Take 3 girls - Italian style

Here's an oddity: despite my affection for British and Italian cinema I had never heard of SOUVENIR D'ITALIE (or IT HAPPENED IN ROME) a 1957 confection about 3 girls travelling in Italy - its sort of a romantic comedy with lots of scenery, a fascinating view now. But why it is so unknown, ok its just a bit of fluff, but maybe it never even played here - I checked my 1957 "Films and Filming" magazines and there is no review or ads for it (ditto another '57 one filmed in Italy: Diana Dors and Vittorio Gassman in THE GIRL AT THE PALIO set at the famous Palio race in Sienna). 

This one - SOUVENIR D'ITALIE - features prim English girl June Laverick (she wears spectacles!) driving her snazzy sportscar and giving a lift to hitchers Isabelle Corey (the headstrong one) and German Ingeborg Schoner (the sensible one). The car zooms zooms over the cliff into the sea at Portofino, so the gals have to hitch. We see them in Florence,Venice and Pisa before they head to Rome, so yes lots of Italy as it was 50+ years ago. 

An amusing sequence sees British grand dame Isabel Jeans (in a dry run for her role in GIGI) posing by that statue of David, with Alberto Sordi as her companion. He soon joins the girls through. Other men are Gabrielle Ferzetti and Massimo Girotti and Vittorio De Sica - for it is he - as a Count who offers the girls some hospitality in Venice. The men of course are dubbed but it does not matter in a slight trifle like this. I liked it a lot, directed by Antonio Pietrangeli. The girls of course all end up with their particular guy. 

June Laverick was a British starlet of the era, who did a few trifles (THE DUKE WORE JEANS with Tommy Steele, a Norman Wisdom film, and a good role in Losey's THE GYPSY AND THE GENTLEMAN in 1958, last credit in 1970). 

This was Italy before the LA DOLCE VITA era took off, Corey went on to Bolognini's GIOVANI MARITI while Ferzetti was on that island with Antonioni and Vitti for L'AVVENTURA filmed in late 1959.  Vittorio clocked up 10 acting credits in '57 - he probably just spent a few days on this one. 

Take 4 girls - American style

Another delirious 1957 treat: (which I reviewed back in 2011)

FOUR GIRLS IN TOWN. I had totally forgotten this 1957 Universal-International item though I know I saw it at the time, it is perhaps, like AWAY ALL BOATS, the quintessential U-I flick. We have 4 girls arriving in Hollywood, all up for an important part in a new biblical epic.

They are: Julie Adams [with her fearsome mother Mabel Albertson], Italian go-getter Elsa Martinelli, from France Gia Scala [who has a secret husband and child] and from Austria Marianne Cook (or Koch – she was the mentally ill wife in Sirk’s INTERLUDE) who is recovering from losing her beloved in a car accident]. There is also one Rita Holloway, the studio's main star who is only ever seen from the rear and looks uncannily like Jayne Mansfield in THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT as she sways around the studio lot.

The girls are nicely depicted and the guys they meet include director George Nader (ideal for Julie), actor-on-the-make John Gavin, playboy Grant Williams [that INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN] and composer Sydney Chaplin. The very attractive Gia (who got the GUNS OF NAVARONE gig but later commited suicide) has the least role here. Julie is as attractive as ever and Elsa (right) is the most eye-catching, she really is the most under-rated of the Italian sirens.

It plays out nicely with a surprise ending and is SO Fifties! The girls are not complete of course until they each have a new man, and the scene where they gleefully catch fish coming ashore to lay their eggs would horrify today's sensibilities. Written and directed by one Jack Sher.

Guy & Kerwin, a few movie choices ....

My friend Martin has caught up with THE GARMENT JUNGLE, a 1957 thriller with Kerwin Matthews and the lovely Gia Scala. He likes Guy Madison as well (see post below) so for you Martin, here's Guy and Kerwin AND a young Kim Novak in FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE, that nifty 1955 thriller (a prototype for OCEANS 11, which I reviewed a while back. Guy/Kerwin/Kim labels), plus the trailer for THE GARMENT JUNGLE .... and a moment from THE LAST FRONTIER in 1955 with Victor Mature; and his SLAVE OF ROME with Rosanna Podesta in 1961 ....

Girls & guitars, 2 . . .

Three of our favourite girls - since the 1960s - and their guitars. They go on, decade after decade ...

