I Just Watched...

[Swithin]

I am a huge fan of Mae West. She is one performer who truly deserves to be called a legend. Beyond acting and singing, she was a playwright and a screenwriter. My favorite of her movies is I'M NO ANGEL, for which she received sole writing credit: "Story, Screenplay and All Dialogue." Her character's cross-examination of witnesses in that movie's courtroom scene is one of the greatest comic sequences captured on film.

I love Mae West and wish that someone would present a full season of her films, not just I'm No Angel and She Done Him Wrong, great though they are. It has been said that she became tamer with the introduction of the Hays Code, but she found ways to work around that. Klondike Annie (1936) and Every Day's a Holiday (1937) are two of my favorites. An older friend of mine -- a famous classical pianist -- told me how much he enjoyed her performance on Broadway in Catherine Was Great (1944).

Just look at this scene from the top of Klondike Annie -- it's pure sex. And when you realize her character is being kept by a Chinese man, the second line -- "And I feel the thrill of China when I see the yellow Buddha moon above" takes on special significance.

[HoldenIsHere]

I am a huge fan of Mae West. She is one performer who truly deserves to be called a legend. Beyond acting and singing, she was a playwright and a screenwriter. My favorite of her movies is I'M NO ANGEL, for which she received sole writing credit: "Story, Screenplay and All Dialogue." Her character's cross-examination of witnesses in that movie's courtroom scene is one of the greatest comic sequences captured on film.

I love Mae West and wish that someone would present a full season of her films, not just I'm No Angel and She Done Him Wrong, great though they are. It has been said that she became tamer with the introduction of the Hays Code, but she found ways to work around that. Klondike Annie (1936) and Every Day's a Holiday (1937) are two of my favorites.

Yes, KLONDIKE ANNIE is a great movie. I don't know if it's ever aired on TCM.
Mae West's last line in the movie is one of my favorites:
"Bull, you ain't no oil paintin' but you are a fascinatin' monster."

The Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon NEVER KICK A WOMAN (released the same year as KLONDIKE ANNIE) features a Mae West-inspired character who flirts with Popeye (much to Olive Oyl's annoyance) including an "oil paintin''/fascinatin' monster" remark.
The Fleischer cartoons were distributed by Paramount, the same studio that distributed KLONDIKE ANNIE and most of Mae West's movies.

[Masha]

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)

This traces the how, why and how of screen nudity from 1887 to the present.

Interviewee: Probably twenty minutes after they invented film, somebody thought wouldn't it be neat if we started photographing naked people and so I think that there has been nudity ever since the early days. In fact, we could say there was nudity on film from before there were film.

Warning: This documentary contains clips of full and complete male and female nudity. Some may find this disturbing from a moral standpoint and some may wish for eye bleach after seeing all three hundred pounds of the future wife of Georges Méliès or the wrestling scene between two disgusting men in: Borat (2006). I will not comment on the three-way werewolf sex scene.

I found it very interesting in how many circumstances that nudity provided the ticket sales to keep studios solvent. It does explain well the pre-code and Hays code era but does not dote on it.

The people interviewed all had direct connection to movies which contained nudity rather than being simply academics or analysts with no stake in the game. I found Malcolm McDowell, Mariel Hemingway and Diane Franklin particularly interesting.

I was induced to watch the movie because it was mentioned to me that clips of nude scenes by an actor whom I like were included. All of the clips in this documentary are brief and presented to show the style or use of nudity in that era. None were more than a few seconds. That does not ease the fact that the actor whom I wished to see had a disappointingly small part.

I find it perversely amusing that some movies contained gratuitous sex but those scenes were legitimized in this documentary as evidence of the nature and extent of nudity in those types of movies.

7.2/10

This is available for viewing for free with commercials on: TubiTV

[CinemaInternational]

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)


I was induced to watch the movie because it was mentioned to me that clips of nude scenes by an actor whom I like were included. All of the clips in this documentary are brief and presented to show the style or use of nudity in that era. None were more than a few seconds. That does not ease the fact that the actor whom I wished to see had a disappointingly small part.

