Paul Frees! Andrew and I first consciously noticed him as the introductory narrator in a series of audio SF adaptations, and for a while referred to him as "Faux-Orson," since he was so obviously being used as a Welles substitute.
He also does faux-Orson in The War of the Worlds (1953), reporting live on air during an unsuccessful counterattack against the Martians. Just because of his often uncredited ubiquity, I know I must have heard Frees all over the place before I had any idea who he was, but I noticed him for the first time in one of his rare live-action roles, playing one of Frank Sinatra's henchmen in the incredbly strange presidential assassination thriller Suddenly (1954). I really can't recommend the movie on its own merits, but Sinatra is amazing in it and his performance almost singlehandedly drags the story into moral complexity. The rest of the film is offensively, almost programmatically bad, bludgeoning the audience with the most toxic clichés of American masculinity and '50's conformity; Sinatra's Johnny Baron is live and dangerous, a contradiction the script doesn't seem to know it's written itself into. It tries and fails to reduce him to an easy social explanation, this deeply damaged hired killer who embodies the cognitive dissonance of the American second amendment debate. Paul Frees is a solid, unflamboyant accomplice who gets a nice unexpected chase scene in the third act. After that I knew what he looked like, which did me no good at all.
ETA -- just found the trailer on YouTube and it's the Chuck-Jonesiest thing I've ever seen.
"Who else could sing like that but Judy Garland?"
Oh, good, it's got the opening credits! I love the Impressionist pastiche portraits of the actors morphing into their cat-characters. Hermione Gingold and Paul Frees look great as seedy denizens of Toulouse-Lautrec's Moulin Rouge. You see also I was not making up the blindfolded mouse. What the trailer is missing is a lot of the artier sequences, which are most of the movie. You can see it a little in the backgrounds and the clip from "Little Drops of Rain."
no subject
He also does faux-Orson in The War of the Worlds (1953), reporting live on air during an unsuccessful counterattack against the Martians. Just because of his often uncredited ubiquity, I know I must have heard Frees all over the place before I had any idea who he was, but I noticed him for the first time in one of his rare live-action roles, playing one of Frank Sinatra's henchmen in the incredbly strange presidential assassination thriller Suddenly (1954). I really can't recommend the movie on its own merits, but Sinatra is amazing in it and his performance almost singlehandedly drags the story into moral complexity. The rest of the film is offensively, almost programmatically bad, bludgeoning the audience with the most toxic clichés of American masculinity and '50's conformity; Sinatra's Johnny Baron is live and dangerous, a contradiction the script doesn't seem to know it's written itself into. It tries and fails to reduce him to an easy social explanation, this deeply damaged hired killer who embodies the cognitive dissonance of the American second amendment debate. Paul Frees is a solid, unflamboyant accomplice who gets a nice unexpected chase scene in the third act. After that I knew what he looked like, which did me no good at all.
ETA -- just found the trailer on YouTube and it's the Chuck-Jonesiest thing I've ever seen.
"Who else could sing like that but Judy Garland?"
Oh, good, it's got the opening credits! I love the Impressionist pastiche portraits of the actors morphing into their cat-characters. Hermione Gingold and Paul Frees look great as seedy denizens of Toulouse-Lautrec's Moulin Rouge. You see also I was not making up the blindfolded mouse. What the trailer is missing is a lot of the artier sequences, which are most of the movie. You can see it a little in the backgrounds and the clip from "Little Drops of Rain."