TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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They began the script back in 1945 and it was filmed in June 1946. So all this information came right from the government at the end of the war.
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Agreed. There was too much exposition at the beginning of the story. It could've been trimmed down to 90 minutes easily.
Personally, I think MGM did much better a few years later with Robert Taylor in ABOVE AND BEYOND. That film, a 1952 effort about World War II American pilot Paul Tibbets, also addressed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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I want to address a few comments you made.
First, I agree that sometimes there is a lack of tolerance for dissenting opinions. Posters should not feel threatened by your not liking Lansbury's film work.
I do think people confuse the actress with the mystery character she played for 12 years on CBS. That was a good gig for her and it prolonged her career in Hollywood. She did well with it, and it deserves to live on in syndication. But that has nothing to do with her film output.
As for her work in MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, one strong performance does not a movie star make. The greatest barrier, in my opinion, was her lack of sex appeal.
For example, when she was cast in Columbia's B-flick A LAWLESS STREET, she was unable to take the opportunity and snag more roles within the genre. She did not have a string of hits in this vein like sexier actresses did-- Felicia Farr, Ruth Roman and Virginia Mayo.
In fact, I am surprised that Lansbury was cast at all against Randolph Scott as a romantic lead. I would think that Donna Reed would have been more of a box-office draw in a western than Angela Lansbury. But I guess the stakes were not as high with a B-budgeted film as it would have been with something more prestigious.
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Fred, it doesn't really pick up steam until around the hour mark. The second half of the film is infinitely more interesting.
The problem I have is that Robert Walker is gliding through this role and certainly not up to his usual skill as an actor. Tom Drake is trying hard and does okay. Then there's the rest of the cast. Hurd Hatfield, so excellent in MGM's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, is dropped into a thankless role. What was Mayer thinking?
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The site is rather pricey, but they have their own featured monthly performer. In November it was Charles Boyer and in December it was Clara Bow. So if you are a completist when it comes to the featured performer, you can probably nicely add to your collection at a somewhat reasonable price.
P.S. I just checked and Barry Fitzgerald is the featured performer in January. There are 13 titles for him and many are very obscure Paramount releases from the 1940s.
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I think we can definitely benefit from watching an Angela Lansbury performance. I happen to really like 'The Shell Seekers,' a sweet telefilm she made for CBS during the run of her mystery series. When given the chance to do something a bit different and take the lead, she more than showed she was up to the challenge.
But this whole concept of star and star of the month does not go with her, in my opinion. She's a star, but she's a stage and television star first.
When this way to sell cable channels featuring classic films was devised long ago (started back on the old AMC), it was meant to conjure up images of stars the studios promoted as being glamorous and larger than life. It was not meant to showcase the Keenan Wynns or the William Demarests or the Elsa Lanchesters, as good as they may be.
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They rate the print quality, with an 'A' rating being highest. Most seem to have a 'B' rating. My guess is that many of the more obscure titles have come from television broadcasts, either from the old AMC or PBS. Or from foreign copies and private collections.
There is a disclaimer that says all the titles they sell are in the public domain, but I do not know whether that is entirely true. For their sake and ours, I hope so!
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You are getting into the issue of what constitutes bonafide 'star quality.' Grace Kelly was definitely a star. So was James Dean. The problem with Grace Kelly and James Dean is that they have relatively limited filmographies. So does Vivien Leigh. TCM would never be able to use James Dean as a SOTM unless they added the live television dramas he did that have been saved from existing kinescopes.
I would even argue that someone like Joan Collins who became more famous for television roles later on did have a period at Fox in the late 50s where she was definitely a movie star (the brunette Monroe, usually taking parts that Marilyn refused). In fact, Fox is so proud of Collins that they have issued a special boxed set of her movies from that era. MGM never built Lansbury up that way. They focused more on Greer Garson, Esther Williams, June Allyson and a young Liz Taylor when Lansbury was under contract there. Lansbury was second-fiddle.
Incidentally, I do think Lansbury has been SOTM twice before...at least once for sure, but I think twice. I am sure that someone who has watched TCM longer than I have can substantiate this.
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>one thing I have noticed on this board and several others is that people's criticisms tend to be harsher if they haven't seen much of the work of those who they are criticizing.
Disagree. I think some posters have proven that they have seen the films on Lansbury's resume. The comments seem to be spot-on about her not often being given top billing.
We cannot count her TV movies. For the most part, TCM does not show many telefilms. Yet during January we are going to be watching one of them on TCM that Lansbury made where she is recreating a stage role, thus proving the point that she was more a television and stage star.
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Lansbury was not a movie star. She was a movie actress. There's a difference.
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She was born on April 3, 1924. She's 87 right now.
My guess is that this will be an excuse to trot out all the Warners films she made early in her career. Some of them are quite good but get played fairly frequently.
I would also guess that MIDNIGHT LACE is the bone that TCM is throwing to viewers to make it seem like they have acquired more of the Doris Day films at Universal than they really have. We will get LOVER COME BACK again and MIDNIGHT LACE, but probably few others of her Universal catalogue...and those are the films she is most famous for, those romantic comedies with Rock Hudson & James Garner. She also made a few for Fox and they show up on FMC, so I wonder if they will air on TCM...titles like DO NOT DISTURB and CAPRICE.
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Thanks for posting that, but it's not coming up for me. Is there a way you can copy and paste the contents into this thread? If not, no big deal.
