Posted on 01/25/2018 4:51:01 PM PST by Captain Peter Blood
"The boys" played off each other, wives, policemen, students ( A CHUMP AT OXFORD, which even had Peter Cushing, of horror movie fame, later on, in the cast ), sailors, etc.! One constant, was the actor James Finlayson, another was Billie Gilbert.
Don't attempt to debate me on this; you don't know enough.
And it's not just that yes, I did watch some T.V. whilst growing up, but have had a life long interest in many different things. And I've also seen every single short, full length movie, and musical that Laurel & Hardy ever made on a movie screen, at The Lambs Club, at the original SONS OF THE DESERT club's monthly meeting. I also met & knew, the widow of Stan Laurel there, as well as quite a few others, who shared stories about "the boys" and their films.
I also have every single T.V. show, including the first one, where Gosden and Correll introduce the cast, prior to the AMOS & ANDY T.V. show ever was shown on T.V, on discs.
Oh the Nicholas Brothers...they were marvelous!
Actually, I met her once at a screening and she was very nice. Very low key and gentle. She kept her fierceness for her reviews.
Love the Nicholas Brothers!
Sons of the Desert used to be at The Players in NYC. Good group. My personal favorite “villain” in Laurel & Hardy is annoying, sneering Charlie Hall, lol.
Very well said. I don’t know why some people here seem to revel in hating “art.” This is one of the major reasons the traditional right of America is failing so badly. Culture first, politics second.
NYC tv was a marvelous thing when we were growing up. I watched old Hollywood classics all day Sunday as well as classic comedies on Saturday afternoon. Saturday Night at the Movies (which was national) was a chance to see Hitchcock and John Huston movies. I learned about ballet from Danny Kaye’s “Hans Christian Anderson.” And I was no prodigy - an appreciation of ballet did not come about until I was a young adult.
I blame the parents and schools of some of the younger freepers’ lack of culture. You can see it in the bad language here, bitter divorced guys who post, etc.
You’re conflating a classic comedy theme (get rich quick) with two different shows. Get rich quick themes are as old as Plautus. If what you said was true, Bilko would also be The Honeymooners and Amos & Andy.
I always used to read her reviews and she came off as being "B*TCHY". Then I read about what she said re Mr. Nixon, and that was that, for me!
What's not to LOVE about those fantastic dancers? :-)
I’m going to reserve judgement on the West Side Story until I learn who will be in the cast. But I predict the cast will be very PC and ghetto-ized. The original movie was okay, liked it, didn’t love it. Really didn’t like the music either.
The movie that I’m predicting to be a total bomb is the announced remake of “Oliver!” with Ice Cube as Fagin. Oh goody, let’s take Dickens and Lionel Bart and do ghetto, hip hop, excessive political correctness and of course the obligatory anti-Trump themes. Barf.....
Should be about as successful as that "Annie" remake.
She just didn’t like B’way adaptations. She felt the dancers broke the realism of the film. (Sort of like some freepers on this thread.) But every musical - whether B’way or designed solely for movies - are unrealistic. You have to believe in the conventions of these movies to enjoy them. And she loved and enjoyed many great musicals. Maybe I have forgotten her other complaints. It’s been a long time although I have most of her books.
My husband and his friends, btw, think that the end credits of West Side Story are the greatest ever made. Graffiti!
Yes The Annie remake was absolutely awful and bombed at the box office. I despise black racist Jamie Foxx, I was happy to see him bomb in this movie.
What difference does any of that make?? Unless you have a world class choreographer to override the impression made by Robbins’ unforgettable dances in the original, this is a non-starter and idiotic in the extreme for Spielberg to attempt. He couldn’t even do the show War Horse properly and nobody danced in that one.
Did you know that Thelma Todd was also in a L&H film?
I'm guessing that that's why her good friend and sometimes buddy in a LOT of films, Patsy Kelly, came to several SONS OF THE DESERT movie nights.
In the mid '60s, when that club was new, they rented rooms in The Lambs for the meeting, green room, and film showing.
The original group was an amazing assortment of people, including THE ne plus ultra of experts on Stan, Babe, their films together and separately, and just those of us who loved the movies.
Chuck McCann ( one of the original founders, along with Orson Bean, Al Kilgore, and John McCabe...whose books are THE definitive books on "the boys" ) was THE bests "HARDY", ever. All of those men were/are really extremely knowledgeable and very nice.
Oh, I forgot all those great fans! Chuck McCann, wow. I loved the McCabe book and kept it for years. My brother used to show L&H shorts on our living room wall after supper. He had a small movie projector. Yes, of course, I remember Thelma Todd (my brother runs her fan page on Facebook). She was the hussy with the evil husband and she was always trying to tickle poor Stanley! The actor who played her husband was named Richard something or other. He was in several of their shorts - and very funny.
B’way conventions are sometimes hard to pick up.
My oldest daughter is a big Bernadette Peters fan, so I got her two tix for last Saturday night @ Hello Dolly. She chose to take her 13 year old sister with her.
The younger one was perplexed - “Why are all these people clapping and cheering during the show? That’s rude!”
I got to walk two of my country bumpkins through TImes Square at 10:45 after the show, that was worth the price of admission for anybody watching them gawking like out-of-towners - which, of course, they are.
We got our first T.V. in the summer of '49, so even though I was far too little, then, to see most of the very early GOLDEN AGE" of T.V. shows, I did get to see more of it, as I grew older and NO, nobody watched, especially not children, all THAT much T.V. when I was growing up. But we all were exposed to a LOT of spectacular shows.
Even comedy/variety shows had "cultutral" stuff in them.
YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS ( the Sid Caesar, Howie Morris, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner show ), had a skit of the Olympia bit, from THE TALES OF HOFFMAN. The Ed Sullivan show had opera stars singing arias, ballet stars dancing, and whole scenes from currently running Broadway shows, regularly. And the Jackie Gleason show had ballet, modern dance, and it's own form of the Rockettes, on the show.
Then there was the Sunday afternoon show, OMNIBUS!
CBS, NBC, and ABC all had weekly programs that were original and old plays of every kind, weekend shows that were full operettas, opera, and classical music; not to mention the "SPECIALS", which were Broadway shows: Peter Pan, Once Upon A Mattress, Cinderella, and more.
And yes, movies, great old American and even foreign movies were on CBS, NBC,CBS, The Dumont channel ( 5 ) and channel 9 & WPIX ( 11 )!
And later, prior to PBS, 13 had THE PLAY OF THE WEEK, which starred the truly great, in fantastic old plays.
Yes, I blame parents, teachers, school boards, and Commies for the destruction of "culture" and the dumbing down of the American populace.
Knowing about and appreciating "the arts" has less than nothing at all to do with social strata, economics, "LIBERALISM"/being a lefty, and EVERYTHING to do with NOT being an uneducated guttersnipe.
Nobody has to like EVERYTHING, or even the same things, but the moronic comments, on this thread, are not just appalling, but disgusting!
Interesting opinion. How do feel about “Gigi”?
I agree the whole idea is idiotic for many reasons. Yes, the original movie had great choreography. But watch and see who they cast, it will be very telling.
Well. I guess that you are just THAT special.
A remake of OLIVER with some moron as FAGIN??????
Just kill me now. :-(
I saw the play in London, saw the movie, own the disc ( the play was even better than the movie, which was good ), and am now very upset.
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