clore

They can show: *The Letter* *A Letter to Three Wives* *A Dispatch From Reuters* *A Message to Garcia* (oops, Wallace Beery threw me off there - it's a Fox film)

The story winds up with both of them naked in her bedroom. Is there any female that he directed that he didn't claim to have slept with?

Whew! All that I can say to that is that I'm going to ignore your posts from now on.

> {quote:title=BillyBrown wrote:}{quote}You just love to argue. You need a wife so you can get your arguing jollies. I dont need to prove anything. Altho its obvious that jfk got bumped by govt agents to all but you. I could list over 150 noirs TCM dont show. But I hardly think I need to. I think that you meant to address that to me, not to TopBilled who is the OP of this thread. But why is it that you seem to think that you can make pronouncements without backing them up? Besides, this is a forum, and if you do post something questionable, it is well within the format for anyone to question it. None of us are sacrosanct here. Sure, I could list fims of many genres that TCM does not air, but that does not allow me to claim that they are deliberately holding back because they know that these films are appreciated. You first accusation was a general one, I submitted evidence to the contrary. I won't get into the JFK thing, this is not the place for it. I was only curious as to how the government killed romance as you claimed. Your answer speaks for itself. As for needing a wife in order to have arguments - that's not my definition of marriage. But to each his own.

> {quote:title=BillyBrown wrote:}{quote}When you have war without end for 50 years - yes the govt killed romance. When you have a romance in the White House & they blow the mans brains out in the street - hell yes the govt killed romance. please I have been here & I was educated. Just like you. 2 & 2 = 4. What romance in the White House? Hell, JFK got around as they used to say, Camelot was just a smokescreen. Besides, do you know for sure that the government killed that occupant of the White House? Where's your proof? And what does that have to do with any of the romances that I've experienced? Are you telling me that they didn't happen? Romance isn't dead and your logic is, well, I won't go any further with that sentence. Sorry, but you make a lot of claims about conspiracies such as the one about TCM holding back on noir (which you avoided addressing), or the MPAA cracking down on Hammer - and yet you don't present a shred of evidence, either here or in that other forum that you frequent.

> Film noir saved Hollywood. Unfortunately TCM knows that fans want it so have cut back on it. There is no romance in america. The gov't killed it. How can you say that when November kicked off with six noirs before 8pm, seven if one wants to consider COLORADO TERRITORY a western noir. The next day had THE KILLERS and SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. This past Monday had THIS GUN FOR HIRE, THE BLUE DAHLIA and THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. That's eleven titles and the month isn't half-over. You'll have to excuse me if I now don't subscribe to your theory about the government killing romance.

> {quote:title=bundie wrote:}{quote} > Clore, > What Norma Shearer and Karen Black have in common is that they both tended to photograph like they were cross-eyed! I was trying to avoid being so explicit, lest the fans of either accuse me of being insensitive.

Why would Warner Brothers charge one of their own companies to use their film library? It should in theory help to inflate the value of the library. Using a ridiculous example, HBO might offer 100 bucks per title for ten premium titles which would be 100 bucks more than TCM would be charged if they weren't paying for them. Stockholders would have a right to complain that in that eample, if Time-Warner passed on the HBO offer, they are not getting market value for an asset.

> {quote:title=musicalnovelty wrote:}{quote} Yes, they did run one of the Van Dine Vitaphone shorts after THE MYSTERY OF THE BLACK CAT. But I caught just the end of it, so I'm not sure which one it was. But I'm sure someone will be able to tell us the title soon. It was THE COLE MYSTERY.

Douglas is a lot beefier though. Powell was announced to be in Ninotchka only a week prior to shooting started, but he was still recovering from surgery and it was Douglas who got the part.

Quick, what's the tile of the remake? *'Til We Meet Again*. Frank McHugh shows up there once again. That was the second time that McHugh played the same part in a remake. The other was when *The Crowd Roars* (1932) was remade as *Indianapolis Speedway*.

Good one. Goldwyn was also guilty of similar things. Supposedly he complained that the garbage that was part of the set for DEAD END wasn't clean enough. The story goes that he would go down to the set and ask "Why is everything so dirty here?" Apparently this wasn't a one time thing, he would frequently come down and attempt to tidy up the slum setting as he thought that audiences familiar with the Goldwyn brand would expect a cleaner slum. You wouldn't see Jack Warner doing that.

I remember a poll on the IMDb message board - their Classic Films forum - and it turned out that Warners came out on top there. It's wasn't just for their crime dramas and the like either as many felt that the likes of ROBIN HOOD and ELIZABETH AND ESSEX showed that WB could make a spectacle as well as any other studio. With Bette Davis they could make weepers as well as MGM or Goldwyn. One thing that did seem to drive the responses was the energy of a Warner film, and I have to admit that their films tended to be well-paced. MGM also had its own signature and nothing reflects this as much as looking at the career of Mervyn LeRoy at Warners and at MGM. Does JOHNNY EAGER come close to LITTLE CAESAR or I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG? An MGM gangster film doesn't look much different than one of their wealthy socialite melodramas.