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>Lansbury played many good roles over the years but some here are right. Rarely got star status. "Manchurian Candidate" was about her best. Did a good turn in "Long, Hot Summer" too.
See, now, I would say that LONG HOT SUMMER is definitely an example of her talent being wasted. That was a rather thankless role and she is continually upstaged by the hammier Orson Welles, plus the sexy young characters. LONG HOT SUMMER is not a film I would recommend to fans of Lansbury who are unfamiliar with her classic film work.
I would instead recommend something like KIND LADY (1951) where she is once again a supporting player but clearly given much more to do. And within the confines of that role, she does very, very well holding her own with pros like Ethel Barrymore and Maurice Evans.
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According to notes from the TCM database for this film, Mayer postponed its release because he was still trying to obtain actual bombing footage. The notes do not say where Mayer eventually located the footage and when it had been initially filmed.
THE BEGINNING OR THE END, which had been scheduled to open in October '46, did not get released till late February '47.
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Interesting comment. Also, this was the era of Esther Williams in a bathing suit and June Allyson romantic comedies. I just don't think the public was interested in such a serious topic. The studio tried to use a love story to sugar-coat and sell it, just like Zanuck did with GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT, made around this time. It didn't work.
One can't help but wonder how the film would've been if it starred MGM's proposed leads: Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Van Johnson. Also, Lionel Barrymore was scheduled to play FDR (the actor was fairly wheel-chair bound at this point). But Barrymore had criticized Roosevelt's politics and the late president's family had objected to him playing the part.
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I just looked up the sci-fi thriller 2012 directed by Roland Emmerich. I didn't realize it was a U.S.-Canadian co-production (distributed by Columbia). It made back almost four times its original budget. I bet it will be re-released later this year in theatres.
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I recorded the 1940 version of GASLIGHT when TCM aired it. Any chance to see Diana Wynyard on screen is always a pleasure.
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And you are right about that...we have been dissing January, not necessarily dissing the ultra-talented Miss Lansbury. Though I do consider her a stage star and a television star more than a movie star.
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The 'time is running out' theme carried over to today's schedule (January 2nd) with the airing of MGM's terrifying atomic bomb story THE BEGINNING OR THE END. Is this because 2012 is supposed to be the last year of (hu)mankind...according to the Mayans...? LOL
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I posted an excerpt of Agee's review of this title in the Classic Film Criticism thread. But I think it deserves its own separate discussion. THE BEGINNING OR THE END is considered a docudrama, and one of the first films on the subject of the Manhattan Project.
I found this user review on the internet movie database, and I thought it worth re-posting here for readers:
*The idea for this film was brought to the studio (MGM) by Donna Reed, whose high school science teacher had written to her about the secret WWII atomic bomb research project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Later, Donna and her husband, Tony Owen, received a $50,000 finders fee for this contribution.*
*Always a contentious project, cooperation came from the army, including General Groves, manager of the Manhattan Project and from top scientists including J. Robert Oppenheimer, at Berkeley, and Albert Einstein, at Princeton. President Truman knew about the film and met with the producer.*
*The script went through a lengthy development with columnist/screenwriter Bob Considine, and Clark Gable was originally in mind for the Robert Walker part. The Tom Drake scene, scattering a mass with his unprotected hand, is based on an actual incident, and the scientist who did it at the Chicago research lab (and possibly saved a good section of the city), died as a result.*
*Not successful at the box office, the studio rationalized the picture was too soon after the war and too realistic: audiences were not able to assimilate a story about nuclear energy in the late '40s, they were terrified of the bomb, of radiation fallout; pictures of Hiroshima were still in the news.*
*The film walks a fine line between fact and fiction (it received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary), but how effective was softening a docu-drama with a fictionalized love story?. The atomic pile was constructed on a sound stage, and the shots of the B-29 formation seem an appropriate metaphor for the film's subtext, the power of the nascent military/industrial relationship moving forcefully ahead into the unknown.*
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Hilarious! Just note that I did not write the word 'soon' in my earlier post. Though you are probably right...the 1000th broadcast of GASLIGHT '44 will air soon enough.
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We need to realize that when she dies there will be an all-day tribute. Then when it's the centenary of her birth (whether or not she's still alive) she will be SOTM again. And in the meanwhile, GASLIGHT will have reached its thousandth airing on TCM.
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*THE BEGINNING OR THE END (1947)*
From Agee on March 1, 1947:
The substitution of O-77 for OSS as a supposed security measure is child's play with what has been done to make THE BEGINNING OR THE END. You learn less about atomic fission from this film than I would assume is taught now in the more progressive nursery schools. You learn even less about the problems of atomic control.
There is to be sure a young scientist played with sincerity by Tom Drake who suffers from scruples. But his conscience is neatly canceled as the story progresses.
The bombing and the Alamagordo test are effectively staged. The rest of it seemed to me surprisingly bad even though I rather expected it to be bad.
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I realized after I wrote that, Audrey, that Malden is being selected because it's the centenary of his birth. As someone else stated, Doris Day will be SOTM in April.
THE BEGINNING OR THE END (1947)
in General Discussions
Posted
Well, they probably did not realize yet the ramifications of the cold war. Interestingly, the Nazis were using the term 'iron curtain' back as early as 1943. Churchill first used the phrase in a confidential memo to Truman in May 1945.