TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Milburn Stone]

2 hours ago, Padma said:

Not sure how the decision was made, but posters there blame Arthur Freed's bias against using non-professional singers.

I can see where he was coming from. Not to cast aspersions on Ava--her singing wasn't bad--but if you can go from a B+ to an A, and you have the technology to do it, and your music department has dubbing down to a science, and audiences will accept it, why wouldn't you use all the tools in your toolkit?

Ava carries off this song in the film better than "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" (also on YouTube). Maybe Freed thought, "Hey, if she'd sung "Lovin'" as well as she sang "Bill," I'd consider it, but she didn't, and it'll be weird to dub her for one song and not the other, and let's not forget, her character is supposed to be a professional singer on a show boat, so let's just dub her for both and be done with it. I have about 43 other decisions to make today; this doesn't have to be one of them."

Edited July 26, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[Rinaldo]

I doubt that the decision was that detailed; they had a dubber at hand, her stardom wasn't based on her singing, end of story. Her own vocal tracks were issued on the original soundtrack LP, and that was more consideration than was given to most. (And "dubbing on one song and not the other" used to happen all the time; again, I give you West Side Story, where Russ Tamblyn sings for himself, except for the Jet Song where the voice is that of Tucker Smith [otherwise Ice in the cast] and sometimes Rita Moreno is herself, occasionally she's Betty Wand, and toward the end she's Marni Nixon).

"Needing" to be dubbed sometimes was irrelevant. The classic case in point is Patricia Morison, whose lovely soprano we know from the original Broadway cast of Kiss Me, Kate. But when she went into the cast of the movie The Silver Skates, the song had already been recorded (by the ubiquitous Martha Mears) and despite Morison's protests they weren't going to pay for another recording session. So we hear Mears. Some dancers who had sung acceptably in their stage careers (Eleanor Powell, Vera-Ellen) were deemed to not sound pretty enough for the image the studio wanted -- it was a very single-standard era in that respect. That smooth band-singer timbre was the ideal. As with Ava Gardner.

[prican58]

Quote

So, adding to the Marni Nixon discussion, I will toss out the nugget (no pun intended) that her son was Andrew Gold, a singer/songwriter who had a schlock pop hit back in the dreaded schlock pop days of the late '70s with "Lonely Boy." And that Nixon's husband/Andrew's Dad was composer Ernest Gold, who won an Academy Award for his score to Exodus.

bluepiano, I must also note while you may think of Andrew Gold's pop as schlock (I can't argue that) but he was a very accomplished musician who was very prominent on 3 of Linda Ronstadt's best albums (Heart Like a Wheel, Prisoner in Disguise and Hasten Down the Wind...my personal fave) and was her bandleader until he went solo. Sadly he died in 2011 of cancer. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/arts/music/andrew-gold-singer-and-songwriter-dies-at-59.html

[Rinaldo]

My record collection includes several non-soundtrack items from Marni Nixon: a Debussy/Fauré song recital, a song cycle by Aaron Copland, and a very nice CD of Gershwin songs. (I especially like her "By Strauss.") Hers was one of those soprano voices that "aged upwards," so to speak -- far from losing the high notes, they remained when solidity below became a little chancier.

[bmoore4026]

4 hours ago, Padma said:

 

Marni Nixon's death

 

Marni Nixon died!?  When!?

Well, anyway, two very good Westerns are on in the prime time slots tonight.

There's the classic Shane, and all the romantic tension between Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur.

And then there's The Ox-Bow Incident, an exceptional Western that was very personal to Henry Fonda and it boggles my mind that he, along with Dana Andrews (God, he had such sad expressive eyes) and Frank Conroy, were not nominate for Oscars.  Ditto for William Wellman.  Also starring are a young Anthony Quinn (so hot), Jane Darwell in an uncharacteristically wicked role, and the ill fated William Eythe, who would play as the son of Frank Conroy's domineering Major Tetley.  The Ox-Bow Incident is a very good movie...but not a movie you want to watch again and again and again.  The subject matter is very heavy and the ending will make you feel numb.  The Ox-Bow Incident would make a huge impression on a young Clint Eastwood, whose first movie he directed, Hang 'em High, could be seen as a "what if" alternate ending to the story.

There's a pretty good book I've read that talks about both Ox-Bow and Hang 'em High, among others.  It's called <u>Hang 'Em High: Law and Disorder in Western Films and Literature</u>.  It goes into details about several Westerns, not just plotwise, but also behind the scenes and social climates and whatnot.  The author can also be very catty at times, especially to Paul Newman.  Like I said, a pretty good and interesting read.

