AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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I don't think we can single-handedly give Mrs. Temple all the credit for Sybil's declining movie fortunes.
I wasn't trying to. I only said she "played a part".
Personally, I don't blame Mrs. Temple for advocating on behalf of her daughter. I would have done it, too. I am sure Sybil Jason's family was fighting to protect her roles, too.
Except that for the most part, Sybil's family, which in America consisted of her South African sister and her British uncle, was no match for Shirley's savvy and determined Santa Monica stage mother. It was a home court advantage comparable to what the Lakers had in the Forum of the Magic Johnson years.
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What part did Shirley's mother have in derailing Sybil's career. Could you elaborate?
This is from Sybil Jason's obituary in The Washington Post:
*When Warner Bros. let her go, Ms. Jason signed with Twentieth Century Fox and supported Temple in two Technicolor productions: Ms. Jason played the cockney scullery maid Becky at a boarding school in the drama ?The Little Princess? (1939) and the crippled Angela in the fantasy drama ?The Blue Bird? (1940).*
*In later interviews, Ms. Jason said Temple?s mother demanded that the studio scissor the most dramatic footage of Angela tossing aside her crutches and attempting to walk unsupported. Ms. Jason said Temple?s mother thought parts of the scene would overshadow her daughter?s role.*
*Sybil Jason said she and Temple remained close over the decades, watching each other?s old movies and dining out. . .*
And on p. 95 of her first memoir, My Fifteen Minutes, published in 2005, Jason relates that her key scene in The Blue Bird - - - where she learns to walk - - - never made the final cut, because Shirley Temple's mother had told Darryl Zanuck that she would pull Shirley out of the movie if that scene had remained in the theatrical cut. She was told this to her face by the movie's director, Walter Lang. And given her lifelong friendship with Shirley Temple and her refusal to say anything negative about her, there's little reason to doubt the veracity of this story.
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I blame Warner Brothers incompetence more for that. Sybil Jason was great in her first leading role in "Little Big Shot" but the excessive violence and that cruel gangster, Norton kicking a little dog to death was too much for people.
Compare it with Shirley Temple's "Little Miss Marker" in which not even a punch was thrown. Movie had people leaving with a smile on their face when Big Steve at the very end says, I got good blood, and left a happy man. Ironically "Little Miss Marker" is a Paramount movie (Fox's rival) that helped launched Shirley's career and saved Fox studio.
I think I've read that point about the killings and the kicking expressed before, and I guess I can understand the usual paranoia about not wanting to offend the congenitally offended. But while Little Big Shot certainly had its share of typical movie violence, to me that only added to the pathos of Sybil's orphaned status, and made me even more compelled by her story.
And personally I don't think any ending could have been happier than that in Little Big Shot, where Armstrong ("Steve") and Glenda and Edward Everett Horton are all reunited with Sybil again in one big extended family, running an ice cream parlor with Horton as a soda jerk and Sybil as their beaming best "customer", happily wiping the ice cream off her face and saying "It's TERRIFIC". I can't remember a movie that left me with a better feeling in the final scene than that one.
Now if only they could re-run The Captain's Kid. . . .
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Sybil Jason has always seemed like a better version of Shirley Temple than Shirley Temple herself, but then I never watched any of their movies until a few years ago, so I'm not sure what my opinion would be worth. But it is noteworthy that the two of them remained good friends throughout their entire long lives, in spite of the part that Shirley's mother had in derailing Sybil's career.
But beyond her relatively brief movie career, Shirley Temple Black impressed the hell out of me in her "afterlife". There was a long (full page +) obituary of her in today's New York Times that made it abundantly clear that she was the real deal in all respects, intelligent and generous in spirit and always confounding people's expectations of her based on only "knowing" her from her movie star days.
And given what we've seen other former child stars go through (and become) after their glory days had ended, this quote from her late husband, taken from the Times' obituary, seems particularly resonant:
*Mr. Black, who was dropped from the San Francisco Social Register for marrying an actress, told a reporter in 1988: ?Over 38 years I have participated in her life 24 hours a day through thick and thin, traumatic situations, exultant situations, and I feel she has only one personality. She would be catastrophic for the psychiatric profession. You can wake her up in the middle of the night and she has the same personality everybody knows. What everybody has seen for 60 years is the bedrock.?*
Shirley Temple Black, R.I.P.
