Loretta's Beauty Shop .......... (for M.B.)

Loretta's Beauty Shop is open again today - it is of course located at Cabot Cove somewhere in New England - Maine, perhaps? - where that amazing sleuth and thriller writer Jessica Fletcher resides - when she is not globe-trotting around the world solving murders where-ever she goes .... Jessica of course is the tireless Angela Lansbury (still working in her late 80s - she was back on the London stage earlier this year) - while her MURDER SHE WROTE TV series are replayed endlessly - there is at least one a day on here. 

I never bothered with the series back when first shown - being younger and out a lot and it was not my sort of TV, but hey 30 or so years later, its amusing to check them out now and then, if only for the great guest stars - we have seen Jean Simmons, Janet Leigh, Carroll Baker, Rod Taylor, David Hemmings and lots more including Angela's old pals from her MGM days. Some episodes are set in a make-believe Ireland (where Angela lived for some years) and its fun seeing their recreations of Paris, Hong Kong, Cairo and others.

A particular favourite of mine, Ruth Roman, wound down her career here, doing three episodes set in Cabot Cove where she plays Loretta who runs the local beauty parlour (where everything is pink), its where Angela and her gossipy neighbours hang out: Julia Adams still looking terrific, a rather portly Kathryn Grayson, and Gloria De Haven, This particular episode I saw the other day "The Sins of Castle Cove" (Season 5, episode 17, 1989) concerns a PEYTON PLACE type novel written by a local girl, using all the local scandals, which becomes a best seller and, yes, inevitably leads to murder. But fear not, Jessica will soon unravel it, meanwhile relax with the girls at the parlour presided over by the good-natured, jovial Loretta, a vision in pink - go Ruth, a good final role for her.

Surprise Package, 1960

The surprise is its terrible. This is one 1960 'comedy' that passed me by completely and never surfaced here at all in the last 50 or so years, so when I saw it was on dvd, I had to investigate ... particularly as it was filmed on the Greek island of Rhodes, at Lindos - a place I loved a few years ago and it looks just the same here. But WHY is it in black and white? if they were filming on a Greek island back then, surely they could have ran to colour? 

Stanley Donen had the oddest career directing movies - he is 91 now - I won't even mention SINGIN' IN THE RAIN or SEVEN BRIDES, as I don't care for them much, both very over-rated - but I love 1949's ON THE TOWN and his 1955 ITS ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER, FUNNY FACE in 1957 and THE PAJAMA GAME, DAMN YANKEES in 1958 and also INDISCREET, then he did those 2 odd films with Yul Brynner: ONCE MORE WITH FEELING made in 1959 and released in 1960 after the death of its star Kay Kendall (who died in September 1959). Yul Brynner was the temperamental orchestra conductor and showed, as he does here in 1960, that while effective in epics and dramatic roles, he has no flair for comedy at all. 

Mitzi Gaynor is as delightful as ever - she had the misfortune to come along as musicals were dying out, but scored in THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS in 1954, in ANYTHING GOES, was one of the LES GIRLS in 1957 and probably peaked as Nellie Forbush in SOUTH PACIFIC in 1958. After that she did a forgettable David Niven comedy, this Donen misfire and another forgotten item in 1963 and that was the end of her movie career - fortunately she went into television and cabaret and had some great stage shows over the years, which are camp extravaganzas to see now on YouTube. 

Noel Coward is wonderful here even if he looks bored with the whole thing, He does have a good scene with Mitzi (in a ritzy dress) where they sing and dance the title song. He is the exiled King of Anatolia and Yul is the deported from the USA criminal. It is meant to be a comedy caper about Yul trying to steal the King's crown but is too tedious to go into detail about. Yul, Mitzi and Noel are the whole show here, and of course that Greek scenery - amusing to see Yul and Mitz on donkeys going up the hill to the town's fortress and ancient Greek temple with those great views ..... I did that in 2009. I dare say Donen, Yul and Mitzi had some talks about Kay Kendall as they had recently worked with her, and Noel knew her well too .... Coward had just finished OUR MAN IN HAVANA and had launched himself as a cabaret star in the USA. This film though has reams of dialogue in scenes that go on too long and have one itching to use the fast-forward ... which I did a few times. 

