Rinaldo

We all have our favorites, and while I happily salute those for whom it's Breakfast at Tiffany's, my own supreme experiences of Audrey-with-Mancini are Charade, and most especially Two for the Road. I had to catch at least the start of the latter last night, even though it was after midnight and I've seen it countless times and own the DVDs. The old magic still happens for me as it did when I saw it on first release. Mancini Day was certainly a splendid gesture by TCM, and it included one pre-fame contribution from his earlier days (Touch of Evil) and began with an obscurity. I'd never heard of Carol for Another Christmas, and catching up with it this morning on Watch TCM, and noticing the 4:3 ratio for a 1964 film, I could make a guess why. I was right; Wikipedia confirmed that it was made for TV, unseen after its single showing till TCM rescued it in 2012 and has shown it periodically since, though with replacement music until the Mancini soundtrack was recovered in 2021. I may finish it, though the report on its critical reception isn't encouraging (Rod Serling at his most didactic, they say). The other choices of the day seem unexceptionable, though Dear Heart (which TCM brings out so very very often) might have been spared in favor of another side of the Mancini touch -- maybe a full-scale period production like The Molly Maguires, or his late-career work for The Glass Menagerie (currently unavailable on home video). One movie that they did air is worth seeing for those with an interest in odd byways, Soldier in the Rain. In the peacetime army, Steve McQueen plays comedic sidekick to Jackie Gleason, with Tuesday Weld excellent in support, all in an adaptation of a seriocomic early novel by William Goldman. The Mancini music is mostly light frisky stuff until Gleason has an introspective moment and we hear the evocative dream melody that for years was the only thing I knew about Soldier in the Rain.

When I saw the lineup for Tuesday April 16, I had a hunch that a birthday might be being celebrated... and I was right! That date would have been Henry Mancini's 100th birthday, so we get 24 hours of movies that include his soundtracks: A Carol for Another Christmas, Soldier in the Rain, Touch of Evil, The Great Race, Bachelor in Paradise, TCM's umpteenth airing of Dear Heart, Days of Wine and Roses, The Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and on after midnight with my beloved Two for the Road, then Charade and Wait Until Dark. I know most of those well, except the first on the list, but I'll probably watch most of them again anyway. Most are worth a look on their nonmusical merits, and in several cases the Mancini touch elevated the movie to classic status. Speaking of music, on April 20 Dave Karger's Musical Matinee (where we usually expect the likes of Singin' in the Rain) will apparently be Ingmar Bergman's film of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute (in Swedish). If it's at his urging, all the more credit to Dave -- it's a marvelous movie experience.

It was a kick to see One Touch of Venus as part of the Scorsese double bill. If it's ever appeared on TCM before, I can't recall it, and it has its oddball charm. Partly, I suppose, because of my long-term involvement with the stage musical that is its source, preparing a restored and corrected edition. As was customary with all film musicals and operettas in that period, a bare minimum (or less) of the stage score was retained -- one song intact, another with some lyrics altered to turn it from a solo to a trio, a third with all lyrics (including title) replaced, plus a smattering of the omitted songs included in the main-titles overture. Most characters changed or omitted as well, and the milieu changed to a department store. At least they cast the optimum choice at that date to embody a goddess of love, Ava Gardner (her singing, as always, dubbed). Robert Walker had charm in his lightweight way, but the mystery remains how Hitchcock could see in this everyman juvenile the person to embody the soulless creep Bruno in Strangers on a Train. However he came up with the idea, he was right.

As someone who tries to find something to love in almost any musical, I must agree that The Broadway Melody mostly has historical value to offer now; the mere fact of seeing a show-biz story with songs and dances must have been overwhelming at the time; it's hard to explain a Best Picture award otherwise. And I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that show dancing tended toward the rudimentary and clunky at that time, at least within ensembles. No Balanchine had yet brought in balletic elements, never mind the individualistic handiwork of a De Mille or Robbins or Fosse. Of course there were brilliant soloists -- Jessie Matthews, the Astaires -- but I wonder what we'd think if we could be time-traveled to the premiere of a Gershwin or Kern show. I have to reinforce the praise for Dodsworth. To my shame, I never saw it (never having heard much about it) until maybe 5 years ago, at which point it became an all-time favorite. The production and the whole cast are excellent, but Walter Huston and Mary Astor are utterly outstanding.