After that is Broken Arrow starring Jimmy Stewart.  I don't know what to make of Jimmy Stewart or his movies after finding out he was more than a bit racist.  Then again, John Wayne admitted he was a white supremacist, yet his movies are still highly regarded. 

[Crisopera]

I'd never seen Shane, but fell asleep just after

Spoiler

Jack Palance shoots Elisha Cook, Jr.

From the opening titles that looked like pinkish shag carpeting, to the oddly cast Jean Arthur, this just didn't capture me.  Maybe I'll re-watch over the weekend.

[garnet207]

23 hours ago, prican58 said:

bluepiano, I must also note while you may think of Andrew Gold's pop as schlock (I can't argue that) but he was a very accomplished musician who was very prominent on 3 of Linda Ronstadt's best albums (Heart Like a Wheel, Prisoner in Disguise and Hasten Down the Wind...my personal fave) and was her bandleader until he went solo. Sadly he died in 2011 of cancer. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/arts/music/andrew-gold-singer-and-songwriter-dies-at-59.html

 Andrew Gold also wrote & and was the original performer of "Thank You for Being a Friend", aka The Golden Girls theme song.

[elle]

On 7/26/2016 at 0:27 PM, Padma said:

She's (Ava) not a professional, but there's a charm to having her do her own singing and, to my thinking, she's good enough that, had I been the director,

This is how I feel about Audrey Hepburn's singing.  In my mind, she should have been allowed to sing in My Fair Lady during the less technical "cockney" parts.  I'm basing this on her singing "Moon River", thought I seem to recall that there is a clip of her singing "Lover'ly".  

Did Vanessa Redgrave do her own singing in Camelot?

 

Thank you all for the information on the Floradora Girls!

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, elle said:

Did Vanessa Redgrave do her own singing in Camelot?

Yes, though there are stories of different takes being edited together phrase by phrase, sometimes note by note, to arrive at something usable. I can't say how true the stories are, of course.

[Padma]

Josh Logan told a story about Vanessa singing "To The Fair".  She wanted to sing the last part in French and wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Logan handed her Alan Lerner's phone number and said, "I'll do it if he gives HIS okay."  She couldn't reach Lerner so they recorded it all in English.

Someone later asked Logan what he would have done if Lerner had been home and said it was okay. "I wasn't worried," he said, "because I had given her my home number."

[ratgirlagogo]

The  comic book artist/illustrator Jack Davis died a couple of days ago.  He's most famously associated with MAD Magazine  - and its classic movie parodies, of course.  I honestly do not remember this, but if you scroll about halfway down the page:

http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/64056/master/1/#.V5wp97grIdU

you will see a MAD-esque ad that he did for The Long Goodbye - go figure.  And the Man from Uncle lunchbox!

Edited July 30, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[Rinaldo]

Jack Davis drew a ton of those parodies over the decades; he even did a very clever one of Il Trovatore for Opera News magazine, ingeniously  supplying the scenes-between-the-scenes (of which there are many in that famously murky narrative).

Lerner told a similar story about Redgrave's whims on the Camelot set, but in his version he was around to say no. He simply brought up his contractual rights not to have his words changed.

[elle]

23 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Yes, though there are stories of different takes being edited together phrase by phrase, sometimes note by note, to arrive at something usable. I can't say how true the stories are, of course.

That reminds me of the story of how the movie version of "Luck be a Lady" with Marlon Brando came about.  It happens to be my favorite scene in the movie, the 'sing-speak' seemed to work well for him.

I wonder how many other musical scenes have been edited together to make one cohesive piece.  Film editors just do not get enough credit, do they?

[Rinaldo]

Well, of course soundtracks can be edited separately from the visual -- and in a musical they're always post-synced in any case

My DVD of Camelot has an option I've never otherwise seen: you can choose to view it with just the "music track" -- no speaking, no solo singing, just orchestra (and chorus, on the rare occasions it turns up). It cracks me up, because never was there a musical film for which that was a more desirable option. Someone knew. And seriously, I love to listen to the orchestrations for this one; Alfred Newman had a great time with recorders and lutes and all.

