dirac

A tidbit from The New York Post. Macaulay's review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/dan...over&st=cse Anybody see the show?

Leigh reviews Savion Glover. http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/thea...f8GoVYTgIWKYBaN

I really like The Major and the Minor. Anoth Bachelor Mother is a funny one, too. I love the scene where David Niven goes back to his own store to get a malfunctioning toy duck replaced. Rogers looked perfect with Astaire and even in the early days when she's less sure of herself she still can't do anything that looks ugly or bad. I also love the lovely Rita but I tend to get the feeling that Rita is just a little too young and too resplendent for him to be quite at ease. It's true that the MGM musicals are garish but it's possible to argue that as a whole they're better movies (the Freed unit ones, anyway) - better written, better directed, better acted as a whole, even if the noisy color and often intrusive orchestrations get on your nerves. ("Dancing in the Dark" with its tasteful orchestration and Charisse's simple dress, is such a relief; I confess these days I usually turn off the movie after that number.) On the other hand, Fred and Ginger's RKO musicals have the two of them and other assets.

Thanks. I had heard of the book and title, although I've never read it, but didn't know it had been dramatized. I found what looks like the production website here. That's interesting. Cole must have been quite a dancer, I'm sure.

I had some of the same thoughts while reading the article, bart. This sounds nice and it is nice, but not everyone can expect a personal intervention by the great Michael Kaiser with a jittery board. I'm also a little surprised that Feldman had to be told it was okay to promote his outfit, but never mind. I can also understand why leaders of smaller arts organizations living on the edge might be less than receptive to boilerplate about "passion" and "boldness." On the other hand Kaiser's tirelessness and willingness to help are undoubted pluses and much needed.

Thanks, atm711. I hadn't heard of this production - what is it like? I should also clarify the language of my OP to say that "please tell us about it here" means "in this forum" and not necessarily in this particular thread. Thanks.

Much as I like talking about old movies, I would also like to hear about other arts in Other Arts. If you've visited an exhibition a/o a museum or seen a play recently, or anything else of an artistic nature that you'd like to talk about, please tell us about it here.

I also like A Woman of Affairs, MakarovaFan. I saw it in a revival house. It's a bowdlerized version of the old Michael Arlen barn-burner The Green Hat. The vicious double standard imposed on women back when is much in evidence but Garbo makes the hoariest scenes moving even as various men sit in judgment on her. I also like a very young Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as her brother. They match up well together. Garbo was on the infamous box office poison list, but her case was slightly different from that of the others, most of whom had for one reason or another worn out their welcome with the public. Garbo was still very popular in Europe and valuable also as a credit to her studio. But the closing of the European market with the coming of the war and the expense involved with a Garbo vehicle meant the studio could no longer swallow the costs (hence the turn to comedy in Ninotchka and Two-Faced Woman, with the goal of making her persona more accessible). Her departure was not intended to be permanent, but that's how it turned out. I remember reading that she waived the money owed on her contract, which she certainly didn't have to do. Garbo had a couple of years in drama school but Davis had more extensive theatrical experience and training. In many ways she was a "natural" by which I don't mean unskilled but with an instinct for the camera that probably no training can give.

Garbo held a special place of prestige at MGM and had she wanted better material it was certainly possible, maybe without even a fight. As far as one can tell she didn't feel the need. (After her early years she didn't need a Svengali, either.) The tests for the proposed Duchess of Langeais do exist and they show a ravishing Garbo in her early forties. It's a shame it didn't happen. (I don't know that MGM pictures were less interesting than those of other studios...less quirky, certainly, more geared to beauty and glamor, but not necessarily duller.) I have a cinema-literate friend who feels much the same way, bart.

It is hard to find. Movies Unlimited used to have it but I took a look and they no longer offer it. I'm not sure I would spend twenty dollars on an old VHS, but then I've seen it. Amazon is offering the VHS brand new for 250 smackers, which is nuts.

I didn't say they weren't enjoyable entertainments, many made with craftmanship and sometimes more than that. I also think Grand Hotel is great fun. My point was that it is unfortunate, however, that such a talent was put to work on mostly inferior material.

I think you make some good points, EvilNinjaX, and I agree with Helene's post as well. Ballet dancers and opera stars used to appear on the old television variety shows alongside some very doubtful performers. These new shows do suggest that there are millions of people who want to see dance and I think if ballet can capitalize in some way then it can only be a good thing. It is in any case worth trying. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, etc.

