TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Rinaldo]

6 hours ago, Crisopera said:

According to IMDB, he also played Harry Hamlin's father in the "Dynamite Hands" segment of Movie Movie 

Quite right. And I should have remembered that, as I'm a fan of the movie and own the Blu-Ray.

[chitowngirl]

One thing that ALWAYS takes me out of the story of My Fair Lady is the obvious transition in the singing of Audrey Hepburn and Marni Nixon.

Edited June 27, 2018 by chitowngirl

[Rinaldo]

44 minutes ago, chitowngirl said:

One thing that ALWAYS takes me out of the story of My Fair Lady is the obvious transition in the singing of Audrey Hepburn and Marni Nixon.

It's about the most blatant in any musical movie I know, even the early ones. My History of Musicals class would often start laughing at the transition, partly because just the week before, we'd heard Marni Nixon transition flawlessly from Deborah Kerr.

The difference is due to the different circumstances and handling thereof. Kerr had accepted (with whatever inner regret) that she didn't sing quite well enough for her King and I songs, so she and Nixon worked together diligently to match their timbres and make the seams undetectable and the illusion complete. By contrast, the producers of My Fair Lady decided (accurately or not) that Hepburn would want to do her own singing -- after all, she had charmed audiences with her own unique vocalizing in Funny Face and Breakfast at Tiffany's. So they strung her along with a series of half (at most) truths: "We'll use your own voice, sure" followed by "Maybe we'll need to sweeten just a handful of high notes" followed by "We'll maybe have someone else do the 'lady' songs, but we'll use you for the 'guttersnipe' ones." Until her entire visual performance was safely filmed and couldn't be undone, then they went ahead and did as they planned to do all along. Which was not only dishonest, but led to the inferior result described, as Nixon had to post-sync to the screen, with orchestra. Which is the opposite order to how it's generally done.

[Milburn Stone]

On 6/27/2018 at 2:57 PM, Rinaldo said:

Until her entire visual performance was safely filmed and couldn't be undone, then they went ahead and did as they planned to do all along. Which was not only dishonest, but led to the inferior result described, as Nixon had to post-sync to the screen, with orchestra. Which is the opposite order to how it's generally done.

I never knew that Nixon's vocals were post-synched! Despite the unsatisfactory results, I always assumed events had occurred in the standard, sensible order. And you're right, deception had to have occurred. Because unquestionably, Hepburn's vocals were pre-recorded. (As would be standard practice.) Which meant The Powers That Be already knew her vocals were deficient before filming began. Being as generous to TPTB as possible, I can see that before she went onto the recording stage they could have deluded themselves (or hoped against hope) that her vocal qualities would prove adequate, but after the pre-recording there's no way they could have continued to think that. Which means they could have had the discussion with Hepburn before filming began to let her know her vocals were deficient, but were afraid to, for fear of "losing" her (either literally, to a walkout, or figuratively, to poor morale). They had to keep lying to her to get a performance out of her.

Edited June 28, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[Sharpie66]

Ahh, 1776 is on. Howard da Silva just came on screen. “I only wish King George felt like my big toe, all over!” I really love his performance, irascible, humorous, yet deadly serious when needed and able to get really pissed off with Adams when things get bad. 

Edited July 5, 2018 by Sharpie66

[Sharpie66]

In watching 1776, I realize that the direction is really spotty in quality. It is very stagy with strange choices on close-ups and camera angles. 

I do like how they use Dr. Lyman Hall from Georgia, first as the newbie to introduce the audience to the cast of characters, then as the principled man persuaded by Adams’ passionate vision of independence. 

It wasn’t until years after growing up watching this film that I found out what an interesting guy Dickinson actually was, not the villain he was portrayed as here. 

[HyeChaps]

Watched it last week; watched it tonight. This was the first show I ever saw on Broadway, back in 1971. 

[voiceover]

1 hour ago, Sharpie66 said:

I do like how they use Dr. Lyman Hall from Georgia, first as the newbie to introduce the audience to the cast of characters, then as the principled man persuaded by Adams’ passionate vision of independence. 

Of the supporting cast, he's my favorite, and it's not even close.  He is The Audience.  And his last line is a zinger -- quoting an Englishman (Edmund Burke) in his defense for switching sides ("Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."). Niiiiiiiiice.

And you're right about Dickinson.  They had to have a villain for the story, so they made him *it* (like Dan Devine in Rudy!).  But the man put his money where his mouth was.  He enlisted in the Pennsylvania militia, just like he said he would; though his stance against independence cost him promotion during the war.