Marie Laforet  (our favourite from PLEIN SOLEIL/PURPLE NOON) in ST TROPEZ BLUES, 1961

Francoise Hardy  (my teenage crush) 

Joni Mitchell - evergreen.     More on all them at labels. 

I remember watching Joni waiting to go on at The Royal Festival Hall in 1970, the hippie princess with her guitar, standing at the side of the stage, not thinking I would be talking to her 2 years later in Kings Road, Chelsea .... as detailed previously. 

Sophia - happy birthday

Happy 82nd to Sophia Loren, still going strong. 

Here she is back in 1962 in a slight thriller FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT, with Tony Perkins. Any film that begins with La Loren at her peak dancing the twist in a Paris nightclub, before Tony Perkins comes in and slaps her face, has to be watchable ... (its directed by Anatole Litvak, and scripted by Peter Viertel. Litvak had already done Tony in Paris with Ingrid in GOODBYE AGAIN). 

RIP, continued ...

Edward Albee (1928-2016), aged 88, surely America's greatest dramatist after O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? remains his masterpiece (there is a major new production in London next year), but we also rate his A DELICATE BALANCE, a super film in 1973 by Tony Richardson with Paul Scofield, Katharine Heburn and Lee Remick (right). I also saw his ALL OVER at the RSC in 1973 with the powerhouse duo of Peggy Ashcroft and Angela Lansbury. His other acclaimed plays include THREE TALL WOMEN and THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE.  Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play. He was a Senior Gay too, though he did say "I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay".

Richard Neville (1941-2016), aged 74. Australian writer who moved to London in those Swinging Sixties and became the celebrated editor of the counterculture magazine OZ - I had several of their op art psychedelic posters on my walls then. OZ was the hippie bible - its issue 'Skoolkids OZ' in May '70 caused a famous prosecution case for obscenity. Neville later returned to Australia and continued his publishing ventures. 

Charmian Carr (1942-2016), aged 73, but she will always be "sixteen, going on seventeen" as Liesl, in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, 

Back to the Sixties at the V&A ....

We will have to trek up to South Kensington shortly to see this new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum: YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: RECORDS & REBELS 1966-1970. Thats a mouthful .... The V&A site says:

This major exhibition will explore the era-defining significance and impact of the late 1960s, expressed through some of the greatest music and performances of the 20th century alongside fashion, film, design and political activism.

I have not been to the V&A for a long time, its such a massive place - but this sounds our kind of show, it runs until February next year. 1966-1970 was a crucial era for me, being 20 to 24 then, and living the London life, going to the Roundhouse (to see The Doors, Jefferson Airplane etc), the NFT, hippie underground clubs like the UFO, seeing 2001 in Cinerama and on acid, loving BLOW-UP etc  - I even lived off the Kings Road in Chelsea for a year or so then. 

It was not only the fashions, music, movies of the time that were so relevant, but that counterculture era in full swing. Perhaps the political significance of that time is too immense for a mere exhibition to encompass, as it will have to cover quite a lot, from the Paris revolutionaries to the US civil rights protests and the dawning of gay lib.

That perceptive critic Philip Hensher says there is little space given in it to feminism and the nascent gay rights movements: "The curious effect is to make it seem as if the revolutions of the late Sixties were a matter of most concern to heterosexual white people, and only at the margins were black and other non-traditional members of society allowed grudging admission". 

It does though capture some of the excitement and the liberation of that era. Being a young gay then I lived through it all, so will be able to see for myself before too long. 

As per the attached review, it seems a massive exhibition

https://www.creativereview.co.uk/decade-disruption-vas-say-want-revolution-records-rebels-1966-70/

headphones and all - well, at £16 a ticket ....

Steve Dinneen of CITY AM says:

The V&A’s David Bowie Is follow-up isn’t concerned with challenging stereotypes so much as celebrating them. Mannequins in Austin Powers getup blink with giant eyes; quotes form and disintegrate on the walls; psychedelic posters and record sleeves clutter every available surface.

It uses the same audio guide as David Bowie Is, detecting where you’re standing and fading in the appropriate music or speech, allowing the curators to micro-manage your personal soundtrack; Martin Luther King blends into advertising muzak blends into The Doors. There are objects of historical significance – the jacket John Lennon wore in the video for Imagine, the battered high-backed chair on which Christine Keeler posed naked for Lewis Morley – but Records and Rebels isn’t aimed at cultural trainspotters. Where it impresses most is in capturing the breakneck speed at which ideology, music and fashion shifted over these years, how a perfect storm of influences created a period of change unlike any before or since.

