Filed under: classic movies, hollywood, movies | Tags: Fred Astaire; MGM; Royal Wedding
The following film clip just sums everything up: why Fred Astaire is a legend, why the Studio System worked, why CGI sucks, why the movies were were once absolute magic, and why Hollywood today is utterly doomed. It’s all there. In this five and a half minute snippet from MGM’s Royal Wedding.
(for more Kitty Packard Pictorial fun with Fred–and Ginger too– click here.)
Filed under: classic movies, film, movies, nostalgia | Tags: Danny Kaye; Virginia Mayo; Sam Goldwyn; Up In Arms; Wonder Man; The Kid From Brooklyn; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; A Song is Born;
Danny & Virginia - 1945 poster art (don't you love her shoes?!?!)
When I was growing up, some of my absolute favorite movies were Sam Goldwyn’s Danny Kaye/Virginia Mayo musicals made during the ‘40s. For a twelve year old, the films were bright, breezy, funny and chock-a-block with snappy tunes and zippy one-liners.
I thought it would be fun to revisit them to see if they’re still just as much fun today as they were then. ( They are. 
)
Up in Arms (1944)
Kaye cutting up in Up in Arms.
Although this film stars Dinah Shore with Kaye, it firmly sets up what was to be the Kaye/Mayo mold. It was Kaye’s first feature film and Goldwyn didn’t want to risk starring two unknowns, so Shore was brought in at the last minute to amp up the star wattage. Co-starring Dana Andrews and Constance Dowling, Up in Arms is Wartime Propaganda at its finest packaged in the form of a fluffy, sweetly silly romp in which hypochondriac Daniel Weems (Kaye) and best friend Joe (Andrews) are drafted into the army where Kaye’s obsessive compulsive behavior lands them both into a bottomless pit of hot water. Dinah Shore’s Tess’ Torch Song is a definite highlight, but more than that, Up In Arms first introduces us to what would be Kaye’s signature: his tongue-twisting, rapid-fire monologues.
Decades before the likes of Jim Carrey, and well before Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye wrote the book on rubber-faced comic madness.
Written in partnership with his wife Sylvia Fine, Kaye’s singular mix of pantomime, song and dance is truly unique and are here unleashed for the first time. Kaye’s Melody in 4-F, a smashing stage success for him, is captured on film in Up In Arms … although tamed considerably for the censors.
Wonder Man (1945)
Kaye gets a hankering for S.Z. Sakall's potato salad in Wonder Man.
Wonder Man is a tired premise executed with delightful freshness and creativity. Kaye plays identical twins: bookworm Edwin Dingle and nightclub singer Buzzy Bellew. When Buzzy is knocked off by notorious gangster ‘Ten Grand Jackson’ for being the Man Who Knew Too Much, the only person who can bring the thugs to justice is Edwin—with a little help from the ghost of Buzzy, that is. (The special effects in the film, by the way, were cutting edge and won a special Oscar.) Buzzy’s ghost possesses his brother in order to lead the cops to Jackson, resulting in the proverbial tangled web we weave: Mild-mannered Dingle, with a squeaky-clean sweetheart of his own (Virginia Mayo) is forced to pretend to be the outrageous Buzzy who happens to be engaged to nightclub hottie Midge Mallone (Vera-Ellen). A cliché of a plot, perhaps, with predictable set pieces, definitely, but Kaye’s wild versatility and show-stopping shenanigans keeps the film fresh and funny. Vera-Ellen makes her feature film debut here, and her sensational talents are well showcased, particularly in a dazzling number entitled So In Love, and I am happy to report that it is just as delightful to me now as it was at the ripe old age of 12. The colors and the costumes are eye popping, but Ellen’s talent is what’s truly jaw-dropping:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAizey5VDu8&feature=related]
p.s.: POTATO SALAD!
The Kid From Brooklyn (1946)
The Kid From Brooklyn (1946) poster art
By the time Kaye and Mayo were cast in Goldwyn’s 1946 remake of Harold Lloyd’s The Milky Way, the team was box office gold. And even though The Kid From Brooklyn lacks Wonder Man’s ingenuity and spunk, it is still breezy, easy entertainment. Delightful, if not a bit dizzy, the film follows the exploits of milkman Burleigh Sullivan who apparently knocks out the middleweight champion of the world. Not exactly good PR for the champ’s agent who concocts a scam to profit over the mishap. He takes the gullible Burleigh and touts him as a boxing sensation, fixing fights across the country to turn him into a star. The fact that Burleigh boxes like he’s waving hello leads to quite a few memorable moments, particularly Eve Arden (the manager’s gal pal) who teaches him the ropes of boxing to the tune of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube: “Trah-la-la-la-la-boom-boom-boom-boom!” The manager then bets against Burleigh in a Vegas-esque fight and, well, you can guess the outcome. Vera-Ellen is Burleigh’s dancing sister and Mayo is the singer that falls for him. Even though Mayo lip sync’s her numbers, it’s still a lot of fun to watch the Sammy Kahn numbers.
