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.
In 1963 a coterie of A-list stars boarded a “celebrity plane” in Los Angeles and came to Washington in support civil rights.
Harry Belafonte, acting in concert with Martin Luther King, helped to arrange it, and the multi-racial cast of musicians, actors, movie directors, and other performers who answered the call constituted a virtual Hall of Fame of the American arts.
Just listing all the names of the celebrities who came to Washington for the 1963 civil rights march takes some doing. For example there was Sidney Poitier, who that year was the first African-American movie star to win an Oscar for best actor.
Poitier was hardly the only leading man on that plane. Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, and Joanne Woodward all came, as did Charlton Heston, who shone a bit brighter than the rest of the Hollywood crowd. He was taller than the others, sure, and he’d played Moses in the movies—but that wasn’t really it.
Heston had campaigned in 1956 for Adlai Stevenson against Eisenhower and in 1960 for Kennedy against Nixon . That was safe enough. But for those who made their living in the motion picture industry, the anti-communist congressional hearings in Washington and the purge of suspected party members in Hollywood had a deterrent effect on the political activities of filmmakers and actors.
Yet at the very same time, a great movement was building in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s—and many of the nation’s biggest motion picture stars wanted to lend their fame and faces to the cause. Charlton Heston was one of the first.
In May of 1961, Heston had picketed a segregated Oklahoma City lunch counter at a now-forgotten demonstration that was one of hundreds of such actions building up to the March on Washington.
The day of the ’63 march, the U.S. Information Agency filmed a roundtable discussion with Heston, Belafonte, Poitier, Brando, and prestigious writer James Baldwin.
Asked why HE is marching, Heston steals the scene. “Two years ago, I picketed some restaurants in Oklahoma, but with that one exception — up until very recently — like most Americans I expressed my support of civil rights largely by talking about it at cocktail parties,” he says. “But like many Americans this summer, I could no longer pay only lip service to a cause that was so urgently right, and in a time that is so urgently now.”
Marlon Brando became reclusive with depression for a short while after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King which caused Brando to turn down plum roles such as Buch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid; but Heston himself liked to say he supported the rights of racial minorities before it was fashionable in Hollywood—and upon his 2008 death African-American scholar Earl Ofari Hutchinson concurred: “He did,” Hutchinson said, “and we honour him for his monumental contributions to the civil rights movement.”
The Bob, Great comment.
HI BOB:
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
I hope all is going well on the domestic front for you.
When the natural world feels out of control, horror stories let us experience fear and, most importantly, release it. During the past 18 months we’ve collectively experienced more anxiety than we could ever have imagined, which ironically makes it fitting that our appetite for horror has increased. Anxious times demand anxious films.
Indie film-makers responded to the lockdowns by making horror films that reflected our mood: Ben Wheatley made the psychedelic earth-horror, Into the Earth, seeped in pandemic paranoia, and Rob Savage tapped into the horror of Zoom calls with Host.
Big franchise releases such as The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Spiral: From the Book of Saw and A Quiet Place Part II were pushed back to be released in cinemas, and did relatively well at the box office.
But none have broken records like Halloween Kills, the 12th instalment in the long-running franchise, which was released both in cinemas and online. The film dominated the box office in its first weekend in US cinemas, taking in more than $50m. Streaming service Netflix also joined in, uploading six of the Halloween films in time for the new release.
Is there something in the franchise that speaks to the moment we find ourselves in? There are only two constants in a true Halloween film: Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. The chief antagonist, Myers – in the 1978 film and in the reboots – is billed as The Shape. Nick Castle, who played him in John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s original, was directed to simply walk from A to B. No backstory. No emotion. No humanity. Myers has been subjected to endless attempts to bring him to an end, and yet he keeps on living, keeps on coming back to the same town, the same house.
And so does Strode, played since the original by Jamie Lee Curtis. While Myers remains an ageless shape hidden beneath the white William Shatner mask (in a fun touch, the mask ages), Strode has been carrying the burden of fear with her for 40 years. She is the beating heart of the films.
