More Priceless Images

Thought I'd bring July to a close on a high note. As I've said before I love these YouTube videos from 1960's Hollywood. No help this time, how many celeb's can you spot? Next month is a dark one with some death looming ahead: Marilyn, Elvis, Groucho.  August is such an ugly month. So for now enjoy these carefree images. Oh, if we could all be forever young.  See y'all next month.

Crush of the week : Catwoman

 

This pic from ' Dark Knight Rises ' reminds me of the Batman bubble gum cards I use to buy as a kid.

Having just seen ' The Dark Knight Rises ' this past friday night I have to say it may be the best Batman movie yet. A long movie that clock's in at about 165 minutes, the pacing rarely flagged,  I never thought to look at my cell phone to check the time [ a rare thing for me when watching a movie that's over two hours ]. Nolan crafted a well thought out plot with the visuals brooding, the audio creative. At times the sound was near non-existent and the music was bombastic when needed but also quiet and moving. Perfs all around were just what the film required. Bale's Batman was, well, Batman [ hoarse voice and all ], his Bruce Wayne quiet, wounded and reclusive. Nolan has been on for sometime about making a film on eccentric, reclusive, obsessive billionaire Howard Hughes. Well it appears that film is no longer on the table as Nolan's next flick, he says in the latest issue of Empire magazine that he scratched that itch with the Wayne character in the Batman movies. If he did, it was merely a sketch, a doodle drawing of a subject that requires a color portrait to do it full justice. I could see the resemblance so I guess he was working in some touches on the subject of Hughes. But this being a Batman movie, well, it was just a bit of character to give the overall film some emotional pull. There is no one outstanding Heath Ledger-like scene stealing in this latest entry. However the heart and soul of this movie belongs to Michael Caine's Alfred. Always Master Wayne's father-figure, Alfred also acts as Wayne's conscious. Alfred figures quite prominently in the first half, almost completely disappears in the second, save for two outstanding and touching scenes. If any one actor walks away with the film, it's Caine.

Alfred with Master Wayne, in full Hughes mode.

Miss Kitt's Cat.

Puss in boots: Newmar's Catwoman

Meriwether's attractive Cat

Having said all the above about ' The Dark Knight Rises ' let me get to the main subject at hand: Catwoman. There have been many actresses who've tackled this part in the past.  One of the first was Julie Newmar fom the ' Batman' tv show of the 1960's. Then there was Eartha Kitt's feline . One would have thought this a purr-fect fit, Eartha had a animal, cat-like appeal that should have translated well. For me, at least, it didn't. I wanted Julie back.  The popularity of the tv show was parlayed into a movie with the cast from the show pretty much intact. Cesar Romero as Joker, Frank Gorshin as Riddler and Burgess Meridith's Penguin. And of course Adam West pudgy Batman and Burt Ward's holy-enthusiastic Robin.  But again the creator's mucked around with Miss Kitty. This time they cast Lee Meriwether as the Cat. Ms. Meriwether was a Miss America 1955 edition winner so the looks department were pretty much there but the danger, sexiness and fire needed to bring life to the Cat was sadly lacking.

Halle with Sharon in Catwoman

 In 2004 Miss Kitty got a big movie all to herself. ' Catwoman ' with Halle Berry as the the woman with the whip, with another hot momma Sharon Stone as her arch enemy Laurel Hedare. Halle gave it her best but the movie was a bust,  it currently holds a 10% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and didn't even crack 100 million worldwide.                                                                                          Now comes Anne Hathaway in the part in ' The Dark Knight Rises '. Ms. Hathaway is one attractive actress and she is sexy, slinky Cat, dressed in black through most if not all of the film. The movie doesn't address Selina Kyle's background though there are interesting items if one looks close enough. Newspaper articles are glimpsed about a cat burglar loose in Gotham City. Hathaway's Kitty is hostile towards not only men but the world in general. there is also a whiff of possible girl-girl action as the only character she interacts without hostility is Juno Temple's Jen. Selina/Catwoman is also attracted to Bale's Wayne/Batman though the flirting is on the back burner for much of the film, Hathaway does have the best audience pleasing lines in the film. Overall, I give Ms. Hathaway a strong 8 on the KittyLitter scale.
                                                                                                                          However the gold standard for all things kittenish must go to Michelle Pfeiffer's kitten with a whip in 1992's Batman Returns.                                                                   

Kitten with a whip!

