FredCDobbs
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Posts posted by FredCDobbs
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My uncle worked as a chef on movie sets during the during the 30s, 40s, and early 50s. We found a photo of him with an actress but we are not able to figure out who she is. Do any of you know?
SUSAN: Look at nose, eyebrows, 2 cheek creases (the high one and the low one), upper and lower lip, upper teeth showing during smile, hair naturally covering top part of ear, hair curls forward and upward in front of forehead.
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Giant is clearly the least, ponderous pseudo-social message mongering from Stevens.
Edna Ferber was completely unqualified, inexperienced, and so unknowlegable about that subject, and she was not qualified to write the novel or have a film based on it. She should have stuck with boring stories about Wisconsin cabbages.
In the first place, most of the big cattle and oil baron showy Victorian estate houses were built much closer to some town and main highway, so wealthy neighbors and outsiders could more easily get to all the parties and business meetings. There might have been small expensive cottages 100 miles further inland, but not the main house. You can still ride past them on an Amtrak train today and see them just a few miles away from the train. The owners WANT all the passing train passengers to see their houses.
All that race stuff was nonsense, such as a daughter in law being turned out of a papa's hotel. ALL of that would be worked out and clear in advance to ALL employees. The rich guy at the end would not have stopped to eat with his family at a working-man's diner, and the poor Mexican family would have gone to a Mexican diner. They still do.
Rich oil and cattle men WILL go to a small diner or even a Mexican cafe, but almost always while in work clothes after being out on the range working half a day.
Heck, my girlfriend and I were turned away from Mama Leone's fancy and famous Italian restaurant in New York in 1965, because we weren't dressed properly. Well, that's ok. I understand. We were disappointed, but we just said "Ok, sorry", and went somewhere else. I didn't start a fist fight about it!
Everyone who sees this film needs to live in Texas several years to see what it is really like. It is not un-prejudiced of course, but it isn't as stupid as what is shown in the film.
The cattleman would NOT have rejected the oil business. He would have just hired a manager to keep it separate from his cattle business. His real business was MAKING MONEY, and whether it was made by having to put up with a lot of cow poo or a lot of greasy oil, he would do it.
The rich guy's wife would NOT interrupt a man's business meeting in the house, with a bunch of stupid Edna Ferber political lectures. That would be like the husband barging into a wife's lady's choir practice at her church, while drunk, and cursing all the church ladies. Neither of these things would happen without a divorce following.
I mean, would YOU barge into your own company's top Board of Directors meeting and start spouting a bunch of Edna Ferber political nonsense or any kind of political nonsense? Of course not.
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South Sea Sinner (1950)
Wow, I just looked at the trailer and I want to see this. Looks like a good cast! YAY for NEW OLD MOVIES!
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JOHNNY O'CLOCK
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But generally speaking, unless they are willing to go the character actress route (like Ann Sothern did) or unless they do not become famous until later in their thirties (like Greer Garson or Sharon Stone), most of these ladies are no longer hired for plum roles by the time they turn 40. They are 'out' and the new wave of starlets are 'in.'
I think it is sad and unfortunate when some beautiful young ladies are big stars in their 20s but they quickly begin to look “old”, even in their 30s. I just can’t imagine having a successful and famous career for ONLY 10 years, and then “life is over” for them when they turn 30 or 31.
While others, like Lana Turner, go well into their 30s and even 40s still looking good enough to be the female lead in a film. And some others don't mind playing roles as mothers and grandmothers well into their 80s, such as Lillian Gish. She was ALWAYS wonderful, from her youth and on up and into her old age.
I faced the same situation as a news photographer and reporter, when my career suddenly began to become very difficult when I was in my late 40s, when I had to start using new and very heavy video camera equipment, whereas, before that, the old news FILM cameras had become fairly small and light weight. But some of the newest early portable video cameras weighed up to 40 pounds, and the separate recorder that we had to carry weighed 20 to 25 pounds. Yikes!
Now, video cameras are tiny and very light weight, but now I’m too old to walk without the help of a cane or a wheelchair so now I CAN use the small video cameras as a news cameraman, but I can't get a job as a cameraman any more because at age 71, I can't do the basic thing of "walking". LOL. Such luck.
