TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[jjj]

41 minutes ago, Fairfax said:

The "good outcome" (in my view), was an important change in English law that was largely caused by the sad case shown in the movie.  At least it can't happen again.  

And I see there also has been a recent UK mini-series on this -- which was also broadcast on the "Sundance Now" streaming site in Autumn 2017 

[prican58]

On 1/8/2018 at 11:34 PM, jjj said:

I had never heard of 10 Rillington Place, which is on right now (Monday night).  What a horrifying, inhumane film.  I will not be able to watch until the end. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/92520/10-Rillington-Place/

Triple j, I saw it years ago on tv because I have a strange fascination with Judy Geeson but that film made me uncomfortable though I sat through it. It was riviting. 

[bmoore4026]

On 1/8/2018 at 10:34 PM, jjj said:

I had never heard of 10 Rillington Place, which is on right now (Monday night).  What a horrifying, inhumane film.  I will not be able to watch until the end. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/92520/10-Rillington-Place/

It's an amazing movie but I can only see it in bits and pieces.  Between this movie and Let Him Have It, it truly cements the case on why the death penalty just doesn't work.  To hell with pretentious crap like The Life of David Gale.

Anyway, on a lighter note, today on TCM is Aminal Day, with Bringing Up Baby airing at 6/5 Central.  Cary Grant's like "Because I just went gay all of a sudden" couple with the jump in the air while he delivers it along with him wearing the fur trimmed ladies robe is comedy gold.

[Rinaldo]

Lassie, Come Home is on right now. I had forgotten it was in color (it occupies black-and-white territory in my confused memory). And what a wonderful movie that nobody need be ashamed to wipe away a few tears for. It's enchanting to see Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor so young, but I'm most particularly moved by seeing Dame May Whitty and Ben Webster in a kind of respite from the action as a lovely old couple who shelter Lassie in their isolated cottage for a while. It's partly because of who they are: Dame May was an eminent British stage actress who was already in her 70s when she moved from London to LA (encouraged by her daughter, the great Shakespearean director Margaret Webster, who wanted her parents away from the dangers in Europe right then), first to film her stage role in Night Must Fall, then in a series of roles as mothers to the stars. This was the only time she got to film with her husband Ben Webster (who despite an illustrious stage career didn't find a home on the Hollywood screen as she had), and it's so heartwarming to see them together. And they're both so good.

Edited January 12, 2018 by Rinaldo

[prican58]

Rinaldo, LCH is just such grand entertainment. I usually watch it with my 88 yr old mom and we always cry at the sentimental parts and Whitty's arc is glorious! I did not realize she was married to Webster. I need to catch up on my UK actors.

I love Donald Crisp but with Hollywood never quite knowing what to do with accented actors he was deemed to mostly play the various UK nationalities as doctors, politicians,farmers, etc. I do know of his behind the scenes career so Hollywood wasn't blind to his talents.  

And don't you just want to crash through the screen and wring J.Pat O'Malley's neck?

[Rinaldo]

18 hours ago, prican58 said:

Whitty's arc is glorious! I did not realize she was married to Webster. I need to catch up on my UK actors.

If you want to try with Whitty, I can enthusiastically recommend two substantial books of memoirs by her daughter Margaret whom I just mentioned -- a witty and lively writer, if perhaps a little eager to polish everything up into an anecdote (but aren't we all). The first, The Same Only Different, deals with the Webster acting family, going back four generations, and spending some time on an early-19th-c. actor-manager of note, but concentrating mostly on her parents -- starting out in touring "rep," which there was so much of in the UK in the decades around 1900, then finding some fame in London -- and her own young self (born while they were acting in the US, and hence holding dual citizenship), starting out as an actress in a scene very different from anything available today, and taking her up to her first big directing success, Maurice Evans in Richard II on Broadway. The other, Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage, carries on from there into the 1970s, including May's unexpected late-in-life metamorphosis into a Hollywood semi-star.

One coincidence she notes that I found amusing: during the 1950s she directed Tyrone Power in a program of one-act plays that toured at length but never managed to open on Broadway. They realized that their great-great-grandfathers, bearing the names Ben Webster and Tyrone Power, had acted together in England, and they figured that such a recurrence after 5 generations must be unique. (She writes about Power with great admiration by the way, both for his talent and for his personal qualities, calling him "one of the best men I have ever known.")

