Movies, Mom & Me

• 
  Commentary:  Under construction.
    I know almost nothing about this movie, but, Kathatharine Hepburn and Cary Grant? Romantic comedy? Criterion? On sale? Of course!
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Katharine Hepburn	Linda Seton	Cary Grant	Johnny Case	Doris Nolan	Julia Seton	Lew Ayres	Edward Seton Jr
  Henry Kolker	Edward Seton Sr	Edward Everett Horton	Professor Nick Potter	Jean Dixon	Susan Potter	Binnie Barnes	Laura Cram

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1938
    Directed by George Cukor.

Labels: cary-grant, comedy3, Criterion9, katharine-hepburn, romance6

# posted by gail @ 11:03    0 comments    email......this post

• 
  Commentary:  Under construction.
    Roger Ebert christened this movie as one of his Great Movies.
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Cary Grant	T. R. Devlin	Ingrid Bergman	Alicia Huberman	Claude Rains	Alexander Sebastian	Leopoldine Konstantin	Madame Anna Sebastian
  Louis Calhern	Cpt. Paul Prescott	Reinhold Schünzel	Dr. Anderson	Moroni Olsen	Walter Beardsley	Ivan Triesault	Eric Mathis
  Alexis Minotis	Joseph, butler	Wally Brown	Mr. Hopkins	Sir Charles Mendl	Commodore	Ricardo Costa	Dr. Julio Barbosa
  Eberhard Krumschmidt	Emil Hupka	Fay Baker	Ethel	Bea Benaderet	File Clerk	Friedrich von Ledebur	Knerr

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1946
    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Labels: §5, alfred-hitchcock, cary-grant, claude-rains, Criterion4, film-noir2, ingrid-bergman, melodramaB, spy, thriller3

# posted by gail @ 20:29    0 comments    email......this post

• 
  Commentary:  Loved it the first time I saw it, loved it upon seeing it again. Delightfully mysterious.
    This movie is also full of famous "snap-shot scenes" (my moniker, by the way) that, no matter where or for what reason you see a snap shot from a particular scene, you not only recognize the movie immediately, even if it's not identified in context, but the snap shot, itself, elicits a review of the initial reaction you had when you first saw the scene.
    Mount Rushmore, anyone?
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Cary Grant	Roger Thornhill	Eva Marie Saint	Eve Kendall	James Mason	Phillip Vandamm	Jessie Royce Landis	Clara Thornhill
  Leo G. Carroll	The Professor	Josephine Hutchinson	Mrs. Townsend	Philip Ober	Lester Townsend	Martin Landau	Leonard
  Adam Williams	Valerian	Edward Platt	Victor Larrabee	Robert Ellenstein	Licht	Les Tremayne	Auctioneer

  
    Originally published in this journal on 081416.
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1959
    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Labels: alfred-hitchcock, cary-grant, james-mason

