Dargo

LOL "Sure! Go ahead and see what happens, big fella!" (...btw Mr.R, thanks for your thoughts about "Kiss of Death"...GREAT point!...I agree...while Widmark's is the flashier performance, Mature actually carries the picture)

Thanks for the heads-up Tom(and Andy). I'll keep my eyes peeled for "The Long Haul" when and if TCM shows it again. It does indeed sound interesting and one I don't believe I've ever caught.

Excuse me Joe, but that's a picture of Paul's fellow "Blackboard Jungle" cast member Jamie Farr.

Thanks for the reply, Joe. (...ya know, for a second I was thinkin' you might've had me on your ignore function 'cause you TOO had become tired of all of my jokin' around, around here!) LOL

(okay, and before we get started here, let me just say that I, as the thread's originator, don't give a rodent's rear-end if somebody wants to sidetrack this thread somewhere along the line for a while AND/OR make fun its subject, Mr. Mature, such as in the case of the guy who's picture I use as my avatar(that would be Groucho) once making a joke about Victor's "k nockers" being bigger than Hedy Lamarr's, and/or in that vein, 'cause I LIKE humor of ALL sorts, and I DON'T think anything and everything I say around here should be treated as some kind of "sacrosanct" material...but yeah, that's just ME...and so now that I've gotten THAT out of the way....) LOL While watching "I Wake Up Screaming" the other evening, it occurred to me how versatile an actor Victor Mature truly was. In the case of this film, playing with such ease and naturalness the glib entertainment promoter who's under suspicion of murder. And then there was his turn as Doc Holliday in John Ford's "My Darling Clementine", and of which studio head Darryl F, Zanuck once sent word to Ford of being pleased that he had cast Mature in his picture with the following words: "Personally, I think the guy has been one of the most under-rated performers in Hollywood. The public is crazy about him and strangely enough every picture that he has been in has been a big box-office hit. Yet the Romanoff round table has refused to take him seriously as an actor. A part like Doc Holiday will be sensational for him and I agree with you that the peculiar traits of his personality are ideal for a characterisation such as this." Add to these thoughts that Mature would be very well cast and acquit himself quite well in many of the better Noir films such as "Kiss of Death" and "Cry of the City", AND be as believable as anyone COULD be in many of the "sword and sandal" epics, and I think this goes a long way in proving my point about his versatility. And while you'd never what to see him attempt the title role of The Bard's "Hamlet", I think Mature's seemingly natural ability to express real human emotions on his face, from anger to joy and many emotions between those two, SHOULD give rise to the thought that he was more than just "Beefcake". (...oh, and I LOVE the story of his wonderful self-deprecating humor and an example of which that goes that when told he was rejected for admission into a certain country club because he was an actor, his reply was reportedly: I'm not an actor...and I've got sixty-four films to prove it!"...yep, my kinda guy...no pretentiousness at all)

Nicely stated post, Lorna. However, I've always gotten the sense that while she did play "the strong woman" very effectively in many of her roles, her roles with Wayne always seemed to have her ultimately bending to his will by the end of the movie. Though of course, that WAS the predominate man/woman dynamic of that era in both reel AND real life. (...might that be the reason you say you got "pummelled" for stating this the last time?...not so much the quality of her performance(s), but the idea that her character's "feminist" stances in these instances only went so far?...just wonderin')

LOL Yeah, I suppose. (...unless of course one might happen to be a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey groupie, and THEN it might come around into a conversation now and then)

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for one day, but TEACH a man to fish and......" LOL

Word is Mature had a wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor.

Happens all the time now with me...though I'm the one who usually instigates the conversation. I'll explain... About six months ago and at the behest of my wife who told me that now that we were both retired, I needed to "get out of her hair occasionally"(I'm sure some of you people around here can understand that LOL), I jokingly relayed this "request" of hers to one of my tennis buddies one day and who then assisted me in getting a little part-time gig with a shuttle service that runs from Sedona to the Phoenix Airport and back, and which he had been doing for about a year or so. The two-hour drives each way seem to go a heck of a lot quicker whenever there's a conversation going on inside the van or town car. And so, seeing as how I have "a captive audience" during these runs, I will often steer the conversation toward this subject and by asking the people I'm shuttling, "So, who likes classic movies, and what are your favorite films?" The most common response I hear is that my riders "like" classic film and occasionally watch TCM, but are not passionate about it and possess modicum knowledge of the subject at best, though I DO every once in a while come across someone with more interest, passion and knowledge than the norm. These rides of course really seem the shortest. Very often when I mention my favorites, "The Apartment" and "The Best Years of Our Lives", many of the people with that aforementioned "modicum knowledge" will admit that they're not familiar with those films or haven't watched them in such a long time that they can't remember too much about them. And so, after giving them a brief synopsis of these two films(and sometimes doing a little of the great dialogue in them) I'll, half-jokingly, tell these riders that "their homework" is to seek those two films out and watch them the next time TCM shows them.

