March Madness #14 SPENCER TRACY

Welcome to Day 14 of MARCH MADNESS!
Every day in March, ALL GOOD THINGS will highlight a Super-Star. The type of Star renowned for many types of roles: really, really B.A.D. to sweetest-dearest-most darling!

DAY #13 Results: LANA TURNER seems to delight in either her sweet-lamb roles or her lion-hearted characters, too. Dear-heart, Lora Meredith (Imitation of Life") inched ahead 33 votes to 32 over bad-girl, CORA SMITH ("The Postman Always Rings Twice").

TODAY the spotlight shines on SPENCER TRACY.
A super-star that was both a "lovable Joe" or a truly demented mad-man.
Which do you prefer: LION: rough n' tuff! or LAMB: Sweet & soulful?

March Madness #13: LANA TURNER

Welcome to Day 13 of MARCH MADNESS!
Every day one Super-star will be featured - a star of many types of roles, from really, really B.A.D. to the sweetest-dearest-most darling!

DAY #12 Results: BURT LANCASTER 19-19 votes. Lamb and Lion TIED equally! (No surprise, since Burt could do it all - and so well!)

TODAY the spotlight shines on LANA TURNER. She was idolized for both her beauty and her talent in roles both soft and hard-as-nails.
Which do you prefer: LION: rough n' tuff! or LAMB: Sweet & soulful?

Round 2 Final results

Here are the final numbers from the second set of brackets in round 2.

THE 30'S ERA:

BARBARA STANWYCK defeated MARLENE DIETRICH 49-7
NORMA SHEARER defeated GLENDA FARRELL 41-12
JOAN BLONDELL defeated JEANETTE MACDONALD 36-20
BILLIE BURKE defeated ELEANOR POWELL 27-23

Billie Burke had a late rally to overtake Eleanor Powell and eventually win by the score 27-23.
Way to go Billie!

THE 40'S ERA:

BETTE DAVIS defeated ROSALIND RUSSELL 40-36
JUDY GARLAND defeated AVA GARDNER 50-20
INGRID BERGMAN defeated VIVIEN LEIGH 37-28
OLIVIA de HAVILLAND defeated MAUREEN O'HARA 45-25

It was a surprisingly close match as Bette Davis narrowly edged out Rosalind Russell in this era's best match-up. Kudos to Roz for giving Bette all she could handle.


THE 50'S ERA:

AUDREY HEPBURN defeated EVA MARIE SAINT 46-9
SUSAN HAYWARD defeated JUDY HOLLIDAY 40-15
GRACE KELLY defeated SOPHIA LOREN 37-17
LANA TURNER defeated KIM NOVAK 28-24

Kim Novak almost pulled off a last minute rally but wound up falling short and losing to Lana Turner by 4 votes.

THE 60'S ERA:

ROMY SCHNEIDER defeated ANNA KARINA 36-10
CATHERINE DENEUVE defeated CLAUDIA CARDINALE 33-18
NATALIE WOOD defeated ANN-MARGRET 47-10
SHIRLEY MACLAINE defeated SHIRLEY JONES 29-23

In the battle of the Shirleys, it was Shirley MacLaine defeating Shirley Jones by 6 votes.

Round 3 will begin on Tuesday and I'll have the 60's era matches posted by tomorrow.

Round Six of Classic Film: Six Degrees of Separation

Kim over at 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die started Round Six (or was it Seven) of Classic Film: Six Degrees of Separation.  She chose Gloria Swanson and Catherine Deneuve to be connected in this round.
Page over at My Love of Old Hollywood chose Gloria Swanson who was in Sadie Thompson (1928) with Lionel Barrymore .




Dave of Dave's Classic Films chose Lionel Barrymore who was in You Can't Take It With You (1938) with James Stewart.




Now it's my turn to continue this round and I choose James Stewart who was in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) with Lana Turner.

I pass this along to the wonderful Whistling Gypsy of distant-voicesandflickering-shadows . Good luck Whistling Gypsy!

Some birthday treats from Jack Lemmon and Lana Turner

About set to watch some movies in honor of two stars who have birthdays today. Jack Lemmon and Lana Turner. Up first will be Jack Lemmon in a funny if very sexist 60's comedy, Under The Yum Yum Tree. He plays a lecherous landlord named Hogan who rents out units to luscious young women at half price.  And then tries to make a move on them. He meets his match in Robin Austin (played by Carol Lynley). I haven't seen this movie in years but remembering liking it. Has a super supporting cast in Edie Adams (yay!), Dean Jones, Paul Lynde, and Imogen Coca. It fits in with all those sex comedies of the 60's like Sunday In New York, Barefoot In The Park, Don't Make Waves, Sex and the Single Girl and others.

Next up will be Lana in Who's Got The Action?, another comedy from the 60's. Paired with Dean Martin as a married couple who must deal with Dino's gambling problem. Solution..Lana as Melanie Flood becomes his mysterious bookie and hopes that her husband will lose enough money to call it quits. The opposite happens as Steve (Dean's character) gets on a lucky streak. A funny movie with a solid supporting cast, including Eddie Albert, Nita Talbot, and Walter Matthau. 

