kingrat

1962 was the last great year of the studio era. Definitely one of the best years. Not a fan of 1974; for me the 1970s was an era of new and commendably ambitious films that don't necessarily hold up all that well. 1950 was indeed another very good year. I've never gotten the hype for 1939, though there were many good films that year. The overlooked year to me is 1947, once you get past the nominated films like Life With Father (not to my taste). A number of films that year had remarkable emotional depth. Some of my favorites would include Black Narcissus, Deep Valley, The Long Night, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Macomber Affair, Out of the Past, Nightmare Alley, High Barbaree, The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, Born To Kill, Crossfire, Brute Force, Dead Reckoning, Dark Passage, Ride the Pink Horse, Night Song, Pursued, A Double Life, Body and Soul, Miracle on 34th Street, The Unfinished Dance, The Guilt of Janet Ames, to name a few, along with the great French film Les Maudits and wonderful Brit noir like Odd Man Out, Brighton Rock, It Always Rains on Sunday, So Well Remembered, along with fun films like Golden Earrings and Green Dolphin Street. This is my favorite movie year.

I can't recall if Aldo Ray gets an "introducing" credit in The Marrying Kind, but there is a bizarre end credit that says something like, "We hope you have enjoyed our new personality Aldo Ray." Two of the children in Whistle Down the Wind get "and introducing" credits. Not Hayley Mills, who was already a child star, and not little Alan Barnes, the non-professional who plays her younger brother and gives one of the best child performances ever. I'm guessing the parents of the two children who got the "and introducing" credits had hopes that their children would go on to have professional careers like Hayley Mills.

Jim, I checked a list I'd made a few years ago of my favorite performances and my top picks for best supporting actress were Patricia Neal and Rachel Roberts. We had a lot of discussion about whether these performances were leading or supporting.

The New York Film Critics (I think) agreed with you, Lydecker, having Al Pacino competing in the Best Actor category and Brando in the supporting actor category. 1961--George C. Scott. For me he's picking up his second Best Supporting Actor award, after Anatomy of a Murder. 1963--Joyce Redman 1965--Maggie Smith, but Desdemona is a leading role, IMO. 1967--Gene Hackman. Absolutely wonderful, perhaps his best performance ever. This is how you play a Southerner, and I can only wish he had had the Rod Steiger role in In the Heat of the Night. 1970--I haven't seen Airport. Maureen Stapleton can occasionally be superb, as in Reds, but she is often over the top for my taste. 1971--Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman, although Jeff Bridges and Ellen Burstyn are fine, too. 1972--Al Pacino. James Caan is rarely beyond the adequate to fairly good range for me, and though I usually love Robert Duvall, I think he's boring here. His weakest performance.

"I hod a dream! A dream about choo, bay-bay!"

Lawrence, thanks for your posts about the 1990s mini-series. I don't think I've heard of any of them! My mind is totally blown by one bit of casting you mention: Debra Messing as Mary Magdalene? Maybe the whole mini-series should have been cast with Will and Grace regulars?

Thanks for the post, Swithin. The young McNally had movie star looks, didn't he? He wrote a number of good plays, like the ones you mentioned. Some others are The Lisbon Traviata and A Perfect Ganesh. It's Only a Play is hilarious if you've ever been involved with the theater, as the cast waits for the opening night reviews. One can only imagine how the actor feels when the review says he didn't bring as much masculinity to his role as Charles Nelson Reilly! Even the film version of Love! Valour! Compassion! is pretty good, although Jason Alexander is definitely not in the same class as Nathan Lane, who played the part in the original cast.

For all you soap opera fans out there: Lenore Kasdorf began her career as Rita Stapleton on Guiding Light, where she became perhaps the top female star on the show at that time. Her move away from GL didn't lead to a bigger career, but I'm glad to hear about this episode of Moonlighting. She was talented and attractive. Brynn Thayer got her start on One Life to Live where she replaced Katherine Glass as Jenny, the nun who fell in love with the handsome no-goodnik played by Jameson Parker. OLTL's recasting of the roles with Brynn Thayer and Steve Fletcher was way more successful that such recasting usually is. Thayer was recently in a few episodes of Suits as the mother of Harvey (Gabriel Macht).

Eric, I'm not surprised fans want to discuss what happens on The Americans. What the heck did happen on it? We tried watching this two or three times (different seasons, for two or three episodes each time) and the plot threads scarcely existed, and who could tell what year we were supposed to be in (the kid had a Beatle haircut but "Tainted Love" was being played), and one time a family got murdered for no apparent reason and then storyline seemed to be dropped, and then there was another episode after the daughter had told her minister about her family and the episode ended with someone being killed in bed in a room in nearly total darkness so that I couldn't tell who, and then this wasn't referred to in the next episode, at which point I had had enough of this supposedly excellent series. What the #######!! Ugly and dysfunctional cinematography (it's DARK, you see, because dark means PROFOUND), and the performances of good actors like Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell counted for very little. The whole premise of the series is supposedly based on the "Ghost Story" spies. Anyone who Googles "Ghost Story" and "Anna Chapman" will find a far more entertaining story than the one told by The Americans. A character based on Anna Chapman would have been incredibly entertaining.