MGM was the greatest studio in the world, they had the greatest stars and films, quality was their goal, not the cheappy gangster pics of WB and the low budgets of Columbia, - MGM made the greatest array of hollywood films in the golden era why not keep showing them and more of them! Long live TCM and MGM! I must have missed something - did I say anything about a moratorium on showing MGM films? But while Warners may have been run with greater emphasis on cost effectiveness, that does not mean that their films were any less entertaining. Certainly they had more social relevance back then and to a degree still do. The romances of MGM and the posh settings with their upper class characters doesn't make them especially relevant today, although many of them make great museum pieces, artifacts of a day long past. Sure, Columbia was even more budget conscious, but still Howard Hawks, John Ford, Leo McCarey and Richard Boleslawski all contributed to make Columbia more than just the house that Capra built. When either Columbia or Warners did spend money on a project, the results were usually as good as the best that MGM turned out. I wouldn't want to see any one studio favored over another in terms of percentage of the air time on TCM. I'd prefer variety because on some days, I'd just rather have a hot dog than filet mignon.

Here you go: http://forums.tcm.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8564387

Can anyone post a picture of him? What did he look like? You just better hope that no one posts a shot of him with his shirt off. Whew - he did not look healthy. Here he is with Loretta Young. Below it is a portrait, albeit not a good one. Edited by: clore on Nov 10, 2011 12:52 PM

> {quote:title=jamesjazzguitar wrote:}{quote}I agree with you except with regards to Streisand. Now granted in the two movies you mention 'they' did the best to make her look good and she looks her best in those two films but I still don't find her attactive. That nose is just too much of a distraction. Believe me, I could never spend any desert island time with the Streisand of FUNNY GIRL, but that's because the character annoys me. When I was a young man, I had a brief conversation with a friend of mine after seeing the film CHASTITY (which maybe now needs a title change). He was just wild about Cher and my reaction was that she looked great at some angles but that she reminded me of Tiny Tim when shot at the wrong angle. Yet she went on to become some sort of sex symbol while I just scratched my head. Every pot has a cover I guess.

As Joan Crawford said once "How can I compete with her, she's sleeping with the boss."

I love Marie Dressler. And Aline MacMahon and Helen Broderick and Edna May Oliver. For me, Norma Shearer is similar to Sarah Jessica Parker in that both seem to represent some kind of tres chic in their respective generations, but neither one does a thing for me. It's not just a matter of whether I find them attractive, I just don't get a register on their charisma on my scale either. Barbara Streisand was one who had people making fun of her looks, but in WHAT'S UP DOC or THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT (to name just a couple), I found her quite appealing.

The Big Sleep is another example. Viewers shouldn't let the plot drag them down. i.e. who killed who isn't the point. Just go with the flow and enjoy the ride. And what a ride! *The Big Sleep* goes by so fast that one doesn't have the chance to notice that maybe things have gotten a bit confusing. While I'm a bit critical of the many coincidences in *The Blue Dahlia*, I think that the dialogue contans some of the greatest lines ever. Such as the house dick mentioning that the death of Mrs. Morrison isn't good for the hotel. The cop played by Tom Powers responds "Kinda tough on the Morrison dame too." Or the bit about changing the sheets every day followed by Ladd asking "how often do they change the fleas?"

I'm glad that you enjoyed it. The scene is the one where a drunken Stewart comes to visit Grant and he's talking about how booze is "a great leveler." Boy, it sounds as if this year's Awards show is falling apart. The producer quit the other day and now planned host Eddie Murphy has backed out.

Did you notice how homely Norma was without her makeup on? She reminded me of Karen Black and that's not necessarily a good thing. Shearer has never done a thing for me. If I watch one of her films, it's only to add to the list of previously unseen titles.

I remember in 1985 that James Stewart received some honorary award and Cary Grant was the one to present it to him. This is where I first learned of the anecdote that Stewart ad-libbed a hiccup in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY as it was Grant who revealed it. That was such a combo of true legends, and I was wishing that both would just stand there and tell stories for the rest of the night. Grant was already retired from show biz for nearly two decades, but who better to represent the golden age could they have found that night?

One year Welch and Dean Martin were jointly presenting an award. Raquel was in a va-va-voom pantssuit and Dino says "I'll bet only two of you are looking at me right now." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Zc7xvP0_k

You never see a wonderful older star as a presenter anymore, because the Oscar people seem afraid that teenagers won't know who they are. When I was in my teens and twenties, for me the great attraction was seeing the likes of John Wayne, James Stewart, Cary Grant making an appearance. Sure, seeing Raquel Welch in some revealing outfit was enjoyable, but back then there was a mix of old and new. I've only missed one airing since Sidney Poitier took home the gold and that was the 1969 show as I was working at night and going to school. But after the last debacle, with that annoying Anne Hathaway going "woo woo" as a cheer every few minutes, I may just give up entirely on the show.