FredCDobbs
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Posts posted by FredCDobbs
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YOU'VE GOT MAIL was shown on TCM several months ago.
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Chief cinematographer James Wong Howe enjoys a cigar and a beer while the 12 screenwriters try to hack out the patchwork movie script.
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What about its box office on Broadway
You mean the play? It's only 20 minutes long and shows only the 13 year old girl talking to the 14 year old boy on a bare stage that shows only about 10 feet of an imitation railroad track. That is all Tennessee Williams wrote. The main part of the movie was pieced together by a dozen or so Hollywood film writers and had nothing to do with Tennessee Williams. They just used his name to promote their defective film script.
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Alicia Rhett as INDIA WILKES in GONE WITH THE WIND. Her only film.
Gone with the Wind (1939) was the only movie role Rhett did. She was offered other roles, but moved back to South Carolina citing she did not think she was right for the parts.
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I agree it's very well done, but it is not necessarily an exception. These people knew what they were doing, probably better than the special effects wizards do today, sitting at computers and pressing buttons.
This is my favorite special effect scene:
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It seems to me that several 1966 screenwriters were given 30 days to come up with a working script that imitated Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner type film scripts, such as something like: THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, THE LONG HOT SUMMER, THE FUGITIVE KIND, SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, BABY DOLL, etc., etc....... but the group of writers weren’t quite finished when their 30-day deadline was suddenly up, so they just cut the script off right there when their time ran out, and they sandwiched their un-finished script in-between the opening scene and closing scene of the original Tennessee Williams play titled “This Property is Condemned”, and then they all pretended this whole film was a Tennessee Williams movie.
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I understand what you are saying but I can't fully agree. I think sometimes Fred you want film to be a pill, to help you escape from the realities of the world. You want to go to a movie and be comforted, I get that. But it's idiotic to think that is how every film should be, because life is not always going to be two lovers heading off into the sunset. It's not the way all people live. Nor is it the way all people should live.
At any rate, film can be instructional and insightful-- there should not always be a happy ending. We need to see things for how they really are-- no sedative to lull us into a false complacency about our society.
Anyone who wants happy endings has no business watching a Tennessee Williams story on stage or on the screen.
See Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Property_Is_Condemned
Budget $4.62 million[1]
Box office $2.6 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)[2]
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LOL. No wonder the movie seemed padded and lacking something to me.
Here is some more:
http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2009/03/26/112925-one-act-this-property-is-condemned-packs-a-wallop/
The play, running less than 25 minutes with only two characters, is a production of The Now Theatre, presented in the Rogue After Curfew series.
Tom, a 16-year-old boy, is played by Nic Adams (who is also the director). Opposite him is Laine Peterson as Willie, a 13-year-old girl who lives by herself in an empty boarding house.
Their conversation is the play.
Sydney Pollack directed the 1966 film adaptation starring Natalie Wood and Robert Redford. The play is nothing like the movie, expanded by 12 screenwriters to be the story of Willie’s wayward, undisciplined older sister who, at 16, actively entertained the many railroad men who stayed at a boarding house run by her mother.
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Apparently, the whole original 1-act play runs about 18 minutes:
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SEE THIS:
Among the running themes at this year’s Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival is the view of Williams as a poet-playwright. Cripple Creek Theatre Company’s presentation of “American Blues,” a pair of early one-act plays, vividly captures Williams’ poetic use of language to explore what would become recurring topics throughout his body of work – love, death, the fallen nature of humanity and repressed desires.
In “This Property is Condemned,” the quiet young Tom is wandering along a railroad track, carrying a kite. He encounters Willie, a colorful, confused and lively young girl. The brief work is made up of their passing conversation.
(The play, it should be noted, has virtually nothing to do with the 1966 film version, starring Robert Redford and Natalie Wood, in which the story Willie tells of her sister is expanded and distorted to become the primary focus.)
MORE HERE:
http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2010/03/one-act_plays_capture_poetry_o.html
ALSO, SEE MORE HERE:
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I agree. I've never liked the way the movie ended. Was never that impressed with the movie as a whole either. Wonder how true to the play it was?
I've been trying to find some info on the original play, but I haven't found anything yet.
See my list of the director and the writers. Too many people. Too many different ideas for different kinds of endings. I can just hear them arguing now:
One writer: "I say she should die at the end of the film!"
Another writer: "I say we should not show her dying".
Another writer: "No, we should show it, just like they showed Blanche being led off to the crazy house at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire".
Director: "No, no, no! We should show her getting sick because of running in the rain, but we should have her almost die but get well at the end and stay in New Orleans with Redford, leaving the stuff about the marriage somewhat ambiguous at the end. Maybe we can have her mother die and make every audience member happy."
Looks to me like they all just gave up and quickly ended the film, WITH NO REAL TRUE ENDING. They don't even show how and why Alva got sick (running in the rain). They just hit a dead stop in the middle of the New Orleans sequence, and cut to the scene of the young girl talking about Alva being in "the boneyard". Very unsatisfying.
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PS: I keep thinking that maybe they did film the ending I would prefer but they cut it out. It just seems like there is at least 10 minutes of the end of the New Orleans sequence "missing". Cut out and thrown away or maybe in an old film can somewhere.
This film needs an ending more like the 1936 CAMILLE had, with a long "sick and dying" scene. That allows guys like me to turn it off early, before she dies.
And it allows others to watch it to the very end.
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Fred, I just read your other post about this film. In that one you wish there was a happy ending. Here it appears you're saying that if they are going to have a sad ending they need to make it even more sad by showing Alma sick, dying or dead.
I'm glad you pointed that out.....
