Dothery

*The Captain's Paradise *love this film and I really hope this one is put back into rotation. I was just thinking that last night. It's a favorite of mine but we never get to see it.

Huh? That doesn't look like it comes from "Till the End of Time," which is a story about a returning vet who falls in love with Dorothy Maguire. This looks more like Mitchum's "Story of G.I. Joe," and Madison's turn as a sailor in "Since You Went Away." I don't know what Williams would have been doing but there are a couple of movies he did as a soldier, one with Robert Young and Laraine Day. I could be wrong. Correct me if I am. It's early in the morning here in the islands.

An English upbringing tends to keep you out of the sun, which tends to keep the skin healthy. I laughed reading a quote from Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Shortly after he was married to Elizabeth he and a friend were chatting and the friend mentioned Elizabeth's gorgeous complexion. Philip said, "Yes; she's like that all over."

Jane Wyman always impresses me. She was a sterling actress, and in this one she was called on to pull all her tricks out of the bag at once. Amazing performance. Hudson wasn't bad, considering that he had a broken collarbone throughout, according to Robert Osborne. He was still new at the game and I think he was concentrating really hard. His career meant everything to him at that point. He had "broken" his voice to make it deeper, through smoking and going up mountains and screaming until he was hoarse. I thought the gray hair at the temples did more for his performance than those things, though. He was BIG, and that was emphasized. Two actors I've heard referred to as big in that way: John Wayne and Rock Hudson. Huge men when they were full-fleshed. Both rail-thin at the end of their lives, sadly. Agnes Moorhead astounded me, as always. She was the cream of the crop of character actresses, followed closely by Thelma Ritter. I confess I love movies with lots of color, nice clothes and elaborate sets, and this one had it all. Everywhere they went was immaculate and well-run. I want my life to be that way, and it's not ... but I don't have a bulky budget, either. No matter what, I watch it whenever it's on. I just love sentiment and always will, I suppose. There was a lot of it around in the novels surrounding my youth, of which this was one.

Actually, that was *Jayne *Meadows (Audrey's big sis) in The Luck of the Irish. I saw Jayne on television one day in a discussion of whether or not actors became emotionally involved with their onscreen partners. She mentioned her part in "Luck of the Irish" and her kissing scene with Tyrone Power, and said, "It was pre-SA (Steve Allen), and I enjoyed every minute of it!"

I know that one ... "Rosebud."

Whenever I think of Fred, I think of his private life. He was the most amazing star, who never made a big show of it, but who invested wisely. He was very smart, had one wife, adopted a family with her, and then a year after her death married June Haver and adopted a second family. They say a man who has had one happy marriage will marry again without delay, and he did, and made a success of the second as well as the first. His kids' neighborhood friends said Mr. M. was just the same in real life as he was on TV. I believe too that he was amazingly versatile. I believed him in everything I saw him in. He had an unusual face, in that he could look goofy sometimes in comedy, and strikingly handsome in romantic parts. I do miss seeing him.

That's Isobel Elsom, and you're right, she is superb. She also must have been very beautiful in her youth, since she's lovely in the movie you refer to, "Between Two Worlds." I love that picture. I saw it again when it ran the other night.

I recorded this, but I couldn't remember why until I watched it last night. There was my Frankie, as he was with Tommy Dorsey, square hair and all, singing "Last Call for Love," one of my favorites, and "Poor You," another, and the Pied Pipers with Jo Stafford singing with him. I think he was about 24 then, or 25. He was pretty much owned by TD, who refused to release him from his contract when he started to hit it big, and sewed up all his money for a long, long time to let him go. Finally Sinatra managed to buy himself out of it. But at this point, when he made this movie, the feud was a way off and they were fairly civil. I remember those years and those songs, outside the movie as well. And "I'll Never Smile Again," again with Frank and the Pied Pipers. His vibrato was really pretty good at that point, though all the smoking he did later did it in, and style was more his forte than the quality of the voice. I saw him live in New York in 1952, and he was really going downhill vocally. A shame. He had a beautiful voice to begin with but abused it. Mitch Miller said it was a fragile voice. Anyway it was nice to see him so young and so good and hear those great old songs.