Looking at Mr. Litel's VERY lengthy filmography in the IMDb website just now, I believe we might have found someone who appeared on the screen(both the big and small) even more than Ward Bond. Seems that face of his, a face which projected earnestness and sincerity in spades, and his overall manner lent him to be cast many times as a judge or some other public official when movie and early television producers were looking for that type, and especially in his later years and especially during and in the "Golden Age" of television Westerns. Though yeah, I do also remember him playing a few villains early on in his career to good effect.

Yeah, I'm actually a lot smarter than I usually let-on, ya know. And THAT of course is because I'm not one inclined to... ..."blow my own horn". (...sorry...didn't mean to scare ya here, ol' buddy!) LOL

LOL Yeah, I can see how you would.

Good thing she had a sense of humo(u)r, eh Tom?! (...I sometimes wonder if that isn't of dwindling economy in these modern times) LOL

Okay Tom, in effort to help rid yourself of these coulrophobic reactions, might I suggest the next time you happen to encounter one of these people, you just take the same approach as that kid who(though probably apocryphally) once stood up to and told a rather famous clown on a nationally televised program to "Cram it!" ?

LOL Sorry Tom, but I have to wonder if these fright-filled emotions ALSO always carried over whenever you watch the movie "Scaramouche"? (...seein' as how THAT one features the guy holding rifle there AND dressed up like a clown in many of the scenes...kind of a "double whammy" there, EH?!)

You would've gotten along great with my father, Bob. He was quite the Tarzan aficionado also. (...the man could do a killer Tarzan yell TOO...and whole yodel thing and all...you'd think Weissmuller had just walked into the room)

Joe, I have to ask here...and please don't take this the wrong way as I'm merely being inquisitive about this and not suggesting any sort of "right/wrong" issue with my inquiry, but...why do you specifically denote "suicides" with these celebs when that was the manner of their death?

Yeah, little Connie Marshall intrigued me enough to go check out her bio in the IMDb website. She started out getting very good notices in her early career, but soon fell into that common fate of many child actors who would be "discarded" by Hollywood as they reached adolescence. She also played one of Grant's and Loy's two children in "Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House". (...btw...good find on that Gutenberg Bible!)

Andy, this looks like it would be a wonderful addition to the Games and Trivia forum instead. (...btw, my offering would be, "Don't ask a dying man to lie his soul into Hell.", as I'm assuming your reference was in regard to the movie in which Burt Lancaster made his film debut)

...and Dargo.

Yeah, you're right! In FACT, just a few weeks back at a yard sale I happened upon a(watch how I so smoothly get this baby back on track here) DVD collection of Maureen O'Hara movies! (...ain't I slick)

Well, I at least TRIED to "get back on topic" here, anyway. Ya know TB, why are you and few others here thinking Kay's speech was "a handicap". It's NOT a freakin' "HANDICAP". It was just how she SPOKE, and it certainly didn't "handicap" her success with Jack Warner OR the movie going public for a while, now DID IT??????? (...and nooooooow...HOW about IF we get back on topic here and JUST like I tried to do before and as per your previous request, HUH?!...geeeeez...the freakin' "sensitivity" expressed around here lately by SOOOO many people is so freakin' un-be-LIEVE-able lately...WHAT?!...did EVERYBODY'S dog die this past week or somethin'?????)

And now back on topic... I happened to catch Kay in her 1933 2-reeler "Mary Stevens, M.D." a few weeks back when TCM showed it one morning, and what struck me most was how she could rise above the rather pedestrian(oooh, I like that, "rather pedestrian") script and make that film better than the sum of its parts.

LOL YEAH! How'd ya KNOW??? (...got your hands on that original script TOO, did YA?!)