[voiceover]

Watching the premiere of Into the Wild, and since I know what happens, I'll probably take refuge in the watchlist on my TCM app & Pride & Prejudice.  In twenty minutes.

Taught the first chapter of this book, and Into Thin Air, to my writing classes: Here's the same writer's opening chapters, find the thematic thread and style choices, etc.  Jon Krakauer writes compelling stories about adventurous, doomed souls.  I guess I found this one harder to take, because Chris was such a young man, but one who simply should have known better.  What a waste; what a preventable end!

Pairing this with Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (also a gripping, hard-to-watch tale) would make for an easy poster tagline: "Man: Nature's Dumbass".

[mariah23]

Two for TCM Remembers:

Bradford Dillman died Tuesday at age 87.

Dorothy Malone died today at age 92.

[Crisopera]

Dorothy Malone was certainly terrific in her Oscar-winning role in Written on the Wind, but I'll always remember her best as the unexpectedly sexy bookstore clerk in The Big Sleep.

[Rinaldo]

Last night's Essential, The Band Wagon, is definitely near the pinnacle of movie musicals for me. Great Schwartz & Dietz songs, zippy "let's put on a show" premise, some fun lines from Comden & Green (as with their script for The Barkleys of Broadway, rather mischievously based on something in Fred Astaire's own life), and a delightful cast: Astaire himself (adapting to 50s styles expertly), Cyd Charisse at her most captivating, Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant being a fictional Comden & Green, and Jack Buchanan. With so much to enjoy, I can wave aside the "artistic ambition stinks, and those who have it are phonies" undertone of the first half, and enjoy the feast I'm given. I could watch "Dancing in the Dark" for hours.

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

...(as with their script for The Barkleys of Broadway, rather mischievously based on something in Fred Astaire's own life)...

Yes. You could even draw a connection between these two movies and a third Comden & Green (non-Astaire) one, Singin' in the Rain, in that all three are about adjusting to upheavals brought about by changes in show business.

As for Band Wagon, is there a basis in Astaire's résumé for the part about Jeffrey ("Jose Ferrer") Cordova? The Astaire-reference I know about is the shift away from "top hat, white tie and tails," but would be interested to learn whether he ever had a Cordova-like experience that was also being referenced.

[Rinaldo]

9 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

is there a basis in Astaire's résumé for the part about Jeffrey ("Jose Ferrer") Cordova?

No. The Astaire-adjacent part of the premise is simply the perception of him as belonging to an earlier era, no longer the box-office magic he once was. There's possibly a momentary reference from Astaire's career in his attitude toward the Charisse character, in his awareness that he would have to adapt his style to partner a ballet dancer, and his concern that she might be taller than he. But all the other bits are gathered from theater lore: the high-spirited songwriting pair (married to each other in the movie, which Comden & Green were not), the pretentious wonder boy of the stage -- C&G said José Ferrer, though Orson Welles would also fit, and he actually had had a fiasco masterminding an unwieldy musical -- and so on.

[Padma]

ITA about "The Band Wagon", one of my favorites. It's such a treat to see Jack Buchanan. He's the only Astaire partner who takes my eyes off Astaire.

However, I may be missing something, but I always laugh at their "big Broadway play" once its revised into a hit. How those dance numbers fit together into a plot is beyond me. Maybe I'm too caught up in enjoying them and miss the point? It's certainly better than a musical Faust, but never makes any sense as a musical within a musical.

Oh well, it's still great entertainment, beautifully directed and fun to see the supporting cast along with Astaire, mocking himself as a short, aging has-been--who's still a nice guy and an incredible talent.

[Milburn Stone]

10 hours ago, Padma said:

I may be missing something, but I always laugh at their "big Broadway play" once its revised into a hit. How those dance numbers fit together into a plot is beyond me. Maybe I'm too caught up in enjoying them and miss the point? It's certainly better than a musical Faust, but never makes any sense as a musical within a musical..

