795 thoughts on “Site Index”

1. 1 STEVE “O day worthy to be marked with a great white stone!” At last someone has produced a profile of Raft which I have been requesting for some time now, WH promised me a statistical one but so far it has been kept like a politician’s promise when an election is over.

   2 One gets the impression that the Raft of real life may not have been too far removed from the Raft of the screen because apparently on the set of Manpower he and Eddie Robinson came to blows and had to be separated; and James Callaghan the British Labour Party’s Home Secretary in the 1960s threw Raft out of Britain for alleged gangster connections. George’s witty opening quote is consistent with impressions, though Raft may have thought he was being unfairly treated when he saw what the natives allowed to remain inside England were like!

   3 As often is the case the quality of the POSTERS was so even with a few exceptions that I have contented myself with simply listing those I liked best – Whistle Stop, Red Light with my lovely Rhonda showing off her legs, Race Street [the on the poster for which at least the title should have read Racy Street] Black Widow, Night after Night, You and Me and Each Dawn I Die***

   4 Classy stills throughout with among my favourites being the ones from They Drive by Night and Scarface. However from a historical standpoint the following stills should be a collector’s item for any movie buff – Bogie ad Raft in the taxi and the machine gun scene from Some Like it Hot. ***The Each dawn I Die poster with gangster Greats Cagney and Raft squaring off is also one to be jealously guarded by any movie buff who owns a copy. The poster for Bolero, my favourite Raft movie, pleased me nearly as much.

   5 I have mentioned how my boyhood pals and I nicknamed Chuck “Tweedie” because one of my chums had a look-alike grandfather of that name Well my father looked a bit like Raft, was the same build, and had George’s passion for dapper dress. So nostalgia and the excellent artwork in your video dictate a 96% rating in my eyes. Unfortunately we’re again a man down in assessing one of your videos so critic/audience comparisons cannot be made

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   1. What no George Raft page in Bruce’s Movie Emporium? Say it isn’t so!

      Thanks Bob, appreciate the review, rating and comment. Glad you liked the stills and posters.

      I liked the scene in Some Like it Hot where a gangster (played by Eddie G’s son) is flipping a coin in the air and George Raft goes up to him and says “where d’ya learn that trick?”, it was a neat in-joke, Raft was constantly flipping a coin in Scarface.

      I liked Raft in those gangster films, he really looked the part, even his voice was perfect. He was a likable gangster in Each Dawn I Die, a worthy match for the great Jimmy Cagney, one of my favorite Hollywood legends.

      That photo of naughty Ann Sheridan with Raft reminds me that she has been overlooked at Steve’s Video Shack. Maybe Bruce has done a page on her… let me look… nooooo! Poor Ann, where’s the love? 🙂

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      1. STEVE

         1 I am not surprised that there is no Raft/Sheridan pages because it seems to me that the Work Horse has been absent from the site a lot of late and leaving most of it to you as our resident professional. The old WH cut and thrust does not appear to me to be present any more as it used to be when I threw jibes at him I would get a sarcastic reply.

         2 Indeed I am worried that he will be like Forrest Gumpwho suddenly stopped running and deserted his fellow runners or that he will be like the character in Matthew
         Arnold’s classic poem The Scholar Gipsy, a brilliant academic who attended Oxford University but suddenly got tired of it all and overnight disappeared and was seen no
         more but with rumours circulating that he had gone to live among gipsies. Who –

         One summer-morn forsook
         His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore,
         And roam’d the world with that wild brotherhood,
         And came, as most men deem’d, to little good,
         But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

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         1. Hey Bob…funny comment. I am still running like Gump …. just slowing up my pace.

            With time getting more limited it is putting me between a rock and a hard place. I love all the comments just the time to respond to them or at least respond to them like I want has become difficult.

            School only has a few weeks left so I am hoping things will get a little easier and I can run fast again.

            FYI ….today and Monday my class will be watching The Sound of Music…..gotta love the end of the school year. Apparently The Exorcist was not approved for these 6th graders…..lol.

