TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[EtheltoTillie]

2 minutes ago, Suzn said:

That's interesting!  Except for something unfortunate with a horse, that I can't watch, Marnie is one of my Hitchcock favorites.  I can well imagine what you may find disturbing with the way Mark treats Marnie.  That is disturbing but in the over all context, I am not that bothered by it.

I have always liked the movie also.  I think it was the fact of tuning in right in the middle where he seems to be bugging her to touch her. 

[Suzn]

3 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I have always liked the movie also.  I think it was the fact of tuning in right in the middle where he seems to be bugging her to touch her. 

Yes, that scene is uncomfortable at best.

[Milburn Stone]

I enjoy the whole first act of Marnie, if that's the right term. Marnie going to work for Martin Gabel under a false name, Martin Gabel coming to trust her, Marnie stealing from his safe, Martin Gabel figuring out it was her, the uncomfortable scene with Connery, Gabel, and Marnie in Gabel's office, et. al. Then that scene in the second act, when Martin Gabel runs into Marnie at the Connery family house. Maybe I just like Martin Gabel! 🙂 I think he's a perfect Hitchcock actor in this.

[Charlie Baker]

Major TCM glitch last night. I saw as part of a Steve Martin evening last night, they included Dead Men Don"t Wear Plaid, the Carl Reiner-directed mash-up of clips from noir to construct a new story with SM and other actors, and integrated them,  practically, without the aid of CGI.  I hadn't seen it since it was released, and remember enjoying it, so I thought I'd take a look.

We got Ben's intro, then some minutes of silent black screen, then Ben's outro.  Then  the between-movies features and promos. Then for whatever reason, Carnival Story, the melodrama from 1954 with a far-from-All-About-Eve Anne Baxter, in a fairly bad print, in its entirety.  Then back in sync with the SM tribute on schedule with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Wow.

Edited May 4 by Charlie Baker

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

We got Ben's intro, then some minutes of silent black screen, then Ben's outro.  Then  the between-movies features and promos. Then for whatever reason, Carnival Story, the melodrama from 1954 with a far-from-All-About-Eve Anne Baxter, in a fairly bad print, in its entirety.  Then back in sync with the SM tribute on schedule with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Thanks for the description of what happened. I turned the TV on toward the end of the timeslot (to watch something I'd recorded), the display told me Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was on (my home channel is always TCM), and thought I'd catch a couple minutes for old times' sake. But this old clip seemed to be going on for a long time without Steve Martin or any of the modern actors, and wasn't it supposed to be in black and white? I concluded that it must be some overwrought short they were showing to fill out the hour, and figured I'd never know. So I'm very glad to have this description. At least the movie is there intact, with Ben's contributions, on Watch TCM.

This kind of thing has happened on very rare occasions over the years, and my totally inadequate understanding of how telecasts actually happen gets in the way of any speculations as to what exactly went wrong. (My image of someone dropping the necessary DVD into a floor vent and then scrambling to find something, anything, to fill the needed time is obviously ridiculously wrong, but it's the best I can do for myself.)

[Fool to cry]

Okay I was watching a Making of Star Wars documentary today and when they showed Carrie Fisher's Star Wars audition she's speaking in this weird way which she doesn't in the movie and doing these gestures and I thought "Is she imitating her mom?"  Was she doing a Debbie Reynolds impression for Princess Leia? I need classic movie buffs to confirm this for me!

 

 

Edited May 4 by Fool to cry

[Rinaldo]

I've not seen this before, and I'm totally guessing, but my impression is that she was "doing a princess" -- speaking the way a standard fantasy princess might, because that's what her script said this character was.

[Charlie Baker]

I'm speculating too but I would agree with @Rinaldo about her take on the character here. And maybe it was influenced by her time in British drama school? Her mother didn't play this sort of character in her movies, as a rule.

 

Edited May 4 by Charlie Baker

[Milburn Stone]

Nice that they had Harrison Ford for her to play against.

[Rinaldo]

I'm taking the liberty of linking to a friend's blog post, because it's so totally pertinent to our conversations here: An in-depth analysis of the 16 films of Margaret Sullavan. Tommy has seen them all, researched the production histories, read the screenplays' sources.

