AndyM108

Welcome aboard, Rosalynd. To help ease your transition from the normal world around you to the more (ahem) focused world of TCM addicts, here are our two most important rules to remember: 1. Barbara Stanwyck is our Official Goddess. No backtalk on this one. 2. And remember that beyond that one point of no dispute, everyone's always right.

If there's ever a matter of pure subjectivity, it's got to be questions like this. Personally I'd take Kurosawa any day of the week and twice on Sunday, and I'd throw in Hitchcock, Rohmer, Hawks, and more than a few others on top of that. But it really boils down to of what sort of movies you like the best, doesn't it?

After reading all the raves here on this thread and then finally getting around to watching The Widow From Chicago after three weeks, all I can say is (1) thank God for DVD recorders, and (2) Leonard Maltin is crazy with his 2-star rating. This movie may not have had the epic narrative of Little Caesar , but it's still one of the better pre-code gangster movies out there. Robinson is as great as ever, and along with others here, I also wonder why Alice White and Neil Hamilton didn't make it to a higher level.

When it comes to "bigotry" or snobbery directed towards other parts of the country, including New Jersey, New Yorkers aren't much worse than anyone else. These days the Garden State is mostly known to outsiders all over the world mainly by that TV show and by the stink emanating from the Turnpike as you approach New York. And in olden times it was associated with an extended tribe of criminal imbeciles from the Pine Barrens known as "the Jukes", who were studied by anthropologists as if they were some exotic South Sea islanders who worshipped Henry Ford. But when it comes to insularity, tell me this: Why is it that along with residents of San Francisco, Manhattanites refer to the place they live simply as "The City"? And in the case of New York, they're not even talking about the city as a whole, but only about one 23 square mile borough! Long before New Jersey was the butt of New Yorkers' stereotypes and jokes, there was Brooklyn.

Andy, I can agree to disagree with you about the great Marlene but as a native New Yorker there's one thing I cannot tolerate: comparing her to New Jersey! As you may know, New Yorkers are a pretty broad-minded, non-judgmental bunch -- except when it comes to New Jersey ! Well, you might want to mention that for a native New Yorker (and I was born in the same NYC hospital as Loretta Young's baby in Life Begins ), "New Jersey" pretty much encompasses the entire country west of the Hudson. Anything north of the city is "Connecticut", and anything south of it is either "Mississippi" or just "down there somewhere".. Btw, "creepy" is ok. Loretta on the other hand would thrive in today's films: bland, pretty, boring, and a feeble attempt at realism. Marlene towers above that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79sCmbDtx_k Well, I'd love to watch Blonde Venus in its entireity (it's been awhile since it's been on TCM), but I'm not sure how far Marlene towers above "realism" in that "Hot Voodoo" bit!

Dietrich made my list because her whole persona is just creepy, and for an actress who kept getting cast in glamour roles, she had about as much sex appeal as Mae West. That said, as an *actress* she's pretty damn good. Just finished watching Witness For The Prosecution a few minutes ago for about the 5th time, and she was absolutely terrific, as she also was in The Blue Angel, A Foreign Affair, and Stage Fright . In my mind she's like the mirror image of Loretta Young, a drop-dead gorgeous actress whose chief virtue was her looks, not her acting. Marlene's kind of like the Atlantic ocean in New Jersey on a hot day in early July: It takes a minute to get used to the frigid temperature, but once you do, you can appreciate the bracing qualities. But she's still creepy.

Couldn't agree more about All About Eve . If Hollywood ever made a better film in the general category of "drama", I've yet to see it. What's also fascinating is to compare Anne Baxter's Eve to the Christabel character that Joan Fontaine portrayed in the 1950 film Born to Be Bad , a movie that came out just six weeks earlier. Both films feature manipulative young women who put on a small town girl act in order to fool the other women while they try to wrap one man after another around their little fingers, and while their roles aren't identical, the similarities of their underlying characters are striking, to say the least. If any of you out there haven't seen BTBB , it's showing here on TCM on January 30th, and it's definitely worth watching.

Well, if you go with a loose defintion of "better", you'd definitely want to include Robert Siodmak's The Killers , which is almost universally considered to be at least one of the top 5 or 10 noirs. The Hemingway short story ends after the movie's opening scene in the diner, and the film had to take it from there. Hemingway stated that it was the *only* work of his whose film version he liked, and watched it many times.

I only wish that Judy Davis had more of her films available. From ingenues to hookers to the mother of Stalin's love child to sharp-tongued divorcees to Adela to Judy Garland, I've yet to see her in any movie she didn't make worth watching all by herself. Just a fabulous performer from A to Z. As for Loretta Young, it's more her face and the subject matter of her pre-code films that draws me to her. I'm not confusing her acting talent or screen persona with Stanwyck or Lombard, or any one of several dozen others among her contemporaries, but AFAIC only Louise Brooks can match that pre-code look of hers, and in this case, that's enough for me.