There is another problem with older workers in MOST professions. As a long-time employee gets bonuses and raises over the decades, he/she soon finds him/her self in a high-wage category by the age of 45, 50, 55, etc, and his/her salary can buy 2 new young college graduates, so the "old" experience person gets the axe, while the 2 inexperienced college grads get hired and replaces the older experienced worker, and the old-timer’s salary is split down the middle and paid to the TWO young inexperienced workers. And when we go shop or call some company, some young new worker tries to help us but they are so inexperienced they don't know what we are talking about.
A young kid I talked to at Directv didn't know what a "documentary" channel was, and a young girl at Best Buy didn't know that their store sold recorders that had a tape deck and DVD deck in one unit. She tried to convince me that "only a computer can record a movie on DVD". I finally found an older salesman in the store, and he showed me where the VHS/DVD machines were located.... about 15 feet away from the young lady clerk, who didn't even know what they were.
At a big LOWES hardware store I was looking around for a 1-1/4 inch, I.D., rubber hose, and the young female department head tried to sell me a 1-1/4 inch, O.D., rubber hose. I told her I needed a 1-1/4 inch, I.D. hose, and she didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and she got MAD at ME for using such "unknown", foreign, ethnic, stupid, or "antique" language!! I told her I would come back later, which I did, and I found the right hose, but WITHOUT any help from any young sales person or department head.
Anyway, I feel bad for the popular young actresses and actors of the old days whose careers lasted only 10 to 15 years because of the age issue.
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They probably saved a lot of money with the Cameos, by having the big stars doing a single number in a studio, so they could put them in the advertising, while less important actresses were in all the Jeep scenes.
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I think you need to move to a place just on your side of the border, then use a pair of binoculars to watch your U.S. neighbor's TCM screen on the other side of the border when this happens.
Canadians watching American TV:
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Betty Grable wasnt in 4 Jills in a Jeep though.
Yes she was. I just saw her, and she is listed in the cast on IMDB
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I'm watching the Fox Movie Channel now, Four Jills in a Jeep, with Betty Grable.
TCM is showing Suspicion (1941) again now. This is a frequent repeat that I will never watch again.
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NIGHTMARE 1956
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Wow. This subject just won't die. Anyone who gets off on having 500 responses to starting a new thread need only broach this subject again, a week later.
The Rene Clair films shown last night were certainly good.
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I think you need to move to a place just on your side of the border, then use a pair of binoculars to watch your U.S. neighbor's TCM screen on the other side of the border when this happens.
The Rene Clair films were really good. Too bad they missed them.
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Yup. I thought that Lena Horne should have played Pinky.
Pinky was a hoax. Jeanne Crain was an all-white woman, going back at least 8 or more generations.
The treatment of her by the local whites was far more egregious with her being so white looking.
They used dark makeup on Ethel Waters.
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No, by ALL I mean all the original early subscribers and 2nd tier subscribers who WANTED the OLD TCM just like they wanted the OLD AMC the way it used to be.
I'm utterly fascinated by how you came to know this. Is your real name Fred C. Gallup?
It’s very simple. I was in the TV news business back in those early days of cable TV, and I read the trade papers about new developments in television. All the relevant articles said that the newest trend was away from antenna TV and toward satellite and cable TV because of all the dozens of new “niche” channels, meaning very specialized channels that were designed for specific audiences, such as the sports channels, the food channels, the youth-music channels like MTV, and ethnic channels like BET, and OLD CLASSIC MOVIE FAN CHANNELS like AMC and TCM.
Now, almost all of the niche channels have moved away from their original niche audiences and are showing mass-marketing junk, like Ice Road Truckers, and Pawn Shop Sweepstakes, and Housewives of New Jersey, and blah, blah, blah. With AMC having changed formats entirely, and TCM gradually changing to an “all era movie” channel and moving more and more away from a "Golden Age of Hollywood" channel.
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I'm fine with TCM premieres of ANY era. Why I watch TCM less now than in the past is the constant repeats of films shown to death (of any era) and its ususally in prime time. I guess it was inevitable with rising costs...
I loved that British Hammer noir special night a couple of days ago. Very interesting and mostly good films that have never been shown before on TCM.
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By "ALL", of course, you mean "Fred C. Dobbs".
No, by ALL I mean all the original early subscribers and 2nd tier subscribers who WANTED the OLD TCM just like they wanted the OLD AMC the way it used to be.
But now TCM is showing only about 1/4 of its original type of old-classic film programming and specialized programming. 3/4 of it now stinks to those of us who have been with TCM the longest.
