Posts in category Uncategorized

« Older Entries

A Smokin’ JOAN CRAWFORD — Damned Good Escapism

Aug22
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Question. Has anyone ever filled a movie screen with cigarette smoke more authoritatively than Joan Crawford (see above)?

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to celebrate the ways audience can escape its quotidien woes by watching a darn good (and often unheralded) film.

And if it happens to star a furiously puffing Crawford, so much the better.

One of Joe’s favorites is Warner Bros.’ 1950 noirish drama, The Damned Don’t Cry, starring Crawford who here is assisted by Steve Cochran and Kent Smith (he’s the match-holding guy above). Joe was pleasantly surprised that the movie was one of the top box office hits the year it came out.

Kent Smith, it should be noted, made a career out of playing plain vanilla types, but in two marvelous RKO titles produced by Val Lewton – 1942′ Cat People, directed beautifully by Jacques Tourneur, and the film’s sequel, 1944′s The Curse of the Cat People — he turns in excellent performances as a concerned husband (in the first) and loving husband-father (in the second).

In any event, we can think of few better films than The Damned Don’t Cry as unadulterated escapist entertainment.

Crawford plays an ambitious woman of uncertain backround (which generally means, poor) who dumps her tightwad husband (Richard Egan) to take up — after several sexy stops along the way — with a syndicate boss (played smoothly by David Brian). The plot is said to be based on the actual antics of notorious mobster Bugsy Siegel and moll Virginia Hill.

Today we’ve invited the following contribution from Classic Movie Chat pal Kurt Niece — novelist (2008′s The Breath of Rapture published by Eloquent Books), entertainment columnist, academic and jewelry designer — with these thoughts on Damned and on escaping through the movies.

The Damned Don’t Cry –  by Kurt Niece

What goes around comes around.

Busby Berkley and 1930’s glam prospered from the public’s need to escape. The country had a serious financial hangover. Jobs were scarce and prospects were grim. Sound familiar?

But escapism, like most everything else, just ain’t what it used to be. It’s feels harder to get away. Don’t like violence? Repelled by greed? Weary by Nihilism? You may have to re-think escaping to the movie theater.

But wait… Is that really fair? Have movies changed all that much? Last night I watched, The Damned Don’t Cry, a 1950 rags to riches to rags story directed by Vincent Sherman and starring the radiant Joan Crawford.

It has plenty of violence, greed and nihilistic defeatism. Yet arguably, it was still an escape from the horrors of 2012.

An overwrought musical score, lighting crazed with foreboding innuendo, caffeinated directing: all contributed to a safe, comfortable place to pull the cinematic sheets over my head and make the world go away, at least for a while.

Besides, when was the last time you heard someone say,  I don’t care for orchids in the afternoon? as did Joan Crawford when she spurned the flowers and advances of a mobster suitor.

Much like “Release the Kraken!” those are words that everyone should be able to utter at least once in their lives. And when did you last hear “mobster”? That’s such a refreshing break from thugs, gangstas, gangs and cartels.

But back to escapism: what is it that makes classic, older black and white films so…escapy?

Perhaps it’s the lack of blood and gore splatter if someone is shot. Perhaps it’s the sexual stereotyping, unhealthy as butter and sugar but just as comforting to those struggling to keep up with the latest politically correct pronouncement.

Perhaps it’s the directness of the verbal dialog and blatant over-acted facial expressions. Perhaps it’s the myth of simpler times. And finally, why did the director choose to reflect three lights in everyone’s eyes but Joan Crawford’s?

She generally sported a single light glistening in her wide, moist eyes. Inquiring minds want to know, that is when those minds aren’t preoccupied with the need to escape.

The Damned Don’t Cry is a blessed 103 minutes respite, and I dare you to think of Afghanistan, crooked bankers and bat crap crazy politicians once in that one hour and 43 minute getaway.

Thanks, Kurt.

Did you like this? Share it:

Monday Mystery Photo: 2 outta 3 ain’t bad.

Aug20
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Two of the stars in the above photo are so internationally famous that we wager there won’t be a single reader of this blog who can’t identify them.

But who’s the second man? The guy with the plunging neckline embracing that stunning-looking woman?

