Ten Random Thoughts on the Tenth: May 2011

--- What is this committed Julie Andrews enthusiast to do when he watches Star! and Darling Lili every time out, but shuns The Sound of Music?

--- We’re told that James Thurber said of Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Commandments: “It makes you realize what God could have done if He’d had the money.”

--- David Thomson in The Whole Equation says of Louis B. Mayer: “He had noticed that people liked going into the dark to see the light.”

--- Paul Stewart is one of my favorite character actors.

--- If they remade the filmed version of Sorry Wrong Number these days, one wonders if they would have the Stanwyck character using a smart phone, her (method?) thumbs, and text messages.


--- I think the young Patty McCormack would have been just right for playing the young girl in H.H. Munro’s short story: The Open Window.

--- Charlton Heston’s In the Arena tells us that of the forty some actresses with whom he worked the most difficult was Ava Gardner (in 55 Days at Peking).

--- I wish Jim Jarmusch made more movies.

--- I regularly dip into all the editions of David Thomson’s A Biographical Dictionary of Film (he is excellent on actresses) but I find most of his film reviews less satisfactory in Have You Seen …? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films.

--- If you cannot get to Mumbai, go to Southall in West London -- The Glassy Junction accepts rupees as legal tender for the bill.



Note: “Random thoughts” pieces bring to mind the great Jimmy Cannon, whose “Nobody Asked Me, But” set the form. Any similarity stops there.

Ten Random Thoughts on the Tenth: April

--- After watching Frankenstein last week, I still cannot rid myself of an image I have long had of an assistant director on the back lot shouting at the extras to turn in their instruments and pick up their torches.

--- It is likely that Paul Douglas’s underlying vulnerability makes me invariably enjoy his screen persona, whereas the more blustery style of Broderick Crawford wears thin.

--- I suspect Joseph Cotten has been in more great films than almost any other featured player.

--- I am tired of seeing and hearing the over-anthologized grapefruit scene in Public Enemy -- Mae Clarke deserves better.

--- I am not sure if I was ever taken with Wuthering Heights, but in recent years if it shows up on the same day as Cobra Woman, I’ll opt for Montez.


-- I think it was on Turner Classic Movies that I heard the following: Cagney performances were never real but always true.

--- I revisited Antonioni’s Il Grido on Netflix Instant last week, after last seeing it a half century ago, and enjoyed it immensely.

--- I like Mamet-speak.

--- I have a friend in Gravesend (Kent) who has an excellent collection of Laurel and Hardy materials but is also a Luddite -- he attends no cinemas, has no personal computer, no television, no DVD or VCR player.

--- In 2004, I was on a French tour of Normandy D-Day sites where the French guide likely used the term “liberators” a few hundred times -- while I heard the following three words only once: American, British, Canadian -- each in connection with a cemetery.


Note: “Random thoughts” pieces bring to mind the great Jimmy Cannon, whose “Nobody Asked Me, But” set the form. Any similarity stops there.

Ten random thoughts on the tenth

--- I wish I was in Hammersmith.

--- I like the idea that Turner Classic Movies showed a baseball movie around the same time as The Super Bowl on February 6.

--- We're told that when William Wyler tired of watching excessive close-ups in others' films he would try to look around the subject's head to see what the other characters were doing.

--- When I was a boy, in a dark movie house, The Spiral Staircase scared me more than any of the Universal horror films.

--- My favorite mogul was (and still is) Louis B. Mayer (I know all the bad stuff).


--- I usually admire Lee Marvin, and Jane Fonda was a good comedienne and sexy then -- but the motor of Cat Ballou belongs to Nat Cole and Stubby Kaye.

--- Am I the only one who would have preferred Eli Wallach rather than Frank Sinatra as Maggio?

--- When I go on about being there, back during the Sarris-Kael dust-ups, I feel like one of those cantankerous old Civil War veterans in thirties westerns.

--- Watching it again on Turner Classic Movies in January, I had forgotten how good 99 River Street is.

--- My English friend, Nicholas, of High Barnet, whose family hails from the north, is fond of saying: “You can always tell a Yorkshireman -- but you can't tell him much.”



Note: “Random thoughts” pieces bring to mind the great Jimmy Cannon, whose “Nobody Asked Me, But” set the form. Any similarity stops there.

Source: Photograph of the young woman at the tube platform is from As I Travel