GordonCole

Agreed. Times may change but intrinsically people often don't.

Swithin, I must say that while reading your posts I often wish I were Professor Monserrat as played by Boris Karloff in the Michael Reeves' film, The Sorcerers, for then I could enter your mind with his apparatus and vicariously enjoy all the amazing cultural experiences to which you have been privy. I so envy so many of them but I also so want to thank you for sharing them with us. Would love to have seen Valentine Dyall in that Joe Orton play. Thanks for your insights.

Dear BBJJ, why not give all your TCM detractors something to really post about and assume the mantle of all four of your names of Billy, Bob, Joe and Jim singly or mayhaps even a whole family of Waltons or at least Duggars and post under each name once every hour. It will keep some people busy and off the streets as they whine about it intermittently and that is always a good thing. Before the snarks arrive, I will say "Yes, that is such a good idea I might do it myself or probably have and I'm sure I enjoyed doing it myself. I find it amusing your name changes have created such a ruckus yet the same movie fans would probably have no problem with actors changing their names from things like Tula Finklea and Spangler Arlington Brugh as often as they wished. Such is irony...

Glad to see a fan of Bierce is also a movie fan. I do wonder what he would have to say if he was alive now coming up with definitions about people on the internet, movie fan posters and let's not even go into politics. A sage wit he was, and still relevant at least to a selected audience. Thanx.

Good one and you know the guy was operating with only one eye too, so he probably couldn't see the ghosts either.

I knew too it was from the story, Conjure Wife but thanks for mentioning it since now I know you know it too, and I'm wondering if you are also a fan of writer Fritz Leiber? During my teen years I loved reading his tales along with those of Robert Howard and others, and if I see his name on any tv episode I know I am in for a good ride. It's funny that The Night of the Eagle is a classy film being that good old Sam Arkoff produced it. Great cast with Peter Wyngarde, Margaret Johnston, and as I said Kathleen Byron. The one surprise I had when I first saw it, was I could not imagine the perky, clean cut and wholesome Janet Blair in anything dealing with the occult, but she performed admirably and using her a bit reminded me of the concept of Hitchcock when he put Cary Grant out in the open in daylight in danger in North by Northwest, instead of using the typical darkly shot night scene to instill fear in the audience. In some ways, using Blair instead of someone like Barbara Steele or a more cerebrally dark actress was genius. Thank goodness they did not have Sid Caesar though play the professor. Thanks, Swithin.

I must congratulate you on your as usual most astute comments, Tiki in using the word "poseur" for in my career of having been in the world of fine arts for many years, you would not believe how many poseurs I have met who lack the credentials to be called an artist, but persist in using this designation. More correctly, they are craft people, being that they create nothing intrinsically themselves but perhaps work on rehabbing furniture and repainting it or restoring minor details to an already built edifice, which itself is worthy work, just not on the level of a true artist. Taking an old building and restoring it to its past glory is admirable even if the people working on it are not true artists in the common way or lingo meant by such in the field. Even Michelangelo occasionally worked on a ceiling or wall, as did Raphael. Oh, and there are poseuses in this quasi-arts category also, but as I respect their fine craft work I always make sure we give posies to the poseuses, since all honest work improving our world should be respected. Thanks for bringing up such a great word even though I doubt in the world of movie knowledge criteria, it is not as apt.

It counts if your dad was Kay Kyser.

The happiest movie ending for Elvis were with Gladys in the audience clapping for her Satin and Elvis singing to his Satin [their pet nicknames for each other supposedly].

You forgot to mention Jesse Garon's birthday also but you are forgiven by me, Gladys and Fester Presley. Don't forget to wish Sal Mineo birthday greetings coming up soon.

Your favorite noir movie is probably "Change of Habit" with that nun and Elvis as a doctor treating autism, I bet, Markoff!

I think Tiki's miffed that you said she would have to squeeze into a restroom at the men's room in the Waldorf Astoria to prove she knew about Stoopnagle. Please apologize for this flagrant sexist remark, Markoff as I'm sure we all find it offensive in this day and age, plus kind of creepy too! Your original comment below causing all the trouble: "The number of people in the world today who know Frederick Chase Taylor ('Colonel Stoopnagle') and Wilbur ('Budd') Hulick could probably squeeze comfortably into a men's room at the old Waldorf-Astoria..."

