Donald Duck

“The stars can change their courses, the universe can go up in flames and the world crash around us but there will always be Donald Duck.”

- Trevor Howard as Dr. Alec Harvey, Brief Encounter (1945)

We are Donald Duck, Donald Duck is us. In close to 200 animated shorts and features, plus comic books and television, the duck known as Donald faced life’s travails in an all too human and relatable manner.

“Mickey was on a pedestal while the duck could blow his top.”

- Walt Disney

Yes, Donald has a temper. So do we all. We may start out with the best of intentions, but Fate with a capital “F” conspires against us.

In 1938s Self Control Donald does his best to follow the simple, kindly advice of a radio psychologist, but all things that buzz and crawl and peck stand in the way of peace and contentment.

In 1940s Donald’s Vacation it is an inanimate object, a *&*^(*)!!* folding chair that obstinately refuses to work as advertised. We cannot cast stones at Donald for losing his temper. We’ve all run across those *&*&&*Q!j** easy-to-work items that refuse to work, easily or otherwise. Poor Donald!

We all love our families. Donald loves his family. However, sometimes little angels aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Sometimes kids like Huey, Dewey and Louis misbehave. Sometimes. Sometimes the psychology books and all the patience in the world gets you nowhere. Sometimes you have to yell!

"Is there anything we didn't do to poor Donald?"

-Ward Kimball, animator

A little "white magic" in The Three Caballeros had Donald changing shape and size. A couple of gods with too much time on their hands gave Donald powers beyond his ken and abruptly took it away again in Trombone Trouble. Donald was hatched by a condor in Contrary Condor. He was attacked by a rooster in Golden Eggs.

He couldn't enjoy a ball game on a radio because of a music-loving bee in Slide, Donald, Slide. He was beset upon by Chip 'n Dale for no reason at all...well, okay, sometimes it was Donald's fault, but honestly, those little guys were diabolical in Toy Tinkers, Corn Chips, All in a Nutshell, Three for Breakfast, The Lone Chipmunk, etc. Diabolical!

“With all respect to Clarence Nash, I think if he had spoken more clearly, Donald Duck would have been a more popular character.”          

Mel Blanc, actor

Really, Mel? According to the Gallop Research Institute, by the end of the 1940s, the American public ranked Donald Duck as its favourite cartoon character, followed by Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse.

In 1953 when the Disney studio ceased production on most of their cartoon shorts for economic reasons, Donald Duck continued.

Since 1959 Swedish television has aired Disney cartoons on Christmas Eve and any mention by the network of tampering with this tradition is met with outrage. Donald Duck, known as Kalle Anka, has become a Swedish symbol of Christmas.

"On our first date, I bet you wished I looked like Donald in Mr. Duck Steps Out."

- Garry, the man who married Caftan Woman when she was Blouse Babe

"Hi, Toots!"

- My son Gavin learns how to talk to girls from classic Disney shorts

Life, and the Disney animators and directors gave Donald Duck a lot to cope with, but they also gave him friends that stick by him through thick and thin...

...and loved ones that make the journey worthwhile. Yes, we are Donald Duck. Donald Duck is us.

CMBA GUILTY PLEASURES BLOGATHON: The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

"You watched a movie. You knew it wasn't very good. But you loved it anyway."

From September 18 - 20 the Classic Movie Blog Association pays tribute to those guilty pleasures with a movie blogathon.

The premise of the CMBA’s Guilty Pleasure Movie Blogathon makes me feel guilty about my participation in said blogathon because I don’t think The Greatest Show on Earth is a bad movie. I don’t! Plus, I don’t feel guilty about watching and loving it. I don’t! Well, I used to…well, not always…not every time...

Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde 

When I was a kid in what I recall as the sunny sixties and The Greatest Show on Earth came on television, it was an event! In my eyes, it was the most glorious movie. It was big, bold, emotional and exciting. Brad was such a good guy. Sebastian was so charming. Klaus was so bad. Angel was so interesting. Holly was so brave. Buttons was so wonderful. Oh, Buttons was the most wonderful man in the world.

