TopBilled

>My newest blog post is up. >Feel free to drop by. You truly did a great job. I love the photos of both girls you have included. And what an excellent touch showing readers the hand-written note you received from Gloria Jean recently...!

It is clear that Agee saw LURED, under that title, not PERSONAL COLUMN. But it was probably re-marketed with the new title, then changed back. It does get confusing. On the TCM database, if a film has alternate titles, they are usually listed all together at the top of the page.

The AFI and the American Film Theatre are two different entities (as I am sure you realize). I have seen a few other AFT entries, and it is not that they are very nearly filmed plays. In fact, most of them are quite engaging. I think part of the problem I had with this version of ICEMAN COMETH is the yellowed look of the film and the fact that Frankenheimer doesn't reign in some of the supporting and even minor players. In several instances, Sorrell Booke is allowed to grandstand and swipe the picture away from Fredric March and Robert Ryan, not to mention Lee Marvin (who seems miscast in the lead role). March wisely plays his part in as subdued a way as possible; while Ryan sort of lets the action come to him, which it does, especially in the final moments. Also, some of the other films in this series are a bit more opened up. For instance, I think Frankenheimer should've added a quick scene of March's agoraphobic character peaking outside after he promises to go for a walk around the block. We should've seen him attempt it, get a panic attack and go back inside to pour another round of drinks. Or if that was too much, then an easier way of doing this would be to have March go to the window and look out, give us a brief point of view shot of that outside world and then a reaction of March, showing the real world is too much for him to bare. Frankeneheimer does not take advantage of the opportunities offered him. Maybe he should have taken a lesson from Sorrell Booke.

Now Jeffrey Lynn is someone I would have expected Hitchcock to use. He had a vulnerability and a masculinity that would have worked well in a film involving a sexually conflicted Hitchcockian male character.

>He could have done roles similar to Farley Granger. Perhaps, but I don't think he had the matinee-idol looks that Farley Granger, Tony Perkins, Robert Donat, Montgomery Clift or Bob Cummings had to interest Hitchcock in using him.

One of the problems with him is that he is not muscular. With a body like his, he is going to wind up a second-rate Joe Brown, not a second-rate Errol Flynn. Still, I found him effective in most of his roles. Had he lived, he probably would've wound up on a hit television sitcom in the 1950s playing the eccentric neighbor.

What about her non-Fox output? I would love to see MISS ANNIE ROONEY.

June 27, 2012 *** Last night TCM led off its primetime schedule with 1977's MACARTHUR, which I still haven't seen yet. Apparently, it was part of a theme 'Gregory Peck Goes to War.' I do not know why they missed such a great opportunity to show MOBY DICK. Peck's brilliance as Captain Ahab in a fight-to-the-death with Melville's giant whale would certainly fit the theme. And I hope I am not the only one who thinks John Huston's classic should be shown more. *** I spent part of yesterday watching some Robert Francis films that TCM had aired recently. There are only four titles in Francis' filmography. The up-and-coming Columbia star was tragically killed in a plane crash at age 25 in the summer of 1955 (two months before the death of James Dean). Francis was a California boy, born in Glendale, and he died not far from there at the Burbank airport. I had seen three of the Robert Francis movies before, but THE BAMBOO PRISON was new to me. It occurs to me that the strapping young actor quickly found his niche in stories about military loyalists, and he plays these parts well with great confidence. He has good chemistry with May Wynn, appearing with her in two of the projects. I have no doubt he would have become a major star. *** A friend recently asked to borrow some Errol Flynn westerns. This caused me to look at two of my favorites. First, I feel SAN ANTONIO is one of the most beautifully photographed westerns from Warners in the mid-1940s. It is a shame that Ted Smith lost the Oscar for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration in a color film. (Smith was aided by uncredited supervising art director Bertram Tuttle.) Next, I re-watched VIRGNIA CITY, which I had not seen in quite some time. I think that Miriam Hopkins gives a strong performance, and so by osmosis, does Errol. Then there's Humphrey Bogart's work as a Mexican bandido. Can one character, judged through the eyes of a later generation, ruin an otherwise perfectly good film? And if so, where does one place the blame? Surely not on Bogart; he was just doing his job.

Thanks for the feedback, and I am glad you went and reviewed the film. Recently, I watched the American Film Theatre version of ICEMAN COMETH, since I like O'Neill too, but something about it didn't work for me, and I'll be darned if I know what. When I figure it out, I will probably write about it. As for DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, I was particularly impressed with Tony's scene where, after the continual bullying by his father (Burl Ives) he finally stands up and mouths off to him. There is also a great scene where he waxes poetic about his mother, no doubt O'Neill's reference to his own mother, but I felt Tony was really feeling something about the mother who raised him, Janet Esselstyn Rane. It was a very touching, very raw piece of dialogue that just spoke volumes.

Thanks for the lesson in word usage, Arturo. I was having a hard time with that when I typed it, because the spell-check on here did not recognize it as a real word. So maybe I should've chosen something else instead!

