FredCDobbs
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Posts posted by FredCDobbs
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Ok, I think you are right. I've changed my mind. Scratch "The Rag Man" off the list.
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?But it actually is, Fred. 3 Godfathers (and its predecessors) is a take on the Three Wise Men and the Duke delivers the baby to civilization on Christmas day or eve, thanks to the divine intervention that kept him going in the desert when he was at the end of his rope.?
Hmm..... interesting.
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?I'm not sure, but this might be a negative stereotype. My father and grandmother used to reminisce about the rag man in East Boston, in the 40s, named Goldstein. I don't know if a rag man was an impoverished profession mostly made up of jews, and might be seen as a negative stereotype by them.?
Yeah, I see your point. I didn?t think of that.
I?ve seen enough early Jewish-oriented films to get the idea that a lot of late 19th Century and early 20th Century Jewish immigrants to the US were poor, especially ones from Russia and Eastern Europe. So this film was not so much of a derogatory ?stereotype? film for 1925, but people today might not realize that.
In fact, Selznick?s film ?Symphony of Six Million? (1931) makes this same point about poor Jewish immigrants from early in the 20th Century. A young poor Jewish guy gets an education and a medical degree and leaves ?the ghetto? in New York and moves uptown and sets up a practice along 5th Avenue where he has rich clients. He doesn?t want to go back to the old poor neighborhood. It?s like many of the early ?poor Irish? and ?poor Italian? immigrant films of the 1930s where the sons and daughters of the poor immigrants work their way out of the old poor neighborhoods.
So, a relative contacts the doctor after he is rich and she and tells him his father is sick, so the doctor operates on his father but the father dies. Then some girl starts working on the doctor, trying to get him to not forget his old family and friends ?down in the ghetto?. In this regard, the word ?ghetto? just means ?the old poor immigrant neighborhood? in New York where he grew up. So the doctor winds up opening a poor-kids clinic back in ?the ghetto?. It?s a typical ?son of poor immigrants? film. The old man in ?The Rag Man? was one of those original types of poor immigrants.
Maybe Robert Osborne could point that out regarding ?The Rag Man? movie. It?s not really a ?stereotype,? it?s more like a ?poor immigrant? film from early in the 20th Century. If this is pointed out, it might make a difference.
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Dick Powell in ?You Never Can Tell?, 1951.
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The silent film ?The Rag Man? with Jackie Coogan, 1925, might be a good one. It was designed for a mixed audience.
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?How about "Fiddler on the Roof" and "The House of Rothschild"??
I thought about those, and also ?Disraeli?, which is a great 1929 sound film, but I think they contain too many Gentile/Jewish conflicts to show during ?the holiday season?. I think we should play down the conflicts and play up the ?family? nature of the holidays as much as possible. We can show the conflict films during other times of the year.
I think Disraeli is a pretty funny movie, with the two groups taking verbal jabs at each other in the film. I think it?s unique in that regard, but not good for ?the holiday season.?
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I used to have to think about the various ethnicities of my audience back when I was a news and documentary producer and a magazine writer. There are certain ways to handle the ?holiday? season to make a lot of people happy, and without the ethnic films necessarily having to have a religious or even a holiday theme.
I think your idea about Pedro Armendariz is a good one. He was a big star in Mexico and appeared in several American movies. It?s not a holiday or a family film, but he is outstanding in it. ?The Golem? is not a holiday movie, but it is ethnic and I think it would be a good ethnic movie to show in early December. I think maybe the ?Sons of Liberty? short might be appropriate for early December too. The silent classic ?Noah?s Ark? might be good, and also maybe the silent ?The Ten Commandments?. Both films were made for a mixed audience and they both contain Old Testament and modern-era segments. ?Hallelujah? might be good as a black family-oriented film. ?The Heart of New York? would be a good Jewish family film that everyone else can like too. Of course films like ?The Bishop's Wife? and ?Christmas in Connecticut? would be good films for early to mid-December. I wonder about ?The Jazz Singer?? That?s a Jewish family-oriented film that is good for mixed audiences.
I think that in real life people in big cities who are friends of different ethnicities don?t have as much trouble during the holidays as the TV networks do trying to decide what films to show. Years ago my friends and I in San Francisco used to have multi-ethnic holiday parties and we all had fun.
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?Why would a Latin American cowboy movie have subtitles in Spanish??
Because the film was made in Brazil. The sound track was in Portuguese, so they had to have Spanish sub-titles for it to show in Spanish-speaking countries.