Donen went on to the agreeable THE GRASS IS GREENER and those 60s hits CHARADE, ARABESQUE, TWO FOR THE ROAD and BEDAZZLED (see Donen label), the rest of his output included the dreadful STAIRCASE in 1969 and some 70s misfires like LUCKY LADY and THE LITTLE PRINCE. But he gets trotted out occasionally to comment on his three with Audrey Hepburn or those great 50s musicals. SURPRISE PACKAGE though is one to forget. The dvd blurb hopefully describes it as a "delightful souffle" but zis ees one souffle that has collapsed and fallen flat. 

French Can-Can

FRENCH CAN-CAN is a delicious pleasure from 1954 .... a visual delight by a major storyteller. This comedy drama from Jean Renoir chronicles the revival of Paris' most notorious dance as it tells the story of a theater producer who turns a humble washerwoman into a star at the Moulin Rouge.

Henri Danglard, proprietor of the fashionable (but bankrupt) cafe 'Le Paravent Chinois' featuring his mistress, belly dancer Lola, goes slumming in Montmarte (circa 1890) where the then-old-fashioned cancan is still danced. There, he conceives the idea of reviving the cancan as the feature of a new, more popular establishment...and meets Nini, a laundress and natural dancer, whom he hopes to star in his new show. But a tangled maze of jealousies intervenes...

Jean Gabin is in his element, Maria Felix is his fiery spitfire, and Francoise Arnoul is the new dancer she is jealous of. Edith Piaf appears too for a few moments, and sings. 1890s Paris is perfectly caught here, one imagines. The Moulin Rouge of course has fascinated movie-makers: John Huston's marvellous MOULIN ROUGE in 1953 as lensed by Oswald Morris; and Baz Luhrmann's 2001 version - theres also the 1960 film from 20th Century Fox: CAN CAN without a shred of period feel as Sinatra and McLaine go through their paces, with some energetic dance numbers. 

Renoir's version is simply wonderful, particularly that long dance sequence at the end, as Gabin dances the steps too backtage. Great movies just remain timeless. We  will have to return to Renoir's THE GOLDEN COACH from 1952 with Magnani, and finally see ELENA ET LES HOMMES with Ingrid Bergman in 1956, and his THE RIVER set in India and of course his earlier 1930s classics ...

Audrey: Portraits of an Icon

As a blockbuster exhibition celebrating Audrey Hepburn is about to open in London, Camille Paglia has written another fascinating essay (I love her BFI booklet on THE BIRDS) exploring the enduring allure of the icon of screen and style ....

Here is just a sample: "TIFFANY'S exposed Hepburn's latent androgyny, turning her into a major diva for gay men, who identified with Holly's witty self-invention in shedding her rural Texas past. Among Hepburn's physical ambiguities were her unusually wide mouth, thick brows and large feet (Garbo had big feet too) the one thing drag queens cannot change.

But among the great gay divas, Hepburn is unique in her pristine innocence and affable courtesy. She was not domineering or temperamental, neither caustic and vampiric like Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford or Bette Davis, nor masochistically needy and wound-baring like Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand. All who worked with her raved about her kindness and gentleness."

Well, we love Audrey here at The Projector, and that other Hepburn as well - two of the movies great stylists (I am just going to watch Kate's DESK SET again, I like it a lot now). Audrey certainly continues to go on being a style icon, as indeed the BFI season on her a few years back showed - they did not even include her great acting roles like THE NUN'S STORY or THE LOUDEST WHISPER or THE UNFORGIVEN ! Instead it was Audrey in Givenchy and in Paris all the way. And of course the books and photo albums go on, perhaps she is now the best known movie star after Marilyn (girls who know nothing about movies, like my teenage niece, have Audrey and Marilyn posters on their bedroom walls), as her sons sell her image to sell chocolate ..... but Audrey always worked for her full fee so would probably be pleased to be still earning. 

We love the early 50s Audrey, when she and Kay Kendall were showgirls in London west end revues before she got into movies, and then the hits ROMAN HOLIDAY and SABRINA and FUNNY FACE, and that 60s Audrey of TIFFANY'S, CHARADE, HOW TO STEAL A MILLION and TWO FOR THE ROAD, and ROBIN AND MARIAN was a lovely late hit for her, and I even like Bogdanovich's THEY ALL LAUGHED though Audrey is not in it much ... more on Audrey at label. Don't even get me started on Audrey and Cat in TIFFANY'S ....

The exhibition Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon is at the National Portrait Gallery, London WC2 from July 2 to October 18 - npg.org.uk
There are even three screenings of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S at the Royal Abert Hall this month, with live orchestra playing the score, and the Mancini family attending ....

