TopBilled
-
Posts
154,044 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
376
Posts posted by TopBilled
-
-
*ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM (1946)*
From Agee on July 6, 1946:
I did not read ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM; after seeing the movie I am, to my pleased surprise, tempted to. I am not among those who take to Irene Dunne. As a rule she makes my skin crawl; nor do I wholly enjoy Rex Harrison's highly skilled, generally restrained horsing as the naively intelligent monarch whose good intentions enthrone him in a pratfall between his ancient and our modern world.
There is indeed a good deal of high-polished and expensive cuteness about the whole production which stands, I suppose, as an apology for venturing to film a story that fits none of the formulas. But in spite of and through all this, the relationship between the rattled, irascible king and the English widow is often real, clear, and delightful, and occasionally very touching.
-
You're welcome!
-
Looking ahead, I can see a few other titles were dropped. Eddie Cantor in THE KID FROM SPAIN is no longer on the schedule, and I wanted to see that one. Also, Charles Starrett in THE KID FROM AMARILLO has disappeared from TCM's schedule. Instead, we now get UTAH KID starring Hoot Gibson. Hopefully, these missing films will magically reappear at a later date.
-
With a three-day weekend, I watched so many films I wouldn't know where to begin!
Though I will give honorable mention to THE SUNSHINE BOYS. I failed to watch it last time it was on TCM, so I rented it from Netflix and it was a pure pleasure. I liked it so much I watched it three times. That's saying a lot, since I had so many other titles to plow through. The charming chemistry of Walter Matthau and George Burns is classic. And Richard Benjamin as the befuddled nephew of Matthau comes close to stealing the picture away from these two pros.
-
*EILEEN HECKART*
HOT SPELL (1958) with Shirley Booth, Robert Ryan & Shirley MacLaine
MY SIX LOVES (1963) with Debbie Reynolds, Cliff Robertson & David Janssen
BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE (1972) with Goldie Hawn & Edward Albert
ZANDY'S BRIDE (1974) with Gene Hackman, Liv Ullman & Susan Tyrrell
-
*THE ILLEGALS (1948)*
From Agee on July 31, 1948:
THE ILLEGALS, a film about the underground railroad through Europe to Palestine, was made on the spot, under heartbreaking difficulties, by Meyer Levin. Even the knowledge that I was watching actual participants in the actual exodus could seldom prevent me from feeling, sadly, that most of the picture is a bore.
On shipboard, however, a new cameraman took over, and the whole thing came powerfully to life. No doubt the intrinsic material here was at once visually more eloquent and more thickly within reach of the camera; but I suspect that the presence of a talented eye made the main difference.
-
*PRESTON FOSTER AS BILL CRANE*
THE WESTLAND CASE (1937) with Frank Jenks & Carol Hughes
THE LADY IN THE MORGUE (1938) with Patricia Ellis & Frank Jenks
THE LAST WARNING (1939) with Frank Jenks & Joyce Compton
-
*OUR VINES HAVE TENDER GRAPES (1945)*
From Agee on September 29, 1945:
Life on a Wisconsin farm with Margaret O'Brien, Edward G. Robinson and Agnes Moorhead, who perform exceedingly well. Here too a lack both of rural redolence and of fresh air; in stretches almost as indigestible as its title. But some of the willful leisureliness comes properly to life, and several scenes and many details are as gracious and touching as the intention of the whole film.
-
>Omigod, Jalna ! With one of Jessie Ralph's greatest performances!
Yes, I am excited about it and hope it stays on the schedule. I have been waiting a long time to see this film.
-
I had originally written down that the seldom-seen Columbia film WHEN YOU'RE IN LOVE was to air on TCM on January 18th. Of course, we know those early schedules sometimes change, and this time it has. I am slightly disappointed, because it means we now get another re-airing of TOPPER, when it would've been nice to see a Cary Grant picture that should be dusted off. Grace Moore costars as does the great Aline MacMahon.
-
Of course, they are all on DVD. What is significant here is that while the Mummy entry is in the Time Warner library, the other two are from Universal, so this is a good thing to find them on TCM. I think THIS-television network recently aired some Abbott & Costello, too.
-
John Cromwell's JALNA is scheduled on April 25th. This is an RKO title that rarely screens and is not on DVD.
-
*BETTY ADAMS/JULIA ADAMS/JULIE ADAMS*
THE DALTON GANG (1949) with Don Barry & Robert Lowery
MARSHAL OF HELDORADO (1950) with Jimmie 'Shamrock' Ellison
CROOKED RIVER (1950) with Jimmie 'Shamrock' Ellison
HOLLYWOOD STORY (1951) with Richard Conte & Richard Egan
BRIGHT VICTORY (1952) with Arthur Kennedy & Peggy Dow
FINDERS KEEPERS (1952) with Tom Ewell & Evelyn Varden
THE MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER (1953) with Tyrone Power & Piper Laurie
WINGS OF THE HAWK (1953) with Van Heflin & Abbe Lane
THE MAN FROM THE ALAMO (1953) with Glenn Ford & Chill Wills
FRANCIS JOINS THE WACS (1954) with Donald O'Connor & Francis
THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) with Richard Carlson
SIX BRIDGES TO CROSS (1955) with Tony Curtis & George Nader
THE PRIVATE WAR OF MAJOR BENSON (1955) with Charlton Heston & Tim Hovey
THE LOOTERS (1955) with Rory Calhoun & Ray Danton
ONE DESIRE (1955) with Anne Baxter & Rock Hudson
AWAY ALL BOATS (1956) with Jeff Chandler, George Nader & Lex Barker
SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE (1957) with Richard Egan, Jan Sterling & Dan Duryea
SLIM CARTER (1957) with Jock Mahoney & Tim Hovey
FOUR GIRLS IN TOWN (1957) with George Nader, Marianne Cook, Elsa Martinelli & Gia Scala
RAYMIE (1960) with David Ladd & John Agar
THE UNDERWATER CITY (1962) with William Lundigan
TICKLE ME (1965) with Elvis Presley
-
*30 SECONDS OVER TOKYO (1944)*
From Agee on December 2, 1944:
It is in some respects the pleasantest of current surprises: a big studio, big scale film, free of artistic pretension, transformed by its not very imaginative but very dogged sincerity into something forceful, simple and thoroughly sympathetic in spite of all its big studio, big scale habits.
