AndyM108

> {quote:title=EugeniaH wrote:}{quote}Was there ever a more perfect Addison DeWitt? Sanders just seethes intelligence and manipulation. Want to also mention him in "Witness to Murder". He makes a great killer. Those are indeed two gems, but the more I look over George Sanders' filmography, the more I realize just how *PERFECTLY* he plays every one of his parts. Three more especially worth mentioning are his role as Stewart Granger's gangster boss Felix Guignol in The Light Touch, in what IMO is one of the best "blackguard" 1-2 pairings of all time; his beyond Addison DeWitt-caddish Clementi Sabourin in Death of a Scoundrel; and his somewhat milder but still manipulative Mark Loving in the classic newsroom based thriller, While The City Sleeps. He simply never misses a beat in any of these. Of course there are also the two comic detective series, The Saint and The Falcon, in which he brings the right mix of wit and sophistication, but then there's an early romantic comedy ( Love Is News, with Tyrone Power and Loretta Young ). where he plays a fortune hunting "blue blooded moron" who's continually foiled in his attempts to wiggle his way into Loretta's family fortune. You almost do a double take when you realize that it's Sanders you're watching, but once you do you'll never forget him. Unfortunately that movie seems to show up only on the Fox Movie Channel, which is too bad because it's a hidden treasure.

> {quote:title=jamesjazzguitar wrote:}{quote}Well Andy wishing to 'cultivate mainstream reviewers' would be more reality programming. > > I know I'm a cynic but I don't think getting those that do not know TCM exists to understand what TCM has to offer would lead to many more TCM viewers. They know black and white movies and movies made before they were born exist. That doesn't motivate them to seek these movies out. I think it takes one-on-one mentoring. > One-on-one mentoring is ideal, but unless you think that nobody's ever influenced by movie or TV reviewers I can't help but think that that sort of publicity would help. Of course how you *get* mainstream critics to pay attention to anything but current movies is another story, but I think it would definitely be worth making the effort. I should add, however, that I'm not talking about "mainstream" viewers in the generic dumbed-down sense, as I realize that TCM is never going to attain viewership numbers on anywhere near that level. I'm talking about trying to reach the sort of viewers who are receptive to entertainment that doesn't necessarily aim at the lowest common denominator, and who don't watch TV only to keep up with the next morning's water cooler conversation. Quiet as it's kept sometimes, there *are* millions of such people, and they aren't all currently aware of TCM.

I have no idea how to go about this, and maybe it's been tried already, but if I were TCM I'd be doing a lot more to cultivate mainstream reviewers, especially when something like Truffaut month or Hitchcock month is playing, or when The Story of Film series commences. The truth is that there is an untapped audience for TCM programming that simply isn't being reached, for two reasons IMO. First, most people work, and with only a few prime time hours of films that are competing with far more familiar stuff on other channels, it's very easy to be blissfully unaware of TCM's existence. I know from my own experience that until I closed my shop and began working from home, I had little idea of just how deep and varied the TCM vault was. I'd been vaguely aware that I could see my old AFI 100 favorites, because that remains much of the prime time lineup, but if I'd known about the rest of what was being offered, I would have paid much more attention and acted accordingly. But second, with a tiny handful of exceptions, most mainstream reviewers focus almost exclusively on new movies, even though they often allude to classic films in their writings. If only there were a way to grab the attention of those reviewers and perhaps even get them to do a brief monthly mini-feature on the upcoming lineup, I would think that the TCM audience would find newly enthusiastic viewers. It's not as if there's no untapped audience for these non-current and far more interesting selection of movies; it's just that so much of this potential audience doesn't even know TCM exists.

....and to the most inexplicably neglected non-SOTM or non-SUTS honoree. No excuses next time, let's just get it done.

The packaging may be somewhat different, but I can't see that the essential mission has changed, unless anyone thinks that mission was to restrict TCM to showing nothing but the Hollywood product from the "Golden Age" up through the 1950's. July's Truffaut retrospective, the Hitchcock retrospective in September, and the Story of Film series beginning that same month are just three more signs that the real mission of TCM is to present the best movies from wherever they might be found, uninterrupted and commercial-free. They can repackage it however they want, but it still seems like the same TCM to me.

By coincidence, I just finished watching a DVD of The Threat, which just played on TCM three days ago. And if that wasn't Virginia Grey that Charles McGraw was pimp-slapping from beginning to end, that was the best example of crossdressing I've ever seen.

> {quote:title=ValentineXavier wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote}By the way...maybe it's just me, but everytime I saw Mr. Muller doing his intros, he kept reminding me of someone, but I couldn't think who. > > > > It struck me yesterday: Eddie Muller looks to me like a combination of John Lithgow and (a younger than he is now) Christopher Walken. > > I think he looks a bit like David Lynch. His constant facial expression reminds me a lot of the former Washington Redskins announcer Frank Herzog.

