Maggie's and Vanessa's first movies, in 1958

Venerable thespians Maggie Smith and Vanessa Redgrave both made their movie debuts, when they were promising young stage actresses, back in 1958. Its quite fascinating catching them now.

NOWHERE TO GO is a low-budget B-movie (not quite a Trash Classic) by the enterprising Seth Holt (and an ucredited Basil Dearden, according to IMDB), with a script by no less than Kenneth Tynan, featuring '50s London in crisp black and white. It stars American import George Nadar - usually wooden, but not bad here actually. Its sole point of interest now of course is that Maggie Smith walks in to it, about the half-way mark, as the rather snooty girlfriend of the guy whose apartment Nadar, a convict sprung from prison, is hiding out in. We see earlier how he cons his way into the affections of wealthy widow Bessie Love in order to get his hands on her late husband's valuable collection of coins, which he places in a safe deposit box before the law catches up with him. 

His partner in crime, Bernard Lee, turns nasty and George soon has to depend on Maggie for assistance as they leave the city and head for her family's ancestral pile in the country with its remote shepherd's hut, where he can lie low, but of course, in B-movie fashion, things fall apart and our man on the run faces a bleak end, accompanied by the appropriate jazzy music score. So, it ticks all the B-movie boxes, and I rather liked it. It does not linger too long too, all wrapped up in 85 minutes. Maggie is fascinating here, with the distinctive voice already in place. Nader (who was gay and later became an author) who was ok in AWAY ALL BOATS, FOUR GIRLS IN TOWN, THE FEMALE ANIMAL, CARNIVAL STORY etc - see Trash label) - so its more of the same here. If there is such a genre as 'British Noir' this qualifies. 

BEHIND THE MASK, also 1958, is a solid hospital drama by the ever reliable Brian Desmond Hurst, less soapy than NO TIME FOR TEARS or LIFE IN EMERGENCY WARD TEN, it focuses on the surgeons and their problems, it doesn't quite though turn out as one imagines ...

Michael Redgrave is in his element here as the rather pompous senior surgeon, with Niall MacGinnis as his rival eager to trip him up; Tony Britton is suave new doctor whom Redgrave wants on his team and who is almost engaged to Pamela, Redgrave's daughter: a porcelain beauty Vanessa - suitably patrician and Sir Michael's real daughter making her debut here. Carl Mohner - that interesting Austrian actor - is also new to the hospital as he fights a drug problem which was have repercussions on an operation going wrong leading to the death of the patient and the subsequent investigation. 

So the story is a bit soapy, but its the cast that fascinate here: Margaret Tyzack, Joan Hickson, Ann Firbank, Lionel Jeffries, Miles Malleson, even William Roach (TV's Ken Barlow in CORONATION STREET), Ian Bannen, Brenda Bruce excellent as ever for a few minutes (as she would be the near year as the first victim of PEEPING TOM) - I didn't even catch Victor Spinetti, also listed. 

It is a hospital tale of jealously, suspicion, ambition, and features a fascinating operation sequence. This was made at that late 50s time when hospital dramas were in vogue, with EMERGENCY WARD TEN on the telly, and CARRY ON NURSE was in production.  The colours are washed out on the dvd. Apart from television work, Vanessa did not film again until MORGAN and BLOW-UP in 1966 ...

Soon: More British '50s B-movie dramas and Trash Classics like Cliff Richard singing "Living Doll" in SERIOUS CHARGE, Jayne Mansfield in THE CHALLENGE, Ava Gardner in TAM LIN, Oliver Reed in THE PARTY'S OVER, THAT KIND OF GIRL and more .... 

Actors want to act

A pleasant surprise watching the latest episde (5th of 6) of the superior BBC comedy series REV, this week, when a surprise guest star turned up - Liam Neeson, as God, no less (its already been transmitted, so hardly a spoiler) - to comfort our troubled vicar Adam when everything is going wrong for him, as this third series gets more sombre. 
I hope there will be an uplifting climax next week. Olivia Colman is also superlative of course, again playing Adam's wife who now has a busy career of her own and in fact we see less of her this time around .... It was good to see Liam and Tom together again - they were the original Oscar and Bosie in that play THE JUDAS KISS which was a successful revival last year, with Rupert Everett, as per my posts at the time - theatre label. Joseph Fiennes (right) too is effective in REV as the bishop. [I have been corrected, thanks Mark - its of course Ralph Fiennes!].

