Day 19- Who’d you like to party it up with in the afterlife

William Powell and Myrna Loy of course (yeah, I'm thinking really in Nick and Nora Charles). And Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (he would be in charge of the music obviously). I'd invite Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra to sing some of their hits. Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers to show some moves. Oh, oh, and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford :) I would go with Cary Grant so we two will laugh about all the craziness around, while S. Z. Sakall tell us some interesting gossip. Everyone would go —just like in Well, did you Evah? lyrics— "what a swell party this is!". 

Look what I found today!

I love old magazines about cinema and this morning I found this treasure. It seems that "Sissi" was a Spanish magazine in which featured lots of comics and these:

(Click to enlarge)

Loved these mini bios (I know, most of you won't understand, but the pictures are so cool). There are a lot more in great quality, William Holden, Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, Dick Borgade, etc etc:

Source: http://navarrobadia.blogspot.com/search/label/BRUGUERA-SISSI

(The link shows all the post with the label Sissi, so just press what should be "older posts" to found more bios).

This is my only post today because this afternoon I'll go to see the theater version of "My Fair Lady"  :) Tomorrow I'm gonna talk about a movie starring Ginger Rogers that I didn't like. See ya. 

Cary Grant: When or where

Cary Grant
Song: "When or where" by Peggy Lee (Rodgers and Hart).

More Photo[graphs] + Music:

• Marlene Dietrich: "It's here for you"
• Burt & Ava: "In the mood"
• Gregory Peck: "Can't help lovin' that man"
• Coolest.pic.ever: Errol Fever
• Clark & Carole: "Tea for two"
• Desilu: "That Sunday, that Summer"
• Errol & Olivia: "Magic Moments"
• Paul & Joanne: "Twist and Shout"
• Gary Cooper: "Mercy"

Day 09- Old Hollywood stars you wish had worked together

Lol, and again this a belated post. Anyway, interesting question. These are some dream teams (imagine all them looking young):

Cary Grant & Olivia de Havilland: In a romantic comedy.

Audrey Hepburn & Paul Newman: In some heavy drama. Really.

Carole Lombard & Rosalind Russell: I'm sure I wouldn't be able to stop laughing. 

Marlene Dietrich & William Holden: In a comedy taking place in a cruise. 

Gary Cooper & Ginger Rogers: In a western with a good dose of humor.

Lauren Bacall & Burt Lancaster: In film noir of course.

Rita Hayworth & Richard Burton: In some romantic drama. 

Claudette Colbert & William Powell: Obviously, in a witty comedy.

Grace Kelly & Robert Mitchum: In a thriller.

Errol Flynn & Jean Arthur: In some light comedy happening in exotic places.

Deborah Kerr & Laurence Olivier: In a war movie.

Gregory Peck & Vivien Leigh: In an epic movie.

What do you think my dear readers?

Day 07- Favorite movie from your favorite Actress

Last night I spent my free time watching the sad "Make way for tomorrow" (Leo McCarey,1937) with my dad & youngest brother and this morning, instead to go out to the cold and play tennis, I decided to stay and watch "Out of the past" (Jacques Tourneur, 1947).
MWFT was excellent, it makes you love and respect your parents or grandparents even more (caution: keep the Kleenex handy). I enjoyed OOTP a lot, loved the presence of my top 8 favorite actor, Robert Mitchum, even when I was so sleepy that I didn't get some of the plot switches.
(Edited after saving: AND this evening I went to the movie theater and saw Russell Hood and Lady Cate kicking some asses. I'll tell you about it in another post).

All this intro is just to explain why I didn't post Day 7 yesterday, lol. Well, this is not gonna be an easy choice either. Just like the post about favorite movie from Cary, I can't pick just one movie from Audrey, so this is my top 5 (in no particular order, and just 5 because she didn't make a lot of films):

Two for the road (Stanley Donen, 1967)

  

Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961)

Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953)

Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963)

The Nun's Story (Fred Zinnemann, 1959)

Day 06- Favorite movie from your favorite Actor

Are you kiddin' me? I simply can't choose one movie from my favorite actor, Cary Grant. So here are 10 titles, which correspond to the films I enjoy the most (they aren't in a particular order):

An Affair to Remember

Charade

His Girl Friday

Holiday

In Name Only

North by Northwest 

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Penny Serenade

The Awful Truth

Notorious

Day 03- Favorite Actor

Mr. Archivald Alexander Leach aka Cary Grant. I simply love everything he did on screen. I've seen 34 of his movies and I always enjoy his performances, even when he was a very young supporting actor. Love him in comedies, dramas and melodramas. Love him in black and white, and love him in Technicolor. Give me anything with Cary Grant in it, and I'll like it.