The first room looks at possible causes for the “revolution”; the erosion of trust in the establishment (evidenced here by the Profumo affair), the rise of the civil rights movement, the increasing popularity of LSD. The exhibition then races through various cultural movements – fashion, music, protest, consumerism – relying on punchy visuals rather than display cases and captions; one room features a Vidal Sassoon salon with a real-life model getting a hair cut, another recreates Woodstock, complete with faux-grass and beanbags. London is heralded as the capital of the world, with Carnaby Street its beating heart (hard to imagine now, with its rows of bland American chains).

The protest section is a highlight, a cacophony of recorded speech and angry music, divided into sections on Women’s Lib, the Black Panthers, Mao’s Cultural Revolution (illustrated with a Little Red Book and a creepy under-lit bust), France’s May 68 protests and, of course, Vietnam.

Everything is painted in broad strokes and primary colours – those hoping for nuanced discourse will leave disappointed. But nobody does mixed-media exhibitions like the V&A. Records and Rebels seamlessly fuses fashion, music, art and history into a dazzling, chaotic experience that will leave anyone under 60 with the distinct impression they were born into the wrong generation.

The Tom boys

This glut of new Toms on the acting scene makes one think any young actor starting out should change his name to Tom. Early Toms were Tom Courtenay and singer Tom Jones and Tom Wilkinson. Then we had that run of posh actors (Benedict, Eddie, Damian), while Tom Hardy was on the rise, getting his kit off a lot and getting covered in tattoos as he essayed various hard men, culminating in the two Krays last year (LEGEND) and taking on the MAD MAX mantle as well as leaving Leonardo in the wilderness in THE REVENANT .... no doubt he has more of the same lined up this year. 

Meanwhile, Tom Daley dived, Toms Hanks and Cruise became veterans, Tom Hollander kept being busy, being DOCTOR THORNE and joining Tom Of The Year, Hiddleston in THE NIGHT MANAGER. Hiddles also had HIGH RISE, a film on Hank Williams and currently back in superhero mode (THOR) after his summer romance with Taylor Swift. 

Now there is Tom Hughes - Albert in the new hit British series VICTORIA, we have not quite got used to him yet; Tom Sturridge is getting the breaks too (THE HOLLOW CROWN, Sgt Troy in the recent FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD), and Tom Riley seems the latest Tom on the block (DA VINCI'S DEMONS, THE COLLECTION). 
Tom Colley was also eye-catching as the Italian fisherman in the recent revival of THE JUDAS KISS. 
Then there's playwright Tom Stoppard, and singer Tom Chaplin from Keane back in the limelight. Meanwhile, Tom Bradby reads the London ITV news, and more Tom actors are Tom Ellis and the busy Tom Goodman-Hill.
Meanwhile Tom Ford has a highly-praised new film NOCTURNAL ANIMALS coming up at the LFF and opening here shortly. Thats about 20 Toms ....

Hitchcock/Truffaut

That recent documentary (by Kent Jones) on Francois Truffaut's 1962 interview with Alfred Hitchcock turns out to be a real treat. I had assumed it was a filmed record of their week-long conversation - I had the book when it first came out in 1966, and later as a paperback, but of course it was not filmed, just audio recorded, and lots of still photographs taken. 

So, we get a compendium of Hitch clips, from the earliest onwards, and some Truffaut moments too - I really have to see THE 400 BLOWS again now (somehow I never liked JULES ET JIM that much, but love LE PEAU DEUCE, HISTORY OF ADELE H, L'ENFANT SAUVAGE, the Antoine Doinel films, DAY FOR NIGHT, MISSISSIPPI MERMAID etc - as per reviews, Truffaut label), and regulars will know we have done a lot on Hitchcock here, including that "Sight & Sound" list with VERTIGO now at Number One - Hitch label. 

Also fascinating at the talking heads commenting here: only Scorsese, Paul Schrader, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, Olivier Assayas, and Arnaud Desplechin.

All those clips of the Hitch classics and extended comments and scenes from VERTIGO and PSYCHO only makes one want to see them all again. 

Both directors were at their peak here, Hitch died in 1980, aged 80 after completing his last, FAMILY PLOT, in 1976, hard to believe Truffaut died four years later, aged 52 in 1984. Back to those movies, then.

Girls night out again + their GBF.

