HI STEVE 1 Loretta was one of the most important movie stars of the early cinema and I’m surprised that it has never attracted a page from the Great One. Apart from its own success that career indirectly charted the rise of my Laddie to super stardom – in the 1943 China the billing was Loretta Young/Alan Ladd but a year later in And Now Tomorrow it was Alan Ladd/Loretta Young. Indeed the posters for the latter including your own have a caption in letters towering above much else LADD’s BACK!
2 Loretta’s daughter Judy who died 3 years before her mother was the secret biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable and Loretta claimed that Judy was to product of rape by the King when they made Call of the Wild together in 1935 but that she kept the alleged offence quiet at the time because of misplaced sense of shame and fear of retribution by the studios who would have wanted to protect Clark’s career above all else.
3 The posters that I most admire in your video are Bedtime Story, China, Taxi, Private Number, Along Came Jones, Crusades and especially the 3 eye-poppers for obvious reasons Bedtime Story, Born to Be Bad and Beau Ideal. Magnificent stills are those with Cagney, Cooper and Ty Power and especially the solo of a leggy stockinged Loretta.
4 WH has covered elsewhere in his pages 4 of your top 5 – The Stranger, The Bishop’s Wife, The Farmer’s daughter and Man’s Castle. Your average rating for those 4 is 72.7% whilst for once The Grinch has been much more generous with a 78.25% average. Overall your video is well worth a 96.5% rating to me and has been most welcome as I have long been greatly interested in Loretta’s movie career which lasted on the silver screen from 2017 to 1953 with a persona hitl TV show from 1963 – 1961 and further TV work including 2 TV movies in the 1980s.
Apparently in her TV show Loretta always sported a dazzling array of swanky clothes and my aunts who lived in the US used to rave about them and nicknamed her “The Clothes Horse”.
1 Excuse another error from me in para 4 of the previous post. The Loretta Young Show of course lasted from 1953 [when she closed down her silver screen career] until 1961.
2 d**n that Work Horse! he once hinted about facilities to correct our own mistakes but never delivered on the provisional promise.
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my um… Loretta… I’ve actually forgotten her name and I’d just produced a video on her… embarrassing… Loretta Young, that’s the name, for some reason Loretta Swit popped into my head and confused me. Appreciate the rating, info, trivia, observation and comparison.
Happy you enjoyed the posters and stills.
I’d heard of Loretta but did not know much about her at all. I wasn’t even sure what she looked like. [Bob winces] A few months ago someone on my video channel asked if I could do a video on her and here it is.
None of her films scored 10 out of 10 but there were a couple of 9’s – The Farmer’s Daughter and Zoo in Budapest.
Highest scorer at IMDB was Heroes for Sale which scored 7.8 and at Rotten Tomatoes silent movie – Laugh Clown Laugh – topped the charts.
HI STEVE 1. As usual useful feedback from you – thanks.Our Work Horse is excellent at analysing performers’ careers, but if I was a publisher I wouldn’t want WH’s own Guru as a reader never mind as a critic or a mentor! I also admire the way you state your personal opinions in a down-to-earth manner and I therefore hope that for my part I am not perceived as being pretentious.
2 My ratings are just my way of comparing the pleasure your videos give me in relation to each other and I have explained how I use ratings that have been professionally allocated to John McCormack songs with my according a rating to a video that equates with one given to a McCormack song that provides me with equal pleasure.
3 A 1920 McCormack interpretation that critics adore is of Rachmaninov’s O Cease they Singing Fair and one reviewer said it was almost perfect the only thing being wrong with it was that technically John might have put a bit more emphasis on “Fair” and paused slightly longer before singing “O”. If you were to press me about why I didn’t give a particular video of yours say 96, 99 or 100% I would struggle to bring that kind of precise technical precision to my reasoning and indeed at times my pleasure is close to 100% if not the latter.
4 However in 1964 I attended night classes and when I handed in my homework assignment our tutor gave me 9/10 pointing to a 10th item that was “wrong”. However when I checked out the matter I discovered I had been completely right and as he agreed I gave him back the paper to change the marking which he did to a 9.5/10. When I complained that I had been COMPLETELY right about item 10 he replied “I never give 10/10. Nobody would believe any homework could be perfect.” Never let some pontificating Joel-type “Authority” figure kid you he can make perfect and definitive distinctions between something that is worth say 92% or 95%. He can’t.
