AndyM108

I know this is heresy around here, but personally, I think GWTW is one of the legendary classic movies that hasn't aged well, especially the second half. The business, for example, of Bonnie's death is dragged out forever - sheer melodrama. I also think it is Gable's performance that remains the most convincing. GWTW has always been a shamelessly lying piece of Confederate propaganda in the form of one of the more entertaining and best made films of all time. Contradictions exist everywhere, and this is merely one of them. You just have to suppress everything you know about the reality of slavery for 233 minutes to appreciate the movie on its own terms. Obviously it couldn't happen for quite a few years, but perhaps the best back-to-back pairing that TCM could ever present would be to follow up their 100th showing of GWTW with the TCM premiere of Twelve Years A Slave, with commentary provided by leading historians of the period. Now *that* would be a night to remember.

Thelma, that was about the 1000th time I've been glad I visited these forums. What a cornucopia of information that little schools brief of yours contained. Definitely worth copying and pasting in my reference folder.

I'd seen Rain several times before, but this was my first viewing of the Hayworth movie, so I gave it extra attention. I can't see it as much of a contest, and the key difference was the Davidson character. Huston was perfect for the role, while Ferrer never brought much conviction to it. He played Davidson more like the school principal Mr. Carroll in Reefer Madness than as serious religious figure. I also liked Crawford much better, but I'm pretty sure that if Hayworth could have been transported back to 1932, she could have played the original film part very well. Of course the biggest disappointment in both versions is that the Davidson character wasn't just tarred and feathered and then sacrificed to a pagan god of sensual pleasure, but I guess that would've required too much alteration to the Maugham story.

*The only problem is that both the book and the movie consist of cartoon characters,* Archetypes would be more accurate, I think. I'd go with cartoon characters. A good archetype at least sounds somewhat human in his speech patterns. *Which isn't too surprising, giving that "Little Orphan Aynie's" primary audience is teenagers and overgrown adolescents.* Which is far more mature than most of the political analysis we get out of our infantile elected officials these days. Considering that many of those elected officials* got their philosophy straight from Ayn Rand, that's perhaps to be expected. Fairy tales always lose something in the re-telling. *Not to mention some notable unelected officials such as Alan Greenspan and Clarence Thomas.

Howard Roark is simply a brilliant architect who opposes a beehive mentality approach to architecture. I fail to comprehend his villainy. You can argue that given the premises and character portrayals that are the basis for The Fountainhead, Roark was everything that the book and the movie say he was: A brilliant architect who with his destruction of his own building was making a symbolic stand against the "beehive mentality", or "collectivism", whatever you wish to call it. The only problem is that both the book and the movie consist of cartoon characters, written with about as much subtlety as a modern day action flick. As a movie, The Fountainhead is little more than the flip side of those countless Soviet films where the capitalists all have 50 inch waistlines and the workers read War and Peace on their lunch breaks. You can argue about the merits of the acting and the production values, but the underlying message is about on the high school level of political analysis. Which isn't too surprising, giving that "Little Orphan Aynie's" primary audience is teenagers and overgrown adolescents.

AndyM wrote: *And the frosting on the cake for me is that in addition to his films, he was one of the stars of the period, alongside Belafonte, Poitier, and Heston, who stood up for civil rights. It's hard to think of a more worthy SOTM selection.* Don't forget Brando, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin! If you're talking about their civil rights stands, I'll agree. I could also throw in Josephine Baker, Richard Widmark and Robert Ryan, among many others.

The "philosophy" behind The Fountainhead is about as twisted and screwy as that behind Gabriel Over The White House, though IMO the latter movie is infinitely more entertaining. OTOH given Gary Cooper's general ignorance of anything outside of skirtchasing and lassoing horses, it's kind of fitting that he was cast as the leading simpleton in one of the more simplistic movies ever.

Lancaster's one of those actors I've only come to appreciate fully since I started mainlining TCM about 4 years ago. Prior to that I'd only seen him in From Here To Eternity and Elmer Gantry, and even in that first movie I mainly remember the subplot involving Clift, Sinatra and Borgnine. Perhaps the women here have different memories of that film. But since TCM kicked in, all I can say is "Wow!" This man can act. The Killers, Brute Force, Criss Cross, I Walk Alone, All My Sons, Mr. 880, The Sweet Smell of Success, Trapeze, Elmer Gantry, Judgement at Nuremberg, The Birdman of Alcatraz, The Young Savages, Seven Days in May, The Swimmer, Atlantic City. . . .That's only a partial listing, but it's enough to rank Burt up along any American movie star not named Barbara Stanwyck. And that's not even considering many of his films that I don't care for that much but won the raves of critics. Many or most male stars with his looks and build might have contented themselves with lightweight "swashbuckler" movies and costume dramas that filled the seats but quickly become hard to tell apart. Not Lancaster. He took on one serious dramatic role after another and added immensely to each of those films. And the frosting on the cake for me is that in addition to his films, he was one of the stars of the period, alongside Belafonte, Poitier, and Heston, who stood up for civil rights. It's hard to think of a more worthy SOTM selection.

