Rinaldo

Now you're making me doubt my memory (which is indeed fallible, more and more). You're right, there's no mention of such a location in IMDb, but nevertheless my recollection is that Manhattan has a brief scene in the Carnegie Hall Cinema, with two of the characters seeing a movie there. And when the scene started, we audience members started uncontrollably buzzing, almost wordlessly -- because the interior we were seeing on the screen was the identical interior in which we were sitting. We were almost characters in the movie, for a few moments.

Another month (and year), new theme programming. Star of the Month (Tuesday evenings) is Marion Davies. Wednesday evenings: Car Chases. Thursday evenings: The Jewish Experience. I noticed a couple of titles coming up this week that TCM doesn't show often. Early Tuesday is Alex in Wonderland, one of those rites of passage we tended to get from young directors (in this case, Paul Mazursky) in the early 1970s. Big initial success (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) is followed by studio permission to make a pet project, which turns to be an excessively personal vision without an audience. (Another example, same period: Altman's MASH followed by Brewster McCloud.) I can't claim anything for Alex in Wonderland -- it's kind of a shapeless mess, in which perhaps the most interesting element is Ellen Burstyn getting her first big chance. But it'll always have a special place for me as one of three occasions when I watched a movie that contained a scene that contained the theater I was watching in. In this case I saw it in a theater on Hollywood Boulevard, which features in a big dream sequence. (The other two are Manhattan and Breaking Away.) Also, on Thursday, for those who want to eventually see every Best Picture honoree, two titles that I haven't seen scheduled in quite some time: Cimarron and Gentleman's Agreement. (The latter presumably being part of the Jewish theme, as the subject and timing fit.)

A short way into the film, when Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue go for a walk together. I too expected the famous theme to lead off the movie as its title music, possibly sung by the standard invisible Hollywood chorus -- but no, the titles were scored with a dramatic piece of Steiner orchestral music. Then, after the main characters had been introduced, the two kids got their scene together, and I told myself "OK, now we'll get The Theme" -- and we did! Not only that, it sounded just like the best-selling Percy Faith record, with the piano triplets as an accompaniment (upon realizing that this was a Steiner score, I had guessed that that piano bing-bing-bing, at least, would turn out to be an extra garnish by Faith, the movie version being more purely orchestral -- wrong again!).

I'd settle for the video of the Broadway revival of She Loves Me that's available on various streaming services. I just saw this, and have some thoughts (as a historian of popular music of the past, how could I not?). This was indeed not a TCM production, but was made by South African director Diana Friedberg and released in 2019. The narrator is her husband Lionel Friedberg, which helpfully explains why nobody would correct him on his mispronunciations -- not just names, but musical terms like "Fine." I'll take a slightly different viewpoint on a couple of the points quoted. I think it's appropriate to spend some time on Gone with the Wind, as it was so important to his career and how the public perceived film music, and the industry placed such weight on it; but it seems to take up more time than it does, because they keep returning to it after seemingly moving on to other topics -- back to the 30s, now GWTW again, on to his next assignment, back to GWTW one more time. (And the selection of clips from the movie could have used an editor's eagle eye too.) I actually appreciated the emphasis on "As Time Goes By," because in my experience people automatically assume that it's written by the film's credited composer (same thing happens with The Graduate, likewise to my annoyance). It needs to be spelled out that it was a pre-existing song, Steiner would rather have written his own (and, as shown elsewhere in the film, he was capable of creating a good pop tune) which is wholly understandable, but he nevertheless wove it into his underscoring very cleverly. I also liked the time given to A Summer Place, because I myself never dreamed it was Steiner's until I actually saw the movie on TCM a few years ago. Thanks to the hit record, I thought that Percy Faith wrote the score for the film (as he did for others). It's gratifying to think that Steiner had a huge popular hit at the end of his career, giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he hadn't gone out of date (and, I hope, a nice nest egg too). All the details from people like Hugo Friedhofer were most welcome, and I was especially tickled to unexpectedly see a friend and colleague, Nathan Platte, onscreen briefly as one of the experts. For anyone interested, he has written an insightful and highly readable book about the music written for David O. Selznick's films. Nathan is one of the rare musicologists who is both a scrupulous researcher and a precise, witty writer, with insight into movies as well as music.

