kingrat

Oscar was way unfair in 1972. Stacy Keach was so real in Fat City that he should have run away with the Best Actor award. Think they gave it to some mannered fakey performance--can't remember the guy's name. The New York Film Critics' Circle actually changed its rules in mid-vote so that Keach wouldn't win. He had a plurality of votes, which was enough under the existing rules. Susan Tyrrell was outstanding, although so was Eileen Heckart, who perhaps should already have won for The Bad Seed.

Mourning Becomes Electra is on during the Thursday day schedule. Many people thought Rosalind Russell would win the Oscar for this movie. Then they actually saw the movie. Both the movie and Roz in this film have their defenders, but this is classic Oscar bait. A prestigious Eugene O'Neill play, unfortunately not very well directed. Roz gives a much better performance in a film noir/domestic melodrama from the same year, The Guilt of Janet Ames, which has not turned up on TCM recently.

Serial is a very fun movie. Has it ever come out on DVD? I wish TCM would show it, but it would have to be digitized first. I remember laughing myself silly when it first came out. Christopher Lee as a businessman who's secretly a gay biker is inspired casting.

Coming up in just a few hours today is Deep Valley, a fine film with my favorite Ida Lupino performance. Fay Bainter and Henry Hull are excellent as her parents. Beautifully directed by Jean Negulesco. I hope this will be shown on the Watch TCM app so that more people can see it.

Anne Shirley adopted that name after she played that character in Anne of Green Gables. She had previously been billed as Dawn O'Day, a name that sounds more like a stripper than like a little girl. Ellen Burstyn previously had gone by a variety of names, including Ellen McRae. Patricia Barry was billed as Patricia White before she married the son of playwright Philip Barry.

Tom, I also like Sands of the Kalahari. Cy Endfield is a good director. But not only does Stuart Whitman not get sunburned, Susannah York's hair looks runway-ready.

Thanks so much for posting this for us. I've never seen Judex, Seduced and Abandoned, Tiger Bay, or Mouchette, and would like to correct that. If you've never seen Maedchen in Uniform, enjoy the battle of good German lesbians vs. evil German lesbians in a girls' school.

I enjoyed seeing Pickup on South Street again. Script is much better than most of Fuller's; he's usually a much better director than writer. Great opening scene with no dialogue. First-rate cinematography by Joe MacDonald. Many of us wish Thelma Ritter had won an Oscar for this picture. All the cast is strong, not a given for Fuller's films, and Jean Peters simply nails the role of Candy, the hooker with, yes, a heart of gold. She is also exceptional in "The Last Leaf" from O. Henry's Full House. Too bad she got involved with Howard Hughes. She seems like potentially one of the best actresses of her era.

This, of course, is the only truly important question!

I watched The Comancheros last night on TCM and enjoyed it quite a bit. Beautiful on-location scenery in Utah and Arizona, an Elmer Bernstein score, a decent script, and an above-average cast. John Wayne plays the kind of part he does well, Stuart Whitman makes a good foil to Wayne, and Lee Marvin is great in a small role as a half-scalped gunrunner. There's also Nehemiah Persoff as the leader of the bad guys, Edgar Buchanan as a judge, Michael Ansara as Persoff's second-in-command, and the lovely Ina Balin as Stuart Whitman's love interest. Ina Balin's performances here and in From the Terrace make me wish she had had a bigger career. By the way, this was Michael Curtiz' last film, and John Wayne had to direct some of the scenes because of Curtiz' illness. Although the brief scenes of torture shown in The Comancheros are nothing compared to what will be shown a few years later in The Wild Bunch and Ulzana's Raid, they are stronger than one might expect for 1961.

Funny you should say this, Lorna. Back in the 70s a friend of mine had an East German boyfriend who declared that he would go straight for Hildegard Knef. Fortunately for my friend, the East German boyfriend never met her.

Hildegard Knef, billed as Hildegarde Neff, also starred in Decision Before Dawn, where she gives a terrific performance as the woman Oskar Werner meets on his mission through the ruins of Germany. According to imdb, the studio was going to mount a best supporting actress campaign for her but backed away because of rumors about her having an affair with a Nazi officer during WWII. IIRC, during her singing career she was billed as "the incomparable Hildegarde."

Gee, you gotta feel bad for any underage kids who didn't get to see a heart ripped out of a human body. Spielberg is a peachy guy for letting more of them get to see this.

Sea Wife is high on my list of guilty pleasures because, you know, Joan Collins is so perfectly typecast as a nun.

Cornered is one of those films that improved for me on a second viewing. The plot may be too convoluted for its own good, but it's interesting to see an early Hollywood treatment of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who escaped to Argentina. The cast is full of less familiar, but very good, actors. Luther Adler and Morris Carnovsky were best known for their stage work. Micheline Chereil (Mme. Jarnac) and Nina Vale (Senora Camargo) are scarcely known at all. Nina Vale should have had a lengthy film noir resume; I loved the scene where she tries to seduce Dick Powell. Powell hits all the right notes as the serviceman who wants revenge on his wife's killer, and Walter Slezak knows how to play sleazy characters, as in Born To Kill. Edward Dmytryk and his cinematographer, Harry Wild, give us lots of the noir imagery we love, and the scene in the subway between Dick Powell and Micheline Chereil is especially fine, as their tense conversation keeps getting interrupted by the trains. Eddie Muller talked about the changes in writers, not all of them known, for the film, and how one right-wing writer was replaced by a Communist writer, John Wexley, whose propagandist speeches Dmytryk and the producer, Adrian Scott, threw out even though they were both Communist Party members. Scott and Dmytryk were then expelled from the CP as not being loyal enough, though both Scott and Dmytryk would eventually serve prison time because of their unwillingness to testify before HUAC.

