[I Just Watched...]

I'm actually rather partial to Ricardo Cortez. He could be a good slimy two timer played with some charm (he was quite good looking, with that patent leather hair style looking a bit out of the Valentino school), and he could also be a fairly credible tough guy. I like his Sam Spade, for example, or playing a gangster trying to solve a crime (before he gets blamed for it, if memory serves me correctly) in The Phantom of Crestwood.

 

Rich, you might take a look at a Kay Francis soaper with an exotic setting, Mandalay, which occasionally comes on TCM. It features Ricardo at his charming oily rat fink best.

 

 

There's a Cortez coming on TCM this Thursday at 6:15pm (EST) I've never seen. Hat Coat and Glove was originally intended as a John Barrymore vehicle but was given to Cortez when the Great Profile was sent to a sanitarium for a lengthy stay.

Agree about Cortez. I've seen Mandalay, but not Hat, Coat, and Glove, so I will have to check that one out. Thanks for the headsup!

[The Rifleman & Other TV Westerns]

 

Sponsored by the National Rifle Association (except for the shovel and pitchfork, that is).

[I Just Watched...]

I've actually seen this one (I often haven't seen the movies you review), and it's one of the few Cortez films that I've seen, as well. It was rather ridiculous, but it kept me entertained.

I think his best performance may have been in The Last Hurrah. I've only seen it once, many years ago, but I remember thinking, "hey, this guy can actually act."

[I Just Watched...]

I Killed That Man (1941)

 

Low-budget entertaining whodunit features some snappy dialogue and a decent performance from Ricardo Cortez (I’m on a Cortez kick lately).

 

The film opens on a bizarre note, as we see a group of people shooting dice, drinking coffee, and having an all-around good time. Cortez arrives. Then they all move into the next room to witness an execution! The condemned man starts to blab, and just before he is about to name the brains behind the operation (whatever the operation is), he collapses in a heap. The prison doctor discovers a dart in the guy’s neck, probably due to an errant throw by either Basil Rathbone or Lionel Atwill.  Assistant D.A. Cortez immediately takes charge, ordering everyone to take off their clothes. Fortunately, the scene changes before we get to the cavity search.

 

Cortez immediately cracks the case and arrests a suspect. He then explains to his boss (John “Perry White” Hamilton) that he knows that the suspect is innocent. Makes perfect sense to me. He then sets about to find the real killer.

 

Now the dead guy’s girlfriend (Iris Adrian) goes belly-up, and Cortez immediately cracks the case, arresting the last guy who was with her. Oh, he turns out to be innocent as well.

 

Meanwhile, Cortez’ reporter girlfriend gets several clues, and immediately cracks the case.

 

Worth a look, if only to hear everyone ironically referring to John Hamilton as “Chief,” and to see how many laws Cortez violates.

 

 

 

[Replace Robert Osborne with actor Robert Conrad]

Cricket Blake would make a better choice.

[Alec Baldwin to host 'The Essentials' starting May 6]

I had it all as a cowboy kid, too, my Rifleman rifle, my Davy Crockett coonskin cap, even a Zorro cape.

 

But something else I also had . . .

 

 

Is that the Horst Buchholz model?

[Alec Baldwin to host 'The Essentials' starting May 6]

 

 

i love the opening, when the camera pans along with Chuck Connors walking straight through the center of town blasting his Winchester '92 six times in rapid succession, and then he looks dead into the camera like "the ****  do YOU want?"

 

 

But didn't you ever wonder whom Chuck was mowing down in the streets?

 

I remember watching the Emmy Awards way back when, and the camera panned to Mike Connors in the audience. Then onscreen flashed the name "Chuck Connors." Host Dick Cavett, without skipping a beat, said "Who's doing Chuck Connors' makeup these days? He looks great."

[Atrocious closed captions...]

