MattHelm

Technically, the "old B&W show" aired one episode in color, "The Big Little Jesus," but it apparently survives only in B&W. I think it's among the various PD episodes floating about today. There may be hope of a color one turning up on DVD, because a local channel here showed it in color just before this Christmas.

Rusty, The movie would have been called "George Brent Came C.O.D." if he did his own stunts. But the thing that made guys like Brent look bigger than they really were, were those skimpy mustaches. You take them off, or position them in an oblique angle, and it takes 50 pounds off of them.

I noticed that Chesterfields machine or sign in the background, and immediatley thought, 'Hey, what about Fatima cigarettes?' They were the sponsors for the Dragnet radio series, and Jack Webb appeared in ads telling people that they were "wise" for smoking Fatimas. Maybe the 'wise' comes in meaning that by smoking these they instantly saw the Our Lady of Fatima prophecies and the end of the world. The end of the Fatima world came in 1980. It must be pretty bad when a cigarette brand bites the dust. And now Jack Webb for our sponsor ... http://www.wclynx.com/burntofferings/packsfatima_jackwebb.html

Watching it now ... great stuff. The TV show was aired in reruns when I was at an age where I couldn't care less about it. Now, I listen to the radio shows online and was thrilled to see that this was on tonight.

I'll be around. I just don't have enough time now to visit here as often as I have in the past. I gotta make enough money to get out of this swamp and get back to Massachusetts, where I belong ... and still be able to fleece taxpayers to pay my teaching salary.

If anyone wants more of Martin & Lewis for free, listen to their radio shows here: http://www.archive.org/details/MartinAndLewis_OldTimeRadio

Fred, The way he tells it, they told him that this guy was the "original" Boston **** that the character was based on. In context, my father was living in Boston at the time, and I think they were just trying to jokingly impress a little kid, and forgot to tell him that it was just a joke.

Rusty, I've been busy making third graders cry at my day job, and making myself cry freelancing at night, and haven't been on much. I don't think any punch thrown in that movie wasn't a roundhouse, but when they switched to the real rough stuff, all of a sudden two of the most obvious stunt doubles in cinematic history appeared on the screen. This blatant disregard for the audience's intelligence wouldn't be rivaled until 30 years later on TV, with the Starsky & Hutch and Dynasty fight scenes. My father has been telling me for years that his father's cousin dated the "real" Boston **** back in the day. I think maybe she dated some mobster and they told him he was Boston ****, and the old man believed it all these years. He still tells the story and I haven't the heart to tell him that ****'s a totally fictional character. I must get me some of those MST3K stuff. I haven't seen them in years.

Cecilia: Who are you? ****: Right now, I'm a fugitive from an autopsy.

Hi Kyle, Been teaching by day and freelancing nights, so it's been all work and no play. If you have iTunes there may be a couple of other online OTR sites in the "radio" section, but Antioch is the best that I've found. I also love that in between shows he plays some great music from that era, too. Here's my search results for OTR shows on the archive site, to make it easier to browse their selection. http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3A%22oldtimeradio%22

I used to listen to the Antioch station on iTunes (and donate to the man if you become a regular listener) before I found www.archive.org. The latter has a more comprehensive selection of radio shows, but you have to know what you're looking for on there and do a search for it. Recently, I've been listening to a lot of "Box 13" with Allan Ladd ... "Dragnet" ... "Inner Sanctum" ... "Martin & Lewis"... "The Whistler" ... "Mr. Keen Tracer of Lost Persons" ... "Rocky Fortune" with Sinatra ... and lots more.

From a few reviews, I've gleaned that it's a let's-pretend-studio-era-movie. It's like what a pervert from today who watches Casablanca and fantasizes Bogie having sex with Bergman, would come up with. It's a perversion of our TCM favorites. I haven't seen it and only read this, so I could be wrong. But I have no desire to see it. If it's true, why try to make a movie in the classic mold and inject today's sexuality and corrupt values in it? The actors in it can't hold a candle to the ones they ape, so it just looks like a pretentious waste of time.