Brando - too surly and then too grotesque Dustin Hoffman - too small Spencer Tracy - too pigheaded Peck - too wooden the entire Fonda family - too much Dietrich - too creepy Monroe - too overrated Hope/Crosby/Skelton/Rooney - too wholesome and formulaic Keaton - too long a career Welles - too full of himself Liz Taylor - see Brando, minus the surly part That's only 16 actors, compared to the many hundreds of actors I like or love. And except for that Hope quartet, even my un-favorites made at least one or two movies I'd watch again.

I totally agree with all the good things that've been said about Richard Widmark, and would like to put in a plug for one of his best movies, Time Limit, which is scheduled for 12:15 AM (ouch!) on Wednesday, March 14th. Widmark plays an army investigator who's trying to find out whether Richard Basehart's Korean War treason confession is valid, and it's as good a depiction of the conflicting values of honor, truth and patriotism that you'll ever see in a movie. It also happens to have been directed by Karl Malden. Here's TCM's synopsis and cast page: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/17351/Time-Limit/

All I can say is you really need to watch more movies - these cheap generalizations about American cinema today already make little sense to me but to hear them while knowing about everything that is happening around the world? Makes no sense. There are an enormous amount of movies made in the last 30-40 years that can throw down with absolutely anything made in the first seventy years of the cinema. One could just as easily ask what in the silent era (any era) can match The Wind Will Carry Us or The Puppet Master or A Brighter Summer Day? But I don't have to - I already know that these are in communion with The Dying Swan, Coeur Fidele, Tabu, The Only Son, How Green Was My Valley, The River, Adelheid. There is no "then" and "now", there's only cinema, and what makes good cinema has changed very, very little in the last 100 years . Very well put, Jonas. Way too many of our opinions about movies, sports, politics, etc.---you name it---are based on the flimsiest sort of knowledge and barely disguised personal preferences that have nothing to do with any objective merit. And as someone who recoils from both sappy Andy Hardy movies and raunchy modern fare, I certainly don't exclude myself from that criticism. But with the exception of the few thousand people in the world who've taken it upon themselves to acquaint themselves with the best films from all countries and all periods in history, all we've really got to say about movies is "this is what I like". Which is fine, as long as we don't try to pretend that what we're saying represents anything more than that.

VP19, every one of those suggestions of yours only adds to my previous thought that a pre-code month is an idea whose time has come. Mike LaSalle's books are both terrific, and he'd be a great person to have as a guest commentator. And if you don't mind my saying so, so would you and the Self-Styled Siren. Not to mention our own Eugenia H, who may know more about Barbara Stanwyck than 99% of the professional critics out there.

*Cushlamochree!* You have to color Mr. O'Malley's wings in the proper shade of pink, otherwise Barnaby might think he was an imposter fairy godfather.

The vast majority of mainstream movies are ALWAYS going to reflect what the filmmakers think are the cultural biases of their intended audience, modified by the formal code requirements of their era. And each era had / has its own templates: The gratuitous violence mixed with the totally incongruous "happy endings" of many of the later silents and much of the pre-code fare; the proliferation of noble priests, virginal teenagers, and timid hagiographical biopics through most of the Breen code era; the return to gratuitous violence in the late 60's and 70's, with the added measure of shameless generational pandering and the appeal to the conspiracy mentality; and now most of the above with all the dubious high tech and digital gimmickry to go along with it. Yet whatever biases shape the context, great movies are always going to be made, and great movies are always going to be in a minority. There are probably more truly first rate movies being made today than ever before, but in order to see them all you have to be operating on a 168-hour day with no time allowed for sleep, since they come from all over the world, and they don't all show in the U.S. Whereas with the best movies of past generations, you need only to be a little patient and they'll eventually plop in your lap via TCM, even the silent and foreign ones. There's nothing that we can do about the moronic blockbuster movies of today beyond simply ignoring them, because like it or not, the major studios have zero interest in appealing to the sort of film buffs you find watching TCM.

That's a great idea, jh33, and TCM should concentrate the films that suggest *why* the Breen boys clamped down on them in mid-1934. Start off the month with a film like The Story of Temple Drake (which was shown here in September for the only time in memory) and take it from there. The only thing I'd add to your suggestion would be to include films from the silent era, since that's when many of these great actresses like Shearer and Joan Crawford first burst into stardom. There are many silent films that are completely "pre-code" in spirit even if we don't generally think of them under that label. I'd bet that a month like that would generate more favorable publicity for TCM than any program they've had in years.

