Splendid last word that Cyrano speaks: "panache."
Lush, luscious, witty, lovely and clever words with which the play abounds.

I don't know about you but I've read Cyrano at least twice and seen it and/or variations at least four or five times. Yet I would not have known what I was missing. Tonight the gods of the new year apparently were working for me because I happened upon the Kevin Kline / Jennifer Garner version on PBS's Great Performances. Fortuitously, my TiVo had recently recorded something on WMHT so when I turned on the tv a mere five minutes in and it was the irresistible scene where "nose" and "knows" and "noes" and all manner of other ways to say something with that sound are bandied about, with quizzical looks and guffaws everywhere, I was lured, unsuspecting, into a hundred and thirty minutes of the moving and sweet story that we more or less know. What was especially engaging and rewarding is discovering that Cyrano is far more robust and meaty than we may remember (or at least than I did). And Kline's performance is amazing. (I wonder what it's like to have those words come out of your own mouth and, in a way, thoughts, and convey them for an audience to understand and feel so much.)

Labels: actors, theater, writing

The actress with easily the most unexpected and delightful name, Honeysuckle Weeks, turns out to be the focus of New York City's mayor (read about it here) although why this is being mentioned now, when the series is shooting its final season and not presently on the air, is a bit of a puzzle.

Labels: actors, tv

Realizing as I do that Miss Marple adventures can be awfully precious, nonetheless I often like them, particularly second and third times as sort of background noise when I can notice details about scenery and/or actors. I am not a fan of Joan Hickson's characterization as she is much too gray, in all the possible interpretations of that word. I do like Geraldine McEwan's portrayal, however. She conveys a sense of humor in the role, suggesting that the character, not the actress, knows that people's first reaction to her is that she must be a silly old lady - and letting the people - the characters, not the actors and not the audience - come to understand and appreciate her as time goes on. In particular, the later episodes with McEwan were interesting and fun to watch. McEwan is the voice of Miss Thripp in several Wallace and Gromit films, too, by the way.

Labels: actors, tv

Laura points out that Claude Rains is TCM's September "star of the month" (read her post here and see the Rains listings here - click "refresh" when you go to the TCM schedule - they have yet to do something to juice up their slow-loading pages but refreshing it quickly seems to help). Unfortunately they're not showing all that many so most of the films have been seen often on TCM, but he is wonderful.

Labels: actors, movies

It's James Mason Day on TCM today for a whole 24 hours. They're showing many of the famous films like A Star Is Born and North By Northwest, of course, as well as Lord Jim and the wonderful, touching Heaven Can Wait. James Mason Day also includes many smaller, unexpected and surprising (to me, anyway) films.

It bears mentioning that Dorothy Parker was one of the writers on Star Is Born, along with Moss Hart and some others, which explains why it's not just drivel, I suppose. And Ernest Lehman, the writer of NxN, also wrote the screenplays for The King and I, Sweet Smell of Success, Westside Story, Hello Dolly, Family Plot, The Sound of Music and others. Whew.

Judy Garland is not one of my favorite performers, partly because I always hear that omnipresent echo of her sad life when I see her, but holy cow she sings magnificently in Star. And she looks fantastic in that huge-skirted, light-and-dark violet dress with its big-shouldered shrug as she sings Melancholy Baby in a nightclub during the visualization of her rise to fame.

I don't know why my first reaction to James Mason is always that he's a little creepy and doesn't interest me and then, after five minutes, I can't turn away.

Labels: actors, movies, writing

Watched "The Jane Austen Book Club" since I was in an Austen frame of mind. It's an odd little story and I'm not sure it doesn't strain one's credibility a bit too much but it's kind of charming. It brings an Austen-esque touch to the lives of six people who decide to discuss and (re)read one Austen book each month for six months. It's interesting to see and hear their interpretations of the various characters. Furthermore, it's an astonishing 198 years since the first book was printed and it's almost impossible to believe that the books are so much a part of our social fabric. the plot twists and tie-ups are a bit too tidy but they are faithful to Austen and they're done without too much melodrama.

It's a nice touch to have the characters develop as the characters in the books. To some extent this works because the film is fairly well written. To another it works because the actors are all terrific. The coup de grace is that each actor had to read entirely whichever book his/her character was leading in each month's meeting of the club. Given the literary plot this definittely gave substance to the layers.

The Northanger Abbey play scene is priceless, I have to say, and the subtle references are nice. As in "Clueless," there are verbal and physical references that will become apparent upon subsequent viewings, I feel sure. If I have a discernible quibble, it's mostly that it didn't seem substantial enough. I don't know if the fault likes it too many television actors whose gravitas is thin or if the writing simply lacked depth. It's pleasant and has some pleasant turns but it never quite picks up enough steam for my taste.

