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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 16, 2018 3:12:28 GMT
Aye Up Peeps
Both my Mother and Father were massive film lovers, my dad at 80 still is in fact. From an early age I remember my dad taking me to see the more robust pics like The Great Escape, Zulu (a film that still today is my favourite of all time) The Vikings, The Magnificent Seven, while on the flip-side my mom would shepherd me off to watch a musical, comedy or a Disney - I'm pretty sure my first ever viewing of a big screen film was Lady & The Tramp.
A lot of my dad's favourite films became my own, the afore mentioned Zulu, The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, The Wild Bunch (my favourite Western of all time), Cool Hand Luke, Papillon, Spartacus et al. I also got my love of the gangster pics, and the works of Cagney & Bogart from my old man. Even now he crams in Westerns and War films every chance he gets, and even yesterday I lent him a Bogart Box Set and he was delighted that he was going to watch The Harder They Fall last night So pretty much he has always been big into macho cinema, my brother and I followed suit, though I went more Westerns and my bro went more War. Dad's also a Laurel & Hardy fan of substance, so that caught on, as did Abbot & Costello and the great Will Hay. Angels With Dirty Faces is his favourite film.
My mom was the girl for a musical for sure, and without her I wouldn't go on to adore the best of Gene Kelly, Fred & Ginger and the like. I lost count how many times we watched Mary Poppins, West Side Story, tom thumb, The Wizard Of Oz, Willy Wonka together. When I grilled her later in life I got to find out exactly what her favourite movie was, and she steadfastly named two! Jane Eyre (1943) and Wuthering Heights (1939), and there was me wondering how come I ended up a huge advocate of Gothic tinted films! Amazingly later in life she loved Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis! and I often took her to the cinema to see their films, then on for wine and something to eat afterwards, the day would be an event. Before her mind started to fail her I have cherished memories of theatre visits with her, the last film we saw together was The Woman In Black (2012). She influenced me with another side of comedy films to my dad, that of Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye (we must have watched The Court Jester a hundred times over the years) and Norman Wisdom!
So there you are, they both hugely influenced me and I'm eternally grateful.
Anything relating to your parents/guardians film tastes, memories, influence on yourself is appreciated in the name of good threading
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Post by OldAussie on Nov 16, 2018 5:09:36 GMT
My dad - Cagney, then Bogie, Duke Wayne and honourable mention to Dan Duryea. For movies - western and gangster.
my mum - Bette Davis, Paul Newman, Gone With the Wind, honourable mention The Long Hot Summer.
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Post by mikef6 on Nov 16, 2018 5:14:46 GMT
Me ol' mum loved musicals of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.
My father loved westerns of all sorts but would never miss "High Noon" if it came back to town, usually at the drive-in. I got my John Wayne, Randy Scott, Joel McCrea education from him. And don't forget Rod Cameron. He would also never miss a WWII war movie as a veteran of that conflict. I think his favorite may have been "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo."
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 16, 2018 15:04:45 GMT
My dad - Cagney, then Bogie, Duke Wayne and honourable mention to Dan Duryea. For movies - western and gangster. my mum - Bette Davis, Paul Newman, Gone With the Wind, honourable mention The Long Hot Summer. Dan Duryea. One of the great things about finding message boards was getting to know that others knew about those type of actors, because prior to that my dad was the only one I could talk to about him since my friends wouldn't have a clue! Only the other night we was discussing Earl Holliman because he was watching Last Train from Gun Hill, another in a long line of great supporting actors in genre of films I love. Cheers Aussie
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Post by Aj_June on Nov 16, 2018 15:13:56 GMT
My uncle's favourite movie is The Bridge on the River Kwai.He is also a fan of James Bond character and especially Sean Connery, of whom he can't talk enough. He had a large collection of movies on VCR cassettes.
My aunt's favourite movie is The Sound of Music. She is also a massive fan of Ben-Hur and the Hitchcock movies. Her favourite Hitch movie is Strangers on a Train. She is also a fan of horror movies such as The Haunting (1963) & The Innocents (1961). Her fav is Jack Nicholson and Bogart.
