TomJH
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Posts posted by TomJH
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The audio and visuals may not be the best here but it's apparent from this camcorder, I assume, image of Diana Rigg's 1987 stage performance in FOLLIES in London that the lady was a pretty dynamic musical comedy performer (not to mention sexy as heck).
Twenty years after filming the last Avengers she still had it, and then some.
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You'll always see Alan Ladd's wedding ring on his left hand. Even when he played that loner Shane.
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I used to find baseball very confusing. But maybe that's because it was these two guys who first taught me about it.
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1 hour ago, kingrat said:
Tom, I just checked out Dana Andrews' filmography at imdb and you're right, the best Dana Andrews films and performances pretty much end with Where the Sidewalk Ends. Alcohol had a great deal to do with the downward turn of his career. It's interesting to note that in Daisy Kenyon he is billed above Henry Fonda. Laura and The Best Years of Our Lives had made him a hot property.
Fans of Dana Andrews need to watch Night Song (1947), which has another of his very best performances. This kind of romantic drama doesn't appeal to all tastes, but Andrews as a blind composer gets to portray the inner guilt and self-loathing he does so well. As a bonus, this has probably the best Merle Oberon performance ever, and Ethel Barrymore and Hoagy Carmichael are solid gold in support.
Where the Sidewalk Ends is full of good supporting performances, all the way down to the unbilled actors, like the inspector who is the superior of Karl Malden and Dana Andrews, and the woman who plays Bert Freed's wife. I like Gary Merrill in just about anything; Ruth Donnelly brings her usual jolt of energy to the screen; Bert Freed is perfectly cast as Andrews' partner; and Tom Tully as Gene Tierney's father is absolutely one of those honest salt-of-the-earth good guys who is nonetheless just annoying enough you don't want to spend a lot of time with him.
While we're saying good things about Dana Andrews, I want to mention what an attractive voice he has.
I haven't seen Night Song, kingrat, so thanks for the recommendation.
It should be mentioned that one post 1950 Dana Andrews film that does get attention, at least for horror buffs, is an effective chiller he made in Britain, Night of the Demon, also known as Curse of the Demon. A tale of a satanic cult, the horror of the film is largely left to the audience's imagination, not unlike the Val Lewton chillers of the '40s. In fact the film was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who had directed three of the Lewton films. A controversial decision was made to include two images of a special effects demon, over the objections of a number of the film's participants, including both Tourneur and Andrews. Director Martin Scorcese would later call this artfully conceived little film one of the 11 scariest horror films of all time.
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Where the Sidewalk Ends is a very solid noir with a superior cast, all giving good accounts of themselves, along with some noteworthy atmospheric black-and-white photography of the big city at night. SPOILER ALERT: I could nit pick a bit about the forced happy ending (well, sort of happy ending anyway). Truth is, I think the film might have been a little more memorable if its chief protagonist, a tired, cynical big city cop of obsessive nature, had achieved a form of redemption by being allowed to follow through on a planned act of self sacrifice.
Nevertheless, I think that Dana Andrews is very impressive here. There are closeups of his face, looking tired, haggard and largely stoic, in which we can still see pain in his eyes. By the way, from the viewpoint of Andrews' career Where The Sidewalk Ends could be renamed Where the Good Films End. If you look at the titles and performances he gave before this film and after it it's almost like two different careers. Andrews gave fine sensitive accounts of himself at the beginning of his career in Swamp Water and, particularly, The Ox Bow Incident before Laura altered his screen persona into a stoic one. Soon after that came The Best Years of Our Lives (possibly Dana's best performance) and Daisy Kenyon, with a surprisingly complex portrayal which, for my money, stole the show from both Joan Crawford and Henry Fonda. It's a shame that after 1950 the actor's good film projects and roles ran out for him.
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Virtually every film posters have listed on this thread so far are available since I have them all on DVD. TCM was a source for most of them, but I have also found a few on the internet. The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, though, was a poor quality image. I found it somewhere (can't remember where) on the internet. So don't lose heart, folks, they are around. It just may take a while before you find them.
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17 hours ago, Fedya said:
A Lovely Way to Die (1968).
Kirk Douglas (or somebody close to him) must have watched Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome and decided that what Kirk needed to do was play a mod late 60s detective.
A wealthy man (he gets bumped off early so I don't remember the actor who played him) bickers with his Trophy Wife (Random European Actress Hollywood Was Trying to Promote, this one named Sylva Koscina from Croatia). Later that evening, as the husband is diving off a diving board, he's shot and killed by a sniper! Trophy Wife has a boyfriend, so those two are accused of the crime, and Fish Out of Water Southern Attorney (Eli Wallach) defends her at trial.
