Steve’s Top 10 Charts YouTube Forum

 

We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.

 

2,998 thoughts on “Steve’s Top 10 Charts YouTube Forum

  1. HI STEVE 1 Even in the 1950s when studios could tightly control publicity to their advantage we were aware of Jeff Chandler’s reputation for cross dressing and it became the butt of jokes in the Shipyard where I worked in the late 1950s.

    2 Years later in a TV interview Esther Williams who made the 1958 Raw Wind in Eden [aka Raw Mind in Eden] and who became engaged to him confirmed the rumours and said that she broke off the engagement because of that quirk of Jeff’s.

    3 A filming schedule of hers was cancelled and she unexpectedly showed up at Chandler’s house and Esther claimed he answered the door in a redhead’s wig and women’s’ underclothing. She says she asked him if his ex-wife had approved of such antics and he replied that she had. Esther by her account DID NOT but in fairness I should mention that Jane Russell who co-starred with Jeff in Foxfire (1955) virtually called Esther a liar over her accusations.

    4 Be all that tittle-tattle as it may I was and still am enthralled by Chandler and for me he WAS the fifties in a way even more than my top idols like Peck, Widmark and Laddie because Jeff churned out programmers that flooded the 1950s cinemas and were endlessly rerun and I used to “follow him around” Thus your Chandler video which showcases a lot of those movies is even more of a delight for me than usual. It has made my day though I stop short of maintaining he deserved an honorary Oscar !

    5 There is a great feast of fine posters and my pick of them is Thunder in the Sun, Lady Takes a Flyer, the raunchy ones from Flame of Araby and [with my Joan] Female on the Beach, Pillars of the Sky [aka The Tomahawk and the Cross] Sign of the Pagan, Battle at Apache Pass, Away all Boats [one of Universal’s few big budget productions back then] and Man in the Shadows [aka Pay the Devil]. Par excellence though were the two from Broken Arrow which made Jeff a star.

    6 Fewer stills this time but certainly 4 of them were well worth including – Flame of Araby with O Hara, Jeff with Jane Russell, the closing solo of Jeff and the eye-popping one of him with Anne Baxter from the Spoilers. Rory Calhoun [50s B movie hero of mine] was in the latter one with Jeff and he and Rory were great friends. Chandler nicknamed Rory Old Smoke because of his jet-black hair and Rory called Jeff Big Grey for obvious reasons. A compulsive-viewing video for any fan of pictorials and rated 98% by this fan. You couldn’t have pleased me more.
    NB One film historian’s Quote about the 1950s Chandler “He was so gorgeous that if he hadn’t really existed they would have invented him.”

    1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and comment, always appreciated. Happy you were pleased with the pictorial presentation.

      I had a plethora of colorful movie posters to select from this time around, so I had to cut down on the stills. Posters come first, stills and Lobby Cards second at Steve’s Video Shack. 😉

      Cross-dresser Ira Grossel was so effective as Apache chief Cochise in Broken Arrow that it earned him an Oscar nomination. Growing up I knew him best from that signature role and thought he must be part native American, he really commands respect in those westerns, and war films too.

      His life was cut tragically short when he went into hospital for a routine slipped disc operation and things went badly wrong, dying from blood poisoning at the age of 42.

      None of his films scored 10 or 9 from my sources, two films scored 8 out of 10 – Broken Arrow and Merrill’s Marauders.

      Broken Arrow topped IMDBs chart with 7.2 and checking Bruce’s James Stewart page the film has scored 7.13 which is close to my score of 7.45.

      1. HI STEVE 1 Now that I’ve received your feedback I can turn off the computer for a while – worth the wait! We have no Cogerson page for Jeff but that prolific and reliable old Work Horse has given us updated grosses for at least 16 of his flicks on the pages of other stars like Jane Russell and Lana Turner.

