It's Alive!

No, no, not Frankenstein. The Clark Gable Signature Collection! He should have been the first to get one, being the "King of Hollywood" and all, but at least he has one now. Or he will, come June. I've already pre-ordered mine.

I found the selection of movies somewhat surprising:

Dancing Lady
China Seas
San Francisco
Boom Town
Wife vs. Secretary
Mogambo

First, I thought I was the only one who adored Dancing Lady and thought it a great example of Gable's work. He is good in that film (everyone is), but I think instead I would have selected Forsaking All Others, which is a fabulous witty drawing-room romatic comedy with some great zingers in the dialogue. It's just a joy to watch. I've talked about it before.

China Seas I like, but I would have picked Red Dust for a Jean Harlow/Gable pairing for this set, especially since Mogambo was also chosen, and it's a remake with Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly in the female roles. Maybe that would have seemed repetitive, but on the other hand, it could be interesting to compare the two.

I love Wife vs. Secretary and would have chosen that one myself. It's another great example of Gable being wonderfully happy-go-lucky, and it also has romance and some drama. Also great costars in Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, and Jimmy Stewart. It was one of Harlow's rare "good girl" roles, and her favorite, so that makes it doubly a good choice.

I've never seen San Francisco or Boom Town, so I'll have some comments about those after I get my boxed set in June. I'm counting the days. ;) If they wanted a "tough guy" role, which I suspect these are, I would have chosen Manhattan Melodrama in place of one of those.

Next up, I would LOVE to see a box set of Joan Crawford/Clark Gable movies. This set would include:

Chained
Possessed
Strange Cargo
Dance, Fools, Dance
Laughing Sinners
Forsaking All Others
Love on the Run

Come on, Ted Turner. Make my day. :)

Pilgrim? Duuuuude!

Last night I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which I think has become my new favorite Western (a close second behind Dodge City). I'm going through a John Wayne phase right now, and Jimmy Stewart is always a winner in my book, so I decided to give this one a viewing. Rounding out the cast are Vera Miles, Andy Devine, and the uber-macho Lee Marvin (who, I was interested to discover, was a Marine and is buried at Arlington). When I saw the Netflix sleeve, I thought, "oh, geez, two hours," but the time flew by with this one.

I didn't realize this was the movie that started a million John Wayne imitations with "howdy, pilgrim." That's his nickname for Jimmy Stewart, and it sticks all through the movie; I couldn't help but giggle every time he said it, because it has become such a staple of the John Wayne persona. Also sort of darkly amusing yet also menacing is Lee Marvin's nickname for Jimmy, "dude," which he bullfrogs in a suitably sinister way. There was a decent amount of action and suspense; although I figured out right away who shot Liberty Valance, and not too long after realized how the rest of the plot would unfold, I did find myself tensing up in a few of the most dramatic scenes. When John Wayne goes home and throws the lamp into the half-finished addition to his house, it's such a painful moment, emotionally. You don't think of Duke as going to piece over a woman, but he does it here; knowing from the start of the movie how he ended up makes it even more difficult to watch, because you know this is the beginning of his downward spiral in that moment.

One thing that stuck in my mind, because I am obsessed by these kind of small details: the hairstyles. Duke looked all right, but Jimmy's hairpiece looked like a dead badger with an Elvis curl over the forehead. And Vera Miles, with her 60's bouffant with two braids clipped to the ends...not very frontier. Yes, I am insane.

Another movie, which I ended up spacing out over the course of the entire week, was one of my favorite Joan Crawford/Clark Gable pairings, Possessed. I'm a sucker for a good romance story where one person does something noble for the benefit of the other; here Joan pretends to be bored and sick of her lover Clark so she won't ruin his reputation when he runs for governor in the near future. The look on her face, which we see over his shoulder as he embraces her and proposes marriage (which she has long waited for) goes through so many emotions so beautifully, from a flash of joy to regret to steeling herself to hurt him so he'll let her go. And Clark's face, as he goes from laughter to disbelief to an angry resignation that Joan has made a fool of him...you can almost feel the ice hardening around his heart. Oh, I know I'm talking like a bad romance novelist, but I do love those two, best of all when they act together.