This is getting dangerously far afield, but I spent over a decade of my life in Bloomington, Indiana, and one thing I really miss about that region is the really excellent cafeterias. It's not an automat, but it represents the same principle of an abundant choice of homey, well-prepared food for you to select on the spot, take to a table, and eat. And they're still flourishing there, as far as I can tell. Back to movies: I watched my recording of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Alas, this isn't one of those times when I can revise a prior negative judgment upward. It's one of the times when Hollywood tried to dramatize a famous literary work, and nothing went right. Well, almost nothing -- George Sanders was a suitably Mephistophelean choice to drag the protagonist into sin (if the superstructure around him had been better built). And Angela Lansbury was ideal in every respect, an indelible picture of youth and innocence destroyed. Seeing what happens to her should have engaged us with the story. But there's this Hurd-Hatfield-shaped blank in the middle. I guess he was, by some standard, a good-looking man, but he never seems young or vibrant in any way that would make us empathize with him and want to follow his story. (Around 2000, Jude Law could have given us both the fresh beauty and the inner corruption; indeed, his Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley is a pretty close match. I don't know who his equivalent would have been in 1945, but even Peter Lawford, also in the cast and far from the world's greatest actor, would have been an improvement on what we got.)

Aw, thanks for thinking of me. (I had no idea I'd put my stamp on Roberta.) I've only seen Lovely To Look At in the last couple of years, and was surprised at how thoroughly reworked it was. Randolph Scott's role got split in two, so Red Skelton could inherit the salon and Howard Keel could be a romantic lead; and therefore they had to add Ann Miller's character so there could be three couples. Songs were reassigned, new obstacles invented, you name it they did it. This is definitely not one of the immortals from MGM in the 50s.

In the stage show (can't speak for the movie as I only watch the songs Tommy Rall is in), they're doing a pre-Broadway tryout in Baltimore. Maybe there's a production story behind the choice of car, but I have no idea what it would be.

As @EtheltoTillie said, if there was a counter and you were being served, that was by definition not an Automat. The essence of the Automat was getting your own food out of the little windows. Yes, Mel Brooks was a riot. But so was Colin Powell, at the moment when someone was trying to neaten up his suit to hide a button, being nonplussed and asking with a smirk, "What's a button, when Mel Brooks is sitting over there looking like a bum?" I have no idea why that whole bit was left in, if timing was demanding that so much be edited out, but it was undeniably an amusingly unexpected bit of verité amid all the nostalgia.

I took the opportunity of Angela Lansbury Day to see Gaslight again after several years (nice work at 17, Angie), and I have The Picture of Dorian Gray recorded if I want to check it out again (my memory is that it doesn't work at all, aside from the irresistible lady herself, but these reactions need to be re-checked every so often). I did watch my recording of Kind Lady, and my oddest takeaway was that I must have seen it before, despite no such memory. Probably I tuned in long ago without really paying attention. Anyway, I realized that I always knew what the next story beat was going to be. Despite that, I enjoyed it; it was fun seeing two grand old figures of the stage who didn't get all that many big movie roles, Ethel Barrymore and Maurice Evans, dominate the screen. And the Downton Abbey side of me loves to see the manners of a century ago embodied in such detail -- the upper-class lady alone in her house on the square sending the housemaid out with something for the carolers, and preparing Christmas gifts for all the local tradespeople and police, and receiving the man from the bank at the appointed hour in her drawing room. Lansbury was excellent but it was a very secondary role; her mother showed up for a moment too. For another side of her, here she is presenting one of the nominated songs at the Oscars. Coming right after her Broadway run in Mame, it seems to be a declaration to Hollywood, "Look at all the talent and charisma you didn't bother to use!"

I think it's a mistake to read Heston's well-known views in later life back into his earlier years. As evidenced in his annotated diaries (published in the late 1970s), he was very vocal for liberal causes through the 1960s, picketing a segregated theater that was showing one of his movies, speaking at events alongside MLK and James Baldwin, etc. Something happened later on that changed his outlook, but like most of us he was a complicated individual.

I'm a longtime fan of The Last of Sheila myself. It has its faults (the sound recording isn't always up to standard, and some of the secrets have dated rather badly), but I still love it and am always glad to see it again. (I always find myself surprised and impressed by how good Raquel Welch is in it. Dyan Cannon is of course no surprise.) Perkins and Sondheim later wrote another mystery script, and I'm sorry it was never made.

My only experience of an automat would have been 1971 or thereabouts, when I was stationed in DC in an army band, but able to get to NYC for an occasional theater-oriented Saturday. I would plan ahead (got to original productions of Company and Follies) and have a cheap lunch somewhere. One time I stumbled upon an automat, and was thrilled -- I thought of them as almost legendary artifacts of the past, and there was one right in front of me. Naturally I had to experience it, and I'm glad I didn't miss it.

