Samuel Palmer

Ray Milland #6

The Major and the Minor (Billy Wilder, 1942)
There's an excellent piece on this wonderfully strange movie here:
See http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com/2011/07/forgotten-or-overlooked-film-tuesday.html

and another here:
http://spellboundcinema.blogspot.com/2011/04/major-and-minor-1941.html

So let's leave it at that!

Lucian Freud RIP

Lucian Freud, the foremost figurative artist of his generation, dies aged 88
Lucian Freud, a colossus of the art world for more than half a century, has died peacefully at his home aged 88.

By James Orr, and Raf Sanchez
11:18PM BST 21 Jul 2011

In a statement his New York-based art dealer and close friend William Acquavella said the realist painter died on Wednesday following a brief illness, but gave no further details.

Freud was known for his intense realist portraits, particularly of nudes.

In recent years his paintings commanded huge prices at auction, including one called Naked Woman on a Sofa that sold for $33.6 million (£20.5million) in 2008. Last month, a portrait entitled Woman Smiling, 1958-59, sold for £4,745,250.

Mr Acquavella said he would mourn Freud “as one of the great painters of the twentieth century.”

“My family and I mourn Lucian Freud not only as one of the great painters of the twentieth century but also as a very dear friend,” he said.

“As the foremost figurative artist of his generation he imbued both portraiture and landscape with profound insight, drama and energy.

“In company he was exciting, humble, warm and witty. He lived to paint and painted until the day he died, far removed from the noise of the art world.”

Freud was well known for bucking the trends of the art world, insisting on using his realist approach even when it was out of favour with critics and collectors.

He stubbornly developed his own unique style, eventually winning recognition as one of the world's greatest painters.

“He certainly is considered one of the most important painters of the 20th and 21st Centuries,” said Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of the postwar art department at Christie's auction house in New York.

“He stayed with his figurative approach even when it was extremely unpopular, when abstraction was the leading concept, and as time moved on his classic approach has proven to be very important. He fought the system and basically won.”

Freud, grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin in 1922. His Jewish family was forced to flee the city in 1933 and he became a British citizen in 1939.

The artist was a member of the Order of Merit - one of Britain's most prestigious chivalry honours founded in 1902 by Edward VII. The honour is a special award presented to individuals of great achievement in the fields of the arts, learning, literature and science.

Current members include former prime minister Baroness Thatcher, naturalist Sir David Attenborough and inventor of the worldwide web Sir Timothy Berners-Lee. Members receive no rank or title apart from the initials OM after their name.

Freud’s most famous subject was arguably the supermodel Kate Moss, who he painted in the nude while she was pregnant. He named the painting Naked Portrait 2002.

He also painted a portrait of the Queen - completed in his characteristically uncompromising and unflattering style, with some commentators describing the Monarch's expression as "glum".

The Director of the Tate in London, Nicholas Serota, said: “The vitality of his nudes, the intensity of the still life paintings and the presence of his portraits of family and friends guarantee Lucian Freud a unique place in the pantheon of late twentieth century art.

“His early paintings redefined British art and his later works stand comparison with the great figurative painters of any period.”

Freud's sister-in-law Ann, told the Daily Telegraph that neither she nor her husband Stephen, knew of the painter's illness and only learned of his death through TV reports.

Mrs Freud said: "We literally out found five minutes ago and it's a terrible shock. I didn't even know he was unwell. He wouldn't keep a telephone so no one could phone him directly.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8653847/Lucian-Freud-the-foremost-figurative-artist-of-his-generation-dies-aged-88.html

Ray Milland #5

The Uninvited (1944)

Considered by Martin Scorsese to be one of the eleven best horror films of all time, Lewis Allen’s seductively melancholic ghostly tale, The Uninvited (1944), was one of the first Hollywood films to portray a haunting as a supernatural event in a serious manner; before this, it was someething that could be explained away rationally or it was played for laughs.

