TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[bmoore4026]

Well, I watched Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last night.  Loved it.  Elizabeth Taylor is a amazing, you can see Paul Newman all ready rising as a star, and Burl Ives is just amazing as Big Daddy.  The sequence with him and Paul Newman's character about why his friend/secret lover (implied but they couldn't out right say it) killed himself is great.  Plus, there's Tennessee William's mastery of the Southern Gothic style that's captivating.  And, God, how I wish I had the strength in me to call kids who annoy me "no necked monsters".

[voiceover]

I am so terribly fond of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

A deaf ear to Capote’s complaints about the adaptation! and the backstage ish about the co-stars (even though I own books detailing such things, from this movie and others, it’s all stuff I’d rather not know), and ughhhhh Mickey Rooney…

But there’s Martin Balsam as Holly’s agent, and John McGiver as the Tiffany salesman: supporting jewels.

And I delight in the chemistry between Peppard & Hepburn — playful and fierce and then sweetly romantic.  I love their day in the city together, and I love those last long scenes in the taxi and the rainy alley.

[bmoore4026]

Just finished Breakfast at Tiffany's.  The scenes at the end where Holly throws the cat out of the taxi and then is going all over the alleyway for him in tears is just gut wrenching.  I have a cat and have had cats so I can't even fathom of having throw out anyone of them.  It all works out in the end, though.

[Rinaldo]

We all have our favorites, and while I happily salute those for whom it's Breakfast at Tiffany's, my own supreme experiences of Audrey-with-Mancini are Charade, and most especially Two for the Road. I had to catch at least the start of the latter last night, even though it was after midnight and I've seen it countless times and own the DVDs. The old magic still happens for me as it did when I saw it on first release. 

Mancini Day was certainly a splendid gesture by TCM, and it included one pre-fame contribution from his earlier days (Touch of Evil) and began with an obscurity. I'd never heard of Carol for Another Christmas, and catching up with it this morning on Watch TCM, and noticing the 4:3 ratio for a 1964 film, I could make a guess why. I was right; Wikipedia confirmed that it was made for TV, unseen after its single showing till TCM rescued it in 2012 and has shown it periodically since, though with replacement music until the Mancini soundtrack was recovered in 2021. I may finish it, though the report on its critical reception isn't encouraging (Rod Serling at his most didactic, they say).

The other choices of the day seem unexceptionable, though Dear Heart (which TCM brings out so very very often) might have been spared in favor of another side of the Mancini touch -- maybe a full-scale period production like The Molly Maguires, or his late-career work for The Glass Menagerie (currently unavailable on home video). 

One movie that they did air is worth seeing for those with an interest in odd byways, Soldier in the Rain. In the peacetime army, Steve McQueen plays comedic sidekick to Jackie Gleason, with Tuesday Weld excellent in support, all in an adaptation of a seriocomic early novel by William Goldman. The Mancini music is mostly light frisky stuff until Gleason has an introspective moment and we hear the evocative dream melody that for years was the only thing I knew about Soldier in the Rain.

[Charlie Baker]

I am absolutely in agreement with @Rinaldo about Two for the Road.

I know Mancini  had a big success with Peter Gunn, and I find it interesting even after he was so well-established with movies, he went back to TV and such projects as the theme to Newhart and the score for the blockbuster miniseries The Thorn Birds. 

Edited April 17 by Charlie Baker

[Milburn Stone]

3 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

The Mancini music is mostly light frisky stuff until Gleason has an introspective moment and we hear the evocative dream melody that for years was the only thing I knew about Soldier in the Rain.

It was also the only thing I knew about the movie, so when I watched the beginning of it on a previous airing, I couldn't make sense of it. I needed a movie that matched that magnificent, melancholy, morose music!

[voiceover]

Carol for Another Christmas has been on TCM a few times; IIRC, usually late nights on Christmas week.

Ah, The Thorn Birds soundtrack!!  One of his best.  That theme has brought me to tears on more than one occasion.

[SomeTameGazelle]

I managed to get through The Pleasure of his Company with Debbie Reynolds and Fred Astaire but it felt too slow and plodding for what it was although the underlying story felt like it could have been charming with a lighter touch.

[Rinaldo]

I'd venture to say that that's a widely shared reaction to The Pleasure of His Company. Were it not for the occasional TCM airing, it would be totally forgotten even among old-movie fans, despite those two popular stars. I do want to catch up with it sometime, though, just to try to make sense of what I remember of the Time review, which talked about distasteful incestuous undertones. But I can wait.

