TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Charlie Baker]

I've been trying to sample films I'm unfamiliar with from the Summer Under the Stars daily choices.  Today's was Edge of the City with Sidney Poitier the man of the day.  It's been, with some justification, likened to a lite version of On the Waterfront, or even a rip off of it.  But it's still compelling.  It has what had to have been for its time a daring presentation of a genuine friendship between a black man and a white man (I wouldn't say the guys in The Defiant Ones had this kind of relationship.) There is great chemistry between Poitier and John Cassavetes (whom I wish had acted more, but let's face it, what he really wanted to do was direct). Well directed by Martin Ritt with some really effective location shooting and compact storytelling.  And Poitier is at his full star power--vibrant and graceful and passionate. 

[Padma]

On ‎8‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 7:12 AM, Charlie Baker said:

I checked out the Uncle Vanya with Tone--and it's respectable.  Due to, of course, the cast having done the play together on stage, where Chekhov is difficult enough to pull off. So more so to make an interesting film of.  Will certainly check out the Lumet Sea Gull with Ms. Redgrave, never saw that.

I agree with you about Uncle Vanya. I appreciated their commitment to the play-as-a-play and how it was an opportunity to enjoy what they were all putting on at the same time elsewhere.  I was surprised that Yelena, the woman with such great beauty and charm, seemed to give a rather flat performance, but that may have been a fault of the time and costuming (the dark, modest clothing made the women look as if they were in mourning so not the glamorous appearance being repeatedly described. Also reminded me of other Chekhov where things happen but then, at the end, everything is pretty much unchanged. I appreciate what he brough to drama of the times, though, (and also that after Unvle Vanya flopped on stage he cut the 24 characters down to 8 or so. (Stanislavsky's restaging made it a big hit later, and he also acted as Uncle Vanya. That would have been a version to see! And, "trivia alert", Chekhov married the woman who played Yelena and, in Franchot Tone's version of the play, Tone married the actress playing Yelena as well. )                                                                                     

[ratgirlagogo]

6 hours ago, voiceover said:

If you don't like the actor who plays the lead, it will be very tough -- though not impossible -- to like the film.  

Oh yeah.  I guess I could come up with A LIST (oh voiceover, I can hear you cheering from here)  but I'll just stick with the two that leap to mind.  First, I can't stand Miriam Hopkins, but Trouble in Paradise is one of my very favorite films - even M.H. can't fuck it up.  And I hate Glenn Ford but I love Gilda and 3:10 to Yuma.

But I still wish those films had been cast differently.

[Padma]

10 hours ago, PaulaO said:

///  I enjoy the plot of Strangers on a Train, but Farley Granger ruins the movie for me.  He's just too soft.  Therefore I don't like Rope either and find the (fairly true) story rather distasteful.  However, I do think Psycho is a wonderful movie as far as direction and cinematography go.  It's just so scary/creepy that I can no longer watch it.  I've only seen Rear Window once and have no memory of it except that it succeeded in make me hot, temperature-wise.

I know what you mean about Granger being too soft (shallow note--he did age very well!

The last time I watched it I had learned that Wm. Holden was Hitchcock's first choice and I kept imagining when Granger spoke how different the lines would be with Holden's authority, smarts and toughness (plus just generally better acting). Granger didn't spoil it for me--I still think its one of Hitchcock's best-- but I think Granger's part of the reason that Bruno becomes the main character so quickly. With Holden, I think there would have been an imbalance at the beginning--Holden brushing him off on the train, seeming so superior to Bruno that routine courtesy was about all the relationship warranted.  Then the balance would gradually shift until we realized he was caught in a trap and all his smarts and confidence was no match for the scheming craziness of Bruno after all.

I still think its a very good film as is, but I'm pretty sure I would have liked it much more if Hitchcock -could- have gotten  Holden as the lead..  (Then again, I like him in everything).

As for actors I hate and will not watch ever, Nicholas Cage is at the top of the list. That's not so much an acting thing, but because many years ago I read a profile of him in the LA Times and during the interview he picked up his cat and swung her wildly by the tail. (Does he have a drug problem? I thought perhaps so at the time). Anyway, ever since reading that I've pretty much loathed him and avoid everything he's in.

Edited August 11, 2017 by Padma

[voiceover]

2 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:

 Oh yeah.  I guess I could come up with A LIST (oh voiceover, I can hear you cheering from here) 

Really, not so much cheering, as stunned into silence, with my eyes Tex Averying out of my head.