The full text of that NY Times obituary is below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/arts/shirley-temple-black-screen-star-dies-at-85.html?_r=0
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For those who would be most interested in honoring non-repeats, here are the last 5 years of SUTS lists. Several stars have already been honored 5 or 6 times, sometimes even in consecutive years.
2011 with Jean Gabin, Lon Chaney, Ann Dvorak, Conrad Veidt and Linda Darnell had to be the strongest lineup of all of them in terms of seldom seen rarities.
*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 Dietrich
*August 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 2013*
Humphrey 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
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My list would be richly sprinkled with deserving newcomers to the honor, along with a few who've been missing from SUTS for quite a few years. I'll call it the *"It's About Time"* list, in alphabetical order.
Eve Arden
Edward Arnold
Richard Barthelmess
Richard Basehart
Clara Bow
Raymond Burr
Louis Calhern
Cyd Charisse
Richard Conte
Judy Davis
Ruby Dee
Richard Dix
Paul Douglas
Marie Dressler
Richard Dreyfuss
W. C. Fields
Gladys George
Stewart Granger
Jane Greer
Susan Hayward
Betty Hutton
Margaret Lindsay
Victor Mature
Ralph Meeker
Robert Mitchum
Ricardo Montalban
Jeanne Moreau
Edmond O'Brien
Al Pacino
George Sanders
Shirley Temple*
*Not really, but it's inevitable
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I think I've got all of Sybil's features except for, alas, The Captain's Kid, which is second only to Little Big Shot in my book. It really steams me that it got taken down from YouTube only a few months after it was shown on TCM, where it was the one movie that evening that I didn't record.
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*AND THEN THERE WERE NONE*
Glad that this was the only TCM premiere that got bounced in order to Make Way For Shirley. It could have been worse, and at least it's not pre-empting the entire day.
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It's a mystery to me regarding the source of the negativity regarding Roz Russell. I've never seen it on these boards. There were few better comic actresses. In dramas, she was a notch lower, but not bad.
I'm a huge Roz fan, and in Roughly Speaking, among others, she shows her dramatic talent to the hilt. Great film, if almost completely forgotten outside of the realm of TCM fans.
But from what I've read, the criticism of her mostly boils down to a charge of overacting in many of her later movies, in particular her hilariously miscast role as a rather stereotyped Jewish woman in A Majority of One. (But hey, nobody's perfect.)
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If I were Sothern, I would have been furious! I wonder if she kept his services after that?
If it'd been me, I would've made dropped a dime to a local mafia unit with a rusty guillotine in their equipment shed.
I think the argument she has with Kirk Douglas after the dinner party is one of the best dialogs of a marital spat ever.
Adam's Rib being another.
Douglas and Darnell's fights are more bitter, and seem to come off less convincing. Still, clever repartee.
Those are both great examples, but in terms of marital nuclear warfare, nothing will ever beat Liz and Dick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(Well, maybe the saga of John Wayne* and Lorena Bobbitt, but I don't know if Hollywood ever took the movie option on that one.
)*Er, John Wayne *Bobbitt,* that is. Though seeing The Duke in that role would probably be well worth the price of admission.
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I also hadn't realized that Ann Sothern had been a SOTM, but sure enough back in July of 2001 TCM ran a 30 film tribute to her, beginning with a 10 film *Maisie* festival that ran from 8:00 PM through 11:30 the next morning. I'd love to see a repeat of that mini-festival sometime soon, since now we seem to be getting "Maisie" only in drips and drabs.
According to the writeup in Now Playing that appeared in that July issue, Sothern's biggest disappointment came when her agent gave the cold shoulder to an offer to have her co-star in *Zorba the Greek* after Simone Signoret had pulled out. When Anthony Quinn later told her that he wished she could have worked with him on that movie (which won Lila Kedrova an Oscar), Sothern said that this was the first time she'd even known that the part had been offered! Her agent had simply failed to notify her.
