TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[ratgirlagogo]

 

super-profanity, megavulgarsex, the good old ultra violence

We always have Shakespeare for all of that.

[elle]

And wasn't there some legend about Mary Astor deciding on a very extreme (for the time) haircut, just to try to make the movie seem interesting?

I recall the story was that she didn't want to bother with having her hair put up every day in makeup, so she had it cut into a very short style that could be made to look like she had a chic chignon style.

 

We always have Shakespeare for all of that.

I recently watch a show called "Shakespeare Uncovered" in which they talked about "A Midsummer's Night Dream".  Apparently a. lot. is lost on modern audiences that would have been caught in the Bard's day!

 

42nd Street, I found it laughable that Ginger Roger (or rather her character) was considered not to be able to carry a show by herself.  She is has much more sparkle than the main character of Ruby Keeler.  You can see why she become a star herself.

[Julia]

Oh, do not get me started on Ruby Keeler. I don't hate on her personally, and I feel bad for her troubles (long story short: she and Al Jolson were by many accounts the basis for the couple in A Star is Born, except they left out the part where he beat her for not giving him children when he knew he was the one who was infertile).

But wow, was she a minor, minor talent. I've never really gotten the thirties girl next door look, so I'll give her that, but she was at best an indifferent singer, a less good actress than that, and she tapdanced like a knock-kneed crane. Even allowing for the terrible choreography in those early stage musicals, because they somehow managed to make Eleanor Powell look ungraceful from time to time, I've never understood how she became a star.

Then, she was, improbably, a real life femme fatale in her youth. This is loosely based on the Keeler/Jolson/a NY gang figure named Irish who took a proprietary interest triangle. So I guess it's a period thing.

Edited February 4, 2015 by Julia

[Wiendish Fitch]

I recall the story was that she didn't want to bother with having her hair put up every day in makeup, so she had it cut into a very short style that could be made to look like she had a chic chignon style.

 

I recently watch a show called "Shakespeare Uncovered" in which they talked about "A Midsummer's Night Dream".  Apparently a. lot. is lost on modern audiences that would have been caught in the Bard's day!

 

42nd Street, I found it laughable that Ginger Roger (or rather her character) was considered not to be able to carry a show by herself.  She is has much more sparkle than the main character of Ruby Keeler.  You can see why she become a star herself.

42nd Street is one of my favorite musicals ever, but I agree on this gaping logic-hole. Any director worth his folding chair would hire Ginger Rogers over Ruby Keeler, and never take no for an answer.

 

I do think Keeler is cute and charming, though, despite being, as Pauline Kael put it, "awesomely untalented". Unfortunately, typecasting got the better for her, and by the time Dames rolled around, her sweet and innocent persona really had worn thin with me (I was so rooting for Joan Blondell in Dames).

 

Poor Bebe Daniels, being toted as the "aging star", despite being only 31 or 32. Yeah, not a kid anymore, and I guess considered older then, but look at her! She has plenty of good years passing as "29" left! I got to see the stage production of 42nd Street at the Fabulous Fox in 2009, and it was wonderful, but they had an opposite problem in casting Dorothy Brock; while Daniels was way too young, Loretta Swit was way too old. I'm sorry, but the poor woman didn't walk or dance so much as lurch, and she wasn't even a fair singer. Forgive me if I sound ageist or mean, but isn't Brock supposed to be a triple-threat Broadway pro? I didn't get that from Swit at all (plus, the age difference between her and Pat Denning was hard to ignore, considering he's supposed to have "shown her the ropes").

[voiceover]

Dude...listen to your own voice, you'll find someone more worthy!

 

*laughs uncontrollably*

 

I even felt that way about the book Sydney.

[bmoore4026]

Ronald Colman is one of my faves. And, I agree, and I never understood what Sydney ever saw in that little idiot Lucie. Dude, look in the mirror, listen to your own voice, you'll find someone more worthy! Trust me on this!

 

Sydney and that girl who was with him when they went to the guillotine made a cute couple....for ten minutes.

 

Lucie and Charles, however, make the perfect couple - a couple of dumbasses who deserve each other.

