AndyM108

Outstanding, and thanks. I'll check back after watching Right Cross from the overnight DVD.

Top Billed, do you have any knowledge of when they'll release the full August schedule?

This may be the best SUTS month ever, equal to the one that had Gabin and Chaney. 8.08 JEANNE MOREAU - The TCM highlight of the year. Hope we're getting The Lovers and Bay of Angels, and maybe even a return of The Bride Wore Black and Elevator to the Gallows. 8.09 WILLIAM POWELL - A few silents and pre-codes, please, and easy on The Thin Man. They're great but everyone's seen them a hundred times. 8.17 JOHN HODIAK - How did he slip in there? But I'm glad he did. 8.20 THELMA RITTER - Everyone's favorite character actress, long overdue for a tribute. 8.21 LEE TRACY - Never made a dull movie in his life. Get the Mexican Ambassador to introduce the prime time selections. 8.24 GLADYS GEORGE - Another great character actress, who died way too young. 8.25 DICK POWELL - Can the juveniles and give us nothing but noirs and it'll be second only to Moreau day. 8.26 SOPHIA LOREN - Hope they make it topheavy with her earlier Italian movies and not her Hollywood blockbusters. 8.27 EDMOND O’BRIEN - The ultimate lunchpail actor, never gave a bad performance. There are also plenty of other great selections like Stanwyck and Lombard, but it's hard to see where they'll get any premieres with those two.

The reason I would like to use the theme of a director's work in their homeland and then in Hollywood is because I think it would be interesting to watch but I am incapable of finding such movies on my own. I take example from Mark Twain's fence-whitewashing technique to try to find ways to lure others into doing work which I can not or do not wish to do. Dammit, that's my move! Find your own way of avoiding work!

I don't think the point about Bowie is that he was a "second-stringer', since obviously he's a major talent. It's that nobody in the entire community that originated and popularized the genre commonly known as "soul music" would have considered David Bowie to be a "soul" singer in a million years. The Righteous Brothers, sure, and a few other crossover singers like Stories who got plenty of airtime on the R&B stations; but David Bowie? Don't be ridic.

Your raising the issue of expatriates brings to my mind an idea for a future Challenge: a night wherein is shown a movie a director made in their homeland and then a movie with the same plot which they made after living in Hollywood for many years. I believe the differences between the two would be very interesting. It would be interesting also to see what basic values did not change. That sounds like another interesting theme, and maybe you or someone with much more knowledge of directors than I have could post a list of prominent directors who'd established solid bodies of work in their own countries before taking their talents to South Beach----Oops, I mean Hollywood. Fritz Lang and Hitchcock would be two I'd lead off with, but I'm sure that there were many others who'd be worth exploring.

This was from the previous thread: My intention is that the movies should be of that country. I do not wish to see movies such as: Quo Vadis (1951) and Roman Holiday (1953) presented as Italian movies. They are very good movies but they are in my opinion Hollywood movies even although they were filmed in Italy and Italian companies and Italian people participated in their production. Got it, and I'm glad that's what you meant. Any other interpretation would have defeated the whole purpose and spirit of the suggestion. EDIT: I see you reinforced this point below, which I hadn't yet read when I wrote the above.

The mid '70s were the high point of soul, and Bowie was right there. That sure would be news to quite a few folks in Detroit, Memphis, DC and Philadelphia, just to name a few places where the soul DJ's and their listeners barely even heard of David Bowie, let alone ever played his music.

These movies must be feature-length movies from any one country except: U.S.A., Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, Japan, France or Sweden. The movies must also not have been made by directors whose main body of work was in any of those countries. Love your template, Sans Fin, but just to be 100% certain I understand you, you're saying that (for instance) a Hungarian director must not have produced his main body of work in Hollywood, Canada, Mexico, GB, Japan, France or Sweden. IOW you're not looking for expats, but directors whose main body of work is in their own country. Is this correct? I hope so, because you didn't exclude the country (Germany) whose silent films of the 20's may encompass the greatest bloc of 5-star films of any one decade in any one country, the U.S. included. The only question is how many of these largely unscreened gems still exist.