It all reminded me of how much actors want to act (Tom Hollander has just finished playing Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in a new drama) and of course Liam is now an action star, his last one set on the airplane seems a must see when on dvd. I was thinking about how even legendary actors like Jack Lemmon (post below), James Stewart, Henry Fonda et al kept working into old age, when they really didn't need to any more, on the stage as well as film. At least they didn't do too much material of lesser value to damage their reputations - unlike say Ray Milland or Joseph Cotten who ended up in all kinds of dreck, and we won't even mention Joan and TROG !  Right: the 1998 JUDAS KISS with Neeson and Hollander which I saw in London before it went to New York.

I am of the opinion that most fortunate actors who come along at the right time get "ten good years" (that delicious song Nancy Wilson sang in her live cabaret act), certainly the likes of Stephen Boyd and Laurence Harvey did - mid-'50s to mid-'60s, or Michael York (mid-'60s to mid-70s), York being one of the fortunate ones who was able to continue in lesser supporting roles, whereas Harvey's and Boyd's careers had died before they did. Fortunate indeed are the likes of Dirk Bogarde or Alain Delon or Jean Sorel who can go on for decades, whereas in the theatre actors like Jeremy Brett or John Stride can transcend their good looks as they get older. Is there the curse of the very good looking actor who starts out well but then fizzles out ? (Whatever did happen to Jeremy Spenser, Leonard Whiting, Graham Faulkner, Martin Potter et al...?). Left: the kind of period movie actors must like appearing in: Michael Redgrave, Richard Warwick, Martin Potter, Tom Baker in NICHOLAS & ALEXANDRA, 1971.

Sometimes one sees an actor who started out well and seems reduced to nothing parts some years later, like John Philip Law - so promising in the mid-60s as the angel in BARBARELLA, in HURRY SUNDOWN, DANGER DIABOLIK etc, having literally nothing to do in the all star CASSANDRA CROSSING in 1976, as an aide to Burt Lancaster, right, with Ingrid Thulin. Well I dare say JPL (who died aged 70 in 2008) had that 10 good years.

Ditto Barry Coe, left, who was a promising 20th Century Fox contract player in the '50s and early '60s - Rodney Harrington in the 1957 PEYTON PLACE, the hero in 300 SPARTANS (looking fetching in a mini toga) etc. 
but in 1966 he is an un-named "communications aide" repeating commands in FANTASTIC VOYAGE - an amusing watch last week. He was also Carroll Baker's boyfriend in the 1959 comedy BUT NOT FOR ME with Clark Gable and Lilli Palmer. Coe went into television in shows like GENERAL HOSPITAL and continued acting to 1978. Other tv actors like George Maharis or Gardner McKay fared less well in the movies.

Barry, centre, in FANTASTIC VOYAGE

Brett Halsey (left) was another of the Fox pretty boys (RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING etc) as was future producer/tycoon Robert Evans (one of the cads in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING), though Robert Wagner and Jeff Hunter were the main Fox contract players, Joanne Woodward and Stuart Whitman too of course. Ditto Fabian - see HOUND DOG MAN post below.
A Fox film like NO DOWN PAYMENT (Jeff Hunter label) is stuffed with their contract players. Jeff Hunter unfortunately died too young too, in 1969, but found his imperishable role as Martin Pawley in THE SEARCHERS, which is always on view somewhere (as it was here yesterday). Robert Wagner was the most successful of all, with some good movies in Europe (THE PINK PANTHER) and successful in television. The Universal-International pretty boys like Rock and Tony Curtis worked hard through supporting parts to build careers and achieve A-list movie status, as before them did Guy Madison and Jeff Chandler and ...while Warners had those blondes Troy and Tab, and Tony Perkins (Tab and Tony tried singing too with some success - see labels), and Kerwin Matthews over at Columbia ... 

