TCM Alerts: What the Siren Wants to Watch for March

So the Siren is just about recovered from the epic blogathon, and was just sort of casually nosing around the Turner Classic Movies schedule for March. Damn if her heart didn't have to be restarted several times. Keep that cable bill paid up, folks; March is choice. Several birthday tributes, two Borzages, Ginger Rogers, and the Siren's favorite Max Ophuls film. Tons of Kurosawa all month. The Siren may have to get vitamin D shots if she forgets to go out into the sunlight. All times are EST/EDT.

Here are the (mostly) not-on-DVD picks that the Siren wants to put on the DVR for March.

March 2
11:30 am The Spanish Main Frank Borzage swashbuckler with Paul Henreid, the thinking woman's Euro-accented bald heartthrob.

TCM is running John Garfield movies all day on March 4, what would have been the great actor's 97th birthday. The Siren will be recording

9:15 am Flowing Gold. A movie that Flickhead recommended long ago (which is good enough for the Siren), that co-stars Frances Farmer, an actor even more ill-fated than Garfield.

10:45 am Saturday's Children. Co-starring Anne Shirley, who was to have her own blacklist woes, and Claude Rains. Directed by the always-competent Vincent Sherman.

12:30 pm Out of the Fog. Costarring goddess Ida Lupino and directed by Anatole Litvak.

3:30 pm Between Two Worlds. Who would not want a white-suited, ledger-toting Sydney Greenstreet as the gatekeeper to the afterlife? In addition to Garfield there is a lovely turn by Eleanor Parker. The Siren really, really dug this one when she caught it a while back and wants to see it again.

March 7
10 am The Whole Town's Talking. One of the few John Ford films that has eluded the Siren so far, and starring Edward G. Robinson, no less. Bonus brilliance in the form of Jean Arthur.




That night, a great Hollywood on Hollywood selection: at 8 pm, The Oscar (the Siren hasn't seen that one, and it's supposed to be a pip); The Big Knife at 10:15 pm (want to see that one again); and Show People at 12:15 am (one of King Vidor's best films).

March 8
6 am The Story of Three Loves. One of those portmanteau movies the Siren can't wean herself off of. A must for Moira Shearer fans--she does a Red Shoes variation with James Mason; good parts for Pier Angeli and Leslie Caron.

March 9
8 am The Sisters. More Anatole Litvak, as well as Bette Davis and Errol Flynn.

March 12
6:15 pm. The Walking Stick. Don't know much about this one and it may be not very good at all; but it stars my old lust object David Hemmings, with Samantha Eggar, in a film version of a Winston Graham novel I loved as a teen.



March 15
Hold on to your hats, dear commenters: it's George Brent's birthday. And that can only mean--yes, you guessed it, an all-day George Brent marathon, something the whole world has been holding its breath for. Seriously, haven't you gotten fond of this man? I have. Anyway. Two Ruth Chattertons and some other goodies, but the real present for the Siren is

2.45 pm. Living on Velvet. The Siren's beloved Kay Francis, directed by Frank Borzage. Once she has this one recorded, the Siren can stop kicking herself for missing it when TCM ran dear Kay as Star of the Month back in 2008.



March 16
Not sure why, as it isn't her birthday--unless, like some other actresses we won't name, she had more than one--but they've got three pre-Codes starring Constance Cummings: The Guilty Generation at 6 am; The Big Timer, with poor doomed Thelma Todd, at 7:30 am; and The Mind Reader at 8:45 am, with Warren William, directed by Roy del Ruth.

March 23
All Kurosawa, all day. Just turn on the TV.

March 24
This was Ginger Rogers month on TCM; she is pretty well represented on home video so despite the Siren's well-known Rogers fandom she waited until this night to make recs. They are Vivacious Lady, directed by George Stevens, at 8 pm (not on DVD); Having Wonderful Time (at 1 am 3/25), a slight but savorable 1938 comedy that also has Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Eve Arden; and Fifth Avenue Girl, directed by the gifted Gregory La Cava, at 2:15 am (3/25).

March 25
One more Ginger: Star of Midnight, at 9:45 am, with the peerless William Powell.

4:45 pm Madeleine Brilliant David Lean film about the most enticing of all "not proven" murderesses. Richly deserves to be seen by many more people.




March 27
STOP THE PRESSES.
10.15 Letter from an Unknown Woman. Max Ophuls directs Joan Fontaine in a movie that would easily make the Siren's top five of all time. Still not on Region 1 DVD. Turn off the phone, put the kids to bed early, shut down the computer, draw the shades, whatever it takes. Shown as part of an evening devoted to Louis Jourdan, who is turning 91 this year; his performance as Stefan was the best he ever gave.

March 28
12 pm The Light in the Piazza. Lovely romantic tale that for some bizarre reason is not on home video, despite a slavering fan base.

March 31 (actually April 1)
One last Ginger: Primrose Path, directed by La Cava. At 1:30 am.

A Matter of Rights: A Talk with Lee Tsiantis

Everyone loves good news, and in 2007 classic film lovers got six doses of it: the RKO “Lost and Found” movies, unseen for decades due to an unusual rights situation, dusted off and unveiled for a delighted public by Turner Classic Movies. The RKO Six are Rafter Romance (1933), the Siren’s personal favorite of the group, a charming Depression comedy starring a young and delicious Ginger Rogers; Double Harness (1933), a wry comedy-drama of marriage and morals with William Powell and the underseen Ann Harding; Stingaree (1934), a rare musical outing for William Wellman and Irene Dunne’s second singing film role; Living on Love (1937), a remake of Rafter Romance whose virtues include Franklin Pangborn; One Man’s Journey (1933), a medical drama starring Lionel Barrymore and Joel McCrea; and its superior remake, A Man to Remember (1938), which boasted Garson Kanin’s first credit as director and a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.

Not many cinephiles wallowing in all this RKO bounty realized that the movies had reappeared due in part to the efforts of Lee Tsiantis, a film lover and industry veteran toiling in the field of rights research for TCM and Warner Home Video. Well, toiling is not the word--Lee loves his work and cares passionately about preservation. Since rights issues stand in the way of our seeing a number of cherished films, Lee agreed to answer some questions via email about the RKO Six and the nuts and bolts of his job.


Please describe your role at Turner Broadcasting System.