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            1. On the new website front I have all the information on 42 Joseph Cotten and a new decade coming too. Plus other than a 5k run tomorrow morning my weekend schedule is pretty empty for the first time in months.

               Maybe then I can figure out a way to get you to see the Loy light.

            2. HI BRUCE

               1 Look forward to you having more spare time again

               2 Regarding your getting me to “see the light about Loy” – have you unearthed a forgotten movie in which she played Florence Nightingale known as The Lady with the Lamp? If so you would like that in more ways than one because like you Flo was a statistician [as well as being a social reformer and perceived founder of modern medicine]
               3 Anyway thanks for your additional comments..

      2. Steve

         Hi Steve. Just got free to start going through your videos and the George Raft one attracted me first. One of the more interesting classic era stars. He supposedly was close to and was once a bodyguard to famed gangland figure (and the owner of the Cotton Club), Owney Madden). He also seems in his youth to have been a dime-a-dance boy and possibly even a gigolo. Whatever the truth, he might not have been much of an actor in the conventional sense, but he certainly had star quality on screen, especially when young and sleek in the 1930’s. Watching your posters pop up was like going through a dime-novel rack back in the fifties. The tough guy, the gun(s), and the blondes.
         A very fun video which I enjoyed a great deal. Your top two are pretty much indisputable, although Raft in both is restricted to flashy supporting roles. Of the “Raft” films in which he was the star or co-star, the WB’s with Cagney & Bogart are certainly high profile and deserve their place near the top of your list, but
         there are a couple of odd omissions. Nob Hill was Raft’s only starring color movie close to his heyday (1945). While I wouldn’t consider it a top tier musical, and Raft might be an odd choice for the lead while surprisingly never displaying his dancing talent, it should be on this list somewhere. I think in the top fifteen.
         I assume Around the World in 80 Days did not make the list because Raft only had a cameo. I agree but wonder where it would have placed despite winning a best picture Oscar. I wouldn’t have put it in his top five myself.
         But the BIG omission. I think the best of all “Raft” movies, movies built around Raft as a star or co-star, is the 1935 The Glass Key. I find his version much better than the 1942 remake with Alan Ladd. Raft is just perfect casting as the strong-arm man for an urban political boss and the film has a wonderful gritty feel, with more plausible plot twists than the remake. I would put it third on this list, behind only Some Like It Hot and Scarface.

         *The poster for Christmas Eve is interesting for the billing. Randolph Scott was at this point billed under Raft and Brent, but the future belonged to Scott with westerns so much more able than gangster flicks to exploit wide-screen and color.

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         1. Hi John, thanks for reviewing my George Raft video.

            Around the World in 80 Days would have been in 6th position with a score of 7, I didn’t include it because his was just one of many short cameos.

            Nob Hill wasn’t on my files for some reason, looking at IMDB it would have been a low scorer. The Glass Key was an omission, but not a big one, it would have been in 20th position with a score of 6.2, one of my sources said the Alan Ladd version was ‘far superior’ and that must have put me off including it. Maltin says it ‘drags during second half’.

            With well over 100 views for the George Raft video you’re the only one to single out The Glass Key as a ‘Big Omission’ so far and youtube viewers aren’t shy about letting me know which of their favorites I haven’t included. A week ago someone complained about ‘Valdez is Coming’ missing from the Burt Lancaster top 30, I replied that it was nearly last on my list of 60 Lancaster movies, he was not amused. 🙂

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            1. Steve

               I was inspired by your comment to re-watch both the 1935 & the 1942 versions yesterday afternoon back to back. I was a bit extreme in saying the 1935 version is much better, but I do prefer it. Still, both movies are very good, but that is not my issue. The main point is that Raft playing a Dashiell Hammett anti-hero in a box-office hit at a time he needed one was and is an important movie in his career.
               And I’m not alone in thinking it very good. It has a 7.2 rating at IMDB while the 1942 version with Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake has a 7.1 rating. I prefer it for its gritty look and more straightforward plot, although the plotting is less faithful to Hammett’s original novel.
               Anyway, no criticism was intended. I know you are relying on your critical sources and if you get a chance to watch the 1935 The Glass Key you might well disagree with me anyway. We all react differently to movies. But I stand totally behind recommending this movie to Raft or noir fans.
               Anyway, thanks again for the wonderful video.

