Amph Hollywood Death Watch

Beautiful, she was. A great actress, maybe not, though she was generally at least serviceable and certainly capable of sometimes surprisingly nuanced turns. I still think my favorite performance of hers is in National Velvet though.

 

Her voice was a bit of a problem. Oddly, when she used a Southern accent, the problem was solved. Which is why I liked "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (it's also on view in "Raintree County")--this strange slutty creature emerged.

When very young, as in "A Place in the Sun" she's so beautiful, she's practically superhuman. You understand a murder being committed for her. And then some.

 

She is pretty great in A Place In the Sun, a movie I didn't much care for otherwise.

 

Oh, yes, she got it that time. When she got it, she could be great.

 

Her voice was definitely a problem. Too high and thin, especially when younger, and at times she didn't know how to use it. In this way she reminds me of Vivien Leigh, also one of the world's truly great beauties, but also not blessed with good vocal equipment. Still, they both did pretty well anyway, working with what they had.

Hearing Elizabeth Taylor attempt to sing, "Send in the Clowns" in the film version of "A Little Night Music" must have given Stephen Sondheim fits!

Elizabeth Taylor "attempts" Sondheim

On the positive side, Taylor used her voice to maximum effect in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" with no problem at all.

 

Farley Granger 1925-2011

Worked with Hitchcock twice ("Rope" and "Strangers on a Train"), Milestone twice ("The North Star" and "The Purple Heart"), Nicholas Ray ("They Live by Night") once, Anthony Mann ("Side Street")once and Visconti ("Senso")once.

Look for those movies. The rest is pretty disposable.

 

Strangers On a Train was surely his greatest legacy. He's also good in Rope, the other Hitchcock. He's surprisingly good in They Live By Night too.

 

Ironically, Hitchcock didn't want him; he had William Holden in mind.

 

He was pretty good in an episode of Get Smart, where he plays a vain and rather pathetic actor.

He's pretty ludicrous in Rope. I think his best performance was They Live by Night - he's well cast, at any rate.

 

I think he's perfectly cast in Strangers On a Train too. Holden, I think, would have had too much strength. Guy is supposed to be a push-over and, I think, rather pathetic too. He's in a loveless marriage, being whipped to hell and back by his harridan wife; and Walker's Bruno dominates him from the word go. Rather than off-balancing the picture, as you might think it would, I think it makes the movie better. Holden might have done a very good Guy, but it would have been different. And I like Granger's Guy; he's . . . weak and I think he needs to be.

I mean, the entire third act hinges on the fact that he can't even just put his tennis opponent away, even when it's frigging life and death. I think he's supposed to be a pretty inept person; ironically, despite all the hell he goes through, Bruno really does fix Guy's life for him, when it's all said and done; if Bruno hadn't come along, things would have kept as they were for the next forty years probably. God, what a great movie. Need to watch it again. I've talked myself into it.

 

Sidney Lumet, 1924-2011

Some great movies; the emphasis always on acting--he started as an actor.

 

I always thought he had a cool name.

 

Twelve Angry Men, Serpico, Network, just to name a few. He was one of the greats.

 

Wow, I'm shocked. This is one of those guys you thought would never be gone. Rarely will a director be as consistently brilliant as Lumet was. His first movie was 12 Angry Men in 1957, his last was Before the Devil Knows Your Dead in 2007, and in-between were all sorts of classics. May well be the most underrated director in film history.

 

This hits me hard. Lumet's one of my top 5 directors, a real inspiration. His book, Making Movies, is superb (and highly informative), and between 12 Angry Men, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker, Fail-Safe, The Hill, The Offence, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, Equus, Deathtrap, Running on Empty, Find me Guilty, and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, he's provided me with more entertainment and joy than most other filmmakers. Comfortably. He will be missed.

 

An appreciation of Sidney Lumet by Owen Gleibermann

An appreciation of Sidney Lumet by Martin Scorsese

 

Q&A is a great forgotten Lumet film. He got Nick Nolte's best performance out of him in that movie. Terrific; terrifying.

 

Lots of media coverage of Lumet; more than usual, anyway.

 

Marie-France Pisier,1944-2011

She died by drowning.

 

Hubert J. ?Hub? Schlafly Jr.

Inventor of the teleprompter dies at age 91.

 

Jackie Cooper, child star, youngest Best Actor nominee ever, and Perry White in the Dick Donner Superman films, has passed away at the age of 88.

 

Will be missed. I first saw noticed him in Superman; years later I discovered I had actually seen him even earlier in Treasure Island without realising (so young!).

 

Arthur Laurents 1917-2011

 

Can't deny the excellence of West Side Story, even if the brilliance is mostly in the music. RIP.

 

To have written the screeplay for Hitchcock's Rope so many years ago, and a script for The Turning Point in the 70s for Herbert Ross, which was a fine film, shows Laurents had staying power for decades as a screenwriter.

This guy must have had some kind of energy level...he restaged and directed his own West Side Story three years ago on Broadway, made it more contemporary, added more Spanish.
Approximately FIFTY years after it originally ran.

And he did that at....age NINETY. Wow.

Arthur Laurents was quite a talent, his resume and accomplishments speak for themselves.