795 thoughts on “Site Index”

1. Steve, congratulations on your Carroll Baker video. I’ m not a huge fan but I consider Baker to be one of the sexiest female stars of her era. I especially liked the photos of her as Baby Doll, the French poster of Cheyenne Autumn and some of the rather cheesy posters of her European thrillers (though I have not seen any of them).

   I believe that both Baby Doll and Harlow were Baker’s signature roles, though I thought she also did very well in The Big Country and How the West Was Won, first as James Stewart’s love interest (or rather he was her interest) and then as George Peppard’s mother, a role where she showed herself quite capable of aging 20 years and showing some strength and determination.

   We will not get into a billing debate this time, as some time ago, I had questioned why Baker had been billed ahead of Charlton Heston in The Big Country, and that question was answered as best as it could be in an exchange with Bob and John….at least I think it was 😉

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   1. Hi Phil, thanks for checking out my Carroll Baker video, much appreciated.

      I’m surprised the video took off the way it did, maybe it was the provocative poster from Station Six Sahara on the cover? Or could be she still has a strong following.

      Yep George Peppard was three years older than Baker and she’s playing his mother in HTWWW and 2 years later his lover in Carpetbaggers.

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      1. Hey Steve…I agree…it is surprising….I am too aware of her…I blame Joel H. he did not put her in his book….that I read so much growing up….lol. Glad your video took off.

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   2. Hello everybody,
      I am going to see the Steve video s Carroll Baker,because She Is very good actress and i like her.
      First of all , i love the Hollywood name i think it Is simply sexy and when You see the lady it Is exactly the star You just want to see.
      I dont know what happening in the 1960 when She left Hollywood to go for films in Italie.
      She Was at top. She Was everywhere in the newspapers and She got greats films and good box office.
      I saw a lot of her films and She was so différent from the first films and the last i know like Harlow or the capt.
      When She came back in Hollywood at the beginning of the 1970 it Was too late.
      Baby doll Was a great film and She Turned with James Dean in Géant.
      Bruce what do You think about a Carroll Baker page.????
      I am sure You have all and everything in Your base.
      My vacations are always a good moment and i just start it.
      Good Day
      Pierre

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      1. Hey Pierre….good comments on Carroll Baker. I told Steve if his Baker page took off, that I would do a Baker page too…seems it is off to a good start….so maybe she will get a UMR page in the near future. Looking at her Steve video…you are right many of these movies are in my database already. Hope you have an awesome vacation.

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   3. A link to Steve’s Carroll Baker video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCfNN-VxBhQ

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      1. Cheers Bruce. Well I’ve used your index page many times for ideas on video subjects so it’s nice that I can give you ideas on future UMR pages. Team work! 🙂

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         1. Hey Steve….The next time I am in a rush to get a page completed…I am sure the fact that I only have to research 8 of Sandra Dee’s movies will quickly reach my mind.

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   4. Hey Phil….she and Debbie Reynolds had the biggest parts in HTWWW…as the other stars just breezed in and out so quickly. Not a huge Tenn. Williams fan…but Baby Doll stuck with me…..though I know so little about Baker….that I thought Tuesday Weld played that part. How little I know about movies…lol.

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2. HI STEVE 1 Though the 1956 Baby Doll was initially Carroll’s calling-card most of my friends remember her more as Rina Marlowe [really Jean Harlow reportedly – whom Carroll later played in another movie] in the 1964 The Carpetbaggers and certainly she had at least one great line in that. When she virtually throws herself at a targeted “date” he reminds her that she would be cheating on fading screen movie cowboy star and her hubby Nevada Smith in the plot and she derisively replies “Nevada’s like his guns, full of blanks!” As my Laddie plays Nevada in The Carpetbaggers I thought it was a sad epitaph for the once great “Shane” and matinee idol of the ladies back in the forties/early fifties.but I’m sure Phil will be relieved that nobody was describing the 1966 Nevada in the way that Carroll did the 1964 one!