[Crisopera]

It was fascinating to watch Sally (1929).  This was the show that made Marilyn Miller probably the biggest star on Broadway during the 1920s, and was brought to the screen with at least some of the show intact.  It's full of terrible stilted dialogue, and the recording technology of the day does not, to say the least, flatter Miller's voice.  But she was a terrific dancer, and enough charm remains (especially during a comic dance with a very young Joe E. Brown, who replaced Leon Errol as the comedy lead) to make it worth looking at. The male lead, Lawrence Gray, is awful (he had a nice voice, but the weirdest pronunciation).  They kept some of the songs at least, and, although most of the Technicolor has been lost, the big number "Wild Rose" has been restored to a slightly peach color.  Sadly, the probably typical Ziegfeld number, a Butterfly Ballet, is not in color, since God knows it could have used it.  The costumes are pretty amazing in black and white; they must have been knockouts in color.

On a completely other note, I was watching Support Your Local Sheriff for the nth time, and realized how brilliant that script is.  The direction and cinematography are more than competent, but what makes it is the incredible cast - not just the always wonderful James Garner, but the raft of great character actors, like Harry Morgan, Henry Jones, Walter Brennan, a hilarious Bruce Dern (of all people), Jack Elam, and the fabulous Joan Hackett, who had incredible chemistry with Garner.  One of my favorite movies.

[Rinaldo]

Thanks for the nice writeup for Sally, Crisopera. I didn't watch it this time, but I bought the on-demand DVD as soon as Warner Archives announced it, because there's so much in it for a musical-theater historian like me. Marilyn Miller! one of the magnetic stars of her time (pretty much the inventor of the name Marilyn), and near-forgotten now! and caught on film in one of her showcase roles! Even leaving her surroundings aside, watching her is kind of a mixed experience. Her famed beauty doesn't quite come across as such, her version of tap dancing is more like heavy-footed clog dancing, and what was it a contemporary observer said? something like "her voice is sweet but there's not much of it." That person also ended the list of imperfections with "But a marvelous thing happens when she's on a stage." And that's what I kept watching for, in vain, until, wonderfully, it finally did happen, and even more wonderfully it coincided with the survival of color footage, during "Wild Rose." And there it is, the magnetism and beauty and charm leaps across the century since. She must have really been something.

[mariah23]

Another one to TCM Remembers: Gloria De Haven has died.  She turned 91 on July 23.

[Rinaldo]

I hope this doesn't seem frivolous when recognizing someone's passing, but my first association with Gloria DeHaven (from having compiled some film quizzes long ago) is that she belongs to the select group of actors who have played their own relatives onscreen. She played her mother, Mrs. Carter DeHaven, in Three Little Words. (Others include Geraldine Chaplin, who played her own grandmother in Chaplin, and various relatives of the Dalai Lama who played other relatives in the two movies made about him.)

Edited August 1, 2016 by Rinaldo

[wilsie]

2 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I hope this doesn't seem frivolous when recognizing someone's passing, but my first association with Gloria DeHaven (from having compiled some film quizzes long ago) is that she belongs to the select group of actors who have played their own relatives onscreen. She played her mother, Mrs. Carter DeHaven, in Three Little Words. (Others include Geraldine Chaplin, who played her own grandmother in Chaplin, and various relative of the Dalai Lama who played other relatives in the two movies made about him.)

It doesn't seem frivolous to me, Rinaldo.  I think it's interesting.  I remember her in so many movies and a lot of tv shows.  I enjoyed her in Murder She Wrote as one of the women who frequented Loretta's Beauty Parlor.  

[Crisopera]

I always liked Gloria DeHaven.  She had the misfortune of coming up at the same time as June Allyson, who became a huge star in the same mold.  MGM didn't really use Gloria well.

[wilsie]

Crisopera, I've always been puzzled about June Allyson's popularity compared with someone like Gloria DeHaven.  I think she's alright as an actress but just doesn't seem to be talented enough to have become as huge a star as she was.  

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, wilsie said:

Crisopera, I've always been puzzled about June Allyson's popularity compared with someone like Gloria DeHaven.  I think she's alright as an actress but just doesn't seem to be talented enough to have become as huge a star as she was.  

A big part of it was the unique sound-signature of her speaking voice.

[wilsie]

1 hour ago, Milburn Stone said:

A big part of it was the unique sound-signature of her speaking voice.

Thank you Milburn Stone.  That makes so much sense.

[voiceover]

Watching Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, thinking -- not for the first time -- that I'd love to see it, and Fredric March's One Foot in Heaven, inserted into the holiday rotation.  Utterly charming Americana.

