therealfuster

who's on first or even in the dugout, and how about the Ritz Brothers. Don't you just love them? Personally, Harry is my favorite.

is so wonderful! Everytime I see him in a film, I remember that he was considered the best dressed man in Hollywood by those of sartorial splendor standards, and his couture is always immaculate and stylish in his films. He's great in Little Miss Marker, and thanks for the heads up on the DVD release!

showing "excerpts" of films that aren't "relevant" might be a good idea across the board for all tv cable networks. Could you also start an in general writing campaign to all cable networks, to only show excerpts of films starring Tom Cruise or John Travolta? They're both worse than any film in the silent cinema genre, in that they were never innovative....and I definitely fail to see their relevance now. Just my two cents worth...

[don't answer that!] or are there a couple of odd goofs in the original "Diabolique"? Last nite I was watching my recent booty, one of which was the dvd of this film, and when it got to the scene where Vera Clouzot is giving the nasty hubby the drugged wine, I heard [and read in the subtitle] something like "Take my shoes off" being barked at her by him, when he is reclining on the bed. At that point, he ends up with just his socks on, after Vera removes his shoes. Then Simone Signoret comes back to the room, and she says...."Take off his shoes" to Vera, as she is planning to drown him in the bathtub. And Vera then looks down at his feet, and I'm thinking...the shoes are off already, aren't they? But she appears to be looking at his feet, as if there is something odd going on and they are not off. You can't really see his feet, in this part. Lo and behold, the next shot shows Simone telling Vera to pick him up by the feet, as she has got the heavier top of his body...and carry him to the bathtub, AND....now the hubby has mysteriously got his shoes back on! And they are still on him, when we see him in the bathtub being pushed down by Simone. This was all so weird, and I never noticed it on previous viewings, that I replayed the scene about four times, just to make sure I was not hallucinating. It got to the point, that I started thinking Clouzot was telling us that this is all a dream sequence, as in some Bunuel film. Okay, I'm kidding, but how could Clouzot use the specific line about the shoes like two times, and have so many consecutive different shots of the hubby first with shoes, then without, and then with the shoes again, and not notice the glaring mistake? If the accompanying dialogue was not discussing the shoes so much, I might not have noticed this bizarre sequence. I took French in school for years and still can barely speak it, and yet stupidly was not really paying attention to the real dialogue, but rather reading the subtitles. I need to check out what they are really saying to each other in the whole scene. So...how could a good filmmaker not notice these continuity goofs, I ask you? And...what does it all mean? Any oddball goofs you've seen lately in an esteemed film?

seems like everytime I see that film, it is different. I just attribute it to the fact that its storyline is about as convoluted as "The Saragossa Manuscript" but maybe it really has been altered in some respects. Good luck on finding out if it is the film, or your head which has been surgically altered. Could you be William Hurt, and did you star in "Altered States"?

probably is that horror film called "Who Slew Auntie Roo". I saw it years ago on late nite tv, and it was obvious that it was a nod to the Hansel and Gretel fairytale, in many respects. It does have some chilling moments and Shelley is marvelous as always.

I've seen that but to refresh my memory, I just checked the cast list, and along with the stars you mention it has people like Franchot Tone, Vera Zorina, Walter Abel, Cass Daley, Ernest Truex, Eva Gabor, and one of my favorite character actors, Lynne Overman. Plus Preston Sturges, and the perennial blonde chorines, Marion Martin and Barbara Pepper. Yes, I shall hope that TCM shows it sometime too!