While Myers might be the empty void of evil, she is a complete human being, flawed, bruised and clinging on to life. When I interviewed Curtis, she talked about the vulnerability of her unexpected heroine: “We have wanted to take care of her all these years.”
The palpable dread in Curtis’s performance has transformed over the years into something more empathic, something that we can connect with more intensely now that we too have been afraid so intensely of the world around us and of unstoppable forces. Strode knows that no matter where she is, the possibility of Myers appearing is never gone. Fear is a certainty that Strode has to live with – as do we.
Being scared has become the default for a lot of us, and it can feel right to latch on to supernatural stories when the natural world feels so out of control. Myers is the shapeless, faceless bogeyman on to whom we project our own personal anxieties.
We can experience fear, and then most importantly the release of it, when we watch these films. The Halloween franchise always taunts us with the death of the bogeyman, but he’s never really defeated. And Strode still has to face him. That’s why we keep coming back to these films, because she reminds us that we need to keep facing our own fears head on.
By Anna Bogutskaya a film and TV critic, writer and broadcaster
Hi Bob, thanks for the recent posts on John Wayne, a good read as usual.
I understand how these things can put someone off an actor. I know Flora isn’t a John Wayne fan, I’m assuming because of his politics and white supremist ‘leanings’. But she still counts The Quiet Man among her favorites. I suppose some movies you’ve grown up with are hard to turn your back on when an actor turns out to be a ****.
These things don’t affect me at all. Unless the actor turns out to be an out and out monster I’ll still enjoy their films. I was disappointed that Charlton Heston was such a fanatical gun rights advocate but he still remains my favorite dead actor. Come to think of it I don’t have a favorite ‘live’ actor. But even Heston I wasn’t fan enough to seek out all his films and watch them like you and Flora do with your favorites.
I’ve never been a Woody Allen fan but if I was I dont think I’d let the controversy bother me and I’d still watch his films and enjoy them. The only film of his I’ve watched many times was Antz, an animation in which he voices the lead ‘ant’ very effectively. 🙂
HI STEVE: Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting reply. You say to me:
“I was disappointed that Charlton Heston was such a fanatical gun rights advocate but he still remains my favorite dead actor.”
At first I was only too pleased to accept this as Chuck is as you know one of my own all-time great favourites; then however it struck me that maybe he’s only your 2nd favorite dead actor when I remembered Jace!! [Steve sports that look of utter destain that only the English have trully-mastered!]
I should add that for my money whatever reservations one has about Chuck’s ‘gun-totin’ tendencies he compensated by being an avid Civil Rights enthusiast and he and Brando became good friends via their mutual participation in the marches and protests.
I also admire Chuck for his stand against McCarthyism and in Part 2 of this post I have reproduced for you if you are interested a copy of an article that expands on Chuck’s civil rights activities and his resistance to McCarthyism; and the article also illustrates how widely respected and valued Chuck was within the civil rights protest community.
Of course all that would have meant nothing to the young Bob of the 1950s and 1960s and indeed I became a Heston admirer via routine movies such as Pony Express/Arrowhead/The Naked Jungle BEFORE he became a mega-star and US national institution. In that respect I suppose I can be bracketed along with the guy who boasted “I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin!”
Anyway when I sent you that Duke material I half-apologised to you for not sending you something about Michael Myers it being Halloween and all that. I hope that I have remedied the situation by adding a part 3 to this post in case you haven’t caught-up with the article concerned. Please keep safe and enjoy the rest of your weekend. I look forward to whatever you have to offer next week.
CHARLTON HESTION AS CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND OPPONENT OF McCARTHYISM IN THE US
In 1963 a coterie of A-list stars boarded a “celebrity plane” in Los Angeles and came to Washington in support civil rights. Harry Belafonte, acting in concert with Martin Luther King, helped to arrange it, and the multi-racial cast of musicians, actors, movie directors, and other performers who answered the call constituted a virtual Hall of Fame of the American arts.
Just listing all the names of the celebrities who came to Washington for the 1963 civil rights march takes some doing. For example there was Sidney Poitier, who that year was the first African-American movie star to win an Oscar for best actor.