I don't think you're missing anything; in fact, I think you're getting the point, in that C&G + Minnelli want us to enjoy the illogic of it all. The numbers couldn't fit into any plot, they know it, we know it, and they know we know it. It's just another layer of fun, the comedic antidote to Cordovaness (all the while the numbers are terrifically enjoyable in their own right). In its way (but using a different conceit), it reminds me of how Busby Berkeley presented us with numbers that purported to be on the stage that couldn't possibly be on a stage. (Even cutting to audience reaction shots to make the absurdity inescapable, and to underline that the absurdity was intentional.) Many movie musicals presented us with "shows" in which the numbers, in one way or another, couldn't be part of a consistent whole; The Band Wagon just ratchets up the silliness so that it becomes satirical and self-referential. The final song ("That's Entertainment"), the only one written by Schwartz and Dietz for the movie, summarizes the ethos: If it entertains, it's good.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[Rinaldo]

Exactly so. Almost all stage musicals shown within a movie turn out to be plotless revues (whether they're explicitly described that way or not) so that there's no internal logic to worry about. This happens even in ostensibly serious movies: I remember going to see Valley of the Dolls with my college friends (all of us music students) and sharing our puzzlement afterwards that Helen Lawson's big show apparently ended with her singing a solo about planting a tree, after which she took a bow before the curtain fell.

There are few exceptions: One is an early Mitchell Leisen film, Murder at the Vanities, which is never shown. I've read that in it, a murder is solved backstage while the performance continues onstage, and Leisen took pride in having what we saw of the "Vanities" show maintain its own consistent continuity. (He conceded ruefully late in life, however, that this may have been wasted effort on his part, as it was the Berkeley extravaganzas, which openly ignored all such considerations, that were still being watched and enjoyed, and not his movie.)

[mariah23]

Another TCM Remembers: The oldest actress in Hollywood, Connie Sawyer, died at the age of 105.

 

Now I must get off my fanny, as per Ms. Sawyer’s advice to live a long life.

[voiceover]

It's that time!  An intriguingly scheduled mid-morning showing of The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg.  It was Ramon Novarro's best role, and one of my favorite silent movies.

(I read the TCM write-up.  It reminded me of my favorite of Esquire's "Dubious Achievement Awards"/ Category: "What would we do without Experts?"  Ignore it.)

It's a charming...then sweet...then bittersweet chapter from the life of a European royal.  First: a wistful, shy child, yanked away from his nanny and thrust among the antique men of his father's court.  His rescue comes with the arrival of his tutor (that Jean Hersholt, of the Humanitarian Oscar Hersholts), a jolly soul who's quick to suss that his young charge needs a lesson in "fun".

The boy embraces the teacher's joyful outlook, and grows into a fun-loving young man, thrilled to embrace the court-ordered journey to study in faraway Heidelberg.

The next sequence is pure Lubitsch: the meet-cute of Novarro's prince and Norma Shearer's innocent barmaid.  It wanders from her stammering a poetic greeting at the doorsteps of the inn, to proffering the cake she made herself, to demonstrating the bounciness of the down mattress in his bedroom, while our Hero does his best to avert his eyes.  Mostly.

Meanwhile, his classmates -- unaware of his real identity -- enfold him in their drunken fraternity rituals.  As he joins in a lusty folk song while raising a frothy stein, you can see in the prince's face: he's finally gained admission to the rest of humanity.

The courtship that follows is quick and intense, as young love always is.  And when bad news comes from the dusty court courier, the young man is quick to promise, he'll come back for his sweetheart.

But real life intrudes, even for a prince.  They do have a reunion! but it's necessarily brief.  As his carriage drives away, Novarro covers his face, and in that moment, we see the boy is forced to become a man.  And does. And it guts me so, I can never bear to watch the ending.  

It's his best work, period.  And Shearer is an unaffected delight.  

[ratgirlagogo]

38 minutes ago, voiceover said:

 The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg.  It was Ramon Novarro's best role, and one of my favorite silent movies.

I have always been fond of this movie - but your LOVE of it is  one of my favorite things about this board.  

[voiceover]

? ha!  It *is* rather my classic film binky.

Edited January 24, 2018 by voiceover

[Crisopera]

I'm not a fan of Shearer, but she's completely lovely and charming in this.  And Ramon Novarro is wonderful.  A really beautiful movie - I've often recommended it to people looking to watch a silent film (that and Sunrise) and they've inevitably loved it.