Now that is even more impressive to me. I can't imagine attending a game seven of the World Series. It was a different world in 1979, Frank. Given the nasty weather and the fact that the Orioles had already blown a 3-1 lead in games, there were plenty of sad-faced scalpers in front of Memorial Stadium before game 7 trying to unload their tickets for face value. But then in Baltimore and Washington it was always easy to find good seats for big games if you ignored the scalpers and concentrated on the last minute arrivals whose wives or children had begged out at the last minute. The secret was simple: Go by yourself, because anyone looking for two tickets together was (and is) always going to pay through the nose. And BTW for the Orioles' clinching game in Philly in '83, I bought a first row upper deck box seat behind the plate for face value. That game set an all time Veterans' Stadium attendance record for baseball, but there were still plenty of Phillies fans who were dumping tickets outside the stadium before the game, in disgust over the fact that their team had lost the last three games.

This is the first time TCM's shown this movie since May of 2010, but for anyone who's missing it, it's playing again on November 6th. It's quite faithful to the Cheever story, and a far cry from Burt's usual fare. It's a terrific performance on Lancaster's part, and one of the many reasons I think he's one of the finest actors of his or any generation.

That picture is of Willie Stargell, just before he hit what was to be the game winning two run homer off the Orioles' Scott McGregor in game 7 of the 1979 World Series. I was an Orioles fan sitting in the upper deck of Memorial Stadium, listening to a group of Pirates' wives down front serenade us with "WE ARE FAM-I-LEE" while a steady rain fell down upon us poor umbrellaless folks for the entire nine innings. It was not the greatest of nights in Birdland, especially considering that the O's had led the Bucs at one point by 3 games to 1. Wacha's dismal performance tonight wasn't that surprising, given that even in game 2 he never had the sort of command he'd had in the NLDS and NLCS. But then the Red Sox are an offensive juggernaut on a whole different level than anything in the National League.

I'm a Yankee fan who has seen the team go through good and bad times and I truly miss the old days when the Yankees annihilated the opposition with the pitcher hitting in the lineup. I'm a lifelong Yankees fan myself, and I think you might appreciate one of your namesake's better quotes. When the late Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert was asked for a description of an ideal game, he replied that it was one in which the Yankees scored nine runs in the first inning, and then "slowly pulled away." Sounds about right to me.

Re: Harlow - i sounded too harsh, I guess. I think she is appealing - especially in Red Dust - just don't think she's a good ACTRESS. If Harlow doesn't show pure comic genius in Bombshell, Dinner at Eight, and Libeled Lady, I'd like to know what it is. Not all humor has to be sophisticated a la Loy or Stanwyck, both of whom I also love. And if you disagree about the talents of our platinum blonde princess, well . . . that's arson!

But deeming a movie as "underrated" is largely a matter of taste. While I, and probably scores of others think BUS STOP is underrated, a larger number might feel it's OVERrated. Thus, it's an indeterminate topic. Exactly. IMO Bus Stop is Marilyn's worst movie, but that's just me. I like her best in The Asphalt Jungle and Don't Bother To Knock, but that's probably because I like noirs better than any other genre. I make no claims to any objectivity about this. But for comediennes, anyone who doesn't put Jean Harlow at the #1 position on that list is definitely UNDERrating her. And about THAT decision there can be no debate.

You can't really go wrong with Metropolis, but IMO an even better choice would be The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which played on TCM just three weeks ago. OTOH if you caught the last two games of the World Series, there's no way to imagine that it won't go seven. What an ending to game 3, and if game 7 ended that way it'd be like Night of the Living Dead for Red Sox fans.

