JackFavell
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Posts posted by JackFavell
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Now...ask your mom about "Sissi" and ask her about Magda Schneider, Romy's mother. She was a big star in the 30's.
I will!
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I would imagine Schickel could be sitting on a bunch of outtakes and interviews that didn't make the cut. Then again, many film stars and directors had limited time for interviews back in the day, and would only consent to an hour or so of interview time . Maybe he had to be really quick with his interviews? I don't know, but it is tantalizing to think about isn't it? I wonder if you wrote to Schickel what he would say?
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The "Who is That?" book is just a small reference book for looking up actors' faces. I believe there are sections describing different types- butlers, men about town, tramps, grand dames, etc. It is really quite a small book, and I can't remember how inclusive it is, but it helped me to get most of the popular character actors figured out.....Because of it's format, it is invaluable when you are sitting there in front of the tv trying to figure out who the chubby old man is with the whiny voice in Swing Time... (Victor Moore)
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Hey, don't get all apothegmatic on me....
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I bow to your astute recommendation.....
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I will ask my mother in law about her, since she is German. Romy might be a little after her time though. I always thought Schneider was remarkably beautiful, and your tributes certainly bear that out.....
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But as long as you are so good at killing threads, can you do 99% of us a favor and kill that "W" thread in General Discussions before somebody has a stroke?
I tried. I really tried, but I am disappointed to say that I have no idea which thread you are talking about, and I just couldn't find it. I would like to have read it though, as I enjoy a good apoplectic thread once in a while.
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I'll have to ask MissGoddess if there's a place you for at Court.
Ok, but I want a really good dress.....
The Daniel Blum book was my very first movie book. I learned every picture in it when I was young, and sometimes, even now, if a movie or actor is mentioned, I will flash a particular picture from that book in my mind.
Cinemaven- That's funny, I couldn't get the blonde either... I don't have the book anymore, so I can't look it up! Grrr.
I would like to know what about groceries prompted you about Elsa?
I was buying hot cocoa and brandy of course.....
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Here are some of my favorite British films.
Great Expectations is a wonderful movie. I especially like Martita Hunt's Miss Havisham.
Lean's Brief Encounter.
Any Ealing comedies with Alec Guinness, most notably The Ladykillers, Man in the White Suit, and Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Most people would mention Local Hero, but my favorite Bill Forsyth movie is Comfort and Joy.
Hobson's Choice.
Carol Reed's Odd Man Out.
Pygmalion, directed by Anthony Asquith, produced by Leslie Howard, with Howard's finest performance as Professor Higgins.
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Oh, I'm not kidding she had the best clothes. I am so jealous... I want some of those outfits! Even her shoes are great....
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Oh god, I killed the thread! Sorry for rambling on last night like a lunatic.....
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I love Katharine Hepburn. She has been in many great movies over the years, and a bunch of duds, but she really tried to expand herself as an actress, and was never afraid to try something interesting or new. It is only lately that I see why people get irritated by her. When she fails, she fails spectacularly. She is uppity. I especially like her when she plays upper-crust suffragistas, as in African Queen, Philadelphia Story, Pat and Mike, Lion in Winter, and Adam's Rib or even Desk Set . But I also like her tremendously in her more nervous, gawky roles- Alice Adams, The Rainmaker and Summertime. She is remarkably good at conveying the fearful, romantic and somewhat silly women in these three movies. Supposedly she was fearless in real life (I wonder how much of that was an act, like Ford's curmudgeon act), but in these movies, she manages to find some real emotion and doubt of herself.
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Bonjour Monsieur Corsaire-
You keep up very well, and surpass most of us!
When I was a kid, my dad got me a book called "Who Is That?" which was chock full of pictures of famous character actors, fussbudgets, and cherubs. Anytime I was watching a movie, and someone I didn't know came on, I would rush to my book, look through the pages, and find out who they were.
It's actually available on ebay for 5 bucks or so.
and this is Laura Hope Crews:
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Handsome, stable, reliable, dependable. Great speaking voice, Always gave me the impression of stability and believability. I'll save my erotic fantasies of Hinds for a PM.
