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What's the use of being free? All that's left is you and me
Oh, hell: Peggy Cummins has died. I think it is time to watch Gun Crazy (1950). I've known of it by reputation for years, but I missed it last summer at the Brattle. I can get it through the library. It will fit with the women-in-noir theme anyway.
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It's a perfectly reasonable age to die! I'm just sorry she's gone out of the world.
I recognised the name instantly, so I knew she'd been in something I've seen not too long ago, but it was Meet Mr Lucifer and she was kind of annoying in that, so I can't say much about her. But I suspect that was more the role and the film, rather than her.
I didn't think I'd seen her in anything, but she seems to have co-starred in Escape (1948), which I saw in 2011 at the HFA, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Rex Harrison as escaped convict Matt Denant, who is having a moral dilemma. It was refreshing to see him in a role where he's not a confident charmer, but it looks as though my primary takeaway from the movie was William Hartnell as the policeman on his trail. A few years older than in The Dark Tower (1943), he retains much of the same clean-lined, whimsical look, so that you cannot tell at first whether his Inspector Harris will turn out to be a good cop or a fool. His professional presentation is the plodding public servant who's not paid to think. He has a mild, affable way of talking, but shows no stronger personal reaction than the occasional peak of his eyebrows until the telephone conversation where one of Denant's friends betrays him for the reward money; Harris hangs up on him nicely and turns to go, remarking meditatively to no one in particular that he wishes sometimes he'd gone into another field, "like poetry." And then, suddenly, savagely, "Or dentistry." And that got my attention. Everything else I remember as the shape of the plot.
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Also perfectly reasonable! There are definitely many people it's better to know are in the world than that they aren't, and most worth a salute when they go, anyway. (I am in denial forever that Alfred Burke is dead, and he was 92 when he went, too.)
And, heh, William Hartnell! Well, he would steal the show, wouldn't he? I really must watch This Sporting Life someday, as that's the role that made Verity Lambert decide he had to be her Doctor Who, and I do tend to be resentfully captivated by all the New Wave stuff anyway. (Something else I learned at 17 - I did a Media Studies course for A-Level!) He was such a mixture of things, but always someone who catches your eye on the screen, and his First Doctor so much more captivating in every way than any of his impersonators since.
(Meet Mr Lucifer has v interesting ideas, a great cast, and some good bits, but I first saw it at 17 and it is full of so many things I don't like about 50s films. It's taken a long time to forgive everybody in it, not just Peggy Cummins.)
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Absolutely. Peter Lorre is immortal.
I really must watch This Sporting Life someday, as that's the role that made Verity Lambert decide he had to be her Doctor Who, and I do tend to be resentfully captivated by all the New Wave stuff anyway.
I look forward to hearing what he's like in it, although I have always had the impression that movie is unrelentingly bleak.
He was such a mixture of things, but always someone who catches your eye on the screen, and his First Doctor so much more captivating in every way than any of his impersonators since.
What do the impersonators miss?
(Meet Mr Lucifer has v interesting ideas, a great cast, and some good bits, but I first saw it at 17 and it is full of so many things I don't like about 50s films. It's taken a long time to forgive everybody in it, not just Peggy Cummins.)
That is a shame, since I see it contains Stanley Holloway.
(I learned "With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm" from my grandmother, so I have a kind of inherited fondness for Stanley Holloway on top of My Fair Lady and, eventually, seeing him in other character parts.)
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LOL, that is the law with New Wave stuff! My attraction to it is v resentful indeed.
What do the impersonators miss?
Well, they're not bad in their own ways, but Hartnell was very fierce and alive, impish and bonkers and charming in a way that no one else can quite combine in one performance. And he knew how to command the camera's attention (he used to tell Peter Purves, who played Steven, that for TV, it's a small screen, you need small, tight movements or they're wasted - his hands to the lapel gesture is thus very deliberate; it allows him to express stuff via his hands as well as his face in a close shot, and that seems to be typical of him). He was becoming ill, even from the start, though nobody knew it, and often suffered and fluffed under the pressure of the way it was made (an episode a week, filmed as live, and for the sixties, DW ran for something like 3/4s of the year - Patrick Troughton was younger and well and he was utterly exhausted by his third year), but also part of that was characterisation - the 'silly old buffer' who blusters and bluffs his way through a situation - as when an important moment comes, or he plays a different character, suddenly all of that dodderiness vanishes.
If you ever want to see him, I would recommend the still-wonderful first episode (I suspect you probably wouldn't mind the whole serial, although with most people I'd hesitate to point them in the direction of the improbable cavepeople in Lime Grove studios!), although make sure it is the first episode, not the (much weaker) pilot version, or The Aztecs or the more comedic The Romans or The Gunfighters (although the Gunfighters depends on a person's reaction to the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon, as it veers the nearest towards a musical episode that DW has ever done, except with only one song). (The Myth Makers seems to have been as good, also the more serious The Massacre, but both only survive in audio, with not even an episode escaping burnination.) The Aztecs is particularly great, though, and it's also one of Jacqueline Hill's strongest serials as Barbara as she and the Doctor fight it out over whether or not you should try to change history if you get the chance, or if you even can.
But, ha, I shall stop being a nuisance on the subject! I have a lot of love for Sixties DW, though. It's shaky, but it's experimenting everywhere with what it's going to be, especially the Hartnell era, because no rules of the series have been set in stone yet and it's great. (The Troughton era is marvellous, just because Troughton is marvellous.) But, as you know by now, I just have a lot of love for DW!
That is a shame, since I see it contains Stanley Holloway.
I may be being unfair again; I often am. It does have some interesting stuff, it just also has some terrible bits and I'm not sure even it believes in its own anti-TV manifesto. But it is an excellent cast! (Just, it begins with an entirely unnecessary scene with Ian Carmichael in blackface in the theatre and if that was supposed to convince us that theatre is better than TV, they needed their heads examined. That bit was cut out of the version I recorded off the TV when I was 17, for which I thank BBC2, or whoever did it.)
ETA: Apologies for the multiple edits, but here's a clip from An Unearthly Child ep2, where the TARDIS goes back in time for the first time (well, on screen, and as far as Ian and Barbara are concerned). (I was looking for some, but most were either random, or collected Billy-fluffs (as they're known) or too long or whatever.)
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I have never actually seen that. I know about it. I like Jacques Tourneur. I like Dana Andrews. I listen to "Hounds of Love." Maybe I'll see if I can find a copy after Gun Crazy.
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It's all right! To my understanding, the filmmakers never stopped, either!