Partly inspired by the success of Hitchcock’s enigmatic melodrama, Rebecca (1940) and partly by the recent group of Val Lewton’s atmospheric supernatural films, like Cat People (1941) and The Seventh Victim (1943) at RKO, and aware that the Universal horror series was past its best (four more years and Abbott and Costello would be meeting Frankenstein), Paramount were looking for a big budget ghost story hit and they found the basis in Dororthy McCardle’s Rebecca-style haunted house mystery, Uneasy Freehold, set on the south-west English coast.

Ray Milland plays London music critic and composer, Roderick Fitzgerald, who, with his sister, Pamela, moves into an old house overlooking the rocky coast of Cornwall. The owner is Commander Beech, who inherited it from his grandmother and had given it to his daughter, Mary Beech Meredith, who has since passed away. Her daughter, Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), is deeply attached to the house, against her grandfather’s wishes, and Rick begins to fall in love with her.

After moving in, the Fitzgeralds open up an artist's studio, in which a bouquet of roses wilts away and where they experience an unexplainable drop in temperature. Their dog, who had earlier refused to climb the stairs, disappears and Rick hears a woman sobbing – something that Pamela has already heard.

Stella feels a calming presence and smells mimosa, a scent she associates with her late mother; however, she becomes upset and claims her mother died cruelly. She dashes out to the cliff top from where her mother fell, but Rick saves her before she too falls – it’s as if she has been possessed!

Local doctor, Dr Scott (Alan Napier), reveals that Stella’s father had an affair with a Spanish gypsy called Carmel, who stole baby Stella and threw Mary Meredith of the cliffs, before succumbing to illness and dying.
During a séance, the ghost communicates that it is guarding Stella, who then becomes obsessed by the spirit of Carmel and she is packed off to a sanitorium by Commander Beech.

The sanitorium manager, Miss Holloway, a childhood friend and obsessive devotée of Mary Meredith, tells the Fitzgeralds how she cared for Carmel, but she died of pneumonia; however, Dr Scott tells them she died of neglect, so they set out to bring Stella back.

Realising that Dr Scott and the Fitzgeralds are on their way, Holloway sends Stella home by train, hoping that the spirit in the house will lead her to the cliff edge. When she arrives back, she refuses to listen to her grandfather’s pleas to leave, but the appearance of the spirit causes him to die of a heart attack.

Rick, Pamela, and Dr. Scott manage to arrive in time to stop Stella falling off the cliff and back in the house, a physician’s journal discovered by Dr Scott reveals that Carmel gave birth to a child, Stella, and her spirit has returned to be close to her daughter. The scent of mimosa and the sobbing had been emanating from Carmel, whose spirit has been freed by her daughter’s return. However, the jealous spirit of the spurned Mary Meredith remains to be confronted by Rick, who tells her no-one is afraid of her any longer and she finally leaves.

When Hitchcock finished filming Rebecca, producer David O. Selznick wanted the smoke from the burning Manderley to form a large letter “R”. Fortunately, the director had the last word and only filmed a burning monogrammed nightdress. With The Uninivited, Allen wanted to rely on suggestion and atmosphere, but Paramount insisted on the inclusion of several ghost shots during post-production and he was unable to stand up to the producers. The ghost’s features were puportedly modelled by actress Elizabeth Russell (no relation to Gail, but a regular in Val Lewton’s horror movies) and physical form by model and bit-player Lynda Grey. Russell also posed for the large portrait of Mary Meredith that is seen on the wall of Miss Holloway’s office in the film. Fortunately, the ghost shots were removed from the British release and critics praised its chilling atmospheric suggestion.

The superbly atmospheric cinematography by Charles Lang won the 1945 Academy Award for Black and White Cinematography.

The popular standard, Stella by Starlight, was based on the main (instrumental) theme of Victor Young’s score and helps underline the melancholy mood of the film. It wasn’t until later that Young’s collaborator, Ned Washington, added lyrics and the song became a standard.

Milland did not appear in the weak follow-up, The Unseen (1945). While it was also directed by Allen (and numbered Raymond Chandler among those who received a writing credit), it was more of a murder mystery with shades of George Cukor's recent popular film Gaslight (1944).