the two WWII films, Stage Door Canteen and Hollywood Canteen? If not, you missed some major screen history. Okay...the films themselves are not inherently classic, but where else would one see legends like Katherine Cornell and Jane Cowl, on the same stage as Harpo Marx and Yehudi Menuhin? I had seen bits of the Stage Door one in previous years, but decided to watch it from the beginning last nite, planning to tune out after a while...but when I saw the cast at the start of the film, I could not resist watching the whole shebang, and I am glad I did. Some of the great bits from Stage Door were...seeing folks like Judith Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead, the Fontannes, Paul Muni, Katharine Hepburn and Dame May Whitty hanging out with the likes of Hugh Herbert, George Raft, Johnny Weismuller, Sam Jaffee, Bill Demarest and Ned Sparks. From great stage performers to baggy pants vaudevillians, this film had it all. The music was a cornucopia of all the best of the Forties, with orchestras like that of Count Basie, Xavier Cugat, and Benny Goodman, and also people like Guy Lombardo, Kay Kyser, and Freddy Martin. Highlights had to be Peggy Lee singing her classic, "Why Don't You Do Right" with Benny, and it was such a pleasure to see her just stand there and sing her posterior off...without all the phony gyrating that is prevalent now in the music world, to distract one from the fact...that the female singer has not got a voice like Peggy Lee's! Lina Romay did the singing honors with Cugey's band, and was also excellent. There were some entertaining bits with Ray Bolger dancing, Ethel Merman belting out some song, and Gypsy Rose Lee showing how not to take much off...clothing wise. There was even a cute rather homosexual bit, with Johnny Weismuller titillating Franklin Pangborn by taking off his shirt in the hot kitchen of the canteen. Also, how often do you get to see the Philip Morris bellhop, Johnny Roventini in a movie, without him yelling out "Call for Philip Morris"? The storyline with Lon McCallister was corny as all get out, but the stars were fun to watch. And it would be nice if stars now, took time off to work in the kitchens or clean up for charity events, and really rolled up their sleeves, instead of performing at dumb telethons and asking for money. Next up was...Hollywood Canteen, which was my favorite. First off let me say, that when I saw the credits I was like...how is Trigger going to perform at the canteen? But...perform he does, and under Roy Rogers' guidance he proved what an exceptional and beautiful animal he was. No wonder Roy had him stuffed, and kept at his home in later years to still admire. This film had another silly storyline, but somehow it worked, with Robert Hutton in love from afar with movie star, Joan Leslie...and she was a fresh faced beauty, unlike what we see today. Osborne mentioned that Ann Sheridan was supposed to star, but resisted, but Joan does fine in her place. The film starts off with some great bits with a doughnut by screen comic legend, Joe E. Brown. There is a great song and dance routine by the wonderfully comedic, Jack Carson and lo and behold....Jane Wyman. Dane Clark plays Hutton's buddy and is equits himself well in all the comic scenes, like trying to impress Ida Lupino with his French. Performers at the canteen include...Eddie Cantor, a great dance routine by Joan McCracken, violin virtuosity by Joseph Szigeti, accompanied hilariously by Jack Benny, a song by a group I'd never heard of but who were great...the Golden Gate Quartette, cowboy bliss by the amazing Sons of the Pioneers, and big band classics by Jimmy Dorsey [no Tommy in view though]. But the highlight for me was...the rendition of "Voodoo Moon" by most amazing pianist and band leader, Carmen Cavallaro! Wow...what a keyboard virtuoso and the song was just so exotic and off the wall, and his piano playing so mesmerizing that I immediately went to Amazon today, and will be ordering their cd of his album, The Poet of the Piano. Oh there was lots more, bits with S.K. Sagall with everyone pinching his cheeks, hosts Bette Davis and John Garfield playing along, Paul Henreid washing dishes with Donald Woods, Joan Crawford pretending not to be Joan Crawford, a funny routine with Greenstreet and Lorre being threatening, Stanwyck serving food, Patty Andrews singing with her siblings, with even Zacharyt Scott making it into the pic. Some bits by uncredited folks like Mark Stevens, Jonathan Hale, and Dorothy Malone I caught, but I sure missed John Dehner [as a Norwegian sailor yet!] and my favorite extra, Bess Flowers. Oh, the film also had a very young Janis Paige, and even married couple Alexis Smith and Craig Stevens. All in all...these two films are classic histories with some great music performances recorded for posterity. It almost made one wish that they could have lived during the Big One...WWII. So...did you catch these films, and what were your favorite parts?

a cursory search for films by director Rex Ingram in the Turner Library came up with: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?/?1921 ? Mare Nostrum?/?1925 ? Scaramouche?/?1923 ? The Conquering Power?/?1921 ? The Magician?/?1926 ? The Prisoner of Zenda?/?1922 I would be happy to bequeath my first born child to you, if you would show "The Magician" or "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" as one of your silent Sunday features. I know you have shown "Mare Nostrum" which I do thank you for, and it was great to see the young Antonio Moreno, as other than that one can only see him on tv in "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" mostly. I will be happy with any Rex Ingram films being shown on TCM though, with our without..wife Alice Terry in them. Any other Rex Ingram fans here to plead my case for more Ingram oeuvre on TCM?