Meow! On the bed with friend

                                         With her mousey, unsure-of-her-self Selina Kyle and alter ego Catwoman, Pfeiffer steals the show from both Michael Keaton's Bat and Danny DeVito's equally twisted Penguin. As torn in half as Batman with a ton more anger and angst, Pfeiffer is by turns sexy, playful and downright furr-ocious. No one before or since has captured that tortured, desperate quality combined with straight up sex that is Catwoman. Not only does she crush the KittyLitter scale she breaks it wide open. My Crush of the week goes back about 20 years: Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman.

Crush of the week : Zooey !!

Adorable

Cute, even with horn rim glasses.

I haven't seen alot of her movies but I am a fan of her show, ' New Girl ' on Fox.   With her blue-blue eyes, rich brown hair, a husky-squeeky voice that sounds like a cross between Jean Arthur and Lauren Bacall combined with a nerdy sense of humor,  Zooey has made geeky sexy. Looking forward to new episodes of ' New Girl ' this fall.  She also sings in the duo She & Him. Talented girl, just starting to make her mark. * Sigh *

Wicked Ways

Just got these two books from Amazon and cannot wait to dive in. I have been on a Flynn kick since his birthday celebration on June 20  [ I took the day off  from work for the occasion ]. Being a fellow Gemini,  I have always felt a special connection with the last swashbuckler. In addition, he died the year I was born. Tomorrow at 1pm PST on TCM they are having a rare showing of 1958's ' Too Much, Too Soon ' in which he plays an aging and quite burnt out John Barrymore. In fact Flynn himself was a burnt out shell of a man when he made this movie and he would be dead some 16 months after it's release in May 1958.  I saw this film, just once years ago, on an extinct  TV station called KCOP channel 13 out of Los Angeles. As far as I know this movie hasn't been shown on TCM before, so I hope you can understand my excitement. As for the books, I have several bios on Errol in my library, a couple of the best are his autobiography ' My Wicked, Wicked Ways' which I first read as a mere lad of fifteen and ' Inherited Risk ' by Jeffrey Meyers which is a duel bio about Errol and his only son Sean, who was reported MIA in Vietnam while working as a photojournalist there in 1970.  Both of these new books have gotten fairly high marks from film buffs and Flynn fans so I was thrilled to free up some hard earned cash and finally get them [ ' Slept Here 'was published in 2009 and ' Errol & Olivia'  in 2010 ]  Maybe I will review them after I plunge in the deep, murky water of Olivia and Flynn's working relationship and the sad, sordid, ghostly goings on at Mulholland House. So much of Flynn and the people he knew and touched in his life had somewhat sad endings: His son Sean dead in 1970, one of his daughters Arnella died in 1998 at age 44 and Mulholland House itself destroyed in the 1990's split up into parcels of land, sold to the highest bidder. Lots of ghosts to deal with. Wish me luck.

Underrated as Soames Forsythe in 1949's That Forsythe Woman with Greer Garson, Robert Young and Janet Leigh

                                                                                                                                                                                 

Happy Fourth of July: 1776

Sometimes age has it's advantages. I was around to experience our country's Bicentennial in 1976, I spent it with my family at Disneyland, the happiest place on earth. Disneyland was wall to wall people that day and the weather was a scorcher. The fireworks were a blast as usual, and Mickey, Donald and Goofy led the parade down Main Street, USA dressed as Minute Men. Well a lot has changed in America since that day, to name just a few:  Our House of Representatives brought articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton in 1998 for perjury and abuse of power, but it was really because he couldn't keep his pecker in his pants, we saw New York City decimated by terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 and we've elected our first President of color, Barack Obama, in 2008. But I wish to call to your attention this day to a movie that made little noise when it was released in November 1972, ' 1776 '.

Gwyneth Paltrow's mom as Martha Jefferson

I first saw the movie in 1973 at the Fairview theater and thought it a good rendering of what had been a smash, Tony winning Broadway musical. It in fact won the Tony for Musical of the Year for 1969. I didn't read critics in those days, being all of about 13 or 14 years old , but I have viewed some excerpts from Vincent Canby of The New York Times in which he says the music was " resolutely unmemorable " and that the lyrics sound as if they were written by " someone high on Root Beer ". Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of 4. What I find fascinating is that for a film adaptation ' 1776 ' is remarkably faithful. If Broadway critics loved it why didn't film critics love it too? Owning the Broadway musical soundtrack and thus listening to it countless times, I noticed but one omission of the songs, the politically charged ' Cool, Cool Considerate Men '. The film's leads were  members of the original stage show: William Daniels as John Adams, Howard De Silva as Ben Franklin and Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson. Having one or two members of the cast of a Broadway show reprise their roles for the screen is rare. Having all three leads and several of the supporting cast in the film version is downright radical.