And oh those Goldwyn Girls.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
Walter Mitty dreams of the Old South in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty remains the most famous of the Goldwyn/Kaye/Mayo films, and understandably so. Norman McLeod, who had brought to the screen classics such as Topper, Lady Be Good as well as Wonder Man and Kid From Brooklyn, finely helms this memorably sweet, smart and sassy story of the loveable daydreamer Walter Mitty. Walter Mitty is a beleaguered wage slave at a pulp-fiction publishing company who is utterly (pardon the expression) pussy-whipped by his mother and fiancé, and retreats into his daydreams to find solace and assert himself as a man. When the woman of his dreams (Mayo) turns up on his train into town one unexpected morning, Mitty is pulled into a game of cat and mouse that turns his life upside down. Mayo, whose roles are painfully cookie-cutter in the Goldwyn films, is here able to actually flex some acting chops (more to follow in A Song is Born) and backed up by the likes of Boris Karloff, Faye Bainter and Ann Rutherford results in pure cinematic gold. It is also perhaps the most ‘mainstream’ Kaye/Mayo film—not the fluffy extravaganzas of the earlier films, but a film that pivots around a plot the viewer actually invests in. Mitty’s daydreams are terrific fun, as are the character actors and the suspense ramps up to a nail-bitingly fun finale.
A pair of Goldwyn Girls on the set of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
A Song is Born (1948)
Charlie Barnett, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstong & Lionel Hampton
Long-time readers of the Pictorial will know exactly how dear this film is to our heart. Howard Hawks’ remake of his beloved 1941 screwball Stanwyck-Cooper starrer Ball of Fire is not the finely crafted sophisticated romp the original was … but it’s the music that makes this film positively priceless. In my opinion, the film contains s segment of celluloid that is living history in its most impressively organic form. Here we have the unprecedented (and arguably unmatched) interracial jazz ensemble of Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Mel Powell, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnett (WOW!) and Pops himself, Louis Armstrong, jamming together in the film’s titular A Song is Born. Kaye is his usual, stuttering, bumbling self, but it is Mayo who really gets to dig into the role. Taking her cue from Barbara Stanwyck’s femme fatale of the 1941 original, it is easy to see how Mayo would go on to play such tough jawed dames as White Heat’s Verna Jarret. (She’d already proven her range as Dana Andrew’s philandering wife in The Best Years Of Our Lives.) It is the last Kaye/Mayo pairing, and was a disappointment at the box office, but it certaily deserves rediscovery … if for no other reason than the following fabulous musical scenes:
Filed under: classic movies, hollywood, movies | Tags: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade, My Fair Lady, Roman Holiday, Sabrina
If any movie star is a testament to the timelessness of classic film, it is Audrey Hepburn. For well over five decades the actress has been the symbol of everything sophisticated, chic and classy. Today she is the evergreen goddess whose little black dress, flawless taste and unearthly beauty remains a benchmark for high fashion—something that, unfortunately, overshadows her very solid body of work as an accomplished actress. Because it is her truly rare sincerity of character, her kindness of heart and sparkling spunk that dazzled audiences then and remains infectious to this day.
This weekend, LACMA’s film program (miraculously saved from the depths of despair) will kick off a tribute to one of Hollywood’s geunine leading ladies (for Audrey was a definitive lady) with a retrospective entitled Audrey Hepburn: Then, Now and Forever. While showcasing her well known classics Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast At Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady, the program will also include the roles that defined her as a quality actress, specifically the spine-tingling thriller Wait Until Dark and the deliciously sexy mystery romance Charade.
From the LACMA website:
“Perhaps the most beloved actress to emerge from the postwar studio system, Hepburn had brains, style, charm, class, and great timing. Eisenhower and Marilyn Monroe were the competing images of a newly suburbanized America, but for audiences excited by a flood of images from a rebuilt modern Europe, Hepburn was a revelation: she represented the aristocratic tradition rebottled as a hip, slim European girl with American-friendly qualities—such as spunk and wit—and old-school manners, particularly toward her elders. Hollywood took note and Hepburn was paired with many of the biggest male stars of the previous decade in a series of beautifully written comedies and romances that drew audiences into an idealized and sophisticated world.”
