Movie review - "Showgirl's Luck" (1931) **

 Not good. Erratic acting. Dodgy scripting. Fascinating. Musical about putting on a musical only there's hardly any songs. They were too ambitious.

Play review - "After the Fall" (1964) by Arthur Miller

 A recording of the 1964 New York production from Elia Kazan, who directed a character based on him played by Ralph Meeker. It's got Jason Robards and Barbara Loden and Faye Dunaway. Fascinating.

Kazan only liked the Marilyn Monroe stuff. He was right. It's the strongest. The informing friend could have worked - needed to connect him with the Marilyn part, made it a love triangle. The first wife - dull, cheated on - is dull. Ditto the third wife - concentration camp and all. it's wife two, Marilyn, that makes this worth watching.

The making of this play would be a great movie/play. 

Book review - "The Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton

 Admire it. Never been huge fan. Great opening - the town wiped out - and ending - ticking clock. In between it's a medical drama, trying to figure out what caused the illness. Tremendous sense of realism though. You can see why it was a sensation.

Movie review - "The Big Heat" (1953) ****

 Everything clicked for Fritz Lang - Glenn Ford in a great performance, a strong story, very good script from Sydney Boehm. Simple story - Ford investigates murder of cop - has punch from the all to believable depiction of corruption in society particularly the higher up cos who are always encouraging people to give up.

Ford's wife is sappy and the kid an annoying boomer but the wife's death has real kic and the minor parts are superb - the slimy bar owner, the mob boss, the sad hooker. Most of all there is Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame - who I was surprised to see don't really appear much til the last act. 

But the relationship between Grahame and Ford is powerful and I loved how Ford's army veteran mates helped. 

Movie review - "I Walk the Line" (1970) **

 One of that trilogy of Tuesday Weld films she made when she turned down Bonnie and Clyde etc.

This should be good. Greg Peck as a sheriff in the south tempted by hot little Tuesday Weld, whose family are moonshiners. But it doesn't quite work. There's no sex. Weld's got plenty but not Peck - he's too solid. It needs to be about the temptation and corruption of a man. Needs more sleaze and crime.

Ralph Meeker brings it, as her dad. Ditto Charles Durning. But Estelle Parsons is too white trash as the wife - the only contrast is she's old and less attractive, when it really needed to be she was lady like.

The film really needed to be made in the late 1950s when it would've been properly sleazy.  Also Peck needed to have his life destroyed more at the end - to die, or go to prison or something. The movie pulls its punches.

Weld is good but she'd been playing these roles for too long and was getting older. The film could've been more rejigged for their ages and personas. 

Book review - "Roddy McDowall" by Samuel Bernstein

 Bernstein does another very good biography of an underrated queer actor Roddy McDowall, on top of the one he did for Caesar Romero. The two actors had many things in common - foreigners who flourised in Hollywood, seem like genuinely nice people, hugely long careers, Batman villains. McDowall had more long term romances and possibly better luck with movies - every decade he managed to appear in a classic. How Green Was My Valley, Compulsion, Camelot, Cleopatra, Planet of the Apes, The Poseidon Adventure. It's incredible. 

Worthy book for a person who deserved it. 

Book review - "Cesar Romero: The Joker Is Wild" by Sam Bernstein

 Loving look at a man who sounds like a genuinely terrific person - underrated actor, handsome, polite, hard working. Never seems to have been linked to a romantic relationship, although something may have happened with Tyrone Power. Well researched, fun - half the book is the filmography!