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mariah23

By mariah23
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Rinaldo
Rinaldo

Never have I valued TCM as much as I did Sunday afternoon, after a tense visit to the ER Saturday afternoon and the OR Sunday morning. (Spoiler alert: the surgery solved everything, I got sent home Mo

Charlie Baker
Charlie Baker

An item I copied from a Hollywood Reporter news round-up: Carol Burnett, 90, Proves You’re Never Too Old to Pitch At the Paley Center premiere of the Bob Mackie bio-doc Naked Illusion in May

Rinaldo
Rinaldo

He had mixed feelings about it for a while; he had a genuine fondness for Julie Andrews, for instance, but (as with many performers) he got annoyed that he was known to the world for one popular movie

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BooksRule

BooksRule

(edited)

Watched 'Random Harvest' last night.  I liked it a lot. I kind of figured it would end as it did, but it kept me guessing as to how they would get there.  And the 'twist' in the middle was excellent!  I did recognize several familiar faces from the other three Garson movies I had recently watched. I checked, and was surprised that we don't have a copy of this movie in either of my university libraries (and kind of disappointed in myself, because my campus library has a film studies program and I've tried to fill in the gaps wherever I could).  I would order a copy for our collection, but it looks like it's out of print--at least for now (and we can't order from 'third party' sellers, only our vendor who gets the movies from the publishers/producers).  Oh well, titles do come back in print now and then, and it looks like this was a Warner Bros. produced-DVD, and they are pretty good about releasing 'collections' periodically. I'll keep an eye out for it.

Even though I read that the Hilton novel has a lot of differences from the movie, now I want to read the book (which I know we have in our collection).

Edited by BooksRule
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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

On 8/17/2023 at 1:07 PM, benteen said:

I couldn't finish watching Quo Vadis. ...

On 8/17/2023 at 3:35 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

I have to agree after a couple of days of not returning to watch the end of Quo Vadis. 

Wow, I feel like a pioneer for making it to the end of Quo Vadis! No, seriously, the fact that I managed it only in short segments over several days reveals that it was a slog for me too.

But I find it interesting to contemplate afterward. Generally it's possible to discern what made a movie popular in its own time, even if the reasons don't seem to work now. But in this case, I really can't figure out why it was SO popular in its day -- repeatedly #1 at the box office, highest-grossing film of 1951, multiple Oscar nominations (even if it didn't win any). I understand the appeal of a Technicolor old-timey spectacle, but there were other examples of that to watch, and this is... I can't come up with a better word than "boring." How did it manage that, considering that it has some juicy story material to work with? Like, loony self-indulgent ol' Nero (the story of him & Poppaea was titillating enough to inspire multiple operas), the burning of Rome, a pointless chariot race, throwing Christians to lions, you name it. And it all just slogs along flatly, while I kept hoping that things would pick up in a minute. Robert Taylor's hilariously prosaic opening line, "Well, there it stands. Rome.", delivered in his flat uninflected tones, says it all. There are some better actors (British ones) in the cast, but I could know their quality only from their other work, not from this; they're all fighting a losing battle given this script where nothing leads to anything. I don't want to seem disrespectful for objecting to the religious messaging in the story; what bothers me is how banal and perfunctory its execution is: harmonized choral "ah"s on the soundtrack, a big swath of the Sermon on the Mount, a blast of light from the sky that the faithful can stare at, a flowering staff, and choral recitation at the fadeout. Other such spectacles over the years have provided some flash and excitement. This one can rest in the obscurity it has by now achieved.

I'm always excited by Fred Astaire Day, but in fact I've seen all his musicals multiple times (at least the ones they're showing this year), so there's no point my watching anything. I'm looking forward to Geraldine Chaplin Day, which promises some titles that don't turn up too often.

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Milburn Stone

Milburn Stone

14 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Generally it's possible to discern what made a movie popular in its own time, even if the reasons don't seem to work now. But in this case, I really can't figure out why it was SO popular in its day

I'm going to make a somewhat informed speculation. America was in the throes of anti-Communist hysteria. All sorts of people who weren't in the direct gunsights of HUAC and the McCarthy committee felt second-hand fear. Fear of being judged subversive was in the air. What better way to establish your mainline Christian patriotic American credentials, what better vaccination against persecution could you get, than by dropping into the conversation that you went to see Quo Vadis? 

