We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
HI STEVE 1. Although at times Gloria Graham would be the leading lady in movies there is only three very minor movies in which she was the out-and-out lead so overall I would categorise her as a supporting actress. Among the smaller fry she probably stood out because she was overtly sexual on the screen which was epitomised by her singing of the song “I’m just a girl who can’t say no” in the musical Oklahoma.
2 It seems that her private life to a degree reflected her on-screen persona. She was married to Nicholas Ray who directed her in what was perhaps her finest role as Bogie’s lover in the 1950 film In a Lonely Place though she won a supporting actress Oscar for the Bad and the Beautiful ans a supporting nomination for Crossfire. However during that marriage Nicholas found her in bed with his 13 year old son Tony by a previous marriage and that led to scandal and ultimately to a divorce. However around decade later Tony and Gloria did the decent thing when they themselves married.
3 To a large extent your posters and stills well reflect that overt sexuality that I mentioned and overall my pick of the very best were Blood and Lace, Naked Alibi, Roughshod, The Good Die Young, the 1st of the 2 for Not as a Stranger, The Big Heat and par excellence both of the ones for Sudden Fear showcasing my Joan.
4 A particularly stunning run of stills in this one and I would highlight the 1st solo of Gloria, the one of her again alone from The Cobweb, the one with Bogie from the aforementioned In a Lonely Place and definitely collector’s items for me are the two with my Glenn and the one of Gloria and Chuck – is the latter an informal off-film photograph? Overall one of your almost “top of the class” presentations earning 97% rating from me.
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my Gloria Grahame video, appreciate the rating and info. Glad you liked the pictorial aspects of the presentation.
Yeah Gloria Grahame has been in the papers recently, thanks to a new movie that’s just come out – Films Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool – starring Annette Bening as Grahame. There are echoes of the Woody Allen scandal in your Grahame story.
Yes she did play support in a lot of films but she was still the lead female in movies like The Big Heat, In a Lonely Place, Human Desire and Crossfire. She may not have been billed first but she was definitely ‘the leading lady’. She was even billed before Shirley Jones in Oklahoma, I’m assuming because Jones was a fresh new face on screen?
Two of Grahame’s films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – In a Lonely Place and It’s a Wonderful Life. Four scored 9 including The Bad and the Beautiful.
Looking at my chart and in billing terms – In a Lonely Place – was the highest rated film in which she was the leading lady.
HI STEVE
1 As always I’ve been looking forward to your feedback on my Gloria Grahame post and have not been disappointed by the contents of your response. In line 2 para 1 of the post “is only” should be “are only” and in line 1 Grahame is spelt wrong. D**n that mischievous Work Horse for not giving us the self-correction facility that he once promised but anyway my apologies to you for my errors. [There is though still alive an American called Gloria Graham who is an artist in visual pursuits such as painting]
2 I’m afraid we are going to have to agree to disagree about Gloria’s status and in response to the specific points that you make I would reply that Shirley Jones too was not a major star and all of Gloria’s acting nominations and her Oscar win were in the supporting actress category. I will send you in a separate post a sample list of Gloria movies from across her career which in addition my other points strongly suggest to me that Gloria was not a star of the 1st rank.
3 However a performer doesn’t have to be the latter to be still reasonably important and useful and Gloria was certainly that at least for a relatively short while
.
4 Anyway there is of course no correlation between a star’s status and the quality of the pictorials for his/her movies and as I have already suggested a whole run of those in Gloria’s video were corkers in my opinion
Steve:
EXAMPLES of GLORIA GRAHAME’S BILLING
1 1947. It’s a Wonderful Life. Well down in the cast list and not billed with the stars. Donna Reed leading lady.
2 1947 Crossfire. Not billed above the title with the 3 male stars.
3 1949 Roughshod 4th billed to actors like Robert Sterling who themselves were not major stars.
4 1950 In a Lonely Place. Bogie billed alone above title.
5 1952. Macao. Not billed above the title with the 3 stars. Jane Russell leading lady
6 Greatest Show on Earth. Billed 5th. Hutton and Lamour were the more famous leading ladies.
7 1952. Bad and The Beautiful Not billed with the stars above the title. Lana leading lady.
