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feaito

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Posts posted by feaito

    [b]COUNSELLOR AT LAW[/b]

    in Your Favorites

    Posted

    So, you found "Easy Living" too "srewballish", that means you found it too far-fetched?

     

    I like screwball comedy, and I think that the most screwballish (in a positive sense of the word) of all madcap comedies are "Bringing Up Baby" and "My Man Godfrey"...and they say that the lesser-known "Merrily We Live" with Connie Bennett, Billie Burke and Brian Aherne is great!!

     

    Along with "The awful truth" and "You Can't take it with you", I also bought "Talk of the Town" and "Once Upon a Time", and think both copies better than the former two...OOhh another must-see film (available on VHS only) is Jean Arthur-Joel McCrea-Charles Coburn "The More the Merrier"....and Ginger Roger's "Bachelor Mother" too.. I've heard that Arthur's "Too Many Husbands" is also good...

     

    MovieJoe...Me too.. I also found the dvd copy of Mae West's "I'm No Angel" at a very low price, in a store in Sunnyvale, when it already was out-of-print!!! Great film!!! I liked even better than "She Done Him Wrong" (only available in VHS)....hilarious!!! I also had the luck to buy "Belle of the Nineties" and "Klondike Annie", both funny...not in the same level than "Angel"...but worthwhile anyway, remember the Production Code was already enforced by then!!! So they harmed Mae's "double-entendres"...Another one (not a comedy) which is good, and features Mae in her first (small but meaty-super-funny) role...is "Night after Night"...available on VHS...great movie...Raft, Connie Cummings and Wynne Gibson are good! and Alison Skipworth is hilarious too!

    DVD Picks

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    Yeah..Edge..but, just as a print of the 1922 "Beyond the Rocks" was found in Holland....I have a secret wish, that a lost print of "Covention City" will appear somewhere!!!...and also Garbo's lost film, "The Divine Woman", which it's been said it was her best silent!

     

    I agree with you that most of them would be released by Criterion or Kino, or maybe Image or Roan Group...

     

    MovieJoe...I'm also waiting for the Astaire-Rogers Box Set!!!

    LOUIS B. MAYER

    in Hot Topics

    Posted

    Thanks for your valuable feedback MovieJoe, we've got much the same opinion.

     

    I think that much Judy Garland's troubles (I haven't read any biography on her) besides Mayer's o MGM's, might be responsibility of her parents, maybe her mother and/or father, were stage-struck, and pushed too early in the show-biz, without regard to her rights and sensibility as a person. Poor Judy, she was a victim, anyway with her "sacrifice" the twentieth century gained one of its brightests & shiniests stars and songtresses. If your parents don't protect you, when you are a child or teenager, what can you expect of a Movie Mogul?

     

    I read what he did with Thalberg's sctock and Shearer, after the former's death, from three different sources: "Merchant of Dreams", "Thalberg" and Quirk's "Norma"...well and the three-part "Lion Roars" too, and he really behaved in a nasty way there.

    Thank God Norma was a woman who could stand her own ground!!

     

    About Crawford, may I add, that, in spite of the way he fired her, he tried to "keep" her and "nurture" her career, although she was voted box-office poison in 1938 (by movie-theatre owners), along with Garbo, Kate Hepburn... So I feel he, at least, tried to save Crawford's career. I don't say if his interest on it was purely financial, or that he cared for her really...no...I can't say that....But when finally Crawford left MGM (in 1943-44), she was on her way down, at least in MGM. I don't know who was to blame on that, bad choices, bad parts given to her by studio-bosses...but let's not forget that after 1938, Crawford made some pretty good pictures (The Women, A Woman's Face, Strange Cargo..)...so...I wouldn't blame only Mayer.

     

    Concerning Selznick, I remember he brought him to MGM, to try to threaten (in 1933?) Thalberg's power, and he created a separate production unit for Selznick, where he produced "A Tale of Two Cities"?, "David Copperfield", "Reckless", etc.

     

    The thing is that he seemed to have wanted to rule everybody's lives (his daughters's, his sons-in-laws's, his stars's, etc.)