[bluepiano]

 I've always enjoyed Gloria de Haven in all the movies I've seen her in. Pretty, talented, charming personality. RIP.

On ‎7‎/‎31‎/‎2016 at 0:06 AM, Crisopera said:

But she was a terrific dancer, and enough charm remains (especially during a comic dance with a very young Joe E. Brown, who replaced Leon Errol as the comedy lead) to make it worth looking at.

Speaking of Joe E. Brown, TCM did an entire day of his movies last week. He was a huge star in his day, but unlike say The Marx Brothers or WC Fields, from the same era, he's now totally forgotten. Other than maybe his small role in "Some Like it Hot."

I guess his humor would be considered pretty broad by today's standards, but "The Tenderfoot," from 1932, which TCM showed, is a highly enjoyable movie, featuring a young, still brunette Ginger Rogers as co-star. There's a very funny scene in which Brown, playing a Texas hick, goes into a Kosher restaurant in New York and can't understand a thing on the menu. It's the kind of "ethnic" humor Hollywood would stop doing within a couple of years.

Edited August 2, 2016 by bluepiano

[Rinaldo]

Is Joe E. Brown totally forgotten? Somehow -- and I've tried to figure this out before -- I was well aware of who Joe E. Brown was in my teen years (starting around 1960), and what his comic shtick was. But how did that happen? He didn't have his own TV variety show that he hosted each week, as some other comics did; and though he made some guest appearances on such shows, would I have seen many of them? (Steve Allen would be the likeliest.) At that point I hadn't seen Some Like It Hot, or Show Boat, or A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was one of the Hollywood figures who would be caricatured in old animated shorts that turned up on TV, but would that be enough for me to learn his name? Well, something did it. I can speak only for myself, of course, but my impression is that he was familiar to most kids my age. Very strange.

[voiceover]

Any reax to Michael Feinstein as guest host?  

I know he & Robert are friends.  So I feel like I should like him better than I do.  And I thought one of you guys could talk me into it! 

[Rinaldo]

I've missed him hosting so far. I like him as a performer/evangelist of the music he does so nicely. And he did a good DVD commentary for The Band Wagon. But he can come off a bit... precious and know-it-all, if he's not careful. MST3K did a very mean, very funny parody of him in the in-between parts of one of their episodes.

[Rinaldo]

Leonard Maltin has posted a lovely interview he did with Gloria DeHaven in 1969, when he was 18.

[Milburn Stone]

22 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Is Joe E. Brown totally forgotten? Somehow -- and I've tried to figure this out before -- I was well aware of who Joe E. Brown was in my teen years (starting around 1960), and what his comic shtick was. But how did that happen? 

I know how it happened for me. One of the local stations in Baltimore around 1960 (WBAL) had obviously purchased (or leased) a package of early Warner Bros. Vitaphone movies and showed Joe E. Brown incessantly in the late afternoon slot. As a result, I had no idea that he wasn't a huge comedy star! I remember particularly enjoying Six Day Bicycle Race, probably because there was nothing about a bicycle race that a ten-year old couldn't understand.

[Padma]

On ‎8‎/‎1‎/‎2016 at 4:17 AM, Rinaldo said:

I hope this doesn't seem frivolous when recognizing someone's passing, but my first association with Gloria DeHaven (from having compiled some film quizzes long ago) is that she belongs to the select group of actors who have played their own relatives onscreen. She played her mother, Mrs. Carter DeHaven, in Three Little Words.

I didn't realize she was playing her mother there, but I do remember her singing "Who's Sorry Now"--first time I heard the song and its probably my favorite from Kelmar & Ruby (I'm also a fan of the film, even though I know it's very much "Hollywood-ized".  Without it, I think they'd be one of the songwriting teams that most non-musicians would have never heard of. Lots of good music and pretty entertaining with Fred Astaire and a dialed down Red Skelton).

[HyeChaps]

Wasn't Gloria DeHaven on a soap opera?

[Rick Kitchen]

3 minutes ago, HyeChaps said:

Wasn't Gloria DeHaven on a soap opera?

She was on Ryan's Hope and As the World Turns

[voiceover]

On August 2, 2016 at 7:27 PM, Rinaldo said:

But he [Michael Feinstein]can come off a bit... precious and know-it-all, if he's not careful. 

Yeah.  That's what I'm getting, too.  

