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.
Added Steve’s latest You Tube Video to this page…Mr. Leo McCarey…my thoughts found on his channel.
“Nice video subject. My first match is #19 Rally Around The Flag Boys…which is an ok movie. Also seen #18 Satan Never Sleeps…depressing movie. #17 Once Upon A Honeymoon….big hit but not a favorite Grant movie. #8 Going My Way…one of the biggest hits of all-time…and one of the highest rated movies at UMR. #7 Bells of St. Mary’s ….sequel to #8…Bergman is good in the movie. #6 An Affair To Remember…probably the movie of his that has had the most last impact…thank Sleepless in Seattle. #2 The Awful Truth…the first Cary Grant classic.watch this one regularly. #1 Duck Soap….classic Marx Brothers movie…but not my favorite of theirs. So that is a total of 9 seen….or 36%….I thought it would be more. Good job. Voted up. And shared.”
Hi Bruce, I think I’ve covered all the best Marx Bros movies in these 3 videos and other classic comedies too. Next weeks videos will be a bit more epic.
Your tally 9, mine 2, Flora 10. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, always appreciated.
From my perspective this McCarey video is most timely. His 1957 Affair to Remember is being given a special re-run at our local Art House cinema shortly and I intend going to see it again. It is my fave McCarey movie followed by Duck Soup, Bells of St Mary’s and Rally Round the Flag Boys.
Whilst I am a fan of the later 1950s/60s Al Leach, the Archie of the 1940s in films like Leo’s The Awful Truth, My Favourite Wife and Once Upon a Honeymoon was never a big fave of mine. I thought he looked rather “sissy’ in those early days. [Who did Asta think he was – Myrna Loy?!]
I might though at some stage be prepared to take a chance on the Awful Truth as the scene-stealing little Asta is in it though credited as Skippy in that particular movie. Indeed so much in demand was Asta/Skippy in those days that the production of the Awful Truth was held up for a while as he had to work on another film which took priority.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, when Leo died in 1969 he left a net worth equivalent to approx $5 million in TODAY’s money. It is reported on the Celebrity Money site called “The Richest” that Asta/ Skippy was the 3rd highest paid animal actor in movies as of Nov 2013. Benji is No 1 on that chart and Rin Tin Tin No 10 [The Meg doesn’t make the cut].
On three different Greatest Directors of All Time charts Leo gets ranked 4th, 13th and 27th
McCAREY VIDEO: FL=Foreign Language poster. LC=Lobby Card
Best POSTERS: 1/Wild Company 2/Sophomore 3/Indiscreet 4/first one for Joel Never Sleeps [the financial failure of this movie marked the beginning of Golden Holden’s decline as a top box office star***] 5/FL Good Sam 6/Wrong Again 7/Liberty 8/entire set for Belle of the Nineties 9/first one for The Kid from Manchester 10/English language one Bells of St Mary’s [though the order of billing is decidedly incorrect-go to the back of WH’s class!] 11/FL Bells of St Mary’s [with correct billing order this time] 12/ FL Affair to Remember 13/Make Way for Tomorrow 14/Duck Soup.
***Leaving aside Casino Royale in which he had a cameo, Bill’s 8 remaining films in the 1960’s have a dismal total Cogerson gross of just approx $400 million, or an average of approx $50 million per movie. That contrasts with a total Cogerson gross of nearly $2 billion [average around $245 million per movie] for Bill’s last 8 movies released prior to Joel Never Sleeps].
My pick of the STILLS: 1/still for Let’s Go Native 2/LC Let’s Go Native 3/Rally Round the Flag Boys [aka Appeal to the Brexiteers!] 4/LC Once upon a Honeymoon 5/LC Liberty 6/Al Leach’s self-proclaimed mentor in Belle of the Nineties – Archie was furious at her claims that she created him! 7/Milky Way 8/Going my Way 9/LC Bells of St Mary’s 10/Affair to Remember 11/Ruggles of Red Gap 12/solo of the one and only Groucho – probably my own fave all-time big screen comedian, matched in my personal estimation by just Kelsey Grammer in TV.
Short but sweet as the saying goes and well worth 97.5% rating as there are some rare gems among the material for Leo’s earlier movies. Take a quiet bow for giving us those collector’s items – and have a good weekend!