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Post by Aj_June on Nov 16, 2018 15:25:31 GMT
I forgot to answer if they influenced me or not. Yes, my first exposure to English movies came from my uncle's collection. I think there were not many people in my obscure hometown who had ever seen English movies back in the 80s and 90s. My uncle used to buy a large collection of movies every time he visited Calcutta. I remember I understood nothing when I saw The Bridge on the River Kwai for the first time in the early 90s. But I still liked watching the action sequence.
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Post by wmcclain on Nov 16, 2018 15:50:21 GMT
My parents knew a lot of actors names but I don't recall them discussing films. An exception: their description of entire theaters of bawling people watching pre-Code weepies with Jackie Cooper: That gave me an early realization of the synergistic effects you get from large excited audiences. Staying home and watching a film (as I do these days) loses that. My father was a WW2 vet and his description of negotiating mine fields has always made those film scenes vivid for me.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 16, 2018 16:34:51 GMT
Influence? Not to what I'd call any great extent, although it was through my father that I was first exposed to musicals of the studio era: he'd always watch a Betty Grable movie. Otherwise, he had little use for motion pictures, at least for his personal enjoyment. They did, however, contribute to his income. He was a typesetter and worked for years at a small company for which a couple of major clients were AMPAS and Pacific Title. If you see any film or TV show made between the late-'50s to mid-70s carrying the credit "Titles By Pacific Title," the chances are better than good that every letter of the onscreen text was originally typed by his fingers. After thousands of them, he'd probably absorbed as many names of personnel on both sides of the camera as anyone, even if they meant nothing to him.
Because of what was otherwise a lack of interest, it came as a surprise to me when he mentioned late in life that, at 18 in 1937, he'd gone to see Lost Horizon three times in one week. Intrigued, I asked what it was about it that he found so unusually compelling. "I dunno; I liked it," was his characteristically taciturn reply.
Since he preferred to stay home, my mother would take me to a lot of films. She'd see most anything, although she preferred light entertainments, like those of Doris Day or Elvis Presley. After they'd retired and moved to Northern California, they'd come back to L.A. for regular visits, and it was on one such that they, my two brothers and I went to the Dome in Hollywood to see Close Encounters Of the Third Kind, about which she was thereafter sentimental: she enjoyed the picture, but more importantly for her, it was the last time the five of us ever went to a movie together.
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Post by teleadm on Nov 16, 2018 17:55:25 GMT
I had a grand aunt on my mothers side who I've been told often went to the cinema, her favorites were Rudolph Valentino and Fred Astaire, She went to see Valentino in The Eagle every day for two weeks. I guess there is at least one influence. From her I got a lot of Film fan magazines from the 1920s, she was still alive then, she thought I was the right person who would understand how great movies are. I've read them and I guess there are many unique pictures in them, and reading the letters section was very interesting too, fans asked the same questions then as they do nowdays, "Is He Married?", "Does He have a girlfriend?", "Do He have any pets?" and so on. My other influence would be my mother, she loved movies and movie stars and had scrapbooks with pictures of her idols. Her idols were Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster. Gable in It Happened One Night and Gone With the Wind, Sinatra in Higher and Higher and Anchors Aweigh, and Burt in From Here to Eternity, those movies have been mentioned a lot. Humphrey Bogart, Melvyn Douglas, Ronald Colman and Walter Pidgeon were others she also liked. Fred MacMurray and Victor Mature were two she didn't like, she called them big blunt buffalos. My father too went to the movies when young, but he never memorised any movies, except that they were cowboy movies and the only name he could remember was Ken Maynard. He gave me something else though, my love for jazz and jazz influenced vocalists.