 

And, I think, that Miss Pross should become an action hero.  She kicked so much ass.  The verbal smackdown to Madame Defarge alone was awesome.

[elle]

"42nd Street" is one of those behind the curtain movies that makes one (me) wonder about the show they are putting on.  I can not see a contecting thread between the numbers.

 

Must put in a word for Una Merkel.  I love seeing her in these movies, she is fun and funny.  After years of only knowing her as "Verbena" from "The Parent Trap" it is a treat to see her young.

 

Ginger and Fred in "Swingtime" = two of my favorite numbers (the first in the dance studio and the infamous one in the club) and one of the greatest love songs written "The Way You Look Tonight".

[Bastet]

Must put in a word for Una Merkel.  I love seeing her in these movies, she is fun and funny.  After years of only knowing her as "Verbena" from "The Parent Trap" it is a treat to see her young.

 

She did the "best friend" role so many times it should have become tiresome, but it didn't (to me, anyway; she may have felt differently) because she was just so damn good at it.  I always enjoy her.

[Rinaldo]

As one who teaches history of musicals, I can say that that statement about Oklahoma!, though frequently seen (even in print), is something of a myth. (One of several about that show.) One can find dozens, hundreds, of previous musicals that tried hard to connect songs and story.

 

But in any case, what elle was talking about with 42nd Street, I'm pretty sure, was specifically the coherence of the show-within-the-show. How can all these numbers be part of the same musical that they're presenting? And this is a problem we find through the years, especially in movie musicals about putting-on-a-show, and most particularly ones directed by Busby Berkeley, and it didn't stop after the R&H era. (What is happening in the musical Susan Hayward stars in in Valley of the Dolls??) Berkeley quite simply didn't care if his production numbers were plausible as part of the same show-within-show, or if they could conceivably be presented on a stage as we see them. To those devoted to his movies, that's part of the appeal, I guess.

[Julia]

As one who teaches history of musicals, I can say that that statement about Oklahoma!, though frequently seen (even in print), is something of a myth. (One of several about that show.) One can find dozens, hundreds, of previous musicals that tried hard to connect songs and story.

 

Show Boat is sixteen years older.

[Crisopera]

One of the odder things about 42nd Street, I always feel, is that Bebe Daniels's character is a singer and Ruby Keeler's is (no matter that she looks pretty lead-footed to us today) a dancer.  So - how did that work?

 

PS - We lived in London in the 1960s, and my parents met Ben Lyon (pre-code star and Bebe Daniels's husband) - said he was a really lovely man.

[elle]

She did the "best friend" role so many times it should have become tiresome, but it didn't (to me, anyway; she may have felt differently) because she was just so damn good at it.  I always enjoy her.

It is fun to see her as the not quite faithful wife to the not so faithful either king in the 1934 version of "The Merry Widow" with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.

 

And she played "Effie Perine" in the '31 version of "The Maltese Falcon"!

 

As one who teaches history of musicals, I can say that that statement about Oklahoma!, though frequently seen (even in print), is something of a myth. (One of several about that show.) One can find dozens, hundreds, of previous musicals that tried hard to connect songs and story.

 

But in any case, what elle was talking about with 42nd Street, I'm pretty sure, was specifically the coherence of the show-within-the-show. How can all these numbers be part of the same musical that they're presenting? And this is a problem we find through the years, especially in movie musicals about putting-on-a-show, and most particularly ones directed by Busby Berkeley, and it didn't stop after the R&H era. (What is happening in the musical Susan Hayward stars in in Valley of the Dolls??) Berkeley quite simply didn't care if his production numbers were plausible as part of the same show-within-show, or if they could conceivably be presented on a stage as we see them. To those devoted to his movies, that's part of the appeal, I guess.

Where were you when I was in college?  (I did however get the lucky break to have a film class on "Romantic Comedies" of the 30s)

 

I have not seen all the BB musicals.  Besides "42nd Street", with its one sweet honeymoon number and the title number which is rather bizarrely staged, the other movie I think of with such a shift of tone in musical numbers is "Gold Diggers of 1933", again with Ginger Rogers and Ruby Keeler.  Between "We're in the Money", "Pettin' in the Park" and then "My Forgotten Man"; I'm convinced that they were all just a bunch of numbers shown on the same stage somewhat akin to a vaudeville or variety show rather than what we think of a "musical play" today.

