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 Tod Browning You Tube video to this page. Our thoughts found on his channel.
“Lots of great posters. I have only seen one of his movies…#2 Dracula. #1 Freaks is on my movies to watch list…as it is one of the Danny Peary Cult Movies listed in this book series. Lots of interesting Lon Chaney movies in the video. Good video. Voted up and shared.”
HI BRUCE
Freaks was technically a fine movie but it’s is the only movie that ever so physically nauseated me that I had to go to the rest room of the cinema to be sick. I actually saw it on a double bill re-run with Victor Mature’s western The Last Frontier.
The star of Freaks was the young Wallace Ford, who for most of his career was a character actor, often in the Walter Brennan mould – eg as Randy’s sidekick in 1955’s western A Lawless Street, co- starring your Delilah Angela Lansbury.
You may remember that Wallace was the actor who had engraved on his tombstone “Here lies Wallace Ford. Top billing at last.” only to have vandals break into the graveyard in the night and inscribe above Wallace’s name in large letters CLARK GABLE!
Bob, I’ve seen Freaks a few times I didn’t find it that repellent but I can understand how some people might be uncomfortable watching it. I’ve seen far worse. Some film fans and film historians have labeled it a masterpiece. [Bob gasps]
Flora hated it too, on my channel she wrote – “I found Freaks extremely offensive and wish I had never seen it.”
Hi Bruce, Freaks might make uncomfortable viewing but it is a fascinating piece of movie history. Flora won’t watch it ever again. 🙂
At least you saw Dracula, Browning’s most famous film, but was it his best film?
Your tally 1, I saw 4 and Flora 3. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, much appreciated.
Todd Browning’s career lasted 26 years from 1913-1939, spanning both the silent era and the first calendar decade of talkies, during which he had overlapping careers as an actor and director: he acted in 53 silent features from 1913 until 1916; as an actor had an uncredited voice role in his own 1931 Dracula; and directed 62 movies from 1915-1939, 9 of which were talkies and 53 silent films. It is said that when he died in 1962 his net worth could well have been up to 40 million in today’s dollars.
As Todd’s career was massively lopsided towards silent films you have done well to compile this video, and though it is short there is some vintage magical material in it which consists of many collector’s items; so despite the brevity [though many of the entries have multi-materials] it gave me 99% satisfaction. In short -terrific! There is hardly one entry that I did not admire but here is my pick of the crop. A lot of the entries are strong stuff – no “mush” among THOSE ones!
POSTERS: 1/two for Manchester after Midnight 2/two for The Virgin of Stamboul 3/two for Outside the Law 4/foreign language one for Outside the Law 5/1st one for Road to Mandalay 6/1st one for Mark of the Vampire 7/two for Devil Doll 8/The Unknown 9/set for Alucard 9/2nd one for Freaks 10/Miracles for Sale
STILLS: 1/Manchester after Midnight 2/Robert Young 3/Iron man 4/Outside the Law 5/Fast Workers 6/West of Zanzibar 7/Mark of Vampire 8/young silent era Joan 9/two for Bela 10/Freaks.
LOBBY CARDS 1/The Virgin of Stamboul 2/13th Chair 3/Outside the Law 4/The Show 5/The Unholy Three 6/Alucard in color [I presume that one is a still?]
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my Tod Browning video, the generous rating and info are much appreciated. Happy you enjoyed the picture gallery.
Well it’s Halloween week and I have to unleash a few monsters onto my youtube channel, last year if I remember correctly I had a Jamie Lee Curtis video standing by at Halloween.
Freaks is considered Tod Brownings masterpiece even if few people have actually watched it. It was banned in Britain for 30 years and I don’t think it has ever been shown on TV in England. It is available on DVD.
Dracula is Tod Browning’s most famous film, it was a box office hit in early 1931 and jump started Universal’s series of classic monster movies which ended with Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.
It made a horror star out of Bela Lugosi, he played Dracula on Broadway way back in 1927 and toured America with the play from 1928 to 1929. Browning would have preferred his friend Lon Chaney ‘Master of a Thousand Faces’ play the vampire Count, but he died of lung cancer in 1930 at the age of 47.
Regarding your query – that Dracula lobby card must be a coloured still, though it looks almost like a painting.
There are no 10 out of 10 scores in Brownings filmography but there are 3 films scoring 9 out of 10 – Freaks, The Unknown and Dracula.
I’ve just uploaded another video. An English classic horror director this time.
HI STEVE
Thanks for your feedback, providing as it does additional information of much interest to me as a movie buff.
Please see my 8.55 am post this morning to Bruce about Freaks. It was in the mid-1960s that I saw it at a small cinema in Cheltenham when I was stationed with the Royal Air Force in nearby Gloucester.
