TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Rinaldo]

I concur on the excellence of Loverly. There has been a boom in scholarly yet broadly readable books devoted to a single musical recently, and of those the best, I think are McHugh's Loverly, Tim Carter's book about Oklahoma! (did you know they tried to get Shirley Temple for Laurey, and Groucho Marx for the peddler?), and bruce mcclung's brilliant discussion of Lady in the Dark. 

Dominic has also located the long-thought-lost score of Lerner & Loewe's pre-Brigadoon show, The Day Before Spring. I hope to see it done some day.

[Padma]

2 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I concur on the excellence of Loverly. There has been a boom in scholarly yet broadly readable books devoted to a single musical recently, and of those the best, I think are McHugh's Loverly, Tim Carter's book about Oklahoma! (did you know they tried to get Shirley Temple for Laurey,

 

I might be the only person who wishes they'd done it. Shirley Temple is one of those actresses that I feel something about her career. She was so brilliant as a child, and to me, looked like a petite, dark haired Marilyn Monroe (without the sizzle) as an adult and was a good enough actress that she should have had more of a career. If I'd been directing "The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer" I would have had her go platinum blonde and be a sexy teen chasing Cary.  I think she could have successfully played a lot of adult roles if she'd had a few better breaks. (Some Gloria Graham parts come to mind).  She still accomplished a lot, but it's so much harder for women to make that transition from child star to adult actress. I wouldn't have minded seeing what she could do with Oklahoma.  (Then again, apart from the singing, I thought she was a better choice for "The Wizard of Oz", as originally intended, than Judy.  But it wouldn't have been the campy adult film it became, so probably for the best that they couldn't get her released.)

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Padma said:

I might be the only person who wishes they'd done it. ...  She still accomplished a lot, but it's so much harder for women to make that transition from child star to adult actress. I wouldn't have minded seeing what she could do with Oklahoma. 

I think the crucial thing here* is the date at which they would have been asking her: Assuming it was early 1943 for a late-1943 opening, she would have been 15. Even in an era more tolerant of very young actresses playing romantically mature roles (think equally young Ann Miller as a married woman in You Can't Take It With You), and when teenagers looked more grown-up than they ever do now, that would have been pushing it. And indeed, that was the tenor of the nice letter Shirley's mother wrote to the Theatre Guild: It looked like a first-class opportunity, Shirley was indeed looking toward adult roles... but Laurey was a little too grown-up for her at this moment.

(*Actually, it's a total side issue :) to my original reason for mentioning her and Marx's names: that the legend that "Oklahoma! didn't want to cast stars" isn't really true. It's that they couldn't get stars, particularly given what they were paying.)

It's hard for any child star to transition from to adult performer, isn't it? I can think of both boys and girls in that era (now, too) who managed it, but they're in the minority. 

Quote

Then again, apart from the singing, I thought she was a better choice for "The Wizard of Oz"...

That's an awfully big "apart from" when we're talking about Judy Garland, isn't it? :)

But then I have to room to talk, because I'm a curmudgeon about The Wizard of Oz, and was even at age 5 when I was taken to a rerelease of the movie into theaters, because I'd read the book first. So I knew that it was silver shoes, not ruby slippers; that the good witch who greeted Dorothy on arrival wasn't Glinda; that all this business with farmhands and mean ladies and traveling whatevers was just a waste of time that pointlessly delays the actual flight to Oz (which in Baum is on page 2); and most of all, that OZ IS REAL AND NOT A DREAM DAMMIT.

Edited October 12, 2016 by Rinaldo

[Padma]

5 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I think the crucial thing here* is the date at which they would have been asking her: Assuming it was early 1943 for a late-1943 opening, she would have been 15. Even in an era more tolerant of very young actresses playing romantically mature roles (think equally young Ann Miller as a married woman in You Can't Take It With You), and when teenagers looked more grown-up than they ever do now, that would have been pushing it. And indeed, that was the tenor of the nice letter Shirley's mother wrote to the Theatre Guild: It looked like a first-class opportunity, Shirley was indeed looking toward adult roles... but Laurey was a little too grown-up for her at this moment.

(*Actually, it's a total side issue :) to my original reason for mentioning her and Marx's names: that the legend that "Oklahoma! didn't want to cast stars" isn't really true. It's that they couldn't get stars, particularly given what they were paying.)

It's hard for any child star to transition from to adult performer, isn't it? I can think of both boys and girls in that era (now, too) who managed it, but they're in the minority. 

That's an awfully big "apart from" when we're talking about Judy Garland, isn't it? :)

But then I have to room to talk, because I'm a curmudgeon about The Wizard of Oz, and was even at age 5 when I was taken to a rerelease of the movie into theaters, because I'd read the book first. So I knew that it was silver shoes, not ruby slippers; that the good witch who greeted Dorothy on arrival wasn't Glinda; that all this business with farmhands and mean ladies and traveling whatevers was just a waste of time that pointlessly delays the actual flight to Oz (which in Baum is on page 2); and most of all, that OZ IS REAL AND NOT A DREAM DAMMIT.

On that last sentence, at least, we agree completely! (I read all 14 by Baum and 13 by Ruth Plumly Thompson--loved every one of them. Other changes I can live with, but that ending was a travesty!)