 

One of the odder things about 42nd Street, I always feel, is that Bebe Daniels's character is a singer and Ruby Keeler's is (no matter that she looks pretty lead-footed to us today) a dancer.  So - how did that work?

 

PS - We lived in London in the 1960s, and my parents met Ben Lyon (pre-code star and Bebe Daniels's husband) - said he was a really lovely man.

One thing? :0)

I think Ginger Roger actually addresses this while convincing the bosses that Ruby is their gal.  She has a line about "needing a dancer" rather than a singer for the role.  or I am misremembering...

 

A shout out to the TV Show "Warehouse 13" - I know can not watch the many dancers in the 42nd street number without thinking of that show where the cast was being forced to dance that number because of the artifact the original "42nd Street" Broadway marquee.

Edited February 6, 2015 by elle

[Jipijapa]

 

Ronald Colman is one of my faves.

 

Ronald Colman was a hottie.

[elle]

"Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn, Olivia DeHaviland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains as Prince John.  Still the my favorite version, best script, actors and oh those colors!

[Rinaldo]

That's a justifiable classic, no doubt. But I'll put in a good word for the Disney (live-action) Story of Robin Hood too. Smart script, fun situations, good actors.

 

Continuing on "Remedying Rinaldo's lamentable holes of knowledge among movie classics": I finally saw Twentieth Century (I knew about it, and I've seen the musical adaptation). It seems like one of those movies that was the source of so much that became common coin in film afterwards (the independent-minded lady star, the egotistical male producer-director at odds with her) that it, like Casablanca, can seem a little disappointing on first view. We've already seen all its imitators. But this is, of course, one of the sources. And even knowing his successors in the type, John Barrymore's Oscar Jaffee is pretty wonderful to see.

[Rick Kitchen]

"Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn, Olivia DeHaviland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains as Prince John.  Still the my favorite version, best script, actors and oh those colors!

 

My father got to see the filming of some of the scenes in his small home town in Northern California.

[mariah23]

Lizabeth Scott passed away January 31.

[Julia]

Lizabeth Scott passed away January 31.

Oh, that hurts. She was remarkable.

[voiceover]

One of the reasons I love Gone With the Wind is that I find something new with every viewing.
Tonight I was thinking about Barbara O'Neill as Ellen O'Hara, Scarlett's mother.  Only a handful of scenes; nothing high drama nor remotely comic -- yet what a grave, gracious, wise presence.  In a few lines she sees to every member of her family, but hones specifically onto Scarlett ("You look tired, my dear!").  Then later she reads Scarlett's weeping quite correctly ("It's only natural to want to be young while you are young") and salves the wound.  No wonder her daughter is in a fever to return to her after all that exposure to Life, Death, & War.

 

Screenwriters have different nicknames for the midpoint of any movie.  I learned it as, "Point of No Return": as in, once the hero goes past that point (scene, incident), he can't possibly go back to being the person he was at the beginning of the film. 
I'd always thought the midpoint of GWTW was the natural break, right before the Entr' Acte, with Scarlett's vow of, "I'll never be hungry again!"  But tonight I reconsidered.  I could argue that it's the moment she sees her mother's body.
She screams and faints.  When she comes to, she's...different.  Not an orphan, but no longer a child.  Vivien Leigh's voice actually moves into a lower register. 

 

Damn! I love this movie.

Edited February 7, 2015 by voiceover

[Treebeard]

Damn! I love this movie.

 

I hadn't seen it in a while.  I watched last night and DVR'd it.  Watched it again today while doing other stuff.  

So good. Nothing nowadays really matched its epic-ness.

[Charlie Baker]

The last time I saw GWTW I took a lot of notice of the production design, the look of the film, the accomplishment of those epic shots, which these days would all be done with CGI, no doubt, and here looks like the only artificial enhancements were some old-school matte paintings.  The movie is long enough and detailed enough you certainly can see something new each time out.

 

Caught up with the Barrymore films on my DVR--certainly Twentieth Century, Counselor at Law, and Topaze really represent how much range the man had.

