Post by petrolino on Apr 23, 2017 1:10:57 GMT
'They Won't Believe Me' is a mildly depressing courtroom melodrama that might appeal to fans of 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' (2013) and 'The Big Short' (2015). Avaricious playboy Lawrence Ballentine (Robert Young) must stand trial on charges of murder despite his reputation as a trusted investment broker. Trouble is, this philanderer has recently been juggling liaisons with seductive secretary Verna Carlson (Susan Hayward) and emotional socialite Janice Bell (Jane Greer), despite the apathetic protestations of his beaten down wife Greta (Rita Johnson) who holds the keys to a prospective goldmine. With pretty newcomer Susan Haines (Janet Shaw) on the horizon, what's Larry going to do?
"Heartless, Shameful, Sordid, Cruel ... he's been a bad husband and a bad citizen, he's violated half a dozen moral laws, betrayed those who loved him."
- Mr Cahill (Frank Ferguson), Defense Attorney
This dutiful picture is given solid, unshowy direction by Irving Pichel who knows how to handle actors. Robert Young is quietly commanding as the inside trader whose passion for premature wildcats, flash cars, expensive suits and luscious martinis comes to be a curse. Music is by Roy Webb. Check it out if you enjoy film noir and courtroom dramas.
"Heartless, Shameful, Sordid, Cruel ... he's been a bad husband and a bad citizen, he's violated half a dozen moral laws, betrayed those who loved him."
- Mr Cahill (Frank Ferguson), Defense Attorney
This dutiful picture is given solid, unshowy direction by Irving Pichel who knows how to handle actors. Robert Young is quietly commanding as the inside trader whose passion for premature wildcats, flash cars, expensive suits and luscious martinis comes to be a curse. Music is by Roy Webb. Check it out if you enjoy film noir and courtroom dramas.
"She looked like a very special kind of dynamite, neatly wrapped in nylon and silk, only I wasn't having any. I'd been too close to one explosion already. I was powder shy."
Robert Young
Jane Greer, Robert Young & Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward & Robert Young
Jane Greer
"In 1947 he (J. Roy Hunt) was almost seventy. He had gotten into pictures about Year One by building his own camera, and he had never stopped inventing. Half the improvements on RKO's special sound camera - the best in the business at that time - were of his design … Because of Roy's speed in lighting, we were also able to reverse the usual statistics on time of preparing versus time of shooting. On the average short-schedule film, setting up and lighting take five to ten times as long as the actual shooting. On ‘Crossfire’, my actors and I were in action at least twice as long as Hunt and his crew."
- Edward Dmytryk, Turner Classic Movies
“On television, Robert Young was more than an actor, more than a star, more even than a father figure. He was a reassurance man. The ideal dad he played on "Father Knows Best" and the warmly compassionate doctor he later portrayed on "Marcus Welby, M.D.," helped comfort the audience at home and ease the anxieties of life in the atomic age. When TV became more realistic in the late '70s and '80s, when entertainment shows starting airing social issues, juggling political hot potatoes and presenting characters with flaws and failings, pharmacology fortunately came up with drugs like Zoloft and Prozac to perform somewhat the same function that escapist TV had done in the '50s. Or perhaps it was just a coincidence. "Father Knows Best" and "Marcus Welby" were shams, but they were comforting shams, sometimes moving and inspiring, and all the more so because of Young, who wore both roles like comfy cardigan sweaters. He had an easygoing charm that was perfect for the intimate medium of TV, but he also brought enough ingratiating authority to the parts he played to make them seem credible and genuine – even if the fictitious "Springfield" in which the Andersons lived was as all-white and homogenized as a gallon of milk.”
- Tom Shales, ‘America’s Father Figure’
“Robert Young spent seven seasons with the highly rated program: after “Marcus Welby, M.D.” went off the air in 1976, the star continued to appear on television and in commercials until the late 1980s. Robert Young, who accrued no less than three Hollywood stars during his career, passed away in 1998 of respiratory failure in his California home. Until he became America’s most widely recognized TV doctor, audiences associated “Marcus Welby, M.D.” star Robert Young with his first big role as the father on “Father Knows Best” – ironically, one of the happiest people on TV. Yet, for Young, it was playing a wise doctor that finally helped him sort through his off screen insecurities. Young battled both depression and alcoholism, and merely getting through the day was sometimes a challenge for the respected actor.”
- PBS Statement, ‘Pioneers Of Television’
“Robert Young told Leonard Maltin in a 1986 interview that he considered The Enchanted Cottage (1945) to be "the best love story that's ever been written. [It] was one of those films I hated to see end. I wanted it to go on and on and on. It was such a joy to do." The Enchanted Cottage is a movie with its heart in the right place. Anyone who has ever been in love can relate to the sensation that one's partner becomes more beautiful as one's love deepens. The Enchanted Cottage illustrates this phenomenon to full and lovely effect, with its allegorical yet delicate story of the power of love to physically transform a couple ... Young loved this picture so much that years later he named the home he built in California "The Enchanted Cottage."