[Constant Viewer]

On 7/5/2018 at 1:01 AM, voiceover said:

And you're right about Dickinson.  They had to have a villain for the story, so they made him *it* (like Dan Devine in Rudy!).  But the man put his money where his mouth was.  He enlisted in the Pennsylvania militia, just like he said he would; though his stance against independence cost him promotion during the war.

It's even stranger when you remember he actually wrote the "Liberty Song" against taxation without representation.

[Spartan Girl]

I love 1776. All of Ben Franklin's lines are gold, and him and the backup chorus of "But, Mr. Adams" cracks me up every single time.

[mariah23]

TCM Remembers: According to his official Facebook page, Tab Hunter has died three days before his 87th birthday.

[Milburn Stone]

35 minutes ago, mariah23 said:

TCM Remembers: According to his official Facebook page, Tab Hunter has died three days before his 87th birthday.

His professional name made him seem like just another pretty face, but he wasn't. No one could have been better in the part of Joe Hardy in the movie version of Damn Yankees.

[Rinaldo]

8 hours ago, mariah23 said:

TCM Remembers: According to his official Facebook page, Tab Hunter has died three days before his 87th birthday.

Whatever else his achievements, he'll always have a special place for me (I say it without irony or condescension; I don't blame actors for getting trapped in certain kinds of bad pictures) because of his participation in the gloriously schlocky Return to Treasure Island. TCM showed it about a year ago, and I hope they will again. I have more affection for it than I do for many far better movies, and I admired him for maintaining his character amid all the inept direction and mismatched takes.

[Charlie Baker]

Set for Friday, July 20th:

TCM Tab Hunter Tribute

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

Set for Friday, July 20th:

TCM Tab Hunter Tribute

Bravo to them! Looks like a good broad selection, and they had the wit to include Return to Treasure Island, which I just mentioned. Record it, and then play MST3K to it with your friends.

The Golden Arrow also looked like it might have potential along the same lines, so I looked it up. It's one of those Italian mythological + action jobs, such as were being made by the boatload in the 1960s, into which they would plug one susceptible but marketable American star. The blond Mr. Hunter of course played the mysterious Arab bandit Hassan, and he spoke of the experience so entertainingly, I have to quote him:

Quote

Not being able to speak Italian wasn't a drawback. The script of La Freccia d'Oro – my copy was the only one in English – featured page after page of truly horrendous dialogue... All I could think of was Tony Curtis in The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951): "Yonda lies da castle of my fadda." I spend every night in my hotel, rewriting my lines so I'd at least have fun delivering them. I camped it up shamelessly. Not that it mattered – all my dialogue was eventually dubbed by a stiff-as-a-board Italian baritone with no sense of humor. I ended up sounding like Rossano Brazzi. Disappointment over being stuck in a stinker was eased considerably by weekly infusions of cash...

I'll be there.

[Sharpie66]

Hee! Reminds me of the Michael Caine quote about Jaws 4: “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

[Rinaldo]

A reminder, don't forget to celebrate Tab Hunter day, preferably by watching Return to Treasure Island.

[Charlie Baker]

Article on what looks like a fascinating series of films at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Cinematek--the work of pioneering women filmmakers.  (Tied in to a boxed set of DVDS to be released later this year, for those who can't get to this.  I'm probably among them, even if I'm in NYC.) One thing the article implies that is not entirely accurate--with the advent of the studio system, there were significant female film editors, they weren't necessarily shut out.  I'm hardly an expert or historian but I know of Blanche Sewell at MGM and Barbara McLean at Fox. 

 

Real Gone Girls of Cinema

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, Charlie Baker said:

Article on what looks like a fascinating series of films at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Cinematek--the work of pioneering women filmmakers.  (Tied in to a boxed set of DVDS to be released later this year, for those who can't get to this.  I'm probably among them, even if I'm in NYC.) One thing the article implies that is not entirely accurate--with the advent of the studio system, there were significant female film editors, they weren't necessarily shut out.  I'm hardly an expert or historian but I know of Blanche Sewell at MGM and Barbara McLean at Fox. 

And Margaret Booth at MGM.

[Charlie Baker]

And somehow this almost slipped by me.  Starts with West Side Story, On the Town, and On the Waterfront tonight, but continues over the weekend with vintage TV: Young People's Concerts and Omnibus.

 

Leonard Bernstein Centennial

[kiddo82]

If for whatever reason I was only allowed to rewatch only 5 movies for the rest of my life, West Side Story would be on that list.  