     

    Rita Hayworth

    in Your Favorites

    Posted

    Well M.L. you're right about Rita being typecasted at the beginning of her career, and overcoming that "handicap" was a great triumph..'cos it let her shoe in a wider range of roles, other than, "the latin".

     

    Her real name was Margarita Carmen Cansino. Although her father, the dancer Eduardo Cansino, wasn't really latin-american, he was spanish, european, although he seems to have come from Spain to the Americas, very young?.

     

    On the other hand, Rita's mother was a showgirl named Volga Haworth, of irish descent?.. So the mixtures of bloods in Rita were explosive!!!!....

     

    I read somewhere that Rita was related to Ginger Rogers, 'cos an aunt/uncle of Rita married a relative of Ginger.

    LOUIS B. MAYER

    in Hot Topics

    Posted

    I've read biographies of some movie moguls, like Bob Thomas's "Thalberg" or Berg's "Goldwyn" (in line waiting is Selznick's biography by Thomas's as well?), but yesterday Louis B. Mayer came to my head (I read his biography "Merchant of Dreams", some years ago, and enjoyed it thoroughly).

     

    Why did he came to my mind yesterday? Because upon reading here at the Boards, about the Special Features of the "The Great Ziegfeld" DVD edition, which I bought some months ago, but hadn't watched it, I noticed that it contained an interview with my beloved Luise Rainer, which once had the kindness of sending me an autographed still by mail, upon request, when I was a teenager.

     

    She didn't refer on very good terms, about her experience (as a human being and an actress) in MGM, with the Star System, and especially with Mr. Mayer, whom he didn't like....she also talked about her once husband, famous playwright Clifford Odets, who also had a relation with doomed Francer Farmer.

     

    I knew all that story, but listening to her now in 2004, she must be 94 or 95 years old!!.... is really something, 'cos not many people of that Era are alive...(Would like to hear what Anita Page has to say about Mayer!!! I loved her on the Crawford documentary). I read & know, that Mayer also threatened Lillian Gish, in 1928?, to "kill" her career, if she didn't take part in some publicity informal campaign, pretending a love affair or sth, like that...to give "new life" to her career...Ms. Gish, also didn't like Mayer at all....Coming to think about it I think I had heard both Rainer & Gish , talked about this issue, on the MGM Documentary "When The Lion Roars"....

     

    Well it's well known too that John Gilbert was threatened by Mayer, after his aborted wedding to Garbo...Some say Mayer didn't do anything to "kill" his career...some say he had sth. to do with it...who knows?....Helen Hayes wasn't fond of Mayer too, he wasn't Shearer's cup of tea either, nor Willy Haines's, and I even read that he (Mayer) had some feud with Conrad Nagel?

     

    On the other hand, many actors were very grateful to Mr. Mayer and liked him, some even "loved" him dearly (as a sort of surrogate father, or so they said): Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Jeanette MacDonald, Lana Turner, Esther Williams, etc.

     

    I have mixed feelings about him....I feel he's one of the most controversial movie moguls of all time....More than Goldwyn, Zanuck, Cohn....he didn't like foul language, he cared about appearances, he wanted badly to be "good", I think he was sort of a "tormented" soul...he had so many "contradictions", 'cos maybe he couldn't live up to his ideal "ethics"....he's said to have had an amount of affairs with actresses.

     

    I'd like to share views, opinions, feedback from pals who may have more information, insight, etc....anyway he's a fascinating character...just as MGM's wonderboy Irving Thalberg (whom I consider superior in most ways, but that's not denying of Mayer's cappacities)

    [b]COUNSELLOR AT LAW[/b]

    in Your Favorites

    Posted

    MovieJoe...we "speak" the same "language"....sad to hear about Dodsworth..I thought MGM had "inherited" the same copy than HBO....'cos the HBO edition is really good!!!!

