TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Rinaldo]

Barrie Youngfellow was in the popular sitcom It's A Living at the time and was familiar to the TV audience.

She was familiar to me too -- I was a big fan from that and her appearances on Barney Miller. I think she deserved to become more of a household name than she did. But given that Moviola was trying to find current people who suggested the old-timers either in personality or appearance... with all of Hollywood-tvland to choose from, how is she the choice for La Crawford? I'm genuinely curious; I wondered for a moment if she was maybe a Universal contract player (as Gless was), but this wasn't a Universal production. Or maybe the long facial shape was enough.

[bmoore4026]

I'm guessing today is Alexander Dumas' birthday?  Because it looks like we've got a lot of movies based on his stuff today.

[Milburn Stone]

I'm guessing today is Alexander Dumas' birthday?  Because it looks like we've got a lot of movies based on his stuff today.

 

I love that TCM doesn't tell us what the themes are, but allows us to deduce the themes for ourselves by observing the schedule and looking for the sometimes subtle connections. I know many of us love that about the channel. It's probably been remarked upon in this forum. But it can't be said too often. :)

[Rinaldo]

Total agreement on that. But though TCM is clearly celebrating him today, it isn't his birthday: father and son were born in July and died near the end of the year.

 

My own claim to fame :) in connection with les Dumas is that I was one of the relatively few to see the musical Dumas and Son in its pre-Broadway tryout in LA in 1967, that turned out to be its one and only engagement (it closed there and was never seen again). Wright & Forrest, the Kismet team, this time used the music of Saint-Saëns for their source as they told the story of the real-life lady of the camellias, Marie Duplessis. Inia Te Wiata and Frank Porretta were father and son, Constance Towers was said lady, Gilbert Price was a valet, Hermione Gingold was (of course) a madam, and Edward Everett Horton (his last stage appearance) was an elderly roué. And no, it wasn't good, but I'm thrilled to have seen it, as it gives me considerable clout in groups of musical-theater fans who compare the rarities they were present for.

[HelenBaby]

I love that TCM doesn't tell us what the themes are, but allows us to deduce the themes for ourselves by observing the schedule and looking for the sometimes subtle connections. I know many of us love that about the channel. It's probably been remarked upon in this forum. But it can't be said too often. :)

I know not everyone subscribes to their magazine "Now Playing" but they list the themes for each day in it. Some daytime listings will have two themes. Tomorrow is Ann-Margret's birthday and films directed by Burt Kennedy. Wednesday is Celeste Holm's and George Hamilton's birthdays. Thursday's theme is "Who's Johnny?" The evening themes are tonight Design by George Jenkins, tomorrow night Fixing the Fight, Wednesday is more Anthony Quinn movies, Thursday night is Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

[Amello]

Total agreement on that. But though TCM is clearly celebrating him today, it isn't his birthday: father and son were born in July and died near the end of the year.

 

My own claim to fame :) in connection with les Dumas is that I was one of the relatively few to see the musical Dumas and Son in its pre-Broadway tryout in LA in 1967, that turned out to be its one and only engagement (it closed there and was never seen again). Wright & Forrest, the Kismet team, this time used the music of Saint-Saëns for their source as they told the story of the real-life lady of the camellias, Marie Duplessis. Inia Te Wiata and Frank Porretta were father and son, Constance Towers was said lady, Gilbert Price was a valet, Hermione Gingold was (of course) a madam, and Edward Everett Horton (his last stage appearance) was an elderly roué. And no, it wasn't good, but I'm thrilled to have seen it, as it gives me considerable clout in groups of musical-theater fans who compare the rarities they were present for.

 

I know you said it wasn't good, but do you remember anything else about Constance Towers?

[Rinaldo]

I know you said it wasn't good, but do you remember anything else about Constance Towers?

She was new to me, I think (though when I mentioned her to my father, who directed commercials, he knew of her). I thought she looked and sounded beautiful, and she quite entranced my teenaged gay heart.