I finished watching Bitter Sweet, which means, I think, that I've now seen all the MacDonald-Eddy movies except The Girl of the Golden West.  My feelings about the series are complicated. I do like them both as singers, and it's rather envy-inducing to imagine an era in which a screen pairing could be a big money-maker largely on the basis of two beautiful classically trained voices (both of them legitimized by successful onstage opera appearances -- he before the series, she after). She had more going than that, of course; she had a sexy vivacious side that came out especially in her pairings with Maurice Chevalier (I still regard Love Me Tonight as one of the highest peaks of movie musicals) and was great to look at, especially in Technicolor (though apparently inordinately fond of ruffles). He has been unfairly vilified as the worst actor ever, which of course he wasn't; but in all candor, he wasn't all that good an actor either. He always gives me a feeling of the first-timer pulled into the school show, and everyone's proud of how well he did "considering." I don't want to pile on, but secretly I wish his acting were up to his singing.

But really the thing that makes theses movies frustrating for me is how they eviscerate the music. All these operettas and musicals had first-rate elaborate and lengthy scores, and the films invariably cut that down to the two or three most popular tunes, throw out all the ensembles and finales and songs for other characters, and usually dumb down the story as well (when they don't replace it with a new story altogether). As a historian-researcher, and just plain lover of musical theater, it frustrates me that the world now thinks that's what those shows were like. Bitter Sweet does the same thing, excising half the story and two thirds of the score (including one of Noël Coward's most famous songs, "If Love Were All") and the present-day frame that should enclose the story. Coward himself loathed it all. 

[SomeTameGazelle]

13 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I'd venture to say that that's a widely shared reaction to The Pleasure of His Company. Were it not for the occasional TCM airing, it would be totally forgotten even among old-movie fans, despite those two popular stars. I do want to catch up with it sometime, though, just to try to make sense of what I remember of the Time review, which talked about distasteful incestuous undertones. But I can wait.

I can't think of anything in this movie that seemed any more incestuous than any of Fred's numbers with Jane Powell in Royal Wedding. There is concern that Pogo is going to tempt Jessica to break her engagement to Tab Hunter's character, but any suggestion that Pogo is sexually interested in Jessica is IMO mitigated by the attractions of Jessica's mother and Pogo's ex, played by Lilli Palmer. 

Fred Astaire just isn't sufficiently charming and worldly to me here to justify Pogo's appeal when absolutely everything depends on it. 

[Rinaldo]

Rather than rely on my immature memories of something seen once in 1961, I remembered that it's 2024, and loads of things can be found online. So here's the review from the June 16 issue. (I make some elisions in the interest of fair use.) If an author was credited, the name didn't make it to the online archive. The title is "Doubtful Pleasure."

Quote

 

...  it is a Nytol nuptial. Where the 1958 Broadway play (by Samuel Taylor "with" Cornelia Otis Skinner) set in motion a sea of social-comedy soap bubbles—light, radiant and pleasantly airy—and kept them afloat, the film merely brains its audience with broad gags. 

Astaire sneers delectably at a photograph of Tab in a football suit, sniffs at the gaudy ties of Lilli's current husband, Gary Merrill, and even changes the weight regulator on the man's Exercycle. What's worse, charming rakehell that he is (though never as arch, mocking or sphinxlike as Cyril Ritchard was onstage), he tries to freeze Tab out and lure his daughter away with promised trips to Venice, Positano and the Aegean Isle where Rupert Brooke is buried. At one painful moment, father and daughter, after a gay, French-talking night on the town, even do the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. 

Thus, what might otherwise have been a lightheaded comedy of manners has undertones of incest and overtones of Andy Hardy. Still, the Bay Area scenery is silken, the sets and costumes effulgent...

 

So my remembered phrase was a very minor glancing blow in a more general sneer.

[EtheltoTillie]

Interesting pairing on the double feature. Paul Thomas Anderson picked Bugsy Malone and The Bad News Bears. Both kid actor movies. He told a story of growing up in LA and going to movies with his mom.  He was destined to be a filmmaker from childhood.  
 

He saw both movies first as a child, whereas I would have been an adult already when these pictures were released. I  tried watching Bugsy Malone but I could not stick with it, let alone understand what would have given Parker the idea to make this bizarre monstrosity. But Anderson and cohost Mankiewicz seemed to have derived some joy out of having watched it as children watching other children in the position of adults. 