(I really didn't mean to "like" my own post, honestly.)

Edited January 28, 2018 by Crisopera

[Rinaldo]

Tonight we had Swing Time. All of Astaire & Rogers is wonderful, but this, for me, is the absolute peak. The only things I can find to say against it is that the story takes too long to get to the first song, and that it's the movie that contains Astaire's only blackface number. (On the other hand, each time I see it, I brace myself to endure and then discover all over again how terrific "Bojangles of Harlem" is choreographically and conceptually, as well as being a brilliant tribute to another of the greatest dancers ever.)

Beyond that, bliss. A sublime Kern/Fields score, perfectly wedded to the script. All kinds of intricate echoes and recalls: the special step she teaches him in the dancing lesson becomes the basis of the number they do together; "La belle, la perfectly swell romance"; "left without a penny / left without my Penny"; the repeated "there isn't going to be any dance" roadblock, culminating in the final realization "there isn't going to be any wedding" (because in this movie dancing together is marriage); and in the last moments, the realization that the two big ballads, "The Way You Look Tonight" and "A Fine Romance" fit together in counterpoint, when our two stars sing them that way. This is mastery.

In any other movie, the airborne "Waltz in Swing Time" would be the supreme dance moment. But this movie has "Never Gonna Dance," which ties all those threads together. But that isn't it either, because back in that first dance lesson we have "Pick Yourself Up" -- the peak of the whole series for me. Is there anything better?

[Charlie Baker]

From Vulture, an interesting, pretty spot on assessment of Gloria Grahame.  Though of necessity, it doesn't cover a performance of hers I love, the uncharacteristic, offbeat, quirky Ado Annie in Okllahoma!

Film Noir Icon

[voiceover]

6 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

it doesn't cover a performance of [Gloria Grahame's] I love, the uncharacteristic, offbeat, quirky Ado Annie in Oklahoma!

"Uncharacteristic", for sure, even though it was years before I found out how true that was.  Just like Stanwyck in Thorn Birds, I had to walk back my original impression of the actress.  It's a looooong hike from "Cain't Say No" to Lonely Place.

[Milburn Stone]

16 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

From Vulture, an interesting, pretty spot on assessment of Gloria Grahame.  Though of necessity, it doesn't cover a performance of hers I love, the uncharacteristic, offbeat, quirky Ado Annie in Okllahoma!

Film Noir Icon

I love her Ado Annie, too. And for me, there's one performance in another film that sort of provides a bridge between her film noir work and Ado Annie. That would be her turn in The Bad and the Beautiful. Her portrayal has some comedy to it, and her character has a roving eye like Ado Annie's. (Although things don't turn out so well this time.) I wonder if her BatB performance is what gave TPTB the idea to cast her in Oklahoma! in the first place. At the very least, the two performances exist in the same universe.

Edited February 3, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[Rinaldo]

I'm pleased to see how many people appreciate Gloria Grahame's Ado Annie... because I guess I'm one of the ones who don't. I saw this movie long before I knew anything else about her career, and she just seemed "off" to me, like a performance rather than a person. But my usual companion on theater excursions, with substantial acting and directing background, adores her in the role, which keeps me returning to it on the assumption that I'm missing something. I'll get there.

As TPTB getting ideas for casting, it's startling to learn how widely they cast their net for the leading roles:

Curly: Paul Newman and James Dean were thoroughly auditioned, while Zinnemann and Hammerstein hoped for Frank Sinatra. Robert Stack, Dale Robertson, and Vic Damone were among the contenders too.

Laurey: Apparently Joanne Woodward's audition impressed everyone. Also considered were Ann Blyth, Florence Henderson, Piper Laurie, and Mona Freeman.

Ado Annie: Mamie Van Doren (!) and Debbie Reynolds did screen tests.

Will: The boy dancers active in movies were seen -- Bobby Van and Bob Fosse. (Gene Nelson, of course, was another of those.)

Ali Hakim: As in the original production (Groucho Marx!), a wide range of types was considered -- Phil Silvers, Eli Wallach, Karl Malden, Danny Thomas, Ray Bolger.

Jud: Jason Robards, Lee Marvin, Neville Brand, and Murvyn Vye were seen. 

