AndyM108

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}Are you one of the big fans of ICE STATION ZEBRA? To tell the truth, I'd never heard of that movie until the last day or so, and I still have no idea what it's about or who's in it. 90% of my current movie viewing is on TCM, 7% is from Netflix, 2% on the Fox Movie Channel, and at most 1% in the theaters. The last movie I saw in a theater was 42, and before that I can't even remember. Every time I see a movie written up that I think I might like, the small print almost always says "Opens today in Manhattan and Los Angeles", but unfortuntely I live just outside DC, and most of those movies never make it this far.

> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}I noticed that as Widmark's character was spewing his anti-black epithets in his apartment, his radio was playing "Sophisticated Lady" by Duke Ellington, probably the greatest black musician of that period. I'm sure the irony was intentional. Widmark often mentioned that between takes of No Way Out, he was constantly apologizing to Poitier for the way he was treating him while the cameras were rolling. The other irony of that movie is that along with another famous "movie bigot", Robert Ryan, in real life Widmark was one of the strongest liberals in Hollywood.

> {quote:title=LonesomePolecat wrote:}{quote}I love movies from all decades, but for some reason I am most inclined to watch a movie I have never heard of before if it's from the mid '30s - mid '40s. But one of my friends prefers the movies of the '50s. What decade/era is your favorite to watch? American *black & white* movies from about 1944 to 1958, as long as they aren't biopics or westerns. Not only was that the Golden Era of film noir, but it was also when some of the best general dramas were made: Intruder in the Dust, All About Eve, Executive Suite, Time Limit, and too many others to count. The black & white qualification is important, though, because most color movies of that period were too hung up on cinematography and spectacle, and not enough on story and character. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions, but not nearly enough of them.

> {quote:title=browne1 wrote:}{quote}Thats it. 2 votes for The Killers. The Killers wins hands down best movie opening of all time. Those of you who voted for movies other than The Killers please accept the suckers award on your way out. :^0 And since I've passed through Chicago many a time, and since I watch The Great McGinty on a regular basis, that means I get to cast 37 more votes for the greatest opening scene of my choice, which brings The Killers' total up to 39 and counting. BTW I expect my $74.00 payoff from Big Jim Colfax to come in the form of a cashier's check. No IOU's from this bird. I was born at night, but not last night.

Personally I'd rather watch Midnight Cowboy or Z+ over any of those 1940 Oscar nominees you listed, if for no other reason than the fact that they don't get shown over and over again. But as a more general point, my take on comparing the 30's and the 70's is that there were more "great" movies from the 70's, but also infinitely more pure disasters. You can probably credit or blame the Breen code, or the lack of it, for both of those observations. Certainly neither The Godfather nor Serpico nor Animal House+ could ever have been made under the Breen Code restrictions, but OTOH we also might have been spared hundreds of embarrassments that were the cinematic equivalent of a group of teenaged boys being let loose with spray guns in a museum. You get the bad with the good.

> {quote:title=StBartsActor wrote:}{quote}I am probably committing cinema heresy here, but just watched Jules & Jim and although I appreciate the fact that this film probably broke a lot of barriers in its day and there was a fluidity in the filming, I was so totally waiting for this to end. Sorry, it just didn't "speak" to me. Hey, don't feel bad. I doubt if 80% of the 31 Days of Oscar movies speak to me, and I'm not sweating it. Different strokes and all that, and I can see where Moreau's narcissism might be a bit offputting. On the other hand, if you don't like Mississippi Mermaid, The 400 Blows, and / or The Bride Wore Black, you might be beyond redemption. As Poppy once said while ranting on Seinfeld, on this issue there can be no debate! B-)

