AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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Other than a scattering of Maverick episodes and a few of his movies (The Children's Hour and Mister Buddwing), I haven't seen enough of Garner to offer much of an opinion of him, except to say that he reminded me of what Gary Cooper might have been like before his lobotomy. Garner never took himself too seriously, and IMO that's half the game right there, and it's probably why I remember him with such a great deal of fondness.
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Robert Young's one of those generic cookie cutter actors who was chosen for his looks, his bland "everyman" personality, and his ability not to flub his lines. His movies are all pretty much programmers with a few exceptions like They Won't Believe Me, which suffers from having had much of it left on the cutting room floor, but is still about the best thing he ever did. Young wouldn't be the worst choice for a SUTS day, but when you think of infinitely better actors like George Sanders who've never been accorded the honor, he doesn't exactly seem like the world's most compelling selection.
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DANG! FIFTEEN BUCKS? You must live in a higher income area than me.
Yeah, but I can't remember whether or not the check cleared.
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I also note that at 10:00 pm they are showing Evil Under the Sun, which was another attempt at an all-star Christie mystery- although with a noticeably smaller budget and a far less substantial source than Orient Express and Death on the Nile. The ultimate solution to the mystery is rather laborious, yet a tad obvious- but the locations divine, the cinematography great and the art-deco sets deliciously tacky. And it's got a great cast- I really like Peter Ustinov as Poirot, Maggie Smith is always fun, Diana Rigg and Sylvia Miles are along for the ride too, and (the late) Nicholas Clay (a young up and comer at the time) is smokin' hot. James Mason is in it too, but is criminally under-used. Oh, Roddy MacDowell too.
I almost feel like checking that one out just to see if the movie persona of Jane Birkin is one hundredth as sexy as
. That famous song of hers was right up there with Sylvia'sas the....well, I think you get the idea....
Evil Under The Sun (1982)A detective trying to solve a case finds himself on an exclusive island frequented by the rich and famous.
Dir: Guy Hamilton Cast: Peter Ustinov , Colin Blakely , Jane Birkin .
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I also also note that I Married a Witch- a real triumph from Clair and one of my favorite fantasy films of the forties- is showing at 6:00 pm that evening. It is a real treat and a nice double feature of his work...hope they show a better print of it than they have in the past.
Good steer, Lorna, but the actual starting time for that movie is 5:00 pm, not 6:00.
5:00 PM77 mincomedyI Married A Witch (1942)A 300-year-old witch wreaks havoc when she falls in love with a young politician.
Dir: René Clair Cast: Fredric March , Veronica Lake , Robert Benchley .
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"DAAAAAAAAAMN YOU, DAAAAAAAAMN YOU!!!!"
Just kidding.
That's the line I always remember from the film, and it works really well for getting you out of jury duty if you're ever called to serve. Just yell that at whichever side is interviewing you, they'll send you right home then and there with your five bucks and everything.
The only time I ever got called for jury duty,. I told a defendant's lawyer in a traffic case that I couldn't in good conscience give a fair hearing to an SUV driver who collided with a subcompact. I was thanked for my honesty and given $15.00 for my admission, and I didn't even have to shell out for a wig and a fake scar.
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I'd say my top five of his films (as a director only) are:
Five Graves to Cairo
Double Indemnity
Sunset Boulevard
Ace in the Hole/ The Big Carnival
One, Two, Three
(oops, am I steering things away from Cagney? apologies)
That's okay, since Wilder's worth the detour. My top five for him would be
1. Witness For The Prosecution - greatest courtroom film ever, Ducky!
2. Double Indemnity - top 10 noir
3. A Foreign Affair - perfect movie on the confused nature of the occupation
4. The Lost Weekend - still the best film on alcoholism
5. The Fortune Cookie - my favorite Lemmon / Matthau combo
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And obviously, there are wacko off-screen types on the other end of the political spectrum, too. Bigotry can work in both directions. For all we know, there are performers who hold militant anti-white beliefs, yet many Caucasians go see their films.
I'm sure that there probably are, but I've yet to see any reports of "militant anti-white beliefs" concerning any actors whose names I'd recognize from films I've seen. It's not as if Amiri Baraka has been showing up lately on TCM.