# posted by gail @ 01:52    0 comments    email......this post

• 
  Commentary:  Up front, I'm not a fan of this movie, nor of the Annette Bening/Warren Beatty remake, although I love Sleepless in Seattle, which is so full of this movie it practically vomits it. When I first saw and fell in love with Sleepless in Seattle I had never seen this movie, any remakes of it, nor was I familiar with the story. Once I became my mother's companion and we began sharing our love of watching movies, I finally saw this movie on one of the many cable channels to which we subscribed. [I'm telling you, we were really into movies!] Mom did not remember if she'd ever seen it, but she didn't care for it. I clearly remember her saying, when the movie finished "Well, that was silly!" My thoughts, exactly.
    So, what am I doing with this movie in my collection? It came in another one of those four-packs. I was looking for one (old) movie, in particular and it was cheaper to buy the four-pack with it than it was to buy the movie as a single.
    All I can say about this movie, An Affair to Remember [Wikipedia link to this film], is, at least I have a disc record of a movie to which lots of other movies refer but that I never liked, and, I'm sure, never will, not even in its next remake. I'm sure there will be another remake!
  Update 8/14/19:  Well, I decided to watch this movie, tonight, as, the more I tried to recall it, the more I realized all I could remember was the Annette Bening/Warren Beatty/Katharine Hepburn remake, for which I didn't much care, and the references to the original in Sleepless in Seattle. Wow! Was I surprised! I'm thinking, now, that maybe I never really saw it, it may have been one of those movies that I'd glance at between chores, checking on Mom watching it, while she and I were companions. I have little knowledge to base this on, but it seems very 50's-ish in it's portrayal of romance (which shouldn't be a surprise, considering that it came to the screen in 1957): witty, intelligent, full of stock secondary characters who are (thankfully) used lightly, lush orchestration almost to a fault, strong female lead, independent male lead, oh, come on, you know the 50's drill. I was born in the 50's and raised primarily outside the U.S. without much television so I was either too young or too far away to see any of these films until decades later when they became available on tapes/dvds, I moved back to the states and finally (after many years) was in the presence of a television. It's an interesting exercise to watch these movies, and this movie, now. I found myself wondering, as I watched (which often happens when I watch one of these 50's movies), if I had been exposed to them when I, as a U.S. kid, was supposed to have been exposed to them, would my perception of what it is to be a woman be any different, now? It's very late, tonight, though, and my mind isn't sharp enough to give much cogent thought to this, but I wanted to make a note of it, perhaps write/think, here, about it, later. Here's the beginning of a list of movies I own that would fall into this category for consideration: The Best of Everything; Funny Face; I don't know, maybe I was too young to have been exposed to these movies at a time when conditions would have been ripe for them to have an effect on me; I mean, in 1957 I was 5 years old for most of the year (I'm an autumn child), thus, I can't imagine that I would have been intrigued by this movie, in particular, and many, of that time, in general, had I seen them during their first runs; ... more later ...
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Cary Grant	Nicolò Ferrante	Deborah Kerr	Terry McKay	Richard Denning	Kenneth Bradley	Neva Patterson	Lois Clark
  Cathleen Nesbitt	Grandmother Janou	Robert Q. Lewis	Self as Announcer	Charles Watts	Ned Hathaway	Fortunio Bonanova	Courbet

  
    By the way, the great Marnie Nixon sings for Terry McKay.
    Release Date: 1957
    Directed by Leo McCarey.

Labels: 20th-century-chick-flicks1, cary-grant, popcorn-and-soda1, romance1

# posted by gail @ 19:00    0 comments    email......this post

• 
  Commentary:  I never thought I'd own this movie. My reaction to it, until recently, has been ho-hum. My mother loved it, so I pseudo-watched it several times while she was alive (I think she identified with Tracy Lord), but it never occurred to me to buy it while she was alive, considering that it played regularly on TCM.
    Recently, though, I've noticed several videos on YouTube, most notably one by Camille Paglia, which is no longer available [note to self, see if someone else has posted it], which intrigued me, so I borrowed the movie from the library and watched it closely a couple of times. It not only jump-started me to prowl through all the Kathatine Hepburn movies I own, but, by the end of my considerations, I decided I wanted to own it.
    I've come to deeply appreciate the movie, and Kathatine Hepburn, as a particular type of womanhood that at least three generations of women (my mother's included) glorified and after which they wanted to model themselves. What Camille Paglia says about this movie, including the research she's done on it, is important and, I think, should have more attention paid to it. I don't always agree with Paglia, but, in the case of this movie, I do, and would further say that it was this portrayal of womanhood that led directly to second wave feminism, through the daughters of all the admirers of Tracy Lord.
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  James Stewart	Macaulay Connor	Cary Grant	C.K. Dexter Haven	Katharine Hepburn	Tracy Samantha Lord	Ruth Hussey	Elizabeth Imbrie
  John Howard	George Kittredge	Roland Young	William Q. Tracy	John Halliday	Seth Lord	Mary Nash	Margaret Lord
  Virginia Weidler	Dinah Lord	Henry Daniell	Sidney Kidd	Lionel Pape	The Footman	Hilda Plowright	Librarian

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1940
    Directed by George Cukor.

