ValeskaSuratt
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Posts posted by ValeskaSuratt
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Mystery solved ! How'd you do it ?
I'd never heard of Selwart ... turns out he was an interesting guy.
According to Wikipedia:
"In 1995, now legally blind, Selwart was interviewed by William F. Powers for his book, Alive and Well: The Emergence of the Active Nonagenarian (Rutledge Books, 1996). In the interview, Selwart reflected: 'If I died today, I could say only that I had lived a very beautiful and charmed life. Even when it looked at times like something bad had happened, it soon turned back again to something positive. The loss of my eyesight, although difficult, did not make me bitter. I figured that at my age I have to expect something and remembered all those poor people who suffer from cancer and are in terrible pain. I say to myself that I may have trouble seeing, but I don't suffer any physical, mental, or emotional pain.' "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonio_Selwart
He died in New York City in 2002 ... at the age of 106 !
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Hedren has devoted her life to the Roar Foundation which supports the Shambala Preserve, a sanctuary for rescued exotic animals located in Acton, CA:
http://www.shambala.org/about.htm
Hitch's relationship to big cats, however, was less clear ...
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:
> }{quote}Kirk Alyn is not on that list, but that doesn't mean it isn't him.
Correct. It's the difference in the shape of the nose, ears, eyes, lips, jawline and hairline which prove it is not Kirk Alyn.
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Any additional information about the photo could help -- like, if there's any date anywhere on it, what's he wearing (looks like he's bare-chested ?), etc.
Some info, in case it helps:
A list of all the shows produced at Ogunquit Playhouse since 1950:
http://www.ogunquitplayhouse.org/about-op/history/shows
A list of "The Stars of the Ogunquit Playhouse":
http://www.ogunquitplayhouse.org/about-op/history/stars
And I don't know how much money you want to spend in your search, but there's a book called "The Ogunquit Playhouse: 75 Years" ... according to amazon it's "not available" but here's what it looks like:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ogunquit-Playhouse-75-Years/dp/193458200X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344325516&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=TheOgunquitPlayhouse%3A75Years%22
Good luck.
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> {quote:title=AddisonDeWitless wrote:}{quote}
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> WHY ON EARTH IS FELICIA FARR THIRD BILLED, RIGHT BELOW FORD AND HEFLIN ON THE MAIN TITLE CARD WHEN SHE IS IN THE FILM FOR MAYBE ALL OF 8 MINUTES AND HER CHARACTER HAS (frankly) VERY LITTLE IMPACT ON THE STORY AT ALL ???? (And I didn't find her performance to be all that inn-teresting or memorable to be honest.)
Am I to understand that the jaded AddisonDeWitless believes there's some relationship between billing and ... fairness ??? :^0
Ye Gods and little fishes ! Next thing, you'll be worrying that the Oscars might be a popularity contest ... :^0
When Tallulah signed to do Clash By Night for Billy Rose in late 1941, the title was prophetic and all Broadway waited for the explosion between the famously tempestuous duo.
When the brawling started, theater columns gleefully reported Bankhead's outrage that her 5'2" producer was nothing but "a BULLY !" as well as Rose's retort: "How do you bully Niagara Falls?"
The problem was billing.
Tallulah's contract said only her name could go above the title, but when she arrived for rehearsal one day, she discovered a sign being unfurled from the floor just above her name which read "Billy Rose Present ..."
According to Miss B's bio:
"Modestly he had his name in letters no larger than mine. With characteristic taste he had neglected to mention the name of the play or its author. Aside from his grammatical lapse - 'Billy Rose Present' - he had airily omitted Joseph Schildkraut and Lee Cobb ... I called his manager and delivered an ultimatum in rich, ripe words ...
*"If your foul employer insists on 'Billy Rose Present' you need only add 'Tallulah Bankhead Absent !! '* "
The sign came down.
Bankhead -- "the only volcano dressed by Mainbocher"
Or ... as Eddie Mannix put it to Elizabeth Taylor when she tried to get out of Butterfield 8 in order to do Cleopatra by citing her years of service to MGM ... ?
"Unfortunately, Miss Taylor, sentimentality went out of this business a long time ago."
(But your loyalty to Ms. Farr IS touching ...
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:
> }{quote}Was Tippi ever under contract to MGM? I guess she had a thing for Leo.
To Hitch, lions were just cool blondes with extra teeth ...
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Madame Bovary (1949) contains an interesting example ...
In the famous sequence where the title character (Jennifer Jones) and her cloddish husband (Van Heflin) attend a fancy ball, the experience doesn't merely seduce her into a life of materialism, hedonism and immorality, it practically ravishes her.