I side with you on the Glenn Ford hate/3:10 to Yuma love (also fond of Courtship of Eddie's Father).  And Miriam annoys as well.  She always seemed to me to be...looking down on her audience.  Anytime she was onscreen with Bette Davis, though = big improvement.

Now you must excuse me, for I am off to make a screenshot of ratgirl's post, all the better to brandish it onsite the next time she gripes about my list-love.

[psychoticstate]

20 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I like Joan Fontaine in some things (like the little-seen Darling, How Could You?, a JM Barrie adaptation directed by Mitchell Leisen, where fey archness is just what's needed), but the one time I saw Suspicion I didn't buy her at all -- and was later astonished to learn that she'd won an Academy Award for what seemed to me amateurish overacting. I should see it again to discover if I was an arrogant young snot (I often was) when I had that reaction. In Rebecca,  "a simp" is pretty much what's needed for the unnamed protagonist of the story, so one might say that Hitchcock used her shrewdly.

I love "Suspicion" (it's on my top 5 Hitch list) but did Fontaine give the best female performance of that year?  Um, no.  At least not in my opinion.  Of course, in my opinion Joan Crawford should have been nominated for "A Woman's Face."  That said, I think Fontaine got the nod and win as a "sorry you didn't win" last year. 

I thought she was excellent in "Rebecca."  The part needed a young girl who was pretty and yet dowdy and who was naive, easily influenced and blindly in love (with Olivier,not difficult). She nailed that.

I haven't see "Darling, How Could You?" - - must add to my list.  

[Wiendish Fitch]

Re: Miriam Hopkins

Hopkins was at her best working with either Ernst Lubitsch and William Wyler; both were excellent directors who brought out her best and helped reign in her tendency to overact. As a result, she makes for a charming thief in Trouble in Paradise, and a genuinely sympathetic victim of vicious gossip in These Three. 

That's not to say that, in The Smiling Lieutenant, I wasn't rooting for Claudette Colbert all the way (she was always good and lovely, but, wow, she's heartbreakingly pretty in that one).

[elle]

1 hour ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

Re: Miriam Hopkins

Hopkins was at her best working with either Ernst Lubitsch and William Wyler; both were excellent directors who brought out her best and helped reign in her tendency to overact. As a result, she makes for a charming thief in Trouble in Paradise, and a genuinely sympathetic victim of vicious gossip in These Three. 

That's not to say that, in The Smiling Lieutenant, I wasn't rooting for Claudette Colbert all the way (she was always good and lovely, but, wow, she's heartbreakingly pretty in that one).

It was hard not to root for Claudette Colbert in that movie, both she and Maurice Chevalier had chemistry one wants them to get together.  Miriam Hopkins does manage to make the princess sympathetic and the scene with Claudette helping Miriam is a fun one.  

I do enjoy Miriam Hopkins in The Richest Girl in the World (1934) and the historical drama Becky Sharp (1935).

[Charlie Baker]

I haven't seen a lot of Miriam Hopkins, but I will second her work in Trouble in Paradise, and think she's pretty effective in Design for Living.  The Stranger's Return is somewhat overlooked, but it's worth checking out.  However, her co-stars in that, Lionel Barrymore and Franchot Tone (yep, him again) are more consistent and convincing than she is. 

Yesterday's star was Ginger Rogers.  I had to check out her teaming with one of my all time favorites, William Powell, in Star of Midnight.  This was another RKO attempt to grab some Thin Man magic, and not as good as when they paired Mr. Powell with Jean Arthur in The Ex Mrs. Bradford.  In this one, the over-complicated plot took over, the characters weren't that interesting and the humor mostly fell flat.  After that, how could I not check out Fred and Ginger's magic in Follow the Fleet and Top Hat?

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Charlie Baker said:

Yesterday's star was Ginger Rogers.

The one I had to check out was Tom, Dick and Harry, her hugely popular comedy from 1941, which I've never seen. (Weirdly, I have seen its seldom-shown musical remake, The Girl Most Likely, the last movie for both RKO and Mitchell Leisen.) So far, I'm just a quarter hour into it, and my main impression is that Ginger's character is coming off as somewhat mentally challenged (admittedly it's a daydreamy post-adolescent sort of part). No doubt that'll change as I continue.

