TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[EtheltoTillie]

I didn't place him as Blifil.  Thanks, @Rinaldo.  In retrospect it seems like Daniel Day-Lewis was channeling this performance for Cecil Vyse in At Room With a View. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by EtheltoTillie

[Tom Holmberg]

On 7/26/2022 at 3:10 PM, voiceover said:

Can’t believe you left out The Monkees.

Sad news about David Warner!  Those who only know him from that smarter-than-his-boss role in Titanic should definitely check out his chilling Jack the Ripper opposite Malcolm McDowell’s HG Wells in Time After Time.

Or the Devil in Time Bandits.

[Charlie Baker]

It's too bad that this week's Noir Alley isn't on Watch TCM.  The film proper is the quite good Raw Deal, from small distributor Eagle Lion.  It's spectacularly photographed for such a modest movie, has a memorably nasty villain in Raymond Burr, among other strengths.  Though a sequence of the story we are led to believe happens after midnight was clearly shot in broad daylight.  Then after came a short written and directed by Noir Alley's own E. Muller, The Grand Inquisitor, starring one of Raw Deal's two excellent female leads, Marsha Hunt, who was then in her 90s.  (The other female star of RD was Claire Trevor.) There was a tech goof on TCM's end--the short started immediately after the fade out of Raw Deal, then after it we get Eddie's outro telling us to stay tuned for the short.   And now we start Summer under the Stars, so no more Noir Alley for a month. 

[Tom Holmberg]

TCM runs "The Bedford Incident" on Weds.  This is a sort of forgotten entry in the "Failsafe" and "Dr. Strangelove" genre. I always think this movie couldn't be made today, because of the way Capt. Findlander is presented.

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 8/1/2022 at 9:52 AM, Charlie Baker said:

There was a tech goof on TCM's end--the short started immediately after the fade out of Raw Deal, then after it we get Eddie's outro telling us to stay tuned for the short. 

They need to talk to whoever's manning the switches at TCM these days.  In addition to this, on Sunday night's TCM Imports, they played Alicia Malone's introduction to Chronicle of a Summer before and after the movie.

[Rinaldo]

On 8/3/2022 at 2:42 AM, patriciahelenkit said:

"switches"?

it's done automatically now.

The automation still has to be set up by someone, and on (rare) occasion it's not done right. I've previously mentioned here an instance of a movie being aired with the audio description turned on, or accidentally stretched out of 4:3 ratio. (And that's leaving aside the matter of airing movies in a pan-and-scan print, which might be a matter of available materials, though still a disturbing one.) Admittedly, these are a very few incidents over a period of a decade or so; but it's still hard to understand how they happen at all. I'm always reminded of the classic Nichols and May sketch, in which a man in a phone booth, having had his last dime taken by the phone, begs the operator not to disconnect him as she puts him on hold: "You won't jostle anything with your elbows, will you?" ("We do not use our elbows, sir.") When I see a TCM glitch like these, I always picture someone jostling something with their elbows.

[StatisticalOutlier]

7 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I've previously mentioned here an instance of a movie being aired with the audio description turned on

Lately, when I watch America's Funniest Home Videos on the over-the-air channel, the audio description is turned on and I have no way to control it.  I actually can't watch the show because it's too annoying ("girl in bathing suit swings on a rope over water").

It happened in a theater, too, at the French documentary The Truffle Hunters.  I kept hearing this talking and would turn around to death-glare whoever was talking, but I was the only one in the theater.  I thought I was losing my mind.  Plus, it was subtitled, so the audio description was almost entirely just reading the subtitles, at a volume you could hear but not really understand.  I grabbed an employee and she said sorry, they can't control that.  Argh.

However, I am happy to report that after a couple of months, my captions are back on on TCM.  I had actually quit watching because I can't understand dialogue without them, and then the other night I was seeing if I could understand Eddie Mueller's introduction to that night's film noir and suddenly grokked:  I see captions!

I did an online chat with DirecTV about the missing captions when they first disappeared (they were on on every other channel, but disappeared from TCM), and "Peter" assured me they would be back on within a week.  Then again, one of the questions he asked was, "Are you experiencing a natural or personal disaster?" so I'm not sure he was the right person for the job.  And sure enough, they didn't come back on

I found out that Dish subscribers lose TCM captions sometimes, but they have a setting they can change to get them back; apparently TCM sometimes starts sending the captions out as the wrong "type" or something.  But I don't have that setting.

