Dothery

I wouldn't mind being in that scene with you in Casablanca, since I learned the Marseillaise (in French) from the cutest French guy I ever saw. I still bellow it out en francais whenever it's on.

Hint #2: The music changes from major to minor to indicate an unwelcome presence.

Not Laura. This song changes from major to minor, unlike Laura. Hint: It's connected to a particular room in the movie. That should be a giveaway clue.

Not "September in the Rain." This was seven years later. After its performance in the movie, it was handed over to a famous lyric writer, who wrote the words for it.

I often don't watch the whole movie. I have several on tap which are easy to roll to the appropriate scene and watch the actors acting. It's such fun to see how they do it. I love watching Olivier lick the butter off his thumb in his hotel suite ... he's so easy with the help and cool but gentle with poor little Joan Fontaine, who can't believe what's happening to her when he asks her to marry him. Then I push over to Ronnie Colman and his look when he can't remember where he heard that hymn before, and Susan Peters' face when she notes that she isn't who he's thinking of ... Then there's my favorite Walter Pidgeon, who flirts mercilessly with Ginger Rogers in the Waldorf when she thinks he's a burglar after her jewels ... oh, I love him in comedy. Then I have a half-hour of Chuck Jones. Now, this is my favorite of all short movies. It's Chuck himself, with drawings and his marvelous persona which comes out in Daffy Duck and Bugs and Michigan J. Frog and all the rest of the great ones who populated his life. He tells us what his upbringing was like and how his father frightened him to death and beat him, and how somehow he managed to get past that and make us all happy for so long with the coyote and the roadrunner (who, he says, Mark Twain says we must respect, because he has to go twenty miles for his breakfast, and thirty miles for his lunch, and maybe fifty miles for his dinner; and at least he's not sitting at home looking out the window and being a burden to his parents). This is when I don't have a lineup of movies ready, such as The Man Who Would Be King, which is in the DVD player now, from Netflix. And if all else fails, I have Amitabh Bachchan. My darling Amitabh. Handsome, 6' 3", full of deviltry and art. A genius. I have a stack of his movies, among them Sharaabi, about a man who spent most of his life half-drunk (a nice cinematic feat it is, too), and who buys a priceless necklace for the lady he loves, which is later stolen, and when the policeman asks what valuable neck it's for, indicates the lady in question and says, "Inspector Sahib: My valuable neck"; Silsila, a serious study of infidelity, starring his own wife, as his wife, and a gorgeous girl named Rekha, as his mistress; Cheni Kum, about a 64-year-old Indian chef, still handsome, still magnetic, who owns a London restaurant and falls in love with a 34-year-old patron, a gorgeous actress named Tabu; and about ten others of different genres and eras. One of my favorites is Satte Pe Satta, the Hindi version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. (I showed it to the mother of a friend of mine a few weeks ago and tweeted Amitabh that I'd done it; he tweeted back and said that was wonderful, and how lovely to see me back on Twitter again. My heart hasn't stopped racing since.) That's all I have available at the moment, but I expect I'll get more in the next day or two. Right now I'm not watching because Les Miserables is on, and I've seen it about 22 times.

This song was originally written without lyrics and placed in a non-musical movie. In the picture, it's played in a major key and suddenly changes to a minor. Afterward, it became a jazz standard and was recorded by just about every big name in the business. Name of song? Performer in the movie? Name of the movie? (Not me. I can play it, but I was never in the movies. Their loss.)

Well, Bogart commented on his change of image himself in an article I read once. He said "They sent me over to makeup and put a toupee on me. The word had gone out: Clean up Bogart." I suppose you could say that did happen with him in about 1940-41, when the gangsters were gone and the new Bogart had arrived. Frank Sinatra (of all people) did pretty much the same thing, in his case starting with musicals and moving into drama in From Here To Eternity, The Man With the Golden Arm, and The Manchurian Candidate. I don't know if you were thinking of these guys.

Flynn was too beautiful to live. I'm sure he must have had a birthday, because there he was, but he was more godlike than human to me. My early movie years were spent worshiping at the shrine of Captain Blood and Robin Hood. So I'll celebrate his birthday with a little Mai Tai on the lanai and remember those days before I knew anything about the world, and just saw it through a movie lens.

And what a lovely woman she was. Her mission in life, to help orphaned children, was her great legacy, to me. She worked so long and hard to get these children adopted internationally that it took up most of her spare time (if she ever had any). A delightful human being, warm and loving. God rest her.