Again, with the laxness

The movie viewing has gone on as usual. The blogging, as you can see, has not. I've watched a ton of movies since I last updated. Instead of one or two giant entries talking about them all, I think I'm going to stick with short, more frequent entries. (Famous last words.)

Here's a list of what I've seen lately:

The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
On the Beach
Crash Dive
Brief Encounter
Laurel & Hardy: This Is Your Life (so cute...they were really surprised)
The Hustler
Love Laughs at Andy Hardy
Gunga Din
Shall We Dance (1937)
The Barefoot Contessa
Laura
They Were Expendable

And the entire Greta Garbo box set, when I got snowed in over a weekend. The silents were great, as were the talkies, of course.

So hopefully we'll have some updates, sooner rather than later.

One more thing

I've created a "virtual cemetery" at Find A Grave of all my famous character actors; you can pay your respects here.

In the Christmas Mood

The title has nothing really to do with the movie I watched today, The Glenn Miller Story. It's just that now I'm mini-obsessed with Miller, and I'm listening to In the Christmas Mood, Vol. 1 while I type this. And I've added a book about him to my Amazon wish list, which I'll delete in a week when my interest wanes back to normal levels (I've loved Miller's brand of big band music for awhile now).

So, the movie. I liked it. I love Jimmy Stewart in pretty much everything I've ever seen him do, even the cheese (read: Airport '77). Bonus points for appearances by George Tobias and Harry "Col. Potter" Morgan. I didn't recognize him until I heard him talk. Coincidentally, I had seen another minor player, Sig Ruman, in another film this weekend, To Be or Not To Be, which we'll get to in a minute. Now, back to Glenn...

I don't know anything about Glenn Miller's life, so I can't say how much is fictionalized or prettied up, but I still enjoyed the film. I read on IMDB that he never actually saw his adopted daughter; she was adopted while he was overseas, and he died only days afterwards, never having seen her. In the film, she's adopted as an infant while he's still in the States, and is about 2-3 when he leaves on his band tour; there's a sweet little scene where he sees her for the first time and gives her a bottle. The music, of course, was a delight -- I enjoyed the way they portrayed him composing his best known pieces (especially "Moonlight Serenade"); although I realize that may not be how it happened at all, the music wove its way into the movie very nicely.

As I mentioned, I also watched To Be Or Not To Be this weekend. Carole Lombard and Jack Benny: now that's an interesting combination. The movie is ostensibly about a group of Polish actors rebelling against the Germans, but of course the cast couldn't be more American. Robert Stack as a character named Stanislav Sobinski? Yeah, don't expect to be dazzled by that performance. I mean, he was good; everyone was. Carole was a delight, as always, and Benny was a big ham, again as always. The plot reminded me a bit of the Joan Crawford movie Reunion in France, which is even more ridiculous, plot-wise. Having glamorous Hollywood starlets, dressed to the nines, playing Europeans oppressed by the Nazis just never flies, at least not in any of the movies I've seen. Now, let one of them strip off the make-up and dress down like Norma Shearer did at the end of Marie Antoinette, and I'll be more inclined to suspend my disbelief. But you don't look terribly downtrodden when your lashes are three inches long. I'm just saying.

As you can see...

...I have been shamefully lax about updating this blog. Part of the reason is that I took a vacation from classic movies to watch most of the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which was recently released on DVD. I also plowed my way through all six seasons of Sex and the City, which I became addicted to instantly once I started watching. I also rented a few SNL "Best of" discs, namely John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Dan Aykroyd ("You're spending the night with Fred Garvin, male prostitute!"). I will also admit, with much shame, that I rented Batman & Robin. Okay, don't judge me! I was curious to see the crazy villains. I didn't know the whole movie was going to be a big ball of cheese!

There have been a few classic movies scattered in there, though. (I had to stop taping them from Comcast for awhile as I was gathering more than I could possibly watch, and using up all the space on my dad's DVR.) As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I did rent Airport '77, if only to see how aging Hollywood legends would survive trapped in a plane at the bottom of the ocean in the Bermuda Triangle. Dun dun dun! I'm happy to report that Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton and Jimmy Stewart all survived (well, especially Jimmy, since he wasn't even on the plane). Sadly, Christopher Lee did not make it, but he sacrificed his life for the greater good.