And don't forget that other than Gibson, most of these wackos we're talking about belonged to previous generations, where racist beliefs were a lot closer to the societal "norm" than they would be today. Adolphe Menjou and Eugene Pallette were already adults when The Birth of A Nation made its screen debut.
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Andy in the quote you used that I posted, I wrote he was he was a teriffic character actor and I might add wasn't he lucky to have been in so many great films, and they would have still probably been great without him. Glad you also agree that many here may not of known about his awful beliefs.
Speaking only for myself, I certainly didn't know about his alleged Nazi sympathies until today.
Since learning about his world views, yes I'm uncomfortable when I see him in those films.I think that disclosing that he was a bigoted, racist, nazi sympathizer is important to get a complete picture of this actor. That's how I feel and I'm standing by that.I guess I just compartmentalize this new information: Whereas previously I thought of Pallette as a "colorful" character who was also one of my all time favorite character actors, now I just think the latter. I won't enjoy his films any less, but let's just say I'll never look upon him as a human being the way I look at Robert Ryan or Richard Widmark. After today, I now view him as an even more extreme version of Adolphe Menjou, another beyond wacko off-screen politico (John Birch Society) who still gave us many memorable and magnificent screen performances.
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then there's this also:
"In interviews, (Jeanne) Crain alleged that Pallette was not only a bigot, who refused to share a table with black cast member Clarence Muse, but an admirer of Adolf Hitler as well."
Exactly, he may have been a teriffic character actor BUT he was also an alleged bigot, racist and nazi sympather, so if all of you can get past that and carry on about how great he was, I can't.Horrible human being, and that to me is MORE important than a bunch of roles in make believe land.
Until that quote from Jeanne Crain was posted, I suspect that few of us here realized that Pallette's paranoia about World War 3 stemmed from any sort of racial bigotry. After all, those "On the atomic clock, it's five minutes to midnight" scare warnings about nuclear war used to come from liberal scientists, not from racist mouthbreathers.
And so what do we do about it, boycott The Lady Eve and My Man Godfrey? Should we refuse to watch any films made by Walt Disney or D.W. Griffith, or any starring Mel Gibson, Walter Brennan, Adolphe Menjou, John Wayne, or innumerable other stars whose various bigotries were legendary? I'm failing to see this. After all, we're not proposing to award Pallette a brotherhood medal; we're simply recognizing his indisputable contributions as a character actor, nothing else.
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Your comment on Dodd kind of reminds me of the discussion we had on Robert Ryan; Instead of saying 'did Dodd ever play anything but' I would have said 'was Dodd ever given anything but'. Actors, especially those at Dodd's 'level' where not given choices. If the producers at a studio decided to type cast them, they had to perform those roles.
Just ask Bogart. It would be incorrect to say 'Bogart must have liked playing a gansters, because he played so many'.
True. But unlike with Ryan, I've never heard or read that Claire Dodd ever had a chance at other types of roles.
But like Ryan, if on a much lower level, she was very good in the roles she was given. A real beauty and a very convincing would-be homewrecker. The anti-Jane Bryan*, if you will.
*or in Hard to Handle, the anti-Mary Brian
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One of the things that I have always appreciated about those early musicals with work by Busby Berkeley, SpeedRacer, is that, unlike the musicals of other studios, they have a gritty feel to them that is pure Warner Brothers. There's also a street quality to much of the wiseacres dialogue that I love.
"It must have been hard on your mother, not having any children!" (Ginger Rogers in 42nd Street)
As an illustration of that in Footlight Parade, there's one scene in which Joan Blondell escorts snooty, money grubbing Claire Dodd (with whom Cagney is infatuated) to the door. After opening the door Blondell gives her a swift kick in the rear with the departing line, "Get going, Countess. As long as there are sidewalks, you've got a job."
That's a variant of the line that Marie Dressler spoke (though with a certain amount of affection) to Jean Harlow near the end of Dinner at Eight, and it works equally well in both of those cases.
And BTW did Claire Dodd ever play anything but low life gold diggers, as opposed to the heart of gold ones? I just saw another Cagney movie the other day (Hard to Handle) where she tried to steal him right out from under Mary Brian, Cagney's only true love. It seems to have been a pattern with her roles.
To me, dialogue like that is not only funny but clever, too, in that hard boiled way that was a trademark of its studio.
Absolutely. Those pre-code Warner Brothers films were in a class by themselves.
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Gardner is a classic deceptive femme fatale in this noir, no question about it, but more a case of effective casting, I feel, than particularly impressive acting. One can hardly blame Burt Lancaster in his obsession over her.
I thought that Gardner was terrfic in the role, maybe not with quite the unalloyed treachery of Jane Greer's Kathie Moffat in Out of the Past, but it was a performance that definitely added to the movie. Though to be honest, I can't think of a single flaw in that film from the first moment to the last, with Edmond O'Brien's being told to take the weekend off as his reward for nearly getting himself killed.
I think she was probably at the zenith of her career, however, when she travelled to Africa to co-star with Gable in Mogambo, a likable, gutsy performance.
I'd take Kitty over Honey Bear Kelly, but that may be simply because in addition to liking The Killers so much better than Mogambo, I much prefer Jean Harlow's Vantine Jefferson in Red Dust. Gardner's okay as Honey Bear, but the movie itself is a relatively weak remake (a 7.5 on a 10 scale to Red Dust's 10), the Gable of 1953 wasn't up to the Gable of 1932, and as an actress Gardner's no Jean Harlow by any stretch of the imagination. (Though in movies like those, who could be?)
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"In interviews, (Jeanne) Crain alleged that Pallette was not only a bigot, who refused to share a table with black cast member Clarence Muse, but an admirer of Adolf Hitler as well."
So I guess he wasn't likely to have gotten one of those NAACP Lifetime Achievement Awards along with Donald Sterling.
OTOH he'd probably be right at home Up There (or Down There) with the longtime John Birch Society stalwart Adolphe Menjou.
Anyway, it's sad to know about that about Pallette, because he was one great character actor. I'm glad he didn't start running his mouth before he made all his earlier movies.
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My favorite Eugene Pallette performance is probably Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood, but I also liked him in My Man Godfrey. He's also in some other films I've seen like Topper and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but I can't remember him well enough to say whether or not I liked his performance. He seems to be fairly consistent in his work, so I'm going to say I probably liked him.
Another very good movie Pallette was in was Bordertown, with Paul Muni and Bette Davis, well before Davis's physical qualities had gone South. He plays gold digger Davis's millionaire husband, and you can probably guess what his fate turns out to be.
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I'm gonna' sue. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna' sue them. And I think you should sue, too. And I might even get around to suing you, too, if you don't sue.
I love it! One of my all time favorite character actors.
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It seems Netflix is renting out the Criterion collection of this film. You can "Add All" and get the 1946 version and then the 1964 version, or you can rent just Disc 1 for the original or Disc 2 for the remake. I'm going to add Disc 1 and move it to the top of the queue. When I finish watching "I Wake Up Screaming," I'll get this one.
Glad you mentioned this, since I didn't realize that you could get the 1964 version by clicking "add all" and deleting the 1946 version, which I already own.
P.S. East Side, West Side is a pretty good drama---not great, but well cast---and Astaire proves that he can do more than sing and dance in On The Beach. I think you'll like them both. And if you like Laird Cregar, you'll love I Wake Up Screaming. It may be his best role, and that's saying a lot.
One small warning, though: Don't watch On The Beach before going to bed. I'm not talking about the grim ending, only that you won't be able to get "Waltzing Matilda" out of your brain for a week. Great song, but it does tend to stay with you.
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Eugene Pallette was a true character, with his distinctive waddle and bullfrog voice. In real life he was just as "colorful" as in his movies. After WW2 he was convinced that the world was headed for a nuclear holocaust, so he went out and bought a 3,500 acre "mountain fortress" in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, complete with its own cannery and lumber mill, and a bottomless supply of cattle and other food. He stayed there for two years before he realized that his fears were probably ungrounded.
IMO his best role was as Henry Fonda's eccentric millionaire dad in The Lady Eve, where we first see him coming down the stairs to breakfast, singing "For tonight we'll merry, merry be" in his typical bullfrog imitation.
But his best single line came in Marlene Dietrich's Shanghai Express, when Pallette ("Sam Salt") discovers that his traveling companion Warner Oland ("Mr. Henry Chang") is really the leader of a band of Chinese revolutionaries who've just taken over the train. Here's the ensuing exchange:
Sam Salt: I can't make head or tail outta' you, Mr. Chang. Are you Chinese, or are you white, or what are you?
