No Bits Today! But Some Good Links.

I just noticed that my Laurel and Hardy post from a few weeks ago has been selected for reposting on the Movies Unlimited blog, MovieFanFare.  This is my third re-post to their site.  I'm glad they like my writing style.

I have found MovieFanFare to be a great read, filled with other enjoyable stuff like polls and little games.  They currently have a still picture from City Slickers (1991), and you are supposed to add a caption, plus you get to vote for your favorite actor who was nominated but never won a Best Actor Oscar.

Another Blog that is very informative and well written comes from my friend and frequent commenter, The Lady Eve.  She is a movie lover and it is obvious in her Blog.  The topics she chooses are varied and always interesting, and her interviews let you get into the mind of her subjects.

It is wonderful to have these resources to add to your knowledge of how and why movies are made.  The insight provided can only increase your enjoyment of what you see on the screen, large or small.

Make sure you check out the Classic Movie Blog Association as well.  Eve and I are both members, and the variety of subjects found there is amazing.  Scroll down the right side of the CMBA page to link to all of the most recent posts from the members.

Watch for the CMBA Blogathon coming in the spring when most members will post about a movie made in 1939.  Sounds like fun!  That was one of the very best years for classic movies.  Now, how about a classic Bit Actor in a 1939 movie?!?!

George Chandler

I think I should mention George Chandler (1898 - 1985) here, in my blog of Bit Actors.  I have a problem calling him a Bit Actor, though.  He has 444 titles listed on IMDb, so he must have been a star.  No matter.

Everyone who is a baby boomer remembers him as Uncle Petrie in the television series, "Lassie" from the 1950s.  He was much more than that.

Chandler started performing in vaudeville, and then in 1928 moved to silent films.  It is rather odd that there isn't much written about him on IMDb or Wikipedia.  TCM has a short biography.  He appears in The Virginian (1929) starring Gary Cooper, but most of his films before that were shorts. 

In 1933 he plays W. C. Fields' son in The Fatal Glass of Beer.  Fields was only five years older than Chandler.  There are six films with Chandler and Dick Powell, starting with Blessed Event (1932) and Footlight Parade the next year. 

Chandler made an interesting movie in 1936 called The Country Doctor.  He wasn't the doctor, he played a character called Greasy.  It was a story about a small town doctor who delivers quintuplets, and they filmed the Dionne Quintuplets (b. 1934) for the part.  As a child, my family had 16mm home movies that my grandfather filmed, and somehow we came across some old Pathe newsreels in our collection.  A news item about the Quints was in one of them.  I wish I still had those films!

The list of stars Chandler worked with must be incredible.  Ten films with Spencer Tracy, five with Jimmy Stewart, six with Henry Fonda, six with Una Merkel and also with Claire Trevor, and he made 23 films with his friend, director William Wellman (1896 - 1975).  The list is much longer, but I can't search through all of his work!

1939 was a good year to look at.

   Blondie Meets the Boss

   Calling Dr. Kildare

   Young Mr. Lincoln

   Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation
   Beau Geste
   Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

He worked with Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto, but most of his parts were very small.  He was the photographer or the sleazy reporter.  He was the next door neighbor, the elevator operator or the bartender.  His soft voice played well as a friendly character, but he had a look that could be turned on to make you think he was up to something. 

By the 1950s he was also working in TV teleplays and series'.  In 1954 he was in The High and the Mighty with John Wayne, one of five films with The Duke.

In addition to "Lassie," Chandler was a regular on "Waterfront" and "The Adventures of Kit Carson."  In the 1960s he had his own series called "Ichabod and Me" that only lasted one season.  In the 1970s we see him in "Alias Smith and Jones" once again in bit parts.  In 1978 he appears as a DMV clerk in Every Which Way but Loose starring Clint Eastwood.

George Chandler's final film he plays an elderly man in The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979).  Fitting as he was 81 years old.  Us baby boomers will miss you, Unlce Petrie!  You are a star in every Bit Part you had.