The screening schedule is as follows:
October 23 7:30 PM Roman Holiday
October 23 9:40 PM They All Laughed
October 24 7:30 PM Breakfast at Tiffany’s
October 24 9:35 PM Two for the Road
October 30 7:30 PM Sabrina
October 30 9:35 PM Love in the Afternoon
November 6 7:30 PM Charade
November 6 9:35 PM Wait Until Dark
November 7 7:30 PM War and Peace
November 13 7:30 PM My Fair Lady
Hope you can make it, dah-ling … and so does Cat!
Audrey's Holly Golightly with Cat - Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1962
Filed under: classic movies, film, movies | Tags: Asta Nielsen, buster Keaton, chaplin, Conrad Veidt, gloria swanson, Greta Garbo, J’accuse, Laila, Lillian Gish, London Film Festival, rudolph valentino, silent film, silent movies, Underground
A thoughtful and expressive piece appeared in today’s Guardian, praising the value, worth and beauty of silent cinema.
Three silent’s are slated to be screened at the London Film Festival later this month: Underground (1928, directed by Anthony Asquith), J’accuse! (1919, directed by Abel Gance), and Laila (1929, directed by George Schneevoigt), which, Guardian writer Ronald Bergan says, remind modern audiences just how eloquent dialogue-free movies are capable of being. He also makes the provocative argument that “if cinema history had started with sound, it would have been necessary to invent silent movies.”
Read his reverent op-ed below:
The London film festival is screening three silent classics this year, reminding us just how eloquent dialogue-free movies are capable of being.
Is there anyone out there who still needs to be convinced of the superiority of silent movies? They hold their own easily against sound, colour and widescreen films in any canonical list. Silent movies are the ne plus ultra of cinema. The rest is… theatre or literature. How exciting, therefore, that this year’s London film festival is screening three silent movie treasures: one British (Underground, 23 October), one French (J’Accuse, 24 October) and one Norwegian (Laila, 29 October).
Pre-sound movies are closer to Erwin Panovsky’s definition of cinema as “the dynamisation of space and the spacialisation of time”, and to Alfred Hitchcock’s belief in “pure cinema”. When film theorists attempt to define cinematic specificity, it is to non-talkies that they turn. I have a theory that if cinema history had started with sound, it would have been necessary to invent silent movies.
Actually, there is no such thing as a silent movie, because a musical accompaniment was an essential component of every performance. And how can anything so eloquent be termed “silent”? That is why I prefer to call them pre-sound movies, or non-talkies. Ironically, one of the few things that non-talkies couldn’t do was create silence. Silence as an acoustic effect exists only where sounds can be heard, as in Abel Gance’s The Life and Loves of Beethoven (1937), in a sequence where the composer loses his hearing. Incidentally, it is interesting to compare Gance’s non-talkie 1919 version of J’Accuse – which depicts death, delusion and insanity in the trenches – with his far less effective talkie remake of 1938.
Pre-sound films were more universal, with no need for subtitles or dubbing – FW Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) is so expressive that intertitles were unnecessary. Charlie Chaplin, feeling that talkies would limit his international appeal, and being popular enough, resisted dialogue for 13 years, making two of the screen’s greatest comedies, City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936), in the midst of an avalanche of talk.
Much is written about the cinematographic beauty and the use of montage in pre-sound films (for Sergei Eisenstein, sound destroyed montage, which he considered the essence of cinema) but of equal importance were the closeup and the performances. The absence of the spoken word concentrates the spectator’s attention more closely on the visual aspect of behaviour. Acting in non-talkies, now a lost art, had to be done in a manner different from the style on stage or the reality of ordinary life. This was precisely what the great actors of the silent period accomplished, far from the pantomimic exaggeration seen in films like Singin’ in the Rain. Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Conrad Veidt, Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino and Asta Nielsen were among those that gave the most extraordinary performances in screen history. As Norma Desmond (Swanson) says in Sunset Boulevard (1950): “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces.”
Underground (UK, 1928)
Laila (Norway, 1929)
J'accuse! (France, 1919)
Filed under: film, movies | Tags: A Fistful of Dollars, A Fistful of Dynamite, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in America, Once Upon a Time in the West, Rome Film Festival, Sergio Leone, spaghetti western, the Bad and the Ugly, The Colossus of Rhodes, The Good
Spaghetti Westerns and Sergio Leone are the cinematic equivalent of bacon and eggs. Peanut butter and jelly. Or any other divinely matched pairing the world would not be quite the same without. (although I could get along quite well without bacon and eggs, but for sake of argument…) Although slim in number, the seven feature films that make up Leone’s body of work had the remarkable effect of reinventing a dead genre (the Western) with his own brand of grit, realism and sweeping beauty. In watching his films today, it is little wonder that the director’s first job was as an assistant on Vittorio de Cica’s The Bicycle Thief—the good guys and the bad guys are equals as flawed, corruptible, f’d up humans. Hence the eternal humanity of Leone’s work.