Back in October I watched Kim, mostly because it had Errol Flynn in it. Not as much Flynn as I was expecting, though, and I've never been a huge fan of curly-headed moppets, although Dean Stockwell did a fine job.

After that came Sin Takes a Holiday, which lasted only about five minutes, as it was a very poor transfer to DVD. I'm beginning to realize a lot of these old, old movies are in the public domain, which allows any rinky-dink production company (Macady, I'm looking in your direction) to slap them onto to a DVD. Which is a shame, because I think there should be some kind of studio control over how their movies are released. Then again, they probably wouldn't put the effort into restoring and/or releasing copies of every old movie they find in the vaults, so maybe it's a draw.

January 21, 2006 will be my third anniversary with Netflix. In honor of that, I'd mention every movie I've rented, but the list is so long it would bore you to tears. One early rental I will mention is The Cat's Meow, about the mysterious death of Thomas Ince on William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924. Because if there's anything that fascinates me more than classic films, it's modern movies about classic film stars.

I Heart Comcast

And their digital cable with DVR. Now I can easily pluck movies from Turner Classic Movies with the onscreen guide and record them with a click of a button! No more painstaking calculations of how long the movie's really going to run, with introductions by Robert Osborne and whatnot. (My last attempt to tape several movies in one week was a miserable failure, as I missed the last 5-10 minutes of each movie.) I was on my own for the holiday weekend, so I settled down to watch a bunch I had taped (and one from Netflix today).

First up was Suzy, with Jean Harlow, Franchot Tone (and can he rock an Irish brogue), and Cary Grant. Rounding out the cast was character actress Inez Courtney as Maisie (who looked familiar to me because she played another Mazie in one of my favorite Jean movies, Hold Your Man), Una O'Connor, and Lewis Stone. I don't think this was oneof Harlow's more popular movies, and I suppose I can see one reason why...her devotion to Cary Grant is incomprehensible to me, after all the dirty tricks he plays on her. Plus he was just all-around not a nice guy. I mean, who doesn't write to his ailing father when he goes off to war? I thought Suzy's devotion to the Baron was very touching, however. I was hoping for a nice romantic reunion with Terry at the end of the film, not Suzy and Terry dragging Andre's body out to the plane so France will think he died a hero. I say, let him die as what he was -- a philandering playboy pilot who was duped and shot by a spy. Oh, well. I guess Suzy is a bigger person than I.

Next was The Unknown, with Lon Chaney and a very young and almost unrecognizable Joan Crawford. Silent films are a taste recently acquired, and I liked this one. The soundtrack was gorgeous. Lon Chaney was delightfully creepy as "Alonzo the Armless." Joan was very pretty, but didn't have the usual "face" that I think most fans associate with her. If I hadn't know ahead of time it was her, I'm not sure I would have known her. Her famous beautiful eyes are rather unremarkable here. And here's an interesting bit of trivia from IMDB: For many years, this film only existed in murky 9.5mm dupes on the black market. In March 1973, at a screening of this film at George Eastman House, archivist James Card said that Henri Langlois and his staff at the Cinematheque Francais discovered The Unknown in 1968 among other miscellaneous cans of film marked "l'inconnu" (films "unknown" due to missing titles, etc.). I could tell that the titles were of a modern era, but I'm not sure about the music. I guess, looking back on it, that it did have an electronic quality to it that would indicate it's not original to the film.

I made it a Joan Crawford double feature with the next movie, The Story of Esther Costello. It was heavy-handed in parts, and of course Joan chews her share of the scenery in places. Overall, though, I enjoyed her performance, and the movie as a whole, very much. Heather Sears was excellent as Esther, and Rossano Brazzi appropriately slimy as Joan's estranged husband. The ending is a little abrupt, with the eventual fate of Joan and her dastardly husband relayed in one sentence, and the last shot of Esther walking away to, I assumed, speak to a crowd gathered for an Esther Costello Fund benefit. (There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-her appearance by Bessie Love, she of Broadway Melody fame, as "Matron in Art Gallery.")

Last on the bill was Beau Geste, which I had a hankering to see after watching Lawrence of Arabia last weekend (which I know is this great epic, but to me it was just...okay). Gary Cooper and Ray Milland together was quite a lot of eye candy to handle at once. I thought Robert Preston was an odd choice as the third brother; he'll always be Professor Harold Hill to me, and the pencil mustache didn't suit him at all. It made him look rather sleazy, I thought. I'll admit that I didn't see the ending coming at all, specifically the last scene at the house with Aunt Pat reads the letter. Look closely and you'll see a very young Donald O'Connor playing Beau Geste as a young boy. This was the first Gary Cooper movie I'd ever seen, and I liked him enough that I think I'll be adding some of his movies to my Netflix queue, along with some more Ray Milland. I could listen to Ray just read the phone book -- a lovely, cultured voice.

Coming attractions include a double feature of Airport '77 and The Concorde: Airport '79, two of those movies in a category I like to call "disaster movies featuring aging Hollywood legends." Hey, I rented Airport 1975 for the sole purpose of seeing Myrna Loy, who did not disappoint as a sensible, calm but cute little old lady. Let's see how Olivia de Havilland handles being trapped in a plane at *snicker* the bottom of the ocean, in the Bermuda triangle! *cue dramatic music*

Also, arriving in the mail this week is The Bela Lugosi Collection on DVD. Yay!

Clark and Olive

I know, a random pairing. It's just what I've been watching lately.

I’ve read in several books that Clark Gable was never the same after the death of Carole Lombard. Well, who would be. It was evident, the various authors said, by comparing his films before and after 1942. Again, I thought: of course he’s going to be different, he lost his wife in a fiery plane crash and then joined the army and flew bomber missions! Jimmy Stewart did more or less the same, and came back with slightly thinner and grayer hair, maybe, but nothing drastic. How much worse could Gable look?

I found out the other day, when I watched Teacher’s Pet. Okay, granted, this movie was made in 1958, so it was only two years before Gable died and over ten since the war had ended. But yikes, he did not age well. The only other “late Gable” movie I’d seen was Run Silent, Run Deep, and yes he looks old, but you kind of expect the grimness, seeing as how it’s a WWII submarine movie. Teacher’s Pet is a romantic comedy; in brief, Gable the journalist goes undercover to Doris Day’s journalism class to disprove its usefulness, and they fall in love. His character is a crusty sort of newshound, but not overly so. But there’s none of the joy or daffy romance with which Gable would have played this character in say, the 1930’s. I’m reminded of one his own quotes (which I’ve cadged from IMDB): "The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great -- and they know I know it." I didn’t get any of that feeling in Teacher’s Pet.

I've also recently watched Forsaking All Others, which is a wonderful light comedy written by Joseph Mankiewicz, which also stars Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Billie Burke, Rosalind Russell, and Charles Butterworth. The dialogue is full of zingers and the action often borders on the goofy. Gable is smooth and urbane yet also happy and full of boyish mischief, always ready with a wisecrack and a hearty laugh. In comparing these two performances, Teacher’s Pet comes off the worse. (Probably not helped by the fact that Gable seems old enough to be Day’s father.)

Thinking it over, though, it’s not really a good comparison. I suppose to be really fair, I should watch Somewhere I’ll Find You, the movie he was filming when Carole was killed (or maybe Honky Tonk, the one before that), and then Adventure, his first movie after the war (Gable’s back and Garson’s got him, so on and so forth).

Next up was the wee little Olive Thomas Collection, which consisted of a documentary (Olive Thomas: Everybody’s Sweetheart) and a film (The Flapper). I had heard of Olive before, primarily through (I’m ashamed to admit) Hollywood Babylon. That picture of her in the straw hat, with big eyes and long curls down her shoulders, is so lovely. When Netflix suggested the DVD, I went ahead and bumped it to the top of my queue.

The documentary was good, augmented by the inclusion of several of Olive’s family members. Frankly, though, I thought Olive’s many sketches (at the hands of Christie and Vargas, among other illustrators) were more beautiful than Olive herself. In some of her photos, she was very pretty. When I saw her in The Flapper, she was pretty, but not what I would label “the most beautiful girl in New York.” I guess it’s all a matter of what was in vogue at the time, though. Which was not, apparently, perfect teeth. (Okay, I said it. And not to be mean to poor Olive, but I just couldn’t help noticing it through out The Flapper.) I thought she was cute, and enjoyed the movie. I’ve never been a huge fan of the silents, although they’re starting to grow on me.