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 17, 2018 9:31:21 GMT
Me ol' mum loved musicals of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. My father loved westerns of all sorts but would never miss "High Noon" if it came back to town, usually at the drive-in. I got my John Wayne, Randy Scott, Joel McCrea education from him. And don't forget Rod Cameron. He would also never miss a WWII war movie as a veteran of that conflict. I think his favorite may have been "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." My dad's favourite actor is William Holden, but like your father there's a whole plethora of Western actors he is pleased to see in the credits - me too! Thanks for sharing mike
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 17, 2018 16:12:44 GMT
My uncle's favourite movie is The Bridge on the River Kwai.He is also a fan of James Bond character and especially Sean Connery, of whom he can't talk enough. He had a large collection of movies on VCR cassettes. My aunt's favourite movie is The Sound of Music. She is also a massive fan of Ben-Hur and the Hitchcock movies. Her favourite Hitch movie is Strangers on a Train. She is also a fan of horror movies such as The Haunting (1963) & The Innocents (1961). Her fav is Jack Nicholson and Bogart. Ah the days of VCR! I still have a player actually because there literally is a small handful of films I have on VCR that have yet to be given disc treatment. Yeah The Bridge on the River Kwai is a family favourite here as well. Your Aunt is way cool! Nice and diverse in tastes. A.J.
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Post by vegalyra on Nov 17, 2018 19:07:58 GMT
My parents watched a lot of films but by the time I came along my Dad worked at a chemical plant on a 7 day/7 night schedule (shift work and lots of overtime) so his time to watch movies was pretty limited. We had a VCR very early on but didn't really buy movies until the prices came down (I remember them being $50 or more a piece in the early 1980's). We had cable fairly early on too so that's how I watched most of my movies in those days. My Dad really enjoyed the James Bond films and WW2 films so whenever TBS or AMC had marathons we'd usually watch quite a few of those when they came on. I was definitely influenced by him watching those films so I still have a big love for WW2 films in general. My mom watched a lot of PBS and shows produced in England (BBC) so I watched quite a few of those but they were typically adaptions of literary classics. She'd usually let my brother and I pick out a movie a piece at the local mom and pop rental store on the weekends so as long as they weren't R rated we usually had free reign. She was usually the one that took us to the movie theater too because of Dad's work schedule although there were a few times he took us (like Top Gun and as a family on vacation we usually inevitably stopped at the local theater at whatever town we were vacationing at). I still remember for some reason my Mom refused to let me go with my neighbor and her Mom to go see the Goonies when it came out. I threw a massive protest and even tried to sneak out of the house that night to go with them. haha. Then once it was out on video she let us rent it and loved it. She must have heard something about the film being too "scary" or something from a friend. Good times.
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Post by london777 on Nov 17, 2018 19:22:45 GMT
I think my first film was "Fantasia" (1940) - not when first released, I ain't that old! I think I was about 5, and being unused to the routine of cinema I squirmed about, asked for explanations in a shrill voice, embarrassed the neighbors who had been so kind as to take me, and spoiled the enjoyment of most people within ten rows. There are posters on this board who think I am still hell-bent on spoiling folks' enjoyment of movies. They can attribute it to that formative experience.
In the immediate post-WWII years in the UK there were three cinema chains that, between them, showed nearly all the new Brit and US releases. There was no TV, of course, and my parents were at that time of limited means. Movies were a cheap entertainment, so we went once, twice, or even three times a week. You normally had to queue and it was quite normal to enter the cinema in the middle of a feature film and afterward walk out once it came round again to scenes you had already viewed. Entrance was 1/3d (one shilling and three pence - about US 8 cents). If you felt flush, you could often jump the queue by paying 1/10d, and savor the resentful looks of the proles in the 1/3d line as you swept pass them. My elder brother, who had just started dating girls, dreaded the doorman shouting "Seats only at 2/6d" and being torn between saving his pocket-money and having to show off to his date by parting with such an exorbitant sum (about US 16 cents!).
As to my parents' taste, they had none, but Dad was the decider. He was not big on musicals but pretty much anything else was acceptable. English films were, with a few exceptions, regarded as inferior substitutes for "real" movies (that is, American movies). Nothing much has changed there after seventy years.
Dad's favorite was Humphrey Bogart, and he did look a bit like him. His favorite female star was Grace Kelly, and my Mum was of that type (not quite in the same league of course!)
