The June 2013 TCM Schedule

[movieman1957]

I caught this one on Netflix last year. It's okay, Rambunctious is a good way to describe her. Very unlike other things she has been in that I've seen. As I recall it's a bit too over the top for my taste about her wanting to get married and her family wanting to marry her off. Taylor is not so anxious.

It has good outdoor locations, a nice job by Victor McLaglen and a rare setting in colonial America.

[CineMaven]

I was finding "Scaramouche" too much for me that way and couldn't make it to the end. But she was glorious to look at and listen to. And Stewart Granger was dashing.

[JackFavell]

The Detective Story is great, all those character actors! Lee Grant. I'm thinking Thelma's in it too. I haven't seen it for ages. Parker and Douglas are great lots of tension.

[moira finnie]

It's an intriguing thought to think of Eleanor Parker playing Calamity Jane, Theresa. If you saw EP in "Interrupted Melody" last night, and caught the moment when, as a Valkyrie galloping her horse into the flames while singing Wagner (well, mouthing the lyrics sung by Eileen Farrell), you sure know she can ride a horse and play an artistically temperamentally diva very well!

Liked George Sanders enormously in "The Seventh Sin" (1957) shown overnight on TCM. The normally effete GS had an opportunity to play a spiritually aware, compassionate ex-pat in China, and he did so by giving an effective, nuanced performance. Sadly, the normally good director Ronald Neame (Golden Salamander, The Man Who Never Was, Tunes of Glory, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) seems to have been a victim of MGM's corporate inertia in the late '50s.

A seemingly miscast Eleanor Parker & Bill Travers played the roles that had previously been played by Garbo & Herbert Marshall in the '30s adaptation of Somerset Maugham's "The Painted Veil"--but Parker and Travers were not as wasted as the talents of Jean-Pierre Aumont and Francoise Rosay in smaller parts!

The only person other than Sanders who made a strong impression: Parker's co-star in Caged (1950)--Ellen Corby as a cheerful little bantam of a nun.

My only real disappointments regarding SoTM Eleanor Parker:

--No Private Screenings with Eleanor Parker and RO (*sigh*)

--No screening of one of my favorite OOT movies, "The Naked Jungle" (1954) with a gloriously beautiful EP vs. Mr. Crankypants, Plantation Owner (Charlton Heston). The pair were great together, esp. after they started battling those ants!! Paramount--let my ant movie go...and be shown on TCM soon, will ya? Don't take my word for it...
[youtube][/youtube]

[moira finnie]

Theresa---you gotta see Detective Story @ 8pm (ET) on MONDAY, June 28th. Some of the best moments of several careers are seen on screen in this one ensemble film, including work by Eleanor Parker, Kirk Douglas, William Bendix, and more. The themes and emotions in this movie are still relevant and just as complex, all these years later. The only difference: filmmakers like William Wyler and writers like Sidney Kingsley aren't around and society is too preoccupied with juvenile distractions from the realities of human life to concentrate long enough to tell this kind of multi-faceted story in a movie.

...as I climb down from soap box, and shuffle away, mumbling my apologies for this momentary, heartfelt rant.

[JackFavell]

I really wanted to see The Seventh Sin, Moira, but didn't get that one either, so thanks for posting about it. sometimes I like it better when GS stretches himself as an actor. He usually comes through with something thoughtful and interesting when not being the cad. It must have been so frustrating for him.

[moira finnie]

I wished you had a chance to see George playing a human, Wen. He was sad and gentle as well as determined to live his own life (with the ying yang of sexuality and spirituality, he was a fairly typical Maugham character, in other words).

Did you happen to see The Last Hurrah (1957) on Father's Day? Your avatar hero, Ricardo Cortez, took a break from Wall Street to act for one of the last times with his contemporaries in this story of change in American life (probably the one Ford film I can watch repeatedly). Playing the practiced Jewish poliitical pro who is one of Skeffington's closest allies, Ricardo was really very likable and believable (something I struggle with when watching him in his prime). Maybe he learned to be a better actor while toiling on the floor of the stock exchange or maybe time stripped away the artifice that was so amusing in his earlier roles, allowing him to be simply human? Or maybe if Cortez had a chance to work with better directors like Ford earlier, things might be different all around?

[JackFavell]

I will hope that they broadcast The Seventh Sin at a more reasonable hour next time, so I can get a look.

Yes, I saw The Last Hurrah, I've seen it twice before and was terribly moved by it both times, once I got the hang of the film. It was hard to understand the gentle, forgiving slant on crony-ism the first time through, but I still loved it. Now that I get the idea, I watch it every time it's on. There are things that simply got done better when you had a guy like Curley Skeffington in office, even if now that kind of thing is thought of as corrupt.

Ed Brophy makes me tear up from the minute the movie starts... he has such a tremendous gallant and funny role in the film, and looks so happy to be there, schlubbing around for Tracy, and then the end with him saying goodbye and on the stairs just makes me bawl like a baby. I love him and his 'hamburger'.

This is the first time I recognized Cortez in the film. On previous viewings I was always being astounded at how great Basil Rathbone was without his English accent, or laughing at Wallace Ford's character ("HENNESSEY's my name") or being shocked that Frank McHugh was still around for this film, or trying to will James Gleason into a bigger role. Cortez has a couple of WONDERFUL scenes, the argument between him and... was it Pat O'Brien? I can't remember...well it was spectacularly good. Incredibly well done. I suspect that when sound came, Cortez had an acting coach or someone who taught him that style was everything, and this accounts form some of his less stellar roles in the thirties. He can be so good and natural when he's not got that affected style and that vocal thing going on. There certainly wasn't a trace of it here.

I love the scene where the new candidate hires a dog for the TV spot he's paid for, so he looks like a real family man, then all of it goes to hell in a handbasket rapidly. I believe that he's played by one of Maureen O'Hara's brothers. Also of note: Jane Darwell, as the woman who likes to attend wakes and then takes charge of them, and Anna Lee as a widow whose husband was disliked by all, but who benefits from Tracy's kindheartedness.

Really, though, how can you go wrong with a movie when you have this many incredible supporting actors in it? Gleason McHugh and Ford alone make it worthwhile, but there are many many more.

But really for me, this is Ed Brophy's movie. Oh geez, he kills me here, his doglike devotion just breaks my heart.

[moira finnie]

Ditto is a killer isn't he? He and his "hamburger." Edward Brophy is one of my favorite character actors, from silents to this film. In the book by Edwin O'Connor the smaller characters like Cuke (James Gleason) are fleshed out more, and the background of the main characters is more detailed too. (I really want to go back and re-read this one now). When I made my family watch The Last Hurrah on Sunday no one else believed that was Ricardo Cortez either. Put back the hair, the ladies' man chutzpah, and a few decades and instantly RC reappears.

I actually love the cronyism and alleged corruption of the Curleys Skeffingtons in The Last Hurrah since I grew up in a family that loved and practiced local and state politics. Back then, you could differ on issues without real enmity but with a certain amount of respect for one another's POV and commitment to making the world a bit better. Some will always be truly corrupt, but a kind of messy can-do attitude--"moral blackmail" as it is termed at one point--has strong-armed many movers and shakers into unselfish acts of civic mindedness before and it will again. (Just my opinion, but that's one reason why Mayor Menino of Boston has succeeded for so long).

The only characters that don't ring true at all for me are the young, Irish Catholic college-educated creep who challenges Skeffington. He is too hollow and seems to belong in a sitcom, not a John Ford movie. I kind of see that broadly drawn character as one sign that the aging director was not in complete control of his material. In another director it would seem like laziness. Here it always seems off-kilter to me. Skeffington is such a richly drawn, well acted character that he deserved a better opponent (maybe the kind of morally complex guy that Gore Vidal would imagine in The Best Man?).

