He was already in the Army when O’Connor met him. They were serving in the CBI (China-Burma-India) theater of WWII, and Donald used him to spy on the Japanese. (Francis was apparently bilingual—he would listen while the Japanese talked.)
Agreed. The Frank Capra original is a masterpiece; flawed, yes; and now a somewhat ragged piece of work, and its qualities, albeit not pc (in today’s strict sense), it’s a liberal humanist fantasy. Time hasn’t been as kind to it as it as been to Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, yet it has a beauty, and a dignity, all its own. The closing scenes in Shangri La, with the melancholic music, and a “chanting” accompaniment, is deeply moving; for me, it’s mesmerizing.
The 1973 Lost Horizon had songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. It’s the movie that broke up their long-time, very successful partnership.
What the heck?
That’s interesting.
And funny.
Gonna watch for those.
Why don’t you go to tcm.com or the TCM channel on a streaming device and watch a movie you want to see?
I thought they were introduced in the movie The Egg and I. They were a bit more restrained there, but I didn’t care for them in any other movies. Just a one note joke and tiresome. Marjorie Main was a decent actor, but Ma Kettle buried her. She did a variation on the character in The Women and was actually funny though.
ETA: Damn, I didn’t know so many people were up on the Kettle family! I actually liked The Egg and I. But I preferred the book she wrote when she had TB and was sent to a sanitarium.
Two reasons. Don’t stream out here in the boonies.
Doesn’t work for me.
I like to watch the same thing maybe 1000s of others are watching. At the same time. Plus I have a watching buddy. We watch together, text back and forth, our thoughts. Eh, it’s fun to do.
She also wrote the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books we read to our kids. Funny stuff. I’ve never seen the series or movie of them - I’d hate to ruin my memory of the series.
That’s a damned goodpoint I never thought about.
We got Dana Andrews as…I don’t remember…he was 4F or something. But Fred wasn’t a low-life (well, not in the picture 2x Indemnity oh, wait…) just a regular saxophone playing shlemiel.
Not that Dana Andrews was any low-life…but he sort of single-handedly took over the leading man role for films of a certain nature for a number of years. I don’t know if he’s considered well-known especially these days, but he was in a bunch of stone classics.
Hmmm…the topic could make for a good essay or book or something.
Earlier this year they fired almost every one at TCM for cost cutting. The brain drain is almost certainly going to effect the channel’s quality of programming.
TCM is on Max and is enough to justify the cost. TONS of classic stuff there.
I’ll say this for TCM, they’ve so far been immune from network decay and stayed pretty true to their mission. Themed marathons are fine in my book, if you don’t like the current theme just wait for one you do like.
Who they fire?
Robert died a few years ago. He’s the only one I miss.
I’ve been watching TCM a few (ahem…10-12 years)
Seems like the same folks there and they added some.
I love Eddie. His noir alley is the bomb. His intros crack me up.
Besides August under the stars my biggest beef right now is that dang commercial for the Warner Brothers tour where they race the buses. So stupid.
My mother had a huge crush on Dana Andrews. I’m sure I’ve seen him in a lot of old films, but I remember him most from The Purple Heart and The Best Years of Our Lives, both of which are on my list of favorite movies.
before we moved and killed off our cable I watched the midnight movies on Saturday on tcm occasionally … lol talk about drive-in trash …but that was its selling point in advertisements …
An elderly friend of mine who died about 10 years ago dated her once or twice. He said she was between husbands at the time. I think it was after Reagan (and Ayres) and before Karger. He said she was gorgeous.
I found Harold Russell’s grave in a small town cemetery west of Boston.
I’ve read all her books (except her children’s books) and enjoyed them all, plus a biography of her. The “Kettles” were a family that was actually named Bishop, I think, right?. I think most of them weren’t as shiftless as she portrayed them to be. One of the sons used to go over and do chores, as her first husband, Bob, was abusive and a moonshiner who left her and the babies alone for doing ays at a time. The Bishops sued her for her portrayal of them, but in part because they’d marketed themselves as The Kettles and charged people to see their farm, they lost the case.
Mrs. Bishop seems to bear little resemblance to Ma Kettle. MacDonald wasn’t scrupulous about sticking to facts. In the book The Egg and I, Ma Kettle was a colorful and kindly character. In real life, she seems to have been kindly but not that colorful.
Beck, The Bowery Boys were pretty popular back in the day, and I remember my parents mentioning them in nostalgic conversations, but I don’t think Gorsey was ever hailed as a great actor.
I caught one of those on TCM a few years back. Huntz Hall was actually pretty funny, to my surprise.
Re: Jane Wyatt:
I think you have confused Jane Wyatt with Jane Wyman. The latter was married to Reagan and Karger. Neither actress was ever married to a Mr. Ayres.
It was actually longer ago than I remembered but here is some info: