Fedya

I just watched Immortal Sergeant today. Henry Fonda plays a Canadian serving with the UK forces in North Africa in World War II, under beloved sergeant Thomas Mitchell. Henry's corporal character is extremely passive, to the point that he basically just lets his girlfriend (Maureen O'Hara) walk off with author/war correspondent Reginald Gardiner. And then the sergeant gets it on a patrol mission, and Fonda, as the highest-ranking person left, has to take command, which allows him to do some toughening up. The war mission story isn't a bad plot, but the parts with Maureen O'Hara are told in flashback intersperesed throughout, which muddles everything and makes the movie rather more of a slog to get through.

I think everyone in Hollywood did copious amounts of drugs of one sort or another.

Have you ever seen One, Two, Three? He's marvy in that one.

And unlike Kay Fwancis, she could pronounce the letter R.

You can see the portrait of Laura in color in On the Riviera.

What about the portrait of Laura?

Be forgiving of a woman who didn't have a right side to her face.

Actually, it's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle that's different, since it's the only one grounded in any sense of reality.

Eating Raoul?

I'm reminded of Scarlet Street, which I haven't seen in a while. Edward G. Robinson basically creates his own punishment, too, doesn't he? I'm not gonna touch this one with a 10-foot pole.

For some reason this made me think of Bette's scene in In This Our Life, where she's just learned from her uncle (Charles Coburn) that he's been diagnosed with a terminal illness and only has months to live. Davis delivers a line in a way that's fun but over the top. What Eagels delivered was almost frightening in its implications.

You should watch Queen Bee, one of those post-Warner Bros. "Joan Crawford is giving 150%" movies, in which Wray has a smaller role.

"Thought better of it"? You say that as though the comment would have been in bad taste.

In Eagels' case, she probably was on a drug trip. She looks skeletal and almost cadaverous in The Letter, and there's something about this I find immensely compelling.

You mean like Gladys Glover?

I couldn't help but think Sandra Dee was playing Gidget in Imitation of Life. Of course now I want to see A Summer Place again.

The Bible: In the Beginning.

Surely I can't be the only person who laughs at the Lana Turner version of Imitation of Life.

It's too bad Lorenzo Music is no longer with us. (Not that he would have done the introductions on camera anyway.)

How could you forget The Entertainer, airing overnight at 4:00 AM? Laurence Olivier is wonderful in what is a pretty downbeat movie, playing a man going on doing the sort of music-hall entertainment he's been doing all his life because it's the only thing he knows how, even if it's leaving his personal life a shambles. Brenda de Banzie plays his long-suffering wife; Joan Plowright his daughter; and Roger Livesey his father.

Carmen Jones also has a bunch of women working at a defense plant in World War II.

I'd already seen it before, but it was nice to see The Whip Hand on the schedule again. It's an odd little movie.

You forgot the bizarre animated sequence.

The same could be said about Xanadu.

I've found George Arliss interesting in pretty much everything I've seen him in. Even if it's programmer piffle like A Successful Calamity or that movie that has him getting involved with a gas station (I can't recall offhand whether that's The Millionaire). A few months back TCM showed Arliss in the really interesting The Man Who Played God with a very young Bette Davis as his love interest.