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.
Steve’s Budd Boetticher video has been added to Steve’s video page.
One of the best western directors…accomplishing a lot on smaller budgets than other directors. My tally is very small…only 3 of his movies….but I liked and in the case of Seven Men From Now loved. I also felt Lee Marvin was playing a vulture in that one. Hanging around watching the carnage until their big showdown at the end. I think this is one of the movies that really got Marvin’s career going. Would have liked seeing that one in the Top Spot….guess I will excuse you for a 2nd place showing. I bet Bob will really enjoy these movies….since he is such a Randolph Scott fan. Voted up and shared.
Hi Bruce, Boetticher’s 7 westerns with Randolph Scott are highly rated by fans, from my internet research I found the the top 3 on this video – Ride Lonesome, 7 Men from Now and The Tall T have all had turns at the no.1 spot at various listing sites. The Tall T was the most frequent topper that I could see. At the UMR 7 Men from Now knocks The Tall T to no.2. But there is only half a point between all three on my chart so it’s close.
Your tally 3, mine 7 and Flora beats us again with 8. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, much appreciated.
Steve’s Robert Z. Leonard and our comments on Steve’s video are added here and on the comment section.
Interesting subject. I admit I am not aware of his name at all. Looking at his movies and the tally is not too impressive. I have seen three of his movies….so I guess I at least have a Top 3 Robert Z. Leonard movie list. #2 The Great Ziegfeld, #12 Dancing Lady..what a cast..Gable, Crawford, Astaire and the Three Stooge and #13 The Divorcee…Shearer’s Oscar winning role. I have not seen #9 The Bribe….but I want to….that is the only movie Steve Martin and Carl Reiner used in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid that I have not seen…for some reason that bugs me…lol. Voted up and shared
Hi Bruce, I’ve only seen 6 of the 40 so I didn’t do well either. Flora has seen 26.
The Bribe isn’t a great film but it is worth watching for the stars. It’s been a while since I last watched Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, one of my favorite Steve Martin comedies. Time to give it another spin. Thanks for the vote, share and comment, much appreciated.
Robert had a prolific silent screen career and was involved with a number of important talkies in the 1930s and 1940s: The Great Ziegfeld, Pride and Prejudice, Weekend of the Waldorf and 3 MacDonald/Eddy films for example.
His career faded in the 1950s and his last two prestige movies were Judy Garland’s in the Good Old Summertime and Esther Williams’ The Duchess of Burnley. Bruce credits those two movies with a combined adjusted Worldwide gross of some $430 million [average $215 million per movie]. His final 4 films were low key: an Italian/Franco production Beautiful but Dangerous starring Gina Lollobrigida, Kelly and Me with Van Johnson, Her 12 Men starring Greer Garson and The King’s Thief starring Edmund Purdom and David Niven. Bruce credits the last three with an unimpressive total adjusted domestic gross of just $84 million, a paltry average of $28 million per movie.
My pick of the material in your video which I rate 98%: POSTERS 1/Outcast Lady 2/Cynthia 3/two raunchy ones for Beautiful but Dangerous 4/Marriage is a private Affair 5/Escapade 6/Stand by for Action 7/Bachelor Father 8/New Moon 9/Lady of Chance 10/Dancing Lady 11/two for The Firefly 12/ foreign language one for The Bribe 13/1st one for Sweethearts 14/1st one for Pride and Prejudice 15/Kelly and Me.
Kelly and Me was Robert’s final film. I saw it back in 1956 on initial release over here on a double bill with Fred MacMurray’s western Gun for a Coward. Kelly and Me’s failure consolidated too Van Johnson’s decline from his own great days of the 1940s and early 1950s. Kelly of the title is, as your poster faithfully reflects, a kindred spirit of Asta – a cute, scene-stealing dog!
