Charlie Baker

TCM Remembers 2021

Just a few responses to recent posts--and I'll try to be brief. :-) On It's a Wonderful Life: At first I thought it was just overexposure that wore the movie out with me--for years it inadvertently was in the public domain, so independent TV stations were free to air it without paying for rights, and fly-by-night video companies could issue it, as I understood it at the time. And SO many TV series adopted the premise of what-if-so-and-so had never been be born. But only later I was able to see what you have pointed out here, and whatever heartwarming or uplifting aspects the movie had didn't compensate or convince. Re @VOICEOVER : The TCM intro to The Outsiders did not comment on how to pronounce "soc," but FFC did say he loved the book even if he saw it as an opportunity to regain some industry clout, was painstaking in his casting that launched a bunch of careers, and felt compelled to reissue it with restored scenes when he had sufficient clout. Yes, @FOOL TO CRY I concur. Sorcerer was underrated. Then there's The Big Cube of our Inadvertent Camp Classics. Unlike The Cool Ones or Skidoo, it's meant to be a serious drama and fails so wildly that it really fits the classic concept of camp. Certainly out of the creators' depths with its subject matter, and poorly executed to boot. Continuity and logic weren't priorities. Star Lana Turner is photographed and lit with great care, until some shots here and there when she isn't, though it must be said she still looked good. She tries so hard to give a good performance it's almost sad. About the same could be said for George Chakiris, and as @RINALDO said, it's too bad his career went where it did. (Though, to allow myself a theater wonk aside, I would have loved to have seen him play Bobby in the tour of the musical Company.)

I have watched all of Skidoo and it is a prime example of not being able to look away from a trainwreck filmmaking. I salute you, @Milburn Stone, for being able to abandon it. Haven't seen The Big Cube. How could I not be intrigued?

A producer of many classic films turns 100. Walter Mirisch

The song that really floored me on first viewing was "Out Here on My Own". It completely spoke to where I was at the time. And yes, finding one's tribe, essential, even if you don't know it's happening while you're discovering it.

It was originally to be Cate Blanchett. Fine actresses, both, but I dunno... There were a couple TV movie bios of LB and the actresses cast tried very hard, with variable results. Saw the trailer for this new one, and it looks like a pretty elaborate recreation of the period. (Without a really good look at Nicole Kidman as Lucy.) It has a voiceover from NK as Lucy that has her speaking like a typical writer/director Aaron Sorkin character, which...I dunno. But yeah, I will probably see it

Lucille Ball has been Star of the Month for October, and there's a tie-in, of course. She's the subject of the new season of TCM's podcast. I've read more than one biography of her--so two episodes in, there's really not much I didn't know. However, these episodes are very well done, and it's great to hear audio from interviews they've dug up with LB herself, but also her brother Fred, her cousin (more like a sister) Cleo, her mother, some of the people involved in Lucy lore from her hometown. With more to come, I presume, as the season continues. Her movie career was made up of frequent good performances in some fairly good to better than that movies, but also a lot of mediocre, forgettable, or worse movies. She was churning them out, especially during her time at RKO as their queen of the Bs. A later example of this which I hadn't seen was Her Husband's Affairs, which just doesn't work at all now, and I wonder how well it worked for a 1947 audience. The principals, LB, Franchot Tone, Edward Everett Horton, and an actor I didn't know before this, Mikhail Rasumny, do their best. The script tries to be screwball, zany, witty. The direction keeps things moving--it runs under an hour and a half. But nope. Contrast that with The Golden Fleecing. It has similar intentions and scope. And everything clicks. Further proof that there's an element of alchemy and/or chance in making a good movie, beyond just getting the elements in place, I guess. OK, end of lecture. As a theatre person, how could I not be curious about this new Music Man? But like Rinaldo, I have my misgivings about the casting of Sutton Foster. Plus the ticket prices currently offered give me a long pause.

A very thoughtful discussion on a piece that can provoke hostility-- congratulations, all. And I hope you don't dial back on the posting, @Rinaldo.

Jane Powell tribute in progress as I write this--four movies, wrapping this afternoon with, of course, Royal Wedding and Seven Brides.

Schedule alert: tomorrow morning 8:30 ET is The Golden Fleecing, a little "B picture" I like a lot. It's a comedy with Lew Ayres as a bumbling insurance salesman turned hero and Lloyd Nolan as his gangster client, both terrific. Just fun.

Saturday night had a noir double feature. First, Armored Car Robbery. Yes, that's the title, generic as it sounds. But don't be fooled. It's a tough, tidy, short heist movie. It's no Asphalt Jungle. And it's no Narrow Margin either, the excellent subsequent collaboration of director Richard Fleischer and lead Charles McGraw, who did this one. But there's loads of flavor and 50s LA location shooting. And a performance from William Talman as the job's mastermind that suggests he might have been recognized as a great screen heavy, instead of as the DA on Perry Mason opposite Raymond Burr. Further evidence: his memorable psychopath in Ida Lupino's The Hitch-hiker. Following that was Noir Alley proper, with a Brit-noir, Brighton Rock. Its plot can be a little confusing, due to local referencing of the period it's set, the 30s, and some dialect that doesn't fall too easily on American ears. But it's beautifully made, and its chief asset is also its baddie, young Richard Attenborough, who suggests an adolescent James Cagney at times, and is lit and shot to look ethereally beautiful or haunting and menacing. This teen gang leader is maybe sicker than any crook Cagney ever played. Mario Cantone can strike me as quite funny or a bit much or both at the same time. His horror choices have been interesting, especially how he pairs them. The Birds with Little Shop of Horrors, the musical. The Bad Seed with the quite bizarre-sounding It's Alive, which I haven't watched. From what I've seen, his commentary and interaction with Ben are fun.

Spending a little time with Ben and Nancy Sinatra on TCM made for a fun Friday evening. (No, I don't get out much.) They showed some movies from her admittedly less than spectacular film career: Marriage on the Rocks, with her father and which I think they just ran on Deborah Kerr day, the beach partier For Those Who Think Young, which had Ellen Burstyn in its cast when she was still working as Ellen McRae. But the kick-off selection was the one I couldn't resist, Movin' with Nancy, a special she made for NBC in 1967. It's not on Watch TCM, but may be floating around You Tube. Anyway, it's for sure a time capsule and along with A Hard Day's Night and Help, an obvious precursor to the music video tropes of the early 80s. Some groovy 60s dances choreographed and performed by David Winters. Plus it's got Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin. And Lee Hazlewood, who wrote some of NS's hits. Included is NS's rendition of "This Town," written by Hazlewood, and part of the soundtrack for our infamously beloved The Cool Ones. IMDB says NS was going to play the female lead in Cool Ones, but did not. She dodged a bullet.

On CBS Sunday Morning: Ben Interviews Daniel Craig

A look at the Academy Museum with a few comments from Jacqueline Stewart. Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

Deborah Kerr The hundredth anniversary of her birth is today. The line-up all day today consists of her films.

She's also the first artistic director of the about-to-open Academy museum, as I learned last night when she introduced Citizen Kane and Malcolm X with Dave Karger. She's also on the faculty of the University of Chicago. At any rate, congratulations to her indeed!

A very creepy bad guy, for sure. The actor, someone I wasn't familiar with, evidently specialized in the type. John Davis Chandler

SUTS=Summer under the Stars. The stuff I saw from the day devoted to Heflin really impressed me.

Back to recent TCM fare: guest programmer Dana Delany and Eddie Muller made a good pair for Saturday night's selections. The first two films I hadn't seen. Once a Thief is a mid-60s type noir, gritty and stylish. Couldn't decide if Alain Delon and Ann-Margret (Whew, what eyefuls!) were really good or really overwrought. Jack Palance and Van Heflin (Whose SUTS day gave me an even deeper appreciation for him) were rock solid. A strong, tough watch. Man on a TIghtrope is based on the factual story of a circus escaping Communist oppression with an outstanding Fredric March and Dana Delany's favorite Gloria Grahame. She stuck around for Noir Alley because GG was in this week's selection Human Desire. All in all, the TCM I know and love.

Not to get too Theater Talk-y here, but I would have liked to have seen Bounce, to see Ms. Powell and other cast members who were preserved on the cast recording, and to see what the show was before it played New York as Road Show with changes made. I did see Road Show. To get it a little more on topic, Wilson Mizner of the brothers/subjects of the musical was, among other things, a screenwriter from silents to pre-Code, with credits including the much-loved-here One Way Passage.

Jane Powell has said she didn't quit movies, they quit her, and she was certainly talented enough to have had a longer film career than she did. I know some find story elements of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers problematic in this day and age. But the script and score are tightly crafted, the Michael Kidd choreography and the men who dance it are great. And Ms. Powell was the movie's secret weapon. She made a completely convincing, strong, practical heroine who was more than a match for her husband and brothers-in-law.

OK, well, About Face is the silliest thing I've seen in some time, and silliness can be a good thing now and then. It's not as overtly campy or inept as something like The Cool Ones, which we talked about a while back. I don't know Brother Rat, or how much About Face changes the plot, but I guess someone on IMDB accurately likened it to a 1950s cleaned-up version of Police Academy set in a military school. And with song and dance. Joel Grey, barely out of his teens (if he was, actually, when this was shot), shall we say, pulls out every last stop. I think this is one I have to be in the right frame of mind to watch...if I weren't it could drive me up the wall. This first time I had fun.

OK, @GussieK -- you have me intrigued with About Face. And it kicks off a Gordon MacRae daytime lineup. Handsome man with beautiful voice, and not a bad actor. They do not have his best known films, Oklahoma and Carousel, but they do have his obscure, dramatic change of pace Backfire and a couple nostalgia fest musicals with Doris Day.

The timing for this seems a bit late, since we're on the verge of a new podcast season for The Plot Thickens, about Lucille Ball. But this linked piece is about Julie Salamon and her approach in converting her book The Devil's Candy into the podcast. Rekindling Bonfire

The stage musical of Annie was not done justice by that movie; with that cast, the movie should have been better. (The 1999 Disney TV show is better.) And I'm hardly a pushover for a show with kids and a dog. But the book of the stage musical is funny and well-crafted, the new songs in the movie do not equal the stage score, and the songs the movie dropped add to the show. I understand that maybe two generations grew up with the movie as their concept of the show, and I suppose I should resign myself to the possibility that the upcoming live TV edition will incorporate stuff from the film. Conversely the movie of Oliver is quite strong and keeps the Dickensian spirit of the stage show.