TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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Excellent thread. Straight and straight-identified posters should definitely read the comments in the thread. It really shows how multiple points of view about classic film narratives can (and should) be expressed.
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>That happens a lot in these tribute days. The performer only has to appear in the movie (even if a cameo!) LOL.
Good point. A cameo of William Powell in a Virginia Weidler film is not indicative of his talent and should definitely be scratched from his SOTM tribute. This is where the programmers seem to be using filler.
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*THE PEOPLE'S AVENGERS (1944)*
From Agee on July 8, 1944:
Eighteen Soviet cameramen contribute their records of guerrilla life and warfare, and Norman Corwin contributes his commentary and his voice. Mr. Corwin, in spite of being a radio man, lets gratifyingly long stretches of film run by without saying a word. When he does speak, the words are generally continent.
The voice itself has, it seems to me, a slightly officious resonance, and I don't think he should be forgiven the remark 'One down when a German sentry falls dead,' or the remark 'Reluctant superman as partisans drag a frantically abject German soldier from his hiding place in a haystack.'
Just before this shot ends, there is a sudden clenching of people round the prostrate soldier, ambiguous but horribly suggestive, which makes the crack still more off color. It tempts me to wonder how global the anthology of post-war atrocity films might be, if every nation has the historical conscience to preserve its stock.
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*JED PROUTY & SPRING BYINGTON AS THE JONESES*
There are eleven of the seventeen films from Fox's Jones series at lovingtheclassics.
BACK TO NATURE (1936)
EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT (1936)
EDUCATING FATHER (1936)
BORROWING TROUBLE (1937)
DOWN ON THE FARM (1938)
LOVE ON A BUDGET (1938)
SAFETY IN NUMBERS (1938)
QUICK MILLIONS (1939)
TOO BUSY TO WORK (1939)
EVERYBODY'S BABY (1939)
THE JONES FAMILY IN HOLLYWOOD (1939)
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*FREDDIE BARTHOLOMEW*
PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER (1936) with Victor McLaglen
KIDNAPPED (1938) with Warner Baxter
EXTORTION (1938) with Jimmy Lydon
THE SPIRIT OF CULVER (1939) with Jackie Cooper
CADETS ON PARADE (1942) with Jimmy Lydon
JUNIOR ARMY (1942) with Billy Halop & Huntz Hall
These are all at lovingtheclassics. And no where else. Why?
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*RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947)*
From Agee on November 8, 1947:
RIDE THE PINK HORSE is practically revolutionary. It obviously intends to show that Mexicans and Indians are capable of great courage and loyalty, even to a white American, and can help him out of a hole if they like him.
In a particularly gratifying scene the star-director Robert Montgomery, escorts a young Indian girl, Wanda Hendrix, into the dining-room of the best hotel in a small New Mexico town, and the reactions of the diners and hired help are recorded with simplicity, accuracy, and courage. But she is shown also to be no serious threat in any traditional movie sense, a mere child with a crush on the white hero, not a possible sweetheart, and something of a little savage at that.
As for the central quarrel of the story, it is so carefully vague you can hardly follow it. Montgomery, for so many motives so dimly stated and so contradictory that you can believe in none of them, is trying to blackmail a war profiteer (well played by Fred Clark) whose exact crime, even whose business, we never learn.
Few American films ever manage really to specify a character or a situation so that either can achieve personal life or general applicability. People merely dance their way, more or less ingratiatingly, through a sequence of windy generalizations. They are not by any fat chance intended to be confused with any persons living or dead or who might ever possibly have lived.
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Great trivia. It should be shown one evening, sandwiched in between a few HOLMES pictures. For contrast.
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*FOLLOW THE BOYS (1944)*
Agee wrote about this film on at least two different occasions.
From Agee on May 13, 1944:
FOLLOW THE BOYS shows you the sort of entertainment American soldiers and sailors are subjected to at home and abroad. And it shows you also how very proud Hollywood is of its role in the war. Purple Hearts should be handed out after every projection.
But, prior to that, on April 24, 1944:
FOLLOW THE BOYS (Universal) is a glorification of the service which cinemice and men are rendering the Armed Forces. It is well described by an old subtitle from a comedy of the silent movies. The subtitle introduced the heavy as muscle-bound from patting himself on the back.
Once in a great while a biceps unflexes, and the result is a good act.
W.C. Fields, looking worn-and-torn but as noble as Stone Mountain, macerates a boozy song around his cigar butt and puts on his achingly funny pool exhibition with warped cues.
Donald O'Connor continues to prove himself a Mickey Rooney with some unspoiled, big-Adam's-apple charm to boot.
Orson Welles, as a nice paraody of a magician, saws Marlene Dietrich in two and watches her better half walk off with the act.
Sophie Tucker shouts a 1 1/2 ?entendre salute to the boys through a meat-grinder larynx.
Dinah Shore, singing I'll Get By over the short waves, soothes the entire planet in generously buttered mush.
Ted Lewis talks through his top hat, and everybody who has ever liked Lewis, or John Barrymore, is happy.
There are at least a dozen other acts, some of them all right. But they seem like three dozen, and the air gets so thick with self-congratulation that it is hard to see the patriotism.