I emailed DirecTV's caption department (I wonder if captions warrant special attention because of the ADA) and actually got a reply, but still no captions, and when I followed up, they said I needed to upgrade my equipment.  But that's what they always say.  I'm still using standard definition (not HD) equipment and an HD dish won't work for my setup, so I'm just letting them whittle away at what channels I get until they turn off SD completely, which was supposed to happen like two years ago and still hasn't.  So I assumed TCM captions were just part of the carnage, and I unhappily gave up watching any movies on TCM that were in English.

And then out of nowhere, bing!  Captions.  I was willing to forgo TCM over this and I guess when it became clear I meant business, the gods took me seriously and stopped my suffering.  Just in time for Noir Alley to take a break, but I'm not complaining.

[Charlie Baker]

A not particularly short  article--hey, it's the New Yorker--but a worthwhile one on Ernst Lubitsch.

He Made the Hollywood Comedy Sublime

[Rinaldo]

55 minutes ago, Charlie Baker said:

A not particularly short  article--hey, it's the New Yorker--but a worthwhile one on Ernst Lubitsch.

He Made the Hollywood Comedy Sublime

Do our TCM-followers here agree with the writer's thesis, that Lubitsch is being forgotten  or devalued these days in favor of Billy Wilder? I was a tad surprised by it.

Admittedly my own bias is much in favor of Lubitsch, and that will color my reaction, but my own conversations about movies with like-minded friends tilts that same way. I'm not out to bash Wilder here -- Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard are immortal -- though I'm not as big a fan of some of his other "classic" titles as others are. But my real point is just to ask what others here think about this idea.

[Charlie Baker]

I don't doubt there are film buffs or scholars that value Wilder more highly than Lubitsch, but just how extensive those sentiments are--I have no data.  Whether it be because of longevity, or variety, or questions of "substance," I don't know. And I suspect Lubitsch has a somewhat broader appeal for classic film lovers than just to the academics Alex Ross posits.   I love the work of both.  I like the article's generalizing Lubitsch as "whimsical" and Wilder as "savage" and that their collaboration on Ninotchka represents a fine melding of their sensibilities. 

[Suzn]

I don't know any way to put values on Lubitsch and Wilder than by the values I put on their movies.  On Lubitsch's side, Ninotchka is a very, very good movie; I like Trouble in Paradise and Design For Living a lot.  For Wilder, I consider Sunset Boulevard a truly great movie and Witness For the Prosecution is excellent; on the other hand, I dislike  a couple of highly acclaimed ones - Some Like It Hot and The Apartment.  I have to give the edge to Wilder for a number of movies that hold up so well.  I can enjoy Lubitsch movies but at the same time find them very dated.

[EtheltoTillie]

I have favorite Wilder movies:  The Major and the Minor, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, and The Apartment, and these are all major achievements in my opinion.  They are favorite movies, not just favorite Wilder movies.  I am in the unpopular opinion category in disliking Some Like It Hot.  I also like Witness For the Prosecution a lot.

I like the Lubitsch movies, but not as much as I admire the Wilder movies. 

Edited August 12, 2022 by EtheltoTillie

[Charlie Baker]

Vulture offers a list of the Marx Brothers movies:

Marx Brothers in the Order You Should Watch Them 

[kristen111]

On 5/1/2022 at 10:21 PM, seasons said:

Oh, thanks, I did miss that part. Thanks very much.

New here .. never knew it was here.  TCM is the first thing I put on as I’m reading the papers in the morning.  I have “How to Marry a Millionaire” on my DVR.  Also “A Letter to Three Wives”  “Death on the Nile”, my favorite and “Saratoga Trunk” where I think Ingrid Bergman did her best with Gary Cooper.  Also “The Lady Eve” with Barbara Stanwick.  Just wish they would go in the vault and put some other movies on, but I get about the “rights”.  I could watch TCM all day long.  Recently, I taped “Lady on a Train” with Diana Durban.  She was a knockout singing “Give me a Little Kiss”.  She opted marriage and kids instead of movies. Love this channel.  I read up every first of the month to set up my DVR.  P.S.  Wish they would include all Sherlock Holmes movies.  Why don’t they?  I love all black n whites.  Oh, and “The Merry Widow” with Lana Turner & Fernando Lamas.  The most beautiful dance to the song I have ever seen.  They are both gorgeous.

Edited August 14, 2022 by kristen111

[SomeTameGazelle]

45 minutes ago, kristen111 said:

Oh, and “The Merry Widow” with Lana Turner & Fernando Lamas.  The most beautiful dance to the song I have ever seen.  They are both gorgeous.