I am indebted to that wonderful site http://doloresdelargotowers.blogspot.co.uk/, for this different shot of one of our favourite photographs here (see sidebar, right).

Thats Vivien Leigh, Kay Kendall, and their gay best friend Noel Coward welcoming Lauren Bacall to London, in January 1959. (As mentioned here before, Kay was gone by September that year, but Bacall soldiered on for 50+ years, until 2014. A night out drinking cocktails could hardly get more glamorous. 

The Beatles 8 days a week

OMG, I just checked out of interest and my perfect condition 1964 Beatles Calendar is on sale on ebay for £92.99 ! I have had mine since '64, when I was 18 and a total Beatle nut. I was living in Ireland till then and I was told I was the first Beatle look-alike in North Kerry! - as per below. I even got my friend Mike to send me over a pair of those Beatle Chelsea Boots.

I also have, also from 1964 - when I was 18 and new in London - a Beatles headscarf, with images and facsimile autographs of The Fabs on it. Maybe thats worth a bit now too - there is a sold out one on ebay. The calendar has those great shots by Robert Freeman, who shot their early album covers, and the images seem unique to this calendar. I am open to offers .... 

The Beatles are now back again in Ron Howard's documentary on their touring years, EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, we will have to go and see it, a lot of that footage, particularly their American tours, will be new to me, as I did not watch television back then, in my London bedsit. Sniff .... thats why much as we loved A HARD DAY'S NIGHT it was utterly fabulous to go and see them on the big screen in colour in HELP! in 1965 - I sat through it twice at the Odeon Harlesden in North London, in those days of continuous performances. 

Now for EIGHT DAYS A WEEK ...  as they said on morning television here earlier, 52 years later and we are still talking about and listening to The Beatles. Good to see Paul and Ringo on the blue carpet at last night's premiere but we know they are 74 and 76, they don't need to dye their hair and beard. We have moved beyond "When I'm 64"!

Hunk de jour: Guy

Another person we like: Guy Madison - quite a lot about him on various sites. Here is his first role of a few minutes in the 1944 wartime drama SINCE YOU WENT AWAY. He was a real marine then, and had a career once he returned to Hollywood after the war.

I don't know SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, John Cromwell's film seems essentially of that era now, like CASABLANCA or MEET ME IN ST LOUIS. I have had to order it, for that great cast: Colbert, Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Robert Walker, Hattie McDaniel, Agnes Moorehead, Nazimova, and er, Shirley Temple. Guy made quite an impression here as the young marine. 

Below: with Judy Garland, at a premiere, and with Judy again a decade or so later.

Guy (1922-1996) had a respectable career, gravitating towards westerns - one of the first films I saw, when aged 8, was his 1954's THE COMMAND - like Dale Robertson, also big in westerns then, Guy was ideal out west or in cavalry uniform. as in THE LAST FRONTIER.
He also had a long-runnng western series THE ADVENTURES OF WILD BILL HICKOK. He is also good with Jean Simmons in the 1956 drama HILDA CRANE (review at Simmons label) and I like FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE (also with gay Kerwin Matthews), and like Jeffrey Hunter, Tab Hunter, Robert Wagner, Tony Perkins etc he was a leading man of the 1950s, before the new crop arrived: Troy Donahue, Fabian, young Warren Beatty, Redford, etc. 
Like a lot of others he then did several costumers in Europe, as did his pal Rory Calhoun (who did a good one: Leone's THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES in 1961).  One of Guy's SLAVE OF ROME in 1961, is on YouTube, where he co-stars with Rosanna (HELEN OF TROY) Podesta:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiPJoCrbtQA

There are lots of pictures actually of Guy and Rory (1922-1999; mainly a B-movie actor (left), best known now for those two Monroe films at Fox: RIVER OF NO RETURN where Mitchum is the lead, and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE where he is teamed with Betty Grable), and with Susan Hayward in the musical sudser WITH  SONG IN MY HEART, 1952, which we like a lot. 

The boys went fishing a lot (and really caught fish, unlike BBM), both were clients of the notorious agent Henry Willson (Below with the boys). Guy was married for some years to the fragile actress Gail Russell, whom we like a lot, and he had 4 children by his second marriage. Rory was married to actress Lita Baron (usually a tough cookie in westerns), but like Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, and Tab and Tony Perkins, their friendship endured during their marriages.

Guy and Rory both did an intriguing-sounding 1949 western: MASSACRE RIVER. One to check out?  He seems a bit clunky jitterbugging though ... More Guy at label. 