It's fun to imagine an "alternate universe" Oklahoma! with some of these choices, Bizarre as a Newman-Woodward pairing seems, it's not at all untypical of Hollywood casting, then or now (with their ability to sing the music being the last thing on anyone's mind). And Debbie Reynolds seems like almost the obvious choice, in that period, for Ado Annie. Lest we forget, Rod Steiger was about as unexpected a choice as you could imagine for an old-fashioned musical like this, and he worked out very well.

[Milburn Stone]

Wow! @Rinaldo, is there one source out there with this OK behind-the-scenes casting info? Or did you acquire it over the years from a number of sources? In any case, fascinating. I love knowing it.

You can easily imagine that if they had cast Debbie as Ado (and of course she would have been fine), and then later you read somewhere that they were thinking of Gloria Grahame, you'd say "Gloria Grahame!!?!? What were they thinking?!?? We sure dodged a bullet with that one!" (Kind of like reading that Ronald Reagan almost played Rick.) And yet, it's exactly the opposite, at least for those of us who love GG in the role. Not casting Debbie Reynolds was the bullet dodged.

[Charlie Baker]

According to IMDB, I think, and a biography, GG's vocals had to be pieced together in the studio.  Ms. Reynolds wouldn't have needed that help.  But she really does read as the obvious choice.

Ann Blyth was more established than Florence Henderson and Shirley Jones, both of them very early in their careers, no?  And Ms. B. could have sung it.  

Newman and Dean would have made for a brooding type Curly.  Damone and Sinatra certainly would have done well by the music, but not the role.

I think Gordon McRae and Ms. J. were just right.

[Rinaldo]

@Milburn Stone, my only hesitation in giving you my source is that you'll see I just lifted it all from one page! But fair is fair, and here it is, from the Academy Awards site. I do think I've seen much of it elsewhere, as in Tim Carter's excellent book about the creation of the show, but here it is in convenient form.

Clearly they were hoping, as producers so often did (and do), that an established actor might be up to the music, and at the same time do something revelatory with acting the role (and bring in their loyal audience along). And though we're clear from our vantage point about what a Newman or Dean signifies, at that date they were just two more up-and-coming young actors (Newman, as the article notes, being known mostly from TV at this point) with their personas not yet formed. Shirley Jones was indeed just starting out, with mostly replacement and chorus work onstage to her credit, while Henderson had done some musical leads, and to Broadway fans at that moment must have seemed like the ideal choice.

I imagine their choice of Grahame for Ado Annie, rather than someone like Reynolds, also meant that they would look for someone just slightly older and more established than boys like Van and Fosse -- Nelson had been doing leads in movies for a few years -- so that the pair would match up onscreen.

[Crisopera]

Going back a bit to the Marlene Dietrich discussion, my favorite of her movies, Shanghai Express, is showing on TCM this Sunday at 9AM.  "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily."  A veritable riot of spectacular photography and veils...lots and lots of veils.  A true pre-Code beauty.

[mariah23]

A TCM Remembers: John Gavin, who played Sam Loomis in Psycho, died this morning at age 86.

[voiceover]

A Room With a View: in my post-1980s, Top 5, no question.  And not only because that smooch in the field between Julian Sands & Helena Bonham-Carter: Top 5 Movie Kisses.

I even love Daniel Day-Lewis, Almost unrecognizable as the twerpy Cecil ("Lucy!  Three split infinitives!!").  Though it's a testament to the actor that you feel a bit sorry when he gets dumped.  Because he handles it with grace.

On 2/8/2018 at 7:48 AM, Crisopera said:

Going back a bit to the Marlene Dietrich discussion, my favorite of her movies, Shanghai Express, is showing on TCM this Sunday at 9AM.  "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily."  A veritable riot of spectacular photography and veils...lots and lots of veils.  A true pre-Code beauty.

Agreed.  Also love this for Anna May Wong, who simply makes any scene she's in, sexier.

[elle]

4 hours ago, mariah23 said:

A TCM Remembers: John Gavin, who played Sam Loomis in Psycho, died this morning at age 86.

I just read about this.  He had a very interesting life.  I enjoy his role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, one he appreciated for the humor of the parody of previous roles.