*LOUISE BROOKS*

Here was the line-up of the first 48 hours of TCM being on the air (thanks to musicalnovelty for posting this a few years back: GONE WITH THE WIND kicked off the channel's line up and was billed as" Complete Road Show version with Overture, Intermission and Exit Music, plus Rare Footage from the Atlanta 1964 Civil War Centennial Re-issue." 222 minutes. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) plus deleted musical number "You Are My Lucky Star". 100 Years at the Movies repeated. GONE WITH THE WIND repeated. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN repeated. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934) THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936) THE CAT PEOPLE (1942) Friday, April 15, 1994: THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR (1936) THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946) THE INFORMER (1935) THE PIRATE (1948) CITIZEN KANE (1941) CEILING ZERO (1935) THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950) Greta Garbo trailers. ANNA CHRISTIE (1930) - English language version. ANNA CHRISTIE (1930) - German language version. ANNA KARENINA (1935) LOVE (1927) plus alternate ending. "MGM Parade" #30 - Greta Garbo. "MGM Parade" #31 - Greta Garbo. THE SINGLE STANDARD (1929) AS YOU DESIRE ME (1931) Hollywood themed shorts. Interesting list, but with a handful of exceptions towards the end, that's a lineup that you could practically find on PBS. What would really be great for the 20th Anniversary would be if we could get 48 hours of TCM premieres, and not just a repeat of what gets shown over and over and over. Lest we forget, the idea was to introduce the TCM audience to movies they likely hadn't seen uninterrupted on TV in a long time. My proposal would honor the spirit of that mission far more than the 10,000th showing of GWTW or Singing In The Rain.

We have FIOS in Maryland, and it's a mixed bag. Some films have but a one line description, while others are so long you have to scroll to a second page to read the whole thing. I'd guess it depends on what TCM gives them, but your problem is probably with your cable provider.

Aside from the Yankees, I believe the Tigers have more victories in their history than any other American League team. I just put in a call to my old friend Fred Lieb up in Valhalla, NY, and he informs me that the *Red Sox* are sandwiched between the Bombers and the Jungaleers in the all-time American League win column, NY 9767 / Bos 9075 / Det 8828

Is this the game wherein the men wear tight pants with much padding and they toss and run with a ball when they are not reaching between each other's legs or patting each other on the behind or is this the game wherein they wear shorts and bounce a ball and try to throw it through a hole? I think it's the game where the players run up and down the field all excited for 90 minutes with their hands tied behind their backs, but the score always ends up 0-0 and then the fans all attack each other with fists and clubs and get drunk in the pubs until daybreak. One of these things is sometimes referred to as "The National Pastime".

The first game was a total snoozer from beginning to end. The highlight was when a popup fell between the Cardinals' pitcher and catcher who were doing an Alphonse / Gaston act. Too bad, but it'll still likely go at least six games. Tonight was easy to skip TCM, since the only worthwhile movie (Castle on the Hudson) has been shown many times, but tomorrow night's Vincent Price schedule is going to be *much* harder to miss. For one of the first times in my life I wish I had a DVR box instead of a DVD recorder, so I wouldn't have to choose between channels.

Why not replicate the lineup when TCM first debuted on April 14, 1994 for 48 hours? That would be great to have as part of a longer celebration, though I'd also want to see them include the original introductions and followup commentary. Without that, the movies themselves may or may not be anything particularly special. It's not as if most of them aren't likely being shown any more these days. When my former GF and I used to run bootleg 16mm TV shows from the 50's on college campuses in the 70's, we'd always get a much better response when our prints included the original commercials. Including them really brought back the feeling of traveling in a time machine, and I think you'd get the same feeling seeing the Bob we all know and love, only 20 years younger and without those 20 years of experience under his belt.

I've been a regular viewer of Turner Classic Films since 2003. I think I'm aware of how they program MGM and WB stars of the Joan Crawford ilk. The point remains that there is too much Joan Crawford on TCM regardless of the luminosity of her star. And I think there's way too much Mickey Rooney, Bing Crosby, Liz Taylor, Doris Day and Elvis Presley. We all can't have our way all the time. Look, I can also think of many stars I'd rather see honored than Crawford: Hayward, Lupino, Sanders, and others too many to mention. But since TCM *does* recycle many stars for SOTM honors, IMO Crawford's as good a choice for a third go-around (and the first since 2002) as any. And since there's a big selection of her silents and pre-codes on the list, it's hardly going to be nothing but the Same Old Same Old. Personally I'm looking forward to it as a way of making me forget the 31 Days of Oscar to follow. (Brother, if you want to talk about overexposure, try *that* month. . .)

I for one would love to see those films shown more frequently. I myself have never seen The Conversation, Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Klute or I Never Sang for My Father. These are the films that should be shown. I'm not sure about Apocalypse Now, but all the other films you've mentioned have either played or are currently scheduled. The Conversation is showing on October 30th, Klute is showing on December 27th, and the others have already shown at least once in the past three years.

If one were to turn on a station that plays Classical Music, would you expect to hear rock and roll or rap music ? I think not ! The same thing can be said about TCM, Turner 'CLASSIC' Movies ! No, but you'd hear Bartok and Prokofiev, not just Bach and Beethoven. Some people complain about that, too.