Monthly archives for August, 2012

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You Know How to Whistle, Don’t Ya?

Aug31
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here with another contribution from our Books2Movies maven, Larry Michie, musing on the uncertain journeys to the big screen of three notable Ernest Hemingway works.

Larry writes:

A famous ‘Papa’ short story is The Killers featuring a couple of mob guys intent on rubbing out a boxer who didn’t box like the palooka he was supposed to be. The 1946 film starred Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner (a breakthrough for the young star) with Edmund O’Brien, Sam Levine, Charles McGraw and William Conrad (the latter two memorable as the vicious hit men).

In 1964, director Don Siegel put together a new version with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Claude Akins and – special bonus for all you fans out there in filmland – Ronald Reagan. (Frank says, skip this one and stick with the original.)

Among all the broken dreams, however, there was one notably successful Hemingway movie, and another motion picture that — although a creative disaster — is forever redeemed by the most sensational flirting in the history of cinema.

We’ll get to that in a bit, but for now, it needs only be said that both the successful movie and the sensational creative disaster were redeemed by women – two of the most gorgeous and influential women ever to grace the silver screen.

The successful movie that had merit was 1943’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. With Gary Cooper as an American in Spain fighting fascism, the film carried weight during the war years. And Cooper again was perfect casting for the role. It wasn’t the best that filmland has to offer, but it had strong underpinnings – and it had Ingrid Bergman as the love interest, not to wholly neglect the presence of Akim Tamiroff.

Bergman was gorgeous, and she and Cooper made the screen come alive. Score one for Hollywood. The movie didn’t have the power and complexity of the novel, but it was a winning effort.

Okay, we’re down to the last marriage of Hemingway and celluloid. Hold onto your hats, because it’s a doozie.

The 1944 movie is director Howard Hawks’ justifiably classic To Have and Have Not. Chances are that many of those who have seen the movie have no idea about the very different novel on which it was allegedly, sort of, kind of, based.

In fact, the movie used only parts of the first chapter of the novel. The rest was foo-foo.

Humphrey Bogart plays a charter boat captain named Steve who takes rich folks out fishing. He’s based in Martinique, and his all-purpose handyman and helper is none other than Walter Brennan, who is most assuredly an alcoholic, although played a bit more humorously than would be considered politically correct today.

Steve turns down the earnest good guy who wants to pay him to pick up and transport some Free French leaders (this being World War II, and the Germans being the bad guys). Steve refuses, but when his latest fishing customer stiffs him, he decides to take the job so he can pay his debts.

While Steve is mulling over his options in his favorite bar, he notes a pick-pocketing young woman, and sparks begin to fly. The young beauty, just out of her teens, is none other than Lauren Bacall, and man, does she make the screen come alive.

Her famous line inviting Steve to whistle if he needs anything – You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow – must have kept a whole generation of men and boys awake at night. Women and girls, too, for that matter.

Well, despite the bullying of the fascist agents in Martinique, Steve and his rummy sidekick save the good guys, confound the bad guys, and so forth. Hoagy Carmichael plays a tune, Lauren sings along, and Sheldon Leonard is frustrated as the bad guy.

Oh, yeah, and eventually, off-screen, Lauren and Bogie got married.

Well, as a movie it had its charms, but aside from borrowing a couple of ideas and the title of the novel, To Have and Have Not the movie, had nothing to do with To Have and Have Not the novel by Ernest Hemingway.

If you want to get a sobering shock or two, read the novel. It ain’t great literature. To Have and Have Not, was published in 1937. The people in the novel weren’t noble, and on its own the book never would have made a movie. There was nothing nice about it.

Thanks, Larry.

(Joe adds that the book was also used as the basis for the John Garfield film, The Breaking Point, which costarred Phyllis Thaxter as his wife and Patricia Neal as the vamp.  Warner Bros. had stolen from the novel on several occasions but this film was closest to Hemingway’s original. But without all the racial slurs in the novel.)