I watched a couple of Jane Powell musicals I had never seen before this week and Fernando Lamas was in Rich, Young, and Pretty. I can't say I hated it (although I wasn't able to muster any amusement at their attempt to lampshade Vic Damone's far from French accent) but it was rather flat and I kept thinking it could have been made more interesting. Hit the Deck was slightly more fun. I had not been familiar with Tony Martin but thought his singing quite beautiful. (When I looked him up I discovered he was Cyd Charisse's husband for many years.) I also enjoyed Russ Tamblyn's acrobatics -- his bit with Debbie Reynolds in the Devil's Funhouse entertained me as they seemed to delight in using the various moving sidewalks and things. I also didn't know of Kay Armen but I liked her singing as well. Ann Miller's first number and the plot point that she resented being strung along without being married reminded me of Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

[kristen111]

9 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

I watched a couple of Jane Powell musicals I had never seen before this week and Fernando Lamas was in Rich, Young, and Pretty. I can't say I hated it (although I wasn't able to muster any amusement at their attempt to lampshade Vic Damone's far from French accent) but it was rather flat and I kept thinking it could have been made more interesting. Hit the Deck was slightly more fun. I had not been familiar with Tony Martin but thought his singing quite beautiful. (When I looked him up I discovered he was Cyd Charisse's husband for many years.) I also enjoyed Russ Tamblyn's acrobatics -- his bit with Debbie Reynolds in the Devil's Funhouse entertained me as they seemed to delight in using the various moving sidewalks and things. I also didn't know of Kay Armen but I liked her singing as well. Ann Miller's first number and the plot point that she resented being strung along without being married reminded me of Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

Yes, I was watching this week also.  I saw a few movies I’ve never seen before.  I also love the Tito Puente movies and the costumes.  They are gold.

[Rinaldo]

21 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

Hit the Deck was slightly more fun... I also didn't know of Kay Armen but I liked her singing as well. Ann Miller's first number and the plot point that she resented being strung along without being married reminded me of Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

Hit the Deck is interesting to me in part for its pedigree; It derives from the 1927 Vincent Youmans stage musical of the same name (not much remembered or revived), which in turn was based on the play Shore Leave, the ancestor of all the servicemen-on-shore-leave musicals (e.g. Follow the Fleet, On the Town). Though made by MGM in the mid-50s, the heyday of big musicals from the "Arthur Freed unit," it had different producers and (to me) a rather different feel, suddenly abandoning all realism for the finale and just presenting the stars one by one on a studio set, as if this was a TV variety special.

When I first saw some of this movie (that finale, in fact), in That's Entertainment, I assumed that Kay Armen must be one of the big singing stars of the past whom I had somehow never heard of before. But no, she was a singer-songwriter popular on the radio for whom this was her first, and essentially only, movie. I also assumed that Tony Martin and Vic Damone must be roughly equivalent figures, Italian-American pop singers recruited to the movies in hopes of finding "the next Sinatra." Wrong again! Tony Martin had been in movies since the 1930s (a bit in Follow the Fleet, in fact), and of Jewish family, while Damone was active enough in the movies that acting was a substantial part of his career. At least I knew who Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds, and Ann Miller were.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Rinaldo

[Milburn Stone]

On 8/10/2022 at 8:10 PM, Rinaldo said:

Do our TCM-followers here agree with the writer's thesis, that Lubitsch is being forgotten  or devalued these days in favor of Billy Wilder? I was a tad surprised by it.

I think there is truth in this. Not among film buffs, but in the wider audience of film lovers. Wilder simply has more "name recognition." Ask random film fanciers if they know the names Wilder and Lubitsch, and more will answer yes to Wilder. Further, even among those who know both names, more will be able to list more Wilder films than Lubitsch. A big part of this is simply that Wilder lived and continued to make movies into a later period than Lubitsch did. Memories are short, and it's easier to remember the work of someone who continued to work into the mid-70s than someone whose last film was in 1948. (And most of whose body of work was in silent film, in a language other than English.)

[Milburn Stone]

12 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

Hit the Deck was slightly more fun. I had not been familiar with Tony Martin but thought his singing quite beautiful. (When I looked him up I discovered he was Cyd Charisse's husband for many years.) I also enjoyed Russ Tamblyn's acrobatics -- his bit with Debbie Reynolds in the Devil's Funhouse entertained me as they seemed to delight in using the various moving sidewalks and things. I also didn't know of Kay Armen but I liked her singing as well. Ann Miller's first number and the plot point that she resented being strung along without being married reminded me of Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

You've made me want to see this movie (finally). Heretofore, I've only made it to the opening scene of Tony Martin in the Arctic, and was immediately bored. (Of course I've seen the big "Hallelujah" number in one of the That's Entertainments, but even that wasn't enough of an inducement for me to make it out of the Arctic.) I will catch it on Watch TCM.

