Dothery

Doris Day. I'm old enough to have seen all the films we're discussing in their first runs, from Irene Dunne on through the decades; I loved her, I loved Garland, I loved Durbin, Grayson, all the rest. I thought they were great. But I never thought any of them was a great actress. When I saw Doris for the first time in "Romance on the High Seas," I couldn't believe it was her first film. Not a quiver, not a mistake anywhere. She acted like a pro, sang like a dream and handled comedy as though she'd been born to it. You could explain away the singing part, since she'd been with Les Brown (and his Band of Renown) for a long time, and knew all about how to get to us with her vocal performance, but the comedy? That's hard to do. Really hard. Then I saw her do drama, and do it so well I was nearly crying with her. I defy anyone to see her in "Love Me or Leave Me," keeping up with Jimmy Cagney and not putting a foot wrong, to deny that she's a great dramatic actress. Her work in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" proves that, and above all her performance in "Midnight Lace." Both were flawless. Granted, her breakdown in "Midnight Lace" was real, and didn't have to be acted ... she had been abused, beaten, tortured, really, by her psychotic first husband, and it all came back to her at that moment. I liked her in the James Garner and Rock Hudson movies ... especially that all-time favorite "Pillow Talk" ... which was her favorite as well ... but they paled in comparison to her dramatic acting. And after all that, she was broke, her money stolen and thrown away by her husband and manager. Her son Terry rescued her from the financial morass they had left her in, but sadly, he died and left her bereft once more. She's a very strong lady and has survived all of it. She quit when she was ahead, and that was a good thing. She has a good life now with all her dogs and her activities.

LadyE wrote, "I know Ginger Rogers does not get much love on these Boards, but I think she was an amazing entertainer. Her awful autobiography has done a lot to burst a sort of "myth" status she had. I read it recently and it took me a while to recover from all that blandness. What a boring person she was in real life, amazing that she managed to be so entertaining on screen!" I have to go along with you there, LadyE. I read a revealing story about her when she was doing a play, and was sitting in the audience seats during rehearsal while her husband Bill Marshall was on stage. They were speaking French to each other. She called up to him, "Fermez la porte de la cuisine." He said, "What?" She said it again: "Fermez la porte de la cuisine." He said, "What?" again, whereupon one of the stage hands yelled from the wings, "Shut the kitchen door!"

Yes, she moved on with marriage to another man and moved to Paris, where she still resides in a townhouse. She was actually married twice. Her first husband was an abuser, Marcus Goodrich, a novelist. In court she claimed he was brutal and left her with bruises she had to cover with scarves. I remember when she married the French editor of Paris Match, and moved to Paris. She wrote a marvelous book about her life there, which I still remember parts of ... I remember thinking she was quite a good writer, on the wryly funny side. She divorced her husband some years later, but raised her children there because she felt the cultural climate was much better for them in terms of education and family life. I think you're right in saying she's still trying to understand Flynn, although I don't think the book will contribute much to her understanding, since he himself said the publishers took out the meat of it and left the fluff. They couldn't, I guess, at that time, include everything he wanted left in, or it would have caused an uproar. He lied a lot in it too, as he later admitted. For one thing he tells the story of the John Barrymore's corpse incident that never happened, as though it were fact. So did Raoul Walsh, for that matter. Flynn had a lot of fun, though, we must admit, playing fast and loose with facts for effect.

<Why couldn't life be like this?> Well, IT IS in our classic movies. Maybe that's why we love 'em so much! It sure is for me. What fun to go back to the way things were, instead of the dreary violence of today's pictures. Not all, but I have a hard time finding anything to compare with these classics.