I am a Corporate Legal Manager at Turner Broadcasting System's Entertainment Division in Atlanta, and have been with the company for 12 years. Prior to Turner, but still based in Atlanta, I handled regional publicity/promotions for a major studio and long ago worked in the late, lamented 16mm nontheatrical distribution market for Films Inc., where I was able to view hundreds of films from their library. My work tools at Turner are the supporting original studio legal documents of the approximately 3900 RKO, pre-1986 MGM and pre-1950 Warner Bros. features that Ted Turner bought in 1986-87. These films comprise the Turner Entertainment Co. (TEC) library, which is currently owned and administrated by Warner Bros. Entertainment. I do rights research on these films for various corporate clients, including Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and sister company Warner Home Video, which exploits the library on DVD and now Blu-ray. It certainly doesn't hurt to have a film background that helps me to connect the dots found in the documents.



Were the mechanics of resolving the rights entanglements of the RKO Six typical of your work?

The situation that brought the six RKO "Lost and Found" titles to light was atypical. The inquiries that come my way from company clients usually ask me to confirm TEC's rights in a particular film or asset, reaffirming a division's ability to exploit the property. Usually, and ideally, these rights are fairly broad, allowing for distribution and exhibition of a film worldwide, perpetually and in all media.

For an unresearched asset, I have to refer to the original studio agreements by which a source story or underlying literary property (in shorthand legalese, the ULP) was acquired. Those agreements, along with the copyright registration records, are key links in proving TEC's chain-of-title ownership of the "derivative work" (the film).

The path that led to the discovery of the RKO Six's rights situation began in 2006, when a TCM viewer asked why a 1933 John Cromwell film, Double Harness, never seemed to show up on the channel's schedule. As it was produced by RKO, it should have been part of the TEC library, but it wasn't on any of the master lists of TEC/RKO titles. TCM's Senior Programming Manager, Dennis Millay, asked me to research the film, and through evidence in the meticulously maintained and organized RKO documents, I was able to piece together a narrative that traced the ownership history not only of Double Harness, but also five other RKO films of the period.



It turned out all six were sold as a package out of the RKO library to former studio head Merian C. Cooper in 1947. Thus, the sale predated by 40 years Turner's 1987 acquisition of its distribution rights to the RKO titles; the six films were never part of the library Turner bought. With dogged persistence and the help of the Internet, Dennis and I were able to track down the son of the person who had been assigned Cooper's copyright ownership--who was totally unaware of that ownership--and six months later, TCM purchased all right, title and interest to the films from his family. Additionally, once prints were tracked down (we even found materials located in France and the Netherlands), TCM financed the cost of physically generating 35mm film preservation elements on all six titles (heroic work here from Dennis), guaranteeing they would have as close to a perpetual big-screen life as is physically possible with film.

After a single-week theatrical engagement at the Film Forum in NYC in Feburary, 2007, the films had their TCM broadcast premieres that April. Barring occasional showings at gatherings like Cinefest in Syracuse, NY, the films hadn’t been shown to a wide audience in almost 50 years. The whole saga, for those interested, can be found here.

None of the titles rewrite film history, but virtually all have distinctive attributes; Garson Kanin's A Man to Remember (1938) seems especially timely today, as it deals with medical ethics and health care responsibilities, but in the context of a deceptively small story about an altruistic country doctor. Film culture is enormously enriched by little gems such as the RKO Six, and TCM's role in resurrecting them attests to the channel's perseverance and commitment to keeping the culture alive.

I think we might have tapped the mother lode for this unorthodox category of rights-orphaned films; we haven't since come across a similar grouping to revive from obscurity.



What role can film preservation funding play in helping to resolve rights issues that keep films unseen? Must the profit motive always play a part?

I would only say that if a film's rights are unresolved, making the film impossible to distribute, there's little incentive to spend preservation money on it. For a studio, funds are better spent on owned, but unexploited assets in need of restoration--with no rights intangibles. Studio preservationists have enough on their plates trying to prioritize and save films whose rights are clear and unencumbered, but whose materials may be on their last legs.



Have you found any patterns in issues that tie up a movie's rights? Are the problems more prevalent with certain types of films?

Legal issues that prevent distribution of a film vary greatly and generally speaking, rarely have anything to do with the type of film in question. Instead they often have everything to do with the term of the original grant of rights in the underlying literary property, or ULP, by an author to the studio producing the film. On rare occasions, the story rights term will expire altogether, or expire with renewal options, and the studio, in order to continue to exploit the film (and despite the fact it may possess a valid copyright in the film itself), must renegotiate an extension with the ULP author, the author’s heirs or other successor-in-interest.

If the ULP owners hold out for what might be considered a disproportionate renewal fee that exceeds what the studio expects to economically return on the title, there can be an impasse, resulting in the frustrating situation where the studio owns the film--but can't distribute or otherwise exploit it. This is doubly frustrating if viable--and sometimes original camera negative--film materials exist in studio vaults.

As a result, certain films have been held up for decades in rights limbo--or at least until the film's ULP lapses into the U.S. public domain. In certain cases, the studio wants to negotiate with the owner of the story rights, but can't track the owner down! This is common in the case of authors who may reside outside the U.S., or authors whose families may not even be aware they are successors to a relative's literary rights. When trails go cold, major sleuthing is in order, but the sheer task of administration can impede the inclination to do the follow-through.

In 1990, a controversial Supreme Court decision involving copyright renewal rights to the Cornell Woolrich short story on which Rear Window was based had the immediate effect of tying up U.S. distribution to a number of notable films. The particulars are too complex to go into here, but for those who are interested (and have the stamina), the full text of the court’s decision is available online.



Do you have any encouraging words for those who view personal or collector’s copies of unobtainable films, and worry about their state of preservation?

I will say this: it's unfair to assume that a poor-quality bootleg copy of a long-unavailable film with rights issues might in any way be representative of the actual condition of film materials archived by a studio.

Thank you, Lee. We will continue to hope for more good news from the Turner vaults.

Unquote, Please

The Siren reads way too much about movies, although the fabulous Sheila O'Malley may have her beat. After a while you start to come across the same quotes again and again. Some are still funny ("I think that 'e' made the whole fuckin' difference," mused Carole Lombard, born plain old Jean Alice Peters.) Some are just true. ("It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter," said Marlene Dietrich, a theory she tested quite a bit in later life.)