Please don't! I think your fantasies might bump my thread to the top for weeks....
I was thinking of Hinds' voice too when I asked about him. In fact, I think a lot of the great character actors had great, or at least memorable voices. I love a movie that sounds like a fast-paced concerto. Alan Mowbray talking to Eugene Palette talking to Alice Brady talking to Mischa Auer ... each distinct in their own way....To me, the voices are almost more important than the looks of a character actor or actress.
MissG- Adolphe Menjou is always so urbane and dapper. I really like the type he plays, and in fact, I can't think of anyone who matched him.
I think we should start a *Runner-Up* list. I had so many that I couldn't fit on my original list that I feel bad. I mean, how do you pick between George Sanders as Uncle Neddy, and Henry Daniell as the Baron in Camille? I would love to give a spot to Daniell just for TAKING the role of Garbitsch in The Great Dictator.....
And I can't believe I left Elsa Lanchester off. I couldn't think of a particular role for her---- until this afternoon. I was grocery shopping and realized that she was just about perfect as Miss Plimsoll in Witness for the Prosecution.
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Oh my god! She looks EXACTLY like Tina Fey!
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What is it about Samuel S. Hinds that does it for you? What are your favorite roles? I would love to know what put you "over the moon"?
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I guess I would say a "squirrely cherub" would be a slightly cuckoo old cutie, like S.Z. Sakall; whereas a "fussbudget" would be either a prim, fussy person (Franklin Pangborn) or a loud, complaining pain in the neck (Laura Hope Crews).
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Esther Ralston
Ginger Rogers
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I was surprised in looking through one of my books that Eagels was in films as early as 1916. I had to double check, but it's true...
She also had a brief affair with John Gilbert, according to Dark Star by Leatrice Joy Fountain....
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1. John Qualen- The Grapes of Wrath
2. Frank Morgan- The Wizard of Oz
3. Oscar Homolka- I Remember Mama
4. William Demarest- The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
5.Cuddles- Casablanca
6. Walter Brennan- The Westerner
7. George Sanders- Uncle Neddy- The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
8.Leon Ames- Meet Me in St. Louis
9. Edmond O'Brien- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
10. Billy Gilbert- Mr. Pettibone- His Girl Friday
1. Marie Dressler- Carlotta Vance- Dinner at Eight
2. Edna May Oliver- David Copperfield
3.Jean Dixon- My Man Godfrey
4.Jean Cadell- Mrs. Pearce-Pygmalion
5.Judy Holliday- Adam's Rib
6.Fay Bainter- Quality Street
7. Diana Lynn- The Major and the Minor
8. Dame Edith Evans/Margaret Rutherford - The Importance of Being Earnest
9. Ethel Barrymore- Portrait of Jennie
10. Alice Brady- My Man Godfrey
I tried really hard not to copy any that anyone else picked but I just had to pick a couple of the same performances. I also could not make up my mind between Margaret Rutherford and Edith Evans so I plopped them both on the list. I have to cheat every time we do one o these lists.... I am the Bad Seed!
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That's so exciting! I would love to order from France- I wonder if they have those movies on dvd because of the enormous work the French did in preserving classic movies during the sixties?
Do you have one of those international thingamajigs that play all different dvd's? I am going to have to get one of those....
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Oh golly, I just wasted my brain comparing *M* and *The Third Man* on another thread.... and besides, MissG! You took some of my favorites already- like Thomas Santschi, Woody Strode, Ward Bond, Alice Brady and Jane Darwell....I guess it is easy to pick Ford's supporting actors.....
I have to think about it, but one performance comes to mind immediately, especially since you mentioned "Grapes". It may be my favorite supporting performance of all time. I just love John Qualen's Muley - he is almost the key to the whole movie for me. I always feel his pain, sitting in the dirt, an old graveyard ghost. I totally believe his dust bowl farmer.... "and some of us died for it...."
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No mention is made of Reed attending movies, or his cinematic idols. Only his bosses are mentioned in the sections of the book "The Films of Carol Reed" that I read. Of course, a fuller investigation would be helpful, but I don't have access to any other literature right now. He seems to have been a busy young man, who did not really become interested in directing until 1934 or so.