Maybe it's just my taste in movies, but in looking over my DVD collection it seems as if two classes are wildly overrepresented: The upper / leisure class and the lumpenproletariat / criminal class. The middle class, even taken in the broadest sense, doesn't get nearly as much play, I guess because its lives on the surface seem relatively devoid of money-centered drama, not to mention fancy dress balls, photogenic houses, and gratuitous murders. And as others have mentioned, once the Breen code slammed the doors shut, honest representations of middle class family life became harder and harder to come by, since the financial squeeze that the Depression put on the middle class was taken almost entirely off the table. But there were still a few movies that did depict middle class life in various parts of the country and at varying points along the income spectrum. Obviously not all of them were of equal quality or have the same angle, but the central characters were all placed squarely in the broader middle class. The five in boldface are those that seem to me to most put the problems and conflicts of middle class family life at the heart of the drama. If I had to choose the best of the lot for concentrating on that central theme, I'd go with Roughly Speaking, which IMO is one of the most underrated dramatic movies ever. Mildred Pierce, at least at the beginning of the movie before Crawford's restaurant took off A Letter to Three Wives *Since You Went Away* *The Best Years of Our Lives* *Roughly Speaking* (Rosalind Russell & Jack Carson) My Son John (Helen Hayes & Dean Jagger) A Raisin in the Sun (Sidney Poitier) Breaking Away (the main character's family) All My Sons (Edward G. Robinson) Invasion of the Body Snatchers Rebel Without a Cause *It's a Wonderful Life* Christmas in July (Dick Powell) American Madness (Walter Huston) The Bride Walks Out (Barbara Stanwyck & Gene Raymond) Trouble Along the Way (John Wayne & Donna Reed) Men in White (Clark Gable & Myrna Loy) *Make Way For Tomorrow* (Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell) A Stolen Life (Bette Davis & Glenn Ford) Tomorrow Is Forever (Orson Welles) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Taylor & Burton) King's Row I Can Get It For You Wholesale Picnic (Roz Russell)

At first glance it looks like we're getting at least 6 of the 9 silents that were recently rescued and shown at the San Francisco silent film festival, and with several open slots there's still a possibility we might also get Downhill, Easy Virtue and/or The Pleasure Garden. This has got to be the best directors' tribute since the Kurosawa retrospective from March of 2010.

The better question would be: Is there anyone here who's NOT a huge Cagney fan? I know he sometimes gets typecast as a gangster and a song-and-dance man, but when you see what he brought to films like These Wilder Years and Man of a Thousand faces, you realize that he was an actor who transcends mere genres.

> {quote:title=JonasEB wrote:}{quote}Let it be said again: Anyone who thinks TCM is going downhill needs to go jump off a bridge RIGHT NOW. > > TCM is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Indeed, amen, and pass the popcorn. If the biggest complaint I can think of is that I'm going to have to record too many overnight disks in EP mode, that tells you what an incredible series this shapes up to be.

> {quote:title=karlofffan wrote:}{quote}Yes, we all like to complain about TCM's 31 days of Oscar. The same movies every year, just in different order. Sort of like the menu at Taco Bell: the same ingredients in every meal, just in different proportions and what gets melted over what. So here goes: > > Musical Mondays > Titanic Tuesdays (Epics. Or Disaster Movies. Or takes place on a boat.) > Wild Wednesdays (shot on locations outdoors not in North America or Europe) > Thriller Thursdays > Funny Fridays (comedies, obviously) > Satanic Saturdays (vampires, mummies, mad scientists, monsters, Joan Crawford) > Sundays: Swords, Sandals, Space (ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient USA - 1960's, when we had a space program) So where does that leave noirs, gangster movies, or drama movies in general? That list you've got there bloats a handful of categories at the expense of others. Not that it really matters, since Oscar Month is almost wholly aimed at new viewers who haven't yet seen the movies that regular TCM viewers are exposed to over and over again all year around. It's a great way to introduce these new viewers to the concept of "old" movies, but trying to make it more attractive to long time TCM junkies is like trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

*"Hi, if there's anything you're looking for in particular, just let me know."* For the 23 years I owned a shop, that line was all I needed to put every first time customer at ease. After that I left the initiative to them. If I'd had a coffee shop instead of a book shop, it would have been a simple *"Hi, can I take your order?"* I reserved any other comments or questions for customers I already knew, who wouldn't be put off by them. It isn't all that complicated: *Treat customers as you'd like to be treated yourself.*

> {quote:title=EugeniaH wrote:}{quote}Another response to false familiarity and politeness in a store or a Starbucks can be a made-up TMI: ] > > Clerk: "Any big plans this weekend?" > > > Customer: "Yes... I'm meeting up with this cute guy I met in the bar the other night. We're staying in a motel on the strip. See, my husband isn't any good... if you know what I mean. Never has been. Even with the prescription he takes. And I'm getting tired of it; I'm not getting any younger, you know. Do you know I'm 51 now? And going through menopause. Wow, you don't know what that's like! Hot flashes, the whole nine yards. Do you dye your hair, honey? It looks so natural!" > Or.... *"I really can't talk about it with all these people around, but I've got about a thousand telephone calls to catch up on. You can't even imagine what it's been like working for the government these last few weeks, ever since that clown Snowden pulled that ####! Problem is, you're supposed to be listening for plots and conspiracies, you know, but then you wind up having to listen to all this #### in Arabic and you don't have any idea what the #### they're talking about. They never told me anything about having to learn no foreign language when I applied for this job...."* *"Here's your coffee, sir. And thank you for sharing."*

> {quote:title=John2Bad wrote:}{quote}I've had a few strange co-workers, but never a real looney tune like that > Dwight. Can you imagine having to work with that guy five days a week? > > Dwight's not a name you hear much anymore. Dwight Frye, not a bad guy, > if you can get past the insect eating. When it comes to those Mafia nick- > names, one of my favorites is Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano. Kinda cool. Not as cool as a late cousin of mine from Queens, who somehow acquired the moniker of "Joe Polio", even though he was healthy as a horse. And no, although he was an Eye-tal, he wasn't in the Mafia.

