Here is a photo of our handsome older brother (on the right) with his dreamy best bud Tom at our parent’s home back in 1980. Written on the back of the snapshot is Oct. 18, 1980 which means it was taken on the evening following the wedding of the OM and yours truly. Everyone was relaxing and the bride and groom had left the scene.
Good times. I wonder what they were playing?
P.S. The BB (big brother) is the same age here as the boy is today.
Yesterday was the birthday of the great director John Ford (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973). In fact, he is probably the greatest of all film directors. Even Bergman and Kurosawa looked up to him.
“Stagecoach” 1939
When I was watching Red River (1948) the other day, which is directed by the great Howard Hawks, I kept thinking, “This is good, but it would have looked so much better had John Ford directed.” There are some good shots in this movie–notably of the swarming cattle herd–but he never gets the huge vistas that Ford would have had. You never get the sense of the size of Texas or the sky in Kansas. Most of it looks like it was filmed on a soundstage with bad lighting. John Ford would have opened it up.
The iconic approaching storm scene in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” 1949
“The Searchers” 1956
A lot of Ford’s success is due to his close association with two great cinematographers, with whom he worked on many of his greatest films: Winton C. Hoch (3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Searchers (1956); and Bert Glennon: Stagecoach (1939), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Rio Grande (1950), Wagon Master (1950), Sergeant Rutledge (1960).
He knew how to pick ’em. And he knew how to cast. His ensemble casts are second to none.
“The Long Voyage Home” 1940
He won four Best Director Oscars–for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1942), and The Quiet Man (1952).
“How Green Was My Valley” 1942
He won two more Academy Awards for best Documentary–The Battle of Midway (1942) and December 7th (1943). Of course, not one of them was for a western. There are so many for which he should have at least been nominated–The Searchers (1956) and My Darling Clementine (1946) chief among them.
I’m not saying that all his films are great. In fact, they are quite inconsistent. He can succumb to a weepy Irish sentimentality which is unfortunate and can be embarrassing. Any movie involving James Cagney, Tyrone Power, Grace Kelly, Spencer Tracy, and/or English history (yes, I’m thinking Mary of Scotland) should be avoided. But even these can be entertaining and worth watching.
John Wayne and Henry Fonda were never better than under the direction of John Ford. And John Ford had the good sense to use them often. He famously cast the relatively unknown John Wayne in Stagecoach when the producer wanted Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich. The result using the big stars would have been a good movie, but Marlene would have taken over and Gary would have been all aw shucks and adorable–standard fare.
Directors who copied his style have made a lot of standard movies. His never were.
John Wayne gave the eulogy at his funeral.
So a toast tonight to the great John Ford!
Sgt. Beaufort in Fort Apache (1948)
In flyover news, the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company announced last week that Mac, the first foal of 2016, was born at Warm Springs Ranch in Boonville, Mo., joining more than 160 other horses in the beer giant’s stable. Hello, Mac!
Over the weekend the OM and I attended the “Elegant Italian Dinner,” an annual fundraising event for the youth mission trip at church. It was, as usual, a jolly good time. What is it about heated up lasagna and a side salad in a dimly lit church hall that always hits the spot?
The next morning I got up and went to the 8 o’clock service at church so that we could go out to breakfast afterwards with the boy and daughter #3 at our favorite diner.
photo from yelp.com
The OM had never been there, but he liked it, I guess, because he ate his slinger and then finished daughter #3’s waffle a la mode.
Anyway, the 8 o’clock service is a shorter service because there is no music (besides the Voluntary at the beginning and end of the service). It appeals to an older crowd and also to the golfers in the congregation. It is not really my cup of tea. I also skipped the 155th Annual Meeting which followed. I forgave myself.
I finished the mystery I was reading by the Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, The Keeper of Lost Causes. It is the first in the Department Q series about detective Carl Morck. I thought it was very good–character-driven and darkly humorous. I will definitely read more in this series.
I watched Red River (1948) and really enjoyed it. John Wayne and Montgomery Clift are really pretty great together. Clift never overplays his hand, never tries to upstage John Wayne, but is a real presence in every scene. He appears to be confident and at ease and not bad on horseback. I was impressed. Needless to say, this is no mean feat, because John Wayne is mythic in this part.
SO…
*I Cor. 13: 12 (or “through a glass, darkly” KJV)
Last night as I trolled Amazon Prime looking for something to watch, I happened upon a 1965 sci fi movie starring Dana Andrews, and immediately knew that my search was over. What could be better for weekend viewing than a movie in which dying scientist, Dr. Stephen Sorensen (Dana Andrews), who just wants to find a source of cheap renewable energy for the world (in 1965 no less!), accidentally starts the apocalypse? Meanwhile, his young scientist wife, Dr. Maggie Sorensen (Janette Scott), who really loves her cranky husband, gamely tries to deny her attraction to former boyfriend and fellow scientist, Dr. Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore), the one guy who can see that Dana Andrews’s theories could end life as we know it. After Sorensen sets off a nuclear bomb that creates a crack in the earth’s crust, the three more or less get over their problems to try to save the world. I mean, really, a love triangle involving Ph.D.s AND floods of magma. Who could resist that?
If only I could add speech bubbles to this photo… the mind reels.
Despite the Mystery-science-theater vibe, it was a thoroughly enjoyable movie. All of the actors took their roles seriously, and, notwithstanding the ridiculous getup depicted above, Dana Andrews gave the type of performance we would expect from the star of Laura. What’s more, I realized partway through that I had seen the movie before. As a child of about 10 I had found it tense and nerve-wracking. Who wouldn’t? No one could figure out where that pesky crack would move next.
It’s over there!
Now it’s over there!
The young hero had to lower a nuclear warhead into an active volcano,
climb up a wrecked elevator shaft with his lady love, who would have fallen if he hadn’t saved her,
and outrun the flowing magma that threatened to surround them.
The special effects were really pretty good. There was even a train full of evacuees that got derailed by a volcanic eruption while crossing a viaduct.
It was nonstop action with a message: science requires restraint and caution, and people who are sick, jealous, or just out to make a name for themselves before they die, should not make decisions that could end the world.
It’s good to rediscover those movies we watched on quiet Sunday afternoons when we were kids. And let’s face it, in many ways they’re more enjoyable than the oversexed, over-violent, characterless movies they make nowadays. If I sound like an old lady, well…it takes one to know one, right? 🙂
Have a great weekend!
*Dr. Maggie Sorensen in A Crack in the World
The title of today’s post refers, of course, to…the Wizard of Oz, who you will remember was from Kansas.
Well, today is the 155th anniversary of the day Kansas was admitted as our 34th state in 1861.
Abolitionist Free-staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from Missouri had rushed to the territory when it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854 in order to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. The area became a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, thus earning it the name Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed. Kansas entered the Union as a free state and the Civil War followed.
After the Civil War the population of Kansas grew rapidly when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. It also became the center of what we think of as “the Wild West,” what with cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail moving through the state to railheads there. Cattle towns like Abilene, Wichita and Dodge City, flourished between 1866 and 1890 as railroads reached towns suitable for gathering and shipping cattle. All the famous gunslingers and lawmen like Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp worked on one side of the law or another in Kansas.
Things eventually calmed down in the state and since the turn of the 20th century people have generally regarded it as one of those states where not much happens.
We who live here in flyover country know that is decidedly not true. Kansas is a big, beautiful state where the weather can be quite severe and the sky is large.
“The High Plains” by Thomas Hart Benton, 1958
Lots of famous (and infamous) people have started out life in Kansas. For instance, did you know that Mabel Walker Willebrandt (1889-1963) was from Kansas? She was the U.S. Assistant Attorney General from 1921-1929 and the highest-ranking woman in the federal government at the time and first woman to head the Tax Division.
She vigorously prosecuted bootleggers during Prohibition–in fact, she was the one who came up with the idea that illegally earned income was subject to income tax. That’s how they got Capone, you know. She is one of those amazing women who nobody knows about–probably because she was a Republican and campaigned vigorously for Herbert Hoover.
Anyway, I watched the movie Dodge City (1939) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland fairly recently, so I will recommend instead watching Red River (1948)–a movie about a cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail which ends dramatically in Abilene, Kansas. It is not one of my favorite westerns, but it is well worth watching for John Wayne, Walter Brennan and Montgomery Clift, who is surprisingly effective as a cowboy.
Well, as you know, that is how my mind works.
P.S. Did you know that Home On the Range is the state song of Kansas? How freaking awesome is that?!
Have a good weekend!
Today is the birthday of Ernst Lubitsch (January 29, 1892 – November 30, 1947) who, you will recall, was a German-American film director, producer, writer, and actor back in the day. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood’s most elegant and sophisticated director. His movies were famous for “the Lubitsch touch.”
The story goes that, leaving Lubitsch’s funeral, Billy Wilder ruefully said, “No more Lubitsch.” William Wyler then responded, “Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.”
Anyway, he made a lot of really good movies with the likes of Greta Garbo, Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Frederic March, Miriam Hopkins etc. He also knew how to use character actors like Edward Everett Horton and Zasu Pitts to their best and most hilarious advantage. Think of Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski in Ninotchka (1939). Think of the acting troupe in To Be or Not to Be (1942).
And actresses like Carole Lombard and Greta Garbo were at their sexiest and funniest–Garbo laughs!–with Lubitsch.
Indeed, Ernst Lubitsch personified what is missing in Hollywood today–humor without vulgarity. His films had class. Sure, there was plenty of innuendo, but it was all done with a light touch.