I myself have seen only four of them, but I'll certainly be on the lookout for the others now.

 

[EtheltoTillie]

I don't know what to make of that Carrie Fisher audition.  She does sound a bit like Debbie and a bit British.  I have no idea why she would be chosen based on those scenes.  She had no oomph or urgency to her entreaty.  As in "help us Obi-Wan-Kenobi, you're our only hope."

22 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

Major TCM glitch last night. I saw as part of a Steve Martin evening last night, they included Dead Men Don"t Wear Plaid, the Carl Reiner-directed mash-up of clips from noir to construct a new story with SM and other actors, and integrated them,  practically, without the aid of CGI.  I hadn't seen it since it was released, and remember enjoying it, so I thought I'd take a look.

We got Ben's intro, then some minutes of silent black screen, then Ben's outro.  Then  the between-movies features and promos. Then for whatever reason, Carnival Story, the melodrama from 1954 with a far-from-All-About-Eve Anne Baxter, in a fairly bad print, in its entirety.  Then back in sync with the SM tribute on schedule with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Wow.

Not having seen any of this, the next day I watched Carnival Story on Watch TCM. That was one of the worst prints I've ever seen. Too bad, because it's a good noir feature.  Anne Baxter and Steve Cochran meet cute:  She picks the pocket of his loud suit (now we know where they got the idea for Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid).   Notable appearances:  a Tor Johnson lookalike and the husband's wacky bathing suit. 

Edited May 5 by EtheltoTillie

[fairffaxx]

5 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I'm taking the liberty of linking to a friend's blog post, because it's so totally pertinent to our conversations here: An in-depth analysis of the 16 films of Margaret Sullavan.

Thanks, Rinaldo.  I love Margaret Sullavan & have seen 6 of those -- time to lobby TCM to show the rest.  And I've added Tommy's site to my bookmarked list of ways to waste spend time.

[voiceover]

On 4/30/2024 at 10:26 AM, Milburn Stone said:

[Frenzy] is funny! (Which I just didn't get at the time.) And suspenseful,  not in the hanging off Mt. Rushmore sense, but in the way all the better episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents were. Exquisitely, quietly suspenseful, all the better for how contained it feels.

Time also improved my view on this one.  I finally figured out that — duh! Jon Finch’s Richard Blaney was no one’s idea of a hero; in fact, he was kind of a…dick 🤣 But he *was draped in the Hitchcockian Tradition (dating back to Robert Donat & Ivor Novello) of the wrongly-accused.  And by the time he’s dragged out of court, screaming the guilty man’s name, I’m really truly on his side.

Love Alec McCowen’s Chief Inspector.  Quiet, introspective, willing to question the “obvious” and to follow his instincts.  I’d’ve watched that character in his own PBS Mystery! series (and I kind of have).  He is the real hero here.

The whole sequence with the potato truck and the body stretches to the point of unbearable tension: fear that it won’t be discovered and fear that it will be.

Genius.

[SomeTameGazelle]

22 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I don't know what to make of that Carrie Fisher audition.  She does sound a bit like Debbie and a bit British.  I have no idea why she would be chosen based on those scenes. 

Cynically, as I read this comment, I had a sudden flash of the clip from the segment they show us about The Graduate, where they explain how they cast Dustin Hoffman based on his performance and Katharine Ross based on her beauty. I'm sure that looks and name influence casting for both men and women, but looks probably weigh disproportionately for women.

On a somewhat related note it is fascinating to see how often when one pulls up the cast list for a movie there can be only one or possibly two women in a cast of many men. 

[Rinaldo]

6 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

...the clip from the segment they show us about The Graduate, where they explain how they cast Dustin Hoffman based on his performance and Katharine Ross based on her beauty. I'm sure that looks and name influence casting for both men and women, but looks probably weigh disproportionately for women.

Sure, but if they were casting Princess Leia based on looks, there were many more gorgeous starlets in Hollywood than Carrie Fisher. I'm speculating wildly, but I would guess that this audition would not on its own have gotten her cast, but that in conversation she revealed the irreverent personality that they actually wanted for the role. (I well remember that one of the things that made my circle of friends love the movie was that finally we had a commercial movie in which "the girl" wasn't a languishing love interest, but a feisty take-charge partner-in-arms for the two guys.)