Having posted this, I then began to use my brain, reminding myself how much is available somewhere-or-other these days, and asked my Xfinity Search how to watch it. It turns out that a streaming channel FXM has it available, so I watched it last night. As it's not from TCM (though who knows but what it might turn up someday -- it's in their database), I won't give it a full report. But it lived up to memory as a reasonably dignified un-campy telling of the story. It did elevate the Moabite Ruth to the position of temple priestess, so she got to be one of a lineup in studio-approved Naughty Lady costumes: shimmery strapless bias-cut gowns. After she marries a Judean and turns virtuous, she goes in for rough homespun clothes like everyone else. Our Ruth was Elana Eden, one of the wave of "charmingly accented" Middle Eastern ingenues imported by Hollywood in those years (see also Haya Harareet and Dahlia Lavi), and like some others had to change her surname to something sufficiently timeless and "exotic" (she started life as Elana Cooper). The latter part of the story also underwent some streamlining and Code-accommodation to get around that "uncover him while he sleeps and huddle at the foot of his bed, and he'll have to marry you" business that's so puzzling in Sunday School. And after Ms. Eden gave a graceful rendition of the famous "Where you go, I will go..." speech, Franz Waxman gave us a very pretty choral setting of it as background to Ruth & Naomi's travels across the desert, which then became the basis of the underscoring of the second half of the movie. And it acquired a bit of a civil-rights undertone (1960, after all), what with "don't stone or bully people who are different from you" being baked into the story.

I dunno, Max von Sydow isn't chopped liver. Also, to his great credit, he kept his dignity in a picture that hasn't (IMO) survived the years as well. By that I mean that while King of Kings for the most part cast good but lesser-known actors, The Greatest Story Ever Told went all out for the star-cameo phenomenon -- in fact it probably remains the classic instance (short of jokey examples like Around the World in 80 Days). I remember one witty, if irreverent, review remarking that if you're going to stuff your Bible movie with big stars in small parts, it's better to avoid names with lots of sibilants. Otherwise, the brief appearance of The Woman Healed will be followed by a theaterful of people hissing "Shelley Winters" to their friends. I quite seriously wish that some of the other biblical movies (i.e., not Jesus, Samson, David, or Solomon) of the era would sometimes be shown by TCM. I remember The Story of Ruth being unusually good, but I was a kid in the back seat at the drive-in, and what did I know? I'd like to re-experience it as an adult.

I myself didn't see it all either -- to my own chagrin, and by my own doing, because I'd been curious about that strange title for a long time, and yet I stopped partway through because it was just dead on the screen and I just couldn't make myself continue. I'd say this is one of those projects when nothing went right, starting with that title, which is the title of the source novel, which is (as they say) a reason but not an excuse. I would be interested to read the full history of how it got made sometime, if someone has researched it. But, knowing nothing of that, I would guess that they got the famously charismatic Ezio Pinza under contract for two movies, had to find a vehicle for him, decided that this book (by a Knopf) would serve, had Lana Turner under contract so in she went. And it just refused to work, starting with Mr. Pinza himself -- truly one of the great bass voices of the 20th century (a strong contender for #1, in fact), by unanimous report intensely stellar onstage in decades of opera and then through the run of South Pacific once the voice could no longer fill out operatic roles... and, it seems, unable to convey whatever version of "it" he had to a movie camera. He made his two movies (and a cameo in another), and that was it for him. Too bad. You may be right about that. But there is an analog for the song's placement, as a separate event before the main credits start. That had also been done the year before, in Three Coins in the Fountain, in which we hear Sinatra (who doesn't actually appear in the film) sing the complete title song with nothing happening onscreen, and then the title and credits run. I guess that's indicative of his cultural weight in that period. I noticed that when the movie first was released, and was surprised because in my mind he was indelibly associated with Laura and nothing else -- he was almost a legend from he past, and here he was in the present. That's when I did a bit of research and found that he'd been an active professional and had scored a lot of movies over the decades. And then years after that, I saw him in person and even got to meet him, in the sense that I murmured something admiring and shook his hand. This was at a Saturday Gershwin symposium at the Library of Congress, for which he, as a longtime friend of Ira Gershwin, spoke on one of the panels. (Another person who participated in a similar way was Angie Dickinson, who'd been a neighbor of the Ira Gershwin's in her early Hollywood years. The big surprise there was that she's quite short!) His score for What's the Matter with Helen? is a good one, as is Forever Amber for sure. Of his many other fine scores, I might mention Force of Evil, which shows up on TCM occasionally. But Laura is surely his claim to immortality.