On to The Bad News Bears. I wasn’t going to watch all of it after the host intro, but I couldn’t turn it off.  It’s a work of genius. There is so much heart and character conveyed in little moments. Watch the host outro on Watch TCM.  Watch pint-sized Jackie Earle Haley try to pick up an adult woman in Tatum's ballet class with the immortal line "I'm batting .841.  I'm on the Bears (swings imaginary bat).  You live around here?"  (Trigger warning:  there is some improper use of slurs.)

Edited April 21 by EtheltoTillie

[Charlie Baker]

16 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

(I still regard Love Me Tonight as one of the highest peaks of movie musicals)

Can't be said enough.

[Bastet]

16 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

(I still regard Love Me Tonight as one of the highest peaks of movie musicals)

While I enjoy a great many stage musicals, movie musicals are generally not my thing; I'm not even sure I'd need both hands to count those I Iike, let alone love.  Love Me Tonight is on that short list of loves.  The first time I watched it, it was only to see Myrna Loy, and I figured it would be something I sat through once for her and never re-watched.  I wound up buying the DVD.

[Wiendish Fitch]

Love Me Tonight is absolutely delightful, and so innovative. I truly believe it, along with 42nd Street the following year, revolutionized film musicals.

 

[EtheltoTillie]

All this discussion of movie musicals leads me to pick @Rinaldo's musical theater brain (and anyone else's) regarding the comparison between movie and stage productions of the same shows.

I enjoy stage musicals, but for some of the classics that I could never have seen but for the movie productions, I regard the films as the definitive versions for me (I know that many fans might not agree). They have crystalized in my mind as the "best" version.

For example, last night I rewatched Guys and Dolls, which as we all know has been criticized for Brando's singing.  I don't think it's that bad for this movie.  And he's great as a sexy romantic figure.  I have never seen a stage production except for one done in my high school (yes, really). 

I think "Pet Me, Papa" is a better, sexier song than "A Bushel and a Peck."  "Marry the Man Tonight" is not a great song and was best left out.  "I've Never Been in Love Before" is a good song, but you don't miss it. 

 

 

[EtheltoTillie]

I’m trying to wade through The Pleasure of his Company out of curiosity, but it’s just as plodding as reported.  (It’s on YouTube FYI.). It seems to be a poor man’s High Society.   I suppose I’d rather watch it than Bugsy Malone, however. 
 

ETA:  the fight between Debbie and Tab over pretentious restaurant talk is pretty funny. 

Edited April 22 by EtheltoTillie

[EtheltoTillie]

This week’s Noir Alley was great!  Did anyone watch?  Born to Kill.  

[SomeTameGazelle]

5 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

"Pet Me, Papa" is a better, sexier song than "A Bushel and a Peck."  "Marry the Man Tonight" is not a great song and was best left out.

Probably because I knew "A Bushel and a Peck" for years before I ever listened to the OBC recording or saw the movie I am incapable of being objective about it and find it to be a hilarious number for Miss Adelaide and her Hot Box Girls. I adore "Take Back Your Mink" but I have no attachment to "Pet Me, Papa" and would gladly do without it. (I could have sworn that I have seen the movie version's "Bushel" though.)

I also have a soft spot for "Marry the Man Today" because I like the interplay between Adelaide and Sarah, but even though "you mustn't squeeze the melon til you get the melon home" and "Reader's Digest! Guy Lombardo! ... Ovaltine!" make me laugh, the overall concept is hard to feel good about.

5 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

the comparison between movie and stage productions of the same shows.

The Sound of Music is a big one here. I think it was absolutely the right call to put "My Favourite Things" with the children and move up Climb Ev'ry Mountain for the Mother Abbess. And even though I love "No Way to Stop It" it feels effective that  the Baroness doesn't sing.

 

[Rinaldo]

Many of the "golden age" musicals are being done less and less in high schools, but Guys and Dolls still seems to be a standard choice, alongside the much newer ones. I would that that's partly because of its irreverent lively tone which still feels appealing to kids, and partly because there are four equal leading roles (no "second couple" syndrome), plus a couple more that are nearly as central.

I never found the movie of it very satisfying, but I'm happy for those who do -- it gives them something to enjoy that I don't have. (Susan Loesser, in her bio of her father, expressed similar sentiments if I recall right.) I do miss the missing songs and don't find the replacement ones a fair trade. And for me some of the casting just misses the mark. But those who feel otherwise are right -- for them.