     

    First..."Lost Horizon"....a must!!!! This one was relased as one of the first "Columbia Classics" releases..along with "It Happened One Night", "Only Angels Have Wings", "Mr. Deeds...", "Mr. Smith...", etc....it is really digitally cleaned and restored, not like "You Can't Take it With You" or "The Awful Truth"...later and poorer "classic" editions, by the guys of Columbia-Sony...In the case of "Lost.."...there's a documentary with Frank Capra's son or people who knew Capra? (saw it last time a couple of years ago)...very good!!...and the guys tried to restore the original movie's length...so although some footage was lost, they found only the audio of some sequences and used photographs of the scenes....nice effort, to really "restore" (in all the sense of the word) a Classic among Classics...Shangri-La...How did they dare to film a remake in the '70s??? Jane Wyatt is one of the loveliest heroines ever....You oughta buy it!!!

     

    Thanks for the Jean Arthur recommendations...I love that actress...her husky voice...her personae...all...I too had high hopes about "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford", ...BTW, have you seen Easy Living??..I've heard it's great. Hope it comes out on dvd!!!

     

    "Stella Dallas" (THE TEARJERKER SUPREME) is just great, just as "Ball of Fire"...excellent movies, great Stanwyck performances!!! Good copies!!

     

    Criterion's Copy of "My Man Godfrey" although not flawless, is the better of all the copies I've seen of the movie, previously I owned a P.D. VHS edition...awful!!!...This dvd copy is more than decent. And there are some nice bonuses. The movie deserves to be watched as best as possible, and Criterion's got the best copy.

    TALLULAH

    in Your Favorites

    Posted

    Tallulah Bankhead..what a great actress & personality!! She really was someone!!

     

    I've only had the opportunity to watch this Lady, three times on-screen only: in the great Hitchcock thriller "Lifeboat".....in the excellent Pre-Code "Faithless" (thanks to TCM) and in her last flick, a "Baby Jane" antic-type "Die! Die! My Darling" (aka "Fanatic")....

     

    Has anyone of you had the opportunity of watching another of her movies??? i.e. her early Paramounts "Tarnished Lady", "The Cheat", "The Devil and The Deep", "Thunder Below" or "My Sin"??? Thwe 1945 Preminger "A Royal Scandal" (where she portrays Catherine the Great, opposite forgotten William Eythe), or any of the silents she made in the late twenties in England or in the 1910's in Hollywood???

    [b]COUNSELLOR AT LAW[/b]

    in Your Favorites

    Posted

    I bought "The Paradine Case", "Notorious", "Spellbound", "Rebecca", all Anchor Bay releases (NO CRITERION NEEDED HERE THANKS): EXCELLENT!!!..."Young And Innocent" I got the Laserlight release, very good and cheap, also add (from Laserlight (Hitchcock)): "Rich and Strange", "Murder", "The Secret Agent", "The Man Who Knew Too Much"...all pretty good, and cheap.

    Didn't buy "The Lady Vanishes" nor "The 39 Steps", 'cos I already had the VHS.

    Rita Hayworth

    in Your Favorites

    Posted

    She was beautiful too in "Salome" and "Loves of Carmen"...and was excellent in "Pal Joey" with Sinatra and Novak (her number "Zip"? was great!!)...She's also good in "Angels over Broadway"...

     

    She looked lovely too in "Cover Girl", "You'll Never Get Rich", "You Were Never Lovelier" and of course "Gilda"...

    DVD Picks

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    Peter Ibbetson

    The Story Of Temple Drake

    We Live Again

    Design For Living

    One Hour With You

    Monte Carlo

    Island of Lost Souls

    Convention City

    Girls About Town

    She Married Her Boss

    The Gilded Lily

    The Sign of the Cross

    top death scenes

    in Hot Topics

    Posted

    One of the most heart-wrenching death scenes is Lew Ayres's one in "All Quiet on the Western Front"...also, Debra Winger's in "Shadowlands"....not talking about violent-thrillers deaths like Psycho, Charade, The Third Man, etc...(all excellent)

     

    Also the drowning scene in Portrait of Jennie is awesome!!

     

    When you think of that also 1997's Titanic comes to my mind, although the movie is no fave of mine...

     

    Well talking about killers...how about the murders committed by Gene Tierney in Leave Her To Heaven...his small brother-in-law, his unborn child!!!

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