As for child stars still having good acting careers as adults, I have a much easier time of thinking of lots of boys rather than girls (Jackie Cooper, Jackie Coogan, the Hickmans, the Stockwells, Roddy McDowell, etc.)  For girls (i.e. preteen children when they were popular actresses, not Taylor or Garland or other popular teens )... well, of course, Natalie Wood, not sure about Margaret O'Brien.  Maybe character parts like Jane Withers? Seems like they mostly the girls, including Shirley Temple, had a much tougher time being child stars and then accepted in adult roles, too.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Padma

[Rinaldo]

Exactly. The others were just me being too young to be ready for how movie adaptations work. But making Oz fictional is unforgivable. (I read all the Baums, all the Thompsons, all the horrible Neills, both the quite-good Snows, the all-right Cosgrove, and the really excellent McGraw, the best of the post-Baum titles. Plus I used to attend the national meetings of the Wizard of Oz club. I'm a sick creature....)

[SeanC]

Morning Glory, the film that won Katharine Hepburn her first Oscar, was playing the other day.  I still haven't seen all that many American films made pre-Code, so that's always interesting, though this ran to only 70 minutes, and definitely felt way too short -- it was, as a result, poorly paced.  The role calls on Hepburn to play an ingenue, of sorts, which even then was a bit of an odd fit for her screen persona, I think.  

[voiceover]

19 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

 

voiceover, regarding whether Higgins and Eliza had too huge a gulf between them to be a couple: My own years have taught me that people who seem surprisingly unlike can form the most devoted of couples.

Sure.  Lots of couples flourish despite/because of the differences.  And lots don't.  

My point was -- perhaps poorly made, though I rather liked it -- that when I was young I believed in Love Triumphant.  And I wrote about that.  A lot.  I had no room for another argument.

Then later on in life, I said, Wow; now I get what the old man was saying.  And I made room for his argument.

[Milburn Stone]

2 hours ago, voiceover said:

Sure.  Lots of couples flourish despite/because of the differences.  And lots don't.  

My point was -- perhaps poorly made, though I rather liked it -- that when I was young I believed in Love Triumphant.  And I wrote about that.  A lot.  I had no room for another argument.

Then later on in life, I said, Wow; now I get what the old man was saying.  And I made room for his argument.

Where I come out--re Higgins and Eliza--is: Sure, a relationship between these two is likely to be stormy at times. They are anything but well-suited for one another. But do I buy that they have developed a need for each other, a need that transcends whether either one is making a wise choice in choosing the other? Yes, the musical succeeds in making me buy that.

[Rinaldo]

Even Shaw conceded that much in the Epilogue he appended for publication: That Higgins will always be an important part of Eliza's life. But he was definite that romance would not be part of it. And of course we ourselves are free to agree with that (or feel that it's the definitive word, and we ought not disagree), or to remember that GBS himself had rather individual ideas about the place of romantic love in life (his biographers seem to believe that his marriage remained unconsummated), which may not be the same as ours. I'm happy to see different productions of Pygmalion handle it differently -- as indeed with different productions of My Fair Lady, within the confines of the text.

Quite coincidentally, today is the day I present My Fair Lady to my History of Musicals class. I keep trying to improve my lecture from year to year; it's hard to convey what makes it good to undergraduates who don't know it. Just sampling one scene or another doesn't help that much; it's the wit and precision of the whole story.

Afterward: I did what I generally do, and I think I did it more effectively than previous years: show the lessons/first-tryout sequence first in the B&W Pygmalion film, then in My Fair Lady. Obvious things like the grand-ification of everything (Higgins now has 3 times as many servants as a bachelor establishment would ever have, plus a balcony level for his study), the addition of the "Rain in Spain" breakthrough moment, replacing Mrs. Higgins's at-home with Ascot, and especially replacement of "bloody" as Eliza's gaffe by "arse," which everyone understands. Plus non-essential acting evaluations (that I still enjoy seeing them state) like Wendy Hiller's desperation while maintaining her poised exterior, and Rex Harrison's superb, hilarious callousness toward others.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Rinaldo

[Sharpie66]

Oh, yes, Wendy Hiller just nails that "hovering on the edge" aspect during her debut.

I've always loved her performances--the three that stand out for me are Pygmalion, I Know Where I'm Going, and Murder on the Orient Express (which was the first film I had ever seen with her, so it'll always be a standout for me!).

[Crisopera]

Wendy Hiller is also marvelous in another Shaw adaptation, Major Barbara.  Not as entertaining as Pygmalion, but her scenes with Robert Morley as her father are wonderful.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Crisopera

[Padma]

10 hours ago, voiceover said:

Sure.  Lots of couples flourish despite/because of the differences.  And lots don't.  

My point was -- perhaps poorly made, though I rather liked it -- that when I was young I believed in Love Triumphant.  And I wrote about that.  A lot.  I had no room for another argument.

Then later on in life, I said, Wow; now I get what the old man was saying.  And I made room for his argument.

Rex is a great Henry Higgins, but I'm with Shaw on the ending (late to it, but...yes.) I think he's a better feminist than I am/was with his conclusion that they'll always be part of each others' lives, but not as a romantic couple. That makes huge sense to me, as written in the play and in the film. (And I think L&L did a great job of capturing a lot of the essence of the dynamic there, in the music and screenplay).

The thing is, by the end, Eliza is just too good for Higgins. It's not because of age, but she's just more open minded, and frankly seems considerably smarter because of it. They've changed each other--and he's definitely opened his mind (a bit) about women, or at least about her. But he's still too much of a curmudgeon, still too sexist and domineering (note the end: "Bring me my slippers!") 