James Stewart, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston

When I was a teen in the seventies I started reading everything I could get my hands on that concerned the movies including those Best and Worst lists. There it was, time after time, in black and white, "worst Best Picture Winner of all-time" into perpetuity, The Greatest Show on Earth. Why? Apparently, because The Greatest Show on Earth was big, bold, emotional, and exciting. Only the words were changed to corny and overblown. While my affection for the movie never changed, guilt and shame wracked my heart. The Greatest Show on Earth was no longer a movie celebration, it was something to be watched on the sly.

The only way to travel.

In 1950 as Cecile B. DeMille neared his 70^th birthday, he felt the desire to run away and join the circus. He spent months with the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus at their Winter quarters in Sarasota, Florida learning all he could about the operation of a circus. He studied the people who populated the big top; their way of speaking, the way they come together year after year as a troupe of traveling players.

Perhaps only DeMille with his expertise in big pictures could relate to that same grandiose quality in the circus and have the guts to tackle the logistics and complications of the location shoot which would not only give his film the air of authenticity he experienced but capture for us all a passing way of life.

Cecil B. DeMille

The Greatest Show on Earth was not only honoured by the Academy with the Best Picture Oscar and Best Writing, Motion Picture Story, but it also received nominations for Costume Design, Color, Best Film Editing, and Best Director. The Greatest Show on Earth was also the Golden Globe winner for Best Motion Picture and won Best Director and Best Cinematography, Color. Cecil B. DeMille was one of 18 directors nominated by the Director’s Guild that season.

James Stewart, Emmett Kelly

DeMille was making a circus picture. Hollywood was filled with lots of folks with a desire to run away and join him. Jimmy Stewart called. He’d always wanted to be a clown. “We have Stewart,” DeMille told his staff. “He wants to be a clown.” Jimmy’s clown, Buttons, would be the heart and soul of the story. Jimmy Stewart helped to create his own clown makeup for Buttons. He was helped by Wally Westmore but had the final decision. He also learned routines and worked with the best including International Clown Hall of Famer Emmett Kelly and the man known as King of the Clowns, Felix Adler.

Gloria Grahame, Minyak, Lyle Bettger

Lucille Ball was DeMille’s original choice for Angel, the elephant trainer. Under contract to Columbia with one picture left, Harry Cohn offered her a contract breaker, a picture so bad the actor would bail and could be sued. Lucy, anxious to do The Greatest Show on Earth, agreed to The Magic Carpet and her work was completed in five days for $85,000. Lucy and Desi then had to report to Mr. DeMille that she couldn’t take the role of Angel because she was now pregnant. Famously, the director said, “Congratulations, Desi, you are the only person in the world to screw Harry Cohn, Columbia Pictures, Paramount, Cecil B. DeMille, and your wife, all at the same time.”

Gloria Grahame took on the role of Angel, a circus temptress with a heart of gold. I think she deserved a medal for some of her stunts with the huge animals. The girl had guts. There is not one man of my acquaintance who doesn’t look at the Oscar-winning (The Bad and the Beautiful) actress and turn into Bert the Cop. There’s always an exception to the rule and in The Greatest Show on Earth, that exception is circus manager Brad Braden played by Charlton Heston. He’s not immune to ladies, after all, he has a thing for trapeze artist Holly, but the circus comes first. He has sawdust in his veins.

Where's my hat, you damn dirty ape?
Cornel Wilde, James Stewart, Betty Hutton
Charlton Heston, John Ridgely, Gloria Grahame

Heston was driving off the Paramount lot one day and stopped to wave at DeMille. DeMille had met the young actor in the studio dining room once. His secretary reminded him of the actor’s name and the movie he had screened, and had not liked called The Dark City. “Umm, I like the way he waved just now. We’d better have him in to talk about the circus manager.”

