 Rolling, rolling, rolling. Hello, welcome to Celluloid Mirror. I'm your hostess, Betty St. LeVoe. On this show, we discuss film history, film terminology, and then we go straight into the movies. Today, I've decided to discuss two movies near and dear to my heart. And both of them deal sort of with high fashion and sort of not. The first one we're going to look at is a beautiful Lana Turner movie called Imitation of Life. And it stars Juanita Moore, Troy Donahue, Sandra Dee, John Gavin, Susicona, Mahalia Jackson, sings in it, Robert Alda, and Don O'Harely. Makeup by Bud Westmore, who also did the makeup for the next movie that we're going to talk about, produced by Ross Hunter, and directed by Douglas Cirque, who also directs the next movie we're going to talk about. It's based on the Fanny Hearst novel, and the gowns were done by Jean-Louis. All right, so let's get into the movie. Coney Island Mardi Gras, 1947, September 8 to September 14. And Laura Meredith is looking for her little girl, Susie, who happens to be befriended by Juanita Moore's character, Annie. And her daughter, played by Susan Kona, her daughter's name is Sarah Jane. The two little girls and the women form a friendship over the years. Very unequal friendship. Juanita Moore plays Black woman, who's hired by Lana to take care of her and her daughter. And she's always calling Lana Ms. Laura. And Lana never calls her Ms. Annie, so it's just part of the plot. It's also a remake of another movie that was made in 1934, which is probably even more tensed with that type of servile attitude between the two characters. Now, John Gavin, who plays Lana's love interest, is actually a pretty interesting person in real life, his Mexican Spanish descent, and served as ambassador to Mexico in the Reagan era. So he plays a photographer who's in love with Laura. Now, part of the reason why we're discussing this movie day is because Douglas Cirque made what they call women's pictures back in the 50s. And as I study, most of these women's pictures, it appears that there's always usually a household of women. Men are on the periphery. Sometimes they have the power, sometimes no. In our next movie that we're going to be checking out, women are key to the plot, as are the relations with men, but the women are more important than the guys. So I just want to see if I. Yeah, I wrote a couple of paragraphs about the fact that in these pictures that were made before the sexual revolution, the women are always in dresses and skirts. They're usually wearing some type of hat wear. They have gloves. The men are opening the doors for them. They appear to be in a position of having to be taken care of. But when we look at Laura's character, Lanturnus' character in this movie, not only does she have a will of steel and is very strong, she doesn't really need anyone to lean on her. And I think that movies like Gilda and Laura and Notorious center on women who appear frail and fragile, but they triumph in the end. I happen to like movies like that, and I hope that you all do too. OK, so they move in together. The mama and the child who are black, they don't have anywhere to live. Sarah Jane is beyond high yellow. And all through the movie, that's part of the conflict. She wishes that she was white. She wants to be white. She disowns her mom several times. It's part of the heartbreaking part of the plot. So as in most movies, the apartment Lana and Susie live in, it's bigger than Montpelier. The house that they later move in is lavish, swimming pool, all of that. Yet Susie, who the daughter of the actress who makes it, suffers from a poverty of the spirit also. So it makes for a great old tearjerker smash up. Now, nowadays, and for me, it's just how I'm looking at it. In the 90s, the explosion of R&B became ramp. And living in New Hampshire and Vermont, I saw guys wear baggy pants. They were dressing in urban wear. The styles changed very different from the style that I was accustomed to in the 70s. Grunge, maybe, but it was more than that. There's also a type of urban consciousness towards a bit of bling. So this movie can never be remade. You can never remake this movie, and that's one of the things I like about it. Because nowadays, if you remade this movie, it would be Beyonce as the actress upcoming black with a black child. And it would be someone like maybe, oh, I don't know. What's that gal who was in the 100 Grand Games? Someone like that playing the person taking care of her and her daughter wanting to be Beyonce's daughter. Do you know what I mean? My friend Elisa in the 90s said, all of a sudden, it's really hip to be black. So this movie, it's what they call archaic. It's outdated and corny, but I love looking at it with a couple of gal friends and snickering and just making fun of it. Check out the clothes. The clothes are great. Check out John Gavin's hat when he first meets Lana and the girls on the beach there. He's wearing this soft crushed felt fedora thing that I'd wear too. OK, and I think that that's about it. Produced by Universal Pictures, made in 1959, I believe, or maybe even 60. So the edge was that close. By the end of the decade, not only would styles change, but the role of women in pictures too. Let's cite Bonnie Clyde as that example. Bonnie and Clyde as that example. Faye Dunnway's character. All right, so our next film is written on the wind. Now I kind of feel like I've done both of these movies on this show before, but it's warmer, getting warmer outside. The air feels a bit lighter, and we're all going to be dressing up. Well, not so much dressing up, but dressing lighter, nicer clothes. And this movie is another example of Bacall look smashing Rock Hudson's To Die For. OK, so written on the wind. Also a universal movie in beautiful, tenech color. Again, Douglas Cirque. We've got Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith, and John Larch, Albert Zugsmith, producer, and George Zuckerman did the script. OK, a Yellow Roadster's Speed to the Night. It's obviously an oil town. There's big oil tanks all around, OK? And then we come to the residential. There's this Yellow Roadster, and it's still speeding through the night. And then we see Robert Stack, unfortunately, with the background on film behind him. So you know he's not driving. He's like guzzling some whiskey. So it sort of ruins the whole thing, but still