And to celebrate the this third post of the Old Hollywood Meme, here are some screencaps from the great documentary "Cary Grant, a Class Apart" (click to enlarge the pics, try to click with the right button and open in a new window for an easier navigation).

In case you're wondering, you can check my top 25 favorite actors.

PS: This is my day 3 at my internship/job too, so excuse me for the length of the text posts, I'm a little bit tired :) I'll appreciate advices to write posts in short time.

Previous days of this meme: 1| 2

"Merrily we go to hell" (1932) or what happens if you marry a jerk

Merrily we go to hell (Dorothy Arzner, 1932)

Who's in it: Fredric March + Sylvia Sidney + George Irving (+ Cary Grant) 

What it's about: A heiress (Sidney) marries an alcoholic jerk (March)...

The good: this film —in charge of the only woman director during the "Golden Age"...how cool is that?— was very good overall; Sidney was a great actress and she carries the movie very well, showing the opposed feelings of her character: on one hand she really loves the guy and she tries to help him, but on the other that love is humiliating her and making her suffer; March is great as the alcoholic husband (just like in "A star is born") and he's so handsome (I never said these are serious reviews, lol); George Irving is very good as the worried father of the bride :) 

The movie has some shocking scenes, that look very modern (Sylvia's character watching her husband kissing another woman surrounded by drunk idiots). The ending is very emotive.

The bad: if you haven't noticed, I hated March's character, so it was a bit painful to see how forgiving was Sylvia with him again and again; Cary Grant appears too little as the heiress' party partner.

Should I see it? Yes. 

Hitchcock or how I became a classic movie lover

I just finished watching "Rear Window" for the umpteenth time and I had to comment something about it. I started writing about how cool Hitchcock's movies are, but I realized that what I really wanted to say is how grateful I am to Hitch and how nostalgic watching his films makes me.

I think the first time I heard about Hitchcock was at high school. Our philosophy teacher made a test in which you had to interpret some drawings and write what it was. I was a very good student but when this thing came up I just didn't know what to answer. I mean, really, what the heck is this?

No one at my class knew. I was very angry with my teacher. She said: "well, that's Hitchcock, you really haven't heard about him?? Ever??". Of course not!

He made his second apparition at university, second journalism year, when we had to watch a movie called "Rear Window" for our weekly media test. Like pretty much all our homework it was just that, another thing to do. So maybe that's why I don't remember the first time I watched a Hitchcock film. Or maybe I didn't watch it at all and I just asked a friend what was it about. Yeah, that's what happened. 

Then I took a course called "Audiovisual Review". Since I was a child, I watched with my family classics like "The Sound of Music" & "Gone with the wind". But I preferred modern movies and I thought I knew a lot about cinema. In that class I learned I didn't.

We had this teacher who was talking about many films, things and people I hadn't heard about. Like Billy Wilder and a French magazine called Cahiers du Cinema. We saw an old movie starring some guy called Cary Grant and a lady called Ginger Rogers. And Marilyn Monroe was there too. At least I knew who she was. Kind of. We saw "Ace in the hole" and we had to review it. I really liked it, but I remember I wrote an awful text, kind of "the movie is in black and white, so that reflects its mood" or something***. 

We were in one of the last classes, we had seen movies like "The Royal Tenenbaums" (I liked it), "Raging Bull" (too violent for me...says the girl who loves "Kill Bill") and "Dead Ringers" (too gross for me).

Then, we saw "Vertigo".

Wow.

The class was quiet, it was a winter afternoon.

It was dark.

I was immersed in Hitch's oneiric world. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. 

I'd never seen Jim Stewart or Kim Novak before. But their performances trapped me. 