STILLS [LC=lobby card] 1/LC for After Office Hours 2/Crawford, Garson and The Cowboy of the Century 3/The King’s Thief 4/LC for Myrna Goes to Rio 5/Van spanks June! 6/Gable & Garbo 7/two of Gable and Crawford, one of which is highly suggestive 8/LC for Sweethearts 9/LC of Gable and Shearer 10/still of Gable and Shearer 11/Young Judy 12/Judy and Lana with Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. My Jimmy got billed above all three of them-hoorah!/Larry & Greer In Pride and Prejudice.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, much appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Between them Robert Z. Leonard and W.S. Van Dyke must have filmed all of the Nelson Eddy / Jeanette MacDonald musicals of the 1930s.
Box office legend Myrna Loy must have worked with nearly all the classic movie directors of the time, and you can’t blame them for hiring her, that girls a miracle, and she’s cute too! [Bob shakes his head]
Just one film scores 10 out of 10 from Leonard’s oeuvre – Pride and Prejudice. And one film scores 9 out of 10 – The Great Ziegfeld. Six more films scored 8 out of 10 including – Maytime, Ziegfeld Girl and In the Good Old Summertime.
Actress Luise Rainer won back to back Oscars for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937) and, according to IMDB, she suffered from the ‘Oscar Curse’ and her career took a nose dive “For my second and third pictures I won Academy Awards. Nothing worse could have happened to me. I came from Europe where I was with a wonderful theater group, and the only thing on my mind was to do good work. I didn’t know what an Academy Award was.” By 1938 her career was over and she quit Hollywood.
HI STEVE: Thanks for the detailed feedback including some additional trivia and more interesting quotes
Your comments about The Thin Woman are noted [though WH probably wrote them for you!] Indeed they remind me of an additional affinity between Asta and Kelly from Leonard’s Kelly and Me: Kelly rescues Van Johnson’s career in the movie and Asta probably did the same for Myrna’s in real life.
“Flop vaudeville performer Len Carmody is adopted by Kelly, a trained dog abandoned by Malo’s dog act. When Kelly joins Len’s ho-hum song and dance, a popular comedy act is born.” IMDB write-up.
Hopefully I’ll catch up with you again in a week or so.
Enjoy your break Bob, see you next week!
Tomorrows video will appeal to western fans.
My next break will probably be at Xmas.
Take care.
HI STEVE
Thanks for your good wishes. When I’m on holiday I’ll be reading your western and any other video that you release during my absence but it will not be convenient to get involved in comments of any length.
I’m almost feeling guilty about taking a break: i have been psyched into thinking that only site organizers should have the luxury of breaks. Probably I’ll keep thinking “Bob, that Work Horse fella and not you should be enjoying this hokiday!”
Anyway as Luke said to Han in the first Star Wars movie “Look after yourself Steve – it’s what you do best!”
IMDB credits John with 18 movie awards and 40 nominations. His reported net worth at the time of his death was relatively low in comparison with the fortunes suggested for many other movie makers: John’s was $1.2 million in today’s money.
Despite it not being one of your ‘epics’ there was some magical material in your video so I rated it 98%. Here are my pick of the best entries. FL=foreign language poster.
POSTERS 1/2nd one for Island of Dr Moreau 2/Wild Christmas [was this another John McClane festive offering?] 3/Power Play 4/Year of the Gun 5/Young Stranger 6/The Work Horsemen 7/FL one for The Gypsy Moths 8/The Challenge 9/The Fixer 10/the set for Grand Prix 11/Burning Season 12/FL one for Black Sunday 13/three FL stunners for Birdman 14/FL one for Manchurian Candidate 15/Seconds. As mentioned in Part One, WH gives the latter movie an 81% Review rating and I see you just shade him with 81.2%
A glut of classy STILLS: 1/Reindeer Games bedroom scene 2/The Great Mumbler in weird garb 3/Prophecy 4/Year of the Gun 5/Young Savages 6/Warren and Eva Marie 7/Against the Wall 8/Ronin 9/two for Black Sunday 10/The Birdman 11/ two for Seconds 12/The Train 13/The Old Firm: Burt & Kirk 14/Laurence Harvey 15/Harvey & Frankie 16/still and lobby card for Grand Prix. During the filming of the latter Garner lost his temper one of the movie’s crew and floored him with a punch. Jim claimed that it was his bad temper which got worse when he drank that made him give up booze entirely.