 "This is a square, square guy so I told them it would be such type casting that they just couldn't get anyone else but me", said Gavin. Gavin read for director George Roy Hill and was cast. "I told Ross I'm playing a parody of every part I've had in a Ross Hunter picture", said Gavin.

[ratgirlagogo]

21 hours ago, voiceover said:

Agreed.  Also love this for Anna May Wong, who simply makes any scene she's in, sexier.

Plus one, especially for Anna May Wong.  

Edited February 11, 2018 by ratgirlagogo

[voiceover]

You know, I love Luise Rainer; I think she was an amazing actress; but I struggle every time to make it through Good Earth.

It could've, and should've, been Anna as O-Lan.

[Crisopera]

This is probably a bit controversial in old-movie-buff circles, but, frankly, I can't stand Luise Rainer.  She may be fantastic in German-language films, but I find her so coy and cloying in her Hollywood movies that i want to throttle her.  (I have never seen The Good Earth, so can't judge her in that.)  But her phone call scene in The Great Ziegfeld, which won her the Oscar over the likes of irene Dunne and Carole Lombard,  just annoys the shit out of me.  Admittedly, her other Hollywood movies are terrible (even William Powell can't salvage The Emperor's Candlesticks), but she acts upon me like multiple mosquito bites.

[ratgirlagogo]

9 hours ago, Crisopera said:

But her phone call scene in The Great Ziegfeld

I love the phone call and it always makes me cry in exactly the cornball way the film intended. At this point I don't care who won the fucking Oscar, THAT was a great old school tearjerker performance, unsurpassed.    And PCness aside though I have my own ideas about who should have played O-Lan (SPOILERS clearly expressed above) I like her in The Good Earth.  But other than those two thing there's The Great Waltz, and.....well as we all know she quit the business.  I admire her for that frankly.

[Charlie Baker]

Was able to dip into some of the 31 Days of Oscar.  Good to revisit Cabaret for the first time in a good long while. It holds up beautifully.  Of course Minnelli and Grey are terrific but Michael York probably didn't get enough credit for securely holding his own in their company.  And the category format this year gave a feast of foreign language films yesterday,  Caught My Night at Maud's, and Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (peak Loren and Mastroianni), and the chance to see the wonderful Babette's Feast again awaits me on the DVR.  

What a haven TCM is. Of course we all know that. 

[voiceover]

9 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

Michael York [in Cabaret] probably didn't get enough credit for securely holding his own in their company.  

That goodbye scene with Liza ("...I'd love to come down to the platform and wave a tiny white handkerchief, et cetera...") is as gutting as any in film, and York manages it mostly with his eyes.

[voiceover]

Not that I'm ungrateful for the TCM app, but I'd like to note here that they've been a disappointing tease as re: movie availability, should you miss the live broadcast and be -- you know -- sans dvr.

My completely shot-in-the-dark, non-mathematical guesstimation: at least 20% of their playlist is unavailable on their app.  Anything post-1995, doesn't surprise me, but dammit!  Cactus Flower, which I adore and will now be forced to purchase = NOT PLAYING.

And so I won't get to hear Rick Lenz's Igor say to Goldie Hawn: "Toni, you're a kook.  But you're a nice kook."  And I won't get to hang on every moment of Ingrid Bergman's stellar performance of a Woman of a Certain Age.  And I won't get to soak in the apartment porn I've been trying to duplicate off of Etsy.

Crap. 

[Inquisitionist]

On ‎2‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 10:47 AM, Charlie Baker said:

Was able to dip into some of the 31 Days of Oscar.  Good to revisit Cabaret for the first time in a good long while. It holds up beautifully. 

Damn, sorry I missed this.  I just saw a terrific stage production of Cabaret and hadn't realized how much the storyline and characters were changed for the film (which I haven't seen in quite a while).  I also hadn't known that some songs written directly for the film later made their way into stage productions (Money, Money and Mein Herr).  I'm now reading Goodbye, Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.  Minnelli's Sally Bowles isn't really much like the character he knew and wrote about, but she sure made an impression!

Edited February 26, 2018 by Inquisitionist

[Rinaldo]

3 hours ago, Inquisitionist said:

I just saw a terrific stage production of Cabaret and hadn't realized how much the storyline and characters were changed for the film (which I haven't seen in quite a while).

