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*RAY MILLAND* CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON (1934) with Warner Oland & Alan Mowbray THE GLASS KEY (1935) with George Raft, Edward Arnold & Claire Dodd THREE SMART GIRLS (1936) with Deanna Durbin THE JUNGLE PRINCESS (1936) with Dorothy Lamour & Ray Mala NEXT TIME WE LOVE (1936) with Margaret Sullavan & James Stewart EASY LIVING (1937) with Jean Arthur & Edward Arnold BULLDOG DRUMMOND ESCAPES (1937) with Guy Standing & Heather Angel EBB TIDE (1937) with Frances Farmer WINGS OVER HONOLULU (1937) with Wendy Barrie SAY IT IN FRENCH (1938) with Olympe Bradna HER JUNGLE LOVE (1938) with Dorothy Lamour TROPIC HOLIDAY (1938) with Bob Burns, Dorothy Lamour & Martha Raye MEN WITH WINGS (1938) with Fred MacMurray & Louise Campbell HOTEL IMPERIAL (1939) with Isa Miranda & Reginald Owen FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS (1940) with Ellen Drew UNTAMED (1940) with Patricia Morison & Akim Tamiroff SKYLARK (1941) with Claudette Colbert & Brian Aherne I WANTED WINGS (1941) with William Holden & Veronica Lake THE LADY HAS PLANS (1942) with Paulette Goddard ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY? (1942) with Betty Field & Patricia Morison THE WELL-GROOMED BRIDE (1946) with Olivia de Havilland & Sonny Tufts CALIFORNIA (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck & Barry Fitzgerald THE IMPERFECT LADY (1947) with Teresa Wright & Anthony Quinn GOLDEN EARRINGS (1947) with Marlene Dietrich THE TROUBLE WITH WOMEN (1947) with Teresa Wright & Brian Donlevy ALIAS NICK BEAL (1949) with Audrey Totter, Thomas Mitchell & George Macready IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING (1949) with Jean Peters & Paul Douglas COPPER CANYON (1950) with Hedy Lamarr & Macdonald Carey RHUBARB (1951) with Jan Sterling THE THIEF (1952) with Rita Gam SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR (1952) with Joan Fontaine & Teresa Wright JAMAICA RUN (1953) with Arlene Dahl & Wendell Corey THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING (1955) with Joan Collins & Farley Granger LISBON (1956) with Maureen O'Hara & Claude Rains

Interesting question, Dargo. First, I don't think the auteur theorists were coming up with anything new. Since the 1910s, there had been very well known directors and influential movie stars, at least in Hollywood (and probably elsewhere internationally). What Agee and other film critics of his day were doing is that they were identifying quality craftsmanship that seemed to be repeated in films made by certain studios, directors and actors. The later theorists went a step further and sought out-right classification, focused on the director and usually politicized in some way.

Agee doesn't seem to favor a particular genre. But he does favor certain directors and performers, both in Hollywood and abroad. I think he looks for a certain level of quality, and if someone is consistent in this regard (in Agee's opinion) then he pours on the praise. Though he will also take some of his favorite film artists to task if he believes they fall short of their potential.

*KATHRYN CRAWFORD* MODERN LOVE (1929) with Charley Chase & Jean Hersholt SENOR AMERICANO (1929) with Ken Maynard RED HOT RHYTHM (1929) with Alan Hale THE CLIMAX (1930) with Jean Hersholt HIDE-OUT (1930) with James Murray SAFETY IN NUMBERS (1930) with Charles Buddy Rogers & Carole Lombard FLYING HIGH (1931) with Bert Lahr, Charlotte Greenwood & Pat O'Brien

*CARNEGIE HALL (1947)* From Agee on May 10, 1947: About the thickest and sourest mess of musical mulligatawny I have yet had to sit down to. It is a sort of aural compromise between the Johnstown flood and the Black Hole of Calcutta. I have an idea that some of the music was well done, but I was so exhausted by suffering and rage that I can't possibly be sure of what. However, as a gnarled mirror of American musical taste at its worst, and as a record of what various prominent musicians look like under strange professional circumstances, it is a permanently fascinating and valuable show. I am sorry to be writing this way about CARNEGIE HALL, for I can't avoid feeling that some rather good intentions were involved in it. But then I can't doubt that Hitler had good intentions. He and I just didn't see eye to eye.