One has to feel sorry though for Richard Davalos, over at Warner Bros: the role of Aaron, the other brother in Kazan's EAST OF EDEN must have been a plum role, but with James Dean as Cal, Davalos was completely over-shadowed. At least the DVD contains those screen tests with Dean and Davalos and young Paul Newman who also tested, and was soon doing Dean roles. Davalos's other credit that year (apart from a bit part in a Jack Palance film) was a small part in Warners THE SEA CHASE, a John Wayne-Lana Turner starrer, where sailors Davalos and Tab Hunter go for a swim in shark-infested waters - guess which one the shark heads for.... ?  He contined acting until 2008 with small parts in films like Newman's COOL HAND LUKE, and lots of television. Right: Davalos, Dean & Julie Harris in EAST OF EDEN.

Heavyweight stuff coming up: Finney in Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO, Frears' PRETTY DIRTY THINGS with this year's best actor nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, LOVE IS THE DEVIL with Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon and Daniel Craig as his criminal lover .... more impersonations with the Liberace film BEHIND THE CANDELABRA and Helena Bonham-Carter a surprisingly effective Elizabeth Taylor in BURTON AND TAYLOR ....  
Left: Jeffrey Hunter / right: Jean Sorel.

Ingrid (and Maggie) as Hedda

HEDDA GABLER. A rare 1963 version of Ibsen’s play done for the BBC with a top notch cast headed by Ingrid Bergman as Hedda, with powerful support by Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard. It is though a truncated version of the play, just 75 minutes, but Bergman is quite effective as the despairing, malicious Hedda trapped in a marriage she does not want to a man she does not love. Making cruel fun of Aunt Julie's hat gives way to deeper schemes ... like Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE (reviewed recently here, both versions), it packs a powerful punch. This '63 version has a more mature than usual cast ...

Having seen Maggie Smith in that powerful 1970 Ingmar Bergman production, above right, (so stunning I went to it twice) and also Jill Bennett in the role, it was one I wanted to see. Hedda seems to be the Hamlet for actresses to strive for and has been played by so many, even recently by young Sheridan Smith. Glenda Jackson must have been an effective HEDDA too, but Ingrid does ok here. Directed by Alex Segal and produced by Bergman's then husband Lars Schmidt and David Susskind. (Bergman and Redgrave teamed up again 2 years later for the very successful production of Turgenev’s A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, one of the first plays I saw in London, in the mid-60s). 

 
Left, the 1970 Ingmar Bergman production for the National Theatre, which was staged entirely in red with the actors (including Robert Stephens and Jeremy Brett) in black against the red background, and right, Ingrid's 1965 succcess A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, which had a long run in London, with Redgrave, Emlyn Williams, Fay Compton and Jeremy Brett again. He was also in that divine 1973 DESIGN FOR LIVING by Coward with Vanessa Redgrave in her prime and John Stride as that naughty threesome ... (Theatre label). I got Jeremy's autograph in 1965, it later sold for quite a bit as he had been Sherlock Holmes on TV ...

My summer trash read ...

Hot on the heels of Scotty Bowers' trash memoirs, we now have this tome on the Redgraves - its the one they tried to stop publication of, an offending paragraph has been removed, but it is not really about the Redgraves at all ... what we have here is a full-blown biography of director Tony Richardson (Vanessa's husband in the 60s) - interesting in its own right, but not what it says on the tin - so why is it being sold as a book on the Redgrave dynasty? Obviously to attract more sales ... We hardly see Michael Redgrave after a brief first chapter on his family .... there is no mention of his great film successes like THE WAY TO THE STARS, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST or indeed THE BROWNING VERSION. No mention of the hit play he had in 1965 A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY with Ingrid Bergman, one of the first plays I saw, or the 2 plays I saw Vanessa in: DESIGN FOR LIVING and MADHOUSE IN GOA - Michael's decline and death is barely mentioned, no reason given why his ashes were left at the crematorium for 8 years. For a volume supposedly about the Redgraves it has no list of their stage or film credits, essential in a book like this. Lynn hardly gets a look in until her decline ...  I have always been interested in the Redgraves for their work - not scandal about their private lives - as per my earlier 'People We Like' post here on Michael (Michael Redgrave label) and my appreciations of Vanessa and Lynn.