        2 Those 16 films have an overall adjusted domestic gross of of over $1 .1 billion and average out at around $70 million per movie. That’s not bad considering that many of them were B movie programmers which cost little to produce and therefore were the kind of film that according to Piper Laurie – and I think John! – Universal, Jeff’s contract studio made big profits out of in the 1950s

        3 Curtis, Hudson and Chandler were 3 of the many young stars whom Universal groomed for stardom in the 1950s but those 3 broke away from the pack that was left behind especially Rock and Tony. Jeff did get into the popularity charts and the following are his Quigley ranking places.
        1952 – 22nd (US)[]
        1953 – 18th (US)
        1954 – 16th (US)
        1955 – 20th (US),
        1956 – 18th (US),
        1957 – 22nd (US)
        In addition in the years 1955,56 and 57 United Kingdom audiences voted Jeff one of the Top 10 most popular stars. Certainly here in Belfast there was aways queues for his films whether stand alone or in double bills.

        4 Jeff performed on the radio in the late 40s early 50s and in 1952 alongside his movie career as Jeff Chandler he was in a radio series called Frontier town and was billed as Tex Chandler. This is the kind of alter-ego stuff that has me wondering if Joel Hirschhorn and Bruce Cogerson are the same person

  2. MR COGERSON, MR LENSMAN AND THEN IN ALPHABETICAL RANKING ORDER MR HIRSCHHORN
    1 PART ONE They say there’s nothing new under the sun. They’re wrong because on this site the Pupil has found some b**** and disagreed with his Master’s opinions. [Ah wee sneaked, cowering beastie, Shiverin’ in your bonnie breastie.] However it’s ironic that in doing so the Pupil has sadly chosen a lost cause to champion.

    2 My friendly acquaintance Vic Mature had an acting pal whose father was 75 but was said to look exceptionally well for his years and Victor’s chum would often boast of that on the set until one day a fed-up Vic turned around and said “Don’t matter what he looks like there’s an auld clock ticking away in there that says 75. I stopped pulling down pillars when I got older.”

    3 Although he usually talks b******* Mr Brando maybe had something when he once said of the celebrity longevity of my fellow actor and friend Bob Hope “He’s an applause junkie. Why doesn’t he retire gracefully and spend some time with his grandchildren while he still has the chance? “

    5 Mr Ford is of course 75 but I see that Mr Cogerson Is enthralled by hyped-up critical praise for Mr Ford in the new Blade Runner. Now there’s a surprise! It is though hard to totally rely on Mr Cogerson’s view as credible when one observes how he hangs onto every word uttered by a Johnny-come-Lately to the film industry like Mr Hirschhorn given the quality of some of HIS critical observations.

    6 In fairness to Messer Lensman and Cogerson though I gave the latest Blade Runner a squint to see if I could spot that virile action hero whom those two gents imagined they detected. Alas all that I saw was a pair of watery eyes staring out of the screen at me.

    7 Accordingly if Mr Ford isn’t interested in spending time with his grandchildren his acting future might be better served if for example he went into drag in any further remake of H Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and played Gagool probably first portrayed on the screen by the elderly Miss Sydney Fairbrother in the 1937 version.

    TIS the last rose of summer
    Left blooming alone;
    All its lovely companions
    Are faded and gone;
    No flower of its kindred, 5
    No rosebud is nigh,
    To reflect back its blushes,
    To give sigh for sigh.

    I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!
    To pine on the stem; 10
    Since the lovely are sleeping,
    Go, sleep thou with them.
    Thus kindly I scatter
    Thy leaves o’er the bed,
    Where thy mates of the garden 15
    Lie scentless and dead.

    So soon may you follow,
    When friendships decay,
    And from Love’s shining circle
    The gems drop away. 20
    When true hearts lie withered
    And fond ones are flown,
    Oh! who would inhabit
    This bleak world alone?

