23 thoughts on “Stewart Granger Movies”

1. “Poor Ms. Loy always being picked on…lol,” BRUCE writes to me yesterday. Yet maybe Myrna herself might well have subscribed to the old Hollywood adage that ANY publicity is better that no publicity. Certainly if I had made back in her time my comments about her I would have anticipated a thank you letter from her!!

   “The film lasts for 1 hr 51 minutes; I’m on the screen for 1hr 50 mins; and in the other minute I’m in the wash room – but the others in the room are all talking about me for ever second I’m in that wash room!” – Jack Palance boasting in a TV interview about his long part in The Big Knife 1955.

   HOWEVER

   “It’s a long part but a lousy one.” Monty Clift talking about his role in 1959’s Suddenly Last Summer.

   As it is Myrna has become a Cogerson cult figure ; so maybe she would be pleased enough with that.

   I was aware that Treat had done Streetcar BRUCE but had forgotten about that as of course I have never seen Treat’s outing as Stanley. Thanks BRUCE for including the reference as I would have mentioned it myself had I recalled it at the time of my posting.

   You know WH, I gather that Tony Quinn and Anthony Franciosa along with Treat all played Stanley in the stage/TV versions of Streetcar. I have therefore often wondered why Tennessee Williams singled-out Sly to veto for the Stanley role in a proposed big-screen remake of Streetcar which never materialized after Tennessee’s intervention.

   Perhaps Williams considered that Stallone was an inferior actor to all the others-and in my Amateur Film Buff’s group there is a school of thought that leans in that direction. Maybe he objected to Sly’s proposal to remake it for the big screen as that would draw direct comparisons with Brando to Sly’s disadvantage. Or possibly its because Sylvester drew attention to himself by making a big deal of prospectively himself as Stanley whereas the others just quietly got on with it under the radar.

   “Once in New Orleans there was a streetcar – and it was named Desire.”

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2. THIS POST REPLACES MY PREVIOUS ONE JUST NOW WHICH SHOULD BE DELETED – I PRESSED THE DELETION BUTTON TOO LATE

   HI BRUCE: Thanks for the reply. As Joel Hirschhorse has now become a massive cult figure on this site it was good to see a third person commenting on Hirsch.

   Until now you and I have been the only ones to do that: you in starry-eyed mode; and I with my signature impartial, measured and reflective modus operandi. It is just a pity that that Darkness guy or gal is on the wrong side of the debate!

   Hey there!
   You with the stars in your eyes.
   Love never made a fool of you,
   You used to be so wise

   No pun is intended here! Anyway for two main reasons I commend you for resurrecting Rating the Movie Stars with the wider audience of your site.

   1/Shakespeare has told us that the evil that men do lives after them and the good is buried with them. Therefore had you not brough Joel’s book back to life for your viewers, only his Brando comments might have been remembered and the good stuff that Hirsch has written forgotten –
   though I would suspect that most of his opera reviews would be reasonably well respected because as I’ve mentioned he was quite learned on that subject.

   Never having seen him in his youthful Elvis-type rock star days or his cabaret nightclub act I can’t comment on the quality of those – but of course his musical compositions with Al Kasha did well at the Oscars. Sadly Al Kasha too is no longer with us having died in 2020 at the age of 83 and unfortunately gets no Cogerson love. I am reminded of the Crosby/Sinatra duet from 1956’s High Society-

   I have heard
   That in this clan
   You are called the forgotten man.

   [There is a slight Dan-like link in all that: the “men’s evil” lines are spoken by Brando’s Antony in Shakey’s Julius Caesar!]

   2/Rating the Movie Stars is a wonderful reference book overall as I have said in my original post and it was generous of you to share copies with your viewers such as Flora and I. NO – I have not gotten rid of my own copy; it is still in fine reading condition and I consult it all the time.

   No prizes for guessing though which of viewers’ fingerprints will be MOST found all-over pages 293 and 294 of Hirsch’s book which deal extensively with Gregory Dano!!! As always great swapping yarns with you – keep safe! By the way good news about your Book 4 – I await purchasing instruction being flagged-up.

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3. THE EAST!: One of Ladd’s old stomping grounds where often he taught lessons and manners to his favourite punchbags in movies: The Reds! And in Thunder in the East he once again of course got stuck into those perennial whipping-boys of his [and of his pal Big John!].

   They weren’t actually called The Reds though in Thunder in the East but though a simple people at heart we were not stupid back in the 1950s: we completely got Uncle Joe McCarthy’s message shining through the movie’s plot.

   In Uncle Joseph’s time many a Hollywood villain or group of villains was analysed by critics and historians as akas for The Reds; and indeed I often wonder whether Hitch meant his notorious Mother Bates to be a destructive closet commie.

   Despite the standard ‘Reds’-bashing there were two things different about Thunder in the East though. One was the fact that Ladd’s obligatory fawning and doating leading lady and love interest [Debs Kerr] was blind in the plot.

   That didn’t matter though as what counted was what the audience saw; and in 1951/52 Ladd and Kerr as a screen team were arguably Hollywood’s two most “beautiful people” so the audiences’ eyes had a feast [contrastingly even in their 1940 peak years Bill Powell and Myrna Loy looked like everyone’s uncle and aunt and were certainly not in the Ladd/Kerr ‘Romeo and Juliet’ bracket.]

   The other major difference was that the ending was sudden and explosive. The ‘Reds’ have Laddie, Debs and the other good guys trapped in a sanctuary compound and those pesky ‘Reds’ are battering away at the stout gates in the complacency that Ladd & Co have no guns with which to defend themselves. [Laddie could have gotten away earlier but heroically came back for Debs – the self-sacrifices that that wonderful guy made were boundless!]

   However there ARE guns available in the compound and when the ‘Reds’ finally break the door down and pile in they don’t get very far: immediately blocking their way and mowing them down like ninepins before they can retreat is a rattling machine gun in the hands of a human fighting machine standing before them like a rock – guess who? There the film abruptly ends.

   [Wade Garrett saloon bar bouncer -played by Sam Elliott- in 1989’s Road House as he pulls down from a bar table top an extrovert roughneck who has been making a nuisance of himself by dancing on the tables “Whoa Rambo! You can save the world from the Commies from down here on the floor.”]

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