Get Ready...

01/01/2012

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Somebody tell this guy I'm not Sean Young
Just under three weeks until the 10th Annual Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco. I saw the preview last week while waiting for Singin' in the Rain to start (second on the program with On the Town) and wished they'd cut it about 40 seconds shorter. Alas, they did something unfortunate typographically with the "X" that signifies "10" and the "Y" in "City" and decided to go soft porn in the promo, which is both a misinterpretation of noir and a lame design treatment. Very 1982.

Happily, The program itself looks good. I'll miss Angie Dickinson and a bunch of great San Francisco-based films, but I will get there just in time for Gilda and The Money Trap and won't have to leave until right after The Great Gatsby (with Ruth Hussey!!) and Three Strangers.

Stay tuned for pre-program preparatory and in-program notes. Meanwhile: Happy New Year!
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Very Good Advice

12/11/2011

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S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall
"John, when you're kissing me, don't talk about plumbing."

I always forget about Christmas in Connecticut, showing now on TCM, and it's such a sweet picture. Barbara Stanwyck is so good at not knowing how to do anything remotely domestic. Plus S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall is in it, fresh from an earlier appearance on TCM this morning in the painful Never Say Goodbye (1946), with Errol Flynn, Eleanor Parker, and the precocious (see "painful") Patti Brady. I confess that I had been confusing him with Gregory Ratoff, Max Fabian from All About Eve, which was a terrible mistake.

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Boy, was I wrong.
No one can convey distaste for a man like Stanwyck. Or desire.

Speaking of which, she's about to pounce on the affable,  eligible Dennis  Morgan so I'm going to cut this short. But first, I've noticed two striking sociological oddities for  the time. First, an African-American restaurant worker defined the word  catastrophe for "Cuddles" Sakall without "dialect" and in an obviously well-educated way. Not bad for 1945. Second, the women who drop off the babies for the ruse are working women, unfazed and unapologetic at having their kids looked after while they work at the war plant.

Interesting.

And short lived.
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