*VINTON HAWORTH/JACK ARNOLD* NIGHT WAITRESS (1936) with Margot Grahame & Gordon Jones CHINA PASSAGE (1937) with Constance Worth & Gordon Jones RIDING ON AIR (1937) with Joe E. Brown, Guy Kibbee & Florence Rice ENEMY AGENT (1940) with Richard Cromwell & Helen Vinson DANGER ON WHEELS (1940) with Richard Arlen, Andy Devine & Peggy Moran

*THE CAPTIVE HEART (1947)* From Agee on May 10, 1947: A British movie about prisoners of war, this has been greeted as a masterpiece by some. And now we know what a masterpiece is: something that isn't either really bad or by any generosity really good. THE CAPTIVE HEART is another of those group-as-hero stories. It is a dangerous clich? in which each member of the group is just one more clich?. Michael Redgrave is a Czech who for self-protection is forced to take on a dead Englishman's identity and to write the widow love letters. This decent, mediocre film is sincerely but often cornily written and is in general honestly acted.

*THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN (1944)* From Agee on May 13, 1944: This film gets long and soggy. But it has frequent good intentions and occasional near-successes. It is at its best when it forgets to be a biography and stretches its points for the fun of it. The jumping frog contest is really funny.

*JUDY CANOVA* GOING HIGHBROW (1935) with Guy Kibbee & ZaSu Pitts ARTISTS AND MODELS (1937) with Jack Benny & Ida Lupino THRILL OF A LIFETIME (1937) with the Yacht Club Boys & Eleanore Whitney SCATTERBRAIN (1940) with Alan Mowbray SIS HOPKINS (1941) with Bob Crosby & Susan Hayward PUDDIN' HEAD (1941) with Francis Lederer & Slim Summerville SLEEPYTIME GAL (1942) with Tom Brown JOAN OF OZARK (1942) with Joe E. Brown & Eddie Foy Jr. TRUE TO THE ARMY (1942) with Allan Jones & Ann Miller CHATTERBOX (1943) with Joe E. Brown & Rosemary Lane SLEEPY LAGOON (1943) with Dennis Day LOUISIANA HAYRIDE (1944) with Ross Hunter & Lloyd Bridges HIT THE HAY (1945) with Ross Hunter SINGIN' IN THE CORN (1946) with Allen Jenkins & Guinn Big Boy Williams HONEYCHILE (1951) with Eddie Foy Jr. OKLAHOMA ANNIE (1952) with John Russell & Grant Withers THE WAC FROM WALLA WALLA (1952) with Stephen Dunne & Irene Ryan UNTAMED HEIRESS (1954) with Don Barry CAROLINA CANNONBALL (1955) with Andy Clyde & Ross Elliott LAY THAT RIFLE DOWN (1955) with Robert Lowery

YES, how did we omit Inspector Clouseau...!

*THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945)* From Agee on May 12, 1945: Greer Garson has kinds of vitality and resource which might do very good kinds of work. But ordinarily they are turned into wax. She is waxen in stretches of THE VALLEY OF DECISION. She is embarrassingly actressy in some others. But here, as an Irish servant in a rich Scottish household, she is alive, vivid and charming and suggests how really good she might be under better circumstances. She seems suffocated and immobilized by MGM's image of her. I could imagine her as a very good Lady Macbeth. I could still more easily imagine her as a wonderful Elisabeth Ney who left the court of Ludwig of Bavaria for a rotting estate in Texas. But I suppose the best she will ever be allowed is this sort of short trot in pre-conditioned open air. Tay Garnett's direction is good, too good to be wasted on big, solemn, expensive trash collections like this.