and I get your drift. I was watching my Eisenstein boxed set last nite about "Ivan the Terrible" and I got to thinking it sure would be fun to have seen the real Ivan. But with ancient characters, there are no photos, or film footage or complete dossiers on the person's life with are complete or even accurate. So...things have to be a bit concocted and still keep the spirit of the thing. But when the person is as famous as Hughes, who did have a most fantastic life...how could any move come up with anything more interesting than just the simple truth? It kind of reminds me of these totally fabricated biographies of famous people, that used to be written like about heroes like Lindbergh, or stars like Valentino, which were puffery. On the other hand, when something is an out and out spoof, like Melvin and Howard, then I can get into it, plus that it just telling the story from Dummar's point of view, and perhaps he did pick up an old bum who said implied he was Howard Hughes. Fictionalizing Hughes life, is a bit like needing to make up female conquests for a film bio of Errol Flynn. Get real...as if ending the film with Flynn dating 15 year old Beverly Aadland was not exciting enough. I think she was fifteen, I may be off a bit.

I forgot that classic bit, where Diana Scarwid clenches her teeth and says so slowly "Because....I'm....NOT....one....of....your....fans!&$@(*&^%. And then they roll around on the floor and the Joan secretary I think tries to break them up. Faye's eyebrows were so scary. Personally I think they were even scarier than Joan's later on in her career, where she had that tangerine colored hair helmet thing going, with the giant eyebrows that looked like caterpillars. At least Joan's were real, as Faye's looked a bit like Groucho Marx had drawn them on for her with a grease pencil. You forgot the part where Joan takes over Tina's role on the Soap, and the nurse says "Look...you mother is playing your part" or something like that, and Tina looks bleary eyed at the hospital tv, and says "But...my character is supposed to be 25 years old." Oh shoot, I probably have those lines all wrong, but you get the idea. The fact that Joan would make a coup out of taking over Tina's part seems mean, but at the time it made big news and brought in lots of fans to watch her on the soap.

I made a special trip to the Algonquin, just to see what the dining room looked like. They did not seem to mind, and let me walk around the hotel. Maybe they are used to it, but it definitely had a 1930's ambience. Yes, my favorite Benchley story is when he visited Dorothy in the hospital, after one of her usual suicide attempts to slit her wrists and supposedly said "Dorothy, you really need to stop doing this as you may hurt yourself sometime." I shall look forward to your assimilation of the tactics to "Resist Enemy Interrogation", Keith and your review!

I wonder who could play Errol Flynn now? Probably no one. How many actors nowadays have survived doing jobs like biting off prairie oysters, as an occupation in New Guinea...and almost being killed a few times before they were 25? And they probably don't even know where Tasmania is. Nor who Lily Damita was. Sad....

I was just thinking about Gail Russell, and how good she was in "Angel and the Badman" with the Duke. Then I remembered I had seen Kelly McGillis last nite while flipping channels, which made me think about the film. "Witness" which is so similar in many plot aspects to...voila, "Angel and the Badman". Okay, not a word for word remake, or an exact story copy, but close enough to defy anyone not believing that there was some influence. Can you name a film which you were watching, and then realized how closely it resembled another film, even though the producers of the newer film gave no indication it was copied?

in one post. First of all, though her singing was her bread and butter, she was a fine actress. Witness her amazing approach to drama in "Christmas Holiday". Shoot, she was much better in that than Gene Kelly, and look how long his career was. Okay...so what I would have done is, have Deanna only appear in films that had no singing for a few years. I think if she had developed a reputation for dramatic roles, over the more lightweight singing vehicles that she was famous for, that her career would have prospered. Then she could have combined the singing with drama, in any Judy type, "A Star is Born" vehicles if she wished, but not exclusively. I would have also had her deemphasize the glamorous aspects of her screen persona, as she often looked a bit too sacharine and cutesy in her costumes and makeup styles. A nice prostitute role, like Donna Reed's in "From Here to Eternity" could have helped too. Any sweet faced ingenue type, who got prostitute roles then [like Shirley Jones too] always did well in their later career.