And that was it. 

I think I bought like 20 of his movies to a guy who also loved Hitchcock. I liked them all.

I also remember this fan said "I think the girls in classic movies are much prettier and classier than modern actresses". Now I now what he meant. And that goes, of course, for the boys.

Then came Audrey to finish what Hitchcok had started. 

But that's another story.

*** I've been looking for that class notepad, but I haven't found it. I wish I could read the things I wrote 4 years ago and how I probably misspelled all these names that now are so familiar to me.

Crazy Survey/Encuesta loca

Spanish is my first language and I live in Chile (which was hinted like one of the most remote places to go filming...which it is), but I'm so answering this survey created by Millie and Kate...because, yeah, I'm asthmatic :)  

Which actors do you always (or did you always) mix-up? (For example: Millie's tendency to confuse William Powell and Clark Gable when she was a thirteen, er, four year-old? Yes, I am talking in the third person.)

Charles Laughton and Charles Coburn.  

Gidget or Beach Party?

Mmmm....I haven't seen any of them. Should I?

Favorite Movie Outfit?

Anything Audrey wore before the 70's, anything Grace or Ingrid wore in Hitch's films. But if I actually had to put the outfit on, I would go with Audrey's classic trench coat + skinny black pants + ballet flats.

If you could be ANY character in ANY movie...who would you choose?

Nora Charles in the Thin Man Series, Marie 'Slim' Browning in "To have and have not" & Hildy Johnson in "His Girl Friday".

If you could marry ANY character in ANY movie...who would you choose? (Excluding any Dana Andrews' characters. Seriously. ;-D)

Any Dana Andrews's characters.

Just kiddin'.

Who's Dana Andrews?

Kiddin' again.

Well, I'd chose almost any character played by Gary Cooper, like Mr. Deeds, John Doe, or Robert Jordan...I even wouldn't mind following him through the desert like Dietrich did in "Morocco"...

But, if this survey has no problems with bigamy, I'd marry Errol Flyn's Robin Hood, or his Captain Blood (I'd be Lady Marian or a pirate's wife, how cool is that?).

If you could live in ANY movie...which would you choose?

Wow, live in a movie? I'd go for "Sunset Boulevard", "The Grapes of Wrath", "On the waterfront". Or maybe "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". Ahhh, such happy people and joyful surroundings.

No, really...

I'd like to live in "High Society" (but ♪ do you want to be a millionaire? I don't ♪) because the settings were kind of relaxing (?)....


...and also in "Camille" (ah, that lovely countryside + Robert Taylor).

"Pollyana"'s town was kind of cool, and at the end all the neighbours were adorable.

I'd never have thought that would be my final answer.

Black & White movies you wish were in Technicolor, or vice-versa?

I wish Carole Lombard's movies were in Technicolor. And "Camille" too.

Favorite Movie Soundtrack?

I love Henry Mancini's soundtracks for Audrey's movies (B@t, Two for the road & Charade. Wait until dark music is too...dark for me).

I also like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" soundtrack by Burt Bacharach...

and the one from "Singin' in the rain" & "The sound of music" .....

and the lovely music from "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort"...so happy...

And I can't leave out John Barry's soundtrack for "Out of Africa", "Robin and Marian", "Dancing with wolves" and 007 movies.

(SORRY reader)

I'm embeding what a think is the less known soundtrack of my list...

Favorite Movie Dance Sequence?

I have 3.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off with Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire (from "Shall we dance"). Really cool. And I love the song.

This one with Fred and Rita Hayworth from "You'll never get rich". So natural.

And Basal Metabolism with Audrey (from "Funny Face)...

Coolest Movie Star? (Cough, cough, BOBBY DARIN, cough, cough)

Errol Flynn.

Sophia or Gina (Oh, how Kate enjoys replaying Gina's sad defeat OVER AND OVER!)

I've never seen Gina...on anything, so I have to say Sophia Loren.

"Isn't It Romantic" in most Billy Wilder films, or "Red River" in most John Ford films?

"Isn't it Romantic".

If you could re-cast ANY role in ANY movie, what would it be?

I would recast Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart and Fred Astaire in "Love in the afternoon", "Sabrina" and "Funny face"...and cast younger versions of themselves :)

Favorite movie character with your first name?