Other than the occasional SuperSUTS day with a Mifune or a Gabin or a Chaney and one TCM premiere after another, this may be the best 14 hour run of movies I've seen on TCM in the last 4 years. If I didn't already have all but the first 2 of them on DVD, I'd be going nuts switching disks on a nonstop basis. In fact this lineup is so great that even the Mickey Rooney movie is worth watching. Those are 16 words I can barely believe I've just written. B-)

I don't know who's doing the intros, but the theme is definitely the films of Francois Truffaut. It looks to be the best such retrospective since they did a similar tribute to Kurosawa back in March of 2010.

I'm not sure it'd fit the "thriller" category, but I was sure thrilled with Walter Huston's 1933 Gabriel Over The White House, which seems to show up on TCM every year or so.

What an incredibly thoughtful and informative post, MovieProfessor! I'm even glad you goofed on Fannie Hurst's race, because that gave you the opportunity to make the extremely important Zora Neale Hurston connection. I also have to go with the 1959 version for its more "modern" take on the racial "question", but within the context of their respective times both movies were light years above other films on that topic, sentimentality aside. For one thing, the whole issue of "passing" was always a topic of interest, and much heated debate, within the black community, and the ongoing confrontation between Sarah Jane and Annie Johnson was a scene that was being played out daily all across the country, even if for whites it was completely under the radar. As you point out, it was Zora Neale Hurston who first made Fannie Hurst aware of this tension, and without their friendship the book might well never have been written. All that aside, I also loved the Colbert version, if for no other reason that it introduced, however briefly, the great Fredi Washington to a mass general audience. It really wasn't until Juano Hernandez's Lucas Beauchamp character in Intruder in the Dust that another African American actor got a chance to play such a serious "racial" role in a mainstream movie. Given my cynicism about all things Hollywood when it comes to race, I was even more taken back by just how well both of these movies dealt with the central issue of black identity, within the context of two different (yet not all that different) eras that were each almost wholly oblivious to such concerns.

If you ever want to see a movie that *doesn't* skirt around the abortion issue, check out tonight's first prime time film, Kirk Douglas's Detective Story. You'll never see a more vivid portrayal of mid-century attitudes than you'll find in Douglas's caveman-like character.

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> {quote:title=darkblue wrote:}{quote}So you think she should have lied under oath? That's a crime, is it not? Of course she shouldn't have lied. She said what she said, and she wasn't criticized for saying it in 1957 or 1967, but for saying it in 2007, when she was *60 years old.* We're not talking about some innocent little girl in 1963, just repeating words her All-benny High School classmates were using. This is a grown woman in the 21st century who's simply facing the consequences of her unfortunate language. Or does the notion of individual responsibilty only apply to those at the bottom, while those on the top get awarded a mulligan?

Thanks, Thelma. Usually I don't have any problems with Firefox, but with Chrome I often wind up with everything yellow-highlighted, at least in the preview. The irony is that in that last message, the problem corrected itself in my edited draft, but I decided to leave well enough alone rather than jinx it by noting the final correction. The even more annoying problem with Chrome is that every time I start to compose a new paragraph, the screen jumps up to the top of the message and I have to keep scrolling down. That's why this is being composed in Firefox.

> {quote:title=Dargo2 wrote:}{quote}I have to say I'm really not all that big into Musicals myself, Eugenia, but the funny thing is almost every single time "Singin' in the Rain" comes on TCM, and no matter if I happen across it at any point of its showing, I am suddenly captivated by the thing and very often end up watching the rest of it. > > It's just perfection, that's all. And by the end of it I get this almost overwhelming feeling of pride in the human spirit that there were people in the world that could reach such heights in comedy, dance and the musical arts and mix it all together to make that concoction. > > > (...and gettin' to watch Cyd Charisse throwing those long luscious legs around yet again is always an added bonus TOO, ya know!) > I have to admit that there are about 10 musicals I absolutely love, including Singing In The Rain, but mainly those 3 classic Berkeleys from 1933. I pray to Buddha in the Joss House that those films will always be with us, and I could probably watch Cagney and Keeler performing "Shanghai Lil" in an endless loop for 24 hours and still never get sick of it. To me that song is *the* cinematic highlight of the 1930's. And the Garland version of A Star Is Born at one point was my favorite Hollywood movie. But God, 90% of the rest of that genre makes me want to borrow one of John Wayne's six-shooters and go to work.