The Saga of the Internal Mountain

Tall Story? Doubts Over Everest's True Height

The world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, is to be remeasured amid claims from China and western climbers that official calculations are not accurate.

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tall-story-doubts-over-everests-true-height-122059916.html

Perhaps they should've measured it from the inside when Lord Seagoon climbed it back in 1954...

Googie Withers RIP

Googie Withers

Googie Withers, who died on July 15 aged 94, was a leading lady of British stage and screen in the 1940s and 1950s, with a famously long 62-year marriage to the Australian actor John McCallum, her regular co-star in 10 popular films of the time.
 
Through talent and determination, she succeeded in carving out a varied career despite a name that seemed forever to consign her to light comedy roles. Born in Karachi, she was given the nickname Googie by her Indian nanny and it stuck. A Hindi word, it meant (according to who was telling) "dove" or "crazy". Subscribers to the latter view held that it reflected her antic behaviour as a child.

As an actress it undeniably held her back. In the inter-war years, the influential critic James Agate missed no opportunity to upbraid her for it. How could she hope to be taken seriously as an actress, he thundered, with such a name? For many years he was right. The studios dyed her hair blonde and typecast her as maids or dolly birds, with supporting roles in George Formby and Tommy Trinder farces.

The actress stood firm. She had used the name for a long time and it had brought her luck. Why abandon it? Ginger Rogers, after all, was proof that an actress could have a nursery name and still win an Oscar (for Kitty Foyle in 1940).

For Googie Withers the war was a turning point. It temporarily brought to an end the era of frothy comedies in which she had hitherto been cast. Suddenly, the demand was for weightier fare to help the war effort. Seizing the moment, she rinsed out her blonde hair, reverting to her natural brunette, and made a pitch for more dramatic roles.

That she was able to make the transition was due to the director Michael Powell. She first worked with him in 1934 on his film The Girl in the Crowd and again in 1935 in The Love Test. In 1936, he directed her for a third time in Her Last Affairs. As usual, she was cast as a comic serving maid, but tucked away in the script was a short sequence that tapped her histrionic abilities.

"One day", Powell told her, "you'll be able to play a dramatic part and I'll direct you." Six years later, when he was casting his wartime picture One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, he remembered his promise and offered her a part as a member of the Dutch Resistance. There was opposition at first. On past form, many thought she would fail in the role, but Powell boosted her confidence. "I think you can do it", he told her, "but I don't mind telling you that no one else thinks you can." It was a shrewd combination of challenge and reassurance, spurring her on to success.

She never looked back, developing into a respected actress, initially in the theatre and cinema and later on television. Among her acclaimed stage performances, she played Gertrude in Hamlet in 1962 and Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest in 1979. On television she was named best actress of the year in 1954 in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea and between 1973 and 1976 played the Governor of Stone Park, a fictitious women's prison in the long-running series Within These Walls.

Born in India on March 12 1917, she was the daughter of Captain EC Withers and his Dutch wife Lizette. She was herself christened Georgette Lizette, which she found a mouthful to pronounce. It was one reason why she preferred another stage name.

From a young age she intended to become a professional dancer. She took her first lessons at the age of four and, when she was eight, came to England for more advanced training. She was educated first at Fredville Park school in Nonnington, Kent, and later at the Convent of the Holy Family in Kensington. Her professional training was undertaken with Italia Conti and then with Helena Lehmiski in Birmingham.

Her first stage experience was in 1929, when she played a toy, a cat, a fairy and a milkmaid in the Christmas pantomime The Windmill Man at the Victoria Palace. Catching measles during the run, she passed it on to half the company, much to the management's displeasure.

Aged 15, in partnership with Vera Morris, she won the Open Dancing Championship of Great Britain but her career was set back by an accident during an acrobatic number in which she injured her arm so badly that it seemed at first to require amputation. Luckily, this was avoided.