Just another example of the gaping hole in my Robert Osborne-less existence.

[bluepiano]

Fay Wray day yesterday. Interesting to see how she was more often a brunette, her natural hair color, but is generally remembered as a blond because of her role in King Kong. I thought that as a brunette she was stunningly beautiful. And though some of the movies TCM showed weren't very good, you could see that she's a better and more versatile actress than generally given credit for. She could even do comedy. But because of King Kong and some of the horror movies she was in, people know her primarily for screaming and fainting.

Interestingly, she was married to two major Hollywood screenwriters, John Monk Saunders ("Wings," "The Dawn Patrol") and then the great Robert Riskin, who wrote so many of the classic Capra movies. ("It Happened One Night," "Meet John Doe, "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.")

[Wiendish Fitch]

I love King Kong, but it did simultaneously make and destroy Fay Wray's career  (y'know, kind of what Dracula did for Bela Lugosi). I read somewhere that, at some party in her later years, Fay Wray was told by a random fan, "I love you in that movie!" and she replied, "Oh? Which one?"

I'm not sure if she was being sarcastic or not, but it's still a great anecdote.

[LilWharveyGal]

I'm among friends here, right?  Can I admit that I've never seen King Kong?  I'm familiar with the iconic images of Fay in his "hand" of course, but had never seen her act in anything so I really enjoyed seeing some of the films yesterday.  (And I agree about her beauty as a brunette!)    

[Charlie Baker]

I wasn't familiar with much of Fay Wray's work beyond Kong, Most Dangerous Game, and Doctor X. I would agree that much of what TCM showed wasn't notable.

But she did a good job in Ann Carver's Profession, where she was a successful defense attorney married to an architect who couldn't get his career going.  The plot gets a bit ridiculous, especially in today's world. (She wins a breach of promise suit in which the defendant claims that he didn't know his fiancee was black when he proposed. She winds up defending her husband on a murder charge.)  Her acting is fine; she does a strong job with her summation.  Except that summation has her blaming herself for his difficulties because she was successful at her career.  None of that sits very well in 2016.

According to IMDB, Ms. Wray had the strongest personal feelings for The Wedding March, a silent where she played opposite the writer/director Erich von Stroheim.  I saw Greed when I was in college, but had never seen this, which does have a great reputation.  And I knew von Stroheim for his fine performances in Grand Illusion and Sunset Boulevard.  He had a rep for excess in his movie making, and this project was divided into two movies, the second of which does not survive.  If you can deal with the silent conventions (or hokum, depending on your point of view), it is an affecting romantic drama.  Ms. Wray and Zasu Pitts, as the woman Stroheim must marry even as he woos Ms. Wray, look very beautiful and are quite touching.  Von Stroheim might not look like a romantic lead, but he has a rugged charisma in this, despite the helmet that could pass for a Sia wig, and is convincing.  And there's even a sequence in color. 

[ratgirlagogo]

Two other good ones they showed yesterday were Black Moon (a good, relatively serious minded voodoo movie, similar in feel to I Walked With A Zombie) and The Richest Girl in the World, which is really a great feminist comedy until it kind of punks out on the ending.  But she's the supporting actress in both of those.  I love her in Doctor X and The Most Dangerous Game is one of my all time favorites.

12 hours ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

 I read somewhere that, at some party in her later years, Fay Wray was told by a random fan, "I love you in that movie!" and she replied, "Oh? Which one?"

I don't remember where I read that either (Michael Musto? or some similar dweeb) but that is one of the nastiest stories I ever read about an actor/actress.  For god's sake of COURSE she made tons of movies (123 according to the IMDB) and just because so many dimbulbs don't have any interest in the cultural past, why would somebody go up and say something that insulting and act as if it were ridiculous that she thought somebody might be aware of one of the 122 films she made other than King Kong?

 

ETA: okay, it was NINETY NINE films.  The rest were TV shows.  Sorry I got a little heated - I just don't understand why anyone would be that rude to an older performer.

Edited August 6, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[Wiendish Fitch]

Well, I'd make a lousy journalist, because the above-mentioned anecdote comes from Roger Ebert and his "Great Movies" review of King Kong, and I hadn't read it in a while. My fault, but here it is, taken directly from Ebert's site:

Quote

At a Hollywood party in 1972, I saw Hugh Hefner introduced to Fay Wray. "I loved your movie," he told her. "Which one?" she asked.

Apologies, everyone.

