BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM #30

"A movie imprisons your eyes. It acts on you , and you on it. Hence, you don't 'see' or 'look at' a movie. 
You watch it the way a cat watches a bird until the cat strikes, kills, eats."
             Leonard Michaels
quoted in Lifelines: A Commonplace Book by Charles Cherry
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THE MINIDRESS SHOWN IN FORBIDDEN PLANET

The minidress worn by Anne Francis was seen to be the first worn in a Hollywood movie, and resulted in the film being banned in Spain (it was not shown there until 1967), due to General Franco's dictatorship that considered it dirty and obscene that a woman wore a minidress to show off legs.
idmB trivia
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ON JEWISH FILMS FROM HOLLYWOOD

While Ben Hecht wrote the original “Scarface,” an Italian gangster flick for Yiddish theater veteran Paul Muni (né Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund), Yiddish film thrived in Europe and the U.S. With the rise of the Third Reich, Hollywood welcomed a crop of European Jewish talent (directors like Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Fritz Lang) whose work would enrich the landscape of American film. But their films weren’t necessarily Jewish – at least not yet.
By the 1960s, studios, once reticent to touch on Jewish topics – out of disinterest, fear of an alienated audience or the threat of German boycott throughout the 1930s  – were happy to roll the dice on actors named Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand. Filmmakers like Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Elaine May and Woody Allen would kick off a renaissance of Jewish humor in the movies, fully committing to what their predecessors only hinted at. Paul Mazursky and Sidney Lumet would capture the counterculture and document the life of survivors. Otto Preminger would make “Exodus” with Paul Newman. Hollywood was Jewish and so, in many instances, was the film scene in Europe, South America and a new state in the Levant called Israel. Hearing the words “mazel tov” or “schlep” or seeing a bride and groom lifted aloft on chairs as “Hava Nagila” plays was no longer uncommon at the cinema. '

By PJ Grisar in THE FORWARD (July 1, 2022)
https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/502654/125-greatest-jewish-movie-scenes-annie-hall-big-lebowski-blazing-saddles/
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HOLLYWOOD FROGS

There are more than 6,000 species of frogs. Only one species, the Pacific chorus frog, is known to make a “ribbit” sound. Its prevalence on the West Coast of the U.S. led to its inclusion in many films, which led to the sound’s association with frogs in general.

ONE GOOD FACT (March 16th, 2025)
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PAULINE KAEL ON MOVIES OF THE 1960's

"To the children of “Blow-Up,” movies that are literary in the worst way—movies that superficially resemble head books and art films—can seem profound and suggestive. Every few months, there is a new spate of secondhand lyrical tricks. Robert Redford is impaled, like a poor butterfly, in frozen frames at the end of picture after picture. Directors have become so fond of telescopic lenses that any actor crossing a street in a movie may linger in transit for a hazy eternity—the movie equivalent of a series of dots. 
Pauline Kael, "Notes on Hearts and Mind" in The New Yorker (January 15, 1971)
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ERROL FLYNN IN THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)

During one fight sequence, Errol Flynn was jabbed by an actor who was using an unprotected sword--he asked him why he didn't have a guard on the point. The other player apologized and explained that director Michael Curtiz had instructed him to remove the safety feature in order to make the action "more exciting". Flynn reportedly climbed up a gantry where Curtiz was standing next to the camera, took him by the throat and asked him if he found that "exciting enough
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK CHANGED HOW MOVIES WERE SCREENED IN THEATERS

Before 1960 most movie theaters did not have set times when screenings began—movies were constantly looping. Patrons would walk into the theater in the middle of a film, watch to the end, and wait for the movie to begin again to see what they missed. Alfred Hitchcock is credited with disrupting this practice. He insisted that no one be allowed in after the start of a Psycho screening to prevent spoiling its ending.

ONE GOOD FACT website for January 5th, 2025
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SMALL TIME CROOKS & SHERLOCK HOLMES

"The film contains several references to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story 'The Red-Headed League,' including the plot to break into a bank through the basement of an adjacent storefront and Frenchy's attempt memorize the contents of the dictionary."
iMDb Trivia
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SILVER STREAK & NORTH BY NORTHWEST

When meeting Gene Wilder after having seen Silver Streak (1976), Cary Grant asked him if the script had been in any way inspired by North by Northwest (1959). As Wilder admitted it was correct, Grant then added, "I knew it! Have you noticed that each time you take ordinary people, say, like you and me, then take them in a situation way above their heads, it makes a great thriller?"
iMDb Trivia
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Lucille Ball Auditioned for the Role of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”

In 1939, Ball — along with 1,400 other hopefuls — auditioned for one of the most celebrated roles in Hollywood history. Her audition proved to be disastrous, however, as she showed up soaking wet and tipsy, the result of running through a rainstorm after having one too many drinks to ease her nerves. But that isn’t Ball’s only Gone With the Wind connection. In an ironic twist, she would go on to own many of the movie’s sets. In 1957, her production studio, Desilu Productions, purchased 33 soundstages (among other things) from RKO Pictures, including the exterior of the Tara plantation.