 

And saw The 400 Blows as it aired.  Not my favorite Truffaut, that has to be Jules et Jim, but it's beautiful and heart-aching, it really moves, and still has a freshness to it.

[Julia]

I guess the thing about GWTW is that it's two movies, much like the way it was two books, one a character study and one a highly political document. It's a well-made character study, with some really impressive performances. As a political document, it's kind of the movie version of your aunt's second husband who tells jokes that make you cringe at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. Your aunt may be a great lady, but it takes a certain amount of noseholding after a while to keep inviting her...

[aradia22]

 

Continuing on "Remedying Rinaldo's lamentable holes of knowledge among movie classics": I finally saw Twentieth Century (I knew about it, and I've seen the musical adaptation). It seems like one of those movies that was the source of so much that became common coin in film afterwards (the independent-minded lady star, the egotistical male producer-director at odds with her) that it, like Casablanca, can seem a little disappointing on first view. We've already seen all its imitators. But this is, of course, one of the sources. And even knowing his successors in the type, John Barrymore's Oscar Jaffee is pretty wonderful to see.

How did you think they compared Rinaldo? I'm still debating whether or not to listen to the cast album of On the Twentieth Century before seeing the new revival. Also, I agree with you about the story seeming a little stale after seeing the imitators. I think I had other issues with it but they don't come to mind right now. This is why I should get back into reviews and blog posts so I can remember all my opinions for when I need them again. ;)

[elle]

TCM Film Festival - Roman Holiday!  1776! with William Daniels and Ken Howard!

[elle]

Different post, different tone: Sahara with Humphrey Bogart is on.  One of the best action movies, imho.  The scene with J. Carrol Naish as the Italian prisoner begging to be taken along breaks my heart every time.

Edited February 9, 2015 by elle

[Rinaldo]

1776! with William Daniels and Ken Howard!

 

I wish I could endure this movie (or the stage musical from which it so closely derives), as it does seem to turn up a lot.

[voiceover]

1776! with William Daniels and Ken Howard!

 

*runs around room, screaming & waving arms*

Not a *great* film, but such wonderful music, performances, dialogue! ("You'd think Congress could afford its own pisser!")

I wasn't the only one in the Sons of Liberty thread who compared the History Channel series -- unfavorably -- with this musical.  Afterwards I had "Sit Down, John!" stuck in my head for days.

 

edited to add:

Howard Da Silva's performance...worth it alone.

 

"I'd ask you along, but talking makes her nervous."

Edited February 9, 2015 by voiceover

[elle]

*runs around room, screaming & waving arms*

You weren't the only one!  (Thankfully my husband is now accustomed to these outbursts about classic movies)

 

I wish I could endure this movie (or the stage musical from which it so closely derives), as it does seem to turn up a lot.

I'm sorry to hear this!  From what I understand, it deviates very little from the stage musical.

 

"Turn up a lot"...in conversation you mean?  I ask because it seems it that it is on so rarely.  It is one of the movies I will call to tell my dad that it is on or will be on.  He loves it as much as I do.

 

And thinking of valentines...

Abigail, what's in this kegs?!*

"Saltpeter, John"  **sigh**

 

*The correct quote

Edited February 10, 2015 by elle

[aradia22]

Guys, I keep trying to watch The Pirate and it is not happening. I've been watching so many 5 minute installments (about 30 minutes in) that I think I should maybe start from the beginning but that just sounds exhausting.

[elle]

My father got to see the filming of some of the scenes in his small home town in Northern California.

I love to hear about real life events like this.  Any stories to share?

 

Guys, I keep trying to watch The Pirate and it is not happening. I've been watching so many 5 minute installments (about 30 minutes in) that I think I should maybe start from the beginning but that just sounds exhausting.

Don't hurt yourself there!  Thirty minutes in, you should be past Kelly's "Nina" and Judy Garland's first big song "Mac the Black".  Skip ahead to where Kelly shows up and demands to see her and keep going a bit to the part where she finds out the deception.  Then, skip ahead again to watch the NIcholas Brothers in action.  You can stop there if you like.

[Rinaldo]

From what I understand, [1776] deviates very little from the stage musical.