@SomeTameGazelle, if I understand you right, I think you're misremembering. "Climb Every Mountain" in the movie stays right where it always was, as the Abbess's "end of Act I" inspirational song (though the movie relocates the intermission). But I agree that moving "My Favorite Things" to be the thunderstorm song for Maria and the children was a wise and needed move. (The stage show has "The Lonely Goatherd" in that spot.) As originally located, "My Favorite Things" has one of those unbearably corny lead-ins (it was corny on opening night), with the Abbess asking Maria, "What's that song I heard you singing in the hallway yesterday?" and the two of them then doing it as a duet. I quite like the two songs for Max and Elsa, but the different premises of the film medium probably made it inevitable that they had to go. And "Something Good" is vastly better than the song it replaces (almost anything would be).

My own candidates for films of classic stage musicals that live up to their stage sources (when they make changes, the changes feel justified) would be The Music Man, West Side Story, How To Succeed in Business, Cabaret, Chicago, Little Shop of Horrors, and Into the Woods.

I'm off for two days of research at the Library of Congress (on musicals, as it happens), so I won't be likely to respond for a while.

[Sarah 103]

18 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

All this discussion of movie musicals leads me to pick @Rinaldo's musical theater brain (and anyone else's) regarding the comparison between movie and stage productions of the same shows.

I enjoy stage musicals, but for some of the classics that I could never have seen but for the movie productions, I regard the films as the definitive versions for me (I know that many fans might not agree). They have crystalized in my mind as the "best" version.

I have serious thoughts on this topic. Guys and Dolls and West Side Story are among the best adaptations from stage to screen, because for the most part they did not make necessary/unneeded additions. I do think it's a shame that the movie version of Guys and Dolls cut "Bushel and a Peck" as well as "My Time of Day." 

Changing the placement of "Cool" and "Gee Officer Krupke" in West Side Story does not bother me. The songs take on different meanings when they are in act 1 or act 2, but they still work. "I Feel Pretty" needs to be in Act 2 after the rumble. It has a greater emotional impact when you see Maria full of joy and in love, and know the tragedy that has just occurred but she is completely unaware of. You do need an emotional check in with the Jets after the rumble which can be "Cool" or "Gee Officer Krupke." This is one of the faults I have with the most recent movie version; that and severely underdeveloping/getting rid of Anybody's character arc. It only takes 30 seconds in act 1 to clearly set up how desperately she/he wants to be a Jet, and that's needed because someone calling her/him "buddy-boy" in act 2 doesn't land the same way without her/him begging them to be a Jet in act 1. (I have no idea how to handle pronouns for this character when writing about the stage version or the first movie version and the 21st century movie version. )

Bye, Bye, Birdie is fantastic on stage and the movie is a mess, especially towards the end. It's a bit of a slog towards the end. The story did not need the added complication of Conrad Bridie's song being almost cut for time and needing to engage in sitcom nonsense to speed up the other acts in order to ensure time for it. 

I have a whole mini-rant on Grease. Grease on stage is not supposed to be the Danny and Sandy show. It's an ensemble with each character getting their little moment. "Those Magic Changes" is supposed a tribute to The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and all the old rock and roll movies from the 1950s were characters would sing for the sake of having a rock and roll song in the movie. The movie reduces it to background music at the Frosty Palace. In the stage show, the Danny Sandy story is there to provide a framework and the illusion of narrative momentum or a through-line. 

A common problem in movie musicals is they focus too much on the central love story and cut the other subplots. The only time this actually worked well was Cabaret. What happened when they did that, was that almost all of the musical numbers occur in the Kit Kat Club, which further separates/distinguishes the world inside the Kit Kat Club from the world outside the Kit Kat Club. The only song in the movie that takes place outside the club is "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." The number in the movie is brilliant on so many levels and is actually an improvement on the stage show. In the movie, it is almost a sure thing that casting, hair, and make-up were given posters/Nazi propaganda of Hitler Youth and told "this is the look we are going for." The cinematographer was probably instructed to recreate some of the angles of the Hitler Youth propaganda posters, as well as few nods to Leni Riefenstahl in terms of camera movements. In a song that takes place continuously without being used to show the passage of days or months, the movie is able to show the Nazis coming to power, and also hints at how they did it. It's brilliant and terrifying.  

[EtheltoTillie]

Thanks for all these thoughts on musicals.  You all have much greater knowledge of the stage musicals than I do.  @RinaldoI'm not sure of what you're referencing regarding high school performances of Guys and Dolls, because my high school's performance took place in 1971 LOL. 

I was lucky enough to see the original off-Broadway performance of Grease in 1972. 

Edited April 22 by EtheltoTillie

[EtheltoTillie]

I've just recalled that my high school had early color-blind casting.  A young Black woman played Adelaide.  This was a NYC high school with a big mix of races and ethnic groups.