It was also unexpected to see Phil Silvers's face pop up full-screen in a short comic bit (self-described as "obnoxious") as an ice cream vendor. It was pretty much the start of his movie career (not preceded by anything stellar onstage either), but clearly he was being groomed as someone with a future in the movies -- and indeed just 3 years later he was essentially a third lead, dancing alongside Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth, in Cover Girl.

[Milburn Stone]

31 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

It was also unexpected to see Phil Silvers's face pop up full-screen in a short comic bit (self-described as "obnoxious") as an ice cream vendor. It was pretty much the start of his movie career (not preceded by anything stellar onstage either), but clearly he was being groomed as someone with a future in the movies -- and indeed just 3 years later he was essentially a third lead, dancing alongside Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth, in Cover Girl.

In Cover Girl, I feel like he's Columbia's Jules Munshin.

[Charlie Baker]

I had to choose between Star of Midnight and Tom, Dick, and Harry, and my love for WP tipped the decision.  But I was intrigued.

[StatisticalOutlier]

I just read about 10 pages of discussion.  From what I can tell, most people talk about classic movies (it is Turner Classic Movies, after all) but does nobody indulge in the foreign films they show late on Sunday nights?  Or maybe showed, since I don't see them on the schedule any more.

I've sometimes been shocked at what they show.  Lots of (classic) Japanese fare, but an Aki Kaurismaki double feature one night, and then an all-time favorite of mine, Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express.  Do y'all watch those?

Also, there was a discussion a few months ago about parody.  CNN is doing a series called The History of Comedy, and last week's episode was about parody.  It's on on Sunday nights, and last week's episode is repeated.

[ratgirlagogo]

1 hour ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

but does nobody indulge in the foreign films they show late on Sunday nights?  Or maybe showed, since I don't see them on the schedule any more.

In general I do find there is little to no interest in the TCM Imports  (or the Saturday night Turner Underground exploitation films and only a little more in the Silent Sunday Nights films), but if you go back a LOT of pages you'll find many posts and  brief discussions and mentions here and there from those of us here  who do.  Why  discussions of these films  don't have more traction I don't know but if you'd like to chime in here , then welcome and let's see where it goes.  I will say that the Kaurismaki films and Chungking Express are also favorites of mine - but they are relatively recent and many of us including me have mixed feelings about having newer films on TCM.  So that might be part of it?  

Oh, and all the regular TCM features are suspended in August for Summer Under the Stars, where every day is devoted to a single movie star, as they are during 31 Days of Oscar.  

[StrictTime]

In another case of YMMV, I love love love Miriam Hopkins and have my DVR set to autorecord anything she's in.  I just find her so "modern" in her style of acting for that time period, that she's fascinating to me. And I also love Franchot Tone--his "Still, love lost today" monologue from Man-Proof is one of my favorites of all time. 

I don't mind being odd man out. ?

[Padma]

7 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

I just read about 10 pages of discussion.  From what I can tell, most people talk about classic movies (it is Turner Classic Movies, after all) but does nobody indulge in the foreign films they show late on Sunday nights?  Or maybe showed, since I don't see them on the schedule any more.

I've sometimes been shocked at what they show.  Lots of (classic) Japanese fare, but an Aki Kaurismaki double feature one night, and then an all-time favorite of mine, Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express.  Do y'all watch those?

Also, there was a discussion a few months ago about parody.  CNN is doing a series called The History of Comedy, and last week's episode was about parody.  It's on on Sunday nights, and last week's episode is repeated.

There are lots of foreign films that I like (or haven't seen and would like to watch.) And many many that would fit both of those categories except that I've never heard of them (yet). I must admit the TCM foreign programming has b een off my radar. That could easily changed by an interesting post here or there, especially drawing attention to an upcoming favorite.  Good idea. Hope you'll post more and share your responses (once TCM returns to regular scheduling).  (And although its OT, I've caught some of the History of Comedy on On Demand lately and liked it more than I thought I would. E ven though its pretty scattershot, there's great value in all the interviews with comedians and some of it sheds some light on comedy and careers in it.  I thought it would be more about the history of comedy writing and more of an analysis chronologically of comedians, but what I've seen is fine, too.)

[voiceover]

Okay Stanwyck fans, and you know who you are:

She was one I missed in my formative Classic Film Fan years.  My first real memory of her was Mary Carson in Thorn Birds (and I thought, Bleah) (a blasphemy I now recognize).  But in part owed TCM, part her slavering fanbase here, I've started watching her movies.  And it's as thrilling as discovering a long-dead author with a huge list.

