Here.
And I even watched the first movie, from the first year, 1960, and wrote a post about it, here.
Since then, I've watched the next 2 movies. Remember, the idea is to rewatch a movie that I originally saw in the theater in the year that it came out, one movie for each year. I'm choosing movies that I think will be fun to watch now and to see how my present-day reaction compares to what I thought and felt at the time. And I want to be inspired to blog about it.
But I didn't blog about the 1961 movie when I watched it a week ago, and now that I've watched the 1962 movie, I have a backlog — a blog backlog. That's uncharacteristic of me, so maybe I'm telling myself: Don't do it! Or maybe I just need you to encourage me. You saw what I did with the 1960 movie, "Please Don't Eat the Daisies."
I'll reveal the titles of the 1961 and the 1962 movies, in case you want to take that into account in encouraging me: "The Absent-Minded Professor" and "The Music Man." And I'll just say that these movies are both, in my 2019 view, essentially entirely about overcoming sexual inhibition. There will be more sex than you could possibly imagine, or, I mean, there was more sex than I could possibly imagine when I was 10 and 11, as I was in 1961 and 1962.
Next up, for 1963: "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World."
June 15, 2019
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Regarding "The Absent-Minded Professor:" Meet the priest who invented flubber
More Doris day? Ok, consider How The West Was Won for 1963. That was the last pro-American movie that came out of Hollywood.
The early 1960's were all about Flubber and better living through chemistry. The 1963 Chemistry Nobel went to Karl Ziegler who enabled the modern plastics era. Mike Nichols captured this in his 1967 movie with just one word. Are listening Benjamin? It all started going downhill when the Cuyahoga caught fire in 1969. The hippies hated plastic and still do.
"It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World."
Great great great great movie. The others are pretty bad.
Was Billie Sue Culpeper really 6'5" tall?
"More Doris day? Ok, consider How The West Was Won for 1963. That was the last pro-American movie that came out of Hollywood."
Doesn't qualify.
Didn't see it in the theater when it came out.
In fact, I've never seen it.
It's Meade's favorite movie, so I would like to see it, but where can I see it in Cinerama?
The great Robert Preston takes a different angle on the travelling salesman in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960).
I am a very strong vote in favor of getting into those particular movies from your 10 and 11 year old mind versus now, especially The Music Man.
Subtext is for people already immersed in thinking that way.
Is it fun to go looking for subtext that way?
Do you find it enjoyable?
THE MUSIC MAN is something of a treasure, as it is a near-perfect preservation of the hit Broadway show and Robert Preston's performance of a lifetime. A bit over-produced, but full of wonderful character actors and great screen stagings of the musical numbers. Directed by original Broadway director Morton DaCosta, who oddly only made three films. Best seen in widescreen with the original stereo soundtrack.
Hmmm. Now I want to watch The Music Man to see if I see the same subtext. I only saw the movie as a young person. I really enjoyed it.
The Robert Preston character in The Music Man is probably more representative of salesmen than Willy Loman or the characters in Glengarry. Sales rep
s are not necessarily tragic or driven figures. It probably helps to be a bit of a con man though. There's something of The Music Man in Trump's persona.
Some comedies are no longer funny decades after they were made. Tastes in humor change, references no longer click with the audience...whatever. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World doesn’t have that problem, in my opinion, and is still as fresh and funny as the day it was released. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I rewatched it several weeks ago, rewatching for the first time in 20 years.
There used to be a time when Hollywood preached the virtues of sexual liberation. The big enemy of happiness was sexual repression. How wrong they were. We now know that the big obstacle to human happiness is intolerance.
MMMM World has been on my bucket list.
I first saw It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World on a New Year's Eve movie marathon on the changeover from 1976 to 1977. Loved it immensely. I saw it again about 20 years later, and liked it a bit less, but was still fun.
"More Doris day? Ok, consider How The West Was Won for 1963.
Debbie Reynolds, not Doris Day.
If it is sex, sex, sex, I can only hope that 1964 brings Night of the Iguana.
The dance production number of Marian the Librarian carries a lot of subtext.
Turned on the TV in Brisbane a few months back and caught the the last hour of MAD, playing on a Fox international channel I think. It was funnier to me now at 65 than when I was 9-10. The cast alone is a once in a lifetime. I guess I appreciated more now than I did then. And I saw HTWWW when it came out in CinemaScope. Wowza. It was gorgeous.
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
I saw it as a kid in the theater, and I thought it was great!! Years later, I showed it to my kids, and I didn't enjoy it as much. It was more about presenting the ensemble cast, then it was about good film-making.
Has anyone else seen any of the Carry On movies from England?
IAMMMMW, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dollar Auction.
Ok ann if you want to do an in-depth of old movies , try assessing Christian and American bashing in the old movies. There is a lot of it even in 50s movies.