The attorney wants the two defendants to stay away from each other, so he hires Kirk, the Unorthodox Police Detective, to play a sort of bodyguard to Trophy Wife. Kirk does some investigating which gets him into trouble, and eventually figures out what really happened.
There's some stylish fashion and set design, but the plot and acting are a mess as it's full of Stock Characters. I got this one on the Kirk Douglas "Centennial Collection" of eight of his films, and the price was right, so having one dud out of the set isn't a tragedy.
5/10
I saw this one at a second run theatre a few months after it came out because I liked Kirk Douglas but I knew the actor was slumming it with this material.
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For what it's worth I did see the longer version of They Won't Believe Me and the quality of the image was rather mediocre, not looking as clean as the shortened version that TCM shows. I wonder if that means there are no quality images of the longer version.
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3 hours ago, misswonderly3 said:
If that's supposed to be funny, it's not.
Humour is subjective, MissW. I'm trying to explain Robert Young's possible "bad boy" appeal in the film with any missing scenes, especially since some posters on the thread don't "get" his attraction for the women.
I've also known a few women for whom what I said is not such an exaggeration from reality.
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5 hours ago, Hibi said:
Does anyone know if the longer version even exists and WHY it was cut??? I wonder if some of those scenes involve Greer who disappears for long periods in the film.
Yes, I saw the longer version. In the scenes cut Robert Young slaps Jane Greer around a lot and knees Susan Hayward in the stomach. Then they come running back to him screaming, "More, more . . ."
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1 hour ago, Det Jim McLeod said:
Just saw this. A good role for Chaney, played with some sadistic glee. still not too much screen time. He of course was no match for Lucas McCain's rapid fire gun.
Yes, there was a lot of cat-and-mouse sadism on Chaney's part, which he played with glee. It's just that every time Chaney calls out to Micah (Paul Fix) the marshall goes running into the back of the jail, "What do you want, Gordo?" "I think, Bonehead," I thought, "He just wants to see you jump like a scared rabbit and run in there every time he calls out your name. Stop playing his game!" At least the show ended with a lot of bullets flying, what is only to be hoped for in an episode called Gunfire.
Ever wonder how many bad guys Lucas McCain cut down with that rifle of his? If he put a notch for every one on the rifle butt he wouldn't have any gun left to shoot with.
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I just thought of Norman Maine's death at the end of A Star Is Born. Maybe suicide wasn't against the rules of the code, after all, but it certainly wasn't common in films of the studio era.
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I believe that suicide was forbidden by the Production Code and have wondered in the past how they got away with it in Leave He To Heaven. That seemed to be the exception to the rule. As for Agnes Moorehead's plunge to her death in Dark Passage that has been a topic of debate here before. Speaking for myself I think her death was an accident. It could be the censors thought so too.
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TCM showed the same 79 minute version of They Won't Believe Me that they've been showing for years. Most disappointing. I was hoping that Eddie Muller might have tried to pull some strings to get them to secure the longer version (which I've seen on the internet). His comments made no reference to the longer and shorter prints of the film, maybe because he was about to show the shorter one.
But they both have the same ending, of course, and it's a shocker that stays with you.
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8 minutes ago, Det Jim McLeod said:
Thanks, I will look for this.
You can find Gunfire on You Tube.
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46 minutes ago, TomJH said:
Lon Chaney in The Rifleman. Another opportunity to shine as a villain.
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1 hour ago, Det Jim McLeod said:
I saw Black Spurs many years ago, but can't recall anything about it, even after reading your detailed post. I saw several of these AC Lyles westerns because I was a big fan of Lon Chaney Jr and wanted to see as many of his films that I could. I thought the best one (which is isn't saying much) was Johnny Reno, because it gave Chaney the biggest role he had in these films. Normally he had a very small part, sometimes just a glorified cameo. In Johnny Reno, he plays the ineffective sheriff of the town, he looks in terrible health, being overweight and having a ragged voice, but it fit with his over the hill character. He even is given a heroic scene near the end.
Yeh, I'm a Chaney fan too. But I'm the reverse of you, having seen Johnny Reno but not able to recall much of it. Lon's career, as you know, was impacted by his alcoholism but he still got some work until about the last two years of his life (his final film, Dracula Vs Frankenstein , is an abomination with Chaney playing a mute in it). But after his heyday as a horror star at Universal he was still able to do the occasional good character work, with a pair of highlights being High Noon and The Defiant Ones.