Believe it or not, William Powell has never been featured in SUTS (possibly because his birthday is July 29, and Powell was honored on TCM that day in some of those years). But I think it's time my all-time favorite actor finally got 24 hours of his own. How about it, TCM? My wish, as well. I don't know what's so charismatic about him, but I dearly love watching him. Maybe it's his great diction. His looks aren't much, but I've read in articles from the 40's that nobody got women interested as much as he, in spite of them. One said he could wipe the floor with the Errol Flynns and Tyrone Powers where girls were concerned. Maybe it was just plain charm. One of the sad stories I read was one concerning Jean Harlow, and the author was there for the scene. She said Jean had asked her to be present, and when she arrived she found Bill sitting alone. Jean then asked him point-blank to marry her. He looked miserable and said, "Baby, we've already been through all this." She accused him of not loving her, and he said, "You know better than that." He left a few minutes later. It was a terrible thing to watch because Jean broke down crying and was sobbing for half the night. Apparently the reason he didn't want to marry her was that he'd been married to one blonde bombshell (Carole Lombard) and wanted a normal stay-at-home wife. He knew that woudn't happen with Jean. Eventually he got one, with his wife Diana Lewis.

Of course it's the title of a famous aria in J. Strauss' operetta Die Fledermaus. Originally in German, no matter what language the opera/aria are sung in, the line Chacun a son gout is always sung in French. Thanks, Swithin. Funny you should include the Die Fledermaus clip, since I just saw the operetta in October, in Honolulu. My friend tenor Richard Troxell sang the role of Eisenstein. Beautifully, as always. His is an exceptional voice and a great stage presence. His Pinkerton in the Frederic Mitterand film "Madame Butterfly" is perfect. When it was released it was given Two Thumbs Up by Siskel and Ebert. It's a lovely, beautifully photographed movie with glorious music. No one should miss it. It's on Netflix, so no one has to. "Butterfly" has become his live signature opera since he made the picture.

Olivia de Havilland as a lovely, intelligent Maid Marian, sharing a fairy tale screen chemistry with her leading man; Wonderful reviews of wonderful films, Tom, as always. This quote got my attention at once, since Olivia has made it very clear on many occasions that she was really in love with Flynn at the time. She said she resented his bringing his wife to the set when they were doing the balcony scene, to the point where, to punish him, she flubbed her lines deliberately over and over, in order to kiss him so much that he, in her words, "had trouble with his tights." She felt he had some nerve bringing his wife over, since he'd been indicating that he loved her (Olivia), and NOT Lili, just prior to that. My own opinion is that she never stopped loving him. I remember her saying on a Donahue show that when she heard of his death she couldn't stop crying for two days. I felt it must be her misfortune to have fallen in love with him at such an early age. She still talks about him with such love.

Thanks for sharing that story. Sounds like a great book! It is. I'm going to get it again. I can't remember every story in it, but there was one about Mae West that was really funny. It was written by a theater owner named Harold J Kennedy, and these are his own recollections that he writes about. He couldn't stand John Barrymore, Jr. ... nobody could. He loved Jean Parker. Things like that and the reasons for them. His story about Mae West focuses on the fact that she was an extremely smart business woman. She knew how to bring in the customers. Great anecdotes. Amazon.com has it.

James Dean? ... Oops. Ssw it was posted already.

I saw Jane Cowl's name on the list and couldn't resist recounting an anecdote about her that was in a book called "No Pickle, No Performance," which was about dinner theater and summer stock. She and her company were playing the circuit once and, as was customary in each town, auditioned young men for the casual parts. She had a deep voice and needed someone with as deep a voice or deeper, and found him in one town. He was to abduct Miss Cowl from a camp and his line was, "I'm going to take you to the mountains!" He was fine in rehearsal, but his wife was very dubious, and said, "He's always fine in rehearsal," but no one took her seriously. On the night of the performance, as Miss Cowl was about to be kidnapped by this young bandit, he made his entrance, but when he tried to speak, he froze. Not a sound came out. He and Jane looked at each other in silence until finally she said, "Do you want to take me to the mountains?" He nodded dumbly, and she said, "Well, let's go," took him by the hand and they exited. I'm laughing again thinking about it. That book is absolutely hilarious. I gave it to Milburn Stone and when I saw him next he said, "I can't stop laughing at that book." Farley Granger loved it and gave it to all his friends. I guess it was the connection between all the dinner theater alumni that made them love it so.

