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Ford at Fox... and RKO, and MGM, and WB, and Columbia...


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> {quote:title=Bronxgirl48 wrote:}{quote}

> I'd like to see the Jennifer Jones/Jason Robards TENDER IS THE NIGHT.

 

Hmmmm....that's all I can say about that movie. I think the Fox Movie Channel airs it

now and then if I'm not mistaken. Have you ever seen The Last Tycoon? That's the

first Robert DeNiro movie I ever saw (I've only seen two since) and it's probably his most

atypical from what I've heard. He plays a "Irving Thalberg" type character and not too

badly I may say. The movie is full of appearances by old time actors, some of them

playing the men who were their studio bosses back in the day.

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Even with Jennifer and Jason, it's still bad, eh? Not a good sign, lol.

 

I've seen bits and pieces of THE LAST TYCOON. I've always thought Robert de Niro was miscast, to say the least.

 

Not many (if at all) decent Fitztgerald film adaptions, are there?

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I think he probably was miscast, but because I had no preconceived ideas about him when

I first saw it (I never watched any of the Scorsese movies he did, I hadn't even seen the

Godfather film, nothing) I was able to accept him. I'm not so sure what I would think were I

to see it today.

 

The same girl who was in The Great Gatsby was in it, too---the pretty brunette who couldn't

act...I forget her name. The other "leading lady" whoever she was had a moon face, though.

 

As for Tender is the Night, it may be more Jason Robards---I haven't liked him in anything.

There is something so perennially dissatisfied and constipated about his expression. Who did he

think he was? Bogart? :P:P

 

And that movie with Gregory Peck playing Fitzgerald (talk about miscasting!) with Deborah

Kerr playing his columnist-lover, that was disappointing, too.

 

Did you know that Fitz got screen credit for only one movie in all his time in Hollywood? It

was for *Three Comrades*, the Taylor-Sullavan-Young drama.

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> {quote:title=FrankGrimes wrote:}{quote}

> I'm in the mood right now (well, actually always) to see EVERY movie Pappy ever made, starting from his first silent, right up to 7 WOMEN.

>

> I'm sorry to hear you are under the weather, Bronxie. I hope you get better soon. :P

 

 

BRONXIE: I wish we could see the early silents he did with Harry Carey, Sr., I've heard

they are quite unique among westerns.

 

I just read an interview with Ford where he talks about the look of 7 Women...he apparently

deliberately chose to photograph it in "drab" colors, browns, yellows, grays---no reds, until

the finals scenes where Ann changes into the Chinese gown and then he said he got wilder

with the colors. So maybe what looked to me like a lack of concern was deliberate on his

part. He was also quite defensive about the movie, I guess in reaction to negative critical

reviews (except in France, the French apparently liked it, at least some did) I have to watch it

again and pay more attention to the look of it, it's been a year or two.

 

OTHER PERSON: I'm going to "get a rope" if you don't behave.

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> {quote:title=FrankGrimes wrote:}{quote}

> Are you going to show me some ropin' tricks, Snippy O?

 

Yes, there's one cute trick where you start out 6 feet tall and end up 6 and a half feet tall.

Guess how that's accomplished?

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I didn't notice the colors in 7 WOMEN either.

 

Interesting you should mention Bogart re: Robards. I read where it was suggested Lauren Bacall married Jason because he resembled a slightly better looking version of Bogie (i.e. long lean craggy face) I like Robards in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. He's got that annoying laugh, though, in every movie. I remember a girlfriend and I went to see FOOLS and we fell in love with him (inexplicable, I know...but we were on a vampire kick, she loving Christopher Lee, and me digging Bela Lugosi)

 

Katherine Ross was her usual non-acting self.

 

I first saw de Niro as Johnny Boy in MEAN STREETS and then GODFATHER II. Seeing him in THE LAST TYCOON was kind of mind-blowing. I don't remember Lois Chiles (if that's the actress you mean from GATSBY) in it, though. Or the moon-faced one. (not Jeanne Moreau, who I don't think had a particularly lunar puss)

 

BELOVED INFIDEL was so boring -- Peck as Fitzgerald - what were they thinking? I like Deborah in anything, though, and this was "anything" (as Sheila Graham)

 

Is THREE COMRADES the one where Sullavan is skiing down a mountain to get to Switzerland?

 

Message was edited by: Bronxgirl48

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Interesting you should mention Bogart re: Robards. I read where it was suggested Lauren Bacall married Jason because he resembled a slightly better looking version of Bogie (i.e. long lean craggy face) I like Robards in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. He's got that annoying laugh, though, in every movie. I remember a girlfriend and I went to see FOOLS and we fell in love with him (inexplicable, I know...but we were on a vampire kick, she loving Christopher Lee, and me digging Bela Lugosi)

 

Without knowing the lady (Bacall) I believe it. But I think Robards is a pale, pale imitation of Bogie. Bogie was a real man, Robards I don't know, he always seemed miserable. I have

seen a couple of movies with this father who looks nothing like him (or Bogie). It's a little

funny, though, the way Lauren will talk about her past as if Bogie were the only man she

ever knew.

 

Katherine Ross was her usual non-acting self.