   2 I last saw Carroll as a gangster’s mother in Arnie’s 1990 Kindergarten Cop but my favourite recollection of her was with my Greg and Chuck in The Big Country. Until I saw your video I hadn’t realized she had made so many stand-alone movies and that they stretched over such a long period. Certainly the best POSTERS are those where Carroll is allowed to display herself to full advantage and my pick overall are Sweet Body of Deborah, Paranoia, Station 6 Sahara, Bad , Baby Doll and The Carpetbaggers whilst probably the most outstanding is the albeit tame Cheyenne Autumn with my Richard.

   3 The STILLS don’t leave much to the imagination either with the best ones for my taste being Carpetbaggers, all from Baby Doll, and Giant but for me even better than those though it was tame and in black and white was the one with Carroll and my Greg in The Big Country – “Stephen! Steven! Why hast thou Forsaken Me?” [Matthew 27:46 or Chuck Tweedie].

   4 No matching Big Guy treat but the Work Horse rarely fails us one way or another and in pages elsewhere on the site he has covered all of your Top 5 giving them an average rating of 78.4% compared with your close 79.5%. He differs most from you about your No 5 The Carpetbaggers which he gives 61% to your 72.%

   5 There was no way that I was going to mark down a video that had posters/stills/movies featuring a whole clutch of my idols –Peck, Heston, Jimmy Stewart, Widmark, Laddie but this classy and eye-popping video earns a 96.5% in its own right in my opinion.

   6 PS I also liked your poster for Gable’s But Not for Me in which the ‘ancient’ King is actually pursued by young Carroll. I remember at the time one critic headed his review with “Oh you sly old dog Mr Gable.” Why could Hirsch not have reviewed with such refreshing abandon and sense of humour?

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   1. Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing and rating my Carroll Baker video, it is appreciated.

      Glad the x-rated pictorial aspects met with your approval. [wink]

      I didn’t know Baker had fled to Europe in the late 60s to make some sexy thrillers, gave me an excuse to showcase a more adult range of poster art. From Baby Doll to Andy Warhol’s Bad, not something to be proud of perhaps but she must have had a cult following and she did feature in some big blockbuster movies inbetween, worldwide successes.

      If Bruce does do a page on her it might be difficult to get box office grosses on her European films, maybe just keep that section blank and fill in the rest.

      Baker on Gable – “I was very young when I saw Gone with the Wind, but I fell in love with Clark Gable. And when I got to work with him, I couldn’t believe it. I still had a crush on him. He was quite an old man by then; he must have seen that I was head over heels, even though I was married. When Clark Gable kissed me, they had to carry me off the set.”

      Baker on George Peppard – “As I understand it, he later became a nice guy, a gentleman, but when we worked together back then, he was pretentious, egotistical, a brat and an a**hole–and that’s just for starters! He pretended he was seven years younger than he was; he even claimed to be a bachelor and denied he was married–in front of me (I knew better),”

      Two of Baker’s films scored 10 out of 10 on my scoresheet – Giant and The Big Country, and two scored 9 out of 10 – Baby Doll and How the West Was Won.

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      1. HI STEVE

         1 Thanks for the additional information especially the trivia about Gable and Peppard. I liked George and loved him in Breakfast at Tiffanys although everyone naturally raved more about Audrey.

         2 If George was as Carroll described him he was obviously suited to the Jonas Cord part in The Carpetbagger because Jonas was certainly an a*****e as Carroll put it. SHE by her own account was also suited to her part in But Not for Me as she plays a.22 year old girl mad about the then [I think] 58 year old Gable. All those younger actresses seemed to go crazy about Gable on and off screen because apparently Princess Grace threw herself at him. between scenes of Mogambo when he was around 52. Never heard about the King being invited to Grace’s Monaco wedding though but apparently attending was Archibald Alexander Leach – sounds as mundane as Maurice Micklewhite! though poor Archie wasn’t able to stick a Sir in front of it.

         3 I hope Carroll didn’t use that sort of language around a gentleman like my Greg when making Big Country though CHUCK would have shrugged it off judging by some the conversations that he and ole Mumbles were supposed to have had.