As for The Graduate... I'm about to confess that I'm a traitor to my generation when it comes to that movie. I saw it as a junior, in the theater that was right off campus, and the audience of my peers cheered and applauded at the end. Except me, sitting glumly and thinking "I don't get it." In truth, I would have to admit that I'm probably just not in tune with its attitudes, but I also think I would have bought it more if Benjamin had been cast more for looks. It's legendary that practically all the juveniles in Hollywood were considered for the role, Hoffman being an unknown whom Nichols wanted against all studio advice. Most of the others were as overaged for the role as he was, but (to my eyes) he really showed it more -- I couldn't accept the usual fiction of college students who were actually nearly 30, because of how world-weary he seemed (to me; apparently not to others). Some of the other candidates, like Robert Redford or Harrison Ford, could at least have embodied the "aimless California boy" idea and helped it all make a little sense.

I'm rather embarrassed to say all that, because (it seems) literally nobody agrees with me. So I accept that mine is an eccentric view, and now I've admitted it out loud for the one and only time. Back to our ongoing topics....

Edited May 6 by Rinaldo

[Tom Holmberg]

On 5/4/2024 at 9:33 AM, Charlie Baker said:

Major TCM glitch last night.

I was all set to watch that, not having seen the movie in at least 8 or 9 years, and blah...darkness.  Hopefully they reschedule soon.

On 5/4/2024 at 6:14 PM, Rinaldo said:

I've not seen this before, and I'm totally guessing, but my impression is that she was "doing a princess" -- speaking the way a standard fantasy princess might, because that's what her script said this character was.

With a sort of British accent.

[Sarah 103]

9 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Sure, but if they were casting Princess Leia based on looks, there were many more gorgeous starlets in Hollywood than Carrie Fisher. I'm speculating wildly, but I would guess that this audition would not on its own have gotten her cast, but that in conversation she revealed the irreverent personality that they actually wanted for the role. 

That makes sense to me. If I remember correctly, there was a lengthy audition process with multiple callbacks. This may not have been what got her the role but something else/another clip we didn't see. 

[bmoore4026]

Late to the party on this, but I just need to vent on The Life and Times of Roy Bean, which was on Wednesday.

Here are things they got right:

1 -  Roy Bean was lynched and left for dead by some drunk yahoos but survived.

2 - He had a tamed bear as a pet who liked beer

3 - He had a major crush on the actress Lillie Langtry.

He never was rescued by a woman named Maria (the rope he was hanging from broke) though he did marry a woman named Virginia Chavez and had four children with her, a boom town did not spring up around where Bean held court but rather he moved his courthouse/saloon to a town, and lastly, and most importantly, he hanged no one.  He sentenced two men to death but one escaped and the other was let go after paying a fine.  In fact, almost of his sentences were fines. 

As I read in a book called Hang 'em High: Law and Disorder in Western Films and Literature, John Millius, who wrote the script, intended to put forth why there should be a death penalty but director John Houston had other ideas.  The book says that Millius' job on set was primarily making sure the inebriated Ava Gardner didn't wander off into the desert and die.  Hand to God.

Also, there was already a Western that dealt with the issue of the death penalty and it was where the book got its title - Hang 'em High.  And the judge in that movie was modeled after a real life hanging judge named Issac Parker and the sequence of the six men hanging is taken directly from historical events.

I just needed to get this off my chest.

Edited May 16 by bmoore4026

[Calvada]

On 5/6/2024 at 11:21 AM, Rinaldo said:

As for The Graduate... I'm about to confess that I'm a traitor to my generation when it comes to that movie. I saw it as a junior, in the theater that was right off campus, and the audience of my peers cheered and applauded at the end. Except me, sitting glumly and thinking "I don't get it." In truth, I would have to admit that I'm probably just not in tune with its attitudes, but I also think I would have bought it more if Benjamin had been cast more for looks. It's legendary that practically all the juveniles in Hollywood were considered for the role, Hoffman being an unknown whom Nichols wanted against all studio advice. Most of the others were as overaged for the role as he was, but (to my eyes) he really showed it more -- I couldn't accept the usual fiction of college students who were actually nearly 30, because of how world-weary he seemed (to me; apparently not to others). Some of the other candidates, like Robert Redford or Harrison Ford, could at least have embodied the "aimless California boy" idea and helped it all make a little sense.