To mark Leone’s 80th birthday, and the 20th anniversary of his death, the Rome Film Festival has paid tribute to the Italian director with a special exhibition of photographs taken from the Leone family archives, the Cineteca di Bologna and the Experimental Centre of Cinematography.
A selection from the exhibit follows below:
Clint Eastwood on the set of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Claudia Cardinale on the set of Once Upon a Time in the West
Charles Bronson on the set of Once Upon a Time in the West
Elizabeth McGovern and Robert De Niro in Once Upon a Time in America
James Coburn on the set of A Fistful of Dynamite
On Monday, the Guardian tipped me off to Spacesicks’ I Can Read Movies series.
Since this project has been up since the January, I am feeling woefully unhip over the fact that I have just discovered the wide, wonderful, dizzying world of Spacekick. I actually don’t know QUITE how to describe this mind-bending experience so all I can say is you have to see it to believe it.
The concept: give cult classic and popular films the 1960s pop art book cover treatment.
The result: sweeeeeeeeetness.
Hot off the Los Angeles Times press:
Responding to public outcry over the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s decision to end its 40-year-old weekend film program, two outside organizations have stepped forward to pledge a total of $150,000 in the fight to save the screening series.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which organizes the annual Golden Globe Awards, and Time Warner Cable, in association with Ovation TV, have each agreed to put up $75,000 toward the LACMA film program, which had been scheduled to close in October.
In addition, Time Warner Cable and Ovation said that they will spend more than $1.5 million to market the film program across their multiple media platforms, both locally and nationally.
A spokeswoman for the museum told The Times that as a result of the new money, the film program will now continue at least through the end of the fiscal year in June 2010. She added that the museum will continue to seek additional donors and patrons in support of the film program.
In a statement, LACMA Director Michael Govan said that the museum is ”grateful to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Time Warner Cable, and Ovation TV, for expressing their tangible support for the art of film at LACMA, and we’re very pleased that we can keep film rolling while we build for the future.”
The museum also announced that it intends to create a film department within its curatorial ranks that will be in charge of “thinking about the history and future of film as art as well as film’s increasing importance in the larger narrative of art history.”
– David Ng
Thanks to Marty and Mr. Shickel for getting the ball rolling on this, and to the Hollywood Foreign Press Assoc and (I never thought I’d say this) Time Warner Cable (even though they overcharged me two months in a row) for keeping LA’s premier film program alive!
Filed under: art, arts, culture, film, movies, preservation | Tags: los angeles, Martin Scorsese; LACMA; Richard Schickel;, museum of art
Marty
I heart Marty Scorsese.
And when he goes and does things like this, well, it just sends me all aflutter.
First, a bit of background.
For nearly four decades, the film program at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art has been a primary venue for film lovers to gather for some of the most engaging retrospectives in LA.
But LACMA director Michael Govan has decided to pull the film program, citing declining audiences and $1 million in losses over the past decade. Govan claims that the move will allow them to “pause for re-thinking.” But you, me, Marty and just about everyone else who gives a damn about film history can see through that one like an episode of Gray’s Anatomy.
Over the past two weeks, a slew of damning op-eds have appeared from some of the most powerfully persuasive pens in the industry—Richard Schickel and Kenneth Turan to name the few.
Mr. Schickel states “It is the duty of museums to place before us the accumulated works of the ages, movies definitely included — old and new; obscure and well known; good, bad and absurd — in order to keep us in touch with the rich and ever-informative history of an ever-evolving, yes, I’ll say it, art form …The fact that good movies arise out of a corrupt commercial system makes it more, not less, worthy of our attention. How in the world does a “Chinatown” arise out of that unpromising soil?”
And now, a letter to Mr. Govan from that preeminent film crusader, Martin Scorsese.
“I am deeply disturbed by the recent decision to suspend the majority of film screenings at LACMA. For those of us who love cinema and believe in its value as an art form, this news hits hard.