The big thing about the character Brad was choosing the hat. DeMille told him “Shoes don’t matter so much…usually, you don’t even see them. But if you wear a hat, it’s in every shot, and featured in every close-up.” They looked at dozens before the right hat clicked, but click it did.

The Flying Concellos

Genuine circus performers such as The Zoppes Equestrian act, The Flying Concellos, and The Alanzas of the high wire are featured in the film and the cast was expected to fit in. Dorothy Lamour learned her iron jaw act. Olympic calibre fencer Cornel Wilde and energetic Betty Hutton worked hard to look plausible on the trapeze. Cornel was doubled in some scenes by aerialist and clown, the son of circus performers, Jackie LeClaire.

The bubbly Hutton was also a woman of fragile emotions, and she found in DeMille a supportive and understanding director. The role of Birdie, the circus wardrobe woman was one of the better ones bestowed on Julia Faye. At one time DeMille’s mistress, she appeared in all of the pictures after that relationship ended.

Our movie follows the fortunes of The Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus from the opening of their season. As long as the manager, Brad, can keep the finances in the black they can play a full tour including the smaller cities. A gangster played by the genuinely frightening Lawrence Tierney plants John Kellog with a crooked sideshow game on the lot to mess up the works and cheat the rubes. He’s got plans to take over the whole operation.

Another guy with plans is elephant trainer Klaus played by Lyle Bettger (Has anybody ever seen him play a good guy?), but as his plans involve pretty Angel and her plans involve Brad…well, you can see trouble coming. Brad’s girl, Holly is distracted by fellow flyer Sebastian. First, she wants his centre ring, and then she’s not so sure it isn’t something more personal.

Buttons the perpetually made-up clown is a doctor on the run. He killed the thing he loved. (Oh, heartbreak!) All of this angst and intrigue is but a background to the day to day work of putting up, taking down, and putting up again the greatest show on earth. The movie is the circus.

The real audiences caught coming and going are moments in time that are a joy to share. Those Hollywood folk who didn’t get to be clowns or barkers like Edmond O’Brien got to be spectators. It is especially fun to see Bing Crosby and Bob Hope as their Road picture comrade Dorothy Lamour does her stuff.

William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy leads a parade. He first worked for DeMille in 1927's King of Kings. Among the spectators, it is fun to spot or try to spot many favourite character actors including Kathleen Freeman, Mary Field, Dorothy Adams, Clarence Nash, Arthur Q. Bryan, Stanley Andrews, and Peter Hansen. Pretty leading lady Nancy Gates makes an impression. Yes, that is her. You’ve been right all these years.

This poster simply screams "melodrama". I love it!

DeMille does nothing small. The gangster plot crosses with the thwarted lover plot and that can only mean one thing, a train wreck. A circus train wreck with wild animals on the loose and ruination in the offing. Also, there is a paralyzed Sebastian, a detective closing in on Buttons, and fateful decisions all around. Ooh, it’s good stuff. Yes, it is. It’s good in the way a banana split is good. A banana split with extra whipped cream. Extra! Why I feel no more guilty about watching The Greatest Show on Earth than I do about eating a banana split with extra whipped cream. And I don’t feel guilty about the ice cream. I don’t. Well, I used to…well, not always…not every time...

All Around the Town

Yes, this is my town. It's not new to you. You've read books about it, you've seen movies. People are always talking about New York. It's the most exciting city in the world they say - the most glamorous, the most frightening and, above all, the fastest. You hear a great deal about the tempo of this city - its speed, its pace, its driving heartbeat. Perhaps it's true for visitors, but I was born here, I live here. The only pace I know is the pace of my own life. The only beat I hear is the beat of my own heart. For me, and for millions of others, New York is home. The days follow each other quietly as they do in most places. Only rarely does any one time stand out so that we remember it and say "That's when everything changed. After that nothing was the same."