While recovering in New Brighton, she spent six months with a concert party at the Floral Pavilion and then, at 17, headed for London. She enrolled at another dancing school run by Buddy Bradley and began to appear as a chorus girl in such shows as Ballyhoo and Nice Goings On. Her first starring part was in Happy Weekend, which came about in the time-honoured showbiz fashion when the leading lady fell sick.

Her performance in this play attracted the attention of the film producer Sergei Nolbandov, who offered her a screen test. In the event, though she turned up for it, it never took place. It would have cost too much, the studio claimed, but rushed her untried into a small part in The Girl In The Crowd. It was the start of a fruitful professional association with Michael Powell.

During the war, she joined Southern Command's Garrison theatre and after the liberation of France, played to the troops in Holland and Belgium. In Antwerp, she narrowly escaped death when the theatre where she was playing was hit by a V2 rocket only minutes after she had left.

In 1944, she and the entire cast of the JB Priestley play They Came To A City, which had enjoyed a nine-month run in London's West End, were invited to Ealing Studios to produce a film version. Ealing offered a congenial working environment and the kind of dramatic roles that, after the war, she increasingly sought. She stayed and did her best work there.

Particularly successful were the films she made with the director Robert Hamer. After an episode in the portmanteau picture Dead Of Night (1945), they worked together on a film of the play Pink String And Sealing Wax (1945), a period piece set in Brighton, in which Googie Withers enjoyed her strongest part to date as a murderess.

Even finer was It Always Rains On Sunday (1947), in which Hamer cast her as a former barmaid who shelters an ex-lover, now an escaped convict. Her portrait of a working-class housewife, prematurely soured by life and looking back enviously to the flashier, more exciting world she might have known with her lover, significantly extended her range and was among her finest performances for the screen.

Her co-star was John McCallum, the Australian actor soon to become her husband. She also appeared with him that year in The Loves Of Joanna Godden, another period drama set in the early 1900s and based on a popular novel by Sheila Kaye-Smith. In an early instance of feminism, she was cast as a strong-willed farming lady at a time when this was considered an unsuitable occupation for a woman.

Over the years, she and John McCallum appeared together in eight more films, including Miranda (1948), about a mermaid, Travellers' Joy (1949), Port of Escape (1956) and The Nickel Queen (1971). Later in life, they also co-starred on stage, achieving personal triumphs in a UK tour of On Golden Pond.

Her other films, made without McCallum, included Once Upon A Dream (1948), in which she played an officer's wife subject to romantic daydreams about her husband's batman, Pat Jackson's White Corridors (1951), in which she was cast as a surgeon, spending a month in a hospital before production began to familiarise herself with procedure, and Night And The City (1950) with Richard Widmark, a film noir about the wrestling game set in London.

In 1958, John McCallum was offered a managerial post with the TC Williamson theatrical agency in his native Australia and the family moved to Melbourne to set up a permanent home there. He held the post for eight years. Meanwhile, both continued to pursue theatrical careers here and in Australia.

After 1971, having made more than 60 films in the course of her career, Googie Withers made no more pictures but staged a comeback on British television. In 1985 she appeared in an adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel Hotel du Lac and in 1989, in a version of Kingsley Amis's Ending Up, with fellow veterans John Mills, Michael Hordern and Wendy Hiller.

She was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1980 and CBE in 2002.

Googie Withers and John McCallum married in 1948 and had three children – two daughters, Joanna (herself an actress) and Amanda, and a son, Nicholas. In 1979 McCallum published an anecdotal memoir of their lives together under the title Life with Googie. He died in 2010.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/8641392/Googie-Withers.html

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #116

The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution

Part 1: Gang of Four

Art writer Waldemar Januszczak explores the revolutionary achievements of the Impressionists. In the first episode, Waldemar delves into the back stories of four of the most influential Impressionists - Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and Bazille - who together laid the foundations of the artistic movement. He finds out what social and cultural influences drove them to their style of painting, how they were united and how ultimately they challenged and changed art forever.

