He played with William Holden and Edgar Buchanon in TEXAS, a pretty good oater in which his best friend, William Holden goes bad and Edgar Buchanon, a dentist criminal, sings Buffalo Gals at the big dance.
He played the Dutchman in "Lust for Gold" and I've never seen that one, nor the other two you just bought. But, I think I've seen almost every other picture he's been in including "Jubal" and "Texas". (lol)
Have you seen Glenn in Human Desire, where he's an engineer, out of prison, romancing Broderick Crawford's wife?
I've just been reading about "Human Desire" on IMDb. That's another one I missed. Sounds like a good one. I'll keep a lookout for it on TCM.
I liked Ford in "Gilda", "The Fastest Gun Alive", "A Stolen Life" with Bette Davis playing twins (he marries the wrong twin) and "Cimmaron" and "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", both of which got terrible reviews and were quite long, but didn't prevent me from enjoying them enough to watch them a second time. (lol)
Human Desire is one of the potboilers they inundated us with at the time. I enjoy a film like that just to get a look at the actors.
Another actor I have always been interested in, to me, is not a really good actor, but some of his films are really worth watching. Broderick Crawford. I want to get copies of some of his better ones, such as All the King's Men, The Last Posse, and Square of Violence. Many of his films are not available, it seems.
Last night I watched two Jimmy Stewart films. Made for Each Other is a good film, but I espacially liked Pot O' Gold. It's a musical comedy that also stars Horace Heidt. In it, Jimmy plays harmonica and sings. Anybody know if he actually did his own music?
Jimmy sang, Edgar, but the harmonica was dubbed.
Last weekend I bought Breakfast at Tiffany's, a mistake, since I recalled reading the little paperback of it in the late 60s, I guess it was. I finished with a vague sense of disappointment. Why I thought the movie could redeam the original work, I can't say. I think I may have been influenced by those who gush over it. The film never really built in interest for me. I eventually went off to work on a manuscript I was finishing. Sorry fans, but, I didn't like it.
I love Audrey Hepburn but "Breakfast At Tiffany's" I never got. I've never been able to sit through even twenty minutes of it before losing interest and wandering away.
It's not one that I've added to my collection of favorite movies to keep, Edgar, - and I've got a voluminous collection of favorites. I did, however, enjoy the New York scenery.
It was beautifully filmed, and I have loved Hepburn since seeing her in My Fair Lady in 1964. Personally, I believe it was Capote to blame.
W. Texas town recalls when it became Giant
50 years ago, James Dean came to Marfa to star in his final movie
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
RESOURCES
MOVIE HIGHLIGHTS
Some facts about the 1956 movie classic Giant:
Director: George Stevens, who directed Gunga Din, Woman of the Year, A Place in the Sun and Shane
Cast: James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Mercedes McCambridge, Chill Wills, Jane Withers, Earl Holliman, Dennis Hopper and Carroll Baker
Plot: Traces a quarter-century of history of the Bick Benedict family, headed by Hudson, who becomes enamored with a Maryland woman (Taylor) in the 1920s, marries her and takes her to his ranch in Texas, where she has difficulties adapting. She draws the attention of ranch hand Jett Rink (Dean), who falls in love with her. One of their daughters, however, falls for Rink. The melodrama takes aim at discrimination of Mexicans in Texas and how the state was changing.
Awards: 1957 Oscar for best director, one of 10 Academy Award nominations the film earned, including best-actor nominations for Hudson and Dean, and best-supporting-actress nomination for McCambridge
Associated Press
MARFA - With its population eroded and the lone movie theater long shuttered, tiny Marfa clings to the memories of when it was Giant.
Fifty years ago this month, this West Texas town, with its wide-open landscape and mountains on the horizon, became the setting for a Hollywood classic about a wealthy Texas cattle-raising family featuring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.
"Every day we have people who come through who are curious about Giant," says Joe Duncan, 46, who grew up in nearby Fort Davis and now owns the Paisano Hotel, home for two months in the summer of 1955 for dozens of the film's cast and crew.