Ball of Fire may just have vaulted to #1.  Those last 10 minutes -- man, even though I could see what was coming, I laughed my butt off when that picture fell.

[Crisopera]

voiceover - welcome to the ranks of Stanwyck fans!  (Another recruit, my fellow fans!)

[ratgirlagogo]

5 hours ago, voiceover said:

Ball of Fire may just have vaulted to #1

I love this movie.  It's not just her, it's Gary Cooper as the sexy nerd, and the endlessly wonderful supporting cast of unworldly old Encylopediasts.  But she should have won the Oscar for it.  Is it my #1? certainly always circling around that in my endlessly changing carousel of  Stanwyck favorites.  

Edited August 14, 2017 by ratgirlagogo

[voiceover]

4 hours ago, Crisopera said:

voiceover - welcome to the ranks of Stanwyck fans!  (Another recruit, my fellow fans!)

I knew you'd be super-proud?

 

32 minutes ago, ratgirlagogo said:

I love this movie.  It's not just her, it's Gary Cooper as the sexy nerd, and the endlessly wonderful supporting cast of unworldly old Encylopediasts.  But she should have won the Oscar for it.  Is it my #1? certainly always circling around that in my endlessly changing carousel of  Stanwyck favorites.  

I think it might be neck & neck with Remember the Night.  Coincidence that there are an equal number  Encyclopediasts & dwarves?

Meanwhile I'm pondering changing my online handle to "Sugarpuss".

[ratgirlagogo]

22 minutes ago, voiceover said:

Coincidence that there are an equal number  Encyclopediasts & dwarves?

Not at all. It's a parody of Snow White among all the other things it's a parody of.

[PaulaO]

Friday I watched Rear Window.  Mind you, it was a bad copy on YouTube streamed onto my TV.   A bit grainy.  I really did not like it.  I felt uncomfortable, hot, and skeevy, which mean Hitchcock succeeded.   I also felt the movie was very dated.  A heat wave in NYC and everyone has their windows open and shades up.  Today everyone would have their a/c on and blinds closed.  In contrast to watching Stagecoach Saturday morning which did not feel dated to me because it took place in a time period I didn't live through.   I don't get the love for Rear Window except for Grace Kelly's entrance dress.

[mariah23]

Who's has been your favorite SUTS star so far and who's day are you looking forward to?

[Charlie Baker]

So far I would have to say Barbara Stanwyck is my favorite featured star and of those remaining, probably James Cagney and Rosalind Russell.  Though it is great that Angela Lansbury, George Sanders, Rod Taylor get their days, and lesser remembered names like Ann Harding and Dennis Morgan. Plus a chance to get familiar with the films of Marion Davies.

I've been doing my best to see some of each day--I did watch The Sea Gull with Vanessa Redgrave on her day, and it is, to me, not as successful a Chekhov transfer to film as the Franchot Tone Uncle Vanya.  There's some miscasting and the tone is a little heavy handed.  But Ms. Redgrave and James Mason are on target among others.  (And I would love to be able to move in to that weathered Swedish estate where they shot this.)  The excellent Kathleen Widdoes is Masha in this--her other major film credit is The Group.  She did a fine production of Much Ado about Nothing with Sam Waterston (LONG before Law and Order) which was shown on CBS and might be out there somewhere on video.  Then Ms. Widdoes went on to work in soap operas for years.  An example of a really good, distinctive actor who never achieved stardom but had a long working career. 

From Ricardo Montalban's day I sampled Two Weeks with Love, a frothy period musical romance with Jane Powell (with Ann Harding as the mother, and Debbie Reynolds' big break?) and Latin Lovers where he woos Lana Turner. MGM crafted light entertainments, both.  He was certainly a dependable actor in film and TV and quite something to look at.  But he never got the kind of film and TV roles that would allow him to show just how good he was.  I saw him in a theater tour of George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell with Edward Mulhare, Kurt Kasznar, and--wait for it, TCM fans--Myrna Loy.  Extraordinary, and as Don Juan, Mr. Montalban gave one of the greatest theater performances I've seen. 

Today is Elvis day--and how could they not show Jailhouse Rock?  And can I resist the temptation to watch it yet again?