Final Analysis

Final Analysis (1992) is a murder mystery starring Richard Gere, Kim Bassinger and Uma Thurman.  It is made in the style of Alfred Hitchcock, and it is a good movie, but it doesn't quite make the mark. 

Gere is a psychiatrist treating Thurman, and she asks him to talk with her sister, played by Bassinger.  To make a long story short, and hopefully not give away the plot, Bassinger's husband, a gangster, is murdered.  Bassinger is charged with the crime and Gere gets pulled into the action.

My blog is not about plots, stories or stars, so let's get to the important stuff.  Bassinger's husband is played by Eric Roberts (b. 1956) and he is superb.  I wouldn't mess with this gangster!  Roberts has close to 200 titles on IMDb, starting on TV in the 1970s.  He has worked with stars as different as Shelley Winters, Sylvester Stallone and Cheech Marin.  He has eight projects in the works for release this year, and he plays Vance Abrams on television's "The Young and the Restless."

The detective who has to sort out the story is played by Keith David (b. 1956) and he is also perfectly cast.  Stern and serious, he gets the job done...eventually, and with help from Gere.  David has 190 titles listed, so he is no stranger to acting.  His first movie credit came in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), starring Kurt Russell.  He also appeared in Platoon in 1986, The Quick and the Dead (1995), Volcano (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), and was a pastor on "ER" for two years.  David has nine productions in the works for this year.

The rest of the cast is almost invisible.  The only other characters that are important are played by Paul Guilfoyle (b. 1949) and Robert Harper (b. 1951).  Guilfoyle, the defense attorney, has 97 titles and Harper as a witness for the defense, has 60.  Both, once again, pull off their part very well, but without becoming etched in your memory.  Nonetheless, they are important bit parts to the story.

Lastly, Harris Yulin (b. 1937) plays the prosecuting attorney.  There is a name you probably don't know, but you will remember him when you see his face or hear his voice.  A veteran of 113 titles, including everything from playing Wyatt Earp in Doc (1971) to a guest spot on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."  He has also played Barabbas, George 'Machine Gun' Kelly, J. Edgar Hoover and Leonardo da Vinci. 

I would say, if you have never seen a Hitchcock film, Final Analysis would be a very good film.  If you are familiar with Hitch, it is still a good movie to watch some evening.

Casino Royale (The second one)

I saw Casino Royale (1967) when it first came out, once again at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA.  I don't think I have seen it in full since that time, when I was just 17 years old.  I recently purchased it because the DVD also includes "Casino Royale" from the TV series "Climax!" and I have never seen that one.  (I still haven't, but I will get around to it!)

Ian Fleming wrote the novel in 1953, introducing James Bond to the world.  The rights to the novel were bought by CBS for $1,000 and the "Climax!" offering was presented the next year starring Barry Nelson (1917 - 2007) as the very first James Bond.

In 1955 Fleming sold the film rights for $6,000 to producers Michael Garrison and Gregory Ratoff, and they had a few failed attempts to sell the idea.  The rights eventually came to Columbia Pictures and it was decided that a satire would be the best way to produce a money maker.

The 1967 release of Casino Royale is somewhat less than true to the novel.  Actually, it is a lot less than true.  This movie is, in my opinion, one of the best satires made in the 1960s, and belongs on the shelf with movies like Barbarella (1968).  They are a statement of the times and the changing mores of the sixties, and I would suggest that they may have inspired Mel Brooks to make Blazing Saddles in 1974.  Casino Royale is not a bad film, as some have said in other reviews, it is simply not a typical James Bond film.  That's why they call it satire.

The cast is nothing short of amazing.  As I try not to focus on the main stars in my blog, they will speak for themselves.  Orson Welles is ominous as Le Chiffre, Peter Sellers has a few wonderful (probably ad libbed) moments, Woody Allen is Woody Allen, and David Niven is as suave as I have ever seen him.  Need I mention Ursula Andress and Deborah Kerr?