[aradia22]

I still haven't finished up The Awful Truth. Also, I never realized that Rita Moreno played Tuptim. I feel like I need to rewatch that movie. Also, has anyone read Moreno's autobiography? If so, would you recommend it? 

[Sharpie66]

I've got Kanin's book Moviola at home and remember reading it way back in high school. That's where I first learned about Fatty Arbuckle as well as the William Desmond Taylor murder. I loved how much time he spent with Mabel Normand in that first section of the book. 

[Charlie Baker]

Definitely recommend Rita Moreno's autobiography.  She's had quite the tempestuous life and the book is decently written.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Charlie Baker

[bmoore4026]

Surprised that haven't showed The Ox-Bow Incident yet for Anthony Quinn month.  I mean that was his first major project, wasn't it?

 

Speaking of The Ox-Bow Incident, Dana Andrews was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

[ratgirlagogo]

Constance Towers' two indelible roles for me are in two Sam Fuller movies - Shock Corridor and even better, The Naked Kiss. 

[Rinaldo]

Wow. I need to see those (I had no idea). I know her only from stage musicals (she's great on a revival recording of The King and I with Yul Brynner, and also as Julie in Show Boat) plus some TV (I only knew second-hand that she was big in daytime soaps, but I did see her arc as Jill Eikenberry's mother -- a nice match -- on L.A. Law).

[bmoore4026]

IT'S JOHNNY DAY TODAY!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI_nk0L-cF4

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjjMH_PdCvI

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnkjOHVK-H4

Edited April 30, 2015 by bmoore4026

[Crisopera]

Rinaldo - if you're interested in Constance Towers, you have to see The Naked Kiss.  It's still pretty shocking now - it must have been stunning in the early 60s.  I'm surprised she didn't become a bigger star.  She's much more interesting than her husband, John Gavin, who was groomed for stardom during the last days of the studio system but is, as I always think of Cornel Wilde, the block of wood that walks like a man.

[bmoore4026]

Huh?  Well, for May Day, it looks like we've got a slew of "gold digging secretary" movies as the theme.  Apparently, such movies were really popular in the 30s.  Given the times, I could see why.  I'm guessing a more present-day equivalent would be "quirky but 'strong' woman finds out she really does need a man to validate her" type movies.

 

Also, Orson Wells movies are on tonight.

[Rick Kitchen]

Constance Towers' two indelible roles for me are in two Sam Fuller movies - Shock Corridor and even better, The Naked Kiss. 

 

The only thing I know Constance Towers from is the evil, seemingly immortal, Helena Cassidine of "General Hospital".

Edited May 2, 2015 by Rick Kitchen

[Milburn Stone]

John Gavin...the block of wood that walks like a man.

 

Yet I can't imagine Psycho with anyone else playing his part. That scene where he and Tony Perkins are on opposite sides of the hotel desk...it's like Gavin is Perkins' untwisted doppelgänger.

Edited May 2, 2015 by Milburn Stone

[magicdog]

That scene where he and Tony Perkins are on opposite sides of the hotel desk...it's like Gavin is Perkins' untwisted doppelgänger.

 

I think that was done on purpose.  I remember hearing that Hitchcock had a thing about twins and duality.  Just about every film he made had a reference to it (like the main character thinking about something while we see the reflection in the window, or the parallels in "Vertigo" ).  Gavin's character was what Norman could have been, but was lost in his insanity.

[bmoore4026]

Oooo, I'm hyped!

 

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/05/04/tcm-announces-the-return-of-summer-of-darkness-film-noir-programming-event/399216/

[Milburn Stone]

I think that was done on purpose.

 

Oh, I have no doubt of it. There are very few things I'm capable of observing in Hitchcock's films that Hitchcock did not put there to be observed.

[bmoore4026]

Well, tonight we'll have Sterling Hayden films tonight.  He was a rather good actor and rather macho, to boot.

 

So why did he walk away from it or did he?  Because it looks like, after the 50s, he didn't do much.