[Wiendish Fitch]

58 minutes ago, kiddo82 said:

If for whatever reason I was only allowed to rewatch only 5 movies for the rest of my life, West Side Story would be on that list.  

I unabashedly, un-ironically love West Side Story, warts and all. The idea of remaking it disgusts me, because it will be accurately cast (good), but will have not one whit of heart or soul (bad, bad, bad, a total deal breaker).

[Rinaldo]

Count me in on the West Side Story love. I can see all the ways in which it falls short of the ideal (some were evident at the start, some have become so over the years), but few of those would be remedied in a remake, and vast numbers of new faults would be added. The biggest one would be present-day condescension to it as a "period piece" that needs to be saved or improved or helped.

Sometimes the mandatory crediting of the original director or choreographer ("conceived by Jerome Robbins" or whatever) is a contractual obligation, even an ego trip. With this show, it's a plain fact: you do it in his visual/emotional/kinetic language, or you leave it alone. (And his hand is evident throughout the movie, never mind that he was barred from physically directing it after a while because he wouldn't work to a schedule.)

I was just the right age to be obsessed with the movie when it came out -- after my freshman year in high school, repeatedly went into the city to buy the inflated road-show tickets, bought the souvenir book, saw it again when it hit the suburbs -- and my obsession has not really abated over the years.

[Charlie Baker]

I don't see the need for or have any interest in a West Side Story remake.  There is also a stage revival in the works, to be directed by Ivo van Hove, who has a  reputation for deconstructing classic works--and that certainly implies the kind of approach to the piece Rinaldo is speaking of. 

[Rinaldo]

The van Hove approach is even worse than what I was talking about. He wouldn't have attempted it with WSS a few years back, because Arthur Laurents was still alive, and notoriously unwilling to let directors screw around with what he'd written. (Big a jerk as Laurents undoubtedly was, I'm 100% behind him on that principle.) Stephen Sondheim, unfortunately, seems willing to let things happen to his work in new productions, so he won't step in and shut the production down as I think he ought. Famously Ivo van Hove will have no set, will throw out such "concessions to the box office" as costumes and sets and orchestras, and will cut and re-order according to his whim. (He removed the final scene of Angels in America because it was "dreadful American happy-ending stuff, the play is better without it.")

[Milburn Stone]

21 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Stephen Sondheim, unfortunately, seems willing to let things happen to his work in new productions, so he won't step in and shut the production down as I think he ought.

I have tried to puzzle out why he seems to care so little. The obvious reason (but not the one I think is most true) is that he likes the royalties. The motive I've imagined that rings the truest to me is that what he cares most about is not money but posterity. You might think a posterity-motive would impel him to keep his work pristine, but he might reasonably conclude the opposite. I believe he asks himself this question: "Self, under what scenario do you think your work is most likely to be performed in the year 2118? A scenario in which no or few productions have occurred in the intervening hundred years due to strict prohibitions against revision, or a scenario in which your work has been constantly performed in every which way imaginable?" And he has concluded that his best shot at being revived in 2118 is the latter.

Of course, we have him on the record as proclaiming that he doesn't care about posterity. But I don't believe him.

Edited July 22, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[HyeChaps]

The ending of Annie Get Your Gun always burns me up!

[Charlie Baker]

First chance I've had to post about Sunday's showing of Omnibus episodes with Leonard Bernstein. I don't think they're on On Demand or Watch TCM, but they may well be out there on DVD.  I caught the ones on jazz, grand opera, and for me the piece de resistance American Musical Comedy.  At the time Bernstein had done On the Town and Wonderful Town, had Candide going into production, and either was about to start or had started writing West Side Story, I think. Guest host expert John Mauceri thought Bernstein's theory about musicals being somewhere between variety show and grand opera, evolving more towards the latter cockamamie. but it kind of made sense to me.  And maybe LB didn't know how WSS might further the way for musicals to have more dramatic approaches and heavier subject matter, His discussion was illustrated with pretty elaborately staged snippets from a lot of shows and I think this was done live. The performers were good  but pretty obscure. except for one Mauceri alerted the audience to.  Her first appearance is brief, and the video quality not the greatest, but she seems pretty familiar.  But then she turns up for a longer solo and you know for sure. It's a young, unknown Carol Burnett belting the hell out of "Heat Wave" and "The Ooh La La"--a total joy worth watching the whole thing for.

[Rinaldo]

Yes, there is a DVD box set of Bernstein's segments of Omnibus. I'm glad TCM showed some of them, as they are perhaps even more informative than the admirable Young People's Concerts, being directly aimed at the camera.