Barbara Stanwyck as the character Jessie Bourne reads the above narration to begin Mervyn LeRoy's 1949 crime romance East Side, West Side based on a Marcia Davenport novel with a screenplay by Isobel Lennert.

I am one of those visitors Jessie mentioned. For me, New York City is a place of learning, a place of fun, a place to glut myself on theatre and a place to honeymoon. All of those memories are augmented by those books and movies she mentions, the titles of which conjure up enduring feelings that make New York City an emotional home to many who reside outside its boundaries.

Classic movie fans were brought up in the nostalgic glow of Henry King's Little Old New York and Michael Curtiz's Life With Father, with Raoul Walsh's The Bowery and The Strawberry Blonde. We learned harsh lessons through William Wyler's Dead End and Michael Curtiz's Angels With Dirty Faces.

We enjoyed and were inspired by the endless show business stories such as Lloyd Bacon's 42nd Street and Robert Mulligan's The Rat Race. We glimpsed the business world in Jean Negulesco's The Best of Everything and Woman's World, as well as Billy Wilder's The Apartment and Fielder Cook's Patterns.

We reveled in NYC noir of Otto Preminger's Laura, Alexander Mckendrick's Sweet Smell of Success and Samuel Fuller's Pick Up on South Street.

Of course, to the annoyance of sports fans from other cities, there is the New York as centre of the universe in movies like Sam Wood's Pride of the Yankees.

Any place, but especially a place like New York City, changes us and changes with us. Neil Simon gave us his optimism in Barefoot in the Park, laughs in Come Blow York Horn and The Odd Couple, memories in The Sunshine Boys and nightmares in The Prisoner of Second Avenue and The Out of Towners.

In East Side, West Side Jessie Bourne spoke of the one time that changed everything. Ten years since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre have brought changes to each of us personally, and to the world we live in. What has not changed is the resilience of New Yorkers and the affection and support from those of us with mythical ties to the city that never sleeps.

Caftan Woman's Choice - One for September on TCM

Turner Classic Movies - Heaven on Earth for classic movie fans or a cog in the evolutionary wheel which will see us one day morphed into a wide-bottomed cyclops with one rectangular eye in the middle of our foreheads?

I've been intrigued by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz's task of recommending one movie per month from the schedule for the print schedule. A lot of film fans find it difficult to choose one movie for any sort of purpose. There is the nagging feeling that you are being disloyal to all of the other films you love with equal fervor. Nonetheless, I decided to challenge myself with that very task. No hemming, hawing, or honourable mentions. One movie.

Frank Capra's 1932 release American Madness is scheduled on TCM for Saturday, September 29 at 6:30 pm est. Capra was a very busy director at Columbia in the 1920s and early 30s. Just prior to American Madness his output included the action-adventure romance Dirigible, the social commentary drama The Miracle Woman, the class conscious romance Platinum Blonde and the woman's picture Forbidden. His success with these varied pictures represents Frank Capra's mastery of his calling.

American Madness was among the first collaborations between Capra and talented screenwriter Robert Riskin which would give us such well-remembered titles as Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, Broadway Bill, and Meet John Doe. The goal with American Madness was to meet the Depression head-on and kick it in the pants while addressing the fears as well as the optimistic spirit of everyday people.

Walter Huston stars as a bank president, respected by his workers and often at odds with his Board of Directors. His business success has come from his belief in the character of his customers and the simple idea that money must be put to work if it is to do any good. What has made him a success is considered a great failing by the Directors, too frightened to take chances in an iffy economy and too enamored of an offer of quick profit on a deal which would close out Huston and his brand of banking.

A bank employee played by Gavin Gordon is in debt to local gangsters and can only save himself by becoming the inside man on a robbery. The plan goes awry when a watchman is murdered and blame is placed on an ex-con, Huston's protege played by Pat O'Brien. Gordon, a roue as well as a gambler, uses his boss' wife, lovely Kay Johnson as an alibi further complicating the situation.