I laughed out loud when I read this. Thank you ever so much for the priceless laugh.

[TikiSoo]

Haha I LOL at that too-I'm sure it was intentional!

Just an aside about Mae West....I always disliked her and felt she was an insult to women. The only movie I had seen was My Little Chickadee and thought it was awful. I thought Mae West was a terrible representation of women, pretty much a $lut.

Then my film group screened one of her films: the one that had her on stage posing in a costume, the curtain opens to show her, the crowd goes wild, then the curtain closes again without her uttering a word or movement. That scene alone won me over, I finally "got" what she was all about.
Now I love Mae West & her movies, she's an inspiration, not an embarrassment. Knowing she wrote the clever dialogue, just adds to my appreciation.

It took 3 tries/trips to pay my respects to her in her final resting place. (Victor Moore is also in the mausoleum)
I don't celebrate Christmas, but this is always my New Years card, I left one for her-

[Detective Jim McLeod]

The House Without A Christmas Tree (1972) Youtube 10/10

This is a TV movie about a precocious 10 year old girl Addie (Lisa Lucas) in 1946 Nebraska who lives with her embittered widower father (Jason Robards) and her understanding grandmother (Mildred Natwick). Her father refuses to have a Christmas tree in the house but this year Addie desperately wants one.



I just rewatched this for the upteenth time, one of my favorite Christmas movies. I had also seen it when first broadcast in 1972 and have loved it ever since. It was directed by Paul Bogart who directed sitcoms like All In The Family. This was shot on videotape so it gives it an intimate feel, more like a play than a movie. The acting is superb, Robards gives one of his best performances as the father, he is stern and stoic but you can still feel he is also hurting inside. Natwick is subtle and touching as the grandma. The real find is Lucas who very funny and spunky as Addie. She did some more acting but did not have a long career, she retired from acting and I read did other jobs such as a chef and news reporter. There were a few more TV movies with these characters which were pretty good too but did not have same impact as this Christmas one.

I hope others love this too.

[Masha]

Haha I LOL at that too-I'm sure it was intentional!

Are you suggesting that I would stoop to crude innuendo for the sake of a cheap laugh?

I am not saying that you are wrong. I merely hoped that it would not be so obvious.

[nakanosunplaza]

I was induced to watch the movie because it was mentioned to me that clips of nude scenes by an actor whom I like were included. All of the clips in this documentary are brief and presented to show the style or use of nudity in that era. None were more than a few seconds. That does not ease the fact that the actor whom I wished to see had a disappointingly small part.


Iunderstand your disapointment, Harvey Keitel in The Bad Lieutenant hwas top billed but he had a small part...

[EP Millstone]

. . . and then there is the one thing that lifts it up a few levels, and that is Mae West as a lusty talent agent . . . She still had it in spades, and she didn't let anything around her get her down. A true star like her never could dim.

CinemaInternational,

Ever seen Sextette?

Vincent Canby's acidic review contained his memorable description of Mae as "a plump sheep that's been stood on its hind legs."

During an interview, Tony Curtis, who appeared in Mae West's cinematic swan song, told a hilarious anecdote about Mae and her hearing aid, which was used to feed her lines of dialogue. The device also picked up police signals, which Mae would then repeat ("Altercation on Melrose and Sunset. Approach with caution.").

I'd love to see those outtakes.

[CinemaInternational]

WOW, you sure see a lot of movies, don't you?

Yes, I do. Probably too many. I actually have a spreadsheet where I arranged all the films I have seen in two straight lines, ultimately coming in at almost 5,700 films (I took the liberty to include three films that I am about to watch). It averages out to a shade over 200 films for each year of my life (although I would love to take back the time spent on some lousy kids films i saw, plus some subpar 2000s films)

They are arranged by year, then alphabetically (although it infuriates me the computer alphabetizing program puts all the movies stating with A, An, or The together). the halfway mark is somewhere in 1968.