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my Leo McCarey video, appreciate the generous rating, info and trivia. Glad you liked the picture gallery.
Lots of info I didn’t know until reading your posts, as usual, cheers for that. I didn’t know Leo McCarey was rated so highly. I mostly knew him as the director of my favorite Marx Bros movie – Duck Soup – which is also one of my all time favorite films (in my top 50).
Btw for some reason I had the impression you and Bruce weren’t fans of the Marx Bros, I know Flora can’t stand them. So it’s a pleasant surprise finding you both enjoyed their films. Duck Soup is probably the funniest & zaniest 65mins of comedy in film history, IMO of course. A Night at the Opera is my 2nd favorite amongst their comedies.
Have to confess I’ve never seen An Affair to Remember but I did read the synopsis years ago so I know it gets a bit upsetting later on though the ending is a happy one. A remake of Love Affair (1939) which was also directed by Leo.
Leo’s ‘Make Way for Tomorrow’ (1937) is a film I wasn’t familiar with, highly rated but one critic said it was probably the most depressing film ever made. An elderly couple lose their home and none of their five children will take them in. Ouch. I think I’ll skip that one thanks. I always make sure to avoid sad or depressing films.
Five films scored 10 out of 10 from McCarey’s filmography – Going My Way, Ruggles of Red Gap, Love Affair, The Awful Truth and Duck Soup.
Leo McCarey on Laurel & Hardy – “Laurel was one of those rare comics intelligent enough to invent his own gags. Laurel was remarkably talented, while Hardy wasn’t. This is the key to the Laurel-Hardy association. Throughout their lives (I was one of their intimates), Laurel insisted on earning twice as much as Hardy. He said he was twice as good and twice as important, that he wrote the film and participated in its creation, while Hardy was really incapable of creating anything at all — it was astounding that he could even find his way to the studio.”
McCarey on Joan Collins – “I thought she was going to be a big star. At the start, she had no confidence in herself, but, little by little, she confided in me. I told her I’d only do this film with her if she’d send her psychoanalyst away and allow me to take over. I said, “If you want to stretch out on a couch, come over to mine.” She laughed, but she did send the analyst away.”
HI STEVE: Thanks for the reply, jam-packed with additional information, quotes etc.
I have always adored the Marx Bros and loved the one-liners in their films such as: “What are you doing standing over there?” REPLY “I gotta be somewhere boss!” Groucho could reel them off in real life too. For example he was interviewed just as he was leaving the premier of Last Tango in Paris-
INTERVIEWER: ”What did you think of the film?”
GROUCHO: “Very tragic.”
INTERVIEWER: A tragedy you say? – but I thought it’s all about sex.”
GROUCHO: “At my age that’s a tragedy!”
Groucho would have had empathy with Flora. He said that Margaret Dumont [aka Daisy Juliette Baker] who was often the butt of Groucho’s jokes and pranks in 7 of their movies was the perfect foil for the Bros because she like Flora didn’t see the funny side of the Marx Bros humor. Groucho opined that if Margaret HAD shared their sense of humor the adversary between them wouldn’t have worked as well as it did. As it was, he valued her contribution so much that he nicknamed her “the 5th Marx Brother!” Margaret was an opera singer in her early days. NB: My father who hated Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen [as much as he did Brando and Russell Crowe] loved the Marx Bros.
I can’t get over how scathing Leo was of Oliver Hardy. Are you sure it wasn’t Hirsch that wrote that savage piece? It’s funny how the browbeaten put-upon-one up on the screen in the great male comedy duos of old Hollywood was always the a** h*** in real life. Apparently Lou Costello, Jerry Lewis and, now you reveal, Stan Laurel all mistreated their respective team mates, Costello for example allowing Abbott just a quarter of their joint fees whilst Lou kept three quarters. Mid-partnership he tried to get Universal to change the billing to Costello and Abbott.
As I’ve mentioned I was a great fan of Archibald Alexander Leach in his later years, but I didn’t like the younger Archie. However as to the Work Horse, Archie is “a man for all seasons” I am surprised that Bruce had never done a Leo page it being obvious that Leo too liked Al Leach. I suppose though that WH can’t get around to everything and if he is going to expend time on ‘old hat’ like that Last Blood stuff the classy material has to fall by the wayside. Anyway take care.