Ben, Tom and John contemplate the consequences of independence.

The film was produced by a Hollywood old timer, Jack L Warner. The former studio chief [ from the 1920's to the 1960's ] of Warner Brothers studios was friends with then President Nixon. It was Nixon, who didn't cotton to ' Cool, Cool Considerate Men '  feeling it being a knock on conservatives in 1970's Washington, that  brought pressure on Warner to cut the song. Warner did cut it, but not before the scene had been filmed. Warner not only ordered the scene cut from the film but that the negative of the scene be destroyed. Fortunately a film editor on the film saved the deleted scene and it was restored for the DVD and subsequent television showings. I was happy to see this as I feel it's one of the best songs from the score. I hoped I could find a film clip from YouTube to share but I couldn't. However I did find this sound clip: 

' 1776 ' presents us our founding fathers as human. Adams is obnoxious and disliked, Franklin is horny yet philosophical and a newlywed Jefferson aches for his wife, Martha, played by a delectable Blythe Danner. It is the only movie I know that deals with the painful birth of our country in a humorous and fairly accurate way [ except that our founding fathers couldn't carry a tune ]. One big history lesson I got out of this is that the southern states refused to sign the declaration unless the slavery clause be removed. By removing it congress planted the seeds of the War Between The States, surely our country's bloodiest hour. I wonder today what law congress wants to stop or repeal [ Obama care, Roe Vs.Wade ? ] and the consequences it may have 50 or 60 years from now. The parallels between our congress then and our congress of today [ as Adams says they ' piddle, twiddle and resolve: nothing's ever solved' ] is scary. As history shows time and again, this country is only successful when we progress, not digress. How this country got started and how close we came to not getting it started is an amazing history lesson that this movie brings home in a touching, humorous and altogether winning way. I say ye 1776!!  Happy 4th of July everyone!

Melanie Hamilton, oldest living Civil War survivor is 96

As goodie two-shoes, Melanie Hamilton Wilkes

A beautiful Maid Marian, Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938

This one almost got past me. July 1 marks the 96th birthday of Lovely Livy. Last living co-star of the epic soaper ' Gone With The Wind ' and for all I know possibly the only living member of the film that all epics are more or less measured against. She is also the former flame of legendary lothario writer/director John Huston and fended off more than a few advances from screen partner Errol Flynn. The duo made a total of eight films together starting with 1935's' Captain Blood' and culminating with 1942's' They Died With Their Boots' On. In between they also made ' Dodge City ' in 1939, ' Charge of the Light Brigade ' in 1936 and 1938's all-time classic ' The Adventures of Robin Hood '. According to de Havilland herself Errol tried for several years to jump her bones, to no avail. Appears that she was the one who got away from that Tasmanian Devil Flynn. Their final film was ' Boots ' and Olivia has said that both she and Flynn knew it was to be their last film together, so the knowledge of that gave their farewell scene where General Custer goes off to do battle at the Little Big Horn a bittersweet poignancy .She never gave the movies she made with him much credit, but they live on today as great epics, spectacles with sound, fury, adventure and romance from a distant time and place that no longer exists. The movies are the poorer without them.

Olivia's career covered more than five decades with the 30's and 40's being her golden period in which she would win two Best Actress Oscar's and have several more nominations her first coming in the Supporting Actress catagory with ' GWTW '. If I had to pick only one Olivia perfomance to take with me on a desert island, I might pick 1941's  Mitchell Leisen's 'Hold Back The Dawn'  with Charles Boyer. An acerbic, touching romantic drama from Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett before that duo went on to be one of the great writer-director-producer partnerships Hollywood ever produced. Still with us living in France [ Paris ?], one of the Golden Ages last movie stars when that really meant something, 96 years old today, but forever young, delicate and beautiful to me. Happy Birthday!
 

Great pic of the two stars probably from around 1940. Note the hand holding.