What's the use of being free? All that's left is you and me

[sovay]

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.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I look forward to hearing what he's like in it, although I have always had the impression that movie is unrelentingly bleak.

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.)