Arturo

SECOND CHANCE was Linda Darnell's second movie for RKO, and would star her with that studio's top male star, Robert Mitchum, along with bad guy Jack Palance. It would be filmed mostly in Taxco, Guerrero, but also in Cuernavaca, Morelos, both an hour or two south of Mexico City. RKO was then run by Howard Hughes, with whom Linda had been involved back around 1946-47. She was offered the role when Susan Hayward refused it; apparently resident sexpot Jane Russell was unavailable, due a loan out to 20th Century Fox for GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (a part I've mentioned here would have been perfect for Linda imo), although I think by then Mitchum had had enough of the studio trying to make Mitchum-Russell into another Bogart-Bacall (he would refuse to do THE FRENCH LINE with her later in 1953). The movie was a typical potboiler, with Linda a gangster's moll traveling incognito south of the border so she doesn't have to return to testify, Mitchum a boxer who can't get over having killed another in the ring, and therefore, barnstorming second raters in Latin America. Palance is in the employ of the gangster, there to silence Darnell, but secretly in love with her. Plenty of suspense is provided by Palance chasing Darnell through the winding cobblestone streets of Taxco, and later, by a cable car full of passengers, including the three leads, dangling mid-route as its cables break. The picturesque settings are helped by the Technicolor used, and it was RKO's first 3-D effort. To this effect, Hughes had wanted Linda to expose as much of her breasts as the times would allow, and wear some literally eye-popping outfits. Linda however, still felt overweight, despite having quickly lost much weight to prepare for the filming, and refused to wear anything too revealing. She spends most of the movie in a tailored black suit, but still looks beautiful nonetheless. Her acting is very good overall, especially in the chase scenes, as is the rest of the cast; the only issue I have with her is her delivery of some insipid dialogue as she and Mitchum are falling in love. Despite the thwarting of some of the intended exploitive aspects, the movie got good reviews and was a hit when released in the Summer of 1953.

You're welcome clore. And thanks for helping to publicize this thread.

Linda DArnell finished working on BLACKBEARD THE PIRATE in August 1952, and soon flew to Rome Italy, to meet with director Giuseppe Amato, to finalize their filmmaking plans. She took her 4 year old daughter Lola with her. He had first approached her the prevoius Autumn, while she was recuperating in London from her jaundice episodes. Later, in the Spring of 1952, he had flown to Hollywood to discuss upcoming projects. Now, as Linda arrived in Rome, he greeted her at the airport, and immediately took her out on the town. Then they spent a week in Capri. The Italian press was abuzz that the divorced Linda and the married Amato were having an affair, something they both denied. Anyway, Linda spent a couple of months or so in Italy at this time, and chose a script to film, one of three Amato offered her; another was planned for filming later. LInda fell in love with Italy, to the point of stating that she would love to live there in the future.However, the movie was not set to begin; in fact, it looked possible that it wouldn't start until early 1953. So Linda flew back to the States. She was greeted at the airport in New York by reporters, wanting to know if the reports of her affair with Amato were true. She again denied the reports, and stated that she was single, but looking for a man to fall in love with; her on-again, off-again affair with Joe Mankiewicz was never brought up. She was relieved that Fox had cancelled her contract at this time, as it wouldn't interfere with any plans to film abroad. She had also put out word to her agent to not accept any offers of movies for the next few months, so as to be free to return to Italy as needed.Linda, without a contract or any filmwork (even if by choice), and no steady man, began to sink into a depression. She began to drink heavily, and started to gain weight. Her weight problems she had had at least since the mid-40s, with her love of starchy foods as well as drink, and as with many other stars back then, gained much weight between film assignments. But she was always able to lose weight quickly as needed, when a movie role was offered. Early in 1953, RKO offered her a movie role, the female lead in SECOND CHANCE, and as the movie being planned in Italy, DONNE PROIBITE, was pushed back to start later in 1953, Linda accepted, and immediately went on a diet, as it would soon start shooting in Mexico. SECOND CHANCE had been offered to Susan Hayward, but she didn't care for her costumes. Howard Hughes, who had just had Linda expose her cleavage in BLACKBEARD, wanted her to do the same, but to greater effect, as this would be that studio's first 3-D film. Linda would thwart these plans, as she still felt overweight when the filming began, and ended up spending most of the movie wearing a black suit.More to come......

WILSON was a big hit in 1944, but as it had been so expensive to make, it ended up losing money. And for all the Oscars it won, Zanuck keenly felt its loss as Best Picture, even mentioning it in his acceptance speech three years later when GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT did win.

