TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Crisopera]

The Picture of Dorian Gray  isn't a terribly good movie (as said above, Hurd Hatfield doesn't actually look young - more like a waxwork).  However, Angela Lansbury is almost unbearably touching and George Sanders was born to play Lord Henry.  (They sabotaged poor Donna Reed with those hideous 40s hairstyles.)  Robert Osborne had an interesting comment - they should have cast Peter Lawford  (who was also in the film) as Dorian - he would have looked convincingly young.  Hatfield just had no kind of chemistry with either Lansbury or Reed.

 

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman isn't too great, either, but James Mason and Ava Gardner did have great chemistry, and, hoo boy, was she beautiful!

 

Lewin's films tend to be heavy and pretentious.

[mariah23]

You know since we are talking about it, in your opinion, what films captured an actress in all of their beauty?

I hope I worded this right. Let me give you an example: I believe that Leslie Caron was photographed at her most beautiful in 1961's Fanny. Vivian Leigh in Waterloo Bridge, etc.

Who are your choices?

[Rick Kitchen]

Grace Kelly in Rear Window.  Sigh.

[Milburn Stone]

There are a lot of Audrey Hepburn possibilities, but for some reason, the way she looked in How to Steal a Million affected me the most, ahem, viscerally.

[Rinaldo]

Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl. Gene Tierney in Laura. Jean Simmons in Young Bess. Jacqueline Bisset (and, not that anyone asked, Ryan O'Neal) in The Thief Who Came To Dinner.

 

Edited in response to Milburn Stone: Yes, I had wanted to include an Audrey title, but I couldn't choose just one. She always looked good. (My favorite movie of hers is Two for the Road, but that's not the question here.)

Edited June 29, 2015 by Rinaldo

[mariah23]

While Gene Tierney was gorgeous in Laura, I'm lean towards Leave Her to Heaven, even though she is the devil incarnate in that one.

[Wiendish Fitch]

If you thought Moira Shearer was lovely in The Red Shoes, she is devastatingly beautiful in The Story of Three Loves. 

 

Ginger Rogers in both Shall We Dance and Carefree (despite some of the iffy costumes in the latter), Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Rita Hayworth in Gilda, Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass, and Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood are my other choices.

[elle]

but I had to stick around long enough to see young Angela Lansbury sing "Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird." I know her singing was dubbed, and it doesn't matter to me: that's just a lovely couple of minutes, and it does touch something vital. To ruin such youth and joy, that's real depravity.

 

She was dubbed?  She has a lovely singing voice.

 

My DVR saved Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. I'll get to it, as it's a famous example of... something.

But how does it end?  I can not see to catch a break when that is on and always miss what ultimately happens.

[Crisopera]

Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis.  She may not have been as classically beautiful as any of these other ladies, but Vincente Minnelli really saw her through the eyes of love in this movie.  The medium shot when she sings "The Boy Next Door" is really, really gorgeous.

[Rinaldo]

[Angela Lansbury] was dubbed?  She has a lovely singing voice.

Dubbing was a habit in the old studio system. Unless someone was famous primarily as a singer, there were always "ghost voices" on call to make them sound  pretty in the way producers thought they ought. Dancers who had sung on stage earlier (Eleanor Powell, Vera-Ellen) or would do so later (Cyd Charisse) were routinely dubbed for the movies.

 

In the case of Lansbury, she has always been straightforward about this history, and would insist that her singing wasn't worth listening to until she was coached for the stage in the 1960s, for Anyone Can Whistle and then Mame. Big a fan of hers though I am (I've seen her onstage a number times, usually in musicals, and loved her), "lovely" might be stretching it -- characterful, touching, memorable would be my words. We're told that she herself protested to the composer that she wasn't the person to sing "Beauty and the Beast," until they convinced her that they wanted a motherly effect. And probably not even in her teens did she have the sweet soprano that characterizes the song in Dorian Gray. She did, however, make a point of returning to the song decades later in a Murder, She Wrote episode and finally getting to sing it in her own voice, in her own way.

[Charlie Baker]

I always thought Ava Gardner looked breathtaking in the 1951 Show Boat, which would have been roughly the same time period as Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.  Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof looked amazing.