It was, but don't assume that what you saw onstage is the Cabaret that Kander & Ebb & Masteroff wrote. The British production which has now been both produced and "revived" on Broadway, and distributed on tour and in local productions, made many changes in the material to make it more "edgy." I would call it a rewriting rather than a production, in fact, and I'm not a fan. It's true, though, that the songs you mention have been taken from the film and inserted into subsequent stage productions.

The version of this material that I'd like to see is I Am a Camera. The play of that title was written by John Van Druten and starred Julie Harris, who re-created her Sally Bowles for film. Laurence Harvey played Christopher Isherwood (and yes, they used his real name in this version), and Shelley Winters was Natalia Landauer. The film was denied the approval of the Production Code because of Sally's behavior without sufficient punishment, and so did not achieve a wide release. Apparently it got a VHS release, but I've never seen it, and I can't recall TCM ever showing it. I'd like to check it out for myself.

[Inquisitionist]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

It was, but don't assume that what you saw onstage is the Cabaret that Kander & Ebb & Masteroff wrote. The British production which has now been both produced and "revived" on Broadway, and distributed on tour and in local productions, made many changes in the material to make it more "edgy." I would call it a rewriting rather than a production, in fact, and I'm not a fan. It's true, though, that the songs you mention have been taken from the film and inserted into subsequent stage productions.

The version of this material that I'd like to see is I Am a Camera. The play of that title was written by John Van Druten and starred Julie Harris, who re-created her Sally Bowles for film. Laurence Harvey played Christopher Isherwood (and yes, they used his real name in this version), and Shelley Winters was Natalia Landauer. The film was denied the approval of the Production Code because of Sally's behavior without sufficient punishment, and so did not achieve a wide release. Apparently it got a VHS release, but I've never seen it, and I can't recall TCM ever showing it. I'd like to check it out for myself.

 

Thanks.  I did some research after seeing the show on Saturday and was aware of all this.  But I am a fan of the changes.  I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut -- in a good way.   ;-)

The film I Am a Camera doesn't seem to have been very well received, but I'm going to keep an eye out for it as well.  Interesting that a character in a short story has inspired so many interpretations. 

[Milburn Stone]

Got an email from Filmstruck (the streaming joint venture between TCM and Criterion) that says "This week we are introducing TCM Select, a constantly refreshed, curated collection of iconic films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, supplemented with exclusive introductions and rare archival content from TCM, as well as other bonus materials." It sounds like it could bring Filmstruck a little closer to what I've hoped it would be all along. (Although the first crop under their TCM Select banner includes several films that already were on Filmstruck, just not gathered together into that particular "basket." So it remains to be seen just how much of an improvement this is.)

Edited February 26, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[voiceover]

I saw the "refreshed" Cabaret when Teri Hatcher (much better than I'd expected) and Norbert Leo Butz* (fascinating as the Emcee) came through D. C.   The film's ending is first sad & emotional (Brian and Sally at the station), then... uncomfortable (the scowling Nazi reflected in the funhouse mirror).  The stage musical's new ending was shocking.

I will say that the two "Sally solos" hold practically an equal place in my heart, and a fine argument could be made for retaining "Don't Tell Mama" (a bawdy, Mae West-joke of a number) over "Mein Herr" (a definition of Sally as she pretended to be, and was, a bit) in the stage version.  I say this because I identify the latter so strongly with Liza's performance, that I can't hear anyone else singing it.

* Butz is a tremendous stage performer but ohthatname!  It's like it fell out of the supporting cast list of a 30s screwball comedy.

[Rinaldo]

I saw Cat Ballou for what must have been the first time since seeing it in a theater, when it was brand new, all those umpty-ump years ago. I was a little fearful, as I enjoyed it a lot back then; and tastes in humor, not to mention sensitivities to treatment of various groups, have changed a lot since then, both in general and in me. 

But I still enjoy it plenty, I find, and I'm not even going to feel guilty about it. The three younger guys -- Michael Callan (original Riff in WSS!), Dwayne Hickman (Dobie Gillis!), and Tom Nardini (otherwise unknown to me, and I wish it were otherwise) -- all verge on self-consciously cute mugging, but they're so genuinely affable and such good company, I can't fuss about it. You can see Jane Fonda perfecting the comic persona that would serve her so well in Barefoot in the Park and Barbarella: her incredulousness at how naughty the world can be, followed by her delight in that very fact. Lee Marvin's playing of his double role needs no praise from me, as he took home an award for it. But I found the sight and sound of Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole as the narrating balladeers almost unbearably moving: they're so good and they belong so much to the past now (Cole in fact died before the movie's release).

