LornaHansonForbes
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Posts posted by LornaHansonForbes
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Hib, baby, at first I thought the thread said "Anyone going psycho?" which, given the stresses we all have to endure each and every day in this weary world, is not an unreasonable question.
Alas, the company or whoever they are that present these theatre screenings, in co-operation with TCM, seem uninterested in scheduling any of their events in Canada. As far as I know they only did this once. I did attend that one event, but I'm pretty sure they've never run anything north of the U.S. border since.
I just can't fathom it.
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I actually enjoyed DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS more than I thought it would- it really sort of "came together" at the end, making a solid point about faith and humanity. I generally tend to not take a lot of interest in the big 1950's "ta-tas and togas" epics, but this was clocked in at under two hours, which helped a lot.
...And then I stayed up for a good bit of THE CONQUEROR.
Wow, that movie....just, wow.
ps- wow.
pss- hope Mod1 doesn't have a stroke at the sight of the word "ta-tas."
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Suzie finally gets her man (really worth watching, just skip over the Jerry Lewis bits- ugh.)
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I don't understand why I'LL CRY TOMORROW and I WANT TO LIVE weren't at 8 and 10, rather than being relegated to the graveyard shift.
+1.
Although both show pretty regularly on TCM (for a while, they were about the only Hayward movies we ever got to see.)
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i caught a brief moment of THE PRISONER OF 2ND AVENUE yesterday, before I had to go back out. The news story about the 12 psychiatrists who were trapped in an elevator during a head-shrinker's convention in NYC was pretty funny, the punch line was that 10 of them had to be hospitalized for severe panic attacks.
when I came home, GARBO TALKS! was on and I actually found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would.
Man, Anne Bancroft was just the best.
Miss her.
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Power was starting to lose his great looks by then, and, without his great looks, he was just another actor. Since this was his last film, we'll really never know what was in store for him.
well, at least he does have NIGHTMARE ALLEY to his credit, were it not for that film I'd be inclined to write Power off entirely.
aside from the failing looks, there is also the fact that Power, while blessed with an extraordinary face, did not have a voice to go with it, a fact that is not helped in his scenes with Laughton who, of course, one could listen to all day.
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I like SOME LIKE IT HOT, but Wilder has done better------THE APARTMENT, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, THE LOST WEEKEND, SABRINA, but I'm sure I don't like SUNSET BLVD. as much as many of you.
FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO and ONE, TWO, THREE up there with his very best. They don't get mentioned often enough. ACE IN THE HOLE too.
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WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION is a good and highly watchable film, and yet, every time I do watch it- I get a sense of "patness" about the whole thing, especially in some of the scenes between Elsa Lanchester (sp?) and Laughton. That said, Laughton is wonderful, Dietrich is wonderful, Lanchester (sp? is wonderful, Una O'Connor is- as always- an utter delight, and Henry Daniell is wonderful. Tyrone Power is not wonderful. He is, perhaps, adequate- but I find him glib (and I know he was a good actor.)
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Possible progenitor for Twin Peaks also.
Yes, very much so.
The entry for THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS in THE PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE also agrees with you.
It's a really intriguing film for all sorts of reasons- but not the least of which is the performance of RON RANDELL, an Australian actor who is also in the awful THE SHE-CREATURE, as well as KISS ME KATE (as Cole Porter!), KING OF KINGS and THE LONGEST DAY. He gives- as I recall- an excellent performance and doesn't betray the slightest hint of an accent.
A kooky, and at times deliciously hateful movie.
Thanks for the OP, this is one that deserves checking out. (it also features the wonderful ANNE BANCROFT soon before she did THE MIRACLE WORKER and blew up.)
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Growing up in the early nineties, I had an eccentric art teacher (who at the time was in her sixties) and who had been a high-fashion model in NYC, and with whom I shared a love of classic movies, songs and actors.
I will never forget her telling me a story about when she was a young girl, she and some friends saw MARGARET SULLAVAN at a table at a beachside cafe. They approached her for an autograph, and she promptly summoned a waiter and told him to "get these kids the hell away from me."
Did it really happen? Was my teacher's memory maybe confused and it was really Constance Bennett? Did they catch her at bad time? I dunno, but combined with what I've read about Sullavan being a neurotic, frosty, volatile personality (being married to Henry Fonda didn't help) whose daughter killed herself and who later took her own life, it's a little hard for me to buy the perpetual "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" routine Miss Sullavan seems to be putting on in all of her films, some of which (LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW? comes immediately to mind) have not aged well at all.
Thank you, and I appreciate your allowing my to ruin Margaret Sullavan for those of you remaining in her corner.
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LOL. No. I think she took lessons from Constance Collier early in her career........
Is she the one who plays the older actress who becomes Katharine Hepburn's "coach/teacher" in STAGE DOOR and gives the great "show must go on!" speech to her after she hears the bad news about Kay?