[prican58]

Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Seriously, that short hair and bronzed skin cemented her in my head as the most beautiful woman in classic Hollywood. Also her Paris scenes in Casablanca. Credit to the makeup folks back then because even Bogart looked 10 years younger in those scenes.

[Rick Kitchen]

Like I said, Grace Kelly in Rear Window:

 

[Julia]

Nothing to do with the earlier conversation, but Judgment in Nuremberg is on, and my father-in-law the combat photographer filmed that footage of the swastika being blown off the hall of justice, so it makes me feel a little extra happy to see it. 

[Rinaldo]

I feel a bond there, Julia. My father was a WWII photographer too -- in his case, in the Pacific theater. He would be flown out ahead of the troops to take aerial photos of the islands and their next prospects for combat.

 

Well, there was no movie content at all in that, so let me add a few more "beauty shot" names. I enthusiastically agree about Ava Gardner in Show Boat and Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis. I really like Garland as a performer in those years but never thought of her as a beauty. But in that movie, in her two big ballads, she's enchanting-looking. I also agree about Bergman in Casablanca; I often can take or leave her, but I'm entranced by her appearance (and performance) in that film.

 

And to add a new name... Barbra Streisand in the flashback (previous life) scenes of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Gowned in Regency style by Cecil Beaton and fussed over by Vincente Minnelli (he didn't do much for the movie as a whole, but he sure knew how to make his lady star look good), she was utterly ravishing.

[henrysmom]

I've been "studying" for my film noir class that TCM is offering online and watching a ton of film noirs.  Those films really do showcase the beautiful women.  I have to say the ones that really captured an actress for me are Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep, Yvonne DeCarlo in Criss Cross, Gloria Graham in Sudden Fear and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.

 

Of those three the one that truly blew me away was Yvonne DeCarlo.  I'm a huge Bogart fan so admiring Lauren Bacall is nothing new to me, and Barbara Stanwyck is my favorite actress.  And while Gloria Graham isn't a big name, I always liked her. But all I knew of Yvonne DeCarlo was The Munsters.  She was great in that, lampooning the stereotypical sitcom mom, but in Criss Cross.  Wow--she managed to take my eyes off both Burt Lancaster and Dan Duryea (not an easy task).

[MissT]

I always thought Yvonne DeCarlo was absolutely beautiful as the wife of Moses in the Ten Commandments.    Elizabeth Taylor looked amazing in every movie I ever saw her in including National Velvet. 

[chitowngirl]

Auntie Mame (Child, how can you see with all that light!) is on followed by Mame!  No sleep tonight!

[Bastet]

I love this “Play vs. Musical” thing they’re doing tonight, but wish they’d gone with a pair other than The Philadelphia Story/High Society as the second set of films.  The former is on a lot, and the latter is crap.

[Rinaldo]

I love that programming idea too, and there are a lot they could do. A somewhat adjacent idea is two different musicals with a link. I'm thinking of Pauline Kael's suggestion of programming Rose of Washington Square with Funny Girl. We all probably know the latter; the former is a 1939 Alice Faye flick, clearly based on the life of Fanny Brice (Brice sued) but with names and details changed (she sings "My Man"), and the milieu gentilified. That could be a fun contrast.

 

Thursday (tomorrow) is another Disney night on TCM. The featured spots this time go to Johnny Tremain, The Living Desert, and The Great Locomotive Chase. The last of these is a vivid childhood memory for me: a brand of shredded wheat did a promotion with cardboard sheets inside the box that you could punch out and assemble to get one of the three trains in the movie. The catch was that it didn't say which train was inside a given box. That must have sold a lot of extra cereal (it took me many tries to get the third one, the Yonah). My mother was willing to keep buying it so I could complete my collection, but like a responsible mother she insisted that I had to eat up all of one box before she would buy another.

[CMH1981]

I have a question regarding "Funny Girl," it is on "getTV" here in my area and I have always wondered at the beginning of the film when Fanny's mother is putting hot water into that metal pail that says "makeup" what was the point of that?  I assume the hot water is to wash the makeup off, but does anyone know the significance of the pail or the origins behind it.  

