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Post by jeffersoncody on Jun 25, 2017 18:05:41 GMT
Vincent Price could ham it up from time to time, I've noticed that. But other times he was so good, plus his overall career helps me to overlook his hamiest moments. I didn't say I didn't like Vincent Price. Check out his supporting performance in the great technicolor noir LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN www.youtube.com/watch?v=27cVqvP9QmQ |
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on Jun 25, 2017 18:26:33 GMT
Are there people who do not like Vincent Price? I don't think so. I have seen Leave Her To Heaven, he's good in it, just prior to his horror era beginning. |
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Post by marshamae on Jun 25, 2017 19:34:41 GMT
I actually think Charleton Heston is both hammy and wooden. But when he's good he's fantastic, and perhaps the only actor who could have made a career out of playing biblical types.
Lawrence Olivier was quite hammy but aged in to a brilliant character actor, who liked attention. He could still command the screen even with the smallest gestures.
Richard Burton is another great Stage actor who was terribly " big" and scenery chewing in his early roles. I have read that he credits Elizabeth Taylor with teaching him to act on film.
Lionel Barrymore never strikes me as hammy, but John Barrymore? Pure pork. In On the Twentieth Century and Dinner at Eight he's playing men of the theater and the hamminess is part of the character. He balances it with brilliant small moments as when Larry Renault checks the lighting on his famous profile before laying down for the last time. Even in the Hammiest scenes there is such brilliance, such fluency and command, as in Twentieth Century when he's blocking the scene where Lombard screams, acting out all the parts. It's manic, but the timing is dead accurate. Garson Kanin , who directed Barrymore in The Great Man Votes, tells of a conversation about Macbeth in which Barrymore wonders about a really Scottish Macbeth in Braid Scots, and drops into a speech of Lady Macbeth's, a perfectly serious , excellent reading without a trace of camp. Wouldn't you have killed to get him off booze so you could see that fabulous facility on stage or film?
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 25, 2017 20:33:33 GMT
Peter Ustinov thought so!
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Post by marshamae on Jun 25, 2017 22:07:33 GMT
Ustinov defines raconteur. Oh I'm a sucker for actors who are clever. Tom Conti, Robin Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Laurie, keep em comin' !
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Post by marianne48 on Jun 26, 2017 1:35:08 GMT
Paul Muni in A Song to Remember is one of the all time hammiest performances. The film, supposedly a bio of Chopin that centers on his relationship with George Sand,
gives third billing to Cornel Wilde as Chopin (with Merle Oberon in second as Sand). Top billing goes to Muni as Chopin's mentor, Professor Elsner, and with good reason--after Muni chews, swallows, and throws up all the scenery, there's not all that much screen time for the guy who's supposed to be the subject of the bio. Muni's performance as the wise old mentor of the composer is irritatingly over the top--with all the mugging, head-scratching, and finger-wagging that goes on, he comes off as some kind of Geppetto in a bad children's theater production of Pinocchio.
Alec Guinness in his "ethnic chameleon" roles, which often border on the insensitive, in addition to being embarrassing.
Marlon Brando and James Dean. Brando is so full of himself that he rarely seems to be looking at, or aware of, the actors who share his scenes, while Dean's writhing and grimacing and tortured speeches are tiresome to watch.
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Post by Salzmank on Jun 26, 2017 1:46:11 GMT
James Mason is one of my favorite actors, but he could succumb to his hammy side at times--none more so than in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, of which I was reminded while watching Destination Tokyo...  Despite (or is that "because of"?) that fact, I'm still a huge fan of 20,000 Leagues and Mason's performance in particular...
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Post by telegonus on Jun 26, 2017 6:42:55 GMT
I like Price in Leave Her To Heaven, though a lot of people don't.
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Post by koskiewicz on Jun 26, 2017 15:45:21 GMT
...a must see ham performance is Charles Laughton in The Private Lives of Henry VIII...