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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

(edited)
11 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

I spent a childhood watching Vincent Price movies!

His movies, especially the Poe-derived ones, tended to turn up in the late-afternoon post-school slot on one of the Chicago channels, so I saw a bunch of his work during my formative years too. But my most personal memory of Vincent Price is that my father directed him in TV commercials, on more than one occasion. Dad described him as a gentleman and a pro, and once told me that, facing a week in which he had to shoot a dozen spots with him in too short a timeframe, he knew he could face it because (unlike some other big names) "Vincent" wouldn't make demands or slow up shooting -- his only request was to have a big stock of replacement shirts on hand so that they could be replaced as the hours under the hot lights progressed. One time he and his wife even invited my parents out to dinner in one of the fancy Chicago restaurants. That was pretty heady stuff for my parents (I myself wasn't quite old enough to appreciate the story at the time, and in fact I only recall hearing about it years later).

Edited by Rinaldo
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Charlie Baker

Charlie Baker

One of the things I like best about Summer under the Stars is the chance to catch up with some movies in the filmography of a favorite that I haven’t seen. Barbara Stanwyck Day had a couple.  It’s too bad that The Man with a Cloak is not on Watch TCM—I hope it turns up again.  It’s a chamber-drama style (talky) melodrama set in 1848 NYC. You wouldn’t immediately think of Ms. S. for the part of a glamourous ex-performer/household manager out to grab the fortune of her aging, sickly employer (excellent Louis Calhern), but of course she’s all in. So’s every member of the cast, and the MGM production team did it up right. The script is tight and clever, and it’s an entertaining, fast watch at under an hour and a half.

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)

New to me Barbara Stanwyck films I watched:

Executive Suite:  Babs has a small but pivotal role.  It's a very entertaining exploration of corporate politics.  All star cast:  W. Holden, Fredric March, Walter Pigeon, and more.  Nina Foch won the Oscar as the lovelorn secretary.  She has a great moment when she cries to herself about her deceased boss. 


Baby Face:  the famous pre-code film about a woman's rise to the top.  I could not watch past about 15 minutes.  Too disturbing.  It started with Babs being pimped out by her father to his speakeasy customers at 14.  Then she turns the tables and starts seducing men for her own benefit on the advice of a philosopher drunk.  I bet this is the only film ever to use Nietzsche as a guide to female power enhancement. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

15 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

Am I wrong, or did Watch TCM used to have everything that was on TCM in the prior week or so?

No, it's always been selective (unless you're talking about 20+ years ago, about which I can't testify). Availability on Watch TCM seems to depend on the nature of the film's availability to TCM in the first place -- e.g., whether it's in their library, or a limited license, or what. 

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

16 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

@EtheltoTillie have you seen Night Nurse or Ladies They Talk About? Two other pre-code gems. Of course Baby Face is the rough ultimate. Which gets more outlandish as it goes along.

Have not seen these.  I'll keep them on my list.  I may be overloaded with pre-code for now.  I watched the Vincent Price movie with Henry Fonda.  .  The Long Night.  Pretty bad

EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

If I'm really eager to see something that is not showing up on Watch TCM I will rent it on Amazon/Prime Video.  Usually inexpensive. 

7 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

No, it's always been selective (unless you're talking about 20+ years ago, about which I can't testify). Availability on Watch TCM seems to depend on the nature of the film's availability to TCM in the first place -- e.g., whether it's in their library, or a limited license, or what. 

I don't think they had Watch TCM 20+ years ago.  I think it's part of the advent of streaming services and smart TVs.  Maybe 10 years or so. 

EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

Yes, I see Loretta Young is in a bunch of precode movies this morning.  I really didn’t realize she had such an early start in her career.  I will investigate these and see if they are easier to watch than Baby Face.

I’m watching The Tingler and watched part of Masque of the Red Death. There was a dwarf character that was clearly the inspiration for Tyrion Lannister. These  are really good Vincent Price movies. I also watched part of House of Wax. Carolyn Jones was blond and had a silly giggle. 

EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)

Okay, The Tingler is the greatest thing ever!  It’s in black and white, but they had a scary scene with the deaf woman where they have colorized bright red blood!  She can’t scream to rid herself of the Tingler.  The Tingler looks like a large rubber earwig. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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Tom Holmberg

Tom Holmberg

10 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Okay, The Tingler is the greatest thing ever!  It’s in black and white, but they had a scary scene with the deaf woman where they have colorized bright red blood!  She can’t scream to rid herself of the Tingler.  The Tingler looks like a large rubber earwig. 

When it was originally released William Castle included one of his gimmicks, "Percepto", which were vibrating buzzers under selected seats at first run theaters.

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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

11 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Yes, I see Loretta Young is in a bunch of precode movies this morning.  I really didn’t realize she had such an early start in her career.

Yes, over half of Loretta Young Day seems to be devoted to her pre-code stuff, which strikes me as a good idea. Although they're not showing a favorite of mine among those, Man's Castle, in which she and Spencer Tracy are homeless and live in sin together in Shantytown; she delivers a completely unaffected, simple, appealing performance. Playwright Christopher During said that it provided the inspiration for the ingenue character in his play History of the American Film.

I've lately come to realize that I thoroughly underrated Loretta Young in my youth -- to most of my generation she was the affected lady on TV who swirled into her parlor in a new gown every week to ever-so-graciously welcome us and introduce that week's hourlong drama (in some, though not all, of which she would star). So it was hard not to read that archness back into her movie work when I finally saw some of it (and in truth, some of the 40s stuff doesn't wear well, especially when she adopted the same risible hairstyle that Ginger Rogers sometimes did at that time, displaying one full head of hair pompadoured up in front and another flowing down in back). But there's good stuff even in that era if you're selective, and even more, earlier and later. Plus (as Jeanine Basinger has pointed out in her book about the making of stars), she deserves credit for shrewdly being master of her own fate: she studied the nuts and bolts of filmmaking while becoming a star, she chose to go independent without a long-term contract in the 1940s, she went into TV early in the 1950s when the new medium was regarded as the enemy of movies, and took a business hand in the company that made her show. Start to finish, her screen career covered 77 years.

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Bastet

Bastet

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

Although they're not showing a favorite of mine among those, Man's Castle, in which she and Spencer Tracy are homeless and live in sin together in Shantytown; she delivers a completely unaffected, simple, appealing performance.

That's probably my favorite performance of hers. 

I was glad to discover her pre-Code work years ago, as I hadn't been terribly impressed with the later work of hers I'd seen.

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)
10 minutes ago, Bastet said:

That's probably my favorite performance of hers. 

I was glad to discover her pre-Code work years ago, as I hadn't been terribly impressed with the later work of hers I'd seen.

I tried watching Loose Ankles this morning.  It was pretty bad, and a very bad print.  But Loretta Young was good.  Young and fresh.  Some good comedic sense. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)
19 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

I know I watched this on a previous TCM airing, but remember nothing about it, which may support your evaluation. But... quite the saucy title, eh?

Would it refresh your memory if I described the scene where Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., sits in a bathtub discussing how to be a male escort?  Where Loretta Young has to undress him to scandalize people?  So she can get her inheritance?  That part of the plot made no sense.  I turned it off before it verged into full Three Stooges territory.  Apparently, the two old maiden aunts were going to engage in drunken hijinks. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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Charlie Baker

Charlie Baker

(edited)

I happened on Loose Ankles sometime back and posted here. At first I just thought it was a creaky, bad early talkie, but I wound up getting caught up in it. It's nuts--the aunts and Doug's gigolo friends wind up going out on the town and bingeing. I found it a hoot. And Doug and Loretta are absolutely stunning looking and do a good job trying to center amidst the chaos.  I threw it on the DVR for another look at my leisure. 

Loretta's pre-code films, what I've seen of them, are enjoyable, Taxi with James Cagney and Employee Entrance with Warren William, to name another two. But her early role in The Squall, which had Myrna Loy stuck in one of her "exotic" vamp roles-- Loretta played the ingenue, and had awful dialogue to deliver which she delivered awfully. You never would have guessed she'd have a star career of such longevity. 

Edited by Charlie Baker
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benteen

benteen

(edited)

I've been meaning to check out Employees Entrance since I first heard of it when it was added to the National Film Registry a few years ago. It's been on my DVR forever. Pre-Code is such a great era of film, when the film industry attempted to treat their audiences like adults before the pearl clutchers threw a hissy fit.

