AndyM108
-
Posts
4,255 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
18
Posts posted by AndyM108
-
-
@Andy:
I had to chuckle when you wrote, "What we have gained is not liberation...."
Thought I wrote that. Hm, so much for memory.
I don't know who wrote it, but it sure wasn't me.
-
You've convinced me about Sanders. After Susan Hayward and Warren William, he's my third choice.
Glad to hear it. And I've never needed any convincing about Hayward or Warren William, both of whom are also long overdue for a similar recognition.
-
They stuffed it into a ketchup bottle and threw it into the Pacific along with everyone's comments. You can expect a reply any month now from an aging Japanese film buff who's hiding out somewhere out in a South Seas island jungle.
-
1
-
-
I've been hearing John Wayne's name a lot now, and I think that he's probably the perennial example. As AndyM108 mentioned, there always will be a segment of the population that identifies with him as one if the lat great "heroes" of the movies, but for a significant portion of viewers, his mannerisms, acting styles, and his.....errr....confrontational political views have made him a polarizing figure. One can only take but so much swaggering around with a gun, and I'll leave it at that.
But that beings me to another question: how do we as viewers, the public, determine whose screen personality endures and whose doesn't? James Stewart was just as conservative as John Wayne. He supported Mayer and the studio system wholeheartedly, was active in the movement to stamp out "Red influence" in Hollywood, was a huge supporter of the Vietnam War, and generally fought for other right-wing causes openly. Yet he somehow remains accessible to and beloved by audiences while John Wayne does not. Is it because of Stewart's image as a nice everyman? Or the fact that he didn't scream at people? I'm not saying that Wayne should experience a surge of popularity, (nor do I want to disparage James Stewart; I love him) just that it's interesting to see how one fares versus the other.
In Hollywood's so-called Golden Age, a majority of stars were Republicans. Wayne differed from the rest of them mainly in his frequently vocal and confrontational opinions, and because as a leading actor and box office draw he commanded a lot more attention than an equally right wing Adolphe Menjou.
To make a crude comparison, Wayne was the Jane Fonda of Hollywood conservatism, whereas Jimmy Stewart's liberal counterpart would have been someone like Robert Ryan or Richard Widmark, actors with strong liberal convictions but who weren't running around expressing them to any reporter with a microphone or a note pad.
-
3
-
-
What I want to know is, how thick are all these Bibles that are getting thumped, and can you use any of them to complement a drum kit?
I think Lenny Bruce addressed this scholarly inquiry in his treatise on
-
Looking at that historically horrific lineup for April of 2012, I'm reminded once again that the real heart of TCM lies in the off-hours of overnight and daytime. And that's fine, since Prime Time is presumably when TCM is best situated to attract the sort of new viewers who want popcorn movies from their childhoods, and nothing that might actually force them to think (GASP!) or---brace yourself--- read a subtitle or two (QUICK, THE SMELLING SALTS! BEACH EMERGENCY!).
-
If you look carefully at the polls of favorite movie stars from 1994 to 2013, there is one name that exists and that person died in 1979. How do you explain this?
It's not very complicated. John Wayne has the most clearly defined screen persona of any "classic era" actor. He's also the one who's most clearly and unambiguously identified with so-called "traditional" American values, and against every social and cultural trend that a sizable minority of the country detests. IOW within the realm of movie stars he's the winner-take-all representative of one part of our divided country, while the other part (which has no use for Wayne) has no single counterpart who so clearly stands out. He's the Ronald Reagan of film stars in a way that Ronald Reagan himself never was, a T-shirt icon loved by a significant minority of people for what he symbolically represents, the ultimate polarizing figure.
-
4
-
-
Many stars were kept vital only because of their iconic photographs, like James Dean, Jean Harlow and Audrey Hepburn. You still see this today, high school kids wearing t-shirts with Marilyn Monroe on them who have NO IDEA who she is.
Very good point. In many ways they're like Che Guevara or "Malcolm the Tenth".
-
Alan Ladd has pretty much dropped off the map. In fact, he's dropped off the map so much that nobody has mentioned him here- perhaps the ultimate proof of just how much this formerly HUGE top ten box office star is no longer a part of our conscious thoughts anymore, even though we are film fans.