Always remember a majority of screen writers even back then were atheists and socialists.
"The Absent-Minded Professor"
"The Shaggy D.A." is the classic of the genre.
The Blue Max, with George Peppard and Ursula Undress.
"Andress".
(hopefully you were inspired by our "It's a Mad Mad Mad Madison" post)
In 1961 I saw ( 4-year-old me, a person nearly completely unlike "I" am now) a Disney film: "101 Dalmations".
Scared me to DEATH. I _HAD_ a puppy. The notion that there were people out in the world who would STEAL a *PUPPY* to cut up for a _*COAT*_ shattered my concept of all that was right and good and controlled in my universe, set aside the comeuppence of the denouement.
How the West was Won was the first movie i bought through Amazon streaming. But it was better in Cinarama
as far as the Music Man; sure, it drips sex, but that's not the point. The point is to ridicule Iowa and more importantly Iowans .
I could go on all day about The Music Man but let me just mention Robert Preston's virtuosity in numbers like "Ya Got Trouble," his astounding charisma, the sly wit of lyrics like "The Sadder But Wiser Girl" . . .
I flinch, I shy
When the lass with the delicate air goes by
I smile, I grin
When the gal with a touch of sin walks in
I hope, and pray
For Hester to win just one more "A"
The sadder-but-wiser girl's the girl for me
The sadder-but-wiser girl for me
Scared me to DEATH.
Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I spent evenings looking for the banshee wagon descending from the moon.
Given your first choice, I was somewhat hesitant for you to proceed. But given your next three, I see the possibilities. The sexual references being overlooked by young Althouse but noticed by current Althouse will eventually go away as Althouse ages, but what will take their place.
As far as IAMMMMW, I'm curious how young Althouse and current Althouse view the Ethel Merman character. The movie is a great grab bag--some of it works and some of it doesn't. The scene with Phil Silvers and Don Knotts only lasts a minute or so, but is great.
The point is to ridicule Iowa and more importantly Iowans.
Yeah, no. If ever there was a love letter to a man's hometown it's Meredith Wilson’s to his native Mason City, Iowa.
I saw It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World at the Cinerama Theater in Nashville, Tennessee in 1963. As a 17-year-old I thought it was wonderful. Years later on TV it was just okay. I believe there may be just one or two Cinerama Theaters remaining in the U.S.
"Yeah, no. If ever there was a love letter to a man's hometown it's Meredith Wilson’s to his native Mason City, Iowa."
Its more like a man expessing nostalgic regret while putting down his beloved horse with a pistol, after he realizes it is lame.
Its not a love letter, in context.
Every once in a while It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World was on television and as a kid I loved it. The only problem was that they cut a lot of it out and added commercials, which broke up the flow of the comedy.
Now, I could see it on demand, on a much larger HD TV and without commercial breaks. But, I know the jokes and some of the humor has become dated--or I just became less juvenile. I like it, but less than I did under the harsher conditions of childhood network TV.
If the 18 year old version of me, who somehow had never seen the TV versions, could have seen it in a theater; I'm pretty sure I would have broken a rib, or at least had a side-ache by the time the movie finished.
The message of "Music Man" was directed to its Broadway audience.
It is always the intended audience that matters.
They are invited to be amused by the quaint but obsolete folkways of these distant, backward people, who are to some degree redeemed in the course of the show, acquiring some aspects (pathetically limited of course) of the sophistication of the Broadway audience.
Its not a love letter, in context.
The plot in a nutshell: A cynical, worldly man attempts to impose his values on an innocent Iowa town, and instead the town gently imposes its values on him.
The Blue Max, with George Peppard and Ursula Undress.
"Andress".
My dad took my brother and me to that movie in the theatre around the time it came out. We were both obsessed with WW I aces and airplanes. Although I was quite young -- 7 or 8 -- I'll never forget her gorgeous breasts. She and Julie Newmar set my orientation.
Oh, and I think Mad Magazine invented the Ursula Undress moniker. They used it in their spoof of "Dr. No."
The plot in a nutshell:
A cynical, worldly man attempts to rob unsophisticated, gullible rural people, and inadvertently manages to do good by dragging them in some way out of their stultifying ignorance.
inadvertently manages to do good by dragging them in some way out of their stultifying ignorance.
Give examples of how the town changes and not the man.
How are those two movies about sexual inhibition?
I wish you would do "The Nutty Professor" for 1963, if you saw it when it came out, just to stay in the academic (and mad, mad) world.
My movie seen at age 10 (really ) 11, was "12 0'clock High," < still a favorite although it was butchered for TV and never yet restored.
Also, "Best Years of our Lives".
Good year for movies.
The majority of my movie theater attending years were the 50's & 60's. With the exception of a very few, every one I enjoyed in a theater is unwatchable, for, me on TV.
