FredCDobbs
-
Posts
25,502 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
17
Posts posted by FredCDobbs
-
-
Interesting story, thanks.
I remember seeing part of a 1953 movie musical with Doris Day, titled ?Calamity Jane?, in which she plays a girl similar to the Annie character, and her co-star is Howard Keel. Doris seems like she is trying to act like Betty Hutton in the Annie movie.
-
I?m not an expert on the subject, so this is just an opinion.
I?ve noticed the closeness scenes in many old early movies and in silent films, but I think they generally represent extreme emotion, sort of like if you?ve ever had the experience of getting right up in front of someone?s face to yell at him to make some kind of political point. Sort of like pointing a finger in someone?s face.
In some musical films of the ?50s, the boy and girl were so close and singing so loud, it seemed to me that they would be hurting each other?s ears.
There was an old saying about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962: ?The Russians and the Americans were up close and eyeball to eyeball with each other, and the Russians just blinked.? Meaning, the two countries got ?face to face? in a serious and emotional conflict, and the Russians finally did something that indicated they were backing down.
I always thought men getting close together or face to face in an emotion scene in an old movie just stressed the tenseness and emotion of it. Sort of like when Roman Polanski gets up close to Jack Nicholson?s face in ?Chinatown? and then sticks a knife up his nose. Also, in some old gangster movies, a tough guy would grab another guy by the top front of his shirt or by his tie and pull him up close, face to face, and give him a serious lecture and a warning.
-
I have to disagree about Anatomy.
To me, this entire film centers around an executive studio decision to use the word ?panties? in a film for the first time and to have a famous old actor use the word. I recall that this was a big promotional feature of the film back in 1959, when all the local high school boys were talking about it and were talking about how all the boys just had to see it.
I was very disappointed in the film.
-
Anyone is fine with me. Whatever makes people happy.
I would prefer some of the older stars and more rare films, such as:
Warren William
Richard Dix
Marian Marsh (with that cute little doll face)
Kay Francis
And how about:
Basil Rathbone
Also, it might be fun to have a month featuring a lot of the old cowboy movies of the 1930s and '40s, such as Lash La Rue, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers,
-
San Sebastian, huh? So you are out in the western rural part of Puerto Rico?
I have a great world map program that came with my computer. I'm amazed at how many towns it has on it.
Yes, I like the rural life now. Nice and quiet.
I receive TCM by means of a small satellite dish. We don't have cable were I am. We do have phones and electricity.
-
Lol, it?s a funny thing about ?The West?. It hasn?t changed much. There are some wealthy places out here, such as Telluride, where Ophra and other famous people have homes. But just 50 miles away, down the mountain, are some inexpensive little towns and some ranches and farms.
Ted Turner has a ranch over northeast of Santa Fe. Sam Donaldson's ranch is south of there. Sam used to be an ABC reporter. Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense) has a ranch near Taos. Our governor is Bill Richardson. He used to be Secretary of Energy and our Ambassador to the United Nations. Half of his relatives live in Mexico City. He?s half Mexican. Might run for President in ?08. Demi Moore?s mother lived near here. People used to see Demi in town every now and then.
A couple of hours South of here is Gallup, where they used to make a lot of old Western movies. They made ?Ace in the Hole? with Kirk Douglas just West of Gallup back in 1951. You can still see the cliffs that they used in the film. They made ?My Darling Clementine? near here. There is a famous local mountain in that film. The same mountain is in ?Laughing Boy? with Lupe Velez and Ramon Novorro.
I buy some of my hardware and my authentic real-wire-screen fly swatters from the local Trading Post a few miles from my house. That?s where the Indians go to trade their rugs and jewelry for their rural tools and supplies. It?s hard to find real wire-screen fly swatters nowadays. I can?t stand plastic fly swatters.
When I was young, I wanted to get out of the Old South and move to big cities. Ok, so I had my fill of big cities, and the older I got the more I wanted to move back into the old days and old-fashioned types of places, and now I?m in the Old West.
Here is what they sell at a local Ace Hardware store. This is a brand new wood/coal burning kitchen stove:
http://i14.tinypic.com/3zhjd4h.jpg
There are companies that still make things like this. Also, treadle sewing machines and wringer washing machines. The Ace store here went out of business because of competition from Lowes hardware and Wal-Mart, but the Trading Posts can order stoves like this.
I like the old Western movies on TCM. Sometimes I see John Wayne crossing the San Juan River in a movie at a location not far from my house. ?Stagecoach? is a little disorienting too me, because for a while the coach drives North, then South, then North again, whichever way the scenery looks best for the filming. But the coach should go only South. The descendants of the Apaches who chased stagecoach still live out here, but they run casinos now. In ?The Searchers?, Wayne meets with some Indians where they do the trading with the blankets, and those are Navajos from around here. You can hear them saying ?Yah Ta Hey? in the movie. That means ?Long time no see? or ?greetings? or just ?hello?. They still say it.