But the Siren realized this week that there are several very famous remarks made by famous movie people that she never wants to hear again, although she will, she will. In reverse order, here they are, starting with the one that triggered this post:

5. "After 40 you must choose between your face and your ass."

This is usually attributed to Catherine Deneuve, but the Siren thinks Zsa Zsa Gabor is a more likely source. We have it on Brian Aherne's authority that Zsa Zsa is quite funny when she wants to be and she was always making remarks like this. One reason to hate this quote is that the age at which you must make this decision is always changing. In this month's InStyle it's pegged at 30. Thirty!! So Amy Adams, currently igniting newstands everywhere on the cover of Vanity Fair, chose one or the other four years ago? Rubbish. Mere mortal women figure on losing both the face and the ass at some point (a point well past 30, thankyouverymuch) unless we're blessed with superb genes and/or an unlimited plastic surgery budget. But for most actresses it isn't true at 40, or even 50. The Siren's favorite example is Diane Lane...

but there's plenty of others. Please, let's not pull out this tired old saying every time we see a woman who's dieted too much or has a face that's been injected too often with the scary stuff du jour. And one last thing. This quote is always applied to a woman.



If that's fair, then tell me, which did Mickey Rourke choose?

4. "For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day..."

Usually attributed to Audrey Hepburn. There's more like that afterward but it always turns the Siren into a version of Daffy Duck, muttering "Easy stomach, don't turn over now," so that's all you're getting. Reason number one to hate this "poem" is that it's insipid nonsense. The Siren feeds hungry children every day and they run their fingers through her hair, as well as anything else that's less than five feet off the ground, but the Siren assures her readers that it has no effect on her looks one way or another. The second reason is that although Hepburn apparently liked this tripe and used to quote the whole thing, in public even (which we will let slide because Hepburn really was a generous lady with otherwise impeccable taste), she didn't write it. It was written by someone named Sam Levenson.



If we are going to talk sensible beauty quotes, let's talk about the wonderful Bette Davis vehicle, Mr. Skeffington. Claude Rains, in the title role, tells his vain, selfish wife that a woman is beautiful when she's loved. Davis retorts, as only Davis can, "A woman is beautiful when she has eight hours' sleep and goes to the beauty parlor every day. And bone structure has a lot to do with it, too."

3. "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, backwards and in high heels."

Often attributed to Ann Richards, but it predates the late, great Texas gov by some years. Rogers included Bob Thaves' Frank and Ernest comic strip, which appears to be the source, in the photos for her autobiography. The Siren cited Ginger for The Performance That Changed My Life, and will defend her abilities against all comers. But as for this quote--it's cute and all, but again, not true. She wore high heels, sure, although take a good look below--compared to today's skyscrapers they're practically flats.



Rogers also rehearsed on slippery Bakelite floors until her feet bled and she probably fantasized about stuffing Fred's top hat up his nose. But she did not do everything Astaire did. Together they were dazzling, but he was self-evidently the greater dancer, which Ginger herself probably would have admitted if you asked her nicely enough. Plus, their duets, carefully designed for maximum beauty on camera, use a lot of forward and side-by-side steps. The Siren is no choreographer, but she's seen these movies over and over, and Ginger doesn't move backwards all that much. Check out "Cheek to Cheek", and see who's moving backwards during most of the first part.

2. "Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul."

Oh boo hoo hoo, Marilyn. After the past few months of watching our economy do a face-plant, the Siren thinks a thousand dollars for a kiss is a darned good price, even without adjusting for inflation. And meanie-weenie Hollywood sold your soul for cheap, huh. The people standing by the clothing racks and saying "Can I help you?" to grumpy, dead-broke customers, and the ones getting repetitive-motion injuries at their keyboards and jumping every time the boss calls them in the office for fear they're getting the old pre-Christmas pink slip--they all got a much better rate for their souls.

Most irritating is when this quote is used to illustrate how Marilyn Monroe suffered. She was charming and funny, really good in several movies, certainly she was beautiful, and you could say she had a hard time. Though, it seems to the Siren, not as hard as her colleagues did, standing around on the set waiting for Marilyn to get her act together. But you want suffering, real suffering, the kind to make Melpomene weep? Without Googling: Clara Bow. D.W. Griffith. Orson Welles. Gene Tierney. John Garfield. Dorothy Dandridge. Rita Hayworth. Canada Lee. Charles Boyer. Wallace Reid. Montgomery Clift. Lou Costello. Roscoe Arbuckle. Erich von Stroheim.

1. "He gives her class. She gives him sex."

Oh, Katharine. The Siren hasn't been able to track down exactly when and where Hepburn said this (anyone know?) but it was probably a fairly casual observation, not one supposed to substitute for any other analysis of the all-time greatest dancing team. Even when people don't invoke the quote itself, as David Thomson mercifully did not in his well-written but dead-wrong Astaire piece last Sunday, they regurgitate its assumptions. Astaire was plenty sexy. The routines themselves, as often noted, echo the rhythms of seduction and even the sex act itself, and that ain't possible with a sexless male.

As for Ginger needing more class, the Siren wonders if that was somehow a leftover bit of cattiness because Rogers stole Stage Door right out from under Hepburn. Rogers had a wonderful common-girl persona in the 1930s, but her movies relied on her self-confidence and grace. Check out something like Gregory La Cava's charmingly subversive 5th Avenue Girl, in which Rogers poses as a millionaire's mistress without losing a shred of her honor. The point to Ginger Rogers, and what made her such a perfect on-screen American woman, was that she constantly proved class is a state of mind and not birth.

The Siren has a suggestion for anyone itching to use the above-listed quotes. Look up Tallulah Bankhead instead. Now there's someone who could give you an evergreen yarn. The Siren winds this up with Tallulah, from A Southern Album, on the perils of stardom and election season:

"Be careful how you quote me. No swearing, no naughty cracks. This is a campaign year, you know, and I must be discreet. If I'm not, I'll have the whole goddamn Bankhead family on my neck."

Is this a dance which I see before me? Or, Dance as Soliloquy

The Siren has always mentally divided Hollywood dance sequences into different types. There is the first kind, the dance as staged interlude.