Poitier was hardly the only leading man on that plane. Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, and Joanne Woodward all came, as did Charlton Heston, who shone a bit brighter than the rest of the Hollywood crowd. He was taller than the others, sure, and he’d played Moses in the movies—but that wasn’t really it.
Heston had campaigned in 1956 for Adlai Stevenson against Eisenhower and in 1960 for Kennedy against Nixon. That was safe enough. But for those who made their living in the motion picture industry, the anti-communist congressional hearings in Washington and the purge of suspected party members in Hollywood had a deterrent effect on the political activities of filmmakers and actors. For example whilst Marlon Brando himself was too big to pull down over his perceived “lefty” activities his actress sister Jocelyn was blacklisted.
Yet at the very same time, a great movement was building in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s—and many of the nation’s biggest motion picture stars wanted to lend their fame and faces to the cause. Charlton Heston was one of the first.
In May of 1961, Heston had picketed a segregated Oklahoma City lunch counter at a now-forgotten demonstration against segregation by colour that was one of hundreds of such actions building up to the March on Washington. The day of the ’63 march, the U.S. Information Agency filmed a roundtable discussion with Heston, Belafonte, Poitier, Brando, and prestigious intellectual black writer James Baldwin.
Asked why HE is marching, Heston steals the scene. “Two years ago, I picketed some restaurants in Oklahoma, but with that one exception — up until very recently — like most Americans I expressed my support of civil rights largely by talking about it at cocktail parties,” he says. “But like many Americans this summer, I could no longer pay only lip service to a cause that was so urgently right, and in a time that is so urgently now.”
Heston himself liked to say he supported the rights of racial minorities before it was fashionable in Hollywood—and upon his 2008 death African-American scholar Earl Ofari Hutchinson concurred: “He did,” Hutchinson said, “and we honour him for his monumental contributions to the civil rights movement.”
HALLOWEEN’s MOST DYNAMIC DUO STRODE AND MYERS ‘SHAPE’ UP FOR THE YEAR’s SCARIEST TIME!
Dread is the modern condition – no wonder the Halloween franchise still resonates
Anna Bogutskaya
When the natural world feels out of control, horror stories let us experience fear and, most importantly, release it.
During the past 18 months we’ve collectively experienced more anxiety than we could ever have imagined, which ironically makes it fitting that our appetite for horror has increased. Anxious times demand anxious films.
Indie film-makers responded to the lockdowns by making horror films that reflected our mood: Ben Wheatley made the psychedelic earth-horror, Into the Earth, seeped in pandemic paranoia, and Rob Savage tapped into the horror of Zoom calls with Host.
Big franchise releases such as The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Spiral: From the Book of Saw and A Quiet Place Part II were pushed back to be released in cinemas, and did relatively well at the box office.
But none have broken records like Halloween Kills, the 12th instalment in the long-running franchise, which was released both in cinemas and online. The film dominated the box office in its first weekend in US cinemas, taking in more than $50m. Streaming service Netflix also joined in, uploading six of the Halloween films in time for the new release.
Is there something in the franchise that speaks to the moment we find ourselves in? There are only two constants in a true Halloween film: Laurie Strode and Michael Myers
The chief antagonist, Myers – in the 1978 film and in the reboots – is billed as The Shape. Nick Castle, who played him in John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s original, was directed to simply walk from A to B. No backstory. No emotion. No humanity. Myers has been subjected to endless attempts to bring him to an end, and yet he keeps on living, keeps on coming back to the same town, the same house.
And so does Strode, played since the original by Jamie Lee Curtis. While Myers remains an ageless shape hidden beneath the white William Shatner mask (in a fun touch, the mask ages), Strode has been carrying the burden of fear with her for 40 years. She is the beating heart of the films.
While Myers might be the empty void of evil, she is a complete human being, flawed, bruised and clinging on to life. When I interviewed Curtis, she talked about the vulnerability of her unexpected heroine: “We have wanted to take care of her all these years.”
The palpable dread in Curtis’s performance has transformed over the years into something more empathic, something that we can connect with more intensely now that we too have been afraid so intensely of the world around us and of unstoppable forces. Strode knows that no matter where she is, the possibility of Myers appearing is never gone. Fear is a certainty that Strode has to live with – as do we.