Whether it was the first comedy Western I neither know nor care, though it had the sense to make the emotional stakes real and important (something many spoofs forget). But I'm glad to find that I still like it a lot.

[ratgirlagogo]

2 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Lee Marvin's playing of his double role needs no praise from me, as he took home an award for it

Although even Marvin himself acknowledged the contribution of his acting partner - the opening line of his acceptance speech was "Half of this probably belongs to a horse out in the Valley somewhere."  Geez! he had a NAME! Smokey! and he won a PATSY for this film!  

https://trueclassics.net/2012/05/27/the-ballad-of-cat-ballou/

From the above link:

Quote

And let’s just talk about that horse. The movie–as per any Western–is overrun with horses. But this one is just something else. In one of the final scenes of the film, Shelleen and his horse sleep off a bender. Leaning against a brick wall, head lowered, front legs crossed, the horse looks just as inebriated as his barely-coherent rider. It’s an iconic, hilarious image, and the one that is perhaps most associated with Cat Ballou. Marvin’s Oscar acceptance speech may have poked fun at the amount of attention the horse received, but the animal was an award-winning “actor” in his own right: in 1966, Smoky the horse received the Craven Award from the American Humane Association. The award, part of the annual PATSY (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year) Awards that were given to animal stars from the 1950s through the mid-1980s, recognized animal performers who were not regular “actors” in film. Smoky joined a long line of horsey winners when he was given the prize for his role in Cat Ballou. But the horse’s performance was far from effortless. According to the IMDb entry on the film, the director, Elliot Silverstein, gave the horse trainer an hour to get Smoky to cross his legs for his big scene, and it took a lot of sugar cubes to make the horse finally willing to cooperate!

Edited February 27, 2018 by ratgirlagogo

[prican58]

I have seen Callan in some 60s film where he was supposed to be a dancer. I remember thinking that they would use a dance double for him and then he went all Gene Kelly on me! I had no idea he was musically inclined and I've seen a lot of him over the years. The WSS angle really threw me.

I remember seeing Nardini in many tv shows back in the 70s.

[Rinaldo]

Dance doubles really began with Flashdance and thereabouts. Before that, though singing doubles were freely used (West Side Story is the poster child for that, in fact) and of course stunt doubles for dangerous physical stuff, people did their own dancing, for better or worse.

But yes, Callan (or Mickey Calin was he was in WSS) actually led with that skill, apparently to the satisfaction of the brutally demanding Jerome Robbins. I'll have to figure out which 60s film that was, and track it down. I've actually never seen him dance. But there a number of fabulous dancers who are glad to get regular acting work on TV (think Bebe Neuwirth, Kelly Bishop) and their audience never knows what else they do.

[Silver Raven]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

Dance doubles really began with Flashdance and thereabouts. Before that, though singing doubles were freely used (West Side Story is the poster child for that, in fact) and of course stunt doubles for dangerous physical stuff, people did their own dancing, for better or worse.

But yes, Callan (or Mickey Calin was he was in WSS) actually led with that skill, apparently to the satisfaction of the brutally demanding Jerome Robbins. I'll have to figure out which 60s film that was, and track it down. I've actually never seen him dance. But there a number of fabulous dancers who are glad to get regular acting work on TV (think Bebe Neuwirth, Kelly Bishop) and their audience never knows what else they do.

Well, there's the mambo in Gidget Goes Hawaiian ...

somebody in the comments said that he's their grandfather

 

(

[voiceover]

Quote

gave the horse trainer an hour to get Smoky to cross his legs for his big scene, and it took a lot of sugar cubes to make the horse finally willing to cooperate!

Thankyouthankyouthankyou, @ratgirlagogo, for that story, which I loved.

I wonder if the same trainer helped out with Alex Karras's horse-smacking duties in Blazing Saddles.

Michael Callan will always be the "Shoulda picked him!" guy from Gidget Goes Hawaiian... #moondoggiesux