Edited April 22 by EtheltoTillie

[HyeChaps]

I saw the original on-Broadway production of Grease and I also regret the loss of Those Magic Changes in the movie, but they had to focus on the star couple and write them some new oldies.

 

IMO 1776 transferred beautifully to film.  

[Rinaldo]

5 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

 @RinaldoI'm not sure of what you're referencing regarding high school performances of Guys and Dolls, because my high school's performance took place in 1971 LOL. 

Yeah, I'm not sure what I meant myself now. Looking back, I guess I took your "yes, really" to mean "can you believe my high school did it?"  whereas now I would suppose it to mean that your having seen no other production might seem unlikely. So, in my mistaken frame of mind, I mentioned that high schools did it a lot then, and despite the school repertoire in general having shifted, they still do it a lot.

5 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I've just recalled that my high school had early color-blind casting. 

Wasn't that the case with school productions in general? I've had the impression that they were way ahead of professional opera and theater productions in that respect -- I suppose for the practical reason that schools have to cast the best available talent in the school, without searching beyond it. 

I myself didn't see Grease on Broadway, but I did see its first London production, in which Danny was played by a young unknown American import named Richard Gere. (The rest of the cast seems to have been British.)

[Sarah 103]

6 hours ago, HyeChaps said:

I saw the original on-Broadway production of Grease and I also regret the loss of Those Magic Changes in the movie, but they had to focus on the star couple and write them some new oldies.

They didn't have to, they made a series of choices. What happened was not inevitable. They decided to cast big name stars for the leads and rewrite the show around them as well as giving in to the demands of their stars. John Travolta asked to sing "Greased Lighting'" even though the song was supposed to go to Jeff Conaway. As for the new songs, I despise "Grease." It sounds more like "Jive Talkin'" than anything from the 1950s. I do like "Hopeless Devoted to You." It sounds like something Patsy Cline might have recorded. 

[Milburn Stone]

On 4/21/2024 at 9:58 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

This week’s Noir Alley was great!  Did anyone watch?  Born to Kill.  

Thanks for the tip, @EtheltoTillie. I fell out of the habit of DVR'ing Noir Alley; hope this movie is on the Watch TCM app.

[EtheltoTillie]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

Thanks for the tip, @EtheltoTillie. I fell out of the habit of DVR'ing Noir Alley; hope this movie is on the Watch TCM app.

I think it still is!

[bmoore4026]

Watched A Midsummer's Night's Dream earlier today.  My God, did Mickey Rooney get any award recognition for his acting.  He stole every scene he was in.  He was just mind blowing.  And Bottom's terrible play left me in stitches. 

However, the dance sequences were a bit boring and the ladies were singing so high, I couldn't understand them.  Despite this, I still like the movie.

[Charlie Baker]

Born to Kill is a corker all right. And Eddie's segments are choice.  I'd also put in  a word for The Breaking Point.  last week's selection. It's a worthy reworking of To Have and Have Not, with an excellent cast: John Garfield and Patricia Neal a smoldering couple, and Phyllis Thaxter and Juano Hernandez in strong support.  On Watch TCM for a couple more weeks.

Edited April 24 by Charlie Baker

[EtheltoTillie]

@Charlie Baker did you go to Eddie’s web site where he recounts an appearance by Larry Tierny at a repertory showing of the film?  He mentioned it in the comments. Check it out if you dare. He gave trigger warnings.

[Rinaldo]

21 hours ago, bmoore4026 said:

Watched A Midsummer's Night's Dream earlier today.  My God, did Mickey Rooney get any award recognition for his acting.  He stole every scene he was in.  He was just mind blowing.  And Bottom's terrible play left me in stitches. 

However, the dance sequences were a bit boring and the ladies were singing so high, I couldn't understand them.  Despite this, I still like the movie.

I remember that after reading the play in high school (and I was already familiar with it and loved it), we were led to the school auditorium to watch this movie. And I was frankly puzzled: why were so many lines missing, while bits never dreamed of by Shakespeare (like the ballet sequences) went on interminably? I was alternately frustrated and bored.