 

 

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The Trials and Tribulations of Hemingway Screen Protagonists

Aug30
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Sometimes the wrong person has been cast in a film and the producers and director recognize it in time to replace the actor.  Such was the case with 1943′s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The film had started production with Vera Zorina in the female lead.  She was soon replaced with the boyishly beautiful  Ingrid Bergman (pictured above with Gary Cooper).

Hello everybody.  Joe Morella and  Frank Segers, your classic movie guys here.  We welcome back today our Books2Movies maven, our pal Larry Michie, who muses on other Ernest Hemingway works that made it for better or worse to the screen.

Writes Larry:

In 1957 came a film version of Hemingway’s first novel, a classic that enraptured millions of readers and defined what came to be known as ‘The Lost Generation.’

Unfortunately, on the big screen 1957′s The Sun Also Rises seemed to set before rising.

This despite a glittering cast that included Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer and Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Juliette Greco and the young Bob Evans as a matador. (Yes, THAT Bob Evans, Darryl Zanuck’s ’the kid stays in the picture’ protégé).

So far as is known, the effort didn’t dazzle audiences around the world. But fugetaboutit. Floppsville. The Sun Also Rises was revived in a 1984 made-for-tv creation starring Jane Seymour, Robert Carradine, Leonard Nimoy, Stephane Audran.

Much earlier there was 1952’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The casting sounds perfect – Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner, Hildegard Neff and Leo G. Carroll. The film simply didn’t work – no chemistry, nothing to grab the audience.

1958 finally brought a winner: The Old Man and the Sea, directed by John Sturges. Its success was attributed to the popularity of the solo star, Spencer Tracy (who was chosen for the lead over Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart).  There was a 1999 remake with Anthony Quinn doing the solo turn. There was even a Japanese cartoon version.

(The classic movie guys note that Hemingway himself endorsed Tracy as his geriatric protagonist before the movie was made. The pair got along splendidly during their initial meetings in Cuba, where most of the movie was shot. I feel like I’d known him about 150 years, exclaimed the author. Referring to the arduous production of the movie, Hemingway, who feared The Old Man and the Sea would be turned into a commercial love story, wrote that he was looking forward to the long fight we’ll win together…There won’t be any great picture…unless Tracy and I carry the ball most of the time.) 

So, alright already, the Hemingway movies are mostly terrible. But don’t give up. You might consider reading/re-reading the novels. There are reasons why Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Thanks for your take on it, Larry.

 

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What Makes a Book a Good Movie? Our Man Ponders.

Aug29
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Your classic movie guys again, Joe Morella and Frank Segers, thinking about “lit-terachur.”

Today we welcome our regular Books2Movies guest contributor, Larry Michie, who muses on a most puzzling classic movie fact – why most film versions of Hemingway books are hard to digest today. We urge you to read on and find out why.

Here’s Larry:

Ernest Hemingway has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential – and popular – writers of the twentieth century.

His distinctive style and gripping tales of love, war, honor, manliness, and loss were read, absorbed and acclaimed by generations.

As might be expected, Hemingway’s various works of fiction were turned into motion pictures by some of the leading masters of Hollywood. For reasons that could be argued eternally, most of those motion pictures have been embarrassing flops.  Somehow the genius of his prose didn’t translate to film very well.

Oddly enough, one of the better films was the first – 1932’s A Farewell to Arms, a later version of which is discussed below.

The 1932 Farewell starred Helen Hayes as Catherine Barkley, billed over the young Gary Cooper as Lieutenant Henry. Adolphe Menjou supplied both humor and, eventually, considerable menace.

Hayes was good, but Cooper was outstanding. He owned the screen. No surprise that a decade later Cooper was tapped to play another Hemingway hero in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The Hayes/Cooper movie is remarkably true to the novel, and the World War I scenes are handled well by director Frank Borzage (there was an Academy Award for cinematography).

One aspect of the movie that is a bit startling, considering the time in which it was made, is that the film was true to the novel, which meant that the two lovers not only had sex but conceived a child – with no more sanction by society than the anguished blessing of a priest.