It's easy to imagine that she'd indulge him a little...nudge his archaic chauvinistic ideas forward a little, over time...and probably become someone he considered his closest friend. For her, he would always be loved as a teacher and father figure. But I think that the script got it right with that awkward exchange of "I don't want you to make love to me...more friendly like..."  And he, kind of asexual it seems, would be fine with that, too.

I think Shaw got it right and so did L&L, while still not alienating those who chose to believe a romance would develop. To me, Eliza would find a man much better suited to her than Higgins (or Freddy), but still be in each other's lives. A very feminist sort of story, Mr. Shaw, and it took me a while to catch up to what you had in mind a century ago!

ETA: Kudos, Rinaldo, on the Oz book mastery. Normally, I'm a curiosity for the familiarity I have with them (most people have, sadly, only seen the movie!) You take it to a higher level and as a big Oz fan myself, I salute you! :)

Edited October 13, 2016 by Padma

[Rinaldo]

5 hours ago, Padma said:

But he's still too much of a curmudgeon, still too sexist and domineering (note the end: "Bring me my slippers!") 

Having just showed this scene to the class today (this was the very first year in which none of them, not one, knew anything about the musical or the play -- can you believe it? -- though at least one of them knew the Pygmalion myth), I can see another side to that line of Higgins, as some in the class also pointed out: just as she is lightly mocking the words she said on their first meeting ("I washed my face and hands"), he is knowingly quoting himself, at his worst, and he knows it. In essence he seems to be saying, "That's what I would typically say now, isn't it?" and maybe he'll try to do a bit better now.

There's also that interesting sentence in the Afterword when Shaw admits that in the occasional moment of fantasy, Eliza imagines getting Higgins alone on an island and seeing if she could tempt him into romance -- but she knows that in the real world, that's not the relationship they have.

Quote

Kudos, Rinaldo, on the Oz book mastery. Normally, I'm a curiosity for the familiarity I have with them (most people have, sadly, only seen the movie!) You take it to a higher level and as a big Oz fan myself, I salute you! :)

Thanks so much! -- few enough people know about the series that I'm ridiculously flattered by your salute. ☺ Perhaps my biggest satisfaction was in carrying on a correspondence with the Club's cartographer, the late Jim Haff, who had drawn up their map of Oz and of its surrounding countries. He shared his working notes with me, outlining all the difficulties of reconciling the geography of 40+ books, for whose authors consistency was the last thing on their minds. Managing to make them all agree was a masterful piece of work, and just the sort of thing that interests me.

[elle]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

(this was the very first year in which none of them, not one, knew anything about the musical or the play -- can you believe it? -- though at least one of them knew the Pygmalion myth)

That is as surprising as none of them knowing about My Fair Lady!  Sounds like someone had a good myths teacher.

It must be fun to see the movie through new eyes!

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, elle said:

That is as surprising as none of them knowing about My Fair Lady!  

I wouldn't expect random undergraduates to know about it these days (though in a department of music students, and a movie that's shown more often than many, I might expect a little better awareness). But this is a bunch of students who've chosen to study History of Musicals, so you'd expect more-than-average awareness. Oh well, everybody has different experiences. For instance, last year there was a boy who was familiar with any number of seldom-done 30s musicals, was happily singing along to songs from On Your Toes and Babes in Arms... but had never even heard of Oklahoma!  Go figure.

And in this case, I found it interesting that though they knew nothing about the story, when I mentioned the original production knew who they had to pursue to play Eliza, and I significantly left the sentence hanging... everyone murmured "Julie Andrews" just as I planned. So they knew that much. (In fact, I was able to go on to tell them, the star L&L wanted, and tried to get, was Mary Martin, just as with every other big musical of the 1950s and 60s.)

Edited October 14, 2016 by Rinaldo

[Milburn Stone]

12 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

But this is a bunch of students who've chosen to study History of Musicals...

Even though I know enough to teach such a course, I wouldn't begin to know how. (Any more than I'd know how to teach someone to read, add or subtract.) So my hat's off to you. I would probably just play them records and say, "Isn't this fantastic? Just listen to this!..." And anyone who didn't get it would fail.

[voiceover]

Two years ago, none of my students knew who Agatha Christie was.  I almost cried.

Linking this back to the topic at hand: I'd love to see a TCM monthlong salute to the film detective.  They've probably done similar, but since I can't remember when, I'm ready for a side-by-side of Nick, Nora, Marlowe, & Shaft.

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

Even though I know enough to teach such a course, I wouldn't begin to know how. ... I would probably just play them records and say, "Isn't this fantastic? Just listen to this!..." And anyone who didn't get it would fail.

I do play recordings (or show parts of videos) sometimes -- often, especially as we're past 1940 now and there is actually stuff to see and hear. But, as I already know from my years as a music professor in general, nobody can listen intelligently unless they know what to listen for. So I have to give some guidelines along those lines, and each year I try to do that a bit better.

31 minutes ago, voiceover said:

I'd love to see a TCM monthlong salute to the film detective.  They've probably done similar, but since I can't remember when, I'm ready for a side-by-side of Nick, Nora, Marlowe, & Shaft.

That would be great. There are so many possibilities. Add in Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple, Hildegarde Withers, Sam Spade, Philo Vance, and semi-forgotten series from the early talkies.