2. STEVE
   1 I’ve written at length about Joe Cotten on this site recently so I’ll just go straight into my comments on your Cotten video.The standard of the artwork is so even throughout and attracting a 96% rating from me that I’ll just mention that the 3 POSTERS that I see as par excellence are Beyond the Forest, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and The Steel Trap and then only list the following as the ones that I liked best without making further artwork distinctions:
   September Affair, Steel Trap, Journey into Fear and Citizen Kane

   2 I was glad that you included my favourite trilogy of Joe Cotten ‘little’ crime films The Killer is Loose, Blueprint for Murder and Steel Trap. I noticed that he got billed above Barbara Stanwyck in Man with a Cloak and that surprised me.in view of Babs’ superior box office pull.
   However she was going through her traumatic divorce from Bob Taylor at that point and probably didn’t care about billing for a time – amazing!. I understand that in the movie Joe who throughout the movie was called Dupin the name of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous detective indeed turned out in the end to be the great Poe himself!. {Dupin was the detective in Murders in the Rue Morgue which literary historians claim was the “first modern detective story.”]

   4 Superb STILLS (1) Joe on the stairs in Niagara (2) the two of Joe with his mentor Welles (3) the one from Portrait of Jennie (4) closing coloured solo of Cotten. Excellent TOP 5 though I would have had 3rd Man first as Joe had the lead in that and was just a supporting player in the greater classic Kane. Excellent opening self-depreciating quote from Joe Cotton [had to spell it that way once for old time’s sake!] Great stuff all over.

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   1. Thanks Bob, your comment, review, rating and trivia, much appreciated.

      Glad you liked the posters and stills.

      I was telling Bruce earlier on my channel that I had this video ready at the weekend and was waiting to see if he was going to do a page on Cotten and we could have had video and page in sync on the same day, but it was not to be.

      The Man With a Cloak sounds interesting, Poe’s detective was a big influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Dupin was a detective long before the word had come into common use.

      This is one of the few times you’ll see The Third Man in 2nd place, it’s a revered movie but had no chance of supplanting Citizen Kane in the top spot. I understand what you mean by a ‘Joe Cotten movie’ but that’s not how this works, remember the movie comes first, the actors a distant second, what did old Hitch say about actors?. [Bob gasps] 🙂

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      1. STEVE

         If I had correction facilities the way Bruce does I would have amended your post to read “the actors apart from Heston a distant second.”

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         1. 🙂

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            1. Hey Steve ….I was doing what you used to do when it comes to classic subjects….saving the best for last…..lol.

            2. 🙂

               Btw even Citizen Kane couldn’t manage a perfect 10 on my video chart. I think it’s tied with The Godfather as the highest rated movie in my files so far. I’ve still got hundreds of modern movies to score later this year. But how many will reach that high?

               It’s impossible to get a perfect 10 because sites like IMDB don’t use round figures and Kane didn’t do as well as expected at IMDB, currently averaging 8.4. There are Italian sword and sandal epics with higher scores than Kane at that site, probably. 🙂

3. Cogerson

   As you post you are going to publish a 1930’s chart, and will probably sneak it in w/o warning, I want to post my predictions now so I can look foolish out front.

   I figure Clark Gable should win easily for the men, by a mile at the box office, also with the Oscars. Gable probably won’t be at the top for average critical ratings as he made so many movies. The bread and butter stars who ground them out for the studios and were the financial foundation of the industry are penalized here in favor of “prestige” actors who picked their spots. My guess is either Paul Muni or Charles Laughton will win the critical average column. But Gable for the male star of the decade and the overall star of the decade. I expect William Powell and Fredric March to get the place and show positions. Spencer Tracy will be in the hunt. So will Fred Astaire. I would rate James Cagney second only to Gable as a star who defined the decade, but I will be surprised if he actually rates in the top five in box office or critical ratings. Tyrone Power & Errol Flynn should do very well in the average ratings, but started too late to be near the overall top.