 

Does anyone else get the "getTV" channel.  They seem to be playing lots of classic movies, w/ commercials mind you.  I just watched "the Fuller Brush Girl" with Lucille Ball and Eddie Albert, and it was a really slap-sticky funny movie.  After the movie I went on imdb to the message boards and some of the posters thought that the writers of "I Love Lucy" took episodes from this movie based on the outfits (peasant dress, Scottish attire) they had put her in matched episodes of the show later on.

[Coffeecup]

Movies where the actress looked best: I think Lana Turner was at the height of her beauty in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

 

Hedy Lamarr in Algiers.

[mariah23]

I watched The Rains Came today and there is a scene near the end of the movie where the camera and the lighting is on Myrna Loy and see looks absolutely angelic.

[ratgirlagogo]

Yes, I like it too.  They seem to have the Columbia catalog and I've seen a lot of crime/noir films from the fifties on GetTV in thw last year or so that were certainly new to me.

[Julia]

I love this “Play vs. Musical” thing they’re doing tonight, but wish they’d gone with a pair other than The Philadelphia Story/High Society as the second set of films.  The former is on a lot, and the latter is crap.

 

The kid really enjoyed double features, so we have a number of those pairs on DVD (those two, Pygmalion / My Fair Lady, Anna and the King of Siam / The King and I, The Women / (the egregious) The Opposite Sex (which was at least not as bad as the remake of The Women), Shop Around the Corner / Good Old Summertime, Ninotchka / Silk Stockings, Romeo and Juliet / West Side Story). Out of all of them, I'd've gone with Anna / the King. 

[bmoore4026]

Like I said, Grace Kelly in Rear Window:

 

 

A woman who lived up to her name.  We just don't have this anymore (or maybe we do and I just can't see it).

 

Anyway, there have been a lot of witch themed movies today.  Is today some sort of Wiccan holiday?

 

Haxan was on very early this morning.  Didn't see it then, but I had seen it some months prior during one of TCM's Halloween marathons and even more months prior than that for their silent film Sunday nights.

 

Lots of freaky imagery in that movie.  The nuns freaking out and dancing about madly was both funny and disturbing, and the entire sequence about the witch hunters arresting and killing all the women in one family was also disturbing.  The stop motion sequences (the demons, the woman's dream about the coins) are amazing, as is the witches sabbat sequence.  Did they actually have the actresses kiss that guy on the ass?

[Rinaldo]

A woman who lived up to her name.  We just don't have this anymore (or maybe we do and I just can't see it).

On the Great British Sewing Bee series, one of the competitors mentioned her obsession with chic 1950s-60s style, her idols being Jacqueline Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, and Princess Grace. And I thought, yep -- those would be the ones, and people thought so back then, too.

[elle]

Belated Birthday Wishes!

"Happy birthday, Olivia de Havilland! 'Gone With the Wind' star is 99 today"  (July 1st)

 

http://www.today.com/popculture/gone-wind-star-olivia-de-havilland-turns-99-t29601

 

I can only wish to be that beautiful and that vital at 99!

 

Best movie for OdH - Robin Hood

Edited July 3, 2015 by elle

[CMH1981]

I was just catching up w/ movies off my dvr last night, and finally watched the Essentials showing of the Picture of Dorian Gray.  I have to say I totally agree w/ Sally Field that Hurd Hatfield was all wrong in the part b/c he played it bland from beginning to end, no emotion peeking out at all throughout the entire performance.  I was surprised that Osborne didn't right out agree w/ her on this, and I wondered if it was b/c he didn't want to step on any toes.  I did agree that Peter Lawford would have been a better fit for the role of Gray.  There needed to be some life in Gray before his soul started to deteriorate after the years of not aging and horrible things he had caused/done.

Edited July 3, 2015 by CMH1981

[ratgirlagogo]

 

Anyway, there have been a lot of witch themed movies today.  Is today some sort of Wiccan holiday?

Not that I know of, although I'm a pagan not a Wiccan.  But Solstice was last weekend and the full moon was the 2nd, so I was also trying to figure out the  day's theme.