The literal translation (in English) is: To each his taste. I understand it has two translations; one English-French and one French. It also has two French versions: "A chacun son gout" and "Chacun a son gout." “Everyone has (a+ ) his taste”; or, “Everyone to (à) his taste.” The former is French, the latter is English-French. The phrase is much more common with us than it is in France, where we meet with the phrases —Chacun a sa chacunerie (everyone has his idiosyncrasy), and chacun a sa marotte (everyone has his hobby). In Latin sua cuique voluptas,+ “as the good-man said when he kissed his cow.” My mother used to end it with "as the old lady said when she kissed the cow." Cow-kissing seems to be closely associated with it.

Howard Hill. I don't know why Flynn is working on the arrow. The story about Hill shooting the arrow that split the other arrow in Robin Hood has been refuted by Buster Wiles, the stuntman friend of Flynn, who said they tried it that way but it didn't photograph well, so they rigged a wire to the target and Buster shot the arrow down the wire for the split, which worked nicely on camera. Oh, and Hill was the world champion archer who worked on the film.

*Anyone?* I'm late getting in, and probably 60 people have beaten me to it, but it's Gloria Swanson.

'oo? Froderick Fronkensteen. (Marty Feldman's line.)

Thank you, Tom, for those great pictures of Valentino and Colman (both guys on my favorites list) and the cogent comments. I never could get the fuss surrounding John Gilbert. His nose was so darn big! But chacon a son gout, I always say. I didn't think his voice was that bad. The stories are rife about why he lost out in the talkies. Not that it matters. My favorite story about him is in Adela Rogers St. John's book, where he's quoted as saying Garbo didn't want to marry him because he loved the bright lights and celebrity and she wanted to leave the business (which of course she did). He said what she really wanted was to get married, live on a farm and have 17 children!

"'Allo, Froderick"

Stone is one of those people who was in so many films, often in small bits and unbilled, that you may not even spot him the first or second time you see a film. One of my favorite small bits he played was as Lieutenant Farragut in "Reap the Wild Wind," in the scene with John Wayne where Wayne has to put the model of his wrecked ship in the ship graveyard. I didn't recognize him the first time I saw it, although I knew his voice right away. It was very distinctive. He had a false nosepiece on, so I didn't realize who he was at first. He did play a lot of reporters. I noticed him first playing a reporter in "The Princess Comes Across," with Carole Lombard. I think he had one line.

...All I could think of was Don Lockwood's first meeting with Lina Lamont!!! True, Dargo! It was similar, wasn't it? I can still see the still picture he showed us of himself and the diva (she actually turned out to be a pretty nice girl, but was apparently having a bad morning that day in the car). He was playing a petty officer in it and was standing with one foot on a chair ... very dashing in his whites. He was quite handsome then and later. He said to me once, "If I'd been six inches taller, I could have been a leading man!" and laughed. He'd been a midshipman at Annapolis before he went with a group of traveling players and entered show business and I think he would have looked the part. He said, lamenting his lost chances, "You know, if I'd stayed in the Navy I might have made something of myself!" And laughed.

Were it a Monogram movie, they would have just kept going. That made me laugh. For about a year before his death, I knew Milburn Stone, and one night he was telling stories about his early years in movies, and said that he was dealing with a diva who was a "star" at Monogram. He added, "Although how you could be a star at Monogram, I never found out ..." It ended well. Apparently she had ignored his greeting when they picked her up in the car on their first day, and a couple of days later she tried to get him to go to lunch or something, and he said, "You've established that you are the star of this film; and that being the case, I'd feel awkward going to lunch with you." She was surprised and began a long apology, which he graciously accepted. He said they were good friends after that. Milburn was a hoot. Everybody liked him. He never took any guff from anybody, big or little, but he liked people until they gave him a reason not to, and then he stood up to them.