[Bastet]

It will be every Wednesday this month; Sterling Hayden is Star of the Month for May.

 

Hayden had a pretty complicated relationship with acting - he largely despised it, but he was terrible with money, so he had to keep working.  (He also wrote an autobiography and at least one novel.)  He didn't do much acting in the '60s, but he worked through the '70s, and in 1980, he was in one of my favorite films, 9 to 5.  He has a small role with just a few lines at the end, and those lines had to be on cue cards for him.

 

His last role was a couple of years later, and he died of cancer in 1986.  He was a complicated man, with a complicated life (his early life at sea, his military service, his cooperation with HUAC [he named names in addition to revealing his prior Communist Party membership] and prolonged, deep regret over it, numerous marriages [including three to the same woman, which culminated in an infamously nasty divorce and custody battle] and half a dozen kids, struggles with alcohol, etc.).

 

We also get quite a few disaster flicks this month, which makes me giddy; the genre is one of my guilty pleasures. 

Edited May 7, 2015 by Bastet

[bmoore4026]

Daaaaamn!  Has no one made a movie about his life yet because that is compelling!

[bmoore4026]

Well, today was Gary Cooper day and one of the films they showed was The Fountainhead.  Was Gary Cooper a fan of Ayn Rand or was he shanghaied into doing a movie about an arrogant architect who appeared to know fuck-all about design? 

 

Pride of the Yankees is on after that.  Have never seen that one fully, so here's my chance :)

[Milburn Stone]

Well, today was Gary Cooper day and one of the films they showed was The Fountainhead.  Was Gary Cooper a fan of Ayn Rand or was he shanghaied into doing a movie about an arrogant architect who appeared to know fuck-all about design? 

 

All he really needed to know was how tall buildings and jackhammers are phallic symbols.

[ratgirlagogo]

 

Pride of the Yankees is on after that.  Have never seen that one fully, so here's my chance :)

Such a wonderful movie, with perfect casting.  Get ready to cry.

[Wiendish Fitch]

All he really needed to know was how tall buildings and jackhammers are phallic symbols.

 

The Fountainhead is so appalling, it has to be seen to be believed. Poor Gary Cooper seems to have learned his lines by rote, because he goes on countless, Ayn Rand-ian tangents (Rand loved getting on her soapbox) and he doesn't appear to know what the hell he's talking about. Watch him in the courtroom scene, you can almost see panic in his eyes.

[HelenBaby]

I think Cooper was a Republican, but I doubt if he would have been a Randian libertarian. The Fountainhead has pretty much been panned ever since it was released. Plus, if I'm not mistaken, that may have been when he started his affair with Patricia Neal.

[Julia]

All he really needed to know was how tall buildings and jackhammers are phallic symbols.

 

and so was Gary Cooper. FWIW, it was a far better movie than it was a book.

 

Pride of the Yankees is legitimately heartbreaking.

[elle]

Going back a couple of days, the "Essential" movie for the night was Ninotchka.  It is a good movie, but, I never understood the hype around "Garbo Laughs!".  She had laughed in other movies, maybe not so ridiculously as in the restaurant scene.  I seem to recall her smiling and laughing lightly in Queen Christina.  In the movie Torrent (a great silent, btw), I was surprised to find out that the lead character was Garbo, she was so lively!

 

I also had problems understanding why Sally Fields was saying that the movie was controversial when it was made.  Because it poked fun at Communist Russia?  Looking back through the lens of The Cold War, I did not see anything controversial, except when Ninotchka and the others claimed to be good Russians as I would think they would say good Soviets?  

 

It is sad to know that this was Garbo's penultimate movie.  She did display a subtlety in comedy that is appreciated now.

 

One more question, about the talk between Sally and Robert, did it seem to anyone else that Robert seemed not like his usual self?  He appeared to me to not engage in the conversation as much as he did when he was with Drew Barrymore.  I wonder if these were taped soon before his illness.