[Padma]

I think you'll be forgiven as it's a MUCH better story knowing that the offensive comment was said by Hefner.

(I imagine older stars get used to the stupid things people say to them. Probably the one you hear about most often--which I think is real, too, not a joke--is "Didn't you used to be (fill in famous name)?") Nice bit of trivia to know that Fay Wray did 99 films. Sorry I missed "her day" this week, although I had hoped to catch "The Clairvoyant" with Claude Rains.

[voiceover]

So I dragged myself to Wednesday's big screen, after-workday showing of GWTW, and I was as glad as I knew I would be for forcing it on myself.  I'd actually seen it in a theater in the mid-80s, during the "classic cinema movie theater" phase that swept the country (pre-TCM) (and how I'd love to see it come back!!  I'd support both!).  It was the first of countless times since, and though I enjoyed it, I didn't love it as I do know, nor did I have the appreciation for classic cinema that the years and Robert O have given me.

One of the first visuals that struck me as a blow to the solar plexus was -- believe it or not -- Thomas Mitchell (or Thomas Mitchell's stunt double) on his stallion, galloping across the fields of Tara.  DAMN.  Just...stunning.  Clark Gable is even more gorgeous when he's three stories high, and Vivien Leigh is perfection.  Even while playing one of the most unlikeable lead characters in film history.

On July 1, 2016 at 8:35 PM, bmoore4026 said:

 watching Gone with the Wind, I can see why the Academy chose Hattie McDaniel over [Olivia De Havilland].  Melanie's character is just so...so...I can't find the word.  Shallow? 

Now, I love Hattie in this film, and I have no argument about that Oscar, but I must disagree with your characterization of Melanie's character, and De Havilland's performance.  As Olivia plays her, Melanie is the kindest, gentlest, most loving & forgiving character in the movie, but she's no simpering drip.  Rhett's got her measure: that she's so honorable and fine that she can simply not conceive of a lack of honor in the ones she loves.  And while he accuses Scarlett of being contemptuous of Mellie for that reason (he may as well have broken the 4th wall & said it to many moviegoers), I believe Scarlett when she insists that she does "love [her], really!"  Because the movie, IMO, is built on the bones of the friendship between those two women.  Because the movie ends when Melanie dies.  This is a theory I floated back in the TWoP days of this thread (though I never claimed to have been the author of that thought).

One of my favorite moments in the movie happens right after Scarlett shoots the Yankee deserter.  She looks up, and there's Melanie, armed with Charles's sword, ready to back up her best friend.  Then she's quick enough to run to the window right after and dissemble to the worried family, forcing an admiring Scarlett to admit, "What a cool liar you are, Mellie!"  She also suggests that they look through the dead man's pockets & knapsack for money (Scarlett: "..just ashamed I didn't think of that myself!").  Are these the actions of a shallow simp?

And I love her "Buck up!" speech to Rhett, as he weeps with guilt over a dangerously ill Scarlett.  She quietly assures him that Scarlett DOES love him ("...much more than she knows!") -- and because Melanie says it, we believe it, too. 

IMO, it's Hattie's dead-on, devastating delivery of -- what is otherwise exposition -- after Bonnie's accident that tips the Oscar scales finally and firmly in her favor.  But without the mirror of a loving and loyal Melanie, via De Havilland, Scarlett's (and Leigh's) brilliance wouldn't shine as bright.

Edited August 7, 2016 by voiceover

[Milburn Stone]

5 hours ago, voiceover said:

One of my favorite moments in the movie happens right after Scarlett shoots the Yankee deserter.  She looks up, and there's Melanie, armed with Charles's sword, ready to back up her best friend.

Of course, one other thing that makes Melanie not just a pure Mary Sue is that she's fully complicit in a world that believes owning people is a fine thing.

I sometimes think a good double feature would be Gone With the Wind and Django Unchained, just for perspective.

[voiceover]

The book paints a harsher view of Melanie in that respect as well.  

Of course, no modern-day critique of GWTW is complete without noting that: That's not the way it really was.  

Edited August 7, 2016 by voiceover

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, voiceover said:

Of course, no modern-day critique of GWTW is complete without noting that: That's not the way it really was.  

Totally--and my comment was not meant to suggest that GWTW should not be enjoyed for what it is. (In case anyone thought I meant that.) Just that it's so easy to be seduced (because of how good the movie is) into forgetting the horrific realities of slavery while you're watching it.

