Posts tagged Jennifer Jones

CELEBRATING MORE MILESTONE BIRTHDAYS

May14
2013 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

In the past few weeks we’ve been discussing films which have been celebrating their 50th and 60th birthdays. (Jeez, how time flies.) But what about those classics which are 70 this year?

70! Imagine it.  Can you think of a film released this year which even has a chance to be remembered 70 years from now? Just asking.

Your classic movie guys, Joe Morella and Frank Segers saying Hello, Everybody, and please dazzle us with your predictions of which film in this year’s crop you think has a shot of being a classic which people will still be watching and talking about 70 years from now.

We can’t think of one.

Seventy years is a very long time. Cultures change, fashions change.  But universal human conditions and emotions are for better or worse lasting.

We’ve thought of four films which were released in 1943, are celebrating their 70th birthday this year, and can still hold an audience in thrall. One is about love. One is about faith. One is about war. The last is about man’s inhumanity to man.

Casablanca is on almost every list of the best films ever made.  Books can (and have) be written about this movie.  It was magic in the making, and remains a favorite of millions. It showed everyone that even the toughest of tough guys could be romantic.

For much more on Casablanca check out our quiz on the film (Casablanca Quiz, April 11, 2012 for questions; April 17, 2012 for answers) and our discussion of a humorous incident that occurred on the production set (Peter Lorre: The Prankster of ‘Casablanca’, April 17, 2012).

The Song of Bernadette is a brilliantly crafted story of a innocent girl whose devotion thrusts her into the limelight. Jennifer Jones (pictured at the top of today’s blog) won the Oscar but its the band of character actors led by Gladys George, Anne Bevere, Vincent Price, Lee J. Cobb and Charles Dingle who steal the show.

Five Graves to Cairo is a taut tale of men during wartime. It is not about battles and blood but about personalities. Erich Von Strohiem is perfect as Field Marshall Rommel.

And The Ox Bow Incident, is a powerful story of mob psychology and violence, set in the American west of the 1880s. Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews star.

All four films are brilliantly written, acted and directed.

Oh, since we mentioned the hit songs from the movies of the day 50 and 60 years ago, let’s not forget the songs generated by films 70 years ago.  Remember “That Old Black Magic?”  How about “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To?”

Can it be?  That they don’t make ‘em like they used to?

 

 

 

 

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Posted in Rare Photos - Tagged , , ,

JENNIFER JONES and DAVID O. SELZNICK

May13
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

Hello everybody.  Morella and Segers here again with a never before seen photo of a radio star who also made movies.  Recognize her?  She was big in her day.

YESTERDAY’S PIC: That marvelously playful photo of Joseph Cotten dancing with Jennifer Jones and Claudette Colbert in the arms of Robert Walker is glorious. How gorgeous these classic screen stalwarts looked off camera.  The shot was taken circa 1944 when the quartet costarred in David O Selznick’s production of the wartime drama “Since You Went Away,” released by United Artists.

Cotten was 39 at the time while Colbert was the senior of the group at age 41.  Jones and Walker, husband and wife at the time, were just 25 and 26, respectively.  Jones played one of Colbert’s daughters in the picture (the other was Shirley Temple). All was not well at the time with her six-year marriage to Walker, however.

Cotten remembered that one day while sitting quietly between rehearsals, Colbert turned to him and asked, “Is it true, Jo, this talk I hear around the lot?”  Cotten responded, “What talk? I haven’t heard a word.”  Concluded Colbert, “If you haven’t heard about it, it’s not true.” The subject was dropped and never brought up again.  A few days later director Alfred Hitchcock visited the movie set, and blabbed to Cotten that “I suppose David and Jennifer are going to get married as soon as his divorce is final. I had a letter from England today.”  A stunned Cotten later recalled that “Claudette and I, each thinking that we were sitting on a powder keg, remained silent.  The picture was not in any way affected by their romance.”  (Jones ended her marriage to Walker a year later, and married Selznick in 1949.)

