795 thoughts on “Site Index”

1. 1 STEVE June Allyson’s stock and trade was playing girl next door/loyal “little” wife roles but I most remember her for a prolific screen partnership with Van Johnson (5 movies) and for playing out of type the shrewish wife in The Shrike (1955) where she drove co-star/director Jose Ferrer** into a mental institution. Bruce has no box office figure for it that I’ve noticed but I doubt if it was a commercial success and you have given just 57% rating though IMDB says it’s 71%.

   **Jose was George Clooney’s uncle off and on for 6 years from 1961 when George was born until 1967 during which time Jose divorced then remarried then again divorced George’s Aunt the famous Rosemary. Ironically given The Shrike’s plot Jose’s real life womanising infidelities drove Rosemary to a nervous breakdown at the conclusion of their 1967 divorce and she was unable to resume her career until 1976.

   2 Your Allyson video was for me a 94% as the standard of artwork was pretty even throughout with I thought the very best posters being those for Battle Circus, You Can’t Run Away from It, Strategic Air Command and The McConnell Story [aka Tiger in the Sky]. I also liked the poster for the Allyson/Jeff Chandler drama Stranger in my Arms. Probably not a lot of people will have heard of that one – its AKA was “And Ride a Tiger” – but I always remember it for the scene in which a browbeaten husband finally stands up to his wife and the entire audience in my cinema broke into applause!

   4 The Allyson/Stewart stills were all of high quality and I liked June and Gene in The Three Musketeers. However I was especially taken with the two featuring June with in turn Niven and Van Johnson in each of which June seemed to be enjoying a vigorous spanking by her co-star! Great stuff.

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   1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating and trivia, much appreciated.

      Glad you liked the stills and posters.

      I was almost sure Bruce had a June Allyson page which is why I decided to do a video on her, someone here must have mentioned her (looks around suspiciously). 😉

      I looked up Shrike to see if it was a proper word or made up for the movie, apparently it’s the name of a songbird with a sharp hooked bill which it uses to impale lizards and other birds.

      June Allyson was tiny, about 5ft tall. I can imagine Alan Ladd was happy to work with her (and the even smaller Veronica Lake), but not so much the statuesque Sophia Loren.

      IMDB gave The Shrike a good score but it failed to please my other sources one of which gave it just 2 out of 5. I can’t imagine ever sitting thru that film but than again there are so many Hollywood dramas and weepies, classic and modern, I have no real interest in. Blind women, crippled women, dying women, loss, divorce, heartbreak etc etc No thanks. Life is too short. I’d rather watch Clint, Eli and Lee shoot it out in the middle of a graveyard during the American Civil War.

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2. Like your Guardian page but there is no place for comments

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3. BRUCE/STEVE – ANNE BAXTER VIDEO 1. Just how many stars is Steve going to profile so that he can keep showing us those [albeit excellent] 10 Commandments posters? Certainly it puts other obsessions in perspective so Bruce please extend my apologies to Cary Grant fans. Anne though seems to share Steve’s enthusiasm because immediately after the De Mille epic she went straight into Three Violent People and long ago though it was I can clearly remember her interview in which she excitedly announced “I’m very pleased with my career just now. I’ve just done another one with Chuck!” I must confess that news excited me too back then.

   2 Anne won best supporting actress Oscar and a Golden Globe for Razor’s Edge and was nominated for best actress for All about Eve and this caused columnists in the 1950s to hype her with the nickname “The Oscar Girl” but I never was certain if she was top of B list/ bottom of A list among stars but the posters and stills in her video are surely very top drawer and warrant a 94.5% rating when assessed against my McCormack comparison chart. The best-

   POSTERS: Cimarron, Three Violent People, the 2nd one for All about Eve, I Confess, the little thriller The Blue Gardenia probably forgotten by or unknown to most people but vividly remembered by me, and the almost B movie The Spoilers. Indeed despite the low rating of the actual film I thought that both posters from that one were in a class of their own.
   STILLS
   (1) Richard Todd and Anne in Chase a Crooked Shadow. A lovely coloured photo from this Hitchcock-style thriller. I really liked Todd in that one.
   (2) As sexy Nefretiri in 10C. “Nefretiri – Moses’ God IS God!” [Rameses]
   (3) With Monty in Hitchcock’s I Confess capturing their very striking looks that year (1953)
   (4) With Tim Holt [I think?] in Magnificent Ambersons. At first I thought it was the film’s star Joe Cotten [Orson Wells apparently thought that Joe was America’s finest all-time actor. I too admired and liked the on-screen Cotten but was at the same time POTENTIALLY annoyed with and envious of him off screen as according to recent reports from the gossip mongers he had an extra-marital fling with my Deanna when they co-starred in the 1943 Hers to Hold.]