The Music man is a great musical. One of the best. And with an actor who had the role of a lifetime. I like Shirley Jones too. But its really a piece of fluff set in 1900. Can it really be gist for the Althouse feminist mill?
Maybe the Mad Mad World - set in 1963 - with a cast of comics will inspire you.
The good thing about the Music man and its true of Singing in the rain, Meet in st. louis, My Fair Lady, etc. is you'd have a pretty good movie even without the songs. One problem with most R&H films, is you take out the music and you usually have a slow, lumbering bore. South pacific comes to mind. Oklahoma is another.
"It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" dragged on forever when I saw it on TV in the 70s. I believe they cut into two parts. Also, as a kid, I didn't know who most of the comics were. I recognized Don Knotts from Andy Griffith reruns, and Spenser Tracy from old movies, & peter falk from Columbo. And that was it.
Its all over the damned thing.
Look with open eyes at the depiction of the town and its people from beginning to the end.
Compare the crude, amateur, naive July 4 production with the "76 trombones" massed band tech upgrade. Itself, btw, deliberately camped up for the benefit of its audience.
The message is that local, organic folkways are pathetic, embarrassing. And that generic organized slickness improves life.
This was part of the 20th century mass media theme. The message from Hollywood and Broadway was "try be like us you proles, although the attempt is futile, unless you actually live with us in New York and Los Angeles".
It's a love letter to Iowa! The most stabilizing, appealing, relatable character is Marian's mom, Mrs. Paroo.
Marian:
Mama, a man with a suitcase followed me home.
Mrs. Paroo:
Oh--Who?
Marian:
I never saw him before.
Mrs. Paroo:
Did he say anythin'?
Marian:
He tried.
Mrs. Paroo:
Did you say anythin'?
Marian:
Of course not, Mama!
Now don't dawdle, Amaryllis.
So do la ti mi,
A little slower and please keep the fingers curved as nice and as high as you possibly can.
Don't get faster, dear.
Mrs. Paroo:
If you don't mind my sayin' so,
It wouldn't have hurt you to find out what the gentleman wanted.
Marian:
I know what the gentleman wanted.
Mrs. Paroo:
What, dear?
Marian:
You'll find it in Balzac.
Mrs. Paroo:
Excuse me fer livin' but I never read it.
Marian:
Neither has anyone else in this town.
Mrs. Paroo:
There you go again with the same old comment
about the low mentality of River City people,
and takin' it all to much to heart.
Marian:
Now, Mama,
As long as the Madison Public Library was entrusted to me for the purpose of improving River City's cultural level,
I can't help my concern that the Ladies of River City
Keep ignoring all my council and advice.
Mrs. Paroo:
But, darlin'--when a woman has a husband
And you've got none,
Why should she take advice from you?
Even if you can quote Balzac and Shakespeare
And all them other highfalutin' Greeks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mrs. Paroo might take an Althousian view toward Marian's limitations at this point in her life.
EP said...
If ever there was a love letter to a man's hometown it's Meredith Wilson’s to his native Mason City, Iowa.
You can't REALLY ridicule something, unless you REALLY love it... Duh!
If I recall correctly, the ladies of the town change their minds about Balzac.
Chaucer, Rabelais, and Baaaaalzac!
"I wish you would do "The Nutty Professor" for 1963, if you saw it when it came out, just to stay in the academic (and mad, mad) world."
I saw it much later.
The only Jerry Lewis movie I saw when I was young and when it came out was "The Disorderly Orderly." I chose a different movie for that year (1964). There is a Jerry Lewis movie that does make my list, but I wasn't that young.
"The message is that local, organic folkways are pathetic, embarrassing. And that generic organized slickness improves life."
The whole point it the town elders were such "sticks in the mud" they wouldn't even sing or have a marching band. Even a pool hall was looked on with suspicion. So, that's why Marian puts up with Harold Hill. She knows he's a con man, but...
Jerry Lewis made one good movie. The nutty professor. Some space alien must have given him the script.
madAsHell said...
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
I saw it as a kid in the theater, and I thought it was great!! Years later, I showed it to my kids, and I didn't enjoy it as much. It was more about presenting the ensemble cast, then it was about good film-making.
Same here - and I was the same age as Althouse when it came out. Looking back, I didn't know who most of those great comics were at the time I saw the movie, but I split my sides laughing - especially at the crazy end. When I watched with the kids (DVD), I appreciated the comics and the cameos (they continued to perform for many more years) - but my children couldn't sit for the entire show. It still made for a decent family movie night.
Indeed, the sneer in "Music Man" exists throughout the thing, down to the choice of cast, to the faces and types. These are, deliberately, depicted as not a beautiful people. Not people that should matter.
The political subtext is common through most of the msm of the time, that these hinterland inadequates need to be ruled by their betters, for their own good. This has only intensified.