Obviously this is true, but I didn't interpret the original question in this way. My understanding was that it referred to actors whose screen personae beneath the surface would seem dated or quaint to a 21st century audience. And while Ladd is undoubtedly forgotten by 99% of the population, I don't think his signature movie character in those classic films he made with Veronica Lake is all that different from someone like Steve McQueen, another slightly built but highly resourceful tough guy whose character still seems "modern", even though these days he's not even the most talked about and recognized Steve McQueen within his own industry.
-
I've heard people refer to Gregory Peck as being "wooden" in his performances, but I wonder how much of that was due to the roles themselves, and what was required of him, rather than his overall acting skills.
It had probably more to do with the requirements of his roles than any innate defect he had as an actor, since there were a few cases where he strayed from his usual persona and played the parts quite well. But Peck's exaggerated stolidity makes him seem like a creature of a long forgotten yesteryear. Of all the well known actors of the post-WW2 generation, perhaps only Doris Day (whom I inexplicably forgot to mention before) seems as impossible to imagine as a believable character type today, although I suppose Day could reprise herself as a self-parody to fairly good effect. But her middle aged virginal "type" as a romantic lead pretty much dropped off the cliff the moment she retired.
-
I'd love to see SOTM George Sanders, and I put all my support behind it, but I do find it incredibly unlikely. From my minor experience, TCM seems to pick people that are regularly played, anyway. George Sanders seems to be continually overlooked, so there's little chance of him getting TCM's highest honor.
I'm not really sure he's been that much overlooked, though he's never been SOTM or given a SUTS day. At last count I'd recorded 30 of his films from TCM. That's just between late 2009 and early 2013, and it's probably a low estimate, since I usually make a note of the actor if he's listed in the top three credit lines, and I seldom record any "adventure" films, especially those set at sea or in the past.
-
Leslie Howard (big time), Paul Henreid, John Gilbert, George Brent, Herbert Marshall, Joe E. Brown, Kay Francis, Margaret Lindsay, Norma Shearer (in her later stages), Paul Muni (also big time), Gregory Peck (too bland and "decent"), Franchot Tone, Clifton Webb.
Many of these are actors or actresses I personally like, but they all seem of another age entirely, either for the excessively mannered persona (Howard, Brent, Marshall, Webb) or their completely dated screen characters (Gilbert, Brown). Whereas others who may seem dated on the surface (Harlow, Warren William, Clara Bow) have the sort of inner twinkle that make them seem forever young and fresh. I'd put Marie Dressler in this latter category, since her rumpled look and wrinkled puss is wholly beside the point.
-
1
-
-
I think it's better to push Sanders for a SUTS tribute-- that seems a bit more realistic. It may be that the programmers at TCM do not consider him enough of a 'star' to be a STAR of the month.
If that's really the case, then IMO TCM is way too wedded to a narrow idea of what constitutes a "star". What objective criteria are they applying, other than....other than what? I don't want to get into names, but anyone who looks at that list of past SOTM selections can easily identify many of them who are far more marginal than Sanders in terms of the length of their repertories and / or the impact of their performances.
I'd give a bit more credibility to the FOX factor, but since his repertory is so long and extensive, and since most of those films have been shown by TCM in the past, it's hard to believe that they couldn't come up with enough films for a SOTM tribute.
-
As another example of Power's range, IMHO he was far more effective in his Zorro dual role than Granger was in his in The Prisoner of Zenda. Granger as the king was pretty bad.
Granger's another actor who I wish had been given more movies like The Light Touch and The Whole Truth to display his talents in. When I recorded those two films together on a single disk, it quickly became one of my favorite DVDs ever, especially since prior to that I hadn't seen either of them. In The Light Touch in particular, Granger exhibits a dishonor among thieves that's almost poetic, as he and his partner in crime (George Sanders) keep trying to swindle each other out of their ill-gotten gains.
But I think I'll pass on his swashbucklers, and I'm sure in those he was no Tyrone Power.
-
What % of Sanders' roles were starring rather than supporting?
IMO that's a false standard. Just to cite an obvious example, Sanders wasn't the star in All About Eve, but Addison DeWitt was utterly central to the plot, more so than Gary Merrill. Requiring a leading role just means that with the exception of the occasional Bogart or Bette Davis, you're going to wind up honoring little more than the actors or actresses with the prettiest faces.
But here's only a partial list of Sanders' movies where he has key roles, many of them leading. It's a list that would make for a very solid SOTM tribute, and IMO much more interesting than a comparable list for many of the actors honored to date.