Among the main actors, Emily Blunt the most interesting to watch. At the beginning, she is so uptight your eyes hurt. I'm not entirely sure how she shows the transition so effectively. She reminds me of Amanda Root's transformation in my favorite film version of "Persuasion" when she morphs from plain to lovely without a film cut and without any change other than the light in her eyes. Some actresses have remarkable abilities.

Madeleine Peyroux sings "Getting some fun out of life" over the credits at the end of the movie and is a dead ringer for Billie Holliday though a lot less loopy. I can't wait to hear more.

Labels: actors, movies, singing, today's movie, writing

I Tivo'd a bunch of Dr. Kildare movies recently, the ones with Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore as the young idealistic Kildare and his grumpy brilliant advisor Gillespie. Both men are intelligent and instinctively wise diagnosticians who steer themselves with a stern moral compass, motivated by decency and compassion. They make an almost perfect two sides of a proverbial coin, visually and textually, one smooth and gentle, the other gruff and sarcastic. And they're both quintessential type-A workaholics who live in the hospital because going back and forth to other residences would waste so much time.

The Kildare films hold up surprisingly well to our oh-so-sophisticated modern standards, needing only a dash of suspended disbelief for outdated morals and social expectations. The language is not at all archaic although some of the stock characters are different than current ones. But when Gillespie burst out with a short speech about knowing a time will come when health care will be as basic to people's rights as are food and shelter (sound familiar?!), I realized they are mainly dated by literal timing, not by sensitivities.

Kildare's parents are fonts of extraordinarily modern wisdom. They are also gracious and far less concerned about their son's prestige and financial success than that he determine and do the right thing. Their advice generally is that he rely on his inner instincts because he will know what the right thing is to do.

I especially enjoy his mother's self-assurance and her cheerfully-given advice to her son. She always knows what's going on with him and always has something forthright to say to him. When he is smitten by a young and adorable Lana Turner - a bad-girl-with-heart-of-gold love interest before the Larraine Day character took front and center in Kildare' heart for the duration of the series - his unusual mother advises him to plunge in and marry her right away because "if it isn't going to work then you find out quickly and haven't wasted much time but if it is going to work then you have that much more time together." How about that?

Ayres' eyes always twinkled and he often seemed faintly bemused. He easily and comfortably inhabited every character he played and seemed totally involved with the people and circumstances around him, as did Lionel Barrymore. Both Barrymore and he were such good actors that it was hard to realize at times that they weren't actually the people we see on film. And Ayres is awfully nice from an eye candy point of view, to boot, and so at ease with himself.

My mother introduced me to Ayres' Dr. Kildare when I was young and impressionable. We would swoon together as he smiled and cajoled his way through things. As a result, in some ways it is he I check gorgeous and sexy against. Could be worse frames of reference, right?

The Dr. Kildare series began in 1938 and continued for about five years and ten films. In addition to them, Ayres made over 150 films including All Quiet on the Western Front which won the 1930 Best Oscar, Donovan's Brain which is one of my favorite campy fun scifis, Johnny Belinda which won the 1948 Golden Globe best film and co-starred Jane Wyman who won the Best Actress Oscar and Holiday which is one of my favorite of the risqué and wild late-thirties films as Ayres plays Kate Hepburn's ne'er-do-well brother and Gary Grant's ultimate benefactor to Hepburn's Philadelphia-Story-esque lead.

In Johnny Belinda, by the way, Aryes was nominated as Best Actor (losing to Lawrence Olivier for Hamlet - the same year that Barbara Bel Geddes lost Best Supporting Actress to Claire Trevor for Key Largo, which is another subject for another day). Hollywood lore has it that Wyman fell madly in love with Ayres during the filming of Johnny Belinda and left her husband (some fellow named Ronald Reagan) to be with Ayres, but they never married.

Ayres appeared and starred in films and television during the fifties and sixties and a bit in the seventies but never earned the fame and adulation one would think he deserved - although he does have two stars on the Walk of Fame. He was a matinee idol who was determined to do some good. He refused to fight in WWII and eventually garnering conscientious objector status and performed medical relief work. Today he wouldn't be at particularly unusual to combine good looks with fame with social action, but fifty-plus years ago his concerns and his determination to do something about them were ridiculed and hurt his career.

I've often heard/read that he was invited to play Dr. Kildare on television, not surprisingly, but he said he wouldn't do it unless there was no cigarette sponsorship and the network refused, so he declined to play the good doctor (lucky for Richard Chamberlain). He was an active follower of Eastern spirituality and wrote, directed and produced Altars of the World in the late seventies; it won several awards including a Golden Globe but got little viewership because distributors thought it was too odd for a movie star to proselytize spirituality. Considering Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, Gwyneth Paltrow, etc., as well as the ban on cigarette advertising on tv, it's safe to say that individuality, social awareness and tolerance have improved a lot in the last half-century.

Anyway, this is my tribute. Brought on by, and thanks to, Tivo and memory. I hope at least one person who never saw any of his films will now watch and enjoy.

Labels: actors, people of note