Cotten and Jones went on to star in a trio of solid pictures: William Dieterle’s “Love Letter”s in 1945, King Vidor’s “Duel in the Sun” a year later and Dieterle’s 1949 classic “Portrait of Jennie.”  While not exactly comparable to Gable and Lombard, Cotten and Jones proved to be an adept and easy-to-look at screen couple.  Off-camera, producer Selznick and Jones became fast Cotten friends. After his first wife, Lenore Kipp Lamont, died in Rome, Cotten was personally at sea.  Selznick and Jones took him under their wing, aiding and abetting Cotten’s subsequent romance with actress Patricia Medina.  The couple eventually married in 1960.  That was a happy union, lasting until Cotten’s death in 1994.

Did you like this? Share it:
Posted in Never Before Seen Photos - Tagged , , ,

Was Joseph Cotten the THIRD MAN?

May12
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

Who exactly was the third man?  Not Cotten, he was looking for the third man.

Hello everybody.  Morella and Segers here at the old stand.

You may not know this but British director Carol Reed’s  1949 classic “The Third Man” was meant to end happily.  At least that’s what the producers wanted. Reed had another idea, and thus a bit of film history was made.

You remember the ending.  It’s set in a Vienna cemetery on a raw, bitingly cold day.  Joseph Cotten as “honest, upright” Holly Martins stands in the foreground while a woman in the distance strides purposefully toward the camera. She is Italian actress Alida Valli portraying the mistress of villain Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who has just been buried. The impression is that the woman and Martins will somehow connect in a romantic finale. At least, that’s how the producers saw the ending.

Here’s how Cotten remembered that scene years later: “The hero (Cotten), smoking a cigarette, was standing in the foreground waiting for her. Like the audience, he was confident she would join him, and they would stroll away happily together, arm in arm.

“Valli walked on and on, closer and closer, until at last she was a life-sized figure in the foreground with the hero. And then, without turning her head, or even glancing in his direction, she continues her steady pace, out of the shot and into limbo.”

At the time of filming, Cotten had no idea “The Third Man” would end this way.  He wrote that “I remained there (in the scene), as directed.  My eyes followed Valli out of the shot…Nobody uttered a word. The camera kept rolling. The special effects men from their high perches continued to drop toasted autumn leaves from above.

“I continued to puff on my cigarette, and began to get quite panic-stricken. Was there more to the scene? Had I gone blank? What was Carol waiting for me to do? I took one more puff, then in exasperation threw the cigarette to the ground, at which point Carol shouted through his laughter the word I had been waiting desperately to hear — ‘CUT.’”

Cotten didn’t know it then but he had just completed one of the greatest single scenes in one of the greatest classics ever made.  ”The Third Man’s” bitter-sweet ending runs worldlessly for about 90 seconds, a long time onscreen when nothing is said and there’s little action. Anton Karas’ signature zither music plays poignantly on the soundtrack. That’s it.

“King Vidor, one of our cinematic giants, always said that in the history of films, every great moment that shines in memory is a silent one,” Cotten wrote in ” Vanity Will Get You Somewhere,” the actor’s excellent 1987 autobiography.

Born in rural Virginia in 1905, Cotten came from a well-off Southern family (his father wanted him to join Uncle Benny’s banking business).

From an early age, he was determined to become an actor, and eventually worked his way up to starring roles on Broadway in the early Thirties. He joined lifelong friend Orson Welles in the Mercury Theater, and it was Welles who brought Cotten to Hollywood to take on the role theater critic Jed Leland in “Citizen Kane.”

The association continued with 1942′s “The Magnificent Ambersons” and in 1943′s Journey Into Fear,” which Cotten wrote with Welles based on the Eric Ambler novel. Cotten also worked with Welles in a cameo part as a drunken coroner in 1958′s “Touch of Evil,” and in a small part in the director’s 1974 late-career film, “F for Fake.”