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Hopefully you feel like you have received over two thousand dollars worth of entertainment. If so, then TCM works for you. Even when they show Ginger Rogers in THE BLACK WIDOW, which I remember you disliked!
Please do not try to guess what I think or misrepresent what I said in the past. You state what you believe and I will state what I believe.
Anyway, let's at least remain friends and keep this discussion friendly.
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The genius of TCM is that there's something for every taste, and most of the time when I read people kvetching about too much of this or not enough of that (and I've done my share of kvetching) it usually just boils down to "Why don't they show more movies that I like, and not as many movies that I don't." Understandable, but hardly a principled objection to the scheduling.
This was not a problem 10, 15, and 20 years ago, because TCM showed plenty of films that ALL of their PAID SUBSCRIBERS liked. That's why we paid MORE for this channel. I'm still on the 2nd Tier Pay Schedule for TCM on Direct TV, after 20 years. How many thousands of dollars has that cost me over the years? At an averaged-out $10 extra per month ($5 early on, $20 now), that equals about $2,400 just for the second tier package. I don't like paying more money for less product.
$3.65 a gallon for gas is a high price to pay now, but I STILL get a FULL GALLON OF GAS for that price, yet I'm now getting about 1/4 gallon of TCM old classic movies now.
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Yes, I know TCM has used the chronological method of programming throughout the day. It just seems that I used to be able to turn on TCM at any hour and *almost * always find something interesting to watch. Lately I've been disappointed.
Oh well, enjoy TCM.
Same here. Now I have to carefully search the schedule, and then I find that most of my favorite old-type films, noirs, pre-codes, etc are on the air between Midnight and 6 AM. While the drab dull 60s and 70s color films are in prime time, except for maybe one or two days a month.
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Yes, and yes. We've been discussing this for years.
What Fred said. Years and years and years and years.
Wait...................for those who will disagree with what Fred said.
NO TCM HAS NOT CHANGED NOT ONE IOTA AND DON'T YOU DARE SAY IT HAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Le Corbeau, you are 1000% correct, but TCM is all we've got. There ain't no other channel that shows what TCM shows, WHEN it is showing classically classic old b/w movies. Is it showing less of them? Of course it is. Don't believe anyone who says it isn't.
That's life. Do as I do. Be grateful when TCM remembers what they should be showing, and be grateful for the chance to save on electricity when they don't.
Well said. You are right.
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It seems like TCM is showing more movies in color, and this seems to include the unexceptional movies of the '60s and later.
Has anyone else found this to be true? Are they trying to pick up more younger viewers?
Yes, and yes. We've been discussing this for years. many of us started subscribing to TCM to see the old classic movies made in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and most are black and white films or the great old 3-Strip Technicolor.
But now TCM has become the All-Film Channel, with a primetime emphasis on color films. And most of those are not at all "classic". They are just random cheap-to-rent color films that weren't any good to start with and are certainly not "classics" now.
As time goes by, more and more people are getting the classic old films on the internet and they are dropping their expensive cable services.
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If you take a look at the background of The Last Flight, it doesn't appear to be a ripoff
of The Sun Also Rises.
Take a look at the film itself. It is the SAME story with the SAME characters going to the SAME places, with the SAME single dame, and including the SAME bullfight.
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I don't think it's as much a matter of copying as it is, as you mention, the fact that there
are only so many plots to go around and that no movie is truly unique. So it is no too
surprising that some films resemble other films. That doesn't mean that the later film
is a copy of the earlier.
I’ve mentioned several times that the 1970s film SORCERER was made up of themes of two other films: THE WAGES OF FEAR and SAFE IN HELL
Wages was about nitro truck hauling along a winding mountain road, and Safe was about criminals from different countries hiding out in some unknown Central American country at the same remote hotel.
Later I found an earlier film from the 1930s about the criminals hiding out in the same remote hotel, this time in Arabia. And of course there were plenty of earlier nitro-hauling films.
So, of course the same and similar themes are used over and over, and some later films can use the plots of several earlier films.
The problem with a lot of people is they haven't seen enough films over a long enough period of time to know what I am talking about.
These Hammer noirs are pretty good!
in General Discussions
Posted
It is built into the system of the universe. As time passes, things age. It's something like entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, and some other things too.... things that eventually take us all.