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I'd never heard of Sybil Jason until she got a mini-birthday tribute on TCM back in 2009, and I can't believe how Warner let her slip away. Watching her in *Little Big Shot,* she was easily Shirley Temple's equal in charm and talent - - - check out her performance in the title number and in "I'm Rolling In Money", which unfortunately got taken down from YouTube several years ago. Mostly what we get of her now are the two movies where she played Kay Francis's daughter ( *I Found Stella Parrish* and *Comet Over Broadway* ), but her roles in those two don't do her justice. Besides *Little Big Shot,* her best role is in the Guy Kibbee comic drama, *The Captain's Kid.* She's absolutely priceless in that one, but that's another film TCM seems to have let fall between the cracks.
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Since the only June Allyson movie I'm certain I've seen is Executive Suite, which is one of my all time favorites, I don't mind at all seeing a whole month devoted to her. Who knows, there may be some I like.
Well of course there will never to 100% agreement or even 90% (e.g. I'm sure even Audrey Hepburn, for example, has her detractors).
So is there any well known "classic" star against whom nobody ever seems to say anything? Cagney? Grant? Bogart? Stanwyck? Ida Lupino?
Not too many others. I've heard these comments directed against other stars, a few of which (three, to be exact) I might even have agreed with at one point (and one I still do):
Davis: too dumpy and / or too bitchy
Harlow: too bleached
Crawford: too histrionic
Katharine Hepburn: snobby
Audrey Hepburn: too anorexic
Stewart: too artificially folksy
Cooper and Peck: a pair of wooden Indians
Mitchum: too macho
Tracy: pigheaded Irishman
And so on. On the other hand, we can all probably think of scores of character actors who get universal praise. Maybe that's because we really value predictability more than anything else.
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Question: "How are the Cubs doing?"
Answer (puzzled): "Cubs? -- A cub is a small bear -- "
That's when the G.I.s know that these are Commie infiltrators.
I dunno, I've met many Northsiders from the Toddling Town who've devoted most of their sober moments *TRYING* to wipe all memories of the Wrigleyites from their conscious thoughts, and not all of them were Commies.
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I've looked at the old schedules from 1995/96. I didn't see one film from the 60s on their schedules. TCM started including 60s films in the early 2000s along with some early 70s.
I've got the vast majority of the Now Playing issues from 1998 to date, which covers all but the first year of that magazine. See if you still think that 1960's movies didn't come along on TCM until the early 2000's:
*TCM Schedule, JANUARY 1, 1998*
6:00 AM The Password is Courage *(1962)*
8:30 AM The Train *(1965)*
11:00 AM The Great Escape *(1963)*
2:00 PM In Harm's Way *(1965)*
5:00 PM The Dirty Dozen *(1967)*
8:00 PM Operation Crossbow *(1965)*
10:00 PM Where Eagles Dare *(1969)*
1:00 AM The Battle of Britain *(1969)*
3:30 AM Kelly's Heroes *(1970)*
15 years later, has there ever been a TCM day that was completely given over to movies from 1977 to 1995?
BTW among the many other later movies shown on TCM in January of 1998 were On Golden Pond (1981), The Man Who Loved Women (1977), Dirty Dingus Magee (1970), Bloom in Love (1973), Darling Lili (1970), Cold Turkey (1971), Funny Lady (1975), Adios, Sabata (1971), Westworld (1973), MacArthur (1977), and The Drowning Pool (1975).
So put on a smily face and stop complaining. Every thing is ok.
Amen, brother. As Vera Lynn might put it,
*"When you're up to your neck in hot water, be like the kettle and sing"*
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It's tough to pin ALTTW down to a two word description, but when the plot is centered around the pain of a husband's supposed betrayal of his wife, it's hard for me to give "comedy" an equal billing, even though there were many light moments.
If you wanted to place it along a spectrum of "mixed" dramatic comedies / comic dramas, with (say) Stalag 17 and All About Eve at the "dramatic" end and The Thin Man or Boston **** at the "comedic" end, I'd put it much closer to Stalag 17. or All About Eve. Many people in the worst sort of situations often have many lighter moments in between the tidal waves of accusation, suspicion and despair, but underneath the surface those darker moods are always present, as they are throughout ALTTW nearly right up to the end. Whereas movies like The Thin Man and the Boston **** series could easily be called comic Whodunits and All Through The Night could be described as a comic spy movie, since Bogart's "henchmen" are basically comic buffoons who would be absurdly miscast in any real spy or gangster movie.