I know Jack and Lana did better movies, but I am in the mood for some mindless comedies. And these seem to fit the bill.


Happy Birthday Jack and Lana!

Happy Birthday Lana Turner! (1921 - 1995)

Happy Birthday Lana!

Lana is one of my ten favorite actresses of all time. My fave films of hers are Imitation of Life, Peyton Place, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Bad and the Beautiful, Ziegfeld Girl just to name a few.

The Morning Movie: SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS (1943)

Now playing this morning on TCM is the delightful, little seen romantic comedy Slighty Dangerous. It stars Lana Turner as a small town girl named Peggy who is bored with her life who changes her identity and heads to New York. Trouble is people back home thinks she was kidnapped or murdered and leaving her boyfriend as a prime suspect. This sounds kind of heavy and film noir but it is actually a light comedy. Robert Young, Dame May Whitty, Walter Brennan and Eugene Pallette lend their talents for a strong supporting cast. Once again Lana shows she is more than just a beautiful face as she is quite funny in this role. Things get a little dramatic towards the end but for the most part this is a sweet little movie.

At The Beach: LANA TURNER

The one and only Lana Turner

Happy Birthday Lana Turner (1921 - 1995)

Happy Birthday to the fabulous Lana Turner. Often viewed based on her stunning looks, Turner still managed to give some note-worthy performances in such films as Ziegfeld Girl, The Postman Always Rings Twice and my personal favorite of hers, Imitation of Life.

Classic Horror Films - Day 21 (DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE - 1941)

Dr. Jekyll allows his dark side to run wild when he drinks a potion that turns him into the evil Mr. Hyde. Pretty good film version and the only one I can go by since I haven't seen the 1931 version with Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins. Tracy is quite good as Jekyll/Hyde. Lana Turner is very pretty to look at and Ingrid Bergman is a  joy to watch in a departure role for her as the barmaid Ivy.

Peyton Place (1957) is top notch soap opera melodrama at it's best...

One of the most definitive melodramatic tear jerker movies ever made. Based on the best-selling novel by Grace Metalious about scandalous activity in a small New Hapshire town. There are several inter-related stories that come together in a riveting courtroom climax. One story features Lana Turner as a possessive single mother who tells her naive daughter (played by Diane Varsi) that her father died when she was 2 years old. Which is a lie because the father is already married to another woman. Another plot line has a daughter (Hope Lange) fending off the unwanted sexual advances of her drunken step-father (Arthur Kennedy). And finally the third connecting plot has the town tramp (a sexy Terry Moore) loving the son of the most powerful man in town. These three storylines make up the bulk of the film and what's amazing is how one event will lead into the next.

Peyton Place does start off slow but once the secrets come flying out, who Nellie! As for the performances, Turner may headline this production, but she kind of phones in her performance. Not that's she is bad, but she just seems ordinary. I can't believe this was her only Oscar nominated role.  In my opinion she was far better in that other soap tearjerker, Imitation Of Life. Kennedy is great as the drunken step father. He's hysterically funny one minute, then cruel and vicious the next. Lange is unbelievably powerful as Selena, his step-daughter. She's quiet,composed and acts so good it doesn't seem like she's acting. Varsi is ok as Turner's daughter. It's to her credit that she can say the film's corniest lines with a straight face. Lee Phillips is solid as the town doctor who gives a memorable speech at the film's climax that sums up everything nicely. And Terry Moore is quite fetching as the bad girl who makes good. What's so good about her performance is that she convinces us that she's not really a bad girl, but a girl who knows what she wants.

Hope Lange

Diane Varsi

Terry Moore

Peyton Place is one of the best films of it's kind. Ranks right up there with Imitation of Life and Stella Dallas as supreme tear jerkers. Plus having a cast of beautiful women doesn't hurt the film at all.
B+

Happy Birthday Lana Turner

Happy Birthday to one of my favorite actresses ever...Lana Turner (1921-1995).

Classic Movie Goddess Of The Week - Lana Turner Part 3

Here is my list of what I think are Lana's best films and her best work. As TCM would call them, the essentials.


ZIEGFELD GIRL (1941) Lana gives a terrific performance that actually overshadows co-stars Judy Garland and Hedy Lamarr. Not an easy feat.

IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) The scene where she lets her housekeeper's daughter have an earful after said daughter is being disrespectful towards her mom. I was like Go Lana, tell that brat off.

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946) Woo-hoo. Lana is positively electrifying with her platinum blonde hair and always dressed in white as a wife who teams with a drifter to knock off her husband.

PEYTON PLACE (1957) Classic soaper that benefits from the presence of Ms. Turner.

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952) One of Lana's best ensemble films ever, co-starring Kirk Douglas, Gloria Grahame, and Dick Powell. Lana gives a solid performance as an actress passed over by the next hot new thing.

So those are Lana's best films in my opinion and the ones you have to watch to understand how talented she really was.

Classic Movie Goddess of the week - Lana Turner Part 2

Here are some little facts and trivia about Lana:

Height: 5"4
Nickname: The Sweater Girl
Married 8 times, twice to Stephen Crane
One daughter: Cheryl Crane (fathered by Steve Crane).

