spiderwort
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@spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 22, 2017 18:15:28 GMT
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)This is one of my favorite Elia Kazan films, his feature film debut after years of directing theater. He did a wonderful job with the actors, all of them studio contract players, who under his direction each gave deeply felt, moving performances. It's a wonderful adaptation of Betty Smith's equally beautiful novel, filled with universal truths about the human condition, the nature of love, death and human resilience, without an iota of sentimentality. Young Peggy Ann Garner is heartbreaking in her deeply touching honesty, shepherded as she was by Kazan, who tapped into her real life difficulties with her own father. And James Dunn won an Oscar for his performance as the loving but alcoholic father. An auspicious debut for a remarkable director, who went on to direct so many wonderful films, among them A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Wild River, Splendor in the Grass, and America, America.
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Post by teleadm on Jul 22, 2017 18:53:31 GMT
Everybody has to start somewhere...
Since I haven't seen the movie I will not coment on it...
James Dunn's Oscar is by some said to have started the legend of the curse of supporting Oscars, that it kills their careers. It didn't kill Dean Jagger or Jack Palance careers.
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,073
Likes: 9,350
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 22, 2017 19:13:03 GMT
Everybody has to start somewhere... Since I haven't seen the movie I will not coment on it... James Dunn's Oscar is by some said to have started the legend of the curse of supporting Oscars, that it kills their careers. It didn't kill Dean Jagger or Jack Palance careers. Here's a short clip from it that's thematically relevant and shows the father daughter relationship:
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Post by marianne48 on Jul 22, 2017 19:46:37 GMT
Everybody has to start somewhere... Since I haven't seen the movie I will not coment on it... James Dunn's Oscar is by some said to have started the legend of the curse of supporting Oscars, that it kills their careers. It didn't kill Dean Jagger or Jack Palance careers. His winning the Oscar didn't kill James Dunn's career; it was pretty much on the skids by the time he appeared in this film. He'd had his heyday in the 1930s, appearing in a lot of light comedies and musicals, but his real-life problems with alcohol had helped send his career downhill. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a comeback role of sorts, a standout dramatic role for someone whose forte was fluffier stuff. He wasn't the type to continue in heavier, darker roles, so his career didn't really take off after winning the Oscar.
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Post by teleadm on Jul 22, 2017 19:46:47 GMT
Evrybody has to start somewhere... or Jack Palance careers. Here's a short clip from it that's thematically relevant and shows the father daughter relationship: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn clipGreat clip! It reminded me of something...too personal. James Dunn is great in that scene
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Post by petrolino on Jul 22, 2017 22:20:34 GMT
This is one of the most beautiful films I've seen. I watched it on tv as a kid, no knowledge of it going in, got sucked in completely. It's always stayed with me. I've met people who the same thing happened to. There's something magical about it.
There's two other Dorothy McGuire movies of the time that impacted me that way after seeing them on tv - 'The Enchanted Cottage' (1945) and 'The Spiral Staircase' (1946). I love all three.
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,073
Likes: 9,350
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Post by spiderwort on Jul 22, 2017 23:08:40 GMT
I couldn't agree more, petrolino. There is something magical about it. And I, too, really love The Enchanted Cottage and The Spiral Staircase. I think all three films are McGuire's career best performances.
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Post by kijii on Jul 23, 2017 6:31:52 GMT
I have never heard of this legend. Where does it come from? I can give the author of that legend countless examples of the opposite effect. Ever hear of Meryl Streep?
By the way, James Dunn was wonderful in this movie and his Oscar was well deserved. And, it came near the end of his career. So, I really doubt that it was this Oscar that ended his career.
This is a bit like saying that A Double Life ended Ronald Colman's career Oscars often "cap off" rather than "end" careers. But, more often than not, they just come along in a given year that can come along anywhere during an actor's career.