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back with a Monday mystery photo challenging you to identify all three personalities shown in one of our vintage candids.

This one IS a toughie.  Frank was totally stumped and couldn’t have named that mystery fellow to the left if his life depended on it.  Fortunately it didn’t, and when Joe attached name to subject, there was a deep ‘ah-hah’ moment.

So consider yourselves successful if you name just those other two folks.  As to the identity of our grinning mystery man, we feel duty bound to provide these generous hints:

– Although he has appeared in two features, he is not known as a movie star.

– If we believe his press agent, he is a ‘legendary crooner and Palm Springs icon.’

– Despite that, our man is largely a creature of Las Vegas.  He has recorded more than 60 record albums the latest of which, Live at the Sands, was released last year. He was an ‘original’ member of the ‘Rat Pack’ in the Sixties.

– Unlike the other two subjects, he is still with us.  He celebrated his 86th birthday last week. And yes, his neckline is still plunging.

– He is a ladies man, married five times, once to a former Mrs. California.

– He is from Philadelphia. His first name is Armando.

– Our man performed with Benny Goodman in the Fifties and also provided musical arrangements for the Goodman band.

– Yes, our mystery guy, is a highly talented singer, pianist and song writer.

There you have it.  Who are these three?

Did you like this? Share it:

LUCY’S BREAKTHROUGH

Aug17
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

The Big Street is a minor classic film, only notable today because of a dramatic performance by comedienne Lucille Ball.

It’s a fanciful tale by Damon Runyon, who also produced the film.  Runyon is almost totally forgotten today, but in the 1920s, 30′s and 40′s he was a popular writer and chronicler of a New York society (and speech) which became known as Runyonesque.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again ruminating about what breakthrough movies meant for top Hollywood stars.  Today we analyse what The Big Street did for the career of Lucille Ball.

Ball had been under contract to RKO for a decade.  She was earning about $1,000 a week and making three or four pictures a year throughout the 1930s.

She’d given some good comedy performances (Stage Door, Room Service, etc.) as well as some good dramatic performances (Five Came Back, Dance, Girl, Dance). She was even auditioned by Orson Welles for the role of Charles Foster Kane’s opera-singing second wife in 1941′s Citizen Kane.   Her competititon included Joan Crawford and Anne Baxter.  The part went, of course, to Dorothy Comingore.

Ball seemed stuck  in “B” movies. After all, the studio lot’s reigning “queens,” Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn, had first choice on all the top parts.

By 1942, however, Rogers and Hepburn had exited the studio and while RKO imported other stars (including Carole Lombard) on one or two-picture deals. As a result, the studio found itself relying more on contract players like Lucille.

Runyon actually wanted Lombard for the role of the narcissistic showgirl in Big Street. And he wanted Charles Laughton for the role of “Little Pinks,” the busboy obsessed with her. Both declined. But Lombard suggested her pal, Lucille.

For ‘Pinks,’ Runyon eventually signed Henry Fonda, who was fulfilling a contract obligation to the studio. Ball and Fonda had had a fling a few years back, and supposedly Desi Arnaz, Ball’s new husband (their 19-year-marriage began in November 1940) was jealous and often visited the set to check up on his wife.

Another rumor that has circulated through the years is that Ball was apprehensive about playing the role, which was very unsympathetic.  We question this.  She had played bitches before. If she was apprehensive at all it was because she knew she would be carrying the picture.

She gave a marvelous performance. In fact she’s best when the character is an unsympathetic bitch and not when her few moments of humanity shine through.

The film was well received critically and just ok at the box office. But MGM, the most successful studio, finally saw her potential and bought her contract. It seemed as if she’d finally made the big time.

Metro glamorized her, and starred her in two big Technicolor musicals.

But within two years she was back to playing supporting roles. She was Hepburn’s pal in 1945′s Without Love (she must have felt she was back at RKO) and a year later, was second lead to Esther Williams in Easy to Wed.

Then she freelanced.  Back to dramas (Lured, Dark Corner) and comedies (The Fuller Brush Girl, Miss Grant Takes Richmond)  None of it put her in the top rung.  She’d have to depend on radio and then television to catapult her to REAL stardom.