Some Like It Hot has now moved into strong contention as the most overplayed movie on TCM, right up there with NBNW, Splendor in the Grass and Payment Deferred . If they're going to re-run Monroe, at least give us Don't Bother to Knock so we can get Richard Widmark and Anne Bancroft thrown in.

That Fields segment in If I Had a Million may be the best thing he ever did. It hasn't shown on TCM for nearly two years, but here it is on You Tube in two parts running 5:27 and 5:57. It's absolutely hilarious, and may possibly have inspired the producers of the DeVito / Dreyfuss classic, The Tin Men . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDSW-ybm0mg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfIoKTTZuUo&feature=related *"How did you like that, you great snorting road-hog!"* *"Oh, Rollo, it's been a GLORIOUS day!"*

Swithin, you write well, I respect your opinions, and like you, I'm a Hepburn fan, if not to the extent that you seem to be. But I'm sorry, the only way you can overrate Miss Barbara Stanwyck is to claim that she gave birth to the Baby Jesus. And now that I've offended probably everyone here with that remark, including myself, I'll give myself 30 lashes, apologize, and wish everyone here a Merry Christmas. This is one of the best forums I've yet to discover on the internet. Oh, and a particularly Merry Greeting to Eugenia H, who is my personal hero(ine) of this particular forum. Great sense of humor, works like Rosie the Riveter, and a GREAT taste in actresses.

Other than Mifune and Gabin, I have a hard time thinking of any male actor whose movies I enjoy more than Lancaster's. He started out with a bang in one of the two top noirs of all time ( The Killers ), and then there was Criss Cross, Brute Force, I Walk Alone, Mister 880, All My Sons, Elmer Gantry, Sweet Smell of Success, Judgment at Nuremburg, Seven Days in May , and even one of his lesser known later films, The Swimmer . And the only reason I'm leaving Birdman of Alcatraz off is because I haven't yet watched it all the way through. Other American actors may have had a greater number of top movies than Burt, but I've only seen about 15 or 20 of his to date, and I've yet to encounter a genuine stinker in the whole bunch. The one I've yet to see but is top on my list is Sorry, Wrong Number , as it's got him paired with my #1 actress, Barbara Stanwyck. I only wish that TCM would hurry up and get that one on its schedule.

I've kept a small list of films I haven't seen on TCM for at least 2+ years, and some of them are surprising in their omission. Do people have any idea why these 10 haven't shown up? The Lady Gambles Sorry, Wrong Number Double Indemnity The Great McGinty Easy Living (the 1937 Preston Sturges "riot in the automat" movie, not the 1949 Victor Mature football movie with the same title) Criss Cross The Killing (as opposed to The Killers, which has played repeatedly) Body and Soul Dracula (the Lugosi version) Sudden Fear This is but a small list, and I could list many more omissions from later years, or from the silent era, or among foreign films, but the 10 above are right smack in the sweet spot of TCM's preferred era.

That quote from Peter Fonda is pretty amazing. I guess that political lunacy may just run in the family. What's even loopier is that he fancies that Easy Rider had something to do with stopping the war in Vietnam! What's even more ironic in retrospect is that Jane Fonda's co-star in one of the more famous anti-war movies of the 70's--- Jon Voigt in Coming Home ---has wound up being one of the more prominent right wing wingnuts around. He's like the Adolphe Menjou of the 21st century. You have to wonder what his poor daughter Angelina must think of his incoherent rants on immigration and Obama's "socialism". Maybe those rumors about Alzheimer's have a kernel of truth to them.

Let's get back on point here. Meaning the overrated thing...one "actress" I always felt was overrated as far as acting and looks by too many people who should have known better for too long was...MARLENE DIETRICH(sic)!! With all the other obvious beauties with far more obvious talent that so much adoration has been heaped on this ostrich-faced HACK just rankles me. And I DEFY! I DEFY! ANYBODY with ANY taste to tell me she was more beautiful than Paulette Goddard or more talented than Irene Dunne! GO AHEAD. Just TRY! Sepiatone. Funny, but while I agree somewhat with the ostrich-faced part (there have been literally hundreds of better looking actresses than Marlene Dietrich---her eyes are utterly lifeless), I can't agree at all with the "hack" part. I've only seen her in about 10 or 12 movies, but just on the basis of A Foreign Affair, The Blue Angel and Witness For the Prosecution alone, there's no way to say that she wasn't an actress of remarkable talent.

I can't even imagine anyone NOT falling in love with Myrna Loy. I've now seen nearly 30 of her films, and so far not a cough in a carload. Loy and Powell are so far and away the best screen couple for what the baseball people call "career value" that it'll take several centuries for any other pair to overtake them.

* *Hmmmmm, then, what about this one?* *http://www.vulcannonibird.de/noni/films/night/night-promo02.jpg* Now wait a minute---I have a question. To which the answer is: It's a girl.