AndyM108

Joe Cocker and the Cockettes has a nice ring to it. And their rendition of "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me" is to die for.

Nobody is claiming that Hayward surpassed Bette Davis, but she still exceeds the SOTM qualification cutoff by a wide margin. Bette Davis is Ty Cobb or Walter Johnson. Susan Hayward is Al Simmons or Andre Dawson. Like baseball's Hall of Fame, the SOTM honor isn't restricted to only the top dozen people in the game. (Of course Barbara Stanwyck is Babe Ruth, but then we all knew that.)

Actually, I know you guys are just kidding, but that's a great example. Seinfeld was never boring. And why? Because it was smart. And it assumed its viewers were smart, too. Bingo. What else did it have? Brilliantly clever and funny dialogue, genius story-lines that all connected at the end of each show, characters who were both hilarious and yet believable. And best of all, it was wickedly funny. It literally made us laugh out loud. I'd add one more key ingredient: Larry David's maxim of "No hugging, no learning". The disregarding of that rule has killed more sitcoms than Putin has killed dissidents.

Do you think any current films will ever be considered "classic"? I can't think of any off hand.....a film of today that will long be remembered many years from now? I don't see many current movies, but here are a dozen 21st century movies that I think will hold up very well, in no particular order. Obviously I'm not a big fan of animated or other fantasy/escapist movies: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Twelve Years a Slave (2013) Mystic River (2003) There Will Be Blood (2007) The Wrestler (2008) City of God (2002) The Three Burials of Malquiades Estrada (2005) Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) The Gangs of New York (2002) The Human Stain (2003) The Lives of Others (2006) The Departed (2006)

I can't honestly say that I hate Dr. Zhivago, because I've never been able to stay awake for more than a reel or two of it. I'm just not a fan of Big Time Epic dramas, especially with Omar Sharif. Because of Sharif, I probably slotted it into my hated "swashbuckler" category, and that finished off whatever interest I might have had in finishing it. I would take a lot of money to make me sit through a "swashbuckler". But since it's the 8th highest grossing movie of all time, there must be a few people out there who like it, and they buy sneakers, too.

Any chance that your long lost friend had a connection to certain Holywood screenwriters? Not that I know of, but his partner in his marginally legitimate "film society" business he played hit-and-run with on the UC/Berkeley campus was a guy named Mark Lester, who did produce an underground classic called , featuring the Cockettes. If there's a better candidate for the TCM Saturday night Underground time slot, I'd be hard pressed to think of it. Here's an example of a flyer my friend had made up for his off-campus showings of that "CLASSIC" film:

Oh, this is what I get for being coy (an annoying trait.) I was not referring to our exchange about "the treatment of women in old films", james. My most recent post was about the silly story I'd told about the inspiration for the Hollies' hit song, Bus Stop. I guess I should have added a winky emoticon or something. A few thought I'd actually read the story somewhere, and was posting it in good faith.In fact, I was indulging in a proclivity I sometimes give in to, which is to totally make something up, but make it sound just plausible enough that it sounds believable. Just for the record, there's at least one person here who enjoys those flights of fancy. It's one of the ways that some of us try to retain our sanity in a world that often can't distinguish seriousness from solemnity. George Herriman, My Patron Saint.

So while I hope you get what you're asking for, the truth is that everyone can't get what they are asking for as it relates to TCM's programming. Bingo. If TCM shows more movies from category X, they need to show less from category Y. The only way to get around that in a way that might please everyone would be for TCM to pare back its multi-repeats in favor of more premieres from categories like low-budget sci-fi AND "obscure european and french films". And maybe even a few films from some other countries as well. Problem is, as gets pointed out repeatedly by Rey and many others, TCM is under contractual obligation to repeat many of those Same Old Same Olds if they want to get the rest of the package. So it's not as simple as just dropping the 7th and 8th showings of North By Northwest and substituting those cult movies that show up on ME-TV. Bottom line is that you can't please all the people all the time.