[Crashcourse]

My favorite Lubitsch movie is The Shop Around the Corner.  Even though they've shown it recently, I enjoy watching it every Christmas. 

[SomeTameGazelle]

11 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

You've made me want to see this movie (finally). Heretofore, I've only made it to the opening scene of Tony Martin in the Arctic, and was immediately bored. (Of course I've seen the big "Hallelujah" number in one of the That's Entertainments, but even that wasn't enough of an inducement for me to make it out of the Arctic.) I will catch it on Watch TCM.

The opening is dull and confusing. The only thing I enjoyed before the first rendition of Hallelujah was the sailor who had failed in the first attempt at baking the cake (I thought he was very familiar -- turned out he was Alfred from Miracle on 34th St). I can't give it an unqualified recommendation but some numbers are worth seeing.

12 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

suddenly abandoning all realism for the finale and just presenting the stars one by one on a studio set, as if this was a TV variety special.

I had not remembered seeing this number in That's Entertainment. When it started I assumed it must be a wedding scene until they revealed Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds in their gold dresses. I loved Anne Miller's version of the dress with the seafoam crinoline.

12 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

the ancestor of all the servicemen-on-shore-leave musicals (e.g. Follow the Fleet, On the Town).

I remember nothing about Follow the Fleet so I am going to record it on Monday to refresh my memory. On the Town has been one of my favourites for years and I feel the need to watch it again now to confirm that its story is indeed more coherent than that of Hit the Deck. Certainly centering the plot around Gabe searching for Miss Turnstiles and keeping the other romances as b-plots helped.

Update: The plot of On the Town is pretty tight and I don't think that's just my bias. Gabe's search for Ivy is the A plot with a couple of dream ballets. Hildy and Chip are the B plot. Claire and Ozzie are really C at best. (Apparently in the original stage show Claire had a plot with a fiancé which is cut here.) 

Edited August 15, 2022 by SomeTameGazelle
Rewatched On the Town

[voiceover]

Late to the Lubitsch v Wilder salon, but here’s my metric ton of two cents:

No surprise to OG readers here — who’ve heard me bore on for ages about The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg —  I’m Team Lubitsch, and it’s not even close. Three of his films are in my All-time 40 (Student Prince…, Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka), and none of Wilder’s crack my Top 100 (though I like his Stalag 17, bc it was one of my dad’s favorites, and I can recommend Seven Graves to Cairo as a terrific little espionage thriller).  I’d agree with @Milburn Stone about Wilder getting the nod because of career length.

I loved Roger Ebert’s take on the “Lubitsch Touch”: how the characters in his films understand that “life cannot be played indefinitely for laughs”.  Andrew Sarris defined it as sadness during the film’s happiest moments.  Prince features a realistic fairytale tear-down (I often just stop watching when Ramon Novarro rides away), and even though it makes sense for Herbert Marshall’s Gaston to leave Kay Francis’s Mariette — and they even joke about it — you can’t help but think: Damn.  

[Milburn Stone]

18 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

I can't give [Hit the Deck] an unqualified recommendation but some numbers are worth seeing.

Last night I FF'ed through it, stopping at the numbers, and I agree with your assessment, with the proviso that by "some" I mean two. Maybe two-and-a-half. I did kind of like the first "Hallelujah" but was embarrassed for the black gospel quartet who came out of the kitchen just to perform their borderline-minstrelsy before marching right back in. For a movie as late as 1955 this was sadly retrograde. Might have expected to see this racialism in a musical of the 30s, but by '55, no. Tone-deaf before that meaning of tone-deaf was even invented.

But the movie's "Hallelujah" finale was exhilarating in its borderline-insane way. What's the story behind Kay Armen? Was she a "legit" singer, the kind of "legit" that Joe Pasternak loved to insert (Jose Iturbi, Lauritz Melchior, et. al.)?

The other number accounting for a full-digit in my two-and-a-half was the funhouse-in-hell dance routine by Debbie Reynolds and Russ Tamblyn. Now that was genuinely inventive (not the funhouse setting per se, but the way they exploited the setting for some truly stunning choreography); it didn't belong in the movie because it was so much better--and not in the least campy, just purely ingenious--than everything else in it.

