Posted on December 30, 2016 at 7:53 am
Many thanks to Kristen Lopez for inviting me on her Ticklish Business podcast to talk about some of our favorite old movie discoveries in 2016. We talked about “The Harvey Girls,” “The Second Face,” “Homicidal,” “Madam Satan,” My Sister Eileen,” and “Keeper of the Flame.”
Posted on December 29, 2016 at 9:41 am
This is a very sad time. One day after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds suffered a fatal stroke and now, suddenly, she is gone too.
Debbie Reynolds could do it all. She sang, she danced, she acted, she wrote, she produced. She was up for anything, always game, the ultimate show-must-go-on girl, and if she was not the girl next door, you wished she was.
Reynolds is one of the last of the classic era of movie stars. She has been an essential part of American culture since she was a teenager, starring opposite Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in the #5 American Film Institute classic “Singin’ In the Rain” and keeping up with them tap for tap and an overturned sofa to boot.
No star ever showed more pure joy in performing. We see Gene Kelly fall for her and we happily join him.
She was best known as the all-American sweetheart with a series of sometimes sugary musicals and romantic comedies like “Tammy” and “The Singing Nun.” Here she is in “The Affairs of Dobie Gillis” with two more of the greatest dancers in movie history, Bobby Van and Bob Fosse.
In that movie, she sang a slow and sweet version of the same song she sang in “Singin’ in the Rain,” “All I Do is Dream of You.”
She co-starred with Frank Sinatra in the very retro “Tender Trap.”
She was a standout in the all-star cast of “How the West Was Won,” and she was perfectly cast in the title role of the brash musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” which she said was her favorite role.
I am especially fond of “The Mating Game,” with Tony Randall and Paul Douglas, about a happy-go-lucky farm family that lives on the barter system and the IRS auditor trying to investigate them.
She was a gifted dramatic actress, as we see in “The Catered Affair,” a gritty drama where she plays the daughter of Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine.
I think one of her best performances is in the neglected gem “Divorce American Style,” a biting satire with Dick Van Dyke, Jason Robards, and Jean Simmons.
She was magnificent in the title role of Albert Brooks’ “Mother.”
She played Debra Messing’s mother on “Will and Grace” and Liberace’s mother in “Behind the Candelabra.” And she had an adorable cameo as herself in another neglected gem, “Connie and Carla.”
In addition to movies, Debbie Reynolds performed in nightclubs, theater, Las Vegas, on television, and had hit records and wrote best-selling books. She provided voices for “Rugrats,” “Kim Possible,” “The Family Guy,” and the title role in the animated “Charlotte’s Web.” She tried for decades to create a museum of Hollywood memorabilia and she was a tireless fund-raiser for good causes.
May her memory be a blessing.
Posted on December 28, 2016 at 1:22 pm
In Slate, Aisha Harris has a very comprehensive list of the movies that inspired writer/director Damien Chazelle in creating the musical romance, “La La Land,” from the more obvious (“Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”) to the more arcane (“Boogie Nights?”). I enjoyed especially her comments on “Funny Face” and the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, and her notice of the word “parapluie” (French for “umbrella”) in one of the scenes on the studio lot.
Posted on December 18, 2016 at 7:32 pm
Featuring almost 1000 images and over 350 pages, The Art of Jay Ward Productions provides the ultimate overview of the Jay Ward studio from its early inception through its many fondly remembered cartoon shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-right, Fractured Fairy Tales, George of the Jungle and Super Chicken, plus animated commercials for products like Cap’n Crunch and Quisp & Quake.
Posted on December 18, 2016 at 3:00 pm
My favorite Christmas story is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and I enjoy as many versions as possible every year. I love it in just about any of its movie incarnations. “Bah, humbugs” have been muttered by Scrooges played by top-notch dramatic actors like George C. Scott and Albert Finney, former Miss America Vanessa Williams, former Fonzie Henry Winkler, Jim Carrey, and former “Saturday Night Live” star Bill Murray. I love them all. I’ve love the Tim Curry and Jim Dale audio versions available on Audible.com, both delightful. And I have the book, of course, with wonderful illustrations by Ronald Searle.
Here are my very favorite versions on film and I try to watch each of them every year.
5. “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” Who better to play Scrooge than his namesake Scrooge McDuck? And who better for the part of the unquenchable Bob Cratchit than Mickey Mouse? This compilation DVD includes other Christmas goodies “The Small One” and “Pluto’s Christmas Tree.”
4. “The Muppet Christmas Carol” has the distinguished actor Michael Caine as Scrooge and the equally distinguished Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit. Special mention of A Sesame Street Christmas Carol as well, for younger audiences.
3. “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol” The voice talent is outstanding, with Broadway star Jack Cassidy (father of teen idols David and Shaun) as Bob Cratchit and of course Jim Backus as Mr. Magoo, in this version an actor playing the part of Scrooge. The tuneful songs were written by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne, who later went on to write “Funny Girl.” (The legend is that their song “People” was originally written for this movie.)
2. “A Christmas Carol” This MGM classic features the top stars of the 1930’s. Watch for future “Lassie” star June Lockhart as one of the Cratchit children — her real-life father Gene Lockhart played Bob. (He also appears in another Christmas classic, as the judge in “Miracle on 34th Street.”) Reginald Owen plays Scrooge and this one has my favorite Fred, Barry MacKay. I love Dickens’ description of Fred’s laugh: “If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.”
1. “A Christmas Carol” This is the all-time best, with the inimitable Alistair Sim as Scrooge. There has never been a more embittered miser or a more jubilant Christmas morning rebirth. When he orders that turkey for the Cratchits and walks into his nephew’s celebration at the end, everything Dickens hoped for from his story is brought to life.