Hey Bob….I agree Steve has a very nice way of showing his preferences without being to forceful. At UMR we try to not have our preferences determine the rankings….but in the comment box we share our favorites as well as the movies we did not care for. Good feedback as always.
BOB
November 8, 2017 at 5:59 am – ORIGINAL POST COPIED TO NEW NOVAK BY MISTAKE
1 HI STEVE In a 1956 interview Dorothy Malone said that she had asked Universal to bill her 4th in Written on the Wind because she felt that if she was given top star billing that could disqualify her from Oscar nomination in the supporting player category. Given that Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall were in the leads it is hard to see how she could have got much further up the bill anyway but otherwise her instincts were sound because she did win the supporting actress Oscar AND a Golden Globe nomination.
2 Many of my most nostalgic B movies produced in the 1950s have some excellent posters in your selections with the particularly pleasing ones for me being Tension at Table Rock, Law and Order [co-starring Mr. President] Tall man Riding, Quantez, Loophole, Private Hell 36 and Tip on a Dead Jockey. NB On the release posters the tagline was “The story of Frame Johnson the last of the great-shooting marshals.” A typical Ronnie character in those days! I saw that one on a double bill with the Brit comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt top-starring great English comedian Stanley Holloway later of My Fair Lady fame [“I’m getting married in the morning. Get me to the church on time!”]
3 I thought the best posters for Dottie’s probably more or slightly more prestigious flicks were Artists & Models, South of St Louis, Pushover, Scared Stiff and The Last Sunset. Sadly in that one Dorothy didn’t get even EQUAL billing to Rock. Separate, special mention in my opinion should be made of the riveting poster for The Killer That Stalked New York and the stunner for Warlock with my Richard in iconic form.
4 The batch of stills you have given us of Dorothy is among the best that I have ever seen from you and I cannot praise enough (1) her with Chandler (2) with Randy in The Nevadan (3) at her most female provocative staring out of a window with Richard Egan (4) looking happy with my Glenn on the set of Convicted (5) driving Rock – very appropriate because she drove him to distraction in the actual movie (6) with Bogie in The Big Sleep and (7) the opening solo still of beautiful Dorothy as well as the closing sexy solo of Dorothy in bathing costume (8) my very favourite a unique one of Dottie with Fred in Quantez.
5 When I see this wonderful collection I think it a pity you didn’t follow up your marathon posters presentation on Mr. America with a short montage devoted solely to stills. The Big Fella was massively photogenic in his time and was some looker when he was a young man in all those early westerns. I know that for you stills are not “the big picture” but we must remember that a key factor in the success of all those Great stars was their physical presence and exceptional looks in one way or another and nothing quite hones in on that like a well photographed still.
6 Posters are the ideal for showcasing the entire film but Laddie with painted-on muscles in some posters for Red Mountain for example was not the real deal whereas some stills of Alan highlighted his beautiful features which were probably his main calling card in his heyday
7Anyway Great stuff well worth 97.5% in my book. No WH page so far but the average rating for your Top 5 is 77.7% and compares with his 74.4% for the same 5 on the pages of Dottie’s co-stars. Your Top 5 were of course Big Sleep, Written on the Wind, Tarnished Angels, Man of 1000 Faces and Warlock – well done Dick or sorry “Richard”.
“What a man tells a woman and a woman tells a man should be written on the wind and lost forever.” – 1956 Belfast release posters tagline.
The Frame Johnson western I mentioned in para 2 of my previous post was of course Law and Order with Frame being played by The Great Communicator of politics! Sorry for any confusion.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, info, trivia, observation and comparison, much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed the posters and stills.
It would have been nice to have added a few stills to my John Wayne video but it was already over 22mins long, the only other solution was to reduce the number of movie posters, I had 150 posters uploaded on there. I did include a few stills on my previous John Wayne video.
A stills only video might be interesting, I’ll keep it in mind.
For some reason I had always associated Dorothy Malone with Peyton Place, so it was a surprise to find she wasn’t in a movie with that title but a long running tv series of the 1960s.
She was a striking looking woman, memorable in her short scene with Bogart in The Big Sleep, one of her first credited films.