Turner Classic Movies stole my idea!

Or, um, I inadvertantly stole theirs. I caught the end of Now, Voyager over the weekend (which I also just bought on DVD) and afterwards they had a brief biography of Guy Kibbee. I only caught the tail end of that as I was still flipping channels. I think it's a series TCM does, and I'm assuming it's called "What A Character" since that was the tag line they ended the piece with.

Anyhow, I have somehow tragically overlooked Guy when doing my little "Character Actors I Love" profiles (and TCM's name is much better, damn it) so he's up next, I have decided. I've really liked him since I first saw him in Laughing Sinners. Which is odd when you think about it, because he plays a somewhat sleazy traveling salesman in that film. I've seen him in other, much more sympathetic roles. But we'll talk more about that next time...

Movies are the best medicine

Nothing like being sick and missing almost a whole week of work to allow one to get caught up on their classic movie viewing. Thank God for Netflix, because I didn't have the energy to go out and rent movies.

Anyhow, my most recent movie was Lady for a Day, and oh, I loved this movie! First off, it was full of character-actory goodness: May Robson, Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks, Walter Connolly, and Nat Pendleton. Bonanza!

The scene when Apple Annie is about to confess her true identity to Count Romero, and then the party guests finally arrive, including the mayor and governor...I cried at the look on her face. And I don't usually cry at movies. But I'm a little choked up just talking about it now. May was just wonderful. So touching when she sees her daughter again for the first time.

I was so rooting for Annie and the Judge to fall in love and get married...they were so cute together. The look on the Judge's face when he sees her as "Mrs. E. Worthington Manville" for the first time was just adorable. From what I could tell, Guy did his own trick pool shots. At least, I'm fairly sure he did. Very impressive. The one thing I would have changed was the casting of Walter Connolly as a Spanish count. Just...no. His nasal squeak of a voice and a "Spanish accent" are two things that should be kept as far apart as possible. He did not work at all in that part. He's better playing father to society girls or frustrated bosses, as we've discussed before.

Plus you have to love a movie with a character named "Dave the Dude." Heh.

Next up was The Damned Don't Cry!, one of the new Joan Crawford DVD releases. Joan's Warner Brothers films are on the edge of an era I don't like in her work. I much prefer her as a 30's shopgirl to the 40's hardened dames with rapidly thickening eyebrows. I'll go as far as Mildred Pierce, which I love, but that's about it. And the 60's scream films...no, we'll not speak of those.

Damned was all right. Joan's character makes an interesting transition from poor but hard-working mother to tough dress model/gangster's moll. Maybe a bit too quick of a transition. The men in film were no one I had ever really heard of before; definitely not the A-listers than Joan had been partnered with in the past. Kent Smith was good, but the rest didn't do much for me. I suppose Warners was trying to boost their careers by putting them in a Joan movie, but it doesn't seem to have done much, in my (albeit limited) opinion.

Next was a double feature of sorts: The Aviator and Hell's Angels. As you know, I'm not much for modern movies, but I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was good as Howard Hughes (he got that creepy, beetling brow stare down, all right) and Cate Blanchett was unbelievably great as Kate Hepburn. I'd give her another Oscar if I could. The special effects were quite nifty, and hey, look! Hawkeye plays a sleazy senator. Aviator qualifies as a classic movie in a "by association" way. It's about classic movie stars and making classic movies, so I'll allow it in. ;)

After seeing that, of course I was curious about the original Hell's Angels, so I gave that a look. Good drama, amazing flight scenes, and Jean Harlow in color was a treat. With natural eyebrows, too! That's not a look you saw often. I thought James Hall looked familiar, and I was right; he also played Jack Maitland in Millie. The character of Monte constantly got on my nerves, and I wanted to smack him, Roy's goodness kind of balanced him out.

We wound up with a encore presentation of an old favorite, Objective, Burma! I would follow Errol Flynn into the jungle in a heartbeat. Yum. Such a great WWII film. After seeing brave and handsomely sweaty Errol lead his troops through the steamy jungles of Burma, I was well enough to go back to work, and so I did.

Up for this weekend: the 1932 Little Women, Teacher's Pet (yay, Gable!), and Olive Thomas: The Flapper and Everybody's Sweetheart.