8 1953 Glass Wall. Billed 2nd to the unimportant Vittorio Gassman
9 1955. The Cobweb. Billed 4th. Bacall leading lady.
10 Back to 1945 and Without Love and Gloria was not mentioned among the main cast and Katie Hep and Lucille Ball were the leading females.
After 1955 Gloria’s big screen faded away.
Thanks for the detailed reply, but Bob, Gloria doesn’t have to be top billed to be a ‘leading lady’ or does she? Where’s John when you need him? 😉
Gloria was the lead actress in a bunch of those films doesn’t that merit some distinction, or will she have to make do with ‘token female’?
Lots of good stuff here Bob….thanks for sharing it.
Gotta agree with Steve on this one. Bases on Bob’s thinking there are only 5 to 10 leading actresses ever….but I have no problem agreeing to disagree with him on this thought.
Thanks for backing me up Bruce. Bob is very protective of the half dozen or so acting divas he adores. Despite being the only woman in most of those films he refuses to acknowledge Gloria Grahame as any sort of leading lady. He doesn’t want her placed in the same category as Bette and Joan, or even Doris.
HI STEVE
1 If there was another important star or stars in the movie male or female Gloria’s part was subordinate. In Big Heat for example she was the leading lady. but Glenn Ford was by far the main character.
2 As Melvyn Douglas explained there was a strict pecking order in Hollywood and Gloria was well down it. Her status in my view was B list in lead roles and supporting actress for other roles whereas the likes of Katie Hep and Doris Day were A list stars whose roles were usually at least equal in importance to other performers in their movies.
Within the studio system Gloria would have had little or no clout whereas the likes of Crawford and Davis could and did take on the studios on occasions.
3 Finally don’t be fooled by the fact that Bruce throws bucket loads of grosses at stars of Gloria’s status who couldn’t actually carry a movie on their own and would rarely be allowed to. Anyway hope u enjoy remainder of weekend.
HI STEVE 1 I should have explained in my previous post that film historians seem to regard supporting players as not just performers who play secondary roles in movies but who are also kept in reserve by the studios to play leads in lower prestige movies that will never be assigned to any of the bigger stars.
2 It is said that at Columbia Harry Cohn before casting a picture would check the most recent grosses of his stars and as he was worried that Rita Hayworth might be too old for Salome he did that before he assigned her that role.
3 The old studio moguls would never have given a performer of Gloria’s lesser stature credit for the earnings of big pictures like Not as a Stranger, Bad and the Beautiful, and Greatest Show on Earth in the way that Bruce does though her supporting Oscar success in the Turner film would have helped Gloria get more supporting parts or lesser lead roles.
4 The 1954 Naked Alibi is the movie that fronts your Grahame video and Gloria is the female lead. But that movie was a B movie running 86 minutes in length and its male lead Sterling Hayden was not a star. Also it was placed on the 2nd half of a double bill here in Belfast with Joel McCrea’s Black Horse Canyon [1954] which Bruce’s McCrea chart credits with a paltry gross of $22.9 million.
5 Sterling Hayden had the same B list/supporting actor status in Gloria’s time as Richard Conte. Both had supporting roles in The Godfather which would have been like an Indian summer for them and Conte was pleased to give interviews about his good fortune. At that time the likes of Pacino and Caan were not major players and in an interview Conte said that the startling thing about Godpop’s success was that there were no real stars in it. The he hastily added “Except one of course!”
“In her heyday Grahame was one of Hollywood’s hottest properties, a bona fide bombshell, the star of some of the biggest movies of the era, an Academy Award winner and a fixture of the gossip pages. She made a name for herself playing gangsters’ molls or women with morals which, if not exactly loose, might be described as generously cut.
The Hollywood that she had arrived in was at the height of its Golden Age and Gloria soon became one of its brightest stars. She radiated an air of mystery, glamour and unpredictability that made her perfect for the noirs the dream factories were crafting, and it was in these films that she really came into her own.
She appeared opposite the biggest male stars of the age, often as the vampish femme fatale who ends up derailing their lives. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Crossfire (1947) opposite Robert Mitchum. In Sudden Fear (1952) she was Jack Palance’s seductive partner in crime. And in the scene for which she is probably best remembered she had scalding coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin in the king of the noir Fritz Lang’s classic The Big Heat in 1953.