He also gave a great villainy portrayal as gunman Charlie Gordo in an episode of The Rifleman called Gunfire. I recommend this episode to any Chaney fan. His craggy features and ragged voice really add to the menacing characterization. Recently I saw him in I Died A Thousand Times for the first time and he gave a fine account of himself as Mac, the brains behind a holdup, in the part originally played by Donald McBride in High Sierra.
I still have a card that Chaney sent me in 1966 with his autograph on it. His handwriting was still beautifully legible then and his signature was almost identical to that of his father. I also have the letter envelope in which Chaney sent the card. It was hand written by the actor and it gives me a kick to see my name and address once written in ink by the legendary Lon Chaney.
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Black Spurs (1965)
During the '60s producer A.C. Lyles produced a number of small budget conventional westerns in which he cast Hollywood veterans past their prime who appreciated getting a couple of weeks' pay at a time when employment for them was getting tough in the industry. With such titles Town Tamer, Johnny Reno and Arizona Bushwackers these were nicknamed "geezer westerns" by some. None of them are good films but I have found a couple of them, including Black Spurs, to be passable time wasters.
This particular effort features Rory Calhoun (whose '50s western film career took a hit when his criminal past was exposed in the gossip rags) as a man who gains a feared reputation as a bounty hunter. He comes up with a money scheme, in combination with a corrupt rich guy who runs one town, to turn a nearby peaceful town into a "hell town" so that the rich guy's town will get a railway company to lay down new tracks near his town instead of the other one. Calhoun plans to accomplish this by bringing gambling and prostitutes (referred to as saloon girls) into the town.
The cast of old timers includes Terry Moore as Calhoun's former fiancee now married to the sheriff of the town targeted for corruption, Bruce Cabot as his hired bouncer who has a number of thugs working for him, Scott Brady as the two fisted town preacher, Lon Chaney Jr. as the rich guy in on Calhoun's plan, Richard Arlen as proprietor of the saloon which will be centre of the action, as well as James Best as the honest town officer married to Moore and DeForrest Kelly as a corrupt sheriff.
Linda Darnell receives second billing in the film in a small inconsequential role as the flashy dressed head of the saloon girls. This was the actress's first film in eight years, her acting opportunities having been limited to sporadic television work recently. Darnell had put on a considerable amount of weight, compromising her once stunning dark haired beauty, and, as the saloon girl/madam, she wears an excessive amount of makeup. This would be the actress's last role, and it's a sad farewell appearance, Black Spurs being released six weeks after her tragic death in a fire.
Aside from the curiosity value of seeing the cast of Hollywood veterans, Black Spurs is also interesting due to the fact that its lead character, played by Calhoun, is largely viewed as a bad guy (even though, SPOILER ALERT, he will reform, rather abruptly, before the end). Calhoun is quite convincing in his role, being an old hand at playing cowboys.
2 out of 4
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I just had the great pleasure of viewing Death at Bargain Prices, one of the most marvelously entertaining episodes of The Avengers. The plot involves Steed and Mrs. Peel investigating a posh London department store where one of their best agents is killed in the show's opener. The story will involve an "A" bomb ready to level the city but, as usual, it's not so much the plot, mad man mastermind melodramatic as it may be, as it is the fun the audience has in this investigative tale with our two intrepid heroes.
Steed has one of his best lines of the series in this one. Mrs. Peel gets herself hired as a sales person in the department store and, as Steed tells her, "I asked the chief predator where to find you and he said, 'Our Mrs. Peel is in ladies' underwear.' I rattled up the stairs three at a time."
Andre Morel has fun as the old crotchety head of the store who operates from a wheel chair but the real gem of this episode is its climax. Steed and Mrs. Peel confront the baddies who have them at their mercy. Not for long, of course, with the goofy fun of seeing Steed turn a pop gun on them, soon after using a cricket bat to launch a knife thrown at him into a dart board.
Highlight of this sequence , though, is one of the most stylish fight sequences Mrs. Peel will have in her leather cat outfit. It starts with a bad guy pointing a gun at her but she starts walking towards him snapping her fingers as she tells him to give her his gun. Laurie Johnson has great musical accompaniment for her here. A fast kick with her foot and the fight is on. This fight sequence alone makes Death at Bargain Prices a winner. But even that will be followed by a spine tingling sequence of Steed and Peel then trying to prevent the bomb from being detonated.