[aradia22]

I finally finished up The Awful Truth. My thoughts are the same... meh. Simply acknowledging it was all the fault of Cary Grant's character didn't fix the movie. They were both kind of awful to each other, there was no driving force because it was all due to his stubbornness, and the hi-jinks (aside from the dog) didn't work for me that much. And at some point there's too much unmotivated singing. My Favorite Wife is stronger.

[elle]

Airport Alert!  -- Check out the old Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport and the SNOW! (links to a blog)

 

This is a movie I can not watch without thinking of my mom.  The story goes that the novel "Airport" was serialized in a magazine of the day, mom was reading it.   Dad says the next he knew there was a magazine flying across the room.  Turns out that it was a 3-part rather than 2-part version.  He had never seen her that frustrated before (or since).

 

Mom was also the one to tell me about the story in the novel that was left out of the movie about how the housing developers knocked down the signs of the airport being built near new houses thus explaining the battle between the neighborhood committees and the airport.

Edited May 8, 2015 by elle

[ratgirlagogo]

 

I also had problems understanding why Sally Fields was saying that the movie was controversial when it was made.  Because it poked fun at Communist Russia?  Looking back through the lens of The Cold War, I did not see anything controversial, except when Ninotchka and the others claimed to be good Russians as I would think they would say good Soviets?

They might have called themselves good Communists, since soviets are a kind of collective:)  Calling themselves good Russians seems more logical, even for an ideologue like Ninotchka.  As for the Cold War,  this is pre-Cold War and the Soviet Union was not the big threat against the US in 1939.  It's definitely not PRO-Soviet (I believe it was banned in the USSR, what with the references to the purges and the show trials and the failed 5 Year Plans), but dialogue like this:

 

Swana: Is that what they're wearing in Moscow this year?

Ninotchka: No, last year, madame.

Swana: Isn't it amazing? One gets the wrong impression of the new Russia. It must be charming. I'm delighted conditions have improved so. I assume this is what the factory workers wear at their dances.

Ninotchka: Exactly. You see, it would have been very embarrassing for people of my sort to wear low-cut gowns in the old Russia. The lashes of the Cossacks across our backs were not very becoming, and you know how vain women are.

Swana: Yes, you're quite right about the Cossacks. We made a great mistake when we let them use their whips. They had such reliable guns.

 

certainly doesn't paint the White Russians in a good light either.

 

In any case I am generally too romantic to really enjoy most romantic comedies.   But I love this one.

[elle]

In any case I am generally too romantic to really enjoy most romantic comedies.   But I love this one.

:0)

 

Thanks for the reply and info, ratgirlagogo!  To clarify, I meant looking through my lens growing up during the Cold War, where in most movies Russians were the bad guys or played for laughs.  I know a lot of people do not like the remake Silk Stockings, I have a fondness for it because of all the great character actors.  So, when I realized that George Tobias played the Soviet representative denying Melvyn Douglas a visa in the original and the commissar who sends the trio and Ninotchka to Paris in the remake, I had to laugh and think how he had moved up in that world.

 

Switching gears, can anyone identify Marion Ross in Airport?  She is supposed to be one of the passengers.

 

Yet another reason to love TCM - letterbox lets you see everyone on split screen!

Edited May 8, 2015 by elle

[prican58]

I caught the last half hour or so of So Big and it was kind of a strange experience. Continuity seemed to be an issue. One minute Barbara Stanwyck is putting cute little Dickie Moore to sleep and the next she was in some fancy schmancy apartment talking to this young man and referring to him as her son. I thought she had maybe more children but it turns out it is supposed to be Dickie's character all grown up.

He didn't even look like DM! Where were the full lips and pout of Dickie? 

 

Very strange.

 

But damn, was George Brent dreamy back then!  Bette Davis at 24 was actually rather pretty. Too bad she and Barbara had no actual scenes together except for the final one and even in that they did not appear with each other. That's almost as bad as not having Brando and Clift acting together in The Young Lions.  

 

Would definitely see this movie in its entirety some day.

[Julia]

He didn't even look like DM! Where were the full lips and pout of Dickie? 