Well, Buddy, I can't get both movies, but I can get one. The song is "When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam," by Irving Berlin. It's in "Easter Parade," sung by Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. The other one? Well, I did unearth the fact that there is a short animated cartoon of it, but I can't find a film clip of it anywhere. I'm one for two ...

Close. The song I had in mind was "Every Street's A Boulevard in Old New York;" otherwise you've got it down cold. Your go, my dear ...

I wonder if Dothery recognized her from "Maytime". Maybe not, it was Gloria's first picture and she was only six years old. No, I didn't! And I'm surprised that I didn't, because I've seen her in so many things over the years. All I can say is I was watching my beautiful baritone Nelson Eddy too closely to see anything else in that darling picture ...

I remember when Margaret Lindsay was being called Liberace's "fiancée." It went on for quite a long time, too.

Hint #1: In the 30's version, hero belts heroine.

Not "Anything Goes." That's a jump tune ... this song is a lilting ballad.

That was fun. Is "Kokomo, Indiana" from that picture? It was always one of my favorite Grable/Dailey numbers. Anyway ... today we'll talk about a song from a 50's movie made from a 50's musical, which was also a 30's film. Much gender-flipping in this group of presentations, with a lady reporter with a man's name and a hero turned into a heroine from one incarnation to another of this hoary old story. A lovely ballad, however, came out of it all. There! That should be confusing enough to keep you guessing for maybe twenty minutes or so ... anyway, I tried.

I never mentioned Betty Grable because it is Betty Grable. Now, the rest should be fairly easy. Well! In that case, is it "Mother Wore Tights?"

I know MN got it, but I happened to think he's on in "Maytime" today.

Okay. Not Faye. Not Grable, then. Monroe? Could it be?

I think I'll drag the thread off course just a little bit here to insert a thought about actors who comment on their own roles, and the terrible consequences that can have. When I was in my romantic early 20's, a wonderful movie called "Madonna of the Seven Moons" came out of the J. Arthur Rank shop (at least I think it was a Rank picture, no pun intended, I'm sure). We were insane about it, a girlfriend and I. We went to see it in D.C. at the Little Theater, which showed foreign films. Oh, how we mooned over Stewart and Phyllis Calvert, who played the woman with the multiple selves. One of the first pictures ever to imply that you could have what they then called a "split personality." In one part of her life she was a pure and deeply religious matron, living in a mansion in Rome, beautiful, married happily to a wonderful man who adored her, and with a grown daughter, equally lovely but of course a young spirited type. Then suddenly something would trigger the other personality, and she would turn into a gypsy, a thief, a gorgeous and amoral creature, who would return to Florence and resume her bohemian life with Granger, who had no idea where she'd been and was afraid to ask, because she'd fly off the handle and threaten to leave if he did. Well! What a movie! I loved it to death. Years and years I remembered the love scenes and the wild craving Granger and his gypsy love had for each other. I finally found it on tape and bought it and ran it again and again. Heaven. Sheer heaven. And then one night I saw him in a documentary, talking about the "pot-boiler" movies he'd made for Rank. And he said he was a good actor. A very good actor, because he never liked Phyllis. "Too much the STAR," he said. Here I'd been drooling over them in "Madonna" and "The Man In Grey," the other romp, this time Regency, with James Mason as the aristocratic cad who pretty much "buys" Phyllis to perpetuate what Granger calls "his rotten line," and then treats her indifferently until she steps out of line with Stewart ... and all the time he was holding in his contempt for poor Phyllis. Who probably never knew it. It's a tribute to his magnetism that I can still like him in "Scaramouche" after his crumbling my illusions to pieces like that. But I still do.

True, I do have criticisms of Robert Osborne's "wraparounds", but as Tom said, that should be reserved perhaps for a thread dedicated to that topic. Dotherty, as the original poster, you may be feeling disappointed. Sorry. Not at all! At the risk of being thought a renegade, I enjoy it when the threads go here and there. I learn a lot and I like to watch discussions. I hope that isn't being too much of a rule-buster. I'm still a fairly recent entry in the movies stakes here.

OK, since you dropped Milburn Stone and I can't remember if I ever asked you, do you know why the theatre at Cecil College, a two year school in Cecil County MD is named the MILBURN STONE THEATRE? I know that means he probably left them money, but my question is why? I can't find a connection between Mr. Stone and the school and/or area. The only connection I can think of is that Mil went to the Naval Academy at Annapolis for a time before joining a theatrical troupe. He said (part of his Navy shtick) that if he'd stayed in the Navy he might have made something of himself ...