Edited by benteen
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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)

I’ve put off for a few days posting about Lolly-Madonna XXX. I had to gather my thoughts.  It’s one of the early 70s films when sex and violence were allowed with the new ratings system.  So it’s like the return of precode, with a vengeance, in more ways than one. 
 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)

My iPad is acting up, so I'm continuing with the computer.

They showed Lolly-Madonna for Robert Ryan Day, but I put it on just because it was something I had heard about and had never seen.  I've posted many times here about how Robert Ryan always looks reptilian, so I wasn't itching to see him.  There was the sexiest man alive, young Jeff Bridges.

  I saw that the summary said it was about a Hatfields/McCoys type feud.  Additional huge stars of then or later: Rod Steiger, Gary Busey, Randy Quaid.  There's scary-looking Ed Lauter.  This is another example where I wonder why I never watched this movie at the time it came out.    My husband and I were in college then (not married yet), and we went to the movies constantly.  We lived in NYC and attended school at Columbia, where they showed movies on campus three or four times a week, and we went to the city's first run theaters, the many repertory cinemas and the dollar theater down the street.  There were just so many movies, and I couldn't see all of them.  I guess Deliverance cornered the hillbilly market. 

Anyhoo, I started watching, and saw in the credits that it was co-written by Sue Grafton.  Suddenly I remembered hearing about this film when she died, in 2017.  I'm a big fan of her Kinsey Milhone Alphabet mystery series, and I knew she had earlier worked in film and TV.  She published two books in the 60s, both out of print.  One is the novel this movie is based on, The Lolly-Madonna Wars.   You can find used paperback copies on line for $400 or so.  There are signed copies for $5,000.  I think her family keeps this out of print.  They are very protective of her work.  For example, she would never allow the Kinsey series to be filmed, and her family has abided by her wishes.

So this movie is among the bleakest, most nihilistic films I have ever seen.  It's an antiwar allegory, written originally in 1969, at the height of the war protest.  The feud starts from something that makes no sense, a prank letter, and it escalates after a brutal rape.  Rod Steiger famously makes a sandwich while watching Ed Lauter die.  There's violence against animals.  That said, I highly recommend that you see this.  It's not the greatest film ever, but it is an important film of its time, overshadowed by others, despite the star power.  I'd love to see if anyone watched this and hear your comments. 

 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

(edited)
On 8/24/2023 at 7:21 PM, Charlie Baker said:

Loretta's pre-code films, what I've seen of them, are enjoyable, Taxi with James Cagney and Employee Entrance with Warren William, to name another two.

I just caught up with Taxi!, thanks to Watch TCM. Like other early talkies (this one is 1932), it makes it clear that the language of the medium is still being invented: at times one short one-line scene follows another, each ended by a fade to black. And the story isn't what one could call original -- the old "he's a self-destructive hothead but she loves him" business. But the pairing of Cagney and Young is something to treasure: he's loose and insolent (but charming too), she's both reserved and ardent, and together they strike erotic sparks (this is not the Loretta Young I grew up on in the 1950s). A high point for me is a dance contest (which they lose by a hairsbreadth to an uncredited George Raft): Cagney of course was a master dancer, while Young wasn't, but they bring off the illusion with ease. I'm glad I saw this.

Edited by Rinaldo
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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)

I really have to give credit to Loretta Young for being a teenager and holding her own in these movies against older actors.  She plays older.  She apparently had child actor experience.   I hope to track down that Spencer Tracy movie you all have referenced.  Supposedly she had a big affair with him too. 

Like @Rinaldo my first experience of Loretta Young was with that old TV show.   Then I only knew her from The Bishop's Wife, Rachel and the Stranger, and The Farmer's Daughter.  I am truly mystified by her personal life, if I may comment.  I went down that rabbit hole.  She had an early marriage that was anulled.   Then you read that she had a big affair with Spencer Tracy, which broke up because he wouldn't divorce his wife as a devout Catholic.  You know the same thing you always hear about him and Katharine Hepburn.   But then everything you read about Loretta Young says she was also a devout Catholic.  So, huh?  