I get a kick out of these gorey slasher flicks for a couple of reasons: One, because horror movies have always been an escapist way of confronting one's fears, and since I find being killed by a sadistic sociopath more realistic than a rubber bat morphing into Bela Lugosi outside my window(at least these days), I fear that more; the second reason is because I used to want to be a make-up fx artist and spent most of my teenage years making monsters and realistic wounds, and I look at these movies technically, trying to think of how they did a certain effect. But, having said that, these movies are coarsening today's youth. I'm not talking about all violence, just the extreme, realistic violence in movies like Saw and Hostel. It's not just the extreme violence in movies, it's the whole culture of violence that permeates music, video games and TV. While I don't think network TV is that violent, or gratuitously so, MTV shows like Jackass and the visualization of violent songs/misogyny in music videos just adds to the creation of a degenerate generation. I was on the fence about the subject of extreme violence in movies, because I got a kick out of them, and was in denial about their effect on kids. What made me change my mind was when I saw all those violent, ugly mobs of kids all over the country the day that Playstation 3 came out. It was almost as if it were planned because it happened in so many places, but it wasn't. That's scary, and what's even scarier is the fact that most of those creating havok that day were 20-somethings. It's not just one thing, it's a whole corrupted culture that's creating this. I'd be a hypocrite if I just denounced the music and TV shows that contribute to this, and still continued to selfishly support these movies by giving them my money. So I decided that it's better to make sacrifices (though it's not much of one) for the greater good. If people stopped supporting these things with their money, then they wouldn't continue to make this garbage.

otterhere, A recent book, and other past studies, show that the individualists give more to charities than the communalists. Individualism sounds selfish and greedy, but for the most part, it's not.

You're right. What I meant to say, but left out, was that all the Sidney Toler Chans for Monogram were Toler's in the sense that he bought the screen rights for the character from Fox and went on to continue making them at Monogram, until his death.

Rusty, I didn't think of ordering the public domain stuff online, duh. That means I don't have to deplete my Paxil supply by wandering outdoors. But if I go into the Mines and survive the Balrog, I emerge as Matt the White, plus with a few dollar DVD impulse buys.

I'll have to look out for those public domain DVDs. I'd rather pass through the Mines of Moria than go into a Walmart or Target, but a bunch of George Zucco PRC flicks would be worth it. TCM is playing a Sidney Toler Charlie Chan flick in March, The Scarlet Clue. All the Toler Chan flicks were done for Monogram so there just may be a whole night or day of them coming up in the future.

I just recently learned that after looking up other Monogram titles when they played Sarong Girl. Another great B flick factory was Producers Releasing Corp. They were absorbed by the British company Eagle Lion Inc. but then they too fizzled out, shortly after. Does anyone know if these PRC Pictures are public domain now?

Lorimar bought Allied Pictures in the 80s, which owned Monogram's movies, and Lorimar was then bought by Warner Communications later that decade. Then, when Lorimar dissolved, it's library defaulted to Warners in the 90s.

I think Wind Across the Everglades had a subtitle: Search for the Skunk Ape.

Kyle, Budd Schulberg wrote a novel in 1939 called What Makes Sammy Run, and several short stories for magazines, in between writing screenplays. In 1958, when Nicholas Ray was fired from Wind Across the Everglades, Schulberg took over as director and refilmed a lot of scenes that Ray shot. He wasn't credited as the director, though. This movie was also Peter Falk's acting debut. I don't think anyone would be surprised that Schulberg would direct a movie seeing how he was a screenwriter and producer since the 30s, but it is surprising that he only directed one movie and not even credited for it.

You have me racking my brain trying to think of novelists who've directed movies. Do you mean of their own works? Or their becoming directors of other writers' works? I have a couple of Woody Allen's books, but I don't think he's made any movies from the stories he's written in them.

I wish I wasn't, Kyle, but he directed that horrible movie Maximum Overdrive in 1986, from a short story of his, called Trucks.

I agree, let anyone say what they will. What she said was: I doubt they are "putting up with" anything. I'm sure very few if any TCM personnel actually go on this website, if they do they obviously don't care what is being said. Besides the percentage of TCM viewers that post here is miniscule. It's true that "few" TCM personnel go on here, since tcmprogrammer is the only one that we see, now and then. And, it's equally true that a miniscule percentage of TCM viewers post here ... just do the math. I should hope they have more viewers than those that post here, or they wouldn't survive. If she's putting forth a negative view of the channel's programming, I can see her point, but like I said, it's a 1% much ado about nothing, in my opinion. But I value someone's civil opinion, opposed to a personal attack on another's character, in response to said opinion. Talk about "mocked indignation."

What filmlover is saying, is that if she has you on ignore, then it's a one way fight because she's not seeing your posts. You need two people to fight, so it isn't a fight at all. So all you're doing is telling the rest of us how you feel about her post. We've got it.