TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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*Monte Carlo*
Gamblers take a chance at love along the Riviera. First, it's Jeanette MacDonald in Ernst Lubitsch's MONTE CARLO, then it's Marlene Dietrich with Vittorio de Sica in THE MONTE CARLO STORY.
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*I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! (1947)*
From Agee on September 13, 1947:
This is a very pleasant English film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger. It is the story of an imperious young Englishwoman (Wendy Hiller), about to marry for money, who is delayed among the natives of one of the islands off the coast of Scotland and there learns better things about herself and about life in general than she might have expected to.
Some of this story is told with slickness and whimsy as well as genuine lightness. I kept realizing as I watched and enjoyed it how shallow and shabby it would probably seem in print. But there are engaging performances by Miss Hiller and Roger Livesey; the sensitive photography and the intelligent if not very imaginative use of sound do more than enough to make eloquent the influence of place on people.
The whole thing is undertaken with a kind of taste and modesty whose absence did much to harm Messrs. Powell and Pressberger's STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN and BLACK NARCISSUS. Theirs is a gentle sort of talent at last, but at times they know very well how to use it, without much concession to their liabilities: inordinate ambition, bumptiousness, and a general unevenness of judgment.
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*JACK OAKIE*
SEA LEGS (1930) with Eugene Pallette & Lillian Roth
LET'S GO NATIVE (1930) with Jeanette MacDonald
THE SAP FROM SYRACUSE (1930) with Ginger Rogers
TOUCHDOWN (1931) with Richard Arlen
DUDE RANCH (1931) with Stuart Erwin
THE GANG BUSTER (1931) with Jean Arthur & William Boyd
SKY BRIDE (1932) with Richard Arlen
UPTOWN NEW YORK (1932) with Shirley Grey & Leon Ames
SITTING PRETTY (1933) with Jack Haley & Ginger Rogers
COLLEGE RHYTHM (1934) with Joe Penner
FLORIDA SPECIAL (1936) with Sally Eilers & Kent Taylor
THANKS FOR EVERYTHING (1938) with Adolphe Menjou & Jack Haley
YOUNG PEOPLE (1940) with Shirley Temple
SOMETHING TO SHOUT ABOUT (1943) with Done Ameche & Janet Blair
THE MERRY MONAHANS (1944) with Donald O'Connor
ON STAGE EVERYBODY (1945) with Peggy Ryan
THAT'S THE SPIRIT (1945) with Peggy Ryan & June Vincent
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*Fred MacMurray Directed by Mitchell Leisen*
Fred's off to a great start with Carole Lombard in Leisen's classic HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE. And Fred does a wonderful job with Barbara Stanwyck in the director's big hit REMEMBER THE NIGHT.
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*MARGARET SULLAVAN*
ONLY YESTERDAY (1933) with John Boles & Edna May Oliver
LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW? (1934) with Douglass Montgomery
THE GOOD FAIRY (1935) with Herbert Marshall & Frank Morgan
SO RED THE ROSE (1935) with Randolph Scott
NEXT TIME WE LOVE (1936) with James Stewart & Ray Milland
THE MOON'S OUR HOME (1936) with Henry Fonda
SO ENDS OUR NIGHT (1941) with Frederic March & Glenn Ford
APPOINTMENT FOR LOVE (1941) with Charles Boyer
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*THE SEVENTH CROSS (1944)*
From Agee on September 9, 1944:
MGM has used THE SEVENTH CROSS, with every good intention I am sure, to crucify the possibilities of a very fine movie. Spencer Tracy is a sincere actor and in many respects a good one, but he is hopelessly ill-qualified to suggest a German anti-Fascist who has escaped from a concentration camp. Very little else in the film helps out either.
In almost every respect, the film is an ultra-typical major MGM production. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that that style is fatal to any sort of film except the purest low-ceilinged romance.
Hume Cronyn, Steve Geray and Agnes Moorhead do manage to cut a few glints of living acid through all the glossy lard. One street shot of coarse legs in black stockings, walking with casual peculiarity, has a suddenness, sadness and individuality which should have taught those who made this film how to create and photograph a city. One has to wonder how on earth it got into so conventional a show.
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I agree that his impact on film was minimal. Television was his area. Radio originally.