Alan Curtis?

Mongo, did you know Walter Brennan spent some of his early years raising pineapples in Central America?

"House of Wax" was one of the scariest pictures I ever saw ... or maybe it was the music. When Kirk climbed up to look at the body of Carolyn Jones as Joan of Arc, I absolutely shuddered, and when she spotted the pierced ear I just froze. We saw that picture in 3-D, with the red and green goggles.

Alan Ladd.

I believe it is easier to make a movie in a hot environment than to make one if cold because equipment is less likely to malfunction. Frost is insidious. That's true. But the only time I ever had a problem with a camera from heat or cold was in India in 1964, where it was probably 120. The heat caused the film emulsion to melt and in my movies, the Taj Mahal shimmered. I must say the moghuls knew how to air condition their palaces, however. They had marble floors with water flowing under them, keeping the air comfortably cool. Everything wide open, as well. Edited by: Dothery on Jul 24, 2013 4:24 PM

I remembered her from the flurry of gossip around Ray and his leading lady in "Where's Charlie," Allyn Ann McLerie, and how silly everyone thought it was, because Mrs. Bolger was with him so much he'd have had to be an acrobatic genius to get away with anything. He laughed about it, and pointed out that his wife was at every meeting, sitting in the audience with him through every audition. They were a team, that's for sure. How I loved seeing him do "Once in Love With Amy." Open thread ... can't think of a thing this evening ...

Unfortunately, I can't think of any classic films about a royal baby (babies) off the top of my head... The only ones I can think of are the Henry VIII movies which feature Edward VI's birth to Jane Seymour. There's "The Prince and the Pauper," of course, but Edward wasn't a baby by then. I always liked that boy. I've read biographies about him and he seems to have been a very nice kid. He came to the throne at nine and died at 15 of a terrible form of tuberculosis, which he endured with great patience, considering the treatment the doctors of the time gave him, including arsenic, which caused him awful pain. I used to go over to Hampton Court Palace in Kingston when I lived there and go through the rooms he frequented, particularly the indoor tennis court, which he used all the time. He seems to have handled the mixed-up family problems very well, being good to his sisters regardless of their supposed legitimacy. Even though it was forbidden by law, he allowed his sister Mary to have Mass said in her private chapel and didn't give her a hard time about converting to Protestantism. He loved his sisters equally. Poor kid to die so young.

Isn't there a movie about the Quintuplets ? I remember Pierre Berton did a documentary about them. There is. Jean Hersholt played Dr. Dafoe, the doctor who saved the lives of the quints. He improvised incubators for them. I remember that they were huge attractions when I was a kid ... dolls, paper dolls, dresses like theirs, curls like theirs ... we had 'em all. Like Shirley Temple. Poor little kids. They had very sad lives as a result. They were babied to death, pampered like little princesses, had their own nursery and their own nurses, were put on display for the public to view through one-way glass. Eventually they were turned over to their own family, who treated them like pariahs. Almost Cinderellas in reverse. They were molested by their father as teens, according to the surviving quints. One died in a convent, from an epileptic seizure which resulted in suffocation. Two others died of other causes. Two are still living.

My pick for studio choice is Ray Bolger. He's the only one I know whose wife was his partner in production, casting and other aspects of his broadway shows. I would imagine she influenced him heavily about the money.

Cesar Romero was in "Captain From Castile" with Tyrone Power.

It sounds like "Music Man" to me. But who could the studio choice be? I know Phil Harris turned this one down and regretted it later. And I think Bob Preston won the Tony for it.