It is certainly fascinating though for anyone interested in British theatre and cinema since the '50s, with the emergence of the Royal Court and those early John Osborne plays like LOOK BACK IN ANGER and THE ENTERTAINER and Richardson's first successful films of them and A TASTE OF HONEY in '61 (Rita Tushingham label) and THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, so very 1962. As covered in my recent post on "Hollywood UK" tv series, the huge success of TOM JONES in 1963 gave his company Woodfall Films unlimited funds for Richardson to indulge himself with films that nobody saw at the time or simply were not well-released, we never got a chance to see SANCTUARY with Lee Remick in 1961, THE LOVED ONE in '65 or those 2 in France with Jeanne Moreau, MADEMOISELLE from Genet and THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR by Marguerite Duras - both rare movies for a long time. Vanessa is brilliant in the latter, in a supporting role at that time her cinema career took off with MORGAN, BLOW-UP, CAMELOT, ISADORA etc. Her politics at this time are well covered too ... now that she is a revered elderly actress this may be a part of her past she does not want dwelled on now. But where are the Redgraves and their illustrious careers ? the author just wants to focus on the family's oddities and scandals, up to the deaths of Natasha, Lynn and Corin in 2009 and 2010.

The first howler is on the dust-jacket which says it was 1928 when Olivier announced the birth of a new actress when Vanessa was born, which of course was 1937. It would be useful too if a biographer acquainted himself with the works of those he writes about. This is how he describes Vanessa's role in BLOW-UP: "Vanessa played one of two dolly birds cavorting in his photographer's studio. Although she was only on screen for 10 minutes, romping topless with Jane Birkin, it was enough for Hollywood to sit up and take notice. Her agent began getting calls". Thats all he has to say about BLOW-UP !

Well this show he knows nothing about Antonioni's classic and has not seen it, a cursory look at the synopsis of this still available and influential film would show her role is very different, and she had already appeared in MORGAN before it was released. So how on earth can anything else he says be taken seriously? and it was David Hemmings - not John Osborne - who named his son Nolan after the character he played in the LIGHT BRIGADE film; and Vanessa and Lynn were both competing for the Best Actress Oscar in 1966 - he gets that wrong too. He also misses the irony of Richardson telling Vanessa in the early 60s that he wanted her to look like Monica Vitti - then she is chosen to star in Antonioni's London film, which must have been a surprise for him.

Richardson & Redgrave

I am now just regarding it as a trashy read, akin to a summer disposable book to amuse oneself with on holiday. As for the remaining Redgraves, I do not think they need worry about it too much. It is good though on Woodfall films and how Richardson (and Osborne) got through all that money, spent too on his badly-received THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE in 1968, while still living the champagne lifestyle in the South of France, so it covers that mad time in the 60s when the Americans were financing (for a while) these bizarre loss-making English movies; but its certainly not a book about the Redgraves and their theatrical legacy. Richardson emerges as a complex man, who after his early successes was able to keep making oddball films that did not attract audiences: A DELICATE BALANCE, DEAD CERT, LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, his hippie HAMLET at the Roundhouse (I used to go to concerts there) with Nicol Williamson and Marianne Faithfull is entertainingly dealt with here, this gave him access to Mick Jagger which led to NED KELLY in Australia and all the headlines that attracted due to Faithfull's collapse - nobody much saw the film though, Jagger only did it to have something to do and felt he should be in movies and just walked away from it. Richardson though had his estate 'La Nid du Duc' in the South of France, where Hockney painted and there was a constant stream of house-guests. Richardson was lucky though to have his daughters nursing him in his final illness. After his death the story turns to Natasha and Liam Neeson, and Vanessa re-unites with Franco Nero.

This is the kind of book though where every salacious rumour has to be dragged in. Adler goes into more detail than I have ever heard before of what Mick and Marianne were doing when the police raided - again supposed to be totally untrue, and not relevant here, nor is the story of one of Joely's boyfriends, Jamie Theakston, visiting a brothel. As for the offending deleted passage (which was printed in the 'Daily Mail'), words fail me! Utter trash then ... with lots of silly mistakes which should have been noticed. However, Richardson and Osborne come across as people you really would not want to to know no matter how brilliant their early work was before complacency set in.