Waldemar journeys from the shores of the West Indies, to the progressive city of Paris to the suburbs of South London, where these four artists drew inspiration from the cities and towns in which they lived. Whether it be the infamous spot on the river Seine - La Grenouillere - where Monet and Renoir beautifully captured animated people, iridescent light and undulating water or the minimalist, non-sensationalised illustrations of Pissarro's coarse countryside paintings, Waldemar discovers how the Impressionists broke conventions by depicting every day encounters within the unpredictable and ever changing sights around them.

Available on BBC iPlayer until 8:59PM Sat, 13 Aug 2011:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b012rvkl/

David Marks revisits Hawthorne, California

The utterly charming former Beach Boy David Marks is your guide on a nostalgic tour of Hawthorne, California, recounting a few stories about the landmarks and his his old friends, Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson and John Maus of the Walker Brothers:

Hugo Williams

Looking dapper at Flowers Gallery...

Saturday Morning

Everyone who made love the night before
was walking around with flashing red lights
on top of their heads-a white-haired old gentlemen,
a red-faced schoolboy, a pregnant woman
who smiled at me from across the street
and gave a little secret shrug,
as if the flashing red light on her head
was a small price to pay for what she knew.

HUGO WILLIAMS

An alternative lifestyle . . .

What?

Ray Milland #4

Inevitably, it’s pretty hard to reduce Ray Milland’s best movies to a mere ten. After all, Martin Scorsese had to name his eleven best horror movies – he couldn’t settle on ten. And I wouldn’t agree with some of his choices, but that’s another post.

Here are five more Milland movies worthy of note.

Skylark (Mark Sandrich, 1941): Claudette Colbert divorces her business-absorbed husband (Milland) and almost marries slick lawyer Brian Aherne. A moment of crisis forces her to re-evaluate and she returns to her husband. All three leads are particularly good in this sophisticated romantic comedy based on Samuel Raphaelson’s play which had been a hit on Broadway a couple of years earlier. This was Colbert and Milland’s second outing as a romantic couple; they had appeared together the previous year in Mitchell Leisen’s Arise My Love, a romantic comedy with an interventionist message and allegedly Colbert’s favourite film.

Beau Geste (William Wellman. 1939): the best-known adaptation of P. C. Wren’s adventure story is virtually a scene for scene remake of Herbert Brenon’s 1926 version. Milland stars with Gary Cooper and Robert Preston as the Geste brothers who, after Beau (Cooper) and Digby (Preston) confess to stealing a jewel their father was going to sell to raise money, join the Foreign Legion where they have to fight off Tuareg tribesmen and deal with the sadistic attentions of their commanding officer, who suspects them of having the jewel with them. At the end, only John Geste (Milland) is alive and a letter Beau had sent to their stepmother reveals that he had stolen the jewel to protect her because he knew it was fake; she had sold the original earlier and he feared she would be punished by her husband.

The River’s Edge (Allan Dwan, 1957): a contemporary Western-noir in which a couple’s (Anthony Quinn and Debra Paget) struggle to survive on a small ranch in New Mexico is violently interrupted by the arrival of the woman’s murderous ex-boyfriend, Nardo Denning (Milland), who forces them to accompany him across the Mexican border with a suitcase packed with stolen money. The situation worsens when the woman develops a fever and her husband’s leg is trapped by a boulder, leaving them at Denning’s mercy. Sounds like a Coen Brothers movie!

So Evil My Love (Lewis Allen, 1948): Victorian London-set psychological thriller, filmed in noir style by the director of The Uninvited. Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd) is infatuated with art thief and forger Mark Bellis (Milland) and allows herself to be manipulated into blackmailing an old friend, Susan, and her wealthy husband, Henry (who, in turn, is plotting to have his wife committed to a sanatorium because she cannot produce the heir he wants), not realising Bellis is romancing another woman, Kitty (Moira Lister), behind her back. The plan goes awry thanks to the work of a private detective (Leo G. Carroll) and Olivia hits Henry when she confronts her with evidence of Mark’s past crimes (which include murder). He collapses with a heart attack and she becomes more complicit when she convinces Susan to give him some medicine which she has laced with poison. Bellis wants to take Olivia to start a new life in America, but the private detective sends Kitty to see her and she sees a locket around the latter’s neck that she had given to him. When she confronts him, he admits he had been using her but tells her he is now genuinely in love, but she stabs him and heads for the police station.