Menjou plays a villain’s role, conspiring to keep them apart until Lt. Henry is forced to desert so he can be with his lover.

True to Hemingway’s tale, Catherine’s child is born dead, and she herself soon expires. Pretty strong stuff for 1932, especially since the Hays Office was in existence.  (The Motion Picture Production Code was set up in 1930.)

It’s only appropriate at this point to hold one’s nose and bring up the later incarnation of Farewell to Arms, the 1957 version starring Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones, with the stellar backing of Vittorio De Sica, Oscar Homolka, Mercedes McCambridge and Elaine Stritch.

Hudson was, in a word, unwatchable.

Scratch that film off your list, unless you actually enjoy pain. Not even Ben Hecht’s screenplay could rescue this turkey. Rock should have saved his energy for Doris Day.

Thanks, Larry.

 

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Female Film Directors — Ida, We Ida-lize Ya!

Aug28
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Even though she joked that the public saw her as “a second rate Bette Davis,” there’s no doubt that Ida Lupino was one of the best screen actresses of the Forties and Fifties.  But she was also one of the ground breaking women directors of the time, as well.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, celebrating today Lupino’s directoral legacy.

In addition to the more than 100 movie and tv titles she logged as an actress, Ida’s director credits include a half-dozen films from 1949 through 1953, and some 35 tv productions from 1956 through 1968.

Ida had come over from England (she was born in 1918 in London, the daughter of vaudeville comedian Stanley Lupino) where she’d started in films in the early Thirties.  By the time she reached Hollywood, she was still only 15.  Her subsequent acting career took her from studio to studio, Paramount, Warners, Columbia.

She’d scored in some top films, including director Charles Vidor’s Ladies in Retirement, a 1941 big screen adaptation of a play about the house companion (Lupino) of rich, retired actress who finds herself putting up with the former’s interloper sisters. The excellent cast includes Ida’s then husband of three years, Louis Hayward. (They divorced four years later.)

But in ensuing years, Ida was slapped with the reputation as a trouble maker, willing to go on studio suspension rather than work in a film she felt unworthy of her talents, and refusing to work with actors (including Humphrey Bogart, her costar in his breakthrough film, 1941′s High Sierra) whom she felt didn’t respect her.

It was no surprise that by the late Forties, Ida and her then second husband, Columbia executive Collier Young, formed their own company to make films the major studios wouldn’t touch. She proved herself to be a competent director of second features, and an early discoverer of feminist themes, observes British author-critic David Thomson.

Our favorite of the movies Ida directed is 1953′s The Bigamist, a melodrama starring Edmond O’Brien, who delivers one of the best performances of his career as a loving husband taken for granted by his driven, businesswoman wife portrayed by Joan Fontaine.   (Jane Greer had agreed to take the lead in the picture but backed out at the last minute.)

The husband finds comfort in the arms of another woman. The role, unfortunately, was played by Lupino herself, who was too old for the part. (It was the only time Lupino directed herself.)

The movie may sound like soap opera but isn’t — at least in front of the camera. Shot on a shoestring, it was produced by Young, who by this time had divorced Lupino (in 1951) and was married to Fontaine (her third husband). For her part, Lupino had also moved on to her third (and final) husband, actor Howard Duff.

I felt it was my wifely duty to leap in and save the day (by taking the part Greer turned down), Fontaine later wrote in her autobiography.

She also took this catty poke at Lupino: After shooting all my scenes, director Ida saw the rushes, didn’t like the photography, and changed cameramen before actress Ida began her own scenes! 

In any case, The Bigamist is an achievement although perhaps an unheralded one. The film is not just melodrama, but a critique of woman’s vulnerability, writes Thomson.

Lupino, who died 17 years ago in Los Angeles, is second woman to be admitted to the Directors Guild of America (the first was Dorothy Arzner, who began in silent movies, shifted to talkies and is credited with the development of the mobile boom mike).