Maria Tura: It’s becoming ridiculous the way you grab attention. Whenever I start to tell a story, you finish it. If I go on a diet, you lose the weight. If I have a cold, you cough. And if we should ever have a baby, I’m not so sure I’d be the mother.
Josef Tura: I’m satisfied to be the father.
Of course he never won an Oscar for directing–only a special Academy Award for his “25-year contribution to motion pictures.”
They say The Shop Around the Corner (1940) was his own favorite. FYI it is the movie You’ve Got Mail (1998) is based on.
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is showing several of Lubitsch’s best comedies today, so check the schedule here and set your DVR.
I know who I’ll be toasting and what I’ll be watching tonight!
*Greenberg in To Be or Not to Be (1942)
President Theodore Roosevelt on a horse in Colorado, c. 1905
“There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.”
―Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Agreed, but I will always be afraid of grizzly bears no matter what and always.
I took this picture of Ollie (one of the boy’s cats) a couple of weeks ago. He and daughter #3 have three (yes, three) cats. They are cat people.
We had a cat once. His name was Marcellus, but we called him Cat.
He doesn’t look so tough in this photo, but he was a badass.
We got him because we were having an issue with mice at our old house. He took care of things swiftly and efficiently. He was a born killer. That is what cats do.
He also protected our home and children. He would sit up in the branches of a tree that overlooked our driveway and survey his territory.
Once a wayward black lab came trotting up the driveway while the kids (and our dog) played merrily inside the fenced yard. The cat waited until the dog was directly underneath him and then pounced on him from the tree limb. The poor dog never knew what hit him. Cat chased him away.
Once Cat brought home our corgi, who had gotten out. The dog, although cute, was no Lassie. I’m not sure he would have found his way home on his own. But before he had a chance to get really lost, the cat led him home. The cat and the dog got along fine, but there never was any question who was in charge.
As it turned out, I am quite allergic to cats and so we have never gotten another to replace our original Cat.
But then, he was kind of irreplaceable.
And this made me smile.
So I spent most of the weekend inside, in solidarity with daughters # 1 and 2, who really were stuck inside their east coast apartments because of all the snow.
Although I guess daughter #2 wasn’t stuck inside all weekend.
We had no snow besides the old stuff from our mid-week event.
The boy came over to show us his new hockey skates.
And we watched Furious 7 again and thoroughly enjoyed all its lovely ridiculousness.
The OM made shepherd’s pie.
Not a bad weekend, all things considered.
Have a good week!
*Hobbs in Furious 7.
Last Sunday I went to see The Revenant. As I sat in the theater and endured Leonardo DiCaprio’s seemingly endless ordeal (one &*$%-ing thing after another), I kept thinking of Jeremiah Johnson and how I’d rather be watching that movie, which after all had a point and actual characters. The one thing that made The Revenant worth my time was the fabulous scenery and cinematography.
The color palette was as unrelenting as the message: mother nature is unforgiving and life used to be awful.
The cinematographer deserves an Oscar.
The director does not. He was incredibly self-indulgent. Frequent hallucinatory dream sequences and references to other movies like Dursu Uzala and Star Wars (?) did not add anything. Nor did he seem to know anything much about the time period and people he depicted. The film gave no context: we don’t know when the movie takes place (the 1820s by my reckoning), where (Canadian Rockies?) or what the relationships are between the various groups (French trappers, British trappers, Americans? and Native Americans), who is in charge (military? private company?), or what their objectives are (other than to get fur). Doubtless that was supposed to add to the authenticity of our viewing experience. I just found it annoying.
Leo doesn’t know what’s gong on either
Although purportedly based on the true story of Hugh Glass, the scriptwriter embellished it by giving Glass a half-breed son, so that he could include lots of a-historical racial prejudice and show how bad people used to be. He also apparently thought he needed to give Glass better motivation for revenge than just having been left for dead in the middle of nowhere.
I’d grimace, too.
Leonardo DiCaprio deserves an award for surviving, but not for acting (at least not in this movie). While it’s true that he proved amazingly versatile at grunting and grimacing in pain, and he can crawl and tear at raw meat with the best of ’em, one cannot call it acting. I bet he felt all of that pain, cold, and general ickyness. I kept expecting him to whisper “the horror, the horror.” And much as I like Tom Hardy, in this movie he was…Tom Hardy, the bad guy we’ve seen before. Moreover, it was often difficult to understand what he was saying. And the film score was entirely forgettable.
Now that I’ve torn it to shreds, I will say that I did not entirely hate the movie or regret the time spent watching it (seriously, that scenery is amazing). I guess the most damning indication of its weakness was that I never once forgot that I was in a theater watching a movie. I never connected to the characters enough to forget myself in their story.
Let’s all go watch Jeremiah Johnson, which has great scenery, lots of color, wonderful characters (super script), is superbly acted and directed, and has a really great score. In short, it has everything that The Revenant does not.
*Bear Claw (Will Geer) in Jeremiah Johnson
all pictures found on Google image.