- Jeremy Arnold, Turner Classic Movies
Robert Young & Franchot Tone with Joan Crawford
Robert Montgomery (!) with Myrna Loy
Robert Young with Ann Sothern
Robert Young with Dorothy McGuire
Jane Greer, Robert Young & Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward & Robert Young
Jane Greer
"In 1947 he (J. Roy Hunt) was almost seventy. He had gotten into pictures about Year One by building his own camera, and he had never stopped inventing. Half the improvements on RKO's special sound camera - the best in the business at that time - were of his design … Because of Roy's speed in lighting, we were also able to reverse the usual statistics on time of preparing versus time of shooting. On the average short-schedule film, setting up and lighting take five to ten times as long as the actual shooting. On ‘Crossfire’, my actors and I were in action at least twice as long as Hunt and his crew."
- Edward Dmytryk, Turner Classic Movies
“On television, Robert Young was more than an actor, more than a star, more even than a father figure. He was a reassurance man. The ideal dad he played on "Father Knows Best" and the warmly compassionate doctor he later portrayed on "Marcus Welby, M.D.," helped comfort the audience at home and ease the anxieties of life in the atomic age. When TV became more realistic in the late '70s and '80s, when entertainment shows starting airing social issues, juggling political hot potatoes and presenting characters with flaws and failings, pharmacology fortunately came up with drugs like Zoloft and Prozac to perform somewhat the same function that escapist TV had done in the '50s. Or perhaps it was just a coincidence. "Father Knows Best" and "Marcus Welby" were shams, but they were comforting shams, sometimes moving and inspiring, and all the more so because of Young, who wore both roles like comfy cardigan sweaters. He had an easygoing charm that was perfect for the intimate medium of TV, but he also brought enough ingratiating authority to the parts he played to make them seem credible and genuine – even if the fictitious "Springfield" in which the Andersons lived was as all-white and homogenized as a gallon of milk.”
- Tom Shales, ‘America’s Father Figure’
“Robert Young spent seven seasons with the highly rated program: after “Marcus Welby, M.D.” went off the air in 1976, the star continued to appear on television and in commercials until the late 1980s. Robert Young, who accrued no less than three Hollywood stars during his career, passed away in 1998 of respiratory failure in his California home. Until he became America’s most widely recognized TV doctor, audiences associated “Marcus Welby, M.D.” star Robert Young with his first big role as the father on “Father Knows Best” – ironically, one of the happiest people on TV. Yet, for Young, it was playing a wise doctor that finally helped him sort through his off screen insecurities. Young battled both depression and alcoholism, and merely getting through the day was sometimes a challenge for the respected actor.”
- PBS Statement, ‘Pioneers Of Television’
“Robert Young told Leonard Maltin in a 1986 interview that he considered The Enchanted Cottage (1945) to be "the best love story that's ever been written. [It] was one of those films I hated to see end. I wanted it to go on and on and on. It was such a joy to do." The Enchanted Cottage is a movie with its heart in the right place. Anyone who has ever been in love can relate to the sensation that one's partner becomes more beautiful as one's love deepens. The Enchanted Cottage illustrates this phenomenon to full and lovely effect, with its allegorical yet delicate story of the power of love to physically transform a couple ... Young loved this picture so much that years later he named the home he built in California "The Enchanted Cottage."
- Jeremy Arnold, Turner Classic Movies
Robert Young & Franchot Tone with Joan Crawford
Robert Montgomery (!) with Myrna Loy
Robert Young with Ann Sothern
Robert Young with Dorothy McGuire
"Waspish and witty, capricious and violent, Bette could swing from mood to mood with mercurial ease – a facility that made her a great actress if an unpredictable co-star. Once she had discovered sex, (“God’s biggest joke on human beings”), she set about looking for the love of her life. She found him on the set of Jezebel in 1937. But director William Wyler, with whom she began an affair, was married and refused to leave his wife. By the end of the Forties she had a reputation for being difficult. When Joseph L Mankiewicz announced that Bette would take over the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve, fellow director Edmund Goulding (who directed her in four films, including Dark Victory) wrote to him: “Dear boy, have you gone mad? This woman will destroy you, she will grind you down to a fine powder and blow you away. You are a writer, dear boy. She will come to the stage with a thick pad of long yellow paper. And pencils. She will write. And then she, not you, will direct. Mark my words.” She was not above physical violence. During the shooting of the 1964 film Where Love Has Gone, she tore off her wig and began whipping her co-star Susan Hayward with it, screaming insults. She wrested control from the writers and directors she considered too weak to do their jobs but it was her fellow actresses who suffered most. At times, Bette exhibited all the worst traits of Margo Channing, the jealous actress who would stop at nothing to get a role."
- Neil Norman, The Express
- Neil Norman, The Express
(I'm going to have to go ahead and watch it some day.)
