Robert Osborne comments

[Sirleucelot]

Is there a place that has what all of what Robert Osborne says about a movie? I missed what he said about The Night They Raided Minsky's tonight (June 23, 2014) or is there someone who can just tell me. Thank you

[sewhite2000]

I didn't actually watch the movie, but I happened to catch the intro commentary. There wasn't a whole lot to it. He gave a very broad plot summary, stated who the main players were and mentioned that it was a very early directorial effort from William Friedkin of THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST fame, briefly praising him for authentically capturing the feel of Minsky's circa 1925. That was about it. I didn't see the outro commentary.

[Dargo]

...and that director Friedkin was able to get the city of New York to delay its planned demolition of parts of the Lower East Side for urban renewal so he could use it for location shooting to more accurately represent the NYC of 1925.

 

(...though SOMEHOW Britt Ekland's obvious 1960's hairstyle in this thing was COMPLETELY missed by him!...by Friedkin that is...though I have my doubts about Bob pickin' up on this TOO...but I'll bet my HOUSE that our FredCDobbs sure as heck picked up on this, remembering as I do his chief complaint about "Cabaret" about a years ago or so, and that went on and on and on and on and...)

 

LOL

[Kay]

In the outro Robert Osborne said that Britt Ekland's husband Peter Sellers didn't want her in the role, or wanted a body double to be used in the more racy scenes. He didn't say whether they actually did use one or if she did her own nudity.

[DownGoesFrazier]

...and that director Friedkin was able to get the city of New York to delay its planned demolition of parts of the Lower East Side for urban renewal so he could use it for location shooting to more accurately represent the NYC of 1925.

 

(...though SOMEHOW Britt Ekland's obvious 1960's hairstyle in this thing was COMPLETELY missed by him!...by Friedkin that is...though I have my doubts about Bob pickin' up on this TOO...but I'll bet my HOUSE that our FredCDobbs sure as heck picked up on this, remembering as I do his chief complaint about "Cabaret" about a years ago or so, and that went on and on and on and on and...)

 

LOL

You obviously are more familiar with the history of women's hairstyles than I am.  There is nothing obvious to me about the most appropriate decade for ANY women's hairstyle, although I underatand that the beehive was big in the 1880s.

[TopBilled]

In the outro Robert Osborne said that Britt Ekland's husband Peter Sellers didn't want her in the role, or wanted a body double to be used in the more racy scenes. He didn't say whether they actually did use one or if she did her own nudity.

Yes, and ironically, she was divorced from Sellers a few days before the movie premiered. 

 

The other thing Osborne mentioned in both the intro and closing was that this was Bert Lahr's last film. After MINSKY'S ended, Osborne said that Lahr died midway through the production, and his role (which was larger in the script) was reduced since they could not the film the remaining scenes without him.

 

In some shots, much like MGM did regarding Harlow in SARATOGA, they used a double for long shots where the character still needed to be present. The last scene of the movie has Lahr's character wandering along the empty stage picking up a bottle. You can tell that they have used a close-up filmed of Lahr then matched it with someone else wearing the same suit setting the bottle down.

 

Not related to Osborne's comments-- one reviewer thought Lahr's casting was one of the more authentic aspects of the film. The idea was that Lahr's performance signified a 'blend of mockery and melancholy' which seems to sum up the tone of the whole picture.

 

For trivia buffs, the double they used to finish Lahr's scenes was a Burlesque old-timer named Joey Faye.

[Dargo]

You obviously are more familiar with the history of women's hairstyles than I am.  There is nothing obvious to me about the most appropriate decade for ANY women's hairstyle, although I underatand that the beehive was big in the 1880s.

 

C'mon now, finance. Even the most casual observers of women hairstyles would or should recognize Britt's cut here as more from the decade in which you and I were in high school and seein' many of our female classmates at the time sportin' THIS 'do, than the decade in which drinkin' a potent potable was strictly frowned upon by our government.

[AndyM108]

From the 40's through the 50's through the early 60's and the mid/late 60's19

 

 

[Dargo]

Thanks for the support(I THINK) of my point here, Andy. However, I think you should have included a shot of the prototypical 1920's women's hairstyle in order to help make my point here too. And so...

 

[darkblue]

Yes, but wasn't our heroine a young girl who'd come from a Mennonite farm? Hardly think she'd have a 20's "fashion" hairdo. The bangs she was sporting would be typical of teen innocence and the long tresses the result of pulling out the hairpins.

[Dargo]

Yes, but wasn't our heroine a young girl who'd come from a Mennonite farm? Hardly think she'd have a 20's "fashion" hairdo. The bangs she was sporting would be typical of teen innocence and the long tresses the result of pulling out the hairpins.

 

I thought about that, dark, but I'm STILL seein' mostly a "Julie Christie/Darling/Carnaby Street" thing goin' on here.

