Pictured above: Jimmy Stewart and Jeanette MacDonald in Rose Marie (1936), a scant two years before Stewart became a bankable leading man with Frank Capra's You Can't Take it With You.
Next up is Conquest (1937) with Greta Garbo and Charles Boyer, directed by the under-appreciated Clarence Brown, a director who never directed a movie that would appear on anyone's "Greatest of all time" lists but nevertheless produced one solid entertainment after another for most of his career.
Third in line we have La Boheme with Lillian Gish and John Gilbert, a silent from 1926. La Boheme the silent feature obviously has none of the music of the opera, just the story which was adapted from the work of Henry Murger, La Vie de Bohème. It also contains an early performance by the great character actor Edward Horton, in only his fourteenth role. Yes, fourteen sounds like a lot but it's early in your career when you end up making 175 movies!
Finally the great Frank Borzage directs Maureen Sullavan and Robert Taylor in Three Comrades from 1938. This is a Borzage I haven't yet seen but look at this cast: Maureen Sullavan, Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, Guy Kibbee, Robert Young, Lionel Atwill, Monty Woolley, Henry Hull and even Charley Grapewin a year before playing Uncle Henry in The Wizard of Oz. Taylor was never a favorite of mine but I've always been fond of Tone (a great wisecracker for the uninitiated), Kibbee and Lionel Atwill, recently profiled on TCM's Movie Morlocks here.
23 comments:
Wow! That WAS jeanette macdonnald?! I have this typical image in my mind of her smiling while she sings that
As for the rest of the images: Possibly my favourite is the Sullavan/taylor one... maybe because she's the protective one, and also, because I remember the sad story told in the movie. I've read that the producers watered down the story not get in (distribution) trouble with Nazi Germany ...
...If they had only had realised that trouble with Nazi germany wasn't going to be confined to distribution troubles, maybe they would have done like Chaplin, who wisely pulled no punches.
(But then it's a Borzage, so worth watching: I hope there will be a DVD release some day: I have a weaknes for WW1 related films)
Gloria, there is a Borzage box set along with Murnau I believe. I'm not sure if this is on it but I do know it's over $150 so I won't be getting it anytime soon. I definitely would like to see it.
It's unbelievable to me that there was ever a time when anyone gave two craps about offending Nazis. I mean, really, watering down anything for distribution in Nazi Germany, even before eye opening events of kristallnacht, is offensive in and of itself.
With Three Comrades and Little Man, What Now?, Borzage was anti-Nazi before most of Hollywood. I was fortunate to see a good number of Borzage films in 16mm, although this was over thirty years ago.
Peter, I'd love to see more Borzage. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity at the AFI, a fairly reliable outlet for older films. And I haven't seen either that you mention but it's good to know he was ahead of the crowd there.
Jonathan, unbelievable as it may sound, it was sadly true.
Apparently, Warner Brothers was the only Major studio who somewhat sided against Nazi germani Before the war, but not so much other majors, which is shocking as a good number of people governing the hollywood studios were Jewish.
A few examples:
- At the outbreak of WW2, and before Pearl Harbour, Britons working in Hollywood might be criticised for campaigning in favour of their country.
- James Whale's "The Road back" was butchered because the original director's montage was considered to be hostile by the (Nazi) German government, and Universal didn't want trouble with it.
- Jewish producer Irving Thalberg travelled through Europe in 1933, where he was witness to anti-jewish demonstrations while on sojourn in Germany. Still, he considered that the international opinion was making too much fuss about antisemitism in Germany. He thought that Hitler was something temporary... And he was, but by the time his rule was over, he had left tons of corpses scattered around the globe. (I've read that MGM kept releasing movies in germany pretty much up to the eve of Pearl Harbour)
Gloria, it is truly amazing what people choose to blind themselves too. I know I often discuss the Manhattan Project here (multiple reviews of narrative and doc movies on the subject) but in 1934 when the great Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard offered his schematica for a nuclear bomb to Britain (which no one at the time even understood, fission in the lab not even yet being achieved) he was patronized and condescended to by the government patent office to his shock. As recounted by author Peter Wyden from Szilard's diary entry Szilard said to them (he had fled Germany in 1933), "You don't take Hitler seriously yet do you? Well I was there and I can tell you, you need to take him seriously."
It took others a long time to catch on. Here's a passage I love from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp as Theo (Anton Walbrook) is answering questions with the immigration office to be admitted into England:
JUDGE: Most refugees left Germany early in 1933 when Hitler came to power.
THEO: I had nothing to fear from Hitler. At least I thought so. It took me eight months to find out I was wrong.
JUDGE: Rather a long time. Don't you think so?
THEO: Please, I mean no offence - but you in England took five years.
Borzage is "on my list". With that new boxset coming out, Netflix now has a lot more of his films available, and I recently DVRed The Mortal Storm.
Speaking of boxsets, that new Boetticher set is out. And Christmas IS coming...
Ha, ha... I Iove "Blimp" and this is one of its many outstanding bits of dialogue. What a splendid, non-self-congratulatory look at British story by Powell & Pressburger!!
As for British (and world) indifference to the rise of fascism and Nazism, Being a Spaniard, I'm over-aware of the fact that, prior to WW2, Italian and German bombers had a lot of practice bombing the Spanish civilian population, which they would later extend over London, etc...
While fascism was overthrowing violently a legitimate, democratically elected government in Spain, the rest of teh world was looking the other side: had they sided openly in favour of democracy, maybe WW2 would have been a different event, if happened at all.