Good luck. Garbo made a lot of junk, and it's one of the mysteries of her career that she never seems to have fought for better quality material as opposed to more money. However, it looks as if this set contains most of the chief titles and after all, Garbo movies do have Garbo. You should enjoy her exchanges with those two great technicians of the stage, John Barrymore and Ina Claire, and Adrian really goes to town in Mata Hari. Camille is my favorite among these even if in some ways it's no better than the others. Will look forward to your reports! It's so much easier to be a movie buff than it used to be, I must say.....

We'll have to agree to disagree, Patrick. Rogers was good in drama even if she occasionally bit off more than she could chew. 'Stage Door' has great ensemble acting and the faceoff between Hepburn and Rogers is memorable and funny. It's a fine film.

Thanks, kfw.

Thanks for posting, sidwich. I think in fact Dunne didn't get around to making that many comedies until the time of Theodora and she was already established as a musical and dramatic star. She made comedies into her forties. Some of her later movies are kind of meh as often happens in a star's fading years but I don't know that she was necessarily making the worst choices of those available to her. I'd also have to disagree about Rogers' choice of career path. She was smart enough to see that her shelf life as a female musical star was likely to be short and she took care to start diversifying into straight comedy and drama. I would say that paid off for her. By the end of the Thirties she was one of RKO's major assets and within a couple of years she had won an Oscar, probably something few would have predicted for Ginger in her early days. "Stage Door" is a classic by any standard and she gave a lovely performance in another Gregory La Cava picture, "The Primrose Path," a drama that isn't frequently revived but holds up well. She made some bad decisions and her star started to fade after she hit thirty-five, but that was the cutoff age for most female stars back then and it might have happened in the normal course of things anyway.

As far as Imitation of Life is concerned I think it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. I liked the earlier version better because I think it's better as a whole, especially the acting, but it's just one person's taste. The second version is a product of the declining years of the Golden Age and shows it.

Sounds good. We've already wheeled quite freely already.

Much obliged as always for these alerts, volcanohunter.

I think that Quiggin's Golden Age goal lines are the standard ones, which I would be inclined to agree with, but it's your topic title, miliosr, and I'm flexible. Patrick, I'm not sure how dated the material of Love Affair/An Affair to Remember/Love Affair was in 1957. Audiences didn't seem to think so, anyway. It was a big hit for Grant at a time when he sorely needed one and thanks in part to Nora Ephron the film is regularly revived today. The earlier version is better IMO but the second one is still pretty good.

Very true. A home in the academy seems to work for poetry but not necessarily for other art forms. (Although some poets resist it when they can. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath shared a common horror of getting stuck in teaching jobs. Conditions in Britain made it possible for them to survive outside the academy. In America they probably couldn't have done.) Nice comments from everyone. Others?

Thanks for reminding me, ballet_n00b. I think you're right, she would have been much better (not that Hilliard set a very high bar). In those two movies Fred and Ginger are really functioning as the second leads.

I like her too, Anthony_NYC. (My only tiny cavil would be that she has a Jeanette MacDonald tendency to show too many teeth.) Dunne could do a lot of things very well and although I don't know much about her either from what I understand she was a charming and very professional person. She had bad luck in that a number of her vehicles (Love Affair, Show Boat, Back Street, Anna and the King of Siam, Magnificent Obsession are the ones that spring to mind) were remade later and hers dropped from circulation. The Awful Truth is one of those great comedies that make me laugh every time I see it. I also like Joy of Living and I'll put in a plug for a lovely movie called Penny Serenade. It's a weepie but it's so well done you overlook the sentimentality and Dunne and Cary Grant are awfully good.

I just PM'd you, miliosr. Let me know if that doesn't work. I was a bad moderator and allowed us to wander too far off the reservation, sorry. Yes, Brooks was in Denishawn as a teenager. She wasn't a favorite of Miss Ruth's but Ted Shawn liked her and cast her. Apparently St. Denis decided, perhaps not entirely fairly, that Louise was too fond of a good time. Of course, Brooks was just a kid. The handbook was written after Brooks had to leave Hollywood for want of work and returned home to Kansas, where she opened a short-lived dance studio. She had also been part of a nightclub dance duo for awhile in addition to her time as a showgirl post-Denishawn, so she had a fair amount of dance experience and thought of herself as a dancer at least as much she considered herself an actor. Shearer at her peak specialized in naughty women of the world, hardly the Ladies' Home type.

Brooks looked great in that twenties bob - no other hairstyle looked quite so good on her. She was a wonderful camera subject and as Quiggin mentions she was taken up by writers and critics in her later years, thanks mainly to Pandora and Pabst and of course her own charm and wit. She was a marvelous interview and a good writer if not a demon for accuracy.