Being scared has become the default for a lot of us, and it can feel right to latch on to supernatural stories when the natural world feels so out of control. Myers is the shapeless, faceless bogeyman on to whom we project our own personal anxieties.
We can experience fear, and then most importantly the release of it, when we watch these films. The Halloween franchise always taunts us with the death of the bogeyman, but he’s never really defeated. And Strode still has to face him. That’s why we keep coming back to these films, because she reminds us that we need to keep facing our own fears head on.
Anna Bogutskaya is a film and TV critic, writer and broadcaster
Hi Bob, thanks for more interesting posts to read. So I take it John Wayne was highly unlikely to walk with Chuck & Mumbles at those civil rights marches. In the notorious interview with Playboy he mentions that he had no problem with black people living in America, but that they shouldn’t be given very important jobs. I wonder what he would have made of Obama being President?
It’s Halloween! I’m not a big fan of the Halloween series, but I did like the first one. I don’t read as much into it as the reviewer in your post does. In the sequel the killer Michael Myers turns out to be the brother of Jamie Lee Curtis character, nothing is really made of this connection, he doesn’t hesitate in trying to kill her. Myers is just a mindless killing machine. At least Freddy Krueger had a sense of humour.
I might watch one of my favorite horrors tonight – Night of the Demon (1958) Dana Andrews as the sceptical hero investigating a satanic cult.
There are 12 Halloween movies in its official franchise including this year’s Halloween Kills. That means that Michael Myers aka The Shape has ripped-off himself 11 times.
I can never understand why horror buffs continue to be fascinated by something so repetitive with the same central characters prancing about in the same house Halloween after Halloween.
Admittedly it could be argued that I am just as guilty when I am content to watch The Duke eternally rounding-up the bad guys in his westerns; but at least they are DIFFERENT villains in a variety of locations and settings-and they don’t especially come out at Halloween!
The franchise has been quite lucrative in terms of profit returns though and according to Wikipedia and the US Bureau of Labor Stats the 12 movies have collectively grossed worldwide earnings which have a purchasing power of $1.365 billion against an overall budget of $175 million when adjusted for inflation at today’s prices
That’s an average of $114 million per movie against a budget of $15 million each so that overall those 12 movies returned about 7.6 times their investment which is quite nice for what – in my perception at least – is a lot of nonsense though I see that you too are not a fan of the franchise. The latest rip-off Halloween Kills has grossed $97 million so far worldwide and its budget was just $20 million and it has been around for just a fortnight.
Anyway thanks for your own comments which I regularly find highly knowledgeable; and I wish you well in watching Night of the Demon as I have long been an admirer of Dana whom I find relaxing to watch.
Indeed I might do a bit of slumming and join you by watching Sorority Row all about another one of these characters who goes mad slashing all around him in a sorority house with the virgins as his special target – where do these guys get their detailed information from? I’ll probably laugh at it as I’ve given up looking for another intelligent horror film it ever since Hitch dies but I like watching the ladies.
There is another one on tonight called “Terrifier” and here are the production notes on it. “A homicidal clown goes on a bloody rampage especially targeting 3 beautiful young girls and he slaughters anyone who tries to get in his way.” A lot of your old mates like Freddie, Mother Bates and The Creature from The Black lagoon are also coming out of the woodwork of tonight’s horror channels
STEVE:
My Parts 2 and 3 have been marked SPAM and held back. Maybe they’ll show up later.
HI STEVE: As Halloween approaches I am sure that you would like me to have sent you something about that seemingly-irrepressible bore Michael Myers.
But the fact is that you have been so generous to me lately in sending me loads of trivia about The Duke for my personal memorabilia collection that I thought that I could return the favour by copying to you a lengthy article which a relative of mine has just sent me and which might be of passing interest to you.
The relative concerned is a great movie buff who is aware of my own tastes just as you are familiar with them – except that HE respects my preferences! Oft have he and I sat together, a large supply of hankies at the ready, weeping bucketloads over the likes of All that Heaven Allows and It’s a Wonderful Life!