Watching Cabaret for the first time in a long time. It was connected with the Joe Caroff Story just mentioned, as he designed the poster; that being the theme, I found it odd that (unless I blinked at some point) they never actually showed us the poster in question. I could remember it easily enough, but still, if that was the point.... In addition to enjoying Cabaret again, I was reminded that it doesn't seem to show up on TCM often -- and then I realized that the previous movie of the same story, I Am a Camera, never appears on TCM at all. In fact, I've never seen it. The author of the source material, Christopher Isherwood, apparently hated the film, but I'd love to check it out for myself, with Laurence Harvey as Isherwood and Julie Harris as Sally, it has to be of some interest. It's one of the many titles discussed by Douglas Brode in his fascinating book Lost Films of the Fifties -- not genuinely "lost" films, but titles that were reasonably popular in that decade, sometimes greatly successful, that nobody talks about any more. A few of them have been rescued by TCM, but a lot more remain unseen. Another that comes to mind is another adaptation of a play-that-became-a-musical, The Matchmaker, with Shirley Booth as Dolly Levi. It's delightful (and unusual for its time with the constant direct address to the viewer) and I don't know why it's ignored. Maybe all of this (like many such questions) is connected with which studio currently has the rights, and how available they make their back catalog.

I meant to ask: I'm unfamiliar with 3 of the earlier films: Tenth Avenue Angel, If Winter Comes, Kind Lady. Can anybody here recommend any of these?

This seems like a nice lineup (Bedknobs and Broomsticks now being unavailable thanks to Disney+). The Manchurian Candidate is of course essential for this, likewise Dorian Gray and Gaslight, and I'm glad they once again chose to include that Sweeney Todd even though it's a live video of a stage performance -- our picture of her would be incomplete without it. The others have their claims, though TCM plays Dear Heart to death for some reason; for an alternative from her brittle-upperclass-urban-lady phase, The World of Henry Orient or The Reluctant Debutante might be fresher. And I might lose The Harvey Girls (she's very secondary in it, and doesn't even get to sing for herself) in favor of something like The Court Jester or The Pirates of Penzance (it's not a good movie, but it's never shown any more, and she does get plenty of singing and goofy comedy in it) or even Something for Everyone (an outré curiosity that's been ignored since its theater run, and not without reason -- Hal Prince really couldn't direct movies). I do hope they'll have interesting things to say about her.

I agree that she had too few movie roles (her vehicle Sweet Adeline was filmed with Irene Dunne instead), but when I see her performance in Show Boat I get what her stardom was about right away (admitting that such reactions are personal for each of us). And it's fascinating that the quintessential lovelorn torch singer of the 1920s was a trembly soprano voice, not the husky alto that later became obligatory for such roles.

Also, just a day before Angela Lansbury, we lost Michael Callan at 86. A self-taught dancer, he was the original Riff in West Side Story (Jerome Robbins liked his dancing but needed multiple auditions to be persuaded of his acting ability) but was unable to repeat the role in the film due to the contract with Columbia he had by then. Among his many movie and TV appearances, he's perhaps best remembered for Gidget Goes Hawaiian (which showcased his dancing) and Cat Ballou.

A few interesting titles coming up this week: not recommendations per se, but "worth catching if they sound like your kind of thing." Also with other distinctive people of the era like Allen Garfield, Louise Lasser, Peter Boyle, Richard B. Shull. And immediately after it, continuing a possible theme of "nice little 70s flicks you may have missed," is Corvette Summer, a coming-of-age anecdote with Mark Hamill trying to track down his stolen car, and Annie Potts as a friendly hooker. Also with Eugene Roche and TK Carter. This was filmed between the first two Star Wars movies, and Hamill's facial scarring from his automobile accident (The Empire Strikes Back created an incident to explain it) is evident. After that, the apparent theme for several hours is "afterlife movies." Of these, the one I especially like is Bedazzled. The comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore play respectively the Devil and a short-order cook who gets 7 chances to invent a new life that will allow him to make an impression on the object of his adoration, Eleanor Bron (otherwise known from Help! and Two for the Road). Also with a cameo by Raquel Welch, aptly cast as Lust. The structure means that it's largely a series of sketches, but I find them very funny, and director Stanley Donen keeps the timing lively. On Thursday morning, Roberta is a Rogers-Astaire movie that isn't shown as often as some of the others, but I think it's marvelous. Besides a great Jerome Kern score and the presence of Irene Dunne to participate in singing it, you can see Fred and Ginger finding their stride as a great dance team. That afternoon, The Young Girls of Rochefort. For those who know it, I need say no more. In all its inept goofiness, it's endlessly rewatchable, at least for me. (Immediately before it, its companion piece The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which is genuinely good, for those on the wavelength of a sentimental French pop opera; it's not for everyone, I've discovered.) Friday seems to be a Farley Granger day. I may try one I've never seen before, but the standout will surely be Strangers on a Train, essential viewing for those who've discovered they like Hitchcock but haven't yet explored very far. Granger and, especially, Robert Walker are outstanding.

Marilyn Miller is one of those musical stage performers, like Gertrude Lawrence, who were widely adored as special charismatic stars in a way that can be difficult to substantiate through their film work. Only in "Wild Rose" in Sally (coincidentally the only segment for which the original color film survives) do I see the magic happen, and understand. Are there any others who belong in this category?

