coffeedan
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Posts posted by coffeedan
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Tuesday's question: What classic horror role did Boris Karloff turn down because Universal studio head Carl Laemmle asked him to take a pay cut?
Good luck!
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Boy, we're really having fun with this one! But vallo was the first one in with the correct answer. Although Tom Ewell appeared in an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in 1955, he was never in a film directed by the Master of Suspense.
For the record, Barry Fitzgerald was in JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK (1930), Robert Benchley in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940), William Tracy in MR. AND MRS. SMITH (1941), and Sean Connery in MARNIE (1964).
And thanks for the "welcome back," vallo and path. Vacations to tropical climes are great, but it's even better to come home again.
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Monday's question: Of Sean Connery, Robert Benchley, William Tracy, Tom Ewell, and Barry Fitzgerald, which actor was never in an Alfred Hitchcock film?
Good luck!
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Greetings, everybody! I had a wonderful time in Fort Myers, Florida last week. I visited two wildlife refuges, made my yearly pilgrimage to Thomas Edison's winter home (since my childhood, he's been one of my heroes), and most importantly, helped my mom celebrate her 71st birthday. It was a real treat for both of us, and a great way to beat the winter blues.
And thanks also to Mongo for taking over the Trivia thread last week. As many of you know by now, Mongo is stepping down from weekly trivia duties, but will be continuing his Happy Birthday and Ask Mongo threads elsewhere on the site. I'll miss him here -- we've had fun e-mailing each other back and forth on trivial and other matters -- but it's good to know he'll still be around.
Now, on to this week's movie trivia . . .
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It's THEED-a Bara (with a "soft" th).
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Glad to help out, Midge. (Sorry for the delay, but I just got back from vacation!)
In this country, I've never heard Ms. Daniels' name pronounced any other way but "Beebee."
I heard Suzanne Lloyd say that her grandfather, Harold Lloyd, called her "Beeb," but it was obviously a pet name (they were in love and almost married at one time), and not the actual pronunciation.
I can't verify this, but I seem to remember a BBC radio broadcast where the announcer pronounced her name as "Baby" Daniels. Again, that may be idiomatic.
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I think you may be right about Perc Westmore, since his professional name is a shortened form of Percival.
But Anita Loos's last name does rhyme with "dose." Loos herself wrote a quatrain for The Literary Digest in 1936 in which she bemoaned the mispronunciation of her name as "loose," and said it actually rhymes with "dose" (she used that very word). I had this confirmed by her grandnephew Rob Loos, whom I met when he stayed at the hotel where I work. He told me it's an old Dutch name, and his family often uses the mispronunciation of the name to tell family members from "outsiders."
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This subject has been proposed elsewhere on the boards, so let's get it started!
Having once been the Robert Osborne of my college town, I put in a lot of research into the proper pronunciation of certain Hollywood names, and received some polite correction at times. I'm going to start with a few names I've occasionally heard mangled on TCM in recent months, and let you add your own:
Frank Borzage bor-ZAY-gee
William Dieterle DEE-ter-lee
Dashiell Hammett dash'l
Sessue Hayakawa SES-su
Anita Loos rhymes with "dose"
Thomas Meighan as in "me an' him"
Maria Ouspenkaya oo-spen-SKY-ya
Franchot Tone FRAN-show
Perc Westmore persh (he once said "I'm not a cup of coffee.")
Also, feel free to ask how to pronounce any difficult names. Having grown up in an intensely ethnic neighborhood (where I learned how to pronounce names with no vowels), I can at least offer some educated guesses!
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Friday's question: What Marx Brothers movie was filmed under the working title PEACE AND QUIET?
Good luck!
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Jeez, another TCM Death Watch thread opened right on schedule, just before the yearly salute to the Oscars! Fearless prediction: We'll see at least another one in July, right before Summer Under The Stars.
Talk about reruns -- I've seen these gloomy threads pop up at least twice a year for the last five years, and the arguments don't get any better or more original. Probably the hoariest argument I've heard is that they show the newer films on HBO, Showtime, Encore, etc. all the time. Well, no they don't -- at least, not at the same time that they're on TCM. The films mentioned at the beginning of this thread are at least 10 years old, which means they've lost their novelty on the pay channels, and turn up infrequently at best. And many of us out here in the hinterland don't shell out for the pay channels -- standard cable is good enough for me, and I only pay enough to get TCM. That's why I don't mind the occasional "modern" film on TCM -- it's a welcome change of pace, and sets off the older films well. In that sense, TCM is true movie heaven, showing us the classic films of every era.
It's not like the modern films are eating up the schedule. Path40a pointed out in another thread a statistic that I posted here in 2003 and 2004, and a few others before me -- the so-called "modern" films take up only 3 to 4 percent of TCM's schedule every month. The "real" classics still make up 96 to 97 percent. And that ratio has remained consistent over the years, right up to now. So the stuff that people are complaining about in these threads is basically window dressing.
And what is a classic? We could argue that six ways from Sunday, but I think Edith Wharton gave the most useful definition: "A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which the author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness." That can apply to any era.
I don't know what it is about the modern films that blinds some people so that they can't see anything else on the schedule. In the nearly nine years that I've been watching TCM, I've sampled just about everything they've offered, and come away a more complete film fan. I didn't like westerns before TCM, but now I can't wait for Lone Star Cinema. I seek out more foreign films because of TCM. The Young Film Composers Competition has made silent films vital and accessible to me. TCM has done so much good in showing hundreds of classic films every month, but for reasons best known to them, some people still wail Eloi Eloi when they see the rare film that doesn't meet with their narrow vision.