I think we talked before about whether Fred MacMurray had appeared in any westerns and it looks like Quantez was one of the few he did. When I saw that still I had to include it. 🙂
Only one of her films scored 10 out of 10 and that was The Big Sleep, other high scorers were Written on the Wind, Tarnished Angels and Warlock.
I’ll bet Bruce has the stats on most of her films and could easily produce a page on Miss Malone. I’m just curious to read what Joel “she looks great but um sorry she should have gone back to acting school” Hirschhorn thinks of her. [wink wink]
HI YET AGAIN STEVE [People will be talking about us!]
1 Lana Turner was of course in the 1957 cinematic Peyton Place and Carol Lynley was the star of the 1961 Return to Peyton Place on the silver screen. Dorothy had much success in the spin-off TV series which ran from 1964-1969 and in fact she was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Television Actress in 1964/65. She was actually also in two further spin off TV movies Murder in Peyton Place [1977] and Peyton Place: The Next Generation [1985]
2 Dottie played the character of Constance MacKenzie in the TV series and the 2 TV movies. Constance was played by Lana in the 1957 theatrical movie and by Eleanor Parker in the 1960 sequel. Carol Lynley who as said was the star of the latter flick was Constance’s daughter Allison played in the 1957 movie by Diane Varsi and in the TV series by Mia Farrow [the common law Mrs. Woody Allen]. I could go on but you might think I was trying to compete with Dan!
4 When his initial top star days had wound down Fred MacMurray sought the refuge of B westerns from 1955-59 and apart from Quantez was the lead actor in the following:
Gun for a Coward
Gunpoint
The Moonlighter
Face of a Fugitive
Day of the Badman
The Oregon Trail; and
The Far Horizons an A movie with Chuck 2nd billed to Fred
5 I always thought that Fred was at his best playing, and among my friends and colleagues became a byword for, sneaky/cowardly/untrustworthy characters as in Double Indemnity, The Caine mutiny and The Apartment. In fact when I worked in the Civil Service here we had a union representative called Mark who shirked standing up to the bosses on behalf of our interests and he was given the nickname “Fred”!
1 HI STEVE In April this year in response to Bruce’s then-new Lee Marvin page I submitted a post containing some trivia about Lee though it drew no response so it looks like it is one of my various 2017 posts that have apparently escaped the Great Panjandrum’s notice. I have copied it to this page in the hope that it will be of be of passing interest to you
2 There are many excellent posters in your selection that are entirely new to me particularly the foreign language ones. The two standout favourites for me were The Big Heat and The Wild One as they starred two of my top idols [as well as Sister Mumbles] but the following were nearly as good in my estimation – The Klansman, Pillars of the Sky [aka The Tomahawk and the Cross] Hangman’s Knot, Monte Walsh, The Killers, Cat Balloo, and the Duke again being his iconic self in Donovan’s Reef.
3 Stills that most pleased me are those from The Killers, Point Blank, The Professionals, Cat Balloo and especially the closing black and white one from Liberty Valance with the 3 legends squaring off against each other!
4 You and WH agree on 4 of Marvin’s Top 5 movies based on artistic merit. He includes The Big Heat at No 1 in his Top 5 whereas you exclude that from your 5 but instead include Liberty Valance and indeed make it your top flick whilst it is Bruce’s No 6 For me this video was very satisfying and overall worth a 97.5% rating for the originality of many of the posters alone.
STEVE
1 The following is the April 2017 post that I have plucked from my Forgotten Man series of posts. As you have now profiled Lee I thought it might be of passing interest to you though you will probably not get too excited about the final paragraph dealing with detailed stats !!
2 I notice that in my previous post to you I spelt Cat Ballou wrong. That’s the fault of my Automatic Pilot because there is an office block that I used to work in and it’s called Balloo House. Apologies anyway.
BOB
April 6, 2017 at 4:44 am
1 Lee’s relationships with his co-stars seemed to vary. In a TV interview I saw after Cat Ballou made him a star he told of how well he had gotten on with John Wayne when making Liberty Valance and Donavan’s Reef and he said that during the shooting of the latter Wayne predicted Lee would make stardom. Then leaning forward he waved into the TV camera and shouted “Hope you’re watching this Duke!” A true ‘character’ was Lee!
