August 2013 on TCM - Summer Under the Stars

[JackFavell]

Oh thanks so much for the link, Moira! I'd love to watch the end myself, even though I'd love a chat.

[CineMaven]

Sigh!!! All day.




Any time. Any place.

[CineMaven]

Crawford...sings at the piano in "Possessed." She has a very lovely voice.

[JackFavell]

She sang in Laughing Sinners too, I was trying to figure out if it was her. If not, she was the BEST lip synch artist EVER.

I am LOVING today on TCM! Oh yes, this is a wonderful selection and I'm recording it all, even though I have some of these already. I am really happy to see all the Gable/Crawford early movies in a row. Also can't wait to get my own copies of Too Hot to Handle, Test Pilot and The Hucksters.

[Rita Hayworth]

I'm in Victoria Now - but my DVR is recording Test Pilot today ... I will be watching it when I get home tomorrow afternoon.

[CineMaven]

She sang in Laughing Sinners too, I was trying to figure out if it was her. If not, she was the BEST lip synch artist EVER...

Yeah, I wasn't 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure. Think I'll skip out on Gable and Davies...and be back for Myrna. I love TCM for doing these ev'ry August. You really can see the depth and breadth of a performer when you take in his/her work in one fell swoop.

* * * *

Was marriage a prison sentence back then? Well, Crawford's first in love with Otto Kruger...then with Gable. Kruger's wife won't divorce him. It really sounds like it was a ball and chain and not above love. And what does it mean that Crawford falls for Gable? Does it mean she wasn't really in love with Otto? Should we never fall in love and marry because we never really know when there's a Gable around the corner?

I'm very confused.

[JackFavell]

Yes.

[CineMaven]

What can I say...I like Jeanne Crain.



She is part of a unique group of actresses who look unbelievably spectacular in technicolor. She shares that distinction with very few: Rita Hayworth, Maureen O'Hara and Gene Tierney. Good company to be in I'd say for a visual medium. I like her acting in films. She has a cool temperature. Quiet and believable.

[JackFavell]

I like her too, I wish they were showing State Fair, but it's nice that they are showing a little more of her work today, not the same old same old.

I just saw Fastest Gun Alive a few weeks ago, and enjoyed Crain and Glenn Ford in the story of a gunman trying to escape his past.

I also saw the movie Dangerous Crossing about a month ago, while we were on vacation, of all things. We all sat watching, trying to figure out what was going to happen, whether Jeanne was perhaps crazy in the head? or if someone was playing her for a fool. It's a fun movie to watch with other people so you can yell at the TV screen together.

I recommend The Fan, though it's on very late. I hope some of you will watch it, I think it's quite good myself, though some slam it for not being enough like the play it's based on - Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. Personally, I think that viewpoint is rubbish. The film has a short pair of brackets at the beginning and end, but other than that, whole sections of the play are lifted and used in the film. I found it very enjoyable, with excellent performances by the whole cast, including George Sanders, Jeanne Crain, and most especially to Madeleine Carroll, who is just marvelous.

[CineMaven]

I just saw TCM's commercial for September's Star Of the Month: KIM NOVAK. They have positively done it again with beautiful editing and narration. You've got to see it. It's breathtaking.

[moira finnie]

I don't know why others would loathe The Fan as vehemently as you describe, unless they are fairly rigid people who think that Oscar Wilde must always be done reverently (I think Wilde would be appalled at that himself) or film fan purists who believe that Otto Preminger should only have been concentrating on film noirs in the late '40s. In any case, it has some considerable charm, esp. when Madeleine Carroll is on screen. Jeanne Crain's work is good too, though for me her best role may still be as Margie, the awkward teenager in need of her widowed father's love. Her Margie almost believes she may need to hide her intelligence to fit in--but for once in a movie, her turn of mind is more important than being cute. In the film she conveys such youthful exuberance and lack of artifice that it is hard to fathom that she was a creation of the studios. Yes, she was beautiful, but in this sometimes overlooked gem she is also very human.

[JackFavell]

What year was Take Care of My Little Girl, kingrat?

[JackFavell]

Thanks. Just trying to get a handle on the time period, esp. when compared with Rebel Without a Cause.