All these "servicemen on temporary shore leave" musicals interest me as to similarities and differences (cf. On the Town, Anchors Aweigh, Three Sailors and a Girl). TCM doesn't show Hit the Deck that often compared to other MGM titles of the era, and I'd always been curious about how it could lead up to that very unreal studio-set number danced to "Hallelujah." And the answer is... it doesn't! We just suddenly cut to the entire cast plunked down in MGM Limbo singing this song straight to camera, and then the movie's over. Great fun, actually. Wikipedia gives a surprisingly detailed account of the origins and tryouts of the source play, considering that it's an artifact of its period that has surely vanished onstage, even in community theater. Anyway, it seems that it was quite extensively revised for the screen, even if its stage bones persist in showing through. The Debbie Reynolds character was beefed up to provide a star role for her -- the star female role onstage (played there by the legendary Kim Stanley) was the character played onscreen by Celeste Holm. the friend from out of town was Robert Preston, and Charlie was Ronny Graham, reportedly cast precisely because he was a goofy non-dreamboat type which would make his womanizing behavior seem more palatable. The main things I like to recall about the movie are musical ones -- odd, as it's not a musical. The hangover sequence near the end is an amusing bit of "choreography" for the wide screen. And the title song is thoroughly featured. In addition to popping up as Debbie's rehearsal song halfway through the story, it gets a full rendition by Sinatra, awkwardly walking slowly toward the camera, before the opening credits even start. And then a reprise after the movie's over, shared out among the cast. That latter choice tickles me, because David Wayne and Celeste Holm were A-1 musical stars onstage (he in Finian's Rainbow, she in Oklahoma! and Bloomer Girl) who never got to sing in the movies, except this one time.

Both Brian's Song and Duel got theatrical releases -- the former (for a modest run) after it proved so popular on TV, the latter mostly abroad. I remember it was all over London the summer I lived there (1973).

Toys in the Attic is atypical Hellman, veering more into Williams/Inge territory -- family undercurrents, the psychology in this case not quite made coherent. When I think about the play or movie, I always have to stop for an instant and remind myself who, out of the American playwrights of the 1950s, wrote it. The movie is interesting to me especially because of the casting mix -- it's one of those "how on earth did all these people get into the same movie?" instances that sometimes happened around then (Wind Across the Everglades is another one). We have the inevitable lady for that school of drama at that date, Geraldine Page, at, yes, her most mannered and twitchy (she settled down and got more internal later in her career); Wendy Hiller unexpectedly (uniquely, I think, in her film career) doing this kind of American drama, and doing it well; Dean Martin, in the period when he was trying to mix an occasional serious drama in with the Westerns and comedies, and rather letting the effort show; Yvette Mimieux, the hot ingenue of the moment; and unexpectedly, what amounts to a post-career guest appearance by the divine Gene Tierney. Given my background, my first association with Cornel Wilde is one that would make a good quiz question: What is the role played onscreen by him, Conrad Veidt, George Chakiris, and Hugh Grant? (The composer Frederic Chopin.)

As it happens, my definite favorite Pride and Prejudice is the stodgy, stagey BBC one from 1980. 😉 In fact, I wouldn't disagree with those adjectives for the other Austen in that particular cycle (I have the DVD box set of all 6); some are pretty dull, and a couple are hilariously dated-looking. But for me the P&P is on a higher level, and I still return to it with enjoyment. But I'm not trying to convert anyone else to my views here. As for the MGM movie, I guess it's not right to refer to the costumes as not period-accurate? as they frankly moved the whole caboodle to a later decade, and the costumes are meant to fit that period. Not my favorite choice, but I don't let it bother me. Sure. There's no doubt that it is one. But I was thinking of all the ones that kept it in period. We have The stodgystagy BBC miniseries from 1972 with Doran Goodwin The 1996 movie with Gwyneth Paltrow The telefilm (also 1996) with Kate Beckinsale The 2009 BBC miniseries with Romola Garai The 2020 film with Anya Taylor-Joy What I really want is a magic computer to blend the best elements of those last 4 together in my desired proportions.