Yes, Guy Madison had his first small part in SINCE YOU WENT AWAY. It's been awhile since I have seen that film, so I can't remember if he appeared in any scenes with Shirley Temple. He was supposed to work with her in TILL THE END OF TIME, but Shirley had just been married to John Agar and went off on her honeymoon instead. The part intended for her went to Jean Porter. But Temple and Madison do get to play off each other in HONEYMOON, ironically! Incidentally, I will be profiling Marsha Hunt later this week...

>I thought the first 45 minutes were a little slow, the stuff about the early part of WW II. I haven't seen it yet. I was watching something else last night. Reading everyone's comments, I am looking forward to it. I don't mind a slow beginning if the character is strongly established.

*SALOME, WHERE SHE DANCED (1945)* From Agee on May 7, 1945: One of the odd things about this picture is that there really is an Arizona town called Salome Where She Danced. It was named, however, after a native, a Mrs. Grace Salome Pratt; and it is called, for short, Suhloam. The oddest thing of all, though, is that this film is quite a lot of fun. Most of the color and costuming is garishly pretty; the dialogue is richly flavored with such tongue-in-cheek lines as one man's description of the heroine: "She was always a great artist, but above all, a woman." Miss de Carlo, a newcomer to the screen, is not exactly persuasive as a great artist, but as a woman, especially in her Salome number, she brings the house down.

*GUY MADISON* TILL THE END OF TIME (1946) with Dorothy McGuire & Robert Mitchum HONEYMOON (1947) with Shirley Temple & Franchot Tone TEXAS, BROOKLYN & HEAVEN (1948) with Diana Lynn & James Dunn MASSACRE RIVER (1949) with Rory Calhoun & Carole Mathews DRUMS IN THE DEEP SOUTH (1951) with James Craig & Barbara Payton BEHIND SOUTHERN LINES (1952) with Andy Devine RED SNOW (1952) with Ray Mala & Carole Mathews THE CHARGE AT FEATHER RIVER (1953) with Frank Lovejoy & Vera Miles BORDER CITY RUSTLERS (1953) with Andy Devine THE COMMAND (1954) with Joan Weldon & James Whitmore 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE (1955) with Brian Keith & Kim Novak ON THE THRESHOLD OF SPACE (1956) with Virginia Leith & John Hodiak THE LAST FRONTIER (1956) with Victor Mature & Robert Preston REPRISAL! (1956) with Felicia Farr THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN (1956) with Patricia Medina HILDA CRANE (1956) with Jean Simmons & Jean Pierre Aumont THE HARD MAN (1957) with Valerie French & Lorne Greene BULLWHIP (1958) with Rhonda Fleming JET OVER THE ATLANTIC (1959) with Virginia Mayo, George Raft & Ilona Massey

*William Powell as Ziegfeld* Mr. Powell appears as the theatrical impresario in MGM's THE GREAT ZIEGFELD and ZIEGFELD FOLLIES.

*Juanita Moore* In IMITATION OF LIFE: How do you tell a child that she was born to be hurt?

Most Americans find no middle ground for Douglas MacArthur. But if you view the facts of his career without emotion (it is not easy), you will find a maddening, incongruous riddle, and a life stunning for its decisive impact (lingering to this day) on world events. Clearly a military genius, George Marshall called him our most brilliant general. MacArthur worked miracles with skeletal resources during the 1941-45 Pacific campaign. He invented triphibious warfare: meticulous coordination of air, sea and ground forces in crushing enemy strong points. But he was capable of colossal lapses and blunders: in May 1944 he ordered costly, unnecessary frontal assaults against Japanese fortifications on Biak Island; and hours after learning of the Pearl Harbor debacle, he left most of his Philippine warplanes unprotected, and Japanese sorties destroyed them on the ground. MacArthur was gregarious, considerate and at times self-effacing in private matters. Professionally, he was imperious, flamboyant, insubordinate and stubborn. In Korea, MacArthur waged a ferocious, nonstop blitzkrieg. He was dismissed from command in April 1951 for criticizing President Truman's refusal to bomb Manchurian staging areas. Later, in 1964, even though his fuming hostility toward communism still flourished, he urged Lyndon Johnson to get out of Vietnam. He spent his final 13 years in seclusion. He died, at age 84, in 1964. In the 1977 film version MacArthur is played by Gregory Peck. Peck is the perfect MacArthur, and costar Ed Flanders is magnificent as Truman. The movie chronicles the general's career from early 1942 to his moving 1964 West Point address ('Duty, Honor, Country'). It is remarkably concise, featuring great combat choreography, excellent performances, and scrupulous accuracy including military dress and weaponry. However, there is one major exception: director Joseph Sargent crafts a knockout rendition of the widely accepted popular fiction that MacArthur, in a fit of one-upmanship, arrived 45 minutes late for a 1950 Wake Island meeting with Truman. It never happened; Truman in his 1956 memoirs and staff members all say that MacArthur greeted the president as soon as his plane touched down. --excerpted from Joseph Roquemore's History Goes to the Movies. *** _Recommended reading_: The Years of MacArthur by D. Clayton James; MacArthur 1941-1951 by Charles Andrew Willoughby; and American Caesar by William Manchester.