 

They made some weird casting decisions to get the young actors they were promoting into movies (the two that stick out in my head as particularly bad were Mickey Rooney as the young Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama and Roddy McDowall as the young Peter Lawford in White Cliffs of Dover). I don't think they hit that bullseye too often, although Peggy Ann Garner made a very credible baby Joan Fontaine in Jane Eyre.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Julia

[prican58]

Julia, Rooney as Gable always irked me. I know it was probably because Mickey could do the wise guy schtick at an early age. Roddy got the call because he was British, I gather.

 

Ahh Old Time Hollywood! 

[bmoore4026]

Well, we've got our annual Mother's Day Mother-themed movies today, and that means a showing of Gypsy.  It's pretty good, but it would have been nice if Ethel Merman reprised her role for the film.

 

Also, if you remade Gypsy today, would you rewrite the play's book to include the seedier parts of Gypsy Rose Lee's autobiography, especially how Mama Rose could become slightly homicidal at times?  Also, would you change things to show it really ended between Gypsy and Mama Rose?

 

Also what are your thoughts on Mildred Pierce and Joan Crawford post-Mommy Dearest?

[Charlie Baker]

I wouldn't want to tamper with Gypsy as it is a practically perfect piece of musical theater--and is billed as a fable inspired by Gypsy Rose Lee's memoirs, not a completely faithful, factual recounting.  That said, who knows if the Streisand remake will happen (hope not) and if they would venture to go there?  The Russell movie is good, but the changes it made to the original were unwarranted.  The Bette Midler made for TV version is more faithful and for me, more satisfying.

 

They had a brief piece on Joan and Christina Crawford on today's CBS Sunday Morning (I think it was due to today being the anniversary of Joan's death) which showed Christina in later years softened on her mother somewhat. Mildred Pierce still holds up for me--regardless.  

[bmoore4026]

a

I wouldn't want to tamper with Gypsy as it is a practically perfect piece of musical theater--and is billed as a fable inspired by Gypsy Rose Lee's memoirs, not a completely faithful, factual recounting.  That said, who knows if the Streisand remake will happen (hope not) and if they would venture to go there?  The Russell movie is good, but the changes it made to the original were unwarranted.  The Bette Midler made for TV version is more faithful and for me, more satisfying.

 

They had a brief piece on Joan and Christina Crawford on today's CBS Sunday Morning (I think it was due to today being the anniversary of Joan's death) which showed Christina in later years softened on her mother somewhat. Mildred Pierce still holds up for me--regardless.  

 

Oh, somebody besides me remembers the Bette Midler version!  Yay!

 

I think the changes to the movie were made because of censorship unfortunately.  The whole sequence with burlesque club and the three veteran strippers being the most obvious.

 

Today is the anniversary of Joan Crawford's death?  Did not know this.  Also, how do you mean Christina has "softened somewhat"?

Edited May 11, 2015 by bmoore4026

[Rinaldo]

Also, if you remade Gypsy today, would you rewrite the play's book to include the seedier parts of Gypsy Rose Lee's autobiography, especially how Mama Rose could become slightly homicidal at times?  Also, would you change things to show it really ended between Gypsy and Mama Rose?

These seem like grotesque preposterous thoughts to me. Gypsy already exists. It is a specific story, structured (brilliantly, more so than any other musical ever) for its purpose. You don't rewrite it on the basis of additional information any more than you rewrite Shakespeare's history plays to include bits he left out or chose to rewrite. 

 

Now if someone wants to create a new play showing the life of Gypsy Rose Lee in an altogether different light, go for it. I'd be interested. But it'll be a different work.

[Milburn Stone]

Count me in as thinking the Bette Midler version has always been seriously underrated.

 

I'm curious--what does it mean that the real Mama Rose was "slightly homicidal"? Homicide seems like a binary thing--i.e., if you murdered someone, you'd be homicidal, but if you didn't murder anyone, you wouldn't. Enquiring minds want to know.

