Tut tut. It sure looked like rain yesterday. But (once again) no rain! It has been a frustrating summer of 100-degree weather and drought and burned up grass.
While we’re waiting for some drizzle, let’s enjoy this classic scene from Just Around the Corner (1938) with Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson on another bone-dry flyover day.
Don’t you just love Shirley?
Our movie pick as the end of the 2012 Olympics approaches is kind of a no-brainer and we have blogged about it already here, but we do love this movie! Chariots of Fire is a 1981 British film, which tells the fact-based story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God,
and Harold Abrahams, a determined British Jew who runs to prove he’s as good as (if not better than) anyone else.
Harold does have an enormous chip on his shoulder in the movie, and whether this was the case in “real life” we don’t know. The fact is he ran the 100m race in 10.6, a mere second slower than the great Usain Bolt did a few days ago, eighty-eight years after Abrahams. I say, hats off to Abrahams and Liddell in their old-fashioned shoes and baggy shorts!
The film was written by Colin Welland and directed by Hugh Hudson, and was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning four, including Best Picture. It is ranked 19th in the British Film Institute’s list of Top 100 British films.
I loved this movie when it was first released in 1981 and saw it 3 times in the theater, before the days of VHS and DVDs made that kind of desperate action unnecessary.
The film’s title was of course inspired by the line, “Bring me my chariot of fire,” from the William Blake poem adapted into the popular British hymn. “Jerusalem” was a popular hymn at our private school, where we sang it often in our morning chapel service. Here is a snippet of the hymn to get you in the mood:
The original phrase “chariot(s) of fire” is from 2 Kings 2:11 and 6:17.
Doesn’t everyone love Natalie Wood?
Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents. She made her film début a few weeks before turning five during a fifteen-second scene in the 1943 film Happy Land. In 1947 she appeared in two favorites of mine, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Miracle on 34th Street. A few years later at age 15 she starred with James Dean in the classic Rebel Without a Cause, uttering the immortal line, “I love somebody. All the time I’ve been… I’ve been looking for someone to love me. And now I love somebody. And it’s so easy. Why is it easy now?” Somehow she made you believe it.
And the next year she appeared in John Ford’s The Searchers with John Wayne. Indeed, she had quite a career, despite not really being a very good actress. Frequently the studio powers-that-be had her playing Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Italians–I suppose because of those big brown eyes–and she was never very good at faking accents. But there was just something about Natalie you had to like.
She died much too young (and tragically) in 1981. Rest in peace, Natalie. May light perpetual shine upon you.
Natalie with Steve McQueen in “Love With the Proper Stranger”–a good Friday movie pic, don’t you think? Steve is better than usual in this movie, and he is always great.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published on this day in 1960.
It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. It’s a shame Harper Lee never wrote another novel, but I admire her for not giving in to the pressure her publisher must have put on her. She said what she had to say. It was enough. It must have taken everything she had.
I love the scene in Infamous where Sandra Bullock, playing Harper Lee, tries to explain what it takes out of a writer to write. She says, “America is not a country where the small gesture goes noticed…We want everything you have, and we want it as fast as you can turn it out.”
Of course, they made a terrific movie based on the novel in 1962. It is one of the few instances where the movie stacks up to the novel. It is also one of those movies that I and my dual personality were too young to go see at the theater. We only got to hear about it from our older brother who came home with our mother and raved about it. They both loved it. We had to wait until it came on television many years later to see it. As I recall, it was a dark and stormy night when we watched it, home alone this time. It was pretty scary! But we loved it too, and every time I see it I love it anew.
And, of course, it has the scene where if you were to stop me on the happiest day of my life and say, stop, watch this, I would be unable to stem the flow of ensuing tears. You know, it’s the Boo Radley behind the door scene. And that music. Absolute perfection.
I always loved Scout. I was not at all like her as a child (too timid), but I always thought I looked like the actress who played her and that was cool (not to mention unusual).
You have to admit, the resemblance is amazing.
So all hail Harper Lee.
