Gilbert Roland - A Latin Performer Unbounded

[MissGoddess]

Gilbert is blinding: I didn't even notice you spelled it wrong, lol.

[JackFavell]

Golly those gifs are gorgeous!

I have to laugh at Roland's comment about how under "offence" it said "actor". You said this was a comedy? If it wasn't, I'd say Marshall Thompson was a goner....

[moira finnie]

Found on ebay:

From the 1930s:

GR at the races sometime in the '30s.


GR clawing at a tray proffered by Clifton Webb at a party he hosted in the '30s. Everyone seems to find Connie's munching on something highly amusing in that utterly natural way, Hollywood-style. Maybe seeing Constance "the human hanger" Bennett chowing down on anything was a laughable event?

From the 1950s, a sad occasion, following the death of silent actress Helene Costello of pneumonia and tuberculosis at the age of 50. Dolores Costello was five years older than her sister. She lived until 1979. :




Helene and Dolores Costello in their heyday on the screen.


GR and Mrs. Roland (Guillerimina) working together on a screenplay that he had written in the '50s and hoped to see produced as a film. Gilbert saw his bullfighting story, called "Blood on the Horns" mentioned several in press reports of the period, but it was apparently never made as a movie.

[MissGoddess]

oh, i love the picture of Gilbertito and Guillerimina!

[MissGoddess]

Moira, I don't remember if you posted this one: Gilbert Roland, director Serge Bourguinon and Max von Sydow on the set of The Reward.

[MissGoddess]

A Gilbert Roland movie I haven't seen yet:

[youtube][/youtube]

[moira finnie]

I believe you will like The Midnight Story, directed by Joseph Pevney and featuring Tony Curtis, GR, lovely Marisa Pavan, Jay C. Flippen and Ted de Corsia.

GR plays a simple man with great warmth and some considerable anguish. You'll know what I mean when you see the scene at the priest's funeral near the beginning of the movie, when Gilbertito pulls out all the stops. Tony Curtis hated this movie. It was his next assignment from Universal after Sweet Smell of Success so he felt he was being unappreciated by his home studio. He had a point, though his next movie was also one of his best, The Vikings.

Filmed around San Francisco's docks, I like the sense of place and the family life conveyed by Joseph Pevney's direction.

[MissGoddess]

Gilbert is the main attraction for me. I hope he sticks around for most of the movie? I can't say I'm much of a fan of Tony Curtis, but I will give it a try.

[CineMaven]

When a picture is worth a thousand words:




(( Sigh. ))


Well...maybe one word.

[moira finnie]

Gilbert is the main attraction for me. I hope he sticks around for most of the movie? I can't say I'm much of a fan of Tony Curtis, but I will give it a try.

GR has a very large role second only to Tony Curtis in the film.

FYI:
Two Gilbert Roland films are on the TCM Schedule tonight (Nov. 13) as part of the Constance Bennett Star of the Month celebration.



OUR BETTERS (1933-George Cukor) at 9:45pm (ET): Based on a 1917 W. Somerset Maugham play, this is a somewhat creaky satirical critique of society made in the midst of The Great Depression. This film tries for a bittersweet brittleness but there are almost no likable characters among the jaded British aristocrats whose idleness and curdled lives center around card games, meals, and long weekends at each others stately homes while engaging in discreet liaisons. Constance Bennett plays a wealthy American woman married to an English aristocrat who only wed her for her money. Her revenge? Dissipation, general snarkiness, a lavish wardrobe, and a boy toy (Gilbert Roland, who barely speaks). This film is noteworthy for the atmosphere of general pre-code naughtiness, but it goes one step further with the specific presence of one of the most flamboyantly portrayed gay characters seen on the screen up to that time. The uncredited Tyrell Davis appears in the role of the mincing dance master Ernest, whose arrival near the last part of the movie shakes up the stale air a bit, but I have never fully understood if Maugham or Cukor meant this character to be the only person who pierces the hypocrisy around him with his outlandish truth-telling or if he is meant to be seen as a satirical by-product of this decadent atmosphere. In either case, Davis takes the kind of role owned by Edward Everett Horton and Franklin Pangborn to an extreme that would disappear as soon as the production code began to pinch in the following year. If only classic Hollywood had found the stereotypical portrayals of other nationalities and races as offensive as one lipstick-wearing guy--but then, that would probably have led to no Hattie McDaniel, no Benson Fong or even any Gilbert Roland.

Above: Violet Kemble Cooper with Tyrell Davis in Our Betters (1933).

*MILD SPOILER ALERT*

AFTER TONIGHT (1932-George Archainbaud) at 3:15am (ET):
I don't know if anyone else saw this movie when it aired earlier this year, but I found it charming, even if it was another version of Dietrich's Dishonored (1931) and Garbo's Mata Hari (1931) dealing with the tangled private lives of female spies during WWI. Bennett, playing a spy for the Russians, meets undercover Austrian intelligence agent Gilbert Roland in a Belgian train station as frantic people around them try to go home just as the war has broken out in 1914. The two have enormous chemistry in every scene and Roland is gentle and funny as he charms the more assertive Constance, who seems much warmer and human than she usually appears on screen (at least to me). I particularly liked their mutual wariness in this opening sequence and their subsequent train trip. As a spy, Bennett is clever, resourceful, in constant danger, and increasingly saddened by her duties, esp. after she is compelled to become a nurse near the front lines. A chance meeting with Roland leads to the sweet, brief romance that we have pictured earlier in this thread. There is some suspense as Roland and his cohorts investigate leaks in the area, leading eventually to Bennett's identification as a suspect. The ending, which feels somewhat rushed, is amusingly coy, and it also takes place in another train station. Watching this movie it is easy to believe that this was the film set where Gilbert Roland and Constance Bennett fell in love for real.

Together in After Tonight (1933)

[MissGoddess]

I hope I can catch or rather, record AFTER TONIGHT. I saw the last few minutes of it the last time it aired and it seemed interesting enough to warrant a better look.

[feaito]

April are those Lizabeth Scott, Bob Mitchum and Liz Taylor on your avatar?

[MissGoddess]

Hola, Feo!
The actress on the left is Janet Leigh. It was taken on the set of Holiday Affair (1949). Elizabeth must have been visiting.

[feaito]

Thanks April. I saw that film and I liked it very much.

[JackFavell]

I saw After Tonight and enjoyed it very much, though the ending was oddly comic for a spy drama.

I love Our Betters, maybe because it IS creaky, but it also has so much naughtiness in it that I find it a hoot! It's nice to see people who really need it skewered. Agree completely about Tyrell Davis.