Movies | dual personalities

November 20, 2014

“I am not steak. You can’t just order me.”*

by chuckofish

Because Mike Nichols (November 6, 1931 – November 19, 2014) died yesterday, I thought I would choose one of his films as my Friday movie pick.

The winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, he was definitely one of the cool kids. He made 22 movies, but I’m sorry to say I’m not really a fan of any of them.

Two of his films took place at or near Smith College. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) was filmed in a house across from Sage Hall. The swing in the yard was still there 10 years later when I was a student there. It was fun to imagine Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton hanging out on my campus.

This is a great film, I suppose, but difficult to watch–all that drunken mean-ness and diatribe–somehow it always hit a little too close to home. So although I can recommend it, I won’t be watching myself.

Carnal Knowledge (1971) is about two Amherst College roommates, played by Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel, and their lives after they graduate. I saw it thirty years ago–because part of it had been filmed at Smith–and was appalled by it. I’m sure it wouldn’t shock me now, but it did then.

Candace Bergen as a Smith girl.

Of course, The Graduate (1967) is a great favorite of many people, but I am not one of them. Dustin Hoffman just seems so mis-cast to me.

Working Girl (1988) starring Melanie Griffith is a cute movie worth watching to see Alec Baldwin in a very early part as Tess’s tacky Irish boyfriend. Joan Cusack is pretty great too.

It’s all about the hair.

I may see if I can find this movie to watch, but I seem to remember that the big lesson learned is to dress for success and tone down the hair while you’re at it. Sigourney Weaver plays a grade A bee-atch who tries to steal night school-educated Melanie’s good ideas, but she shows her, right? Harrison Ford is the stand-up guy who looks uncomfortable in a suit. Everyone thought this movie was so radical. It was really just a 1930s re-tread updated a little.

So what to recommend? How about “Lady Bouvier’s Lover” from season five of The Simpsons? Mrs. Bouvier!!

Have a great weekend! I’ll be getting ready for the big feast on Thursday which will be at my house this year. What about you?

*Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) in Working Girl

4 Comments

November 17, 2014

“They can’t keep me out of heaven on a technicality!”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Clarence Day (November 18, 1874–December 28, 1935), the author of Life With Father and long-time contributor to The New Yorker.

Born in New York City, he attended St. Paul’s School and Yale, where he edited the humor magazine. He was an Episcopalian. But bedridden with arthritis for the last 23 years of his life, he was barely able to hold a pencil. Isn’t it amazing that he wrote such hilarious material?

Scenes from Life With Father, along with its 1932 predecessor, God and My Father, and its 1937 sequel, Life with Mother, published posthumously, were the basis for the 1939 play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, which became one of Broadway’s longest-running non-musical hits. In 1947—the year the play ended on Broadway—it was made into a wonderful film starring William Powell and Irene Dunne and directed by Michael Curtiz.

Sadly, Day died in 1935, never having realized the sensational success of his book or the play and movie based on it.

We always got a big kick out of it, especially all the poking fun at Episcopalians:

Mary: That’s funny. The words are the same, but it’s the wrong tune.

Clarence Day: Oh, it can’t be the wrong tune. We sing it exactly that way in church.

Mary: We don’t sing it that way in the Methodist Church. You see, we’re Methodist.

Clarence Day: Oh, that’s too bad. Oh, I don’t mean it’s too bad that you’re a Methodist. Anybody’s got a right to be anything they want, but what I mean is, we’re… *Episcopalians*.

Clarence Day is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

That would be an interesting place to visit, don’t you think? A rural cemetery, it is one of the largest in New York City and is a designated historic landmark. There are lots of famous people buried there including Fiorello La Guardia, Irving Berlin, Damon Runyon…and Herman Melville! But I digress.

In the meantime, I’ll toast ol’ Clarence tonight (along with his mother and Father).

*Life With Father (1947)

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November 7, 2014

Friday movie pick

by chuckofish

The other night I tried to watch Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) on TCM, but I didn’t make it to the end. I knew how it was going to end, and it was pretty depressing.

Indeed, there was nothing uplifting in the story of the hapless Czar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra and their downfall and ultimate murder. I remember seeing it at the movies back when it came out. My mother thought it was great and wept through much of it, but seeing it again, I was unmoved. And I should note that the soundtrack was terrible.

The next night I watched Anastasia (1956)–the film adaption of the stage play starring Ingrid Bergman in her second Academy Award-winning role and the great Yul Brynner.