Good breakdowns on Leo McCarey from both Steve and Bob. Mr. McCarey is on our list of people to do UMR pages on….so Steve beat me to the punch. Gotta give the man credit…he was a very talented director in many genres. About to head to You Tube and check out Steve’s latest video.
Added Steve’s Norman McLeod Video To This Page.
“Nice new video subject. After a rough start…seeing one movie in the first 11 movies….I ended up with a tally of 8…..with 7 being in his Top 14. Favorites would include Topper (Cary Grant’s first leading man role that was a hit), #2 Monkey Business (my favorite Marx Brothers movie) and #7 Road To Rio (fun movie). Mr. McLeod worked with some of the greats…and many times he worked with them numerous times. Good stuff. Voted up and shared.”
Hi Bruce, thanks for the vote, comment and share.
Monkey Business is one my favorites too, hilarious shenanigans on board ship. I had the impression you weren’t a Marx Bros fan. Flora sadly isn’t and was starting to worry the Marx Bros would be topping the charts on all my new videos. 😉
Your tally 8, mine 11 and Flora wins again with 14 out of 25.
1/Best POSTERS in the Norm video: 1/Jackass mail 2/1st one for Panama Hattie 3/raunchy one for Never wave at a WAC 4/foreign language one for Remember? 5/two ‘leggy’ ones for Swing Shift Maisie 6/the set for Alias Jesse James 7/1st one for Lady Be Good 8/foreign language one for Topper Takes a Trip 9/1st one of The Paleface with Jane in her underwear [prophetic in a way as in later career she made a fortune from advertising bras!] 10/foreign language one for The Paleface 11/foreign language one for Topper.
2/Classy TILLS for me are: 1/ Cowboy of the Century in Remember? 2/Fred and Hutton 3/Hope and Russell.
3/A real glut of LOBBY CARDS my own faves being: 1/Topper Takes a Trip 2/The Kid from Manchester 3/Merrily we Live 4/Road to Rio 5/Al Leach in Topper.
4.Plus ALL posters, stills and lobby cards for The Marx Bros films that you have included– some collectors’ items among that lot. Indeed despite its relative brevity the video contains much magical material which I found highly satisfactory and which earned an overall high 98.5% rating from me. As you would say “Voted Up!”
Historians credit Norm with being quietly “influential” by way of some of the films that he was involved with such as The Marx Bros’ Horse Feathers and Monkey Business and especially his directing of 1947’s The Secret Life of Joel Mitty, the latter character having become a legendary by-word for a person who imagines and/or makes up things – ie lives in a fantasy world.
Norm’s big screen career lasted over 30 years from 1928 in the silent era until 1959’s Alias Jesse James starring Bob Hope. Norm’s 2nd film ever and his first in the talkies era was a naughty pre-Code movie which he co-directed called Along Came Youth [1930] and starred Charles Buddy Rogers who was married to the great Mary Pickford for 40 years from 1937 until her death in 1979.
That must have made Charles feel really important because not only did he become known as “Mr Mary Pickford” but apparently in her declining years Mary used to cry out in her sleep “Doug! Doug!” [obviously forever pining for the dead Fairbanks]. You may have seen exchanges between WH and me today in which he claims to have been married to Barbra Streisand for a time [the ‘secret life of Walter Cogerson’?] I hope that WH’s not waking W o C from her slumbers to cries of “Babs! Babs!”
Norm was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and his net worth at the time of his death in 1964 was equivalent to $20 million today.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, it is appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
How do you pronounce ‘McLeod’? I think it must be like ‘MacCloud’. There’s a cult movie titled Highlander, a favorite of mine, and the hero played by Christopher Lambert is named Connor MacLeod. Everyone in the film pronounces his surname ‘MacCloud’. So I assume thats how it’s pronounced.
I was going to add Along Came Youth but knocked it off when it looked like IMDB had the only ratings score for it and from people who have probably never watched it, wondering if its a lost film. Just 10 people voted for it on IMDB one of the lowest amount of votes I’ve seen on that site.
Three films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – The Paleface, It’s a Gift and Horse Feathers. Two more scored 9 – Topper and Monkey Business (1931).
Thanks for the feedback, additional information and explanatory notes on your scoring system.