Thanks for prompting me to take a look at Hit the Deck, @SomeTameGazelle. It was well worth it for the two-and-a-half.

[Suzn]

10 hours ago, voiceover said:

and even though it makes sense for Herbert Marshall’s Gaston to leave Kay Francis’s Mariette — and they even joke about it — you can’t help but think: Damn.  

Oh, yes, I guess it made sense but that was painful.

4 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

Last night I FF'ed through it, stopping at the numbers, and I agree with your assessment, with the proviso that by "some" I mean two.

Usually no matter how lame the rest of the movie is, the musical numbers are worth watching.  Not this one.  It was l00% lame start to finish.

[SomeTameGazelle]

8 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

But the movie's "Hallelujah" finale was exhilarating in its borderline-insane way. What's the story behind Kay Armen? Was she a "legit" singer, the kind of "legit" that Joe Pasternak loved to insert (Jose Iturbi, Lauritz Melchior, et. al.)?

I was not familiar with her at all but apparently she was a singer and composer, and her cousin wrote Come On-a My House for her to perform (although why it was then forced on Rosemary Clooney I don't know. Maybe she just sang the demo?). 

8 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

it didn't belong in the movie because it was so much better-

Glad you found something to enjoy. In addition I rather liked "Ciribiribin", the music and arrangement for "Why oh Why" as well -- and I have to admit I liked the concept of Bill taking the male singer's part in Ginger's first number. But none of it hung together especially well so I can't say that anything belonged anywhere really. 

[Rinaldo]

On 8/15/2022 at 8:31 AM, Milburn Stone said:

What's the story behind Kay Armen? Was she a "legit" singer, the kind of "legit" that Joe Pasternak loved to insert (Jose Iturbi, Lauritz Melchior, et. al.)?

No -- she worked in nightclubs and had a weekly 15-minute radio show, as so many did back in the 1940s -- but I can see why you'd ask that; it was sort of what I wondered when that finale was included in That's Entertainment. And it was only increased by interpolating the long-known "Ciribiribin" as her specialty. She seemed to come off as a "poor man's Kate Smith," if that name still means anything to anyone.

[kristen111]

I especially loved “Flying Down to Rio”.  The dance scene with the many dancers I think was Otto Preminger’s best masterpiece, or I think it was his or his inspiration for making movies.  I forgot which.

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 8/14/2022 at 1:32 PM, SomeTameGazelle said:

I remember nothing about Follow the Fleet so I am going to record it on Monday to refresh my memory.

Watched Follow the Fleet. I know Harriet Nelson only by name so I was surprised to discover that was her playing Connie. My favourite performance is probably "Let Yourself Go"; the rhythm is sublime. There's not much of a really romantic feeling between Astaire and Rogers but I sort of enjoyed Bake's mistakes. 

"I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" is one of my favorite songs, but but the number here is not as good as the Ella and Louis version.

The segment where Bake was offering dance lessons amused me for the wrestling joke but it ended very strangely. Who were the men who broke it up and why were they there? 

[Inquisitionist]

Does TCM ever show The Big Street?  After seeing Being the Ricardos, I'd really like to watch it.  It's $2.99 to rent on Amazon Prime. 

[Tom Holmberg]

Tomorrow, Fri Aug. 19, TCM is showing a bunch of Japanese samurai pictures, including the standards: "Yojimbo", "Seven Samurai", "Rashomon", "Throne of Blood"; as well as some not as well-known, like "Zatoichi meet Yojimbo",with Toshiro Mifune's character meeting up with the blind-masseur-swordsman-gambler (yeah, that's right! This is the 20th movie in the Zatoichi series), Zatoichi.

[mariah23]

5 hours ago, Inquisitionist said:

Does TCM ever show The Big Street?  After seeing Being the Ricardos, I'd really like to watch it.  It's $2.99 to rent on Amazon Prime. 

TCM has aired The Big Street many times.  Wasn’t it on earlier this year or was it back in October?

[Inquisitionist]

22 hours ago, mariah23 said:

TCM has aired The Big Street many times.  Wasn’t it on earlier this year or was it back in October?

Thanks!  I will keep an eye out for it!

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 8/18/2022 at 1:31 PM, Inquisitionist said:

Does TCM ever show The Big Street?  After seeing Being the Ricardos, I'd really like to watch it.  It's $2.99 to rent on Amazon Prime. 

Speaking of Lucy, she also has a small part in Follow the Fleet.