Maxvonmayerling wrote:I haven't seen this colorized version, but I always though it was unfortunate that they didn't make this film in the old Technicolor way! Another Power film that should have been in color was "Prince of Foxes"! MVM:It is a shame that Fox didn't film this in Technicolor, as originally planned. But 1940 was a year of retrenchment, and cost cutting measures were put into place. For an idea of what TMOZ could have been in color, BLOOD AND SAND was by the same director, and whose color palette on the latter film is amazing. I believe PRINCE OF FOXES was not done in color because of the strong lights that would have had to have been employed, causing damage in those priceless renaissance interiors. Edited by: Arturo on Feb 8, 2013 10:06 PM

*There have only been 3,104 feature films up for an Oscar over the years (That includes documentaries and foreign-language films). 1,286 came out before 1960. 1,643 came out before 1970. TCM is showing 349 this month. By the limited number of films that can be shown, I think they are trying as best as they can.* Actually they feature nominations in all categories/

HEAD'S UP: For those with Fox Movie Channel, they will be showing the Linda Darnell noir FALLEN ANGEL this Saturday morning at 8 am Eastern, 5 am Pacific. FMC will also show other noirs that morning, from MOONTIDE prior to FA, to LAURA and VICKY afterwards.

Linda Darnell started a new film in June 1952 for RKO (with the provisional title of BUCCANEER EMPIRE), fresh from completing her last film under her contract for 20th Century Fox, (although at that time, she didn't know it would be her last film there, as the contract would be terminated in the Fall of 1952). The new film, directed by one-eyed director Raoul Walsh, would be released as BLACKBEARD THE PIRATE. Starring with Linda were an exceedingly hammy Robert Newton as the title character, William Bendix as Newton's right-hand man, and new leading man Keith Andes (in a part originally meant for Robert Mitchum). Featured in this pirate epic were Irene Ryan as Linda's lady-in waiting (Newton: "Waiting for what?"...Bendix: "For a man, most likely!'), and future leading man Richard Egan in a small role. Plus the usual assortment of oddballs and cutthoats to be found in the late 17th century Spanish Main. Here, Linda plays a captured lady thinking she's going to marry Captain Morgan, on whose ship she is boarding, unaware that Blackbeard has hanged him and commandeered the vessel for himself. She has stolen a huge stockpile of treasure, which is quickly appropriated by Blackbeard, with the help of a drunken loose tongued Irene Ryan. She tries to recover it with the help of Keith Andes, playing a doctor attending to Blackbeard's wounds, and here her love interest. Several battles ensue, both on land and on sea. The crafty Blackbeard is finally buried in the sand at water's edge, with the tide rising, when his men realized that he intends to hold out on dividing the captured booty from them. This enjoyable romp featured Linda again looking quite fetching in Technicolor and period costumes (she was still thin from her recent bouts of illness). As befits a movie made at Howard Hughes' studio, Linda is required to show an amazing amount of cleavage in the low-cut gowns she wears (by now Monroe had joined Jane Russell in making the decade one of mammary-crazed excess). She is once again a damsel in distress, albeit one with fire and spunk. Robert Newton is suitably over-the-top with the tongue in cheek dialogue, seemingly enjoying saying it as much as we're enjoying listening to it. And the rest of the cast contribute to the fun of the proceedings.

Silvana Mangano is one of the most beautiful women to grace the screen, anywhere, at any time. IMHO. Period.

Of course I will continue with her career.

Heads up: Tomorrow on TCM's salute to movies with Oscar nominations from 20th Century Fox will feature a Linda Darnell Double feature: 11:30 a.m. est, 8:30 am pst: THE MARK OF ZORRO (1940) 1:30 p.m. est, 10:30 am pst: BLOOD AND SAND (1941) Or a Tyrone Power triple feature if you count the movie right before these: 9:30 a.m. est, 6:30 am pst: THE RAINS CAME (1939) Both Darnell and Power have other films later that day (or the next): Darnell with ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM (1946) and NO WAY OUT (1950). Power with CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE (1947).

NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP was released in the Fall of 1952, and turned out to be a so-so psychological mystery. For me, the problem is Gary Merrill's character, who I find boring, boorish, full of himself, and wallowing in self-pity. Why would the attractive women in his life have ever been attracted to him. This makes the movie hard to take. Especially for Linda Darnell's character, as a beautiful movie star, what would she see in a drunk that definitely needs a shave and a bath. OK, so she has had a thing for him since he had ensured her casting as a dancer in his successful play, "Purple Like Grapes", which incidentally, was the original title of this movie (and "Night Without Sleep" was a working title for Marilyn Monroe's first starring film at Fox, released as DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK). Obviously, Bette Davis "got" Gary's attraction, but I don't see him as a leading man, and definitely not one that would have been able to tempt a movie siren like Linda. The movie would work so much better, and be so much more believable, if someone like Tyrone Power or Dana Andrews had done it (2-3 years earlier, when 20th first acquired this property, their names were bandied about as possible leads in this movie). This is a good example of the rather haphazard way that Linda Darnell was treated at Fox, where she would be tossed into many fairly routine movies with little concern over the long-term viability of her career (and their coffers). Of course by 1952, Susan Hayward was just then being crowned the studio's top dramatic actress (Darryl Zanuck would refer to her as his "$12 Million Dollar Baby", referring to the combined budgets of all the top films they had awaiting release with her). Linda could have acquitted herself well in any of these: WITH A SONG IN MY HEART, THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO, THE PRESIDENT'S LADY, and WHITE WITCH DOCTOR. But she was never high in Zanuck's good graces. Also, Marilyn Monroe was exploding as the new sex symbol of the decade, and suddenly, Linda found her position at the studio ever more precarious and extraneous. Another good role that Linda was being considered for, but did not get, was the gritty crime drama (and future noir classic), PICK-UP ON SOUTH STREET. And she would have done well as MM's partner in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES; she had an decent voice, and she could dance as well as Jane Russell (for whom the studio would not have had to borrow), and IMHO, was more beautiful than Jane. Or the next Monroe film, HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, she would have been perfect in the part played by Lauren Bacall (again, borrowed by Fox), where her acid delivery of witty dialogue, as already demonstrated, would have been great. Instead the studio dropped her in the fall of 1952, after 13 1/2 years there. She was a rather high-priced commodity in a Hollywood whose profits were crashing, and other stars on the lot (Hayward, Monroe) were suddenly more popular. At the time, Linda was actually relieved (after all, it was only one movie a year she had to do for the studio), especially because now she could take the offer by Giuseppe Amato to make movies in Italy. Plus, she was enjoying freelancing, so she felt this as a positive move. She would say rather wistfully that, "I feel Iike a girl leaving home for the first time", since she had been at the studio since arriving in Hollywood at age 15 in 1939. She would be bracing for the brave new world that was Hollywood movies in the topsy-turvy mid-1950s. Edited by: Arturo on Feb 6, 2013 8:24 PM

Careful, because there may be concerns about promoting a "chick-flick" double feature, to the exclusion of everything else.

In early spring 1952, Linda Darnell felt well enough to be able to work. 20th Century Fox assigned her to a psychological murder mystery, NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP, also starring Gary Merrill and Hildegard Neff. In it she plays a movie star, stopping over in New York on her way to make a film in England. She meets Gary, a onetime successful Broadway writer-director now on the skids, at a party, letting him know they had met some six years earlier. He has no recollection of her, but is entranced by her beauty. They each cancel their engagements for that night, and do the town together. All this is told in flashback, as Gary wakes up the following morning trying to piece together the night before, and especially the feeling he had murdered one of three women: his wife, his mistress Hildegarde, or Linda. He eventually realizes who it is, and turns himself in. Linda, who has been in love with him since she tried out for one of his plays, comes around the next morning hoping he'd see her off, sees him off instead.

Dothery wrote: My own opinion is that she never stopped loving him. Dothery. I agree with this, although I remember reading a quote from her about marriage or a relationship with Errol. to the effect of, "I'm not going to regret it. It could've ruined my life".

Or Bette knowing Joan wore it, and wearing it deliberately, sort of conveying the message that "Look how bad I look in this, and so did you".

And since GWTW was filmed in Culver City on the MGM lot, I don't think snagging gowns on the thorns would've been an issue on that production, Addison: Maybe the red ball gown, or any other from JEZEBEL....or from SARATOGA TRUNK, BRIGHT LEAF, etc.

Tom, Great list, and awesome descriptions as always, but quite a few are missing. But I won't quibble, and definitely not be "concerned" about what your slant is and what you left out, and have the threat of the thread derail agqain.

TomJH wrote; Recently I saw Forever Amber for the first times in years. And it's going to be the last time for years. That is one long film. Darnell's okay in it but even more so I quite enjoyed George Sanders. When he's on screen, with that dry sardonic attitude of his, I think things picked up. What didn't help, however, was that I was seeing an old print off AMC. Sometimes the colour looked lovely, other times the scenes were way too dark. It really wasn't doing the film full justice in that respect. TOM; I guess the problem might be that old print. For years I also had a VHS copy I recorded from AMC (or was it the old Z Channel?), and the color was poor. Later I bought a manufactured VHS, and that was much better. But the print showing for the last few years on FMC, and HBO/Cinemax, is much better, with brighter, crisper colors. Hopefully Fox will release FA on DVD soon, preferably with a new restoration, but as part of their DVD Rom series would be ok,