 

Haxan is a trip - I've always wondered if the actress really kissed the guy's ass too.  If they ever show it on TCM the same director's  Seven Footprints to Satan is also one of the wildest films you'll ever see, similarly full of demons, dwarves, illogical plotting and unforgettably insane set design.

[editorgrrl]

Anyway, there have been a lot of witch themed movies today. Is today [July 2] some sort of Wiccan holiday?

https://mobile.twitter.com/tcm/status/614855748502319105

Live Tweet Alert! Join @MissAusten for a #TCMWitchHunt this coming Thurs, July 2.

Why do witches fascinate on film?

I think the date is random, though.

[ratgirlagogo]

 

I think the date is random, though.

Probably, although even after I typed it I remembered that in fact July 2 was the full moon too, so maybe not.

Edited July 3, 2015 by ratgirlagogo

[bmoore4026]

FYI for your DVRs: They're showing 1776 tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Eastern.

 

Can't wait!

 

The Scarlet Coat's pretty good (a John Andre portrayed well and doesn't have some stupid blonde braid thing - huge plus), as is The Devil's Disciple.  On the Town  is on at the crack of dawn, though :(

Edited July 3, 2015 by bmoore4026

[Rinaldo]

FYI for your DVRs: They're showing 1776 tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Eastern.

Thanks for the warning. I'm glad (seemingly) everyone else gets enjoyment out of it, though.

[ratgirlagogo]

 

Thanks for the warning.

I love how you know how to hang onto a grudge.  :)

[Julia]

My 1776 UO is that the theatrical release is way better paced and more compelling than the director's cut, and that the restored GOP gavotte brings the movie to a screeching halt while it's on the screen.

[CMH1981]

Again, catching up on movies on the dvr this week on TCM and finally got around to watching Mame w/ Lucille Ball.  I didn't realize that TCM had never shown the film before, so that was a surprise.  I watched it for the first time via Netflix dvd a few years back b/c I heard what a train-wreck it is.  I loved how again, Robert Osborne towed the line w/ his thoughts on Lucille Ball's casting due to his history w/ her as well as his friendship w/ Angela Lansbury.

 

I'll just say it, and i'm sure my opinion is backed up by so many, but Lucy taking this role from Angela Lansbury was a pure travesty.  Lucy's voice was so shot from smoking that she couldn't even sing the songs properly, she just spoke the lines.  I read that the studio wanted her to allow them to have her singing voice dubbed, but Lucy said no.  So how much vaseline was on that lens to make Lucy look that young?  The red outfit from the opening number looked like something Bea Arthur would have wore in the Golden Girls.

 

This was one role where it should really have been Angela Lansbury's.  Didn't WB learn their lesson after the Julie Andrews/Audrey Hepburn/My Fair Lady debacle?  You should always go for the original actress to recreate a role from a hit Broadway show (hell Angela had the damn Tony for that role), if nothing else it would just increase the box office in my opinion.  It's sad b/c even now Angela doesn't like to discuss being passed over for the role.

 

The casting of Lucy really hurt the movie, I could totally see Angela and Bea both getting Oscar nominations if they cast the movie right.

 

If you have never heard the original Broadway recording of Angela in Mame I suggest you take a listen or just buy it.  

Edited July 3, 2015 by CMH1981

[Julia]

Something to go into the weekend with: the original cast recording (sadly, no video) of Bosom Buddies and the reunion.

[bmoore4026]

Something to go into the weekend with: the original cast recording (sadly, no video) of Bosom Buddies and the reunion.

 

Yeah.  Anyone else would greatly pale.

 

For those who don't wanna watch a train wreck, I mean Ms. Ball's version, here's a concise rundown: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tISsu3bsGnw

Edited July 4, 2015 by bmoore4026

[Rinaldo]

This was one role where it should really have been Angela Lansbury's.  Didn't WB learn their lesson after the Julie Andrews/Audrey Hepburn/My Fair Lady debacle?  You should always go for the original actress to recreate a role from a hit Broadway show (hell Angela had the damn Tony for that role), if nothing else it would just increase the box office in my opinion. 