Looking at MASSACRE RIVER now the chemistry between the boys is startling, with all that horseplay and fooling around, as Rory's trousers fall down and they grapple in the hot tub. The rest of it is standard 1940s horse opera. Guy had a good run in cavalry uniform, as here and THE COMMAND in 1954 (which I saw when I was 8, one of the first films I saw), THE LAST FRONTIER in '56, and others. 

People We Like: Lauren

No, not that one, the other one: Lauren Hutton in AMERICAN GIGOLO.

We have covered Paul Schrader's 1980 hit AMERICAN GIGOLO quite a bit here, see label, usually focusing on Richard Gere, this is the role, as gigolo Julian Kaye, which established him after DAYS OF HEAVEN and YANKS. The film for me ushers in the glamour and glitz of the Eighties, with that Moroder soundtrack. But the more I see it the more I am fascinated by Lauren Hutton as the senator's wife, she is the still centre of the film and is marvellously watchable, and how she wears clothes, being a top fashion model of course (she was on the cover of VOGUE 25 times). Her character though is so sympathetic compared to the others on view here and the climax is so affecting when she gives Julian the alibi he needs to get off that fixed murder rap. 

Lauren, in her seventies now, is as fascinating to look at as Joni Mitchell - they both have that blonde, Nordic look. She is also effective in Alan Rudolph's WELCOME TO L.A. and THE GAMBLER with James Caan, and Altman's A WEDDING, as well as assorted tv series like NIP/TUCK and FALCON CREST.  She has notched up 57 movie credits and has turned producer. Like that other fashion model turned actress, Marisa Berenson, it is always a pleasure to see Lauren. 

Joni is back!

How nice to check Joni Mitchell's site and see that she is back and out and about again after that fall and illness last year. Here she is a month ago, in August, at a concert in L.A. with Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. So pleased to see her well again. 

Lots on Joni at label. 

Hockney's bigger book

We got a lot of David Hockney's books over the years, starting with that 1978 nice Thames & Hudson retrospective on his career to then (right), followed by his books on paper pools, collages, sketches, his dogs and all those various exhibitions, as his art moved from London to Paris and Europe and on to America and back to the North of England in recent years, as per other posts on him, see label, plus of course that A BIGGER SPLASH film in 1974.. Now 79 Hockney is painting and smoking as much as ever - there will be a huge new exhibition at the Tate in London next year, after the one that just finished here Now we have an even bigger book:

Taschen are bringing out A BIGGER BOOK, and this IS  a coffee table tome, in fact it could be a coffee table, if you have £1,750 for the price, but it does comes with its own stand. It is 500 pages, large size, weighing 70lbs ... covering 60 years of David's ever-changing art from his Bradford art-student days to now, and it is signed by Hockney, could he have signed all 10,000 copies? 

Good interview with him too in this week's "Sunday Times", by Lynn Barber. He is going to paint on for as long as he can, but he does have a good team of 9 to help him: 3 assistants, and other staff (housekeeper, gardener, those off-site running his office and archive). 
A BIGGER BOOK follows his 2012 Royal Academy exhibition, A Bigger Picture, in which the artist produced large images with the aid of an iPad. It unveils at Frankfurt's Book Fair in October, with Hockney present to introduce the new tome. 

RIP: Clubbing

That seems a spectacular own goal by the London licencing authorities - just as London becomes an all-night city (well, at weekends anyway for now) by the introduction of all-night underground trains they go and close the main London club for clubbers and night owls, so its RIP to renowned superclub Fabric, following all those other clubs and music venues that have closed here in the last decade or so.

I had not been to Fabric - having more or less retired from clubbing a decade or so ago, but knew and frequented others, both gay and straight, then, in London and Brighton: The End, Crash, Action, Substation in Brixton and Soho (those clubs run by Wayne Shires and Patrick Lilley), Club Colosseum, Turnmills etc. all gone now too, as well as havens like The Shadow Lounge and  Madame JoJo's in Soho. The Astoria (G-A-Y and Falconburg Court) have been demolished for the new Crossrail line, At least we still have Heaven (G-A-Y).

Soho in fact is in danger of being swept away by gentrification too. The Yard, a super gay venue, with an open courtyard and outdoor area, right in Wardour Street, has just successfully fought off another round of developers wanting to close the open space and build more luxury flats. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern (see below) at least got listed status to keep it as an entertainment and musical venue. Over the past decade over 40% of London's club;s and live music venues have closed, leaving the city a quieter and less exciting place. We do not all want to trek out to the O2 for some over-priced concert. So who is next?

