JackFavell

John Hartford:

I think she was on Star Trek or maybe it was a greek mythology movie, but I have found color pictures of her wearing her hair in an upswept ponytail/greek goddess look.

Yes, Ugaarte, *Tom Moore* is the boy sitting on the log, and the officer with the fake moustache, and the curly headed fellow being looked over by the cops. He's one of my silent screen crushes. I should be posting him in the other thread!

I've never heard that one before, it's lovely.

gorgeous Valentino, in gorgeous colors, Jeff! For Rudy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EElD3Drc6hc&feature=related

Leslie Parrish is a blonde actress I always notice, I like her very much. She's got looks and a sweet gentle way about her. Edited by: JackFavell on Nov 5, 2011 5:13 PM

Oh dear, I think Madge's new short blonde hairstyle is singularly unattractive for her face. She was so cute and dark, but it is all ruined with that flat on top hair, which doesn't match her coloring. I wish they had shown Olive Borden up close. She had a lovely figure. And wasn't Janet adorable, as always! Rudy would have made such a great father. You can tell he loves children. Edited by: JackFavell on Nov 5, 2011 5:02 PM

OK!

Aaah! That explains a lot. Here is Tom Moore posing as a policeman in *Officer 666:*

I can't get through using the link.

I love Wildwood Flower! It's funny when I was growing up in Oklahoma, I hated country and western. Now, I love classic country music.

Oooh, I love the last three posts, Jake! Especially Gene. Was there ever a more comforting voice?

MAdge Bellamy certainly changed her look! I am used to photos of her in an earlier period of time... like this:

I always love those slides, they are colored so beautifully. The Colleen Moore one is beautiful, but I find it fascinating that on many of the slides, the stars names are not mentioned, but the director and writers are. Jeff, Thanks so much for the Tom Moore - and in uniform yet! He's a doll. I haven't seen that particular picture. My favorite Tom Moore photo is from *Just for Tonight* (1918) with Lucy Fox.

I am especially intrigued by the Once Upon a Time in the West comment...I'll see if I can see the same thing in the film, though I've only seen OUATITW once.

I just found my copy of RTHC, I'll try to get to it this weekend or maybe Monday. Then I'll reply, hopefully with more inspiration and insight than I have right now.

I love The Great Escape.

You will love it again! I am quite sure. Your perceptions are different, but they will change again, grow deeper again, and you'll find that nugget that drew you to it in the first place. I promise.

Thank you, Maven! >As for being written and directed by Coward and Lean and them understanding how a woman would feel about it all, the woman's perspective, my question is: was Coward just writing about LOVE, Period. Is Love, LOVE whether a man feels it or a woman feels it. I wonder what Love Feels Like To Men. Is it the same. We know men see things in more physical terms; what attracts him to her, physically. But Love, actually, TO LOVE, is it a really DIFFERENT thing for men than it is for women? Could Coward know what he was writing about becuz he was IN LOVE himself...the very same Laura way. Perhaps he loved an Alec and both sides could not risk the loss their LOVE would bring? That's the nugget of what I think, Maven, and I'm glad you were able to state it so well. This is what I've always thought. That Coward (and Lean) had to have taken their own blackest, most despairing moments to have written this film as well as their most joyous. Used their own painful experiences down to the minutest detail. Thy put what is almost always inward out. That's true art - taking the deepest most personal thing and putting it on show for the world to see. It must have been so difficult. But through that experience that we think no one could possibly share, we realize how much we are alike, how human we are. It has the ring of absolute truth to it, the way the high minded emotion is written into the mundane of life, unexpected, yet elevating every detail into something cherished and remembered. So yes, LOVE is LOVE, whether it's inside a shopgirl or a rich matron, or a man or a woman. And the need to feel, to remember and to keep it inside is also universal. Edited by: JackFavell on Oct 31, 2011 7:10 AM

Thanks very much, MissG. I don't know what makes the movies I love so hard to write about. There is something floating out there in the miasma that I can't name when I really care about a movie. Or maybe it's the movies I like that have an unattainable floating quality.... It takes a lot out of me to muddle around, without really being able to put a finger on the real reasons why a movie makes me emotional. I can say I identify with the character, but why? I know I cried almost as much at *Brief Encounter* the first time I saw it, when I was fifteen.... what did I know then about love or duty?

I honestly don't know. My first thought was to say no, I wouldn't feel the same way. I so like Celia Johnson, she is the whole thing, really. And being a woman, I respond to her little thoughts and comments about the details of her life. But then I remember that Coward was a man, and Lean was a man, and they still came up with this brilliant movie. It's really Coward's thoughts that we are hearing, adjusted by Lean's sensitivity. I suppose I could identify with a male just as well - if it were done correctly.

