TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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*GENE RAYMOND*
PERSONAL MAID (1931) with Nancy Carroll, Pat O'Brien & Mary Boland
LADIES OF THE BIG HOUSE (1931) with Sylvia Sidney & Wynne GIbson
FORGOTTEN COMMANDMENTS (1932) with Sari Maritza & Marguerite Churchill
THE NIGHT OF JUNE 13TH (1932) with Clive Brook, Frances Dee, Charles Ruggles & Mary Boland
THE HOUSE ON 56TH STREET (1933) with Kay Francis & Ricardo Cortez
ANN CARVER'S PROFESSION (1933) with Fay Wray & Claire Dodd
EX-LADY (1933) with Bette Davis & Kay Strozzi
I AM SUZANNE (1933) with Leslie Banks & Lilian Harvey
COMING OUT PARTY (1934) with Frances Dee & Alison Skipworth
BEHOLD MY WIFE (1934) with Sylvia Sidney
SADIE MCKEE (1934) with Joan Crawford & Edward Arnold
TRANSATLANTIC MERRY-GO-ROUND (1934) with Nancy Carroll & Jack Benny
THE WOMAN IN RED (1935) with Barbara Stanwyck & Genevieve Tobin
TRANSIENT LADY (1935) with Henry Hull & Frances Drake
HOORAY FOR LOVE (1935) with Ann Sothern & Bill Robinson
LOVE ON A BET (1936) with Wendy Barrie & Helen Broderick
THE BRIDE WALKS OUT (1936) with Barbara Stanwyck & Robert Young
SMARTEST GIRL IN TOWN (1936) with Ann Sothern & Helen Broderick
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY (1937) with Joe Penner, Parkyakarkus & Harriet Hilliard
THERE GOES MY GIRL (1937) with Ann Sothern & Gordon Jones
SHE'S GOT EVERYTHING (1937) with Ann Sothern, Victor Moore & Helen Broderick
STOLEN HEAVEN (1938) with Olympe Bradna, Glenda Farrell & Lewis Stone
SMILIN' THROUGH (1941) with Jeanette MacDonald, Brian Aherne & Ian Hunter
ASSIGNED TO DANGER (1948) with Noreen Nash
MILLION DOLLAR WEEKEND (1948) with Osa Massen & Francis Lederer
SOFIA (1948) with Sigrid Gurie & Patricia Morison
PLUNDER ROAD (1957) with Jeanne Cooper & Wayne Morris
I'D RATHER BE RICH (1964) with Sandra Dee, Robert Goulet, Andy Williams & Maurice Chevalier
THE HANGED MAN (1964) with Robert Culp, Edmond O'Brien & Vera Miles
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MURDER BY DEATH has many great lines of dialogue. Neil Simon at his best, and the cast really goes to town with it.
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*PERFECT STRANGERS/VACATION FROM MARRIAGE (1945)*
From Agee on March 23, 1946:
The film is the story of a lower middle-class English couple played by Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr who are peacetime dimouts transformed by history. During the early reels, they develop a good deal of pathos. The real logic of the picture is that a large part of the human race is hardly fit for existence under any circumstances. My chief objection is that this logic is not shown to be either inescapable or changeable.
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*KAY HARRIS*
TILLIE THE TOILER (1941) with William Tracy
SABOTAGE SQUAD (1942) with Bruce Bennett
SMITH OF MINNESOTA (1942) with Bruce Smith & Arline Judge
PARACHUTE NURSE (1942) with Marguerite Chapman & Will Wright
LUCKY LEGS (1942) with Jinx Falkenburg & Leslie Brooks
THE FIGHTING BUCKAROO (1943) with Charles Starrett & Arthur Hunnicutt
ROBIN HOOD OF THE RANGE (1943) with Charles Starrett & Arthur Hunnicutt
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>.. two pieces of melodrama which set records for willful denial of suspense. What a great turn of phrase.
Yes, that's a great one. I love the one where he describes Joan Fontaine as a Vassar girl and where he mentions how her acting rests on a square jaw.
The one I posted yesterday for MELODY TIME is also very pointedly written. The Disney fanatics would consider it blasphemous.
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Thanks Mr. B. As you probably noted, I did mention Heather Sears earlier in the thread. I included two of her other films plus the one you listed.
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SINCE YOU WENT AWAY is one I loved when I first saw it. I bought a DVD copy and would play it occasionally. Then, about a year passed, and when I watched it on TCM, I really found some of the scenes to be unintentionally funny. And I thought the dialogue sounded ultra corny, as if it had been lifted out of a melodramatic radio play of the 40s.
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There have been films I liked then dismissed. LOL
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*MELODY TIME (1948)*
From Agee on June 19, 1948:
There seems to be an obvious connection between the Disney artists' increasing insipidity and their increasing talent for fright. But I will leave it to accredited sadomasochists to make the official discovery.
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*JOHNNY DESMOND*
CALYPSO HEAT WAVE (1957) with Merry Anders
ESCAPE FROM SAN QUENTIN (1957) with Merry Anders
CHINA DOLL (1958) with Victor Mature & Ward Bond
DESERT HELL (1958) with Brian Keith, Barbara Hale & Richard Denning
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*ESTELLE WINWOOD*
QUALITY STREET (1937) with Katharine Hepburn, Franchot Tone & Fay Bainter
THE GLASS SLIPPER (1955) with Leslie Caron, Michael Wilding, Keenan Wynn & Elsa Lanchester
THE NOTORIOUS LANDLADY (1962) with Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak & Fred Astaire
THE MAGIC SWORD (1962) with Basil Rathbone & Gary Lockwood
ALIVE AND KICKING (1964) with Sybil Thorndike
MURDER BY DEATH (1976) with David Niven, Peter Sellers, Peter Falk, Elsa Lanchester, Maggie Smith, Alec Guinness & Nancy Walker
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>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.
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*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.
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The original thread title appears at the top of the older posts.
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*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.
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*DAN ROWAN & DICK MARTIN*
ONCE UPON A HORSE (1958) with Martha Hyer & Leif Erickson
THE MALTESE BIPPY (1969) with Carol Lynley & Julie Newmar
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I love the Redgraves. And I also love the Mills family...John, Juliet & Hayley.
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>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.
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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.
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*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.
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*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
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I am eager to see MORGAN...I don't know if it will meet my expectations, though!
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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!)
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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.
Classic Film Criticism
in General Discussions
Posted
*NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK (1941)*
From Agee on November 24, 1941:
This is not a movie. It is 70 minutes of photographed vaudeville by polypnosed W.C. Fields. He is assisted by Gloria Jean, Franklin Pangborn and other stage properties. As such, it is a strong drink for cinemaddicts who believe that the Great Man can do no wrong, small beer for those who think that even a Fields picture should have a modicum of direction.