2 Reportedly on the set of Klansman Marvin and Burton became 24/7 drinking buddies throughout shooting. With Spencer Tracy though things were apparently different. Lee is said to sometimes make elaborate preparations for a scene and allegedly before commencing a scene for Bad Day at Black Rock he jogged a couple of laps of the set to energise himself leaving Tracy and other impatiently waiting. When a breathless Lee finally stopped Old Cantankerous growled in front of the others “Now do you suppose you could cut out all this bull and let us get on with some acting?”
3 I always value the updates because Cogerson is the only site I know that comprehensively provides adjusted grosses for Classic era films and therefore for consistency I include only Bruce’s stats in my own data base. I especially looked forward to this update because every site quotes dramatically different figures for Paint your Wagon and as I knew Bruce constantly reviews and improves his figures I wanted to be assured that his Paint your Wagon stat on the Eastwood/100 Musicals sites was holding firm. For that movie The Numbers quotes $31.6 million actual which equates to some $195 million, Mojo gives us $14.5 million actual/$89 million adjusted, and Bruce had listed $40 million actual/some $238 million adjusted on the Eastwood/Musical sites. I was pleased to see in Lee’s update Bruce’s figures were holding firm as they best reflect my own sense of the size of Paint you Wagon’s audiences when it was released. I think I have already mentioned on Cogerson that my favourite Marvin films are probably his gangster trilogy, Prime Cut, Point Blank and The Killers.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, trivia, comment, observation, comparison and archive retrieval, always appreciated.
Happy you liked the posters and stills.
I remember reading your Lee Marvin post a few months ago, not sure how Bruce might have missed it. I thought mine were the only posts not visible in the Americas. 😉
Some Lee quotes – “There was that very credible virility of guys like Spencer Tracy or Humphrey Bogart. I don’t think that I could one day resemble them, but in life and in movies I profoundly admired Bogart, both personally and professionally. Something good about Duke, I gotta admit: When he’s on, he’s on. “Send us more Japs”, that’s The Duke for you. I love Marlon Brando. Never seen him bad, just less good.”
“My performance as Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou (1965) didn’t help things. I guess I acted so realistically drunk that audiences figured nobody could pretend that well. It’s like I told the audience when I went up to accept the award: “I think half of this belongs to some horse in the Valley. Then the house came down. I was totally serious. That drunken horse really helped me. What was I supposed to say – “I’d like to thank my mommy and daddy”?
Five of Lee’s films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Ship of Fools (Maltin), Point Blank, The Sir Michael Caine Mutiny, Black Day at Bad Rock and Liberty Valance.
Highest rated at IMDB was Liberty Valance with 8.1, it’s also the highest rated at Rotten Tomatoes.
1 HI STEVE Useful feedback as normal consolidating an informative pictorial. You always come up with great quotes that are new to me. I particularly like Lee’s one about Mr M being good and just less good. Clearly given Lee’s praise for the Duke too Joel is not MARVIN’s Guru! But stop! you’re spoiling me by giving me flattering quotes about 2 of my top idols in the one post.
2 In the Fonda movie 12 Angry Men flashy salesman Robert Webber [Juror No 12] continually speaks in clichés of sales jargon and in one scene when the other jurors are wondering if a certain piece of evidence is worth exploring Webber says to them “In my business if we are doubtful about the value of a product or an idea we just run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it.”
3 I used the flagpole a lot on this site in 2017 but unfortunately at times didn’t get any return salutes. However the fact that you and WH regularly profile the same performers often gives me a “2nd bite of the cherry” as in the case of Marvin.
4 Besides unlike say Tracy, Mumbles and our own Great Panjandrum I do not crave the fawning attentions of others and am satisfied if I have to make do with just leaving a record of my views on the site. After all SOMEBODY has to contradict elements of Joel’s misconceptions and as I’ve quoted before –
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
PS Bob Webber always reminded me a bit of a “poor man’s” Golden Holden.
Thanks for adding links to my Sid Marvin and Lee Poitier videos Bruce, mucho apreciado! Btw there seems to be a mysterious lone ‘W’ under the Jeff Chandler video. I didn’t put it there, maybe… it was Joel? [Bob shudders]
Steve’s Dorothy Malone and Loretta Young videos added.
Thanks Bruce, much appreciated.
Hey Steve…here to help.