I'm reading Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (which, frustratingly, has no index) and I was shocked to read a mention of the number "Dancing on the Ceiling" in 1930. I had been under the impression that Fred Astaire had invented the idea in Royal Wedding. Now based on the description the stage show Ever Green simply had the performers dancing around a chandelier that was fixed on the floor. I have looked at the clip on the TCM site for the movie Evergreen and they don't even seem to do that, so maybe Astaire was the first to fix the camera so that the audience perspective was of someone actually dancing on the ceiling.

https://www.tcm.com/video/1119807/evergreen-1934-dancing-on-the-ceiling

[EtheltoTillie]

Hit the Deck was pretty bad. There was a backup dancer chewing gum in one of the scenes—one of the gals in pink behind Ann Miller. I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be a joke or just bad editing. 

[Rinaldo]

23 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

I was shocked to read a mention of the number "Dancing on the Ceiling" in 1930. I had been under the impression that Fred Astaire had invented the idea in Royal Wedding. Now based on the description the stage show Ever Green simply had the performers dancing around a chandelier that was fixed on the floor. I have looked at the clip on the TCM site for the movie Evergreen and they don't even seem to do that, so maybe Astaire was the first to fix the camera so that the audience perspective was of someone actually dancing on the ceiling.

I think it's fair to say that Astaire and his collaborators in Royal Wedding were the first to actually make the idea of dancing on the ceiling visible by rotating the room. They must have specially wanted to do that, as it isn't at all suggested by the lyrics of "You're All the World To Me." And then of course decades later Lionel Richie recruited that film's director, Stanley Donen, to stage his music video of a new song called "Dancing on the Ceiling," which used the same visual idea.

I've watched the movie Ever Green when TCM has shown it in the past, and no attempt is made to stage the idea of dancing on a ceiling -- as you say, Jessie Matthews just sings the song, and then wafts around the room a bit. I was actually a bit surprised to discover that the original London production (the show never played on Broadway) did stage the lyric literally, with a rotating chandelier on the floor. I say surprised, because in my research over the years, again and again I find that famous songs of that period whose lyrics painted a specific picture were often not staged to create that picture at all. The song "Triplets" was introduced by a male trio who didn't impersonate triplets and weren't intended to. And Astaire himself, for all his musical sensitivity, would quite often ignore song lyrics when inventing dances -- think of the out-of-nowhere firing squad in "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails," or the staging of "I'd Rather Lead a Band" (in Follow the Fleet) which has nothing to do with leading a band.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Rinaldo

[Milburn Stone]

19 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

Now based on the description the stage show Ever Green simply had the performers dancing around a chandelier that was fixed on the floor. I have looked at the clip on the TCM site for the movie Evergreen and they don't even seem to do that...

I have long known who Jessie Matthews was, but until seeing this clip I don't believe I had ever seen one second of her. Now I know what all the fuss was about. Thank you for sharing it, @SomeTameGazelle.

[SomeTameGazelle]

14 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I was actually a bit surprised to discover that the original London production (the show never played on Broadway) did stage the lyric literally, with a rotating chandelier on the floor. I say surprised, because in my research over the years, again and again I find that famous songs of that period whose lyrics painted a specific picture were often not staged to create that picture at all.

The lyrics in this case seem so odd I have to wonder whether the gimmick for the staging came first and the song was written for the concept. 

14 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I think it's fair to say that Astaire and his collaborators in Royal Wedding were the first to actually make the idea of dancing on the ceiling visible by rotating the room. They must have specially wanted to do that, as it isn't at all suggested by the lyrics of "You're All the World To Me."

It does make me think they could have been influenced by the original staging of Ever Green. As long as the lyrics of the song don't insist that the singer has his feet planted firmly on the ground, tapping on the ceiling is fair game.

4 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

I have long known who Jessie Matthews was, but until seeing this clip I don't believe I had ever seen one second of her. Now I know what all the fuss was about.

Those high kicks were certainly something.

I'm interested to see the whole movie and will keep an eye out for it. I don't expect it to be good, but it's a curiosity.

[Charlie Baker]

I posted here a while back about discovering Jessie Matthews when TCM ran It's Love Again--she was a special talent.  And I also learned then how she was almost paired with Fred Astaire in A Damsel in Distress--what might have been.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Charlie Baker

[voiceover]

Tonight’s Alicia Malone intro of Boys Town pinged a Spencer Tracy anecdote (from, IIRC, Garson Kanin’s Tracy and Hepburn):

When Tracy accepted the Academy Award for Best Actor, he rambled on a bit about how he’d let the spirit of Father Flanagan shine through his performance.  Later Frank Morgan pulled him aside to say, “I didn’t see the movie, Spence, but you deserved the Oscar for that speech!”