What debacle? (From WB's point of view, that is.) It was a big financial and popular hit, and it won the Best Movie Oscar. If anything, it taught the industry to always substitute a movie star for the stage star, and in general they have always done that thereafter. (There are a few exceptions, like Streisand in Funny Girl, Ellen Greene in Little Shop, Joel Grey in Cabaret, and most of the casts of 1776 and Rent.)

 

I too would love to have seen Lansbury in the Mame movie, but she wouldn't have meant a thing at the box office; the general public at that time had no idea who she was. Those who know and care about theater are a drop in the bucket.

[CMH1981]

I disagree, the general public knew who Lansbury was at the time the movie version of Mame came out.  Lansbury had three Oscar nominations under her belt as well as a healthy film career, even if they were bit parts.  Just a few years earlier she was in Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  You have to remember that Angela was the one who chose to leave Hollywood for Broadway, she was being typecast as women much older than her own age.  

 

I tend to think if you can get the star of a hit Broadway musical to reprise the same role on film it will bring a bigger box office.  It allows the general public who don't live in NYC or have to funds to travel to Broadway shows to see what the fuss was all about, imo.  I still don't know why they don't film Broadway musicals now and do limited engagements at some of the larger cinemas, I would pay money to see the original shows instead of the water-downed movie versions or road show versions we get here.

[ennui]

Going back to ‘most beautiful,” I choose Ava Gardner in Barefoot Contessa. And Angela Lansbury in Blue Hawaii. And Elizabeth Taylor in Giant (or Butterfield 8).

 

Angela Lansbury was in Samson and Delilah, but I barely recognized her. Yes, beautiful, but I think she looked better in with a little age.

Edited July 4, 2015 by ennui

[HelenBaby]

Rather than quote posts related to Mame I'll just state that I remember from my increasingly aging brain that the film was doomed from the start specifically because Ball was starring in it rather than Lansbury.

[Rinaldo]

I disagree, the general public knew who Lansbury was at the time the movie version of Mame came out.  Lansbury had three Oscar nominations under her belt as well as a healthy film career, even if they were bit parts.  Just a few years earlier she was in Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  You have to remember that Angela was the one who chose to leave Hollywood for Broadway, she was being typecast as women much older than her own age.  

 

I tend to think if you can get the star of a hit Broadway musical to reprise the same role on film it will bring a bigger box office.  It allows the general public who don't live in NYC or have to funds to travel to Broadway shows to see what the fuss was all about, imo.  I still don't know why they don't film Broadway musicals now and do limited engagements at some of the larger cinemas, I would pay money to see the original shows instead of the water-downed movie versions or road show versions we get here.

My point (which I admit I rhetorically exaggerated with the "didn't know who she was" phrase) was that she hadn't been the person whose name above the title brings in the audience. The big exception (and her main film credit since leaving movies for Broadway) was indeed Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and it's usually hard to tell with a Disney film if people showed up because of the cast or just the Disney brand.

 

I wish I thought your second paragraph was true. But I'm constantly saddened to be reminded how few people in the US really care about live theater and its performers (the Tony Awards have been acknowledged to be televised as a charity case, the head of CBS likes them even if there's close to no audience for them). I too would like to see more live telecasts or movie casts of shows from the stage, but producers continue to feel that it diminishes the (already small) audience that will feel the need to show up in person. Some analysts feel that this has actually happened to an extent with the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD showings (I don't have the info to know if they're right).

 

I'm curious what you don't like about [1776]. As an historian, sure it has issues but nothing that sends me into a tail spin.

I know I've gone on about this here before, so I apologize to those who remember my rant on the subject; I ask them to skip ahead.