I think it's the combination of artiness, pretentiousness, and druggy incoherence that makes Lylah so special. I mean, usually bad dialogue is just a string of cliches, but here someone or some committee of writers has carefully crafted these lines believing them to be high art, though the result is something else entirely.

Oh, Hibi, you are so right. Dialogue as rotten as this cannot be found every day!

Just when you think Stevens is wrapping up each of those films, he drags them out for ten or fifteen more minutes, by which point I no longer care 1) if the adorable couple of Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea gets together or 2) whether Jean Arthur picks Cary Grant or Ronald Colman. It's not surprising that Stevens' films get longer and longer after WWII; the seeds are already there in his comedies. Although I have seen all of Shane, Giant, and A Place in the Sun, I've never made it all the way through I Remember Mama, trying again when it was recently on TCM. Must start in the middle sometime.

If we're picking worldwide films, the top five for me are La Strada, Seven Samurai, Rififi, Knave of Hearts, and Touchez pas au grisbi. To my mind, not one of the best years for Hollywood films. However, since dagoldenage is oriented more toward Hollywood films and Oscar picks, I'll go with: 1. Rear Window 2. On the Waterfront 3. Crime Wave 4. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers 5. A Star Is Born 6. Vera Cruz 7. Beat the Devil 8. A Bullet Is Waiting 9. Three Coins in the Fountain 10. Garden of Evil (mainly for the great score by Bernard Herrmann) Best Actor: Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront Best Actress: Judy Garland, A Star Is Born Best Supporting Actor: Rod Steiger, On the Waterfront Best Supporting Actress: Brenda de Banzie, Hobson's Choice

I had always avoided Quality Street, since it's often cited as one of the films that made Katharine Hepburn "box-office poison," but watched it yesterday and quite liked it. Granted, it's an artificial comedy by J. M. Barrie that will not be to everyone's taste. Quality Street is a neighborhood with more than its share of old maids with not much to do but observe and comment on everything that goes on. This is especially true of Estelle Winwood, Helena Grant, and Florence Lake, a formidable trio. It's 1805, and Phoebe (Katharine Hepburn) believes she's about to receive a proposal of marriage from Dr. Brown (Franchot Tone). Instead, he announces he's off to fight in the war against Napoleon. Ten years later, Phoebe feels like she's lost her looks and is turning into an old maid. Dr. Brown doesn't even recognize her at first, so she pretends to be her niece Livvie, a flirtatious little minx. Will Dr. Brown prefer Phoebe or Livvie, and will the local gossips confirm their suspicions that there is no such person as Livvie? Some serious matters arise during all the artifice: does a woman have to be young and silly, or at least pretend to be, if she wants a husband? How do unmarried women live out their lives in this society? The war, of course, is taking away potential husbands; this was a problem in Britain in the aftermath of WWI when so many men were killed. Thus must be Eric Blore's manliest role, as he plays a recruiting sergeant who is rather taken by Patty (Cora Witherspoon), the domestic servant of Phoebe and her older sister Susan (Fay Bainter). Lots of mugging by Blore, Cora Witherspoon, and Estelle Winwood, and Fay Bainter provides some touching moments as she shows her younger sister the wedding dress she was never able to use. This is one of the few George Stevens movies that isn't too long; his comedies usually drag out their resolutions until I just want the film to be over.

Carolyn Jones had a very short role in The Bachelor Party. She's a standout, but isn't on screen long. Miyoshi Umeki's win was considered one of the big upsets. Anna May Wong is wonderful in Shanghai Express.

Murder goes unpunished in The Informer. I would guess this was acceptable to Joseph Breen, the main censor, because he was a conservative Catholic who would have supported the IRA. Nonetheless, the IRA gunman gets away with murder.

Last night on YouTube I watched Blanche Fury (1948), which falls into the category of historical noir or gaslight noir. TopBilled has mentioned liking this film a lot, and now so do I. Excellent print on YouTube that shows off the costumes, sets, and outdoor settings. Some of the elements of the film are familiar, and a subplot is borrowed from a famous film, but everything is well done. Stewart Granger is perfectly cast as the illegitimate son who believes that Clare, the ancestral hall of the Fury family, rightfully belongs to him. As usual, Granger looks right in these historical roles. Valerie Hobson plays Blanche, the poor relation who escapes a life of drudgery as a governess to live with her uncle and cousin. Though I haven't seen a lot of Valerie Hobson's work, I don't think she has ever looked more beautiful, and she sinks her teeth into this very juicy role. She and Stewart Granger have great chemistry, Marc Allegret directs with considerable skill, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching to see how the plot was going to turn.

Now THAT's the way Kay Francis dresses!

Sorry I missed both of those, Dargo, but Kay Francis was probably miffed that Florence Nightingale didn't get to wear the glamorous gowns Kay usually sported.