John Alton's great noir cinematography is yet another plus for Crime Wave. You also get to see Timothy Carey play one of those small crazy roles he acts so well . . . or is he acting?? I don't want to oversell Crime Wave, but if you like noir, this is one to check out.

Fun topic, Det. Jim. 1. Claude Rains. Like you, I don't recall much about Harry Carey. Oscar logic worked fine, as Hattie McDaniel won (important historical moment) and Olivia De Havilland went on to win two Oscars. However, I would vote for De Havilland. She had the wit to understand that she would never be cast as Scarlett and that she could make something of Melanie. Good, long-suffering characters are extremely difficult to play well. Usually we just want to put them out of our misery! Structurally, the main opposition in the film is not Scarlett/Rhett or Scarlett/Ashley but Scarlett/Melanie, and GWTW works so well because Olivia as the perfect Southern lady of the time is such a good foil for Vivien Leigh's selfish and rebellious Scarlett. Even an actress as good as Joan Fontaine, who read for Melanie, would have been eaten for breakfast by Scarlett. 2. I'll go along with Jim in preferring Patricia Collinge as Birdie 3. Gladys Cooper certainly is effective as the mean nun, so I'll pick her too, but Anne Revere as Bernadette's mother is a convincing peasant. 4. Eve Arden is fun as usual, but Ann Blyth has the face you want to slap in this one. 5. Celeste Holm was excellent as the brittle, sophisticated woman who has designs on Gregory Peck, and she has the showier role, but I have to pick Anne Revere, who does so much as the mother who has set Gregory Peck's moral standards and expects him to live up to them. Again this is a part--"the mother role"--that could be routinely played, but isn't when Revere digs into the part. 6. I've only seen bits of I Remember Mama, so no vote here. 7. Ethel Barrymore vs. Ethel Waters is a tough call. I'll have to study on that one. As for Come to the Stable, Celeste Holm has the fun role of a tennis-playing nun, but I'll pick Elsa Lanchester, who has the deeper role, an untutored but talented painter. The writers may have been thinking of someone like Grandma Moses.

They're actually having an NCAA-style 64-movie bracket so viewers can pick the ultimate winner of their Hallmark Christmas Movie contest. Bronxie, don't you want to watch all 64 so you can vote for your favorites?

Aye, and save when that O'Hara lass be shinin' on screen and sometimes that Wayne boyo, 'tis a hard film to stomach, I do be thinkin'.

A very attractive man who belongs in any Beefcake Thread. Thanks for the news, Lawrence. He held up well, too, didn't he?

Me, either, Bogie. I'll have to check that one out. There are some interesting films on for St. Patrick's Day, even for those allergic to great globs of stage Irish sentimentality. The Girl with Green Eyes is a nice vehicle for Rita Tushingham, the perfect example of what the French call a jolie laide (literally, an ugly girl who is pretty); Odd Man Out is a classic film noir, one of Carol Reed's best; and Young Cassidy is a film where the sum of the parts adds up to much more than the whole, thanks to a staggeringly talented cast. You even have the chance to see the young Maggie Smith play a romantic heroine. What a beautiful creamy complexion she had, and lovely red hair. Watching this film, you would never imagine that she would eventually come to be best known for campy comedy.

So many good suggestions here. Because the programmers usually work about six months ahead, this year's SUTS may already be planned. I'm glad so many people would like to see a tribute to Max von Sydow.

The Good Liar is quite good. My husband and I both liked it. It starts off rather slowly, but we were always interested. Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen are just as good as you would be expect them to be.

I suppose whether the young David McCallum was beefcake depends on your definition of beefcake. He was insanely good-looking and sexy, and you know, I might settle for that even if it isn't beefcake. I certainly agree that he has aged well.

