Charlie Baker

I posted last month about Noir Alley showing Raw Deal, in which Marsha Hunt is excellent, followed by Eddie Muller's short The Grand Inquisitor, where she had the lead, in her 90s, and gave a fine, sharp performance. She worked, despite being blacklisted and never having a big breakthrough, but deserved a higher profile. RIP.

This book would appear to be tailor-made for obsessive TCMers. Anybody know any? :-) Hollywood: The Oral History

Patterns is terrifically written, directed, and acted, Similar in subject to Executive Suite, but even better.

New York Times piece on Michael Schulz: Longest Running Black Director in History?

I posted here a while back about discovering Jessie Matthews when TCM ran It's Love Again--she was a special talent. And I also learned then how she was almost paired with Fred Astaire in A Damsel in Distress--what might have been.

Vulture offers a list of the Marx Brothers movies: Marx Brothers in the Order You Should Watch Them

I don't doubt there are film buffs or scholars that value Wilder more highly than Lubitsch, but just how extensive those sentiments are--I have no data. Whether it be because of longevity, or variety, or questions of "substance," I don't know. And I suspect Lubitsch has a somewhat broader appeal for classic film lovers than just to the academics Alex Ross posits. I love the work of both. I like the article's generalizing Lubitsch as "whimsical" and Wilder as "savage" and that their collaboration on Ninotchka represents a fine melding of their sensibilities.

A not particularly short article--hey, it's the New Yorker--but a worthwhile one on Ernst Lubitsch. He Made the Hollywood Comedy Sublime

It's too bad that this week's Noir Alley isn't on Watch TCM. The film proper is the quite good Raw Deal, from small distributor Eagle Lion. It's spectacularly photographed for such a modest movie, has a memorably nasty villain in Raymond Burr, among other strengths. Though a sequence of the story we are led to believe happens after midnight was clearly shot in broad daylight. Then after came a short written and directed by Noir Alley's own E. Muller, The Grand Inquisitor, starring one of Raw Deal's two excellent female leads, Marsha Hunt, who was then in her 90s. (The other female star of RD was Claire Trevor.) There was a tech goof on TCM's end--the short started immediately after the fade out of Raw Deal, then after it we get Eddie's outro telling us to stay tuned for the short. And now we start Summer under the Stars, so no more Noir Alley for a month.

Easy Rider, Last Picture Show, Five Easy Pieces Bob Rafelson Dies at 89

I've only watched the first two episodes of The Last Movie Stars, but I'm in to the end. The framework of Hawke and his cohorts does threaten to get over-indulgent, but it hasn't happened so far. And the transcripts and the readings of them are riveting, along with the beautifully chosen film clips. A feast.

On CBS Sunday Morning, Ben talks to Ethan Hawke about his new documentary series on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. The Last Movie Stars?

And, yeesh, those serials...recently Saturday mornings have seen the two Batman serials, a Buck Rogers, and now a Flash Gordon, which will get interrupted for Summer under the Stars next month. I guess audiences (for these mostly kids?) were less demanding, and it would seem George Lucas and Steven Spielberg got some inspiration from them. Again, part of TCM legacy,

They're both worthwhile, @ruby24. For Charles Boyer and Olivia de Havilland and the Wilder/Brackett script and Mitchell Leisen directing, in addition to Goddard, I would go with Hold Back the Dawn.

A really good appraisal that makes me want to seek out his movies. Remembering James Caan

TCM wrapped the Star of the Month Judy Garland with, fittingly, her final two movies. They did, as Ben points out, show her strengths as a dramatic actress. A Child Is Waiting is a rare outside project John Cassavetes took on as director, but the intensity and directness towards the subject matter, the treatment of mentally disabled children, suit him. The whole cast is quite good, even if the particulars might be dated, as we are hopefully more enlightened now. I Could Go on Singing is a British-made, high-toned soap opera about a famous singer who wants to get to know the son she surrendered to his prominent physician father. Jack Klugman and Aline MacMahon are over-qualified and of course very fine as the singer's aides, and Gregory Phillips is very engaging as the boy. Though he reportedly came to hate working with her, Dirk Bogarde and JG are powerful together, elevating the script. And the in-concert numbers are gripping. I think I saw both of these on TV as a kid, but I wasn't as impressed as I was this go-round.

Old school dependable professional, perhaps underrated, Eleanor Parker was born on this date 100 years ago. Eleanor Parker on Wikipedia

Today also included the amazingly inept Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Quite a day. I am intrigued with Bucket of Blood--never saw it and it's on Watch TCM.

An interesting overview of this director from Vulture: The Acerbic Works of Robert Aldrich

Ben's new piece for CBS Sunday Morning is a profile of an actor who's come through some big health challenges. Jeff Bridges

The Star of the Month tribute begins tonight. Her centennial is a week from now, Judy Garland

An appreciation of a brilliant, groundbreaking cinematographer. James Wong Howe

I caught up with an intriguing Bette Davis title I hadn't seen, Payment on Demand. This was her first movie after her time at Warner Bros. ended, and she was still shooting it when she got the call offering her All About Eve, to start shooting immediately afterward, And RKO waited to release it until after Eve hit big. It's about the end of a marriage. The wife (guess who) drove her husband to success and schemed to advance him, and he grew increasingly resentful. It plays like a talky, drawing room drama, and when things fall apart and he demands a divorce, we get highly theatrical flashbacks to their humble beginnings. It all works pretty well within the confines of this type of melodrama. The supporting cast keeps up with the star, Barry Sullivan as the husband and Jane Cowl as a dowager, and Betty Lynn (Later to be Thelma Lou of Mayberry!) as the couple's young daughter stand out. And of course Ms. D. has her field day and commendably never goes too far over the top. The ending is left open--maybe these two will get together again, maybe not--supposedly softened over the original ending. At any rate, it is pretty honest for a movie of this time, when the Code frowned upon divorce being taken lightly, or floated as an acceptable life choice. It's on Watch TCM until the 1st.

These American Film Theatre selections are pretty fascinating, and pretty variable as to quality, as I recall. I eventually got to see most of them; revisiting Butley, I thought it held up very well. Bates' character and his performance are of course dominant--he's great. But Jessica Tandy and Richard O'Callaghan are excellent in support, in point of fact. The ambiguity and potentially fluid sexuality--I did not remember the late revelation about Ms. Tandy's character--hardly seem dated in our present.

I have CCs now on TCM through my cable provider, FWIW.