← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Howard Campbell, Jr.
Thread ID: 11597 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-12-24
2003-12-24 19:26 | User Profile
Those of you fortunate enough to receive TCM (Turner Classic Movies) on dish or cable may know that every year the network includes a "TCM Remembers" segment including footage of all the major actors and other film people who died during the year.
I was happily startled to see Leni Riefenstahl--and footage from "Olympiad"--included in this featurette. This brave lady endured a 70 year blacklist and outlived all of her contemporary enemies. Glad that TCM didn't cave to Abe Foxman by refusing to celebrate the greatest woman in the history of cinema.
2003-12-25 04:20 | User Profile
I noticed that with satisfaction as well - right in there with Peck, Hepburn & Bob Hope. Very smooth.
TCM is surely the best channel ever. Everything about it is interesting, including the between-movies filler. Above all, where else can you see old films jam-packed with casual racism? I saw one the other day with Harold Lloyd portraying a former Chinese missionary who cleans up a corrupt American town: the White characters said the word "chink" at least a half dozen times - and without the mandatory Racists Are Evil brush characters uttering such sentiments today would be tarred with by Hollywitz. Wonderfully free & refreshing.
TCM gives us an addicting (and when you think about it, sadly nostalgic) look back at a world controlled by self-confident Whites who weren't afraid to call a spade a spade, by God. Hopefully the de-balled Six Packs who see those suit & rakish fedora-sporting bad asses will also feel the sense of loss and begin to yearn for a return to power.
2003-12-27 21:51 | User Profile
Yup, that's it exactly (and the reason I [I]knew [/I] Nathan Bedford would enjoy getting TCM).
It doesn't matter if the movie they're showing is very good or not (though a lot of them are excellent), TCM is like a snow-globe you shake up to view a long-gone white world that made sense and [I]worked[/I]. (By the way, that Lloyd picture was THE CAT'S PAW. This Monday morning they're showing a [I]real [/I] Harold Lloyd classic, the rarely-seen and lovingly-restored silent "thrill comedy" GIRL SHY- so set your VCRs....)
2003-12-29 04:35 | User Profile
Thanks for the heads-up, IR.
Yesterday they showed Operator 13, a Civil War romance starring Gary Cooper & William Randolph Hearst's squeeze Marion Davies. Davies portrayed a Union spy in Virginia, posing for part of the movie as a saucy nigra slave (with Davies speaking in hilarious darkie "dialeck"). The Mills Brothers appear as part of a medicine show: when they cut loose with a bouncy tune called "Jungle Fever", the Sambos go wild, jes a-jiggin' 'n' a-grinnin' up a storm. Priceless!
Last month, they replayed Discovering the It Girl, their biography of Clara Bow, and it was simply magnificent. There have been many lovely actresses (Susan Hayward, Anne Baxter, Hedy Lamarr, Vivien Leigh & Rita Hayworth, to name a few of my favorites) - but for my money, Clara was without question the ultimate silver screen beauty; the most adorable lady I have ever seen. What a fantastic talent she was, too: the way every emotion registered on her face is a wonder to behold. And what a tragic life she had: a horrific poverty-stricken childhood with abusive parents; then being jewed by her loathsome tapeworm of a boss B.P. Schulberg; and finally, the torture of a hereditary mental illness that forced her to live the last 15 years of her life as a recluse.
To those who missed it this time around, don't miss it the next.
2003-12-29 06:55 | User Profile
Caught the Clara Bow bio on TCM--superb work...as was their recent documentary on Chaney, Sr.
Clara's own statement that "the microphone is my enemy" (at the advent of sound in motion pictures) brought to mind Lena Lamont's duel with the mic' in Singing in the Rain.