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I worked with Robert Anderson, who wrote the screenplay for The Nun's Story, which was nominated for eight Oscars. Bob said they were hoping to win something, but it was the year of Ben-Hur. And the two of their categories that Ben-Hur wasn't nominated in were won by Room at the Top.
And as much as I dislike BEN-HUR, I can at least understand where the sweep came from and the fact that MGM took a gamble and spent a fafillion mojillion dollars and won is a feat as commendable as the merits of the many films BEN-HUR triumphed over that year.
But for the life of me, I have never understood just what in the hell it was that everyone thought was so great about ROOM AT THE TOP. The same film released at the same time but minus the accents would've come and gone in a week and a half with very little notice (see also: the work of Mike Leigh )
...and that said, Simone Signoret was a brilliant actress and she's excellent in the film and I'd be fine with her win, but the fact that her role borders on being supporting and she is summarily dismissed from the film without the final scene that she is owed.
That just puts her a notch in my book below Audrey and (the unnominated) Marilyn Monroe in SOME LIKE IT HOT and Elizabeth Taylor in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (which, nutty as that movie is, is a great and fearless performance.)
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Yes. Nun's Story got hammered by Ben-Hur's sweep that year. From what I've read Audrey and Anderson had an affair. He wrote a novel about it, but I've forgotten the title..........
That Audrey.
She was a brilliant actress, but not exactly "method" was she?
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I have mixed feelings about it, too. The first part always fascinates me, the details of what happens exactly when a girl goes from her home to postulant, novitiate, nun, was all new to me the first time I watched it. The scenes around and inside the church with the beautiful, ascetic Audrey were all sublime to look at.
It loses me quite a bit at the mental hospital -- she was so eager to go to Africa and nurse the children there, which I totally get, but her inability to feel much of anything but fear toward her mentally ill patients seemed odd to me. I didn't expect such specialized sympathy from a nun.
Then, finally, part three seemed a bit rushed. I understood her frustration at having to drop her nursing duties to run off to prayers, but I would also expect a nun to believe that the prayers were as vital to the well being of her patients as her hands on care.
I don't know, it's disappointing in some ways, yet still compelling enough for me to watch it over and over.
Yes, yes, yes and yes.
I can't think of any other star besides AUDREY who could be at the center of THE NUN'S STORY the way she is and make it as compelling as she does and make you not somehow resent the ending (and of course, the direction, production values and cast are certainly a help) the way she does.
I did not mention this in my original review, but there also comes a point in THE NUN'S STORY where- pageantry and custom be damned- the esoteric nature of the story can be frustrating, and by this I mean the many, many scenes and situations wherein Audrey either tells herself or is told that she, for lack of a better way of putting it, "ain't NUN enough to be a NUN." There gets to be a point where it's like ROCKY, only for nuns...and without the upbeat ending.
Personally, I would've loved to've seen THE NUN'S STORY 2: THE REVENGE OF SISTER LUKE wherein Audrey teams up with Colleen Dewhurst as THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL (the insane lady who attacks her when she's working at the asylum, and whom we discover via backstory is actually a member of the German underground who has been heavily drugged into dementia and shipped to the nunnery by her husband, an Austrian Baronet who wishes aid the Reich) and a newly jaded MOTHER SUPERIOR (Dame Edith Evans)- who has a bone to pick with the SS after they stampede a herd of cattle through her orphanage. Together, the trio form an elite group of militant saboteurs, determined to drive the Germans all the way back to Berlin.
THE NUN'S STORY 2: GOD FORGIVES, THEY DON'T!
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I missed the beginning this time around. What did R.O. and Sally have to say in the beginning?? I admire Audrey's performance in this film the more I see it. She's in almost every scene and a lot of the conflict is internal. A difficult thing to film or act...........
i did not catch the intro Robert and Sally did for THE NUN'S STORY, but I did catch their end discussion and it was one of their better ones- Sally wasn't as critical as she's tended to be of late, and she seemed to know quite a bit about the filmmakers struggle with Jack Warner to keep the ending low-key without any dramatic music or anything- whether this was from researching imdb or discussing it with either Audrey or Zinneman himself, I dunno (it's possible she had done any of three at some point in her life.)
...and I have no idea if there were any references to THE FLYING NUN at any time in the introduction, but I'd put ten bucks on "no."
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Edmund Goulding directed her in 4
William Dieterle in 4
Curtiz directed her in 6;
Alfred E. Green in 7;
While William Wyler only directed her in 3
I wonder if they all got together on occasion as a support group, you know like war buddies or survivors of violent traumas....
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then maybe there is some sort of issue with the Salinger estate. Maybe they bought the rights back to MY FOOLISH HEART and are sitting on it.
( I brought up earlier that I read somewhere that JD Salinger so hated what they did to his original story he vowed never to let any of his works be filmed again.)
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Irving Rapper also directed ANOTHER MAN'S POISON, which was later in Bette's career (1951, right after her big ALL ABOUT EVE comeback) and not a Warner's film, so maybe they had worked things out by that time (he directed her in four movies, was there any other director she worked with more?)