My guess is that it's Alice Faye in the second one; now I'll just have to go down the list of AF movies and see what I can find ... I don't expect to be able to pick it out, though ... I remember a gag on someone's show way back when, talking about Phil Harris buying a railroad? They called it the Atchison, Topeka and the Alice Faye ... My memories of Alice Faye concern the guys who were in love with her ... Philsie, of course, George Brent and Tony Martin (who married her first). She must have been one heck of a guy magnet. Tony wrote about the days when he was pursuing her. He was in a men's clothing store and the clerk asked him if he would try on a coat that Greta Garbo was buying for George Brent, since they were about the same size. He agreed, even though he wasn't fond of George because George was after Alice, because he didn't want to pass up the chance to meet Garbo. Garbo was crazy about George and wanted to marry him. His daughter, years later, asked why he didn't marry her, since he married just about everybody else. He said, "Sometimes you feel like getting married, sometimes you don't. At that time I didn't." She lavished gifts on him ... I saw a pair of gorgeous silver candlesticks she bought him, the most beautiful I ever saw. Sorry! I'm rambling. Just one of those rambling days.

George was a graceful guy. Seems strange to use that word to describe him, but he was. Gracie had been badly burned as a child ... a pot of scalding water had fallen on her arm ... and she was scarred, so that she never wore short sleeves. One day she said to him, "You've always been so nice about the scar on my arm; you never mentioned it." He said, "That's okay." Then after a minute he asked, "Which one is it?" He was the brains of the act, of course, and Gracie always recognized it. He had never been successful without her, but he remained very savvy about show business. When he talked about it, he said the big thing he had going for him was that he knew how to get on and how to get off. That's critical. One of his best lines was, "I said, 'Gracie, how's your brother?' And she talked for thirty-eight years." I saw him once telling about his nickname for her, "Googie." He said one night she said to him, "George, say something funny to me." He said, "Googie." She laughed. It stuck. He always called her that. "Googie," pronounced like "cookie." He was at the mausoleum, touching her tomb, saying, "I'll see you soon, Googie."

Okay, so there's nothing going on about George Burns. I just like to talk about him, and he has been in some movies. When he died, a friend of mine who lived quite near him left a tribute at the gatepost outside his house. A giant cigar tied to a plant with a white flower, and a note that said "Thanks, George ... one for the road." His songs were of course the things people loved toward the end of his life. He could get up there and start (accompanied by the guy who could play in his key). He could sing the song, racing himself in the beginning "There was a fellow down in Yonkers who wrote a song one day ..." then slowing down for the middle, telling the story in rhythm, and finally dropping the last line as he walked off the stage. It never failed to kill the people. He told about his surefire method of getting an ovation for every song as he started the first line, by beginning it with the same verse: "There was a fellow down in Yonkers who wrote a song one day and it made a great big hit and everybody came to hear it played How could it miss ... How could it miss ... When the chorus goes like this: And then you can sing any song you want and get a standing ovation." I'm going to drop my favorite name (Milburn Stone) and tell you what he said about George. He said George had the most phenomenal memory he had ever encountered. You could be talking to him and say goodbye and thirty years later you could run into him and he'd pick up the conversation right where you left it off. He never forgot anything, places, times, subjects. My favorite of his songs: A SWEET YOUNG THING George Burns A sweet young thing was jilted by her husband He left her and went his merry way With tearful eyes she wrote a final letter In which her broken heart had this to say: 'I'm returning every present that you gave me I'm sending back each letter that you wrote And every sweet memento that we cherished The locket that I wore around my throat; Enclosed you'll find the mortgage on the house, dear; That I'm fair, you must admit is true; I'm returning everything except the baby ... That's the one thing that I didn't get from you!" George taught me a great lesson. He wrote that if you had trouble going to sleep, you should sit up and determine NOT to go to sleep, no matter what happened. Surround yourself with all the things you can think of to keep you awake. Guaranteed to put you out in five minutes. Good story about George and Jack Benny. They went to a club for lunch where they used to meet often, paying the check by turns. One day George urged Jack to have the bread and butter with his lunch. Jack said Mary didn't like him to have the bread and butter. George said, "Oh, go on; have the bread and butter." "No," said Jack, "Mary just wouldn't like it." George finally wore him down and Jack decided to have the bread and butter. At the end of the meal the waiter brought the check. George said to give it to Jack. Jack said it wasn't his turn to pay; it was George's turn. George said, "If you don't pay the check, I'll tell Mary you had the bread and butter."