There's the type that Busby Berkeley perfected for all time, Dance as Spectacle. As a girl this was not only the Siren's favorite type of dance, it was her favorite type of movie, period. If she could switch on the television and spot showgirls with marcelled hair making big flower-blooming patterns, the Siren's week was made. Since these were always backstage musicals she was convinced for at least the first decade of her life that somewhere there was a stage big enough to accomodate "The Lullaby of Broadway."



Later on the Siren became acquainted, through Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with dance as courtship ...



... and, when she was old enough to get the idea, with dance as consummation.



Astaire and Rogers did this brilliantly but they were far from the only ones. Over at Raymond de Felitta's place you will find him posting a Cyd Charisse number with James Mitchell (later to be Palmer Cortlandt on All My Children) that is indescribably lustful.

But it wasn't until fairly late in the Hollywood musical's flowering that we got what is perhaps the purest form of film dancing, dance as soliloquy. There were few dancers who could carry this off, and in fact Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly have this category almost to themselves, with at least one exception noted below.

In essence, the character's emotions reach such a pitch that he's gotta dance. It's romance that pushes him to this point, usually, either from pure happiness or despair. The most famous dance-as-soliloquy of all time is "Singin' in the Rain," which the Siren adores as much as anyone else but won't discuss here since what's left to say? Another favorite from Gene Kelly is this one, "I Like Myself" from It's Always Fair Weather.



In some ways this is the perfect example of what the Siren is talking about--Kelly is not only ecstatically in love with the ravishing Cyd Charisse, but also celebrating a new outlook on life, after a depressing afternoon in which he discovered that not only can you not go home again, as Thomas Wolfe told us, you also can't go back to the Army or its comradeship. I suppose you could look at it as a re-run of "Singin' in the Rain," which has an almost identical set-up for its centerpiece soliloquy, but in this as in the rest of the film, IAFW is darker and more complicated. The breathtaking impossibility of Gene's dancing around on roller skates is matched with the point in the plot--this kind of happiness is also impossible, fragile and won't last, any more than the giddy trash-can-dancing camraderie in the first part of the movie has lasted.

It's Always Fair Weather was, as de Felitta notes in this splendid write-up, just about the last gasp for the Freed unit. And the Siren completely agrees with Raymond that it's a great shame, because Kelly was poised to take the musical in even more varied and unexpected directions. If you ever get a chance to catch it on TCM, the Siren highly recommends Invitation to the Dance to her readers who are true dance addicts.

But in this category, as in so much, it has to be acknowledged that Astaire got there first, as in this snippet from the spellbinding "One For My Baby" number in the otherwise not-terribly-interesting The Sky's the Limit.

This is a number to savor. There's the perfection of Astaire's take on this type of "romantic" drunk--the way maudlin self-pity alternates with the compulsion to fight anything, up to and including the bar glasses. As in "I Like Myself," there's the fact that while the movements look organic and natural and seem to flow from the character's mental state with great ease, Astaire is expressing it all with steps no mortal man can equal.

Astaire could do that with other soliloquy dances too, including an early example such as "No Strings" from Top Hat, with Astaire singing about the joys of being a bachelor (since before Shakespeare's time, a sure way to mark yourself for Cupid's arrow), then turning it into a sand dance when fate, oopsImean Ginger, intrudes. There's the immortal "Dancing on the Ceiling" from Royal Wedding, where the gimmicky-ness of the turning room actually distracts a bit from how tender the moment is. Or there's the short but lovely number "Yolanda" from the criminally underrated Yolanda and the Thief, where Fred dances with a harp.

The final example the Siren is posting here is Cyd Charisse's exquisite solo from Silk Stockings. This musical is highly regarded by some, including de Felitta and David Thomson, but the Siren finds it pretty thin gruel, perhaps because she treasures every moment of Ninotchka, and while Garbo was a lousy ballerina, Cyd was no Garbo. But this snippet is one of the loveliest parts of the movie, expressing not just love, but the joy to be had in savoring your own beauty. That's definitely a part of all the soliloquies--for a few minutes, these dancers draw the audience, no matter how pudgy, flat-footed or hopelessly arrhythmic, and let us share the way they move. I like myself, indeed.

NOTE: The Siren tried hard to post the video clips in here and failed, utterly, so you'll have to follow the links. This post is a humble and (very) belated offering in Ferdy on Films' Invitation to the Dance blog-a-thon.

Comedy in Character

One of the reasons that the movies of today aren't as much fun as those made in the first two decades of Talkies is because they jettisoned their great army of supporting players. At one time when people reminisced about movies, they were more likely to be talking about Eve Arden than Doris Day or Jane Wyman, whose friends she played on some funny occasions. Her first appearance always caused an appreciative buzz, and her slightest glance was treasured more than all the star's vapourings...She could make almost any line funny, though her forte was the sort of lines that went with the look-elegant bitchery or advice she knows the heroine is too stupid to accept.

That, in one of the most dead-accurate paragraphs he has ever written, is how David Shipman summarizes the delicious Eve Arden in The Great Movie Stars: The International Years--but he could be writing the epitaph for all of the era's great comic character actors. It was a golden age for comic relief and it is, alas, as dead as the dodo. For the Newcritics Comedy Blogathon Blowout, the Siren herewith offers some brief takes on the characters she loves. And she loves them with a passion.

We'll start with Eve Arden. Is she not everyone's favorite thing in Mildred Pierce, whether she's taking Jack Carson down a peg ("Leave something on me, I might catch cold") or trying to give Joan Crawford a clue about daughter Veda's real nature ("Alligators have the right idea. They eat their young")? Eve made a decades-long career out of being the smartest gal in the room, whether backstage as a Ziegfeld Girl, in a rooming house trying to get in the Stage Door, or working for a fashion editor in Cover Girl. In a melodrama she'd give you a whimsical moment between hankies, as in My Reputation; in a piece of unalloyed kitsch like Song of Scheherezade she'd be the only one who seemed to realize the train had left Reality Station, so you might as well live it up.