Her seductive ambiguity was her greatest asset. “She is both unfathomable and ungraspable,” the critic Judith Williamson wrote of her performance in Human Desire, in which she starred alongside Glenn Ford in 1954. “She slips through the film like a drop of loose mercury. Elusive as a cat, she is the focus of terrible actions, but unknowable herself.”
Hey Bob….interesting information…especially the part if Harry checking the latest grosses before casting…definitely a case of what have you done for me lately.
Hey Joel Lensman….excellent breakdown of Gloria’s career. This of course got me thinking I should share my thoughts too.
“Gloria Graham was Hollywood’s Best tramp. Her characters excluded a tawdry insolence that taunted and was often punished. Bogart tried to strangle her, Broderick Crawford succeeded, and Lee Marvin disfigured her face with scalding coffee,”
We do agree on her best performance….as we both think it occurred in It’s A Wonderful Life.
Hey Steve…interesting that Annette Bening is playing Graham….that is news to me….I will have to do some research on that one. Thanks for the info.
Hey Bob and Steve….I will have to check out Steve’s latest videos when I get home tonight….as for a Gloria Graham…..gotta go with The Big Heat as my favorite movie of hers.
BRUCE
For once I can’t argue with you because for me it’s a toss up between that one and In a Lonely Place with Big Heat probably getting the thumbs up on a fine balance because my idol Glenn is in it along with the sister of another one of my idols. By the way I take it you’re feeling completely well again and are fighting fit to once more torture us all with Joel?
The Big Heat and Lonely Place are good choices but I gotta go with It’s a Wonderful Life as my favorite from Grahame’s filmography. Her star power really shone thru in that one. Donna Reed was good too.
Feeling better….but very very busy….between work….school events….the upcoming holidays at this little site that is starting to really really grow.
HI BRUCE
Good news about your health. I once read a story called The Happy Victim and it seems to me that you are now the happy victim of this site’s success!
2 Certainly I can only repeat that even Joel cannot spoil the pleasure and use that I get out of Cogerson. As one historian said about Jeff Chandler whose looks were a Godsend to romantic adventures of the 1950s I you hadn’t come along I would have wanted somebody to invent you
3 Indeed I’m beginning to think Steve is an invention because it is crazy to think that a “man born of woman” could equate Miss Grahame with my Doris or Joan.
Hey Bob….thanks for the good wishes….back and better than ever. Yesterday was a monster day here at UMR…..one of our best view days…without a major reason….usually it takes a Chris Pratt twitter share or some other major event to produce such epic numbers we saw yesterday.
STEVE/BRUCE 1 STEVE Thanks for the great array of viewing stats and the link. You should be proud of those wonderful figures which are a tribute to your fine work. Also as charity begins at home I am personally pleased with them as they vindicate my own taste in being addicted to your videos and posters and I was delighted at my Greg getting a fine showing though Flora might be miffed with you for leaving him out in the first place!
2 I will send in a further post my Alice Faye stats table updated to include in capitals the 3 extra Alice Faye flicks I identified in Bruce’s massive greatest musical pages. Sorry I said 4 previously but that was a slip of the pen – and there was I loftily lecturing you about stats!
3 Although Alice’s final feature film was in 1978 she did appear in a documentary about Carmen Miranda in 1995 in view of her screen association with Carmen. It was called Bananas is my Business but I’m sure that even that stats fruitcake WH wouldn’t credit THAT movie to Alice’s grosses.
4 WH does though at times throw the grosses around as if they were confetti at a wedding – for example on his musicals pages he credits the massive Alexander’s Ragtime Band to Frederick Austerlitz. However who am I to cast stones? as in an earlier post to Bruce I shaved 9 years off my Laddie’s already relatively short life and anyway maybe Fred passed the set or phoned another actor on it when the film was being shot!
BRUCE 5. Nice of you to refer to Steve and me as The Man though my heart leapt at first as I thought you were calling me The Thin Man and if that had been the case you know who The Woman for me would have been. However as the accolade was shared with Steve I wouldn’t have minded us being referred to as The Men as a tribute to that 1950 movie.