Mr. Henry Chang: My mother is Chinese. My father was white.
Sam Salt: You look more like a white man to me.
Mr. Henry Chang: I'm not proud of my white blood.
Sam Salt: Oh, you're not, are you?
Mr. Henry Chang: No, I'm not.
Sam Salt: Rather be a Chinaman, huh?
Mr. Henry Chang: Yes.
Sam Salt: What future is there in bein' a Chinaman? You're born, eat your way through a handful of rice, and you die. What a country! Let's have a drink!-
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Sorry! I seem to have struck a nerve. I've only ever seen her in "Mogambo." I tried watching "Barefoot Contessa" but it was boring. I've heard of some of Gardner's other films like "The Killers," which I'm presuming is the one featured in this picture. I'll definitely have to look out for this one as it seems to be her ultimate performance.
It's not only Gardner's best performance, it's also got Burt Lancaster, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker and the most chilling pair of supporting actors (who are the actual "killers") you'll ever see in Charles McGraw and William Conrad, here shown in the diner at the opening of the movie, grilling poor Harry Hayden, AKA "Bright Boy", about their soon-to-be victim Lancaster's ("the Swede") whereabouts.
Hemingway said that this was the ONLY film version of his writing that he could stand to watch, even though only the diner scene was what he described in his short story---the rest of the film was an extension of it. In fact he liked the movie so much, he got a personal copy and would show it to his friends down in Key West.
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Unfortunately Netflix only has the original Lancaster / Gardner version, though for some weird reason it gives the year as 1964. So it looks as if I'm going to have to wait for TCM to show it.
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(...and speaking of "The Killers" and "remakes", what do you folks think of the 1964 remake co-starring a certain future POTUS in his big screen swan song?...my opinion: Angie Dickinson couldn't hold a candle to Ava, AND in fact, Ronnie is a poor substitute for Albert Dekker)
I've read so many bad things about that remake that now I want to watch it. And since the original is tied with Out of the Past as the greatest noir ever, I'm almost hoping that Divine Symmetry will give us closure and reveal the 1964 version to be one of the two worst.
And in my perverse image of an ideal world, the remade Dekker would have died in a manner that anticipated the way the real Dekker met his finish four years later. Nothing against Ronnie, but I'm rooting for it to be on an Ed Wood level of unintentional awfulness.
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Haha. At the risk of going off topic in this thread... what is "the" ultimate Ava Gardner film?
Are you kidding? Is this a serious question?
"KITTY IS INNOCENT! KITTY IS INNOCENT! KITTY IS INNOCENT!"
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But I think that The Strawberry Blonde successfully demonstrated that Cagney could be something other than just that. The tough little mug with a touch of sensitivity who mellows in middle age and discovers that his dream girl was just an illusion and that the "plain" girl he married (not that Olivia de havilland is anything like plain) was the real gem, after all.
But I'm not saying for a second that Cagney wasn't versatile, or that he wasn't good in The Strawberry Blonde. I just don't care for the entire genre. As I said, different strokes for different folks.
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Here's a "blue" cartoon that I used to feature in midnight shows on college campuses in the 70's, only it was under a different name, without titles, and with a much better soundtrack. But it's still the same cartoon, and it's a hoot. I bought my copy from a guy who worked (seriously) at a religious film service in Michigan. He had lent it to the AFI for a cartoon series, which is where I first saw it.
P.S. Disregard the title, which is totally misleading, in some sort of an attempt to make it into a political statement. The name it's better known by is "P e c k e r Island." I later showed it along with Reefer Madness and Jack Webb's Red Nightmare as part of a "Sex, Drugs and Treason" package. It was a lot of fun while it lasted.
Icon vs. Person/Symbol vs. Reality
in General Discussions
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I never really understood the appeal of Ronald Reagan as an actor. I think people idolize him because of his presidency, not his acting career. Just speaking honestly here.
I think that other than his political followers who like him no matter what, most people's opinion of Reagan the actor pretty much depends on whether or not they like the sort of cotton candy movies that he was forever being cast in. He always seemed to me to be the quintessential B-movie leading man, handsome and affable enough to play the lead, but utterly incapable of portraying any real emotional depth. A lesser version of Robert Young is about how I'd put it.