The film is also filled with incredibly beautiful women, dressed (or rather almost dressed) in sixties style.  As my wife pointed out, the use of these girls is just a bit on the sexist side, but consider the era.  It was obviosly made as a movie for men.  We see Joanna Pettet (b. 1942) as Bond's daughter, Barbara Bouchet (b. 1943) as Miss Moneypenny, and a young Jacqueline Bisset (b. 1944) in her fourth film role.  All in their twenties, and they all went on to successful acting careers.

The cameo appearances speak for themselves, but I think I may have to watch it again, as I missed Charles Boyer and Richard Burton!  It is impossible to miss George Raft who shoots himself with a trick gun, and Peter O'Toole who is "the finest man who ever breathed."

Here are some cast members that you may not know.  David Prowse (b. 1935) has a walk-on as the Frankenstein monster.  This was his first film.  Prowse went on to fame playing the screen part of Darth Vader, the man with James Earl Jones' voice in Star Wars.

This was also Anjelica Huston's (b. 1951) first film, but we only see her hands.  Of course, she is John Huston's daughter and the elder Huston appears in the movie as M, and directed some scenes.  Finally, Charlie Chaplin's daughter, Geraldine Chaplin (b. 1944) is unrecognizable as one of the Keystone Kops in a very quick clip.

If you thought Casino Royale was a bad movie, please see it again.  Keep in mind that it is a treasure of the sixties, not a James Bond film.  And don't try to follow the story...that is almost impossible.  A closer story to the original novel was made with Daniel Craig, in his first Bond appearance, in 2006.  I believe the story has also increased in value since 1955.  In 1999 MGM paid $10,000,000 for the rights.

My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady (1964) is a classic musical, and one of the best.  I was lucky enough to see it at Radio City Music Hall in New York when it was released, on 70mm film with six track RCA sound.  That is the way to see a movie!

As everyone knows, the play My Fair Lady (1956) was made into the movie, and they are the musical remake of Pygmalion (1938, the film starring Leslie Howard), which is adapted from the 1912 George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) play by the same name.  In fact, Shaw worked on the screenplay for the 1938 film.

Music is by Lerner and Loewe, and it doesn't get much better than that.  A great many of the songs went on to become hits by artists like Nat King Cole and others.  And as everyone knows, Marni Nixon (b. 1930) dubbed the signing voice of Eliza Doolittle due to the good, but untrained voice of Hepburn.  It is curious that Nixon did not receive screen credit, but I am sure she was well paid.

I don't need to go into the stars of My Fair Lady.  Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Wilfred Hyde-White and Stanley Holloway are easy to remember.  Enough has been said of the movie and their parts in it. 

Let's just take a quick look at a few of the smaller parts.  This was a big movie with a big cast, many of whom are just extras.  I just noticed that Grady Sutton (1906 - 1995) was one of those extras.  Grady has a huge filmography with 230 titles, including W. C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940) where he played Og Oggilby.  Fields said it sounded like a bubble in a bathtub.

Alan Napier (1903 - 1988) was a gentleman who escorted Eliza to the queen at the ball.  Napier is most famous as the television butler, Alfred, to Adam West's "Batman."  Napier's career of 145 titles spans more than 50 years.

Some other wonderful names include stunt man Clyde Howdy (1919 - 1969) and Queenie Leonard (1905 - 2002).  I know nothing about those two, but they had great names. 

Betty Blythe (1893 - 1972) is also an extra.  Her career of 158 titles started in 1916, and My Fair Lady was her last film.  You can see Blythe in such great movies at Anna Karenina (1935) and Topper (1937). 

Lastly I want to mention Theodore Bikel (b. 1924) who played Zoltan Karpathy, the Count who tried to figure out where Eliza came from and got it all wrong.  Bikel is a wonderful character actor with 152 titles on IMDb, starting in 1949.  His third film was The African Queen in 1951.  You can also see him in The Enemy Below (1957) and he did a lot of TV work starting in the 1960s.  His versatile voice and command of dialects is impressive.