Very little indeed, more's the pity... 

"Turn up a lot"...in conversation you mean?  I ask because it seems it that it is on so rarely.  

 

I don't know, it seems to me that it's around all the time (granted that any amount of it is too much for me). I know someone who has a tradition of watching it every July 4. I read an online article praising it not long ago. It just seems like someone's talking about it every time I turn around, and I just can't. stand. it. If it weren't a musical it would be all right, but everyone's IQ drops as soon as they start to sing. The lyrics are misaccentuated and contrived, just amateur-level stuff, and the music is worse -- sometimes whole sections can't move away from a single chord. I'm shivering right now at the offensiveness of a score this inept being offered as professional work.

 

OK, I've said my piece and I now promise to shut up on the subject. For this year, at least.

[voiceover]

And thinking of valentines...

Abigail, what is this?

"Saltpeter, John"  **sigh**

 

I actually get a little weepy whenever I hear that. *sniff*

Edited February 10, 2015 by voiceover

[Julia]

Guys, I keep trying to watch The Pirate and it is not happening. I've been watching so many 5 minute installments (about 30 minutes in) that I think I should maybe start from the beginning but that just sounds exhausting.

Don't hurt yourself there!  Thirty minutes in, you should be past Kelly's "Nina" and Judy Garland's first big song "Mac the Black".  Skip ahead to where Kelly shows up and demands to see her and keep going a bit to the part where she finds out the deception.  Then, skip ahead again to watch the NIcholas Brothers in action.  You can stop there if you like.

I would go further than that and say you could have just watched Mack the Black and then fast forwarded to the Nicholas Brothers, unless you're up for the uncredited guest-starring role of Gene Kelly's package in the Pirate ballet.

[elle]

OK, I've said my piece and I now promise to shut up on the subject. For this year, at least.

Mileage may vary, as the saying goes :0)

[Rick Kitchen]

 

I love to hear about real life events like this.  Any stories to share?

 

I don't really remember anything about it, he just talked about being thrilled that Errol Flynn was in his town.  He was about 12.

[Milburn Stone]

Guys, I keep trying to watch The Pirate and it is not happening. I've been watching so many 5 minute installments (about 30 minutes in) that I think I should maybe start from the beginning but that just sounds exhausting.

 

I think you're exactly right--you need to watch it from the beginning. When I finally did, I got in sync with the movie's delightfully whimsical (and ahead-of-its-time) sense of humor in a way I never did from watching excerpts. The movie creates its own world out of a very special sensibility, one that bears a family resemblance to a Minnelli movie that preceded it, Yolanda and the Thief. But the only way to find its rhythms is by watching it from the start.

 

Or don't. But you'll be missing something.

Edited February 10, 2015 by Milburn Stone

[Julia]

I think you're exactly right--you need to watch it from the beginning. When I finally did, I got in sync with the movie's delightfully whimsical (and ahead-of-its-time) sense of humor in a way I never did from watching excerpts. The movie creates its own world out of a very special sensibility, one that bears a family resemblance to a Minnelli movie that preceded it, Yolanda and the Thief. But the only way to find its rhythms is by watching it from the start.

 

Or don't. But you'll be missing something.

 

Usually, I find our opinions are very much in sync, but in this case we differ widely. I didn't get whimsy out of those two movies. I thought they were kind of leaden.

[Milburn Stone]

Julia, do you know those wall posters that you're supposed to stare at, and if you defocus your eyes just "past" the surface for long enough, suddenly a three-dimensional image that wasn't visible before comes into your view? That's what Yolanda and The Pirate were like for me. For years, decades, I didn't get them. I found them leaden and boring, like you. Then one day--I have no idea what changed in me, what allowed me to focus or defocus my eyes just beyond the surface--I found where the wit and humor was in both of them. 

 

Not saying this will happen to you, nor holding myself out as especially enlightened or perceptive. Just saying that was my experience, and at some point it might be yours.

[Wiendish Fitch]

I couldn't get through The Pirate, either. Gene Kelly in brownface acting like a creeper (moreso than usual), Judy Garland behaving like a shrill idiot, piles of noise and "whimsy", it was just too much for me. When MGM musicals were good, they were damn near magical. When they were bad? They were baaaaaaaaad.