"I don't waltz," Jones tells Louis Jourdan as if refusing to wash his windows, but he literally sweeps her ON to her feet. Vincente Minnelli's still-astonishing dance sequence reaches a literally-crashing climax when Bovary cries she can't breathe and the wealthy host demands all the windows of the room be smashed open to give her fresh air.
Even on the umpteenth viewing, it's SO dramatic ...
But watching it this time, thanks to this thread, I started thinking about the music under the waltz and I realized that, though technically it's an unnamed portion of Miklós Rózsa's wonderful score, his waltz is a plot point as surely as the cataclysmic storm in Hurricane (1937). (Sadly, Jennifer Jones doesn't make out nearly as well as Dorothy Lamour did.)
Jourdan may be dancing with Jones, but it's Miklós Rózsa's music that actually seduces her.
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> {quote:title=Gellar47 wrote:}{quote}Russo's book is classic in only one way. It is a classic example of an author trying to 'gayify' films that had no under or over current of homosexuality in them. His book and others like it do no service to gay or to films, in general. I find it hard to understand why we are supposed to find a gay theme in films and scenes that have no reason to be interpreted as gay oriented.
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> Case in point is the famous dispute over the scene between Messala and Ben Hur in the 1959 version of Ben Hur. *There is absolutely no reason to interpret a friendship between men as 'gay' without some actual evidence of such.* The assumption is always that any relationship is non-sexual unless there is evidence otherwise. You can't just say they were gay because you want to. It's absurb and a cheat to try it. Russo's book is full of this stuff and only the sloppiest of thinker would be taken in by it.
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Some "*actual evidence of such*" courtesy of Ben Hur screenwriter Gore Vidal:
"Over the years I have told the funny story of how I wrote a love scene for Ben-Hur and Messala and how only the actor playing Messala was told what the scene was about because, according to director [William] Wyler, 'Chuck will fall apart.'"
Thank you, Gellar47, for illustrating how easily "sloppy thinking" can be avoided -- by simply closing one's mind to everything, including the facts.
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> {quote:title=Lazyking wrote:
> }{quote}you know who really stole the movie? Astor the terrier...
Myrna stole it back with the best line in the picture:
"Waiter, would you serve the nuts ? I mean, will you serve *the guests* the nuts ?"
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Thanks, JakeHolman, for the link.
While I'd heard of Hitch's "thing" for his blonde stars before, those somewhat-obtuse quotes from Tippi Hedren are new ...
"'I don't know what to call it,' the still-stunning 82-year-old said. 'It was something I'd never experienced before. It wasn't love. When you love someone, you treat them well. We are dealing with a mind here that is incomprehensible. And I certainly am not capable of discerning what was going through his mind or why. I certainly gave no indication that I was ever interested in a relationship with him.'"
(She may have quit cigs, but Tippi's still "smokin' ".)
Another of Hitch's cinematic quirks which fascinates me is his obsession with mistaken identity -- in particular, the nightmarish storyline to which he returned again and again: an innocent man who's suddenly (and in many cases quite viciously) pursued and persecuted and, unable to get anyone to believe his innocence, he must go it alone.
To varying degrees, it's in Saboteur, Strangers On a Train and North By Northwest, among others. It seems tied somehow to the life-long terror of police Hitch described during his interview with Dick Cavett:
I wonder if there's some Hitch quote or interview which might shed similar light on the "love-hate thing" he had with so many of his female stars ?
Maybe he was just bored to death -- I know he claimed on a few occasions that after he'd carefully storyboarded a film he was essentially done with it, and that having to go to all the trouble of committing it to celluloid was a most unwelcome imposition.
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Thanks to these comment threads, it's fun watching this film again now (despite just having seen it a few days ago) both because the film is that good and because of all the "new" things to watch for that people have pointed out.
(Like ... the score doesn't seem too loud to me at all ... )
And I'm with you, BaggarVance, that the question of it being "dated" is moot.
As long as we keep fighting wars from which warriors must return, The Best Years of Our Lives will remain timeless.
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> {quote:title=slaytonf wrote:
> }{quote}But then it degenewates at the end to a conventional adventua/womance, like Kay Fwancis' aws.
Like Kay Fwancis' WHAT ?
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What a shame that this month-long tribute didn't include a showing of "Leslie Howard: The Man Who Gave a Damn."