Did anyone else see Thank Your Lucky Stars last night, with Michael Feinstein's introduction? Feinstein was interested in highlighting the work of lyricist Arthur Schwarz, working this time with Frank Loesser. Eddie Cantor was one of those stars, like Al Jolson, who meant something to my parents' generation. I had never seen him before. He plays a dual role in Thank Your Lucky Stars. Two Eddie Cantors is about three too many for my taste. My parents also loved Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, and that I understand completely. Eddie Cantor's brand of comedy has not worn as well, at least to me. It's like the song Dennis Morgan sings in TYLS. Morgan has an outstanding voice, but most of us today don't care for the operetta style of such songs. Ann Sheridan singing "Love Isn't Born, It's Made" was the highlight of the film for me, with Bette Davis' "They're Either Too Old or Too Young" a close second. Sheridan looked gorgeous, even with the bizarre snood on her hair. I also enjoyed Hattie McDaniel and crew in "Ice Cold Katie." Olivia and Ida looked like they were having fun with their number, and Edward Everett Horton and S.Z. Sakall made a good comic duo.

The Boys in the Band, however dated some of it might appear now, was hugely important. Not only were all the characters gay (well, we were never quite sure about the late arrival, or were we?), but the play had some funny lines and some good parts for actors, and it taught the theater and film world an important lesson: you could do a play or a film about gay men and make money. Instead of having one gay character who was usually stereotypically swishy or a tragic gay character who committed suicide (e.g., The Children's Hour), the play showed a variety of recognizable types.

Dargo, Three Days of the Condor is one of Ben Mankiewicz's favorite films. I wish TCM would run the interview that Max von Sydow gave at the TCM Film Festival a few years ago. He seemed smart, professional, likable, and someone you would enjoy knowing--none of which would be a surprise to his fans. That year the festival showed Three Days of the Condor and The Seventh Seal, which together should make it obvious why von Sydow should have received an honorary Oscar. Bogie, thanks for making the effort. Two things I particularly recall from the interview: 1) Bergman visited many churches in southern Sweden to immerse himself in medieval imagery for The Seventh Seal. 2) Von Sydow did not much enjoy making The Greatest Story Ever Told. George Stevens would line everyone up for a closer shot, then line them up again in the same position for a slightly more distant view, then move back for a slightly more distant view, etc. Von Sydow isn't on screen much for Winter Light, but his scene in this film is unforgettable.

In his outro to Ride the Pink Horse Eddie Muller was somewhat dismissive of Robert Montgomery's performance, saying it "lacked gravitas" and suggesting that the part could have been played better by Richard Conte, Sterling Hayden, and someone else--perhaps Robert Mitchum. Although I would agree with the general proposition that Richard Conte and Robert Mitchum are usually better actors than Montgomery (Sterling Hayden is an actor I often find unsympathetic, but good for unsympathetic roles), I do not think that the character of Lucky Gagin needs gravitas at all, and the relatively lightweight Montgomery is just about perfect for the role. This dude is so in over his head. He's tough, but not nearly so smart as he thinks he is. Montgomery has enough charisma to make it believable that the Wanda Hendrix and Thomas Gomez characters are drawn to him, but his lack of understanding of Pila (Hendrix) is deliciously funny. I agree with everyone who is impressed by Wanda Hendrix. If she's in the background of a shot, as happens several times, we're usually looking at her. She's also great in Confidential Agent--I think she had my best supporting actress award for that year--and it's truly unfortunate that her career was derailed by her involvement with Audie Murphy. Eddie Muller provided some of those grim details. Thomas Gomez does his best with a role that's not very subtle, but I am more impressed by Fred Clark, Art Smith, and Andrea King. All three are just about perfect. The script by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer is full of good lines, and these actors make the most of them. For a small example of how good the writing and acting is, take the little scene where Andrea King intrudes on Montgomery's lunch with Hendrix. She's perfectly polite to the young Indian woman--Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt would have been proud--while in effect asserting her superiority with every syllable, and Andrea King doesn't overplay the scene, which would have been easy to do. The movie is really that good. Then there's Russell Metty's cinematography, which Eddie Muller praised in his intro. Muller mentions the great and very complex opening shot, and he suggests that it inspired the long opening shot of Touch of Evil, which Metty also photographed. To throw another kind word Montgomery's way, he shows amazing growth as a director from Lady in the Lake to Ride the Pink Horse.

Irving Rapper doesn't have a great reputation as a director, but Deception is very smartly directed. This film looked even better to me on a second viewing.

I loved Donna Wandrey and was disappointed she didn't have a bigger career. She still looks beautiful in that later photo. Two long-lived soap opera writers have died recently: 1) Lee Phillip Bell, widow of William J. Bell. They created The Young and the Restless. 2) James Lipton, best known as the host of Inside the Actors Studio. (If you didn't care for him, that would be the fawning host of Inside the Actors Studio.) Lipton was a soap opera actor in the 1950s, but is better known as a writer for The Doctors and other shows, among them Capitol, whose head writer he was from 1984-1987, according to the obituary I saw. Again according to the obituary, Lipton helped save the Actors Studio by urging them to offer an M.F.A. degree and then by his interview show.