[voiceover]

Bulldog Drummond!!  Walter Pidgeon's turn in that role was actually pretty...sexy, if you can believe it.

Edited October 14, 2016 by voiceover
Because autocorrect isn't 100%

[Milburn Stone]

Rinaldo wrote:

I do play recordings (or show parts of videos) sometimes -- often, especially as we're past 1940 now and there is actually stuff to see and hear. But, as I already know from my years as a music professor in general, nobody can listen intelligently unless they know what to listen for. So I have to give some guidelines along those lines, and each year I try to do that a bit better.

(Manually quoting since the quote function is on the fritz.)

I don't quarrel with anything you're saying. It leaves me wondering, however, how I was able--with no instruction--to perceive 90% of what was amazing about the scores of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Bernstein, Sondheim, Styne, Loesser, et. al. when I was 9 years old.

I'm going to venture a guess that something much the same can be said of you.

[mariah23]

5 hours ago, voiceover said:

Two years ago, none of my students knew who Agatha Christie was.  I almost cried.

Linking this back to the topic at hand: I'd love to see a TCM monthlong salute to the film detective.  They've probably done similar, but since I can't remember when, I'm ready for a side-by-side of Nick, Nora, Marlowe, & Shaft.

They have.

[WendyCR72]

Criterion is releasing His Girl Friday on Blu-Ray in January 2017 with a list of extras, one of them a 2K Restoration of The Front Page from 1931. Looks like it's going to be quite a set!

[Rinaldo]

I love it when Criterion or other companies take the trouble to do something like that. TCM has been showing the 1931 Front Page on occasion, and it would be great to have it easily accessible like this. 

Two other sterling examples are Warner's 3-disc set of The Maltese Falcon, which includes the two earlier adaptations of the same book, plus assorted shorts (for one of those great "Warner night at the movies" programs): a cartoon, a big-band all-music spot, and a famous filming of Gaité Parisienne that I'd been curious about for years. And their Singin' in the Rain which adds the original film renditions of all the songs.

15 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

It leaves me wondering, however, how I was able--with no instruction--to perceive 90% of what was amazing about the scores of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Bernstein, Sondheim, Styne, Loesser, et. al. when I was 9 years old.

I'm going to venture a guess that something much the same can be said of you.

Sure, but we had the advantage (well, I did -- I can't speak for your age) of being half a century closer to that stuff when first encountering it, when the actual scores were newer and the whole genre was closer to the center of pop culture than it has now become. That's a huge difference. Nothing needs explication in its own time and place; even classical music and theater was once just everyone's entertainment and needed no help. Nobody even thought of Brahms or Shaw, when new, as having a style or content that needed understanding, until time passed and it became more remote. Now in addition to mine, we have courses in History of Rock and History of Jazz, etc., all of them with a lot to absorb and understand. The same is true of Film History courses, and those have been around even longer. I'm delighted that there are indeed undergraduates who want to learn about all these, and helping them know more about musicals is great fun for me (and for them, I'm told).

[Crisopera]

Rinaldo, I wish I could take your class - and I'm in the prime original-cast-album demographic.  (I believe all suburban houses of the 1950s were sold equipped with cast albums of My Fair Lady and West Side Story.)

[Padma]

On ‎10‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 6:16 PM, Rinaldo said:

 Perhaps my biggest satisfaction was in carrying on a correspondence with the Club's cartographer, the late Jim Haff, who had drawn up their map of Oz and of its surrounding countries. He shared his working notes with me, outlining all the difficulties of reconciling the geography of 40+ books, for whose authors consistency was the last thing on their minds. Managing to make them all agree was a masterful piece of work, and just the sort of thing that interests me.

That map is amazing! Thank you so much for sharing it.  Since we were also mentioning Shaw, something I always liked about Baum was his support for women's suffrage, although he passed away just a few months before the 19th amendment was passed.  Also, his love of musical theater, even producing plays (you know all this, of course, but many don't) and starting a film company.  He was really a fresh voice in children's literature and meant a lot to me growing up with my second generation of books (too battered now to be valuable, but its wonderful that there are at least decent facsimiles of his OZs available, though not of the others).

I have mixed feelings about the movie, but without it probably Oz might be forgotten, so there's that. (Plus, of course, the music that introduced me, probably like most people, to Harold Arlen).

[Milburn Stone]

54 minutes ago, Padma said:

I have mixed feelings about the movie, but without it probably Oz might be forgotten, so there's that. (Plus, of course, the music that introduced me, probably like most people, to Harold Arlen).

You know that sequence near the beginning of 2001 when the appearance of the monolith is the catalyst for a quantum leap of consciousness in the apes? That was the Wizard of Oz soundtrack LP on MGM Records when I was six in 1956. I played it incessantly, and I'm certain the work of Arlen and Harburg was singlehandedly responsible for transforming my brain.

Edited October 15, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[bmoore4026]

If you're a night owl like me, then I should tell you that, tonight, they're showing two classic Blaxploitation pics:  Dolemite and Superfly.

Also, they're showing a trio of gothic horror films staring Deborah Kerr right now - The Innocents, The Chalk Garden, and Eye of the Devil.

[Rinaldo]

10 hours ago, Crisopera said:

I believe all suburban houses of the 1950s were sold equipped with cast albums of My Fair Lady and West Side Story.