Strong actress, formidable director.  Ida Lupino was both.

 

 

 

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Posted in Rare Photos - Tagged

MYSTERY MONDAY PHOTO: Can You SEE Them much Less Identify Them?

Aug27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

O.K.  The last few weeks have been easy.

Last Monday almost everyone recognized Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe and a few people guessed composer-crooner Buddy Greco.  But  today we’re out to stump you. No more Mr. Nice Guys.

Here’s an interesting bunch. How many do you recognize?

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers here again with another of our Monday reader challenges to indentify famous (and not so famous) faces in our collection of candid shots.

This time we’ll wager it won’t be so simple to identify all the people in the above photo. (For one thing, the picture resolution, the best we could get, leaves a lot to be desired.)

Be that as it may, here’s a clue. Two are named Frances and one Elyse. A suggestion: start from photo right where three personalities should be readily identifiable.

Another hint:  it’s the three women (fourth, fifth and sixth from the right) that pose the real challenge since they are a lot less identifiable.

Yet another hint:  The woman all the way to the left wasn’t in the movies (she wasn’t exactly known for being a looker), but she and her ultra-famous husband loved Hollywood actors.  And, for the most part, vice versa.

Second from left had a not especially notable career at four studios including RKO, Paramount and Republic.  She was accidentally discovered when she was a UCLA-bound student visiting the Sam Goldwyn studio. Her surname is the same as that of a famous former tv sports broadcaster.

Third from the left is better known as a singer whose radio appearances with the guy all the way to photo right were notable.  Less notable were her movie performances in mostly forgettable musicals.

The woman fourth from left appeared in 1942′s The Mummy’s Tomb” but is better known for whom she married and for their successful TV star son.

That’s it.  Bonne chance.

 

 

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FRED’S Best Dancing Partner Ever? Does The Name ADELE ASTAIRE Sound Familiar?

Aug24
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Long before Ginger Rogers, Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, and Barrie Chase — much less Joan Crawford (yes, she was quite a hoofer in her day), Rita Hayworth (ditto) and Audrey Hepburn (ditto again) — lit up the screen as seven of Fred Astaire’s many dancing cohorts, there was one woman in his life who was his very best partner.

Unfortunately their work together was never fully captured on film.

By the time Astaire began his movie career in Hollywood in 1933 — playing himself in MGM’s Dancing Lady, a romantic musical costarring Crawford and Clark Gable — Fred’s renowned partner had retired from show business to begin a 12-year marriage to a specimen of British aristocracy, one Lord Charles Cavendish, the younger son of the Duke of Devonshire.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to celebrate the famous Astaires — Fred and older sister (by two years and eight months) Adele, and to wonder just how good they actually were together.

We were inspired by the publication of a new book , The Astaires: Fred and Adele, by Australia-born historian Kathleen Riley (who in 2008 convened what is described as “the first international conference on the art and legacy of Fred Astaire”).  The thoroughly  referenced tome, published by Oxford University Press, doesn’t stint in its praise of the dancing duo.

Had Fred Astaire not entered films, knowledge of his revolutionary contribution to musical theater and popular culture would perhaps, in the twenty-first century, be largely the preserve of stage and social historians, writes Riley.

Adele Astaire, one of the first true pop icons of the twentieth century and,  for the duration of their professional partnership, a bigger star than her brother, retired from show business in March 1932…Never having been prey to the precisionist zeal that drove her brother to rehearse endlessly, she neither regretted her retirement nor envied Fred’s subsequent success in Hollywood.

Fred and Adele came from a struggling and not entirely happy middle class family in Omaha, Nebraska.  She was born Adele Marie Austerlitz while his monicker was Frederick Austerlitz Jr. At the urging or their parents, who harbored thwarted show biz aspirations themselves, the pair began their professional lives as a child dance team via a vaudeville appearance at a New Jersey amusement park in 1905.