I'm rather embarrassed to say all that, because (it seems) literally nobody agrees with me. So I accept that mine is an eccentric view, and now I've admitted it out loud for the one and only time. Back to our ongoing topics....

I'm not a fan of The Graduate either.  I was a child in 1967, so I saw it about 25 to 30 years after its release, probably about the time TCM launched and I began to to explore pre-1970 films that weren't hacked to bits by commercials on the late show.  Perhaps I should give it another try now that three additional decades have elapsed. I did like the soundtrack.

[Charlie Baker]

Roger Corman Dies at 98

[Milburn Stone]

On 5/10/2024 at 9:34 PM, Calvada said:

I'm not a fan of The Graduate either. 

I recently watched the film of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. (Nichols' first film, The Graduate being his second.) Thinking about it later, I realized both films are about the same thing: The Cancerous Rot at the Heart of the American Marriage. And then shortly later, Carnal Knowledge, which at least rang a change on the theme, being about The Cancerous Rot at the Heart of the American Relationship.

[EtheltoTillie]

On 5/12/2024 at 10:08 AM, Milburn Stone said:

I recently watched the film of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. (Nichols' first film, The Graduate being his second.) Thinking about it later, I realized both films are about the same thing: The Cancerous Rot at the Heart of the American Marriage. And then shortly later, Carnal Knowledge, which at least rang a change on the theme, being about The Cancerous Rot at the Heart of the American Relationship.

Oh, yeah, they're all by Mike Nichols.  But he had other themes too.  Such as Working Girl.  The cancerous rot at the heart of American capitalism.  LOL. 

[voiceover]

Any night is a great night for Anna May Wong movies.  What a lovely few scenes with Sessue Hayakawa!  They’re easily the two most beautiful people onscreen.  The mind wanders to what might have been with the pair: husband-and-wife detectives…or jewel thieves.

And pour one out for the miscast The Good Earth.  It should have been Anna as O-Lan and Sessue as Wang Lung.

[Milburn Stone]

On 5/13/2024 at 11:43 AM, EtheltoTillie said:

Oh, yeah, they're all by Mike Nichols.  But he had other themes too.  Such as Working Girl.  The cancerous rot at the heart of American capitalism.  LOL. 

I guess when you're a satirist at heart, you have to be finding Cancerous Rot somewhere or you're out of a job.

[EtheltoTillie]

12 hours ago, voiceover said:

Any night is a great night for Anna May Wong movies.  What a lovely few scenes with Sessue Hayakawa!  They’re easily the two most beautiful people onscreen.  The mind wanders to what might have been with the pair: husband-and-wife detectives…or jewel thieves.

And pour one out for the miscast The Good Earth.  It should have been Anna as O-Lan and Sessue as Wang Lung.

You mean not those veterans of the Yiddish theater? 

[bmoore4026]

On 5/12/2024 at 8:19 AM, Charlie Baker said:

Roger Corman Dies at 98

Have they scheduled a tribute day for him yet?

[Tom Holmberg]

On 2/26/2024 at 1:29 PM, Tom Holmberg said:

It was remade in 1974 with Lucille Ball and Bea Arthur.

The Lucille Ball "Mame" will be on TCM overnight tonight 4:45 AM (Thurs., 5/16) if you're a glutton for punishment.

Edited May 15 by Tom Holmberg

[EtheltoTillie]

2 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

The Lucille Ball "Mame" will be on TCM overnight tonight 4:45 AM (Thurs., 5/16) if you're a glutton for punishment.

Why do they bother? 

[SomeTameGazelle]

The Boy Friend reminded me that we were discussing musical adaptations not long ago and that the amateur version in which a friend played  Lady Brockhurst in no way prepared me for Ken Russell's show within a show. 

I can't take my eyes off Tommy Tune and there are some fun and clever bits but I always find myself confused by how inexplicably cinematic the stage numbers seem. 