In a 2015 interview she gave Diana Rigg extolled the virtues of black and white photography over colour in bringing out the beauty of a woman. This episode is a prime illustration of it. I don't know if the actress ever looked more beautiful or sexy than in this 50 minute show.
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3 hours ago, nakano said:
Singer and actress Juliette Gréco dies at 93 .https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2020%2Fsep%2F23%2Fjuliette-greco-face-of-chic-postwar-paris-dies-aged-93&usg=AOvVaw1O5sWNYX2Y4Wm5d4BgKvWw
Juliette Greco never clicked in the movies but she delivered a highly credible performance as a night club hostess who enlists with a motley collection of characters to try to save the African elephant from extinction in The Roots of Heaven.
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These are images of Elizabeth Shepherd, the original actress chosen for the role of Emma Peel in The Avengers. They completed one episode with her, The Town of No Return, and it was during the shooting of a second episode, Murder Market, that she was replaced by Diana Rigg. While all involved agreed that Shepherd was very beautiful and an excellent actress, they also thought she was simply wrong for the role. She played Emma Peel straight, without a hint of the humour that would be a distinguishing trademark of Diana Rigg's characterization. That plus the fact that Rigg and Patrick Macnee had a real chemistry together, Macnee later saying that playing with Rigg sharpened his own humour technique which had been lying dormant prior to Diana coming along.
Diana Rigg, by the way, with her slim body and small butt, was doubled in the leather cat outfit action scenes by a male stunt man, Billy Westley. Apparently he sat around the set in leather with a wig on much of the time, getting razzed by guys on the set asking him for a date.
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1 hour ago, Dargo said:
Hey! Anyone here have a good remedy for an earworm?
HELP! Ya see, it's been almost two weeks since Diana Rigg's passing, and ever since I heard the news I JUST can't get The Avengers theme song out of my head, and it's driving me CRAZY!!!
(...okay okay..."crazier")
Here, Dargo, this might help.
Okay I admit that was a bit of a rat thing for me to do but with all the Avengers episodes I've been watching lately I can't get Laurie Johnson's great theme and arrangement out of my mind either. In fact, I spent much of today humming it . . . over and over and over again. It's somehow comforting to know that someone else is going nuts with this, too.
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I viewed two of the earliest broadcast Avengers, both of them favourites of mine.
The Gravediggers has Steed and Mrs. Peel investigating why the nation's early warning radar system is developing glitches, leading them to a graveyard and a hospital for retired railwaymen. This episode, in particular its second half, is a delightful illustration of the series love for eccentric characters, as well as featuring a climax which turns into a delightful parody of silent movie serials. The villains tie Mrs. Peel to a railway track on which operates a mini train in which a collision with the lady might well do as much harm to the train as it does the lady. Meanwhile Steed battles the baddies on the train before the collision takes place as a tinny sounding piano right out of a silent movie theatre plays on the soundtrack.
The Cybernauts may well be the Avengers episode that created more of a reaction among fans of the series than most others, at least among its early releases. This time our two intrepid heroes are investigating the deaths of a number of executives of major industries who are murdered in their offices by a single blow from an individual powerful enough to literally punch his way through their doors. Does the killer originate with a karate school, which Mrs. Peel joins, or is it something more . . . like a killer robot?
The sci fi element, which would become a fixture in many future scripts for the series, features Michael Gough as an electronics genius operating from a wheelchair. The early scenes depicting the deaths of executives, as largely seen through the killer's eyes, are suspensefully presented, with amplified sound effects as doors are battered apart and guns are fired at the killer with no effect. The episode's climax, with Mrs. Peel unknowingly being stocked by the killer, as Steed seeks to come to the rescue, is also excitingly staged, and there will be a twist in the physical action.
This episode was popular enough that it spanned a sequel, Return of the Cybernauts, in the following season, the only sequel of the Peel series.
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3 minutes ago, Dargo said:
Looks as if the cover has some sort of embossed floral image on it. Does yours?
(...gotta say, Ty and Linda sure made a striking looking couple, didn't they)
No, my book has no cover. Truth is, now that I look at it, that book is thicker than mine. Yes, they were a handsome couple.
"The Egyptian"
in General Discussions
Posted
It's been a while since I saw The Egyptian to give a really fair appraisal of it. I do recall finding it splashy but cardboard empty, as I find almost all of Michael Curtiz's post 1950 films to be disappointments with one exception (The Proud Rebel).
I did enjoy watching Bella Darvi's scenes, though, probably more for her exotic appearance and variety of outlandish colourful wigs than anything else.