You will see that in a nutshell the article conveys the author’s dislike of Big John’s politics but admires him as a movie star. You are probably aware that such is my own stance concerning The Duke:
Not all of his political views would be my own but I love his screen persona and his movies and regard him as being among a handful of exceptional entertainment Legends such as Elvis/Bogie/Mumbles/Chaplin/Monroe/Sinatra/Olivier and Hitchcock who stand-out among even other Greats. MEGA-“ORIGINALS” as performersin my book.
Whilst I say that John and I would not have agreed on a number of political issues -though I wouldn’t have told him that [at least not before ducking!] – I like to think that The Duke too would have been a Brexit supporter just as Sir Maurice is.
After all to its enthusiasts Brexit is about the kind of thing Wayne professed to believe in above all others: a democratic nation’s right to exercise its own sovereignty.
As the article is long I have for easy reading by you split it into 5 separate posts though nothing is missing from the original article.
FIVE. Americans don’t want to just kick ass, they want to dictate the terms. Wayne’s characters often did both. It’s also no accident that he was often settling scores. Americans like to see the tit for tat. Our very un-Western support of capital punishment is a reflection of a basic eye-for-eye philosophy at the heart of the American ethos.
Ironically in another Ford classic, Fort Apache (1948), Wayne’s character is the one who cautions restraint and urges negotiations with nearby tribes while the real-life liberal Henry Fonda plays a Custer-like officer who wants to charge in and fight. Today the movie can and has been seen as a metaphor for U.S. adventures in Vietnam and Iraq.
John Wayne is a seminal character in my film watching experience and a supporting player in my political development. Thankfully I’ve matured enough, at long last, that I can separate the two.
Hey Bob. As always you have written a well-thought-out comment to Steve’s latest video. I hope your 80s are treating you well so far. I’ve missed talking movies here at UMR, oh how I missed my first retirement. Debbie recently broke her wrist, but has not stopped her from traveling, thankfully she comes back home tonight. Hope your families doing well too
HI BRUCE: Thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear about Debbie. Please give her my regards and tell her I hope -as I’m sure other regulars of this site do – that she is OK for the Thanksgiving/Christmas celebrations.
Steve’s westerns series has been going great guns -no pun intended! – but he is fast running out of steam as gradually post-1960s the western ceased to be one of the standard main genres from Hollywood and you will see that to put together a decent 1980s westerns video Steve had to include the output from the entire decade in just one video.
I’ve said before that your site and Steve’s tend to be “harbingers”: no sooner does a topic appear on one of them than something related to the same subject surfaces elsewhere. You’d almost think that Dan was pulling the strings!
For example a few weeks ago I sent Steve some material collected from a number of professional sources and simply cogged together by me. Bearing out W o C’s “Curse of 39” statistical survey, it showed how the average age of the romantic female co-stars of ‘old-timers’ like Al Leach/Gable/Joel McCrea etc was on average almost a quarter of a century younger than those Greats were in the 1955-66 period when the latter were all getting on a good bit.
For example in one movie McCrea’s father-in-law was 4 years younger than Joel; in another King Clark’s prospective one was a whopping 7 years younger than Gable; and in Operation Petticoat Al Leach’s romantic interest and ultimate wife Joan O’Brien was young enough to be Archie’s daughter, aged 23 to Archibald’s 55. And lo and behold a few evenings later Joan surfaced in a Perry Mason rerun [1960’s The Case of the Singing Skirt] showing us again what a lovely young woman she was in her heyday. She is actually still alive aged 85. Steve tells me that at 88 Sir Maurice can no longer walk and has to be given permanently-sitting-down parts.
Anyway please keep safe and in the meantime (1) how’s your 3rd book coming along? I’ve looked out for it but haven’t seen it flagged up – but then these old eyes you know! Your first 2 books sit alongside Joel’s on my bookshelf and I was thinking that if your new one could join that shelf I would have to demote Hirsch’s to a lower shelf! (2) more importantly how is your mother progressing?
Sorry to read about Debbie’s injury Bruce. I hope she gets well soon.