Capra really grabs a hold of the pacing in this film with overlapping dialogue and quick cuts. It moves. The grapevine scene which starts with the robbery and from telephone call to telephone call leads to a run on the bank is top-notch. You feel for Huston and Johnson as their personal relationship gets mixed up with banking and legal disaster. Can nothing save Pat O'Brien and his trusting girlfriend played by Constance Cummings? The only distraction in the cast may be Gavin Gordon's drawn-on eyebrows, but the story gathers steam that carries the audience along and makes them easy to overlook (eventually).

American Madness
The run on the bank.

Two other frequent Capra collaborators worked on American Madness with great skill. Architect and Oscar-winning (Lost Horizon) set designer Stephen Goosson, with his incredibly detailed eye, created the bank set that is breathtaking as we take in the lobby, the offices, the safe. It's a perfect setting for the drama and a reminder of the reverence with which our institutions were built. Innovative Hall of Fame cinematographer Joseph Walker works his usual Black and White magic with his hypnotic images.

A few years ago, along with one of my movie-loving sisters, I caught a theatrical screening of American Madness thanks to Cinematheque Ontario. A couple of young fellows were sitting in front of us, a film student and his friend. After the movie, the friend commented that he had only come along out of curiosity, but he became really caught up in the story and wanted to see more movies like it.

I think that whoever coined the phrase Capra-corn has done an injustice to the director. Frank Capra was, first and foremost, a gifted storyteller and one who knew how to tell his stories cinematically. He knew how to move an audience. He did it all with gentle, insightful humor and true affection for all kinds of people.

Timely and engrossing, American Madness is worth watching on TCM this month, whether it be for the first time or a re-visit.

For more suggestions on our favourite channel check out Laura's Miscellaneous Musings for worthy titles on the September line-up on TCM.

Officer O'Hara, Mr. B. and Hugo Barnstead

Jack Carson
1910 - 1963

Born in Carmen, Manitoba, raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and schooled in Vaudeville, Jack Carson is one of classic Hollywood's most beloved character actor stars. Arriving in California in the mid 1930s Carson can be spotted in small roles in many films as he worked his way up the ladder including Stage Door and Bringing Up Baby, and gradually larger supporting roles in Carefree and Destry Rides Again. He's outstanding as a gangster's henchman with an unusual sense of humour in The Saint in New York.

Jack was very busy at Warner Brothers during the 1940s where he would make his mark in a number of well-remembered films, including a number with genial singing star Dennis Morgan such as Shine on Harvest Moon and It's a Great Feeling. Jack is a well-meaning salesman in Larceny Inc., a no goodnik in Blues in the Night (Really, what kind of a guy would stomp on Priscilla Lane's heart?) , the loquacious would-be playwright Officer O'Hara in Arsenic and Old Lace, a former college football hero in The Male Animal, a romantic vaudevillian in The Hard Way, Rosalind Russell's helpmeet in Roughly Speaking and Mildred Pierce's slimy patsy Wally Fay. Jack also had radio success with a series called Everybody Loves Jack which ran from 1943-1947.

In the 1950s Jack would turn in exemplary performances in movies such as Phffft with Judy Holliday, Jack Lemmon and Kim Novak, Douglas Sirk's The Tarnished Angels, George Cukor's A Star is Born and Richard Brooks' movie of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Where is Jack's Oscar nomination? Recount!) .

For all his screen success, Jack Carson still needed a live audience. During the 40s he would take a break from the studio to perform as a clown with the Clyde Beatty circus. In 1952 he starred as John P. Wintergreen in a Broadway revival of the Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing. It was during rehearsal in 1962 for a production of Critic's Choice that Jack fell ill and eventually was diagnosed with a stomach cancer which took his life at the age of 53. Jack had been married four times and was the father of two.

