slaytonf

I was going to respond to the Mary Pickford thread in Films and Filmmakers, but I thought I ought to bring it here to heighten it's profile. I give my sincere apologies and all the credit to A. Pismo Clam. I have no desire to highjack the thread. In response to some disparaging comments about Ms. Pickford, my post is as follows: Mary Pickford, for all her diminutive stature, was a towering presence in movies and their development. It is almost impossible to overestimate her influence. She was a great actress, innovator and cultivator of talent. Her career set the pattern for the great majority of future actresses, especially those that started as children and transitioned to adults, especially, Shirley Temple, Elizabeth Taylor, and Judy Garland. If anyone cares to, in a spare moment, they might take the time to compare the filmographies of Ms. Pickford and Ms. Temple. They will note a singular correspondence. Aside from her promotion of talent in her movies, both men and women, along with her husband Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith, she founded United Artists, the first major producer of independent films. Although during the studio era, independent movies were greatly suppressed, with some notable exceptions, after the studios' decline they assumed a much greater role in filmmaking, as I need hardly detail. Mary Pickford's pivotal role in movies persists today influencing how movies look on the screen and how they get there. It is perhaps forgotten because we don't see many of her movies today. A pity, because many are masterpieces. Skimming along her filmography it's hard to find a title that's not recognizable for having been scavenged for later remakes.

Not winning. Losing. Lost. Forgotten.

Like father. . . .well, you know. . . .

Well, ok--if you've got a winning smile.

Dense as I am, it wan't until the end of What's Up Doc? that I realized Peter Bogdanovitch modeled his movie after the Hawks screwball comedy. The comic energy derives from the man-bites-dog aspect of a woman chasing a man as the basis of the romantic plot. I remember seeing it a long time ago in a theater and liking it. Then seeing it, or the beginning of it some years ago and not liking it. And today, liking a lot of it, or at least enough to watch it all the way through. Lots of great turns by actors who for some reason happen to all show up in Mel Brooks movies. Hmmm. This looks like it's Madeline Kahn's first motion picture appearance. At least she is credited under that most unpromising heading "Introducing." So how do they compare? To tell you the truth, I've never been a big fan of Bringing Up Baby. There's one scene at the end where Katherine Hepburn plays the moll, which is hilarious, but not much else. So while there are some sequences that are annoying, and there is the conventional chase at the end, and the conventional court scene, and the conventional resolution scene, What's Up Doc? is still diverting. The ducking and dodging and handbag chasing scenes in the hotel are worthy of the best sight gags of Blake Edwards. And while I don't laughoutloud, I smile through quite a bit of it.

Hey, no smile!

Twofer!

One example, haunting not for the death, but for the images that follow, comes in William Wellman's The Light That Failed (1939). The now-blind artist Dick Heldar (played by Ronald Colman) makes his way to a battlefield, and get's friends there to put him into a cavalry charge, and then: The video is dark, but you get the picture.

Um. . . . I'll get back to you. . . .

That's a relief. Good luck w/your idea. And thanks for the offer of the money order. It'll help w/my college fund.

Maybe his horse.

I'm glad you're so happy. But there aren't too many movies with people carrying human heads around. Bytheway, check the movie out if you can, it's one of Mr. Montgomery's best performances. Totally out of his breezy, boozy, society sophisticate type. A real conniving baddie.

Try Night Must Fall (1937), with Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/15177/Night-Must-Fall/ Click on the READ THE FULL SYNOPSIS button. The head's in a hatbox, not a bag, tho. Sorry, I originally pasted the wrong link.

I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

I would not buy shares in his gold mine. BTW, that's from Island of Lost Souls (1932) the only good adaptation of H. G. Wells Island of Dr. Moreau, with Kathleen Burke as the Panther Woman, about the sexiest appearance of a woman on the screen.

Yeah, but that's not all she got. Hummmmm.

Yes, I will buy shares in his gold mine.

You were right with Brigitte. This Miss Horne?

It's continually annoying. People joke around. And I joke around. Then they say they were just joking around. And there I stand with no emojis.

Ah, there you have the advantage of me, once again the victim of that most deplorable lack of an emoji with it's tongue in it's cheek.

I will defer to the OP on this one since I believe that they all have winning smiles and am particularly interested in those who have ESPECIALLY winning smiles (which is not to undermine the OP corrective, which was a nice point). --Per laffite But--but you are undermining my distinction. Or rather stretching out the playing field. Smiles become winning smiles, and winning smiles become especially winning smiles. But I do not think that will work. All smiles are not winning, as many posters here have been at lengths to demonstrate. As for what I meant, why just what any American speaker would automatically understand. It's a common expression, and I don't think it needs to be hyper-scrutinized. For those who just won't be able to sit still until it's nailed down, I did a quick search for a definition. But first: It is surprising that so common an expression has so few sources for definitions. Here's one, per Collins online dictionary: winning in British (ˈwɪnɪŋ ) adjective 1. (of a person, character, etc) charming, engaging, or attractive winning ways a winning smile What's so complicated about that?

That's the difference between a smile, and a winning smile.

Not to dwell on this, but, I have to give a nod to Myrna Loy for her good death in The Rains Came (1939):