It is only for those with a strong stomach [ie guys like you who are seasoned horror fans!] and I would never watch it again. That does not mean that I don’t agree that it is a masterpiece of horror.
Bob, I’ll bet there are plenty of horror fans out there that would be envious of you seeing that horror classic at a cinema with an audience.
Why pair it with a western? Were double bills so random back then?
HI STEVE: TV started to eat into cinema audiences in the late forties and early fifties but it took a while for the small city centre and street corner cinemas to be replaced by fewer larger cinemas and the more centralized multi-screen complexes that we know today and into the 1960s were droves of the old cinemas that required enormous “feeding”, so reruns of any kind that these 3rd tier cinemas could get their hands on were to a large extent the order of the day for such cinemas.
Double feature programs of re-runs were thus hastily thrown together weekly or even twice weekly and the cinemas ignored the fact that sometimes the selected movies on the double bills were from contrasting genres: beggars couldn’t be choosers and anyway the small down-market cinemas couldn’t afford the new films.
Cheltenham where I saw Freaks around 1963 [a date which seems consistent with your information about the movie’s 30-year ban in England] had a modern state of the arts Odeon cinema and a Ritz cinema where new, single feature movies as well as new double bills were shown, and Cheltenham had also 2 of the down-market re-run movie houses.
On the evening before I departed the RAF camp at Innsworth Gloucester for a tour of the middle east in 1964 with the RAF, I watched, at the cinema where I saw Freaks/Last frontier, Carry on Jack [part of the famous Brit Carry On comedy farce series of course]. Carry on Jack which had been released the year before and was getting a re-run. As said “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” [L P Hartley The Go Between]
Added Steve’s latest You Tube video to this page. Our thoughts on Henry King’s career and Steve’s video…which are found on Steve’s video channel are listed below.
“Voted up and shared at UltimateMovieRankings.com. First of all…I had no idea he had made so many movies with Tyrone Power. I lost count of how many movies…but it had to be at least close to double digits. I have not seen as many of his movies as Flora has….but I have seen 13 of them. Favorites would be #1 Twelve O’Clock High….which was one of my dad’s Top 5 movies of all-time. #5 Jesse James…classic western…and one of the Power movies. #2 The Gunfighter…one of my favorite performances by Gregory Peck. #4 The Black Swan…fun movie that POTC The Black Pearl heavily borrowed from. Good stuff. Keep’em coming.”
Hi Bruce, Henry King worked a lot at Fox studios and Tyrone Power was one of their biggest stars. I’m sure Flora was happy to see Gregory Peck take the top two spots on the video. Your tally 13, mine 14, Flora 17. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, always appreciated.
Always glad to add content to our pages. Good video.
When searching for material to include with my comments on your King video I came across one source that claimed that Henry was 5ft 4inches in height. At that point I intended to quip to you that he would have made an ideal director of Alan Ladd pictures! However IMDB and another source say that Henry was around 6ft. Any information on that yourself? Your video earned a 98% satisfaction rating from me. Here is my pick of the very best entries. As usual FL=foreign language entry and LC = lobby card.
POSTERS: 1/entire set for David and Bathsheba 2/1st 2 for This Earth is Mine – Rock then at peak popularity 3/Chad Hanna 4/Deep Waters 5/King of Khyber Rifles [voluptuous Terry Moore then very lovely – I saw her recently in a walk on part as a little old woman]
6/Prince of Foxes [Dom Cummings of yesteryear!] 7/Winning of Myrna Worth [Cooper’s debut film] 8/FL for Bell for Adano 9/1st one for Captain from Castile 10/two for The Bravados 11/FL one for Sun also Rises 12/Stella Dallas 13/1st one for Margie 14/1st one for Jesse James15/FL one for 12 O’Clock High-vintage Greg
STILLS 1/Ty & Susan 2/Ty with is that Grable?-hard to recognize her when she’s not showing us her legs! 3/my Jimmy in 7th Heaven 4/Greg & Susan 5/Golden and Jennifer – Bill had achieved greatness previous year in Stalag 17 and was at the commencement of the great Golden Holden period from 1953-1960
6/LC for Bravados 7/Flynn and Power-sadly on their last legs when that was taken: Ty would die the following year, 1958, and Errol the year after him, aged 44 and 50 respectively 8/LC for In Old Chicago 9/Lloyds of Manchester 10/Ty and Randy on set 11/The Gunfighter- a Greg film I did not like 12/Terrific LC of Greg 13/The Black Swan, Bulgarian-born Brit George Baker as The Moonraker, Doug Fairbanks Junior’s Sinbad the Sailor and Doug Senior’s The Iron Mask and The Black Pirate are my all time fave pirate/swashbuckler yarns.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, it is appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
As you mentioned in one of your posts Henry King directed most of his films at 20th Century Fox, in fact looking at the posters on the video I only see 3 films out of 35 that aren’t from Fox studios – Stella Dallas, The Winning of Barbara Worth and This Earth is Mine.