The Siren has a one-year-old who apparently harbors dreams of moving to Australia, since that is the time zone he has decided to synchronize with. Despite having become an unwilling participant in an endless day-for-night shoot the Siren stayed up to midnight on Wednesday night to watch The Hard Way from 1943. Did she watch it for Ida Lupino, director Vincent Sherman or even the towering genius of cameraman James Wong Howe? No way. She watched it for Jack Carson. He was born in Manitoba (of all places) but his persona was wise-guy American, complete with a voice so nasal it seemed to originate at the bottom of his sinuses. Probably the best acting he ever did (and he was always good) was in A Star Is Born, in the deeply unfunny role of the heartless agent. He played a lot of light comedies too, often with Dennis Morgan. But Carson's strong suit was comic relief, often mixed with a dash of the heavy, as in Mildred Pierce ("Oh, I'm happy. Believe me, inside my heart is singing") or more than a dash, as in The Strawberry Blonde. He could hold his own with Errol Flynn in Gentleman Jim and underplay in scenes with a frenetically mugging Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace.

No tribute to comic character actors could be complete without mention of the great Margaret Dumont. She was, without question, The Greatest Straight Woman of All Time. Marx authorities ranging from Dick Cavett to Groucho himself all say Dumont didn't get the jokes, on or off screen, but the Siren doesn't buy it. Dumont had a long career as a comic foil, and face it, she is too good not to know what she's doing. To be a good straight (wo)man, it isn't enough to keep a poker face and ignore the lunacy. Kitty Carlisle, Lillian Roth and Kay Francis all do that, and they still get flattened. No, Dumont had something extra--the ability to broaden her characterization with each new joke. Her finest moments probably came in Duck Soup, where her manner is so impeccably grand she seems to have wandered in from some Ruritanian operetta filming on another soundstage. Groucho was one of the funniest men American comedy ever produced--and if you want to say THE funniest the Siren won't argue. But it takes nothing away from Groucho to state that he was never funnier than when he was bouncing joke after joke off Dumont's imposing figure.

Andrew Sarris used to tell a story about a party where he encountered a fellow who edited films for television. Seems the editor was eager to tell Sarris about how he improved the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films by "cutting out all those boring dance numbers." This horrifying tale from the days before Turner Classic Movies came to rescue us doesn't mean that we should neglect three non-dancing stalwarts from the Astaire-Rogers movies, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes and Edward Everett Horton. (All three were discussed with great verve in Vito Russo's landmark The Celluloid Closet.) Blore was in five of nine Astaire-Rogers musicals, usually playing an English butler, frequently one dim in wit and dubious in ethics. But Blore's best role was undoubtedly as Sir Alfred "Pearlie" McGlennan-Keith R. F. D., con-man confidant of Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn, in The Lady Eve: "Into the gulf that separated the unfortunate couple, there was a coachman on the estate, a gay dog, a great hand with the horses and the ladies, need I say more?" Rhodes appeared in Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee, offering proof to homegrown audiences that there was something a little swishy about these Continental types: "Your wife is safe with Tonetti! He prefers spaghetti!" Horton usually played wholly inadequate husbands of some sort, using his carefully honed double-take, one of the best in the business, to convey utter shock at being suspected of some sort of caddery, as in Top Hat. Of the three, Horton had the most extensive career. The Siren's favorite Horton role is his turn as the impossibly dull husband of Miriam Hopkins in Design for Living.

Billie Burke played the dithery matron to perfection in many comedies of the 1930s. Burke, who had been a great beauty in the days when she was married to Florenz Ziegfeld, had an impeccably upper-crust accent and a voice like a piccolo with the hiccups. The adjective that clings to Burke is "fluttery"--yet, if you watch closely, you'll see that there is an economy to her movement. She conveys fluttering without flapping. And nobody did the wan, put-upon, strictly-social smile like Billie Burke--watch her turn it on Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery in Dinner at Eight. Her signature role, Glinda the Good Witch, is a good deal mushier than Burke's usual outings. Her characters were frequently atrociously selfish, as with her aspic-obsessed party-giver in Dinner at Eight and blithe con artist in The Young in Heart, but they were usually capable of being nudged into better behavior by the last reel.

S.Z. Sakall found refuge from Hitler's Europe in roles as a bemused, bewitched and bewildered mensch, often behind a bar or a front desk, as in Casablanca and Seven Sweethearts. The Siren loves the way Sakall swallows his lines--half the time you have no idea what he's saying--and lets his rubbery jowls do much of his acting for him.

Ralph Bellamy and Gail Patrick may seem out of place in this roundup, as they were both strikingly good-looking and often played second leads of some sort. But they almost never got the hero or heroine, and both of them were at their best in comedies. In My Man Godfrey, Patrick almost walks away with the picture as she raises one bitchy eyebrow at all of Carole Lombard's lovelorn antics. And in My Favorite Wife, she sets up some of Cary Grant's best lines, then gets to punch Grant in the face--and the audience knows he deserves it. Ralph Bellamy reaches his nebbishy apotheosis in His Girl Friday, even to the indignity of having his character described to a T as a Ralphy Bellamy type. He is one of that beloved movie's least-sung glories, but god is he funny, the picture of reasonable benevolence as he intones, "Hildy, we could take the six o'clock train if it will save a man's life!"

Finally, the Siren mulled long and hard over whether to include Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in this list, finally deciding that no, they really don't belong, as marvelously and subversively witty as they are. Greenstreet and Lorre are usually playing villains, not comic relief...and great villains would be another blogathon altogether.

The floor is open. Go ahead, argue with the Siren. Knock her over the head with a rubber chicken and demand to know how she could forget your favorite character actor. Frank Morgan? Eugene Palette? Marjorie Main? Anyone? And if you think there is someone from our own less-funny era who deserves a place at the table, share that name too.

(This post is part of the Newcritics Comedy Blogathon, going on until tomorrow, Nov. 11. Stop by Newcritics for more musings.)

Anytime Annie: Role Model

Emma of All About My Movies called this Blogathon for The Performance That Changed My Life. Right there--"changed my life"--seems the Siren should be delving into something deep and meaningful. "Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront showed me the possibilities of a new style of acting!" "Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story showed me the agony of spiritual struggle!" "Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice broke my heart!"