Rita Hayworth, Olivia de Havilland, James Cagney, Jack Carson
The Strawberry Blonde

A role that typifies Jack's prevailing screen image is that of Hugo Barnstead in Raoul Walsh's 1941 version of actor/playwright James Hagen's successful 1933 play One Sunday Afternoon. Set at the turn of the 20th century The Strawberry Blonde stars James Cagney as Biff Grimes, a dentist and an ex-con who, one Sunday afternoon, ruminates on his hard luck in life and love. Most of his hard luck can be traced back to his friendship with Hugo, a sneaky, lying, ambitious, two-faced friend to no one whose comeuppance is a long time coming thing of beauty. The billigerent softy Biff is one of Cagney's finest characterizations. Olivia de Havilland is warm and lovely as Amy, the right girl for Biff. Rita Hayworth would make audiences remember her as Virginia, the girl of Biff's dreams. Jack Carson was a force of nature as Hugo roared through the movie. In his autobiography Cagney by Cagney, Jimmy speaks of the movie with fondness and of how his mother, who appeared as an extra in the beer garden scene, thought it captured the New York of her youth. The Strawberry Blonde is a movie of much charm and heart.

Don DeFore
1913 - 1993

The world is full of baby boomers with fond recollections of television, among them Don DeFore as the neighbour "Thorny" on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and "Mr. B" (Baxter) on Hazel. The image of Don DeFore in those sitcom roles is a hearty and pleasant one. His career in films is equally pleasant to contemplate. The Iowa native was studying at The Pasadena Playhouse when he went east to Broadway in a limited run of a play called Where Do We Go From Here? In 1940 Don found success in the role of Wally Myers, a college football star, in James Thurber and Elliott Nugent's The Male Animal. Nugent directed the film version for Warner Bros. with Henry Fonda playing the role Nugent himself had played in New York. Coming west to repeat his stage success was Don DeFore as Wally. In the set-up of the play, there is an older counterpart to the footballer and that role was taken by Jack Carson. In the 1952 revamp She's Working Her Way Through College, Don would play the Jack Carson role. (Trust me, it makes sense.)

Don's film appearances in the 1940s include A Guy Named Joe with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne, Without Reservations with John Wayne and Claudette Colbert and My Friend Irma with Marie Wilson. He stars in Roy Del Ruth's impossible to dislike Christmas perennial It Happened on Fifth Avenue and as Betty Hutton's exasperated love interest in The Stork Club. Don crosses paths with Jack Carson again in Doris Day's debut film Romance on the High Seas. I'm particularly fond of his hot-headed young gunslinger in Andre de Toth's Ramrod and of his role in 1960s The Facts of Life as Lucille Ball's neglectful husband. He also impressed in later TV appearances on St. Elsewhere and Murder, She Wrote.

In real life, Don and his wife Marion were married for 51 years and the parents of five children. Don passed from a heart attack at the age of 80.

Don DeFore, Dorothy Malone, Janis Paige, Dennis Morgan
One Sunday Afternoon

In 1948 Warner Bros. revamped The Strawberry Blonde as a Technicolor musical with songs by Ralph Blane, Raoul Walsh once again directing and a return to the original title. Dennis Morgan was given the role of Biff in which he performs earnestly. It is not fair to compare any performer to Cagney. Janis Paige is a bright and brittle Virginia. Dorothy Malone is every inch the equal of de Havilland as the sympathetic Amy. Guess who plays Hugo! Yes, Don DeFore tackles the sneaking, lying, ambitious...we've been down this road before, haven't we? Really, who else would they cast? One Sunday Afternoon should work, but unfortunately the songs are weak and the energy and heart that make The Strawberry Blonde such a winner is nowhere in evidence. If you're not familiar with the 1941 version, it is a passable time-waster, nothing more.

James Hagen's Broadway success of One Sunday Afternoon ran for 322 performances. Steely-eyed Rankin Mansfield (To Hell and Back, The Brothers Rico) played Hugo. Lloyd Nolan (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Somewhere in the Night) was everybody's favourite dentist, Biff Grimes.

