TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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ONE TWO THREE (1961)
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1
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EL PASO (1949)
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IS MY FACE RED? (1932)
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53 minutes ago, JamesJazGuitar said:
MOVIES-TV shows this Fox film a few times a month. This film, along with Thieves Highway, made me a fan of Italian Valentina Cortese.
Telegraph Hill is moody film with noir themes and solid acting.
Yes, THIEVES' HIGHWAY is another great 20th Century Fox flick.
I always used to get Valentina Cortese confused with Viveca Lindfors. Of course one is Italian (Cortese) and one is Swedish (Lindfors).
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From 1948
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GREEN EGGS AND HAMLET (1995)
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IT'S ALIVE (1974)
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HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE (1954)
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Quinlan, Anthony
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6 hours ago, mr6666 said:
TB, posting one for OCT. ??
Yes, I will do so later today...check back. And thanks for the reminder!
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Today's neglected film is from 1933. It has aired 25 times on TCM.
Frankie Darro was almost 16 when he had the lead role in this Warner Brothers precode about adolescents affected by the Depression. Darro would be able to play teens for the next ten years, since he was blessed with a youthful face. As the story begins, he’s at a dance with a bunch of his pals. One of these pals (Edwin Phillips) tells him that he’s dropping out of school to take a job that will help support his struggling family.
Later when Darro mentions this to his folks (Grant Mitchell and Claire McDowell), he learns his father just became unemployed. So they are also facing economic hardship. Things go from bad to worse, when his pop is unable to find work, and the family is about to be evicted.
In the next part Darro and Phillips both decide to leave home, so they won’t be a continuing burden on their respective families. They hop a freight train and meet another wayward youth, a girl they think is a boy (Dorothy Coonan). A set of adventures follow, or should I say misadventures, with them hopping from train to train traveling across the country. It’s tough all over, no matter what region of America these characters find themselves in.
WILD BOYS (and girls) OF THE ROAD is sort of an exploitation flick. It depicts Depression era money woes, then puts a group of young people on the road, to over-dramatize their angst and exaggerate the sorrows they experience. There are also some anti-establishment elements, where the kids are harassed by police for being transients. Later when they visit Coonan’s aunt (Minna Gombell) it turns out they are visiting a brothel.
It’s one sensational event after another.
Things take an even darker turn when another girl they meet (Ann Hovey) is sexually attacked by a railroad employee (Ward Bond). So not only are dealing with unemployment, homelessness and prostitution but rape of a minor is also thrown into the mix!
As if that were not enough, Bond’s character is killed during a climactic fight scene…and Phillips’ character becomes the victim of an accident, losing his leg. Now we’ve just added manslaughter and amputation to the ongoing drama these teens are dealing with. It’s all a bit much.
The last part of the movie brings it all to a skidding halt. The kids have been caught stealing and appear before a judge. The judge has mercy on them, and they are promised jobs– a reference to the New Deal. I guess the studio could only go so far with the story’s prevailing bleakness before magically giving us a happy ending, where all is right in the end.
William Wellman and WB deserve some credit for trying to tackle hard issues. But what they’ve crammed into 67 minutes is enough fodder to make four or five different issue-oriented films. Because the picture is trying to showcase all the social and financial problems of the Depression, it overplays its hand. It’s one thing to strive for realism in cinema, but it’s quite another thing to over-egg the pudding.
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3
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DREAM WIFE (1953)
Next: Husband
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FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966)
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Ava Gardner
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1
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O'Brien, Pat
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two thousand five hundred seventy-eighth categoryKids and trains
WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD (1933)
THE RAILWAY CHILDREN (1970)
THOMAS AND THE MAGIC RAILROAD (2000)-
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MRS. PARKINGTON (1944)
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TOP HAT (1935)
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1
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Lee, Anna
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BLACK RAIN (1989)
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1
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CHINA (1943)
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Jolson, Al
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Henry, Gloria
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Farrell, Mike
TWO word titles
in Games and Trivia
Posted
TOP GUN (1955)