Labels: cary-grant, comedy1, Criterion2, james-stewart, journalism, katharine-hepburn, romance1, satire1

# posted by gail @ 07:00    0 comments    email......this post

• Who's watched:  M & G
• Mentions:  none
• 
  Commentary:  The Collection contains the following movies:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Corn is Green - directed by George Cukor
    This was Mom's favorite of the collection. Of course it was. Mom was a teacher, not by default, as so many are, but by choice. She believes in the importance of good teaching. When she was in the Navy she was an instructor, in fact; a gunnery instructor. She was a crack shot, in and out of uniform. That's how she met my father. He was one of her students in the Navy.
    I think she would have liked to have been in a situation like the one laid out in the movie. In fact, considering that she taught in country schools in very rural areas before going into the Navy, perhaps she was.
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Katharine Hepburn	Lilly Moffat	Ian Saynor	Morgan Evans	Bill Fraser	The Squire	Patricia Hayes	Mrs. Watty
  Anna Massey	Miss Ronberry	Artro Morris	John Goronwy Jones	Dorothea Phillips	Sarah Pugh	Toyah Willcox	Bessie Watty

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1979
  
  
  
  Morning Glory - directed by Lowell Sherman
    Although the idea of the movie attracted me because I have actors in my family, in many ways I find this movie uncomfortably jittery, rather like Hepburn's portrayal of Eva Lovelace. Mom found it too jittery to watch for long. I don't think she ever viewed the entire movie of a piece. I don't blame her but, frankly, I'm glad I have a copy of it, if for no other reason that to remind me of the crazier aspects of pursuing the acting profession. Not everyone who does exhibits behavior like Eva's, but, believe me, such aspiring actors are not in the minority.
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Katharine Hepburn	Eva Lovelace	Douglas Fairbanks Jr	Joseph Sheridan	Adolphe Menjou	Louis Easton	Mary Duncan	Rita Verdon
  C. Aubrey Smith	Robert Harley Hedges	Don Alvarado	Pepi Velez	Fredric Santley	Will Seymour	Richard Carle	Henry Lawrence
  Tyler Brooke	Charley Van Duesen	Geneva Mitchell	Gwendoline Hall	Helen Ware	Nellie Navarre	Robert Adair	Roberts

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1933
  
  
  
  Sylvia Scarlett - directed by George Cukor
    Mom didn't find this one interesting, despite her interest in gender-bender movies, but I did. The caper part of the story was beside the point, to me, but Hepburn was able to play a superb boy, I think.
    Since Mom's death, though, I've learned more about the film itself and now that "we're" in an LBGTQ kind of mood, I find watching the movie for trans detail pretty interesting. I've done this twice within the last couple of years. It has a strong feminist undercurrent.
    Although the movie has certain peculiarities that could be (and were, at the time of its release) considered flaws, those same pointed-out flaws now seem more like societal misunderstandings that included both critics and audiences, like it just wasn't time, yet, for this movie or this idea.
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Katharine Hepburn	Sylvia Scarlett	Cary Grant	Jimmy Monkey	Brian Aherne	Michael Fane	Edmund Gwenn	Henry Scarlett

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1935
  
  
  
  Undercurrent - directed by Vincente Minnelli
    I honestly don't remember anything about this movie, even though I'm sure we watched it. I have no idea if Mom does.
  Update 5/23/2022:  As of this day, I still don't know whether I, or we, ever watched this film. That's something I should do tonight. Maybe it's one of those movies, like Keeper of the Flame, that's so turgid that the only way you can remember it is by watching it yet again.
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Katharine Hepburn	Ann Hamilton	Robert Taylor	Alan Garroway	Edmund Gwenn	Prof. "Dink" Hamilton	Marjorie Main	Lucy
  Jayne Meadows	Sylvia Lea Burton	Clinton Sundberg	Mr. Warmsley	Dan Tobin	Prof. Joseph Bangs	Kathryn Card	Mrs. Foster