I'm also glad John Mauceri alerted the audience to Carol Burnett's presence, as she goes entirely uncredited onscreen. Still, as @Charlie Baker said, one good look and listen, and she's unmistakable -- already fully formed as a performer at that young age. (I'm delighted to find that my undergraduate students also recognize her instantly when I play a recording.)

[Crisopera]

Not only Carol Burnett, but Reri Grist (Rinaldo, you'll remember her), singing the Italian Street Song from Naughty Marietta.  She came to notice as one of Maria's three friends in West Side Story (also introduced "Somewhere"), then went on to a long career in opera, including many performances at the Met.  (They were credited, but at the very end - I checked because I wasn't sure about Reri Grist, since the old recordings weren't very clear.)

[Rinaldo]

Of course I remember Reri Grist, initially (like many others then) for her role in West Side Story -- in addition to "Somewhere," she's the one who yells "I know you do!" early in the song "America." I'm abashed that I didn't notice those end credits (I'm usually an inveterate credit-scanner). She started to get substantial opera engagements by the end of the 1950s, and it was Leonard Bernstein, appropriately enough, who launched her with an international public around 1960 by performing and recording Mahler's fourth symphony with her as soprano soloist. Her opera career was truly international, including long-term contracts in Germany and Austria. And when the original cast of WSS had a 50th anniversary reunion (there are several YT videos showing parts of it), she was right there alongside Carol Lawrence, Chita Rivera, and Michael Callan.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Rinaldo

[voiceover]

Ahhhh: "Silent Sunday Nights"!!!  Watching Lillian Gish freeze her tiny porcelain butt off during the ice floe escape of Way Down East.  Recalling her facing down the gritty sandstorm of The Wind, and going without liquids for a week, just to convincingly die from TB in La Boheme.

When critics were celebrating Brando and The Method, I imagine her rolling her eyes to the sky with a "Whatevs, dude.  I was there first."
 

[Charlie Baker]

So before we plunge into the daily star tributes of August, TCM throws us a day of Pre-Code!  Along with the must be experienced Safe in Hell, there were two new ones I caught up with.  Faithless had Tallulah Bankhead, quite well cast and effective as a Depression heiress spending her way to destitute streetwalking, and Robert Montgomery as her somewhat less affluent fiance who loses his own resources. The misfortunes rapidly pile up on the couple until things slightly improve and all of it's pretty believable and frank to come out of MGM in 1932. 

For something completely different. there was the bonkers Loose Ankles, a farce that first felt so fake and early talkie stagy to me that I almost bailed but just got so giddy and bent on having its characters just get smashed and go nuts I stayed on.  An heiress played by Loretta Young wants to first be compromised by, then marry would be gigolo Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but her relatives don't approve.  So by marrying him, she would surrender her fortune.  Turns out his friends really are gigolos, and they and her proper aunts paint the town red.  Well, you have to be there.  Basically it's about the joys of booze and promiscuity.  In the midst of the comic actors letting loose, Loretta and Doug make an impossibly beautiful pair of straight-man young romantic interests.

 

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by Charlie Baker

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Charlie Baker said:

An heiress played by Loretta Young wants to first be compromised by, then marry would be gigolo Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but her relatives don't approve.  So by marrying him, she would surrender her fortune.  ...  Basically it's about the joys of booze and promiscuity.  In the midst of the comic actors letting loose, Loretta and Doug make an impossibly beautiful pair of straight-man young romantic interests.

I have this image of Loretta Young as a poised, reserved, image-controlled Gracious Lady of the screen (early TV too), and it's not altogether unfair. But my goodness, in those early talkies she really was something. I definitely need to catch Loose Ankles  (what a title!), and in A Man's Castle (a Shantytown romance with Spencer Tracy) she's luminously real and unaffected.