President George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to author Harper Lee during a ceremony Monday, Nov. 5, 2007, in the East Room. “To Kill a Mockingbird has influenced the character of our country for the better. It’s been a gift to the entire world. As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever,” said the President about Harper Lee’s work. (White House photo by Eric Draper)
AMEN.
On this day in 1890 Wyoming entered the Union as the 44th U.S. state.
As daughter #1 says, quoting Liz Lemmon, I want to go to there. In fact, it is at the top of my list.
The state flower is Indian Paintbrush.
And my favorite movie was filmed there.
Sigh.
July is Leslie Howard month on TCM.com! Here is the line-up for the Star of the Month.
So set your DVR for Tuesdays in July when they’ll be showing some well-known Leslie Howard movies like Pygmalion, Of Human Bondage and The Scarlet Pimpernel and some not-so-often seen ones like Berkeley Square and The Animal Kingdom. What a treasure trove!
You can see my favorite Leslie Howard movie The Petrified Forest (1936) next Tuesday–so mark your calendar! This movie was based on the play by Robert Emmet Sherwood, which Leslie Howard had starred in on Broadway. He insisted that Humphrey Bogart reprise his role as Duke Mantee, “the world-famous killer” in the movie. He did and the rest, as you know, is history. Bogart was duly grateful and even named his daughter after Leslie years later.
Bogart has lots of good lines which he makes the most of:
“Since I’ve been a grown up, I’ve spent most of my life in prison… I’ll probably spend the rest of it dead.”
and
“You can talk sitting down; I seen ya’ doing it.”
But Howard, as the dreamy Alan Squier, gets plenty of his own:
“So that was once a tree? Hmmm. Petrified forest, eh? Suitable haven for me. Well, perhaps that’s what I’m destined to become, an interesting fossil for future study.”
and
Gramp Maple: “But let me tell you one thing, Mr. Squier. The woman don’t live or ever did live that’s worth five thousand dollars!”
Alan Squier: “Well, let me tell you something. You’re a forgetful old fool. Any woman’s worth everything that any man has to give: anguish, ecstasy, faith, jealousy, love, hatred, life or death. Don’t you see that’s the whole excuse for our existence? It’s what makes the whole thing possible and tolerable.”
I even included an Alan Squeir quote on my senior page: “I had a vague idea I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drown in it. But that depends.” My mother raised an eyebrow at my teenage angst, but no one else ever commented!
Above all else, Leslie Howard was a great British patriot, who used his Hollywood fame to further the cause of England in WWII, by making several propaganda films like Pimpernel Smith and The First of the Few.
He died at the age of 50 in 1943 when the plane he was in was shot down by the Nazis. They thought he was a spy and they were correct. According to Sir William Samuel Stephenson, the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, the Germans knew about Howard’s mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.
I’m surprised no one has ever thought to make a movie about Leslie Howard. Wouldn’t he be an interesting subject?
As you know, the United States Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on this day in 1776. In our family we have always made a Big Thing about the 4th of July, because we are a patriotic family (of course) and because it is our brother’s birthday.
We always had a shindig (with favors) and set off firecrackers galore and other explosives. We blared Sousa marches from our open windows. Normally a quiet, reserved family, we were LOUD.
Sadly, we are experiencing a drought this year in our flyover state and so we will not participate in any of these fun activities. We may play some patriotic tunes inside this year, but God forbid we should open a window! The temperature is broiling out there. And we won’t be setting off any of our own fireworks either as there is a serious danger of fire due to the dryness issue. Almost all the local displays are canceled. Sigh. Only the big one on the big river will go on.
We will be sure to tip a glass or two, however, in toasts to our absent family and especially our absent bro who turns 61!
Since July 4 will be celebrated indoors this year, we will no doubt spend it watching movies first enjoyed with our brother: Stagecoach, Tall in the Saddle, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, How the West Was Won, El Dorado, The War Wagon…Sounds good to me.
It is also, we should note, the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), Stephen Foster (1826), Calvin Coolidge (1872), Louis B. Mayer (1882), and Stephen Boyd (1931)! Reason enough (and more) to party hearty.