[bmoore4026]

Count me in as thinking the Bette Midler version has always been seriously underrated.

 

I'm curious--what does it mean that the real Mama Rose was "slightly homicidal"? Homicide seems like a binary thing--i.e., if you murdered someone, you'd be homicidal, but if you didn't murder anyone, you wouldn't. Enquiring minds want to know.

 

Well, she supposedly killed her lesbian lover.  This was when she was running a flophouse in New York and was well after she severed ties with Gypsy and June.  She also had they guy June ran off with arrested and then showed up at the police station waving around a loaded gun.  That's what I've heard, at least.

These seem like grotesque preposterous thoughts to me.

 

Didn't mean to freak you out.  I apologize.

[Rinaldo]

Sorry, I was tired and I overstated. I'm the one to apologize, and I do. But I'll confess to being (partially) in the business of restoration and preservation of musicals, for which in so many cases the materials haven't survived intact or have been messed with so the original version is hard to recover. So I suppose I'm rather fanatical about letting them be as they were written. (Definitely when it's a masterpiece as this is, but even when it's not.) If someone's dissatisfied with that (as people can legitimately be), one can choose not to perform a work, or else write a brand-new piece with a new score on the same subject. (Don't get me started on the abomination recently passed off onstage as Porgy and Bess.) So that's where I was coming from, but I should probably have bit my tongue. I did take care, at least, to reserve my reaction for the idea -- which wasn't even being definitely proposed by anyone -- rather than any of my esteemed fellow forumites.

 

Milburn Stone, I'm with you on the Bette Midler film. It's the one I use in my teaching of Gypsy when I teach history of musicals, and it's maybe my most brilliant lecture :). In no other case does a movie of a musical so respect the stage text, line for line and note for note. And the respect is justified -- it works.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Rinaldo

[Charlie Baker]

Here's the Sunday morning piece: Christina seemed a bit more forgiving and understanding towards her mother than I expected.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/almanac-mommie-dearest/

[elle]

It is Margaret Rutherford's birthday!

 

Sadly for me, I missed the best of the Marples!  At least I caught the end of Murder Ahoy!

[bmoore4026]

It is Margaret Rutherford's birthday!

 

Sadly for me, I missed the best of the Marples!  At least I caught the end of Murder Ahoy!

 

I have a book called The Bathtub Companion to Agatha Christie that I bought at a library book sale.  In one section of the book, there's a bunch of quotes Agatha made on different subjects.  Apparently, she didn't much care for Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple because Agatha said "She looks a bit like a bulldog".  So, yeah.

[Rinaldo]

I wouldn't have expected a different reaction from Dame Agatha. Anyone who's read the Miss Marple books knows that Margaret Rutherford was almost a polar opposite of the Jane Marple in the books. But we've now had multiple movies and series with more faithful incarnations (Joan Hickson especially), so I find it easy to return to those four movies as a distinct long-ago pleasure of their own, pretty much unrelated to anything Christie. (In fact, one is entirely original, and another is a Hercule Poirot story with a pre-credits sequence from Dorothy Sayers. And even one that used a Marple story gave her a different role in it, eliminating the principal book character to give Margaret Rutherford more to do.)

[elle]

I have a book called The Bathtub Companion to Agatha Christie that I bought at a library book sale.  In one section of the book, there's a bunch of quotes Agatha made on different subjects.  Apparently, she didn't much care for Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple because Agatha said "She looks a bit like a bulldog".  So, yeah.

 

 

I wouldn't have expected a different reaction from Dame Agatha. Anyone who's read the Miss Marple books knows that Margaret Rutherford was almost a polar opposite of the Jane Marple in the books. 

And you would have been correct...though Christie's remark is probably accurate as she had modeled Marple after an aunt who looked nothing like Rutherford.   Otoh,  while Christie did not like what the movie makers had changed in the stories and Marple herself, she and Margaret Rutherford were supposed to have been friends.  The novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side  was dedicated "To Margaret Rutherford in admiration".

Edited May 11, 2015 by elle