Isn't that the truth! When students ask me now what was the last musical that seemed to be as omnipresent as Hamilton does now, I have to go back (with all acknowledgment to Dolly and Fiddler and the Franco-Brit imports of the 80s) to My Fair Lady. That had the advantage of the live variety shows that were all over TV then -- I knew there was a thing called My Fair Lady and a girl named Julie Andrews who sang this thing called "I Could Have Danced All Night" (which she did, on Sid Caesar and Ed Sullivan and you name it; always in a grand ball setting that led to confusion when people actually saw the show and it had nothing to do with that), long before I knew what it was and what the story was.

And yes, we had the LP (with that confusing-for-kids Hirschfeld drawing on the cover). We were actually late coming to West Side Story -- it really didn't "hit" for a lot of families till the movie happened. Our second one was The Music Man, and then South Pacific. And then Camelot, which happened just when I hit the age to read about what was about to open and buy it for myself, plus, that was one of the most gorgeously lavish albums of that era.

[voiceover]

21 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:

Criterion is releasing His Girl Friday on Blu-Ray in January 2017 with a list of extras, one of them a 2K Restoration of The Front Page from 1931. Looks like it's going to be quite a set!

EEEEEEEEE[breath]EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

My all-time favorite movie, with extras??  The only "extra" I've acquired over the years is an original publicity still of Cary & Roz (my first eBay purchase).

*runs off to find a blu-Ray machine*

[WendyCR72]

1 hour ago, voiceover said:

EEEEEEEEE[breath]EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

My all-time favorite movie, with extras??  The only "extra" I've acquired over the years is an original publicity still of Cary & Roz (my first eBay purchase).

*runs off to find a blu-Ray machine*

Aww, glad my post (and Criterion!) has made you happy, @voiceover!  :-)  Although looking at Criterion's site again, it is also said to be coming on DVD, too. I assume the extras are the same, but I don't know for certain. So maybe you are better off buying a cheap Blu-Ray player then!

[Rinaldo]

12 hours ago, bmoore4026 said:

they're showing a trio of gothic horror films staring Deborah Kerr right now - The Innocents, The Chalk Garden, and Eye of the Devil.

I can't speak to Eye of the Devil, but the other two are more substantial than the term "gothic horror" would suggest, even though they do fit the trope of "woman takes a job in sinister isolated house as governess." 

The Innocents is the James story The Turn of the Screw, and a beautiful piece of work. Kerr herself is a marvel as the naive woman who is sure the young children in her charge are being visited by ghosts (but the problem may be hers), Jack Clayton directs beautifully, and the mystery and ambiguity of the story is maintained better than one might think possible, once the characters (ghosts included) have to be embodied by actual people. (The same is true of Benjamin Britten's magnificent chamber opera of the same story, whose original Miles was a superb boy soprano later to become a noted actor -- David Hemmings.) A special pleasure on this viewing was young Pamela Franklin as Flora; just a few years later she was one of Maggie Smith's most skilled antagonists in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I saw The Chalk Garden when it first was released and loved it then. Now, I can see how Hollywood-ized the production is (as Ron Perlman's intro gently pointed out), with a much grander house than the story calls for, and a very un-English one. The Enid Bagnold play on which it is based is not free of contrivance, with character after character having a secret to be uncovered at the right time. But what performances! Edith Evans, Hayley Mills, her father John, and the amazing Miss Kerr herself.

6 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:

So maybe you are better off buying a cheap Blu-Ray player then!

I understand that the statement about having to run out and get a Blu-Ray player was mostly a joke, but if I may be indulged, I would suggest that any movie lover thinking about acquiring a new player look at the Oppo line, as I did a year ago with most happy results. My model plays all disc types short of 3D, PAL as well as NTSC format, and all regions, so I can buy British movies if something isn't released in the US. They're a couple of levels up from "cheap," but in my opinion very much worth it.

[Padma]

On ‎10‎/‎15‎/‎2016 at 8:00 AM, Crisopera said:

Rinaldo, I wish I could take your class - and I'm in the prime original-cast-album demographic.  (I believe all suburban houses of the 1950s were sold equipped with cast albums of My Fair Lady and West Side Story.)

Me too! I'm sure a syllabus would be too much to ask for, but would it be possible for you to post a few of the plays/films you have them learn about -- maybe what they begin with and end and a little bit in the middle? (I'm sure this is on topic because many are undoubtedly things we could see on TCM. :) )  And maybe a text if they use one?  I'm sure I'm not the only one who loves all this, has never taken a class in it, and am very interested to know more about it.

[Milburn Stone]

17 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

And yes, we had the LP (with that confusing-for-kids Hirschfeld drawing on the cover). 

9 out of 10 of us believed that was God.

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, Padma said:

Me too! I'm sure a syllabus would be too much to ask for, but would it be possible for you to post a few of the plays/films you have them learn about -- maybe what they begin with and end and a little bit in the middle? (I'm sure this is on topic because many are undoubtedly things we could see on TCM. :) )  And maybe a text if they use one?  I'm sure I'm not the only one who loves all this, has never taken a class in it, and am very interested to know more about it.