It was pretty great. It is the story of an opportunistic Russian businessman (Brynner) who tries to pass a mysterious woman (Bergman) off as the Grand Duchess Anastasia. However, she is so convincing in her performance that even the biggest skeptics, including the Dowager Empress herself, believe her.

So Anastasia is my Friday movie pick. Check it out. Although Yul’s part is not nearly big enough to suit me, it is a good movie and the soundtrack by the great Alfred Newman is terrific.

Have a great weekend!

4 Comments

October 31, 2014

“We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!”*

by chuckofish

I am certainly not a fan of horror films. I have never understood the human desire to be scared, whether it be at the movies or at the amusement park on a roller coaster. These are thrills I do not seek. Call me dull, whatever.

However, I do have a few suggestions for Halloween-y movies to watch tonight. If you are like me, you turn off the lights and pretend you are not home and spend the evening watching a movie. Call me dull, whatever.

1. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

In this romantic story set in the early 1900s, young widow Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) moves to the seaside English village of Whitecliff despite the fierce disapproval of her mother-in-law and sister-in-law. She falls in love with and rents Gull Cottage, where she takes up residence with her young daughter Anna and her devoted maid Martha. On the first night, she is visited by the ghostly apparition of the former owner, a roguish sea captain named Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison), who “allows” her to stay. Eventually they write a book together which saves her from financial disaster. I say this a lot I know, but truly, they do not make movies like this anymore: low-key, touching and, yes, romantic. I watched this movie recently and it made me cry.

2. Signs (2002)

Signs is my favorite film in the M. Night Shyamalan oeuvre. Written and directed by the brilliant Shyamalan, it was scary the first time I saw it, but not so much now. However, it is worth watching over and over, because it is also a great movie about an Episcopal priest who has lost his faith. Yes, there is a lot more to this movie than extraterrestrials! By the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) the hero/minister has found his faith again and donned his collar, having saved his family from extraterrestrials in the bargain. Mel Gibson (not a favorite of mine) is really good in this movie, as are Joaquin Phoenix and, as the children, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin. I saw this movie recently and it made me cry.

3. and 4. Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989)

In the first Ghostbuster movie misfit parapsychologists Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Raymond Stantz (Dan Ackroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) lose their jobs at Columbia University and establish a paranormal extermination/investigation service known as “Ghostbusters”. They go on to save New York City. In the sequel (which unlike most sequels, is pretty darn good) they save NYC again and all is once again well in the world. Also I should note that these movies are funny without being overly vulgar. There is a funny joke about a guy being “Dick-less”, but it is pretty restrained by today’s standards.

Venkman: Or you can accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.

Mayor: What do you mean,”biblical”?

Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff!

Venkman: Exactly.

Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!

Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!

Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!

Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!

Mayor: Enough, I get the point! And what if you’re wrong?

Venkman: If we’re wrong, then nothing happens! We go to jail; peacefully, quietly. We’ll enjoy it! But if we’re right, and we can stop this thing… Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.

Please Note: This movie will not make you cry, unless you laugh ’til you cry.

Do you have any suggestions? Young Frankenstein (1973)? The Addams Family (1991)? What will you be watching? Personally, I may hunker down and binge-watch Angel, Season One.

Don’t judge me.

If you are not in the Halloween mood at all, you could choose to celebrate the birthday of the late, great John Candy (October 31, 1950 – March 4, 1994), who is a particular favorite of mine, by watching one of his movies.

Recently I was channel surfing and found Uncle Buck (1989) which I watched for awhile. I laughed so hard I was literally (literally) weeping during one scene where Candy goes into the empty Men’s Room at an elementary school and finds a wall of mini urinals. The man was a comic genius. I should note that the OM watched this scene with the great stone face, never breaking so much as a smile. He was not amused. What can I say? To each his own.

*Bill Murray in Ghostbusters

9 Comments

October 29, 2014

Way back when Wednesday: Steve McQueen comes to St. Louis

by chuckofish

Spoiler alert! Crime does not pay!

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery is a 1959 heist film shot in black and white. The film stars a 28-year old Steve McQueen as a college dropout hired to be the getaway driver in a bank robbery. The film is based on a 1953 bank robbery attempt of Southwest Bank in St. Louis.

It was filmed on location in south St. Louis in 1959 and for anyone who grew up here, it is a fascinating movie, which captures a moment in time, that is gone, gone, gone.

I watched it one Friday afternoon at work–“previewing” it for a film course at school–and my assistant (who is from South St. Louis) and I had so much fun pointing out landmarks–

Planning the heist in Tower Grove Park

Tower Grove Park! Magnolia Avenue! The Southtown Famous Barr!

Love those St. Louis names!