Indeed, the sneer in "Music Man" exists throughout the thing, down to the choice of cast, to the faces and types. These are, deliberately, depicted as not a beautiful people. Not people that should matter.
Well, its a BROADWAY musical. Its about as "Small Town positive" as you could get in 1958 or whatever. Even then it was criticized in NYC as too "small town" and the music was "too corny". IRC, Harold Hill ends up wanting to stay.
If you want sophisticated sneers. Look at a mad mad world. "average people" find some money and they can't split it up properly and end up going crazy and acting stupid.
Every "average person" in the movie is a horror. Except for one or two. No wonder we needed the SCOTUS and DC to rule us.
Georgia Lawyer said...
I saw It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World at the Cinerama Theater in Nashville, Tennessee in 1963. As a 17-year-old I thought it was wonderful. Years later on TV it was just okay. I believe there may be just one or two Cinerama Theaters remaining in the U.S.
I saw both MMMMW and "How the West Was Won" at the Cinerama Theater in Seattle. Thanks to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the Seattle Cinerama saved the theater from demolition and restored to its former glory. History of Seattle Cinerama
BTW, here's a true story. 20 years ago, our local movie theater showed the Music Man during the 4th of July. We had a packed crowd and everyone seemed to have a good time, some people shouted out bits of dialogue before they were spoken.
Given the great reaction, I assumed it would play next year, and when it didn't I asked the theater manager. He told me "He'd had complaints" about the movie. Too American. Too old fashioned. Well, Okey-dokey.
The political subtext is common through most of the msm of the time, that these hinterland inadequates need to be ruled by their betters, for their own good.
The Music Man is a loving paean to the American Ideal that the common sense of simple, ordinary small-town people will triumph over the machinations of the worldly, cynical, and corrupt. If you’re seeing something diametrically opposed to that in the film and play then I question whether you ever actually believed in the Ideal in the first place.
OK. Cinerama is a bridge too far, but with modern acoustic systems and 80 inch hi-def TV it can be done.The value in How The West Was Won remains the story. It is a bold story told by Director John Ford using great American actors in their prime. Try Jimmy Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Carol Baker, Henry Fonda, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, John Wayne, Robert Preston, Richard Widmark, Walter Brennan, Lee J. Cobb, Spencer Tracy, Harry Morgan, Raymond Massey et al.
Shows how much I pay attention. I always thought The Music Man was Dick Van Dyke.
It may take the worldly and cynical, and to these I cop, to see what is being thought and done from within the camps of the worldly and cynical.
A little bit like Trump really, a man from inside the belly of the beast.
Jerry Lewis movies where he does a buck-toothed Japanese are always good.
I don't recall any movies at all that I saw as a similar aged kid. Maybe Spirit of St Louis. When did that come out? 1957 Too late.
"It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"
The funniest movie. And the lineup of stars was simply impressive. When stars were real stars.
Fred MacMurray's father was a music teacher in Madison WI, and Nancy Olson is from Milwaukee. I mention these things for no particular reason.
Nancy Olson was one of the prettiest girls in Hollywood, and that's saying a lot. She was in a category with Iowan Donna Reed, with a wholesome, midwestern, cornfed look (I mean that in the best possible way) and personality, while also being stunningly beautiful. Even though she was the girl next door, she was as sexy and glamorous, IMHO, as any other Hollywood star, including Gene Tierney and Ava Garner.
Thanks for standing up for my people, Buwaya, as you so often do, and I applaud you for that. But I really don't think The Music Man is derogatory, and I don't think there was a huge divide between Broadway audiences and the good people of River City. I'm sure they were one and the same when they took a trip to the Big Apple, and musicals belong to them as much as to New York City. Gentle fun was poked at River Citizens, but the show also displays affection for them, and the same goes for the con man and his partner. Anyway, nobody looks down on boring, sleepy midwestern towns more than the teenagers who have to live in them.
I'm a 56 model and remember seeing it's a M,M,M,M world when it came out. I enjoyed it and got the moral message about the dangers of being carried away with reckless greed. I found Buddy Hackett to be the most amusing.
I think it was when I was around 10, 1966, that I could fully appreciate grown-up films. Georgy Girl made a big impact on me that year. It would be interesting to re-watch it over 50 years later.
Hollywood has done more than its fair share of America-bashing, and maybe Broadway too, but I don't think The Music Man falls into that category.
The Music Man is no more derogatory of small-town Iowa than Hello,Dolly is of Yonkers, NY.
I think if you like The Three Stooges, you'll like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Too slapstick for me, though Dick Shawn cracked me up, Daddy-O.
Althouse says, And I'll just say that these movies are both, in my 2019 view, essentially entirely about overcoming sexual inhibition
Just wait until you get to the “Pink Panther” movies with Elke Sommers!
