TopBilled

On May 14th, you will have the chance to see Deanna on TCM in ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL. A fair number of her titles are on DVD, thanks in part to the TCM Vault series. I agree that it is foolhardy for someone to compare apples and oranges, especially if they haven't looked at all the apples yet.

*FRANK FAY* THE SHOW OF SHOWS (1929) with Myrna Loy UNDER A TEXAS MOON (1930) with Myrna Loy & Raquel Torres THE MATRIMONIAL BED (1930) with Lilyan Tashman & James Gleason GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN (1931) with Laura La Plante, Joan Blondell & Charles Winninger A FOOL'S ADVICE (1932) with Ruth Hall & Hale Hamilton I WANT A DIVORCE (1940) with Joan Blondell, Dick Powell & Gloria Dickson THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED (1940) with Carole Lombard & Charles Laughton LOVE NEST (1951) with June Haver, William Lundigan & Marilyn Monroe

*ESCAPE (1948)* From Agee on June 24, 1948: John Galsworthy's play about a convict (Rex Harrison) who prefers freedom to security, rather nicely done by an American company in England. Apparently people a few years younger than I am are puzzled by the hero's preference. Considering the world they grew up watching, I don't wonder. But I can't help feeling it is their loss, and the world's, and about as grave a one as I can imagine.

*MARY TYLER MOORE* X-15 (1961) with Charles Bronson & Brad Dexter THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE (1967) with Julie Andrews, Carol Channing & John Gavin WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT FEELING GOOD? (1968) with George Peppard & Dom DeLuise DON'T JUST STAND THERE! (1968) with Robert Wagner & Glynis Johns CHANGE OF HABIT (1969) with Elvis Presley & Barbara McNair ORDINARY PEOPLE (1980) with Donald Sutherland & Timothy Hutton

*GIRL CRAZY (1943)* From Agee on December 18, 1943: GIRL CRAZY has nothing in it I can recommend unless you are curious to see what makes one of the biggest box-office successes of the year; unless, like me, you find Mickey Rooney much more bearable since he quit putting his soul into his comedy. He seems now just a detached and very competent vaudeville actor. And unless, like me, you like Judy Garland. Miss Garland is a good strident vaudeville actor too; and has an apparent straightness and sweetness with which I sympathize. Judging by her infrequent emotional moments I would like very much to see her in straight dramatic roles.

I would agree. I think he was a bit harsh on BRUTE FORCE. It's one of Hellinger's best productions, and Lancaster is great in it.

You can add: FOR THE LOVE OF RUSTY on June 23rd. THE SON OF RUSTY on June 30th.

>Who knows what performances John Garfield would left us had HUAC not made their false accusations. This can be said about any actor cut down in his prime. Imagine what unfilmed classic work we do not have because James Dean died too young.

Try as it might, AIP never really moved beyond B-film fare. They attempted some big-budget respectability with METEOR and THE AMITYVILLE HORROR at the end, to mixed results.

I think most of the anglo actors in DRAGON SEED are miscast (Katharine Hepburn as a Chinese woman?!), but it is still a well-made MGM production. The same can be said about the studio's earlier effort, also based on a story by Pearl S. Buck, THE GOOD EARTH. We can lament the fact that white actors are portraying these roles in yellow-face, or we can just get past that and judge the film on its overall merits.

I think the theme for the evening of June 29th is women in danger. There is a new TCM-produced DVD along these lines that hits stores in June. The films in this collection include 1950s thrillers: WOMAN IN HIDING starring Ida Lupino (scheduled); THE PRICE OF FEAR starring Merle Oberon; FEMALE ON THE BEACH with Joan Crawford; and THE UNGUARDED MOMENT featuring Esther Williams which screened on TCM last year when she was the star of the month.

BLACK BART is a fun film. Any Universal western with Yvonne de Carlo is fun to watch. The remake that you mentioned is equally entertaining.

I agree, clore...both of the PHIBES films are stylishly made. I happen to enjoy them, too.

I love the title of this thread. And I like reading the replies here. I hope this thread stays on page one for a long time.

I suppose we could call lovingtheclassics a company that relies on bootleg copies, though some of their offerings are films that are in the public domain. It is not a black-and-white issue. It looks like there's a fair number who follow them on twitter, so I would say that they have customers that trust them and frequently buy classic film products from them. I have never purchased anything from lovingtheclassics though I do appreciate the fact that they are a last resort when trying to locate obscure titles.

What is interesting about AIP, at least in its early phase, is that it hit on the youth formula when most of the other studios were ignoring that potentially lucrative market. Now, as you stated, most all marketing is geared to this subgroup and we have the opposite problem with few films made for more mature audiences.

Since there will be a fair number of beach films from the 60s on TCM this April, and since many of them will come from the AIP catalogue (which is now controlled by MGM/Orion), I thought it would be fun to create a thread about this Hollywood studio. _My question: what is your favorite AIP flick?_ Most, if not all, AIP films followed this basic formula: * Action (exciting, entertaining drama) * Revolution (novel or controversial themes and ideas) * Killing (a modicum of violence) * Oratory (notable dialogue and speeches) * Fantasy (acted-out fantasies common to the audience) * **** (sex appeal, for young adults) According to wiki, the AIP publicity department devised a strategy called "The Peter Pan Syndrome" which meant: a) a younger child will watch anything an older child will watch; an older child will not watch anything a younger child will watch; c) a girl will watch anything a boy will watch d) a boy will not watch anything a girl will watch; therefore-to catch your greatest audience you zero in on the 19-year old male.

The Fredric March film version is available at lovingtheclassics.com for around fifteen dollars. The print quality is listed as 'B,' with 'A' being the highest.

