FredCDobbs
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Posts posted by FredCDobbs
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"Sunset Boulevard" is filled with so many golden moments.
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The swimming pool sequence in "Cat People." One of the greatest sequences ever filmed.
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Ok, I think I found the problem in my computer. Something about cookies and Temp file settings. I'm now seeing all the latest posts on the main Forum Home index.
Fred
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Help, I'm lost in time!
I signed on this morning but the main Forum Home index showed only the last posts of yesterday.
I clicked back and forth between Forum Home and specific forum topics and I finally got a list of today's posts, then I lost them again and I'm still receiving a list on Forum Home that is updated only to yesterday's posts, and I can't respond to any of today's posts because the Forum Home doesn't show them.
Fred
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I keep clicking "Forum Home" and I keep getting different indexes of posts, mainly ones for earlier today. If I sign off I can sometimes see the latests posts on the main index, but when I sign on again the main index and sub-indexes go back to list the top posts that where made 4 or 5 hours ago.
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I had trouble understanding my Radio Shack Model III.
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There is a good 1945 book about the Code, which can be found here:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=MOLEY&ph=2&tn=thehaysoffice
or look here and use the title "The Hays Office" and the author "Moley". Then search AbeBooks.
http://www.trussel.com/f_books.htm
This book tells the true story about why so many Americans began to protest certain movies back as early as the 19-teens, not long after the movie industry moved to Hollywood. And the book goes through the history of earlier codes. But it ends around 1945 so it doesn't tell about the gradual abolishment of the Code in the 1950s and '60s.
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Hi, thanks for the info about the "White Slave Act". That would have made the term a significant one in the US vocabulary.
I looked up some early references in the early 19th Century and that's when the term meant white slaves. There was some use of the word prostitution in some early writings, but I think the term was changed in the media and government documents late in the 19th Century. It's easier to dismiss little kids when they ask "what are white slaves" than it is when they ask "what are prostitutes".
By the way, I have a 1946 book about the Hays Code, and it says that Will Hays was selected as the spokesman for the MPPDA Code because he was a rather famous national political figure, although not in an elected office, and I think it said he was hired away from being the US Postmaster General to take the MPPDA job. That purpose was to give the (false) impression to the public that Hays and the Code had something to do with "the government", which it did not.
The very same trick was used when Jack Valente (a low-level national political figure) was hired as the spokesman for the MPAA when the ratings code went into effect in the 1960s.
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It might have grown to mean that late in the 19th Century, but before the War it mean the slavery of white people, either orphans bought from orphanages or indentured servants.
Here is a good place to find 19th Century terms:
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For me it is a "premium channel." I started out paying about $23 to Direct TV about 8 years ago, without TCM. I had to go up to their next tier at about $33 to get TCM and Fox movie channel. Then they dropped the bottom tier and went up on my tier so I'm now paying about $48 a month to get TCM and the news channels. Fox was pulled from Direct TV a couple of months ago and they want more money for Fox now. If they pull this trick with TCM, I'm bailing out. I've got enough movies on disk now.
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The key term in the adultery rule was "must not be explicitly treated". In other words, they could do it, but they shouldn't be too obvious about it. The idea was to keep the kids from finding out about and thinking such relationships were normal.
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"White Slavery" was the polite media term for white prostitution back in the '30s and '40s.
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That's an interesting observation about the two different Gillis'. I saw this film first as a kid and then many times later as an adult, and I find the idea that the main story teller is dead to be a very interesting approach.
While the basic story was very specific to Hollywood, I think there are many people who watch it and remember the times in their lives that they were in situations that they hated but that they couldn't get out of because they were broke and needed a place to stay and free food to eat.
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I don't care much for her either. I think she was a good actress, but I never liked her personality.
Right off hand I can't think of other 1929 pre-codes, but there were some silent pre-codes, such as the 1928 "Our Dancing Daughers" in which Crawford took off her clothes and danced on a table in her underwear at a college dance at a hotel ballroom.