P.S. I’ll be wearing my flag pin, made by daughter #1 years ago at Philmont. I know you’re jealous.
Last week I replaced the pillows on my wicker sofa in the Florida Room. Unfortunately, it has been way too hot (108-degrees yesterday!) to enjoy this room except in the early hours of the day. Zut alors!
We are in the middle of a drought as well. Maybe tonight would be a good night to watch “The Rainmaker”–that’s the movie (1956) with Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, not the John Grisham one released in 1997 with Matt Damon. Or maybe not. It’s not a great movie.
I must say I’m feeling a little like Lizzie Curry these days.
What would be a good choice of movie to watch tonight? That is, of course, if the electricity holds out!
(Props to the boy for using his blog name in my post.)
I missed Errol Flynn’s birthday last week on June 20, so I thought I would give him a shout out today on the anniversary of the battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand.
They Died With Their Boots On, a highly fictionalized version of George Armstrong Custer’s life, is nonetheless one of the best of Flynn’s 8 pairings with the inimitable Olivia de Haviland. It is also the last of the movies they made together. Made in 1941 and directed by Raoul Walsh, it features a veritable who’s who of Warner Brothers character actors, including a young Anthony Quinn as Crazy Horse, Sydney Greenstreet, Hattie McDaniel, Regis Toomey, Charley Grapewin, and on and on. But it is Olivia and Errol that make the movie.
I wanted to show the scene where the two part for the last time before George leaves for what we in the audience know will be his death in battle at the the Little Big Horn. (The scene is unfortunately unavailable.) It is a genuinely touching scene by two great actors. Errol is always at his best with Olivia; he seems to be trying and not just calling it in, so to speak.
It is also a particularly poignant scene because we know this couple will never star in another movie together and that Errol’s career will quickly dissolve as his personal life begins the inevitable downward spiral to an early death. As children watching, we knew this because our mother was a big Errol Flynn fan and she told us. Indeed, Errol Flynn’s life was in itself a cautionary tale–beauty, brains and talent are not enough. Olivia de Haviland knew this and she wisely distanced herself from the doomed Flynn.
In a side note, our great-grandfather, the original ANC, fought at the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876. A youth fresh from Vermont, he was the trumpeteer.
On this day in 1969 Frances Ethel Gumm, better known as Judy Garland, was found dead in the bathroom of a rented house in Chelsea, England of an “incautious over-dosage of barbiturates”. She was only 47, but she had been working for over 40 years.
On June 26 Garland’s remains were taken to New York City, where an estimated 20,000 people lined up for hours at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan to pay their respects. James Mason gave a eulogy the next day at her funeral, an Episcopal service.
Recently I happened to watch The Wizard of Oz on TCM for the umpteenth time. It really is one of the best movies ever made. Definitely on my Top Ten list. It should have won Best Picture in that year of years 1939, but, of course, it lost to the over-blown and over-esteemed Gone With the Wind. This movie has everything, including a flyover state tornado! Everyone in it is perfect from the smartest, bravest dog ever in movies (Toto) to the Munchkins to Billie Burke as Glinda and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West to the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and Cowardly Lion. The sets, the music. And 17-year-old Judy Garland as the brown-eyed Dorothy Gale: Wonderful.
Much has been written about the sad life of Judy Garland and her misbegotten career in Hollywood. She only made about 30 movies, but she will be remembered forever for a handful of really good movies and one great one: The Wizard of Oz. Everyone should own it and watch it once a year. Remember in the old days when they would broadcast it on Thanksgiving night? We looked forward to it every year, and always watched it. For a long time Danny Kaye introduced it and warned people not to adjust their televisions when the screen suddenly turns to color when Dorothy wakes up in Oz. Genius. Of course, we never had a color TV growing up, so our mother had to explain to us what happens in the movie. I never saw it on the big screen–it must have been magical.
Anyway, watching The Wizard of Oz would be a good way to honor the great Judy Garland today. May light perpetual shine upon you, Judy.
dual personalities 