An album I like: Let It Bleed

I see a De Luxe version of the Rolling Stones' STICKY FINGERS album is about to be released, I've had to order it for the extra disc of remixes and rarities, including a 1971 live version of "Midnight Rambler" and a "Brown Sugar" with Eric Clapton - so should have that tomorrow. We loved STICKY FINGERS at the time - 1970 - particularly that original vinyl with the cardboard cover and the real zip. By then The Beatles had imploded but the Stones were entering that nasty funky phase, we had liked THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES (with that psychedelic cover) and BEGGER'S BANQUET, but LET IT BLEED was for me their best ever . My best pal Stan gave me the album for my 24th birthday, with a nice inscription on it. 

It was full of funky grooves and that nice Robert Johnson cover of "Love In Vain", plus the terrific "Gimme Shelter", "You Got The Silver" and ending with the epic "You Can't Always Get What You Want". - its a murky, dark and chilling record capturing that time the counterculture crashed and burned: "rape and murder, just a shot away", as the Altamont Speedway was just around the corner ...

STICKY FINGERS was darker stuff entirely ("Sister Morphine", "Wild Horses"),  and of course they followed that with EXILE ON MAIN STREET (De Luxed last year) ... their '70s output was variable to say the least, but there were some good tracks on GOAT'S HEAD SOUP, ITS ONLY ROCK N ROLL, SOME GIRLS etc. and I loved those later tracks like "Miss You" and "Emotional Rescue".  They are one group I never saw live - I would have wanted to see them in their prime, not as the later rock dinosaurs. Back then it was The Beatles and The Stones, Cream and The Yardbirds, The Doors and The Band, and Blood Sweat & Tears ... 

Soul grooves for the weekend .....

Back to those '80s/'90's club nights .....

.

One could of course also include Shannon's "Let The Music Play", "Joyce Sims' "Come Into My Life", Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You", Soul II Soul's "Back to Life", or George Michael & Mary J's great club video "As" and so many more like from the amazing Billie Ray Martin (try her "running around town" remix  .... Alison Limerick's "Where Love Lives", Cece Peniston's "Finally", or that fierce diva Adeva, or those Funky Green Dogs and Murk, or any of that Danny Tenaglia Global Underground dark house vibes, and some chillout from A Man Called Adam. Then there's Angie Stone, D'Angelo, those CRASH compilations, Tiga and Jake Shears .... 
And here is something new: Markus Feehily's very dark "Love Is A Drug" ... (yes, he was in Westife!)

London in the movies, again

London's BFI is starting a three-part series LONDON ON FILM in July - roll out all the usual suspects: the models in BLOW-UP (above) - Antonioni's classic is included of course, it may be nice to go back and see it on the big screen again. 
Also favourites of mine like POOL OF LONDON in 1950, SAPPHIRE in 1959 - both of these feature Earl Cameron, one of the first black actors to feature in British films of the 1950s. Another one I have already booked for is THE HEART WITHIN, a B-movie from 1957 which I had not heard of, where Earl is on the run from some drug smugglers,aided by a teenage David Hemmings - it will be interesting to see David here, a decade before BLOW-UP, its interesting now catching his early performances (SOME PEOPLE, TWO LEFT FEET, WEST 11, PLAY IT COOL, THE SYSTEM etc as per Hemmings label.).

The BFI says: 

Young David Hemmings in 
THE HEART WITHIN

London is one of the great cinematic cities. The city that emerges from our 200-film, three-month season, is at once historic and imaginary, deeply familiar and utterly impossible. London is currently transforming before our eyes, so in July we start with a century of film-making that captures changes to the city across the decades. In our first monthly spotlight on one corner of the city, we visit Soho - once the city's vibrant alternative heart, now at risk of losing its edge. In August we meet endlessly diverse Londoners: spivs and city slickers, upper class and underclass, high culture and subculture. In September we visit the reimagined city, a place of song and dance or dystopian nightmare. Welcome to London on Film.

Well, bring it on. July includes screenings of HUE AND CRY, NIGHT AND THE CITY, POOL OF LONDON and SAPPHIRE, BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, FOUR IN THE MORNING, BLOW-UP, THE LONDON NOBODY KNOWS, PERFORMANCE (with James Fox in discussion with producer Sandy Lieberson); S.W.A.L.K (or MELODY), Hitch's FRENZY, an extended run of THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (which somehow I never saw), and a SOHO SEX CLUB NIGHT featurng documentaries on the 'West End Jungle" and "Get 'Em Off" on the strip clubs, and "Vanishing Soho", THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE and Belinda Lee's 1957 charmer MIRACLE IN SOHO. 