[SomeTameGazelle]

Knowing Pert Kelton only as Mrs Paroo in The Music Man, I had no idea that she had been quite hot stuff in her youth until I noticed her credit in Bed of Roses on Constance Bennett day recently. 

[EtheltoTillie]

I'm watching Bullitt for the first time since 1968.  At the age of 13 I couldn't truly appreciate all the corrupt machinations, and it was only memorable to me for the famous car chase.  So call me astonished when I saw the opening credits and find out that Peter Yates was the director.  The director of the world's most famous movie car chase is also the director of the world's most famous and exciting movie bicycle race and EtheltoTillie Top FiveTM film (Breaking Away).  He sure had a knack for that kind of action sequence, and also a great way with actors and character.

[StatisticalOutlier]

I watched a couple of the interstitial features on TCM this morning.  There was one about Hedda Hopper that was kind of unwatchable, or unlistenable, because of her granddaughter's gravelly voice and there weren't captions on it.  But it was about Hedda Hopper's strained relationship with Katharine Hepburn (Hopper had strained relationships with many many people), and it included screen shots of a couple of letters they wrote to each other so I was able to read those with the sound muted.

Actually, here's the one Hedda wrote to break the ice (sorry if it's gigantic):

Hepburn answered just as graciously, and her letter looked like a typed draft, with corrections she wrote all over it, which made it seem all the more personal.  She even called out Hopper's politics, but in an inoffensive way, somehow.  It really made me miss the days when people wrote letters to each other, and thought about what they were saying.

Then after that they had one with Tony Curtis talking about Cary Grant.  He said he joined the Navy because of seeing Cary Grant looking through a periscope in Destination Tokyo.  It was one short clip after another, and it made me realize how much I love Cary Grant, and I appreciate him even more after seeing him through Tony Curtis's eyes. 

I've been seeing previews for a new George Clooney/Julia Roberts movie called Ticket to Paradise and I about swoon every time watching these two absolute movie stars working their magic on the screen.  And I got the same feeling watching all those little clips of Cary Grant.  He was such a movie star.

I even laughed out loud during the scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (a movie I discovered only a year or two ago, and that we've discussed here before) they showed, where he's on the phone with the banker or somebody, and Myrna Loy is standing next to him, listening.  Grant goes on and on about how he's not moving in 30 days and he'll do whatever it takes to see that it doesn't happen, etc., etc., and he hangs up and Myrna Loy says, "So?" and he says, "We're moving in 30 days." 

And right after that was a scene I assume from Bringing Up Baby where there's a tiger(?) lying on a chair in a room and Grant comes in and spots it and shrieks and runs out.  I can't resist a man who shrieks. 

Then he's on a train with Eva Marie Saint being unspeakably handsome.  I can't resist a man who's unspeakably handsome. 

[Bastet]

1 hour ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

And right after that was a scene I assume from Bringing Up Baby where there's a tiger(?) lying on a chair in a room and Grant comes in and spots it and shrieks and runs out. 

Leopard.  Which Cary Grant was just as scared of as his character was.

Here's a short but interesting post about the leopard's trainer.

[Milburn Stone]

@StatisticalOutlier, loved your whole post, and am particularly interested in where you found the image of the Hopper letter. On TCM's website somewhere? Or some other place?

[StatisticalOutlier]

4 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

and am particularly interested in where you found the image of the Hopper letter.

I'm glad you asked because I found the site it came from and this time actually read the site instead of just plucking the image from it.

https://artsmeme.com/2019/10/05/written-woman-to-woman-hedda-to-hepburn/

The site claims: "Basically, Hopper, consciously or not, calls out in code language Hepburn’s closeted homosexuality. Perhaps that is why Kate did not want to be her friend." 

That never even occurred to me.  I think I'm a pollyanna.

[EtheltoTillie]

I watched two more Jaqueline Bissett movies. Both extremely depressing. I couldn’t watch all of The Grasshopper, where JB sleeps with lots of men and is degraded. She marries football player Jim Brown and he assaults someone who attacked her and then I turned it off. Then there’s Believe In Me, where she becomes a meth addict at the hands of her med student boyfriend, Michael Sarrazin. I was amused with one early scene where a male med student sitting behind Sarrazin was crocheting during a lecture. 