Now, all these years later, I find it rather fascinating, but for the surrounding circumstances rather than its contents. The legendary director Max Reinhardt, having fled Germany, directed a spectacular production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Hollywood Bowl and then was invited to make a film (with Olivia De Havilland and Mickey Rooney retained from the stage cast, but movie people otherwise imported). His theatrical taste was probably already becoming a bit old-fashioned at the time, and was certainly idiosyncratic; that pas de deux of the sinister male fairy carrying off the fluttering female fairy was evidently important to him, as he had included it in the live production as well. I may just be insensitive to ballet, but I'd rather get on with the story (it's a good story, after all). And I have to remind myself that there was little tradition for Shakespeare on film at that date, so to see such a sumptuous production must have meant a lot to those interested. And it launched Eric Wolfgang Korngold in his groundbreaking film-music career; he adapted and arranged Mendelssohn's music here and was given a free hand with it, and its effectiveness got him launched into his many wonderful film scores.

Now we're spoiled for choice with movies of this play. Last I looked, just Prime had 3 or 4 to offer (many of them recent ones that I had no idea existed). So I find it easier to be indulgent toward the oddball charms of the 1935 one, even if I roll my eyes at some of the acting and can't consider it a satisfying rendering of the play as a whole.

Edited April 24 by Rinaldo

[Charlie Baker]

@EtheltoTillie I did go to Eddie's website and read about Tierney.  Not sorry, but Eddie was wise to give the warnings. :-) 

In other news, Shirley MacLaine is 90 today, and Barbra Streisand is 82. 

[SomeTameGazelle]

Just starting to watch The Card (aka The Promoter) and in the opening as the aerial view moves in to Denry's home in Bursley, the movement and the angle look very much like the card for some production company I can't recall the name of so I have not been able to turn up any confirmation or denial that it was inspired by this clip. Anyone know what I am referring to? The camera moves left over some little houses or shacks with slanted roofs. It's possible that the production company version sort of shimmers & waves?

[Rinaldo]

@SomeTameGazelle I think I know the one you're talking about, and it does sort of shimmer. But I'm useless on recalling the name.

Meanwhile, let's talk about The Card! I'm very fond indeed of this movie.

[Shelbie]

10 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

Just starting to watch The Card (aka The Promoter) and in the opening as the aerial view moves in to Denry's home in Bursley, the movement and the angle look very much like the card for some production company I can't recall the name of so I have not been able to turn up any confirmation or denial that it was inspired by this clip. Anyone know what I am referring to? The camera moves left over some little houses or shacks with slanted roofs. It's possible that the production company version sort of shimmers & waves?

I can’t find it but I think it’s for Warner Bros. 

[voiceover]

Jillionth rewatch of Tootsie; as usual I laughed myself sick in all the same places.

And thought again of the Oscars, and how Jessica Lange got the Miss Congeniality title of Supporting Actress that year, since no one was going to deny Meryl Streep the top prize.  And though I appreciate her Julie, it should have gone to Teri Garr as Sandy.

What perfection in the friend-zone role!  That hilariously great meltdown before the end, where she finally comes into her own (“I don’t take this shit from friends. Only from lovers!”), is such a tremendous character arc, it should be taught in schools.

[ECM1231]

On 4/22/2024 at 2:18 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

I was lucky enough to see the original off-Broadway performance of Grease in 1972.

I must be just a few years younger than you, @EtheltoTillie. Our senior high school class took a trip to see Grease in June of 1974, but by then it had moved to Broadway. We had fantastic seats and I remember that Jeff Conaway (from the TV show Taxi) played Danny Zuko.

 

The other night the mister and I watched Woman of the Year with Hepburn and Tracy. As much as I have liked their other movies together, this one just did not live up to the hype, or at least the hype that Dave Karger bestowed upon it. It was very slow-moving to me. 🤷‍♀️

[kristen111]

On 4/21/2024 at 10:58 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

This week’s Noir Alley was great!  Did anyone watch?  Born to Kill.  

We watch them all.  Our Favorite is “ Great Expetations,” , A Letter to Three Wives, the Thin Man Series, and any musical.  Plus Saratoga Trunk.  So many to count.  Picnic too.

Edited April 27 by kristen111

[EtheltoTillie]

28 minutes ago, kristen111 said:

We watch them all.  Our Favorite is “ Great Expetations,” , A Letter to Three Wives, the Thin Man Series, and any musical.  Plus Saratoga Trunk.  So many to count.  Picnic too.

Letter to three wives and Picnic are two of my faves. 

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 4/24/2024 at 10:26 PM, Rinaldo said:

Meanwhile, let's talk about The Card! I'm very fond indeed of this movie.

I keep getting interrupted so that I haven't been able to finish it! I was trying to think whether Mrs Codleyn was familiar but I admit I was shocked to discover she was played by Joan Hickson whom I know only from Miss Marple. I also would not have recognized Petula Clark.

I read somewhere the comment that Alec Guiness was too old for the part and although I can see that he is physically not in his late teens he does present himself so youthfully that I can almost believe it.