P.S.: there's an interesting story related to yours. A Catalan engineer, who, during the Spanish Civil War, devised efficient neighbourhood air-raid shelters and who by these means saved the lives of many Barcelonans. After the war, he went into exile in Britain, and offered his expertise to the British Government to help them build good shelters for the general population: his offer was largely ignored: had the British Government listened to him, the number of civilian victims of the Blitz would have been lesser.
People should hold each other's heads more - referring to the Mitchum picture. It's comforting but not so often done anymore... at least in my experience.
Fox, I'll hold your head...after I punch you in the mouth!
Bill - When a box set is released does that generally mean that rental sites like NetFlix get to break up the box set for individual rentals right away? I thought there was a contractual agreement, at least there was years ago when I worked in video stores, that the Box Set was not to be sold or rented in individual units until some arbitrary amount of time like six to twelve months.
I'd love it if they all became available concurrently with the release of the box set.
Gloria, that's an illuminating story. I think both stories can be explained by the arrogance of empire theory. Basically, Britain, like America, had been a powerful country for so long they sneered at the idea that they could be vulnerable in any way.
From what I can tell, that's not the case with Netflix. When I first started feeling bad about not seeing more Borzage, I got on Netflix and found almost nothing. The other day, there was a LOT more, including titles I've heard mentioned as being part of this set.
Not only that, but you couldn't get Sunrise -- which is also part of the set -- on Netflix before, and now you can. Maybe Netflix has some special contract.
Fox, I'd like to see the Mitchum picture you're referring to, I bet it's a doozy. As for the pictures here the men are Stewart, Boyer, Gilbert and Taylor. Now the Taylore picture, which sounds an awful lot like the Mitchum picture, does indeed look comforting.
I ask strangers to hold my head all the time at the bus stop but they usually just give me an odd look.
And just an F.Y.I. - Don't accept any offers from Bill to hold your head.
Bill - that's great news. I haven't done anything with my Netflix queue since October. Now I have something to queue up.
John Wayne was actually an early vocal anti-Nazi before it became patriotic.
See, he did some stuff right.
The Duke's okay in my book. Libs like Katherine Hepburn and John Garfield got along great with him and in interviews he seemed like a nice guy. Not my favorite actor (but pretty good I think, personally) and of a different political persuasion but so what.
Mike Nichols and, indirectly, Buck Henry went up several notches in my book (and I already liked both pretty well) when Nichols told that story on the Catch-22 DVD about how he and and Henry refused to let Wayne use the airstrip that had been built for the film, purely, as Nichols said, because of a difference in politics. He said that both he and Henry felt awful about their behavior for years afterwards, until Nichols ran into Wayne at some event and apologized. Soderbergh asked Nichols to tell that story, and I think he expected Nichols to tell it a bit differently, because after he told the story, Soderbergh just said, "Huh."
That Catch-22 commentary track is one of my favorites ever. Or maybe I should say it's one of the few I actually liked listeing to as so many of them I don't. Nichols and Henry were of course right to feel awful about something so childish and stupid as refusing to let someone use an airstrip because you disagree with them politically. Like most everyone else, they grew up. Good for them.
As for the much derided Catch-22 it's always been a favorite of mine even if it's comedy is heavy handed and at times leaden. I don't know though, there's just something about that movie I like, the look, the feel, the performances, especially Arkin of course, just great as Yossarian.
I've done multiple screen grabs from my DVD but still haven't picked one for a banner. Maybe soon. Of course, it has to get in line behind the other 100 or so I've made but not used yet.
I just appreciated Nichols's honesty about the whole thing. He comes off well in that regard in the book Pictures at a Revolution, when he admits that while filming The Graduate, he treated his crew like trash, and it's something he feels ashamed about to this day. It's good to admit that sort of thing! It shows character.
Anyway, I've always liked Catch-22 as well, and have never understood why it always gets slammed. There's a lot of good stuff in it, and deserves to be "rediscovered", as they say. It's damn funny, the reveal of what happened to Snowden still haunts me, Norman Fell telling Doc to "pull up" as the plane is heading towards the rocks, Newhart, Welles, Grodin...I mean really, people! What's not to like?
the reveal of what happened to Snowden still haunts me
It's an incredible image. I believe that's where Nichols says on the commentary that he felt he made it too gruesome but you never forget it.
Aww damn, my bad. I took that last photo for Mitchum. I guess it helps to read through your entire captions before commenting.
LESSON LEARNED!
Fox, I'll hold your head...after I punch you in the mouth!
Bill... that kind of sounds like the often attempted but never landed manuever called "The Reverse Donkey Punch".
p.s. Lapper let me get away with that last comment b/c I posted it after midnight AND it's way down the on the comment page. So, if Roger Ebert were to show up later today, it's unlikely he'd make it all the way down to my comment before figuring out how awesome Lapper is and thus offering him a Movie Review TV show staring him and Spike Lee on Saturday Mornings.
If Ebert has ever visited any of our blogs it would be a miracle. That's okay because I don't visit his. Oh I like him don't get me wrong but I trust my regular commenters and fellow bloggers much more at this point than any critic, even the best out there. I used to go to Rotten Tomatoes and things like that for an idea of how a movie was received but now I just check you guys out. And I can interact with you and ask questions about the movie, which I can't do with a critic or Rotten Tomatoes.
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