Edited August 28, 2022 by EtheltoTillie

[Rinaldo]

On 8/27/2022 at 1:23 PM, StatisticalOutlier said:

The site claims: "Basically, Hopper, consciously or not, calls out in code language Hepburn’s closeted homosexuality. Perhaps that is why Kate did not want to be her friend." 

That never even occurred to me.  I think I'm a pollyanna.

Or maybe just sensible. It's always complicated interpreting documents of the past, and distressingly easy to misinterpret them in light of current sensibilities. (I encounter this problem all the time in my own researches in musical history, and am often in danger of doing the misinterpreting myself; maybe I've even done it at times.) Not that coded homophobia didn't exist in times past -- it certainly did (look at some of the reaction to Benjamin Britten's compositions). But in 1964, "gay" as a sexual term was not yet in wide public use, and it's hard to imagine someone of Hopper's generation and outlook being  fluent in its use, even "unconsciously." And "man" as a gender-neutral term was standard (whatever we think of that now); I recall The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a pro-feminist TV series of the 1970s, having an episode in which Mary Richards is publicly praised as "a fine newsman" without anybody, including Mary, hearing anything odd about it.

I haven't read any in-depth biographies of Katharine Hepburn, but the suggestion that her orientation was (like Cary Grant's) a complicated question is hardly new, and I have no issue with that aspect. I guess my problem with the quoted text is the use of "Basically..." as if this were an unarguable idea, rather than, say, "It is just barely conceivable that...". Historical documents need to be interpreted with care and caution. I could give many examples from classical musicology where a bit of over-fanciful extrapolation has been given disproportionate weight and become prematurely accepted as "fact," which then takes decades to correct.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Rinaldo

[Milburn Stone]

Watched Meet Danny Wilson last night. It seemed to disprove the "urban myth" that Sinatra was at low ebb in this early-fifties period. (Between cancellation of his Columbia recording contract and start of his Capitol contract, and between losing his MGM movie contract and making his "comeback" in From Here to Eternity.) In his several numbers he sang at the very top of his game, and his performance emanated charisma, charm, and (when called for) vicious power. 

From what I thought I knew about Sinatra in this period, I expected watching the movie would be painful. It's no great achievement in cinema, but I thoroughly enjoyed/was magnetized by Sinatra in it. He did not seem like a singer or actor on the verge of implosion.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Milburn Stone

[Miss Anne Thrope]

While I watched Meet Danny Wilson for Shelley Winters (and because I’d read the film is seldom screened), I thought Sinatra was also solid. And despite Winters and Sinatra disliking each other, they had good chemistry and you’d never know about the animus.  But that’s about the only nice thing I can say about it; I enjoyed this flick for all the wrong reasons. 

The film’s climax was one of the slowest and least suspenseful (and ultimately hokey) I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t believe Raymond Burr failed at being quietly menacing (which he did so well in Rear Window) but was just quiet.  The ending was just so  …. pat.

My understanding of Sinatra’s career being at a low point at that time was not only a lack or recording or movie contract, but that he also wasn’t selling tickets, possibly due to bad press from flinging it with Ava Gardner and divorcing Nancy. Hence his decision to play Vegas when it wasn’t a statusy thing to do which helped to bring in other performers. (I wasn’t around then, just going by what I’ve read.)

Meet Danny Wilson is not the worst movie I’ve seen – really bad movies are kind of a hobby – but Sinatra and Winters are the only bright spots in it.  As always, just my unsolicited opinion.

Edited August 30, 2022 by Miss Anne Thrope

[Milburn Stone]

12 hours ago, Miss Anne Thrope said:

While I watched Meet Danny Wilson for Shelley Winters (and because I’d read the film is seldom screened), I thought Sinatra was also solid.

I wonder if stories of Sinatra's hitting rock-bottom in this period have been exaggerated. Clearly he had come down a peg or three from his 1940s glory, but was he all-but-dead, as legend has it? Many careers have ebbs and flows, which we generally find unremarkable.

As I was born in 1950 I had no real-time consciousness of Sinatra in this 50-52 period, but I'd like to return to that time as an adult, just for a day, to satisfy my curiosity on the question of how "finished" Sinatra really appeared to be. To some extent the subsequent comeback legend served his purposes, which is why I'm mildly suspicious of it. It made his story something more than the ebb and flow of a career, but a resurrection, giving him (in the zeitgeist's subconscious) the mythical qualities of a Phoenix, or a Lazarus, or a Jesus. I do know that in my own perception of him (which began when I was 4!) he was, and in some sense remains, larger than life.