I am at

Spoiler

a very stressful part when they are at Llandudno in the storm and I dread what might happen next. 

 

On 4/25/2024 at 7:45 AM, Shelbie said:

I can’t find it but I think it’s for Warner Bros. 

Interesting. I expect to see WB for Warner Bros but maybe it's a subsidiary? I'll be very cross if it turns out to be Pinewood. I've been searching and nothing seems to help.

[Charlie Baker]

Is this any help? The buildings, I believe, are WB soundstages. This link is for a short comparison video of this shimmering opening over the years. There's also a twenty-minute-plus compilation of many logos, including a full screen view of the shimmering, on You Tube.

Warmer Bros. Logo Comparison

[SomeTameGazelle]

18 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

Is this any help? The buildings, I believe, are WB soundstages. This link is for a short comparison video of this shimmering opening over the years. There's also a twenty-minute-plus compilation of many logos, including a full screen view of the shimmering, on You Tube.

Warmer Bros. Logo Comparison

Thank you, it does! And to @Shelbie I'm sorry I was skeptical -- I did not connect WB to it at all and in fact had a completely different little musical sting in my head, not As Time Goes By. And of course the camera is moving in the other direction, it doesn't look much like the opening scene of The Card at all.

I have finished the movie of The Card and am reading the book which is on Project Gutenberg. Imagine my surprise to find that the character Glynis Johns plays is described as "plain". However I think it may be a kind of plainness that is hard to present on-screen since the character also has a kind of charm that makes her attractive despite her allegedly plain looks. I recall reading that for example Scarlett O'Hara is not really as pretty as Vivien Leigh but in order to convey how attractive she was they cast GWTW for beauty.  

 

Edited April 29 by SomeTameGazelle
Autocorrect undermining my spelling

[Rinaldo]

On 4/27/2024 at 10:55 PM, SomeTameGazelle said:

I keep getting interrupted so that I haven't been able to finish [The Card]! I was trying to think whether Mrs Codleyn was familiar but I admit I was shocked to discover she was played by Joan Hickson whom I know only from Miss Marple. I also would not have recognized Petula Clark.

Besides the pleasures of the story and Alec Guinness, I treasure this movie for the five memorable actresses in it:

1. Veronica Turleigh (Mrs Machin) -- This wasn't the first time she'd played Guinness's mother; she'd been Gertrude to his Hamlet in a famous (and apparently effective and beautiful) modern-dress production at the Old Vic. She was also in several plays by Dorothy L. Sayers.
2. Joan Hickson (Mrs Codelyn) -- She has a long history on British TV and stage. I saw her on Broadway in an Ayckbourn comedy for which she and Michael Gough won Tony Awards and I thought "They're so good... I wonder if they'll ever get the fame they deserve." And just a decade later she was Miss Marple and he was Batman's butler.
3. Valerie Hobson (Countess) -- I was down on her for too long, for being a letdown as a replacement for Jean Simmons when Estella grew up in Great Expectations. But she's delightful in this, and in Kind Hearts and Coronets, and she's heartbreaking in The Rocking-Horse Winner.
4. Glynis Johns (Miss Earp) -- I'm sure she's well enough known in this forum to need no description.
5. Petula Clark (Nellie) -- This isn't even her earliest appearance on film, as fans of I Know Where I'm Going! are aware. But I imagine it was a big surprise to those who knew her as an early-50s ingenue in small British films to see her emergence as a giant pop star in the 1960s.

There was a UK musical of The Card in 1973, starring Jim Dale. Beyond the story, it has two amusing connections with the movie: Joan Hickson (this time playing Mrs Machin), and music by Tony Hatch (who created all of Petula Clark's big song hits).

[Fool to cry]

Caught the end of Stagecoach which I haven't seen in years on another classic movie channel. Claire Trevor now sounds a lot like a character Heidi Gardner would play on SNL!

[Milburn Stone]

I'm sure this has been shown on TCM sometime: Hitchcock's Frenzy. I came to rent it because I had recently listened to a CD by one of the artisanal soundtrack labels, containing the score by Ron Goodwin and the rejected score by Henry Mancini. 

Listening to the CD and watching the movie (for the first time since I saw it in the movies in '72) contained surprises. Re the CD, the score I greatly preferred was that by Goodwin. My expectation was that I would prefer the Mancini, for a couple of good and not-good reasons. The good reason is that I love Mancini. The not-good reason is that I have a knee-jerk, movie-soundtrack-freak prejudice, whenever I find out a score has been rejected and replaced, to think that score was the one they should have gone with (even though I've never heard it). Probably started when the news hit the film mags that Hitchcock had rejected Herrmann's score for Torn Curtain and replaced it with one by John Addison (a score that is mostly mediocre at best). Torn Curtain as released was so awful that the Herrmann score could only have improved it (even if it couldn't have saved it).