Have to say though, that like yourself, for years I too was never..ahem.."bewitched" with his dramatic acting, as he never really..ahem.."got under my skin". However, the more I re-watch his movies, I seem have gained more of an appreciation for his work, though he'll certainly never be...ahem..."all the way" up there on my list of the greatest actors ever. I think it's because I was besotted with him early on that I watched him so carefully in his later movies. I always felt he was out of his element in the ones where he wasn't playing himself. I never felt he had the range. Cary Grant, on the other hand, could play mean, sly, funny, cruel, anything he wanted and make you believe it. In fact, I was always a little afraid of him when he was playing a con man. He reminded me of Dirk Bogarde's charming menace in "Cast a Dark Shadow." BTW, a godson of mine who was in the Marine Corps was stationed at Twenty-Nine Palms in the desert years ago, and was at Mass in Palm Springs on an Easter Sunday, when he turned at the sign of peace and found himself shaking hands with Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck and Dudley Moore. The saddest moment in my professional music life was when I learned Sinatra had died and I would never see him come into a restaurant where I was playing and say, "'My Way,' key of F," and then sing it. All piano players had that dream. Puns duly noted. They're pretty good, too.

(...btw Dothery, if you've never watched "Suddenly", it's a very well done and suspenseful tale in which Sinatra leads a couple of would-be assassins of the President...I believe TCM has shown it a few times in the past) As I said, I did see "Suddenly," but wasn't greatly impressed by it. Perhaps because I always saw Frank Sinatra as a not-very-good actor. Mind you, I loved him; I was one of his original bobby-soxers and had 24 pictures of him on my bedroom wall. But I never saw him as a convincing dramatic actor, even in Manchurian Candidate. I thought he overacted most of the time. I'm a severe critic, particularly of my favorites in other areas. So sue me. As far as the stories about the movie are concerned, I'm inclined to take quotes from the principals more seriously than theories by other people; they always abound in controversies of any kind. The stories will go on, and no one will ever be able to tell who was telling the truth or had it right.

The assassination of Jack Kennedy took on a whole new aspect after I heard Gore Vidal telling stories about himself and Jack on a nighttime talk show; probably Johnny Carson. It was a long time ago, but I remember it clearly. He talked about having discussed the possibility with Jack that somebody would shoot him some day. He said, "If I'm sitting next to you they could miss you and hit me." Jack said, "No great loss," and they laughed. Jack also said, talking in general about assassination, "If they want to get you, they'll get you." One day they were out on a boat and were talking about death. Vidal asked Jack if he had his choice, how he'd choose to die. He said Jack looked down in the water for a minute or so, and then said, "Gunshot. No question. You'd never know what hit you."

The term, Brainwashing, is a pretty lousy description, imho; it must have been a popular term in the press. It doesn't describe the ordeal that psychologists surmised. A combination of mental cruelty and physical torture to raise helplessness, futility, and paranoia, and psycho drugs that can bring about hallucinations. I remember seeing a newsreel (that's how long ago it was) of two priests being returned to the US after years of imprisoment in China, having been tortured physically and mentally. One was quite young, the other elderly. The young priest was babbling on, "confessing" about being guilty of counterfeiting and heaven knows what other strange economic crimes. He didn't even remember the Our Father any more. While he was going on, the older priest said "Oh, don't pay any attention to him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. They got to him with the torture." He himself had kept his sanity, God knows how. He was old. Maybe that was why he could withstand it. He'd seen a lot and lived through a lot in his life and maybe could hold out, knowing it wasn't going to be forever. Who knows. It's a horrible thing to lose your real self through systematic breaking down. "Brainwashing" was a popular term at the time. It was used to describe anything like what happened to these men.

The hottest I've ever seen it was in India, well above 100, probably 115 or so, in Delhi. I remember getting out of a cab dripping wet from sweat and being dry in about a minute. Like baking in an oven. Here in Hawaii we have trade winds to keep us cool, for the most part. The Big Island, where I live, has eleven different climates (of the thirteen major climates in the world), so you can choose the kind of temperature you like. Some areas have winter and summer, like Kamuela, which has some altitude and where it can get very cool and blustery in winter and be beautifully comfortable and pleasant in summer. Others, like the area I live in, in the southern part of the island only a little above sea level, are very much the same all year round, about 80 degrees in the daytime and cool in the evenings. If you decide you don't like the climate in one area, you can drive to another within an hour or so. Paradise.