In Hangman's Knot (1952), a young Lee Marvin's date with Donna Reed is interrupted by Randolph Scott.
Showing posts with label Lee Marvin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lee Marvin. Show all posts
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
Morning Movie Review: Donovan's Reef
This morning, with no Belle to rouse us at sun-up, Murphy and I slept in a bit, only to be finally awakened by the vet calling to let me know that she's doing well and can come home this afternoon. As I hung up, it dawned on me that she's not even here and she still managed to get me out of bed in the morning, albeit indirectly through the vet.
So Murphy and I turned to and made breakfast, and then I watched a movie while he played with two Wubba toys all by himself.
The movie: Donovan's Reef, a 1963 movie starring John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Jack Warden, Cesar Romero, Elizabeth Allen, and Dorothy Lamour. There was also a minor role played by Edgar Buchanan, best known to most as Uncle Joe from Petticoat Junction. He was a great character actor back in the day and you can't not love the guy even if he's only paying a sleazy corporate lawyer for two minutes.
In this picture, three old World War Two Navy buddies (Wayne, Marvin and Warden) now live on a South Polynesian island paradise. All is going well until Warden's grown daughter from Boston shows up to meet the father that she'd never met before, the idea being to prove that he's living a life of poor character (by Boston standards) so that she can divest him of his shares in the family's vast shipping business. Warden, the island doctor and builder of the local hospital, is away when she arrives but she's attended to quite well by Wayne, who starts out by dropping her into the lagoon while trying to help her depart the ship that brought her. She is, of course, as severe and dowdy as any upper-crust society woman from Boston would be expected to be and she doesn't take kindly to her reception or some of the islanders' ways. However she soon encounters three precocious "half caste" children (remember, this movie was made in the early 60's) who, she is told, belong to Wayne. They're really her father's children by a native princess that he'd married shortly after the war but everyone conspires to keep that a secret as they fear that she won't understand. The movie is light, fun and predictable, and of course she figures out that the kids are really her sisters and brother in the end, but by then she's come to respect and admire her father so much that she insists that he keep his shares in the family business. He of course refuses to go back to Boston and in the end, so does she as she remains on the island to marry Wayne, who tames her properly by taking her over his knee and giving her a good spanking followed by a kiss that makes her submit totally. (remember: 1960's...) Cesar Romero plays the island's scheming Governor who tries without success to woo Allen away from Wayne, and Dorothy Lamour plays a nightclub singer who is chasing Lee Marvin and of course she gets him in the end.
There's no real drama and nothing heavier than a few fistfights between Wayne and Marvin, both of whom share the same birthday and slug it out every year "as kind of a tradition" even though neither remembers what the original fight was about. They also slug it out with the Australian Navy on Christmas morning for no real reason, but what they hey--it's just a fun movie like they don't make any more.
Meanwhile, it's 4 degrees outside, and Murphy's enjoying the radiant warmth of the wood stove.
I guess that he's giving the movie four paws up.
Hope your day is going well, too.
So Murphy and I turned to and made breakfast, and then I watched a movie while he played with two Wubba toys all by himself.
The movie: Donovan's Reef, a 1963 movie starring John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Jack Warden, Cesar Romero, Elizabeth Allen, and Dorothy Lamour. There was also a minor role played by Edgar Buchanan, best known to most as Uncle Joe from Petticoat Junction. He was a great character actor back in the day and you can't not love the guy even if he's only paying a sleazy corporate lawyer for two minutes.
In this picture, three old World War Two Navy buddies (Wayne, Marvin and Warden) now live on a South Polynesian island paradise. All is going well until Warden's grown daughter from Boston shows up to meet the father that she'd never met before, the idea being to prove that he's living a life of poor character (by Boston standards) so that she can divest him of his shares in the family's vast shipping business. Warden, the island doctor and builder of the local hospital, is away when she arrives but she's attended to quite well by Wayne, who starts out by dropping her into the lagoon while trying to help her depart the ship that brought her. She is, of course, as severe and dowdy as any upper-crust society woman from Boston would be expected to be and she doesn't take kindly to her reception or some of the islanders' ways. However she soon encounters three precocious "half caste" children (remember, this movie was made in the early 60's) who, she is told, belong to Wayne. They're really her father's children by a native princess that he'd married shortly after the war but everyone conspires to keep that a secret as they fear that she won't understand. The movie is light, fun and predictable, and of course she figures out that the kids are really her sisters and brother in the end, but by then she's come to respect and admire her father so much that she insists that he keep his shares in the family business. He of course refuses to go back to Boston and in the end, so does she as she remains on the island to marry Wayne, who tames her properly by taking her over his knee and giving her a good spanking followed by a kiss that makes her submit totally. (remember: 1960's...) Cesar Romero plays the island's scheming Governor who tries without success to woo Allen away from Wayne, and Dorothy Lamour plays a nightclub singer who is chasing Lee Marvin and of course she gets him in the end.