I think a syllabus would indeed be overkill here, but I can say that we use Larry Stempel's book Showtime for a text, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested. For years there was no really good textbook on the subject -- all were either too dry or too opinionated -- and this relatively recent publication handles that beautifully. There's a long stretch at the beginning for which there's no film and only later-made recordings. Some of the movies we see parts of (there's never time for more than a sample) are Yankee Doodle Dandy (it's the closest we can get to Cohan, and it has 2 scenes from Little Johnny Jones), Show Boat (1936), The King and I, Pygmalion + My Fair Lady, The Music Man, West Side Story, Gypsy (the telefilm with Midler), Hair, Little Shop of Horrors. In addition we see bits of available stage videos including the National Theatre Oklahoma!, the complete "If I Loved You" scene done by the original Carousel cast for TV (it's an extra in the Broadway! DVD set), and the concert of Sweeney Todd. The list isn't complete.

35 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

9 out of 10 of us believed that [the cartoon of GBS on the My Fair Lady cover] was God.

Exactly. I was so surprised and happy when Paul Rudnick made a joke about that in his play (and movie) Jeffrey, having an older man tell a younger one, "I know, you thought that's what God looked like, right?" It's always a thrill to discover that something you thought unique to yourself was shared by a whole generation. (Like the acknowledgment that a whole generation of gay boys discovered their identity by seeing the South Pacific movie.)

[Milburn Stone]

8 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

Some of the movies we see parts of (there's never time for more than a sample) are Yankee Doodle Dandy (it's the closest we can get to Cohan, and it has 2 scenes from Little Johnny Jones), Show Boat (1936), The King and I, Pygmalion + My Fair Lady, The Music Man, West Side Story, Gypsy (the telefilm with Midler), Hair, Little Shop of Horrors. In addition we see bits of available stage videos including the National Theatre Oklahoma!, the complete "If I Loved You" scene done by the original Carousel cast for TV (it's an extra in the Broadway! DVD set), and the concert of Sweeney Todd. The list isn't complete.

In my own little way, I show "The Small House of Uncle Thomas" from The King and I to my 5th grade Jewish History Sunday School class every year. (Trust me, there's a way to tie it in.) :)

[Padma]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

I think a syllabus would indeed be overkill here, but I can say that we use Larry Stempel's book Showtime for a text, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested. For years there was no really good textbook on the subject -- all were either too dry or too opinionated -- and this relatively recent publication handles that beautifully. There's a long stretch at the beginning for which there's no film and only later-made recordings. Some of the movies we see parts of (there's never time for more than a sample) are Yankee Doodle Dandy (it's the closest we can get to Cohan, and it has 2 scenes from Little Johnny Jones), Show Boat (1936), The King and I, Pygmalion + My Fair Lady, The Music Man, West Side Story, Gypsy (the telefilm with Midler), Hair, Little Shop of Horrors. In addition we see bits of available stage videos including the National Theatre Oklahoma!, the complete "If I Loved You" scene done by the original Carousel cast for TV (it's an extra in the Broadway! DVD set), and the concert of Sweeney Todd. The list isn't complete.

Exactly. I was so surprised and happy when Paul Rudnick made a joke about that in his play (and movie) Jeffrey, having an older man tell a younger one, "I know, you thought that's what God looked like, right?" It's always a thrill to discover that something you thought unique to yourself was shared by a whole generation. (Like the acknowledgment that a whole generation of gay boys discovered their identity by seeing the South Pacific movie.)

Thank you so much for that! Amazon had a nice copy of the book--looks like a good read! Also, what an interesting enjoyable class. It might be hard, if it were me, to bridge the generation gap with students reacting to seeing them for the first time, maybe with such different cultural contexts now. I do envy how, now with Netflix they are so fortunate to be able to followup on pretty much anything they might like to see--not like back in my college days--I took a European film history class where there was a theater for the screening, but if you wanted to rewatch or see other films of the period, director etc. you were pretty much out of luck as we didn't have even have the option of dvd rentals.  Today, people have such easy access to follow up on whatever strikes their fancy--so nice.

I didn't understand this sentence: "Like the acknowledgment that a whole generation of gay boys discovered their identity by seeing the South Pacific movie."  Was it because they realized the sailors (shirtless, if memory serves) were hot? Just checking, in case there's something obviously gay-friendly or sexy about that movie that I'm oblivious to.

[Rinaldo]

25 minutes ago, Padma said:

I didn't understand this sentence: "Like the acknowledgment that a whole generation of gay boys discovered their identity by seeing the South Pacific movie."  Was it because they realized the sailors (shirtless, if memory serves) were hot?

Bingo. There was a lot of semi-nude military male flesh on view in that flick. Big groups, for minutes on end. And it was all served up to the children as family entertainment. I remember my mother dropped me and my younger brother off to see it (she and Dad already had), thinking we would enjoy it. And oh I did, but it was a little unnerving too. I thought that was just my unique perspective on this innocent film, but years later I saw article after article confirming that it was a widely shared reaction among my age group.

[ratgirlagogo]

7 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I can't speak to Eye of the Devil

Well, I can!  This is one of a group of films from this time period that posit a witch/Satanic/Pagan cult as both real and evil - some others being Hammer's The Devil Rides Out with Christopher Lee, Mario Bava's Operazione Paura, The Blood On Satan's Claw. Rosemary's Baby, and most similar to this film, the Joan Fontaine vehicle The Witches and a few years later The Wicker Man.   Until the DVD release of this a few years ago,  this was hard to see since it had only ever been released on laserdisc.  I'd imagine for many today its main (ghoulish) interest would be that it is sadly one of the half dozen or so films Sharon Tate appeared in before her murder.  