Why then was The Big Street a BREAKTHROUGH film for Lucille Ball?  Because it brought her to the attention of MGM who bought her contract from RKO and changed the direction of her career.

At MGM Lucille Ball became the flaming redhead she is remembered as today.  At MGM she met comedy greats such as Buster Keaton and director Eddie Sedgewick, who taught her timing and molded her into the great physical comedian she became.

The Lucy most people know — and is still celebrated with an annual ‘Lucy Fest’ in her hometown of Jamestown, New York –was born with her move from RKO to MGM. And that only happened because of The Big Street.

 

Did you like this? Share it:

ORSON WELLES & ‘The Greatest Film Of All Time’

Aug14
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Citizen Kane was on the tube the other night, and had Joe all wound up watching it yet AGAIN.

He’s lost count of how many times he’s seen Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece considered by most film historians and critics to be the best film ever made. (We’ll get to that point in a minute.)

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again and all we have to say today is ‘Rosebud.’ (Actually we DO have more to say — notably that the tension is rising.)

For over a year now in the pages of this blog we’ve touted that a true classic is a film that no matter how many times one watches it, one can always discover something new.

So what did Joe discover on his last viewing of Citizen Kane?

Only that Welles may have been the first to use a ‘musical interlude.’  You know what that is.  The action in a dramatic picture stops and a musical number is introduced.  Joe had always thought that the ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head’ bicycle ride of Paul Newman and Katherine Ross in director George Roy Hill’s 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had started the trend.

But, no. The ‘musical interlude’ in the Welles classic does not refer to any of the operatic blasts from Kane’s second wife (Dorothy Comingore) but comes earlier in the picture when the staff of ‘The Inquirer’ throws itself a raucous stag party (the newspaper was celebrating a circulation milestone, following its hire of the competition’s best reporters).

In the midst of the festivities, Welles as Kane sends off a shrill whistle cuing the introduction of a bubbly, gaudy musical number featuring an MC and a line of shapely  chorus girls.

The witty number, both praising and sending up Kane as The Inquirer’s publisher, is marvelous. It’s  fully  enjoyable on its own terms and at the same time prompting key snatches of dialogue foreshadowing the larger drama to come.

So, chalk this up as one of the million reasons why Citizen Kane is commonly regarded as the best movie ever made. And that’s where our parenthetical reference above to ‘the tension is rising’ comes in.

The highly respected British movie journal Sight & Sound — published by the British Film Institute – has been polling international critics every 10 years since 1952, asking them to identify the best movies of all time.  This is the gold standard of movie polls, an extensive culling of the views of cineastes all over the world.

In 1952, the first-place pick was Italian director Victoria DeSica’s moving 1947 film, The BicycleThief. But Citizen Kane took over as the critics’ No. 1 choice in all the polls since, from 1962 through 2002.

The magazine is currently completing its 2012 poll, and the tension is indeed rising. A S&S subscriber, Frank just received a hot flash announcing that the 2012 poll findings will be released at any time now on S&S’s newly created digital edition.  Poll results will also be splashed across S&S’s September print edition.

The Greatest Films of All Time — the results are in! Explore our celebrated once-in-a-decade poll of the world’s critics and directors, says S&S by way of self promotion.

Our question is:  will Citizen Kane retain the No. 1 spot it has held for 50 years? We certainly hope it will.  In any case, as soon as the poll results are disclosed, we’ll let you know in detail.

In the meantime, we are keeping our fingers crossed.

 

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Tagged

A Jewish ‘GUNGA DIN?’ — Fairbanks Jr., Cary, Victor McLaglen & that ‘Shalom’ Fellow

Aug10
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here to announce that one of our favorite pieces of cinematic frippery is director George Stevens’ entertainingly frenetic 1939 adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s paean to British imperialism, Gunga Din.

It’s by no means a great picture but, by gosh (we are children of the Forties) it sure is entertaining every time we see it.

What an energetic cast — Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Victor McLaglen as a trio of British soldiers battling long odds as they repel a torrent of rampaging natives in 19th century India.  Joan Fontaine is along for the bumpy ride as Fairbanks’ fiancee.