> {quote:title=browne1 wrote:}{quote}has to be The Killers 46 wher the criminal & his pal bully the guy in the diner. "Bright boy" ... Right Bright Boy...ain't that right Bright Boy...Bright Boy doesn't think so ... Bright Boy says... > Whenever I watch that movie I have to stop the movie until I stop laughing. Anybody get that reaction? That's Charles McGraw and William Conrad, and I agree that there's never been a better opening to a movie, beginning with the black sedan speeding through the New Jersey countryside, accompanied by the soon-to-be "Dragnet" theme, in search of a man to kill. And though I don't break out laughing, I do keep a grin on my face during that entire "Bright Boy" dialogue. Total classic. Of course it doesn't hurt that The Killers is up there with Out of the Past as one of the two greatest American noirs of all time. Two runners-up: The Steel Helmet, which opens with a shot of a battlefield in Korea, and a seemingly abandoned helmet just lying there upright. But then as the credits unfold, you see that Gene Evans' head is attached to the helmet, and together they slowly rise up from his foxhole. And on a lighter note, Ginger Rogers singing "We're in the Money" *in Pig Latin* at the beginning of Gold Diggers of 1933 is the best opening of any musical I can think of.

> {quote:title=Dargo2 wrote:}{quote} > > but unless it's light years above all the other Classic Era Hollywood sports biopix I've seen (another of my un-favorite genres, no thank you Gary Cooper, no thank you Ronald Reagan) > Yeah Andy, I guess you needn't have bothered to add somethin' like "no thank you William Bendix" there, 'cause EVERYBODY already know his portrayal of The Bambino is pretty darn lame, huh! Dargo, my only reaction to The Babe Ruth Story was *WHAT A REVOLTIN' DEVELOPMENT THIS IS!!*

Okay, I just checked my Flynn DVDs, and as I suspected, I came up with only 4 titles in a 3000 collection. I've already seen Cry Wolf and The Case of the Curious Bride (both okay but nothing special), so now I have to watch Four's a Crowd and Footsteps in the Dark. And unless TCM doesn't show Gentleman Jim due to rights issues, I'll get that the next time around. As Jack Webb once said in his magnum opus known as Red Nightmare,+ *"In America, there's always a tomorrow."* B-)

Okay, Tom, after looking at your list of Flynn's non-swashbucklers, I think I see the problem: They're in genres I don't care for: Westerns; Hollywood war movies; "action" movies; and biopix. The one exception might be Gentleman Jim, but unless it's light years above all the other Classic Era Hollywood sports biopix I've seen (another of my un-favorite genres, no thank you Gary Cooper, no thank you Ronald Reagan), I'm not getting my hopes up. Kingrat suggested Four's A Crowd, though, and since I actually recorded that movie late one night back in 2011, I'll check it out. In some ways our back and forth reminds me of discussions centering around Richard Conte, an actor I rate much higher than do most people here. But then that may be because nearly every Conte film I've seen is a noir, where his gritty "everyman" persona fits in perfectly with the story. Take him away from that genre, and I suspect he'd be like Flynn without swords to brandish or arrows to shoot. And no, I've never cared for Robin Hood, either. I read the Classics Comics version when I was about eight, and that was pretty much enough Merry Men for me. Although I admit any movie with Eugene Pallette is hard to work up too much of an objection to.

Tom, you're right, my opinion of swashbuckler movies is about equivalent to my opinion of Rambo movies, and so-called "action" films in general. I'd say they bore me to tears, except that sleep usually beats tears to it. But with that in mind, I'll gladly concede that Flynn was the King of the Swashbucklers, and I'll duly acknowledge that he was extremely popular in his day, much as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzegger were in their time. Can't argue with box office receipts. But then another fairly well noted swashbuckler actor of slightly more recent vintage is Stewart Granger, and he's been terrific in numerous non-swashbuckler films, such as The Whole Truth and The Light Touch, both of which just played on TCM a week or so ago. How many non-swashbuckler films of any real merit did Flynn ever star in? Did he even appear in more than a handful of movies that were set in the present? The only one that comes to mind immediately is Cry Wolf, and his role there could have been handled by any competent actor. It's not that he was bad, he just wasn't particularly memorable.

