She also was on an episode of Mad About You playing an actress who once had the role ‘Spy Girl’.
George Raft in Some Like It Hot had a habit of flipping a coin in one hand. This and some of his other films was a reference to his breakthrough role in Scarface, where he has constantly flipping a coin.
In one of the Golddigger films, Ruby Keeler is turned down in an dance audition by a stage director played by Busby Berkeley, who directed and created most of the dances that made her a star.
Bette Davis was shown to be a terrible actress in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? on the strength of clips of her actual films. (Davis chose the clips from movies she hated.)
In His Girl Friday, Cary Grant referred to Earl Williams (hidden in a roll top desk) as “Mock Turtle,” his role in the Paramount Alice in Wonderland.
Raft was still flipping that coin in the 1967 non-EON James Bond film Casino Royale
“Bob Newhart 19th anniversary special” where Newhart talks about having a dream where he owned an inn in Vermont. Howard (Bill Daily) says he once dreamed he was an astronaut.
At the end when the elevator opens, Larry, Darryl and Darryl were in it so Bob decided to take the stairs.
Along those lines, Gloria Swanson had a film that was shot in 1932, but not released until 1985 (actually, it had a very limited release in S. America in the 1930s, but was never shown in the US until 1985). It was about “white slavery,” ran afoul of the brand new Hays code. When the code began to relax, no complete print was known, but one was found in 1984, and cleaned up with the new computer technology being used to restore old films, and the film, Queen Kelly, was released in the US.
However, when a film was needed for Norma Desmond to view as she relived her glory days in Sunset Boulevard, some scenes from Queen Kelly were used. The director was Erich von Stroheim, her butler and general manservant in Sunset Boulevard.
Also interesting, is the fact that there was a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? starring Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, with Vanessa as the serious actress, and Lynn as the washed up joke. It was particularly meta, because within the context of the film, Lynn is actually required to execute a much more complex performance (and does) than her sister.
ReSunset Boulevard there was the line by Max von Meyerling (Erich von Stroheim), “There were three young directors who showed promise in those days: D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Max Von Mayerling.”
Of course that was certainly true if you use Von Stroheim for the third name.
That line is a conceit, and usually gets laughs, because while von Stroheim was a good director, I would not say that he was in the top three. If you are considering von Stroheim, you surely have to consider King Vidor, Howard Hawks, Charlie Chaplin, just in the US. Then, there are twice as many more directors outside the US that rank above von Stroheim.
Moreover, DW Griffith was the first director who was an auteur; possesses a singular greatness; and most of all, was also well-established by the time von Strohheim first picked up his bull horn. Griffith began directing in 1908, and made Birth of a Nation in 1915.
Von Stroheim did not even begin directing until 1919; he had only 12 directing credits, while Griffith had more than 12 blockbusters; and von Stroheim’s only tour de force was 1924’s Greed (albeit, that was a great one).
Von Stroheim really is mostly known as an actor, who had one great moment when he dabbled in directing,
Most of those (except Chaplin) established themselves after Von Stroheim. But Andrew Sarris did consider Von Stroheim as one of his pantheon directors, and his work was far in advance of others of the silent days. But the quote acknowledges Griffith and if you only count dramatic directors, Von Stroheim certainly belongs among the top three. Even the mangled version of Greed is better than 99% of films of the era.
Although they weren’t working together, Griffith drew the template for a uniquely American style of cinema, and Chaplain and Vidor rounded it out. Hawks showed how to fit genre stories into it. Every Hollywood film (and many independent ones) operate under this paradigm.
Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Lang, Eisenstein, were off inventing styles of cinema for other countries. When WWII brought many of them here, and took soldiers overseas to see films in other countries, that’s when independent films reflecting other sensibilities began to be made.
When the great directors left, so did the great actors, and many became very patriotic Americans. Marlene Dietrich made the first “Buy War Bonds!” ad for showing in theaters, and was very vocally pro-US, anti-3rd Reich.
Von Stroheim got lucky once, and made a heart-wrenching film. But he didn’t have the people skills to be a good director. He wasted a lot of the budget of his films paying actors to stand around arguing period underwear with him. He made only 12 films because he had a reputation for being difficult to work with, and couldn’t find producers.
What he was, was a powerhouse actor, and he should have stuck to it.
When Todd describes the Margo Martindale character in Bojack Horseman, he says something like “She could be an aging southern belle, or a Russian spy, or [some other stuff I forgot]”, all references to Margo Martindale’s previous roles.
There’s an episode of DOCTOR WHO where our hero dismissively notes that, while the authorities thought they’d captured The Master, they’d merely succeeded in arresting a man who turned out to be the Spanish ambassador.
Which was, of course, Roger Delgado’s old role.
In an episode of Mad About You, someone asks Paul (Paul Reiser) whether he’d seen the Aliens movies. He replies, “Only the first one!”
(Reiser, of course, played a memorably loathsome bad guy in the second movie of the series).
The 200th episode of TV series Stargate SG-1 (an episode which was called “200”) was an all out comedic episode parodying and referencing many other films and TV shows. Mainly SciFi shows.
One of the TV shows parodied was Farscape, a show which starred Ben Browder (by then a Stargate SG-1 regular) and Claudia Black (previously a regular and by then an occasional guest star in Stargate.) For the spoof Browder did NOT portray his own Farscape character but Black did portray hers.
TCMF-2L
In The Road to Bali, Harold (Bob Hope) and George (Bing Crosby) are on an island in the Pacific when they spot Humphrey Bogart with The African Queen. George holds up the Academy Award Bogart won for that role to prove they weren’t imagining him. Harold grabs the Oscar away.
Harold (to George): That’s mine. You’ve got one.
(Bing Crosby had won an Oscar for Going My Way.)
Selfish bastard.
I think it was on Herman’s Head that Yeardley Smith’s character mentioned someone saying that she sounded like Lisa Simpson.
Yeah, I remember that
I’d completely forgotten about that show. But, reviewing the cast shots, I’d say she was more punk there than goth.
In The Mission, Robert De Nero plays a would-be aristocrat and notorious duellist.
Whenever he sets out to kill someone, he starts the conversation with a stilted “At whom do you laugh?”
It just occurred to me that this was probably an allusion to the well-rehearsed “You talkin’ to me?” from Taxi Driver.
When I saw her image here, I remembered her as being really funny but couldn’t place her in any shows.
Oh.