Hey, I wouldn't want to spoil @voiceover's fun, so I'm happy to oblige. Our forum (probably wisely) doesn't include eyeroll among its dozen emojis, but I'll perform as expected and trot out my predictable contempt for the oeuvre of K****** G****** at all times and places. She ended my innocence, and not in a fun way. But will I spoil @voiceover's fun anyway if I venture a reaction that the other opinions in that paragraph aren't all that lonely or misfit? I have no opinion one way or the other bout John Hodiak, so I'll stay out of that. But is there really a groundswell of loathing for Louis Hayward? I never knew. As for Ramon Novarro, plenty of people probably don't know him at all (I was once one of them), but once they (like me) eventually do, is there really widespread resistance to this delightful goofball? I haven't been keeping track, so I'll yield to the more knowledgeable. As for Pride and Prejudice, I adore the book and find all screen adaptations a mixture of good and bad in varying proportions, but I can enjoy just about all of them when they turn up. (My own top choice is one not widely shared.) That definitely includes the 1940 one, which (along with perfectly obvious demerits) has decided pleasures to offer. Now, comparing all the screen versions of Emma... that can drive a person nuts.

Which she did so well, that when she ended up getting the musical Mame in 1966 (of course they had first asked Mary Martin -- who said yes, then no -- and Ethel Merman -- who just said no -- and then they auditioned dozens of other musical ladies), many thought she must be decades too old for it, she'd been playing above her age for so long. But she was in fact a very stylish 40, and in great shape. (And of course had many decades of work ahead of her.)

Funny you should mention that! She very much wanted to do the musical on Broadway, and was under consideration. She loved the show, and attended several performances (Lansbury even arranged for her to watch from backstage -- they had worked together at MGM, of course). She could certainly have sung it wonderfully, and needed the work by that point. But (according to Lansbury) by the late 1960s she had become so unreliable for an 8-performances-a-week responsibility that the producers could never have taken the chance, and they couldn't have obtained the insurance to underwrite her participation. On TV or in a movie it might have been different. I can think of actresses now with the presence, comic chops, warmth, and (if it were the musical) voice to do justice to Mame. But they're theater stars -- people like Victoria Clark, Donna Murphy, Kelli O'Hara -- and they mean nothing to the TV or movie audience.

I don't know. She could have made the humor land, in a way that Ball couldn't at that stage, but casting Auntie Mama (musical or not) is a trickier operation than one might think (IMO). I'm a big believer in actors being allowed to not play characters just like themselves, and stretch their radius of limits, but some innate qualities are hard to erase, or imitate. In this case, I'm thinking of a parental, maternal quality. Mame isn't literally a mother, but a central kernel of the story is that (to her own surprise) she in effect becomes one, and it's more important and "right" for her than she had suspected. And it has nothing to do with whether someone is a parent in real life; performing is an illusion. Rosalind Russell could convey this motherly quality. Angela Lansbury definitely did. I can't see Bea Arthur doing it (she has played mothers, but they've been of a rather remote, stern type). I actually saw a big-scale revival of the musical Mame (at the Kennedy Center, clearly hoping to move to Broadway, but it closed with no afterlife), starring Christine Baranski. Great actress, terrific singer (best Mrs. Lovett in my experience), brilliantly funny but capable of warmth too. But onstage she wasn't a mother (despite being, by all accounts, a devoted mother in real life). That moment when she takes Patrick into her care didn't land. And there goes the ball game. Clearly she would have been much more suited to Vera.

There was talk about two decades ago of doing a TV movie of the musical version, Mame, back when a few such tele-remakes were proving to be popular, and sometimes even good. At the time, I recall the casting idea with the most staying power being Emma Thompson as Mame, with Bebe Neuwirth as Vera.

