Tag Archives: Charlie Chaplin

In Their Own Words: Actors on Film Flops and Disappointments

Posted on by
Reply

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Why would they? Not only is it a colossal waste of money but it will remain on the permanent record of everyone associated with it. Still, there are factors that no one can control and sometimes an actor makes a movie with the best intentions that the critics hate, audiences avoid like the plague or conflicts during production doom it to failure.  Here are 15 well documented examples including Marlon Brando (A Countess from Hong Kong), Shelley Winters (Knickerbocker Holiday), Richard Widmark (Slattery’s Hurricane), Beverly Garland (Swamp Women and Stark Fear), Bruce Dern (The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant), Ava Gardner (The Bible…In the Beginning), Christopher Plummer (The Royal Hunt of the Sun), Ida Lupino (The Hard Way), Tony Curtis (Son of Ali Baba), Sally Kellerman (Reform School Girl), Ernest Borgnine (The Devil’s Rain), Raquel Welch (Myra Breckinridge), Warren Oates (Chandler), Joan Shawlee (Prehistoric Women) and Vincent Price (Green Hell).

Continue reading →

A Cowpoke and His Cow

Posted on by
Reply

Buster Keaton plays a hapless cowpoke who tries to save a cow named Brown Eyes from the slaughterhouse in Go West (1925).

Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary homage, The Great Buster, is scheduled to open at theaters across the country in October 2018 and perhaps it might introduce a new generation of film-goers to the silent era legend. I would certainly recommend The General, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman to Keaton novices but even his less celebrated efforts are cinematic wonders brimming with visual poetry and imaginative sight gags like Go West (1925). Continue reading →

Norman Lloyd: Hollywood’s Long Distance Runner, Part 2

Posted on by
1

Actor/Director/Producer Norman Lloyd, born 1914.

*This is the second part of a revised and updated version of a Norman Lloyd interview which was first recorded in March 2010 just prior to the actor/director/producer’s appearance at the first Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival.

Here is the link to Part 1: https://cinemasojourns.com/2017/04/09/norman-lloyd-hollywoods-long-distance-runner/     Continue reading →

Norman Lloyd: Hollywood’s Long Distance Runner, Part 1

Posted on by
1

Norman Lloyd hangs on for dear life in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942).

On November 8, 2017 Norman Lloyd will be 203 and he shows no signs of slowing down. In recent years, he has become the go-to historian for the American film industry’s golden era due to his friendship and working relationships with such cinema legends as Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Garfield, Bernard Herrmann, John Houseman, Joseph Losey and others. Lloyd also continues to take acting roles (he has a nice cameo in the 2015 Judd Apatow comedy Trainwreck starring Amy Schumer) and appear as an interviewee in documentaries such as Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity (2015) and Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age, which is currently in post-production.

*This is a revised and updated version of the original interview which was recorded in March 2010 just prior to Lloyd’s appearance at the first Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival.   Continue reading →