> {quote:title=twinkeee wrote:}{quote}AndyM108 Wrote: Of course we can't imagine Sandra Bullock in NOW, VOYAGER but then it is equally unimaginable that Hollywood would EVER MAKE a film like NOW, VOYAGER today ! > > Now that we have esablished that Hollywood would EVER Make NOW, VOYAGER today then it is also Equally Unimaginable that Hollywood would 'EVER MAKE' a film like "THE GRAPES OF WRATH" today ! > > Twink Apples and oranges. Hollywood will always make room every few years for an epic drama with strong political overtones, which includes films like Reds, Schindler's List, Malcolm X, 42, and The Grapes of Wrath. What it isn't likely to finance is a complex emotional drama that depicts a neurotic woman, played by a star actress stuffed with pillows to make her look as dumpy as possible, being rescued from a domineering mother by a male psychiatrist and the love of another man.

> {quote:title=twinkeee wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}The 20 Most Handsome Actors Pre-1960 > > > > > > > > > > Aside from being the Most Handsome/Most Beautiful, they were also Much better actors/actresses then any that are out there today, with the exception maybe of Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. > > > Can you imagine for instance, Sandra Bullock playing the role of Charlotte in NOW VOYAGER ? That would be a joke. There's no comparison between the "Classic Age" ( the 30s, 40s') of actors and their ability compared to today's actors. They seemed to come across as being more believable back then and therefore easier to relate to, as well, most of them made Several movies in one year, which is unheard of today. > > There is way too much Hype whenever a new movie is released and more often then not, they are a complete Let Down. > I don't think it's that the actors and actresses of today are incapable, as there are way too many exceptions to make such a generality. The problem is much more that when movies go from being story driven to technology driven, the *need* for character depiction - which is at the heart of the actor's craft - diminishes, and a pretty face and tight body suffices. Of course we can't imagine Sandra Bullock in Now, Voyager, but then it's equally unimaginable that Hollywood would ever *make* a film like Now, Voyager today. OTOH many a current or recent Hollywood star could step into one of Errol Flynn's "swashbuckling" roles and do just as well as he did. Aplogies to Flynn fans out there, but his talent lay in his looks and his athleticism, not in his ability to portray character. You could find replacements for Errol Flynn types today in the gyms of every American city, complete with kinky backstory to keep the gossipmongers in thrall. It all gets back to the fact that movies today are frankly driven by the alleged desires of the 18-24 age group, and with today's attention span having been reduced to Twitter length, you're going to see fewer and fewer movies that require great acting talent. And yet in the midst of all the garbage out there, the exceptions like Daniel Day-Lewis show what they can do when only given a story with some meat in it. In short, if we could only replace today's audiences with audiences more receptive to anything other than animated interplanetary wars and car chases, we'd start to see the emergence of more Day-Lewises and Streeps. Of course the chances of that happening are about on the level of the Astros winning the World Series in the same year that the Jaguars win the Super Bowl, but that's another story.

*Howard Hawks' Scarface, far and away the best of the early talkie gangster epics, with a terrific broadstroke performance by Paul Muni. He is as much fun to watch in this film as he would later be such a pain in some of his later film performances. The film also helped to make a star of a coin flipping George Raft.* *I now wonder if there's any poster that prefers Muni as a performer to our three tough guy stars.* Overall I'd rate Muni way below Cagney, Bogart and Robinson. Muni's problem was that he was fixated on snaring those "prestige" movies, largely hagiographic portraits of "great" men, 99% of which are crashing bores when seen today. OTOH as you say, before he got enmeshed in those stultifying biopics and stuck to films set in the present, he was in some very good movies. Scarface holds up very well; Bordertown isn't bad at all in spite of the stereotyping; a newsroom comedy he made with Glenda Farrell ( Hi, Nellie! ) is terrific; Black Fury has a powerful political message; and IMHO, I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang packs more real social drama in it than anything our "Big Three" ever played in, especially since it depicted the real story of an actual case. If he'd stuck to more movies like that and fewer hagiographies, he'd be a lot better remembered today.