Edited August 16, 2017 by Charlie Baker

[Rinaldo]

My own top names of those still to come would include Rosalind Russell (though I wish they'd forgo The Women, which they air so often, in favor of some I read about and haven't seen like Take a Letter, Darling and Roughly Speaking), Angela Lansbury (they're sneaking in Sweeney Todd again, with which I'm thoroughly familiar -- again I'd rather see something rarer), Marion Davies, and George Sanders.

1 hour ago, Charlie Baker said:

I did watch The Sea Gull with Vanessa Redgrave on her day, and it is, to me, not as successful a Chekhov transfer to film as the Franchot Tone Uncle Vanya... But Ms. Redgrave and James Mason are on target...

I didn't watch that Vanya, but I'm sure you're right. As I've said here, that Sea Gull is kind of a mess. It's possible to get excessively cliquish about Chekov, but his plays do need a director who can turn a group of actors into a believably nuanced family whose lives we can follow and feel. And Sidney Lumet was not (at least at that point) such a director, and he saddled himself with a cast of wildly varying styles and nationalities ,and it just doesn't work. But I would totally pick out the same two you did: Mason's quiet reflectiveness is very much at home here, and Redgrave's is a really great performance of a classic role, unfortunately stuck in an inferior context that few will ever want to sit through.

1 hour ago, Charlie Baker said:

Kathleen Widdoes ... did a fine production of Much Ado about Nothing with Sam Waterston ... might be out there somewhere on video.

It is! This derived from a NY stage production and was given a c. 1900 Americana setting. So much from that era of TV is lost, it's nice to have this officially released.

It's also nice to see Ricardo Montalban given the appreciation he deserves, though alas, the film roles just don't exist to really showcase his range. One item that I'd recommend is a one-hour Hallmark televising of The Fantasticks in which he plays El Gallo and (such is the abridgment) takes over the visiting actors' functions too. You also get John Davidson & Susan Watson as the kids and Stanley Holloway & Bert Lahr as the fathers. It pops up here and there online and then gets taken  down; keep an eye out.

For those who'll be watching Mr. Presley, may I again recommend Sheila O'Malley's blog. Herself a former actress (and with other actors in the family, like cousin Mike), she likes to write about (among other things) actors who aren't given sufficient respect by other writers -- Elvis first among them, but also Doris Day, John Wayne, many others. She makes for good reading.

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 8/12/2017 at 8:02 PM, Padma said:

There are lots of foreign films that I like (or haven't seen and would like to watch.) And many many that would fit both of those categories except that I've never heard of them (yet). I must admit the TCM foreign programming has b een off my radar.

I'm just kind of curious about TCM's foreign movie programming--how they choose them, and whether anybody watches them, especially an audience that likes things like:

9 minutes ago, Charlie Baker said:

Two Weeks with Love, a frothy period musical romance with Jane Powell (with Ann Harding as the mother, and Debbie Reynolds' big break?)

I thought Two Weeks with Love was surprisingly funny, and I learned a bit about corsets.   But Phyllis Kirk, who played Valerie.  Holy cow!  She is gorgeous. 

Anyway, back to TCM's foreign movies...

Last month, they showed Pedro Almodóvar's Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, which was rated X when it came out.  I saw it when it was first released and recorded it when TCM showed it, but didn't watch it yet because it was going to be playing in a theater near me so there was a chance I'd see it on the big screen, which I always prefer.

I turned out I did see it in the theater, as part of a series of all 20 of Almodóvar's films.  The guy who curated the series noted that Sony Classics owns all of Almodóvar's films except Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down.  He said Janus Films owns this one, and I remembered that the Janus logo is at the beginning of most (if not all?) of the foreign films TCM shows real late on Sunday nights.

So there's a connection to Janus Films, and I suppose that drives what TCM shows.

That said, this one in particular was a very strange choice.  Even if it's the only Almodóvar film they can show, because the rest are owned by Sony, I can't think of a movie that would be a more polar opposite of the usual fare on TCM.  They put it in a time slot when hardly anybody would be thinking, "Hmm...I can't sleep.  I'll see what's on TCM."  But anybody who did?  Yikes!

Personally, I'm glad they're showing some foreign films, because I can't stream video and I'm enough of a big-screen snob that I don't watch DVDs on my crappy TV, but if something shows up for free?  I'm liable to watch it.  Well, eventually.  TCM had a couple of movies from Turkey a long time ago that are still sitting on my DVR waiting to be watched, but I know I'm gonna have to be in the right mood in order to give them a fair shake.