 

Why was she so popular???? Gad, she seemed to be everywhere in the 70s. I was watching

*They Only Kill Their Masters* until I couldn't take it anymore---she was her usual non-acting

self as you say, but Garner wasn't much better---I don't think I ever saw him so sour and

nasty. Except maybe in Marlow. Yuck. I don't like his movies after a certain point. I think

Ross is another of those brown eyed-brown hair girls that appeal to lots of people (men) but

don't have to necessarily act, just look cute.

 

I first saw de Niro as Johnny Boy in MEAN STREETS and then GODFATHER II. Seeing him in THE LAST TYCOON was kind of mind-blowing. I don't remember Lois Chiles (if that's the actress you mean from GATSBY) in it, though. Or the moon-faced one. (not Jeanne Moreau, who I don't think had a particularly lunar puss)

 

I keep avoiding Mean Streets but someone at another forum just wrote something about it

that surprised me, he considered it a very "Catholic" movie about sin and redemption. I

never heard anything about those aspects in all the years I've heard people talk about that

movie.

 

BELOVED INFIDEL was so boring -- Peck as Fitzgerald - what were they thinking? I like Deborah in anything, though, and this was "anything" (as Sheila Graham)

 

There you go, that's the title. Yes, Deborah is always good and she even made Sheila

Graham seem nice (I understand that generally was not how she was perceived).

 

 

Is THREE COMRADES the one where Sullavan is skiing down a mountain to get to Switzerland?

 

Nope, that's *The Mortal Storm*. *3 Comrades* is about Robert Taylor, Robert Young and Francot

Tone falling in love with Margaret Sullavan in Germany just before the war breaks out. It's

the movie that changed my mind about her (I used to loathe her).

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Lauren Bacall once gave an interview where she actually said something to the effect that she didn't understand why she and Bogie's romance was so lionized. I don't think she bought into that myth for one minute.

She said her father left the family when she was young and she didn't know what true love was, including when she met and married Bogie.

She also said she was a big flirt.

 

Just try to get through Katherine Ross "acting" in THE STEPFORD WIVES. Every 5 seconds she's playing with her hair. I was thrilled when Diz sealed her fate.

 

Oh yes, THE MORTAL STORM -- that was with Frank Morgan as the father I think. I always get these two movie titles mixed up.

 

I highly recommend MEAN STREETS; it's a bit ragged, but great American movie-making. I believe it was influenced by Fellini's I VITTELONI. The dialogue between Keitel and de Niro is cult-classic.

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Lauren Bacall once gave an interview where she actually said something to the effect that she didn't understand why she and Bogie's romance was so lionized. I don't think she bought into that myth for one minute.

 

Well she must have been in an unusually candid mood, usually it's "Bogie this" and "Bogie that" with

her, including her book and never a word about Jason. :P

 

If *Mean Streets* comes on TV and I'm in the right frame of mind, I may take a look. But

I can already see myself shutting it off after five minutes. I've never seen I Vitteloni. I

love Scorsese's passion for movies and movie making, I've just never liked any of his films.

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Interesting news in the Classic DVD forum about two unreleased John Ford films possibly coming

to dvd, from digitalbits:

 

"John Ford's *Gideon's Day* should be on its way within two years; A reader has also reported on information passed on to him from Mike (Schlesinger at Sony) that suggests that *Two Rode Together* is a high priority and hopefully will appear before the end of 2009."

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> {quote:title=Bronxgirl48 wrote:}{quote}

> Scorcese then isn't your cup of tea and that's fine. You might not turn off MEAN STREETS after five minutes though. (maybe 15)

>

> I think Bacall gave that interview to RO! I could be mistaken, though.

> Maybe it was Charlie Rose...

 

She's repreated herself with several interviewers. ;)

 

Ok, FRANKGRIMES, your cover is BLOWN.

 

Tonight I went to the New York premiere at Lincoln Center of the "documentary" on British

director and critic, Lindsay Anderson, by actor Malcolm MacDowell, called appropriately

*Never Apologize*. Mr. Anderson, as you all may know, adored Ford's films and wrote the

wonderful piece of literature on the filmaker, _About John Ford_, so of course there were mentions of his encounters with Pappy. MacDowell (for those who may not recall, he starred

in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange - yuck) basically filmed a one-man show reminiscing about the

man who brought him fame (in his breakthrough movie If...) and with whom he worked a few

more times and remained lifelong friends. Anderson was evidently almost as legendarily caustic

and colorful as his ideal was so there were plenty of stories. Where I was in tears was of course

the recolleciton of Lindsay's last meeting with Ford a few weeks before he died and then, at the end as the credits rolled, they played a recording of Lindsay singing the first verses of "Red River

Valley" and then asking (whoever was with him) if they remembered Henry Fonda singing that to

Jane Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath? I was in full flood of course---it was such a poignant

way to end the film but then here is the point of laughter and the cover blown: the credits roll on

to say "Red River Valley" sung by Lindsay Anderson and accompanied on guitar by........

Frank Grimes! lol

 

So now we know all that talk about "Crappy Pappy" is obviously a bunch of hooey. :P

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the credits roll on to say "Red River Valley" sung by Lindsay Anderson and accompanied on guitar by........Frank Grimes! lol

 

So now we know all that talk about "Crappy Pappy" is obviously a bunch of hooey. :P

 

That's an impostor! I wouldn't be caught dead around anything Ford. A true gentleman must always keep the highest of standards.

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