For the five or six of you out there with access to TCM, they will be showing the original version of the Maltese Falcon: Dangerous Female (1931), starring Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels. It’s pretty awful (despite the wonderful Bebe, Una Merkel, Thelma Todd and Dwight Frye), but interesting for fans of the later version.
It’s on midnight (check local times) Wed/Thursday. Dec. 11/12.
Dwight Frye always struck me as the David Spade of his generation.
How dare you! Dwight was a genius!
[. . . Unless that’s what you meant . . . ]
Eve, I have to respectfully disagree that it was an “awful” movie. IIRC, some of the scenes were very similar in the 1941 version, so apparently John Huston thought a lot of it.
Now, the intermediate version, Satan Met a Lady, I’ll agree was not too good, despite the presence of Bette Davis and Arthur Treacher.
(To this day, I always thing of Treacher as being Merv Griffin’s second fiddle, with his inimitable announcement, “Here’s Muuuuuuuuuurrrrvvvvvvvvv.”
Well, alright, it has been a long time since I’ve seen it, so I will withdraw the “awful” till I’ve re-viewed it. And with that cast, how bad could it be? I mean, Una Merkel and Thelma Todd in the same movie?!
I meant that he gives me the creeps. Of course, in the films I’ve seen with Frye he was SUPPOSED to be creepy. David Spade is just flat out creepy whatever the context.
Arrrggghhh…quit callously brandishing your TCM access in my face, willya?
[sub]%#&@$#*&%! Brooklyn-Queens Cable…[/sub]
When Time-Warner is your cable provider, it’s not too hard to get TCM.
Thanks, Eve.
::Jots down reminder to set up VCR for Wednesday night::
And not only that, but Thursday night TCM is showing an Alec Guinness festival: The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers and All at Sea.
The Huston/Bogart version is the only one I’ve seen. I’ve always thought Mary Astor was terrible in it.
I remember reading a newspaper article about “stock devices” in movies. One of them was “In any bag of groceries, there will be a loaf of French bread.”
I think this is one of the first movies to use that device (that or the 1936 version). Although, given the time, it might not have actually been French bread, just a generic loaf that had not yet been sliced.
Maybe it was celery, and Bebe Daniels’ panties will fall off?
Mary Astor terrible in TMF? She’s perfect. Stirring the coals and straightening things one minute, kicking Joel Cairo in the shins the next.
I started getting TCM when I upgraded my cable. I love to catch the really old flicks on Saturday morning (really early). I saw that hideous old John Wayne (as a Singing Cowboy) and about died laughing. TCM is where it’s at for the oldies.
Did Huston even see it? IIRC, he wrote the script directly from the novel.
Since they were both based on the same source, it’s not surprising that they had similar scenes.
I’ll have to see about taping it.
Just one last reminder to set your VCRs!