My Fair Lady, directed by George Cukor (1899 - 1983), is a classic and should be in every collection.

J. Farrell MacDonald

Here's a name that you may not know, but most likely you have seen him in several classic films.  J. Farrell MacDonald (1875 - 1952) worked in 327 movies from 1911 to 1951, and he also directed 43 silent films.

MacDonald was a favorite of John Ford and also Frank Capra.  Good company to be in.  He made about 25 films with Ford as director or writer, including some 18 silents when he was still being billed as Jack Ford.  He worked in three Capra films.

In his silent films, he worked with some of the greats such as Mary Pickford, Tom Mix and Harold Lloyd.  MacDonald successfully made the transition to talkies through the evolutionary period of 1927 to 1928.  The early sound films had music and sound effects played on a record during the movie, with hit or miss synchronization. 

Just a few years after sound was invented, or at least added to film with some success, he was cast as a detective in The Maltese Falcon (1931).  This is, of course, the earlier, pre-Hayes Code version, long before Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in 1941.  Ricardo Cortex (1900 - 1977) had that honor, and we also see film greats Una Merkel (1903 - 1986) and Thelma Todd (1906 - 1935) in it.

MacDonald also worked in three Spencer Tracy films in the 1930s.  Me and My Gal (1932), The Power and the Glory (1933) and Riffraff (1936).  He is in two of the Shirley Temple films in her earlier years and one of her last films, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer in 1947.

I hesitate to say any of his films were better than others.  Back in the 1930s and 1940s, movies were turned out at a phenomenal rate because it was inexpensive entertainment and the demand was so high.  Character actors like J. Farrell MacDonald were in needed, hence the reason he made so many films.  They can't be all great, and the certainly aren't all bad.

In 1940 he is in Dark Command with another great cast.  John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes, Walter Pidgeon and Marjorie Main.  Over the years he made seven films with William 'Hopalong Cassidy' Boyd, and four with The Duke.

Meet John Doe (1941) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946) were two of his Capra films.  He played the man whose grandfather planted the tree in Wonderful Life.  It was a role that you didn't think about twice, but he played it well, and I bet you remember it.

The last movie he made where he received screen credit was Superman and the Mole People in 1951, starring George Reeves (1914 - 1959).  I suppose there were a few films where MacDonald had top billing, but he mostly used his talent to make the stars look good.  That's what a Bit Actor does best.

Three on a Match

Three on a Match (1932) was another of the Forbidden Hollywood movies of the pre-code era.  It was the twelfth movie for a very blond Bette Davis (1908 - 1989) in what was a pretty small part, but her future is evident even back then.  The stars of this film were Ann Dvorak (1912 - 1979), Warren William (1894 - 1948), and Joan Blondell (1906 - 1979). 

Back in the early days of talkies, you turned out a lot of films if you wanted a decent income.  This was before residuals and advertising, and also before an actor could negotiate for a portion of the profits of a film in lieu of a salary.  The big studios controlled everything.

Ann Dvorak made a total of 86 titles including a few TV shows in the early 1950s.  I must admit that I am unfamiliar with her work and most of the movies she made.  In fact, I have never heard of the TV shows she made, including "Gruen Guild Theater" and "The Bigelow Theatre."

Warren William is a bit better known, at least to me.  He was a big star and has 65 movies in his filmography.  In Gold Diggers of 1933 he played Dick Powell's brother who eventually falls in love with Joan Blondell.  I think everybody in Hollywood knew everybody else in those days.  Look for him as Julius Caesar in the Claudette Colbert version of Cleopatra (1934).  In 1941 he appears in The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, and Bela Lugosi. 

What can I say about Joan Blondell?  A former Ziegfeld Girl, Joan also worked in five of Busby Berkeley's best musicals of the era.  She appeared in the movies and on TV 156 times.  At 72 years old she appeared in Grease (1978).  Blondell is one of my favorites, perhaps because she was usually portrayed as an honest working girl, but she also had an angle!  And she's not bad looking!