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*ROBERT ARTHUR*
GREEN GRASS OF WYOMING (1947) with Peggy Cummins, Charles Coburn & Lloyd Nolan
ON THE LOOSE (1951) with Joan Evans & Melvyn Douglas
THE RING (1952) with Gerald Mohr & Rita Moreno
THE DESPERADOS ARE IN TOWN (1956) with Kathy Nolan & Rhodes Reason
HELLCATS OF THE NAVY (1957) with Ronald Reagan & Nancy Davis
YOUNG AND WILD (1958) with Gene Evans
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*THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE (1948)*
From Agee on June 19, 1948:
Saroyan is an exasperatingly irreducible blend of Nehi and sacramental wine, and his play needs the live stage in a way a fish needs water. The Cagney Brothers' loving production as nearly overcomes these handicaps as any I can imagine. James Barton's beautifully timed and pointed act is already famous, and deserves to be. In its own way James Cagney's controlling, self-effacing performance is fully as good.
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*Alice Faye & John Payne*
Faye's favorite costar was Payne. They made quite a few motion pictures together, including THE GREAT AMERICAN BROADCAST and HELLO, FRISCO, HELLO.
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Thank you! I love the Internet Archive!
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I think you are right about her not living long enough to see her achieve classic status. She bowed out of the spotlight, and she simply faded from view. Because she seems to have lived a relatively calm life post-Hollywood, without tabloid headlines, then it is easy to see how people would not remember her as much. That is, until they see her films and are reminded of her talent and her temporary stardom.
Supposedly KATHLEEN was purchased for her, then given to Temple. Temple was originally assigned to do BARNACLE BILL with Wallace Beery, with Temple playing Beery's daughter. MGM decided to have the girls swap the roles. KATHLEEN did not do well at the box office, but BARNACLE BILL, like most of Beery's pictures was a crowd-pleaser and money maker. So in a way, Weidler fared better losing KATHLEEN, but the part in the Beery picture was fairly routine and thankless and did not do much to bolster her screen image.
Weidler was known at MGM for being able to upstage Mickey Rooney, something that very few people could do. They did a few films together, one of them being an Andy Hardy picture. I think it would be great to see an evening of these on TCM. And I definitely think Virginia Weidler should be honored in August for Summer Under the Stars, especially since all her MGM films are in the Turner Library and presumably so are her RKO pictures.
Tomorrow if I get the chance, I am going to post her filmography by studio, so we can see where she worked most often and get a sense of her billing and major costars.
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It wasn't Taylor who replaced Weidler. Taylor was still too young in the early '40s.
This book I have says that the MGM brass gave roles to O'Brien that required a lot of emoting, because Weidler and other girls at the studio could not turn on the water works as well as the more emotional O'Brien. As for Allyson, who could also emote, she and Nancy Walker were given more musical bits to do in BEST FOOT FORWARD which meant it became a showcase for them (and for Lucille Ball) instead of for Weidler.
Interestingly, Weidler's biggest role at MGM, in THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION, was intended for Judy Garland. Then, it was slated for Kathryn Grayson. But both of them had matured too much before it went into production. So a younger-looking Weidler was given the part.
As for Weidler's earlier work, before MGM, she was under contract at Paramount for a few years in the mid-30s, but she was often loaned out to RKO. At Paramount, she appeared in the original MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH and in PETER IBBETSON, portraying a young Ann Harding.
Paramount did not know what to do with her, but RKO did, and she made two hit movies for them which showed that she could help carry a film and be a box-office draw all on her own: FRECKLES and LADDIE. Both titles were based on stories by Gene Stratton Porter and were released in 1935. Weidler would return to RKO a few more times, the most noteworthy assignment occurring with Barrymore in THE GREAT MAN VOTES in 1939.
Sadly, she was nearly forgotten by the time she died. And many major newspapers did not carry her obituary.
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*Twenty-First Century Keir Dullea*
Hollywood anticipates life in the new millennium-- and so does actor Keir Dullea as Dave Bowman-- in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and 2010.
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*LETICIA ROMAN*
G.I. BLUES (1960) with Elvis Presley & Juliet Prowse
GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS (1961) with Clint Walker & Roger Moore
PIRATES OF TORTUGA (1961) with Ken Scott
EVIL EYE (1964) with John Saxon & Valentina Cortese
FANNY HILL: MEMOIRS OF A WOMAN OF PLEASURE (1965) with Miriam Hopkins
FLAMING FRONTIER (1968) with Stewart Granger
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*THE RAINBOW (1944)*
From Agee on November 18, 1944:
The new Russian film, THE RAINBOW, is a ferocious anthology of the atrocities perpetuated by German soldiers upon the women and children and babies and old men of an occupied Ukrainian village. It is fiction, derived from a prize-winning novel. Yet its maniacal quality is of itself persuasive. Still more so is one's realization that crimes at least as terrible have been a commonplace in the war in Russia and elsewhere.