Curious about Gunga Din’s source, we discovered that the movie is not based on a novel nor short story, but a poem.  We immediately called in our Books2Movies expert Larry Michie – who revels in tracking often treacherous transitions from source material to the big-screen — to look into all this and report back.

Here’s Larry.

Kipling was the outstanding hack poet of the Victorian era, grinding out patriotic poems by the score. Gunga Din was perhaps the most important of of the so-called barrack-room ballads. The poem was about the downtrodden Indian national who was used as a go-for by the British troops.

Here’s just a small slice of the Kipling poem:  ‘Now in Injia’s sunny clime,  where I used to spend my time,  a-servin’ of ‘Er Majesty the Queen,  of all them blackfaced crew,  the finest man I knew, Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din! ‘ (The character is variously  referred to as ‘You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, You squidgy-nosed old idol’ and ‘You ‘eathen.’)

Well, ok, say Joe and Frank.  How to make a movie out of this? Nearly a dozen writers were given by RKO the task of adapting Gunga Din including such screenwriting luminaries as Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur and William Faulkner. (Official credit went to Joel Sayre and Fred Guiol.)

Let’s say that liberties were taken.

For one thing, the movie was shot in mountainous Lone Pine, California, about 80 miles East of Fresno — not India. The cast included only one native Brit, a physically agile Grant then in his mid-30′s. (Fontaine came from British stock but was born in Japan.) The screenplay de-emphasized British imperialism in India, and turned Gunga Din into an adventurous ‘war is fun’ romp.

In her autobiography, Fontaine described her part (as the woman Fairbanks almost quit the military to marry) as a tiny role of little importance.

She complained of being lonely in Lone Pine, but kept somewhat busy by developing an infatuation with director Stevens. Accompanying Grant was his then romantic interest, actress Phyllis Brooks. Fairbanks had to settle for his date at the time, one Marlene Dietrich. 

The ensemble could not have been thrilled by the fact that, according to Fontaine, Stevens, who was part American Indian, maintained a stoic mein, often keeping the cast and crew waiting for hours and even days while he sat in reverie or paced back and forth behind the set…I learned little or nothing from him as a director.

Given the movie’s title role was one of Hollywood’s best character actors, Sam Jaffe.  He was born in 1891 in New York, into a theatrical Jewish family. His first name was Shalom. So what’s a nice Jewish boy doing playing a roughhouse 19th century Indian water-bearer?  Why ask? Jaffe, heavily made up, is superb in the part.

As Larry writes, the movie concludes with the brave Gunga Din, played with broad humor by Jaffe, being killed in action and buried by the Brits, with the character of Kipling himself standing next to the British chief who recites the famous final lines of the poem as Din’s remains are lowered into the ground.

‘Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, by the Livin Gawd that made you, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!’

War is never fun but seeing Gunga Din always is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Tagged

FILM NOIR in Living COLOR — Or, Gene Tierney With Dead Eyes.

Jul27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Sounds like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it.  The term ‘film noir’ literally MEANS “black film” or “dark film.”

The reference, originated by those canny French, refers to those marvelous American-made thrillers which played in France after World War II, chocked full of deadly violence, greed and sexual obsession shared by petty crooks, desperate (but often strong-willed) women and sleazy private eyes. (The actual term, ‘film noir,’ is attributed to Italian-born French critic, Nino Frank, who is said to have come up with the description in 1946.)

But, we ask, if ‘film noir’ means ‘black film,’ how can such a title be shot in color?

Yet as early as 1945, when the genre was less than a half dozen years old, noir films were made not just in color but in vivid Technicolor.

Hello, everybody.  Mr. Joe Morella and Mr. Frank Segers back again while MRS. Norman Maine, both in black-and-white and living color, is now out searching for 3D. (At least she’s not shopping for a ‘gat.’)

A few days ago we reminisced about Lizabeth Scott, the virtual queen of film noir. We noted that she started at the top.  Star billing right under Robert Cummings for her debut in 1945′s You Came Along.

Then, star billing with heavyweights Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin in 1946′s The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.  And then, in only her third film, top billing over John Hodiak, Burt Lancaster, Mary Astor and Wendell Corey in 1947′s Desert Fury.  And in color.

