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.
IMDB credits Senta with 20 acting awards and 6 nominations.
Best POSTERS for my money in your video are (1) When Women had Tails (2) De Sade (3) 2nd one for Swiss Conspiracy (4) Ambushers (5) sexy one for Bang Bang You’re Dead (6) foreign language one for Scarlet Letter (7) raunchy one for Nest of Joels (8) the entire set for Spy with My Face (9) Treasure of San Genaro (10) foreign language one for Cast a Giant Shadow (11) 1st one for Major Dundee (12) 2nd one for Cross of Iron and (13) one that I have not seen before for my Richard’s The Secret Ways.
That Widmark movie has particularly strong memories for me as I went to see it just a few days before I crossed to England to join the Royal Air Force in 1961
The STILLS I most enjoyed are (1)lobby card for Women Had Tails (2) Sherlock Holmes (3) The Ambushers (4) with Robert Vaughn (5) lobby card for Glory Guys (6) with Kirk (7) in Quiller (8) Senta in the water! (9) unusual one of her with Finney and (10) Senta and Louis Jordan.
Louis was a great Mr Mumbles fan saying about the latter “HE is OUR Don Quixote forever tilting at windmills in an attempt to bring us actors something fresh and new.”
A solid profile of a very successful actress despite its brevity – 97% rated.
Senta Berger has been acting on stage, screen and television for 64 years now from 1955 until the present. Her first film was 1959’s The Journey with Deb Kerr and Brynner and her most recent one is the 2016 German comedy Welcome to Germany in which she is top billed. I have no worldwide or US stats for it but it grossed $20 million in Germany alone so she can be said to be still going strong.
She has never received any Master attention or [so far] Work Horse love but has managed to accumulate a reported net worth of a staggering $83 million over her long career so she can claim to be one of those actresses who have been enormously successful despite not being an out and out Hollywood megastar.
I have seen too few of her movies but have liked her in the ones that I did see, which are-
The Spy with My Face
Major Dundee
Cast a Giant Shadow
The Quiller Memorandum
The Ambushers.
Four of the 5 are American films and Quiller is a joint Anglo-American project.
In 2006 Senta published her auto biography in which she named many Greats that she met who turned out to be “shallow”. She also claimed that Daryl F Zanuck made crude attempts to get her onto his “casting couch”. Daryl’s lack of success doesn’t surprise me as Senta seems a romantically stable person having been married to German film director Michael Verhoeven for over half a century since 1966, the year she made Cast a Giant Shadow with the likes of Kirk, Yul, Sinatra and The Duke.
Continued in Part 2
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, info and trivia, always appreciated.
Happy you enjoyed the picture gallery.
Last week I had Seberg on video, this week Berger. Someone had to do it! 🙂
Appreciate the background info. I knew very little of Senta Berger, mostly knew her from her appearances in Major Dundee and Cross of Iron.
There are no 10s or 9s on her scoresheet, but she does have four 8s – If it’s Tuesday it Must Be Belgium, The Quiller Memorandum, The Victors and Cross of Iron.
Cross of Iron tops the charts at IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
You might like these stills from Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee I’ve spotted on the net, I liked the quotes.
https://myfavoritewesterns.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/major-dundee-charleton-heston-32.jpg
https://myfavoritewesterns.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/major-dundee-heston-and-berger.jpg
https://myfavoritewesterns.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/major-dundee-harris-and-heston.jpg
HI STEVE
Thanks for the feedback, additional information and links which I will enjoy viewing over a nice cup of tea. Sounds like something Terry-Thomas or Ian Carmichael would say doesn’t it?
By the way, I forgot to say that I used to confuse Senta Berger with Candice Bergen for obvious reasons.
Enjoy yourself and keep well.
Bob, Bruce, Flora, I’m having a video break next week so it’ll be about 10 days before a new video turns up. No worries we’ll still meet up at Cogerson’s Movie Café Américain. 🙂
Bob, I’ve got Khartoum to watch over the weekend, Heston and Olivier, woohoo. A friend of mine lent me an uncut high definition copy to watch. I was going to buy it from Amazon but read that it had been cut by 39 seconds, mostly horse-tripping scenes which is taboo here in the UK.