Summer re-runs: Utter Trash

In the age of Aquarius, the deranged Gemini twins share everything - teddy bears, lovers and murder! Judy Geeson (TO SIR WITH LOVE) and Martin Potter (FELLINI'S SATYRICON) play 20-year-old siblings with an unusually close relationship. Their bizarre fantasy world is shattered by the arrival of Clive (Alexis Kanner) a flamboyant London criminal with a massive gambling debt. As the twins become exposed to the sleazy underbelly of swinging London nightlife, they tumble into a bubbling cauldron of kinky sex, blackmail and sickening violence.

Directed by Alan Gibson (DRACULA AD 1972) with cameos from Freddie Jones and the legendary Sir Michael Redgrave, GOODBYE GEMINI is an unsettling tale of incest, obsessive jealousy and death. Unseen since the early '70s, the movie is one of the most controversial, and taboo-busting, British exploitation pictures ever made. - That's how the dvd cover bigs it up!

Well, there is Trash and there is Utter Trash. I think this qualifies for the latter, or as Pauline Kael used to say "the higher trash" and "the lower trash". This is another key exhibit in how crazy movies went circa 1970 - I coverered the 1970 DORIAN GRAY a week or so ago (Trash label) - here we are back re-visiting the very same drag pub watching the same drag queen as Dorian (Helmut Berger) and pals - this is presumably "the sleazy underbelly of swinging London nightlife" mentioned in the new dvd blurb, above. 

Geeson and Potter don't even look like twins and they don't even look marvellous here. She was just right in HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH and THREE INTO TWO WON'T GO, and had just been in Joan Crawford's BERSERK,  but has lost her glow here and that lank hair doesn't help - he was stunning in FELLINI SATYRICON but has nothing to play with here and is just a fairly pretty pout. Michael Redgrave is certainly slumming as a concerned probably bisexual MP who stumbles on the "stunning" twins at a Chelsea houseboat party. Those houseboats also featured in that other dotty incest drama from 1969 MY LOVER MY SON (also written by the writer of this) which I was interested to get last year as it was a missing Romy Schneider title (review at Romy label).

Romy in MY LOVER MY SON

This one is equally dotty. Our twins Jacki and Julian arrive in London by coach (couldn't they afford the train fare?) with their giant teddybear, and take over a mansion in Cheyne Walk; they soon dispose of the housekeeper who is meant to keep an eye on them - they don't have to bother with work of course - and soon Clive (the odd Alexis Kanner) has them in his sights. Why is he wearing those awful side-whiskers? His massive gambling debt is all of £400! He blackmails Julian by getting those decadent drag queens to assault him at that grubby hotel room while Clive gets his camera out ... he gets more than he bargained for though when the twins cover themselves in white sheets so he cannot tell them apart, then Julian kills him with a sword. Jacki runs away - into the arms of the MP (who has a time capsule '70s apartment all in browns and oranges with lots of white gloss trimmings) while the now deranged Julian hides out at that grubby hotel, where Jacki finally finds him. Do you want to know how this absurd farrago ends? Ok - here we go: he strangles her and then puts a shilling in the meter of the quaint old gas fire so he sits there fondling her hair as he gasses himself .....  (those big houses were similarly effective in those other oddities of that era: Losey's SECRET CEREMONY and of course PERFORMANCE.

Its the actors I feel sorry for - surely this kind of tosh is not what they envisaged when they started out? How do they try to make this rubbish playable or try to find some motivation for what they are doing? Its a mystery. There is another lost one Redgrave did that year, for the same producers: CONNECTING ROOMS, another drab drama which teams him with Bette Davis (her career was on a downturn then) and the same Alexis Kanner, perhaps it had better stay lost. GOODBYE GEMINI could be an entry in the British horror series, but Hammer were doing it so much better. I must also mention that deliriously awful title song "Tell the world we are not in" played over the credits by a group called The Peddlers. It is simply AWFUL. It is fascinating though in one respect - that look into the gay underworld before the gay liberation movement took off in the '70s and then the arrival of that superclub Heaven in 1979 bringing a whole new culture of gay clubbing for the '80s onwards ... back here though people had to be content with these tatty drag pubs.