Films were rated "U" (universal entrance), "A" (children under 12 not allowed, over 12 only with an adult) and "H" for horror (children under 16 banned). There was no rating which discriminated against sexually explicit or violent films until the "X" certificate appeared in 1950 to replace "H". I remember being indignant at not being allowed to watch The Big Heat (1953) as I had a crush on Gloria Grahame (still do).
The period of my most frequent cinema going (late 40s to mid-50s) exactly coincides with the Film Noir epoch, which is why I am hooked on that "genre".
A running family joke which I did not understand as a child surfaced whenever my mother looked up the local rag to see what was showing. My father always suggested "Richard Dix in the Iron Road". Apparently in the pre-war years this was a movie that was repeatedly shown ad nauseam. I had no idea who Richard Dix was. I had never knowingly seen one of his movies. I still have not.
I have used the word "movies" here, but we never referred to them as that. It was always "the pictures" as in "Are we going to the pictures on Saturday?" or "My favorite picture".
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Post by Aj_June on Nov 17, 2018 19:38:35 GMT
I think my first film was "Fantasia" (1940) - not when first released, I ain't that old! I think I was about 5, and being unused to the routine of cinema I squirmed about, asked for explanations in a shrill voice, embarrassed the neighbors who had been so kind as to take me, and spoiled the enjoyment of most people within ten rows. There are posters on this board who think I am still hell-bent on spoiling folks' enjoyment of movies. They can attribute it to that formative experience. The period of my most frequent cinema going (late 40s to mid-50s) exactly coincides with the Film Noir epoch, which is why I am hooked on that "genre". Well, not me. I enjoy almost all your posts. Even that one when you blasted me by saying that I should watch Disney movies If I can't like realistic endings like that of Chinatown.
What do you mean by your parents had no taste? You mean they were like those people who would watch anything that came on TV?
Now I am especially excited about this part of the post. What do you mean by saying that English movies were regarded as inferior? Regarded as inferior by whom? Your parents? Did they have access to foreign movies? That's great to know if that's what you are saying!
The same was true in my childhood. Nobody that I remember ever used the term "movies" or "films". It was always pictures or cinema. Things back home have changed now though.
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Post by london777 on Nov 17, 2018 20:12:44 GMT
... that one when you blasted me by saying that I should watch Disney movies If I can't like realistic endings like that of Chinatown.
Well, it's true isn't it? Imagine Chinatown with a happy ending! Hardly "blasted', though. Wait until I really blast someone here! What do you mean by your parents had no taste? You mean they were like those people who would watch anything that came on TV?
I mean they were not in a position to exercise taste. They just went to see almost everything that was released because it was the only entertainment they could afford. Life after WWII in the UK was pretty bleak so it was escapism. Dad dug in his heels with musicals. We went to see a lot of westerns (there were a lot to see then) but he was often pretty scathing, especially when old gits like Randolph Scott (whom he called "Old Creaking Joints") or Joel McCrea were out-punching a dozen guys thirty years younger. He loved HB in the African Queen because it showed an old git of his age doing the heroic thing but breaking wind, complaining about back-ache, etc in a realistic way.
Now I am especially excited about this part of the post. What do you mean by saying that English movies were regarded as inferior? Regarded as inferior by whom? Your parents? Did they have access to foreign movies? That's great to know if that's what you are saying! My fault, I was not clear in my post. Only English-language films were on the menu. Most people preferred American films as better-budgeted and more escapist with "Hollywood Endings".
Besides the three main cinemas in our town there was a fleapit which showed B-horrors and sci-fi and the odd foreign film, especially if deemed "saucy". Also revived older classics but they had no appeal to my family or the general public. In another thread I told the tale of how my father took me to see "Bicycle Thieves" there as he thought I would appreciate my relatively affluent home life as a result. But he sat down in a pool of urine left by a previous patron, and this put him off "arty-farty" foreign rubbish for good.