         4 Whatever their screen image a lot of those young ladies seemed very free with the expletives without the deleted. Tucked away somewhere on the Net is a report of a conversation of a discussion between Garland and Durbin when Judy visited my Deanna at her home in France and the 4-letter words fairly flew. Another report that I read on a series of discussions between Bogie and Hollywood producers with whom he was friendly would have made a gangster blush.

         5 Accordingly people who think that the stars of the classic era would not have been comfortable with the relaxed censorship in relation to language and deed today should consider that maybe their view is too much of a generalisation.

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3. Hey Bob….great breakdown on Steve’s video…..which here is the link….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhItmQ82bg4 good stuff.

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4. STEVE

   Sylvia Sydney and Cary Grant in 30 Day Princess
   Sylvia Sydney and Spencer Tracy in Fury
   Sylvia Fury and Frederic March in Good Girl [aka Good Dame]
   Fred MacMurray Sylvia Sydney and Henry Fonda in Trail of the Lonesome Pine***

   Actually Myrna did get billed above Tracy in Test Pilot. Years later he is supposed to have said to Katie Hep in their Pillow Talk “That was the last straw for me. Everybody was getting billed above that b****y woman but me and I decided to get a top billing clause in my contract when it came up for renewal like Clark had told me was thinking of doing.”

   ***Later when Henry rose to more prominence posters were released which actually give him first billing. Currently Wikipedia shows the original release poster that gives Henry 3rd billing but IMDB has the later poster with Henry billed first.

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   1. Good work Bob, Sylvia Sidney’s video might be up this evening if all goes well, and Bruce has a page! [cue whistling and cheering]

      An hour ago someone posted a comment on my Bing Crosby video, he was surprised to see Ingrid Bergman billed first on The Bells of St. Mary’s poster, and it wasn’t a foreign poster! This is what the man posted “‘ere guv’nor what’s all this malarkey about Ingrid billed first over Bing, never happened before. Did you fuff around with it? I ain’t having this you plonker. Put Bing back on top pronto or I’m hitting the thumbs down button. I ain’t messing around”

      See what I have to put up with on my channel. El Supremo has it easy here in UMR land.

      Btw that poster must be rare, don’t understand it. Bing is billed first on every other poster for that particular film.

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      1. HI STEVE

         1 Yes that’s a poster someone made up as Bing was the top billed star in that movie.

         2 It shows how obsessed Old Cantankerous was with with billing when he couldn’t forget about it even in the bedroom. And there was nothing in the conversation for poor Katie because she knew she was never going to get billed over Spence! I’m beginning to think that the only person who has never minded about billing has been John but then he was never a movie star.

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   2. Hello Bob,
      sorry to say (not really), but in Lonesome Pine the original billing was

      Sylvia Sidney
      Fred MacMurray Henry Fonda

      in

      Just checked the DVD cover and the beginning of the movie 😉

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      1. Hey Lupino….thinking you will like Steve’s next video…..Sylvia Sidney. That will be two new pages on her in the last 4 months.

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      2. LUPINO:
         1 The original theatrical release posters in 1936 gave Fred MacMurray first billing and I in my post to Steve that I was quoting the theatrical release posters and I said that others had been issued since which for example gave Henry Fonda top billing and that IMDB was using the latter version. Even in that one though Sylvia still gets billed below Fred

         2 If you check the page for Trail of the Lonesome Pine on Wikipedia you will see that Wiki actually spells out that it is using the theatrical release poster which gives top billing to Fred.

         3 Unless I have more conclusive alternative confirmation I always consult the theatrical release posters which are usually to be found on Wiki because (1) different versions of posters often come out after a movie has passed the initial release stage of its life (2) DVD producers can at times do their own thing regarding billing on their covers (3) a print of the film is on most occasions not immediately to hand and the billing on the screen can differ from the posters.

         4 For example (1) In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Wayne was billed first on the screen and Jimmy Stewart on the posters *** (2) In the Great Race (1965) Tony Curtis was first billed on posters and Jack Lemmon on screen (3) in the little known Spring Reunion (1957) Betty Hutton came first on posters and Dana Andrews name appeared first on screen at least in the prints released over here.(4) In the 1940 Strange Cargo Gable got top-billed on the PROMOTIONAL posters for the movie but Joan Crawford was billed first on all other posters and on the screen.

