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.
HELLO AGAIN BOB:
I am really sorry to hear of the death of your parents and can appreciate that it is especially difficult to cope with both of them passing away at the same time.
I hope that you can at least reasonably come to terms with your grief in due course and in the meantime please accept my sincere condolences.
thank you my friend
HI STEVE: You say “Thanks for the review, generous rating (ooer), info, trivia and quotes, always appreciated.”
NO! -in fact I thank YOU. Your 1945 video apart from entertaining me -2 views so far- also gave great direct coverage to 3 of my idols [DD Joan and ROYALty if you get my meaning] and also provided me with an excuse to include trivia about two of my other heroes: Churchill and The Great Mumbler – and here I think I’ve got the order of billing correct!
Deanna was Sir Winston’s facourite film star so one presumes that he liked 100 Men and a Girl the best of all her movies as obviously did audiences. The Work Horse ranks it 11th for critical review with a rating 0f 68% which he regards as a fair bit more than good. Like you he ranks It Started with Myrna No 1 among DD’s films
Anyway in short: your 1945 noirs video is excellent ‘value for money’ from my perspective; I mean who wants to be writing about for example The Thin Woman or Jason Statham and sharks when an opportunity arises to discuss exciting and talented people like Joan, Sir Winston and Royal Dano?
By the way although I have never seen a genre statistical breakdown -have YOU? – I would guess that along with the western the film noir may well have been the most popular and prolific type of film in certainly the 1940s and maybe part of the 1950s though low budget horror films did great in that period and indeed into the 1960s if I recall correctly.
I look forward to your next video and in meantime keep safe.
great comment. i might offer the war genre for the 40s and fifties. i once named 300 WWII , and i am no expert.
HI BOB
Thanks for your comments. I had actually thought that war movies might have been a major genre in the periods concerned but as I have watched few of them down the years as they are not my cup of tea I never mentioned them in my post to Steve.
My pick of the VERY best STILLS/LOBBY CARDS is as follows:
1/The Spider
2/Bewitched
3.The Unseen
4/2 for Power of the Whistler
5/ALL for Cornered
6/ALL for Fallen Angel
7/1st one for Hangover Square – wow!
8/Detour
9/2 for Conflict
10/2 for Two O’Clock Courage
11/All for Scarlet Street-Joan Bennett to my eyes being one of those 1930s/40s Myrna Loy look-alikes who could act and had sex-appeal.
12/Spellbound. ALL, with collector’s items being the one with Hitch and cute little Asta and the solo of the young Dano showing how dashing he was in his heyday
13/ALL for Mildred Pierce. Great performance from Joan – of course! – but for me it dates a bit when compared with Kate Winslet’s 2011 TV miniseries which I watched recently: “English Rose” Kate with tour- de-force acting performs daring romantic scenes that might have made even the notorious Errol Flynn blush!
14/Fine run of stills for Lady on a Train. This film had an adjusted domestic gross of $89 million and sadly all of Deanna’s movies that crashed the Cogerson adjusted $100 million barrier in US were all behind her and the next 5 and final movies after Lady on a Train had an average adjusted domestic gross of a paltry $57 million according to Bruce’s figures. Contrast that average with the shopping $320 million US adjusted for Deanna’s biggest hit “100 Men and a Girl” which was Winston Churchill’s fave movie. He reportedly watched it EVERY Remembrance Day with cigars and whiskey!
Conservative peer to Winston in the corridors of England’s Houses of Parliament: “Churchill – you’re drunk!”
Churchill: “Madam, you’re ugly; I’ll be sober in the morning!”
Here for openers is my own pick of the very best POSTERS with as always FL= foreign language versions of them.
1/1st one for The Spider
2/1st 2 for Bewitched
3/1st and FL one for The Unseen
4/All for Johnny Angel especially FL one
5/1st one for Cornered
6/2 for Fallen Angel – wow!
7/FL one for Hangover Square – is that somewhere near 10 Downing St London?
8/1st for Detour
9/ALL for Scarlet Street – wow!
10/All for Mildred Pierce especially FL ones
11/1st one for House on 92nd Street
12/FL for Conflict
13/both for Two O’Clock Courage
14/1st and FL one for Lady on a Train -wasn’t she lovely in her day?!
15/2 great FL ones for Spellbound-the last film but one [ie Duel in the Sun] in which Royal Dano would be billed other than 1st in a full-length role throughout his heyday as a top star though in the mid-1950s he was scheduled to team up with “The King” of movies but it never came off – “ME get billed above GABLE – get real!” {Dano to his agent when the movie was at initial planning stage ].
Steve’s film noir videos have so-far been a learning-curve for me as many of the titles were previously unfamiliar. For example I was totally oblivious to the existence of The Whistler series. Anyway for me the 1945 offering is another of Steve’s 99%-rated videos.
As mentioned in my comments on Steve’s previous video the director of Lady on a Train, France’s Charles Henri David, ultimately married Deanna and they lived ‘happy ever after’ as man and wife for 49 years. It wouldn’t be Deanna if Hollywood being awash at the time with male American heartthrobs and poshly-speaking Englishmen she didn’t nevertheless go off and marry an ‘aristocratic’ Frenchman!
And her hubby was not one of those matinee-idol charmers such as Alain Delon or Louis Jourdan*** mind you but rather a guy who judging by his internet photographs looked somewhat like Woody Allen! She obviously had her own preferences and I am reminded of a slogan that used to be on the classroom wall of a rather demanding schoolteacher of mine: “Only the BEST is good enough” so it is unlikely she would have settled for an Irishman. Poor me – but a Virginian or a Mancunian would not have sufficed either!
***”Brando: the Don Quixote of actors. Always tilting at windmills he showed us what we could dare!” -Louis Jourdan.
Hi Bob, apologies for the late reply. Thanks for the review, generous rating (ooer), info, trivia and quotes, always appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
I liked the Churchill quote. Why on earth was ‘100 Men and a Girl’ a favorite of Churchills? I have to seek it out and imagine I’m Churchill while watching it.
Was young warbling bird watching one of his private pleasures?
Two films have scored 10 out of 10 from my sources –
Scarlet Street and Mildred Pierce.
My Video Top 6 –
Mildred Pierce 8.35
Scarlet Street 8.15
Spellbound 7.8
Detour 7.6
Hangover Square 7.5
Fallen Angel 7.2
The UMR Critics Top 6 –
Scarlet Street 8.7
Mildred Pierce 8.2
Detour 8.0
Spellbound 7.8
Hangover Square 7.4
Fallen Angel 7.4
The question is should ‘Leave Her to Heaven’ have been included on the video? It has an infamous femme fatale but it’s also in full rich bright technicolor with nary a shadow to be found anywhere.
There are indeed colour noirs and Leave Her to Heaven is one of them. Niagara starring Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten is another excellent colour noir