"Nonsense. What could happen to a Manhatten?" Jim Backus
"He's just like his father; he never listens." Ethel Mermanya;
"It's under a big 'W', I tell ya; a big 'W'". Jimmy Durante
"What is this American fascination with bosoms?" Terry Thomas
Professor Harold Hill was Barack Obama, and I will keep it to myself who is the librarian.
"You can't REALLY ridicule something, unless you REALLY love it...”
Blazing Saddles
Galaxy Quest
I thought that your “Don’t Eat the Daisies” post was terrific, but maybe you were just inspired by that movie. I was really sorry that I didn’t catch it on Turner when it played last week.
"How the West Was Won" at the Cinerama Theater in Seattle
Thanks, Mr. Allen. RIP. I saw Mad World, and How the West Was Won in that same theater.
TWWren— “You watch your phraseology” the mayor to his daughter’s boyfriend
Fun fact about The Music Man. Unbeknownst to the producers and cast, Shirley Jones was pregnant. In the scene on the bridge before Robert Preston's character is caught, the two embrace. Not caught on film is Preston's surprise at discovering her real-life secret.
WRT Broadway plays, after rewatching Oklahoma! I caught the NYC outlook on all things not NYC. Turned me off.
When The Godfather came out there were those who said its portrayal of Italian-Americans was grossly demeaning, and those who said its sympathetic portrayal of psychopathic murderers was far too flattering. I suppose both points of view are valid if that’s what you’re looking for in the movie.
Still waiting to hear this sex theory.
I will watch The Music Man and Mad Mad World over and over again. Capt Culpepper (Spencer Tracey) and Phil Silvers! Ethel Merman. Wow! And Marian the librarian is Hot!
I love The Music Man movie, a good love story and I watch it again every few years.
Going to the Cinerama theater in Boston to see How the West Was Won was my 6th grade class end of the year field trip. They showed a short feature that was shot on a roller coaster too. Then they took us to Logan Airport and let us all sit on an airplane and visit the control tower.
The Music Man is as American as apple pie. Maybe Trump was thinking of that movie when he came up with the MAGA slogan. A bygone era that never was.
Yes blog those movies. Pretty please?
Shirley Jones was at her most adorable in Music Man, but her wick was turned up a bit higher in Elmer Gantry (1960).
Will reveal the darkness of my soul so far as movies are concerned: I watched what I have now realised must have been a remake of IAMMMW. Whether I knew at the time it was a remake or version, I don't know. Wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, from what I remember.
The Coen brothers derogate flyover America in virtually every one of their movies. Their frequently amusing dialogue and humorous set-ups provide cover for an extremely dark, cynical, and utterly disdainful vision of Americans. I say this as one who has found several of their movies to be laugh-out-loud funny. They have always been obsessed with death but that obsession has intensified in recent years. I hated the Ballad of Lester Scruggs for that reason. It was an ugly movie with ugly humor. The humor that infuses their movies has taken an increasingly sadistic bent -- they remind me of little boys pulling the wings off flies and laughing about it. Their movies have become predictable and boring as a result. I'm not laughing with them, not anymore, and I'm not interested in what they have to say either.
Ernest Prole said: If you’re seeing something diametrically opposed to that in the film and play then I question whether you ever actually believed in the Ideal in the first place.
Yes indeed. Well said.
The Coen brothers derogate flyover America in virtually every one of their movies.
It's an old Minnesota tradition. Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Garrison Kiellor do it, too.
Fun fact about The Music Man. Unbeknownst to the producers and cast, Shirley Jones was pregnant.
She was as lovely as a ripe peach. Pregnancy affects women differently; for some it makes them look and act utterly alive.
The "epic comedy" film genre came to an end in the mid-sixties more or less, and I still lament its passing. I miss those movies, e.g., "Mad World,"Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines," "The Great Race," etc. I remember laughing so hard while watching them, I couldn't catch my breath. Afterward my stomach would hurt. Similarly I would watch scary movies and really be frightened, sometimes putting my hands to my eyes and watching between parted fingers. "Forbidden Planet" and "House on the Haunted Hill" terrified me almost to paralysis ("Kill it, Robbie, KILL IT!"). I wish I could still get that emotionally engaged in movies; wish I could still laugh that hard and feel that terror.
Ah, me. As Squire Will Danaher ruefully observed, "The aulde days are gone forever."
The last time I felt truly disturbed by a movie was when I watched "The Exorcist," when it first came out. That one really bothered me for awhile.
It's a Mad Mad ... World. Jimmy Durante kicks the bucket.
"Forbidden Planet" and "House on the Haunted Hill"
.....and I didn't see Forbidden Planet until college.
It's almost like the marketing formula changed. Before 1970, I believe they produced fewer films (quantity), but more memorable films (quality). I would like to say that it was the advent of VHS that changed the marketing formula, but I don't think VHS was truly affordable until about 1980.
