Posted: December 7th, 2007, 9:40 am
I think that I'll call this chapter of my cinematic adventures "Live and Learn Part CXXVVIII", okay?
Whew, what's that smell?? Must be Jeanne Eagels (1957). Hmmm, so much for the cinematic memories of girlhood. This movie was purty bad, don't you think, kids? Sometimes there's a good reason why movies lie mouldering in the vault. This one wasn't going to do a thing for the likable, talented people who appeared in it, except for one: Virginia Grey
Ms. Grey was wonderfully touching and managed to almost evoke a real person in her few moments on screen as an actress at the end of her tether. My thanks for the heads up about her acting in this flick over on the TCM board, Mongo. With my usual amnesia for dimly remembered movies, I didn't recall her presence at all.
All the other poor actors were in desperate need of good, firm direction and a less hackneyed script. One thing that this movie did make one wish was to learn a few facts about Jeanne Eagels, now that I've seen what I suspect is largely the fanciful version again. And, interestingly, I've learned that one other reason that this movie might've been out of sight for so long was that Eagels' family apparently sued Columbia for their distortion of the facts of her life.
Poor Kim Novak. She's obviously working like a ditch-digger to evoke the doomed glamour of this actress, but with little visible support from from the script. Jeff Chandler hadn't much to do either but appear to be Mr. Nice Guy who, not so mysteriously, perhaps, doffed his shirt every other scene. The next to last scene in this movie with Kim Novak descending the stairs was delightfully over the top, but most of this movie made me laugh derisively at the movie and my younger self, who ate this nonsense up last time I saw it at about age 11.
I'm still hoping that someday TCM will be able to show some of the few fragments of the real Jeanne Eagels left on film, such as her role in The Letter (1929).
Whew, what's that smell?? Must be Jeanne Eagels (1957). Hmmm, so much for the cinematic memories of girlhood. This movie was purty bad, don't you think, kids? Sometimes there's a good reason why movies lie mouldering in the vault. This one wasn't going to do a thing for the likable, talented people who appeared in it, except for one: Virginia Grey
Ms. Grey was wonderfully touching and managed to almost evoke a real person in her few moments on screen as an actress at the end of her tether. My thanks for the heads up about her acting in this flick over on the TCM board, Mongo. With my usual amnesia for dimly remembered movies, I didn't recall her presence at all.
All the other poor actors were in desperate need of good, firm direction and a less hackneyed script. One thing that this movie did make one wish was to learn a few facts about Jeanne Eagels, now that I've seen what I suspect is largely the fanciful version again. And, interestingly, I've learned that one other reason that this movie might've been out of sight for so long was that Eagels' family apparently sued Columbia for their distortion of the facts of her life.
Poor Kim Novak. She's obviously working like a ditch-digger to evoke the doomed glamour of this actress, but with little visible support from from the script. Jeff Chandler hadn't much to do either but appear to be Mr. Nice Guy who, not so mysteriously, perhaps, doffed his shirt every other scene. The next to last scene in this movie with Kim Novak descending the stairs was delightfully over the top, but most of this movie made me laugh derisively at the movie and my younger self, who ate this nonsense up last time I saw it at about age 11.
I'm still hoping that someday TCM will be able to show some of the few fragments of the real Jeanne Eagels left on film, such as her role in The Letter (1929).