STEVE/BRUCE
Alexander’s Ragtime Band [Don Ameche] $384.4million
In Old Chicago [Don Ameche] $332.7
HELLO FRISCO HELLO $ [Co-star John Payne] $280.1
THE GANG’s ALL HERE [Co-star Carmen Miranda] $$207.00
Rose of Washington Square [Tyrone Power] $185.4
Tin Pan Alley [Betty Grable] $176.5
WEEKEND IN HAVANA [C-star Carmen Miranda] $174.4
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*
TOTAL ALL 21 MOVIES $3.19 billion Average $152 million
TOTAL18 HEYDAY MOVIES ONLY $3.08 billion Average $171 million
Thanks Bob, those old musicals were very profitable for the studio and considering how much they cost. No wonder MGM and Fox were churning them out.
MGM was the biggest studio in the classic era, followed by 20th Century Fox? Than it was WB followed by Paramount? Universal and Columbia were small in comparison though they became huge later. Thanks to Spielberg, Universal had Jaws, ET and Jurassic Park each movie the biggest hit of all time when released. Fox had two ‘biggest hits of all time ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Star Wars’. Not sure but was Paramounts The Godfather briefly the most successful movie of all time?
HI STEVE: 1 Good rundown of the relative power of the studios. Godpop was hailed by Variety and other sources as the highest grossing movie of all time in 1972/73 but that was a huge misnomer for several reasons:
(1) The Variety chart only dealt in rentals and Godpop was initially able to extract from the cinemas a 63% rental which was a much higher share of rentals than normal. The actual grosses of films like GWTW, Sound of Music and even The Sting in 1972/73 exceeded the Godfather but their lower rental shares prevented them from reflecting their true status in the Variety chart.
(2) For example in that period Variety showed US rentals of $86 million for Godpop and $79 million for Sting whereas in the period concerned The Sting grossed around $150-160 million and the Godpop about $135 million.
(3) Indeed Bruce’s very excellent table on Olivia De Havilland;s page demonstrates the position with GWTW which between release and 1972 garnered $150 million in actual grosses but only around $67 million in actual rentals therefore exceeding the Godfather in terms of actual grosses but below it in actual rentals. Bruce’s total rentals figure for GWTW in the 1939-72 period accord s exactly with the Variety chart at the time.
(4) Variety’s charts didn’t adjust for inflation and when that was done films like GWTW, Sound of Music and Chuck’s Ben Hur and 10 Commandments by far exceeded the Godfather as again Bruce has demonstrated on Olivia De Havilland’s page.and I think that even The Graduate had grossed more that Godpop by 1972 when inflation is taken into account..
(5) Also of course foreign grosses have to be taken into account before one can definitively say which movie has outgrossed which and not only was that information not available for the most part if at all in 1972 especially for older films but it’s hard to get such information today for older films.
(6) Indeed Bruce’s site is still the only one that I know that publishes worldwide figures for classic era films to any great extent in a comprehensive manner but of course whilst he is nowadays all things to all men and a legend in his time as the Sammy Davis song says in 1972 Bruce would have been about 5 years old I think and wasn’t around for us then. However he is entitled to say to us as Gene Hackman said in the 1991 Class Action “Well I’m here now.”
Hey Bob/Steve…this UMR website has lots of information on box office grosses….I will have to come here more often…lol. Good work researching all of these movies.
GOOD AFTERNOON MR JOEL LENSMAN 1 We are surprised that ANYBODY on this site has the inclination to look at ANYTHING else but your latest post which to our mind for all its grandiose verbose completely overstates Gloria Grahame’s impact and is at best hyperbole. Still the piece is so outlandish that it’s fascinating and we can’t take our eyes off it as it is kinda like the journalistic equivalent of Ed Wood’s movie Plan 9 from Outer Space
2 Wikipedia sees Miss Grahame;s heyday as being from 1949 until 1955 after which it went into sharp decline. These are the films that she made in that period in which she could be regardes as the leading lady. The figures are your Disciple’s
IN a Lonely Place/gross $70.8 million
The Big Heat/$54.6
The Man who Never Was/49.4
Human Desire/$43.0
Man on a Tightrope/34.9
OVERALL GROSS $250 million/average $50.4 million
Even the highest grossing one on the table the excellent In a Lonely Place lost money according to Wikipedia
3. In the period concerned Miss Grahame made 3 other, irrelevant movies in which she could be said to have the leading female role -The Glass Wall, Prisoner of the Casbah and Roughshod. Wikipedia gives no income figures for them which suggests they were not good grossers and indeed Wiki does emphasise that the 1947 Roughshod lost the studio $550,000 which is about 6 million dollars today.