I'm quite fond of Song of the South for similar reasons as GWTW. But at least with SotS, I can "comfort" myself that Disney seems to have moved the setting away from the world of slavery to the world of Reconstruction.

Edited August 7, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[bluepiano]

On ‎8‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 7:37 AM, Wiendish Fitch said:

I love King Kong, but it did simultaneously make and destroy Fay Wray's career  (y'know, kind of what Dracula did for Bela Lugosi). 

I used to think the same thing, but looking at her credits on IMDB, she did make many non "woman in peril" movies after Kong. In any event, to her credit she had a sense of humor about the whole thing. There's a famous picture of her posing with the tiny Kong model used in the filming, and she frequently told the anecdote of how the producer promised her she'd be playing opposite a tall dark leading man, but didn't happen to mention that it would be a giant gorilla.

On ‎8‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 8:07 AM, Charlie Baker said:

But she did a good job in Ann Carver's Profession, where she was a successful defense attorney married to an architect who couldn't get his career going.  The plot gets a bit ridiculous, especially in today's world.  

That movie was certainly an interesting cultural artifact. The breach of contract case, hinging on whether the defendant should've easily been able to identify a light skinned "colored woman" as not being white, was sadly probably an accurate portrayal of the times.

The movie starts out as if it's going to have a feminist slant. Ann Carver is an ambitious young woman who puts herself through law school working as a waitress, and who has the self-confidence to tell a distinguished older male attorney that he's completely mishandling a case. But then, as in many movies of the '30s and '40s, the fact that she has a far more successful career than her husband is depicted as the reason their marriage fails, and is justification for him turning to another woman. The climactic court scene, where she blames her husband's mistakes on her own self-centeredness and wows to give up practicing law, was pretty hard to stomach.

But archaic plot aside, I thought she was very good throughout, charming in the early scenes and suitably intense later. I also really liked her in a silly but fun low budget movie TCM screened called Wildcat Bus. (There's an ignored Hollywood sub genre for study! The bus movie.)

Edited August 7, 2016 by bluepiano

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, bluepiano said:

(There's an ignored Hollywood sub genre for study! The bus movie.)

Loved The Big Bus with Stockard Channing. :)

[ratgirlagogo]

On 8/6/2016 at 2:36 PM, Padma said:

I think you'll be forgiven as it's a MUCH better story knowing that the offensive comment was said by Hefner.

(I imagine older stars get used to the stupid things people say to them. Probably the one you hear about most often--which I think is real, too, not a joke--is "Didn't you used to be (fill in famous name)?") Nice bit of trivia to know that Fay Wray did 99 films. Sorry I missed "her day" this week, although I had hoped to catch "The Clairvoyant" with Claude Rains.

Agree about the Hefner part. Also I should have remembered it was Ebert who would of course have told the story against Hef.

The Clairvoyant was kind of a surprise - a music-hall performer with a mindreading act develops genuine psychic abilities when around one clinging fan.  It's unusual for a movie in this time period to present psychic abilities as genuine - it's all Cat and the Canary scenarios back then.  Even though there were many classic horror films that depend on the supernatural being presented as real, of course - much more often than today the supposed "supernatural" element turns out to be  some kind of gaslighting trick.  My only problem was that the sound was poor and there was no closed captioning, so I missed some of the dialogue.

Edited August 7, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[bluepiano]

That's one I wasn't thinking of. My list includes It Happened One Night (the greatest of all bus movies), Two Tickets to Broadway, The Runaway Bus, Bus Stop, Some Came Running, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, The Italian Job, Forest Gump, and Speed.

Admittedly some of these have of a minimal amount of screen time on board a bus, but the bus scene does have significance.

There have certainly been way more train movies, going back to the silent movie days and the heroine tied to the tracks in the path of a speeding train. Just would not have worked as well with a bus. And "Strangers on a Bus" just wouldn't have had the same ring.

[Rinaldo]

You beat me to it, Milburn Stone! Silly as it is, I adore The Big Bus. To take on the disaster movie at the height of its popularity with, not a plane or a submarine or even a train, but... a bus! is delightful. And the slightly cheesy all-star casts of those movies meet their match with the use of Lynn Redgrave, Larry Hagman, Joe Bologna, Ruth Gordon, Sally Kellerman, and many more. The pulsating theme music is going through my head right now. Seriously, TCM should totally program it on Bus Movie night.

Edited August 8, 2016 by Rinaldo