We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
(Visited 1,785 times)
We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
1 HI STEVE/BRUCE. Alice Faye was described by the New York Times as one of the few actresses to walk away from stardom at the height of her career. Her heyday was in the period from mid 1930s until 1945 when she disappeared from the silver screen.
2 When I came to watch films in the 1950s none of her movies ever had a rerun in Belfast and all that I knew about her was that she had made a few films with one of my own great 1950s idols Tyrone Power, In Old Chicago, Alexander’s Ragtime Band and Rose of Washington Square.
3 She returned to the big screen in 1962 aged 47 to play supporting roles/cameos in 4 films made between that year and 1978 but I never saw any of them. It is said that, at the very start of her career any rate, her singing voice was far better than her acting. However despite her short heyday her overall career spanned almost 50 years and historians regard her as one of the most important musical stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era a “musical superstar”.
4 Despite the relative brevity of Steve’s Faye video there are lots of fine posters to admire and on balance my pick as the very best are Now I’l Tell, King of Burlesque, Little Old New York, Lillian Russell, On the Ave, Tin Pan Alley, Stowaway, and In Old Chicago. Lovely nostalgic old world stills were Alice with [I think] Rudy Valee, Alice with Ameche and Carmen Miranda, the quartet one that included 1950s B cowboy actor John Payne, Alice with Ty Power and her and Dana Andrews. from Fallen Angel, Alice’s final picture before her 1945 retirement. Overall I saw this video as in the 96% ratings bracket.
5 Not only do we have no Faye page yet from the Wise One but in the co-star links column on Ty Power’s page the great Alice is not even listed , WH mentioning only the 3rd billed male co-stars in the 3 films concerned, Don Ameche and A Jolson. In the 6 films that Alice made with Don and which are mentioned at the start of Steve’s video Alice was ALWAYS billed above Don Better watch out Bruce or W o C’s ardent “feminist” workmates will be after your scalp again! You Steve however can take a bow for being the TRUE friend of the actresses though to be fair WH does give Alice some credit as Don’s co-star on the Ameche page.
Just added Steve’s Alice Fay video….Hey Bob….good breakdown on his video. True we do not currently have an Alice Fay page….but you never know what the future holds. Good stuff.
Mighty nice of you Bruce, thanks.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, trivia, comment and billing info, it is appreciated. Glad you liked the posters and stills.
According to the IMDB “Alice Faye rose from the mean streets of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen to become the most famous singing actress in the world. When the pressures of fame became too much, she had the courage to leave Hollywood on her own terms”.
Not too familiar with Faye but I did enjoy a bunch of those Latin American musicals from Fox even if the plotlines were so threadbare they made the MGM musicals seem like Gone With the Wind by comparison. They were colorful time wasters.
My favorite of the songs featured in those films was ‘Brazil’ which became a kind of anthem and featured heavily in Terry Gilliams ‘Brazil’, one of my favorite films of the 1980s.
That was Rude Valley in the still with Alice. 🙂
Two of Faye’s films scored 9 out of 9 – Poor Little Rich Girl and In Old Chicago. But it wasn’t enough to topple Fallen Angel of the top. The top 5 were pretty close in points.
Highest rated at IMDB is Fallen Angel and Stowaway, they scored 8.2 each.
“We were in the studio from seven in the morning till whatever time they released us. We had so much fun together; we were just like a bunch of kids – we WERE kids! I didn’t have a favorite leading man. I loved them all!”
Sorry that should be 9 out of 10, not 9 out of 9. must slow down when typnig
HI STEVE:
1 Thanks for the informative feedback.
2 Back in the early decades of the cinema many movie houses in the UK ran most films for only three days and then changed the programme. I can well remember the midweek changes in Belfast because they meant you had just a limited time to catch a movie.
3 Anyway in those far off days in the 1940s Alice Faye’s films were apparently so popular in the UK that the were usually retained for a whole week
Bob, we have the ratings for Faye but what about the box office? I mean you know how interested I am in the grosses, what was Alice Faye’s biggest hit? I’m guessing In Old Chicago but it might be one of the Shirley Temple movies. Bruce may have the answer stored away in one of his vaults.
