Sgt_Markoff

Jane, I don't know what you're talking about...

It did eventually turn a profit. Agreed. This is too rarely mentioned.

Google 'Advanced Search' page. Type 'tcm.com' under domain to search and your keyword in the 'search for' slot. Thank you Don Ho!

Get an easier Job!

'slewfoot' (heard in 'the Pride of the Yankees') 'bindlestiff' aka a hobo, a man-of-the-road, aka 'forgotten man'

"Amazon Prime"?

morons in my neighborhood still have their stupid godamn holiday decorations festooned on their house-fronts ! ! !

That's not the Gospel quote I would have chosen. Y'know, 'the Bible is something we could all do a lot more use of with'

Thanks for that kind word. Y'know, I'd like to get back into discussing westerns. Maybe I'll have to actually create some threads. It could be a terra firma where Uncle Joe Grandi and Vargas see more eye-to-eye.

Thanks. I'm glad you chimed in. Pithy remarks in the David Mamet book I just finished. On the topic of media: "What kind of right-thinking individual would spend hours --hours --every evening viewing advertisements? Is it not clear that any product which must spend a fortune drawing attention to itself is probably not one we need?" "...(when watching a sunset) How often have we said to a loved one, 'Wish you were here to share it with me'. But we never say this about a television program."

Yet it was written by a woman. Great stuff there, Darg. Reminiscent of Jane Fonda in 'Period of Adjustment'. Wasn't that the Tennessee Williams play where a young woman (at some point in the story) admits she went to nursing school ...solely to work in a hospital ...solely to find a doctor as a husband? It just may be the most hilarious skit of Nichols & May but I'm thinking now of the one where the young Jewish boy wonders aloud to his mother whether mom & pop can afford to pony up the tuition money to send him to college to pursue his career goal. (Well, what career does he have in mind?) Hesitantly, cautiously, he admits he wants to be a registered nurse. Elaine May as the Jewish mother flies in a paroxysm of joy. "Ohhhhhhh!!! When the neighbors see you coming down the street we'll point with pride and tell them ...there goes our son ...da nurse...!"

I like how in "Airport '75" Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, and every other guy in the movie calls all the stewardesses (including 'head' stewardess Karen Black flying the plane)...'honey'. "Keep 'her nose level honey!"..."Watch that altimeter honey! Whatever you do don't let it run down, got that honey? You're doin' swell. honey..."

Indeed many do choose to style it that way, and I wouldn't want to try to restrict them even if I could. Let people think and speak freely, each according to their abilities. I support that gladly. I'm just saying that the better way to consider questions like, 'What is this kind of film?' are answered from this other perspective I'm pointing out. What happens when genre boundaries are drawn along content-objects in the story? Fans wind up thrashing around in circles. There's no end to it.

Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray. Now those two'll raise anyone's blood sugar level.

This is gossip I hadn't heard

Yes --agreed. But as a matter of correctness let me amend my comments above. When I said "this film doesn't contain X, and this film doesn't contain Y, and this film doesn't contain Z"--this is not what I ascribe to. I misspoke. The reason why 'Bad Day at Black Rock' isn't really a western is due to the way the story is constructed. Western narratives follow a certain form. This movie follows a simple 'thriller' structure. Its really so simplistic, (this story) that it could be set in any town anywhere in the USA whether South, East, North, or West. The crux is not geographic locale but the timeperiod. Its natural to look for horses in this desert setting, but the timeperiod makes their inclusion/exclusion irrelevant. We don't assess crime films on whether they have 1920s Prohibition roadsters, after all. We should recognize a crime story on the way it is told.

I don't know that I would designate 'Bad Day at Black Rock' a western at all. You might as well call it a thriller (no, it's not a noir). Sure, it happens to be set in a western state, but after 1940, the west is no longer being settled, right? There's tension in the tale but I don't think there's even a single horse anywhere in the film; and everyone wears city clothes. No cowboys. No indians. No sixguns. No spurs on anyone's boots. There are some stetson hats, but otherwise it could be a small remote town in Pennsylvania. I also gotta say that "Ulzana's Raid" is certainly odd to see listed on anyone's list of all-time westerns. Not criticizing the decision, but I don't quite understand it what drives it. It's a strange, off-kilter film which seems to lack a sweeping, or satisfying resolution. Unusual choice!

errm...who?

Agreed--I used to know a classics buff who was firm and loud about Jack Carson being his #1 favorite star. Out of the whole pantheon of American actors, Carson was his fave. I've already mentioned (in other threads) that my favorite movie reviewer was always just as ready to vouchsafe Leslie Nielsen as HIS favorite star. The same reviewer confessed to weeping when news of Mason's death was announced. I really admire this kind of loyalty and devotion.

I can't say much about the female leads in these versions. The chief interest for me is the male lead. Frederic March is the American actor I probably respect the most of any American actor of his generation. Is he better cast than James Mason as Norman Maine? Mason is also a superb, extremely fine actor from the UK. He might even warrant a place alongside someone like Guinness; certainly he is a peer of Burton. Anyway so in this one lone case, I would choose Mason over March. Mason has the proper sombreness; the delicacy; a sort of fragility. And that marvelous voice. For humor, I like Jack Carson's presence. Forget what version he was in. But his sardonic jibes were perfect. The only thing I can heartily agree with about the female leads is that Garland's 'the Man that Got Away' is indeed, colossal. She reprised it at the London Palladium in her later years I believe--when the meds and the drugs had almost ruined her. Thats the version I savor.

It was mighty dashing but the effect was ruined by the cap he donned. You know the kind I mean...

That menacing figure lurking in the b.g. --there in magenta hues--is it sportin' mammarial glands? Now that evokes some fond recollections. I won't go into them here of course, to spare all our tender sensibilities.

aeons ago, LawrenceA hissed: I've always kinda liked it; despite the oddness of everything about it. Holden's officer is half Native American indian or something and he resents the attitudes he has experienced due to this. That explains his cold manner, or so we're led to believe. He plays a wolf towards Kerr and that's entertaining; fun chemistry. The comeuppance he gets though, makes for a strange part of the plot: his character receives a head injury and he is forced to repeat an apology to Kerr over and over from his sickbed. p.s. one of two films Holden made where he has a scene walking along a jungle trail and is ambushed by a young soldier with a knife.

to my way of thinking, her best singing numbers are: Freddy, Get Ready That's The Way He Does It Sentimental Journey

What do you mean, "you're serious"? That hag resembles Merle Oberon about as much as a sea cucumber might