[TopBilled]

This thread has really gotten off track. A few people are dominating the thread with a discussion about hairstyles, and that had nothing to do with Robert Osborne's comments about the film last night. The original poster has to wade through a bunch of off-topic comments to find an answer to their question.

[darkblue]

Yeah, Dargo - you dominatrix you!

[clore]

I did notice that in the intro for Doll Face, it was mentioned that Michael O'Shea was in the cast. The person who wrote that confused Doll Face, which came from a play authored by Gypsy Rose Lee with Lady of Burlesque, which came from a novel written by Gypsy Rose Lee - O'Shea was in the latter film, not the former.

 

If only there was a database where some researcher could actually so some researching.

[TopBilled]

I did notice that in the intro for Doll Face, it was mentioned that Michael O'Shea was in the cast. The person who wrote that confused Doll Face, which came from a play authored by Gypsy Rose Lee with Lady of Burlesque, which came from a novel written by Gypsy Rose Lee - O'Shea was in the latter film, not the former.

 

If only there was a database where some researcher could actually so some researching.

You're right.  Osborne misspoke. Good catch, clore.  And O'Shea also appeared in a 20th Century Fox picture with Vivian Blaine and Carmen Miranda called SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS.  He was definitely not in DOLL FACE.

[Richard Kimble]

Anyone interested in Minsky's should read the classic When The Shooting Stops, The Editing Begins by veteran film editor Ralph Rosenblum. He claims that Friedkin despised the material and turned in an unwatchable mess, which Rosenblum edited into a releasable film by adding all the '60s-style quick cuts. (Rosenblum also claims to have taken a blob of incoherent footage called Anhedonia and removed everything not related to the main female character, a certain Annie Hall.)

 

As for Minsky's itself, the unquestionable highlight for me is "Perfect Gentleman", the great duet with Robards and Wisdom. It should have won the best song Oscar (was it even nominated?).

 

Trivia: the Robards role was originally to have been played by Tony Curtis, but he dropped out shortly before filming began.

[Dargo]

One of my favorite parts in it is when the husband of the woman who Robards is puttin' the moves on suddenly shows up, and how he then fast-talks his way out of getting pulverized.

[Kay]

Yeah, what was it that he said? "You must be glad to be married to a woman who can attract a man of my caliber" or something like that, but better. That's the best.

[Dargo]

Yeah, what was it that he said? "You must be glad to be married to a woman who can attract a man of my caliber" or something like that, but better. That's the best.

 

LOL

 

Yeah Kay, I think that was the line, alright.

[DownGoesFrazier]

Thanks for the support(I THINK) of my point here, Andy. However, I think you should have included a shot of the prototypical 1920's women's hairstyle in order to help make my point here too. And so...

 

The thing I am most aware of about women in the '20s and early '30s is that many women covered up their heairtyles by wearing a headpice that looked like a large men's yarmulke. What was that thing called?

[darkblue]

The thing I am most aware of about women in the '20s and early '30s is that many women covered up their heairtyles by wearing a headpice that looked like a large men's yarmulke. What was that thing called?

 

A hat.

[Dargo]

A hat.

 

LOL

[Arturo]

The thing I am most aware of about women in the '20s and early '30s is that many women covered up their heairtyles by wearing a headpice that looked like a large men's yarmulke. What was that thing called?

It was called a cloche. It was popular throughout the 20s, but coincidentally went out of style at the very end of the decade. Early 1930s hats were less helmet like, and then what I think is called the Eugenie hat was worn by Garbo in a movie, and most women's hats for the next few years were variations of it. These are the ones worn tilted on the head.

[Dargo]

It was called a cloche. It was popular throughout the 20s, but coincidentally went out of style at the very end of the decade. Early 1930s hats were less helmet like, and then what I think is called the Eugenie hat was worn by Garbo in a movie, and most women's hats for the next few years were variations of it. These are the ones worn tilted on the head.

 

So Arturo. Seein' as how you seem to be up on this whole women's hat thing here, tell me...what's with those things all those British babes are wearin' on their heads over there that they call "Fascinators", HUH?!

 

(...man, I'm tellin' ya, now THOSE things are REALLY odd, wouldn't ya say?!)

[Arturo]

C'mon now, finance. Even the most casual observers of women hairstyles would or should recognize Britt's cut here as more from the decade in which you and I were in high school and seein' many of our female classmates at the time sportin' THIS 'do, than the decade in which drinkin' a potent potable was strictly frowned upon by our government.

Britt.Ecklund's hairdo evokes nothing if not the mid to late 1960s. There is nothing that calls to.mind the period it is supposed to represent. Even taking into account that she was straight out of a rural.Mennonite community, and therefore loathe to do one of the fashionable dos, like a bob or a shingle, she would have kept her hair pulled up or back. Prior to the 60s, long straight hair was not considered attractive: there's a reason those wigs are called "fright wigs".

 

Ecklund was.only doing what had been going on since the dawn of movies, interpret period hairstyles, makeup and costumes through the prrism of current trends.