The Bit Actors included Humphrey Bogart (1899 - 1957) in a small role.  This was his ninth feature and was two years before The Petrified Forest, one of his defining roles.  I like looking at the early careers of famous stars, just to see where they came from.

We also see Lyle Talbot (1902 - 1996) in one of his many roles.  This was also his ninth film, and his list goes to 309 titles from 1930 to 1987.  Trying to list his highlights would take more time than I have today.  He was famous in B-movies and worked for Ed Wood.  Toward the end of his career he did a lot of television work, including everything from "The Lone Ranger" to "Who's the Boss?" and "Newhart."

See the movie!  Three on a Match touches on some tough topics of the day, and deals with them in a frank manner.  It doesn't glamorize the prohibition era drinking and drug use, and it comes to a tragic end, but somehow you are gratified by it because you know everything will be OK.

Dean Martin

Let's think about Dean Martin (1917 - 1995) the Bit Actor and King of Cool.  Of course Everybody Loves Somebody, and Dino is one of my favorite singers, which probably gives away my age.  His music is heard in the soundtracks of over 160 films and TV shows.

He also appears as an actor/comedian in eight TV shows, including the very first broadcast of "Toast of the Town," which would later become "The Ed Sullivan Show."  But let's Sway over to his 55 films as an actor.

His most famous roles were certainly as half of the Martin and Lewis team with Jerry Lewis, which was the real start in movies for both of them.  They made 16 movies as a team, and also appeared together in Road to Bali (1952) with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

By 1956 the team was finished.  Dean wanted to have his own movie career, but he had to reinvent himself to a certain degree for it to work.  His first solo film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957), was not a box office success.  It also starred Anna Maria Alberghetti (b. 1936).

Dean's next film was a war movie called The Young Lions (1958) and it proved that he had some quality acting ability, so his new career was off and running.  In 1959 he played the drunken deputy in Rio Bravo with John Wayne, Ricky Nelson (1940 - 1985), and Walter Brennan (1894 - 1974).  In that one, I could have done without the singing!

The next year he starred with Judy Holliday (1921 - 1965) in Bells Are Ringing, and also made Ocean's Eleven with the Rat Pack.  I was sad that Ocean's Eleven didn't have more music.  Only Sammy Davis Jr. has a number.  Dean made several more movies with his Vegas buddies in the next few years, including a total of six with Frank Sinatra.

I think Dean liked serious westerns.  He worked with John Wayne in two, Rio Bravo and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965).  He also made Rough Night in Jericho in 1967, Bandolero! and 5 Card Stud in 1968, among others and some TV westerns.

In his Matt Helm series, we see the over-the-top comedy that worked for a while, but I tend to get tired of it.  Here is part of the story line of The Ambushers (1967) from IMDb:

"A government space saucer is hijacked mid-flight by a powerful laser beam under the control of Jose Ortega, who then proceeds to rape the female pilot, Sheila Sommars. ICE sends agent Matt Helm to Acapulco with Sheila to recover the saucer, under the guise of Matt taking fashion photographs of beautiful models."

I think you see what I mean, but That's Amore.  He made four Matt Helm movies, until everybody else got tired of it.

Just after the last Helm movie, The Wrecking Crew (1969), Martin takes a dramatic role in Airport (1970) as the co-pilot with marital problems and a broken plane to land.  I thought he played the part well, using his humour in some scenes, but also allowing his softer side to show through.

Somehow he managed to end his film career on a low note by making The Cannonball Run (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1984).  Ain't That a Kick in the Head?  Well Dean, because of the rest of your career, and your wonderful voice, I forgive you.

Dean Martin was a star, but I also think he had Bit Actor parts in some of these movies.  As Dean would croon, Memories are Made of This.

Night Nurse

I just received a wonderful collector's set from Turner Classic Movies, called Forbidden Hollywood.  My first purchase in the series is Volume 2, because I wanted to see Night Nurse (1931).  The other movies in this set are The Divorcee (1930), A Free Soul (1931), Three on a Match (1932), and Female (1933). 