More on these at London label, and see London-A for my main feature on London in The Movies, done back in 2010. 

Lets hope they also get around to more post-war London in THE BLUE LAMP, DANCE HALL and IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, and the Fifties sleaze of the strip club era in EXPRESSO BONGO, TOO HOT TO HANDLE, PEEPING TOM, PASSPORT TO SHAME as well as Sixties London in SMASHING TIME, THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER, WEST 11, A PLACE TO GO, SATURDAY NIGHT OUT, , TWO LEFT FEET, BITTER HARVEST, DARLING, MORGAN, and into the '70s London of SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY and more, like those Trash Classics DORIAN GRAY and GOODBYE GEMINI, both 1970, as well as those '70s London thrillers like HENNESSEY, THE SQUEEZE etc - see 1970s label .... 

I am in Soho myself next week, meeting friends for drinks and checking out some shops including that Vintage Magazine Store, hopefully before the developers take over completely! 

Monica Vitti in Town

As reported on those vintage magazines (sounds better than old magazines) it was nice to get my hands on this issue of TOWN, which I had when I was 16, a British fashion/style magazine for the man about town, from October 1962 with that exciting new star Monica Vitti on the cover - Antonioni's L'ECLISSE had opened and was the must-see movie then. I have written a lot about this film and Antonioni and Vitti before, see the labels.

There is a good feature in this issue by Italian specialist John Francis Lane ("Films and Filming"'s Italian correspondent) interviewing Monica here. 
She is the new Italian sensation after Lollo, Loren and Cardinale ..... and she wants to do comedy but Antonioni only sees her in serious drama, as in L'AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE and now L'ECLISSE, and he is preparing THE RED DESERT for her, another serious role. Monica, then 28, does not identify with these women and wants to be a clown, and funny like Kay Kendall. 

The intellectuals at that time saw Antonioni and Vitti as the height of chic in that fascinating era of early Sixites international cinema. Alienation was the topic of the day and Antonioni specialised in it. Monica giggles and says nobody could be less alienated than she. Monica wants to act in a comedy - for her, life is a continuous joke. 

Like Fellini, Antonioni moulds his characters on to the personality of the actor. Much of Monica has gone into those characters: Claudia in L'AVVENTURA, Valentina in LA NOTTE and now Vittoria in L'ECLISSE - what has emerged is the personality of an actress who is the anti-star, who has nothing in common with Loren and Cardinale and even less with Bardot and Monroe. The girl of the new decade will recognise herself in Claudia, Valentina and Vittoria. 

Fifty plus years later, Monica now in her 80s (as are Loren and Lollobrigida) is it seems in seclusion with Alzheimers, and has not been seen in public for a decade or more. One trusts she is being looked after and happy. She has been married to Italian actor Roberto Russo since her Antonioni period. 
Antonioni died in 2007 - the same day as Ingmar Bergman, as per our reports on that - Antonioni label. The films go on being watched and discovered. 

We love Monica too of course as MODESTY BLAISE and in all those comedies she made, after Antonioni, as per Monica label.

Julie and the fish ....

An astonishing photograph of Julie Christie, astonishing at a mere 74, posed naked in a fishing net and covered in fish. The shoot was so cold her temperature got very low ....

Part of an eye-catching campaign to highlight the perils of overfishing. Its called Fishlove. and you can read more about it at the link:

The photos are by John Swannell, and the various naked celebrities draped in sea creatures include Dane Judi Dench with a lobster, Katy Lette, Helena Bonham-Carter, Fiona Shaw, Zoe Wannamaker and others, and Hugh Bonneville ! 

Fishlove aims to promote sustainable fishing. The photos certainly get our attention. Lots more Julie at label. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11641951/Judi-Dench-as-you-have-never-seen-her-before.html

RIP, continued

Charles Kennedy (1959-2015) - we are genuinely saddened to hear of the sudden death at the far too young age of 55 of Scottish politician Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who was that rare thing in politics: a decent man, with wide-ranging interests. He only left politics in the recent British election, and had a young family. He also came clean about problems with alcohol, and was widely respected across the whole British political spectrum. RIP indeed. Very moving tributes in today's papers. 
For once Nick Clegg got it right: "Charles devoted his life to public service, yet he had an unusual gift for speaking about politics with humour and humility which touched people well beyond the world of politics," he said."He was one of the most gentle and unflappable politicians I have ever known, yet he was immensely courageous too not least when he spoke for the country against the invasion of Iraq."

