TopBilled

>Rowan & Martin fans: watch for the 1968 short ROWAN AND MARTIN AT THE MOVIES that turns up on TCM occasionally. Thanks for mentioning that. The second full-length feature is an MGM release, so it should show up on TCM. The first feature was a Universal picture.

*SECRET COMMAND (1944)* From Agee on July 8, 1944: SECRET COMMAND is about shipyards, saboteurs, and saboteur hounds. It contains two pieces of melodrama which set records for willful denial of suspense. Aside from that, and another of Pat O'Brien's experienced soft-shoe performances, the film is in no way memorable.

The original thread title appears at the top of the older posts.

*CLUNY BROWN (1946)* From Age on June 8, 1946: CLUNY BROWN is a comedy about English snobbism on three levels: county family, backstairs and lower middle class. For good measure there are a couple of patrician liberals, fatuously melodramatic in their eagerness to protect an anti-fascist refugee, Charles Boyer. All this social kidding turns on a housemaid, Jennifer Jones, who can never remember for long what is meant by knowing one's place. One main difficulty is that comedies about snobbism seem, as a rule, to depend on stimulating and playing up to, rather than shriveling, the worst kinds of snobbism in the audience. In spite of this, Ernst Lubitsch's direction makes the film more amusing than there was any other reason to expect.

*DAN ROWAN & DICK MARTIN* ONCE UPON A HORSE (1958) with Martha Hyer & Leif Erickson THE MALTESE BIPPY (1969) with Carol Lynley & Julie Newmar

I love the Redgraves. And I also love the Mills family...John, Juliet & Hayley.

>Topbilled, you gave me an idea for another thread, albeit a short lived one... Good, I'm glad. I will have to check it out.

Good post. Nowadays, people go out on stress leave when they reach that point where Garland was during the filming of THE PIRATE. Personally, I find her more difficult to watch in SUMMER STOCK. Kelly works better with Sinatra than with Garland in my opinion.

*JOHNNY COME LATELY (1943)* From Agee on November 1943: The Cagney brothers' first independent piece, JOHNNY COME LATELY, seems to persuade many people that the Cagneys should stay dependent. I do not agree. The film does show a fatal commercial uneasiness, but JOHNNY does give a gentle and leisure first hour whose tone and pace would never have survived a big studio.

*ESTHER RALSTON* THE WHEEL OF LIFE (1929) with Richard Dix & O.P. Heggie THE PRODIGAL (1931) with Lawrence Tibbett LONELY WIVES (1931) with Edward Everett Horton BLACK BEAUTY (1933) with Alexander Kirkland THE MARINES ARE COMING (1934) with William Haines & Conrad Nagel ROMANCE IN THE RAIN (1934) with Roger Pryor, Heather Angel & Victor Moore STRANGE WIVES (1934) with Roger Pryor & June Clayworth FORCED LANDING (1935) with Onslow Stevens & Sidney Blackmer STREAMLINE EXPRESS (1935) with Victor Jory & Evelyn Venable TOGETHER WE LIVE (1935) with Willard Mack & Ben Lyon SHADOWS OF THE ORIENT (1937) with Regis Toomey

I am eager to see MORGAN...I don't know if it will meet my expectations, though!

Mine: FAVORITE STUDIO: Universal FAVORITE ACTRESS: Claudette Colbert FAVORITE ACTOR: Richard Burton FAVORITE DIRECTOR: Robert Aldrich FAVORITE SCREENWRITER: Nunnally Johnson FAVORITE PRODUCER: It's a tie between Darryl Zanuck & David Selznick. FAVORITE HOLLYWOOD PERSONALITY: Hedda Hopper FAVORITE FILM: ??? (I have too many favorites to list, probably!)

I agree about the short time that is given to the Essentials wraparounds. I think they should have a 15-minute program either before or after the screening, sort of like Tom Rothman's pieces over at FMC. It allows for much more film analysis that way. Incidentally, as I posted in another thread, I think Anjelica Huston would've done just as great a job. Drew, as delightful and perky as she is in a Meg Ryan sort of way, is not the only knowledgeable one in Hollywood who has been descended from a film-making dynasty.

I like Drew. She's charming. However...I would've preferred Anjelica Huston as an Essentials cohost. She has a solid Hollywood pedigree, too.

>I noticed that the Fox Movie channel will be showing an old Joel McCrea film---Banjo on My Knee---on 3/31/2012. the film also stars Barbara Stanwyck. Check it out! This film, BANJO ON MY KNEE, is also available as a streaming title on Netflix. It's a charmer in more ways than one. As for the FMC schedule, I am in the Pacific time zone, and it is listed for 6 a.m. However, the next title listed is for 9 a.m. BANJO is not a three-hour film. So it will be interesting to see if they correct the schedule in the weeks ahead.