The other surprise was my reaction to Frenzy the film. At the time, I regarded it as a disappointment. It wasn't the Hitchcock I was hoping for, the Hitchcock of epic wrong-man chases over awesome landscapes. But now I saw it for what it was--Hitchcock in his Stage Fright, Shadow of a Doubt mode, Hitchcock contained, miniaturized. The film is funny! (Which I just didn't get at the time.) And suspenseful,  not in the hanging off Mt. Rushmore sense, but in the way all the better episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents were. Exquisitely, quietly suspenseful, all the better for how contained it feels. (Exemplified in a memorable set-piece, the kind we hope for from Hitch.)

Another thing that surprised me. I remembered how in this film Hitchcock had taken advantage of the freedom of the times to show a woman's bare breasts. I hadn't remembered he also had put a woman's pubic region on display in this film. Nor that there's a visual joke graphically simulating cunnilingus!

 

 

Edited April 30 by Milburn Stone

[Suzn]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

I'm sure this has been shown on TCM sometime: Hitchcock's Frenzy. I came to rent it because I had recently listened to a CD by one of the artisanal soundtrack labels, containing the score by Ron Goodwin and the rejected score by Henry Mancini. 

Listening to the CD and watching the movie (for the first time since I saw it in the movies in '72) contained surprises. Re the CD, the score I greatly preferred was that by Goodwin. My expectation was that I would prefer the Mancini, for a couple of good and not-good reasons. The good reason is that I love Mancini. The not-good reason is that I have a knee-jerk, movie-soundtrack-freak prejudice, whenever I find out a score has been rejected and replaced, to think that score was the one they should have gone with (even though I've never heard it). Probably started when the news hit the film mags that Hitchcock had rejected Herrmann's score for Torn Curtain and replaced it with one by John Addison (a score that is mostly mediocre at best). Torn Curtain as released was so awful that the Herrmann score could only have improved it (even if it couldn't have saved it).

The other surprise was my reaction to Frenzy the film. At the time, I regarded it as a disappointment. It wasn't the Hitchcock I was hoping for, the Hitchcock of epic wrong-man chases over awesome landscapes. But now I saw it for what it was--Hitchcock in his Stage Fright, Shadow of a Doubt mode, Hitchcock contained, miniaturized. The film is funny! (Which I just didn't get at the time.) And suspenseful,  not in the hanging off Mt. Rushmore sense, but in the way all the better episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents were. Exquisitely, quietly suspenseful, all the better for how contained it feels. (Exemplified in a memorable set-piece, the kind we hope for from Hitch.)

Another thing that surprised me. I remembered how in this film Hitchcock had taken advantage of the freedom of the times to show a woman's bare breasts. I hadn't remembered he also had put a woman's pubic region on display in this film. Nor that there's a visual joke graphically simulating cunnilingus!

 

 

I hated Frenzy.  The strangulation scene was filmed so close-up and lovingly that it was obscene.  There are other Hitchcock films that I don't care for but it's the only one I can't bear.  Odd I don't remember the nudity, but I do remember some humor - the police officer's wife's awful cooking in particular.

I guess I need to steel myself and watch it again.

[Milburn Stone]

2 hours ago, Suzn said:

I hated Frenzy.  The strangulation scene was filmed so close-up and lovingly that it was obscene.  There are other Hitchcock films that I don't care for but it's the only one I can't bear.  Odd I don't remember the nudity, but I do remember some humor - the police officer's wife's awful cooking in particular.

I guess I need to steel myself and watch it again.

Not necessarily. The violence is shocking, more than in any of his films other than Psycho. I didn't even appreciate how shocking it was when I saw it at the time. I think I received it then as Hitchcock seeing how much he could get away with in the "New Hollywood." Now I saw it as Hitchcock digging into the subterranean psychology of some very unpleasant proclivities (and making us complicit in them). Which he always did, but now could go further than ever before.

[EtheltoTillie]

In line with the Frenzy comments, last night I watched some of Marnie, but I had tuned in in the middle and it was just too disturbing to watch. 

[Suzn]

9 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

In line with the Frenzy comments, last night I watched some of Marnie, but I had tuned in in the middle and it was just too disturbing to watch. 

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