Especially since documentarian Tom Hamilton discovered hours of rapidly deteriorating home movies in Leslie Howard's daughter's basement.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/12/leslie-howard-found-footage
"The reels, both colour and black and white, have been saved following their discovery by Tom Hamilton, who was making a documentary on Howard. The star's 82-year-old daughter, Leslie Ruth Howard (known as Doodie), had kept them in her basement since 1979, not realising that some of the reels had decomposed.
"Hamilton recalled opening a case: 'A sight and smell to chill the heart … pungent and vinegary – never a good sign when dealing with film.'
"He then spotted another box, which was filled with canisters in perfect condition. 'I uttered a silent 'thank you' to a benevolent God of film,' he said. 'As the first images appeared, I was startled by the visual quality, razor sharp with barely a scratch.'
"A married Howard can be seen on the set of Animal Kingdom, flirting openly with Myrna Loy, with whom he was rumoured to have had an affair; she later said that while he was charming, she was not among his conquests. The mock romantic scenes with another leading actress, Norma Shearer, hint at further infidelities.
"Hamilton said: 'You get a sense of the real human being. He's quite playful and warm in a way you don't see in his films.'"
According to a blog entry on the site dedicated to "The Man Who Gave a Damn," dated April 19, 2010, "there was a scheduled TCM screening in December last year, which was mysteriously dropped as the date approached."
http://lesliehoward.squarespace.com/
Whot hoppened ???
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Great info, gagman66 ...
Thanks mainly to that atrocious book, Hollywood Babylon, Norma Talmadge has gone down in film history as one of the casualties of sound -- because of a supposed Brooklyn "honk."
But there's a clip on YouTube from a 1929 picture called A Year From Today which really doesn't seem to bear this out at all ...
(It's also interesting to hear Norma singing and, at about 5:00 in, doing what she did best: eeeeemote !)
HOWEVER ...
You just can't talk about the great silent stars who lost their careers with the advent of sound without mentioning the sssaddessst sssstory of all -- Cecilia Sssssisssson ...
YouTube clip of Cecilla Sisson:
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Some interesting BYOOL / Harold Russell trivia for anyone interested ...
From the obituary of Harold Russell (January 14, 1914 - January 29, 2002) in the Guardian:
"Russell, who was born in Nova Scotia, but moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, was working in a food market when Pearl Harbour was bombed. 'I made a rush to the recruiting office, not out of patriotism but because I thought of myself a failure,' he explained in his autobiography, Victory In My Hands (1949). He became a demolition expert, and it was while teaching recruits that a defective fuse detonated TNT that he was holding. After choosing steel hooks rather than plastic hands, he became so adept at using them that he featured in a US army training film, Diary Of A Sergeant, made for soldiers who had lost both hands.
"Wyler saw the film and, although Russell had no lines, cast him in The Best Years of Our Lives. Russell, who was then attending business school at Boston University, got $250 a week, and $100 a week for living expenses. After the movie became a box-office hit, the producer Sam Goldwyn gave him a weekly bonus of $120 for a year, asking that he make promotional tours. On Wyler's advice, he then went back to college, 'because there wasn't much call for a guy with no hands in the motion picture industry.'
"After graduating, Russell started a public relations business, but spent most of his time campaigning for the disabled, his main message being, 'It's not what you lost, but what you have left and how you use it.' He would joke that he could pick up anything with his hands except 'a dinner cheque.'"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/feb/06/guardianobituaries
On YouTube:
"Diary of a Sergeant (1945) A Canadian-born, Boston-raised paratroop sergeant in World War II, Harold Russell lost both hands in a demolition accident and later appeared in this Army Signal Corps documentary in which he acted out the various phases of the rehabilitation process of an amputee.
"Director William Wyler saw the film while preparing "The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)" and cast Russell as the film's disabled returning veteran.
"For his performance in The Best Years of Our Lives, Russell won both the Academy Award as the year's Best Supporting Actor and a second, honorary Oscar 'for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans.'
"He is the only actor ever to win two Oscars for the same role."
[Though the voice-over isn't Russell, it shows in detail how he operated his hooks, as well as many other interesting details.]
Per Wikipedia:
"For The Best Years of Our Lives, director William Wyler asked the principal actors to purchase their own clothes, in order to connect with daily life and produce an authentic feeling. Other Wyler touches included constructing life-size sets, which went against the standard larger sets that were more suited to camera positions ...