Desert Fury is thought by many to be the first film noir shot in color.  But it’s not.  Two years before Fury, Twentieth Century Fox, who’d scored such a hit with director Otto Preminger’s Laura presented Gene Tierney in another noir classic, Leave Her to Heaven.

It was a brilliant piece of casting.  Tierney had always been somewhat mysterious. There was also no denying her stunning oscreen presence; she was gorgeous. (One of her admirers was a young John F. Kennedy.) She’d portrayed fallen women, sophisticated women, exotic beauties. But in this film she was downright evil.  Death followed pretty much her every move in this melodrama. (That’s her above with co-star Cornell Wilde.)

As Ellen Berent, a stylish newlywed given to psychotic jealousy, Tierney delivers in Leave Her To Heaven one of the most chilling performances ever seen in film noir.  It frightens Frank to watch it even today.

Concerned that her new husband’s crippled younger brother is interfering with her marriage, Tierney’s character invites the young man (Darryl Hickman) out for a swim in the lake.  From a rowboat, she observes him paddling into dangerously deep water. He soon is in trouble. She does nothing.

‘You’re not making very much progress, Danny,’ says Tierney without a trace of urgency or emotion, immovable in the rowboat.

As he sinks below the lake’s surface, struggling for his life, Ellen watches implacably from behind her fashionable sunglasses, writes Eddie Muller, author of Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. The scene is a lengthy one and is tough to watch.

Muller calls Tierney’s character the most deranged femme fatale ever.

In her memoirs, Tierney (who had more than her share of personal offscreen drama, subject for another blog) wrote that as much as any part she played onscreen, Ellen has meaning for me as a woman….She believed herself to be normal and worked at convincing her friends she was. Most emotionally disturbed people go through such a stage, the equivalent of an alcoholic hiding the bottle.

Concludes Muller: There was no precedent for the morbidity of these scenes (in ‘Leave Her To Heaven’), somehow made all the more malignant by the overripe lushness of (Oscar-winning) Leon Shamroy’s (Technicolor) cinematography.

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Tagged

HELP

Mar24
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Joe Morella and Frank Segers

A NOTE TO OUR FAITHFUL READERS

For some reason we have lost the comments several of you have made on recent blogs. If you commented on the St Patrick’s Day blog please send your thoughts again and we will publish them.  If you once saw your comment on a recent blog and then noticed it had disappeared, we apologize.  It’s a mystery to us.  We’re happy to have the internet and wish we were better at using it.  But we’re just two old movie buffs doing our best to understand how it works.

Did you like this? Share it:

YOUR FAVORITE VALENTINE’S DAY PICKS + Sage Observations From Our Email Bag

Jan31
2012 3 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

 

Hello, everyone.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today reminding you that Valentine’s Day is just a week away.

In a move of maximum modesty, we decided to refrain from dictating our picks of the best movies to mark the romantic occasion. Instead, we ask you — yes, you!

Don’t be shy, please. We’d like to know about your Valentine’s Day favorites, both familiar (Casablanca, Brief Encounter, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, Moonstruck, etc.) and unfamiliar. Especially the latter.

Is there a great romantic gem out there that you have been keeping to yourself all these years?  If so, now is the time to spill the beans. We’ll happily print your answers, so don’t hesitate to let the world in on your movie secret.

We’d like to know not only the title of your favorite Valentine’s Day movie, but what about it makes you like it so much.

We plan on publishing as many reader picks as we can in our Feb. 14 blog.  So, by all means, shake a leg. The sooner we receive your choice(s) the better. Just click onto the “Leave A Comment” box (upper right) and fire away.  Thanks.

Troweling through our email bag, we came across the response of regular correspondent and fellow blogger Patricia Nolan-Hall (Caftan Woman) to our Jan. 27 What’s A “Working Actor”? (Richard Jaeckel, Anyone?) blog.  As you’ll see, Pat has a favorite in the “working actor” sweepstakes:

I’ll put Wallace Ford at the top of the list. From “Freaks” to “A Patch of Blue” he did it all in the movies. (That’s our man pictured above and below)

A detective in “Shadow of a Doubt”, a snitch in “T-Men”, Jean Harlow’s leading man in “The Beast of the City”, the doomed Frankie McPhillips in “The Informer” and the philosophical cabbie in “Harvey”. He created the role of George in the Broadway production of “Of Mice and Men”. When he appeared on screen you could relax and enjoy a good performance because he knew what he was doing and never disappointed.