5 If you can demonstrate to us how the foregoing summary reflects that Miss Grahame was “one of Hollywood’s properties” then “You’re a better man than I am Gunga Din,” or had they all gone mad in Tinsel Town during Gloria’s brief 8 year heyday? in the same period 1949-1955 Miss Doris Day churned out a remarkable total of 18 movies and she was the leading lady in 14 of them which have a total Cogerson Gross of $1.83 billion which averages out at $131 million dollars each. Now there WAS a lady who was “one of Hollywood’s hottest properties.”
MR JOEL LENSMAN:
1 We were so stunned by the breathtaking sweeping statements in your own post that we regrettably made a few typing errors. Roughshod was a 1949 and not 1947 film.
2 Also Miss Grahame’s heyday was according to Wiki just 6 years [1949-1955] and not 8 years. Your own fondness for hyperbole sadly sucks us all into exaggerating.
“Hollywood legend Gloria Grahame is a film noir icon who hit the sweet spot with audiences and directors, and epitomised the femme fatale in the Golden Age of Hollywood’s greatest, grittiest films
Grahame’s career was about more than her looks. She was talented and a consummate professional – she learned the dialogue, hit her spots and figured the backstory to every character she portrayed – and she was mercurial and method, as displayed in a scene from The Greatest Show On Earth, where she learned to fill Charlton Heston’s pipe as if she’d done it all her life.
Every character into which she breathed life was rooted in a reality that was almost palpable. In her role as flirty Violet Bick in It’s A Wonderful Life, Grahame’s simple gesture of bringing her hand to her mouth lets the audience feel her joy at George and Mary’s honeymoon departure as well as a fleeting inner sorrow that she remains unmarried.
Grahame was genuine, which is why the audience – and those who came into contact with her – fell instantly in love. Her lack of guile, her focus on the upbeat and ability to be in the moment made her performances shine with more depth, brilliance and life than many of her peers. As Annette Bening says of playing her: “She had a presence on screen… When you watch her you feel like there’s an inner life going on and that is what is compelling.”
MR JOEL LENSMAN
1 What audiences? Miss Doris Day’s Pillow Talk alone grossed far more than did combined all 5 films mentioned in our last post as the virtual extent of Miss Graham’s box office in leading roles in her heyday.
2 It’s all very well to make sweeping hyperbolic statements as you do but proper analysts deal in facts and the latter in Miss Grahame’s case support only a profile of a performer who was a modest success and a good actress.
3 Perhaps you are making your pupil’s mistake of crediting to a lesser star like Miss Gloria Grahame the massive audiences drawn to prestige pictures by mega stars such as Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Olivia DeHavilland and Robert Mitchum.
4 You mention that Miss Benning says that Miss Grahame had “a massive presence”. Well to paraphrase Miss Mandy Rice Davis when giving evidence about the British government Profumo scandal in 1963 Miss Benning who’s playing Miss Grahame “would say that, wouldn’t she?” Facts! dear Mr Joel Lensman. Facts!
Every movie book I own has Gloria Graham listed…..that is not always the case….she made her mark in movies…..so I agree…..that she had a massive presence….plus a factor you are not talking about is her marriage to Nicholas Ray and later to Ray’s son…which was her 2nd and 4th marriage. Her public life reminds me of Anjelina Jolie….is Jolie a great actress?….maybe, maybe not….but she is treating by the tabloids as the biggest star in the world….kind of like Elizabeth Taylor. Just my two cents.
Based on Bob’s argument…Doris Day would not be a leading lady….if you look at her billings….she is not top billed in many of her movies….even her biggest hit she took second billing to Rock Hudson….not to mention…taking a backseat to Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Jack Carson, Clark Gable and even Ronald Reagan in Storm Warning….granted she top Frank Sinatra, James Cagney (in their second movie together), Jack Lemmon and Richard Widmark. You know….this almost sounds like the same conversation about somebody with the intials…M.L. In mind if you are the female lead….you are a leading lady. I would argue more…but even though I have spent 4 hours on comments…I am still about 20 comments behind…and the work week starts in another 8 hours.
