GREAT MOVIE DIALOGUE PT9
BEAU GESTE (1939) Beau Geste (Gary Cooper), as Schwartz shouts at the legionnaires, exhorting them to mutiny against Sgt. Markoff: ‘Wait a minute. I don’t know much about mutinies, but I do know it isn’t good form to […]
beau geste
60 MOVIES TO WATCH – PT2
PART TWO OF 60 MOVIES TO WATCH As I stated in Part One, a lot of my personal favourite movies were eliminated because they were, in my eyes, spoiled by one or two performances or casting decisions. The Carpetbaggers (1964), despite it being mercilessly panned by the critics, is […]
WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT45.
ROBERT PRESTON (1918-87) This charismatic Robert Preston was born in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts as Robert Preston Meservey towards the end of World War One. As Bob Mesevey he joined the US Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the US Army Air Force (USAAF) after Pearl Harbor and served for three […]
MOVIE TRIVIA – PT144.
Larry Storch as Corporal Randolph Agarn in F Troop (1965-7) A large number of us baby-boomers remain huge fans of the sixties comedy series F Troop (1965-7), mostly because of the hilarious antics of Larry Storch as Corporal Randolph Agarn and, to a slightly lesser extent, Frank de Kova’s deadpan humour as […]
MOVIE TRIVIA – PT119.
Wendy Barrie as Jane Seymour in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) Whenever I see the Alexander Korda feature The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), the one in which Charles Laughton so memorably plays the title role, I find myself drawn to the actress playing Jane […]
THE BEST OSCAR YEARS – 1939 & 1950.
Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in GWTW (1939) The Academy Awards is a competition, but it is one that has seldom been conducted on a level playing field. A winner one year may very well not even have been nominated in a stronger year. Historically, the two […]
MEMORABLE PERFORMANCES – PT2
Michael Caine as Peachy Carnehan in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot Michael Caine and Sean Connery were the fifth intended pairing for Rudyard Kipling’s terrific The Man Who Would be King to be transferred to the screen. In the fifties it was to […]
1939 – My Top Ten.
10 THE WOMEN – Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Mary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Virginia Weidler, Marjorie Main, Virginia Grey, Ruth Hussey, Lucille Watson, Hedda Hopper There are a number of things wrong with The Women, not the least of which is the appallingly hammy performance […]
The best pictures – year by year – PT 1 (1939-44).
I have often been flabbergasted or just plain disbelieving as the Academy ran out each year’s list of Oscar nominees, especially the Best Picture nominees, and time after time exceptional pictures simply did not make the list. Consequently, I thought I might (starting with 1939, the year movies came […]
The three ‘Beau Gestes’.
So far the classic PC Wren novel Beau Geste has made it to the screen on three occasions – in 1926, 1939 and 1966 – with varying success. It has been nearly fifty years since the last version, so one expects the industry might be gearing up for another crack […]