Julie Harris (1921-2015), aged 94. Not the American actress (who died in 2013), Julie Harris was a British Academy Award-winning costume designer who outfitted James Bond and the Beatles. Ms. Harris played a major role in capturing the look of “Swinging London” on film in the 1960s. She dressed the Beatles for both A HARD DAY'S NIGHT and HELP! (She later said, “I must be one of the few people who can claim they have seen John, Paul, George and Ringo naked.”) 

She won an Oscar for DARLING the style-setting 1965 film about London models and media types starring Dirk Bogarde and Julie Christie, and an award from Bafta, the British film academy, for the 1966 Michael Caine comedy THE WRONG BOX. She once said of Ms. Christie: “She badgered me to make the skirts shorter. And she was right.” Ms. Harris worked on the James Bond spoof CASINO ROYALE in 1967 and created costumes for Roger Moore’s first outing as 007 LIVE AND LET DIE in 1973.

Anne Meara (1929-2015) aged 85. Popular American actress (and mother of Ben Stiller), she and husband Jerry Stiller were a comedy act, Films included LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS, FAME, BOYS FROM BRAZIL, THE OUT OF TOWNERS and NASTY HABITS, and lots of TV incuding RHODA. 

Jim Bailey, (1938-2015) aged 77, entertainer and one of the first great female impersonators, specialising in perfect recreations of Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee and others including Phyllis Diller. Charles Pierce was the great Bette Davis impersonator, but Bailey was terrific as well - I saw his show in London sometime in the late Seventies or early Eighties. He was back in London in 2009 - Susie Boyt from The Times wrote "There is nothing camp or stagey about his act--it can scarcely even be described as an act, for Bailey inhabits Garland's persona to such an extent that well, there she is. It is a supreme illusion, a sort of perfect madness."

Who's who in Town

When I did that recent post of my holy grail of missing vintage magazines, that 1962 issue of English  magazine TOWN, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover of their November 1962 issue, which I saw on-line for the ridiculous price of £299 - I did not realise I would soon have a copy of it again myself, plus their '62 issues with Monica Vitti (then the sensation of L'ECLISSE) and new girl in town Sarah Miles (then in TERM OF TRIAL) - so it pays to check out vintage magazine sites, and whats new on eBay - as new stuff comes on every day. TOWN issues are surprisingly large, bigger than the usual A4 magazine size and heavy too, with all those fascinating early 60s advertisements - TOWN was styled for the smart man about town, with men's fashion, cars, the emerging Sixties high life, drinks, food, and ladies. The sort of magazine the young master in THE SERVANT would be reading, in 1963. I had those issues with Monroe and Vitti on the covers when I was 16 in Ireland, and was dying to see them again. Young Sarah gives good interview and photos too ...

Luckily I checked a vintage magazine site I had bought from, Tilleys Vintage Magazines, and saw that they had just received a selection of TOWN magazines, which they were selling for £30 or £40 each, and yes they had the Monroe and Vitti and Miles ones, so I made sure I jumped in and got them before anyone else did. Still expensive of course, but as my pal Martin said, "if you want it badly enough then it is worth the price you pay". 

I also got a delicious pile of the American WHO'S WHO IN HOLLYWOOD annual magazines (on eBay), I have had the 1966 one since, well, 1966 - and its a collector's item. Fantastic to get issues covering 1957 to 1967! lots to peruse there .... these feature thumbnail portraits and information on all the current players - making up a fascinating record of who was who then: the leading stars, featured players, older stars, newcomers, musical stars, comedy stars, etc, and who had just passed away .... so the 1957 one features that interesting new actor Anthony Perkins who was playing in LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL on Broadway (I remember reading about that at the time in the Hollywood fan mags), Jean Seberg ("from Marshalltown, Iowa") who had done SAINT JOAN and was about to discover France in BONJOUR TRISTESSE, Kay Kendall is featured each year - until 1960, as she had died in 1959, along with Henri Vidal and Gerard Philipe; Italian import Sophia Loren grows in stature in each issue, until she is on the cover of the 1967 issue, along with Julie Andrews. Liz and Debbie of course feature on each year's covers too. Fascinating stuff then, and at a bargain price! 

