Movie Chat

Thelma Ritter.
If I began naming my favorite character actors the list would be long indeed. I could name a few, though: Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern, Jack Elam, Thomas Mitchell, John Caradine, Jane Darwell, Marjorie Maine, Margaret Hamilton - So many ...

Hey, willow weep for me. Who is that? As one horse said to another:

The pace is familiar, but I can't recall the race.

I just recalled the movie that Sam Shepherd made:

Frances.

Met Sam at Mountain Lake...both he and Jessica Lang and her very silent children looking at me from under inquisitive eyes.

Thelma Ritter, Letty.

ah, yes, edgar.

Still love Kevin Anderson.

from modern movies...David Morse is a favorite.

Here's another oft overlooked character actor in modern times...John C. Reilly...he is to the 90's what Tom Skeritt was to the 70's & 80's to me...you see him everywhere.

Some of my favorites are Joan Davis, Franklin Pangborn, Edgar Kennedy,Eugene Pallette,Hugh Herbert,Sheldon Leonard,Edward Everett Horton, C. Aubrey Smith, Billie Burke, Una Merkel, and the list goes on.

I used to get C. Aubrey Smith and Henry Stephenson confused. Stephenson appeared in a number of Errol Flynn films (Captain Blood, Elizabeth and Essex, Charge of the Light Brigade, Prince and the Pauper, and several Johnny Weismuller Tarzan pics and was always a kind and gentle soul. So was C. Aubrey Smith (Little Women with K. Hepburn, Waterloo Bridge, the original Tarzan the Ape Man, Wee Willie Winkie w. Shirley Temple) but he would start out as a stern, forbidding sort who had to be warmed up along the way.

John C. Reilly has shown that he can handle any type of role as did John Carradine in his day.

Kevin Anderson is on my CD of the original London cast recording of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Sunset Blvd. When Weber decided he didn't want Patti Lupone in the Broadway production, and cast Glenn Close, Kevin Anderson declined the role on Broadway.

I love Sam Shepard, Letty.

Sorry, if I got carried away here, Edgar. When we start discussing the "oldies", I have to be restrained.

Carry on. I love it.

thank you. I don't see many new movies, because I just don't get out to the theater any more. But, I grew up with the movies as my babysitter for many years , including the serials/ cliff-hangers, travel-logues, cartoons, shorts where they featured the big bands of the day, etc. And, sometimes, I sat through the main features twice. (lol) And now I'm seeing them all over again on TCM.

It's funny, but when I think Character Actor I think black and white. I agree John Reilly is great. But my current favorite is Dominique Pinion. He was in Diva, City of Lost Children, and Amalie

Anybody noticed the $I.00 DVDs in stores now? Mostly old stuff nobody wants, but I have bought fifteen or twenty. One has three episodes of Robert Newton's tv series Long John Silver. There is Black Brigade with Stephen Boyd, Richard Pryor, Billy Dee Williams, Rosie Grier, in a WWII film. Drums in the Deep South, with Guy Madison (Remember Wild Bill Hickock and Jingles?) in which he is a Confederate officer sent to attack a Yankee supply train. The Proud and the Damned; Chuck Conners, Caesar Romero, mercenary civil war soldiers somewhere south of the Rio Grande, looks like. Since I like old films and can't recall any of these I plan to watch some on nights when my wife is off with her sister or something.

I remember Drums in the Deep South. It also starred James Craig who was once touted as the "new Clark Gable". But, I don't remember the story. I remember Guy Madison in Till the End of Time, a story about returning WWII soldiers, a movie which gave Bill Williams (Kit Carson on TV) and Robert Mitchum their first really big breaks in the movies. Guy Madison became a heart-throb after that film.

In the proud and the damned, Chuck Conners' gypsy girlfriend gets her ears cut off by Jose Greco, whom Chuck kills. Chuck gets hanged, his buddies get killed in a local war, all but one, who rides into the sunset. They don't make 'em like that anymore, do they? Yeah, I guess they do.

Well, I'm still waiting for my sis to send me I Walked With a Zombie...It is not only scary, it can be compared to The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Jose Greco? The flamenco dancer? I had a crush on him after seeing him dance at a concert in my home town. I can't imagine him cutting off anyone's ear.

After Chuck and the woman spent the night together, Jose, the lead Gypsy, was outraged enough to do that. Chuck tells him, "You're a dead man" and proceeds to shoot at his ears. Jose gets a knife into Chuck then Chuck drills him. Whew.

Sounds like an intense movie, Edgar. I guess Jose's dancing career was over around that time. He could look pretty mean at times while dancing. (that intense curled lip expression that some flamenco dancers have) But oh, he was such an excellent dancer.

Yeah, Jose looked mean enough to be the Soup Nazi or something, but he sure could dance. He and his traditional dancing partner (his wife?) also danced in the movie.

I just looked at the cast of your movie, Edgar, and I don't think that was his wife, but I could be wrong. But what really surprised me was that Greco was born in Italy. And the cause of his death is a shocker:

"On 18 Sept. 2000 in Trenton, New Jersey, USA, Greco's toe was broken in an altercation with Amtrak railway police. The injury required surgery. The Greco family maintained that that led to a subsequent infection and ultimately Greco's death."