Her auburn hair was bleached for Idiot's Delight (1939). She was withdrawn from the film, but the fact that she had become a blonde not only changed her screen image but gave her such an outgoing, swinging personality that Hollywood called her the Nightclub Queen.

In the movie Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman she was originally supposed to play the part of Ivy, the tart, and Bergman was supposed to play the innocent girl engaged to Tracy but Bergman wanted Turner's part and so the roles were switched.

Campaigned for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1944 presidential election.

Was considered for the role of Maggie Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), which was eventually given to Elizabeth Taylor.

She was a true American hybrid, with a mixture of Scottish, Irish, Dutch and English ancestry.

Classic Movie Goddess Of The Week - Lana Turner

Decided to kick off my new weekly blog on classic movie goddesses with Lana Turner after having watched her in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) the other day. She gave an amazing performance and stole the movie from Judy Garland and Hedy Lamarr, not exactly pushovers. But I do believe Lana to have been a very underrated actress, that most critics judged her by her stunning looks and not her acting ability. Don't get me wrong, Lana is very easy on the eyes but she was much more than that. She gave several strong performances most notably in Imitation of Life (1958), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Peyton Place (1957) and the a fore mentioned Ziegfeld Girl.

Lana was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner on February 8, 1921 in Wallace, Idaho. She didn't have the easiest of childhoods as her father was murdered when she was eight, which prompted her family to move to California. As legend states, she was discovered at Currie's Drug Store by a talent agent, who brought Lana before director Mervyn LeRoy, who cast her in a small role as a murder victim in his 1937 film They Won't Forget. Publicists quickly dubbed her "the sweater girl" and the rest is history.


Lana would work with some of the biggest stars early and often such as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Kirk Douglas. She was one of the top box-office draws during the 40's. And amid all the marriages and scandals, not to mention the killing of her abusive lover Johnny Stompanato by her own daughter in self defense, her clout at the movies gained even more into the 50's. She scored big hits with 1952's The Bad and the Beautiful, 1957's Peyton Place, and the seminal tearjerker Imitation of Life (1958) which provided Lana with one of her strongest roles ever.

Lana would finish out her career on TV with a plum role on the nighttime soap Falcon Crest. She died on June 29, 1995 of throat cancer at the age of 74. Throughout the week I will post tons of pics of Lana and more information about her personal life and a list of her essential films to see, in my opinion. So just sit back and enjoy the daily posts on one of Hollywood's great Movie Goddesses.

Ziegfeld Girl is solid entertainment

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Star loaded 1941 film Ziegfeld Girl is an enjoyable film. It stars Jimmy Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner. Like I said star loaded. The film centers on three different girls who become Ziegfeld girls, which they hope mean fame and money. Judy is Susan Gallagher, one half of a musical variety act with her old school dad (played by the fabulous Charles Winniger) that play at very small locales just to earn some money. Well Susan gets the call that the great Mr. Ziegfeld is looking for new girls and she is all happy for her and her dad. But Ziegfeld just wants Susan and not dad. So tension arises from that situation but good old dad doesn't stand in her way. Susan becomes a Ziegfeld girl and her dad carries on the show by himself. Hedy plays Sandra Kotler, a married woman whose violinist husband Franz is struggling to make a name for himself. At the audition for acts for The Ziegfeld show, Franz is overlooked but Sandra is picked to be a ZG, much to Franz's displeasure. They end up separated for awhile and Sandra becomes close with the show's male vocalist Frank (played by Tony Martin). And finally there is elevator girl Sheila Regan (Lana Turner) who has a boyfriend trucker named Gill (Jimmy Stewart with a thick Brooklyn accent). Sheila is the type of girl from the wrong side of the tracks with a hard working family. Once she gets picked, she makes the biggest transformation of all the girls. She lets the fame and money go to her head and breaks up with Gill and starts romancing a much older and richer man. All the girls personal issues play out against the backdrop of the Ziegfeld musical shows. Judy Garland gets to belt out a few good numbers. But its actually Charles Winniger who has the best musical number: a song and dance number with an old vaudeville partner that leaves the audience amazed. Hedy Lamarr is pretty good here in one of her first musicals. Her scenes with Franz are excellent. Jimmy Stewart is good as Gill, a nice change of pace from playing the good guys..he ends up in jail for bootlegging after being dumped by Sheila. His Brooklyn accent is thick, but somehow he loses it by midway through the film. The standout in this film is Lana Turner as Sheila. Whoever may have question Ms. Turner's acting ability will be put in check by her performance here. It deserved some type of award for her hard take on this girl who becomes her own worst enemy. Towards the end, Sheila will have hit rock bottom and Turner nails it with a riveting performance. Ms. Turner may have been known for her beauty, but here she proves she can act with the best of them. There is also solid support from veterans Edward Everett Horton, Fay Holden and Eve Arden. Typical Eve gets in several good zingers. So, Ziegfeld Girl is a marvelous film, not really a straight forward musical, more of a drama that has a few musical numbers in it with solid performances by a talented cast. And one knockout performance by Lana Turner. I enjoyed every minute of it.

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