HI STEVE 1 Loretta was one of the most important movie stars of the early cinema and I’m surprised that it has never attracted a page from the Great One. Apart from its own success that career indirectly charted the rise of my Laddie to super stardom – in the 1943 China the billing was Loretta Young/Alan Ladd but a year later in And Now Tomorrow it was Alan Ladd/Loretta Young. Indeed the posters for the latter including your own have a caption in letters towering above much else LADD’s BACK!
2 Loretta’s daughter Judy who died 3 years before her mother was the secret biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable and Loretta claimed that Judy was to product of rape by the King when they made Call of the Wild together in 1935 but that she kept the alleged offence quiet at the time because of misplaced sense of shame and fear of retribution by the studios who would have wanted to protect Clark’s career above all else.
3 The posters that I most admire in your video are Bedtime Story, China, Taxi, Private Number, Along Came Jones, Crusades and especially the 3 eye-poppers for obvious reasons Bedtime Story, Born to Be Bad and Beau Ideal. Magnificent stills are those with Cagney, Cooper and Ty Power and especially the solo of a leggy stockinged Loretta.
4 WH has covered elsewhere in his pages 4 of your top 5 – The Stranger, The Bishop’s Wife, The Farmer’s daughter and Man’s Castle. Your average rating for those 4 is 72.7% whilst for once The Grinch has been much more generous with a 78.25% average. Overall your video is well worth a 96.5% rating to me and has been most welcome as I have long been greatly interested in Loretta’s movie career which lasted on the silver screen from 2017 to 1953 with a persona hitl TV show from 1963 – 1961 and further TV work including 2 TV movies in the 1980s.
Apparently in her TV show Loretta always sported a dazzling array of swanky clothes and my aunts who lived in the US used to rave about them and nicknamed her “The Clothes Horse”.
STEVE
1 Excuse another error from me in para 4 of the previous post. The Loretta Young Show of course lasted from 1953 [when she closed down her silver screen career] until 1961.
2 d**n that Work Horse! he once hinted about facilities to correct our own mistakes but never delivered on the provisional promise.
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my um… Loretta… I’ve actually forgotten her name and I’d just produced a video on her… embarrassing… Loretta Young, that’s the name, for some reason Loretta Swit popped into my head and confused me. Appreciate the rating, info, trivia, observation and comparison.
Happy you enjoyed the posters and stills.
I’d heard of Loretta but did not know much about her at all. I wasn’t even sure what she looked like. [Bob winces] A few months ago someone on my video channel asked if I could do a video on her and here it is.
None of her films scored 10 out of 10 but there were a couple of 9’s – The Farmer’s Daughter and Zoo in Budapest.
Highest scorer at IMDB was Heroes for Sale which scored 7.8 and at Rotten Tomatoes silent movie – Laugh Clown Laugh – topped the charts.
HI STEVE 1. As usual useful feedback from you – thanks.Our Work Horse is excellent at analysing performers’ careers, but if I was a publisher I wouldn’t want WH’s own Guru as a reader never mind as a critic or a mentor! I also admire the way you state your personal opinions in a down-to-earth manner and I therefore hope that for my part I am not perceived as being pretentious.
2 My ratings are just my way of comparing the pleasure your videos give me in relation to each other and I have explained how I use ratings that have been professionally allocated to John McCormack songs with my according a rating to a video that equates with one given to a McCormack song that provides me with equal pleasure.
3 A 1920 McCormack interpretation that critics adore is of Rachmaninov’s O Cease they Singing Fair and one reviewer said it was almost perfect the only thing being wrong with it was that technically John might have put a bit more emphasis on “Fair” and paused slightly longer before singing “O”. If you were to press me about why I didn’t give a particular video of yours say 96, 99 or 100% I would struggle to bring that kind of precise technical precision to my reasoning and indeed at times my pleasure is close to 100% if not the latter.
4 However in 1964 I attended night classes and when I handed in my homework assignment our tutor gave me 9/10 pointing to a 10th item that was “wrong”. However when I checked out the matter I discovered I had been completely right and as he agreed I gave him back the paper to change the marking which he did to a 9.5/10. When I complained that I had been COMPLETELY right about item 10 he replied “I never give 10/10. Nobody would believe any homework could be perfect.” Never let some pontificating Joel-type “Authority” figure kid you he can make perfect and definitive distinctions between something that is worth say 92% or 95%. He can’t.