Foreign Correspondent
The House of the Seven Gables
Rage in Heaven
Sundown
Man Hunt
The Moon and Sixpence
Appointment in Berlin
Quiet Please Murder
This Land Is Mine
The Lodger
Hangover Square
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A Scandal in Paris
The Private Affairs of Bel Ami
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Forever Amber
Lured
All About Eve
I Can Get It For You Wholesale
The Light Touch
Witness to Murder
The King's Thief
Journey to Italy
That Certain Feeling
While The City Sleeps
Death of a Scoundrel
The Seventh Sin
The Whole Truth
A Touch of Larceny
The Last Voyage
That's 30, not counting the many first rate Saint and Falcon films, and cutting it off after 1960. Without naming names, I'd gladly match that list against nearly all of the other SOTM suggestions I've seen made here.
-
1
-
-
I wonder whether TCM might instigate a policy of not allowing new members the privilege of starting new threads until they've participated coherently in at least 10 other threads. By "coherently" I mean engaging in the topic at hand with other people, not just posting random comments that have nothing to do with anything germane to the thread.
So that means we will have spam injected into threads, as opposed to being isolated in separate ones that can easily be deleted.
Read what I wrote. I don't see how any spammer could get around that, given the requirement for coherence, which no spammer yet has ever met in those semi-illiterate introductions they sometimes add before all those links.
But you could add to the spammer's burden by also forbidding any new member from posting any sort of links in his first ten comments. Few spammers want to put in that sort of effort just to post spam.
Another possibility would be for a thread to be red-highlighted as soon as it's been reported, rather than having to wait for the moderator to see it, and then automatically deleted after 15 minutes or so. IMO where there's a will there should be a way.
BTW it also doesn't help when you respond to one of those spam posts, as you did a few minutes ago. It was a funny comment, but just seeing "1 reply" on the thread list page instead of "0 replies" gives the spammer more legitimacy than he deserves.
-
But my point, Andy, was on the versatility that Power demonstrated by being effective in more than just the kind of movies that you like - that he was outstanding, as well, as a swashbuckler, and there are, in my opinion, very few actors in the movies who have been outstanding swashbucklers. (It's far easier, in fact, to find an actor who's a good tough guy in a film noir). Because of your repeatedly stated dislike of swashbucklers, I don't get the impression that you appreciate that point.
I don't doubt for a minute that Power buckled swashes with the best of them. For all I know he may have able to out-swash Errol Flynn and Stewart Granger blindfolded while simultaneously snatching Lady Godiva off a galloping unicorn. To me it's still little more than a waste of Power's acting talent, as opposed to the talent to swashbuckle, even though I'm not pretending that this is anything more than one anti-swashbuckler's lonely opinion.
-
Five new spam threads attempted (and reported) just today. (EDIT: Make that six) I'll repeat an earlier suggestion I made:
I wonder whether TCM might instigate a policy of not allowing new members the privilege of starting new threads until they've participated coherently in at least 10 other threads. By "coherently" I mean engaging in the topic at hand with other people, not just posting random comments that have nothing to do with anything germane to the thread.
-
Janet Leigh will be SOTM in October.
Is that confirmed? If so, I sure hope that TCM raids the FOX vault in order to do her career full justice.
-
I can't remember which person here wrote this several months ago, but I loved it anyway
(raises hand) It was ME! It's one of my favorite snipes! "I've never had me quoted back to me before" (who said that line?)
I suspected it was you, but I didn't want to diss anyone if I'd said it and been mistaken. I quoted it to my wife when you first wrote it, and it had her in stitches for an hour.
My own favorite snipe is directed at loudmouths who can't ever shut up: "You run on like a six pack of gonorrhea". But it's one I usually let remain in the pool rooms I frequent rather than direct it against people in more civilized forums like this.
-
Your above statement, Andy, is more a reflection, I feel, of your own preference for one genre (and intolerance of the other) than it is a balanced assessment on Power's versatility as an actor. You may not care for swashbucklers but to those who do Power's perfomance in The Mark of Zorro ranks as a classic (and his duel with Rathbone at the film's climax as a remarkable demonstration of fencing choreography).