Of course it is beyond tragic that two clubbers at Fabric either bought or got drugs there and fatally overdosed. It makes me realise how lucky I was in my clubbing days - but some people will always take drugs in clubs, or take them before they go in, despite all the management can do to keep the venue clean, but closing the clubs is not the answer, it only makes it all go underground and less regulated.

Nightclubbing is a large slice of London's economy and like all major cities needs its clubs and music venues.  How soon perhaps before another block of expensive flats rises on this prime real estate building?  London needs its iconic clubs like Fabric and the rest, especially if it is going to be an all-night city.
The London gay scene is constantly evolving but its astonishing to realise that a lot of the venues I knew over the last 20 years or so are no longer here: Crews, Brief Encounter, Bromptons, The Colherne, The Copacabana, The Black Cap, The Market Tavern, The London Apprentice, Escape, Barcode, Crash, 79CXR, The Queen's Head pub off the Kings Road in Chelsea (I lived near it in the '70s), etc as the 'scene' moved from Earls Court and the West End to Vauxhall and on to East London .... 

La La Land, Tom & Isabelle at LFF ,,,

Another year, another bulky LFF (London Film Festival) brochure arrives for the October feast of new films, as another award season gets underway.

The Venice Film Festival is also in full swing, and initial reports on some of the films whet one's appetite. I particularly want to see LA LA LAND, David Chazelle's follow-up to WHIPLASH which is an out-and-out musical, a hymn to Hollywood and stardom and those who strive there. Ryan Gosling at his most appealing plays a jazz musician hoping to open his own club. Emma Stone is an aspiring actress but working as a barista. They get together and inspire each other to achieve their dreams, they sing and dance. The stunning opening sequence apparantly of mass happiness breaking out on a jammed freeway is eye-popping. Bring it on. Maybe a new hymn to Hollywood and music a la Scorsese's NEW YORK NEW YORK?  

Tom Ford, after the problematic version of Isherwood's A SINGLE MAN in 2009 (see Tom Ford label), also has a well received new film, that should generate a lot of interest: NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, showing the disintegration of crime victim Jake Gyllenhaal in rural Texas. Amy Adams and Michael Sheen also star. The Ford got the grand jury prize at Venice and LA LA LAND's Emma Stone best actress.

There are also two new Isabelle Huppert films, ELLE by maestro Paul Verhoeven, a rape revenge drama, and SOUVENIR. Ms Huppert keeps busy, there is also a new one just opened in London, THINGS TO COME, which my pal Martin liked a lot. 

We will have to go through the LFF listings in more detail for more items to look forward to. 

Fun out west with Anne, Jeff, Rory, Randolph & Angela

I have not seen the 1942 western THE SPOILERS - but it should be fun, with John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich and Randolph Scott heading this western set in Alaska in those gold-rush days. It was remade though in 1955, with a more 50s cast: Jeff Chandler, Anne Baxter and Rory Calhoun, with some grizzled veterans like Wallace Ford and John McIntyre. 

Like Wayne's 1960 comedy western by Henry Hathaway NORTH TO ALASKA we are back in those muddy streets of Nome, Alaska, where everyone is looking for gold or trying to get their hands on others' claims. 

Anne is vamping in high style, and some eye-popping costumes, as saloon owner Cherry Malotte, the guys are merely adequate around her scheming minx, Cue lots of fighting in the mud, and much amusement as Jeff and Rory demolish the saloon bar during their extended fight at the climax. She seems to be having as much fun as she does in her next, Cecil's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Below: the 1942 trio.

A lot of Randolph Scott's westerns are being aired here just now too, usually those lean Budd Boetticher revenge dramas with Randolph as a man alone seeking those who did him wrong, as in BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, COMMANCE STATION, THE TALL T, SIX MEN FROM NOW etc 
One I had not seen before is A LAWLESS STREET from 1955 - usual story, he is the weary Sheriff of a lawless town, who wants to hand in his badge. The interest in this run of the mill one is that Angela L|ansbury plays his ex-wife who returns to town as a singer and dancer and does a rather risque musical number. Rest assured Randolph and Angela ride off in a wagon once he has dished out justice to the lawbreakers .... a pleasant timewaster then, as indeed is THE SPOILERS, I imagine Marlene and Wayne would be fun too, with Randy too of course.