This is what closed-captioning looks like in France:

 

[HITS & MISSES: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow on TCM]

Upon further review,  Lloyd looks like something out of The Wizard of Oz:

 

[HITS & MISSES: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow on TCM]

Sunday, April 23rd/24th--All times E.S.T.

 

 

 

12:00 a.m. OR 1:00 a.m. "Dr. Jack (1922)--Harold Lloyd spoof of Lon Chaney movies sounds very good (I got the information off imdb--TCM has nothing on the films' webpage).

I haven't seen the film, but don't expect a spoof of Lon Chaney movies based upon IMDb. One of those reviews notes that Lloyd's disguise looks like Chaney in London After Midnight ... but that film was released several years after Dr. Jack. Of course, maybe Chaney ripped off Lloyd.

[I Just Watched...]

 

 

There was an incident that happened on the September 20, 1955 episode that caused many of the shows tv audience to turn against Martha, involving an african american child. 12-year-old $64,000 Question winner Gloria Lockerman was a guest, along with Tallulah Bankhead, on the show that night. "At the bows, when they were saying goodnight," recalls Norman Lear (the brains behind All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, and The Jeffersons) "Talullah Bankhead picked Gloria Lockerman up and hugged her; Martha joined them and the three of them were hugging, and they both kissed her, This was 1954. There were so many letters about hugging that little black child that the show never recovered from it, with the ad agency carrying on the way it did." For whatever reason, the show was cancelled at the end of the 1955-56 season.

 

http://1950sunlimited.blogspot.ca/2010/01/curves-ahead-martha-raye.html

 

 

I'd be curious to know where the author got that information (though I don't doubt it could have happened). Gloria Lockerman actually won $16,000, although the article makes it appear she won $64,000. She won the money by spelling antidisestablishmentarianism.

Her win was mentioned on a Honeymooners episode ("The $99,000 Answer"), starting at around the 9:40 mark below:

 

[I Just Watched...]

"Hellzapoppin'" (1941)--Starring Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, and Martha Raye.

 

 

This is the first time I saw Olsen & Johnson, and I thought they were funny. 

They didn't make too many films, but a few were on tv often when I was a kid. I thought they were hysterical. My parents saw the duo perform on Broadway.

 

I recommend Crazy House, which has lots of cameos by Universal stars, and I especially recommend Ghost Catchers, which has a great dance sequence. 

 

Trivia about Ghost Catchers: Morton Downey, a popular Irish singer of the time, performs. His son, Morton Downey, Jr., had a crazy show in the late 1980s in NYC, with frequent guests like Al Sharpton (whom he called "Fats Domino") and Alan Dershowitz.

[is tcm missing a golden opportunity here?]

I'd rather just watch Robert Conrad for about half a minute, and in those old commercials where he goes all macho man and dares ya to knock that damn battery off his shoulder.

 

What, you never watched Baa Baa Black Sheep? Neither did 99% of the human race.

 

I really got a kick out of the time he lost a footrace to Gabe Kaplan (Gabe Kaplan!!!) on an episode of Battle of the Network Stars.

[Life Imitates Art]

 

 

Whenever I happen to see a news program and it cuts to someone's cel phone video of an actual murder, I stick my head out the window and yell, "I'm as mad as hell & I'm not going to take this any more!"

And every time you do that, somebody records you on their cell phone.

[A poll: who would you all most want at the new TCM Host now?]

I hear Mr. O'Reilly is looking for work. He would make a great host. He could begin each film with his "talking points," then spend the next few minutes telling off some pinhead movie critic.

[I Just Watched...]

 

 

Tales of Manhattan.  I was really looking forward to seeing this film as I'm a big fan of Rita Hayworth and Ginger Rogers.  I hate to say it, but I thought this film was boring? Maybe I'm missing something.  I just thought it was too long and nothing really interesting happened.  I liked the vignette with Rogers, Cesar Romero and Henry Fonda, but other than that, nothing grabbed me.  

 

Try the obscure adult film Tails of Manhattan instead.