But the Siren can't lie to Emma. The performance that really did change my life wasn't deep and wasn't even a star turn, though certainly it was meaningful to me. It was Ginger Rogers as Anytime Annie in 42nd Street. I saw this movie as a kid, probably chopped up on TBS, source of many of my cinematic touchstone viewings. I must have been well under 10, too young to catch a single double-entendre. Still, Ginger fascinated me. That tart tongue, that supreme self-confidence, the way she took any obstacle from the Depression to a catty costar and rolled right over it. I love almost all of Ginger's early tough-tootsie characters, but 42nd Street was the first one I saw and it holds a special place for me. (I am happy to note that it recently charmed Siren favorite Tonio Kruger as well.) Over the years I saw the movie again and again, and here are the lessons it carried for me:

1. People used to dress a lot better, especially starlets. The Siren defies you to look at any modern-day picture and tell her she is wrong. For a time in the 1930s Ginger had one of the best figures in Hollywood. She loved clothes and she wore each ensemble with dash. Which leads into

2. With the right attitude, even an odd outfit can be carried off. When Anytime Annie enters, she is wearing tweeds and a monocle.

And, in the modern parlance, she rocks them.

3. Bad girls have more fun. Does this even need elaboration? Here's how Annie is introduced:

Andy Lee: Not Anytime Annie? Say, who could forget 'er? She only said "No" once, and then she didn't hear the question!

And here we have Ruby Keeler, as insipid ingenue Peggy Sawyer:

Chorine: You, uh, looking for somebody - or just shopping around?
Peggy: Could you tell me where I'll find the gentleman in charge?
Chorine: First door to your left, dearie!

Which woman would you like to hang out with?

4. Dealing with male lechery? Mock it. The Siren read one reviewer who was so offended by the scene in which the chorus girls have to show off their legs to the producers and director that he compared it--unfavorably--to a scene in Takeshi Miike's Ichi the Killer where a prostitute gets her nipples sliced off. The Siren suggests, politely (because she is a little afraid of this guy) that he is missing an important element of the scene. That would be Ginger and Una Merkel (as Lorraine), rolling their eyes as soon as the director moves down the line, not taking any of it seriously for a minute. You know they are thinking it beats stenography, which at the time also attracted a fair share of wolves (check out Joan Crawford dealing with Wallace Beery in Grand Hotel). In Showgirls, Elizabeth Berkley and the others stand around tremulously, like Irish setters on point, waiting for that magic bit of male approval. Ginger and Una know they're attractive, they know they will make it through, and they also know the men are drips. Which brings us to

5. See an opportunity for a wisecrack? Grab it.

Marsh: Address?
Chorine: Park Avenue.
Annie: And is her homework tough!

Lorraine: ...I always said she was a nice girl. And she's so good to her mother.
Annie: She sure is. Do you know that she makes forty-five dollars a week and sends her mother a hundred of it?

Annie: [to chorus girl] It must have been hard on your mother, not having any children.

Music director: Get some feeling into it, willya?
Annie: Whaddya want me to do, bite my nails?

6. What's going on at the margins is often more interesting than the main event. Ginger and Una in their upper berth, sarcastically commenting on the newlyweds, are the best part of "Shuffle Off to Buffalo":

Matrimony is baloney
She'll be wanting alimony in a year or so
Oh-oh-oh
Still they go and shuffle, shuffle off to Buffalo.
When she knows as much as we know
She'll be on her way to Reno
While he still has dough
Oh-oh-oh
She'll give him the shuffle, when they get back from Buffalo.

7. Sisterhood is beautiful. Watch as Annie and Lorraine adopt Peggy, for no apparent reason, and Lorraine holds up three fingers to indicate they need three parts:

Annie: (to Peggy) Stick with us girl, and you'll come in on the tide.

Later, when cast in the lead due to a fortuitous relationship with porky "angel" Guy Kibbee, Annie gives up the part because Peggy supposedly has a better chance of saving the show. Here we have the movie's most glaring logical flaw, though. The Siren cannot look at Keeler without thinking of lines in a much-later show-business satire: "She can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance. A triple threat." Keeler wasn't a patch on Rogers, and something about the former Ms. McMath's face in this scene shows she knows it.

Finally,

8. Men are wonderful, but they aren't necessities. Annie, sending Kibbee out to walk her Pekingese and rushing back onstage, showed the Siren that there are plenty of different ways to a happy ending.

*******

Wow, Emma's blogathon was an absolute roaring success. The Siren is including all the links in her post, because ALL of the links are so well worth reading. Get a long cool glass of something and settle in front of the screen. The final roundup:

Kendra at Jake Weird on Michael Caine in Sleuth
Catherine from The Mixed Up Files of Catherine on Bette Davis in All About Eve
Adam from All Things Film on James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life.
Anna at Verging Writer on Sally Field in Norma Rae.
DL at Cellar Door on Samantha Morton in Morvern Callar.
Sen at Les montreurs d'images on Robert Redford in All the President's Men.
Becci at The Sacred Ramblings of Becci on Emmy Rossum in The Day After Tomorrow.
Marius at Blog by Cosmo Marius on Marco Hofschneider in Europa Europa.
Dave over at Victim of the Time on Jodhi May in The Last of the Mohicans .
Kayleigh at Shiny Happy Blog on Audrey Tautou in Amélie.
Vertigo's Psycho from And Your Little Blog, Too on Shani Wallis in Oliver!.
RC at Strange Culture on Stéphane Audran in Babette's Feast.
Beautiful.Adam at DVDPanache on Joseph Cotten in The Third Man.
Rant1229 from The 400 Obscure Passions of the 8½ Personas on Erland Josephson in The Sacrifice.
Nathaniel R from the Film Experience on Marni Nixon in West Side Story.
Mr. Movie Geek at Movies to Movie Geek No Kamikakushi on Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Adam Carson Keller from Crumb by Crumb picks Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise.
Jose at The pathetically normal, pop culture obsessed, life of Jose on Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire.
StinkyLulu goes for Anne Meara in Fame.
Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre on Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York.
Luke at The Musings of a Movie Maestro on Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!.
Lylee from Lylee's Blog on Jane Powell in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Cal from Shake Well Before Use on Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men.
As Cool as a Fruitstand on Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation.
Erich Kuersten from acidemic-film on Jon Voight in Runaway Train.
Cinefille from For Cinephiles by a Cinefille goes for Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen.
Bob Turnbull from Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind looks at the entire cast of Network.
Damian at Windmills of My Mind on Liam Neeson in Schindler's List.
Arden at Cinephilia picks Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me.
Midento from when i look deep in your eyes selects Ninón Sevilla in Aventurera.
Glenn Dunks from Stale Popcorn on Drew Barrymore in Scream.
Peter Nellhaus from Coffee Coffee and More Coffee on Sean Connery in From Russia With Love.
Kimberly from Cinebeats on Barbara Shelley in Dracula: Prince of Darkness.
Chris from Drunken On Celluloid on Robert de Niro in Raging Bull.

