tcm alert thread (Jun '23 - tcm alert: dead)

4 Goldie Hawns tonight (I've only seen Foul Play).

HOBO MOVIES tomorrow night!

Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
Girls of the Road (1940)

jeez, it's WHEELER & WOOLSEY night!

(not the 4 I'd have picked tho)

Did you catch Girls of the Road?

no, only one of those 5 I don't know

wuthering heights is great but then i find merle oberon fascinating.

I was so mad when Alec Baldwin recommended Wuthering Heights on The Essentials but then went on to say how Oberon sucked in this movie. Not cool, Donaghy.

Murnau's Nosferatu in 90 mins.

Missed the documentary about Johnny Mercer last night.

Putney Swope & Greasers Palace in the cult spot tonight

I asked my black friend about Putney Swope a few months ago and he said, "It's the most racist piece of shit - the only time I've ever walked out of a movie."

eternal lols at "my black friend"

did he see it in 1968?

I'm sure thereabouts.

So his memory of it wouldn't be good, I know, and he's older and different now. I didn't want to go into it with him, though.

I'll clarify, even though you might not be there, Morbs.

I don't think it was 1968, because he'd have been about 20, and that doesn't place him in NYC or in or near Chicago, where he might've seen the movie. So it was probably 7-10 years later.

I asked him about it because I had bought it for a dollar and my friend and I had seen it recently, a couple months before, probably, and I saw it stacked with my videos and wondered what he thought. We've talked about the merits and flaws and social/racial implications of the Bill Cosby Show, Steppin Fetchit, Amos & Andy, Fresh Prince of Bellair, rap music, gansta rap, Everybody Hates Chris, even, uncharacteristically for him, since he brought it up, Song of the South - if it was a popular cultural thing at one time and it featured blacks, we had probably talked about it. Because who else am I going to go to to have a discussion about this stuff without someone going, lol u racist or something. And the Putney Swope comment was the only time he had ever said anything like that. For instance, he has several dvds of Amos & Andy and likes them quite a lot.

When my friend and I had watched it, we enjoyed it a lot, and thought it was unusually edited - that there were a lot of nontrivial decisions made about most aspects of the craft of the movie. We didn't like that Downy dubbed Swope's voice over. We figured that the movie, besides indicting the advertising industry, was also satirizing the exploitation of "black is beautiful" and black militancy, and that the movie had no heroes besides nihilism personified, or some kind of catholic, ultra-moral being teaching people a lesson. And the ads - they seemed to inhabit that space of how white people see black people, how black people see themselves, and how they really are - and inhabit it in a way that makes you deliberately uncomfortable - it reminded me of some of the material black comedians have done. But we were confused after the movie was over, too, and uncertain about it.

I still don't know if I agree about it being incredibly racist.

Greaser's Palace is a really odd film -- in some ways it's a bit like a Jodorowsky movie -- it seems like there was this period in the 70s where a lot of films featured long scenes or at least a lot of scenes of people walking around somewhat aimlessly.

Huh. I got that one for a dollar, too, but I'm pretty sure I got rid of it before watching it.

(I had to gis the cover.)

it's actually pretty rare. i don't think it has been released widely on dvd.

well, as rare as a mass-produced vhs videotape can be.

My cable company is now listing Turner Classic Movies HD in their coming soon section. I may never leave the house again!

I saw Swope in '78 on a twinbill w/ Animal House.

(probably '79, actually -- and that was a fairly wide re-release pairing)

Wow! That's a really interesting/unusual (from my vantage point) juxtaposition. Putney Swope is a really packed movie that I've only seen once, but want to have a copy of so I can watch it multiple times.

it's Claudia Cardinale night.

Redd, the Johnny Mercer doc reruns tom'w at 6pm, followed by films w/ Mercer songs.

WTF?