A shilling in the gas meter

THE NIGHT DIGGER from 1971 is more of the same but a whole lot better featuring Patricia Neal and her mother Pamela Brown sharing their huge dilapitated mansion with Nicholas Clay who may be that murderer on the loose (I shall have to review it....)  Nicholas gets out of his clothes once more, but it is all a lot more dignified than GOODBYE GEMINI ! but British exploitation cinema was going to get a whole lot worse in those early '70s, with those Confessions of Window Cleaners and Taxi Drivers and even more softcore porn, with PERCY (about a penis operation) and THE STATUE (a David Niven disaster) and anything with Hywel Bennett. GOODBYE GEMINI and DORIAN GRAY and THE NIGHT DIGGER were just the tip ....Then of course there were those Amicus horror compendiums, amusing trash to see at this remove, but back in the early '70s respected thespians (Glynis Johns, Terry Thomas, Richard Todd, Sylvia Syms, Daniel and Anna Massey, Michael Craig, Joan Collins, even Raplh Richardson) a decade or so past their prime were queueing up to play in these, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, VAULT OF HORROR, ASYLUM etc.
The dvd of GEMINI though features a booklet, a 'making of' featurette and a commentary by Judy Geeson, as though its some lost masterpiece - and some amusing trailers: another horrorshow of that era MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY & GIRLY (don't ask...), and that Jean Simmons-Leonard Whiting romance SAY HELLO TO YESTERDAY - what no BABY LOVE or UNMAN, WITTERING AND ZIGO ?

Young Cassidy - a John Ford film directed by Jack Cardiff

YOUNG CASSIDY Or: SEAN O'CASEY IN LOVE ? One of 1965's under-rated gems is this biopic of Irish writer Sean O'Casey, a perfect example of American film-making in England in the '60s. It was a project dear to John Ford, but he only spent a few weeks on the film due to illness, so esteemed photographer Jack Cardiff took over, having directed the successful D.H. Lawrence adaptation SONS AND LOVERS himself in 1960.

Ford may only have directed a couple of scenes - the pub fight and meeting Daisy Battles (the radiant young Julie Christie) and the death of Sean's mother, the noble Flora Robson. The cast here is the thing: Rod Taylor is an agreeable presence, ideal in THE BIRDS etc, and certainly makes for a brawling playright! Maggie Smith is Nora, the bookshop girl he loves, but she cannot deal with his growing success and the world he wants to live in. Julie (just before DARLING and DR ZHIVAGO that year) is the happy prostitute he meets a few times, Dame Flora is perfect as the ailing mother, Sian Phillips his poverty-stricken sister - and then theres Edith Evans as Lady Gregory who runs the Abbey Theatre, and Michael Redgrave as W.B.Yeats - heavyweights indeed. Add in Pauline Delaney as the randy landlady, Donal Donnelly, Joe Lynch, Jack McGowran and other assorted Irish characters.

Ford and Cardiff on set, above right.

The Easter Rebellion of 1916 plays out in the background as O'Casey steals books from Maggie's shop and gets his first play written and staged, but he cannot cash his first cheque to pay for his mother's funeral! Finally, he leaves for England and the successes waiting for him. The Dublin backgrounds are nicely staged along with the poverty of the time and its all a breezy romp touching certainly on events in the early O'Casey's life. O'Casey's plays are still being revived, I am off to a National Theatre revivial of JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK in the new year.

Vanessa

How good to see Vanessa Redgrave continuing to work into her '70s both in cinema and currently on the stage. Two fascinating new projects awaiting release are her Elizabeth I in ANONYMOUS about Shakespeare and his works, and CORIOLANUS by Ralph Fiennes, and that she continues to be as admired as Dames Maggie and Judi et al.

She has been a fixed presence in my moviegoing since the mid-60s: MORGAN, BLOW-UP, THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR, ISADORA, CAMELOT, THE DEVILS, THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, JULIA, THE TROJAN WOMEN and through to cameos in HOWARD'S END, THE WHITE COUNTESS, ATONEMENT etc, not to mention her delirious A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY in '69 with Franco Nero (now her husband). I have only caught a few of her stage performances but she was astounding in a delicious '70s DESIGN FOR LIVING (photo at Vanessa Redgrave label) and A MADHOUSE IN GOA sometime in the 80s. She is very lucid too on the making of BLOW-UP in a BBC documentary showing how Antonioni showed her how he wanted her to sit and move and stand. Her autobiography is a revealing read too covering not only her theatrical heritage, the Tony Richardson years and later. Her late sister Lynn was also a particular favourite of mine, as per Lynn Redgrave label.