We couldn’t agree more, Pat.  Frank especially appreciates Ford’s expressions of pathetic desperation while being parboiled in a steam bath by nasty Charles McGraw in 1947′s T-Men.

In response to our Jan. 10 Carole Lombard & George Raft — Lovers? Can That Be? blog, we received interesting responses from two of our regular correspondents.  Kim Wilson provides the woman’s point-of-view about the plausibility of team Raft and Lombard as lovers:

I can see it. He had intensity and that can be attractive to women.

Our man Vincent tells us more about Raft’s liaisons:

It should be noted that among Raft’s other lovers were Norma Shearer (after Irving Thalberg’s passing), Betty Grable (pre-Harry James) and Mae West. He and Mae were lifelong friends — in later years, they talked on the phone daily — and he worked on both her first film (“Night After Night”) and last (“Sextette”). Raft and West died within two days of each other in late 1980.

Thanks, Vincent.

Finally, back to Pat Nolan-Hall, who took one look at the photograph of Spring Byington surrounded by Edmund Gwenn and Charles Coburn (costars of 1950′s Louisa) in our Jan. 25 blog, What’s An Old-Fashioned, Charming Picture Doing In A Place Like This, and wrote:

I scrolled down to the picture and “Bam!” I was a kid again, sitting in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon watching “Louisa”. It’s been that long since I’ve seen that gem, as you so rightfully called it. Truly, they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

One of the plot points deftly and discreetly made in Louisa is that romance is indeed possible post 60 or even after 70.  Sounds like a great Valentine’s Day choice to us.

 

 

 

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Tagged , , ,

DEAN MARTIN — The Coolest?

Dec22
2011 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to enjoy the entertaining responses we received to our Dec. 8 blog that asked the pressing question, Was Dean Martin a Movie Star or a TV Star?

Our answer was that he was both. And we certainly stick by that!  But what we may have overlooked Is Martin’s “coolness” factor.

Whatever you thought of his merits as an actor (disclosure: Frank is a lot less enthusiastic than Joe), Martin was one cool dude.  With or without Sinatra and the Rat Pack, el Dino was as smooth a vocalist as he was an operator.

That certainly is the view of reader Dino Martin Peters, who emailed on Dec. 10:

Hey pallies, likes what a totally totally provocative Dino-quire and stunnin’ Dino-reflection! Never was, never will be anyone as cool as the King of Cool…oh, to return to the days when Dino walked the earth!

Knows your Dino-prose is bein’ shared this day with the ilovedinomartin readership.

Gosh, Martin STILL commands such a rapturous following!  We suspect that is a lot more than can be said for Jerry Lewis. Thanks Dino, and we are glad you so enjoyed our blog.

In our Dec. 8 piece, we ran a photo (see above) of Martin starring (more or less as a goof, we suspect) in Texas Across The River. Its is totally forgettable comedy/western made in 1966, in which Martin’s eclectic costars include French actor Alain Delon and our mystery gent (we asked that you identify him) who played the ‘Indian’ (see above).

Peter Graves, the younger brother of “Gunsmoke’s” James Arness, was also in the picture, playing one Captain Rodney Stimson, and given to delivering such lines as “Take it easy, Yancy. You got a wedding to go to.”

In any case, who was the guy playing “the Indian.”

Reader Gerri had the correct answer:  Is that “Indian” Joey Bishop??? What a riot!

It was indeed Joey Bishop, playing an Indian by the name of “Kronk.” Talk about casting against type. Bishop was many things but never an Indian.  He was Jewish, born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb in the Bronx in 1918. (He died in 2007 at the age of 89.)

Bishop made a fair number of movies but was most popular as a TV show personality.  He was also, along with Martin, a certified member of Frank Sinatra’s Las Vegas-based Rat Pack, and costarred with fellow packers in their signature movie, Ocean’s Eleven in 1960.

Indeed, what a riot!

