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| My Name Is Julia Ross | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 26 2010, 07:18 AM (499 Views) | |
| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 26 2010, 07:18 AM Post #1 |
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Mouth Breather
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George, George, George. Get a grip, son! In this little gem Macready tends to go a little peculiar whenever he gets a knife in his hands, or maybe "a little peculiar" is an understatement, considering that the cushions aren't safe when he's around. His Mama, Dame May Whitty, has her hands full locking up all the knives in the house in a drawer he could easily break into, but for some puzzling reason, she's the only person who can see through him; the only person, that is, except Julia Ross, who is his wife but isn't his wife, if you know what I mean, and why should you? Julia, played by Nina Foch, is a young woman at loose ends who takes a job at a phony employment office and finds herself doped up in a great big house on the savage Cornwall coast where everybody calls her "Marian," and I'm already flirting with spoilers here, but Marian is the name of Macready's real wife who died -- oh, you know, in a little stabbing accident. This fine B was shot for almost nothing and attracted attention right away. Director Joseph H. Lewis learned he had done something right when he walked into Columbia and all the flunkies were suddenly calling him "Joey, Baby," when the day before they didn't know he existed: the Great Roy Cohn was impressed. The film was released as an A picture in big theaters and was something of a career maker for all concerned. It must have pleased Harry that it was made on a low budget, too: good for the bottom line. B pictures don't get better. Even the small parts are executed well, and the trademark Lewis close-ups are very much in evidence. Not only did they thrust the characters at the audience, but they also saved money on set details. You don't think about that as you watch the movie though: it pulls you in. Panzer gives this B an A. I tried to watch an episode of The Monster and the Ape before the picture, but for that rant you'll have to go to the serials forum. Incidentally, Nina, who pronounced her last name to rhyme with Bosch, not roach, ended up teaching film at USC. My son took her course. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| The Batman | Jul 26 2010, 08:13 AM Post #2 |
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Charter Member
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Amazon has delayed shipping that title Up North, dammit. |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| JazzGuyy | Jul 26 2010, 08:26 AM Post #3 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Hey, Paul, I think you got your Cohns mixed up. Harry was the Columbia head. Roy was the guy who was involved in the Army-McCarthy hearings and immortalized as a central character of "Angels In America". I've always loved the quote (possibly apochryphal) attributed to Red Skelton about why there was such a large attendance at Harry Cohn's funeral: "It proves what Harry always said: Give the public what they want and they'll come out for it." |
| TANSTAAFL! | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 26 2010, 08:34 AM Post #4 |
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Mouth Breather
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You're right, of course. I'm always substituting Roy for Harry, why I cannot say. Roy was a total, unprincipled bastard without any redeeming qualities, and Harry, despite a rough exterior, was a much more interesting and valuable guy. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| JazzGuyy | Jul 26 2010, 08:42 AM Post #5 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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But Harry was still a bastard too. |
| TANSTAAFL! | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 26 2010, 09:44 AM Post #6 |
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Mouth Breather
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Harry was intimidating when he thought he could get away with it. I don't call guys like that bastards, I call 'em tough. Many stories indicate that straight shooters had no trouble with him, and frankly, simply by hiring the best and letting them get the job done he came up with more good work than Mayer and Zanuck put together. He didn't ruin movies by tinkering. Just look at what Mayer did to Vidor's An American Romance, or what Zanuck did to Richard Fleischer's Compulsion (an unusually dumb move in dealing with a presold bestseller). Compare those to, oh, From Here to Eternity and you get an idea what I mean. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| JazzGuyy | Jul 26 2010, 10:35 AM Post #7 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Zanuck had some legitimate claims to be able to interfere. He had been a screenwriter and producer before he was ever a studio head so he had more knowledge than the average studio head about what made a good movie. Some of his interference in movies had a very positive result. I just don't think he understood the business after the '50s when the death of the studio system, the eventual elimination of the production code and other stuff made the movie business a lot different. Most of the old-time studio heads were lost by the '60s. Look at Mayer, Jack Warner, and others. The business just wasn't the one they understood any more. |
| TANSTAAFL! | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 26 2010, 12:56 PM Post #8 |
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Mouth Breather
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Zanuck's ability to interfere with any degree of competence ended in the late Fifties for, ahem, personal reasons. Compulsion (1959) and Crack In the Mirror (1960), both swell stories with fine casts directed by reliable old Richard Fleischer, make my point, and both, of course, came well before the swingin' Sixties threw the suits into confusion. The savaging of A Star Is Born, the first sign that Jack Warner was becoming a weird old man, came in 1954, two years after Cohn came into his own by trusting the same director, George Cukor (who, incidentally, never said a word against Cohn -- why would he? -- but who was treated horribly by MGM as well as by Warners, and later by Fox). Mayer, of course, lost it in the Forties, and "it" included his job. He died in 1957, a victim of the same ageism he had practiced for years (always excepting his friends Clarence Brown and Victor Fleming. My understanding is that when Mayer left, Brown bowed out to manage his huge real estate interests, and Fleming quit in a fury when Dore Schary's new MGM administration took Plymouth Adventure away from him and wrecked it in the cutting room. What wrecked the studio system, incidentally, was that the U.S. government separated the studios from their theaters. The collapse of censorship was a symptom not a cause. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| mort bakaprevski | Jul 26 2010, 03:13 PM Post #9 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Universal-International certainly had a hand in it.. with their introduction of stars participation in the profits. Interestingly, Universal never had any theatres... even though Unca Carl started in the theatre business. |
| "Nov Shmoz Ka Pop." | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 26 2010, 09:10 PM Post #10 |
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Mouth Breather
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Good point. Universal is also the studio that owns all its serials and won't even sign off on any kind of release, and that ain't 60 years ago, folks, it's right this minute, today... Heckweeds I calls 'em. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 26 2010, 09:14 PM Post #11 |
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Mouth Breather
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Good point. Universal is also the studio that owns all its serials and won't even sign off on any kind of release, and that ain't 60 years ago, folks, it's right this minute, today... Heckweeds I calls 'em. Some call 'em suits, but I wore a suit to my daughter's wedding 16 years ago so I'm true to my clan. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Apr 4 2012, 08:01 AM Post #12 |
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Pete the Volvo Repair Guy and I watched this film t'other night, and thought it either a minor classic or a major B-movie. The sense of dread in the early part of the story - where Julia is so happy to be offered a job, not noticing that the agent seemed much more interested in whether or not she had any relatives or a boyfriend, and whether anyone would miss her if she went away - is followed by claustophobic Kafkaism on a Hitchcockian house atop a cliff, or do I mix my moviephors? Anyway, it's a terrific li'l movie and we enjoyed it tons. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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