I'd love to see a month devoted to classic French, Japanese or Italian films. It'd be a nice change of pace from Hollywood themes that get showcased to the max already. You'd also be more likely to see more premieres than usual, or at least we'd get to see some films in prime time that previously had been exclusively relegated to the overnight ghetto. Maybe you could devote one night each to a particular actor, perhaps choosing one from each decade from the 30's through the 60's, with either the 20's or the 70's being a bonus if the tribute was over five weeks instead of four. Or alternately, you could feature a representative sampling of films from each of those decades in successive weeks, with a variety of leading actors. But whatever the theme, the main point is to get as many premieres as possible, and as few of the same old films that show up half a dozen times a year. And P.S.: Gigi is not a French film.

I went through the riots in Washington, D.C. at the time. It's interesting.. the London and French riots produced songs, but none I can recall here in the States - The closest I can think of was that the Washington riots were the background to a fairly long segment of Talk to Me, a largely embellished biopic of the late DC talk show host and stand-up comedian Petey Greene. The film took so many liberties with the facts that the details are scarcely worth mentioning. One of the saddest things I've ever witnessed was that about 15 minutes after the news came in that Dr. King had been shot, I was in an otherwise all black pool room in the 1400 block of Irving St. in DC. I'd just dropped a friend off and heard the news on my car radio on my way back to the pool room. There I found half the players in tears, while the other half were laughing at the ones who were crying, apparently for being sentimentalists or something. I had to drag one of my better friends out of there before he started attacking the mockers, and then an hour later I had to drag him out of a mixed race bar on Mt. Pleasant St. when some stewed old white guy started proclaiming that King had gotten what he deserved. It was a very sad and very strange evening.

So I guess that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's really just a duck and a goose quacking in highly entertaining harmony.

So, "Jake Holman" and "jakeem", should we all split ourselves into two different people so we can give double strength to our opinions? It's an interesting technique that I admit I'd never thought of trying. And what the h e l l, why not take it a step further? Of course if the two of you are twin brothers, then I'm doubly nonplussed.

Well, that's quite a relevant counterpoint, Jake. I'll leave it to you to explain exactly what you're trying to get at.

Steiger's gum chewing is a thing of beauty. Notice how he modulated it -- or stopped, especially when his character was deep in thought. Here's Steiger's real life Mississippi model, only he chewed tobacco instead of gum and there wasn't any Hollywood ending. Those of a certain age won't have any trouble identifying either the sheriff or the scene.

I saw In The Heat of the Night when it came out, and while the acting was terrific and the plot fairly good, both then and now it seems much more 1967 Hollywood than 1967 Mississippi. The idea that a character like Gillespie would ever allow an outspoken and forceful black man like Tibbs to work with him, no matter how well qualified he was to aid in the murder case, just doesn't ring true in that time and place. Certainly there weren't any real life stories from Mississippi in the mid-60's that paralleled anything remotely like that. If anyone should want a much better and more realistic depiction of the racial conditions of the Deep South during that time frame, Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man with Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln is the gold standard. Given the Hollywood bias for blockbusters with big name stars, it never got the recognition of the Steiger / Poitier movie*, but it was highly acclaimed by all the critics and it's now listed on the National Film Registry. *Jaime Christley of Slant Magazine put it best when he wrote that "It can't be overstated just how Nothing But a Man is militantly tone-deaf to the Hollywood muzak of race relations."

1. Pepe Le Moko (Gabin) Glad I caught this on Gabin's SUTS day 2. The Lady Eve (Sturges' best) 3. I Wake Up Screaming (TCM needs to get this from FOX) 4. Ladies in Retirement (Lupino & Louis Hayward) 5. The Devil and Daniel Webster (that ending!) 6. High Sierra (another great Lupino) 7. The Maltese Falcon 8. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 9. When Ladies Meet (Garson and Crawford) 10. Meet Boston B l a c k i e (the best one in the series)

Max's "Symphony of Six Million" was our wedding march back in 1981. We had it played by harp and violin. Sheet music was never issued, but I called the publisher and got an old-timer on the phone and he made me a lead sheet for it, which I gave to a couple of musicians from Julliard. My wife and I couldn't have had a better way to begin our lives together. That's a beautiful story, though I'm afraid if I'd been there I might have been overcome by the combination of the moment and the music. Fortunately or unfortunately, at the time of my marriage it would be another 20 years before I was first exposed to the movie and the melody.