Um... I'll try. I actually was going to write more, but I have trouble putting it into words. One thing I do agree with is that it would end up in the same place, if she had married Alec instead of Fred. It's not the people's fault, its just life. Because the story is in the first person, I find myself drawn into the thoughts that Laura is having. The very mundane-ness of her life, and the way she is so obviously a normal person, not a movie star type character, brings me emotionally close to her. She does shopping, she has annoying friends, she has a husband who falls asleep on the couch every night and does the crossword puzzle. The daily routine brings them together, but keeps them worlds apart. At the same time, they are one entity, they act as one with the children, get along, laugh, and joke together. They know everything about each other, and nothing. After meeting Alec, Laura begins to live in her mind. I think like her, I find her very much on my wavelength, so I can put myself very easily into her shoes, even when the plot goes somewhere my life has not. She has a lot of humor in her, and joy, and love, but the passion behind it has left her life. In fact, I think there is a lot untapped inside her, things that she never knew about herself....the wild emotions she can have, the crazy longings she had never realized might be there.....and it is this that she comes to feel more than anything, because of Alec. Once let loose, she wants to run to the one person who she should share them with....Fred.... but she can't, and never will be able to. This to me is the heartbreaking part, the part that chokes me up most. The never. She can never see or write to Alec, and worse, she can never tell Fred. So she is going to be within herself for a long time. That tears me up. I said before I was solitary, but really it isn't that, it's that I am within myself, thinking, in my own life all the time, whether I am with people or not. To not share some of these thoughts with my loved ones would be like death, and it would be a wedge between us too, keeping us apart. Fred is kind, sweet, but far from romantic. I think there is something in all women that longs for romance and passion, especially when our significant other is sitting there snoring away, or asking what's for dinner when you told him seven times already. You can't really have both, romance and comfort, longevity....at least not all the time. You have to juggle. And you don't always get what you want. Mostly, you put the things you want, especially emotional needs, on the back burner. There's no time for them, and that's OK. Mostly. But if I were to fall for someone else, it would be agony to open up only to be clamped down when I so needed to be free. What I respond to is the longing and the lifetime quietly unfulfilled. Because she is kind and decent and NORMAL, she would never be able to go with Alec, though for one heady moment, she thought she might. She knows the cost of it would be too great. - her children and husband still come first. The series of emotions Laura goes through - this is love - I have felt all of it before. It almost doesn't matter who the characters are.... all the facets and situations are here, everything that goes with it is in this short relationship. I am swept up in it. The feeling of giddiness at the beginning, the sweet melancholy of being apart, the dreaming, the time interrupted, the misunderstandings, the frustration, and finally the agonizing pain of saying goodbye, never when we want to. Wanting to die... it's all here in this movie, foreshortened, but just as strong and fresh and intense as in real life, as if I were living it. When Laura rushes out onto the platform and stops herself from going under a train, I FEEL it, the little details of it, just as she does, and it's all because of Coward's script and Lean's direction and Johnson's AMAZING performance, in the film itself and the voice-over. It;s all in the details, the little things we remember. Talk about visceral! I'm in that movie. And there's also the sheer beauty of it. It takes my breath away, as if the steam and the light and the sound were all conspiring together to show the swirling emotion in vivid detail. There is the ride home with Dolly, the busybody. Just like in real life, there is some kind of cosmic joke in poor stupid Dolly's showing up and talking madly on while Laura and Alec sit dumbly, only able to respond to one another by that brief harmless touch. Why do I know this feeling? Laura has admiration for Alec's remarkable control. Finally, the feeling of nothingness. It's all super real to me. It's True. Then, when it's too bleak to endure, Fred, completely oblivious, says she's been a long way away..... somehow, he knows just the right thing to say. Man, that's the killer. "Thank you for coming back to me." And all that's left of me is a puddle of tears. I hope this jumble of thoughts helps, I don't think it will. Edited by: JackFavell on Oct 30, 2011 10:16 PM

Thanks for the Tom Moore photo, Jeff! Where's Una Merkel? Am I missing something?

Not to interrupt, but I react more emotionally to *Brief Encounter* than I do to almost any other movie.... except for maybe *Cat People* and *Curse of the Cat People.* I find it terribly emotional, actually because it's all held in.

Don't worry about the weird glitches on the boards, it's happening to everyone! I still like Robert Preston in *Music Man*. But I see what you mean. > You know, the more I see INSIDE DAISY CLOVER, the more I pine for the Prince of Darkness. No, not Chris Lee as Dracula, but Christopher Plummer as Raymond Swan. > He's even meaner to Natalie than Wade, but I adore him in a sort of kinky way. He's really very good! I had made up my mind to hate him, and then he made me feel sorry for him, so I liked him. Then later on I did hate him. I guess that's good acting. > Whenever our program director at work starts screaming at us, I desperately want to shrink him down to size. When I get mad at people, I wish I was Irena. That would be the way to go.... you could just scare the life out of people, like Alice at the pool. I just love the look on Simone Simon's face when she flicks on the light. > My BERSERK review is floating around here somewhere, whirling about like the dancing poodles. Ty Hardin and Joan Crawford as lovers, now there's a pair. Don't you just love > Diana Dors? Joan: "You ****!" BERSERK SPOILERS I thought Ty Hardin was Don Murray for a few minutes. Then I thought Robert Hardy was Edward Mulhare, he was so svelt! Diana was so asking for it! She was born to be killed. Ty surprised me. I was sure he was in on it with sweet homicidal Judy. BERSERK is a wonderful movie! I enjoyed every minute of it. Especially the poodles. Joanie does it again! I really find myself loving Joan Crawford lately. Edited by: JackFavell on Oct 30, 2011 8:10 PM