Wriggling through all this dense tedium-laudamus, like a Pekingese lost in a shopping rush, is a story. George Raft, a hoofer, marries Vera Zorina, a dancer. But George can think of nothing but camp shows and Vera can think of nothing except their impending baby (about which she is too miffed to tell him), so they part. Before they can make it up Raft dies, a hero, in the Pacific. His widow becomes the pride of the USO.
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>Hitchcock did not really want her for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. She was shoved down his throat by the studio.
He may have had more freedom at Universal. But while working for Warners, several actresses were assigned to him, like Jane Wyman (not a typical choice for a Hitchcock heroine); Anne Baxter (for I CONFESS) and Ruth Roman.
Maybe part of the problem is that these are not the icy blondes we have come to associate as his most daring female characters.
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*ELLEN DREW*
Definitely one of the most underplayed classic film actresses, which does not seem right considering her lengthy career as a leading lady and the many motion picture hits she had with audiences.
THE LADY'S FROM KENTUCKY (1939)...with George Raft
THE GRACIE ALLEN MURDER CASE (1939)...with Warren William
BUCK BENNY RIDES AGAIN (1940)...with Jack Benny
FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS (1940)...with Ray Milland
WOMEN WITHOUT NAMES (1940)...with Robert Paige
NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH (1941)...with Robert Preston
OUR WIFE (1941)...with Melvyn Douglas
REACHING FOR THE SUN (1941)...with Joel McCrea
THE PARSON OF PANAMINT (1941)...with Charles Ruggles
THE REMARKABLE ANDREW (1942)...with William Holden
RHYTHM HITS THE ICE (1942)...with Richard Denning
NIGHT PLANE FROM CHUNGKING (1943)...with Robert Preston
THAT'S MY BABY (1944)...with Richard Arlen
SING WHILE YOU DANCE (1946)...with Kirby Grant
CARGO TO CAPETOWN (1950)...with Broderick Crawford
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Did FRENCHMAN'S CREEK recently air on TCM? I don't think so. We would've had a thread about it. THE CONSTANT NYMPH was the big one that aired in late September (it will re-air in January and has just been released as a disc thru the Warner Archives).
All of these Fontaine titles I listed are available at lovingtheclassics. DARLING, HOW COULD YOU! and FLIGHT TO TANGIER are both streaming titles at Netflix, plus one that lovingtheclassics does not have, called SEPTEMBER AFFAIR (1950), costarring Joseph Cotten.
It would be truly great if some of these found their way to TCM.
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*JOAN FONTAINE*
A MILLION TO ONE (1937)...with Bruce Bennett
MAN OF CONQUEST (1939)...with Richard Dix
FRENCHMAN'S CREEK (1944)...with Arturo de Cordova
IVY (1947)...with Herbert Marshall
KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS (1948)...with Burt Lancaster
DARLING, HOW COULD YOU! (1951)...with John Lund
SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR (1952)...with Ray Milland
FLIGHT TO TANGIER (1953)...with Jack Palance
A CERTAIN SMILE (1958)...with Rosanno Brazzi
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I have to start this thread, because it is a constructive way to vent my frustration. After reading Fred's thread about Dorothy Dell, I spent a good hour or two yesterday afternoon looking at what lovingtheclassics has to offer. Using their search engine, I would type the name of a very popular or at least semi-well-known actor, actress or director. I was often surprised at how many titles I had never heard of, namely because I have never seen them played anywhere.
I know, I know...there are rights issues and it costs a kid's lunch money to acquire some of the more expensive titles...but why not try (and try harder)...because if bringing THE CONSTANT NYMPH into the light of day has taught us anything, it's that nothing is impossible when it comes to rescuing classic titles from the vaults and essentially from obscurity. Give fans the chance to see some of their favorite artists in films that have long been neglected.
Each day I am going to post on this thread (and I will start this afternoon with the first honoree)...where I will basically highlight an artist that most of us know (though a Dorothy Dell or two wouldn't hurt) and I will list the films that are available at lovingtheclassics that do not get played.
Join me for this ride...add your constructive feedback...share a long-forgotten film by a favorite artist that should be rediscovered. Thanks..!
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I watched the tail end of STOLEN KISSES. It was not as great as I had hoped. I think it pales compared to 400 BLOWS. There are two other sequels, I think. Perhaps if TCM did a special evening of Antoine Doinel films we could get our foreign fix. LOL
I agree that foreign films are vastly under-represented on the channel. Remember back in August when there was a whole day devoted to Jean Gabin...and what an uproar that caused!
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Why should it have to take so long?
What I am wondering is if TCM will make Lewis Stone their SOTM sometime in 2012 to coincide with the marketing and release of these newly-minted discs. Mickey Rooney was SOTM just a year ago. Too bad they didn't wait a year to showcase all his Hardy films.
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*IVAN THE TERRIBLE (1947)*
From Agee on April 26, 1947:
In IVAN THE TERRIBLE, Part I, Eisenstein has deprived himself of the speed, flow and shape which helped give ALEXANDER NEVSKY grace, and most of his peculiar energy has become cold, muscle-bound, and somber. Yet IVAN is a bolder, more adventurous, more interesting film. For a while I felt even more admiration for it than grief over it.