Is it a good film?  Well, it's not bad exactly, but given the talent involved you'd expect it to be better.  It's gorgeous looking and very atmospheric, but the plot is confusing 

Spoiler

why do they need to gaslight Deborah Kerr in the first place to perform the human sacrifice on David NIven?  yes, it's the same Golden Bough kind of idea of Old European Paganism as in The Wicker Man

 and the whole film just seem to kind of stop unexpectedly.  Sharon Tate and David Hemmings are beautiful in an unsettling Metzengersteinesque way (similar to Jane and Peter Fonda in Spirits of the Dead)  - Tate in particular really holds your attention as she mocks and terrorizes Deborah Kerr - the camera just loved her.  Apparently this movie had a lot of problems behind the scenes and Deborah Kerr was a last-minute replacement for Kim Novak, who quit after she fell off a horse.  If she was supposed to be playing the kind of frumpy wife Kerr is cast as (which is all the more comic when you remember her looking like a pinup in her lingerie in Casino Royale, made the same year) then I don't know how it all would have come across.    It's interesting, but not a must see unless you share my tastes.

[Padma]

2 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:

Well, I can!  This is one of a group of films from this time period that posit a witch/Satanic/Pagan cult as both real and evil - some others being Hammer's The Devil Rides Out with Christopher Lee, Mario Bava's Operazione Paura, The Blood On Satan's Claw. Rosemary's Baby, and most similar to this film, the Joan Fontaine vehicle The Witches and a few years later The Wicker Man.   Until the DVD release of this a few years ago,  this was hard to see since it had only ever been released on laserdisc.  I'd imagine for many today its main (ghoulish) interest would be that it is sadly one of the half dozen or so films Sharon Tate appeared in before her murder.  

Is it a good film?  Well, it's not bad exactly, but given the talent involved you'd expect it to be better.  It's gorgeous looking and very atmospheric, but the plot is confusing 

  Reveal hidden contents

why do they need to gaslight Deborah Kerr in the first place to perform the human sacrifice on David NIven?  yes, it's the same Golden Bough kind of idea of Old European Paganism as in The Wicker Man

 and the whole film just seem to kind of stop unexpectedly.  Sharon Tate and David Hemmings are beautiful in an unsettling Metzengersteinesque way (similar to Jane and Peter Fonda in Spirits of the Dead)  - Tate in particular really holds your attention as she mocks and terrorizes Deborah Kerr - the camera just loved her.  Apparently this movie had a lot of problems behind the scenes and Deborah Kerr was a last-minute replacement for Kim Novak, who quit after she fell off a horse.  If she was supposed to be playing the kind of frumpy wife Kerr is cast as (which is all the more comic when you remember her looking like a pinup in her lingerie in Casino Royale, made the same year) then I don't know how it all would have come across.    It's interesting, but not a must see unless you share my tastes.

I tried Eye of the Devil and, despite Kerr and Niven it was just so awful. However, I did not realize that the woman terrorizing Kerr was Sharon Tate, whose career I knew nothing about and had never seen before in a film. She was more beautiful than I expected from photos, and definitely mesmerizing--I couldn't agree more that the camera loved her and in a way she upstaged Kerr.  I thought she and Hemmings were the only memorable things about that movie--which was a mess in script and direction and editing. I did think her scene with the children on the parapet was effectively creepy. (I had to turn it off while Niven was whipping her. That was weird, random and emotionless all at the same time.)

[Rinaldo]

Shamelessly repeating myself, I have to point out that David Hemmings, just mentioned in connection with Eye of the Devil, makes an odd indirect link with The Innocents. A decade earlier, the Henry James story on which that movie was based had been turned by Benjamin Britten into a (wonderful) opera under the original title, The Turn of the Screw. And the boy Miles was played (as can be heard on the original recording) by the foremost boy soprano in England in the early 1950s, one David Hemmings. Sorry, but Britten is my favorite composer, and that's my favorite opera of his, so I had to pick up on this.

[bluepiano]

Old Acquaintance and Old Maid on TCM today for Miriam Hopkins day. She was never better than when paired with Bette Davis. What a festival of female suffering, female rivalry, and female self-sacrifice. I always thought Hopkins was also good as the poor, wretched victim of Mr. Hyde in the Fredric March Jekyll and Hyde. Probably sacrilegious to some folks, but I think she embodied the part better than Ingrid Bergman, who to me was always too obviously Ingrid Bergman playing a part.

Edited October 19, 2016 by bluepiano

[Crisopera]

Rinaldo, I love the Britten opera.  I was lucky enough to play Mrs. Grose in college, and was blown away.  However, Peter Grimes is still my favorite Britten opera.  I was REALLY lucky to be in the chorus of the Paris Opera in the 1980s when we did Peter Grimes with Jon Vickers - this and Leonie Rysanek in Jenufa are the two greatest opera performances I've ever seen (and I was in both of them!).  I know that Britten himself was not enamored with Vickers' performance, but it just about killed me.  We were frozen behind him in the inn scene, when he sings "Now the great bear and the Pleiades," and tears ran down my face every night.