>...and it's certainly okay to discuss the politics within the context of the movie, simply because it is a political-themed film. Completely agree. This is exactly the way politics should be discussed on the TCM boards: in how effectively a filmmaker makes political statements vis-a-vis the execution of the narrative, whether or not the viewer shares the same political philosophy. What I really like about EXECUTIVE ACTION is that it boldly blurs the line between fact and fiction and forces the viewer to find the truth on his or her own terms. It is not as flashy as Stone's later efforts. And it is done in such an even manner with stars that the viewer trusts. How can you not trust a face like Robert Ryan or Grandpa Walton?

June 26, 2012 *** Yesterday I watched DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, via Netflix streaming. It belongs in the 'they don't make 'em like this anymore' category. That can be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on one's perspective. I really enjoyed the film, especially the performances of top-billed Sophia Loren and Anthony Perkins, considering I had already seen their work in the later noir-style thriller FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT. With this earlier effort, they are four years younger and have yet to come into their own cinematically (his Norman Bates was around the corner, and her Oscar for TWO WOMEN would occur shortly). There is much I want to say about DESIRE and maybe I will revisit the film more in-depth in subsequent writings. The photography, direction, supporting performances (by Burl Ives and pre-television star Pernell Roberts), and music (by Elmer Bernstein) were all astonishingly good. But it is Perkins I have to focus on here. It didn't hit me until several hours later just what a window into Perkins' soul we glimpse with this performance. I think he must be a truly special human being to fearlessly share who he is on camera like that. I almost feel like a voyeur, getting a naked look into the man that way. *** The other film I watched was Dino DeLaurentiis' epic extravaganza WATERLOO, again via Netflix. I had a conversation with a fellow educator this morning. We were discussing how district officials need to go around and visit individual schools more often. Sometimes it does seem to be analagous to visiting the troops on the battle lines. In DeLaurentiis' film, you could almost feel empathy toward Napoleon (Rod Steiger) going down in the final scenes. That is how some of these superintendents are in some of these under-performing districts.

At first, I was going to call this thread Eat-Sleep-Breathe-Film, which I thought would seem obsessive and cute. I know there is already a thread about what folks watched during the week, but I was needing a daily type of thread. Especially since I watch about three or four films per day. I don't want to wait till the end of the week to write about some of them, because then I would have about thirty to post about. Also, this will save me from the temptation of creating countless threads about individual films or film artists. I can sort of throw it all in here, toss and serve. In the past, I have tried to blog but I came to the inevitable conclusion that it is not best for me. I use Facebook sparingingly, and I have contemplated Twitter. My passion, frequent that it is, is possibly too detailed for that. So posting here is a happy half-way house for me. Someday when my imagination is no longer fertile and I have seen every classic film available to humankind, I may comb through these posts and collect them into a volume which may then publish very nicely on to a blog format or in a book form. Until then, I will begin a daily digest of what I viewed yesterday. I look forward to insights and dialogue from others in this community. And please note that TCM constitutes about half my viewing. I watch films in a variety of other places, too. But never in the lavatory on a cell phone with internet access.

I was also glad to see the original author cited. I did wonder how much of the text was editorialized. After all, was the writer in the room when the inquests were held? It was so descriptive, especially the death scenes, that unless one had access to a crystal ball or the actual police reports, then my guess is some of it was embellished. Still, I think the facts are mostly there in the article.

>Oh Top Billed, I thought of another one. Marsha Hunt - I love her. I like her, too. And I don't think I have profiled her yet...

>Oh Top Billed, I thought of another one. Marsha Hunt - I love her. I like her, too. And I don't think I have profiled her yet...

*MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945)* From Agee on November 24, 1945: A mouse-among-cats thriller, it shows bewildered Nina Foch who thought she was merely a new secretary, trying to escape from Dame May Whitty and George Macready, who insist that she is respectively their daughter-in-law and wife. They do their best to drive her to madness and suicide. The film is well-planned, mostly well-played, well-directed, and well-photographed. All around it's a likable, unpretentious, generally successful attempt to turn good trash into decently artful entertainment.

*MARI BLANCHARD* OVERLAND TELEGRAPH (1951) with Tim Holt & Hugh Beaumont WILLIE AND JOE BACK AT THE FRONT (1952) with Tom Ewell & Richard Long THE VEILS OF BAGDAD (1953) with Victor Mature & James Arness ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS (1953) with Abbott, Costello & Robert Paige BLACK HORSE CANYON (1954) with Joel McCrea RAILS INTO LARAMIE (1954) with John Payne & Dan Duryea THE CROOKED WEB (1955) with Frank Lovejoy & Richard Denning THE RETURN OF JACK SLADE (1955) with John Ericson & Neville Brand DESTRY (1955) with Audie Murphy & Lyle Bettger STAGECOACH TO FURY (1956) with Forrest Tucker THE CRUEL TOWER (1956) with John Ericson & Charles McGraw SHE DEVIL (1957) with Jack Kelly & Albert Dekker JUNGLE HEAT (1957) with Lex Barker NO PLACE TO LAND (1958) with John Ireland & Gail Russell MACHETE (1958) with Albert Dekker & Juano Hernandez TWICE TOLD TALES (1963) with Vincent Price & Sebastian Cabot