TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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Well, we shall find out in just a few short days what the remaining films are on the June 2012 schedule.
As for July, we do know that Leslie Howard is the featured performer. And we know there will be all those traditional patriotic films at the beginning of the month. Last year, they showed THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA which was not on the schedule the year before. It would be nice if they could show STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER on July 4th.
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>Bogarde is such an interesting actor. There's an aura about him that seems to suggest he inherently harbours secret knowledge.
Well-said. I would like for him to be featured as Star of the Month, if that hasn't already happened before. He has a rich filmography. He's my second favorite British actor, just after Richard Burton and slightly ahead of Laurence Harvey. I love these British matinee idols who truly could act!
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I caught an episode of Men from Shiloh, the retitled last season of The Virginian, which features Brandon de Wilde. It is from 1970, and I figured it was probably one of his last screen credits. It was heartbreaking to watch this hard-working, talented young actor in one of his final roles, knowing he would soon tragically die. He should really be featured by TCM for a SUTS tribute.
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Great thread. Anything that celebrates the genius of Zanuck gets my attention...
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*A WALK IN THE SUN (1946)*
From Agee on January 6, 1946:
A WALK IN THE SUN is often very alive and likeable, thanks to several of its players, particularly Herbert Rudley, Richard Conte, Lloyd Bridges, and Dana Andrews. The gradual increase of daylight which opens it is atmospherically and technically wonderful. You can seldom get your eyes hurt, as I did here, by the manipulation, against dark contexts, of a little bit of cloudy light on a screen.
In motion and shooting, much of the film is worked out with very unusual vitality and care, much of which, unfortunately, is related more nearly to ballet than to warfare.
But mainly I think it is an embarrassing movie. The dialogue seems as unreal as it is expert. Most of the characters, as distinct from the men who play them, are as unreal and literary as the dialogue. The aesthetic and literary and pseudo-democratic preoccupations are so strong that at times all sense of plain reality drops out of the picture.
At the end, for instance, with their farmhouse captured, various featured players are shown completing the gags which tag their characters: chomping an apple, notching a rifle-stock, and so on as the camera lets you know that their wounded comrades are still writhing unattended in the dooryard.
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*JUNE LAVERICK*
THE SON OF ROBIN HOOD (1959) with David Farrar & George Colouris
THE GYPSY AND THE GENTLEMAN (1959) with Melina Mercouri
MANIA (1961) with Peter Cushing & Donald Pleasence
FOLLOW A STAR (1961) with Norman Wisdom
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>I wonder if Maltin actually saw I LOVED A WOMAN. If he had, he could not help but see the similarities to CITIZEN KANE in the story.
I agree, clore. I also think UPPER WORLD, with Warren William, Mary Astor and Ginger Rogers is a precursor for KANE, and I have no doubt that Herman Mankiewicz borrowed heavily from UPPER WORLD and I LOVED A WOMAN and that Welles went along for the ride.
The piano playing scene with EGR and Kay Francis in I LOVED A WOMAN is shamelessly stolen by Mankiewicz and Welles and inserted into the get-to-know-each-other bit between Kane and Susan Alexander. There is a similar scene in UPPER WORLD, too.
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I think the role in TAXI was perfect for him...it is a shame he was not able to do it. At some point, he probably would've done foreign film productions, the blacklisting aside, because most of them did enter into that phase of their career, especially in British productions that were co-financed by Hollywood studios.
I love Michelline Presle, so I am biased because UNDER MY SKIN is my favorite of Garfield's films, with THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE a close second.
As for the House committee defeating him, I have a feeling that if Garfield was here today speaking, his pride would kick in and he would definitely not say McCarthy or McCarthy's cronies licked him.
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Fay's status in Hollywood had improved when Zanuck offered him the role in LOVE NEST. He had been a hit on Broadway in the original stage production of HARVEY, which Jimmy Stewart snagged for the film version over at Universal.
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Glad to see the Dick Foran tribute on June 18th. I love those B-westerns!
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I am going to agree with those who say that the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (technically it is HCUA, not HUAC) did not destroy Garfield's acting career. He was freelancing at this point, and when you are not under contract exclusively at a studio, thrown into one film after another, your output tends to slow.
This said, Zanuck liked hiring him at Fox. He had a multi-picture deal at Fox. He did a fine job in GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT, then made UNDER MY SKIN with Fox's European import Michelline Presle in 1950, several years after giving testimony. And he was slated to begin production on a story about immigrants, called TAXI, when he died. That film was made, though it switched from an A-film to a tidy little B-film and starred Dan Dailey in the role that Garfield would've had. I am sure that if Garfield hadn't died, he would've continued to work in films and television as well as on stage.
It's easy to say the blacklisting did him in, but he was v-e-r-y resilient, and even if his career in Hollywood had ended, which it did not, he would have rebounded in European productions I'm sure.
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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.
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*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
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*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.
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*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
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*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.
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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.
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You can add:
FOR THE LOVE OF RUSTY on June 23rd.
THE SON OF RUSTY on June 30th.
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>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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I agree, clore...both of the PHIBES films are stylishly made. I happen to enjoy them, too.
Classic Film Criticism
in General Discussions
Posted
*JOURNEY FOR MARGARET (1943)*
From Agee on January 23, 1943:
The film contains a few poignant flashes on children and parental emotion; some writing as awful as the people who talk like that, and a well-meant performance by Fay Bainter which suggests that if Anna Freud, whom she is supposed to echo, really treats children like that, they are far better left shocked in the bomb-rubble than deshocked in her clinic.