   The women are much tougher. No one stands out. I don’t expect Garbo or Dietrich will be up there with the American box office. Claudette Colbert should finish very high. Davis & Crawford? I don’t think so, but let’s see. Shirley Temple? Perhaps at the top in average, but again didn’t really arrive until well into the decade. So I think it is going to boil down to Myrna Loy and Jean Harlow. I will go out on a limb and pick Loy, followed by Colbert and Harlow.

   I judge the 1930’s as having more great stars in their primes than any other decade.

   Reply

   1. Hey John…..well….I do have all the numbers ready to go. I do admit that I do not have as many stars for that decade…..as I only have about 120 movies per year…..and some of the early 1930s stars are ignored completely….BUT……right now your guess is looking good…..currently the King and Queen of the Box Office are Clark Gable and Myrna Loy….who were in fact named the King and Queen back then during a huge poll. I will have to come back to your comment when I get that page up and running….but I feel confident that you will be very very close.

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

   Glad you liked the posters and stills.

   Seven Brides is one of my favorite non-Astaire / Kelly musicals. Good fun and a great soundtrack too. Royal Wedding has it’s moments too, particularly Astaire dancing on the ceiling, no one knew how he did that trick back then. It seemed awfully clever, no opticals, purely mechanical. Kubrick did something similar on a larger scale in Space Odyssey.

   I was hoping by speeding up my video output it might spur Bruce into action and we’d get more movie pages at the UMR and we have had quite a few new ones this past few days. I wouldn’t mind if Bruce carries on with the yearly rundowns, they don’t seem as time consuming for him as some of the actor pages.

   I have about 600 movie people videos to go and I’ll take a rest before starting on my own Top 50 yearly video rundowns, or maybe I’ll start that sooner, we shall see.

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   1. Hey Steve…yep the yearly ones do not take as long. I am having fun with the decades pages….which actually take almost no time at all. 600 more to go? Wow that is a lot of people and videos. Good comment….keep up the hard work.

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      1. Hey Bruce, the hyperbole from all those classic movie posters is starting to affect my commenting, I meant 500 more video people to go. Sorry.
         🙂

         p.s. remember when I was posting videos of all my DVDs a few years ago? After more than 1000 videos in just a few months I nearly got banned from youtube. I’d better take things easy on these ones.

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5. STEVE 1 Like other musical stars after the decline of the genre Jane turned to drama but her career there was short lived and her last major role was as Hedy Lamarr’s man-crazy alcoholic daughter in The Female Animal (1958) where she competes with her mother for the affections of “beefcake” boy George Nader. This part was of course a contrast to the upbeat rather “sweet young things” whom Jane played in some of her sanitized musicals. In real life Jane had 5 husbands. And yes! Jane too ultimately turned up in a supporting role at the age of 58 in a 1987 episode of TV’s Murder She Wrote. Jane accurately and honestly sums up her career situation in her fine opening quote in your excellent video

   2 Pleasingly the video captures for the most part the happy-go-lucky spirit of Jane’ musical films but really her poses in some of the selections were actually quite suggestive for the times. Best POSTERS were Girl Most Likely, Small Town Girl, Hit the Deck, Royal Wedding and yes The Female Animal which unlike the movie itself was I thought outstanding. Excellent STILLS were the Date with Judy quartet, Jane and Fred, the large ensemble one from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and the sumptuous solo of the lovely young Jane rounding off a 94% treat for me. Well done with so few movies to work from.

   3 Actually a few months ago I mentioned that the Work Horse had covered the careers of all the great Hollywood musical era stars excepting a golden few like Jane, Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel. Since then the WH has given us an albeit highly comprehensive and satisfying page on JUST Grayson whereas you have now completed THAT entire set of 3. Considering all your other recent scoops over WH and his own current tendency to go AWOL at intervals from his own site it could well be that you will soon be a one man show among our leaders on both your site and this one!

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   1. Good review on Steve’s latest You Tube video. Here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyUwfFeMl2k

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      1. Thanks again Bruce.

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