We all know that the film industry, like many other institutions and industries, has to be radically rebuilt for the future. This is now apparent to everyone. But in the midst of all this change, the value and power of cinema’s past will only increase, and the need to show films as they were intended to be shown will become that much more pressing. So I find it profoundly disheartening to know that a vital outlet for the exhibition of what was once known as “repertory cinema” has been cut off in L.A. of all places, the center of film production and the land of the movie-making itself. My personal connection to LACMA stretches back almost 40 years to when I lived in L.A.during the ’70s and regularly attended their vibrant film series, programmed by the legendary Ron Haver. It was actually at LACMA, during a 20th Century Fox retrospective, that I first became aware of the issues of color film fading and the urgent need for film preservation. Ian Birnie, a programmer of immaculate taste and knowledge, has continued in the tradition of Ron Haver, who was so well-versed in cinema past and present. I do not understand why this approach to programming needs to be re-thought. I am puzzled by the notion of pegging future film programming to “artist-created films,” as stated in the letter announcing this shift – to do this would be tantamount to downgrading the worth of cinema. Aren’t the best films made by artists in the first place?
Without places like LACMA and other museums, archives, and festivals where people can still see a wide variety of films projected on screen with an audience, what do we lose? We lose what makes the movies so powerful and such a pervasive cultural influence. If this is not valued in Hollywood, what does that say about the future of the art form? Aren’t museums serving a cultural purpose beyond appealing to the largest possible audience? I know that my life and work have been enriched by places like LACMA and MoMA whose public screening programs enabled me to see films that would never have appeared at my local movie theater, and that lose a considerable amount of their power and beauty on smaller screens.
I believe that LACMA is taking an unfortunate course of action. I support the petition that is still circulating, with well over a thousand names at this point, many of them prominent. It comes as no surprise to me that the public is rallying. People from all over the world are speaking out, because they see this action – correctly, I think – as a serious rebuke to film within the context of the art world. The film department is often held at arms’ length at LACMA and other institutions, separate from the fine arts, and this simply should not be. Film departments should be accorded the same respect, and the same amount of financial leeway, as any other department of fine arts. To do otherwise is a disservice to cinema, and to the public as well.
I hope that LACMA will reverse this unfortunate decision.
–Martin Scorsese
New York, N.Y.
I hope that Mr. Govan reads Marty’s letter without the sort of culturecrat piety that seems have crippled his powers of reason on this particular decision.
Filed under: movies | Tags: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in memoriam, John Hughes, John Hughes' death, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club
John Hughes
What would the 80s have been like without this man?
For a lot of us out there, John Hughes pretty much is our childhood. Without him we wouldn’t have had Ducky and Andie, Ferris and Cameron, Bender and Claire, or the world’s most lovable pain in the ass, Del Griffith.
Although Hughes was more prolific as a writer, he is a permanent part of our cultural subconscious due to his work as a director. His sudden death today at the tragically young age of 59 has, I’m sure, left all of us startled and saddened.
His movies, for a lot of us, rather helped define our generation and we still relate to them in acutely personal ways. Watching a John Hughes film is, for me anyway, like smelling your mother’s cooking on the way in from school—a million and one childhood memories wrapped up into a single experience.
And so, because of the very personal relationship so many of us have with his films, the Pictorial bestows its deepest sympathies to Hughes’ wife 39 years and their family.
He gave all of us so many happy memories that the least we can do is celebrate his.
All together now, you guys …
Filed under: cinema, classic movies, entertainment, hollywood, movies | Tags: Harvey, Jimmy Stewart, re-make, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks
Best friends: Elwood & Harvey
The relentless Hollywood remake machine strikes again.
The next classic film to get the rehash treatment in what has become a never-ending slew of rehash treatments? 1950’s Oscar winning light comedy Harvey.
That’s right, the much-loved precious Pooka tale is being retold with Steven Spielberg at the helm.
According to this morning’s Variety, shooting is going to start early next year and the role of Jimmy Stewart’s Elwood P. Down is expected to be offered to the likes of Tom Hanks and Will Smith.
Now, I absolutely adore Tom Hanks and definitely think that a family-friendly film might be good for his career at the moment, but … the obvious questions that begs to be answered is …
is this really necessary?
Sure, the original film was an adaptation of a Pulitzer prize winning play, and perhaps I am being a bit too protective. But … Harvey is such a part of postwar American idealism, I honestly do wonder if the story as a vehicle can even work anymore? The wide-eyed innocence that is so vital to Elwood P Dowd’s character simply doesn’t exist these days and I wonder if even someone as talented as Mr. Hanks would be able to pull it off in a manner that could make the audience believe in Harvey the way we do with Stewart.
And who could possibly follow Josephine Hull?
Sigh.
We’re going to keep the development of this project tightly under our radar.