Lee Puckett, events coordinator with the Marfa Chamber of Commerce, thinks it's the iconic Dean who keeps people fascinated with the town and movie. "James Dean is remarkable, the following he has," he said.
Mythical status
To mark the golden anniversary of Giant, Warner Brothers is shipping a print of the film from the corporate vault to Marfa for a July 2 benefit to raise money for the Marfa Public Library.
Because the Palace, Marfa's only movie theater, closed about 30 years ago, a projection truck will beam the movie to an inflatable screen for an audience of 500 people. For their $50, attendees will get a custom-made lawn chair carrying the film logo.
Dean achieved mythical status when he was killed driving his Porsche Spyder to a car race in California shortly after he finished filming Giant. The young, cool actor played Jett Rink, the sullen ranch hand-turned-wildcatter who struck it rich by striking oil on his small piece of Presidio County real estate outside Marfa.
It's a fictional twist. Rink's gusher wouldn't happen in real life, at least not around Marfa, about 180 miles southeast of El Paso and 75 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border.
The chief minerals in Presidio County are sand and gravel, not oil.
The movie remains a classic for the themes it represents, both on screen and off.
In the story based on the 1952 Edna Ferber novel, the Benedict clan headed by patriarch Hudson was old Texas wealth with land and cattle, living in a three-story Victorian mansion on the vast ranch they called Reata. Oil-rich Rink was new money.
The film was among the first in the mainstream to address racism, in this case, against Hispanics in Texas. A famous scene in the movie has Bick Benedict, played by Hudson, objecting to a restaurant owner's refusal to serve Hispanics. Benedict is beaten by the bigoted cafe owner while The Yellow Rose of Texas plays in a jukebox.
Little remains
The book already had received a cool reception in Texas, and Hudson recalled in 1983 getting letters during the filming in Marfa that warned: "Get out of Texas! Get out or you'll be shot."
The only shooting, however, was through a lens and directed by George Stevens, who died in 1975. He spent about $1 million ?- about 20 percent of his budget ?- filming in Marfa.
"They looked around at a lot of places, but obviously he wanted to film it in Texas," said George Stevens Jr., the founding director of the American Film Institute who worked on the screenplay with his father. "He just saw it as a place where he could create that image of this kind of Victorian house on a great plain."
Rink's "ranch" in the movie, where Dean gets doused with oil from his suddenly gushing well, is right along U.S. 90 about midway between Marfa and the Reata site.
A water windmill, teetering slightly and missing a couple of blades, and a cistern are all that's left.
The Reata palace was only a facade, the product of Warner Brothers' carpenters. Today only the supporting poles remain, a ghostly wood skeleton monument towering over the dusty grazing land a few hundred yards from the home and ranch of Clay Evans, 69, whose father's ranch was the site for the movie.
"We had to tear down a lot of it to keep it from falling on people," said Evans, who still has a dog-eared copy of the script, bound with a black cover and engraved with George Stevens' name.
Memories of filming
The set was shipped among tons of equipment on flatbed truck trailers and railcars to Marfa, now a town of just 2,100 residents, about half the number of people who lived here when the movie was made.
"It was very exciting," said Jane White, who was paid $10 a day as an extra in the film. "People came from a hundred miles around to watch."
White, who was 29 at the time, and the other extras would get into long dresses and makeup at a building in downtown Marfa, then take a bus 16 miles west to the ranch.
For three days she stood talking with a friend, holding a glass of water colored brown with diluted Coke to resemble a highball, for a Texas barbecue scene that lasted only seconds on screen.
"It flashed by so quickly," she said of her film appearance.
Hudson, who died in 1985, remembered the intense heat of West Texas.
"Hot, with no relief," he told Southern Methodist University history professor Ronald Davis in an interview that was part of an SMU oral history project. " ... the weather just put its thumb on us and kept us right down into the ground."