For those who just want a quick sketch of this year's "Summer under the Stars" lineup (the complete listing with all the titles for each is, of course, at the TCM website), here it is:

1    Frank Sinatra        2    Myrna Loy                 3    Lionel Atwill
4    Clint Eastwood      5    Katharine Hepburn   6    Audrey Totter
7    Harold Lloyd         8    Jeanette MacDonald  9    Walter Matthau
10  Dorothy Malone    11  Gary Cooper              12  Doris Day
13  George Brent        14  Lupe Velez                15  Peter Finch
16  Miriam Hopkins    17  Barbra Streisand        18  Clark Gable
19  Judy Garland         20  Stewart Granger        21  Anita Louise
22  Dana Andrews      23  Virginia Mayo            24  Peter Lorre
25  Carroll Baker        26  Anthony Quinn          27  Agnes Moorehead
28  Lew Ayres             29  Lauren Bacall            30  Marcello Mastroianni
31  Joan Crawford

[Charlie Baker]

I would be remiss in my adoration for Myrna Loy if I didn't plug her day, tomorrow, which also happens to be her birthday.  Can't go wrong with the schedule so heavy on her comedies with William Powell, plus her paint color tour de force, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Try any one of them.  Or for something maybe a bit less familiar, Third Finger, Left Hand, where she's a lot of fun paired with Melvyn Douglas.

[Crisopera]

Hey, Dorothy Malone is on my birthday!  Thanks for the list, Rinaldo.  Quite an interesting, more obscure bunch this year.  And, Charlie Baker, indeed, Safe in Hell must be seen.  I have many of the pre-Codes recorded for a weekend binge, including Loose Ankles.

[Bastet]

4 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

I would be remiss in my adoration for Myrna Loy if I didn't plug her day, tomorrow, which also happens to be her birthday.  Can't go wrong with the schedule so heavy on her comedies with William Powell, plus her paint color tour de force, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Try any one of them.  Or for something maybe a bit less familiar, Third Finger, Left Hand, where she's a lot of fun paired with Melvyn Douglas.

I need to take a closer look at the schedule before I go to bed, but my quick glance when it was first posted didn't show anything I don't already have on DVD, let alone anything I haven't seen.  That will not stop me from having the TV tuned to TCM all day tomorrow, though.  (I'll be working out of my home office; no one will know, as the cat won't tell.)

[Rinaldo]

I'm very glad that Doris Day Day is including (at 2 a.m.) Midnight Lace, which I've been wanting to see for some time. Frank Langella in his book of memories of actors (Dropped Names), is as unreserved in his praise of Rex Harrison's mastery as an actor as he is devoid of nice things to say about him personally (he has plenty of company there). But he says that 

Quote

Oddly, he and the actress Doris Day seemed to have found a warm rapport on a film they made together in 1960 entitled Midnight Lace. And it shows in both their wonderful performances.

So I think I need to see that.

[Charlie Baker]

Plus it has Myrna Loy--who has nice things to say about DD in her memoir.

[Charlie Baker]

Loss of a Golden Ager, with whom I wasn't famiiar:

 

Mary Carlisle, Depression Era Movie Ingenue

[Charlie Baker]

An irresistible and too short interview with Angela Allen, a script supervisor who worked on some notable movies with notable stars and directors.

 

Behind the scenes with Angela Allen

[voiceover]

At last!!  Cactus Flower has jumped the velvet rope into the TCM "On Demand" app-theater.  I am *giddy*.   Among its other delights, it features the first film Igor I ever crushed on.

And a very deserving Supporting Actress winner in Goldie Hawn.  You should find her Toni exasperating and childish.  Instead, she's adorable; even admirable.  My guy Igor put it best: "Toni, you're a kook.  But you're a nice kook."  

[Wiendish Fitch]

5 hours ago, voiceover said:

At last!!  Cactus Flower has jumped the velvet rope into the TCM "On Demand" app-theater.  I am *giddy*.   Among its other delights, it features the first film Igor I ever crushed on.

And a very deserving Supporting Actress winner in Goldie Hawn.  You should find her Toni exasperating and childish.  Instead, she's adorable; even admirable.  My guy Igor put it best: "Toni, you're a kook.  But you're a nice kook."  

I also love how Cactus Flower features a middle-aged woman learning to embrace life and her own attractiveness and sexuality (but, come on, it's Ingrid Bergman, how difficult can it be?) without getting too over the top or making poor Stephanie the butt of cheap jokes. Bergman and Walter Matthau are such an odd couple (*rimshot*), but they somehow click so well. 

And, yes, Goldie Hawn's Toni is quite possibly the most well-written "other woman" I've ever encountered in a comedy

[Suzn]

Because of the recent death of Tab Hunter, I wanted to watch Damn Yankees again and discovered that I had gotten rid of my DVD of it, for inexplicable reasons. It is out of print and eBay prices for used DVDs is astronomical.  Which leads me to TCM and Previously TV.  I don't remember ever seeing it on TCM and hope I'm wrong and might see it turn up some day.  It's a Warner Bros production and TCM has Warner Bro movies in its library.  Do any of you know if it has ever shown on TCM?  Surely they could show Meet in St Louis a few less times and fit it in.