Hey Bob….I agree Steve has a very nice way of showing his preferences without being to forceful. At UMR we try to not have our preferences determine the rankings….but in the comment box we share our favorites as well as the movies we did not care for. Good feedback as always.
Hey Steve….Swift and Young might be the two most famous Lorettas. Good feedback.
BOB
November 8, 2017 at 5:59 am – ORIGINAL POST COPIED TO NEW NOVAK BY MISTAKE
1 HI STEVE In a 1956 interview Dorothy Malone said that she had asked Universal to bill her 4th in Written on the Wind because she felt that if she was given top star billing that could disqualify her from Oscar nomination in the supporting player category. Given that Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall were in the leads it is hard to see how she could have got much further up the bill anyway but otherwise her instincts were sound because she did win the supporting actress Oscar AND a Golden Globe nomination.
2 Many of my most nostalgic B movies produced in the 1950s have some excellent posters in your selections with the particularly pleasing ones for me being Tension at Table Rock, Law and Order [co-starring Mr. President] Tall man Riding, Quantez, Loophole, Private Hell 36 and Tip on a Dead Jockey. NB On the release posters the tagline was “The story of Frame Johnson the last of the great-shooting marshals.” A typical Ronnie character in those days! I saw that one on a double bill with the Brit comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt top-starring great English comedian Stanley Holloway later of My Fair Lady fame [“I’m getting married in the morning. Get me to the church on time!”]
3 I thought the best posters for Dottie’s probably more or slightly more prestigious flicks were Artists & Models, South of St Louis, Pushover, Scared Stiff and The Last Sunset. Sadly in that one Dorothy didn’t get even EQUAL billing to Rock. Separate, special mention in my opinion should be made of the riveting poster for The Killer That Stalked New York and the stunner for Warlock with my Richard in iconic form.
4 The batch of stills you have given us of Dorothy is among the best that I have ever seen from you and I cannot praise enough (1) her with Chandler (2) with Randy in The Nevadan (3) at her most female provocative staring out of a window with Richard Egan (4) looking happy with my Glenn on the set of Convicted (5) driving Rock – very appropriate because she drove him to distraction in the actual movie (6) with Bogie in The Big Sleep and (7) the opening solo still of beautiful Dorothy as well as the closing sexy solo of Dorothy in bathing costume (8) my very favourite a unique one of Dottie with Fred in Quantez.
5 When I see this wonderful collection I think it a pity you didn’t follow up your marathon posters presentation on Mr. America with a short montage devoted solely to stills. The Big Fella was massively photogenic in his time and was some looker when he was a young man in all those early westerns. I know that for you stills are not “the big picture” but we must remember that a key factor in the success of all those Great stars was their physical presence and exceptional looks in one way or another and nothing quite hones in on that like a well photographed still.
6 Posters are the ideal for showcasing the entire film but Laddie with painted-on muscles in some posters for Red Mountain for example was not the real deal whereas some stills of Alan highlighted his beautiful features which were probably his main calling card in his heyday
7Anyway Great stuff well worth 97.5% in my book. No WH page so far but the average rating for your Top 5 is 77.7% and compares with his 74.4% for the same 5 on the pages of Dottie’s co-stars. Your Top 5 were of course Big Sleep, Written on the Wind, Tarnished Angels, Man of 1000 Faces and Warlock – well done Dick or sorry “Richard”.
“What a man tells a woman and a woman tells a man should be written on the wind and lost forever.” – 1956 Belfast release posters tagline.
STEVE
The Frame Johnson western I mentioned in para 2 of my previous post was of course Law and Order with Frame being played by The Great Communicator of politics! Sorry for any confusion.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, info, trivia, observation and comparison, much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed the posters and stills.
It would have been nice to have added a few stills to my John Wayne video but it was already over 22mins long, the only other solution was to reduce the number of movie posters, I had 150 posters uploaded on there. I did include a few stills on my previous John Wayne video.
A stills only video might be interesting, I’ll keep it in mind.
For some reason I had always associated Dorothy Malone with Peyton Place, so it was a surprise to find she wasn’t in a movie with that title but a long running tv series of the 1960s.
She was a striking looking woman, memorable in her short scene with Bogart in The Big Sleep, one of her first credited films.