In addition, Cotten starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 classic, “Shadow of a Doubt,” playing young Teresa Wright’s cold, murderous Uncle Charlie. As film writer David Thomson notes, Cotten’s “best performances are in parts outside Hollywood conventions.” In all, he appeared in 66 films over a 40 year period, from the classics mentioned here to studio generated disaster movies (“Airport 77″) and worse.  Our recommendation is to catch Cotten’s work in four solid films: George Cukor’s 1944 “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman; King Vidor’s 1946 western outing, “Duel in the Sun” with Jennifer Jones; with Jones again in William Dieterle’s”A Portrait of Jennie” in 1949; and in Robert Aldrich’s “Hush, Hush…Sweet Charlotte” in 1964 with Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland.

By the end of his career in the early 1980′s Cotten was appearing in string of very entertaining horror movies with titles such as “Screamers” and ‘The House Where Death Lives” (his last movie in 1981).  Factoid:  Cotten was also part of the large cast in one of the most influential box office bombs in movie history, Michael Cimino’s disastrous “Heaven’s Gate” (1980).

Offscreen, Cotten was married twice, the second time to actress Patricia Medina (check out her great performance as a floozy in Orson Welles’ 1955 “Mr. Arkadin,” a big favorite of Frank’s). The union was a happy one, lasting until Cotten died of multiple health problems (including a stroke) in February 1994.  He dedicated his autobiography to Medina — “For Patricia, who is my world.”

The actor took a rightful measure of pride for being the star of films that three of the greatest directors who ever walked this earth — Welles, Hitchcock and Carol Reed — singled out as their finest work.


 

 

 

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Posted in Rare Photos - Tagged , , , ,

BOGART and LOLLO and JENNIFER JONES

Apr08
2011 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys


Hello Everybody.   Joe Morella and Frank Segers here once again

Let’s start with this question:

How can you resist a picture that (1) began production a week late, awaiting the arrival of the leading man’s false teeth; that (2) featured a principal character whose surname sounds suspiciously like “Dan Rather”; that (3) was directed by a distinguished veteran who literally fell off a cliff, martini in hand; and that (4) costarred Gina Lollobrigida speaking mangled English?

Before we reveal the title of this movie, it should be said Joe and Frank have differences about its merit.  Joe regards it more or less as an amusing trifle, once seen and that’s it.  Frank has enjoyed watching the movie again, and again and cannot get enough.  That pretty much defines the split reaction to “Beat the Devil” since it first came out in 1954.

If you haven’t seen it, please do yourself the favor. It’s on DVD, although the visual quality of the copy we have leaves a bit to be desired. Turner Classic Movies runs it occasionally although we suspect it is not one of host Robert Osborne’s favorites.  He describes as a mixture of film noir and comedy without making up its mind which genre it really occupies.

Fair enough.  But look what “Beat the Devil” has going for it.  A cast headed by Humphrey Bogart (who also coproduced the picture, meaning he put his own money into it).  There’s Ms. Lollo in full flower as Bogie’s wife. (She is the one who enunciates her husband’s surname, Dannreuther, as “Dan Rather.”)

There is also a terrific supporting cast including Robert Morley, Peter Lorre , Edward Underdown, Ivor Barnard and Bernard Lee.  It was directed by the John Huston, who, of course, cut his professional teeth along with Bogie and Lorre in the 1941 classic, “The Maltese Falcon.” The two stars appear older if not wiser in “Beat The Devil.” (And it was Huston who took a tumble with martini glass in tow down a steep 40-foot embankment; he swore he emerged unhurt.)

“Beat the Devil” was shot on location in Ravello, a steeply banked mountaintop village behind Sorrento on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Much of the movie was shot in a grand villa that was once Greta Garbo’s romantic hideaway. An added advantage of the gorgeous Italy locale is the presence in the cast of several fine Italian actors including Marco Tulli, Mario Perrone and Saro Urzi, as a loud-mouthed, drunken ship’s captain.