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Thanks for the list. I?ve been following this December ?holiday? debate on TV during the past 10 years and I want to try to find a way to alleviate some of the competition problems and make almost everyone happy, especially in December, but without offending anyone. Even the atheists could be pleased with some of the various classic ?family reunion? type films.
I think ?The Sound of Music? is ok, even with the Nazis in it. Films like ?The Sound of Music? and ?Symphony of Six Million? can be enjoyed by everyone. So can ?It?s a Wonderful Life? (but I think NBC owns that film right now).
There are some very good old classic Jewish family films that I think are being shown during the wrong times of the year and the importance of their ethnic-focus is lost. I think maybe ?Green Pastures? might be a good mid-December film for everyone. I?ve been trying to think of a black-family-oriented type of Christmas film and maybe a Mexican or Hispanic-oriented type Christmas film, but offhand I can?t think of any. Surely there were some classic Mexican family/Christmas movies made in the 1940s that could be shown with English-sub-titles. About 15-16% of Americans now are Mexican or Hispanic. Every December I see a lot of Mexican Christmas family-oriented modern programs on Univision and Galavision with my Direct TV satellite service. The Hispanic minority in America today is now larger in number than the black minority. Between blacks and Hispanics, that?s almost 30% of the US population.
I?m just trying to think like an objective network programmer, and in a way so we can work to defuse some of these annual ?holiday? debates every December.
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May I suggest that TCM design a long-term ?holiday? movie plan that suits everyone, regarding the Easter/Passover and Hanukkah/Christmas holidays.
What made me think of this is the upcoming movie ?I Remember Mama?. I suggest that it be shown in early to mid-December each year as Hanukkah-holiday type movie. I suggest that December 25 should be reserved for famous life-of-Jesus movies.
I think life-of-Jesus movies could also be reserved for Easter, and ?The Ten Commandments? would be suitable for Passover. So would ?Samson and Delilah?.
In addition, there are other Old Testament and New Testament movies that could be arranged for showing on or around these holidays.
I don?t recall seeing any specific ?Hanukkah? movie, but several Jewish ?family? type movies could be shown early in December or even in late November for this purpose, since ?family reunions? are often planned for this season, and especially during the Thanksgiving holiday.
One good film for early December would be ?Symphony of Six Million.? This is a very good Ricardo Cortez movie produced by David O. Selznick, with great music by Max Steiner, and it has been shown on TCM before, although it is a fairly rare ?Jewish? family movie.
A good film for mid- to late-December is one I can?t remember the title of, but it involves a priest, a Protestant minister, and a Rabbi helping to take care of an orphan girl in New York.
Also, any of the standard ?Christmas in the city? type movies can be shown in early-to late-December.
Mainly what I think should be grouped and consolidated are all the miscellaneous Jewish Biblical and family type movies so they can be aired during the appropriate season rather than being scattered about during the rest of the year.
This plan should not in any way be considered as some kind of ethnic or religious ?competition.? The films should just be shown at the appropriate times.
Whatever person who edited the classic film noir promos for February should be selected to do the promos for these holiday films. Whoever did the editing on these promos did an excellent job.
Any opinions? Any suggestions for specific titles?
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That might have been ?Green Pastures?.
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Thanks for the information. It?s funny, I couldn?t taste the grapes until you mentioned them. Now I can detect a slight grape flavor. I think I?m going to go out to an expensive local department store next week and try to find a real brandy glass. Then I?ll be able to have a real glass of brandy whenever I watch one of those old British movies.
And that reminds me.... every time I watch ?Dr. Zhivago? I start feeling cold. I have to turn up the heat on my thermostat. It?s all that ice and snow in the movie. And the howling wolves!
LOL, I like to get involved in the movies I watch.
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Hey, I?ve got an odd trivia question! I hope it is ok with everyone if I put it in this thread.
One time I was in San Jose, Costa Rica, watching a cowboy movie on TV. I don?t speak much Spanish so I was trying to figure out what was going on in the movie.
It had subtitles, but I couldn?t read them. It finally dawned on me that the subtitles were in Spanish. Doh!
Why would a Latin American cowboy movie have subtitles in Spanish?
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I don?t quite remember this particular movie. There were a lot of Latin American ?vacation? type movies made in the ?30s and ?40. Plus, some Mexican-made movies were about rich Mexican people on vacation in Acapulco and other resorts. Also, there were some Rio and Argentina resort movies.