The annual Psycho re-watch, Rear Window too

PSYCHO continues to be fiendishly re-warchable, in fact one should rewatch it every year, I catch it whenever it is on and get mesmerised all over again, just like I did the first time I saw it, at the time, at my local cinema in Ireland, when I was about 14 (we were able to get into X-cert films there). It remains brilliant on so many levels. Here is what I said about it, last time I wrote about it here:

Now I know PSYCHO inside out over the years but had not actually seen it for maybe 20 years or so, so I was surprised to be so totally involved and stunned by it all over again. 
It is such a rich complex film that draws one in time and time again, this time I noticed how amazing that music score is - its not just all screaming violins, as Herrmann complements the action perfectly. Tony Perkins of course had his defining role as Norman Bates, but so did Janet Leigh as Marion Crane - after all her years as a leading lady this is the role she will be remembered for (as her then husband Curtis will be for Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT made around the same time). Never mind the size of the role she should have been a contender for best actress of the year.

Janet has revealed how Hitch called her in, told her he knew she could act and told her what he wanted from her in his camera set-ups and left the creation of the role to her. She certainly delivers here and looks her best - she did get rather emaciated in her later years. This nice photo by Nocoletta Zalaffi is from a 1969 "Sight & Sound" interview where she discusses working with Hitch and Welles among others. The movie of course is famous for other things too: the first time a toilet is seen and flushed in a mainstream movie, and our lovers in that hotel room, frank for that era, with Janet in her bra. Odd too the date in the opening scene is given as December 11th, but there no mention of Christmas at all apart from that one shot as our heroine flees from Phoenix Arixona in her car, to that lone highway, after sleeping in her car all night attracting the interest of that cop ... the music underscores her travel to that motel perfectly;
then that great scene with that strange young man as they talk about birds and the traps they are in and she resolves to get out of hers. Great moments too with the old police chief and Simon Oakland as that psychiatrist at the end compels our attention as the swamp gives up its secrets - those eerie moments too of Norman at the swamp, and that perfect ending.. I like Martin Balsam's Arbogast too with that line "Someone always sees a girl with 40,000 dollars". We are now in the age of 'torture porn' (which I don't bother with) so PSYCHO may seem old-hat to some, but its still as powerful now as when I first saw it .... Hitch of course was the master showman here with his teasing trailer visiting the site of the motel, and those ads, during the era of continuous performances, not letting people in once it had started. Quite right too.  I have always liked Janet, more on her and Hitch at labels. 
For me PSYCHO and Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA usher in the new movie world of the Sixties - both of course are about a woman who disappears and the people looking for her - Hitch shows us what happens, Antonioni doesn't, both are complex masterpieces which repay endless viewing, even if Hitch dismissed PSYCHO as a black comedy he made millions on, as it was shot so cheap and quick like one of his TV shows. 

REAR WINDOW mesmerises too, and is maybe at the top of the Hitchcock canon. Set almost entirely in the two-room apartment of James Stewart's wheelchair-bound photographer this murder mystery is claustrophobic and masterfully controlled, John Michael Hayes script being just perfect, and Hitch creates some iconic images of Stewart with his camera and Grace in another Edith Head wardrobe. "Preview of coming attractions" indeed. She is the spunky heroine here, taking risks by getting into the apartment of the suspected murderer - that whole set of all those apartments is merely stupendous, and Thelma is delicious as ever as the pragmatic nurse, and of course all those people we snoop on in those apartments across the way ...

Its a study in the complex mechanics of voyeurism and desire - subjects close to Hitch - which has kept film theorists busy for decades, particuarly as this and VERTIGO and some others were out of circulation for years - a canny move to whet interest for them. Its also an edge-of-your-seat thriller and a fascinating love story, as we leave Grace's Lisa Fremont settling down with "Vogue" while Jimmy, now with two broken legs, is trapped in that wheelchair ... 
THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY was also on, but I just could not muster much interest in it, and I suppose I have to catch TORN CURTAIN one of these days, the only late Hitch I had no desire in seeing. 