I think more of the sound films were thought of as pre-codes becuse of the dialogue, such as "The Divorcee". No nudity at all, but plenty of suggestive dialogue.
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I think I remember the place across from Paramount. I was in it a few times back in the late ?70s. I remember seeing some guys dressed in Western costumes in it. I figured they were making a movie at Paramount.
I also think I was in the place across from Warner Brothers. That?s where I was sitting in a booth eating lunch and some studio business men were sitting in the booth behind me. I heard one of the old guys tell a story about Lana Turner on location in Hawaii (I think it was Hawaii) and she went shopping in an expensive store in the hotel, and she charged a $5,000 mink coat to her room. The studio wound up paying for it.
Those little cafes and bars were just like any in any small town. Many of them weren?t fancy at all and were just diners, yet because they were near or across from studios, many actors and department heads went in them quite often, just to get away from the regular studio cafeteria every now and then.
When I was a teenager in Mississippi in the mid-?50s, there was an early rock and roll singer and guitar player who would be seen at a local small-town bar-b-q place from time to time, the Choctaw Bar-B-Q house, just off Highway 49. I think he drove a pink Cadillac. In 1955 and ?56 he would be driving from either Tupelo or Memphis down to the coast for concerts. Later in ?56 we saw him on the Ed Sullivan show on TV, and we learned that his name was Elvis Presley. Another time I lived in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. There was a little colored girl growing up there, although I never met or saw her. She was just one of the hundreds of other little colored girls (that's the term we used back then). Later I learned that her name was Oprah Winfrey.
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Thanks! That was 52 years ago.
When I watched the show, I wondered how Harpo's family could put up with living with a clown all the time. I thought his TV and movie personality was his real one.
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There was one about a bar across from a movie studio that famous actors used to visit.
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Thanks. What about the old office building downtown that was built in the late 19th or early 20th Century that was hollow inside? It had what was an old type of open "mall" inside, with walkways around the big central opening. I think it was about 5 stories tall and was used in several old films.
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I have a tape of Red Dust. I first saw this film in a theater in San Francisco in the 1970s.
I was about to give up on watching movies because I didn't like modern ones, then some theaters in SF started showing rare old ones. I also saw Joan Crawford in "Rain" in a theater, which has now turned out to be a fairly rare film again. One theater showed "San Francisco" for a week during every anniversary of the Great Earthquake, and large numbers of us would go to see it every year.
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I was thinking specifically of Joan Crawford in "Untamed", 1929. She dances in a dress then a guy dances with her and swings her around, high in the air, and she seem to not be wearing any underwear at all. You can see this by running a tape or disk slow. She either doesn't have on any underwear or she is wearing a special garment that makes it seem so. Later in the film her father tells her to stop dancing while not wearing any underwear.
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Do you know the year of that Harpo Marx interview?
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Ok, then it must have been some other Brando interview I heard my folks talking about.
The only Murrow interview I specifically remember was Harpo Marx. Seems like I recall that Harpo was in costume and playing his regular character, while the rest of his family looked normal. Do you know if that is correct or not?
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I don't remember it having a name, but I suppose it does. I think it is just separate reports. Very interesting.
But there is so much in Hollywood and all of LA, places that were used in movies. I'd like to see where those cable cars go up the hill near downtown. I see them in LA noir movies. Also, the house in Double Indemnity is still in the same place somewhere in LA. I'd like to see the house that was in Sunset Boulevard. There used to be some little courts (motels) out near Santa Monica which I think were used in movies, but they might all be gone by now.
My folks and I drove on old 66 to LA back in 1953, not long after we saw "Sunset Boulevard". That was the old LA I see in a lot of old movies.
Skating Scene
in Information, Please!
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There is a scene like that in TCM's December Christmas Movie promo. Looks like the people are in early 19th Century costumes.