 

Yolanda and the Thief also suffers from too much whimsy, a clunky plot, and one of the dumbest protagonists I've ever seen in a movie (seriously, Yolanda? You really think your guardian angel just makes phone calls and sets up appointments to see you instead of, you know, appearing right before you?!).  Poor Lucille Bremer, she was a good dancer, but couldn't act hot in the Sahara. The only thing Yolanda and the Thief has going for it is "Coffee Time". I'd put it under the heading of "Fred Astaire's Greatest Number from One of His Worst Movies"*. No joke, it sucks you in, and I dare any of you not to clap along. 

 

 

*I say "One of His Worst Movies" because I'd sooner watch Yolanda and the Thief over, say, The Belle of New York (even gentlemanly Astaire thought it was a steaming turd).

Edited February 10, 2015 by Wiendish Fitch

[Milburn Stone]

*I say "One of His Worst Movies" because I'd sooner watch Yolanda and the Thief over, say, The Belle of New York (even gentlemanly Astaire thought it was a steaming turd).

 

I liked The Belle of New York too. :) Charles Walters seldom made a bad musical.

[Crisopera]

Personally, I could never get through Second Chorus (1940).  Fred cast as a 40-year-old college student.  But looking it up on imdb, I find that Artie Shaw (and His Orchestra) play a prominent part in it, so I'll have to steel myself to watch it the next time it's on (Shaw is my favorite swing bandleader).  But I'm not really looking forward to it.

 

I actually am quite fond of The Pirate.  It does have one of my favorite Judy moments.  Gene has come to her town and demands that she comes to him.  One of her friends (after seeing Gene) weepily says that she'll sacrifice herself.  Judy snaps, "He asked for me!"  Her reading of that line always makes me laugh.  And I like the Cole Porter songs.  (Apparently, Porter never complained about the fact that "Be a Clown" and "Make 'Em Laugh" (from Singin in the Rain) were basically identical because Arthur Freed had "rescued" him with The Pirate after two consecutive Broadway flops.)  And yes, "Coffee Time" is a great number in a terrible  movie.  Yolanda and the Thief is what I always think of as "curdled whimsy."

Edited February 10, 2015 by Crisopera

[Rinaldo]

"Be a Clown" and "Make 'Em Laugh" aren't quite as identical as they're often said to be. If I look at the musical details (which is my profession, I guess), I see divergences all along the way. Still, there's a big intersection of similarity, I'm not denying it.

 

My own candidate for most unbearable Fred Astaire movie is Let's Dance. And that's even without seeing all of it, just the bits that people have put on YouTube. It seems to be the only one of all his musical films that's not available on DVD, which I find significant. And if I'm accused of having a Betty Hutton Problem (as I have been), I'd say that it's not unfounded. The first few seconds of this are enough to kill any interest:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgxbHhmMgAk

 

And the promise of her later getting into cowboy drag to dance a duet with him doesn't entice me back.

[Julia]

You know, I feel sorry for her, because her life turned out to be very hard, and maybe if her directors and coworkers had liked her more she could have carved out a niche for herself, but Betty Hutton just abrades me. I don't know if it's that she's trying way too hard or just that she only had one speed, but I've never watched anything of hers that didn't strike me badly.

[Charlie Baker]

Milburn Stone, have you read the Charles Walters biography yet?  I want to get around to it but I wondered what you thought if you had read it.

[Milburn Stone]

Rinaldo, that clip of Betty Hutton...Imagine her as Danny Kaye. The performance would be virtually identical, facial inflections and all! 

 

I don't know if this means Danny Kaye was "influenced" by Betty Hutton, Betty Hutton (at this stage of her career) was imitating Danny Kaye, or neither. But for the first 29 seconds of the clip (before the cut from the medium closeup in which she performs directly to the camera) their interchangeability is remarkable.

