This is the seventh in a new series of “Getting to Know” Pages from Ultimate Movie Rankings.com. Our interview this time around is with UMR Hall of Famer Flora. Flora has been commenting on our pages for almost 10 years. She is a Top 3 Commenter. So we figured it was time to learn a little more about Flora.
Cogerson – It has always interested me in knowing which thespian made the first impact on a person. Who was the first actor or actress that you knew by their actual name?
Flora– Judy Garland because of The Wizard of Oz. I saw it on television.
Cogerson – That is a great movie. Every time I read a reference to The Wizard of Oz, I think about my grandmother. She had some of the original Oz books. She only had two VHS tapes in her house, The African Queen and The Wizard of Oz.
Cogerson – Is there a person in your life that pushed you down the path of liking movies? For me, it was my parents and my grandmother.
Flora – For me it was Mom. She would bring home rented movies back in the VHS days. I remember the first one she brought home was The Music Man. We still watch movies together on a regular basis.
Cogerson – When I was younger, I was convinced that Disney’s Gus was the greatest movie of all-time. Today, I realize, though it might be the best mule playing football movie, it is not very good. What movies did little Flora think were awesome when he was a kid?
Flora – I didn’t watch a lot of movies as a kid, actually, outside of Disney films which all hold up pretty well. I spent most of my time reading mysteries. I started watching non-animated films as a teenager. The teen-aged me thought that The Adventures in Babysitting was great, but it is not one that I can ever imagine me watching again.
Cogerson – I know that Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark are two of your favorite actors. How did they become such favorites?
I was introduced to Gregory Peck in grade 10. Our English class read To Kill a Mockingbird which I loved and then we watched the movie. I didn’t think that the film was going to capture the magic of the book, but it did and I was so impressed by Gregory Peck’s performance. I had to watch more of his films. I admire him a lot. I have seen almost all of his movies with the exception of The Shoot Out and the tv movie The Portrait.
Richard Widmark became a favourite actor through my love of Gregory Peck. I was watching a western called Yellow Sky starring Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter. I found myself watching this blonde character all in black even when Greg was on screen. I said to myself: “Who is distracting me from My Darling Greg?” After the movie I looked it up online and found the man was somebody called Richard Widmark. I had actually seen him in The Murder on the Orient Express several times. I decided that anyone who distracted me from my favourite actor was worth watching. I have seen most of his films. He is my favourite film noir actor.
Cogerson – Are there any actresses that reached the same level of Widmark and Peck in your eyes?
Flora – Audrey Hepburn is my favourite actress. She is utterly charming and she lights up the screen. I have seen 20 of her films, not as much as Peck and Widmark.
Cogerson – What are your Top 3 movies of all-time? Or share as many as you are willing to share.
Flora – The Guns of Navarone starring Gregory Peck and David Niven, Roman Holiday starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, Charade starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, Rear Window starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart, Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum, Night and the City starring Richard Widmark, Double Indemnity starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, And Then There Were None starring Barry Fitzgerald, and Murder on the Orient Express starring Albert Finney.
Cogerson – Sorry I could only get 8 movies in the picture, but And Then There Were None and Night and the City get a second mention here.
Cogerson – Which movies do you re-watch the most? Do you have any tradition of watching a certain movie during a certain holiday or time of the year?
Flora – I watch film noir/crime (not all crime films are film noir) and musicals the most often in terms of genre. As for individual titles, I watch The Maltese Falcon and Singin’ in the Rain the most often year round. Every Christmas Eve I watch A Christmas Carol/Scrooge starring Alastair Sim. Every Easter I watch Easter Parade.
Cogerson – Tell me a few of your guilty pleasure movies. Movies you know are bad, but you really like them anyway. For me, Armageddon would be on my list.
Flora – Plan 9 From Outer Space. Ed Wood directed it and it was Bela Lugosi’s last movie. It is laughably bad.
Cogerson – Do you have any memorable movie experiences? I remember seeing Porky’s in theaters. People were laughing so hard, I thought the walls might crumble.
Flora – I have talked about this before on this site, but the most memorable experience was seeing Rear Window on the big screen. Mom and I drove into Vancouver to see it – that is about 90 minutes away from where I live. It was playing on the top floor of a mall. Although there were stairs with railings for the other floors, the top floor could only be reached by escalator and that was scary with my bad balance. I was not going to let that stop me. The theatre was packed. It was fantastic seeing a classic Hitchcock film on the big screen. I would love to see more classic movies on the big screen.
Cogerson – Can you believe it has been almost ten years that we have been talking about movies? From Hub Pages to UMR we have talked about so many movie subjects. So here is your chance. Your reward for doing this interview….we will do our next page on the actor or actress you most want to see an UMR page on. So what is the next new UMR page going to?
Flora – No, I cannot. So much has happened to us since then. You had recently lost your father and my father was still alive. I have loved reading these pages and sharing how many films I have seen of artists and my favourites. Prior to this, I had not kept track of which films I had seen. Now I use Letterbox. As for my request…..how about George Brent, leading man at Warner Bros during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Cogerson – Thank you Flora for taking the time to answer these questions. You are truly deserving of your UMR Hall of Fame status.
So even though my interview is the best, it looks like Flora and BERN1960’s are the most viewed. Congratulations to the two of you.
Hey SteinHoF16. Very interesting. Your comment got me to look at the viewing numbers for the page. I would actually say Flora’s is the most popular with almost 4,000 views. BERN1960’s is more of a Mother’s Day page versus an interview…plus it has been around for many more years….though by views…it is the only one that crossed the 10,000 view mark. The newest interview, Steve Lensman, is already getting close to 1,000 views. Good stuff.