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When we had a thread on "The Underrated 40's", I placed The Search at the very top of the Hollywood list for movies of that decade. This is what I wrote about it at the time:
*1. The Search (1948)* - Everything that a film can offer: A moving story based on the reality of separated families in postwar Europe, without a drop of false sentimentality; fabulous performances by the American leading actor (Montgomery Clift), the American supporting actress (Aline McMahon), and the two Czech actors, Jarmila Novotn? and Ivan Jandl. There's not a shot fired in the entire 104 minutes, but it's as good a war movie as Hollywood has ever produced.
Discovering movies like THE SEARCH is what makes the 31 Days of Oscar and TCM in general so wonderful.
Truer words about the unparalleled value of TCM have seldom been written.
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A Letter to Three Wives is definitely a drama. It's no more of a comedy than All Through The Night or Stalag 17, even though both of those movies also had many comic moments scattered throughout.
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I wouldn't put Crawford in the class of Stanwyck or Davis, but other than those two I can't think of another actress who's been in so many enjoyable movies, all the way from silents such as The Unknown to classic horror films such as Whatever Became of Baby Jane? and Strait-Jacket.
One particular thing I also like about Crawford is that almost all of her best remembered films are set in the present, firmly rooted in contemporary life. Very few of these idiotic costume dramas and period pieces for her, thank God. However insane and melodramatic some of her roles may be, they're almost always a product of her time and place.
How many other actresses can claim as many first rate dramas in their repertory?
Sudden Fear
Rain
A Woman's Face
Possessed (the 1947 film)
Paid
The Damned Don't Cry
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Mildred Pierce
The Women*
Flamingo Road
That's hardly a complete list, either, but I think the point is clear.
*a movie in which she zinged one of the great comic lines ever to the gossipmongering Mrs. Fowler, as played by Rosalind Russell: *"Do come again, Mrs. PROWLER"*
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There was something like that in "Battleground." It happened at a checkpoint where they got into a discussion about baseball and one of the Germans dressed as an American soldier messed up.
Not sure if that is the one you mean but that is what popped into my head.
Thanks, movieman. I can't remember whether I've even seen Battleground, but by a stroke of fortunate coincidence it's showing in the pre-dawn hours tonight, so I'll know the answer tomorrow if nobody else clues me in before then. None of the plot synopses of Battleground that I can find online mention the incident, but I've heard so many references to it over the years that I doubt it's just something I dreamed up.
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Last night I watched the last hour of Stalag 17, a movie I hadn't seen in many years. When Sefton (William Holden) discovers that Sgt. Price (Peter Graves) is the real German informer, his discovery centers around *(SPOILER ALERT)* a swinging light bulb and a hollowed out chess piece.
But here's what's been driving me slightly nuts ever since the movie ended: Since it wasn't Stalag 17, what movie was it where the spy within the P.O.W. ranks was uncovered when he mistakenly said that the Brooklyn Dodgers were in the same baseball league as the Yankees? It's a classic scene that I'd always associated with Stalag 17, but obviously my distant memory was off.
So what movie am I thinking of? Was William Bendix in it?
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I can think of at least 50 actors and actresses I've have chosen before June Allyson, but OTOH if I can survive Mickey Rooney, Esther Williams, "Singing Cowboys" and "Teen Idols", I figure I can survive pretty much any form of month-long punishment that TCM can dole out.
And as Jack Webb said in Red Nightmare. . . .
"Don't worry Jerry, that bullet will never reach you. Because, you see, Jerry, *in America there's always a tomorrow.* "
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I guess George Sanders will have to wait until his 200th birthday in 2106 to get his long deserved tribute. Even a SUTS day for The World's Greatest Cad would be appreciated at this point.
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And that means that even with all those newer Australian movies being given Friday nights, the majority of May films will come from just two decades: The 1930's and the 1940's.
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Somewhat Off-Topic: What have you been reading lately?
in General Discussions
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My latest read is a terrific compendium by George Anastasia and Glen Macnow called *The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies* (2011), which ranks and gives long writeups of 100 of the best of the genre from all over the world, from Little Caesar and The Public Enemy up through the 21st century. Great book to read and argue with, though actually their rankings are fairly defensible for the most part.