She lost out on two other roles--All About Eve because of injury and State of the Union because she couldn't work the hours they wanted. Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn stepped into the roles and Bette, at least, got a career defining role out of it. Great a talent as Colbert was, I can't even imagine any other actress acing Margo Channing the way that Bette Davis did, in what was truly a performance for the ages. It's the combination of a fierce intelligence and malignant wit that sets her apart in roles like that. Colbert couldn't have pulled it off with the same degree of authenticity.

The more I've seen of Colbert, the more I've come to appreciate her. My two favorites of hers both come from 1950: The Secret Fury and Homecoming, but there are others that are nearly as good. But she ain't no Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck had an emotional range that was the equivalent of a six octave singer, which gives her characters a consistently realistic quality that no other actress (or actor) can match. I'd have to see a lot more of Colbert's earlier work to convince me that she was capable of that level of performance. (Which come to think of it, would make for a great SUTS day: 24 hours devoted exclusively to Colbert's silents and pre-codes! That might be enough for me to put her up into the Bette Davis category, if not to Stanwyck's.)

I watched Morris Engel's Little Fugitive last night, called the first indie film, what a wonderful slice of life of New York's Coney Island, and a great little film. My question has TCM ever aired this? Not for the past 5 years, which is when I began recording every movie in sight, but I do remember having seen it at one point sometime before that. I'd love to see it again, as aside from its considerable artistic qualities, it presents a wonderful time capsule of New York City childhood of the 50's, when every waking moment wasn't crammed with organized activities scheduled by helicopter parents.

What makes the Street Scene melody so particularly evocative for me is that all the movies I've heard it in are set in what I think of as "Lost New York City", meaning the economically diverse city as it was before the yuppies and the gentrifiers colonized pretty much the entire borough of Manhattan and began extending their tentacles outwards to Brooklyn and Queens. Another beautiful opening score that evokes many of the same memories is Max Steiner's composition for the 1932 Ricardo Cortez / Irene Dunne film, Symphony of Six Million, a melodrama centered on the Lower East Side. Not a noir, of course, but still a great movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0OOuKGDHIE

TCM should have a "Street Scene Soundtrack" Film Noir's theme night. The score is by Alfred Newman (originally used for Street Scene 1931) and was re-used for Cry Of The City, Kiss Of Death, I Wake Up Screaming, Where The Sidewalk Ends, and The Dark Corner. I've known about that re-use of the "Street Scene" theme for several years now, but I'd never thought of making that haunting melody into an evening's programming theme. What a great idea!

I try to find all the films I can with William Powell in them, so when I even see his name in the description, I program it into my DVR. That's the way I found "Rondezvous". Don't you wish we could have seen him as a young actor in the "Silent's" in his young career Powell was in a 1922 silent version of Sherlock Holmes that pops up occasionally on TCM. It may or may not have him listed among the first three actors, but he's in there.

Good points, Andy. However, while I agree there were a few clunkers made in the 1930s and 1940s, there were also hidden gems that couldn't be discerned simply by looking at the names of the actors or the plot synopses. Even the reviews aren't always spot on. But it is nice to have the obscure little black and white movies available to surprise us, isn't it? Even if we turn them off midway, as I have done with some, there might always be the wondrous little scene, as with Lionel at the end of Sweepings, that make checking the schedule of TCM every day worthwhile. There are more misses than hits these days, but on the days of the hits - oh boy. Completely agree with all of the above, especially with regards to the pre-code era. Along with noirs and the TCM choices of foreign and silent movies, the pre-code genre has the biggest number of "pleasant surprises", including several of those Barrymores that played yesterday during the daytime hours. And I also agree that even when I use my suggested shortcut for screening out duds, there are always going to be exceptions to any general rule. Hell, I've even seen a few Joel McCrea movies that I didn't turn off after the first 15 minutes. It wasn't that long ago that I would have ridiculed such a thought.