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Post by Salzmank on Jun 26, 2017 18:05:29 GMT
Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 I love Tod Slaughter's movies. He is, quite frankly, an awful actor, but that's what makes the movies all the more enjoyable, in my opinion. The pictures are so over-the-top and wild, and so much fun. And--my God!--the "Slaughter" part of his name was actually his real name. Unbelievable. Carlos Villarias played Dracula in the Spanish-language version of the '31 Dracula (the English-language version starred Bela Lugosi, of course). The "Spanish version," as it's usually called (though it was made mostly for the Central American market), is really an excellent movie, but the most important performances--the Count himself and his arch-nemesis, Prof. Van Helsing--are far weaker than their counterparts in the English-language version. Still, it is to a great extent superior than the tedium of the English-language version, even if Villarias overacts wildly. (By the way, Lupita Tovar, an excellent and beautiful actress whose performance as the heroine was hugely superior to Helen Chandler's in the "English version," only passed away a few months ago, at the age of 106.) As always, you are a bounty of information, thank you. Very welcome, and you're really much too kind. |
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Post by telegonus on Jun 27, 2017 7:58:28 GMT
I actually think Charleton Heston is both hammy and wooden. But when he's good he's fantastic, and perhaps the only actor who could have made a career out of playing biblical types. Lawrence Olivier was quite hammy but aged in to a brilliant character actor, who liked attention. He could still command the screen even with the smallest gestures. Richard Burton is another great Stage actor who was terribly " big" and scenery chewing in his early roles. I have read that he credits Elizabeth Taylor with teaching him to act on film. Lionel Barrymore never strikes me as hammy, but John Barrymore? Pure pork. In On the Twentieth Century and Dinner at Eight he's playing men of the theater and the hamminess is part of the character. He balances it with brilliant small moments as when Larry Renault checks the lighting on his famous profile before laying down for the last time. Even in the Hammiest scenes there is such brilliance, such fluency and command, as in Twentieth Century when he's blocking the scene where Lombard screams, acting out all the parts. It's manic, but the timing is dead accurate. Garson Kanin , who directed Barrymore in The Great Man Votes, tells of a conversation about Macbeth in which Barrymore wonders about a really Scottish Macbeth in Braid Scots, and drops into a speech of Lady Macbeth's, a perfectly serious , excellent reading without a trace of camp. Wouldn't you have killed to get him off booze so you could see that fabulous facility on stage or film? I can take just so much Charlton Heston, Marshamae. In Biblicals and spectacles of the The Ten Commandments-El Cid-Khartoum sort I can take him, as his "monolithic" qualities (that's how some critic once described Heston's screen presence, and I agree) were suited to that kind of material; burt him him in a suit and a tie, or even on a horse, I find him hard to take. He's so unnatural. NOBODY ACTS LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE OR EVER DID. I find him somewhat acceptable in contrast to the Irish ham of Richard Harris in Major Dundee (a mess of a movie but worth it), and these two players create an interesting contrast on screen. Richard Burton could serve the material when the material was good, but that was, sadly, seldom the case with him. Whenever I see Burton in anything good I remember Monty Clift's comment on him to Liz Taylor: Burton doesn't act, he recites. I've watched Burton closely a couple of time lately and I don't think this is the case. Love him or hate him in Look Back In Anger he was acting, sometimes over-acting, and if some of his delivery of dialogue sounds a bit like reciting this reflects his classical training, not an inability to act. Agreed on Olivier, and I'm a big fan. Call it ham, genius, inspiration, chutzpah or a combination of those four qualities, he just plain had it. He was like Charlton in in one respect at least, aside from massive ambition: he was never truly natural on screen, with the difference being that he knew it, worked around it, got better with age even as there was always that factitious aspect to him. Maybe the major difference between these two hugely ambitious actors has as much to do with Olivier knowing his limitations, his flaws, as an actor, physical and vocal, and worked like a son of a gun to overcome them, and that he truly succeeded, while Heston just was Heston. It's like it never occurred to Chuck that he could ever be more than Chuck (not sure why I've spent so much time comparing these two....  ). |
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Post by sostie on Jun 27, 2017 11:19:38 GMT
Bella Lugosi
Victor Mature
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jun 27, 2017 12:00:08 GMT
I watched Bela Lugosi in "The Invisible Ghost" last night and was struck (again) by his need for mustard. He's always interesting and does what he can with the awful roles he plays but, hammy ? yes ! Victor Mature's picture goes right up there with Heston's in the Hammy Hall of Fame. Even as a kid, I realized that the man cannot act his way out of a paper bag and hated whenever he was in anything. and now I logged on armed with my brilliant contributions to this thread, only to find that sostie beat me to the punch  Curses, foiled again ! |
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Post by sostie on Jun 27, 2017 12:12:46 GMT
I watched Bela Lugosi in "The Invisible Ghost" last night and was struck (again) by his need for mustard. He's always interesting and does what he can with the awful roles he plays but, hammy ? yes ! Victor Mature's picture goes right up there with Heston's in the Hammy Hall of Fame. Even as a kid, I realized that the man cannot act his way out of a paper bag and hated whenever he was in anything. and now I logged on armed with my brilliant contributions to this thread, only to find that sostie beat me to the punch Curses, foiled again ! Well if two people think it it must be right. Many rave on about Lugosi in Dracula. The film has some nice visuals but both he and the film itself are pretty poor. Mature's best role was the one where he sent himself up - After The Fox is his finest moment |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jun 27, 2017 12:28:10 GMT
telegonusHave you seen Olivier in 49th Parallel (1941) ? It's an interesting Canadian "support the war" film (made before December 7) with some very big stars of the day. Olivier as a French Canadian fur trapper complete with "French-Canadian fur trapper accent" ! Kinda spooky watching the performance. Hamlet as "Johnnie - the trapper".