12:00 AM Miss Mend (1926)

Three reporters fight off a capitalist attempt to release deadly bacteria in the USSR. Cast: Boris Banet, Vladimir Fogel, Natalya Glan. Dir: Fyodor Otsep. BW-250 mins, TV-PG

And don't worry if you miss it. Flicker Alley is releasing it on DVD on the 15th

i recorded this and am super excited to watch it!

for those with Minnelli/Tracy blind spots, Father Of The Bride (1950)
and Father's Little Dividend (1951) late tonight.

Silent Ben-Hur tomw at midnight.

both versions of King of Kings tonight

watched double bill of chicken every sunday (never seen, pretty good) and meet me in st. louis (<3 <3 <3) last night, but i couldn't help noticing that robert osborne was not looking well. he's gaunt and was rushing his line readings (pronounced "biopic" to rhyme with myopic) and just sort of seemed not all there. has he been sick?

I saw him introducing Remember the Night and figured he just had a cold.

Sunday midnight:

Sherlock Holmes (1922)
Sherlock Holmes faces off against Professor Moriarty. Cast: John Barrymore, Roland Young, Carol Dempster. Dir: Albert Parker. BW-86 mins

FIELDS on Sunday night!

http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=276107

Jean Simmons triple play Friday eve, incl that late '60s Oscar nomination no one's ever seen.

Then we do Jean Simmons poll.

jeez, Dick Shawn, Bobby Darin and Tina Louise are in that film!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064405/

bumped for Jean S night, esp that Richard Brooks film in about 4 hours.

She was one withering young Estella in Great Expectations. "He is a common labouring boy!"

jeez, Dick Shawn, Bobby Darin and Tina Louise are in that film!
What about Arnold Stang?

So how was The Happy Ending? (p.s. Click the imdb link above and check out Simmons' thumb imdb pic - she looks like Loretta Swit with all the fur engulfing her head.)

Fascinating filmography. I have a copy of the 1981 Valley of the Dolls TV movie in which she takes on the Helen Lawson but haven't watched it yet (if I ever will) due to inhuman length. Totally forgot she was Ophelia in Olivier's Hamlet. Amaaaaaazing job! Best thing in the flick, actually. And then there's the eternal Angel Face, the greatest of many things (Simmons performance, Preminger film, noir, etc.).

I meant to buy a copy of Angel Face but I bought Fallen Angel instead.

The Happy Ending is pretty crap 'honest, adult' 1969 filmmaking -- tries Nichols/Lester-fractured editing and "frank language" to goose up soapy alcoholic-rich-housewife story. (He was still doing the same kinda shtick in Looking for Mr Goodbar.) I kinda threw up my hands when Darin showed up as a gigolo in the Bahamas with a variety-show Italian accent (which is revealed to be fake after 10 mins but Jean fails to laugh). It's also got that Legrand song "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" w/ the typically awful A & M Bergman lyrics ("the north and south and west of your life?"). John Forsythe is as boring as ever, otherwise it mighta been a good-bad movie.

Apparently Brooks (married to Simmons at the time) wrote for her bcz, um, she was a drunk at the time and their marriage was sinking.

Shirley Jones upgraded from whore in Elmer Gantry to serial mistress in this one. V hot.

nice Vincent Canby quote on that film: "a kind of false Faces"

LOVE Shirley Jones in not-perfect mode.

I meant to buy a copy of Angel Face but I bought Fallen Angel instead.

You're doing fine then! Probably my 2nd fave Preminger. The man has precious few crap films to his name.

a highly debatable proposition, much as I like him.

No I'm sorry this is not debatable.

I've set myself up an automated reminder -- I'm NOT going to miss The Magnificent Ambersons again. (3 weeks from Wednesday)

Snowday victim here -- Rita Hayworth in Tonight and Every Night in 2 hours; any good?

WmC, make sure you don't!

have you guys heard that the 31 Days of Oscar twist this year is every film features an actor who appears in the one following it? (guest prog Kevin Bacon)

I hadn't heard it, but I picked up on it when I was reading over the schedule.

Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair with Marlene Dietrich and Jean Arthur -- the perfect farcical Berlin '48 counterweight to Germany Year Zero -- tomorrow morning. Do not miss!