Then she has the baby with Clark Gable.  They supposedly covered it up to protect their mutual careers.   Then she later (1980s) comes out with long held secret that it was a date rape.  But at the same time she acted with Clark Gable in a 1950 movie!  How did they work together when they had this charged past with secrets?  Supposedly, the daughter says she met Clark Gable once in her whole life, when they were making that 1950 movie.   And she didn't know he was her father at that point. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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Tom Holmberg

Tom Holmberg

On 8/26/2023 at 4:24 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

They showed Lolly-Madonna for Robert Ryan Day, but I put it on just because it was something I had heard about and had never seen.  I've posted many times here about how Robert Ryan always looks reptilian, so I wasn't itching to see him. 

I saw that at a sneak preview before it was released and it was the only sneak preview I walked out on.

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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

6 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I really have to give credit to Loretta Young for being a teenager and holding her own in these movies against older actors.  She plays older. 

That so often happened in those days, didn't it? Actresses would make their first movie around 20, with a year or two of miscellaneous stage experience behind them, and they were decidedly women, not girls. (Think of what Lauren Bacall embodied in To Have and Have Not at 20.) The aspiration seemed to be to be grown-up as soon as you could, sort of the opposite of day when adolescent promise can last until practically 30.

I'm not inclined to delve into Loretta Young's inner life much (I'm talking about me, not anyone else). I don't doubt that her Catholic faith was sincere, and I also don't doubt that she was a complicated person, like all of us. It's now literally impossible to know what happened in private when all the participants are long gone. And I think I'm going to stop there. But I definitely recommend the book The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger; it contains a substantial appreciation and re-evaluation of Loretta Young's career and stature. Forgive me for adding an abridged paragraph from it:

Quote

Young’s fighting the system to gain control of her own working life continued in the 1950s when she entered television at a time when the studios were warning stars that the small screen would ruin their careers. (Some of these “warnings” were out-and-out threats.)  ... However, Young not only saved her career through TV, she extended it and increased her visibility. Feminist film scholars have praised Ida Lupino for her relatively minor directorial career, celebrated Hepburn’s independence (which doesn’t amount to much in career terms), and given cult status to Dietrich’s androgyny, but no one has inspected Loretta Young’s nerve in fighting her bosses, going independent when she could have remained at the very top, safely under studio protection, and pioneering in television where she cast her shows, produced them, and even carried edited films to the airport to be flown to New York if she had to. You never hear about that Loretta Young.

 

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GreekGeek

GreekGeek

I watched Heroes for Sale on Loretta Young Day. It’s pre-Code, released at the height of the Depression in 1933. Young’s role is relatively small; it’s Richard Barthelmess’s movie. He gets injured in World War I, becomes hooked on morphine, moves out of town after a stay at a sanitarium, finally becomes a successful businessman and marries Young, only to have an invention he championed lead to a riot by workers who were put out of work because of it. Then things get even worse. It’s a really bleak movie; “We’ll get through it somehow” is as close as it comes to an uplifting ending. Very much worth seeing, though.

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Amello

Amello

(edited)

I watched The Heart is a Lonely Hunter last night. I like to go into movies blind so I had no idea what it was about. What a beautiful surprise! Alan Arkin's performance is very engaging. It's actually the first Arkin performance I've ever seen (don't shoot!). What a disservice I've done to myself to never see him act. Great performances from all around him, too. This is one of those movies that once it ended it still stayed with me. I felt restless because I couldn't talk about it with anyone. I certainly teared up, and had to eat Oreos to center myself 😄.

On a superficial note, I'm surprised Wayne Smith, who plays Sondra Locke's love interest of sorts, didn't have more of a career. He was beautiful!

Edited by Amello
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Milburn Stone

Milburn Stone

I watched part of the Loretta Young one from the post-war, anti-Commie years where she played a boring suburban Mary Sue wife married to devious Barry Sullivan, and I was...bored.

But I do like her in that one with Orson Welles as the Nazi infiltrator and she's the daughter of a Supreme Court judge. She at least has some "animal magnetism" going on.

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voiceover

voiceover

A Special Day was my first Loren/Mastroianni picture  (and — best of luck — saw it in a theater).  I watched it again when it was a TCM premiere (a few years ago?) and was drawn in again, but in a different way: by then I’d seen most of their movies, and was able to grasp what a change this one had been.

But even as neglected, frumpy housewife and terrified, defiant gay man — DAMN.  Hard to hide all that sex appeal and sizzling chem.  Great story and worth the watch.

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