Very true. Watching from the back seat at the local drive-in theater, I was entranced by how important music was to the story: "Que Sera, Sera" obviously, and also the concert piece with a cymbal crash as camouflage for an assassin's gunshot. I guess even at about 10, my future was destined to be in music. (In general, within the standard 1950s plan of the kids dozing off for the second, "adult" feature, the Hitchcock movies were the ones that kept me awake the best. I hadn't quite made it through Rear Window (didn't really follow the internal subtleties), but this one, with the action and suspense that were easy for a young mind to follow, kept me involved to the end. Now that I know the history of it all better (there's a whole book about music in Hitchcock's films), I'm impressed that Bernard Herrmann, certainly no shrinking violet in terms of protecting and promoting his own music, chose to reuse Arthur Benjamin's Storm Cloud Cantata from the earlier movie of which this is a remake; he did extend and reorchestrate it though. He also let other hands supply the important song. And speaking of songs: yes, "Belleville Rendez-vous" is hard to get out of one's head. (I recorded TCM's airing just to hear that song again; haven't got around to watching yet.) I also remember the performance on that year's Oscars, complete with bicycle, being unlike anything we'd seen on the show before:

Coming up Sunday evening (10pm ET, as one of the Supporting Actor winners) is a TCM premiere, Adaptation. I mention it because the title doesn't really suggest the appeal it may have to those with oddball tastes like mine -- specifically, a taste for the meta and self-referential. I hope it'll get an introduction that explains some of the wacky background, but the Wikipedia article covers it: Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, commissioned to adapt the nonfiction book The Orchid Thief, submitting (without warning producers in advance) the story of his own difficulties in adapting it, including himself and his nonexistent identical twin, both of whom are credited with the screenplay, and the real-life participants in the book, given fictitious adventures. Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, and others fully commit themselves to it all, and I find myself enjoying it every time I revisit it.

I considered Images as I got to it chronologically, because I was susceptible to it at the time it came out (I saw it during my 1973 summer in London), but I think I then grew out of it. Shallow stuff that seemed deep to a 20-something in that era, like the 5 characters having the same first names as the actors, just reassigned, or the illusion-vs-reality stuff that (like other movie reliables) seems profound the first time you encounter it and don't realize how well-worn it is. (The same phenomenon as my obsession with Brewster McCloud in that same period.) I still would have a good word for John Williams's subtle score, half pastoral strings-and-piano, half modernistic percussion -- but I'm a student of film music, there's no reason for someone else to care. I don't really recommend Popeye, and I can't excuse Harry Nilsson's inane songs. (When the cast unexpectedly sings "Popeye the Sailor Man" at the end, one's first reaction is "Finally, a good song.") I guess its quirks happen to fit my weird taste. Plus, I will say that in Olive Oyl, Shelley Duvall got the role she was born to play, and that the baby is really cute. But feel free to bypass it. I liked California Split at the time too, just haven't felt moved to revisit it. For that matter, I think about half the vignettes in Short Cuts are good. Altman's stuff (at its best) somehow spoke to me in those years. There are also a couple of his titles that I've still not seen; I need to do something about that.

I took it pretty literally although, as I recall, it was the two ladies who cut cards. It didn't really matter who paired off with whom, so they took a deck of cards, each cut it to expose a card, and the one who drew a high card got to choose. I'm inordinately fond of Gosford Park myself. The whole insight into the workings of upstairs/downstairs. Screenwriter Julian Fellowes returned to the subject in Downton Abbey of course, but, as far as I'm concerned, he did it better here because he stuck to the point, with the minutiae themselves being the focus. And so much good acting that I'm not even going to try to list names. Okay, just one, because even in such heady company, Jeremy Northam stands out as Ivor Novello, gloriously embodying the glamorous star of stage and screen (he was not a professional singer, despite Wikipedia, and always wrote nonsinging roles for himself in his musicals, but I'm happy to believe that he informally "sang for his supper" at house parties like this one, and in fact maybe he did). Gosford Park is also dear to me as a late-career triumph for Robert Altman, after a long career with its ups and downs, masterpieces and stinkers, but enough great achievements to secure his stature (for me: MASH though it's aged poorly, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, A Wedding, Popeye even with the bad songs, The Player, Cookie's Fortune, and this). Never a real box-office smash at any point. And after one might have expected him to wind down and rest on his laurels, he had one more big-ensemble extravaganza left in him, and all these British eminences were thrilled to get to be part of "an Altman."