"In 1992, [Harold] Russell needed money for his wife's medical expenses. In a controversial decision, he consigned his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor to Herman Darvick Autograph Auctions, and on August 6, 1992, in New York City, the Oscar sold to a private collector for $60,500. Russell defended his action, saying, 'I don't know why anybody would be critical. My wife's health is much more important than sentimental reasons. The movie will be here, even if Oscar isn't.' The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has required all Oscar recipients since 1950 to sign an agreement forbidding them from selling their award; as a pre-1950 winner, Russell was exempt from this provision."
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The scene when Homer shows his fiance what "going to bed" with him REALLY means -- removing his prosthetic arms, rendering him virtually helpless ...
And she loves him so much that she watches and listens so carefully -- "I'LL do that!" ...
And the look on his face -- like he can't believe ANYone would be willing to go through this ritual every night for the rest of their lives ...
To me, that scene just about defines unconditional love.
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> {quote:title=kriegerg69 wrote:
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> }{quote}Excuse me for not being precise enough, but I meant that unless Robert was there all the time, he can't possibly know what else transpired between those two when he wasn't around. I never claimed nor meant to insinuate that he was there all the time.
Now, don't be silly ... there's no need for you to apologize for being imprecise !
For being rude, presumptuous and disingenuous, yes! But imprecise ? Nah ...
Ya see, the FACT is that you're trying to dance around a couple of incredibly bizarre, baseless and insulting remarks you made upthread concerning Robert Osborne:
> {quote:title=kriegerg69 wrote:
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> }{quote}*(1)* "Seemed to be" doesn't mean a thing...he couldn't have possibly been there ALL the time, not to mention that was a LONG time ago, and *(2)* no offense to R.O., but his memories from the set may not be as accurate as he might remember them to be.
Did you know that Bob was a columnist for one of the entertainment industry's most valued daily trade journals, The Hollywood Reporter, *for 17 years* and that part of his job involved visiting movie sets and filing reports about what he observed ?
So, that -- along with the simple logic that one need not be on a movie set 24/7 in order to form an opinion-- demolishes your first point.
As for your second ... ? Well, try THIS on for size:
No offense to YOU, kriegerg69, but your comments would probably sound less like a certain body part was badly CHAPPED if you didn't TALK out of it so often !
Again, no offense intended and none taken, I hope ...
Of COURSE you have the right to post whatever you want here. But so do the rest of us, especially if you insist on posting ignorant, billious, curmudgeonly claptrap.
Love ya, mean it, bye,
"I've been fighting for the keylight for a hundred years so don't cross me, honey ... "
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> {quote:title=kriegerg69 wrote:
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> }{quote}"Seemed to be" doesn't mean a thing...he couldn't have possibly been there ALL the time, not to mention that was a LONG time ago, and no offense to R.O., but his memories from the set may not be as accurate as he might remember them to be.
A book about the making of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? called Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud seems to be in agreement with Robert's eyewitness account.
Author Shaun Considine claims that Bette and Joan seemed to be cordial toward each other during the day but "the dueling divas called director Bill Aldrich every night after the shoot to complain about the other. "
Also, Robert's intro contained no claim that he was on the Baby Jane set "ALL the time" so, no offense to you, but your memory seems to be less trustworthy than R.O.'s.
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Dear, dear Joan ...
People always said we could have been SISTERS ...
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}You forgot about Molarball. .....CACTUS FLOWER and THE IN-LAWS actually WERE dentist movies.
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> Edited by: finance on Jul 20, 2012 2:15 PM
That reminds me of a satirical piece written by Marshal Brickman for The New Yorker in 1977.
It was called Who's Who In the Cast and lampooned the arcane biographical information found in too many theater programs. The pertinent excerpt:
{font:Times New Roman}*ARNOLD BATFISH* (Author) spent several years as an advertising copywriter and burst upon the theatrical scene with a cathartic evening of one-acters: Spearmint, Doublemint, and Excremint, which won him both a Nudlicer and a Peavy. His dental trilogy, Drill, Fill and Rinse, Please, was hailed as the finest American dental writing in fifty years and was compared to Gogol’s The Overbite and Sophocles’ Oedipus in Pyorrhea. Mr. Batfish resides with his wife, Laura, and her wife, Leslie, at Nutmeat College, North Carolina, where he holds the Robert Goulet Chair of Dramaturgy.{font}
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:
> }{quote}Maybe we should start a thread about dentist movies.
You mean like The Awful Tooth ... Hopalong Cavity ... The Drill of It All ... That's Dentertainment ?
Sorry, but they're just too painful to sit through.
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> {quote:title=cattrivia wrote:}{quote}i have my mothers greer garson coloring book1944 can't find any info on it 11 by 15? any body???
Does it look like this ?