it's pretty exciting. We don't know what's going to happen next. He pulls up to the house. Rock Hudson is in a bedroom looking out the window, and Lauren Bacall is on the bed. From there, how can your attention not be grabbed by this thrilling woman's picture, OK? So basically, Lauren Bacall plays a nice girl, working advertising agency. Rock Hudson is an engineer who works for Bob Stack and his pop, Robert Keith, big oil company, thinking Texas, Oklahoma. And both men kind of fall in love with her, but it's Robert Stack's crazy stalker Rache crybaby butt that wins Lauren Bacall's affection. It's always the crybabies that kind of get the girls at first in the movies. Meanwhile, as you're checking out the triangulation of the characters, here comes Dorothy Malone looking beautiful and stunning. She plays Bob Stack's younger sister who's in love with Rock Hudson. And she makes plenty of trouble. Dorothy got Oscar for a best supporting actress, by the way, in this movie. And she later married that French actor who's on my tongue. He was in a few Jacques Bourgeois, and I think that was her first husband. So Rock is beautiful in this movie. I mean, he's really, really beautiful. Kyle, unfortunately, is a spoiled louse. And it's partly Kyle's brutality towards Lauren that's a major component, but the way that Rock Hudson plays a gentleman is really sweet. And so that's another part of the plot. OK, now, again, we have Redemption for the Heroine. In all of these movies, the one appears, she's either single, or she might be an adventurous or both, but she ends up placing herself and her heart's desire and the forefront by the end of the movie. OK, which makes another favorite mind, Duel and the Sun, not a woman's picture. Not simply because of the way it turns out. On the other hand, Hanny Calder could be considered Owen's picture in my eyes a bit. She gets revenge, and she gets a guy. So Lauren Bacall is in the Aphrodite role. She is the desired one. Looking like Athena, however, she's looking like she's really, really smart. Whereas Dorothy Malone plays the Athena, the really, really smart dog type of the goddess, but she is looking like Aphrodite. So I thought that was very interesting how the way that they looked, the roles were kind of switched off the cuff. In Basic Instinct, Dorothy Malone gives Michael Douglas Unsured Hell. I love the scant seconds that she is in that movie. She steals the show. And she's in her 70s. She says a couple lines. Her eyes hit you like a thunderbolt. And that was her last movie. Check her out in Painplace also. So obviously Ms. Malone is my favorite out of all the actors in the movie. But I just love that Rock Hudson. He was a generally nice guy in real life. And just what a hunk of a man. So I think that that's it for the movie part. I wanted to mention that as I look around and search around for material to write about my show, I watch a lot of old 80s shows, some of them Canadian, and some of them with lots of nudity and violence. And one of them is The Hitchhiker. I'd love it if you all check it out. It has some insane villains. You'll see Parker Stevenson. You'll see Virginia Madstone. It sort of shows like that Hitchhiker, Tales from the Crypt, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Not only hired actors who are just between movies, but also hired talent that was up and coming. And so I think that you all ought to check out some of the old, not sitcoms, but dramas and thrillers that would be on late night here in New England. OK, so very, very briefly, I'd like to discuss the many Frankenstein movies that have been made over the years. The monster will always intrigue me. I have a soft spot for him. I have a soft spot for Victor too. The other characters, yeah, but especially for the monster. It wasn't his fault that Victor did that to him. So here's just a quick list of dates and movies that you can check out if you so choose. There have been many, many renditions of this movie as have been The Three Musketeers, A Star Is Born, and anything that has to involve Elizabeth and Mary of Scots. So Charles Ogle starred in the first Frankenstein movie back in 1910. And in 1931, 1935, the magnificent Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein was directed by James Whale with Boris Karloff in the titular role. In 1973, we had the Michael Sarazan, Leonard Whiting, James Mason, and James Seymour production, which I watched as a child, and I really, really loved it. It was very, it seemed very gritty to my eyes as a child. In 1994, we have Kenneth Bernard's excellent, excellent Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with Elena Bonham Carter, John Kalise, Ian Holm, Tom Holtz, and of course, Robert De Niro. Great version. I like it, especially for the costumes. And the music cracks me up, though. The music is very operative. Kenneth always likes the music booming, but I still like it nevertheless. In 1986, Ken also directed the production, Gothic, with Natasha Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands. It's a beautiful fevered dream of a movie. I had quite a few nightmares after watching that one. The movie's only 90 minutes long or shorter. It feels like it takes three hours, and it concerns itself with the night that Frankenstein, the story, was created in Mary's head. In 1990, we have the excellent Frankenstein Unbound with Ronald Julia, Bridget Fonda, Michael Hutchinson, Jason Patrick, and John Hurt. It's a Robert, pardon me, Roger Corman production, near and dear to my heart. I think you all ought to check those out. So, I was briefly gonna talk about the three scandals that have been consuming this country lately, Juicy Smolens, Loya Laughlin, and R. Kelly, but I don't usually talk about non-movie entertainment. Maybe we'll go into that a little bit next week, but I just couldn't get away from all those three scandals as I was writing my show and doing schoolwork. On that note, we're gonna say chow. I'd like to thank the crew here at ORCA, Gender and Building for its continued support over the years, Kellogg Hubbard Library for supplying me with materials and also being just as supportive. And to my first film professor, Ocasana Sharon, Warfield, Paris, Adela Ocasana-Clarich for helping me eludicate and articulate myself concerning the silver screen. Until next time, darlings, stay away from those bad movies. Chow.