Seriously, the duel in Scaramouche is one of the great glories of swashbuckling films From a review of "Scaramouche," "Incidentally the final sword fight was the longest sword fight in movie history until Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones fenced their way into the record books in The Mask of Zorro. They may now have the longest but Scaramouche still has the best." "Scaramouche" is still one of my favorites. Nobody ever looked as good in those period costumes as Granger. I thought Janet Leigh was good but stiff; Eleanor Parker was REALLY good. Ramon Novarro did a version of "Scramouche" with Alice Terry. It's available at Amazon for fifteen bucks. I may just invest in it. Always liked Ramon.

I remember my grandmother going on and on about him and Valentino's Sheik of Araby. Regarding Valentino, I can see why. My mother (born in 1901) said she couldn't see much in him at first, but then she saw him in a picture where he had his shirt off, rowing a boat, and she was surprised at his muscles and how beautiful he was physically. I saw him in The Sheik back in the 1950's and I was impressed then. I thought he was a pretty charismatic personality. Fascinating to watch. Since then I've seen several of his other movies and they were just as watchable. I keep The Sheik on my DVR and watch it again now and then. I didn't like the plot of The Son of The Sheik as much, but he was even better as the father in that one, with a false nose. Again impressed, since the dual-role characters were quite different. I've read of him (Adela Rogers St. John) that he was much more like a boy than a romantic lover, was nearsighted but couldn't wear glasses when he was working, so his steady romantic looks were partly not being able to see where he was going on the set. He loved cars and horses and fun, and was very athletic. He was very much in love with his wife Natasha Rambova, but she broke his heart by leaving him. When he died he was "sort of" engaged to Pola Negri, but his heart wasn't in it. A shame he went so young.

No one could sing "A Little Girl from Little Rock" like Carol. I have it on tape from a show she did when her arm was broken and in a cast, and she was still so funny and could get such response from the audience it was hard to believe. She could make you laugh out loud at the lyrics and her delivery of them. She's so tall, but it looks good on stage and you don't notice it. I too wish we had seen her in those two shows. They really belonged to her.

Yesterday I watched Orson Welles' last interview, with Merv Griffin. It was his last appearance anywhere, as he died two hours later. He agreed for some reason to answer that night the personal questions he had always evaded in previous interviews, and when Merv asked him about Rita Hayworth, he said she was the sweetest, warmest, most gentle woman he had ever known. A lovely tribute. He said that when the rumors began about her being drunk and rowdy (she actually was in the early stages of Alzheimer's), he never believed them, because it would have been so alien to her real personality.

I like seeing Barton MacLane in films, but wish he had gotten some more lead role opportunities. Sometime ago TCM aired *Wine, Women and Horses *and he was the lead along with Ann Sheridan. I thought it was a very good little film and would recommend it to others. Like many people of my age my first look at him was on TV's I Dream of Jeannie where he was the General, sadly that was his last credits, he died in 1969 at age 66. My first look at him was in "The Prince and the Pauper," where he played poor Tom Canty's horrible abusive father. I LOATHED him. After that whenever I saw him I had to work my way around that original characterization. The older girl who took us to the movie tried to explain that he was just an actor playing a part, and that he was probably a nice guy, but we weren't buying it. We were about nine at the time and impressionable as all get out.

In my quest for the lyrics to "El Sombrero Blanco," I came across a forum of Zorro enthusiasts, and have stolen an informative post from someone named Don Firth, who I hope will not mind my reprinting it for some other admirers of the genre. If it isn't cricket to do this, forgive my ignorance. "One of the finest swashbuckers ever made and the best duel scene in any movie, by far. Both Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone were excellent fencers, and although Fred Cavins is listed as the fight director, Power and Rathbone choreographed the duel in the alcalde's study themselves. The only quibble would be that their fencing was the modern Hungarian-Italian style of saber-play and they used modern competition fencing sabers. But I don't mind a little anachronism when I can watch fencing that good." I watched the movie tonight with my Tuesday-night movie buddy. Marvelous. Nobody seems to agree on the lyrics to "El Sombrero Blanco," or its origin, though there are several replies. However it began, the dance serves as a terrific high point in the romance between Diego and Lolita.