We wondered where the bar was where Steve goes and drinks a Budweiser.

No need for a concealed carry permit in the good old days!

Well, it’s a small world really.

You want to know how small? The film was directed by Charles Guggenheim, who was a neighbor of ours on Westgate Avenue for awhile back in the 1960s before he got famous and won three Oscars for documentary films. His daughter Gracie was a friend of my dual personality. (Actually I don’t think my sister liked Gracie too much, but they got invited to the same birthday parties.) Be that as it may, the point is that there really are/were six degrees of separation between me and old Steve McQueen.

Anyway, Guggenheim’s switch to documentaries was a good move on his part. This movie is not very good, despite Steve’s ~~best efforts~~ trying really hard. Who knew he would become such a star? No one who saw this movie. (Don’t worry, I thought he was terrific!) But I do recommend it to anyone from St. Louis. It is a hoot and a half. You can find the entire film on YouTube.

8 Comments

October 24, 2014

“Baby sister, I was born game and I intend to go out that way.”*

by chuckofish

Since I asked the trivia question yesterday, for which True Grit (1969) is the answer, I will suggest it as my Friday movie pick.

It has been a long time since I read the book by Charles Portis, but I remember that this film is a remarkably close adaption of it, which makes for a really good and authentic movie. The story revolves around Mattie Ross who is bent on avenging the death of her father and bringing to justice his killer, Tom Cheney. She hires U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn to go after him and insists on accompanying him on the trail. They are joined by a Texas Ranger, La Boeuf, as they head into the Indian Territory.

John Wayne, of course, is great in his Academy Award-winning role of Cogburn. Glen Campbell isn’t bad as La Boeuf and Kim Darby as Mattie Ross has grown on me. If you can ignore her ridiculous modern hairdo, she is really pretty good. She is not supposed to be endearing or even particularly likeable–but she does have true grit and lots of it. Robert Duvall and the rest of the supporting players are also terrific. It is interesting to see Dennis Hopper in one of his last roles before he went the Easy Rider hippie/drug route. [Side note: Hopper always credited John Wayne with saving his career when, after seven years of no one hiring him, Wayne gave him a job in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). (I could do a whole blogpost about actors whose careers were resurrected/saved by John Wayne.)]

True Grit was beautifully shot on location, mainly in Ouray County, Colorado, which is right next door to my ancestral Hinsdale County–so I am partial to the gorgeous San Juan scenery. The courthouse scene was filmed in the Ouray County Courthouse.

Unfortunately, I have watched the movie fairly recently, so I really should watch the new version tonight, but as I make it a rule never to watch re-makes of John Wayne films, I am unable to do so. This is a good rule. Therefore, I will try to get my hands on the sequel to True Grit—Rooster Cogburn (1975) which co-starred Katharine Hepburn in a sort of western version of The African Queen.

Although not the classic its predecessor is, it is a good and highly enjoyable movie. You can tell that the two great stars were simpatico and liked each other a lot.

So that’s my plan.

Have a great weekend!

*Rooster Cogburn in True Grit

6 Comments

October 13, 2014

“I can’t look at everything hard enough.”*

by chuckofish

“Field of Lilies”, Louis Comfort Tiffany

Last week I watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) and cried through much of it. Then this weekend I watched Our Town (1940) and wept through the entire third act. I must say that much of this was due to the great musical scores of both films, by Bernard Hermann and Aaron Copland, respectively, but still. They even changed the end of Our Town! (Spoiler alert) Emily doesn’t die! They softened up the hard ending of the play, but it was still effective.

Then I finished Jan Karon’s Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good and got a little weepy. It is not a sad book at all, but it reminds us all to rejoice and be glad and you know that that can make me tear up.

Then we sang hymn #624 in church–“Jerusalem the Golden”–and I was done (or undone as the case may be).

Well, you know what Frederick Buechner says about tears:

You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay close attention.

They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.

(Whistling in the Dark)

So keep your eyes and your heart open as you go forth into the world this week. Thanks be to God.

*Emily in “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder

2 Comments

October 2, 2014

Words of wisdom

by chuckofish

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”

–Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By and About Groucho Marx

Today is the birthday of Julius Henry Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977)–American comedian and film and television star.

An early photo of the Marx brothers with their parents in New York City, 1915. From left to right: Groucho, Gummo, Minnie (mother), Zeppo, Frenchie (father), Chico, and Harpo.

So stop taking yourself so seriously, at least for today! A toast to Groucho and his brothers–L’chaim!