 

It has nothing to do with the history for me; My own orientation is as a musician. I actually think Peter Stone wrote a terrific libretto/screenplay, and it would make a good straight play. But everyone's IQ drops when they start to sing. I just don't find Sherman Edwards's music and lyrics to be at an acceptable minimum professional level. Just in the opening number, we have words extended because an extra syllable is needed ("independencY"), words misaccentuated ("VOTE yes" so that it sounds like vochess), and music with so little harmonic resource that it hardly moves off a single chord. And similar amateurish mistakes happen in pretty much every song. It drives me crazy. I'm not demanding that anybody else agree with me; but you did ask. :)

Edited July 4, 2015 by Rinaldo

[Milburn Stone]

But everyone's IQ drops when they start to sing. I just don't find Sherman Edwards's music and lyrics to be at an acceptable minimum professional level. Just in the opening number, we have words extended because an extra syllable is needed ("independencY")...

 

I'm in agreement about the substandard level of craft in the songs. And with "independency," you cite the example that's always been the single most egregious one for me.

 

Imagine my surprise, then, when just now I decided to see if "independency" was even a word (my expectation was that it isn't), and I learned that apparently it is  an archaic form of "independence," and was actually in use at the time. This link contains a reference to the Gentleman's Magazine in London, which in August 1776 printed the Declaration under the heading Declaration of American Independency. Damn.

 

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/69054/independence-vs-independency

 

I'm still in your camp regarding other flaws of craft in the score.

[elle]

Thanks for the warning. I'm glad (seemingly) everyone else gets enjoyment out of it, though.

(1776!)  Not me this year!  I've joined the ranks of those who have lost TCM because of eeevil Cable.  Not happy!

 

Yeah.  Anyone else would greatly pale.

 

For those who don't wanna watch a train wreck, I mean Ms. Ball's version, here's a concise rundown: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tISsu3bsGnw

Ooo, a new rabbit hole to go a-wandering, thanks!  Interesting watching, it almost felt as if one could switch out what he was saying about "Mame" and replace it with "Hello Dolly".

[Julia]

Interesting watching, it almost felt as if one could switch out what he was saying about "Mame" and replace it with "Hello Dolly".

Well, they both stole it from Ruth Gordon... ;)

Edited July 4, 2015 by Julia

[CMH1981]

Wow, I have never seen the Great Locomotive Chase by Disney but damn if that was one entertaining movie.  I usually hate movies like this, western-ish types of movies, although i'm not sure this could be classified as one.  I had heard of it before when years ago on the Disney Channel they had their Vault Disney stuff at night and they would do mini-interview/retrospectives with their stars.  I believe the one featuring Fess Parker's history with the Disney studios is where I first heard about it.  I swear I remember hearing/reading that Disney made this film and cast Parker in the film b/c Walt wouldn't loan him out to another movie studio...i'm probably wrong/misremembering though.

 

I'm loving these Disney retrospectives every few months, but I hope eventually Disney will either give TCM full access to their live-action library or create their own Vault Disney channel w/ the classic shorts, tv programs, and live-action films they won't show on their other channels.

Edited July 4, 2015 by CMH1981

[Rinaldo]

Exactly (or really, from Jane Cowl, the original-original Dolly Levi in the first version of the play, The Merchant of Yonkers). Just as all the musical Mames stole it from Roz Russell. That's why I think similarly to that YouTube guy (though I have my disagreements with his specifics): it's not about someone "owning" a role, it's about who does it well. Lucille Ball is objectionable not because she's not Lansbury* but because she's bad in the role, and the movie is bad because of the way it had to be tailored to her.

 

(*Though I moaned as loud as anybody at the time that Angela was passed over -- partly because it seemed like her last chance to become a real national star as she deserved [nobody could have predicted Murder, She Wrote back then].)

[bmoore4026]

Watching the end of The Devil's Disciple - holy shit, are Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster cute looking in those American Revolution era outfits.  What?  I gotta thing for guys in colonial period costume.

 

Also, after watching The Scarlet Coat, I was wondering if a movie focusing on John Andre would work today.  Most people don't know who he is.  Hell, some people don't know who Benedict Arnold is other than his name is synonymous with traitor.  I mean, yes, there is that show about Washington's first spy ring, but I don't like their John Andre (features are too rough and there's that dumb braid thing) and, for some reason, Lt. Simcoe is the British colonial equivalent to Kiriyama from Battle Royale.  Tallmadge is cute, though.  Again, guys in colonial period costume.