If so, there was one on eBay recently -- it wasn't in great shape and was priced at $3.99 but it didn't sell:
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> {quote:title=musicalnovelty wrote:}{quote}
> > {quote:title=ValeskaSuratt wrote:
> > }{quote}*"Directed the first 'talkie' for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928)."*
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> > Isn't this the picture where the famous line "Take him for a ride !" is shouted at a telephone concealing a microphone ?
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> No, that was the 1928 Warner Bros. feature LIGHTS OF NEW YORK.
> Unfortunately, ALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE appears to be lost.
Thank you for the correction.
Interesting that according to Wikipedia Valentine is lost but "a private collector in England is rumored to own a 35mm nitrate print."
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> {quote:title=TopBilled wrote:}{quote}I would hardly say Lana's career was stalling. True, she had left MGM but there were offers pouring in from other studios. She was in the process of reinventing herself, not making a comeback.
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> Her motion picture career did not really go into decline until 1969 with THE BIG CUBE, which though I like it, probably was not the right project for her. In the 1970s, her output slowed considerably and she went into semi-retirement until a few television roles put her back on the map in the 1980s.
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> But back in 1957, she was hardly washed up and hardly stalling.
You're all over the map with your terminology. "Stalled" (the only term I used) is not synonymous with "in decline" or "washed up."
As for the facts ..
While her Technicolor debut in The Three Musketeers (1948) was a smash hit, Lana then took off for a two-year honeymoon with husband #3, Bob Topping.
Upon returning, her 1950 "comeback picture" (so called at the time), A Life of Her Own, was a dud.
Mr. Imperium, which followed in 1951, was a total bomb critically and financially.
Of her subsequent films, only The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), The Merry Widow (1952), and The Sea Chase (1955, made on loan-out to WB) were hits.
In contrast, Latin Lovers (1953), Flame and the Flesh (1954), Betrayed, (1954), The Prodigal (1955), The Rains of Ranchipur (1955, made on loan-out to Fox) and Diane (1956) all ranged from box-office disappointments to outright flops.
In three years, she'd tried musical-comedy, costume dramas, a biblical epic, a fourth teaming with Clark Gable, and even dyed her famously blonde hair brown ... all without success. Then things got worse.
It's not entirely accurate to say Lana Turner "left MGM." The fact is that MGM left HER. In February of 1956, after an 18-year association, MGM chose not to renew her contract. Had she been a bankable star, not even studio head Dory Schary's well-known disdain for MGM's "more stars than in heaven" business model could have pried her loose.
As for film offers "pouring in," what's your source for this ? If she was really flooded with offers, why -- at a time when she had no income and owed MGM a large amount from loans they'd made to her -- did it take over a year after she left "home" at MGM before Turner set foot in front of the cameras again for Peyton Place ?
Emily Toth's book, "Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious," may provide a clue:
"By the time Jerry Wald was casting Peyton Place, Lana Turner and Lex Barker, who had become her fourth husband, were divorcing. *Twentieth Century-Fox fought Wald about Lana Turner and suggested Jane Wyman or Olivia de Havilland for Allison's mother.*"
Maybe Fox thought her wrong for the part ... or rmaybe they thought she was, in your words, "washed up" ?
Toth also reports that it had taken producer Jerry Wald several hours to convince Lana to even consider Peyton Place, so loathe was she to play the mother of a teenager. To me, it speaks volumes that a 36-year-old sex symbol would even consider such a drastic re-invention of her public image.
It wasn't until Wald reminded her how his production of Mildred Pierce had resuscitated Joan Crawford's career that Turner finally agreed. Remarkably, the result was the same as for Crawford: Lana earned her first and only Oscar nomination as well as another full decade of name-above-the-title stardom. And if that ain't "making a comeback," I don't know what is.
I provide all these details in order to explain why it's not merely accurate but even especially appropriate to describe Lana Turner's career just prior to Peyton Place as I did -- because when it stalled, she got out and pushed until she managed to get it started again.
,Valeska
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20th Century Vole Presents
in General Discussions
Posted
*The Way We Whirr*
A four-hankie love story about two star-crossed cyborgs.
She's a computerized Communist programmed to take life
too seriously, he's an easy-going outer space assassin
whose piercing blue eyes will melt your heart, not to mention
anything metallic. But despite destroying most of the Earth
together, not even the birth of their daughter, Xbox, can
ultimately prevent their love from short-circuiting. (The door
is, however, left open for a sequel set in the Caribbean
when she delivers her parting line: "Klaatu Bermuda Nikto.")