Just pre-ordered it, thank you! Jeanine Basinger as co-author is a guarantee of a good read, in my experience, even if the "oral history" words aren't hers. She knows the terrain of the studio system.

We can all have our own opinions about using the transcripts, but the fact is that many or most biographies, published or filmed, include among their sources letters (or similar private documents) that the subjects had wished to be destroyed. To me, such use isn't "sneaky" but rather responsible to the historical record. (I can think of instances where a famous person or their heirs destroyed diaries that contained valuable information, and I always regret it.) But then I'm an academic-historian type, so I suppose that's my bias.

Or maybe just sensible. It's always complicated interpreting documents of the past, and distressingly easy to misinterpret them in light of current sensibilities. (I encounter this problem all the time in my own researches in musical history, and am often in danger of doing the misinterpreting myself; maybe I've even done it at times.) Not that coded homophobia didn't exist in times past -- it certainly did (look at some of the reaction to Benjamin Britten's compositions). But in 1964, "gay" as a sexual term was not yet in wide public use, and it's hard to imagine someone of Hopper's generation and outlook being fluent in its use, even "unconsciously." And "man" as a gender-neutral term was standard (whatever we think of that now); I recall The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a pro-feminist TV series of the 1970s, having an episode in which Mary Richards is publicly praised as "a fine newsman" without anybody, including Mary, hearing anything odd about it. I haven't read any in-depth biographies of Katharine Hepburn, but the suggestion that her orientation was (like Cary Grant's) a complicated question is hardly new, and I have no issue with that aspect. I guess my problem with the quoted text is the use of "Basically..." as if this were an unarguable idea, rather than, say, "It is just barely conceivable that...". Historical documents need to be interpreted with care and caution. I could give many examples from classical musicology where a bit of over-fanciful extrapolation has been given disproportionate weight and become prematurely accepted as "fact," which then takes decades to correct.

I think it's fair to say that Astaire and his collaborators in Royal Wedding were the first to actually make the idea of dancing on the ceiling visible by rotating the room. They must have specially wanted to do that, as it isn't at all suggested by the lyrics of "You're All the World To Me." And then of course decades later Lionel Richie recruited that film's director, Stanley Donen, to stage his music video of a new song called "Dancing on the Ceiling," which used the same visual idea. I've watched the movie Ever Green when TCM has shown it in the past, and no attempt is made to stage the idea of dancing on a ceiling -- as you say, Jessie Matthews just sings the song, and then wafts around the room a bit. I was actually a bit surprised to discover that the original London production (the show never played on Broadway) did stage the lyric literally, with a rotating chandelier on the floor. I say surprised, because in my research over the years, again and again I find that famous songs of that period whose lyrics painted a specific picture were often not staged to create that picture at all. The song "Triplets" was introduced by a male trio who didn't impersonate triplets and weren't intended to. And Astaire himself, for all his musical sensitivity, would quite often ignore song lyrics when inventing dances -- think of the out-of-nowhere firing squad in "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails," or the staging of "I'd Rather Lead a Band" (in Follow the Fleet) which has nothing to do with leading a band.

No -- she worked in nightclubs and had a weekly 15-minute radio show, as so many did back in the 1940s -- but I can see why you'd ask that; it was sort of what I wondered when that finale was included in That's Entertainment. And it was only increased by interpolating the long-known "Ciribiribin" as her specialty. She seemed to come off as a "poor man's Kate Smith," if that name still means anything to anyone.

Hit the Deck is interesting to me in part for its pedigree; It derives from the 1927 Vincent Youmans stage musical of the same name (not much remembered or revived), which in turn was based on the play Shore Leave, the ancestor of all the servicemen-on-shore-leave musicals (e.g. Follow the Fleet, On the Town). Though made by MGM in the mid-50s, the heyday of big musicals from the "Arthur Freed unit," it had different producers and (to me) a rather different feel, suddenly abandoning all realism for the finale and just presenting the stars one by one on a studio set, as if this was a TV variety special. When I first saw some of this movie (that finale, in fact), in That's Entertainment, I assumed that Kay Armen must be one of the big singing stars of the past whom I had somehow never heard of before. But no, she was a singer-songwriter popular on the radio for whom this was her first, and essentially only, movie. I also assumed that Tony Martin and Vic Damone must be roughly equivalent figures, Italian-American pop singers recruited to the movies in hopes of finding "the next Sinatra." Wrong again! Tony Martin had been in movies since the 1930s (a bit in Follow the Fleet, in fact), and of Jewish family, while Damone was active enough in the movies that acting was a substantial part of his career. At least I knew who Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds, and Ann Miller were.