Bad Movies You Love

[Bronxgirl48]

I get a migraine thinking about this movie, and don't get me started on Coral Browne....(shiver)

It's probably all deeper than we know, and I'll bet the French think it's Aldrich's masterpiece.

Guten nacht!

[moira finnie]

I admire your persistence, Kingrat. I don't think I've ever made it through a single sitting of The Legend of Lylah Clare. I usually give up after the third or fourth flashback. Thank goodness for Ernest Borgnine. He's often one of the few believable characters in any movie. Don't you think that The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), The Star (1951), The Big Knife (1955), The Oscar (1966) and Fedora (1978) would make a great boxed set of DVDs sold just in time for the holidays?

It's good to know that others have occasionally confused Milton Selzer and Ned Glass, two guys whose presence in good and bad movies is often a welcome sight. Here's a quick and cliché-ridden thumbnail description of the two actors' careers. They should have been cast as brothers:


Milton Selzer (1918-2006)

1.) Milton usually played some kind of ambitious/weaselly bean counter (a shady accountant, a bookkeeper who was a mobster's brother-in-law, and a long-suffering hubby, sometimes all three simultaneously). He was occasionally a professional man like a judge, professor or doctor (though often untrustworthy ones).
2.) His characters are often named Irving, Abe, Leo, and Murray
3.) He sweats a lot when under scrutiny by either the law or the mob
4.) Milton is often an injustice collector, hoarding and remembering the slights he has received for decades. Sometimes his characters are ineptly seeking revenge for a perceived injustice (see all four different characters he played on The Untouchables).
5.) Most unlikely casting, but a role he played more than once: a farmer


Ned Glass (1906-1984)

1.) Ned is an earthy sort, resigned to languishing in the lower middle class for life, if he's lucky. Ned works in several below-the-radar jobs that may give him a decent if unspectacular living (tailor, dry cleaning store attendant, bowling alley manager, candy store operator).
2.) His characters are sometimes called Maury, Stanley, Max or Milt, though he is also called simply by his character's last names or profession (pawnbroker, barkeep, or milkman, for instance).
3.) Ned often has some words of advice for the central characters, underlining his tacit role as a kind of one-man Greek chorus (see Storm Warning and esp. West Side Story)
4.) He had a gift for comedy, as evidenced by his wonderful work as the wardrobe man with the cat suits in The Bad and The Beautiful (1951). Sadly, this was one of his last screen roles for much of that decade, though he later re-emerged on television. Thanks to McCarthyism, his past work during the Depression, when he abandoned a career as a teacher to go to work with the Federal Theatre, led to his blacklisting.
5.) He was married to Frank and Matt McHugh's sister, actress Kitty McHugh, who, sadly, committed suicide in 1954, at a time when Glass was only able to support himself as a carpenter and janitor.

[JackFavell]

Oh Moira, your side by side comparisons of Milton Selzer and Ned Glass warmed my heart! Beautifully done, and you're right, sometimes they are all that a movie lover can hang onto when a film jumps the shark.

Add Inside Daisy Clover to the list of films in that dvd set....

[moira finnie]

Add Inside Daisy Clover to the list of films in that dvd set....

Yeah! and I am sure there are several more I'm forgetting. Hollywood loves to gaze at its own navel, doesn't it? And it does it sooo well.

[JackFavell]

Gad! Is that Frank Faylen in your new avatar??

[moira finnie]

Yup. Ya gotta problem with that?

Careful! Whitey don't take kindly to any lip. (Just ask Donald Crisp in Whispering Smith).

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Moira, thanks for the "mano a mano" of Ned Glass and Milton Seltzer. Without their weasely sycophancy on the screen, our heroes just would not be as expansive and compelling. As usual, you help us to navigate to our appreciation with a sense of purpose.

[JackFavell]

I've heard about his portrayal of Whitey.....yikes!

[knitwit45]

I've heard about his portrayal of Whitey.....yikes!

Creepy and chilling at the same time. I have to keep saying to myself, Bert and Ernie, Bert and Ernie.

[JackFavell]

Ha! He's one of the few who can do chillingly cold or warm and sweet really well.

Hard to believe from that picture that it's Dobie's father.

[Bronxgirl48]

moira, ah, at last the definitive compare/contrast on Milton and Ned! Masterful, I lurve it! We will never be confused again! Grazie! If the two of them were in a horror movie, Seltzer would be Dr. Frankenstein and Glass would be Igor, right? Isn't Milt the guy at the track in MARNIE, asking Tippi if she's Peggy Nicholson, and then thief Marnie replies, in the script's clever Freudian slip: "No, I am not Miss Nickels".

Frank Faylen, lol, who knew he could be so brilliantly creepy? "Delirium tremens is a disease of the night. Good night!" And now Whitey du Sang, boy how I love that name. Never saw WHISPERING SMITH.

[movieman1957]

MissB:

It's so good to see you on this side of the playground.

[Bronxgirl48]

Oh, thank you so much, Chris. Hail, hail to you and SSO!

[moira finnie]

If the two of them were in a horror movie, Seltzer would be Dr. Frankenstein and Glass would be Igor, right?

I'd watch that movie, but the monster might turn out to be frightening to people because of all the kvetching he would do. How about if they open a pharmacy/deli together? Dr. Frankenstein can mix the prescriptions, Igor can mix the sodas, sundaes and make the sandwiches (though he keeps confusing the pickles and the cherries) and the monster could sweep the store out and chase the kids out of the place when they try to buy cigarettes (he would bellow "Fire! Bad!" at them) I love a happy ending.

Good to see you visiting, oh, Queen of the Bronx.

[Bronxgirl48]

moira, LOL!!!

I see David Hasselhof as the Monster. (he makes the world so lousy, lol)

I'll try not to be such a stranger here!