I guess what I'm always gettin' at is my belief that tcm has decided to more or less disregard the lifelong couch potato / space cadet crowd like myself. So if we want the 1950s science fiction B classics like the creature films, we gotta look elsewhere. Am I really so outta line simply because I would like to see them shown here on tcm without commercials? I don't think anyone is outta line for expressing their genre preferences. I only get annoyed when people start pretending that they represent any specific percentage of the TCM audience, in some sort of effort to denigrate the followers of other genres. Classic science fiction films whether they be the George Pal classics or the low-budget saturday matinee variety are a part of american mainstream filmdom and they always have been. Yet tcm has decided to consign them to the weekends and tcm underground. Some of these films deserve to be in the spotlight too. At least as much if not more so than many obscure european and french foreign films. See, here's the problem: What's "obscure" to you is "mainstream" to plenty of other viewers, and what's "mainstream" to you may be just as marginal to those viewers as "obscure european and french foreign films" are to you. Believe it or not, many of those "obscure european and french foreign films" took in a lot more money in American box offices than most of those low-budget sci-fi movies you seem to love. Those low-budget sci-fi movies movies were usually relegated to Saturday afternoons (and later to midnight showings) for a very good reason, the reason being that they seldom attracted enough full price (i.e. adult) viewers to show them during the evening hours. That doesn't mean that TCM shouldn't show these movies. But I can't see why on Earth they'd have any sort of preferential time slot claim over some of those "obscure european and french foreign films" that are universally acknowledged by critics and audiences to be among the finest movies ever made. And BTW those "obscure european and french foreign films" are themselves seldom shown in prime time, but you don't see many of us fans of those films complaining about the time slots, even though some of us would sometimes rather see Children of Paradise or Touchez Pas au Grisbi in prime time once in a while, rather than the 500th showing of Adam's Rib or West Side Story. We're just grateful that they're shown at all, and when they're shown overnight, well, that's what recorders were made for.

LMREO. Well it was for me............. Should we transfer that reply to the George Brent thread?

As for the comment of "who always said that he'd spent his entire career portraying the sort of people he'd fought against in his offscreen life". To me that doesn't say he passed up on lead parts offered to him to instead play a secondary 'bad guy'. What that says to be is that producers knew he was great at playing certain type of roles and they cast him in those roles. I see the distinction you're making, but I remember Ryan specifically saying he didn't choose to go after more conventional roles at the point of his career when he had the leverage to do so. Of course he was under a contract, but that didn't stop other stars from using various tactics to get their way when they really wanted to break out of typecasting.

Even Bogie had to take secondary role after secondary role since Cagney, E.G. Robinson and George Raft were given first crack. If Raft wasn't such a fool, Bogie might be known today as only Bogart. Well, that was one of the more fortuitous breaks imaginable for us movie buffs, wasn't it? Imagine a wooden stiff like Raft in Casablanca, running the gamut of emotions from "Thanks" to "Thanks a lot". I completely agree that Ryan had the talent. But one would really need to study what other stars were available at the time, who was offered each part first in specific movies, etc... to know if Ryan really pass up lead roles to take secondary ones. I don't mean to brush you off here, but that sort of detail is beyond my pay scale of research ability. All I know is what I've read that Ryan said himself, and accepted that at face value. Since he was one of the more famously non-ego driven actors in Hollywood, I can't imagine he would've been making this up.

Did anyone else start thinking about Paper Moon when they were watching the Salesman documentary the other night? Just a year or two before Paper Moon came out, I had a slightly degenerate college friend living in Berkeley, who was telling me about this idea he had about selling Bibles to recently widowed women, using the same scheme that O'Neal employed in the movie that had yet to be released. It cracked me up just thinking about it, even more so because I knew he'd never actually do it. He was a con man at heart, but he had a slightly higher code of ethics than your run of the mill grifter. But every time I see Paper Moon, I think of my long lost friend and that long conversation about Bible selling. It still cracks me up.

Ryan stated on many occasions that he deliberately sought out the most challenging and unsympathetic leading roles. He said (correctly, IMO) that it takes a lot more skill to play a complex villain than it does to play a typical leading "good guy". I'm sure that the studios were more than glad to accommodate him, given that finding great actors for "bad" roles isn't that easy, but if Ryan had tried to get more traditional leading roles before he began to be typecast by Crossfire and Act of Violence, I don't see any reason why he couldn't have gotten them. He certainly had the talent, the screen presence, and the rugged good looks to carry many of the parts that were given to actors like Gable and Wayne and Cooper.

LOL. Well Ross would have to be shown early in the morning due to the language. (I think it may hold the record for the use of the F word, but I cant be sure......) Not even close, though I would've thought so myself. In fact, according to one scholarly study, it doesn't even make the top 100. Other than a documentary on the word, The Wolf of Wall Street's 569 uses easily tops the runner-up Summer of Sam's 435. And poor Goodfellas is way down at 11th place with a mere 300. The above information has been brought to you by the Joseph I. Breen Memorial Society, and I approve the message.

It was also considerate of TCM to schedule the Francis evening on a night when baseball is on its All-Star break. Trouble in Paradise and Jewel Robbery may be Kay's two most entertaining movies, and I Found Stella Parrish is one of the all-time great soapers, even if the thought of a world famous actress ever being married to Barton MacLane kind of stretches one's imagination well past the breaking point. Never seen For the Defense, and so that's the one I'm really looking forward to.

Okay, I just found the Olive version online, although I'd already ordered the Bonanza copy. The Olive edition is $18.71, so I still probably would have gone with the cheaper version. I am so looking forward to actually seeing this movie, given that I've read about it in about half a dozen different books.