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So it's made out of grapes rather than grain??
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I?ve seen so many old British type movies lately, and in every one someone gets sick, hit by a car, almost murdered, nearly frozen, or crashes in an airplane, and they are rushed by a group of people to someone?s house and placed on a sofa and someone shouts ?Quick, get some Brandy!? The person who almost died is always revived by the brandy. So, I finally picked up a bottle of brandy today, and I?m having some of it now. I feel better already. But what is it? What is it made from?
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?Other than the few 'newer' films there are over 300 old films in February, too.
How soon we forget.?
Mongo, that?s like saying ?Other than 10 or 15 murders in your neighborhood this month, 300 people weren?t murdered.? It?s not very consoling.
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Lol, my first experience with Los Angeles, was as a kid in 1953. We drove out Route 66 to visit my aunt and uncle in Covina. That was the same route the Joad family had taken. We crossed over the same bridge over the Colorado River that they crossed over.
I was out in my aunt and uncle?s yard one day when the neighbor came out. He had slightly long hair and a beard, and he was carrying a big red Macaw. He said, ?Do you wanna see a California chicken?? That scared the hell out of me. The guy was weird and the danged ?chicken? was weird.
A couple of days later my relatives took us on a drive down Sunset Boulevard (this was just a couple of years after we had seen the movie ?Sunset Boulevard?). That was weird. It was a big wide winding street that I had seen in the movies! Wow!
Then we went out to the beach at Santa Monica and we saw hundreds of bohemians and beachcombers actually living on the beach, in little wooden boxes and refrigerator crates. My aunt said the city and state authorities were trying to get rid of them, but some loophole in the ?camping? laws at that time allowed them to live there right on the beach.
We went by Paramount Pictures and we saw the gate that Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim had driven through. I was amazed. Some years later I decided that I wanted to live in California for a while. The whole state was just ?far out? to me back in the ?60s and ?70s. I eventually got a job for a magazine publisher in West Hollywood and I had an office on Sunset Boulevard! Wow!
In the late ?70s I had a chance to meet and photograph Gloria DeHaven. I gave her some of the photos and she liked one of them, so she asked for reprints. She was trying to get a TV job doing commercials and she used my photo for her portfolio. She was about 53 years old at the time and the light happened to be just right in the photo and her wrinkles didn?t show in the photo.
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Opera, I doubt if any modern film makers can make a politically objective film about Cortez today. He was actually a hero to a couple of million farmer-Indians who were subjugated by the fascistic Aztecs for years, but today he would probably be made to seem like a Nazi himself, a typical ?bad white guy taking advantage of the Indians.? Few people today know that he had about 20,000 to 30,000 local Indians (non-Aztecs) helping him defeat the Aztecs. He could have never done it with just a few hundred Spanish guys alone.
And I agree that we need more Latin American oriented films. TCM needs to show Selena and more classic Mexican films.
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Yes, Mongo, that?s a great movie. I love it. I especially love that real volcano erupting in the distance. It was a very politically well-balanced film, with the priest who griped against the greedy soldiers of fortune, Cortez always smiling and looking for more gold, and the average Spanish guys just wanting a place where they can settle down and get away from the hard times of Spain. I especially liked that lady who played Do?a Marina, the Aztec lady they picked up in Yucatan before arriving at Veracruz. She sounded like she was really speaking the Aztec language.
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Hey Izzie, I used to live in The Valley, near Nordhoff and Sepulveda. I had a big enough lot to have chickens and ducks. LOL. I loved it there.
I was out there back around 1978 when Rita Hayworth put in a personal appearance at a showing of a restored print of ?Miss Sadie Thompson? at a theater somewhere around Hollywood. Were you there then?
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Wow! Marian Marsh with Warren William!!
I?ve got two Marian Marsh films she made with Barrymore: ?Svengali? and ?The Mad Genius?. He called her ?doll face? in ?The Mad Genius.?
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LOL. Hey, maybe this would be a good thread to put all the political arguments on.
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"The Petrified Forest"
George Gershwin
in Information, Please!
Posted
?I for some reason thought that the music for a movie was written while the movie was being made my apoligies for being such an idiot I guess.?
Some Hollywood movies were based in part or totally on earlier Broadway musical shows. Some movie biographies might contain segments of earlier Broadway musicals. James Cagney?s ?Yankee Doodle Dandy? is a good example.