Yes, the Odets play looks interesting on paper, and I have nothing against it. It's had some interesting stage productions. Originally the husband and wife were played by Uta Hagen and Paul Kelly. In the two Broadway revivals, they've been Maureen Stapleton / Jason Robards, then (in 2008) Frances McDormand / Morgan Freeman. Heavy hitters all, obviously, and I'd point out that in each case the actress wasn't a glamour figure pointedly "playing plain" which is what you get when you choose Grace Kelly for the part. I agree that Bing Crosby does well with his share of the movie. One odd thing about the adaptation that I'd expect to be mentioned more often is that it's turned into a musical -- not in an Oklahoma! sense, but Crosby's character is making his comeback in a musical play, and we hear 4 newly written songs, some at more length than others. Even more oddly (I don't think I thought about it till this moment), the songwriters were the same pair who wrote the songs for A Star Is Born the same year: Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. I suppose if I say something like that about my mother, I must on some level have been expecting people to take notice of it! I don't think it was quite conscious when I was typing, but I have to admit, I do mention the fact to people when I can, so I guess I knew what I was doing. It's pretty cool, after all.

Well, the book itself has resonated with others in a way it doesn't with me, so I may just have a blind spot about this sort of thing. I have just dredged up a memory that The Razor's Edge was one of relatively few hardbound novels that my parents owned, possibly from before their marriage, and had kept on the bookshelf for a long time. So it probably meant something to them too. (I may try asking my mother; she turns 104 this month, and we Zoom twice a week.)

... Or, on second thought, it may say exactly what they meant, and the occasional winner gets mixed in with nominees in the earlier part of each day. It may well be that they couldn't always get them to come out even, or that they could include more winners than could be fit in between 8 pm and 6 am. Case in point, Fay Bainter today, a winner for Jezebel despite the movie airing midmorning. I'll take back what I said before. Of this evening's Supporting Actress winners, Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge is a classic variation of the trope I mentioned a few comments back re Grace Kelly: let a beautiful young woman acquire a disease or an addiction and fall apart visually, and she'll get at least a nomination. Still the movie may be worth a look to those who've never seen it, because it's such an odd story for Hollywood to have attempted at all in that era -- a WWI vet looking for (and finding) transcendental meaning in the Himalayas (i.e., some rather cheesy matte paintings), while his more worldly friends go to pieces. I don't think it works at all (and it's beyond me why it was later remade with Bill Murray), but at least it has good-looking stars: Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney. Following it, we have Cary Grant's pet project None But the Lonely Heart, a drama about an aimless working-class Londoner. Not at all a "Cary Grant" type of role, and I wish I could think that his earnestness added up to a compelling performance, but I can't (though it has its moments). Again I don't think it works as a whole. But Ethel Barrymore as his mother deserved her award.

31 Days of Oscar began on Friday. This year they're organizing them by category, so that in general we get nominees for a category during the day (though to my eye the headings on the schedule word this a bit confusingly) and winners starting in primetime: As always, there are a few TCM premieres, both older and more recent, including items like Crazylegs, Gosford Park, Adaptation., and The Triplets of Belleville. Today (Sunday) is the second Supporting Actress day.

As a general rule, I try not to think or say this sort of thing (many people are good in a given year, each role is its own challenge, etc. etc.), but this is a case where I find it unavoidable. And it's not that I'm anti- Grace Kelly -- she's indelible in several roles (Rear Window at the top of the list for me). But this is such a classic example of the Academy responding on cue to the "we thought she was just a pretty face, but look how she made herself look ordinary and act sad" scenario that's always good for at least a nomination. Does anyone remember The Country Girl for anything now? But we still watch A Star Is Born; for me it's the most memorable of the 4 (or 5, or 6) versions of the story. It's just a shame that we don't have the complete movie as initially released (or that Hart & Cukor didn't self-edit before filming). Yes, in this case I find it unavoidable that Judy Garland was robbed.