Clara Varner (Joan Woodward in "The Long, Hot Summer").

One movie that should NEVER be remade? (under THE THREAT OF A SLOW, PAINFUL DEATH!)

The ones that have a very personal vision/technique from their director. Movies by Manckiewicz, Wilder, Hitch, etc.

Actor or Actress who you would love to be best friends with?

Carole Lombard. Or Cary Grant. Or Audrey Hepburn. Or William Powell. Or Myrna Loy.

Are you an Oscar or a Felix?

I'm a Felix.

Actor/Actress you originally hated and now love?

As Eliza Doolittle would say,  I'm a good girl, I am, so I don't hate people.

Actor/Actress you originally loved and now don't like?

Same as above.

(Edit: But I found Bing Crosby extremely boring the first time I saw him...and now... there's something more extreme than extremely?)

Favorite performance that was looked over by Oscar? (Not to be confused with the aforementioned Oscar of Felix fame.)

Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke", "Hud", "The Hustler" and "Cat on a hot tin roof". I mean, c'mon, he was great.

Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie?

I just have seen "Bewitched", so Bewitched it is.

Hannibal Heyes or Kid Curry? (Hint for those who don't know who they are: pick Kid Curry.)

Kid Curry looks nicer in Google Images :)

Favorite Style Icon: Fred Astaire or Cary Grant?

Cary Grant.

Single most favorite movie scene EVER?

Impossible to answer. I mean ONE scene?
A have a lot of favorite scenes, from this one...

...to this one...(SPOILER...yeah, for aliens)

And all in between. And around. And before. And after. You get the idea.

Movie you really "should" see, but have subconsciously been avoiding for who knows what reason?

"The maltese falcon". Really.

Movie quote you find yourself most often repeating in real life?

This one is not a greaaaat quote, but each time I have keys on my hands I make them sound and  I say "the British are coming!" (yeah, in English)...like Holly Golightly.

50's Westerns or 60's Spies? (I can't even answer this myself...but you have to! MWAHAHAHA!)

Sean Connery's 007 v/s John Wayne's "The Searchers"??

Really??

MWWAHAHAHA, I'm so not gonna answer :)

Favorite splashy, colorful, obnoxious 50's musical?

Does "Calamity Jane" work like an answer here?

Favorite film setting (example: Rome, Paris, Seattle, Siberia, Chile, Sahara Desert, etc)

I'm from Chile :)

And the only famous foreign  movie that was filmed here was "Quantum of Solace". But in the movie Chile's locations are supposed to be Bolivia.

So obviously the major of the northern city Sierra Gorda had to enter to the set, while Craig was filming a scene, and stop everything. Ah, that crazy major.

So, to answer the question, I'd say Ireland  in "The quiet man"...

....or Austria in the next movie...

If you could own the entire wardrobe of any film, which would it be?

The one from "The Sound of Music"...

...because I love curtain-made clothes.

Carol Burnette or Lucille Ball?

Have you seen Carol's Gone with the wind? Hilarious.

But I choose Lucille Ball because "I love Lucy".

Favorite Voice. Ever. Period?

Cary Grant. But, if I had to borrow one voice for myself (like Ursula in the "Little Mermaid")....

....I'd pick Liz Hurley's, even when she doesn't belong to classic cinema :)

Favorite movie that takes place in your home-state?

Home-state? LOL (see favorite film setting answer). But "Gringuito" is a good Chilean movie filmed in Santiago, our capital, which is near to my city :)

Which actors would you want for relatives? (Mother, Father, Grandma, Crazy Aunt, annoying cousin, older brother, etc...)

What a weird question :)

Mom: Deborah Kerr.

Dad: William Powell.

Sister: Shirley Temple or Debbie Reynolds.

Crazy Aunt: Shirley Maclaine or Rosalind Russell.

Uncle: Groucho Marx

Older Brothers: Burt Lancaster (like at the begining of "The Unforgiven". If you see it, you'll understand).

Grandpa: Charles Coburn.

Grandma: Lilian Gish (remember her in "The night of the hunter?)

Well this took me a whole day, but who cares?