There's no real drama and nothing heavier than a few fistfights between Wayne and Marvin, both of whom share the same birthday and slug it out every year "as kind of a tradition" even though neither remembers what the original fight was about. They also slug it out with the Australian Navy on Christmas morning for no real reason, but what they hey--it's just a fun movie like they don't make any more.
Meanwhile, it's 4 degrees outside, and Murphy's enjoying the radiant warmth of the wood stove.
Hope your day is going well, too.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Saturday Man Movie
In the 1962 movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, tenderfoot lawyer Ransome Stoddard, played by James Stewart, runs afoul of the local desperado bully, Liberty Valance played by Lee Marvin. Determined to stick it out, he eventually buys a gun to protect himself but has no idea how to use it. Here, gunfighter Tom Donophon played by John Wayne offers him a bit of instruction.
It's a great movie with an all-star cast. Valance's two henchmen are played by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Van_Cleef and Strother Martin. Donophon's right hand man was played by Woody Strode, a then-famous athlete-turned-actor. Other stars of the day such as Andy Devine, Edmund O'Brien, John Carradine and Denver Pyle can be seen in this one, too, along with a then-hot Vera Miles as the lady that Donophon pursued but Stoddard won.
And here's the epic gunfight from the showdown between Stoddard and Valance.
I won't spoil a great movie by giving too much away, but if you haven't seen it, you need to.
It's a great movie with an all-star cast. Valance's two henchmen are played by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Van_Cleef and Strother Martin. Donophon's right hand man was played by Woody Strode, a then-famous athlete-turned-actor. Other stars of the day such as Andy Devine, Edmund O'Brien, John Carradine and Denver Pyle can be seen in this one, too, along with a then-hot Vera Miles as the lady that Donophon pursued but Stoddard won.
And here's the epic gunfight from the showdown between Stoddard and Valance.
I won't spoil a great movie by giving too much away, but if you haven't seen it, you need to.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Saturday Man Movie
In The Comancheros, Texas Ranger Jake Cutter (John Wayne) is working a deal to get inside a gunrunning gang by stringing along drunken killer Tully Crow (Lee Marvin). But as he and Crow sit down at a card table, he comes face to face with Paul Regret(Stuart Whitman), a man who'd escaped from him following a prior arrest. And Crow's a sore loser.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Saturday Man Movie
In The Big Red One (1980), Lee Marvin takes his squad after a sniper.
Lee Marvin walked the walk, too. He was a combat Marine in World War Two, where he was shot and wounded on Saipan. Here's buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and I took this shot there a few years ago, in section 7A, near Greg "Pappy" Boyington and boxer Joe Louis.
Lee Marvin walked the walk, too. He was a combat Marine in World War Two, where he was shot and wounded on Saipan. Here's buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and I took this shot there a few years ago, in section 7A, near Greg "Pappy" Boyington and boxer Joe Louis.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Saturday man Movie
In 1953, Marlon Brando wasn't the size of a small moon. And in the movie The Wild One, he fought a young-looking Lee Marvin pretty well.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Saturday Morning Western
In this clip from 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, villain Valance, played by Lee Marvin, messes with James Stewart but incurs the wrath of John Wayne.
This movie also starred Lee Van Cleef, Denver Pyle, John Carradine and Andy Devine. Seldom have such greats shared the screen in the same flick. They really don't make 'em like this one any more.