I thought that there were many connections between *M* and *The Third Man*. Many people compare "Kane" and TTM, but I think a case could be made that M and TTM are closer cinematically.
First of all, they have in common a lead character who is a reprehensible criminal. Throughout each movie, our feelings about these criminals change. In *The Third Man* , we go from thinking Lime is just a sort of kindly black marketeer, to realizing that he considers his victims less than human. He becomes a monster before our eyes. As *M* starts, we see Beckart as a monster, but by the end we have begun to see that he is a victim, and almost sympathetic (thanks to an incredibly strong performance by Peter Lorre).
In M, there are significant, long sections of the film in which there is total silence.Then the silence is suddenly punctuated by sounds, eerily coming out of the dark, or off screen, or even rising over a totally black screen. These noises consist of crowd noises, children playing, agitated talking, singing, whistles, bells and tapping. In TTM, there are significant, long sections in which the zither music is playing, sequences of Holly running down a street, or scrambling over rocks or down stairs. When the music stops, we hear an amazing series of sounds - of footsteps echoing, crowd noises, children's voices, agitated talking, tapping, gun shots, and dripping water. The sounds eerily come out of the dark, sometimes coming from different directions, we don't know where they are coming from....Both movies are quite amazing in their use of sound.
Both movies have a balloon, and a balloon man. Both balloons hold our attention uncomfortably, stealing the scenes they are in from the actors.... In M, the balloon floats crazily in the phone wires in the Elsie Beckmann scene. It is a horrible image, making us think of a body jerking in the throes of death. At the end, the same balloon flies up above and behind Peter Lorre's frightened face, taking our attention, and reminding us that he is always being followed, shadowed by his crime.
The balloon (and balloon man) in The Third Man literally fills the frame, obscuring our view, just as it possibly ruins the stake-out for Calloway, blocking his view of Lime....It isn't quite as uncomfortable an image as in M, but it is distracting. For some time, I have thought that it was meant to be a kind of red herring, making the audience think, "Is that Harry in disguise? Is he making his getaway?"
Both films have a double chase setup, a desperate search that turns awry. Both also deal with mistaken identity - the mob at the beginning of M mistakenly accuses one then another innocent (or not so innocent) person of being the murderer; whereas in TTM, the dead body is a double - the never seen and unfortunate Harbin, mistakenly assumed to be Harry.
Both movies have many other things in common - the use of flashlights directed at the camera, wet city streets, stairs, doorways, verticals.... an expressionistic use of lighting. But the movies differ from each other as well. M uses the theme of concentric circles and clock imagery to make it's main points. TTM uses crumbling ruins, odd craggy unnatural faces, the idea of falling, and theatrical imagery to make it's main points. But they feel the same, and the underlying ideas are so similar. I can imagine Carol Reed seeing M, then years later making TTM, never even realizing that the other movie might have been buried in his subconscious. I also think it's possible that Reed may never have seen M. It's taken me years of watching both movies to realize how connected they are, at least in my mind.....
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I have never seen that one. I will check it out now, though! There is a book about Reed with excerpts on the net, so I might just go do some reading, but I'm sure they have cut out key pages so you have to buy the book....
Silent Film Gallery
in Silent
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Janet Gaynor was one of those strange types that photograph differently- sometimes she is so drop dead beautiful it makes your heart flutter, and other times merely cute, with that odd, heart shaped face and dimple.....
But Gaynor's real forte was her acting- she could break your heart in two. At first, she excelled at playing the gamine. I think normal, everyday women of the time really identified with her. She seems so down to earth...She won the very first Academy Award for her performances in Seventh Heaven and Sunrise, the only time the academy nominated someone for multiple performances. She made the transition to sound without a hitch, because of her charming speaking voice. She continued to give great performances in some not so great pictures throughout the early thirties. By the time you get to 1937's A Star is Born, she has become a consummate actress, capable of establishing an adult, strong-willed, and even regal performance. She was nominated for another Academy Award for this movie. She was so much more than just cute.....