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Post by teleadm on Jun 27, 2017 17:49:29 GMT
Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 I love Tod Slaughter's movies. He is, quite frankly, an awful actor, but that's what makes the movies all the more enjoyable, in my opinion. The pictures are so over-the-top and wild, and so much fun. And--my God!--the "Slaughter" part of his name was actually his real name. Unbelievable. I came to think of another actor who just like Tod Slaughter travelled the countryside giving the commoners Sheakspeare and other great dramas, and his name was Sir Donald Wolfit who according to himself was the greatest and most correct interpreter of the great costume dramas, so much so that he became enemies with all other knighted actors of that time, he also hired the most awful local actors he could find when travelling so that he could shine, his dresser wrote about these experiences that became a play The Dresser, that also became a movie caleed The Dresser 1983 with Albert Finney more or less as Sir Donald. I've only seen Sir Donald in The Mark 1961 and Lawrence of Arabia 1962, when he acted in movies with the other knighted actors they never spoked or rehearsed except when the cameras was rolling. He must have had some fans since he became knighted. When he died in 1968, BBC wanted to make a documentary about him, but nobody wanted to be part of such a documentary since none of his colleagues wanted to have any association with a programe that might have said anything posititve about him. |
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Post by telegonus on Jun 30, 2017 7:37:58 GMT
telegonus Have you seen Olivier in 49th Parallel (1941) ? It's an interesting Canadian "support the war" film (made before December 7) with some very big stars of the day. Olivier as a French Canadian fur trapper complete with "French-Canadian fur trapper accent" ! Kinda spooky watching the performance. Hamlet as "Johnnie - the trapper". I love The 49th Parallel, Bat. It's beautifully made. Olivier is hammy but I like his fur trapper character performance, ham and all. Raymond Massey struck me as even hammier and near weird in that boxcar at Niagra Falls at the end, and his leering at his German companion, whom he's presumanly going to finish off in a fight is downright bizarro  . While I know it wasn't his intention now, decades after the film was made, it looks like he might have other ideas as well. Not a real gay subtext, just law of unintended consequences, and a kinda funny way to end a mostly very serious film  . |
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Post by marshamae on Jun 30, 2017 13:44:06 GMT
Telegonus- totally agree about Burton reciting, but sometimes it did rise to acting and when it did, Holy cow! Spy Who Came in from the Cold was spectacular, his drunken exhausted wasted spy just a brilliant portrait of a man in ruins . He's really fun in Taming if the Shrew and Becket. In both he had a strong partner to bounce off . He's brilliant in Virginia Woolf , I'm just not a huge fan of the film , too depressing.
Interesting to compare Olivier and Heston. As a female, I think you underestimate the joy of Heston in his non monolithic roles. He is so dead sexy in big Country, a subtext that is the core of his duel with Peck. Likewise in BenHur, his massive sexual appeal makes the whole subplot with Masala work , even though Heston apparently wasn't told about it. Olivier also had the ability to project great sex appeal but always controlled by intellect. I think that intellect is often missing in Heston's work.
Olivier's conviction that he could do any accent was put to the test many times. Among his fails , in my book, are 49th parallel ( that Canuck French is just as embarrassing as rRooney's Japanese in Breakfast at Tiffany's) and Boys from Brazil in which his German Jewish accent was like some radio comic. It makes me wonder about his approach to such characters, if he doesn't come to them through a massive prejudice. His accent for Szell in Marathon man was much more relaxed, and when Szell, trying to price his diamonds with New York's Jewish diamond merchants , suddenly needs to pass himself off as a Jew, his accent is quite different than the one Olivier used in Boys from Brazil. I've heard him in interviews give off some racial and cultural stereotypes that were pretty disturbing. He was a man of his times, no angel , but those mental attitudes set limits.
The whole thing with accents is complex. Even Meryl Streep , the acknowledged master, is not as perfect as she's given credit for. Kenneth Branagh, Robin Williams, two modern actors who are awfully good at accents, are not perfect. John Voight, who thinks he is good at it, isn't. A lot of times they are reaching for a regional accent They can't even distinguish properly.
The funniest story I know about this is about Charles Laughton. When he was cast in They Knew What They Wanted as an Italian wine grower, he was offered a dialogue coach. He poopooed the idea, stating that he would listen to Italian music, read Italian papers and immerse himself in the sound. The first day of shooting , he sounded like a vaudeville organ grinder so a dialogue coach was hired. When the film came out Laughton received many compliments on his authentic accent. He responded that he had listened to Italian music, read Italian papers and immersed himself in the sound.
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Post by teleadm on Jun 30, 2017 15:21:45 GMT
I'm sorry, but I came to think of two others, Akim Tamiroff and Robert Newton.
Robert Newton chewing it up as Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island 1950, and rolling his eyes.
Akim Tamiroff the crazy exiled russian, chewing up the scenes in the original Ocean's Eleven 1960 and Topkapi 1964
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Post by pippinmaniac on Jul 1, 2017 3:57:34 GMT
My favorite grade of ham is Vincent Price. With a voice like that, it was hard not to steal every scene he was in. I loved him in "His Kind of Woman". The has-been actor he played got to be a real hero in the end.
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).
. While I know it wasn't his intention now, decades after the film was made, it looks like he might have other ideas as well. Not a real gay subtext, just law of unintended consequences, and a kinda funny way to end a mostly very serious film 
.