HI STEVE 1 Great you’re looking for stats! Since I was a boy of 15 I have been a fan of Greg Peck and that’s a lot longer than Flora’s has worshipped him so I consider Greg to be more MINE than hers and if you had asked me for Greg’s stats I could have quickly reeled them off for you.
2 However I’ve explained that I know little about Alice so I’ll be largely relying on the Big Boy to come up with the goods about her. We may not have to wait long because apparently in W o C’s work there are co-workers whom pathetic chauvinists where I worked would refer to as a “blouse club” or a “skirt brigade” who watched everything and everybody to ensure that women got fair treatment.
3 Meanwhile in the next post are the stats that the The Wise One has already given us on the pages of Alice’s co-stars. The figures are Bruce’s recently updated adjusted US grosses and the square brackets indicate a relevant co-star page:. Enjoy!
STEVE – ALICE’s STATS PART 2
Alexander’s Ragtime Band [Don Ameche] $384.4million
In Old Chicago [Don Ameche] $332.7
Rose of Washington Square [Tyrone Power] $185.4
Tin Pan Alley [Betty Grable] $176.5
On the Avenue [Dick Powell] $173.0
Poor Little Rich Girl [Shirley Temple] $167.8
That Night in Rio [Don Ameche] $159.4
Hollywood Cavalcade [Don Ameche] $123.6
You Can’t Have Everything [Don Ameche] $121.8
Stowaway [Shirley Temple] $121.1
State Fair 1962 [Ann-Margaret] $115.00*
Fallen Angel [Dana Andrews] $106.00
Four Jills and a Jeep [Betty Grable] $98.1
Lillian Russell [Don Ameche] $88.3
Little Old New York [Fred MacMurray] $79.4
Now I’ll Tell [Spencer Tracy] $67.3
Won Ton Ton Dog that saved Hollywood [Victor Mature] $14.7*
Magic of Lassie [James Stewart] $14.6*
NOTES
1 I think Alice made only 36 feature films so the above list of 18 represents half her output. Once the WH goes after grosses he rarely lets us down so never doubt him! The total overall figure is $2.53 billion and averages out at approx. $141 million per movie.
2 The 3 asterisked are the ones in which late in her career she played
supporting/cameo roles and when they are excluded the 15 Faye heyday films gross overall $2.39 billion and average out at $159 million each.
3 All very respectable figures, though when the Great One provides the remainder that will of course increase the overall gross but will probably bring down the averages and indeed most of the ones that I am familiar with are in the above list so many of the rest could be low grossers but to find out conclusively we’ll have to wait until the Oracle speaks.
Wow Bob, impressive work finding all the grosses, thanks. You’ve made Bruce’s job a lot easier now and he could probably put together an Alice Faye page in less than hour. Now that we’ve gone dynamic.
I really thought In Old Chicago was the big one and it did get to no.2 but I never suspected Alexander’s Ragtime Band to be the biggest draw here.
Looking at Bruce’s Tyrone Power page it’s also Power’s biggest grosser. In Old Chicago isn’t even his no.2, that’s The Razor’s Edge. Who says box office info isn’t interesting eh? 😉
Hey Bob…..good stuff on your memories of Alice Faye and how her movies never reached theaters in your area. I think the fact that she did not have a signature monster box office hit is the reason her movies never were big when it comes to her re-releases. Good rating on Steve’s video. True Alice did not get a mention. Gotta admit….when I see the co-stars of a movie…Don Ameche and Al Jolson jump out at me a lot more than Alice Faye did….but she had a wonderful career.
Added Steve’s latest videos…..Jane Wyman and Joan Blondell to Steve’s You Tube page.
Thank ye kindly sir.
Hey Steve ?
HI BRUCE
Kind words from you indeed and certainly for me it would be fitting to have a Wyman stats page to complement Stevie’s excellent pictorial.
Hey Bob…Wyman is on the list of pages to do…..which is really backing up…Wyman, Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Loretta Young and so many others…..we need to increase the amount of hours in a day to about 30….that would help…lol.
HI STEVE.