[TCM to discontinue print editions of Now Playing]

 

 

My guess is this board will be the next to go.

 

 

Oh crap. We will all have to get lives.

[TCM Backlot Member Vote: Summer Under the Stars 2017]

Hold the Mayo.

 

I think Tor Johnson and Allison Hayes would make a good pair. Actually, Ms. Hayes would make a good pair.

[what is needed to save Hollywood?]

Wait a minute. Stefanie Powers was 27 when we entered World War II?

[I Just Watched...]

"My Little Chickadee" (1940)--Starring Mae West, W.C. Fields, and Margaret Hamilton.

 

 

While subbing for the schoolteacher, she sees the sentence "I will be a good boy" on the blackboard and mutters "What is this, propaganda?!"  Her version of arithmetic; "1+1=2, 2+2=4, and 5 will get you 10 if you know how to work it". 

 

[I Just Watched...]

Rubber Racketeers (1942) youtube

 

Not to be confused with Prophylactic Pirates, Rubber Racketeers is an oddball wartime curio dealing with scumballs who replace rubber tires with cheap imitation crap.

 

Our story opens in a defense factory, where our hero, Bill Barry (Bill Henry) uses a machine gun to mow down caricatures of Mussolini, Hitler, and Tojo. He refers to his machine gun as a “j a p exterminator.”

 

Bill has a girlfriend named Mary. (That’s right; if they get married, she’ll be Mary Barry.) While driving home from work, they are cut off by a car carrying Ricardo Cortez, who has just been released from the can after having spent three years in stir. Cortez stiffs Barry for the repairs, then gets the idea of entering the rubber racket.

 

After Mary’s brother is killed by a tire blowout, Bill decides to find the culprits.  As usual, the police are nowhere to be found in movies of this type.

 

Cortez’ girlfriend (the lovely Rochelle Hudson) tries to convince Cortez to give up the racket in the name of patriotism. Nice try. In the climactic donnybrook, Bill’s defense pals beat the crap out of Cortez and his gang. Hudson goes to work at the defense factory and demonstrates her skill at using a “j a p exterminator.” Then we bomb the **** out of Japan … as I recall.

 

Cortez is his usual suave d-bag. John Abbott plays a moron killer named Dumbo who doesn’t speak and plays with rubber rings, which is obviously where Captain Queeg came up with the idea of playing with his steel balls. Alan Hale Jr. shows up as a muscle-bound pal of Bill, and Milburn Stone plays a crook.

 

The movie manages not to be tiresome. However, the filmmakers spared every expense, threatening to fire Stone, and jacking up the price of admission.

 

 

[Mitchum in 'Farewell My Lovely' (1975)]

HOW could i forget TAXI DRIVER????!!!!

I hear it's being remade as Uber Chauffeur.

[what is needed to save Hollywood?]

 

 

     I've seen ADVISE AND CONSENT and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN twice each and don't think of either film along the lines of "Yes, I'm watching a liberal political drama". 

I haven't seen Advise and Consent for some time, and I read the book many years ago so it's not too fresh in my memory either.

 

But I can state with almost near certainty that author Allen Drury did not have a liberal bent, upon reading his other works. In his novels that followed Advise and Consent (most of which featured the same characters), he clearly favored conservatism over liberalism. His last two novels in the series were a pair of "what if" stories: Come Nineveh, Come Tyre, which featured a weak liberal president (with disastrous results) and The Promise of Joy, which featured a strong conservative president.

[Alec Baldwin to host 'The Essentials' starting May 6]

Now will Tina Fey be a "host" or a "hostess?"

[HITS & MISSES: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow on TCM]

Wednesday, April 19th, 9 a.m. ET:

The Indestructible Man (1956)

 

Lon Chaney Jr. as a dead, then resurrected convict who can't be killed (except by the script). Casey Adams as Lt. Dick Chasen. Horror/noir is actually somewhat entertaining.