I think we talked before about whether Fred MacMurray had appeared in any westerns and it looks like Quantez was one of the few he did. When I saw that still I had to include it. 🙂
Only one of her films scored 10 out of 10 and that was The Big Sleep, other high scorers were Written on the Wind, Tarnished Angels and Warlock.
I’ll bet Bruce has the stats on most of her films and could easily produce a page on Miss Malone. I’m just curious to read what Joel “she looks great but um sorry she should have gone back to acting school” Hirschhorn thinks of her. [wink wink]
HI YET AGAIN STEVE [People will be talking about us!]
1 Lana Turner was of course in the 1957 cinematic Peyton Place and Carol Lynley was the star of the 1961 Return to Peyton Place on the silver screen. Dorothy had much success in the spin-off TV series which ran from 1964-1969 and in fact she was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Television Actress in 1964/65. She was actually also in two further spin off TV movies Murder in Peyton Place [1977] and Peyton Place: The Next Generation [1985]
2 Dottie played the character of Constance MacKenzie in the TV series and the 2 TV movies. Constance was played by Lana in the 1957 theatrical movie and by Eleanor Parker in the 1960 sequel. Carol Lynley who as said was the star of the latter flick was Constance’s daughter Allison played in the 1957 movie by Diane Varsi and in the TV series by Mia Farrow [the common law Mrs. Woody Allen]. I could go on but you might think I was trying to compete with Dan!
4 When his initial top star days had wound down Fred MacMurray sought the refuge of B westerns from 1955-59 and apart from Quantez was the lead actor in the following:
Gun for a Coward
Gunpoint
The Moonlighter
Face of a Fugitive
Day of the Badman
The Oregon Trail; and
The Far Horizons an A movie with Chuck 2nd billed to Fred
5 I always thought that Fred was at his best playing, and among my friends and colleagues became a byword for, sneaky/cowardly/untrustworthy characters as in Double Indemnity, The Caine mutiny and The Apartment. In fact when I worked in the Civil Service here we had a union representative called Mark who shirked standing up to the bosses on behalf of our interests and he was given the nickname “Fred”!
HI STEVE:
No, it being Halloween this week it was appropriate that somebody should mention Joel!
🙂
Something wicked this way comes…..
brrr
or maybe it’s gremlins?
1 HI STEVE In April this year in response to Bruce’s then-new Lee Marvin page I submitted a post containing some trivia about Lee though it drew no response so it looks like it is one of my various 2017 posts that have apparently escaped the Great Panjandrum’s notice. I have copied it to this page in the hope that it will be of be of passing interest to you
2 There are many excellent posters in your selection that are entirely new to me particularly the foreign language ones. The two standout favourites for me were The Big Heat and The Wild One as they starred two of my top idols [as well as Sister Mumbles] but the following were nearly as good in my estimation – The Klansman, Pillars of the Sky [aka The Tomahawk and the Cross] Hangman’s Knot, Monte Walsh, The Killers, Cat Balloo, and the Duke again being his iconic self in Donovan’s Reef.
3 Stills that most pleased me are those from The Killers, Point Blank, The Professionals, Cat Balloo and especially the closing black and white one from Liberty Valance with the 3 legends squaring off against each other!
4 You and WH agree on 4 of Marvin’s Top 5 movies based on artistic merit. He includes The Big Heat at No 1 in his Top 5 whereas you exclude that from your 5 but instead include Liberty Valance and indeed make it your top flick whilst it is Bruce’s No 6 For me this video was very satisfying and overall worth a 97.5% rating for the originality of many of the posters alone.
STEVE
1 The following is the April 2017 post that I have plucked from my Forgotten Man series of posts. As you have now profiled Lee I thought it might be of passing interest to you though you will probably not get too excited about the final paragraph dealing with detailed stats !!
2 I notice that in my previous post to you I spelt Cat Ballou wrong. That’s the fault of my Automatic Pilot because there is an office block that I used to work in and it’s called Balloo House. Apologies anyway.
BOB
April 6, 2017 at 4:44 am
1 Lee’s relationships with his co-stars seemed to vary. In a TV interview I saw after Cat Ballou made him a star he told of how well he had gotten on with John Wayne when making Liberty Valance and Donavan’s Reef and he said that during the shooting of the latter Wayne predicted Lee would make stardom. Then leaning forward he waved into the TV camera and shouted “Hope you’re watching this Duke!” A true ‘character’ was Lee!