As per 1930s and 40s film style and techniques, her getting sick would give me a "warning" that she was going to die, so I could prepare myself. But I don't like the 1960s technique of simply having both movie stars suddenly disappear, right in the middle of a dramatic scene, and having a funky girl telling us the ending of the movie. That is a downer for me.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, and THAT is why this film failed at the boxoffice.
Directed by Sydney Pollack Writing Credits Tennessee Williams ... (suggested by a one act play of) Francis Ford Coppola ... (screenplay) (as Francis Coppola) & Fred Coe ... (screenplay) & Edith R. Sommer ... (screenplay) (as Edith Sommer) David Rayfiel ... (uncredited)
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Wow that's incredible Dobbs.....thanks for the photo!
I didn't take that photo. There were other locals and tourists taking pictures of the movie being made. Here is a source of some others:
http://joeb-tallyho.blogspot.com/2010/05/this-propert-is-condemned-natilie-wood.html
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Okay. Now I've finished watching This Property is Condemned. Overall, I really liked it. I think Natalie Wood's mother in this film could rival her mother in Splendor in the Grass and Kim Novak's in Picnic. Good grief. I thought this was a great melodrama and it was very compelling. I understand that Tennessee Williams was unhappy with this adaptation of his story. In fact, I think the entire cast was upset with the film as they didn't have a finished script and had to ad-lib some of their lines just to get through the shoot. While I liked the film, I found the ending to be very sad, but also very poignant. I liked that Willie was wearing her sister's jewelry and party dress (even though it was in tatters). Willie mentioned that her mom moved to Arkansas with her boyfriend. Is Willie living in Mississippi all alone taking care of herself?
The film seems to be moving right along and then all of a sudden the story stops and we see the final scene with the kids on the train, talking. It looks as if their film budget finally and suddenly ran out and they had to stop the film right there, so they filled in with the short dialogue with the kids.
They didn't even show Alva sick or dying or dead. No tears for the audience. They could have played that part up and the film might have been more successful. But just Wham, Alva runs out of the apartment, and they cut to the final scene of the kids talking.
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The finished recording
Thanks for the description of the equipment.
I own an Auricon optical-track sound camera, in which all of that stuff has been miniaturized to a sound-head size of about 2 inches by 3 inches, and it places a variable-area sound track on the film as the camera photographs the image.
The sound track is advanced about 26 frames ahead of the image frame and it is always in synch since both are on the same piece of film. It uses single-perf 16 mm film with the sprocket drive on one edge and the sound track on the other edge (the edge with no perfs).
The sound head is the rectangular gray block in the center-rear of the camera. The light goes out the front "nozzle" and onto the sound track of the film. They later designed a magnetic head and fit it inside that curved metal thing to the left of the optical sound head.
The optical "exciter lamp" is low-voltage and fits inside that round thing that has the name AURICON written on it. Looks a little like a small flashlight bulb. The rectangular box contains the device that has some kind of "blade" or "mirror" that vibrates in tune with the sound and that is what causes either the variable density or variable area, carefully focused light beam, to hit the edge of the film. Much like a flashlight beam that might be designed to flicker to the same frequencies as the sound track.
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If we're discussing THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, I am going to disagree. I love the ending. These stories are all about Williams' sister Rose. Mary Badham is playing a younger version of Rose in this movie-- we are seeing another snapshot into the real Blanche DuBois, at a stage when her whole life was starting to spiral in ambiguous directions. This film is not actually about the love story between Redford and Wood's characters-- it is about the impact that a mother's decisions has on a daughter. It's a brilliant ending.
Thanks for the information. But for me...ME.... I prefer a cute love story with a happy ending. If I want to feel bad and depressed, I'll just look in a mirror.
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In late 1965 or early ’66, I had a chance to meet James Wong Howe in New Orleans. They were filming Robert Redford at night, walking down the street in the rain. I was able to talk to Howe for about 3 minutes. He set up the scene and the lights, and he let camera operators do the actual filming of the scene.
I do wish this film had a better ending.
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Fred, are you noticing this on just trivia or on all the threads? I noticed it once last week in the discussions threads and yesterday on the REBUS thread in trivia.
I've noticed it in GENERAL DISCUSSIONS too.
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Of course even if it works now (i.e. she can see them) it doesn't mean there still isn't an issue for her still. But as far as I know it isn't an issue for me.
There IS an issue with this problem. I see this issue all the time. Many times I get notices but the "Like" , quite often, does NOT show up where it should at the end of the post.
That's why I started this thread, and lavenderblue19 has noticed this problem too.
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I just did the same.
Ok, I now see your name for your "Like", but I no longer see my "Like", which should still say "You Like This", but it no longer says that. My "Like" is not showing up for me.
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OPPS, sorry. My "Like" still does show up on a different post.
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I just clicked "LIKE" on a lavenderblue19 post and I will leave it like that.
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I just got a personal notice of a "like" for my first post, but it doesn't show up as a "like" on the post itself.
The notice says:
jamesjazzguitar liked a post you made in Some "Like This" no...
Today, 06:02 PM -
Years ago I worked at a TV station where we had two average looking girls who were our best looking news anchors (presenters).
I usually saw them with all their professional makeup on and they were fantastic looking.
But occasionally I saw them on Saturday, when they came in to pick up their pay checks, and they had NO makeup on, and I didn’t recognize them.
One Saturday I was working and one of them, a close friend, came into the newsroom and I saw her and I didn’t recognize and I asked her, “May I help you??” I felt like an idiot when she spoke, because she was our top anchor with no makeup on !
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Rebus
in Games and Trivia
Posted
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Mild Red Pierce