There are some of those ?wayward Mormons? out here too, the ones who left the church so they can have a lot of wives. They have little colonies around here.
Out in my yard, when I do garden work, I sometimes come across some pieces of old Anasazi pottery. It?s about a thousand years old. I find little broken pieces of it.
The tumbleweeds haven?t been too bad this year. I don?t have to sleep with one eye open, but I have to be careful when I walk around my yard at night. I have to be on the lookout for bears and mountain lions.
-
"Keel states Hutton upstaged everyone in every scene (including himself)."
Well, the movie is titled "Annie Get Your Gun," not "Howard Keel Get Your Gun."
She was the star of the film. She made the film a great classic. The outstanding costumes were made for her. She was supposed to be featured prominently in every scene she was in.
How would the film have been better if Betty had played a wimpy Annie?
-
Coming up next, "The Horn Blows at Midnight". What a silly movie. How wonderful.
-
Yes, back to the topic.
And yes, Gary Cooper's voice. Henry Fonda. Jimmy Stewart.
-
aftermath, yeah, me too, regarding the news. Too much news, Bush, Korea, Iraq and Iran stuff is enough to drive anyone bonkers.
I was watching a bunch of news reports about war with North Korea last week, and I thought, "Hmm... I've already seen this film, and in fact, this is where I came in, 54 years ago." So I'm not very interested in North Korean War The Sequel (this time with A-Bombs).
I've been enjoying a lot of Kay Francis movies on TCM this month.
-
Thanks re the cell phone info. I'm working my way through the instruction book. I'm still trying to figure out how to turn the music and light show off every time I turn the thing on. I'm sure that runs my batteries down. I got the regular ring-tone to work, but it still doesn't sound like a real "bell". It sounds like a "squeek, squeek, squeek" like one of the fenders on one of my old cars back in the '60s.
-
That sounds like fun.
After I retired, I moved to an old-type place out West (but not West Coast). Now I live among Indians, cowboys, sheep herders, Mormons, Mennonites, and Mexicans, plus a lot of "Anglos" who moved here from the East years ago (all white and non-brown folks out here are called "Anglos"). Lol, it took a little getting used to, with all these old-fashioned cultures, but I fit in now.
In some hardware stores they still sell kerosine lanterns, old 1920s style wood-burning cook stoves for the kitchen, wood stoves for heating, and wringer washing machines. Many of the Indians and Mennonites out here don't have electricity or gas.
I can't get cable TV where I am (I'm too far out of town, about 15 miles), and it took a while before I could get satellite TV. But I do have electricity, water, gas, and phone lines. Many of the Indians didn't have telephones until the government started giving them free cell phones a couple of years ago. They are limited to a certain number of minutes per month.
I watch a lot of cable news, and I see New York and Washington with all their problems and the 911 attacks, but that doesn't affect us out here. The strangest thing that happened to us during the 911 attacks was that the cross-country airliners stopped flying overhead for a couple of days, and all our mail from the East was held up for about three weeks because of the East Coast anthrax attacks.
I'm really amazed at how much cable news programs are so New York and Washington oriented. I get better Western news coverage over Univision, the Spanish Language channel that is run out of Miami and Mexico City. It's aimed at the Mexican "immigrant" audience in the US, so it has a lot of Western US news on their news shows.
And for movies, there's TCM.
-
Sure, I do it.
I even watch a little of some movies I don't like.
I like to see the clothes, the furniture, the cars or carriages, etc., etc. and I like to hear the music.
I just got my first cell phone. The dang thing doesn't "ring", it plays a lousy rap tune. It is too small to fit in my hand. It's about the size of an old penny match box. It's got an instruction book thicker than the Manhattan yellow pages. When I turn it on, it does a little vibrating dance, it plays some electronic music, it has a screen that flashes bright lights and presents a psychedelic light show, then it ends up showing a painting of a football player kicking a ball. The numbers are too small for my fingers, so I try to tap them with my fingernails.
I would like a cell phone about the size of a handset on a 1940s telephone, all black, with the numbers on the inside of the handset. No, I don't need a dial, a touch-tone will work just fine, but it needs to be bigger than the one I have.
I need an "on/off" switch, nothing else, no music, no light show, just a bell inside it that rings loud.
There was a story in the local news last month about two old ladies who got trapped in their new car in the hot sun for 2 hours in a mall parking lot. One of the new all-electronic cars.