By 1917, they were dancing in bigtime musicals, the first being Sigmond Romberg’s Over the Top, which opened at the Subert Theater in New Haven, Conn. Adele was a natural dancer and born clown. Fred was the workhorse and the worrier. What made (them) such an effective team was that, creatively and temperamentally, they were perfect foils for one another, notes Riley.

Neither a physical beauty nor a particularly good singer, Adele was instead a sublimely natural dancer and born clown (who) possessed great magnetism — an energy and irresistibility memorialized by various revered men of letters as little short of a fifth force of nature.

After appearances in a half dozen stage musicals in the U.S., the duo embarked for London, the site of their greatest successes.  Fred and Adele quickly became sensations on the British stage.

The premiere of “Stop Flirting” at the Shaftesbury Theater on May 30, 1923, signaled the beginning of London’s long love affair with Fred and Adele and of a new transatlantic wonder. In a notable departure from its usual phlegmatic style, “The Times” proclaimed: “Columbus may have danced with joy at discovering America, but how he would have cavorted had he also discovered Fred and Adele Astaire!”

Riley writes that although the Astaires — who had become by now genuine symbols of the “Jazz Age” Twenties — shuttled back and forth between Broadway and the West End, it was London that truly made (them) stars. In this regard it is interesting to remind that when Fred began his Hollywood movie career, he was already an established international stage star.

Fred and Adele remained close throughout their lives. He died in 1987, nearly six years after his sister’s death.  Riley observes that she has, since her death in 1981, passed into comparative obscurity. It is Fred’s name that remains in the mainstream cultural consciousness, and it is Ginger Rogers who has been immortalized as his most famous dancing partner.

She wasn’t.  Adele was.

 

 

 

 

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News Flash — WHICH IS THE ‘GREATEST’ FILM OF ALL TIME? — We Have The Latest Poll Results!

Aug23
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, a bit breathless today because we just received the results of the international cineastes’ poll naming “the greatest film” ever made. Our hands can’t stop shaking.

But before we rip open the envelope, we should explain that the highly respected British movie journal Sight & Sound – published by the British Film Institute – has been polling international critics and directors 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. This year’s poll, for example, surveyed more than 1,000 international critics and another 350 directors.

In 1952, the first-place pick in the Sight & Sound poll was director Victoria DeSica’s  The BicycleThief, shot in war-torn Italy four years earlier. It quickly became (and remains) both a neo-realist classic and a genuine tear-jerker.

But Orson Welles’s great classic, Citizen Kane, took over as the critics’ No. 1 choice in the five Sight & Sound polls since, from 1962 through 2002. It has reigned supreme as “the greatest” for a half century through this year.

The magazine just completed its newest worldwide survey, and as a subscriber, Frank  received a hot digital flash from across the pond announcing the 2012 poll findings (which will also be splashed across the magazine’s September print edition).

Our question is:  will Citizen Kane retain the No. 1 spot it has held for 50 years?  The following listing of the poll’s top 10 movie selections — “the greatest films of all time” — provides the answer.

No. 1 — Vertigo (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

No. 2 — Citizen Kane (1941), Welles.

No. 3) Tokyo Story (1953), directed by Yasujiro Ozu.

No. 4) La Regle du Jeu (Rules of the Game) (1939), directed by Jean Renoir.

No. 5) Sunrise (1927), directed by F. W. Murnau.

No. 6) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), directed by Stanley Kubrick.

No. 7) The Searchers (1956), directed by John Ford.

No. 8) Man With A Movie Camera (1929), directed by Dziga Vertov.

No. 9) The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

No. 10) 8 1/2 (1963), directed by Federico Fellini.

So, there you have it.

After a half century of monopolizing the top spot, “Citizen Kane” was beginning to look smugly inviolable, writes critic Peter Matthews.

Perhaps.  But we can’t be too disappointed because the newly-crowned champ is a classic from one of our very favorite directors, a movie that seems to get better with each viewing.