"My relationships with George Stevens, James Dean and Rock Hudson changed my life in many ways," Elizabeth Taylor told the Associated Press. "The people of Texas were warm and wonderful, and my memories of their kindness stays in my heart after all these years."
As a 15-year-old, Lucy Garcia watched the filming of the movie during the day, then spent evenings hobnobbing with the movie people at the Paisano.
She keeps a framed photo of Dean on her bookshelf and a box of Giant mementoes at her home ?- near the intersection of Dean and Texas streets.
"When they left, the city was very sad to see them go," she said of the actors.
At the Paisano, a room in the lobby is filled with photos and movie posters and offers Dean and Giant souvenirs. The hotel restaurant is called Jett's Grill.
Duncan said he's booked for the upcoming anniversary event, and he's somewhat surprised.
"Who would have thought 25 years ago when they had a 25th anniversary they'd still be talking about it today?" he said.
Edward G. Robinson Jr.
edgarblythe wrote:Here is a mystery I have been trying to solve for quite a few years:
I read an autobiography of Edward G. Robinson, Jr. He was constantly in trouble and he and his father were estranged. The last part of the book tells how they reconciled and even performed together on an episode of the GE Theater. It ends with Manny, as he was called, asserting that he was on the right track and puruing a movie career. I know that he died not that long later, but have never been able to find any person who knows how it happened. Edward G. Robinson's autobiography doesn't even tell.
According to newspapers in 1974, Edward G. Robinson Jr. took 2 tranquilizers and drank a quart of tequila before retiring. He was an alcoholic, and I doubt he was trying to commit suicide. His death was most likely accidental. His wife, Nancy called paramedics because she woke up and saw he was turning blue and unable to breathe. I guess by the time paramedics got there it was too late. From what has been told to me second hand, Edward G. Robinson Jr. vomited in his sleep and choked to death. Sad ending for a man who died so young.
Thanks, Shawn. I have been asking that question a lot of years.
Well, finally, edgar, I found this thread. Soooo you say the Yellow Rose of Texas was playing when Rock beat up some rednecks? Wow! Dennis Hopper was as clean and neat as James Dean. What should I see tonight on the news but Lance Armstrong compared to Easy Rider.
I've been trying to get some responses on Beyond the Sea from everyone. I loved it. Did you see it, Texas?
I didn't see Beyond the Sea. It came and went rather quickly. I plan to get the DVD. Bobby Darin holds a special place in my heart. When I was about twenty, I developed an affinity for the man, a brotherly feeling. I made a sort of pledge to follow his life in conjunction with my own. He left us so quickly, I am still getting used to it.
I went to Target and bought Beyond the Sea just today. First, I thought it would be disasterous to let Spacey sing, but he did a reasonable imitation. My one criticism is, such a film doesn't have the time to cover all the important stuff. I recall that when Bobby made his breakthrough at the Copa, George Burns took a fatherly interest in him and followed him about quite a bit. But George Burns wasn't in the movie at all. His experiences with Tim Hardin, who wrote If I Were a Carpenter, not mentioned. The phase of his career when he produced recordings, such as Eighteen Yellow Roses, and You're the Reason I'm Living, missing. Still, I enjoyed it.
Good morning, edgar. Well, as you know, the life of Bobby Darin was foreign to me. I was just anxious to see how Spacey did. He is an actor, but all of his interpretations seem so effortless and excellent.
I tried to talk lightwizard into watching Hide and Seek. It is not the type movie one might think that it is. DeNiro and Dakota Fanning are truly superb, and the ending is quite a surprise.
Looking forward to watching 'Beyond the Sea'.
We watched "The Aviator" with Leonardo di Caprio the other night. I was very impressed by his performance and the movie itself. Fast-paced and covered alot of ground in a short time with terrific visuals and creative editing. Cate Blanchett disturbed me greatly, tho. Her imitation of Kate Hepburn was almost comical.
The Aviator is on my list to see.
Hide and Seek I never heard of.