The second film he ever directed is the charming story of a minister: ONE FOOT IN HEAVEN, which was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (and done the year before VOYAGER). That is his only film to earn that honor and likely gave him some clout on the VOYAGER set.
He also directed THE CHRISTINE JORGENSON STORY ca. 1970...am I too far out on limb to suggest there is a parallel between it and NOW, VOYAGER?
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I always felt that Irving Rapper got a bad Rap from the gang at Warners. He may not have been a Curtiz, but he certainly was no Peter Godfrey!
He also doesn't get enough credit for being the first white Rapper to hit it big in Hollywood.
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Oh goody, are we going to talk about Stanley Kubrick again?
nothing to see here...move on, move on....
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I think MY FOOLISH HEART was originally in the schedule but got pulled for some reason. Someone posted about that. Or maybe it was Smash Up? Now I'm confused......
No TCM showed SMASH-UP (it's in the Public Domain, so there's no rights issues, although a lot of prints of it are not in great shape)...However it was shown at 6:00 am as the last part of the first night of the Hayward tribute, which I don't get because it is totally her breakthrough film.
I can't imagine the Salinger estate is still that peeved that they'd block MY FOOLISH HEART from showing on tv, (do they even have any legal say-so about it?) but who knows?
I distinctly recall MY FOOLISH HEART running on AMC waaaaaaaaay back in the day, because a promo for it was on the first part of a VHS recording I made of something I taped off of it in the early nineties and used to watch a lot (likely one of their classic monster movies.)
Sigh, that last sentence made me so nostalgic....
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I watched THE NUN'S STORY all the way through last night. I already knew how it ended, thanks to a GOLDEN GIRLS episode (AND IT'S WORTH NOTING THAT THE MALTIN REVIEW GIVES AWAY THE ENDING AS WELL, WHAT THE HELL LEONARD??)
anyhoo, that said SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS IN RE: THE NUN'S STORY
I like the film, even though it is something of a cul-de-sac storywise...it's surprising that one doesn't feel unrewarded at the end of the film, which could not have been executed better. I think the fact that it's so well crafted and acted helps to make up for that feeling one could have- were it not so well done- that it was a whole lot of film that is in fact about very little. "Girl wants to be nun. Girl becomes nun. Girl quits. And all in two and a half hours!"
There are a lot of Fred Zinneman films I don't care for, but in this case his direction was terrific. It's hard to believe this intimate, quiet film was a blockbuster, (it made $12 million on a budget of $3.5 or something like that) but I'm glad it was.
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HUMAN DESIRE is quite interesting, but what I find noteworthy is that Broderick Crawford is in a third lead that borders on being supporting just four years after winning Best Actor for ALL THE KING'S MEN (...and in a Columbia film that while not really a "B Picture" is maybe something of a "B+" if we're to be completely honest about it.)
He is a very one-note actor, IMO one of the worst to ever win the Oscar, but every now and then he finds a role where he's a good enough fit (if you need someone to play a lout and Paul Douglas wants too much money.)
HUMAN DESIRE is one of those roles for Crawford.
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transcript of outtake from the recording session of I'LL PLANT MY OWN TREE
Judy Garland in Century City, CA
3/17/1967
JUDY:
(singing)
"I’ll plant my own tree and I’ll make it grow.
My tree will not be just one in a row.
My tree will offer shade when strangers go by.
If you’re a stranger, brother, well so am I.
Come tomorrow all that I see is my tree,
oh, Lord, what a sight...Wait, wait, waitStop, can you please stop the...?"
The music stops.
MAN IN THE BOOTH
"What is it Judy?"
JUDY
"I just...I can't...can someone explain to
me just what in the name of The Black Baby Jesus
this song is all the (expletive) about? I mean, this (expletive)
tree thing, is that like some kind of a...metaphor or
something? Am I literally singing about planting
a (expletive) tree? Like, am I going to have a
shovel when I sing it onstage? Because I
feel like I need one. Man?...You? man in the glass
box with the headphones on? Are ? Can you hear me?"
MAN IN THE BOOTH
"Yeah, we do, we hear you Judy. Honestly, we don't have any
more of an idea what the song is about than we did the last
nine times you asked us. The thing is, we've got wives and
kids we were really hoping to see some time before Christmas..."
JUDY
"All right all right all right. I just...I'll do it...I mean
though, it seems like this was just written by an awfully
stupid person...and I don't say that to be mean. I mean,
it says right here that I think the tree is going to grow
overnight into "all that I see" How exactly does that work? And why
do I think that planting a tree will make me friends? And
what the hell is wrong with rows of trees? And just what kind
of a tree am I planting anyway?"
MAN IN THE BOOTH
"Any more questions, Judy?"
JUDY
"Yeah, where did they get whatever they were on when they wrote this
(expletive)?, because I want some."
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Haywire over Hayward.
in General Discussions
Posted
So in other words: a Superbowl halftime routine.
ps- that, and Suzie's accompanying dance-of-the-one-veil (the six others were at the cleaner's I guess) was the highlight of the film.