Fast forward to today, and we have content proliferation. Netflix, Amazon, Disney, I'm sure I'm overlooking several others. Obviously, the distribution costs have diminished, and there must be other incentives, but the marketing formula today seems to be...."Let's see what sticks!"
I certainly don’t hold to an “ideal” that requires me to believe that simple good hearted people’s common sense will eventually prevail.
History does not support this rather naive notion, there are too many depopulated countrysides and burned out villages to think that is a likely outcome. Nor does justice usually prevail.
These are wish fulfillment fantasies.
BLUE MAX RULES! What a towel!
I watch it on dvd every year or so.
Poor George Peppard, they tried to make a big star out of him, but he's just not a very good actor. Pork Chop Hill, Breakfast at Tiffany's . . . He was adequate as Stachel.
Narr
Andress was a Bond Girl too
I too watched IAMMMMW when it first debuted in theaters. That was when movies stuck around for more than a week or two....remember "HELD OVER EIGHTH SMASH WEEK!"? I found it hysterical (I was 8) and saw it in the theatre again at least one more time. It needs to be seen in full, not cut up (with deleted portions) at inopportune times on TV. I have watched it since and my tastes have changed but I do enjoy all those starts and cameos.
I recently watched HTWWW on my home TV (which is fairly large but not gigantic) and I had trouble adjusting to the fishbowl effect on the sides of the action. I remember the score was magnificent and my parents actually bought the record album after we saw it as a family when it was first run.
THEOLDMAN
Too bad Althouse didn't see "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
That's a favorite.
Its also topical as anything.
There are an awful lot of Holly Golightlys out here in SF, undirected, detached from family, lost drifting girls. They are rarely in Holly's line of work (such as it is), but they don't have to be. The tragic trap is the same.
There are an awful lot of Holly Golightlys out here in SF, undirected, detached from family, lost drifting girls. They are rarely in Holly's line of work (such as it is), but they don't have to be. The tragic trap is the same.
Warren will scoop them up like so many lost souls.
No mention of Butterfield 8. That was a great one.
I recall at age 11 ( The Professor was 5) seeing a WWII movie from a great writer's experience about the leadership of men in a war. I recall that it really affected me in a lasting way. Away All Boats. That may one reason watching Trump's leadership inspires me today.
@buwaya ...
If you've read The Fountainhead how would you compare Dominique to Hollygolightly or even the Flapper earlier time.
One more vote for your continuing this project.
MM is one of my favorites. Mrs. Paroo is awesome. There's not a man alive who could hope to measure up to that blend of Paul Bunyan, Saint Pat and Noah Webster you've concocted for yourself outta your Irish imagination, your Iowa stubbornness, and your library full of books!
Let's also hear it for Marian singing along with the Barbershop Quartet.
But I've never seen it in a movie theater.
Its a mad, mad world, needed less Sid Caesar and more Jimmy Durante. They should have switched roles!
OR gotten Mel Brooks to play Sid's part. Now that would've been funny.
IAMMMMW is like Trump. Big, funny and entertaining. Just saw it a few weeks ago. Great cameos, great characters, fun. Not serious business, but fun. We need more fun.
Great idea. I am your age and saw those 4 movies at the time. Rather stopped watching many movies by 1975 or so but will try to keep up on this project.
speaking of Peppard-- remember Banacek, the Polish detective?
every morning, rowing out of his Beacon Hill digs w the towel over his head...
...his Polish 'proverbs'
Peppard ended up doing schtick on The A-Team. I couldn't watch.
Come on out Maxers! I swear I have one of the promo magazines from the first showing--if only I could find it.
The ground scenes are large-scale, at least, and pretty complex; some good staging of old arty and such; a lot of verisimilitude overall (just don't study picturesque 1960s Ireland in the background too closely).
Air combat scenes are still thrilling, Moths and other ringers notwithstanding.
Narr
Did I mention Ursula Andress was in it?
narr
if memory fails me correctly, wasnt the opening scene a panoramic skyscape w/ a dogfight, several planes weaving around the roman aquaduct ruins?
Bach(?) playing (yes, goldsmith did the soundtrack)
"Forbidden Planet"
Star Trek without a transporter. A favorite of mine. But, then I thought King Kong vs. Godzilla was a great movie at the time.
KK v G doesn't hold up well. Forbidden Planet does.
William said...
The Robert Preston character in The Music Man is probably more representative of salesmen than Willy Loman or the characters in Glengarry. Sales rep
s are not necessarily tragic or driven figures. It probably helps to be a bit of a con man though.
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Try being a con man selling capital equipment.
Good luck.
this is an admirable blog project. Lots of us have been doing comparable interior monologues about films that felt one way when we were children, and quite different now. Thank you, TCM.
BTW, TCM is Ted Turner's insufficient recompense for CNN, but it's a start.
