FREDRIC MARCH

[knitwit45]

now back to your scheduled programming...

[Ann Harding]

By the way, afilm of his I must see is "Laughter" (1930) opposite Nancy Carroll. I've read it's superb! Anyone has seen it?

I did and indeed, it's a brilliant comedy. It predates by 4 years screwball comedies. March and Carroll are having a ball. Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast was a former Chaplin assistant and he shows there a real flair for comedy in this transitionnal era of film making.

[charliechaplinfan]

I'm so glad so many of you are fans too. This morning I watched Les Miserables, he's great as Jean Valjean, although the novel is somewhat condensed for this outing on the screen it didn't seem so and Frederic March and Charles Laughton, I like the fact that Charles Laughton plays it quite straight and with a Northern accent.

I watched The Eagle and The Hawk recently, Frederic March gives a very powerful performance, I could feel the pain, I felt like he captured the doomed spirit of the war and the fatality of the pilots, even now watching it nearly 80 years after it was made, it had a nice ending too. I remember the same fatality of spirit in Merrily We Go To Hell.

With so many of you recommending The Best Years of Our Lives I'm going to have to dig it out and see what the fuss is all about.

I don't understand why he's not as prominent as Gary Cooper,Spencer Tracy or James Stewart.

[JackFavell]

I think he was just as prominent, but time has singled out those few men because they are in some ways more .....modern seeming than March, even though he practically ushered in the modern film performance in The Best Years of Our Lives.

[feaito]

By the way, afilm of his I must see is "Laughter" (1930) opposite Nancy Carroll. I've read it's superb! Anyone has seen it?

I did and indeed, it's a brilliant comedy. It predates by 4 years screwball comedies. March and Carroll are having a ball. Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast was a former Chaplin assistant and he shows there a real flair for comedy in this transitionnal era of film making.

Now I recall you told us Christine. How lucky! And you saw it on the big screen, didn't you? Let's keep our fingers crossed for a DVD release.

[charliechaplinfan]

I got half way through The Best Years of Our Lives only to find that when I'd recorded it from the TV the last hour or so as dissappeared. What I saw I really liked, especially the reunion between Frederic March and Myrna Loy, especially the morning after. How grown up, more realistic, I'm sure at the time it made people think more about the men who were coming home, the disablities they suffered, the things they saw and most of all the readjustment to their homes which had carried on without them.

Two days ago we buried my husband's grandma, she's our last link to the 2nd WW. I grew up on stories my Grandma told, they were part of the fabric of my childhood, I understood that the 2nd WW changed all my grandparents lives and the lives of those they knew. Watching Best Years Of Our Lives, it doesn't seem that long ago but it is.

So I'm part way through the story and thank heavens, Amazon has a discounted copy, so I've had to order it, I'm just desperate to know what happens to them all, especially Homer. I can see the similarities to Since You Went Away, I think this is shaping up to be an even better film than that one.

[JackFavell]

CCFan - I personally think The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the ten best movies ever made. I hope you get to finish it soon! It is one of those that gets more layered with each successive viewing.

[knitwit45]

Alison, pay close attention to the scene in the bar, when Dana Andrews is making a phone call. It is an amazing bit of photography, which until I read about it here, I'd never really noticed.

The very best part in the movie is when Andrews' father reads his son's citations. Have tissues ready!!!!

You are watching one of my most favorite movies, ever.

[pvitari]

I want The Best Years of Our Lives on Blu-ray... NOW dang it!

TCM Film Fest memory: I couldn't stand any more concession food in place of meals, so I actually skipped going to a movie and went to the Roosevelt Hotel Cinegrill for a divine cheeseburger with lots of onions, and french fries. Playing on the TV screen above the bar: The Best Years of Our Lives. I sat there scarfing down my first real food in a couple of days, wondering why that movie wasn't also playing on a big screen nearby for the festival. Maybe in 2011.

[JackFavell]

Lovely avatar, P.