This movie also starred Lee Van Cleef, Denver Pyle, John Carradine and Andy Devine. Seldom have such greats shared the screen in the same flick. They really don't make 'em like this one any more.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Saturday Man Movie
Today's Saturday Man Movie revolves around several real men, the likes of which are unknown in Hollywood today. In The Killers, produced in 1964 and adopted from a short story written by Ernest Hemmingway, we see Jack Browning, played by Ronald Reagan--a real man on and off the screen--teaching Angie Dickinson's Sheila Farr to do what she's told.
Obviously that didn't set well with Johnny North, played by John Cassavette (another real man), who, after belting the future best President ever in the mouth, steals away with Dickinson, trying to save her from Browning.
OK, maybe Johnny North should have thought that one through a little better. That Sheila was pure evil and not at all ready to walk away from her meal ticket Jack.
But the movie ends in a way that we could expect from Hemmingway--when confronted by hired killer Charlie Strom, played by Lee Marvin (yet another real man), Sheila throws Jack under the bus too in order to save herself.
So much for that. And lest you think that Johnny North got away clean, his death at the hands of Strom a year ago was the opening scene to this excellent movie.
This suspense-filled masterpiece was Ronald Reagan's last movie before he went into politics, and it was the only one in which he played a villain. For years afterwards, he always expressed regret over that role because he hadn't liked slapping a woman, particularly Angie Dickinson, who was a good friend of his.
Lee Marvin, on the other hand, said that it was one of the movies that he enjoyed the most.
Claude Akins and Norman Fell had roles in this one, too. Definitely worth seeing even after I untwisted most of the plot for you, if only for the star power. This one was vintage Hollywood--not a girly-man like Woody Harrelson or Brad Pitt even allowed near the set.
Obviously that didn't set well with Johnny North, played by John Cassavette (another real man), who, after belting the future best President ever in the mouth, steals away with Dickinson, trying to save her from Browning.
OK, maybe Johnny North should have thought that one through a little better. That Sheila was pure evil and not at all ready to walk away from her meal ticket Jack.
But the movie ends in a way that we could expect from Hemmingway--when confronted by hired killer Charlie Strom, played by Lee Marvin (yet another real man), Sheila throws Jack under the bus too in order to save herself.
So much for that. And lest you think that Johnny North got away clean, his death at the hands of Strom a year ago was the opening scene to this excellent movie.
This suspense-filled masterpiece was Ronald Reagan's last movie before he went into politics, and it was the only one in which he played a villain. For years afterwards, he always expressed regret over that role because he hadn't liked slapping a woman, particularly Angie Dickinson, who was a good friend of his.
Lee Marvin, on the other hand, said that it was one of the movies that he enjoyed the most.
Claude Akins and Norman Fell had roles in this one, too. Definitely worth seeing even after I untwisted most of the plot for you, if only for the star power. This one was vintage Hollywood--not a girly-man like Woody Harrelson or Brad Pitt even allowed near the set.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Saturday Man Movie
In this scene from the 1956 western Seven Men From Now, Ex-Sheriff Ben Stride, played by Randolph Scott confronts villain Bill Masters, played by Lee Marvin.
These were men like you'll not find in Hollywood today. They were real men on the silver screen and real men off it. Randolph Scott was a veteran of World War One, having served in France as an artillery forward observer. Lee Marvin was a former Marine who'd enlisted to fight in World War Two. He was wounded on Saipan and is buried today in Arlington National Cemetery (section 7A, next to Joe Louis and just down from Gregory "Pappy" Boyington). These were the kind of men that I'm hoping my nephew, The Spud, grows up to emulate.
Don't be like Johnny Depp, kid. Be a real man. Be like Randolph Scott or Lee Marvin.
These were men like you'll not find in Hollywood today. They were real men on the silver screen and real men off it. Randolph Scott was a veteran of World War One, having served in France as an artillery forward observer. Lee Marvin was a former Marine who'd enlisted to fight in World War Two. He was wounded on Saipan and is buried today in Arlington National Cemetery (section 7A, next to Joe Louis and just down from Gregory "Pappy" Boyington). These were the kind of men that I'm hoping my nephew, The Spud, grows up to emulate.
Don't be like Johnny Depp, kid. Be a real man. Be like Randolph Scott or Lee Marvin.
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