An Irish cottage for the weekend ...

Its a weekend with THE QUIET MAN - John Ford's immortal piece of Irish whimsy from 1952. No matter how many times I have seen it (quite a lot since I was a kid) it always comes up fresh. All those great characters to enjoy spending time with - that perfect cottage interior and were Wayne and O'Hara ever more lovable?  (above: the restored cottage for today's tourists)

Just because its March 17 ...

RIP continued

Maureen O'Hara (1920-2015), at the grand age of 95. See my post on her from last week, below, for an appreciation ....  

I was watching THE PARENT TRAP on a cable channel just yesterday, bringing back so many childhood memories.

Chantal Akerman (1950-2015, aged 65, Belgian filmmaker, a leading light in experimental European cinema,  best known perhaps for JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DE COMMERCE, 1080, BRUXELLES, one I keep meaning to re-see. 

Philip French, aged 82. For 50 years he was the influential film critic for the London "Guardian" and also author His top 50 films from the last five decades are on this Guardian website: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/apr/13/features.culture2

Geoffrey Howe (1926-2015), aged 88 - a week after the death of his old political colleague and foe Denis Healey (RIP label). Howe was a likeable Conservative politician who famously brought down Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom he had served for years as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor, with his resignation speech in 1990, when he rebelled against her leadership style. His opposite number Denis Healey famously compared a Howe broadside to being “savaged by a dead sheep” – his ponderous, monotone exterior concealed a subtle wit, a profound legal intelligence and a dogged bravery.

Illtyd Harrington (1931-2015), aged 84. British Labour politician who was deputy Mayor of London in the 1980. The flamboyant (newspeak for gay) and Welsh Harrington was often in the news for us Londoners, An old-fashioned Labour man, he later wrote about the arts, books and politics for "The Camden News Journal" newspaper and was a board member of The National Theatre.

O'Hara

It was nice watching a new Sky Arts documentary on Maureen O'Hara, the latest of an occasional series, reminding one of much much we like the veteran actress who often seems overlooked in the pantheon of movie greats.

Maureen, now all of 95, is still going and received an honorary Oscar last year. She will of course be forever linked to those John Ford-John Wayne films, but has a great body of work, starting with those early films with Charles Laughton: Hitch's JAMAICA INN and THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME in 1939. Born in Dublin in 1920, she was soon in America. 
I particularly liked her and Lucille Ball as showgirls in Dorothy Arzner's DANCE GIRL DANCE in 1940. Maureen then became "The Queen of Technicolor" with that flaming red hair and all those pirate and adventure movies she did in the 1940s and into the '50s: THE SPANISH MAIN, AGAINST ALL FLAGS, THE BLACK SWAN, SINBAD THE SAILOR, THE FLAME OF ARABY, TRIPOLI, LISBON where she was teamed with the likes of Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, John Payne, Ray Milland, and Rex Harrison in THE FOXES OF HARROW, as well as playing perfect wives for James Stewart and Henry Fonda in the Sixties. She and John Wayne were first paired in Ford's RIO GRANDE in 1950, then came their classic THE QUIET MAN where her Mary Kate Danaher is the spirited centre of the film. She and Wayne were also in Ford's THE WINGS OF EAGLES in 1957, and they were both in McLINTOCK! and BIG JAKE in 1971. She and Tyrone Power headed Ford's THE LONG GREY LINE in 1955.

Two of her late 1940s classics are the imperishable THE MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET in 1947, where she has great rapport with the young Natalie Wood, and SITTING PRETTY in 1948 where she is the mother of the children being babysat by Mr Belvedere (Clifton Webb). She was in good company too in OUR MAN IN HAVANA in 1959, with Alec Guinness, and Disney's THE PARENT TRAP was an enormous hit in 1961 with Hayley Mills as those twins. 
She was teamed again with Brian Keith in that early Peckinhah western THE DEADLY COMPANIONS in 1961. It seems impossible to see her THE BATTLE OF THE VILLA FIORITA, a Delmar Daves romance from 1965, One of her last roles was as John Candy's Irish mother in ONLY THE LONELY in 1991, before a long retirement in County Kerry, Ireland. She ran an airline for 10 years as well, when her third husband, Charles Blair, a pilot, died in a plane crash in 1978, so she took over their Antilles Airboats, a commuter seaplane service in the Carribean, scene of her many swashbuckling adventures. So she was the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the United States, Her autobiography "Tis Herself" is an enjoyable read too. 

Maureen had a good singing voice too and did some recordings and cabaret appearances. She would have been an ideal Mrs Anna in THE KING AND I, but it seems Oscar & Hammerstein would not consider "The Queen of Technicolor" ..... but we will always have Mary Kate and her QUIET MAN. I've just had to pre-order the Blu-ray out in November, as there are so many ropey prints of it out there ...

Happy St Patrick's Day to Irish folk everywhere

Its Maureen O'Hara of course, with thanks to that great site POSEIDON'S UNDERWORLD. 

John, Maureen, Clifton, Sophia ....

Rainy day doodlings: THE QUIET MAN was on again yesterday .... in a movie of magic moments I love that scene where Wayne's Sean Thornton first sees Mary Kate Danaher ..... we like Wayne in lots of movies: those Ford and Hawks classics - THE SEARCHERS with Jeff Hunter and Natalie Wood, RIO BRAVO with Feathers (Angie Dickinson) and Colorado (Ricky Nelson), and the bliss that is Hawks' HATARI; his Joe January in Hathaway's Sahara western LEGEND OF THE LOST with the blooming Sophia Loren in 1957 (Loren label), the still delighful NORTH TO ALASKA (Westerns label) also for Hathaway, and of course here in THE QUIET MAN with another of his perfect co-stars Maureen O'Hara.

Maureen's MIRACLE ON 34th STREET is on tomorrow, with the even younger Natalie Wood (I must get around to GYPSY and LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER soon) its one I am not that familiar with, I may only have seen it once ... so we will tune in again, particularly now with Christmas rushing at us. 

 
The Maureen one I do want to see though is SITTING PRETTY, her 1948 comedy with Clifton Webb as Mr Belvedere, the baby-sitter. This seems impossible to obtain now here in the UK.  I saw it when I was a kid though, at one of those Sunday matinee revivals, but obviously I would appreciate it a lot more now. Maureen's book was a good read and she is still going strong in her 90s ... 

I have done an 'appreciation' on Clifton here,  see label - particularly his Negulesco films I like, like WOMAN'S WORLD and BOY ON A DOLPHIN, with Sophia. There is also a book on Clifton, which I just had to order ... there was 1 copy left and I had to have it. Seems he began it himself and did the first half dozen chapters .... should be a fascinating look back at his career and that Hollywood gay era in the 40s and earlier ..... his early career as a dancer, and hits like LAURA, and his family movies like CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, to his later waspish roles. I particularly like his art collector in BOY ON A DOLPHIN (below, with Sophia), as mentioned before here ...
The Clifton book has got good comments - The Zanucks regarded him as "family": There has never been a replacement for him; he could do everything and did it in a singular style that could never be repeated. He was 20th Century Fox's most unlikely star ... who was also a meticulous and devoted friend".