[charliechaplinfan]

I can't wait to get The Best Years Of Our Lives on DVD, I'm going to start it at the beginning to watch it again. Harold Russell is wonderful as Homer. He nearly made me cry a number of times. I will watch the bar during the scene when Dana is on the phone.

I can't wait to get my new copy of TBYOOL. I'm going to watch it all again from the beginning, I can tell I was watching a very special film, it was so frustrating when it ended half way through.

I made up for it by watching The Desperate Hours, a good replacement. How good are Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March together on screen. It's not often that someone holds their own against Bogie when he's playing a tough guy and this one is really tough and unlikeable. Fredric March does more than hold his own, it's a film pleasurable to watch because of the skill of th cast, particularly the two main leads. I'd read that Bogie had bought this to star with Spencer Tracy but Tracy dropped out, I'm glad and I'm glad he chose March to step into the breech. It's nice to see a film being carried by two men in their fifties who are physically past their best and without any nip or tuck, the only concession they might have made would be to wearing toupees and I'm not even sure they did that. I did wonder what the film would have been like if the roles had been reversed, just as interesting.

I've realised I spelt his name wrong when I started the thread, it's Fredric not Frederic as I originally spelt it. Moira would have corrected me.

Why does he remind me of Gene Kelly sometimes. I think it's the voice but I'm dreadful with accents. Do they sound similar to anyone else?

[pvitari]

Thank you, JackFavell. My favorite on-screen couple! ;) Unfortunately I had to chop off the edges to make it fit the prescribed parameters for the avatar but Charlie and Janet still look beautiful anyway. :)

[jdb1]

Well friends, you know I can't keep quiet for long when I don't agree. And that hasn't been easy, especially at the Musicals thread, where posters are waxing ecstatic over "opera singers" who give me the williwaws with their anemic, quavery voices and scant acting abilities. But I feel I have to check in to voice my opposition to March-worship.

I don't understand all the hoo-hah. He does nothing for me, he gives me absolute zilch from the screen, and I think he was miscast in all too many roles. I find him rather louche in appearance; I think of him as one of those guys who sits in the back of an empty movie theater in a raincoat doing who knows what. He looks like he should be perspiring. I've already mentioned how I dislike the singsong way he speaks from the back of his throat. One would think he was hard of hearing (maybe he was). If there are great acting skills there, I can't see them. To me he is one of Hollywood's most artificial performers. He fades into the wallpaper for me and I don't watch movies that have him in them if I can avoid them.

This is just my voicing of dissenting opinion, not an attack on anyone's preferences. I love plenty of stars that our compatriots here can't stand. As they say: that's what makes horseraces.

[JackFavell]

When he made TBYOOL, his credit was under your original spelling, so I don't see anything wrong with Frederic.

[charliechaplinfan]

You mean his name has been misspelt by the professionals, well I feel better then. It does look more correct as Frederic.

Judith, I know you've never liked him but you're a little too descriptive about the man in the back of the cinema. Thankfully I can't see him that way.

When I watched Design For Living I thought I would be the exception, ie the woman who given the choice would take Fredric March over Gary Cooper anyday, it would be better to have both as Miriam does but it is a choice I could have easily made, unlike Miriam.

I've been a little off colour these last few days, hence the amount of movies I've managed to get through and they have made me feel better. Well this morning I was tickled pink to watch The Royal Family of Broadway, I haven't had a chance to see Ina Claire on film before, she's a good screen presence and quite beautiful, what a pity she didn't make more movies. Fredric was doing John Barrymore wasn't he? I didn't realise that it was based on the famous Barrymores, he has him to a tee, I thought his portrayal gave the film it's comedy. Only in a precode can you get a man going upstairs, taking his clothes off as he goes, the door getting in the way before he removed his pants, then we followed him into the bathroom. I bet that was quite a novel site for 1930, an inside of a bathroom with two women sat on the bath watching the man shower. I wonder what John Barrymore thought of this take on him? makes me want to read about John Barrymore.