One problem with foreign movies is that they can be hard for people to get on board with, but it was vastly easier when the IMDb boards still existed, because you could ask questions about cultural references, or get clarification on a questionable subtitle, or even ask "What did that note say?" and there were "locals" or die-hard fans who could help out.  Now, you have to watch them in kind of a vacuum, which I don't think will help build audiences.  I thought maybe if these movies drop in people's via TCM, they might give them a shot, but I'm not so sure.

It's a shame because I consider foreign movies to be, among other things, a substitute for actually going to these places.  I acknowledge that it's one person's point of view and therefore possibly very skewed, but the films give me a boots-on-the-ground impression of a place that I really enjoy having.  Like door knobs in London, and maybe all of England--I noticed in seeing lots of British movies that they are really high up on the door.  Not exactly important information to have, but I think it makes for a more interesting life.  (Like learning how important corsets were to young women in the early 1900s in Two Weeks with Love.)

And speaking of British movies, I have to give TCM credit for many years ago showing Kes, which was one of those bucket-list movies that I'd never been able to see, and there it was.  They showed it twice, and one of them had captions, which was beyond wonderful because those working-class accents are impenetrable.  I taped it and still have it on VHS.  At least now there's a time slot I can target when this stuff is likely to pop up.  (Then again, maybe it's always been late on Sunday nights and I just never noticed--I did notice for a while that it was silent movies in that slot.)

 

[Charlie Baker]

When I can, I try to catch some of TCM's foreign offerings.  Of course, they'd show The 400 Blows or Jules et Jim. (Wasn't there a day months ago or longer devoted to the recently departed Jeanne Moreau?)  But they also had a string of Godard films a while back, and I watched Breathless and Masculin Feminin and a couple of his short films.  And during last year's spotlight on women in film series, they showed Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Diielman..., a remarkable movie to turn up on this network.  

[ratgirlagogo]

1 hour ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

I'm just kind of curious about TCM's foreign movie programming--how they choose them

They're all in the Criterion Collection.  Not just Tie me up, tie me down and Jeanne Dielman -  but culty things like Paul Morrisey's Flesh for Frankenstein/ Blood for Dracula and  Obayashi's Hausu, and B-movies like Equinox and Carnival of Souls all are Criterion releases.

 

1 hour ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

So there's a connection to Janus Films, and I suppose that drives what TCM shows.

Much of the Janus Collection is part of the Criterion Collection, although they are still a separate entity AFAIK.  The Janus films shown on TCM are all Criterion films as well.

Edited August 16, 2017 by ratgirlagogo

[Padma]

I can't disagree with anything said about The Seagull. Redgrave and Mason were excellent, but the rest of it was disappointing (particularly David Warner in a key role). Lumet was an odd choice and didn't do well with the challenges.  Compared with The Seagull, Uncle Vanya was clean and clear--appropriately restrained--not great, but a decent production that is very watchable and gives a legitimate sense "of Chekhov".

Re: my favorite "star day" so far,... For me, Marilyn Monroe's films were the best (and also most enjoyable) when taken overall for their variety and quality. (And she may have driven Olivier crazy on "The Prince and the Showgirl", but it's his performance that ruins it, not hers.)

I saw Ricardo Montalban in Don Juan in Hell, too, and its sad he's one of those actors with talent and charisma to burn who never got very good movie roles. His best to me was in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", even better when you consider he had to act his bad guy v. good guy scenes to a blue screen or a stand in.

[Milburn Stone]

Another TCM-Criterion connection is that the streaming portal called Filmstruck (available on Apple TV, perhaps elsewhere) appears to be a joint venture between them.

[prican58]

Please excuse this post. I had a little trouble. Can't seem to delete it. I had no interest in posting Mrs Olsen.

Montalban is great in a great film, Mystery Street from 1950. Also Border Incident from 1949/50ish. And he's good in the ensemble Battleground which over time has shot up towards the top of my fave WWII movies.

I remember how my parents and I were always so proud  to see the likes of him and Rita Moreno in big movies and popular tv shows. Growing up in the 70s one didn't see too many Latino Stars in Hollywood, seemingly anyway. BTW in case anyone of a certain age remembers the old Savarin coffee commercials featuring a man dressed in a white suit walking around some sleepy little S. American coffee growing village on his way to taste the towns coffee. They called him El Exigente. That was Ricardo Montalban's brother Carlos. This is one of the later ads but it's the same person. Close your eyes and he sounds just like Ricardo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W_iIXRxbsk

Edited August 17, 2017 by prican58

[voiceover]

Yay for Rosalind Russell day, and the prime time showing of my favorite movie: His Girl Friday.