Back to movies - I saw a documentary on Netflix, Women He's Undressed, about the great costume designer Orry-Kelly.  I was really looking forward to it, as it's directed by Gillian Armstrong, who directed one of my favorite movies, My Brilliant Career, and I adore Hollywood Golden-Age costume design.  Sadly, it's awful.  The actual Hollywood costume stuff is interesting, but it's stuffed full of terrible re-enactments.  I really don't think anyone would be watching this for the 20-30 minutes about his early life in Australia.  And it's obsessed with Cary Grant and his relationship with Orry-Kelly - according to the movie, Grant was the love of his life.  As usual, this is completely unsubstantiated, although it does seem pretty clear the Grant was at least bisexual.  The doc plays pretty foul in one fairly important area - we don't see an actual photo (or clip) of Orry-Kelly as a grownup until the very end.  I don't know if they think that showing him (he was not an attractive man) would kill the idea that Grant was in love with him or what.  The doc came to mind watching The Old Maid yesterday, because the exquisite period costumes are, of course, by Orry-Kelly.

[mariah23]

Todd VanDerWerff of Vox.com just published an article on TCM, Filmstruck, and streaming.  It's a great read.

The age of streaming is killing classic film. Can Turner Classic Movies be its salvation?

[ratgirlagogo]

It's weird that NOWHERE in the article does he mention that even in 80's and 90's (and by the way it's kind of weird that the 80's is as far back as he seems to be prepared to go) a lot of us saw these films at REPERTORY THEATERS with real live audiences.  But I can't tell you how much I totally share his grief at the demise of neighborhood video stores - how many films, especially older oddball titles, exploitation, horror, documentary or foreign films, I discovered just by poking around the local video store.   I first saw the Maysles'  Salesman because it caught my eye at the corner video store.  For example. 

TGFTCM.

[Sharpie66]

I remember putting together what ended up being a chess-themed double feature night by poking around the video store in the storefront in the first floor of my apartment building. I brought home Searching for Bobby Fisher and Fresh, the second of which just wiped me out emotionally. 

[prican58]

Neptune's Daughter is on now. As a person of latin heritage I have an affinity for Ricardo Montalban. Handsome, athletic and just a real gentleman on film and in real life. I realize that I really don't know much about him besides what most folks know. I know he wrote an autobio so Amazon here I come.

I also begin to wonder (and it may just be in the book) if he, Cesar Romero and Fernando Lamas had any kind of friendship. Not just because all latino celebs hang out together but because they seem to have had very different personalities ( Lord knows Lamas was a character). Lamas was quite full of himself to a degree, Ricardo was a gentleman and Cesar (my personal fave) was a gay man. Plus they were from very different parts of the diaspora with RM from Mexico, Cesar from Cuba and FL from Argentina.

Red Skelton is one of my favorites and while he may not be everyone's cup of tea I think he was brilliant. It occurs to me that I don't know if he was ever compared to Danny Kaye. Both adept at the physical while Kaye was pretty quick with the verbal. I suppose DK would be classified as more of a "leading man". 

Edited October 23, 2016 by prican58

[Padma]

1 hour ago, prican58 said:

Neptune's Daughter is on now. As a person of latin heritage I have an affinity for Ricardo Montalban. Handsome, athletic and just a real gentleman on film and in real life. I realize that I really don't know much about him besides what most folks know. I know he wrote an autobio so Amazon here I come.

I also begin to wonder (and it may just be in the book) if he, Cesar Romero and Fernando Lamas had any kind of friendship. Not just because all latino celebs hang out together but because they seem to have had very different personalities ( Lord knows Lamas was a character). Lamas was quite full of himself to a degree, Ricardo was a gentleman and Cesar (my personal fave) was a gay man. Plus they were from very different parts of the diaspora with RM from Mexico, Cesar from Cuba and FL from Argentina.

Red Skelton is one of my favorites and while he may not be everyone's cup of tea I think he was brilliant. It occurs to me that I don't know if he was ever compared to Danny Kaye. Both adept at the physical while Kaye was pretty quick with the verbal. I suppose DK would be classified as more of a "leading man". 

Love Ricardo, too, in his older films and more recently ("Khhannn!!!"). And no one else could have made "Fantasy Island" remotely watchable (or sold "Corinthian leather"as well as he did. He could do everything, but like so many Latino men & women, didn't get the roles he deserved). Lamas always seemed kind of wooden as an actor. There'd have to be someone else I really liked in the movie to make me watch.

I didn't know much about Cesar Romero at all (didn't know until reading your post that he was gay, for example). But I recently saw him on TCM in the original "Ocean's 11" and, for me, he stole the show (Sammy Davis Jr. stole it for me musically, but script-wise didn't have a lot to do. Romero was far and away the most interesting character to me, and really sold it because of his acting).  And that was against ALL of the Rat Pack!  Not bad! 

[Wiendish Fitch]

Romero also co-starred with Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie* and The Little Princess. When I watch them, it's difficult to believe that this dashing figure would eventually become the Joker!

 

*Now, now, I can hear you snickering.

[ratgirlagogo]

6 hours ago, prican58 said:

Red Skelton is one of my favorites and while he may not be everyone's cup of tea I think he was brilliant

I didn't like his TV show but I agree he was incredibly funny in Neptune's Daughter and his other movies in the forties.

[Padma]

My favorite Red Skelton movie was "Three Little Words"--very embellished, but entertaining, biopic of Tin Pan Alley songwriters Burt Kalmar (Fred Astaire) and Harry Ruby (Skelton). Astaire was really the star, but Skelton was good as his partner, mildly comedic off and on, generally pretty laid back and did fine with the part. Probably my favorite movie musical based on a songwriter/songwriting team.