*CHESTER MORRIS* ALIBI (1929) with Mae Busch WOMAN TRAP (1929) with Hal Skelly & Evelyn Brent FAST LIFE (1929) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. & Loretta Young THE BAT WHISPERS (1930) with Una Merkel PLAYING AROUND (1930) with Alice White SHE COULDN'T SAY NO (1930) with Winnie Lightner THE CASE OF SERGEANT GRISCHA (1930) with Betty Compson SINNERS IN THE SUN (1932) with Carole Lombard & Cary Grant THE MIRACLE MAN (1932) with Sylvia Sidney KING FOR A NIGHT (1933) with Helen Twelvetrees & Alice White GOLDEN HARVEST (1933) with Richard Arlen & Genevieve Tobin INFERNAL MACHINE (1933) with Genevieve Tobin & Victor Jory TOMORROW AT SEVEN (1933) with Vivienne Osborne & Allen Jenkins I'VE BEEN AROUND (1934) with Rochelle Hudson EMBARRASSING MOMENTS (1934) with Marion Nixon & Alan Mowbray LET'S TALK IT OVER (1934) with Mae Clarke PURSUIT (1935) with Sally Eilers & Scotty Beckett PRINCESS O'HARA (1935) with Jean Parker & Leon Errol MOONLIGHT MURDER (1936) with Madge Evans & Leo Carrillo COUNTERFEIT (1936) with Margot Grahame & Lloyd Nolan FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE (1936) with Helen Morgan & Lilyan Tashman THEY MET IN A TAXI (1936) with Fay Wray I PROMISE TO PAY (1937) with Leo Carrillo & Helen Mack FLIGHT FROM GLORY (1937) with Whitney Bourne & Van Heflin THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND (1937) with Richard Dix & Dolores Del Rio LAW OF THE UNDERWORLD (1938) with Anne Shirley SMASHING THE RACKETS (1938) with Frances Mercer, Rita Johnson & Bruce Cabot SKY GIANT (1938) with Richard Dix & Joan Fontaine PACIFIC LINER (1939) with Victor McLaglen & Wendy Barrie WAGONS WESTWARD (1940) with Anita Louise THUNDER AFLOAT (1939) with Wallace Beery & Virginia Grey MARINES FLY HIGH (1940) with Richard Dix & Lucille Ball GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY (1940) with Jane Wyatt & Charles Bickford NO HANDS ON THE CLOCK (1941) with Jean Parker & Rose Hobart CANAL ZONE (1942) with Harriet Hilliard Nelson & Larry Parks WRECKING CREW (1942) with Richard Arlen & Jean Parker I LIVE ON DANGER (1942) with Jean Parker THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME (1943) with Erik Rolf TORNADO (1943) with Nancy Kelly AERIAL GUNNER (1943) with Richard Arlen & Jimmy Lydon HIGH EXPLOSIVE (1943) with Jean Parker & Barry Sullivan GAMBLER'S CHOICE (1944) with Nancy Kelly DOUBLE EXPOSURE (1944) with Nancy Kelly & Jane Farrar SECRET COMMAND (1944) with Pat O'Brien & Carole Landis ROUGH, TOUGH AND READY (1945) with Victor McLaglen & Jean Rogers ONE WAY TO LOVE (1946) with Willard Parker & Marguerite Chapman BLIND SPOT (1947) with Constance Dowling & Steven Geray UNCHAINED (1955) with Elroy Hirsch & Barbara Hale THE SHE-CREATURE (1956) with Tom Conway & Cathy Downs

It makes me wonder where the folks who run the lovingtheclassics site obtained their copies of all those Jane Withers films and some of the Jones Family films. Perhaps they were aired overseas...?

*BRUTE FORCE (1947)* From Agee on September 13, 1947: I was astounded to hear that some knowledgeable people think of BRUTE FORCE, a movie about men in a big jail, as a happy return to the melodramas of the early thirties. Maybe so, in some of the jab-paced, slickly sadistic action sequences. But there isn't a line in it, or a performance, or an idea, or an emotion, that belongs much later than 1915, and cheesy 1915 at that. I suspect that the ideal audience for BRUTE FORCE is among men who have been shut off from the world , paying their debts to society. I am sure they were never like the men in this picture, even in their youth. But I am also reasonably sure that they think they were, and think people still are.

I am wondering if Withers' films aired on the old AMC. A fair number of them are available at the lovingtheclassics website. They should be shown more often. And speaking of Fox B-comedies, I would like to see the Jones family films, too.

*THE FUGITIVE (1947)* From Agee on January 10, 1948 John Ford's THE FUGITIVE is a solidly pro-Catholic picture about a priest, a creeping Jesus. My feelings about the Catholic Church are, to put it mildly, more mixed than Mr. Ford's. I doubt that Jesus ever crept, and I am sickened when I watch others creep in His name. I dislike allegory and symbolism which are imposed and denature reality as deeply as I love both when they bloom from and exalt reality. And romantic photography is the kind I care for least. Overall, I think THE FUGITIVE is a bad work of art, tacky, unreal, and pretentious. Yet I have seldom seen in a moving picture such grandeur and sobriety of ambition, such continuous intensity of treatment, or such frequent achievement of what was obviously worked for, however distasteful or misguided I think it.

*LOTUS LONG* ESKIMO (1934) with Ray Mala THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1934) with Bela Lugosi & Arline Judge LAST OF THE PAGANS (1935) with Ray Mala SEA SPOILERS (1936) with John Wayne & Nan Grey THINK FAST, MR. MOTO (1937) with Peter Lorre PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN (1940) with Keye Luke & Grant Withers TOKYO ROSE (1946) with Osa Massen & Keye Luke

Jane Withers' films do not even air on FMC, at least none recently.