That's their problem. And their loss.
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Thursday's question: In what movie does John Wayne say, "The Army is always the same. The sun and the moon change, but the Army knows no seasons"?
Good luck!
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Vallo, you're on a roll! You are correct!
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Wednesday's question: What film noir classic was remade as THE FIEND WHO WALKED THE WEST in 1958?
Good luck!
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Excellent, vallo! You are correct!
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You can still search for silent movies. Click on Site, type "silent" in the search window, hit Go, and look under Schedule Matches. It'll show you all the silent movies playing on TCM over the next three months. Try it!
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The website seems to be bouncing me in and out today, but here I am, finally . . .
Tuesday's question: In what film does Porter Hall say, "I'm an atheist. Besides, I'm superstitious"?
Good luck!
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Good job, johnny! You are correct!
And that's a great quotation from Lionel. I wonder if he had the same reservations as Ethel . . .
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Judy Garland: By Myself is also available as an extra on the two-disc special edition of EASTER PARADE from Warner Home Video -- a terrific package definitely worth having.
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Monday's question: In what film does Lionel Barrymore appear in drag for most of its length?
Good luck!
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Greetings, everybody! I found an intriguing rumination from Ethel Barrymore in the April 10, 1926 issue of Liberty. Near the end of her article "Backstage." she explains why she was reluctant to work with her brothers John and Lionel on the same stage. She writes:
Some have asked . . . why not play Ophelia to my brother John's Hamlet, or Desdemona to Lionel's Othello?
Some years ago, it was even rumored that we intended doing this -- a Hamlet production in which Lionel would be the King with John and me; and an Othello with John as Iago to Lionel's Othello and my Desdemona.
Really, the idea is absurd. We never contemplated such a thing. Impassioned scenes of love and jealousy such as this would demand would never be accepted from brother and sister. As greatly as I would like to appear in a cast with my brothers, it would be asking too much from intelligent patrons of the theater -- and from the actors.
Could this explain the "fascinating failure" of the 1932 film RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS with all three Barrymores? As much as I like them all, maybe the filial ties were too much to overcome in this picture with all its passions -- even though it's exciting to see John, Lionel and Ethel on the screen together. It might also explain why Ethel didn't set foot in front of a movie camera for another 12 years. She respected her audience as much as her brothers.
Maybe Ethel knew this better than John and Lionel, who worked together many times on screen. After all, she outlasted them both, on the stage and in life.
Now, on to this week's movie trivia . . .
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Friday's question: In what movie does Akim Tamiroff say, "I am drunk. The wise man gets drunk to spend his time with fools"?
Good luck!
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Thursday's question: In what movie does Gene Kelly say, "That's quite a dress you almost have on"? And to whom does he say it?
Good luck!
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You got it, vallo! And I love the end of Gish's quotation: "That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older."
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A few years ago, TCM featured a "Festival of Shorts" volume (I forget which number) that included two of the MGM shorts the Stooges made with Ted Healy, PLANE NUTS (1933) and THE BIG IDEA (1934). They've been repeating a lot of the earlier volumes lately, so this will probably turn up again soon. Better yet, request it!
The End Is Near
in General Discussions
Posted
Well, I had to look and look, but I found a nearly complete TCM schedule for July of 2001 on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. It's lacking the lineups for July 30 and 31, but the numbers still have a lot to tell. Here's the breakdown:
1920s and before -- 10 films
1930s -- 81 films
1940s -- 100 films
1950s -- 91 films
1960s -- 60 films
1970s -- 7 films
1980s -- 3 films
1990s -- 4 films
2000s -- 1 film (the restored and expanded ELVIS: THAT'S THE WAY IT IS)
Also, I found the closest thing to a TCM "mission statement" on a 1999 webpage of TCM's history, short as it was then. It begins with this statement: "Turner Classic Movies presents the greatest films of all time, from the '20s through the '80s (emphasis mine) -- featuring the silent screen, international pictures, as well as all of Hollywood's genres -- commercial-free, uninterrupted, 24 hours a day."
And continuing in path40a's footsteps, I compiled these stats from the January 2003 and January 2004 issues of Now Playing, respectively:
1920s and before . . . . . . . .7 . . . . . . . . . 9
1930s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 . . . . . . . . 82
1940s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 . . . . . . . 114
1950s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 . . . . . . . 105
1960s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 . . . . . . . . 51
1970s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . . . . . . . 19
1980s and after . . . . . . . . . 17 . . . . . . . . .11
I could produce other stats showing the numbers going up and down, but I think Lynn's prior appraisal was right: At times, TCM has had more modern films in the schedule than it does now. It has also had fewer of those films. But as much as the numbers go up and down, the programmers do maintain some basic proportions. The modern films have always been part of the programming mix, right from the very beginning, but they have never overwhelmed the rest of the schedule. There are a few exceptions, but TCM has kept to showing modern films that are at least 10 years old (the most recent film in this month's schedule is from 1996), which I think is distance enough for determining a "classic."
In the end, you can't define quality chronologically or "by the numbers." Like others here, I used a chronological criterion to define classics for many years, and eventually found it constricting. You just have to sit down and watch the movies, and evaluate them on their own merits. Fortunately, TCM gives us a lot of opportunites to do just that.