Eisenstein's theme is more deeply involved in an individual. Ivan, as Eisenstein presents him, is a fair parallel to Stalin. But he is still more suggestively a symbol of the whole history of Russian communism.
Eisenstein has, for Ivan, a magnficent looking actor, Cherkassov, who can handle the utmost grandiloquence of manner. Eisenstein is very acute with his research, very excitable over architecture and decoration, costume and ritual, and very astute and forceful in his use of them. He gives each movement legendary grandeur, as in the marvelous shots, at once comic and sinister and full of glory, which the kneeling Ivan's rising hands accept the orb and scepter.
The picture is splendid to look at; yet there is little that is superior to, or much different from, Russian operatic and theatrical mannerisms. And considering the illusion Eisenstein manages to create of expressing many complex ideas, densely and continuously, it is remarkable how little actually gets expressed, and how commonplace most of it is.
There is a kind of frozen, catatonic deadness about the particular intensity and rigidity of style developed for this film, as if the intelligence, great as it is, could liberate only a very little of itself in the actual images of the film.
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I watched quite a few films, taking advantage of down-time during the recent Thanksgiving holiday.
First, I neglected to mention last week that I had seen THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE. There is something wickedly funny about an out-of-control soap opera star making a pass at two nuns in a taxi cab. Especially since said character happens to be female. The story works rather well, most notably the intercutting between the actress' real life drama and the drama she gets paid to perform on screen.
Robert Aldrich is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors. In addition to SISTER GEORGE, I watched THE EMPEROR OF THE NORTH. Again, Aldrich takes unlikable characters (this time a murderous railroad agent played by Ernest Borgnine) and makes the proceedings infinitely interesting. While I would not pick the subject material he does, the director shows how a master craftsman can put an artistic spin on almost anything and make it entertaining.
I really enjoyed FREE AND EASY, which I just finally got around to viewing. I had recorded it about a month ago when Buster Keaton was TCM's Star of the Month. I think this film, one of Buster's first talkies, shows what he is so good at. Here, he takes a simple premise and really builds on it. He's a backwoods boy who goes to Hollywood to escort a budding starlet, only to become the bigger more celebrated movie celebrity himself. There are some great scenes where Buster flops into an orchestra pit, where he gets beat up by actors on set (during an endlessly violent rehearsal), and when he and costar Robert Montgomery duke it out over comely Anita Page.
I started a thread on the TCM General Discussion board about PENELOPE, a mid-60s vehicle starring Natalie Wood. I couldn't help but think that this caper about a bored housewife who becomes a bank robber in order to get easy cash, new clothes and jewels (and the attention of her bank manager husband) would have been perfect for Marilyn Monroe. MGM's lush production values are deliciously intact, and Natalie was never better. Pity that it is not yet on DVD.
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*THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1945)*
From Agee on March 31, 1945:
In the English-made COLONEL BLIMP, every Tory has been relieved of all selfish motives for his actions and of nearly all dangerousness in those actions. This is annoying, and worse; but at the same time the movie's characterization of an innocent, brave, honorable and stupid man is, within its own limits, so persuasive and so endearing, and so rare to movies, that I am at least as grateful as I am annoyed.
There is nothing brilliant about the picture, but it is perceptive, witty, and sweet-tempered, and it shows a continuous feeling for the charm and illuminating power of mannerism, speech, and gesture used semi-ritually, rather than purely realistically, which owes a good deal to Lubitsch.
I very much liked the performances of Roger Livesey as the Colonel, Deborah Kerr as his imago in three installments, and Anton Walbrook as his German friend.
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Thanks. Is there a way to italicize the recent additions? I have a feeling that there may be some original programming that could air during some of those gaps.
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Interesting comment. Some sequences work very well...the scene where she robs the bank dressed as an old lady in the beginning of the picture is remarkably played and promises much that the rest of the film does not quite deliver. But it is still a charming, cute effort and Natalie is good in it. The usual MGM production values are superb.
Peter Falk would make his first Columbo telefilm not long afterward. Clearly, he was already typecast in the role of detective when he signed up to do PENELOPE.
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Are you suggesting health issues or plastic surgery? This seems to have nothing to do with the showing of classic films on TCM. Now if he is unable to perform the job adequately in terms of presenting films, then that is something we could and should discuss. But speculating like this seems unnecessary. I am sure that if he was not up to returning to his duties, he would've stayed on extended leave.
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*SWEET ROSIE O'GRADY (1943)*
From Agee on October 8, 1943:
SWEET ROSIE O'GRADY has some fairly pretty color and sets (1880), a few glimpses of Betty Grable's fa?ade, and the power to remind you that the right director and author could make wonderful use of her.
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We need an evening of Columbia noir featuring Vince Edwards. This could be one of the first titles.
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Thanks Stagecoach. I love this...such great news!
Ruth Roman
in General Discussions
Posted
>I will never forget when CITIZEN KANE kicked off Alan Ladd's SUTS day.
It proves that they do not have access to many Paramount films, since the bulk of his career was at that studio.