The Blue Max is an excellent movie, and it works on several levels. It gets better with time. I last saw it about a year ago and once again came away from it impressed by its handling of the theme of class conflict and antagonisms in Wilhelmine Germany. Stachel is a better pilot than his aristocratic squadron mates but his petit bourgeois origins obviate any chance that they will ever accept him as an equal. They are Stachel's real enemies, and well he knows it. By the same token they know that Stachel and his ilk, not the Allies, constitute the primary threat to their aristocratic way of life. They are less concerned with losing the war to the Allies than they are to losing Germany to all the restive Stachels that the war has engendered and empowered. One gets the feeling that these aristocratic pilots are the same sort of men who, as Luftwaffe generals in World War II, professed to despite Hitler and the Nazis yet nonetheless proved all too eager and willing to fight the Nazi's genocidal war if it mean that the officer class would continue on in its dominant position in the German social order.
despise not despite
Roughcoat said...
One gets the feeling that these aristocratic pilots are the same sort of men who, as Luftwaffe generals in World War II, professed to despise Hitler and the Nazis yet nonetheless proved all too eager and willing to fight the Nazi's genocidal war if it mean that the officer class would continue on in its dominant position in the German social order.
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I think "genocidal war" is out of place in this context. Hitler made total war against his enemies, but his genocidal policies toward Jewish and other NON-combatants is a whole different thing.
It's interesting that Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering, himself a WWI ace, always had a soft spot for Allied fliers, ordering that they be treated well in captivity. Perhaps it was a lingering trace of the feeling that airmen were aristocrats.
And of course there's the assassination attempt against Hitler himself, driven by....army generals like Rommel, himself a Junker aristocrat.
"Away all Boats", Dodson (the novelist)
I was too young for the movie, didnt see it till many years later.
But the book is exactly as you say. It was the first "adult" book I read, at age 9 or so.
Formative you could say. It should be a "cult" favorite for MBA programs.
Rommel wasn't an aristocrat. No "von". His father was a schoolteacher. His mothers father got a "von" as a government service award but it wasnt hereditary. He was one of those Wehrmacht commoners like Model.
Erwin Rommel was NOT a junker aristocrat. He was firmly middle class, the son of a school teacher, born and raised in Heidenheim an der Brenz the southern German Kingdom of Württemberg, and accordingly he spoke German with a pronounced Swabian accent. He was about as far, both geographically and in terms of his social class, from being a Prussian junker aristocrat as a German general officer could be, and many of the Prussians who dominated the German officer corps looked down on him because of his comparatively low-born origin.
I stand by the use of the term "genocidal" as an accurate characterization of Hitler's war. In this I am in agreement with the vast majority of reputable historians of that conflict. In that regard one of the Nazi's objectives in the conquest of European Soviet Russia and its satellite states was the extermination of all Slavs between Germany and the Urals.
As for the German officers who took part in the failed 20 July plot against Hitler: their motivation in doing so came from their recognition that Germany was losing the war and would probably go down to defeat within the year. Had Germany been holding its own against the Allies, to the extent where it might seem that they could reach a negotiated settlement with the Allies -- an outright victory was by then out of the question -- they would never have conspired against the Fuehrer, much less made an attempt on his life. They had the whole war, not mention the years preceding it, to get rid of Hitler but they scarcely lifted a finger against him so long as Germany and the Wehrmacht's fortunes were in the ascendant. They only two men who emerged from the whole wretched affair with even scintilla of honor were Stauffenber and Ludwig Beck, and even they waited until in their view the war was irretrievably lost to take action.
And it was merely the germans, you have the vichy who were enthusiastic by far, or the Ukrainians like the followers of bandera (who is an inspiration to the post maiden regime) of course you have a special level among the croats In places like jasenovac (the kind of thing that unnerves Danilo kis as a child)
And, just to drive the point home, it should be said that high ranking German officers were not only well aware of Hitler's genocidal policies but were complicit in implementing them. They provided manpower (in the form of regular army troops) and logistical support to the murderous Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei, and other special action groups operating just behind the front lines. They turned a collective blind eye to the systematic commission of atrocities by Wehrmacht troops in the Ostheer, and even sanctioned and encouraged them in their depredations. They did nothing to ameliorate the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners taken in the opening months of the war in the East, which resulted in the death of the majority of those hapless men. They mercilessly enforced the notorious (and criminal) Commissar Order, with their own troops serving as the executioners. They were a disgrace, and that is why Eisenhower refused to return Jodl's salute at the war's end when the German general was ushered into Ike's presence. Ike told him that the German army and its commanders had long since forfeited their soldierly honor and did not merit the military courtesies officers normally extend to each other.
But, then I thought King Kong vs. Godzilla was a great movie at the time.
I was 11 and when my mother picked me up after watching Jason And Argonauts and I assured her that it was the greatest movie ever made!
No CGI can hold up to Ray Harryhausen.