Thanks in advance if any of you can help!

Edited August 10, 2018 by Suzn

[ratgirlagogo]

16 hours ago, Suzn said:

Do any of you know if it has ever shown on TCM?

If they ever did it must have been quite a while ago since people have been complaining about it on the TCM message boards for the last ten years at least.  There's either a copyright fight going on (thus no currently available DVD/BluRay) or some other channel has paid to get the rights to it for now.

Maybe somebody else here knows more.

[Suzn]

12 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:

If they ever did it must have been quite a while ago since people have been complaining about it on the TCM message boards for the last ten years at least.  There's either a copyright fight going on (thus no currently available DVD/BluRay) or some other channel has paid to get the rights to it for now.

Maybe somebody else here knows more.

Thanks, RATGIRLAGOGO!  I'm at least glad to know I'm not the only one who would like to see it and wonder why it is not shown.

[Rinaldo]

On 8/3/2018 at 5:38 PM, Rinaldo said:

I'm very glad that Doris Day Day is including (at 2 a.m.) Midnight Lace, which I've been wanting to see for some time....

I've now seen it. I'm not calling it an overlooked masterpiece or anything, but it's an effective suspense melodrama (if one doesn't object to the helpless-woman-in-jeopardy scenario), and it does indeed contain a very touching and effective performance by Ms. Day, and she and Mr. Harrison do indeed create a most convincing loving-married-couple ambience. The story is sort of Wait Until Dark meets Gaslight meets Dial M for Murder meets The Man Who Knew Too Much (different bits of each of those). It's awfully nice to have Myrna Loy on hand, and a lot of good British acting support. Seeing music & lyrics credits for 2 songs during the credits, I was expecting Doris to break into song at some point, or at least for somebody to sing when they all went to a nightclub, but no; presumably we hear them instrumentally at some point. (Good underscoring by Frank Skinner, including a nice solo harmonica.) Somebody went berserk with an excessive number of showy costumes for the leading lady, but it is, after all, a Ross Hunter production.

I also DVR'd Julie, but I'm not sure how soon I'll get to it, if ever. I knew nothing about it and was therefore intrigued, figuring it'd be a glossy Technicolor romp, but it turns out to be a serious B&W drama. (In this one she does sing the title song.) I'll keep it in reserve for a snow day.

[Charlie Baker]

Julie would be a good choice for a snow day diversion.  Another woman-in-jeopardy situation but not nearly as smoothly done as Midnight Lace.

[Charlie Baker]

Peter Finch Day today with his probably best known performance Network tonight, the camp fest The Legend of Lylah Clare today, and late night, a very 70s item that rarely surfaces,, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, in which he and Glenda Jackson are brilliant as two sides of an unconventional triangle.  And The Nun's Story and Far from the Madding Crowd ( with a ravishing cast) are in there too. A very rich day.

Miriam Hopkins, whom we discussed here a while back, gets her day tomorrow.  There are her vehicles with Bette Davis, and the delightful Trouble in Paradise, if no Design for Living.   A movie I mentioned before, The Stranger's Return, which absolutely deserves to be better known, kicks off the day.  It's the story of a woman who returns to her rural roots after her marriage disintegrates and falls for a married neighbor. Unfortunately, MH's uneven performance is a problem, but Franchot Tone and Lionel Barrymore are excellent. 

And George Brent Day reminded me of how good he was in The Rains Came, as voiceover has pointed out here. 

[Rinaldo]

30 minutes ago, Charlie Baker said:

a very 70s item that rarely surfaces,, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, in which he and Glenda Jackson are brilliant as two sides of an unconventional triangle. 

I guess it's true that it rarely surfaces; it's not among the titles that keep popping up on TCM, though I think of it as a perennial classic. It was among the Criterion Collection titles that TCM put on sale a couple of years ago, at which time I bought it. Finch and Jackson truly are extraordinary in it, and I remember how much seeing Finch's performance meant to me back in 1971 -- for the first time on the screen, a quiet functional gay man whose problems were just ordinary human problems.

Among Penelope Gilliatt's many wonderful lines of dialogue in the movie, I especially remember one that Jackson's mother (played by Peggy Ashcroft) says to her, because it represents more or less how I feel: "You keep throwing in your hand because you haven't got the whole thing. There is no whole thing. You just have to make it work."

Another point in its favor: the music featured on the soundtrack includes my favorite Mozart vocal trio (from Così fan tutte).

Edited August 15, 2018 by Rinaldo