> {quote:title=SansFin wrote:}{quote}I am not a student of film nor do I have any education, knowledge or experience in how movies are made but I must wonder if some of the loss of "presence" of stars is changes in cinematography. > > I can think of a number of classic movies where the star dominates the screen because of the framing and composition. This is true especially in the scenes when the star makes their first entrance. > > It seems to me that in many movies today it seems like the star shuffles into a scene with no flair and all of the shots are broader and include many more elements. I think that SansFin comes the closest to the heart of the problem. Today's films are so dominated by technology, noise for the sake of noise, and other cinematic gimmicks, that the plot and the actors often get lost in the shuffle. The coming of the wide screen alone resulted in at least 50% more screen space for competing visuals, whereas it was much easier for the "classic" actors to dominate a relatively squarish frame. Put all these factors together, and it's hardly surprising that the stars of yesteryear stay with us a lot longer than today's top actors, no matter how talented they may be. To illustrate my first point, take a look at the between-films promotion that the Fox Movie Channel shows in between each and every one of its movies, including the "classic" and uncut films they show between 3 am and 3 pm. If you're like me, and I suspect many or most other TCM viewers, you'll either be reaching for the mute button or your revolver after the second or third time you're exposed to it. It's so in-your-face and loudly obnoxious that I'm frankly glad I don't own a gun, since I'd then have to go out and replace my TV several times a month. B-)

Since "ordinary" dramas featuring all-black casts were as rare as hen's teeth in the Hollywood of the 50's, it was quite a revelation to see the 1958 version of Anna Lacosta. Quite a cast, too: Eartha Kitt, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frederick O'Neal, Rex Ingram, and Alvin Childress, best known as "Amos" in the TV version of Amos 'n' Andy. Kitt, Davis and Childress are fairly well known today, but O'Neal and Ingram seem to have been largely ignored by film historians. Don't miss them. I won't give away the plot, but I will mention the final camera pan, which consists of a large charcoal extended family portrait of the two generations that were living in the house. For a portrait that on the surface was little more than a throwaway coda between the final scene and "THE END", it was extraordinarily powerful in its sheer ordinariness. I say that because it was so completely uncommon for Hollywood back then ever to depict African Americans as anything other than cartoon figures or victims of oppression, but this portrait gives us a fleeting but powerful glance as the sort of human depth of character that was so rarely afforded to blacks in the movies of that time. I know I haven't expressed this very well, but anyone who watches that film to the end will know what I mean. I'm glad I captured it on a DVD, and I hope that TCM shows it again in the near future.

I gotta say that going from Sluggy to Baby was the greatest upgrade this side of F.W. de Klerk to Nelson Mandela. B-)

> {quote:title=John2Bad wrote:}{quote}*I've always thought that people who like a certain movie genre tend* > *to like a movie of that genre, even if it's not among the top tier in that* > *genre.* So if you like noir, you'll probably like Hollow Triumph. Joan's > character was so world-weary, seen it all, that I don't think she could > have done much anyway. Very different from Lazylegs. That sums me up pretty well. Very few noirs I really don't like, and aside from the plot glitch that several people have mentioned, this one scores for atmosphere and characters. Other than Casablanca, Now Voyager, and Deception, it's probably my favorite Henreid film.

My Fair Lady. No contest, though it's really apples and oranges. Audrey, Rex, Stanley Holloway, and the best soundtrack of any musical ever. And yes, I know it isn't Audrey singing, but so what? No way that any movie with the charisma challenged Leslie Howard can ever top that.

One thing MarketWatch editors probably won't tell you: 1. What offshore tax havens they stash their profits in.

> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}If TCM made a habit of airing foreign films and silent movies at prime time, they'd be out of business so fast that your head would be spinning. Like MissWonderly, I wish they'd show more foreign and silent films, but as long as they show them *sometime,* I can live with the off hours. That's what DVRs and DVD recorders were made for. And like many people, I'd love to see the endlessly repetitious 31 Days of Oscar torched, but I also realize that this is one of the bigger ports of entry through which new viewers get acquainted with TCM, and for that reason alone I can see the justification for it. Quiet as it's kept, it's also true that at one point or another we were all new viewers ourselves. B-)

> {quote:title=crazyblonde7 wrote:}{quote}Andy, I hsve 64 Cagney films on dvd and about the same amount for Bing Crosby. Also all of Steve Mcqueen's films on DVD. I have maybe 3 Bogart films on DVD. So I guess Ifeel differently from you. Apparently so. I've 32 Cagneys and look forward to getting more, but the next Crosby DVD I acquire will be my first, and that would be used only to keep the moths out of my closet. But if the AFI had put Cagney at the top of its list, that would've been OK by me, too. Love the Jimster.

Your point about Bogart's dumb luck in getting those High Sierra and Maltese Falcon roles suggests an interesting question: Just how many actors or actresses have been the beneficiaries of similar good fortune? The answer almost surely must run at least into the dozens.

> {quote:title=TomJH wrote:}{quote}*Andy wrote:* *The problem is that there are just too damn many great actors to make any final definitive ranking, and anyway, as we all know, the whole ranking game itself is almost completely subjective..* > > I couldn't agree more. I was just offering a possible explanation for the selection of Bogart. Let's put it this way, no matter who is selected Number One there will be an outcry from admirers/fans of other stars. Bogart is as deserving of that honour as anyone, I think. But if a Tracy or a Cagney or a Grant had been selected, instead, so be it, as far as I'm concerned. (Though I still tend to stick by my statement that Bogie's collection of films is pretty darned hard to top). Well, when I crunch the numbers I see I've got 54 Bogarts on DVD, which tops everyone except Barbara Stanwyck (61) and Bette Davis (55). So unless the zombies slip into those two dames' graves and pull a pair of gender switches, I guess that Bogey is as good a choice as any for top male actor. B-)

> {quote:title=TomJH wrote:}{quote}Andy, it's apparent that Bogart is not one of your very favourite stars. The same with finance. > > Even though as I stated in my original posting Cagney is my favourite of the three actors, off hand I can't think of another male star of the 1940s who appeared in a stronger collection of films than Bogart. > > > Aside from bonafide classics like Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and Treasure of the Sierra Madre, take a look at some of the other titles: High Sierra, Across the Pacific, Sahara, To Have and Have Not (which undoubtedly many regard as a classic), Big Sleep (ditto on that previous classic comment), Dark Passage, Key Largo. > > > And that's just the '40s alone, without touching on the fact that Bogie had a far stronger career than most of the top male stars of the '30s and '40s during the '50s, as well, in spite of the fact that death cut it short for him sooner than almost anyone else. > > > That's a pretty impressive list of titles, in my opinion. Whether he deserves to be ranked as #1 I don't even want to go near because I wouldn't know who to pick myself. But if someone had to get it, the quality of those films certainly helps. And, let's face it, Bogart was an integral part of the success of those films, too. > Just to be slightly less unclear, Bogart *is* one of my favorite actors, somewhere near the bottom of my informal Top Ten. Excluding my two favorites (Mifune and Gabin) because of their nationality, my top 10 male actors would probably be something like Lancaster, Mitchum, Kirk Douglas (even though I *hate* Bible epics and costume dramas), Pacino, Robert Ryan, Widmark, Robinson, Cagney, Bogart, and Glenn Ford or Gable. But if you ask me in a month I'd probably scramble the order and maybe add a few and take out a few. The problem is that there are just too damn many great actors to make any final definitive ranking, and anyway, as we all know, the whole ranking game itself is almost completely subjective..