You’re going away from us for 10 whole days! I’m immediately reminded of the scene from Forrest Gump where he has for some time been at the head of a pack of runners who are jogging non-stop all over the place. They are his disciples and he is their Master. One day he suddenly stops and tells them he will run no more. Gobsmacked they huddle in a mass and wonder “What are we going to do now?”
When it was released Khartoum was reported as a box office flop and indeed The Work Horse although giving it a fine 78% rating credits with just a $48 million adjusted domestic gross. Wikipedia suggests that its production cost was twice its US rental return to the studio.
The big talking point among UK critics at the time was their great surprise at their almost uniform perception that Hollywood he-man Chuck had out-acted Brit acting Legend Larry in Khartoum. In those days there were differing expectations of American and English thespians when they acted together. The Yanks were expected to shine as action heroes whereas the Limeys, especially the English then or soon-to-be actor-Knights such as Olivier, were expected to command the acting heights.
For example, when my Richard’s A Prize of Gold was released over here in 1955 the newspapers were agog with the fact that in an initial screen confrontation English “wimp” Nigel Patrick bested Widmark in the fisticuff stakes. “England’s Nigel thrashes Hollywood tough guy Widmark in fist fight. Rule Britannia!” screamed out London’s Daily Express. At first I thought that the pair had gotten into a real-life fight on set!
In my experience video/DVD versions of movies are as often as not shorter than their big screen prints’ sometimes significantly so. For example in my video library at present –
1954 Magnificent Obsession is 108 mins on screen/101 mins on DVD
1955 All that Heaven Allows is 89 mins on screen/84 mins on DVD
1950 In a Lonely Place 94 mins to 89 mins DVD
1950 Asphalt Jungle 112 mins to 108 mins DVD
1946 Postman Always Rings Twice 113 mins to 108 mins DVD
1948 Key Largo 100 mins to 98 mins DVD
Indeed the only DVD that I can remember exceeding the big screen time is the one for my Joan’s 1955 Female on the Beach.
Anyway I hope you enjoy your break generally and Khartoum in particular.
Thanks for letting us know, Steve. I miss your videos when you take a break, but I’ll have to manage somehow. 🙂 The 18th seems so far away…
Hey Steve….a break? Well….if you are taking a break….then you work doubly hard the week before…..and then you share the videos on a time lapse…..that way you get your break…but your subscribers get new material. Easy peasy…..lol All jokes aside….taking breathers every once in awhile is a smart idea for sure. Hope you enjoy Khartoum. This weekend I am watching Creed 2 and Can You Forgive Me at home, and LEGO Movie Part 2 tomorrow in theaters. Hope you enjoy your time.
Hey Flora….I agree with your comment 100%….even if Steve is being a slacker…lol.
Hey Bob and Steve….thanks for all the information on Constance Bennett….I toyed with the idea of doing a page on her tonight….she did not get her name called though….I did end up writing to pages new today…..one current star (he has a movie opening Friday) and one classic star (another Joel subject). Good stuff as always.
Added Steve’s latest video to this page. Our thoughts shared on his channel.
“Voted up and will share at UltimateMovieRankings.com when I get home. We have a page on Joan….but no page on Constance….maybe this video will motivate us to do a page on her. Have not seen many of her movies. My first match is #7 MadameX…and her part is pretty small. My finally match is #1 Topper. Topper was a big hit for Bennett and Grant. Too bad Grant did not return for the sequel. Posters look awesome…some of the movies look like they might be worth checking out. So I part with my lowly tally of 2…licking my wounds and vowing to return.”
Hi Bruce, I felt a bit guilty that I had a video on Joan Bennett and nothing for her big sister Constance, so here it is. I’ve seen 2 too, Topper and Topper Takes a Trip. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, much appreciated.