 

Crisopera, your appreciation of The Pirate brings two things to mind. One, the recent discussion of Gene Kelly and his supposed egotism. The Pirate is yet another example that Kelly, in the movies, played his egotism for laughs, in a very self-aware way. The full-of-himself character who gets brought down a peg (sometimes comedically, sometimes with pathos) was virtually the permanent Kelly persona, nowhere more present than in this movie. Two, your love of that Judy Garland line reading. So many of her line readings in this movie seem to be from a later period of comedy. She anticipates an "ironic, introspective throwaway" style (for lack of a better term) that would become common in entertainment about fifteen years later. This is what I meant by "ahead of its time."

 

Charlie Baker, I'm reading it now! I'm still in the theatrical years, impatient for the movie career to begin. But reading through everything anyway, because the book persuades me the theatrical years were important in forming his style and sensibility. I think the book is good.

Edited February 10, 2015 by Milburn Stone

[Crisopera]

Oh, yeah, Let's Dance is awful.  It used to be available on tape, which I rented one night (wanting to be an Astaire completist - at least for the musicals).  It's just terrible.  There is absolutely no chemistry - they're barely the same species.  I don't even dislike Betty Hutton - although I don't like her performance in Annie Get Your Gun.  It's like Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown - too loud and anxious to please.

[elle]

I actually am quite fond of The Pirate.  It does have one of my favorite Judy moments.  Gene has come to her town and demands that she comes to him.  One of her friends (after seeing Gene) weepily says that she'll sacrifice herself.  Judy snaps, "He asked for me!"  Her reading of that line always makes me laugh.  And I like the Cole Porter songs.  

I love that scene!  I also love when she finds out that it is Serafin and not Mac the Black who she is meeting.  Her anger and frustration at "this man" tricking her and the revenge she gets on him.  High camp!  She was great at comedy.

 

Crisopera, your appreciation of The Pirate brings two things to mind. One, the recent discussion of Gene Kelly and his supposed egotism. The Pirate is yet another example that Kelly, in the movies, played his egotism for laughs, in a very self-aware way. The full-of-himself character who gets brought down a peg (sometimes comedically, sometimes with pathos) was virtually the permanent Kelly persona, nowhere more present than in this movie. Two, your love of that Judy Garland line reading. So many of her line readings in this movie seem to be from a later period of comedy. She anticipates an "ironic, introspective throwaway" style (for lack of a better term) that would become common in entertainment about fifteen years later. This is what I meant by "ahead of its time."

"Ahead of its time" is often used as the reason why the movie did not go over with contemporary audiences.  I think people still today may not expect such camp from a movie musical of that time.   Walter Slezak could chew through scenery like a pro.  Kelly makes him look subtle.

 

DVR Alert! Charade is on tonight!  Check you local listings. ;0)

Edited February 10, 2015 by elle

[Rinaldo]

Ah, Charade! I sometimes have the feeling I shouldn't love it as much as I do, with all its Hollywood gloss, its impossibly glamorous stars, its Mancini ballad in the background of a moonlight scene.... but love it I do. (And Mr. Mancini reworks that tune splendidly as the ominous main-title music.)

 

That's one I bought the DVD for. There was a scare that its Criterion release would become unavailable when the remake was released. But as with most such scares, it turned out to be a very short-lived blip. (And nobody remembers the remake now.) 

[Crisopera]

"Do you know what's wrong with you?  Nothing!"  Cary Grant is possibly the only male movie star for whom that is simply...true.

Edited February 10, 2015 by Crisopera

[elle]

Ah, Charade! I sometimes have the feeling I shouldn't love it as much as I do, with all its Hollywood gloss, its impossibly glamorous stars, its Mancini ballad in the background of a moonlight scene.... but love it I do. (And Mr. Mancini reworks that tune splendidly as the ominous main-title music.)

 

That's one I bought the DVD for. There was a scare that its Criterion release would become unavailable when the remake was released. But as with most such scares, it turned out to be a very short-lived blip. (And nobody remembers the remake now.) 

Ah, Rinaldo, of this one I will say, don't fight it!  Enjoy the lovely views, both the lead actors and the scenery, and a pretty darn good mystery.

 

(remake, what remake, no one would be so foolish as to touch such a gem) [blinders]

 

"Do you know what's wrong with you?  Nothing!"  Cary Grant is possibly the only male movie star for whom that is simply...true.

And the only female movie star would be the one saying it - Audrey Hepburn :0)