I have to agree with Bruce here, doesn’t matter if you’re not top-billed if you’re the lead female on any film than you’re the leading lady. Myrna Loy was the leading lady on all those top Hollywood money-makers. Dame Joan Collins was the leading lady in Land of the Pharaohs. [Bob shudders]
HI STEVE
1 But Steve billing was just one of the points in my argument and it DOES in fact matter because billing equates to perceived status within the film industry, but the 5 movies that I listed in which Gloria was the leading lady all failed at the box office and that and not her billing in those one whilst never 1st never first was not the main issue.
2 Also when there was another important female like Turner in the movie Grahame was never the lead and even in Oklahoma where she was 2nd billed to Gordon MacRae newcomer Shirley Jones [in her first movie] had the lead female role and IMDB’s cast list reflects that by billing Shirley 2nd. Indeed all the posters for Oklahoma highlighted Shirley more than Gloria including your own. Wikipedia’ current poster shows just Gordon and Shirley.
3 The most striking example though is the 1952 Macao halfway through Gloria’s 6-year heyday where Mitchum, Jane Russell and Bill Bendix [Laddie’s virtual employee and NOT a star] were all billed above the title and Gloria was mentioned among the also rans in small letters below the title where even character actor Thomas Gomez was billed before her “Check it out!”
4 Put it this way if Gloria was one of Hollywood’s “hottest properties” in her short mayfly-type career all of those below her must have frozen to death! However maybe being near Chuck when his pipe was alight kept Gloria warm!
Hey Bob and Steve…finally watched Steve’s Gloria Graham video…..it is now shared here……I had forgotten all about Bad and the Beautiful…..another great movie of hers. The video has now been included into this page.
Steve – thanks for the back up.
Bob – I see your points…and they are good ones……but……disagree with your final judgement on Gloria Grahame. She is in the large group of stars below the legends……but that group is so far ahead of so many actors and actresses.
HI BRUCE
1 I agree with you that Alice’s legend didn’t outlast her heyday in the way that Ameche’s and especially Jolson’s did. However it seems that during that “mayfly” heyday she was one of those stars who was universally popular like my ladies Doris and Deanna in their time and your Cary Grant.
2 My male idols like the Duke and Mumbles on the other hand could be highly divisive.
In the Duke’s case it was usually his perceived hawkish politics and at times screen persona which some saw as a bullying one on occasions though of course overall he was possibly the most popular movie star ever, Gable not accepted and Chaplin possibly the only contender.
3 Mumbles’ acting style and his social attitudes [such as telling my Joan that he would only agree to her offer** to co-star with him if she played his mother] seem to have put many people off him so that Spencer Tracy and James Cagney seem to have had a venomous hatred of him whereas Nicholson revered him and Fonda and Jack Lemmon loudly sang his praises. It seems the wider audiences also found him a divisive figure because the famous film historian David Shipman opined “Brando was never fashionable.”
**She originally asked her agent to try to get him for the eventual Cliff Robertson part in the 1956 Autumn Leaves. She didn’t play Cliff’s mother but his lover 19 years older that the 33 year old Robertson! However Mumbles’ refusal was my loss because it would been great to have seen two of my all-time favourite idols acting together and it was a passably good movie with you for example giving it a respectable 76% rating.
Hey Bob…..neither Alice or Fay made Joel’s book….which as much as you do not like his writings…he did do a good job of including most of the stars pre-1980s. I agree for a nice period of time she was popular….and one day I will finish the work you started and get a Alice done.
Thanks for more background on Mr. Brando. I agree that would have been a great screen team to watch. Shame it did not happen. Good stuff.
Steve and Bob
1. Great back and forth between the two of you.
2. So with Steve doing the critic reviews….and Bob doing the box office….now all you two need is the Oscar nominations and Oscar wins and you can make your own Alice Faye page. I feel like you guys are pushing me off to the side……lol.
3. Seriously….glad our pages are able to give people (in this case Bob) a way to research different things…in this case…Alice Faye….finding almost half of movies is….I think….pretty impressive.