The best POSTERS I think are (1) Code of the West (2) Rockabye (3) foreign language one for Law of the Tropics (4) Madame Spy (5) both for Moulin Rouge (6) the set for Office After Hours (7) Ladies in Love (8) foreign language one for Topper Takes a Trip (9) Unsuspected (10) What Price Hollywood (11) Topper (12) Outcast Lady and (13) Sin Town. That last one takes me back. I was only 11 years of age when I watched a rerun of it at our Local Castle Cinema and that was the 1st time I ever saw Brodie Crawford. Ah nostalgia!
A fine run of STILLS/LOBBY CARDS my own pick of which are (1) Lobby card of Constance with McCrea in Rockabye (2) the Tail Spin Trio (3) lobby card for The Easiest Way (4) with “Sherlock” in Sin Takes a Holiday (5) with Gable (6) Service De Luxe (7) Constance with Melvyn Douglas (8) Lobby card for Madam X (9) lobby card for Topper Takes a Trip (10) Constance with Al Leach in Topper and (11) Constance and McCrea again, this time in Bed of Roses.
It would probably have been hard to foresee back then that the rather foppish McCrea in that still and your earlier one would one day be an iconic stalwart and rugged Man of the West. In the 30s the women seemed to dominate more than the men and many future big male stars were initially used as almost props or ‘clothes horses’ to prima donna type actresses like Crawford, Garbo etc.
I have not categorised your Bennett material as closely as I normally would and indeed I might be incorrect in some of the categorisations that I have mentioned because at times I was unsure of what I was looking at – poster, lobby card, magazine cover or perhaps even a cinema programme cover.
Overall it doesn’t matter though what they were because they were exceptionally classy and unique. Without hyperbole I can say that your Bennett video is really super, indeed an often stunning, collection of posters, stills and lobby cards.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, much appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
I’m a little bit more familiar with Joan Bennett than her big sister and most of these films were new to me. I’ve seen the Topper films but thats it. I still enjoyed making the video and seeing all the unfamiliar, to me, poster art.
You must have seen a lot of a & b westerns at the cinema when you were young.
The first western I remember seeing on the big screen was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
No 10s in Bennett’s filmography but Topper did score 9. Five films scored 8 out of 10
What Price Hollywood
Merrily We Live
The Unsuspected
Topper Takes a Trip
Lady With a Past
No.1 at IMDB is What Price Hollywood and numero uno at Rotten Tomatoes is Merrily We Live.
According to IMDB Constance was married to Gilbert Roland for a while, he was quite popular in his time and has appeared in over 100 films, rarely first billed though.
HI STEVE Thanks for the interesting feedback.Yes I did see a lot of westerns in my youth as they were plentiful in those days, especially B movies being cheap to make and easily slotted into double bill programmes as they usually lasted around only 80 minutes in length. The first one that I can remember seeing was the 1950 Eagle and the Hawk starring John Payne and Rhonda Fleming which at 104 mins was a good deal longer than the average western of its type and whilst The Work Horse gives it just a 56% rating on Rhonda’s Cogerson page he credits it with an adjusted domestic gross of around $80 million, which of course whilst not a massive hit was around twice the gross that the average successful Audie Murphy movie for example attracted.
By the time the 1970s came around we were in the blockbuster era and the B movie generally was virtually a thing of the past so that the old-style Hollywood western that Rory, Audie, Randy etc specialised in had largely had its day and in reality television had started to take it over prolifically from even as early as the mid-1950s onward. Thus we had Rawhide, Bonanza, Cheyenne, Maverick Wagon Train, Gunsmoke etc.
Gilbert Roland was very popular with us youths of the 1950s because he was usually the foil to our heroes like Burt in 10 Tall Men (1951) Jimmy in 1953’s Thunder Bay, Rory in The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955) Mitchum in Bandido (1956) Chuck in 3 Violent People (1956) and Audie in 1959’s The Wild and the Innocent.
The only film in which I have seen and in which I can ever remember Gilbert being the top billed lead was 1952, B western Apache War Smoke which last just 67 minutes, was in black and white, cost around $400,000 dollars to make and attracted a US rental of $800,000 – respectively $4 million and $8 million today. Robert Horton of the later Wagon Train series had a small role in it. He died in 2016 aged 91. Take care and keep the good stuff coming!