A Movie Scene Quiz

It could only be Shirley MacLaine, Raggedy.

Shirley and Julia acted together in "Steel Magnolias".

None other than Shirley, Wandeljw.

Raggedy, here's a thread you'll like...

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=73617

Thank you, Mac. I Like!

Did you catch South Pacific with Brian Stokes Mitchell?

Yes I did, thanks to you! That man can sing.

I had some trouble with Reba as Nellie though. And I got tired of Alec Baldwin, and thought longingly of Ray Walston as Luther.

Mac, I am in complete agreement about South Pacific, except I had a lot of trouble accepting Nellie and was actually embarrassed by Alec's portrayal of Luther. I did like the fellow that played Lieut. Cable.

Ah, yes. Thanks for reminding me that I wanted to learn more about the fellow who sang Cable. His name is Jason Danieley. Here's his website: http://www.jasondanieley.com/ .

Wow. Thanks Mac. He's done a lot. He'd make a great Johnny Nolan in Tree Grows in Brooklyn. While I was watching South Pac., I was picturing him in "Miss Saigon". I think he did a fine acting job, too.

I saw that production of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and he was great in it.

I guess I'm the only one here who actually liked Reba McEntire in South Pacific. At first, it bothered me that that her singing was so much more "country" than Broadway, but after a while her charm won me over, and I stopped caring about her style of singing. On the other hand, I'm in complete agreement with you guys about both Brian Stokes Mitchell and Alec Baldwin.

Last night I saw a wonderful play called Faith Healer, by Brian Friel (who wrote Dancing at Lughnasa). Ralph Fiennes plays an itinerant Irish faith healer, Cherry Jones plays his wife, and Ian McDiarmid (whom I had never seen before, but who has apparently been in several Star Wars movies) plays his manager. The time period is unspecified, but there are some hints which suggest it may be the 1930's or 1940's.

The play consists of four monologues: the first is by the faith healer, the second by the wife, the third by the manager, and the last is by the faith healer again. The characters' descriptions of their lives on the road overlap in many ways, but they also differ in many ways, some trivial (whose idea was it to play the song "The Way You Look Tonight" before each of the faith healer's appearances? Each character says it was one of the others), others not so trivial (when the faith healer goes home to visit a dying parent, is it his mother or his father?). One thing that is clear from the monologues is that, while the faith healer may be a bit of a con man, he also has a gift which -- on occasion -- enables him actually to heal people, and the strain of never knowing when he'll succeed and when he'll fail takes a terrible toll on him. Beyond that, I'll say no more. The acting was sensational -- even though there was no onstage interaction between the characters, you got a real sense of their relationships.

Thank you for posting about the play, bree. Sounds wonderful.
You've mentioned before that you really like Cherry Jones and I hope some day I'll see her in a movie, or maybe on TV. Does Ralph Fiennes look as good on stage as he does in the movies?

My daughter just handed me the Theater page from the May issue of Vogue. There is a short paragraph about Faith Healer. "Any list of the greatest living playwrights would have to include the Irish dramatist Brian Friel, whose lyrical, mournful works include "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" and "Aristocrats". 1979's "Faith Healer", comes to New York from Dublin's Gate Theater...... ..and the next two sentences tell us "the story reaches its climax in a terrible act of violence."

I suppose he does, but he's such a good actor I could only see him as the seedy alcoholic he was playing, so I can't say I found him especially appealing (and I mean that as a compliment).

Yes, thanks for the report on Faith Healer, bree. I'd pay big bucks to see Ralph Fiennes or Cherry Jones on stage - both for the price of one ticket is a great deal.

I like his eyes.

I was looking at a list of celebrities born on this day and thought this was interesting trivia. I'll put it into question form.

It's about an author born on May 1 (died in 1999) . Don't peek at today's birthdays.

A chapter of one of his novels,"- - - - - 18", was published in a magazine quarterly before the book was published.

Just before the scheduled publication date for his novel, another author's book was published using "18" in its title. So, the author renamed his book, and by doing so, actually increased the number of requirements expected of the characters in his book.

It was later adapted into a movie, which I did not care for at all. But, I loved the book.

I believe that the book in question is Catch-22 (by birthday boy Joseph Heller, of course), and that the book by the other author was Leon Uris's Mila 18.

The question was very clearly written, but I don't know if I would have gotten the answer if I hadn't heard this story before.

And you are correct as usual, bree. I had never heard the story before. "Catch 18" just doesn't sound right, does it?

I thought "Mila 18" was a great book, but extremely depressing. It was never filmed.

No, it doesn't!

In my opinion, Robert Altman's "M*A*S*H" overshadowed Mike Nichols' "Catch-22". "M*A*S*H*" had been released a few months earlier.

I've never seen M*A*S*H from beginning to end, Wandeljw.

I felt that the movie "Catch 22" captured nothing of the characters' personalities. It actually distorted them. It went from buffoonery to gore to needless action. I loved the book. I detested the movie.

His birthday is today:




In what movie did his companion get bitten on the leg by a guard dog? :wink:


Here's a picture of the pants he was wearing at the time.