Vertigo has been steadily making gains in the Sight & Sound poll rankings for decades, although, as the magazine crisply points out, it was received with largely a thud by mainstream movie critics when it first came out.  (When will those people learn!)

Writes Matthews in his Sight & Sound summary on behalf of Vertigo’s elevation to No. 1: The pleasure principal of Hollywood cinema succumbs to the death instinct.  Never has a work of ostensible light entertainment been this dark. Not sure we agree.  Didn’t film noir present itself as “entertainment” as its genre movies covered the darkest of subjects?

We are delighted that The Searchers has received its due.  By the way, director Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now came in at No. 14 in the Sight & Sound poll, while Singing In The Rain finished at No. 20.

Do you agree that Vertigo is better than Citizen Kane?  Just asking.

 

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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.

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HOLY CATS! FELINE STARS

Aug21
2012 2 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

A friend of ours, Patricia Barry, has just had a book published.  Julia’s Cats is about the feline companions of the late chef and TV star Julia Child.  In our shameless wish to plug our pal’s book we’ve decided to look at classic movies which feature cats as co-stars.

Joe Morella and Frank Segers here to scratch the surface of a new idea. Are cats in classic films? Why not? They’re everywhere else.

Joe has thought of four films which might be considered classics which feature a feline actor.

1961′s Breakfast at Tiffany’s is an unqualified classic (Joe sez; Frank not so sure) and ‘cat’ –Holly Golightly’s pet — is integral to the story. Although the animal actor (Orangely) did not get billing with Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, he did win the animal version of the Oscar, the PATSY (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year).

And it wasn’t Orangey’s first win either.  He’d copped the PATSY back in 1951 for his performance in Rhubarb.  In that he costarred with Ray Milland and Jan Sterling.

Rhubarb is the second of Joe’s recommendations.  It’s an odd film that defies categorization, often referred to as a noir comedy based on a H. Allen Smith story about a cat who inherits a professional baseball team.

Not a great film, but worth seeing for the cast (James Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Hermione Gingold, Ernie Kovacs, Elsa Lanchester, Janice Rule and the gorgeous Kim Novak) is Bell Book and Candle, adapted from the John Van Druten play.  Its cat star was Pyewackit (who won the PATSY that year), pictured below with Kim.

It should be noted that classic movies with ‘cat’ in the title aren’t necessarily about cats. Two of Frank’s very favorite classic titles are RKO producer Val Lewton’s 1942 title Cat People, directed beautifully by Jacques Tourneur, and the film’s sequel, 1944′s The Curse of the Cat People, also produced by Lewton.

The first is about a woman  (Simone Simon) and a panther. The second is feline-less, focusing instead on a lonely little girl given to fantasy, the only child of doting parents.  Both these movies are gems, not to be missed.

Perhaps the most cat-centered movie we know of comes from Japan.  It’s The Adventures of Chartran, a mid-Eighties family-oriented adventure in which several felines were used to play the ‘lead’ part of an orange tabby cat who braves several close calls in the wild. The picture was a huge hit in Japan but was adapted for U.S. release — as 1986′s The Adventures of Milo and Otis, pairing the cat with a pug canine and attaching a Dudley Moore narration — and promptly bombed at the box office.

Another of Joe’s ‘cat as co-star in possible classics’ is Harry and Tonto, director Paul Mazurski’s 1974 film which established the then tv-only star Art Carney as a serious movie actor, and won him an Oscar.  It’s about an elderly man who takes his cat along on a cross-country journey. The cat, billed as Tonto, won the PATSY.

But there was an outcry that year from dog lovers.

Higgins a mutt who’d portrayed Benji, in the 1974 film of that name, was the odds on favorite. Directed by Joe Camp, Benji tells the tale of an courageous canine who thwarts the kidnapping of two children. Higgins had been voted into the Humane Society’s Animal Actor’s Hall of Fame, the only other animal besides Lassie, who’d been so honored.

Many felt that Carney’s Oscar win had swayed voters to compliment Tonto in the same fashion. So he, not Higgins, won the PATSY.

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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?

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