[EtheltoTillie]

11 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

The Boy Friend reminded me that we were discussing musical adaptations not long ago and that the amateur version in which a friend played  Lady Brockhurst in no way prepared me for Ken Russell's show within a show. 

I can't take my eyes off Tommy Tune and there are some fun and clever bits but I always find myself confused by how inexplicably cinematic the stage numbers seem. 

I don't like that movie, but I love the music.  I have the original cast album from the stage show.  I also saw a restaging directed by Julie Andrews at the Sag Harbor theater about 20 years ago. The only star I remember from it is Tony Roberts. 

Edited May 16 by EtheltoTillie

[Charlie Baker]

21 hours ago, bmoore4026 said:

Have they scheduled a tribute day for him yet?

I have yet to see anything about a day dedicated to him, but there is this:

TCM Remembers

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 5/16/2024 at 10:41 AM, EtheltoTillie said:

I don't like that movie, but I love the music. 

The movie of The Boy Friend just doesn't hang together very well. I understand the layers of reality vs the stage show vs the daydreams and visualizations but all of that at once creates problems in the pacing and it feels like we are getting the same joke over and over. But I can enjoy watching a number or two out of context occasionally. 

[Rinaldo]

On 5/15/2024 at 11:00 PM, SomeTameGazelle said:

I can't take my eyes off Tommy Tune and there are some fun and clever bits but I always find myself confused by how inexplicably cinematic the stage numbers seem. 

Well, Ken Russell was trying to do lots of (incompatible) things at the same time. He wanted to film the stage musical, but he also wanted to mock talentless or self-aggrandizing minor-league stage performers, but he also wanted genuine heart and pathos at arbitrary times of his choosing. He had people with actual skill and charm in the cast (including, surprisingly at that historical moment, Twiggy) but didn't want them to look too good onscreen because that would undercut his sour message, so none of them really get a chance to shine (though they do burst through at moments despite everything, especially Tommy Tune). AND he wanted to parody the old Busby Berkeley film musicals, in which the stage acts were indeed "inexplicably cinematic," so he played the same sort of campy tricks.

[Charlie Baker]

I caught another glitch similar to the Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid debacle. Last night I intended to check out the second part of Steven Spielberg's Two for One double feature, Forty Guns, a Samuel Fuller western with Barbara Stanwyck. We got SS and Ben's intro discussion, then dead air. I didn't monitor it closely but the broadcast popped back in and we got Jewel Robbery with William Powell and Kay Francis, I presume the whole film.  I think things got back to normal with Noir Alley.

[Miss Anne Thrope]

I wonder how/why this happens -- I mean, if TCM doesn't have the rights to show something, presumably they'd ask the guest programmer to select something else, wouldn't they? 

I get TCM via YouTubeTV, and a handful of films have the not available sign shows on my schedule (but there was no such notation in the Forty Guns slot).  Did viewers who get TCM through a cable system get to see the flick? 

Does Spielberg, as one of the three quasi-saviors of TCM, have a reaction to one of his personal film choices being scrubbed?  (I'd pitch a fit, FWIW.) 

I don't have answers, don't exepect anyone else to have them, just ranting away, I guess.  Thank you, and stepping gingerly off the soapbox.  

Edited May 19 by Miss Anne Thrope

[bmoore4026]

THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN AND LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS ARE ON TONIGHT!!!!!!!

[Rinaldo]

4 hours ago, Miss Anne Thrope said:

if TCM doesn't have the rights to show something

It's not a matter of rights. Forty Guns is right there on Watch TCM -- I just watched the Spielberg intro and spot-checked the movie itself to be sure. Just a technical glitch... an unfortunate one, certainly. Beyond that, I'm in no position to speculate how this happens.

[bmoore4026]

Something I realized when I was watching Little Shop of Horrors: It moves at a good clip and does not feel like a drag.

Favorite musical sequences are "Skid Row", "Suddenly Seymour" and "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space".  We truly lost a genius when Howard Ashman died.

And for those who don't know, the original ending to the movie is on Youtube, which features the great finale number "Don't Feed the Plants" and a sad reprise of "Somewhere that's green".  However, audiences didn't like it so they had to bring back Rick Morranis and Ellen Greene to reshoot the ending.