Did you like this? Share it:
Tagged , , , ,

SUSAN HAYWARD Boffo in Europe, Plus Period Gaffs & Other Musings From Our E-Mail Bag

Dec20
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys dipping our delighted figures into our semi-bountiful email bag. (We always welcome more reader missives.)

From Philippe, we received a strong pitch on behalf of Susan Hayward, the Fifties star whom we’ve bad-mouthed in previous blogs. (Notably July 14′s Susan Hayward – Forgotten Star?) That’s Susan above with Dean Martin in “Ada.”

Philippe takes exception to our view that while Hayward was a big star in her time, she is less remembered today largely because she starred in forgettable movies.

Here’s Philippe:  No classic films  in Susan  Hayward’s filmography!!? Here in Europe,  ”Canton Passage (1946), ” House of Strangers” (1949) ,”The Lusty Men” (1952) (regarded as a true American film masterpiece from Nicholas Ray),”Garden of Evil ” (1954) and of course Robert Wise’s powerful  ”I Want To Live” are regarded as top classic movies and Hayward praised as a terrific actress.

But, he adds, “Valley Of The Dolls” (the 1967 film version of author Jacqueline Susann’s novel costarring Hayward) does not have the cult following in Europe it does enjoy in the US…

Susan Hayward was a worldwide favourite maybe even more popular in countries like Italy, Spain, France or Germany than she was in the USA.

Thanks, Philippe.  We wonder what the Europeans know about Hayward that we don’t.

Our Dec. 6 blog about how Americans filmmakers botch period movies (Why Can’t Americans Do Period?) drew interesting responses.

The Lady Eve dropped us this note on Dec. 7:

You may laugh, but my one (and only) complaint about THE GODFATHER (especially Part I) is Diane Keaton’s hairstyle. All wrong. The other women in the film (Talia Shire, Morgana King, the bridesmaids, the mobsters’ wives) have authentic looks, as does just about everything else in the film – but Keaton’s hair is that of a conservative late ’60s/early ’70s housewife.

Thanks.  And, no, we aren’t laughing. We’ll take another look at Keaton’s errant hair style. 

Regular correspondent Patricia Nolan-Hall (aka Caftan Woman) cites these period movie gaffs:  One of the worst offenders has to be 1961′s “Bridge to the Sun”. The true story of a 1930s-era Japanese diplomat (James Shigeta) who marries a southern US girl (Carroll Baker) and their trials when they return to Japan during the war. They were dressed and coiffed like it was an episode of “Ben Casey”!

1954s “The Glenn Miller Story” also fails to capture the 20s/30s/40s, and it was closer to the period. It detracts from the film.

Regarding the latter movie, Patricia, we agree with your criticism of the period lapses. But, but, but… the biography of the famous bandleader (played by Jimmy Stewart) is musically satisfying.  The scene set in a band rehearsal studio in which Miller instrumentally works out the swing ensemble’s signature, reed-led sound is a terrific ‘Eureka’ moment.

Vincent also weighs in: I fully concur (with your blog). Watch “Inside Daisy Clover,” which is supposed to be set in the 1930s but hardly has any of that period’s feel.

Well, Vincent, Frank tries as much as possible to avoid watching Inside Daisy Clover. Costarring Robert Redford and Natalie Wood, the film is set in Thirties Hollywood. Couldda fooled us.  It looks like 1965, the year the movie was made. Joe, by the way likes the film for it’s performances, and of course, Ruth Gordon co-stars.

In response to our Dec. 5 blog,  Again – First Published Here, featuring early Forties photos taken from our marvelous Donald Gordon Collection, Lady Eve coments:

Jeff Donnell looks about 12 years old in that picture! Barely recognize Janet Blair, though. Was Donald Gordon still with Columbia when Kim Novak arrived? That would be interesting…He must’ve been there when Rita Hayworth reigned. How about some pix of Rita?

The late Donald, a tyro actor hired for an abbreviated period by Columbia in the early Forties, was long gone when Novak hit her stride at the studio. However, he did know Rita. We’ll search the files, especially for some great shots of Hayworth in her day.

Thanks to all, and please keep those cards and letters coming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Tagged , , , ,
« Older Entries