Paramount Studios filmed the first version of the play in 1933. The role of Hugo Barnstead was played by handsome Neil Hamilton. (So sue me - I had a crush on Commissioner Gordon!)

Gary Cooper made an oddly unlikeable Biff. It is a movie I would recommend for comparison purposes only.

How did she know?

When Dawn of Noir and Chick Flicks chose this blog among her honorees for The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award, did she know of my overwhelming admiration for strawberry shortcake? Of all the awards in all the cyberspace, what could be more appealing than that fruity, creamy, flaky goodness?

Of course there are certain provisos with being greeted by a picture of the desert to end all deserts, namely linking back to your host, sharing with and notifying 12 worthy bloggers, plus the dreaded "7 random things about me". Even though, for some reason, I'm feeling a little shy about the sharing part today, I can't help but think that bringing shortcake will mean an automatic welcome.

Bloggers, new and old, who brighten my day:

• Laura's Miscellaneous Musings
• The Great Entertainment Media Archive
• The Second Sentence
• in so many words
• Tales of the Easily Distracted
• Take Two
• Gold Hollywood 
• The Ancient Pelican
• Resilient Little Muscle
• Fang Shih-yu and the "Trivia Wing" of the Shaolin Temple!
• Saddles and Spurs: The Great Westerns
• Two Through Twelve

Seven random things about Caftan Woman:

• I live by Lake Ontario.
• I spend $6 a week on the lottery. Not so much a gambler, as a dreamer.
• I'm a very sloppy eater. The friend who made my wedding dress used extra material to fashion a bib that looked like the bodice, just in case of slopped gravy.
• I get a kick out of singing Brahms.
• My childhood dreams included becoming a poet (people laughed), a police officer (too much Dragnet), and a big band singer (born too late).
• My family likes to put things I need on shelves I can't reach. They think it's funny.
• My husband claims he was tight the night he proposed and if I'd been a gentleman I'd have forgotten all about it.

Well, folks, I'm off to the fruit market to fulfill my strawberry shortcake dreams. Thanks, Dawn.

BORN IN A TRUNK: ETHEL GRIFFIES

Ethel Griffies
1878-1975

On April 26, 1878 in Sheffield, England actress Lillie Roberts presented her husband actor-manager Samuel Rupert Woods with a daughter, Ethel. Three years later the couple presented the girl on stage and an 80 year career began. Known professionally as Ethel Griffies (A youthful bid for independence? A youthful indiscretion? Ethel Woods sounded too much some ancient king? Advice from a fortune teller to have a 13 lettered name?), the actress learned her craft in the provinces and made her London debut in 1899 at the Haymarket. Her Broadway debut would occur in 1924 in a short run production of Havoc directed by and co-starring Leo G. Carroll.

Forty-three years on the New York stage would see some also rans including The Shop at Sly Corner featuring Boris Karloff and Una O'Connor which closed in one week in 1949 and The Natural Look featuring Gene Hackman, Zorha Lampert, Jerry Orbach, Doris Roberts and Brenda Vaccaro which opened and closed on March 11, 1967.

Ethel did enjoy successes such as Irving Berlin's Miss Liberty in 1949-50, The Criminal Code in 1929-30 (filmed by Howard Hawks), Frederick Knott's Write Me a Murder in 1961-62 and John Galsworthy's Old English directed by and starring George Arliss. Ethel Griffies would make the film version with George Arliss, also appearing in his movies The House of Rothschild and The Millionaire.

Old English was not Ethel's first foray unto the silver screen. In 1917 she appeared in The Cost of a Kiss and that same year she married the movie's co-star, Edward Cooper. Five years Ethel's junior, the marriage would last 40 years until Edward's death in 1956. This was Ethel's second marriage. Her first husband, Walter Beaumont passed in 1910.

Edward Cooper's Broadway career encompassed roles in plays as varied as Hay Fever and The Hasty Heart. He appeared in Lady Dedlock with Ethel in the 1928-29 season. On-screen the couple are featured in, besides The Cost of a Kiss, Torch Singer, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Holy Matrimony.