[Miss Anne Thrope]

22 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

It's not a matter of rights. Forty Guns is right there on Watch TCM -- I just watched the Spielberg intro and spot-checked the movie itself to be sure. Just a technical glitch... an unfortunate one, certainly. Beyond that, I'm in no position to speculate how this happens.

 

Thank you for the clarification, and that's interesting -- at least I find it interesting, for lack of a better word, for TCM to have the same glitch happen a couple of times within a month or so in a prime slot when I don't recall this occurring much at all in the past.  Maybe I just watch the wrong stuff and it's been happening all along. 

Specific movies (Little Shop of Horrors, for example) are regularly not available to me on TCM, I believe because I don't get the channel from a traditional cable outlet, so I was beginning to think this might be more of the same.  (At least in those cases, the circle/line symbol shows on the schedule so we know the score.)  Thank you for setting me straight!

Edited May 21 by Miss Anne Thrope

[Tom Holmberg]

On 5/19/2024 at 1:57 PM, Charlie Baker said:

I caught another glitch similar to the Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid debacle. Last night I intended to check out the second part of Steven Spielberg's Two for One double feature, Forty Guns, a Samuel Fuller western with Barbara Stanwyck. We got SS and Ben's intro discussion, then dead air. I didn't monitor it closely but the broadcast popped back in and we got Jewel Robbery with William Powell and Kay Francis, I presume the whole film.  I think things got back to normal with Noir Alley.

Odd that they happened during special "theme" showings. I don't recall this ever being a problem in the past, and certainly not this often.

[Rinaldo]

I recall occasional glitches going back for many years on TCM. These stand out because they happened during featured Saturday-primetime spots (surely the last place they'd want them), but I recall showings with the audio description turned on (impossible to turn off), or starting (& therefore ending) substantially late, or the wrong movie altogether. Not often -- 99.999% of the time everything works perfectly -- but of course annoying when it's something one was especially hoping to see. (For me, this also includes showing movies in the wrong aspect ratio -- pan-n-scan 4:3 prints of widescreen movies -- such as they did with Tender Is the Night and All of Me -- but I concede that it's not the same kind of technical problem.)

Having zero understanding of how a channel actually operates when it comes to getting its output to viewers, I won't even begin to speculate how it happens. I always default to the Nicholas & May routine with "Please don't jostle something with your elbows." "We do not use our elbows, sir."

Edited May 21 by Rinaldo

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 5/19/2024 at 12:13 PM, Rinaldo said:

Well, Ken Russell was trying to do lots of (incompatible) things at the same time. He wanted to film the stage musical, but he also wanted to mock talentless or self-aggrandizing minor-league stage performers, but he also wanted genuine heart and pathos at arbitrary times of his choosing. He had people with actual skill and charm in the cast (including, surprisingly at that historical moment, Twiggy) but didn't want them to look too good onscreen because that would undercut his sour message, so none of them really get a chance to shine (though they do burst through at moments despite everything, especially Tommy Tune). AND he wanted to parody the old Busby Berkeley film musicals, in which the stage acts were indeed "inexplicably cinematic," so he played the same sort of campy tricks.

It's funny now that you lay this out it makes me realize that in many ways it is Singin' in the Rain (de Thrill's punchline) that crams in the behind the scenes story, bad ideas and bad performances, alongside big production numbers and imagined scenarios. But it has a tighter focus on a smaller number of characters and achieves a very good balance instead of trying to give room to everything. Now that said, my impression of Ken Russell is that he probably wants me to feel some of the alienation I am feeling and didn't really want to try to imitate or improve upon the musical form but to twist it.

Shows about shows are catnip to me. If Russell had wanted to smooth out the pacing I think it would have helped to make some sections rehearsal and then dip in and out of the actual performance. But that's what most shows about shows do so I admit that in those cases the show within the show often appears bizarrely disconnected and confused even while the show "without", as it were, runs smoothly.   

Most of the fantasy sequences in The Boy Friend are clearly explained -- Polly yearning for Tony, de Thrill visualizing musical numbers, the stage director imagining the command performance -- except for the Room in Bloomsbury where Polly and Tony peer into the little window at le Crazy Golf and we are then immersed in their tiny elf life for an extended period. This always irritates me just because all of the others are explained. Am I supposed to read this as

Spoiler

Tony's fantasy but because we are supposed to be surprised by the reveal at the end that he does love Polly

Russell chose not to make it explicit? Or is it just another de Thrill number?