         5 In my post to Steve my object was to quote to him a film in which Sylvia Sidney [I’ve spelt her surname right this time!] got billed above Fonda and Fred’s billing was incidental. If because of the confusion we set aside Trail of the Lonesome Pine I can still achieve my object by quoting You Only Live Once where Sylvia got billed above Henry – at least on the posters I’ve seen!

         6 Anyway the matter did give me the pleasure of once again exchanging posts direct with you and I thank you for the information about the DVD regarding billing matters “all’s grist that comes to my mill!” I now await with baited breath to see what version(s) of the poster Steve uses in his video! Have a good weekend

         BOB
         ***John who uses this site and who is usually very reliable thinks he saw a TV print which gave Stewart billing on the screen as well as the posters though the screen prints released over here definitely gave top spot to the Duke.

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5. HI STEVE 1 Ah Memory Lane! Eleanor is a big part of my nostalgic recollections of movies in the 1950s. My fondest memories of her are with Golden in Escape from Fort Bravo, Granger in Scaramouche and especially with Chuck in The Naked Jungle which fronts your video. Eleanor was also good as one of Gable’s queens in the gimmicky titled The King and Four Queens. Like most of her female contemporaries her heyday in the cinema was gone by the 1960s and in her later years she like many others from the Old Days was largely consigned to TV but she will though always have a soft spot in my memory and I am therefore delighted with your video.

   2 However enough about me and my wallow in nostalgia. Let’s talk about YOU – ie discuss your video. Included in the many fine POSTERS were Escape Me Never, Hole in the Head and Many Rivers to Cross but a 96.5% rating for this video came to me once my breath was taken away by Valley of the Kings, Chain Lightning, Escape from Fort Bravo and The King & Four Queens. I also admired the posters for Interrupted Melody and Phil might like to note that although Eleanor had the lead in that one Glenn Ford would co-star only if he got top billing. She is reported to have said at the time “I don’t care!” Eleanor played the Australian opera soprano Marjorie Lawrence who was noted for her interpretation of the work of the famous German composer Richard Wagner and the film was profiable

   3 I simply loved the STILLS and especially wish to praise (1) Escape from Fort Bravo. Holden didn’t have to take any Towering Inferno c**p from the likes of McQueen in those Halcyon Days of Golden’s glittering career (2) with John Garfield when he and Eleanor were in their heyday of both career and looks (3) with Granger in Scaramouche and Kirk in Detective Story (4) and I almost broke into applause when I saw the lobby card for Naked Jungle.

   4 The Big Boy doesn’t have a Parker page yet so we’ll not get any condescending lectures for now about what Joel though of her but WH has rated elsewhere on the site Sound of Music, Detective Story and Man with the Golden Arm which are 3 of your Top 5 and his average rating for them is 78.1%against your slightly more generous one of 79.5%. Anyway happy days seeing the arrival of this video!

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   1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, comment, trivia, observation and comparison, always appreciated. Glad you enjoyed the visual presentation.

      I’d always planned to do a video on the beautiful Miss Parker. I probably first saw her in The Naked Jungle with Chuck Heston on TV back in the 70s, the film would regularly crop up on one of our three channels (!) and I’d try not to miss it. It’s not a great film but it is very watchable. TCM is currently showing an excellent HD print of this classic.

      The foreign posters for Chain Lightning almost make it look like a science fiction film!

      Only one Parker movie scored 10 out of 10 from my sources and that was The Sound of Music, for a while the highest grossing movie ever! Kudos to Robert Wise, director of classic sci-fi The Day The Earth Stood Still and West Side Story, IMO the greatest musical not starring Kelly and Astaire. Before becoming a director Wise edited Citizen Kane. Parker has 4 films scoring 9 out of 10.

      The next actress coming up quite soon was billed above Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, Fredric March and… Spencer Tracy! Who could it be? Clue: It isn’t Myrna Loy.

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