God, she's just perfect, and perfectly dressed, in this.  And so is Cary Grant, in one of his few heel-turn romantic pursuer roles ("...I still have that dimple.  And in the same place!"  Yeow! what a visual)

Next to the Russell/Grant smokin' chem, I love the scenes with Hildy's reporter buddies the best.  I love how much they appreciate (& acknowledge) her superior talent as a reporter, and how cynical they are about her "standard woman" decision to marry & retire from the news business. 

Wipes the floor with The Front Page.  All versions.  To the point where, when you see the source material for this, you shake your head over why ANYone thought making it about two men was a good idea.

[chitowngirl]

Hmph! His Girl Friday is on at Midnight here on the East Coast. I hope this one makes it to On Demand. I don't have DVR. And I agree with Rinaldo about The Women. TCM airs this way too much. Besides it's airing today, it's on again in October.

[Charlie Baker]

For me, The Front Page works just fine as a play and in its first film version.  It was a brilliant turnaround idea to make Hildy a woman, and then to cast Russell and Grant--irresistible.

[Padma]

Really enjoyed seeing "Kid Galahad" for the first time--Elvis in 1962 as a boxer, with excellent support from Gig Young and Charles Bronson.  Enjoyable. Also saw "Elvis On Tour" for the first time. A decade later, and Elvis has gone the flashy route, gained some weight, but still looking and sounding good. Lots of songs, not just clips, and you can see what a hard worker he was. Its hard not to just want to see him alone on a stage with a guitar or, at most, a backing trio.  Nice film, that only hints at the downside (including his "circle"). Doesn't get nearly as much attention as "Elvis::That's The Way It Is" (1970) but I enjoyed this one much more (including the clips of Elvis on Ed Sullivan in 1957, before music had become such a job.  (One of the nicest moments is when he and the band are singing gospel together in the rehearsal room, just because they "grew up with it" and like it still. Just singing.)

Edited August 17, 2017 by Padma

[mariah23]

1 hour ago, Charlie Baker said:

For me, The Front Page works just fine as a play and in its first film version.  It was a brilliant turnaround idea to make Hildy a woman, and then to cast Russell and Grant--irresistible.

And she was the sixth choice!

[chitowngirl]

Sigh, Auntie Mame ❤️

[Padma]

4 hours ago, mariah23 said:

And she was the sixth choice!

You got my interest with this! So that meant Wikipedia. The list of actresses Howard Hawks wanted before Russell was a distinguished one:  Carole Lombard was first, but too expensive. "Then there was  Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Sullavan, Ginger Rogers and Irene Dunne who all turned it down, Jean Arthur was offered the part, and was suspended by the studio when she refused to take it. Joan Crawford was reportedly also considered."

"...During filming, Russell noticed that Hawks treated her like an also-ran, so she confronted him: "You don't want me, do you? Well, you're stuck with me, so you might as well make the most of it."[5] ,,,,In her autobiography, Life Is A Banquet, Russell wrote that she thought her role did not have as many good lines as Grant's, so she hired her own writer to "punch up" her dialogue. With Hawks encouraging ad-libbing on the set, Russell was able to slip her writer's work into the movie. Only Grant was wise to this tactic and greeted her each morning saying, "What have you got today?'"
 

[GreekGeek]

Apologies to all who adore Auntie Mame, but I just re-watched it and was amazed how stagebound it seemed--so much of the cast playing their roles in that overly loud Broadway farce style, with their obviously timed entrances and exits from Mame's apartment. It only felt like a movie during the fox hunt and the travel montage. I liked Mame much more in the quieter moments when she was showing genuine love for Patrick than when she was being flamboyantly zany.

[voiceover]

I don't "adore" Auntie Mame, but it has...moments.  The opening party sequence is really hilarious, and I agree about the one-on-one between Mame & Patrick (esp young Patrick, but older Patrick's okay).  The mannered, stage-y quality works, until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, I want to look away.

Part of me feels obliged to be fond of this film.  I am, after all, the Auntie M to my beloved Nephew de Voiceover.  But I really can only hang on to the first 15 minutes.  

