Vautrin

Up against the wall, you Oedipus people. I've never seen TCM as having much of a liberal bent or having liberal credentials. It's just a channel that shows old movies. I know Mank gets a lot of guff for mentioning the blacklist, but I believe Osborne would mention it also at times.

It definitely deserves a bare all exploration. I believe these girls were on a nudist camp vacation for a few weeks in the summer. I wouldn't be surprised if there are nudist camps in many states. Maybe there are some in the Pine Barrens or close to the shore. I'll wager the French had some camps in pre-1962 Algeria, though I doubt they were nudist camps.

I remember seeing a nudist camp film on YT a number of years ago. Can't recall the title, but it looked like it was from the early to mid 1960s. Everyone stayed in cozy cabins with a roommate of the same sex. After welcoming people to the camp, the nudists gradually started to shed their clothes. The swimming pool became the center of the social scene at the camp. The nudity wasn't that blatant, mostly topless women and perhaps a strategic bush (the vegetative kind) or tree to hide the men's dickerdoos. All rather innocent, which was part of the charm of the film. There was no sex, just some nice people cavorting around without clothes.

I liked Osborne. The only quibble I have is people referring to him as a rock star. This guy was many things, but a rock star wasn't one of them.

I gleaned the information about Mankiewicz and Hearst from two long articles by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker from February of 1971. This was later turned into a book called, for some crazy reason, The Citizen Kane Book. I'll have to skim through the magazines to find the details about the relationship. Rosebud was Hearst's pet name for Marion Davies' pudendum. He must have felt that Mank using this in the script was a shot below the belt.

God may forgive you but...I do too. I haven't seen the remake in many years, but I think I would still like the original version better. The Fenchness helps a lot, those funny little cars, the upstairs highly put out neighbors, etc. And I've always had a crush on Vera Clouzot. Scott became typecast as a charming, sometimes deadly, bounder, so that was where the studio placed him for the most part. Scott zooming down that ramp in his wheelchair and out into the traffic is ten times funnier than Widmark pushing granny down the narrow stairs, but to each their own.

That would be the original with Widmark and his big Spy vs. Spy hat. Remakes vary in quality. Some are total bombs, others, though not as good as the original, are still good films, and a few surpass the original. A remake of Les Diaboliques came out quite a number of years ago. It was nowhere as good as the original, but judged on its own it was pretty good.

This was at the start of the film, so the audience was just getting into the picture. We were more interested in looking at Dominique Sanda than the brothers, but that's a gender matter. We were teenagers who did not appreciate the great cinematic masterpiece which we were about to experience. This was in New York, if I recall it correctly. And it sure seemed to last longer than 95 minutes. I've only seen it a few times since and have upgraded my opinion of the movie.

Let's roll. The scene with Scott going down the ramp and out into heavy traffic came so suddenly all I could do was watch in fascination, almost in disbelief. It just looked so funny. Zoom, Crash. It's funny how the look of wheelchairs have stayed the same until the last few years.

I once caused a minor bad experience. I was with a friend watching The Garden of the Finzi-Continis when we were talking a bit too loudly as the move started. A woman in front of us turned around and told us to be quiet. We gave her a dirty look back but shut up for the most part.

Don't forget Paris, Texas. They even made a movie with that title. It would take more than a town named Paris to make me want to visit Texas. I have two editions of the RS history book. One is the size of a coffee table book on steroids, the later edition is a more regular size. They both have interesting essays on the individuals and bands of rock and roll history. If one is just interested in factual detail, Wiki is pretty good.