No idea how tall he was. You mean there were directors shorter than Alan Ladd?
[Bob groans] 😉
That has to be Betty Grable in the still with Tyrone Power, it looks like the girl in the posters.
One film scored 10 out of 10 – Twelve O’Clock High. Five films scored 9 – Lloyds of London, Carousel, In Old Chicago, The Gunfighter and The Song of Bernadette.
Henry King on Errol Flynn – “Errol Flynn was a joy, a lovely man, and most of the talk about him is nothing but rumor by people who didn’t even know him. He loved to talk about how much he could drink and the women he’d made love to, but most of it was just the rationalizations of a disappointed moralist. He was the hardest-working, most down-to-earth actor I have ever worked with.”
Thanks for the informative response and for confirming Grable Did you not tell me Flynn was a Nazi?
When I was lying in bed this morning avoiding getting up and letting random thoughts pass through my mind it occurred to me that there is an oblique Dan-like link between you and WH other than you both providing movie-related sites.
When I was serving with the British Royal Air Force in Gloucester England in 1963 my closest friend and co-worker on the military camp was a chap called Roy Higgins. He was a ferocious and highly competent worker and was so proud of the fact that he nicknamed himself The Work Horse. I could hardly keep up with his output. As Curtis said about working with Lancaster on 1956’s Trapeze “It was like being near a furnace all the time!”
So I have linked Roy Higgins to our WH via the work ethic– but where do you fit into the picture apart from you too being an obviously active and contributive person? Roy was a Mancunian! He was a fanatical Man U supporter and was forever writing sad letters away to his local newspapers about the tragedy of the Busby Babes and the 1958 Munich, West Germany airport disaster.
The only fly in the ointment of our friendship was that he had a habit of going on the town every Friday night and coming back blocked and sitting on my bed for an hour or so and keeping me awake by spouting a great deal of drunken nonsense! Isn’t it a small world though that more than half a century after being tormented occasionally by one Mancunian, I have now fallen prey to another?!!! However Manchester must be a place full of very busy people!
STEVE: Like me you have suffered so much misery over the delay of Brexit that I would never add to it
That ever-beavering, ever-alert Work Horse has obviously been following our exchanges about Woody. That WH guy like Big Brother probably watches everything [and W o C most likely is always watching HIM!]
He sent me a post suggesting that he had sufficient material on W S to do a page and hinted that the page would come at some stage. Here is a copy of his post. You can see that Naughty Myrnietta is missing from his list and he does have the info on that one – so I’m crying before I’m hit!
Cogerson
October 22, 2019 at 6:53 am
Hey Bob…I should do a page on him….did some quick research and see that I have 34 of his movies already researched….lots of Loy.
By UMR ranking
MovieYear
San Francisco (1936)..says he is uncredited for this one
After the Thin Man (1936)
Trader Horn (1931)
Marie Antoinette (1938)
Another Thin Man (1939)
Thin Man, The (1934)
Rose Marie (1936)
Sweethearts (1938)
Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939)
I Love You Again (1940)
Tarzan The Ape Man (1932)
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
Rosalie (1937)
Love on the Run (1936)
Personal Property (1937)
Stand Up And Fight (1939)
Forsaking All Others (1934)
Eskimo (1933)
Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
His Brother’s Wife (1936)
Penthouse (1933)
It’s A Wonderful World (1939)
Bitter Sweet (1940)
Prizefighter and the Lady, The (1933)
Hide-Out (1934)
I Live My Life (1935)
They Gave Him A Gun (1937)
Guilty Hands (1931)
Cairo (1942)
Feminine Touch, The (1941)
Rage In Heaven (1941)
Dr. Kildare’s Victory (1942)
I Take This Woman (1940)
I Married An Angel (19
I have just sent that.
All clear now Bob, thanks for the clarification. If Bruce does accidentally come across our posts some day I’m sure he’ll add naughty Marietta to the list. 🙂
Might be a good idea if Bruce separates the directors from the actors on his index page that way we can see how many directors he has UMR’d so far. I have well over a hundred videos on directors classic and modern on my youtube channel, more than I thought, but that includes box office videos along with ratings videos.
HI STEVE Can’t solve the Brexit equation on my own but I am glad I’ve clarified something for you.
I think that Teach used to have the directors and actors separated. It’s the old argument if I may mix my metaphors: do you keep all your eggs in the one basket or is variety the spice of life?