Please note that it is also the birthday of Graham Greene–but it was much too depressing looking for a quote from him! I am not a great fan of his novels, but some of the movies based on his novels or for which he wrote the screenplays–such as The Third Man (1949) and This Gun For Hire (1942)–are pretty darn good. So another toast, barkeep–for Graham Greene!

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September 19, 2014

“Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream”*

by chuckofish

As my dual personality mentioned last weekend, this is the birthday month of our grandmother Catherine Carnahan Cameron. I have searched high and low and cannot come up with the date of her birth in 1900, but it was probably this week. She also died in September, a few days after her 67th birthday.

You will recall that my great-grandparents had five children, the youngest of which was our maternal grandmother. Named after her two grandmothers, Mary Hough and Catherine Rand Carnahan, she was considered the family beauty–and by one of her sisters to be spoiled.

Catherine in 1917

My mother and her sisters always rejected this latter claim vociferously. They did not take kindly to anyone criticizing their mother.

She was brought up a strict Baptist in a deeply religious family. Her family observed the sabbath and no smoking, drinking, dancing, etc. was allowed ever. Not surprisingly, she fell in love with our wild grandfather and eloped with him in September of 1921.

She was raised to be a lady, but she was also trained to take care of herself and she believed in women’s equality. She never worked at a paid job, but she was the treasurer of every women’s club she belonged to (and she was quite a club-woman) and the first female treasurer of her large Baptist church in Worcester, MA. She also kept the books of her husband’s lumber company, and it is my belief that when Bunker faltered–as he did from time to time– she pulled the business through the hard years of the depression and WWII.

She had her own money and her own (female) stockbroker. She had a female doctor and a female lawyer. She believed, however, that a married woman with children should stay home. Today she would probably be the president of some bank. I have no idea what became of that accounting gene, but it got lost in my branch of the family!

I wish I had known my grandmother better. We always lived far away in flyover country and only got back to Massachusetts once in a blue moon. She and my grandfather only visited us once and they stayed for just a few days–our grandmother had meetings back at home she didn’t want to miss. Our mother was devoted to her and missed her a lot. On the other hand, I think she liked “doing her own thing”. She would have had a hard time living up to her mother’s high standards. I remember she told me once that her mother always wore a girdle, stockings and high heels every day. Well.

Catherine Cameron (right) in New Hampshire in 1963

Catherine did her best to keep in touch via letter, but our mother was a terrible letter-writer, and it must have been frustrating for her. Frequently my grandmother would write to me, because I wrote her back. I think she meant this as a bit of a dig to our mother, hoping to encourage her to improve her habits. It didn’t work.

She was not an outwardly warm person, but once she sent me the spoon I had admired when visiting her house and had insisted on using every morning to eat my cereal. I thought that showed that she had noticed and that she cared.

I still have that spoon–of course.

P.S. My movie pick for tonight is Ninotchka (1939) in honor of Greta Garbo whose birthday was yesterday.

Garbo with Melvyn Douglas finding love in Paris

If you haven’t seen Ninotchka, you are in for a treat! It’s the one where “Garbo laughs!” Directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, it is one of the great comedies of all time. Garbo plays a stern Russian (Communist) woman sent to Paris on official business who finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest. If you have seen it, you are in for a treat, because its humor is as timeless as Garbo’s beauty.

Our mother loved this movie and raved about it to us growing up. We finally got an opportunity to see it when they were showing it at some film series at Washington University. We walked up to the campus to see it and I think our mother was a little nervous, fearing that she had built it up too much. But, of course, we all loved it too.

*Robert Burns, Sweet Afton

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September 12, 2014

“Sorry don’t get it done, Dude.”*

by chuckofish

Since it is her birthday week, daughter #1 made the movie pick for this Friday.

Directed by Howard Hawks, Rio Bravo (1959) is John Wayne’s answer to High Noon which he thought was “Un-American”. You remember, in High Noon, Gary Cooper is the sheriff who asks for support from his town and gets none. Supposedly it is an allegory of the McCarthy era in Hollywood. Please.

Well, in Rio Bravo, John T. Chance, the sheriff, is surrounded by allies—a drunken deputy (Dude) trying to pull himself together, a young untried gunfighter (Colorado), a “crippled” old man (Stumpy), a Mexican innkeeper (Carlos) and his wife (Consuela), and an attractive young gambler (Feathers) whom Chance tries to kick out of town. He repeatedly turns down aid from most of these people because he thinks they will get hurt helping him, as his friend Ward Bond does at the beginning of the film. They all come through and help him anyway. That is the American Way. A motley crew bands together and vanquishes the Bad Guy, who is rich and powerful and has a lot of hired guns.