2 Reportedly on the set of Klansman Marvin and Burton became 24/7 drinking buddies throughout shooting. With Spencer Tracy though things were apparently different. Lee is said to sometimes make elaborate preparations for a scene and allegedly before commencing a scene for Bad Day at Black Rock he jogged a couple of laps of the set to energise himself leaving Tracy and other impatiently waiting. When a breathless Lee finally stopped Old Cantankerous growled in front of the others “Now do you suppose you could cut out all this bull and let us get on with some acting?”
3 I always value the updates because Cogerson is the only site I know that comprehensively provides adjusted grosses for Classic era films and therefore for consistency I include only Bruce’s stats in my own data base. I especially looked forward to this update because every site quotes dramatically different figures for Paint your Wagon and as I knew Bruce constantly reviews and improves his figures I wanted to be assured that his Paint your Wagon stat on the Eastwood/100 Musicals sites was holding firm. For that movie The Numbers quotes $31.6 million actual which equates to some $195 million, Mojo gives us $14.5 million actual/$89 million adjusted, and Bruce had listed $40 million actual/some $238 million adjusted on the Eastwood/Musical sites. I was pleased to see in Lee’s update Bruce’s figures were holding firm as they best reflect my own sense of the size of Paint you Wagon’s audiences when it was released. I think I have already mentioned on Cogerson that my favourite Marvin films are probably his gangster trilogy, Prime Cut, Point Blank and The Killers.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, trivia, comment, observation, comparison and archive retrieval, always appreciated.
Happy you liked the posters and stills.
I remember reading your Lee Marvin post a few months ago, not sure how Bruce might have missed it. I thought mine were the only posts not visible in the Americas. 😉
Some Lee quotes – “There was that very credible virility of guys like Spencer Tracy or Humphrey Bogart. I don’t think that I could one day resemble them, but in life and in movies I profoundly admired Bogart, both personally and professionally. Something good about Duke, I gotta admit: When he’s on, he’s on. “Send us more Japs”, that’s The Duke for you. I love Marlon Brando. Never seen him bad, just less good.”
“My performance as Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou (1965) didn’t help things. I guess I acted so realistically drunk that audiences figured nobody could pretend that well. It’s like I told the audience when I went up to accept the award: “I think half of this belongs to some horse in the Valley. Then the house came down. I was totally serious. That drunken horse really helped me. What was I supposed to say – “I’d like to thank my mommy and daddy”?
Five of Lee’s films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Ship of Fools (Maltin), Point Blank, The Sir Michael Caine Mutiny, Black Day at Bad Rock and Liberty Valance.
Highest rated at IMDB was Liberty Valance with 8.1, it’s also the highest rated at Rotten Tomatoes.
1 HI STEVE Useful feedback as normal consolidating an informative pictorial. You always come up with great quotes that are new to me. I particularly like Lee’s one about Mr M being good and just less good. Clearly given Lee’s praise for the Duke too Joel is not MARVIN’s Guru! But stop! you’re spoiling me by giving me flattering quotes about 2 of my top idols in the one post.
2 In the Fonda movie 12 Angry Men flashy salesman Robert Webber [Juror No 12] continually speaks in clichés of sales jargon and in one scene when the other jurors are wondering if a certain piece of evidence is worth exploring Webber says to them “In my business if we are doubtful about the value of a product or an idea we just run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it.”
3 I used the flagpole a lot on this site in 2017 but unfortunately at times didn’t get any return salutes. However the fact that you and WH regularly profile the same performers often gives me a “2nd bite of the cherry” as in the case of Marvin.
4 Besides unlike say Tracy, Mumbles and our own Great Panjandrum I do not crave the fawning attentions of others and am satisfied if I have to make do with just leaving a record of my views on the site. After all SOMEBODY has to contradict elements of Joel’s misconceptions and as I’ve quoted before –
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
PS Bob Webber always reminded me a bit of a “poor man’s” Golden Holden.
Just added Steve’s latest videos to this page…..his new Sidney Poitier and Lee Marvin movies are here for your viewing pleasure.
Thanks for adding links to my Sid Marvin and Lee Poitier videos Bruce, mucho apreciado! Btw there seems to be a mysterious lone ‘W’ under the Jeff Chandler video. I didn’t put it there, maybe… it was Joel? [Bob shudders]