Edward Cooper, Roger Livesey

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Edward Cooper has over 75 movie/tv credits to his name, most often uncredited in the role of a butler as in On the Avenue, Small Town Girl, The Dark Angel, and others. The next time you spot the prison clerk in 1935s Les Miserables, the BBC official in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp or the Indian Chief in Diplomaniacs say to yourself "That's the guy who married Mrs. Whack!".

Ethel Griffies, Zeffie Tilbury
Werewolf of London

Mrs. Whack may be my favourite character in Ethel Griffie's movie career. She and the incredible Zeffie Tilbury as Mrs. Moncaster in 1935s Werewolf of London steal the picture as Horror's best comedy relief. Obsessed botanist Henry Hull was bitten by werewolf Warner Oland in Tibet and now, jaunty scarf around his neck and walking stick in hand, Hull stalks the streets of London by the light of the full moon. Competing landladies and drinking companions Whack and Moncastle are alternately curious and frightened by the philosophical and dangerous stranger in their midst. You never saw a flirt like Mrs. Whack!

Ethel didn't always require an acting partner the likes of Miss Tilbury to make her presence felt. In 1944s The White Cliffs of Dover she dominates fellow train travelers Irene Dunne and Frank Morgan with nary a word. While her forceful personality is played for laughs in that British flag-waver, in John Ford's 1941 Oscar winner How Green Was My Valley she is quite intimidating as the tyrannical housekeeper, Mrs. Nicholas.

Ethel played another tippler, Grace Poole in the 1934 and 1943 versions of Jane Eyre. She played as many landladies as her husband played butlers, in fact, taking that role in both the 1931 and 1940 versions of Waterloo Bridge.

Well-remembered titles from the 1930s include Alice in Wonderland, Doctor Bull, Four Frightened People, The Painted Veil, and Anna Karenina. You can see Ethel in some of your favourite films of the 1940s, Stranger on the Third Floor (landlady), Billy the Kid, A Yank in the R.A.F., The Keys of the Kingdom, Forever and a Day and The Horn Blows at Midnight.

In Caftan Woman's universe actors get an extra gold star for appearing in a Charlie Chan picture and Ethel has two to her credit in the waning days of that series' run at 20th Century Fox.

Ethel Griffies, Sidney Toler
Dead Men Tell

Dead Men Tell, 1941 finds Ethel as Patience Nodbury, a superstitious eccentric with a treasure map and a murderous ghostly ancestor. Sidney Toler's Chan is so patient in his scene with Miss Nodbury that he might be channeling Warner Oland, that is when Oland isn't biting botanists in Tibet.

, Ethel Griffies, Sidney Toler, Oliver Blake
Castle in the Desert

Castle in the Desert, 1942 gives Ethel another eccentric in Madame Saturnia, a mystic, a busybody and, of course, a murder suspect. She seems almost sane compared to some of the crackpots the Inspector and Jimmy (Sen Yung) are dealing with in this outing.

Ethel Griffies

The Birds

The Chan series notwithstanding, to the general public an actor's bid for immortality comes through an association with either Walt Disney or Alfred Hitchcock. Ethel certainly has her Hitchcock connection as Mrs. Bundy, the emphatic amateur ornithologist in The Birds, 1963. She is most enjoyable in the diner scene where, at 83 years old, Ethel has lost none of her ability to dominate a scene and hold your attention.

In his IMDb mini-bio on Ethel, Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide, states: "Presumably at the invitation of fellow Briton Arthur Treacher, Ethel Griffies was a frequent guest on TVs Merv Griffin Show in the late 1960s, never failing to bring down the house with her wickedly witty comments on her 80 years in show business."

Doesn't that make you long for a specialty channel devoted to retro talk shows? I would love to hear Ethel's story in her own words. Luckily we still have decades of movie work to enjoy.