The Siren's Top 9 Objections to the AFI Top 100

Because she likes the number 9 better than the number 10. In reverse order, the Siren's problems with who made it, Ma, and who didn't:

9. This morning, my daughter was playing with a set of wooden blocks. There are 30 blocks in the set. Her twin brother reached out and tentatively grabbed one block. This left her with 29. His sister let out a howl that could probably be heard in Newark: "No, MY BLOCKS! MINE!" And I had the same conversation as always. There are a lot of blocks here. Your brother can have his one block.

What reminded the Siren of this scenario was the presence, once again, of Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai on this list. These films weren't merely created by a British director, like Vertigo. They are culturally and thematically British, about British history and British empire. Who cares about which country put up the money? Kwai had one American star and two American screenwriters, it is true, but one writer was in France and the other in London because we had, you know, made them leave in order to get work.

We have a massive film industry. We have our own blocks and furthermore, unlike this morning's combatants, we are not four years old. We don't have to take away movies from the British. (The Siren assumes that the howls over the prior inclusion of The Third Man as "American" must have made a dent, since its omission can't be explained otherwise.) And while we are on the subject, A Clockwork Orange, despite Kubrick, doesn't make much sense as an American movie either.

8. No Fritz Lang. Come on--no Scarlet Street? no Woman in the Window? Well, the second one has been hard to see for some time. The Siren hasn't seen it since the 1980s, but its DVD-less state is about to be rectified.

7. Sophie's Choice really isn't a good movie. It is a pretty bad movie with one great performance and an unforgettable climax. The other movies on the list that the Siren considers unworthy can be justified in terms of cultural impact or later influence--even (the Siren swallows hard) something like The Sixth Sense. But Sophie's Choice was recognized as a deeply flawed movie even at the time, and if it had lasting influence on anything other than subject matter and Meryl Streep's (well-earned) career the Siren has missed it.

6. The Siren loves James Cagney. Worships him, in fact. And she loves Yankee Doodle Dandy. But if you are going to do only one Cagney, the one to do is White Heat.

5. Similar beef with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Swing Time is great, but everyone knows Top Hat is the one to beat.

4. You out there, yes you, the one whining about Citizen Kane. Cut it out. No, it is not a "boring movie." No, it did not achieve its status strictly because of "technical stuff." It is one of the most thematically complex movies ever made in this country, an astoundingly rich statement on American success and American failure, as relevant today as it was in 1941. The Siren finds Paradise Lost boring. Nevertheless she does not waste people's time by trying to argue that this means Milton is overrated.

3. If, however, you wish to argue that The Magnificent Ambersons has as much of a right to be here as Kane, the Siren will listen.

2. Famous exchange at Ernst Lubitsch's funeral:

Billy Wilder: No more Ernst Lubitsch.
William Wyler: Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.

While this thought depressed the hell out of Wilder and Wyler, a lack of Lubitsch does not unduly ruffle the mandarins of the AFI. That is ten different kinds of wrong.

1. As Ebert points out, this list is more a marketing tool than anything else, designed to shift DVDs. Given the amount of attention the list generates, and the fact that it is compiled by "filmmakers, critics and historians," does it have to be so SAFE? So many Oscar winners. So many epics and adventure stories, so few women's pictures, so little grit. Everything already widely seen and widely available. Live a little, guys. Is a bit of a surprise too much to ask?

Postscript: Mucho morning-after discussion on this, of course. Edward Copeland tracks the ins and outs on the list, and M.A. Peel at Newcritics looks in depth at the Top 10. Here is Chuck Tryon, giving his thoughts on the value of lists in general, and speculating about the "why" behind some of the MIA. Jim Emerson gives his thoughts, and links to his own list at the bottom of the post. Lots of love to the Reeler for the best two-word summary of the AFI list, and his constructive suggestions for alternatives. A list of "100 Forgotten Films"--now that is something the Siren could applaud.

Still more--Daniel at Check the Fien Print has no tolerance for the D.W. Griffith entry, and a lot of skepticism over how it was chosen.

Ten Underrated Films

It's so late in spring it's almost summer, but the Siren is sprucing up once again, adding some wonderful film bloggers she somehow never put on her Blogroll: Matt Zoller Seitz and the crew at The House Next Door, That Little Round-Headed Boy, Edward Copeland on Film and Mr. Middlebrow (he's not all movies, but I like his style, so on he goes).

Back in April, Mr. Middlebrow issued a challenge, taken up by TLRHB among others, to name "10 movies you consider overlooked, underrated, offbeat and in general deserving of not being forgotten." The one rule is that the movies you choose must never have won a major award (and preferably have not been nominated for Best Picture, either). Well now, the Siren knows she is late to the party, and she doesn't want to get too list-happy, especially since she just did one of these things for Edward Copeland's blog. However, she went over the submissions in Mr. Middlebrow's comments, and to be blunt, there aren't enough old movies on the lists to suit her. I mean, good movies and all that, but must they all be in color? And must they be quite so macho? So here's her list:

1. Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948) Ignore the ludicrous voice-over at the beginning (complete with gathering cloudbanks) and let yourself be swept away by this full-throttle romance, a film unafraid to say that deeply felt love is an artist's truest inspiration. Jennifer Jones gives her best performance, aging from a little girl to a full-grown woman. If you go over to IMDB you'll see more reviews than usual for such an old movie, but it still deserves a far wider fame.

2. The Diary of a Chambermaid (Jean Renoir, 1946) Paulette Goddard, in real life sort of a Lorelei Lee with intellect, got only a few roles to showcase her unique quality--the hint of a mercenary soul under that heart of gold. Goddard produced this one with her husband, Burgess Meredith (one hell of an odd couple, huh?), resulting in her best performance, her Chaplin films notwithstanding. Jean Renoir's adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's novel has both fans and detractors, as well as those who prefer Luis Bunuel's version, but the Siren thinks this one is swell. It's a dark little farce about class, money and sex, with an outstanding Francis Lederer as the sinister valet. Diary hits many of the same themes as La Regle du Jeu, and perhaps that is why it gets short shrift, since few are the movies as good as Renoir's masterpiece. But Renoir's worst movies are better than many directors' best, and this is far from his worst. Of course it isn't available on DVD but it pops up on TCM every once in a while.