Its characters are hardest to take when they are most intimately in character, though even then they are played with a straightforwardness you don't normally expect of marquee names. The flying sequences are really well made, powerful and exciting.
The Chinese, nearly all of them amateur, are the best thing in the picture and the best Chinese in any American picture: I can only hope they make a great many people in Hollywood aware of the tremendous advantages of using non-actors in films.
-
Eddie Foy Jr. is in these selections, too.
-
*RONALD REAGAN AS LT. BRASS BANCROFT*
CODE OF THE SECRET SERVICE (1939) with Roselia Towne
SECRET SERVICE OF THE AIR (1939) with John Litel
SMASHING THE MONEY RING (1939) with Margot Stevenson
MURDER IN THE AIR (1940) with John Litel
-
*OPEN CITY (1946)*
From Agee on April 13, 1946:
OPEN CITY is a story of underground resistance during the late phases of the German occupation of Rome. The heroes are an underground leader; a co-worker and friend of his who hopes to marry a widow, pregnant by him; a priest who, generally at great risk to himself, is eager to help all of them.
The villains are a Gestapo officer; his lesbian assistant; and a rudderless young Italian girl, misled by dope, sex poverty and easy money into betraying the patriots.
The widow is shot down in the street. The leader dies under torture, without denouncing his comrades. The priest, who has to witness the torture, does so without pleading with the victim to give in and without ceasing to pray for his courage; then he is executed. The widow's lover survives; so does her eight year old son, who is active, with other children, in an effective underground of their own.
-
*SHARON TATE*
VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967) with Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke & Susan Hayward
DON'T MAKE WAVES (1967) with Tony Curtis & Claudia Cardinale
EYE OF THE DEVIL (1967) with David Niven, Deborah Kerr & David Hemmings
THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967) with Roman Polanski
THE WRECKING CREW (1969) with Dean Martin, Elke Sommer & Nancy Kwan
-
*BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)*
From Agee on August 30, 1947:
Several nuns get upset by the strange atmosphere surrounding their new convent, which was formerly a Himalayan harem. (Quite an idea for a musical, that. Take it away, Rita.)
One falls for a local Englishman (David Farrar) and fails to renew her vows. The head nun (Deborah Kerr) just makes Sisterly sheeps' eyes at him as he lounges around the sanctuary in his shorts (he is not, one gathers, a Believer). There is also a local Holy Man, staring at a peak, and a great deal of talk about the wind and the strangeness of it all.
After a while the Sisters give it up as a bad job. It is all intended to be very psychological, atmospheric, rueful and worldly-wise.
There is some unusually good color photography, and as movie-making some of it is intelligent and powerful. But the pervasive attitude in and toward the picture makes it as a whole tedious and vulgar. I think celibacy is of itself faintly obscene; so I admire still less the dramatic exploitation of celibacy as an opportunity for titillation in the best of taste.
-
This thread belongs on a soap message board. I don't see how it has anything to do with TCM or TCM's movies.
-
*JAMES DRURY*
TEN WHO DARED (1960) with Brian Keith & John Beal
THIRD OF A MAN (1962) with Simon Oakland
THE YOUNG WARRIORS (1967) with Jonathan Daly
-
*TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY (1946)*
From Agee on December 28, 1946:
TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY is a little like sitting down to a soda-fountain deluxe atomic special of maple walnut on vanilla on burnt almond on strawberry on butter pecan on coffee on raspberry sherbet on tutti frutti with hot fudge, butterscotch, marshmallow, filberts, pistachios, shredded pineapple, and rainbow sprills on top, go double on the whipped cream. Some of the nuts, it turns out, are a little stale.
Wandering throughout the confection is a long bleached-golden hair, probably all right in its place but, here just a little more than you can swallow. This hair, in the difficult technical language of the Screen Writers Guild would, I suppose, be called the story-line.
-
*BERYL REID*
TRIAL AND ERROR (1962) with Peter Sellers & Richard Attenborough
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE (1968) with Susannah York
INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU (1968 with Alan Arkin
-
*THE HEAT'S ON (1943)*
From Agee on December 18, 1943:
THE HEAT'S ON is a stale-ale musical in which a lot of good people apathetically support the almost equally apathetic Mae West. There is one wonderful shot, epitomizing a flop legshow trying to be dirty, which a lot of peeled girls writhe rather wearily on a flight of steps. Victor Moore is good except for his big seduction scene with Mae, at which both of them merely sniff as if it were a saucer of black-market dog food. Mae West is mainly as good as ever, which is still plenty good enough for me; but evidently she and her colleagues feel that too few people agree with me.
WANTED: Classic Films Featuring This Classic Artist
in General Discussions
Posted
*PHIL BRITO*
SWEETHEART OF SIGMA CHI (1946) with Phil Regan, Elyse Knox & Ross Hunter
MUSIC MAN (1948) with Freddie Stewart & Jimmy Dorsey
SQUARE DANCE KATY (1950) with Vera Vague