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.
I’ve known Flora almost as long as you have Bruce, in fact I think it’s you that was suggesting I check out Flora’s articles at hubpages.
Flora and I are big Hitchcock fans, we had that connection, and I remember she used to send me poems she wrote herself, as a tribute to Hitch, or maybe Peck or Widmark?
I once attempted to write a poem back but I was hopeless, it was probably more like a dirty limerick instead. 😉
Good interview. The Guns of Navarone was one of my fathers favorites, I like it too. I even have Tiomkin’s soundtrack on CD.
Hey Steve….this time next year it will be a full 10 years of you, me and Flora talking. How in the hell did 10 years go by so fast? Thanks for checking out our latest interview….your time to shine is coming soon….if you are willing to answer the questions. Good stuff.
Hey, Steve. Thanks for checking out my interview. Yes, we are both big fans of Hitchcock. I still write poetry, but I have not been publishing any. Tiomkin was a great composer.
I am looking forward to an interview with you.
Hey Flora….. I think the fact that you both like Hitchcock….is what got you two talking years ago. Steve’s interview (if he agrees to it is a little down the schedule), trying to reach three UMR Hall of Famers for the next interview….Pierre from France, Lupino from Germany or Helakoski from unknown. So far nobody has responded back. We are going away for the weekend, if I do not hear from any of them by the time we get back, I will have to get somebody else on the list.
Those still on the list
Bob
Steve
bob cox
BryRog57
Helakoski
Pierre
Lupino
Chris
KTCat94
Sunshine
John
Lyle
Plus maybe some of the recent people to show up regular in the comment box – Taylor, Sidney Johnson, Mike, In The Shadows.
Hello Bruce and Flora,
Good interview, very interesting. I agre with Flora, Richard Widmark was one of the best actor of is time. I love any movie I’ve seen with him. And I love Film noir too. My favoirte is Big Sleep, that I watch often.
Gregory Peck was one of the most popular american classic actor in France, with Burt Lancster and Gary Cooper.
Same thing for Audrey Hepburn. So Roman Holiday was a very big success in my country.
Hi, Laurent, happy to find another film noir fan. The Big Sleep is a great movie. I like Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper too.
Glad to see this page on Flora, one of this site’s top commentors and top watcher of Hollywood classic films! As a fellow Canadian, I share Flora’s fine taste in movies 🙂 Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn are also two of my favorite actors, and Charade and Out of the Past are two of my favorite films. It may have been a Canadian or North American thing to read To Kill a Mocking Bird in English class and then see the movie. I have fond memories of watching the film in my high school auditorium. I can’t say that Plan 9 from Outer Space is a guilty pleasure for me, but I agree it’s very very bad movie! Thanks for sharing.
Oh and Bruce, love the way you designed this page, including the final touch with Widmark concluding his prosecution 🙂
Hey PhilHoF17…..glad you like the final touch of Widmark as the prosecutor. I thought it was a great way to wrap up the interview.
Hey, Phil. Glad to hear about us sharing a love for Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Charade and Out of the Past.
Hey PhilHoF17…amazingly neither my brother and myself had to read that book. We had to read Great Expectations. I wonder what the students in England had to read. As for Charade….it has a spot on my Top 100 personal favortie movies of all-time. Good stuff.
Speaking of the books one had to read in high school; allow me to add my two cents worth on the subject. The book that I had to read in high school was THE GRAPES OF WRATH. After my class read the book, we were treated to a viewing of THE GRAPES OF WRATH movie starring Henry Fonda. Just my opinion but Henry Fonda really deserved an Oscar for his performance in that film.
The Grapes of Wrath is a classic in novel and in movies. I agree with you….Fonda was well deserving of an Oscar for that performance. Good feedback.
thank you Flora. i love that you and your mom can watch pictures together. you have opened my horizons in film noir and Richard widmark and so many more of your favorites that made it to my watchlist. a wonderful story of your adventure to see rear window. great share.
Thanks Bob. Glad I was able to add movies to your watchlist
Great interview. Looking forward to future interviews. Like Flora, Judy Garland was the first movie star that I was aware of as kid. The movies mentioned in this interview bring back so many wonderful memories for me. Keep up the good work, Bruce, and Thank you. Flora, for a wonderful trip down memory lane.
Hey, Greg. Glad that my interview brought back wonderful memories for you.
Hey Greg….glad Flora’s interview brought back fond memories. Thanks for checking out our interview series and thanks for the kind words. Good stuff.