    1. MR COGERSON, MR LENSMAN AND THEN IN ALPHABETICAL RANKING ORDER MR HIRSCHHORN – PART TWO
      1 About honorary Oscars. They’re not the real thing and just emphasise that a performer can’t really cut it as a proper Oscar winner. Imagine one of my screen heroes being made an honorary sharpshooter and then being sent out to face Billy the Kid or those Dalton Boys.

      2 Only in our profession is a meaningless award taken seriously. Imagine Muhammed Ali with merely an honorary World Champion title or Mr Federer with just a compensatory tennis Grand Slam title. Laughable isn’t it? Devalues the whole honours/awards process and is unfair to the respect that genuine winners have earned

      3 Tell me where to justify singling out Mr Ford for special treatment is there a performance by him to match those great winning acting tour de forces by say Tracy in Captains Courageous, Freddie March in Dr Jekyll or more recently Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest or Pacino’s Scent of a Woman? Slavish sentimentality is not a substitute for real acting talents and achievements.

      4 I mean if Mr Ford or his sycophants did con the Academy into giving him one would he consider himself in the company of the likes of Day Lewis or Katie Hepburn? It would be a bit like Pinocchio imagining he was a REAL boy.

      5 At least I and that other villain of Mr Hirschhorn’s pieces Mr Brando, though I have little time for him, are proper Oscar winners.

      6 Here’s what Mr Brando had to say publicly about stars like Mr Ford “They have enormously strong personalities that make then hugely popular like TV celebrities but they tend to repetitively play almost themselves and are not really actors.”

      7 I see that in this site Mr Brando is referred to as Mr Mumbles. He deserves that but I hope that the Lensman critter who started all that doesn’t make fun of my drawl [Jealousy could provoke that as some of those pansy-tongued Limeys would be hopeless at drawling]

      8 I suppose Mr Brando included me in those performers he was referring to as virtual non-actors but I don’t mind as at least the likes of Clark, Jimmy, Bogie and me were real box office stars who didn’t depend on boring, self-perpetuating franchises to draw the crowds, and I did gross twice the overall amount that Mr Brando attracted for all his dressing up as non-American and putting on funny accents.

      9 I hope that those Cogerson stats don’t kid Pinocchio Ford into believing he’s REALLY in the league of us true Legends though such delusion is possible because after the Loy doll was crowned Queen of the May Pappy said to me “Duke that Cogerson site is becoming more like our pal Ricardo Montalbans’ TV series Fantasy Island – or even The Twilight Zone”

      1. There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man … a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.

        🙂

        1. Imagine I’m in love with you,
          It’s easy cause I know
          I’ve imagine I’m in love with you
          Many, many times before.

          Ah Lennon and McCartney!

  3. 1 STEVE. Richard Egan [a true “blast from the past”] had a fine run of lead roles in his heyday and it was thought at one time that he was “the next BIG star” but he never made it to the very top and he was another of those leading men who would always have the secondary role if there was an especially important A list performer in the movie such as Mitchum in The Hunters. Still in terms of stardom Richard does have one unique historical distinction as he was the only male performer ever to get get billed above Elvis and have the lead role in an Elvis flick, which was of course Presley’s first movie Love Me Tender. Debra Paget in that film was the only female to be billed over The King throughout his movie career.

    2 Whatever Richard’s perceived historical status as a star his films have yielded some poster gems on your site and my favourites are Underwater, GOG, Esther and the King,
    Chubasco, Seven Cities of Gold, These 1000 Hills, Voice in the Mirror, the foreign language one for Demetrius and the Gladiators, and the two raunchy ones for A Summer Place. Posters like those would seldom have been on prominent public display in the superficially prudish 1950s when the movie came out! However I must make special mention of both of your poster selections for Tension at Table Rock as I regard those two as par excellence

    3 Interesting stills are Richard with Mitch in The Hunters, with Elvis [a collector’s item] The 300 Spartans, with child star Hayley Mills in Pollyanna and the closing solo of Richard. A fine nostalgic trip for me and 97% rated.

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

      Glad you liked the posters and stills.