 

 

[mariah23]

TCM Remembers Daryl Hickman who passed away Wednesday at age 92.  
 

https://youtu.be/7sZYx2x3l3I?si=Dwh3gQJQL-5J0zw6

Edited May 24 by mariah23

[Rinaldo]

21 minutes ago, mariah23 said:

TCM Remembers Daryl Hickman who passed away Wednesday at age 92.  

Ah, that touches me more than I would have expected. The Hickman brothers represent a part of my childhood, I guess. I was more familiar with Dwayne then (though the younger one, he died first, in 2022) from his sitcom work, but Darryl would turn up occasionally on my TV too, especially in episodes of the drama anthology series that were so prevalent then. And more recently, of course, I've come to know their movie credits.

[BooksRule]

Did anyone watch 'The Loved One'? (I think it was shown yesterday morning)  I vaguely remember watching at least parts of it many, many years ago when I was a kid (probably on the late movie on a weekend night). I do know that the '60s British humor and the satirical look at the American funeral industry would have gone right over my head at the time.  That movie was absolutely bonkers in parts. I've never been a big Rod Steiger fan, but his portrayal of Mr. Joyboy was fun to watch (and the scenes with his beloved mother strayed a little into John Waters territory--at least it seemed to me). And I definitely didn't see that ending coming. 

[fairffaxx]

The book was 1000 times better than the movie.

[Sarah 103]

@EtheltoTillieIn my opinion, the only good reason to show the 1970s Mame with Lucille Ball is if it's part of a double feature that includes the 1950s version of the story based on original stage play Auntie Mame. 

One summer (I can't remember what order I did them in, but I know it was not chronological order), I watched both movie versions, read the libretto of the stage musical, as well as reading one of the books the other works were based on. 

"The Man in the Moon Is a Lady" is the only big improvement from the first movie/play. Having a big musical number go horribly wrong is funnier than having one cast member's bracelet get stuck to another cast member's costume/dress. 

[Charlie Baker]

With his brother Robert, he wrote songs for Disney and others.

Richard Sherman Dies at 95

[Rinaldo]

19 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

I watched both movie versions, read the libretto of the stage musical, as well as reading one of the books the other works were based on. 

Bravo! In addition to those, I recall reading (long ago) the published (nonmusical) play Auntie Mame by Lawrence and Lee, based on the Patrick Dennis novel. (This play, which starred Rosalind Russell onstage, was adapted very faithfully into the movie of the same title.)

I always remembered their description of their play as "a musical without songs," because that's just what it seemed like to me when I read it -- big cast (demanding big personalities), numerous scenes in different locations, and periodic complete changes of style in decor and clothes (because as Auntie Mame moves through the decades, she keeps adopting new styles). I wonder how often the play got done after the original productions and tours -- it's an expensive challenge for a community or college theater to undertake.

Edited May 26 by Rinaldo

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 5/25/2024 at 12:07 PM, BooksRule said:

Did anyone watch 'The Loved One'? (I think it was shown yesterday morning)  I vaguely remember watching at least parts of it many, many years ago when I was a kid (probably on the late movie on a weekend night). I do know that the '60s British humor and the satirical look at the American funeral industry would have gone right over my head at the time.  That movie was absolutely bonkers in parts. I've never been a big Rod Steiger fan, but his portrayal of Mr. Joyboy was fun to watch (and the scenes with his beloved mother strayed a little into John Waters territory--at least it seemed to me). And I definitely didn't see that ending coming. 

I remember enjoying the book when I read it years ago but although I glance at the movie occasionally I have never watched it all the way through. I looked at some of it this airing and was very distracted by the obvious dubbing. Then I was surprised to learn that the dubbing was apparently because Robert Morse had rerecorded his dialogue since he had had a hard time with the accent. Up until that point I had been vaguely assuming that they had reinterpreted the character as American, but now I have picked up on several places where the dialogue does indicate that Dennis is foreign. Huh.