   3 Anyway the video is overall a great presentation packed with goodies. Super, Steve.

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   1. “Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool.”

      A classic line from The Ten Commandments spoken by the lovely Anne Baxter as Nefretiri. The actual name for the Queen of Egypt was Nefretiti but DeMille decided to change it because people watching the movie might titter every time her name was mentioned. 🙂

      Hello Bob, thanks for the review, rating and trivia always appreciated. Yes it’s frustrating not being able to compare my written in stone ratings with Bruce’s charts because well there isn’t an Anne Baxter page in Bruce’s sacred movie temple. [cue gasps and cries of ‘stone him’] Now now calm down everyone before I smight thee with my staff, Bruce did give us a John Conway page recently [cue smiles and more than a few quizzical looks] yeah yeah I still don’t know who that is.

      Bob, I don’t think I’ve seen three violent people (the film not in life) I confess to missing a few Chuck ‘Behold His Might Hand’ Heston movies and I still dare to call myself a fan. I did see The Omega Man twice in one day at the cinema (when I should have been in school tut tut).

      I liked Anne Baxter in All About Eve, even when she turned out to be the films villain, she was cute and she had a sexy voice. She wasn’t evil, she was just ambitious.

      I should add Joseph Cotten to my list of future video subjects.

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      1. HI STEVE

         1 I usually learn something from your follow-ups and it shows you how we always accept Hollywood version of things as gospel as I hadn’t known that Nefritiri was not the precise name for Brynner’s Queen. Mind you my computer dictionary kept signalling me that I was spelling the name incorrectly but after twice checking it in cast lists I accept Hollywood’s spelling.

         2 DeMille saw himself as something of a puritan and would not have wanted a name pronounced in a way that could have been suggestive. Also no artist wants his professional work to invoke giggles as Bruce could probably have testified after he declared Loy the greatest female box office star of all time. I see that in the latest post in response to the Work Horse’s 1940 box office grosses Rocco has said “This is an insane amount of work.” Remove the words “amount of” and you will get a flavour of the responses Bruce should have gotten after he published his Loy page with it’s hyperbolic headline.

         3. Any way Google Joanne Dru on Wikipedia and you will see her real surname which will tell you why a name change was much more imperative in her case than in DeMille’s situation. The lovely Joanne was the Duke’s leading lady in Red River and she was married to supporting actor John Ireland from 1949 until 1957.

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4. Hi Bob, thanks for checking out my Merle Toblerone.. sorry ‘Oberon’, video, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters and stills.

   I was telling Bruce at the video channel how murky Merle’s bio was and the secret she took to her grave. I think he may have an Oberon page coming up soon, he has the stats on a lot of these films.

   Did you know? Oberon is the only Asian actress ever nominated for a Best Actress Oscar! For the film Dark Angel (1935).

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5. 1 STEVE The standard of artwork in your Merle Oberon video was fairly even throughout warranting a 95.5% rating overall but for me these were the best POSTERS – Night in Paradise, Dark Water, Private Life of Henry 8th, Private Life of Don Juan, Desiree, The Lodger and both the poster and still from The Cowboy and the Lady.

   2 OTHER STILLS that caught my imagination were
   (1) Doug Senior and Merle in Private Life of Don Juan
   (2) Robert Ryan and Merle in Berlin Express
   (3) The separate-beds scene from That Uncertain Feeling.
   (4) The scrumptious coloured solo of Merle from Henry 8
   (5) Larry Olivier and Merle in Wuthering Heights.
   (6) Your coloured still of Brando as Napoleon with Merle as his Josephine in Desiree.

   3 Wuthering Heights is rightly in my view your No 1. Bruce has it at No 4 on his Olivier page and certainly it was not going to claim the Top spot there which was reserved for Sleuth. I can’t help wondering though what Larry would think of a Micklewhite idolater placing Sleuth well made and entertaining and well made as it was above Olivier’s classics such as Rebecca, Wuthering Heights and his apparently personally cherished interpretations of the works of the Bard.

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