Just some questions. Which "classic" films stars would be your selection to the questions: All answered Rorschach style, i.e., these were the first answers that popped into my head. Ask me again tomorrow and some of them might well be different. 1. If you could invite 6 classic film stars to your home, who would you invite? Robert Ryan, Richard Widmark, Bette Davis, Sybil Jason, Edward Arnold, Katharine Hepburn. I'd have said Barbara Stanwyck, but my understanding is that she never liked to talk much about herself. 2. If you could only keep 1 DVD classic film - which would it be? Assuming you mean "classic" American films only, either Vertigo or The Search 3. Which classic film actor/actress do you feel is overrated? Which person is underated? Overrated: Gary Cooper. Underrated: Robert Ryan and Richard Widmark 4. Who do you think was the most handsome classic film actor? Either Clark Gable or Robert Taylor, depending on your definition 5. Who do you think was the most beautiful classic film actress? Loretta Young for career value, but Jane Greer for peak value in Out of the Past 6. Who is your least favorite classic actor? Gary Cooper, no contest. 7. Who is your least favorite classic actress? Can't think of any offhand, though I'm not particularly thrilled with Katharine Hepburn's pre-Stage Door career. But then she stepped it up radically after that, and became one of my favorites. 8. If you could star in a classic film, which film would you want to be in and what character would you want to play? Either Jack Carson's part in Roughly Speaking, Humphrey Bogart's part in To Have or Have Not or Dark Passage, or Fredric March's part in Middle of the Night. All for obvious reasons, at least to me they're obvious. 9. What is your favorite line in a classic film? Either "That's arson!" (Jean Harlow in Libeled Lady), or "Do come again, Mrs. PROWLER" (Joan Crawford in The Women), or "He'll never see sixteen!" (Humphrey Bogart in The Roaring Twenties) 10. If you were stuck in an elevator, which classic film star would you want to be stuck with? Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis, assuming I could get an occasional word in edgeways. 11. Do you have a favorite biography or autobiography of a classic film star? I'd go with my signed first edition of Bette Davis's Mother G o d d a m 12. What critically acclaimed classic film do you not enjoy watching? West Side Story, or pretty much any other stage-transferred cornball musical that was targeted at the tourist crowd.

There's something, I think, that is extra-commendable about a performer who invests his or her self into being true to a role, even if that role is someone who the audience might not like, because life is full of fascinating people who aren't necessarily likeable. Julie Harris in Member of the Wedding is a good example of this. An even better example would be Robert Ryan, who always said that he'd spent his entire career portraying the sort of people he'd fought against in his offscreen life. With his talent and looks, he easily could have been a "star" on a much higher level than he was, but instead he continued to choose roles that would challenge both him and his audience.

Have you seen No Man of Her Own (1950) ? It is my personal favorite Stanwyck film; it never airs on TCM (it's Paramount, I think.) It is on DVD through Olive Films though and sometimes it shows up on youtube. Highly, highly recommended. That's been on my "Saved" line at Netflix for several years now. One of these years they'll get around to releasing it. But in the meantime, I just found it on Bonanza for $6.79, so thanks for the heads up about the DVD. P.S. Right now there are only short clips of it on YouTube. P.P.S. There are so many of my "favorite" Stanwyck movies that it's almost impossible to narrow it down, but if I had to take five, it'd be So Big, Baby Face, Stella Dallas, Double Indemnity, and These Wilder Years. And even though I usually can't stand westerns, I loved her in The Violent Men with Edward G. Robinson and Glenn Ford. She could play evil with the best of them, and not just in Double Indemnity or The File on Thelma Jordan.

Picked up the uncleanliness, but not the abortion-love, huh. I guess for the tiebreaker we'd have to learn Stalin's position on allowing cucumbers on pizza.

That's a shame, since not only has the Shearer version of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney been shown at least twice in recent years, it's distinctly inferior to the 1937 Joan Crawford / William Powell / Robert Montgomery remake. I sure hope that The Trial of Mary Dugan gets re-scheduled sometime soon.

I wonder how intelligent a person needs to be to drive their unwashed toilet hands into the pizza dough. I think it was a habit that Poppie picked up from the Communistas. You know, these guys:

AndyM108, Regarding actresses: When it comes to women who commit crimes (and women who don't) across the entire movie spectrum, I will certainly go with my all-time favorite, Barbara Stanwyck. To that sentiment I can only quote the Poppie character in Seinfeld: "On-a this issue, there is-a no debate, and-a no intelligent person can-a think-a differently. "

Well, since other than Ruth Roman I wouldn't recognize any of those other actors or actresses if I tripped over them in a time machine, those flaws only add to the movie's camp qualities. Roman's wigmeister and fluctuating measurements reminded me of one of those Liz Taylor photos from the National Enquirer of the 1980's, and they also added to the fun. The only scene that I thought was a bit over the top was the one with the baby and the babysitter, which fortunately for all concerned seems to have been mostly left to the imagination.