The Forbidden Hollywood series includes movies that were released before the Hayes Code was enacted, and these are particularly risque.  It is a chance to see the raw side of such stars as Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Humphrey Bogart and Joan Blondell, among others.

I chose Night Nurse to see some early Barbara Stanwyck, and I was not disappointed.  Stanwyck plays a young woman who wants to become a nurse.  After convincing the hospital to allow her to study, despite being a high school dropout, she gets her cap and is assigned to a private home to watch over two children.  Lovely Joan Blondell is another nurse in the story, who befriends Stanwyck.

She eventually finds out that the children have a large trust fund and they are being starved to death by an unscrupulous doctor, so the family can get the inheritance.  She sets out to blow the whistle on them.

The bad guy in this one is played by Clark Gable.  Here is one kicker...the good guy is a bootlegger that Stanwyck met at the drug store, and at the end of the movie he has Nick the chauffeur (played by Gable) rubbed out, and they have a good laugh over it!

Throughout the movie, Stanwyck keeps undressing so she can change into or out of her nursing uniform.  She is never completely naked, but the thought of showing her undergarments in 1931 must have been simply shocking! 

We also see quite a bit of drunken debauchery at the home of the children, plus some implied sex.  Not to mention the very thought of killing off the innocent heirs as the topic of a movie.

Just to mention some Bit Actor names, look for Ralf Harolde (1899 - 1974) as the bad doctor, Charles Winninger (1884 - 1969) as the good doctor, Vera Lewis (1873 - 1956) as the nurse manager, and Blanche Friderici (1878 - 1933) as the housekeeper.

The actors in the small parts of these early talkies have loads of wonderful experience that they bring to their work.  Vera Lewis has over 180 titles listed in her filmography including great silents like Intolerance (1916).  Of course you will remember Winninger as Washington Dimsdale in Destry Rides Again (1939). 

The early talkies may not be the best movies ever made and they were churned out in huge numbers, but they are enjoyable, supply us with a history lesson, and many of them are true classics.

Goodbye, Jack LaLanne

The man who started the fitness craze in the USA just passed away.  Jack LaLanne (9/26/1914 - 1/23/2011) lived to be 96 years old.  He hadn't had a dessert since 1929.

I guess he was never a bit actor, but perhaps some of his screen work as himself, could be considered bit work.  IMDB credits him with six acting roles and 33 appearances as himself.  It was not all TV either, he was in a few movies and documentaries. 

His own fitness show on television ran for more than three decades.  He played himself in the 1961 Jerry Lewis movie, The Ladies Man; and in 1990 in Repossessed with Linda Blair (b. 1959), Ned Beatty (b. 1937) and Leslie Nielsen (1926 - 2010).  In 2006, in his final TV movie (a stinker called "The Year Without a Santa Claus"), he played Hercules when he was 92 years old!

Some of his fitness stunts amazed me.  In 1936 he opened the first health club in the nation.  In 1950 he performed 1033 push ups on TV in 23 minutes on "You Asked For It."  When he was seventy years old, he swam a mile and a half, pulling seventy boats with a person in each one, while handcuffed and shackled.  He is responsible for designing many of the exercise machines that are still in use today.  And his TV show was aimed at helping us normal people attain fitness using things found around the home.

Now, not that I would want to become a nay-sayer on LaLanne, but it came to mind that George Burns (1896 - 1996) lived to be over 100 years old.  Burns drank and smoked cigars.  I am almost positive that he frequently had dessert.  And he was a womanizer.  An acquaintance of mine, some years ago, had been in a George Burns show somewhere.  Burns was probably in his late 80s at the time.  She needed a ride to the airport and Burns offered her a seat in his limo.  All the way there she had to refuse his advances!

I guess there is no figuring it out.  Just do the best you can.  Goodbye, Jack, and I really do think your effort has helped many people over the years.  If you see George up there, say "Hi" from all of us.