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Post by manfromplanetx on Nov 17, 2018 20:30:20 GMT
My parents were not big film fans, I loved going to my grandmothers as she would take me to the Saturday matinee. My mother was born in Zagreb and fled to Australia in the mid 50s. One film I clearly remember that held great interest for my her was Roger Corman's, Secret Invasion (1964) mainly because of the location filming around Dubrovnik, Croatia (pic below). As a very young child the harrowing scene involving a baby stuck with me for years... My father did introduce me to my all time favourite childhood film The Time Machine (1960) When I was a child my grandmother a city socialite always liked to name drop and claimed that she was great friends with movie star Googie Withers, no one else in the family seemed interested nor cared, but I never forgot that unusual name. When I seriously began to take an interest in classic film I sought out Googie Withers films and became a great fan...thanks Nan !
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Post by louise on Nov 18, 2018 6:45:27 GMT
I don't know. Both of them liked the Marx Brothers,Will Hay etc, and they also liked foreign films like Bicycle Thieves etc, but I don't remember either of them ever mentioning one film specifically as beimg their.favourite. They had been keen cinema goers when they were younger, but They didn't go to see new films very often when I was young, apart from taking me to kids films, but I do remember us going to see Discreet Charm of the Boirgeoise and enjoying it. And they liked Day for Night.
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 18, 2018 10:22:46 GMT
I forgot to answer if they influenced me or not. Yes, my first exposure to English movies came from my uncle's collection. I think there were not many people in my obscure hometown who had ever seen English movies back in the 80s and 90s. My uncle used to buy a large collection of movies every time he visited Calcutta. I remember I understood nothing when I saw The Bridge on the River Kwai for the first time in the early 90s. But I still liked watching the action sequence. Top stuff A.J. Thank You.
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 18, 2018 10:37:04 GMT
My parents knew a lot of actors names but I don't recall them discussing films. An exception: their description of entire theaters of bawling people watching pre-Code weepies with Jackie Cooper: That gave me an early realization of the synergistic effects you get from large excited audiences. Staying home and watching a film (as I do these days) loses that. My father was a WW2 vet and his description of negotiating mine fields has always made those film scenes vivid for me. Oh yes, I was always fascinated to hear their stories of theaters, from times when it was the ultimate event for teenagers. My mom actually worked as an usherette for a few years, as did one of her sisters. Still standing as a Bingo Hall this is it > cinematreasures.org/theaters/22733My dad was literally born around the corner from it as well! wm
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Post by tommyrockarolla on Nov 18, 2018 11:27:31 GMT
Jeez. My Dad used to storm out on my Mom, and grabbed my petrified ass and go to the movies. It may be 'selective memory', I'm not sure, but? "Patton", the Peter Sellers "Pink Panther" movies come to mind.
My Dad was a pretty vocal "NYC Conservative" in his time. He had a Nixon Campaign button which read: "They can't lick our Dick", LMAO. Wish I'd have found THAT among his things when he passed.
We never talked 'in depth 'cinema. But clearly, whether he knew it or not, he was a great fan of John Huston, who was anything but a "NYC Conservative". On the television, he liked "Maltese Falcon", and spectacularly, "The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre". One of his 'grab my hand, we're going to the fkn movies' films was? "The Man Who Would Be King", which, like Welles quest for "Heart Of Darkness", was on Hustons 'wish list' for decades. I think John's initial plan for the Kipling story was Bogart and Gable. He wound up with Michael Caine and Sean Connery, early 1970's. If you like "Treasure Sierra", definitely check that 'unsung' Huston film out. Similar thematically.
And I'll never, EVER forget watching "On The Waterfront" with the old man on television, early 1970's. The film has been a profound influence on my life. Reeking with the Catholicism I was raised in? Terry Malloys "Captain Ahab like quest" to FINALLY 'do the right thing' is an emotional cornerstone in my life. My Dad was of Brando's generation. He was probably 21-22 when that film came out.
Great thread, BTW. I should probably go back and 'like' everything.
PS: I think he liked the Marx Brothers, not sure.
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