3. All This, and Heaven Too (Anatole Litvak, 1940) This big-budget version of Rachel Field's bestseller didn't fulfill box-office hopes at the time, and to this day it's a bit of a stepchild. The main character, a gentle governess, isn't what you expect from Bette Davis, the central romance remains unconsummated, and the historical background (the 1848 revolution) is one that gets a "whaa? whaddya mean, no Bastille?" response from most Americans. Still, it's the Siren's favorite Bette Davis movie, a sweeping melodrama with a dead-sexy turn by Charles Boyer as the tormented Duc de Praslin. Barbara O'Neil, usually the warm, understanding mother figure, here plays Boyer's Duchesse as the most ghastly, unmaternal harpy imaginable. O'Neil manages to keep just enough of the woman's pathetic (and, for 1940, suprisingly explicit) desire for her husband to make it a truly fine performance.

4. Madeleine (David Lean, 1950) One of the Siren's side interests is crime, but as with film her fascination is with the old or very old. Madeleine Smith, tried for murder in 19th century Scotland, is an enigma as great as Lizzie Borden. Did Madeleine poison her lover? did he commit suicide in an attempt to implicate her? David Lean's subtle, sexy take on the celebrated case starred his wife, Ann Todd, and though she looks nothing like the raven-haired Smith she does a superb job. This, Lean's first effort to tackle a piece of actual history, is criminally unavailable at the moment but scheduled for release in 2008. It's good enough to mark your calendar for.

5. The Strawberry Blonde (Raoul Walsh, 1941) James Cagney plays a two-fisted dentist, an even better conceit than "James Cagney plays a two-fisted inspector for the Bureau of Weights and Measures." Jack Carson plays a heel, five words that are enough to get the Siren to rent anything. Rita Hayworth is the hard-to-hold title character and Olivia de Havilland is Warner Brothers' notion of what a wallflower girlfriend looks like. It is hard to describe this rather whimsical, genre-crossing movie, except to say that it outranks both its predecessor and its remake.

6. Two-Family House (Raymond De Felitta, 2000) The Siren's favorite overlooked movie so far this century won the audience award at Sundance, then vanished from the radar. That's a pity, because it's the perfect indie Christmas movie, the tale of the self-redemption of a sad-sack Staten Islander.

7. Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, 1939) Ginger Rogers and David Niven in an incredibly funny screwball comedy. Plot summary is pretty useless, it's all there in the title. The pleasure is from the dialogue and Niven's timing, as when he defends the honor of a baby with "Of course he talks! Why, he can recite the first line of Gunga Din!"

8. Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1950) Based on the memoirs of a woman who spent World War II interned in a Japanese prison camp, this harsh drama does perpetuate some stereotypes. Claudette Colbert, as good as she is here, should have let herself get a little more mussed. But Sessue Hayakawa plays the Colonel in charge of the camp as an honorable man well aware of the codes he is breaking. And late in the film, a scene between Colbert and Hayakawa brings them together and breaks the audience's heart.

9. The Young in Heart (Richard Wallace, 1938) A family of con artists finds themselves in a quandary when their old-lady mark starts to win their affections. Janet Gaynor's last starring role, and a very funny film. Best scene: Roland Young and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., seeking gainful employment with no very lively desire to succeed. Second-best scene: Young arriving for his first day of (gulp) work.

10. Seven Sweethearts (Frank Borzage, 1942) Not a classic, maybe even not that good, but this is my list so I'm putting it up anyway. If fairy tales aren't your thing, stay far away. If, however, you have a soft spot for Borzage the true romantic, wait for this one on TCM. Reasons to watch include S.Z. Sakall (the bartender from Casablanca) flinging his accent all over the place, a funny and self-deprecating turn by Marsha Hunt, and a magical scene between Van Heflin and Kathryn Grayson in a rain-soaked car.

So They Say: Thoughts on Star Memoirs

The Siren has been devouring star autobiographies since she was knee-high to a prop table. Her first experience was with fellow Alabamian Tallulah Bankhead, as the Siren sought reassurance that being from Alabama need not preclude having a fascinating life. Tallulah gave that reassurance, and how. From there on out, star memoirs were the Siren's literary potato chips.

Blinded by the fun, the stories, the dish of it all, it took me years to discover that the hallmark of most Hollywood autobiographies is inaccuracy. (And ghostwriters, of course. Often I read memoirs imagining the ghostwriter saying soothingly, "But of COURSE I believe you. Everyone knows you're a teetotaler.")

Sometimes you get sins of omission, like Rosalind Russell's Life Is a Banquet, where she neglects to mention the celebrated contretemps over her failure to win an Oscar for Mourning Becomes Electra. You also run into the odd priorities of actresses like Ginger Rogers, who could remember every detail of her costumes for her Astaire pictures and almost nothing about trivia such as the choreography.

The great Lillian Gish gives fascinating details about filmmaking in The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me. Alas, Lillian has certain blind spots, such as when she assures the reader that D.W. Griffith was "incapable of prejudice against any group" and if he had lived, he would done a film of "affirmation about the Negro." Suuuuuure he would have. Right after Leo McCarey made a film about the ghastly toll of the blacklist.

Other times you detect a certain tendency to elide personal foibles, as John Huston did in An Open Book. Read that one and you would think him the most reasonable of directors, which doesn't quite jibe with most actors' recollections. Gregory Peck once said he had the distinct impression that if getting a certain shot for Moby Dick had required his drowning on camera, that wouldn't have perturbed his director at all.

There are stars like Myrna Loy, whose admirable Being and Becoming shows loyalty to her friend Joan Crawford, but perhaps not that much ability to read between the lines of family disputes. Finally, there are the ones who just lie their little rear ends off, as Frank Capra apparently did in The Name Above the Title.

Despite all this I pounce on autobiographies year after year, including the latest, Tis Herself, by Maureen O'Hara. Ms. O'Hara deserves her own post, and the Siren plans to give her one in the next couple of days.