I thought that my point was fairly clear: I think Power was a fine actor, but I'm less than thrilled with the sort of movies that he was usually cast in. I only wish he'd been given more roles like those he had in Nightmare Alley and Witness For The Prosecution, because the talent he demonstrated in those two showed that he was far more than just another pretty face. IMO Nightmare Alley is perhaps the 3rd or 4th greatest noir ever, and Witness For The Prosecution the best courtroom drama, and in both of those cases---and particularly in Nightmare Alley, but also in the latter film---Power was an integral part of these movies' greatness. Laughton and Dietrich obviously had the glamor roles in WFTP, but Tower's performance was up there with Ray Milland's Tony Wendice in Dial M For Murder, which is saying a lot.
-
It is likely that society will soon experience a reversal and there will be many grandmothers with sex videos floating around the Internet and intimate body parts covered in tattoos who will be estranged from their grandchildren because the young can not afford to be associated publicly with such people.
I can't remember which person here wrote this several months ago, but I loved it anyway, when she said something to the effect of "The cute little hummingbird you just tattooed on your breast is going to look like a stork by the time you're 50".
-
Yeah, I guess one man's coward can be another man's hero. I guess it all depends on perspective.
But, couldn't you pick 'Breaking Away' for that same motif or did you leave a haranguing Rayetta with a bun in the oven too? I can't say I blamed Jack for wanting to bolt but it seems like a glorified attempt to justify abandoning all responsibility...
Justify how? Bobby knew what he was doing was wrong and so did we. But he did it because it's a movie about a guy who does it - just like a million other guys in real life. There's no justification being sold to us, we're simply being shown one man's imperfect existence. Movies are experiences and in this one we take from it a man's actions to ponder and to judge for ourselves. 'Hud' (1962) is another movie like that - as is 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and countless others. If simply showing that these things happen is "glorifying", then I guess everything we ever see in a movie is glorification.
I can live with and even love movies that center around interesting dirtballs. For instance Hoffa, in which Nicholson also starred.* This wasn't one of those movies. In Five Easy Pieces, Nicholson's Bobby was about as interesting as the guy who leans back his seat on a transoceanic flight, and says "That's your problem, not mine" when you deign to object. I still wish the waitress had just used the ketchup bottle to knock a bit of sense into him, and ended the movie on a Bambi Meets Godzilla note, only in reverse. It would have amounted to a mercy lesson.
*Talk about a film that TCM should pry out of Fox; this is one of Jack's best roles.
-
And here are the SUTS honorees up through 2013. I haven't yet copied this year's list, but that's easy to obtain.
SUMMER UNDER THE STARSAugust 2003
James Stewart, Clint Eastwood, Peter O'Toole, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon, Frank Sinatra, Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Katherine Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Gene Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, John Wayne, Myrna Loy, Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Paul Newman, Doris Day, William Holden
August 2004
John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, Bob Hope, Debbie Reynolds, Sidney Poitier, Lucille Ball, Katherine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, Ava Gardner, Henry Fonda, Jean Harlow, Laurence Olivier, Doris Day, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis, Peter Sellers, James Stewart, Olivia de Havilland, Ginger Rogers, Charles Chaplin, Shirley MacLaine, Claudette Colbert, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Esther Williams, Kirk Douglas
August 2005
Lauren Bacall, James Cagney, Joel McCrea, Alec Guinness, Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne, Judy Garland, Shelley Winters, Ray Milland, Lena Horne, Kirk Douglas, Jane Wyman, Cary Grant, Glenn Ford, Fred Astaire, Donna Reed, James Garner, Irene Dunne, Marlon Brando, James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Joan Crawford, Basil Rathbone, Sophia Loren, Norma Shearer, Randolph Scott, Spencer Tracy, William Holden, Constance Bennett, Deborah Kerr, Humphrey Bogart
August 2006