Interesting Facts website (December 10, 2025)
https://interestingfacts.com/lucille-ball-facts/

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Today's selection--from The Hollywood Brand by Peter Catapano. 

The MoMA  and Iris Barry redefine traditional museum art. 
“In November 1935, five years after its founding, the Museum of Modern Art in New York announced the opening of its Film Library ‘to render possible for the first time a considered study of the film as art.’ This announcement by Iris Barry, the curator of the Film Library, overstated the case in suggesting that MoMA was the first establishment to provide institutional support for the study of ‘film as art,’ & we saw in Chapter 4, the University of Southern California, with the help of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, had begun offering classes in both production and criticism/history prior to the creation of its Cinema Department in 1932. Other universities and museums had also begun including the motion picture in their programs more than a decade before MoMA. Stanley Kauffinan cited a course taught by Victor O. Freeburg at Columbia University's School of Journalism that used Vachel Lindsay's The Art of the Moving Picture as one of the first college film classes."

              DelanceyPlace.com via gmail.mcsv.net (January 17, 2025)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQZSjfQNMMpMNdvVlPVFjKJRhhVcompose=GTvVlcSPFrGpssPlsVpLjkXHKbjBCKtTwLzPlbdpPkWMKpFPLhMtMTDPVzLmVgfXQCVmRSrnGmhpr

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On August 10, 1984, Red Dawn became the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating.

Mental Floss Magazine
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Films for persons over 75: 
 
 THREE MUSKETEERS. Instead of sword fights,
duels are settled on shuffleboard courts.

THE GRADUATE:  "I have a word for you."
                               "Plastics?"
                               "No. Fiber."
Remake of Niagra :  Viagra
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WHEN A DOG RECEIVED AN ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION FOR WRITING THE BEST ADAPTATION SCREENPLAY

" Unhappy with the wholesale changes to his story, (Robert)Towne took a page from the disgruntled directors who disown their films under the pseudonym of Alan Smithee and insisted on being credited as "P.H. Vazak" — the name of his Hungarian sheepdog — for his contributions to the script. Lo and behold, the completed Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes garnered a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination in 1985 for the duo of Michael Austin and P.H. Vazak. The awards ceremony seemed ripe for comedy, but ultimately human Peter Shaffer received the trophy for Amadeus."

INTERESTING FACTS WEBSITE (JANUARY 17, 2025)
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JACK LEMMON TELLS PLAYBOY WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE A YOUNG ACTOR STARTING OUT IN A VERY DIFFICULT CAREER

Playboy: Did it ever occur to you to quit?

LEMMON: No, it didn't, but there was an awful lot of fear and insecurity the first few years. Still, I would not have quit. The terrible thing is that it isn't a matter of just getting a little job now and then or a small part. An actor really can't begin to know how good he might or might not be until he gets a couple of good parts with a good cast, in a good piece, with a good director. The rest of the time, you don't really know. And it may be ten years and you're going to have to look in the mirror, finally, after all of that time, and say, 'I'm a journeyman,' or 'I can't cut it."
"20 Questions: Jack Lemmon " in Playboy (June 1981)
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE

The scenes in which Herbert Marshall is running up and down the stairs at Madame Colet's were done with a double who is only seen from the rear. Mr. Marshall lost a leg in WWI and although it was almost impossible to notice that he used a prosthesis, he could not perform any action that called for physical agility.
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iMDb Trivia for TROUBLE IN PARADISE
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HOW DO THE MOVIES DO IT?

7:43 A.M.
I do not wish to be entertained,
By lovers unknotting
Picture-perfect bodies 
Under blue gels.
Nobody, not even my doctor
Wants to see me naked.

How do the movies do it?
With music over
& under all, violins, harps,
Pianos & kazoos,
Men, women, & others
Backlit & keylit,
In frame after frame,
 
Tumble over each other,
Yet there is 
No more love in the world
Than there was before.
When properly lit,
How seductive is 
The three-walled room

With the bed unmade.
Time to go to work.
How about some lipstick
On my cheek or collar?
Have I learned nothing
From silver-screen romance
Except that there is
More of it than I shall ever need.


Louis Phillips.