But “Beat the Devil”s real surprise is the wondrous presence of Jennifer Jones as quirky, blunt-speaking British wife. The surprise, at least for some of us, is that  Jones was quite the sexpot, every bit the Lollobrigida’s physical rival. She comes across as a feisty sparkplug. No languorous romanticism here.

Jones was about 35 when she made “Beat the Devil,” and her lithe, athletic figure is fully on display in several scenes. Enough said that she looked great in a bathing suit.  Lollobrigida appears almost matronly by comparison.

At the time the movie was made, Jones was married to mogul David Selznick.  Although he had nothing whatsoever to do with the picture’s production, Selznick felt he had plenty to protect in how his much younger wife was handled.

As Huston recounts in his most entertaining 1980 memoir, “An Open Book,” Selznick would dispatch multi-page cables to the set providing his unsolicited opinions on how his wife should be directed and photographed.

“One day, after receiving a particularly long cable from David, “ recalled Huston, “I sent him a cable back. Page one answered various points he had made. I then omitted page two and jumped to page three. From then on I answered anything he asked me by replying: ‘Refer page two my cable X date.’ I understand this drove him right up the wall.  It was rough on the cable company, too, because David was out to find that missing page.  You might say that Page Two was Gone With The Wind.”

The script for “Beat the Devil” was a last-minute affair, literally composed on the set before and during shooting. The movie is based on a novel by one “James Helvick,” the nom de plume of a British newspaperman and Huston pal, Claude Cockburn.

Huston turned to a 29-year-old Truman Capote to help out after an earlier screen treatment was junked. One night, undoubtedly after the liquor flowed, Bogart and Capote got into an arm wrestling contest that turned into a genuine wrestling match. Tempers got the better of both men.

“Beat the Devil”s plot is difficult to summarize coherently but it has to do with the search for supposed uranium deposit in East Africa by a motley international crew stuck on a dilapidated Italian cargo ship.  In one scene, an Arab chieftain (holding stranded passengers captive) poses this question to the film’s world-weary narrator-protagonist, Bogie: “Now tell me, do you really know Rita Hayworth?”

Bogart and the rest handle such lines and situations with great aplomb.  The performances overall, as mentioned, are most enjoyable.  And, oh yes, by the time he made this picture, Bogie was sporting dentures.

Huston remembered that he and Bogie were provided by an Italian co-producer a Mercedes to make the trip from Rome to Naples on their way to the film location.  The problem was the chauffeur provided was less than reliable.

Somewhere around Monte Cassino, the Mercedes went flying into a stone wall and into a ditch.  No one was seriously hurt but Bogie’s false front teeth were knocked out. A new bridge was promptly ordered sent over from his dentist in California.  “Waiting for Bogie’s teeth delayed things for a week or so and gave Truman and me a chance to work on the script,” Huston wrote.

“Beat the Devil” was not well received when it first came out. It was, Huston felt, “ahead of its time. A few critics hailed it as a masterpiece… but they were all European.  There was not an American among them.”

Despite its early reception, the picture has developed an enthusiastic audience over time. “’Beat the Devil’ has done well over the years,” concluded Huston. “I only wish Bogie could have been around to see this happen.”

It was the last picture Huston and Bogart did together.  (Bogart died three years after “Beat the Devil” was released, of cancer; he was 58.)

Yesterday’s Pic:

That man in the center of yesterday’s photo is, of course, Humphrey Bogart, in a studio publicity shot with the Dead End Kids.

From 1937 to 1940, Bogie starred in nearly 25 films, one of which was the Broadway hit “Dead End” by Sidney Kingsley.  The film version was scripted by Lillian Hellman and directed by William Wyler. (Bogie was loaned out by Warner Bros. to the Goldwyn studio for the picture, a deal that netted Bogart no extra salary but made WB richer by nearly $7,000, a lot of money in those days.)

 

Did you like this? Share it:
Posted in Rare Photos - Tagged , , , ,