I'd like to smack the casting director for giving her Forrest Tucker as a love interest.  Wasn't Ward Bond available?  I mean, if you're going down that road.

Edited August 18, 2017 by voiceover

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, voiceover said:

I'd like to smack the casting director for giving her Forrest Tucker as a love interest.  

This casting works out rather nicely for me, because the same role is played in the movie Mame by Robert Preston -- and I saw both of them play Prof. Harold Hill in The Music Man.

[voiceover]

3 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

This casting works out rather nicely for me, because the same role is played in the movie Mame by Robert Preston -- and I saw both of them play Prof. Harold Hill in The Music Man.

The movie version of Mame was utter crap.  I didn't like Preston in that role either.

As Harold Hill, sure.

[Rinaldo]

5 hours ago, voiceover said:

The movie version of Mame was utter crap.

Well, of course. Nobody disagrees about that.

[SeanC]

Ricardo Montalban's featured day was an opportunity to see Sayonara, which I've long wanted to see because it has the only Asian woman to win an Oscar in it (it turns out, the role is really marginal; I'm not really sure why she won).  Montalban plays a Japanese man, for some reason, even though every other Japanese character in the movie is cast with an actual Japanese person.

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, SeanC said:

Montalban plays a Japanese man, for some reason, even though every other Japanese character in the movie is cast with an actual Japanese person.

I don't know this movie (aside from knowing of the Oscars for Umeki and Red Buttons, and dim childhood memories of a title song on the radio). But that sort of situation (the imposture surrounded by genuine examples) was not uncommon in films -- it sure looks weird now. Brando himself had done likewise the year before, in Teahouse of the August Moon. And Alec Guinness did it shortly afterward, in A Majority of One. In the late 60s Leonard Nimoy supposedly passed for Japanese among Japanese people in an episode of Mission Impossible, without even using makeup. Alec Guinness returns to provide (maybe?) the last example in A Passage to India in 1984, playing an Indian scholar surrounded by actual Indian actors. 

[ratgirlagogo]

On 8/17/2017 at 3:03 PM, Padma said:

(One of the nicest moments is when he and the band are singing gospel together in the rehearsal room, just because they "grew up with it" and like it still. Just singing.)

Thank you! I love this too - one of the few moments in any of his many films that give you an idea of his offstage musical tastes.

[voiceover]

18 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Well, of course. Nobody disagrees about [the fact that the movie version of Mame is crap].

Whew.  You had me worried there, with the "works out nicely for [you]" reference ?

"Tragic" is too strong a word, but I did so love the stage version.  Just mention the musical, and "Bosom Buddies" starts playing in my head, with Angela Lansbury bellowing, "And if I say that sex and guts made you into a star/It's simply that, who else but a bosom buddy would tell you how rotten you are?"

"Somewhere between 40.  And death."

*sigh*

Edited August 19, 2017 by voiceover

[Rinaldo]

5 hours ago, voiceover said:

You had me worried there, with the "works out nicely for [you]" reference

All I meant is that I get to enjoy the coincidence of seeing both "my" Harold Hills play the same role. Nothing more.

There are few things so universally agreed upon in this thread that they can just be stated as axioms in red letters and never referred to again, but the abysmal quality of this movie is one of them.

[Charlie Baker]

Rosalind Russell day had its delights with Auntie Mame, His Girl Friday, My Sister Eileen--but they wrapped it with Rendezvous, which could have been one of those scripts Myrna Loy balked at and Ms. Russell inherited from MGM.  Because there she was, as a ditsy comic foil to William Powell.  Mr. P. plays a cryptographer during WWI reluctantly trying to outsmart the Germans stateside with codes and cyphers, rather than being on the front. The intrigue plot is played straight, and Ms. R. is the comic relief who seems to have dropped in from another movie.  The integration of the comic and the suspenseful just didn't happen.  Nevertheless, the stars demonstrate chemistry between them, even if her character is borderline insufferable. I may never see all of Mr. Powell's filmography--maybe some of the silents he did don't survive, I don;t know.  But I will catch as much as TCM offers up.

[prican58]

23 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:

Thank you! I love this too - one of the few moments in any of his many films that give you an idea of his offstage musical tastes.

I saw this film some years ago and was very struck by how different Elvis seemed while singing Gospel. You see a calm and peaceful look on his face. It really was "his" music. Love hearing him sing Gospel.