4. I will include Alice….on our request page….to see just how many of her movies are already out there….but I think Bob has done a great job of finding most of them.
5. Once again…thanks for sharing your movie thoughts….both of you are…..”The Man”.
STEVE – A question.
1 Am just marking time until you produce your next video or until The All Seeing One [hopefully!] responds to my Janet Leigh post. First I recall one of those “mad scientist” movies in which the “Frankenstein” creative inventor is looking for a subordinate genius to help him with his unorthodox research programme so he secretly feels out a number of candidates that he has identified as potentials and in his disappointment about one for whom he had high hopes says “Oh, I was mistaken about you. I thought you were creative but you are only interpretive.”
2 That’s my long winded way of saying that when your are a stats buff like me [something that you sadly would no nothing about!] it is quite easy to pull together something that somebody like Bruce has painstakingly done all the hard and truly necessary work on.. Before he came on the scene all I could have thrown at you were a limited number of Variety rentals and for reasons we have discussed before on this site would have been inconclusive and certainly not comprehensive. Nowadays Bruce repeatedly demonstrates that I was for a long time in a fool’s paradise about the true extent of many movies’ box office performances and in my comparisons of one stars box office achievements compared with those of another
3 However it is said that you can share in the accolades if you are allowed to “sit on a Great Man’s shoulders” [ie get some reflected glory] which is again my long winded way of saying that I am merely a Cogerson cheerleader in the way that HE is a cheerleader for Joel and he would never dream of taking personal credit for the pearls of wisdom from Joel that Our Leader hands down to us.
4 A “health warning” though , WH may have more stats already on this site than I have been able to pick up and for example as Alice was a great musical star there could be some of her grosses lurking on Bruce’s massive Musicals pages which have a wealth of detail about the stats for musicals.
5 Now to my question – whilst generally speaking you are a Stats Grinch you must surely take a keen interest in the stats for your own video views so can you list for me say your Top 5 or 10 highest viewed presentations? And please note that this is not just a”cunning plan” as Baldrick said in TV’s Blackadder to suck you into stats presentations!
STOP PRESS – I have now identified 4 other Faye hits on WH’s musical page but for which Bruce has not provided pages for Alice’s co-stars in those flicks but there may still be others there or elsewhere that I haven’t picked up and we will again just have to be patient and wait for The Wizard of Oz to reveal more of his secrets.
Hi Bob, my most viewed video on that channel is –
2010-2015 Sci-Fi – Top 30 Highest Rated Movies – which has accumulated 590,500 views thus far. I don’t know why that took off the way it did.
Of the actor videos the most popular currently are –
Keira Knighley – 121,911
Sharon Stone – 77,206
Errol Flynn – 36,547
Burt Lancaster – 32,091
Megan Fox – 31,085
Rachel McAdams – 22,393
Audie Murphy – 20,801
Chris Evans – 19,386
Stewart Granger – 15,311
Anthony Quinn – 15,164
Angelina Jolie – 15,026
Tyrone Power – 11,410
Glenn Ford – 9,996
Joel McCrea – 8,020
If you go to the home page of my channel there is a button marked ‘Videos’ under the title – Top 10 Charts – if you click on that there is a full page of video links with the most recent video on the top left, if you click on ‘date added (newest)’ link at the top right it also gives you the option to view the most popular videos on that channel. I hope that helps.
Forgot to include – Gregory Peck – 17,599
Hey Steve….I was going to share my Peck total as well…..but it seems my view counter is missing….wonder where it went? WoC says she has nothing to do with it….I guess it was tired of hanging out here…lol. I do know my Peck page has over 40k page.
Hey Steve.
1. Thanks for sharing some of your video stats.
2. Your SciFi video has surpassed my top view getting page….Pixar vs DreamWorks…..so congrats on that.
3. Looking at your Top Viewed movies….I feel a little better about my You Tube channel….which I do not do much with….but my McQueen video has 64k views and my B. Davis has over 50k views. Maybe I should do some more videos.
4. I did my Elizabeth Swan page …when I saw how popular your video page was…but it has not been a big view getter for me….so I was not able to capture the Keira magic you did.
Lots of numbers…love it!