*JOHN PHILLIP LAW* HURRY SUNDOWN (1967) with Michael Caine, Jane Fonda & Diahann Carroll THE SERGEANT (1968) with Rod Steiger & Frank Latimore BARBARELLA (1968) with Jane Fonda DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1969) with Lee Van Cleef THE HAWAIIANS (1970) with Charlton Heston & Geraldine Chaplin VON RICHTOFEN AND BROWN (1971) with Don Stroud, Corin Redgrave & Hurd Hatfield THE LAST MOVIE (1971) with Julie Adams & Rod Cameron THE LOVE MACHINE (1971) with Dyan Cannon, Robert Ryan, Jackie Cooper & David Hemmings

Yeah, the police do not perform their duties too admirably in FRENZY. The serial killer continues to baffle them and thwart their efforts.

Alida Valli also shares that birthday. But I just checked and none of her RKO films are scheduled for May 31.

Did you try the other actors who share a birthday with Eastwood? TCM is not necessarily going to honor the same actor every year. This year, in January, Luise Rainer turned 102 and they did not air one of her films. In prior years, they devoted the entire daytime schedule to her.

The Keystone Kops were the original klassic klowns of law enforcement in the movies:

Gillespie was definitely changed for the television version, starring Carroll O'Connor. He was much more in charge of things and certainly not inept the way Carroll played him.

Again, we have differing views on the definition of classic film. Maybe RUTHLESS PEOPLE has not yet achieved classic status, but I do think BODY HEAT, a more contemporary noir, has definitely reached the realm of classic film. The tearing down of the production code is a morals issue, not a classic film issue. Many precodes are considered classics. So I feel we need to loosen up on the idea of restricting classics only to the Breen era. It's a disservice to the talented artists who worked in years prior to and after the dissolution of the code. Also, are we to say that Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne, who kept working in film after the code, were suddenly no longer classic film stars no longer making classic films? Most people would say THE SHOOTIST is a classic, made eight years after the production code ceased. Going back to your comment about a villain getting away with a crime, of course that would not happen during the code years. Unless it was an imported film made on foreign soil, where their film industry guidelines were not like those found in the U.S.

>The trigger-happy cop who fired a gun at a carousel filled with children while trying to shoot Robert Walker in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. This killed the little guy who crawled under the ride and when he fell, he hit the lever that caused it to go faster than any carousel was ever built to go. When the thing finally crashed and sent bodies flying everywhere, the cop was more concerned with a cigarette lighter than the mayhem that he caused. Trigger-happy is a good word for it.

I like the title of this thread. The film has screened in the past year on Cinemax and Fox Movie Channel. Fox has also released it in a handsome DVD, so it has hardly been out of circulation. I think the black-and-white cinematography makes it look more old world, more old faith. By comparison, THE MIRACLE OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA is filmed by Warners in Technicolor. It looks too lush and too rich, and the stark poverty of the religious subjects seems all but glossed over.

Andy, If I am not mistaken, Kathleen Turner gets away with her crimes in BODY HEAT and ends up on some beach enjoying the fruits of her labors. Also, the kidnappers in RUTHLESS PEOPLE (played by Helen Slater and Judge Reinhold) go unpunished...actually, their victim (Bette Midler) runs off with them!

I love the example of Dogberry (Michael Keaton) in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. He's as inept as they come! They don't make 'em any dimmer.

Antecedent is a good word. And RAISING ARIZONA is another great example. I also happened to catch MIDNIGHT RUN yesterday, with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin. DeNiro is a bounty hunter and Grodin is the white-collar criminal he is escorting across the country. Of course, they run into their share of buffoonish cops.

*WHEN STRANGERS MARRY (1945)* From Agee on April 7, 1945: I want to add my own respect for the Monogram melodrama WHEN STRANGERS MARRY. The story has locomotor ataxia at several of its joints and the intensity of the telling slackens off toward the end, but I have seldom seen one hour so energetically and sensibly used in a film. Bits of it gave me a heart-lifted sense of delight. Thanks to that, I can no longer feel so hopeless as I have, lately, that it is possible to make pictures in Hollywood that are worth making.

*LASSIE* THE PAINTED HILLS (1951) with Paul Kelly, Ann Doran & Brown Jug LASSIE'S GREAT ADVENTURE (1963) with June Lockhart & Jon Provost THE MAGIC OF LASSIE (1978) with Mickey Rooney, James Stewart & Alice Faye LASSIE (2005) with Peter O'Toole