Whiplash (1948) Dana Clark, Alexis Smith, Zachary Scott, et al. No, it's not a flick about a group of crooks who stage minor traffic accidents. It's that rare plot about a painter who turns into a boxer and then, back again, into a painter. Dane Clark plays his patented Dane Clark role as a working stiff with a large chip on his shoulder who is going to scratch his way to the top of something. As the film opens, Dane is in the boxing ring taking a beating. Then as he's about to get beat up some more, it's flashback time. Dane started out as an artiste, a painter in Monterrey. Alexis buys one of his paintings and Dane goes to visit her. Before you can say second rate Impressionism, they fall for each other. Then one day, Alexis is suddenly gone. Dane finds out that the painting is being sent to NYC. Naturally he goes to NYC. Who wouldn't? There he is depressed to find out that Alexis is married to Scott, who is confined to a wheelchair. Dane decides to try his hand at boxing as one of Scott's group of boxers. He is very successful as a pugilist. Alexis's brother is a booze hound doctor who give the boxers physicals. On the night of the big championship fight, Dane is getting beat to a pulp, but then he regroups and wins the fight. Maybe the flashback, instead of depleting his energy, gave it a big boost. The boozing doctor confronts Zachary and his bodyguard for all their underhanded schemes and their treatment of his sister. The bodyguard shoots the doctor and Zach prepares to be wheeled down the ramp at the back of the boxing arena. But the dying good doctor pulls out a gat and shoots the bodyguard, leaving old Zach to careen down the ramp and right out into the street, where Zach or a stuntman or a dummy is smashed by a car. This is one of the best unintentional comic scenes I have ever seen. It looks like one of those things you might see in a Fields' comedy and it is a better come- uppance than Scott received in Mildred Pierce. With the bad guy out of the way, Clark and Smith head back to Californyeaye and a happy ending. Alan Hale has a supporting part as Clark's Irish trainer, who spends much of his screen time reminding people that he is...Irish. Eve Arden also has a turn as her usual wise cracking friend of the star. Overall, a pretty conventional noir film with a few unusual twists but still entertaining. The Zachary Scott death in wheelchair scene is worth an additional half star, it's that hilarious. Spoilers.

Most, if not all, of the Rathbone SH series is on YT and the visual quality is pretty good.

Herman Mankiewicz was a fairly regular guest at Hearst's lavish boreathons at San Simeon. So while other tycoons were used to some extent as models for Kane, Hearst was the main one. The biggest shot Herman took was rosebud, which in its original use had nothing to do with sleds.

I would attribute it to a much simpler reason--many of the readers were probably on certain mind-altering substances when they were reading RS. These rumors usually don't make much sense in the first place. RS did do some good journalism, both of the musical and non-musical kind. I still have a box full of old RSs out in my garage from the early to mid 1970s when they still used the fold over format. No, I spent my petit enfanthood in New Jersey, which isn't very close to Paris.

Sweeter than sugar. Even after all these years that song still sounds good, even with those silly lyrics.

Little Gilly, Gilly won't go home But you can't push Gilly round Gilly won't go, try tellin' everybody but, oh no Little Gilly, Gilly won't go home Little Gilly, Gilly won't go home But you can't push Gilly round Gilly won't go, try tellin' everybody but, oh no Little Gilly, Gilly won't go home

Glenda giving it to the Iron Bag Lady. Priceless. Ding dong...

Yes, Lumpy Dumpy was a bully, though one who looked kind of nerdy riding around on a bike with his jacket and hat on. Well, he was a suburban bully. Whole different dress code. Beaver also had a crush on Miss Landers and then he saw some preppy type guy in a sports car pull up to her place. Yes, Miss Landers. That was that. I remember I went to summer school one year. There would be a double bill of Beaver and Donna Reed and then I would get on my bike and ride to school. I recall there were rumors that Ken Osmond was John Holmes and Alice Cooper and all the time he was some square motorcycle cop in L.A. Bummer, man. And then there was the rumor that Jerry Mathers died in Vietnam. I don't know if there was actually a headline Leave It to Beaver to Get Killed in Vietnam. Likely not, but it was funny.

Well that's nothing compared to having a visible band playing generic funk following you down the street. Not even the King had that. My excuse is that the only Elvis film I've seen is Jailhouse Rock and I don't remember if I made it all the way through that one. Be careful when you take career advice from a small time grifter from Holland.

Wait a minute. Fred and Judy were a thing? That blows my mind, totally. Who would conceive that square ol Freddy boy was a cradle snatcher. Parents, better stock up on barrel hoops to spread in your driveway. Rutherford is on the prowl. GB was very untrustworthy. As an adult I wouldn't be surprised if he spent time in the pen for some white collar crime. Beaver didn't have much luck in picking friends. Yes, a boy's best friend is his mother, even if she didn't want to wear that Oh La La blouse.

I laugh every time I see that scene, even though I know it's coming. Not even Superfly or Shaft had their own theme musicians following them around.

I'm not that big a fan, but I won't dispute it.

It appears that Nip isn't quite on board. Stark was a good guy for a short while, then he turned into a crook very quickly.

I remember most of those. You haven't lived till you've seen a picture of ol' David Ferrie with his fake eyebrows. Yikes. Ferrie made Oswald look almost normal. I'm sure Omarosa is too busy plugging her book, which is, well what authors do. Strzok is probably just sitting down and starting his first draft.