      There are still a few ‘classic’ actors I want to showcase before moving on to more modern, still living movie people.

      Interesting posters always pop up when I work on videos for the not so famous, probably because we’ve become so familiar with the poster art for popular Hollywood movies.

      Btw I always try to clean up damaged posters as best I can with my photo editing program, which also enhances faded colors. Most troublesome are creases that cross over the actors faces, especially the eyes, which doesn’t happen often but in some cases I have no choice but to leave those parts untouched.

      Posters for movies of the last couple of decades are already digitized on the net so there are no creases or tears.

      Looking at my files Egan has one film scoring 9 out of 10, Pollyanna – and one scoring 8, Violent Saturday. Pollyanna is also no.1 at IMDB with a score of 7.4.

      Cochise is up next, he said cryptically. 🙂

      1. 1 HI AGAIN STEVE: True a lot of posters are old hat but you seem to have sources that provide you with very unusual versions which I at least have never seen before and that’s why it’s very difficult for me to avoid giving your videos high marks [not that I’m trying to mark you down!]

        2 I mentioned how your posters for Tension at Table Rock especially appealed to me and that is saying something because when that movie came out in 1956 it was accompanied by some first-class posters here in Belfast. I loved the tagline on one of them about Richard and the film “HE was a man like Shane and IT has all the suspense of High Noon.” DeForrest Kelly of the original Star Trek TV series and films was one of the gunmen whom ‘Shane’ Egan had to outdraw in Table Rock.

        3 Both being RKO releases Tension at Table Rock was on a double bill over here in 1956 with Death of a Scoundrel starring George Sanders and one of his Gabor brides, Zsa Zsa. George had divorced Zsa Zsa a few years earlier and was on the brink of marrying her sister Magdor having also allegedly been pursuing their mother. As James Cromwell said about Russell Crowe’s character in LA Confidential “Bud White sure is one boyo!”

        4 But Hey! I thought Flora and I were the poets on this site. However your verse was funny because it was so appropriate and another positive factor is that at least we aren’t getting poetry by Hirsch quoted at us. Actually if he had expressed his guff in rhyme Joel would have been a kindred spirit of the great Alexander Pope who used his poetry to crucify people whom he didn’t like – as in The Rape of the Lock which is said to have devastated and publicly destroyed one socialite aristocrat.

  4. 1 STEVE I always liked the passage in the Bible where Jesus, tired after a long journey, called at a certain household and most of the women of the house got into a busy flurry cleaning and cooking for their guest but one of them took time to get a basin of water and sit down and bathe Christ’s feet, and she was the one he appreciated the most.

    2 So it’s a question of priorities and we just have to accept that you and I are not among the Work Horse’s priorities at present. Why that is so in your case I can’t fathom but I have always remembered a line from the 1958 Dirk Bogarde version of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities Dirk’s cynical, world-weary and self-loathing Sydney Carton gives the impression that he doesn’t like Charles Darnay because he has the affections of the heroine Lucie*** and someone says to Carton that this is a surprise because Darnay look a lot like Sydney. Later an intoxicated Carton stands in front of a mirror and say to his reflection.”Why should I like a man because he resembles me? There’s nothing in me to like.” [Ah Dirk! – you never mumbled and there were those who though that at your very best you were as fine an actor as one who has been accused of mumbling ] *** Played in the movie by Dame Dorothy Tutin – the English ARE just crazy about those titles whereas the only “titled” celeb the Yanks have is the Duke!

    3 That’s just my long-winded way of saying that I could understand Bruce getting p****d off with ME if not you as I am always trying to wind him up though.that’s just me trying to inject some lightheartedness into matters to counter-balance all that serious stuff about the likes of Sir Maurice, Myrna and all that crowd as well as the lofty pontificating of Joel.

    4 Anyway as the elderly juror indicated at the end of 12 Angry Men nobody likes being ignored, but don’t let it keep you awake tonight Will catch up you again when your next offering comes out.