AddisonDeWitless wrote: Really though, I perused the schedule for tomorrow and it's an awesome day of 30's and 40's Warner's features that at least seems kindasorta like someone put some thought into shining the spotlight on some of the titles that haven't been shown *quite as much* as some of the others throughout the years. AddisonDWL: These are all great WB films, and I always enjoy watching them, but hile they may not have been shown quite as much on the 31 Days throughout the years, most of them are shown regularly throughout the year, every year. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The cast and crew of SATURDAY ISLAND/ISLAND OF DESIRE flew back to England from Jamaica to complete the opening and closing scenes of the movie in studio soundstages. Once the filming was finished, Linda came down with jaundice contracted while on location. She was hospitalized in London for over 5 weeks. During this period, an Italian producer, Giuseppe Amato, visited Linda and proposed that they make a film in the near future. Linda mulled over the idea, and decided that she would consider it, but was not up to anything at that time. In December 1951, she returned to the States, taking a suite in New York to be near her love Joseph Mankiewicz, who was staying there preparing for JULIUS CAESAR. She then flew to Hollywood to be with her daughter for the holidays. While there, she had a relapse of the jaundice, and in her weakened condition, told Darryl Zanuck that she was unable to work, and would need a long rest; she told her agent as well. When she returned to NYC early in 1952, she found that her suite had been ransacked completely, with many valuable items of Linda's taken. SATURDAY ISLAND opened in Britain in March 1952; it wouldn't be released in the US (as ISLAND OF DESIRE) until the summer. Everywhere it got mixed reviews, with raves for the Technicolor and scenery, not so much for the trite story. Linda got good reviews, as did Donald Gray' but newcomer Tab Hunter was rightly considered wooden. However, the movie was a big hit everywhere, with Linda wearing some revealing costumes made out of hemp, and Tab in little more than a loincloth; the ad campaign focused on this as the main selling point, obviously successfully so. Linda Darnell didn't have much to do, other than look beautiful and sultry. She could look amazingly youthful (including one scene where she wears pigtails and recalls the same look she wore in CHAD HANNA, filmed when she was still 16). More importantly for the success of the movie, her outfits allowed her to spend the better part of the movie showing her voluptuous figure, which the filmmakers exploited to great effect. She got qutie a bit of publicity from this in all the fan magazines, etc. She had not played a part this overtly sexy since FOREVER AMBER, filmed nearly 5 years earlier. Edited by: Arturo on Feb 2, 2013 12:03 PM

Linda Darnell spent the Summer of 1951 on location, filming ISLAND OF DESIRE. This movie dealt with Linda being shipwrecked on an island during WW2 with a cocky and immature marine, played by newcomer Tab Hunter. The simple plot had Linda, a prim nurse whose devotion to her career has left her to eschew her personal life, and is thus considered a spinster, an "old maid", even though in real life Linda was all of 27 when she filmed this movie (reminds me of the line that David Wayne says to Marilyn Monroe, while seated next to each other on an airplane in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, re: her wearing reading glasses, "I've never seen anyone that reminds me less of an old maid" or something to that effect). Anyway, her initial revulsion over his brashness softens to admiration for his know-how, and eventually, and inevitably, into love. Hunter, for his part, is early on frustrated because she is so (intentionally) off-putting towards him, is very happy when she finally relents. Well into their sealed little paradise comes literally crashing a British fighter pilot, and nurse Darnell is forced to amputate an arm (played by Donald Gray, real life pilot turned actor who lost an arm during WWII). Well as she nurses him back to health, they develop mutual feelings for each other, as Tab jealously watches. Eventually, they all get rescued, and the pairings are sorted in the most logically fashion imho. During the filming, a hurricane roared through Jamaica, cutting off all communication with the outside world. (Luckily, prior to this, Linda had sent her 2 1/2 year old daughter Lola back to the States, as the heat, humidity and mosquitos was making it a trying experience for mother and daughter). Headlines reported that the status of Linda and the film crew was unknown, as they were incommunicado. When communications were restored, the press flocked to Linda to comment on the experience. When asked how she weathered the storm, she answered, "With a prayer and a bottle of scotch!", inadvertently referencing her fondness for drinking. More to come..... Edited by: Arturo on Feb 1, 2013 2:58 PM

Thank you all for your comments. They are very gratifying and much appreciated. Topbilled wrote: Have you visited the Margaret Herrick Library? I just mentioned it to Ginnyfan in his thread. Since you are doing similar studies, it is worth mentioning to both of you. TB, I checked Ginnyfan's thread, but remain clueless as to where, or even what, the Margaret Herrick Library is. Can you fill me in? Thanks.

Fred, sounds like you and Dargo* have another ARGO on your hands, i.e. in-depth work on a non-existent movie. * Or is it D'Argo?

Well I see this as the slippery slope that I'd rather not have TCM approach. As some have said, I would go elsewhere for 80s miniseries. If anything, I'd like that TV movies to be shown on TCM be early movies, or blueprints for later movies, like the Playhouse 90 type of dramas.