I am glad you made this comment. I stated at the beginning of the thread that the length of his reviews vary according to each film and that sometimes I would condense or else continue the longer ones in a later post. On some (rare) occasions he has misspelled an actor or director's name and I correct those. In this case, he wrote about BRIEF ENCOUNTER with ANNA KARENINA (which I omitted) and then went into comments about THE BIG SLEEP, which he had seen during the same week of 1946. For purposes of this thread, I felt that ANNA KARENINA and BIG SLEEP deserved separate posts and photos. However, the opening line of his review for BRIEF ENCOUNTER is how he started, with a comment about Coward's play and then going on from there. What I noticed with this review is that it doesn't hit print till the last day of August '46, and the film was actually released in 1945. Perhaps it premiered in the U.K. a year earlier and was just getting to American movie screens almost 9 months later. Unless it was a re-issue and Agee was just getting around to reviewing it.

*BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945)* From Agee on August 31, 1946: The film is an expansion of a one-act play by Noel Coward. It is a story about two decent middle-class people who fall in love outside their marriages. Beset by guilt and unable to stomach the enforced deceit and humiliation, they give each other up. The story is written, filmed and acted with a good deal of positive qualities. The picture is a pleasure to watch as a well-controlled piece of work and is deeply touching. I particularly like the performances of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as the lovers. I like the things that are done with their faces and with the various ways they walk at various stages of the affair.

*DAVID WARNER* MORGAN! (1966) with Vanessa Redgrave & Robert Stephens A KING'S STORY (1967) with Orson Welles & Flora Robson THE SEA GULL (1968) with James Mason, Vanessa Redgrave & Simone Signoret THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970) with Jason Robards & Stella Stevens A DOLL'S HOUSE (1973) with Jane Fonda & Trevor Howard THE OMEN (1976) with Gregory Peck, Lee Remick & Billie Whitelaw

Of the sisters, I would say Polly Ann most resembles Loretta. However, Polly Ann had a shorter film career than Loretta or Sally. There was a half-sister named Georgiana who married Ricardo Montalban. All four ladies appear on camera together in Fox's THE STORY OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL (1939).

>Hey TB, how about if we add Wonder Boys (2000) to the Michael Douglas list here? THE WONDER BOYS is definitely one of his better more recent films. Going by the list I provided, I would say that COMA is my favorite of his from the 70s. I thought he and Genevieve Bujold had fabulous chemistry together.

*POLLY ANN YOUNG* MAN FROM UTAH (1934) with John Wayne THE CRIMSON TRAIL (1935) with Buck Jones & Ward Bond THE BORDER PATROLMAN (1936) with George O'Brien & Smiley Burnette THE INVISIBLE GHOST (1941) with Bela Lugosi

*THE PIRATE (1948)* From Agee on June 19, 1948: Color worth seeing, and Gene Kelly's very ambitious, painfully misguided performance. Judy Garland is good, and Vincente Minnelli's direction gives the whole business bulge and splendor. My sympathies are largely with them, for they are all really trying something. Many people admire THE PIRATE but it seems to me to have the culture-cute mirthful grin of the average Shakespearean comic.

Yes, he certainly was not impressed by A GUY NAMED JOE. I would agree that it's glossed-up hokum.

*A GUY NAMED JOE (1944)* From Agee on May 6, 1944: The makers of A GUY NAMED JOE had courage, if a moral idiot has it. I doubt whether taste and honesty enter into it at all. I can hardly conceive of a picture more stonily impious. Spencer Tracy's affability in the afterlife is enough to discredit the very idea that death in combat amounts to anything more than getting a freshly pressed uniform. And he is so unconcerned as he watches Van Johnson palpitate after Irene Dunne that he hardly bothers to take his gum out of his mouth. The people who have the best right to picket God on this matter, or at least MGM, are the dead whom the film is supposed to honor.

*MICHAEL DOUGLAS* HAIL, HERO! (1969) with Arthur Kennedy & Teresa Wright ADAM AT 6 A.M. (1970) with Joe Don Baker SUMMERTREE (1971) with Jack Warden, Brenda Vaccaro & Barbara Bel Geddes NAPOLEON AND SAMANTHA (1972) with Will Geer, Johnny Whitaker & Jodie Foster COMA (1978) with Genevieve Bujold & Richard Widmark THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) with Jane Fonda & Jack Lemmon