Why it was de rigueur in my house to watch the film International House once a year with the whole family assembled in the rec room, and we all knew the Colonel from his appearance in same. So glad to be in the under-estimated group graduates from the College of Trivia Knowledge.

Why Sgt. Markoff is just a piker in this type of debate, when one can go find remarks like the following from H.L. Mencken to ban first, so seek bigger fish to admonish, Tiki: "“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” H. L. Mencken

Yeah, those films where priests protect the sanctity of the confessional are bunk. We used to love to go to confession on Saturday when the adults were there, since just because the sliding wood piece was closed on your side of the confessional, did not mean you could not totally hear what was being confessed on the other side as in, "Bless me, Father for I have sinned" which was followed by many impure thoughts, and other dastardly deeds that needed way more than Hail Marys and Our Fathers to correct morally, probably more like a penicillin shot and maybe even some tetanus injections. Also, nuns in real life don't look like Loretta Young and Ingrid Bergman but more like Beulah Bondi and Ernest Borgnine, so putting them in cute roller skates on-screen driving a pink Volkswagen is not amusing to me, unless they are carrying that deadly pointer and can crack a noggin with their wooden beads around their waist.

Who was it said the Beatles stole their hair styles from Ish?

Great list of small and tall character icons.

Do you smell rubber burning? That may be why you want to vomit since I recall when George had that happen, it was the precursor to his diagnosis. Having read his biography given to me as a teen since my mother made me learn many of his songs for my recital, I still worry about smelling rubber someday myself, as a Gershwin fan.

How wonderful that you personally knew someone who was a part of this film. So glad to see there are other fans of this film also. The review to which I referred, as I recall was detailing how "boring" the film was and that the performances were "hammy". Since I often believe that what one gets out of film might be dependent on what one brings to the film I felt compelled to give the film an alternative review. Thank you for mentioning Valentine Dyall, who was marvelous also and one can only regret that Patricia Jessel died at a young age, as I found her incredibly talented and a kind of satanic Cloris Leachman on steroids. If you liked this film I'm wondering if you also have seen "The Night of the Eagle" which has a similar theme of a professor, a college setting and evil supernatural forces at work and stars also the Mad Nun from Black Narcissus.

I recall my grandmother who worked in the theatre creating costumes, saying that her favorite Hollywood designer was Travis Banton. I would often see grandmama cutting out patterns although she often made up her own and was partial to cutting on the bias for many as Banton did for people like Lombard and Colbert.

A quite brilliant take and the film also sports the female triumvirate symbolism too.

Dear and charming Miss Wonderly, surely a woman of your breeding and sophistication would be aware I was parodying the style of Ambrose Bierce in his famous "The Devil's Dictionary" [that he wrote with tongue planted firmly in cheek] when I submitted an alternative take for the word "pedantic" at this forum in jest?Surely you would not go chiding Ambrose, and berate him saying that the Oxford Dictionary should have been checked first, when Bierce compiled witty definitions like:Harangue, n. A speech by an opponent who is known as an harangue-outang. Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage. It is appealing when you copy the style of Brigid O'Shaughnessy mostly, but being that her fatal flaw was a total lack of humor, I would desist in that quality since it is probably why the humorous Spade let her be sent up to Tehachapi. I expect so much more from you, being that you are my favorite female poster at TCM.

There's also that tendency for the anti-intellectualism pundits to rear their heads in decrying unison, when one goes beyond the fray in their posts with abstruse facts and deep issues galvanized by reading Frazer's The Golden Bough, that your detractors may only find soporific, so try to keep your elite opinions to a few per hour, Sarge or the ghost of Clifton Webb might start to haunt you in your sleep. A word to the wise...

Do like Eddie Muller and just say it is noir with conviction, and the masses will follow.

If you were watching TCM way back in the Stone Age, you would have been able to see the trilogy, though as I recall the prints were a bit murky. Maybe a request for a repeat viewing is due, since they probably still have the films in their vaults.