Yes, the Blue Max is one of the few movies that even tries to show something of the class tensions that finally helped pull the Kaiser down. The performances are actually pretty good for a multi-national war epic; gotta mention my man James Mason, who owns weary cynicism.
Too tired for July 20. Maybe tomorrow,
Narr
Jupiter's bright tonight
Yes stauffenberg had been in poland and Russia, and it wasn't till north Africa, that he really turned (that's where valkyrie begind) the nuance was noticed by robert ludlum in one of his tales, the holcroft indifferently adapted into a film, wolfschanze is an evil organization I'm thid.
What is referred here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/why-we-need-danilo-kis/amp/
Oh, we got problems,
Right here in River City,
With a capital Pee
And rhymes with Tee
And stands for tool!
Yes, Narcisco, but ... Stauffenberg surely did take some time before reaching his own personal turning point. I cannot help but think that his Damascene conversion, if you will, was influenced in some measure by the defeat and mass surrender of Wehrmacht forces at Stalingrad and in Tunisia. Had the outcomes in those two places been favorable to Germany, I have a feeling he would never have seen the proverbial light . . .
Phillip Kerr's Gunther series has allowed to get a closer look, at the savagery in the system, but then they were up against stalin's forces which had a seemingly unending thirst for blood.
I saw Its a Mad Mas Mad Mad World as a kid at home on TV, with my dad. He explained the "Kicking the Bucket" gag to me. When I see it as an adult, I remember it as a movie seen with my dad. Always enjoy it, but Id like just once to see it without a 1000 commercials/
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Before I was nine I don't think I ever saw a movie the same year it was released. My family was so large and we were so hard up that a movie was a major project. Till I was nine or ten, my parents saw the movie first and banned it if it would be unsuitable for any age group for any reason. To give you an idea of how limiting this was, there were revivals of "family friendly" Disney movies in the Fifties and Sixties. My younger brother left Bambi when the mother was shot (this is the brother that became a Green Beret and won the Silver Star); and my younger sisters left Dumbo because it was too dreadful; and every one younger than myself left Pinocchio. But at nine an adult section was formed for my older brother and myself. I saw Robin Hood and His Merry Men in 1952 and Shane in 1953. We reenacted Robin Hood for years after with the other kids It's not a movie I like now though I wouldn't be surprised to find I'm still reenacting it. Shane was a good movie but bewildering when I saw it. Jack Palance as the villain made a huge impression and the man obviously needed to be shot. So why did Shane leave? The whole rest of the movie - guns and peaceful society; different societies in conflict (homesteaders vs. cattle men); former enemies (Confederate and Union soldiers) working together; the triangle - all passed over my head but make a very good movie even now.
"Away all Boats", Dodson (the novelist) - is a great novel. And realistic. Unlike Mailer's hogwash.
Too bad the movie is awful.
For some reason George Peppard was good at playing Germans. Don't know why. James Mason was too. Some actors just have that Kraut thing going.
Peppard sucked at playing German. He didn't even try a German accent in The Blue Max, which is probably better than the alternative. It almost made his rivalry with his fellow pilots seem to be be because he was an American.
"imaginary movie project"
Is the project imaginary?
Is that why it's not proceeding apace?
The movies seem to be real, even if some of your recollections may be imagined.
George Peppard player a major role in How The West Was Won. And he played it to perfection.
I may have to watch HTWWW again. I'm not saying GP is awful, just not very versatile.
I wonder if the late Kerr's Gunther could be made into a mini-series. The Good Bad Guy character and the conceit about even police states needing real detectives allows glimpses into Nazidom that are pretty compelling; Kerr got pretty sloppy with time and space in some of the books, but that's quibbling.
Narr
No Clayallee in the 3rd Reich, for one
True but the second half of his tails do occasionally bring him onto the 50s, Lthough it usually happens in Vienna not berlin,
narciso@741: So true, actually all over--Argentina, Cuba, the Riviera, and always with connections above and below board--a great way to move through the postwar world from a peculiar vantage point.
I read a few of Kerr's non-Bernie books, and The Second Angel was probably my favorite.
Narr
Too bad he died so young
Indeed, at first the premise was implausible a police detective in the third Reich, who was loaned out for various investigative functions (his Cuba vision was right out of Graham greene, some cross of Marlowe and gittes
Blogger madAsHell said...
Scared me to DEATH.
Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I spent evenings looking for the banshee wagon descending from the moon.
Yes! I saw this in the theater as a kid and the banshee scared the Schlitz out of me.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but for me The Music Man was all about redemption. Harold Hill was a wicked (in the original sense of the word) man, a thief and a charlatan, and let us remember he was about to get away with it when he chose to stay and face the music, and accept his punishment. He did this not because he was outsmarted, but rather because his love for Marian (the delicious Shirley Jones) made him a better man.
That is easily the corniest thing that I have ever written, and I mean every word of it.
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