Here it is.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... ue&sd=true

[CinemaInternational]

. . . and then there is the one thing that lifts it up a few levels, and that is Mae West as a lusty talent agent . . . She still had it in spades, and she didn't let anything around her get her down. A true star like her never could dim.

CinemaInternational,

Ever seen Sextette?

Vincent Canby's acidic review contained his memorable description of Mae as "a plump sheep that's been stood on its hind legs."

During an interview, Tony Curtis, who appeared in Mae West's cinematic swan song, told a hilarious anecdote about Mae and her hearing aid, which was used to feed her lines of dialogue. The device also picked up police signals, which Mae would then repeat ("Altercation on Melrose and Sunset. Approach with caution.").

I'd love to see those outtakes.

Never saw Sexette, although I definitely heard about it and its reputation. I might be willing to give it a look....

[Hibi]

. . . and then there is the one thing that lifts it up a few levels, and that is Mae West as a lusty talent agent . . . She still had it in spades, and she didn't let anything around her get her down. A true star like her never could dim.

CinemaInternational,

Ever seen Sextette?

Vincent Canby's acidic review contained his memorable description of Mae as "a plump sheep that's been stood on its hind legs."

During an interview, Tony Curtis, who appeared in Mae West's cinematic swan song, told a hilarious anecdote about Mae and her hearing aid, which was used to feed her lines of dialogue. The device also picked up police signals, which Mae would then repeat ("Altercation on Melrose and Sunset. Approach with caution.").

I'd love to see those outtakes.


It has to be seen to be believed!

Never saw Sexette, although I definitely heard about it and its reputation. I might be willing to give it a look....

[CinemaInternational]

The Grass Harp (1995) is a delicate, bittersweet tale of Southern eccentricity based on a short story by Truman Capote, and is mainly set in 1940. The film meanders at times, and the sad ending (right from the story, probably) is a bit of a letdown, but its still worth seeing for an excellent cast and graceful staging. As the story begins in a prologue set in 1935, a young boy (Edward Furlong) is sent to live with his two spinster aunts following the death of his parents. These aunts might be sisters, but they are decidedly different; one is a hard-nosed business woman who owns many of the shops in town (Sissy Spacek), the other (Piper Laurie) is gentle and childlike, keeps house, and makes a homeopathic dropsy cure. After a few years pass, the two sisters have a falling out over taking the homeopathic cure into a factory setting, Laurie, Furlong, and maid Nell Carter decamp to the woods while waiting for Spacek to change her mind. That is the main thrust of the plot, but there are all sorts of familiar faces in here as well: Walter Matthau as a retired judge and suitor for Laurie, Mary Steenburgen as a tent revivalist with 15 children, and brief cameos from the likes of Jack Lemmon, Roddy McDowell, Charles Durning, Scott Wilson, and Doris Roberts. This film is very little known, but its worth tracking down for Laurie's performance especially.

[TikiSoo]

Never saw Sexette, although I definitely heard about it and its reputation. I might be willing to give it a look....

I certainly would like to see it-what a talented cast! And it seems like Mae is enjoying the exploitation of her persona.

BTW, I had forgotten to mention how fun it was seeing my name in the credits of RICH IN LOVE-always a thrill even if it's just my name, not me.

[HoldenIsHere]

I'm a fan of Sandra Dee. Until They Sail has a very good cast.

I like Sandra Dee too. She's one of my favorites. I love Gidget.

I also love her in A Summer Place. A Summer Place is one of my favorites because that movie has EVERYTHING. It's amazing to me that Dee made Gidget and A Summer Place in the same year.

I love A SUMMER PLACE too.

The scene where Sandra Dee's character's mother has her examined by a doctor to see if Troy Donahue has de-flowered her!

I love this line that Sandra Dee says in her New Jersey accent:
"Johnny's lettuhs were all I had to live for. And now you've even made them dirty."