I have endured none of these things, but it is easy for me to realize that others who have and still others who haven't may be strongly moved by them, in the way the makers of the picture intended to move them.
It is the utter simplicity of feeling, among those who approve THE RAINBOW, which is particularly disturbing. The picture presents data which, backed by one's knowledge of fact, make it hard to keep one eye open.
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*Lana Turner Costume Dramas*
A huge dressing room was required for DIANE and THE PRODIGAL.
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*RICHARD MULLIGAN*
ONE POTATO TWO POTATO (1964) with Barbara Barrie
LITTLE BIG MAN (1970) with Dustin Hoffman & Faye Dunaway
IRISH WHISKEY REBELLION (1972) with Stephen Joyce & Anne Meara
FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILIER (1973) with Ingrid Bergman
S.O.B. (1981) with Julie Andrews & William Holden
TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER (1982) with Peter Sellers & David Niven
A FINE MESS (1986) with Ted Danson & Howie Mandel
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*THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER (1944)*
From Agee on May 27, 1944:
Watching THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER is like drinking cup after cup of tepid orange pekoe at a rained-out garden party. The Alice Duer Miller poem from which it derives makes it a natural for our better Bovaries and their male equivalents. It may also be unequivocally urged upon anyone who has a sufficient appetite for suffering, hatred and a study of the devout exposition of the unqualified snob dream-life.
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I have a book about MGM contract players. I thought Weidler was listed in it and sure enough she was. I will return later after work and provide a summary of what was written about her. She seems to have been under contract at MGM from 1938 to 1943, though she was also under contract at Paramount before this time...
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I agree that Monroe is very objectified in THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. Drool is the word for it. I prefer her in THE MISFITS where she has a much more substantial film role.
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I would like to see those early schedules, too. It would be fun to look at the broadcast history of TCM. We can see which films have been played most often and which ones have not been aired at all.
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Please consider me a fellow Virginia Weidler fan. I think she is pitch perfect as Hepburn's kid sis in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. In a film otherwise owned by Kate, Jimmy & Cary, she gets this one moment to shine and when she sings that song the picture is all hers.
She is also very good as Mickey Rooney's sister in LOVE IS A HEADACHE. You know, the one where they latch on to actress Gladys George, because they want a mother.
As you said, she probably had a typical stage mother. When the Barrymore incident occurred, I am sure she was told by her mother, her agent, the director and the studio boss to just suck it up. There was always that fear they could be replaced by another up-and-coming child actor.
When we look at her work at MGM in the early 40s, I think we can make some general comments. She was in a unique position, because Judy Garland, the studio's previous young talent, was now maturing into adult roles. So for awhile, these sorts of roles went to Weidler. But within a year or two, she would be considered too old and these parts would start to go to Margaret O'Brien. After O'Brien outgrew these jobs, they went to Donna Corcoran.
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From my understanding, things ended badly for her in Hollywood. MGM did drop her in the mid-40s. Fox had previously dropped Shirley Temple. Child stars who were no longer considered viable by studios were cut loose. They were forced to reinvent themselves.
In Weidler's case, she turned to theatre and did some musical shows around the country before retiring early. She did not come back to film and did not really do television. It is sad, because she was very talented.
During her glory years, she had some difficulties. John Barrymore threw her across the set in a rage on an RKO picture. He was drinking and out of control. If this happened today, the internet would go viral and a star, no matter how big, would find his career effectively ended due to child abuse.
One thing that worked against her is that she did not have conventional beauty. Shirley Temple found jobs as a teen and in her early 20s. But some of the child actors fade because they cannot, like Liz Taylor, transition into ingenue roles.
Remember Brandon De Wilde? He was a very talented child star who died young. His problem was that when he matured he had to take supporting roles, because he was very short and did not have those tall, imposing leading man looks that Hollywood wants. Some of these child stars are cute as kids, but they do not blossom into sexy adults. So they wind up leaving the business or becoming character actors.
Classic Film Criticism
in General Discussions
Posted
*THEY ARE NOT ANGELS (1948)*
From Agee on June 19, 1948:
Well, who would expect them to be; they are French parachute troops. Good in spots but very long and often next-door to tiresome.