Alias Nick Beal (John Farrow, 1949): a reworking of the Faust story with Milland in outstanding form as Nick Beal, a smartly-attired habitué of the China Coast wharfside café, who summons Judge Foster (Thomas Mitchell) when the latter exclaims that he would sell his soul to the devil if he could put a city crime boss, Hansen, behind bars. Beal provides the evidence in the form of Hansen’s account books and Foster is nominated for governor, accepting $25,000 for his campaign from his mysterious benefactor. He begins to change from an incorruptible judge into a vain, selfish politician and is persuaded by Beal to enter into a pact with a criminal to get elected. His old allies and even his wife desert him; the only person who stands by him is his old friend Reverend Garfield (George MacReady), who explains his suspicions that Beal is actually the devil! Foster tries to get out of the pact, but Beal implicates him in the murder of Hansen’s book-keeper. When he wins the election but immediately resigns and hold a press conference to admit to fraud. Although he has expiated his sins, Beal still wants his soul and drives him the wharf, where he is confronted by Reverend Garfield…

Full moon on a Friday night, the fifteenth of July

Paul Buchanan - Easter Parade

Harold Von Schmidt

Father of blues singer/guitarist and artist Eric Von Schmidt.

Last night's set list

At The Habit, York: -

Falling
World To Know (debut)*
Another Song For You (debut)*
Comes A Time
Sugar Mountain

* from the album Falling

A few beers washed down with a nice Macallan finished off the night in style.

Ray Milland #3

Here are the remaining five films from the ten Milland you ought to see - of course, in true top ten style, there'll certainly be an eleven and maybe even a twelve...

The Premature Burial (Roger Corman, 1962): gripping Roger Corman adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s tale (and the first Corman Poe not to star Vincent Price), that features Milland as a man tormented by the fear that his father died buried alive after a cataleptic attack. He designs a crypt rigged with escape devices – then he suffers his own attack of catalepsy, which a doctor misdiagnoses as a fatal coronary.

A Man Alone (Ray Milland, 1955): a gunfighter, Wes Steele (Milland), alone in the wilderness discovers the aftermath of a stage robbery, in which all the passengers were killed. He rides to town on one of the loose horses and reports what he has seen but finds himself not only accused of the crime, but also of the murder of a local banker. He hides in the basement of a house where the sheriff lives with his daughter. This tightly scripted little film, a paranoid Western-noir, highlights small-town corruption and the mentality of the mob and was Milland’s directorial debut.

The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948): a snappily-paced film noir told in flashback. Crime magazine publisher Earl; Janoth (Charles Laughton) murders his wife after wrongly assuming she is having an affair; he decides to frame her ‘lover’ and sets his editor-in-chief George Stroud(Milland) on the case – not knowing that he is the man he had seen her with!

Earl Janoth: [talking on intercom to Steve Hagen] On the fourth floor - in the broom closet - a bulb has been burning for several days. Find the man responsible, dock his pay.

X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman, 1963): an ambitious science-fiction film in which Milland plays Dr Xavier, a scientist carries out experiments with X-Ray vision that go horribly wrong. His visual capacity begins to increase but his ability to control it decreases and he can no longer see the world in human terms, just in forms of lights and textures that his brain cannot completely comprehend. Eventually, he claims he can see things at the edges of the universe and an "eye that sees us all.” A pastor tells him that this is "sin and the devil," adding: "If thine eye offends thee... pluck it out!" and Xavier blinds himself rather than see anything more.

Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954): hugely underrated thriller adapted from Frederick Knott’s successful stage play, somewhat in the Gaslight vein. Former tennis pro Tony Wendice (Milland) discovers his wife (Grace Kelly) is having an affair with an American crime writer (Robert Cummings) and decides to have her murdered, but she kills the hired assassin and is sentenced to death until Wendice makes one key mistake…

“Do you really believe in the perfect murder?”