    1. Bob, I don’t mind Bruce not replying to our various conversations, why should I? but if my comment is intended for him, praising his newest page or work on his site and it looks like he didn’t see it well it does bother me a bit. When I posted a comment about Harrison Ford recently I thought he’d jump in and post his thoughts on Blade Runner, knowing he’s a huge fan of Ford. He’s busy, okay, or losing interest, or both. 🙂

      1. Not losing interest at all…..just busy flipping the page…..I admit…I missed the Ford comment….but I will check it out when I get a chance at work. On the good side…..I see the end of the tunnel of these dynamic page updates. Off to work.

        1. AH the Kraken Wakes!

          “Do I dream or do I doubt, .
          Do mine eyes deceive me?
          Are things what they seem,
          Or are visions about?!

          1. “Like one, that on a lonesome road
            Doth walk in fear and dread,
            And having once turned round walks on,
            And turns no more his head;
            Because he knows, a frightful fiend
            Doth close behind him tread.”

            😉

      2. HI STEVE

        1 I think the one possible flaw in your approach is that if the Pimpernel is not reading any comments but a few topliners and yours is not amongst those he will be oblivious to what you say or don’t say so it’s arguably a waste of time expending your energies in making your points at all, unless of course you are content to be like the beautiful flower in Thomas Gray’s classic poem which is doomed to “waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

        2 Again I’m reminded of Joseph Sweeney who played the elderly juror [No 9] in 12 Angry Men. Jospeh is arguing with Ed Begley [Juror No 10] and getting highly agitated and frustrated because Ed is not responding to his point of view when Fonda puts his arm on Joseph’s shoulder to calm him down and says to Sweeney “He can’t hear you. He never will.”

        [Is he in Heaven or is he in Hell?
        That damned elusive Pimpernel.]

  5. HI STEVE
    1 Your comment that you are becoming disheartened concerned me so I’m on a “cheer up Steve” mission this afternoon [though you’re maybe thinking to yourself “How am gonna get time to even READ all this chap’s stuff let alone respond to it?!].

    2 In the 1955 movie Magnificent Obsession Otto Kruger says to Rock “Once you get into this thing it will obsess you, but it will be a Magnificent Obsession” And so it is that when one “gets into” magnificent sites like yours and WH it can become obsessive.

    3 For example when I’m on vacation I rely for laptop/I Pad facilities on other members of the large family that I holiday with and whilst I can’t very well monopolise those facilities by typing and sending posts I can nevertheless borrow an hour a day to keep up with the latest developments on Cogerson and Lensman – and then and there I write comments in manuscript for posting when I return home.

    4 On my recent Portugese holiday I duly drafted out responses to 3 of your latest videos and to Bruce’s new pages on Eleanor Parker, George Sanders and Eleanor Powell but ultimately realising that WH had other fish to fry I didn’t bother submitting my Powell response

    5 However I did send the Parker and Sanders ones but Burt Lancaster once said that the only people who went to see a certain box office flop of his were “Kirk Douglas and his family” and alas not even the Douglases were interested in those posts of mine. However Burt also went on to claim that he nevertheless had fun making the film concerned and it was part of the fun of my holiday to sit in the warm sun and write about the Eleanors, ole Shere Khan and your Godpop boys Pacino, De Niro and Duvall. Truly a magnificent obsession!

    6 Anyway as part of my “cheer up Stevie” campaign may I suggest to you as Baldrick in Blackadder would express it “ a cunning plan” for ensuring Our Lord and Master at least reads your posts? Submit them under the name of Joel Hirschhorn.

    1. It’s a good idea Bob, but there are already a couple of Hirschhorn’s posting here already, it would get confusing. 😉

      I could just wait and see if Bruce posts something and than jump in with my comment that might take him by surprise… 🙂

      I suspect that Bruce only looks at the most recent comments when he passes by, the ones that appear in the comment box on the right. I might be wrong but I don’t think he checks the actual comments page anymore. Too busy.

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