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I assume Hugh Grant's A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL didn't qualify for this year's awards?

Just watched Tab Hunter the other night in a "Playhouse 90" presentation of Portrait of a Murderer with Geraldine Page. He turned in a remarkable LIVE performance. When given the chance, he was a fine actor, but he got stereotyped by the studio bosses.

and Alison Skipworth, Almira Sessions, Zasu Pitts, Bertha Belmore, Helen Broderick, Esther Dale, Janet Beecher.....

Marion Davies and Emily Fitzroy in Zander the Great (1925)

Esma Cannon in Holiday Camp (1947), terrific film that stars Dennis Price, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Hazel Court, and Jimmy Hanley. Cannon plays Elsie Dawson, a spinster who gets involved in everything.

Of course they would make a documentary and focus on one thing. The "scandal" is just about the thing I'd be LEAST interested in knowing more about.

Oh YES to the great Kathleen Freeman ... and Nancy Kulp, Kathleen Howard, Josephine Crowell, Nora Cecil, Mary Wickes, Mabel Albertson, Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Gingold........

I love old biddies in movies and thought of writing a book entitled Biddies, Frumps, and Hags, but haven't gotten to it yet. Old biddies are a dying breed! Josephine Hull in Harvey and Arsenic and Old Lace Margaret Hamilton in Nothing Sacred Emily Fitzroy in Zander the Great and Show Boat Agnes Moorehead in Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte Marjorie Main in The Egg and I Mary Boland in The Women Jane Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath Patsy Kelly in Going Hollywood Polly Moran in Hollywood Party May Robson in Lady for a Day, Lady by Choice and Bringing Up Baby Thelma Ritter in The Mating Season, All About Eve and The Misfits Jan Duggan in The Old Fashioned Way and A Damsel in Distress Ellen Corby in I Remember Mama Hope Emerson in Caged Lee Patrick in Auntie Mame Esma Cannon in Jassy and Holiday Camp Judith Anderson in Rebecca and of course Marie Dressler in any film she ever made!

I doubt it, since the current crop can't sing. All they can do is shriek and add ten notes where only one is needed.

They can't equal the music or the dancing, so why bother? Are they going to make the music into hip-hop and rap crap? I can't believe Stephen Sondheim (he wrote the lyrics) okayed this or has anything to do with it.

George Bernard Shaw was a Marion Davies fan and wanted her to play Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, which Leslie Howard filmed in 1938 as an independent production released thru MGM. Would have been another great teaming of Davies and Howard. By the time Howard and Shaw got around to filming, Davies had retired. Davies and Shaw in March of 1933 with some guy named Chaplin in tow.

If the film was shown before via a licensing agreement, the agreement likely was in force for 5-7 years. And yes it would have been a good Howard film to show.

The licensing agreement may have expired.....

I usually like the great musicals of the era, but I find Jane Powell hugely annoying in this one.....

Never liked it. One good dance sequence.

I don't know ANYONE who watches TV series anymore.

They still hand out Emmy Awards? Really.

and she may be the new Madonna.

His daughter Leslie Ruth Howard made one film appearance as an actress. She also appears in Tom's documentary.

Yup you got me on that one! Davies actually WAS a big movie star. Like a lot of other big movie stars of the era, we've forgotten what a star looks she was.

My guess is that this is a bomb in the making, much like Renee Zellweger's Judy Garland biopic. The audience for these kinds of films don't go to theaters all that often.

Is there an audience for this film? Any opinions?

While the Hungarian-born Leslie Howard specialized in playing British gentlemen (a lost breed in today's world, British or otherwise), his real life (and death) was anything but. Watch my friend Tom Hamilton's terrific documentary on Howard on June 18. You'll have a better appreciation of Leslie Howard.

Saying that a film is "dated" is like saying a Shakespeare play or a Stenbeck novel is "dated." Obviously so. You need to approach the work in its own context. A film made in 1937 was no more dated in its time than any film now playing is today.

I'll pass.