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1946
  → film-noir2
  
  
  
  Without Love - directed by Harold S. Bucquet
    I found this movie minimally intriguing, because of Hepburn's and Tracey's IRL relationship, but for me, that was almost all that was intriguing about it. Mom liked it very much.
    I was disappointed because it was one of the few Tracy/Hepburn movies I hadn't seen and the description interested me...but, I don't know, their chemistry seemed off in this film, as though they were having a long personal argument underneath the script. It was distracting. However, Lucille Ball plays a fun part in it and Gloria Grahame (Violet Bick in It's a Wonderful Life)
    Mom really liked the character that Hepburn played in this movie, which didn't surprise me...I think Mom imagined herself as "that type".
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Spencer Tracy	Patrick Jameson	Katharine Hepburn	Jamie Rowan	Lucille Ball	Kitty Trimble	Keenan Wynn	Quentin Ladd
  Carl Esmond	Paul Carrell	Patricia Morison	Edwina Collins	Felix Bressart	Prof. Ginza	Gloria Grahame	Flower Girl

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1945
  
  
  
  Dragon Seed - directed by Harold S. Bucquet & Jack Conway
    I would have loved to have managed to link to a full copy of James Agee's review of this film. Not being able to find it, though, I did find a description of it that included excerpts, thank you Claude Rains Fan Club. The Dragon Seed review is the first review on this page. That being said, both Mom and I were a little off-put by this movie, almost too much to enjoy it. Both of us have always been annoyed with yellow-black-red-any/face. Although all were a common practice during a certain time period in Hollywood (and, sometimes, even now), it's very distracting. Hollywood, find actors who are of the ethnicity you need! If you can't find anyone, look harder! They're out there!
  Update 5/23/20:  Regarding yellow face: While putting together the Actor/Role table, below, my curiosity got the best of me and I searched for a really full cast listing of this movie to see if the one Asian American named among the first sixteen actors listed was the only Asian American. Turns out, quite a few Asian Americans appeared in this movie but, of course, not in any upper lead roles. The further down you go on the Cast & Crew list, the more likely you are to find an Asian American actor. Shameful for its time, indeed! The Asian American actors were out there, and, apparently, were enlisted in this cast, but only one appeared in an leading role.
  P.S  DVD Savant's article on this collection, linked to the title of this post, gives meticulous, interesting reviews for each one of the movies above. It's easy to find them in his write-up.
    This collection was clearly put together to make a little money off Hepburn's lesser known works. That's okay. I'm always interested in viewing odd movies by, so to speak, "even" (in this case, meaning "famous") people. This collection is a doozy! I'm surprised The Madwoman of Chaillot wasn't included! Yes, Virginia, I saw that film. 'Nuf said.
    

  Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role	Actor	Role
  Katharine Hepburn	Jade	Walter Huston	Ling Tan	Aline MacMahon	Ling Tan's Wife	Akim Tamiroff	Wu Lien
  Turhan Bey	Lao Er Tan	Hurd Hatfield	Lao San Tan	J. Carrol Naish	Japanese Kitchen Overseer	Agnes Moorehead	Third Cousin's Wife
  Henry Travers	Third Cousin	Robert Bice	Lao Ta Tan	Robert Lewis	Captain Sato	Frances Rafferty	Japanese Official
  Leonard Strong	Japanese Official	Jacqueline deWit	Wu Lien's wife	Clarence Lung	Fourth Cousin	Paul E. Burns	Neighbor Shen

  
    Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
    Release Date: 1944

Labels: cary-grant, film-noir2, gender-bender, katharine-hepburn, marjorie-main, melodramaB, pre-code, spencer-tracy, teaching, tracy-hepburn

# posted by gail @ 19:30    0 comments    email......this post