Their windows were too dark for anyone to see them. Their battery had run down on the car and when they got in, the car locked them in and they couldn't find any door handles to open the door manually to get out. They couldn't break the glass on the car to get out. Finally, someone saw a sign in a side window, up against the glass, that said "HELP! CALL 911". The emergency people came and used a metal bar to break the glass and pull the women out through the windows.
We don't need cars like that. We need cars that always have manual handles so we can get out.
I've seen other reports on the news about crazy guys pushing girls into their cars in mall parking lots, and the girls can't get out because the crazy guy locks them in with an electronic button that is only on his side of the car. We don't need cars like that.
So, yes, I watch a lot of portions of a lot of old movies so I can get out of this mad 21st Century for a while.
-
ALL the people in A Night To Remember are important, not just two of them.
WE are the people on the Titanic in A Night To Remember. Do we get off in time? I don't think I made it. I went down with the ship.
-
"People were children until they were 16, and then they were adults."
I agree with that. I used to go to villages in Central America on medical mission trips, and that's the way it still is in many third-world countries. Children are children until about 16, then they start having babies and setting up households of their own. It used to be that way in this country and Europe too. For example. Scarlett O'Hara was 16 at the beginning party at 12 Oaks in Gone with the Wind.
It wasn't until around the 1880s that some states started requiring marriage licenses and limiting the marriage age to 18. This had to do with some new theories about "education". The theory said that all American kids should go to school for 12 years, and graduate at about 17 or 18. Then they were adults in most legal matters.
I think the "teenage" craze started in the 1950s. I've never heard so much stuff in the media about "teenagers" as I did in the 1950s.
What I think this trend did is introduce a new era of three stages in life to our culture: 1) childhood, 2) young adult foolish idiot (teenager), 3) adult.
We didn't let many American teenagers go without medical mission team, because even at age 16-18 they were so immature they would get into too much trouble in the villages. On the other hand, the local village teens were mostly married and had kids and families, while our American teenagers were acting like idiots.
And yes, I was a young teenage idiot once myself. We had too much teen-oriented media in the '50s and '60s, and that media taught us to be irresponsible, goofy, foolish, and idiots.
-
Hey, I remember that movie now. With Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra. It was one of the early hippie and biker movies.
-
Yes, try what Vallo said.
On the Google website, just to the right of the word WEB is the word "Images".
Type in the actor's name you are searching for then click on "Images" and that might bring up some photos of him.
-
You need to learn how to use Google.
It is called a "search engine". You use it to search for websites you are looking for.
Click on this address:
Then type his name in the blank box, then click on "Google Search".
That will take you to the address of his website which has pictures on it:
-
I've just been watching a delightful romantic comedy with Warren William and Marian Marsh. "Beauty and the Boss", 1932. The two are perfect together. It was on TCM early this morning.
-
Are you talking about the movie within the movie? I don't think it was a real movie. It was just part of the "Bells" story line. It was never a complete movie that was made and released separately.
-
That was a great interview. Robert Osborne let her talk and he understood how to get her to talk and feel at ease. One of his best interviews.
-
Yes, it was a very good movie, and I remember liking it as a kid. It was a good movie for the whole family, and that Technicolor was fabulous. I've been humming some of those tunes all my life.
-
What a great interview!
I haven't seen "Annie Get Your Gun" since around 1951. What a great movie. Did you see all the beautiful costumes?
-
I agree. Did you see the exotic "Mandalay" with Kay and Ricardo Cortez?
What Film is this? (Horror/Suspense) - Window mysteriously get bricked up..
in Information, Please!
Posted
Some years ago I saw a b&w movie on TV that had a similar plot, but I don?t recall if it was a TV movie or a theatrical film. I think it was a theatrical film.
It was about a guy in the late 1890s who went to Paris on business, he stayed in a hotel, in a certain room that we all got to see, then he just disappeared. When his family sent a detective to try to find him, there was no record of him at the hotel, nobody at the hotel had ever heard of him, and we the audience see that his room had disappeared too.
So the movie goes through a long sequence were the detective and the audience is trying to figure out what kind of ?conspiracy? could have caused all of this, and especially what made the room disappear.
Anyway, during the film they kept talking about so many people being in Paris for the world?s fair, and not many rooms were available in any of the hotels. The audience thinks this is just a minor side story, but it turns out that the detective finally learned that the guy who disappeared died of some major epidemic type disease, such as yellow fever or the plague. So, the hotel, all its workers, and even the local police officials, ambulance, hospitals, etc., conspired to keep his death a secret, out of a fear that the information about how he died would ruin the world?s fair and cost the businesses of Paris millions of lost dollars, if word got around Europe that a guy had died in Paris of the plague. They removed the door to his room, added a new wall where the door was, and bricked up all the windows to the room, to make it seem as if there had never been any room there.
It was a pretty good mystery movie.