Angela Lansbury, Groucho Marx, Susan Hayward, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, Doris Day, Burt Lancaster, Claire Trevor, Jane Powell, John Garfield, Katherine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, Walter Matthau, Lana Turner, Richard Dix, Joseph Cotten, Carole Lombard, Bela Lugosi, Audrey Hepburn, Lee Marvin, David Niven, Rita Hayworth, Van Johnson, Ann Sothern, James Stewart, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Hedy Lamarr, Ingrid Bergman, Sidney Poitier, Barbara Stanwyck
August 2007
Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O’Toole, Joan Crawford, William Holden, James Stewart, Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Vincent Price, Doris Day, Alan Ladd, June Allyson, Ernest Borgnine, Joan Bennett, Elvis Presley, Maureen O’Hara, Spencer Tracy, Errol Flynn, Rosalind Russell, Gary Cooper, Ann Miller, Jane Fonda, Ronald Reagan, Broderick Crawford, Kirk Douglas, Loretta Young, Roy Rogers, Mary Astor, Buster Keaton, Sean Connery
August 2008
Michael Caine, Charlie Chaplin, Gregory Peck, Marie Dressler, Claude Rains, Anne Bancroft, Greta Garbo, James Garner, Fred MacMurray, Doris Day, Richard Widmark, Kim Novak, Peter Lorre, Greer Garson, Rita Hayworth, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Jack Palance, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Ava Gardner, Trevor Howard, Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, Henry Fonda, Ingrid Bergman, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy
August 2009
Henry Fonda, James Mason, Marion Davies, James Coburn, Harold Lloyd, Judy Garland, Glenn Ford, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Dirk Bogarde, Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable, Gloria Grahame, Sidney Poitier, Deborah Kerr, Elvis Presley, Jennifer Jones, John Wayne, Red Skelton, Miriam Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Sterling Hayden, Angela Lansbury, Fredric March, Merle Oberon, Yul Brynner, Ida Lupino, Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers, Jean Arthur, Claire Bloom
August 2010
Basil Rathbone, Julie Christie, Steve McQueen, Ethel Barrymore,. Woody Strode, Ingrid Bergman, Errol Flynn, Bob Hope, Warren Beatty, Kathryn Grayson, Walter Matthau, Norma Shearer, Robert Ryan, Gene Tierney, Margaret O'Brien, Robert Stack, Maureen O'Hara, Ann Sheridan, Walter Pidgeon, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, John Mills, Elizabeth Taylor, John Gilbert, Lauren Bacall, Lee Remick, Olivia de Havilland, Peter O'Toole, Henry Fonda, Thelma Todd, Clint Eastwood
August 2011
Marlon Brando, Paulette Goddard, Bette Davis, Ronald Colman, John Garfield, Lucille Ball, Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, Ann Dvorak, Shirley MacLaine, Ben Johnson, Claudette Colbert, James Stewart, Ralph Bellamy, Lon Chaney, Joanne Woodward, Humphrey Bogart, Jean Gabin, Debbie Reynolds, Montgomery Clift, Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, Conrad Veidt, Joan Blondell, Burt Lancaster, Peter Lawford, Linda Darnell, Carole Lombard, Anne Francis, Howard Keel, Marlene DietrichAugust 2012
John Wayne, Myrna Loy, Johnny Weissmuller, Marilyn Monroe, Claude Rains, Van Heflin, Sidney Poitier, Rita Hayworth, Toshiro Mifune, Lionel Barrymore, James Mason, Ginger Rogers, Deborah Kerr, James Cagney, Lillian Gish, Elvis Presley, Katharine Hepburn, Freddie Bartholomew, Eva Marie Saint, Anthony Quinn, Kay Francis, Jack Lemmon, Gene Kelly, Irene Dunne, Tyrone Power, Gary Cooper, Jeanette MacDonald, Ava Gardner, James Caan, Warren William, Ingrid Bergman
August 2013Humphrey Bogart, Doris Day, Alec Guinness, Mary Boland, Charlton Heston, Joan Fontaine, Fred Macmurray, Ramon Novarro, Steve McQueen, Lana Turner, Henry Fonda, Catherine Deneuve, Mickey Rooney, Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, Ann Blyth, Wallace Beery, Natalie Wood, Randolph Scott, Hattie McDaniel, William Holden, Maggie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, Charles Coburn, Clark Gable, Jeanne Crain, Martin Balsam, Shirley Jones, Glenda Farrell, Kirk Douglas, Rex Harrison
TCM Premieres
in General Discussions
Posted
I guess it's appropriate that a film set in a ghetto would be shown in the "ghetto" hours of the night, but if there's ever been a movie worth setting your recorder timer for, this is it. It's a variant of movies like Pixote and The Kid With a Bike, though not with the "happy" ending of the latter. If you're like me and you don't shy away from films that depict life with brutal honesty, you'll be watching La Haine again and again. It's easily the TCM highlight for July, and it's one of the many reasons that TCM maintains its reputation as one of the world's great cultural resources.