I love/hate that guy! He is so good at being despicable. If I were casting, I would have given him a part in any movie I was making. Lane was such a delight to see, in any tv show or movie. Now there's someone that Robert Osborne should interview for sure!

was out dining in Hanoi, the first time TCM showed it. Patty Hearst missed it too, when Stephen Weed wanted to take her to the cinema to see it. Not that the Symbionese Liberation Army are like Nazis....

with you. Sherman did have a very modern look, in this film and was quite attractive. Maybe we can track him down and do the interview for Robert Osborne?

and other sundry issues. I meant to tape this training film which TCM had programmed for this morning at 7am, but having stayed up too late watching deleted scenes from "Ivan the Terrible" made me sleep through my alarm clock setting. Did I miss anything? Who watched? Would this training film have really helped you resist Nazi interrogation tricks, and would you have been able to only give out..Name, Rank and Serial Number if they put straw under your fingernails? I hope they show it again. I love when TCM shows oddball things like this from their vaults! Who else loves watching the short subjects, the etiquette primers, the Robert Benchley bits, the Ken Murray private films, and those Travel Talk documentaries?

would be an excellent choice. I think I have only seen one minor interview with her, on film. I think Mel Brooks was really the focus of it. I'd like to see Vera Miles. I'm sure she might have some interesting anecdotes about Hitchcock, both from movies and working with him on his television show. I think she was in the premiere, which packed a wallop, as did most of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series episodes.

put your through the Film Spanking Machine [sort of a Willy Wonka type device] for saying that you only watch sci fi, if it is on that Mystery Science Theater abomination. Why...that is the only place that one should NOT watch sci fi! I cannot tell you how many times I would happen to land on that channel, be trying to watch The Screaming Skull, or The Brain That Wouldn't Die, or They Saved Hitler's Brain...and those fruit loops would keep talking over all the good lines, and I'd keep yelling "Shut up!" at the screen! Why the fun of watching those old films, was to realize the inherent humor in them oneself, and not have people talking over all the unintentionally funny lines. You really aren't kidding when you say you don't like sci fi, are you? Well, to each his own!

special edition of "Lawrence of Arabia" because it is just a film one should own. I love David Lean pictures and am hoping to be able to find his wonderful set of Dickens flicks, like "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist" which are the definitive versions. I like sci fi but will admit that I am not the most excited by war flicks, of all the genres. Now if it is a movie that transcends the genre, or is a WWII film, I can get into it...but purely war theatrics only that gets close to propaganda, does not interest me too much. I have no problem with the propaganda angle, as I can easily watch Leni Reifenstahl films like "Triumph of the Will" and find them fascinating, but as much as I like Errol Flynn, a few of those films where he saves the world, are a bit much, and those are the war films that bore me. I like war films like "Paths of Glory", "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "Grande Illusion" and things like that though.

I'd seen IAMMMMW on tv, but last year I saw it in a theatre, and Ethel Merman was a scream. Amongst all those great comedians, her scenes with her son, as played by Dick Shawn were hilarious. The original "Manchurian Candidate" cannot be beat, and for $7.50 is a steal. What great visuals. I can still see scenes in my brain from that film, and I have not seen it for years. It's sad that Laurence Harvey died so young, as he was a unique presence on film.

even if Cardinal Spellman did say it was obscene. Like he would know. At least I think it was Cardinal Spellman. They should start showing his tv shows again, and in living color as they were quite interesting and he had a following in the 1950's from what I hear, almost as big as Liberace's. Nevertheless, when I heard Elia Kazan say that "Baby Doll" was a Gothic comedy, it all finally made sense to me. I used to laugh myself silly, watching Eli Wallach romancing Carroll Baker, and wonder why my friends thought Tennessee Williams was being so serious in this play. Actually, not only is there no sex between Baby Doll and Wallach, there is not even any sex between Baby Doll and her legally wed husband, so the only thing for the moralists to really complain about must have been the scene of her in her baby doll pajamas, sucking her thumb. Yes, there was more real sex on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on tv, I think.... I too hope Baby Doll comes out on dvd.

as the conniving lawyer. I kept looking at his hands though, even though he was looking quite spiffy and in pretty good shape in this film. I remember reading as a kid, a biography my mother owned about Barrymore, and it mentioned that he always hated his hands. Said that his fingers looked like bunches of bananas, and that he often felt uncomfortable with them, and would try to hide them in scenes. Hmmm...so even this very handsome man, with the Great Profile had some insecurities about his appearance. But he looked quite suave in this film, and Thelma Todd was quite dishy too. I liked the scene with the bratty stepchildren, in the waiting room, when Vincent Sherman almost decked them, and then after when they were so rude to Barrymore. Good movie!