Marilyn: mysterious girl

Interest in Marilyn Monroe never ceases, her films are on television a lot here, the BFI is starting a new season on her, and there are more features on her in the papers. Its been interesting to finally get around to NIAGARA again:

NIAGARA, 1953. Rose Loomis, a Technicolor femme fatale and Monroe's first star billing, is young and highly sensual. Her marriage to the jealous and depressed George (Joseph Cotten) plays out in front of honeymooning couple Polly and Ray, including the unveiling of Rose's many secrets. Unlike Monroe's later roles exploring playful and innocent sexuality, this noir portrays sex as deadly ...

So says the BFI in their notes on Henry Hathaway's lurid 1953 thriller, a delicious noir in lurid color.

Marilyn is the most striking thing here, Cotten seems sadly diminished, Jean Peters is adequate but Max Showalter is gratingly annoying as the doofus husband. The publicity at the time of course had MM competing with the majestic waterfalls, it is certainly interestingly worked out as Rose and her lover scheme to kill her husband (perhaps he has a large insurance policy?) but the jealous husband soon cottons on, as Rose finds out when she goes to the morgue to identify the body she expects to be her husband's .... soon, she is trapped as he follows her around town, it was unwise of her to climb those stairs up to where those bells ring .... After MM's exit, what remains is a routine timefiller.

She has some stunning moments here, in that tight blue suit as she walks past the honeymoon couple teetering on those "fuck me" shoes, and then in that lurid pink dress for the "Kiss" sequence ...

1953 was certainly Marilyn's year - after those small roles that got her noticed in 1950 in THE ASPHALT JUNGLE and ALL ABOUT EVE (as well as that comic western TICKET TO TOMAHAWK), by 1952 she was in WE'RE NOT MARRIED, Lang's CLASH BY NIGHT, Hawks' MONKEY BUSINESS as Miss Laurel the secretary who cannot type, and her hypnotic role as the disturbed babysitter in DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK. Then, NIAGARA in 1953 followed by GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE. She was still working for peanuts though for Fox, who only saw her in dumb blonde roles - as in 1954's RIVER OF NO RETURN (where she makes an interesting character of her standard saloon girl role) and she certainly lights up the screen in THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS with those three sizzling numbers - apparantly she did this to get the SEVEN YEAR ITCH role. But soon she was leaving Fox for New York and the Actors' Studio, returning under new terms for BUS STOP. Then her most interesting films were made away from Fox: England for THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL, for her own production company, SOME LIKE IT HOT in 1959 and 1961's THE MISFITS. Her last two films for Fox were the dreary comedy LETS MAKE LOVE where she sparkled in a few numbers, and looked marvellous in the fragments of SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE ... a new slimmed down Marilyn for the 1960s .... but it was not to be.

What did they think about her at the time? Here is an interesting piece by author (INSIDE DAISY CLOVER), screenwriter and one time editor of "Sight & Sound" Gavin Lambert, written in 1953, who perceives her special qualities:

"This well-formed but rather mysterious girl ... does not fit in any of the cinema's established categories for blondes. Her acting can at best be described as reluctant, she is too passive to be a vamp, she is no menace because so easily frightened; and she is certainly no bombshell because she never bursts.

She walks - only that can account for the curious swaying of her hips - as if the whole earth were a tightrope on which she has to balance. Her face, with its eyes inclined to pop and mouth perpetually parted for a kiss, looks vaguely drugged. For all the wolf calls that she gets and deserves, there is something oddly mournful about Miss Monroe. She doesn't look happy. She lacks the pinup's cheerful grin. She seems to have lost something or to be waking up from a bad dream."

Quite perceptive. Wonder what he thought of her as the decade wore on as the critics discovered that comedy was her forte, she could sing as well, and wanted to try dramatic roles. It was this underlying melancholy that gave her comedy its special flavour - there was always something forlorn in it, a pathos barely concealed. She was so extraordinary and so exciting then - on endless magazine covers, she and Elizabeth Taylor being the two polar screen opposites, the blond and the brunette. 
Both Carroll Baker and Mitzi Gaynor have written about the electric effect Marilyn had on men, and on their husbands in particular, when she focused on them saying their name with that special emphasis of hers ....

When she died in 1962 everyone tried to explain her. Her canonisation was so sudden then after she had spent so much time getting people to take her seriously. But she was no joke, as she studied to improve herself and into the company of America's great sporting hero and playwright, not to mention the White House ...

One only has to see how marvellous she looked here in 1953, and then in her final summer 1962, a mere nine years later on that Malibu beach, in those timeless George Barris pictures. 

Click label Marilyn-1 for my 2010 appreciation on her. 

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 ....