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Post by teleadm on Jul 25, 2017 9:09:27 GMT
I have never heard of this legend. Where does it come from? I can give the author of that legend countless examples of the opposite effect. Ever hear of Meryl Streep? By the way, James Dunn was wonderful in this movie and his Oscar was well deserved. And, it came near the end of his career. So, I really doubt that it was this Oscar that ended his career. This is a bit like saying that A Double Life ended Ronald Colman's career Oscars often "cap off" rather than "end" careers. But, more often than not, they just come along in a given year that can come along anywhere during an actor's career. Sorry, it took me some time to find were I read about it, sometimes called a curse and sometimes called a jinx, I can't find one of the books I've read it, but I found another. One can also Google and just write "Oscar", "Actor" and "Curse", and there is a lot of articles, but those are mostly refering to modern winners, such as Halle Berry, Mia Sorvino, Cuba Gooding Jr. The following is from a book printed 1983 written by Thomas Simonet and the editors of Associated Press, Oscar, A pictoral History of the Academy Awards. Is There an Oscar Jinx?:When Milos Forman won Best Director of 1975 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he warned the film's Oscar winning co-stars Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, "You know we're all going to fail". As it turned out their next films - Forman's Hair, Nicholson's The Missouri Breaks and Fletcher's Excorsist II: The Heretic - were all indeed disappointments at the box-office, with the critics and to their makers. What Forman was referring to was the so-called Oscar Jinx, which is said to have put the whammy on certain winners since the 1930s. In 1936 and 1937 Louis Rainer won back to back Best Actress awards. She then finnished five mediocre movies in the next year and, except for one film in 1943, promptly dissapeard from the screen. Some said it was a series of bad choices of movies that made her career to collaps. Others blamed the mysterious jinx, an she herself said "Those two Academy Awards I got were bad for me ... I later did one bad film. I was treated as if I had never done anything good in my life". Manny winners including Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda and Glenda Jackson have gone on to greater hights after winning their first Academy Awards. But for others the award represented a peak that proved impossible to match, at least immediatly afterward. The list of those supposedly affected includes Olivia de Havilland, Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Liza Minnelli and Gene Hackman. Their downturn might be described to the normal ups and downs that would be expected in anyone's career in a risky and creative business - except that a Temple University doctoral dissertation found statistical confirmation of it. In a study of biographical data that might relate to predicting box-office revenues, prior Academy Awards were found to be negative predictors for people's next movies. Even this finding, however, might have logical explanationes. For one thing, Academ Awards often go to seasoned veterans at the peaks or near the ends of their careers instead of to rising newcomers. Also understandable psychological grounds for reverses could exist: fear of success, unrealistic expectations, or perhaps an attempt to out'do one's self or belief in a self-fullfilling prophecy. Some winners may price themselves out of desirable projects, appear to producers to be too expensive, or find themselves typecast repeatedly in roles similiar to those which they won the Oscar. "Once you win" said Best Supporting Actress of 1966, Sandy Dennis, "poeople think you're going to ask so much more, they don't ask you. Besides there's always a touch of envy". Gig Young said sourly "It didn't help me to win or get nominated three times. Oh, It's a great thing to be appreciated by your peers. But the producers though I was going to want more money and that I was going to be difficult. The Oscar doesn't give you a ticket to anything - not even to a theatre". Bette Midelr, a 1979 nominee, complained, "You should see the worthless scripts I've been offerd since The Rose", and Diana Ross, nominated for Lady Sings the Blues 1972 said "Scores of ofers appeared that would have me playing Billie Holliday over and over again". Others who Alledgedy were jinxed may simply have shifted their interests. In the 1960's Rita Moreno was sometimes cited as a victim of Oscar's backspin because she only made one film in the seven years after winning Supporting Actress Award 1961 in West Side Story. The reality is that one film was all she had time for, she was finding success in other fields of entertainment. The Jinx is talked about enough in Hollywood and joked about enough on talk shows that some winners may believe in a psychological force that makes one's own best act hard to follow. End
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Post by telegonus on Jul 26, 2017 6:58:00 GMT
Everybody has to start somewhere... Since I haven't seen the movie I will not coment on it... James Dunn's Oscar is by some said to have started the legend of the curse of supporting Oscars, that it kills their careers. It didn't kill Dean Jagger or Jack Palance careers. Re: Yeah, but for every Walter Brennan or Karl Malden there seem to be two, maybe three like Gale Sondergaard and Anne Revere (both blacklisted, and neither really came back), Alice Brady (died a year later), Katina Paxinou, Merecedes McCabridge, Jo Van Fleet,--yikes, the women really did badly-- early on anyway . Of the men, it seems that things went somewhat better, though there were some unfortunate ones, too, with Van Heflin not going on to become the next Spencer Tracy, as many wished he would have done; and those who simply had personal misfortunes or were quite frankly "one hit wonders" (Gig Young, for the former, George Chakiris the latter). The thing is, a lot of actresses and actors who win Oscars, whether supporting or otherwise, have their award as much for their careers as for a particular film. At the other end of the spectrum are actors whose film careers don't pan out as they might have wished, especially the supporting ones, and there was always the stage to return to and, later on, television was a nice "save". I think of Written On The Wind's Dorothy Malone, who had Peyton Place on television some years after her win; and Donna Reed, who enjoyed huge small screen success with her long running TV sitcom.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Mar 27, 2019 17:54:38 GMT
Saw this recently, kinda made me think of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) in that both are classic films about and narrated by young girls. Joan Blondell, whom everyone knows from Grease (1978), steals the show for me. I assumed she was just some actress who popped out of the sky and landed a part in Grease but she has an entire Hollywood history for me to discover. I've recently seen her in Christmas Eve (1947) and Desk Set (1957).
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Post by marianne48 on Mar 27, 2019 18:52:09 GMT
One of her better films is Footlight Parade, with a dancing Jimmy Cagney and a series of elaborate Busby Berkeley numbers. Blondell also delivers one of the greatest, funniest lines of all time.
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Post by wmcclain on Mar 28, 2019 1:37:45 GMT
Young Peggy Ann Garner is heartbreaking in her deeply touching honesty I just saw her in Jane Eyre from the year before, giving perhaps the best performance in the movie: Jane Eyre (1944)
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