1 Interesting feedback as normal – much appreciated.
2 I can understand you being unsure of ANY photo of the young Wyman because when the 1950s arrived and her top stardom was just a few years old her appearance seemed to harden almost overnight and although she was still an attractive woman, she looked different to me from what she did in the 1940s in that the lovely sultry face was gone forever and she was more like somebody’s kind and good-looking aunt than like a sex symbol. Ironically in the 1935 Magnificent Obsession Irene Dunne played the role that Jane performed in the 1954 version and I thought that Dunne too developed a rather matronly look in her later films. Another coincidence just as 1954’s Magnificent Obsession is credited with making Hudson a star historians opine that the 1935 version made a star of the would be Cowboy of the Century.
3 However the new look certainly suited her roles of the widowed women who attracted the younger suitors played by Rock in both Magnificent Obsession and All that Heaven Allows, two of my all-time favourite flicks by the way. However today’s audiences would possibly associate those movies with Hudson rather than with Jane.
4 Her comments about The Great Communicator are interesting because in another article she claimed that Ronnie’s obsession with politics in his movie star days and long before he got to the White House was one of the main reasons for the breakup of their marriage though that is not to contradict her statement that Ronnie was a kindly man and certainly in that respect he did not on the face of it have a hard act in the White House to precede!
HI STEVE 1 My perspective of Jane Wyman’s career is that it was relatively short as that of a very top star. Until Johnny Belinda in 1948 she played 2nd fiddle or less to most other stars like Ann Sheridan and Betty Grable, was even 2nd billed to Dennis Morgan, himself no vertiginous box office star, and her career peaked in 1954/55 with the hits Magnificent Obsession and All that Heaven Allows both of which heralded in the Rock Hudson era of super stardom and possibly would not have been hits to the same extent without him.
2 Then the 3 movies she made immediately after All that Heaven Allows averaged only an adjusted $57 million each domestically and after that it was back to supporting roles again as in Disney’s 1960 Pollyanna in which Jane was 2nd billed to newcomer Brit “wonder child” the 14 year-old Hayley Mills.
3 However I welcome this video and I found much to admire in it and for me the best of the many slick posters were Cheyenne, Crime by Night, Lucy Gallant with Chuck, The Crowd Roars, Night and Day and Let’s Do It Again and I must make special mention of all the ones for So Big and the 2 Hudson flicks as those splendid posters are among ones which are unique to me.
4 My pick of the stills were the unusual “pin-up” one of young curvy Jane, her and my Greg, the astonishing one from Johnny Belinda and of course no Wyman pictorial would be complete without her and Mr President, though unfortunately nowadays when Jane is mentioned it is not for her own splendid achievements but as Ronnie’s one-time wife. Bet though Democrats later loved the title of the Wyman/Regan movie together “Brother Rat”! No WH page but for me this video was a good way to start the weekend and worth 97% as a measure the pleasure it gave me
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my Jane Wyman video, appreciate the rating, info and trivia. Glad you liked the posters and stills.
I wasn’t sure that was Wyman in the swimsuit photo so I had to double and triple check, it just seemed unusual to see her in that kind of pose and she had nice curves. I found a photo which I assume took place on the same day and shows another woman applying suntan lotion to her. If you go to google images and type in ‘jane wyman swimsuit’ that other photo is somewhere at the top and it does look like her.
There was a sequel to Brother Rat which I didn’t include, it was a low scorer.
Jane on winning her Oscar for Johnny Belinda – “I heard my name called and the first thing that came to my mind was ‘Did I or didn’t I put on my girdle tonight? Then I thought, ‘So what? Let it bounce.”
“Ask Ronnie the time and he’ll tell you how the watch was made.”
On Reagan’s death – “America has lost a great president, and a great, kind gentleman.”
Only one Wyman movie scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – The Lost Weekend, four others scored 9 – Johnny Belinda, Pollyanna, Larceny inc. and The Yearling.
More ladies in the coming week.
Hey Bob and Steve….so am guessing Steve’s latest video is on Jane Wyman….another actress that has been sitting on my request list for a very long time. I will have to catch up on Steve’s latest videos after I catch up on the comments here….which hopefully will be some time later tonight. Good feedback between the two of you….both entertaining and educational…what more can you want from a comment.