Update 26 October: a busy week for Vanessa, she has been on morning television twice, on different days, promoting ANONYMOUS as well as CORIOLANUS and DRIVING MISS DAISY - must be tiring doing a play at night and then up early for morning tv! Good to see Joely with her, as Vanessa is as busy as ever - ANONYMOUS looks like a must-see with mother and daughter both playing Elizabeth I. Franco Nero also popped up in LAW & ORDER, SVU as the (Italian here) diplomat accused of rape by a hotel maid, in a topical take on that recent headline grabber!



Coming up: return visits to MORGAN and ISADORA.

Dirk Bogarde double bill: those '50s British war movies...

Life during wartime back in the '50s - including a brace of early Bogardes.

THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM. I saw this 1954 war drama as a kid, and it still involves now as it almost plays like a documentary on the wartime air rescue service, who went out in their boats in all weathers to rescue crews from downed planes. Here a plane ditches in the North Sea as Michael Redgrave (carrying a briefcase of military secrets), Dirk Bogarde, Bonar Colleano and Jack Watling spend the film in a dinghy in the Shepperton tank. The rescue boat 2561 is headed by Nigel Patrick and Anthony Steel (in regulation duffel coats and polo neck sweaters) and the lower orders below deck include all the familiar faces: Sidney Tafler, Victor Maddern, Michael Ripper. The men in the dinghy start to deteriorate in adverse weather, a rescue plane also has to ditch and picks up a German, (Anton Diffring of course), while back on land posh wife (Rachel Kempson, Mrs Redgrave) and working class one (young Joan Sims) get a scene each, and there is also a middle-class girlfriend waiting, so class distinctions are as rigid as in IN WHICH WE SERVE. It is all directed at a brisk pace by Lewis Gilbert. Certainly one of the best war movies of the ‘50s.

APPOINTMENT IN LONDON. A marvellous early Dirk Bogarde film I had not seen before, this 1953 film, sensitively directed by Philip Leacock, is one of the better war films of the ‘50s. It seems to be a realistic depiction of Bomber Command, flying their Lancasters on those nightly bombing raids. Bogarde is the Wing Commander who has done more than his share of night flights but wants to continue, he is grounded though by his superiors who feel that fatigue has set in. Bryan Forbes is the young flyer who disobeys orders by letting his girl (secretly his wife) know he is safe after flights, much to Bogarde’s annoyance. Later Dirk has to confront the wife, Anne Leon. Lots of regulars are among the ranks: Richard Wattis, Sam Kydd, Terence Longdon, William Slyvester. Dinah Sheridan is perfect again as the naval officer and her romance with Bogarde, who gets his opportunity to fly again, nicely depicted. As it THE WAY TO THE STARS there is also that bar and hotel next to the airfield. In all, a pleasant surprise. Leacock directed some interesting little films like this, THE SPANISH GARDENER and REACH FOR GLORY (both reviewed here , Bodarde, war labels) before going over to American television directing series like “The Waltons”, “Dynasty” and “Falcon Crest”.



SEA OF SAND. One of those British war movies they turned out a lot in the ‘50s, this 1958 one is rather a companion piece to ICE COLD IN ALEX. Here our motley crew are behind enemy lines tasked to destroy a German petrol dump as part of the North Africa campaign, in 1942. Guy Green keeps it moving nicely and the desert is like an ocean of sand with that crisp black and white photography. John Gregson and Michael Craig lead our men, with Richard Attenborough as one of the squaddies. The usual conflicts arise and sacrifices are made; surprisingly the young 21 year old who confides that his wife had a son a week earlier manages to survive – I had him down as a goner! It is an under-rated, well-made example of the war genre with some splendid moments, and a nice coda at the end.

Back in the '40s during the war those films like IN WHICH WE SERVE, THE WAY TO THE STARS, THE GENTLE SEX, 2000 WOMEN and THE DAY WILL DAWN are still very affecting and were just the ticket then - then came those expensive '60s re-creations like BATTLE OF BRITAIN, OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR and no end of stuff like OPERATION CROSSBOW or WHERE EAGLES DARE!