ADDITIONAL TRIVIA: You and I have had recent detailed discussions about stars’ heights; Frankenheimer was apparently 6ft 3 ins tall.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, much appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
I think I included Reindeer Games aka Wild Christmas on my Top 75 Xmas movies video. [Bob winces]
At 6ft 3ins John Frankenheimer was tall, and quite young when he directed those classic thrillers. Just 32 years old when he filmed Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate in 1962.
I added a few high rated TV movies which were award nominated.
Seven Days in May is my favorite of his films. Seconds was good but not a favorite. I also liked The Train, Black Sunday, Ronin and The Manchurian Candidate.
Three films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – The Train, Seven Days in May and The Manchurian Candidate. One scored 9 out of 10 – Seconds. And 6 films scored 8 out of 10.
The Mancunian Candidate tops both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
Frankenheimer on Hitchcock – “Any American director who says he hasn’t been influenced by him is out of his mind.”
Frankenheimer on Kirk Douglas – “He’s wanted to be Burt Lancaster all his life. Jiggs Casey (Seven Days in May) no matter how you look at it, is kind of a despicable human being, he does rat on his friend.”
“There are two things I will never do in my life. I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn’t enough money in the world.”
HI STEVE: A very comprehensive reply from you, which I greatly appreciate.So it was John Frankenheimer who said that Kirk always wanted to be Burt. I could never recall that identity so thanks for refreshing my memory. Of course we don’t always get we want. If we COULD choose I would probably like to be The Work Horse; whereas he in turn would most likely wish to be one of his idols like Hirsch, Al Leach or The Thin Woman. Indeed as sometimes people “protest too much” [as the saying goes] against their real feelings so I wouldn’t surprise me if for his part Joel always wanted to be Brando.
I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she would meet her connection
At her feet was a footloose man
No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want [sung by The Rolling Stones]
Do you not think that John was being a bit hard on Jiggs? I mean General Scott was planning a military coup that would overthrow a constitutionally elected president and his administration. If you thought that WH was up to such tricks, would you not turn him in to the authorities?
Seven Days in May was remade as a TV movie in 1994 called The Enemy Within. Forest Whitaker played Kirk’s role, Jason Robards was Burt’s traitorous general and Sam Waterson was the president. Apparently within the African American community “Jiggs” is considered a racist epithet; so as Forest is of course an African American citizen the nickname “Jiggs” was not attributed to his character in that remake.
Bob, I agree Frankensteiner was harsh on Jiggs for ‘ratting on his friend’ for those important reasons, and how close were they anyway? If they were close friends the general would have considered letting his friend in on his plans. And if he went thru with it, friends might have become enemies. You can’t have it both ways.
One of my favorite scenes, near the end of the film –
General Scott – “You’re a night crawler, Colonel. A peddler. You sell information. Are you sufficiently up on your Bible to know who Judas was?”
Colonel “Jiggs” Casey – “I suggest you read that letter, sir. It’s from the President.”
General Scott – “I asked you a question.”
Colonel “Jiggs” Casey – “Are you ordering me to answer, sir?”
General Scott – “I am.”
Colonel “Jiggs” Casey – “Yes, I know who Judas was. He was a man I worked for and admired… until he disgraced the four stars on his uniform.”
HI STEVE:
Excellent recall of that conversation. I remember it well in general terms [no pun intended!] but the only line I could specifically recall is “Yes, I know who Judas was.” So thanks for refreshing my memory on the entirety of the exchange.
I am glad we agree that Jiggs wasn’t the villain of the piece. Indeed if I found out that Brexit was secretly a plot to overthrow the monarchy I would insist that Alexander Boris de Pfeffle Johnson be locked up in the Tower!
STEVE
This paragraph should be substituted for the final one in my previous post about John. Apologies for the original flawed paragraph.
Burt seems to have been John’s fave actor, the pair having made 5 flicks together: Young Savages, 7 Days in May, The Train, Birdman of Alcatraz and Gypsy Moths. Part 2 to follow