[MissGoddess]

Moira, Wendy:

I too think George is wonderful in The Seventh Sin. So relaxed. His character reminds me a little of George Brent's in The Rains Came. Both men seemed at ease playing ex-pats, ha. Wonder why? I find this version of Maugham's tale most re-watchable, though the Garbo one feels more authentically tragic. George may be the reason why. I agree he's great with Maugham characters---he communicates disdain for conventionality so well.

I started Lizzie on my lunch break and can't wait to get back home to finish it! It already rings more true for me personally than Three Faces of Eve, which I cannot help but compare it to.

Cortez did work with Ford early on (Flesh) but I, too, did not recognize him the first couple of times I saw The Last Hurrah.

Little Eddie Brophy is the heart and soul of the movie, bless him.

[ChiO]

Moira wrote regarding DETECTIVE STORY:
The only difference: filmmakers like William Wyler and writers like Sidney Kingsley

Kingsley wrote the play that the movie was based on, but the screenplay was written by Robert Wyler (William's brother) and the ubiquitous Philip Yordan, for which they received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.

Was this one of Yordan's scripts, or was he a front? Oddly, Alan Rode doesn't mention (or, I couldn't find the mention) DETECTIVE STORY in his article on Yordan in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of the Noir City Sentinel.

[JackFavell]

I moved to Chicago in 1968 Moira, and so grew up a bit under the Daley administration there. I'll tell you, things ran pretty well under Mr. Daley. There was also Jesse Jackson, who one could look at almost the same way now, which is kind of weird, considering they were so antithetical at one time. So I have a lot of admiration for those old school politicians who got things done, and kept their ties to their own communities. I guess the slant of the movie was unexpected for me the first time through. It's just so unusual to find such a thoughtful film nowadays on power, seeing a little emotional blackmail as a good thing. Heaven help us if Lyndon Johnson, who is criticized now for being the epitome of the 'politician', hadn't pulled strings and called in markers to get the civil rights act passed. Sometimes we are so blocked by our ideas of what is the right thing to do, we need those who play the game, the ones who aren't afraid of a dust up to get the job done first, ethics second.

ChiO, that's super interesting about Yordan... do you think he was a front? Does anyone know if the film is his style? If it seems like anyone else's type of story? I'm not familiar with Yordan enough to know.

[moira finnie]

Dang, Wen!! Chicago in the '60s. That was one of those "some will always be really corrupt" no matter what instances, you know? Which is actually one of the things that was good about The Last Hurrah. You can have affection for the past, but in politics and life, you gotta let the future happen too!

Kingsley wrote the play that the movie was based on, but the screenplay was written by Robert Wyler (William's brother) and the ubiquitous Philip Yordan, for which they received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.

Yes, Yordan, and Robert Wyler (whose role in these matters always seems kind of vague) were credited with Detective Story's screenplay, but Kingsley's play was even more powerful, if anything, and the playwright created the characters and situations, so I feel that he deserves more credit than he is often given. In his article, The Philip Yordan Story, found here, Alan K. Rode quotes Gabriel Miller, author of William Wyler (being released in August 2013 by University Press of Kentucky), this way: "Miller notes that 'The film is pretty faithful to the play; much of the dialogue is Kingsley’s. Yordan and Wyler rearranged certain sequences, sharpening the dramatic focus, added a couple, cut some lines, and, of course, had to get rid of the abortion element—though it still comes across.' "

[JackFavell]

Well, Moira, I guess I don't know politics very well!

[moira finnie]

Well, Moira, I guess I don't know politics very well!

No, I know you understand it very well. I just remember the behavior of Daley in several instances rather vividly (I had siblings and family friends in the street there during the convention). I agree about LBJ. He was the last of his kind. Even Johnson biographer Robert Caro seems to look back on him with fondness and respect--and that guy knows Johnson's dark side as well as his pragmatic and even idealistic streaks.