Another big budget Tarzan film from MGM following the success of the first Johnny Weissmuller film ‘ Tarzan the Ape Man’
This Elmo Lincoln the very first screen Tarzan visits the set and joins Johnny and Benita Hulme = she was married to Ronald Colman
It is well know that Peter Sellers was a car addict – over the years he owned so many
ABOVE – The first owner of this lovely Rolls Royce saloon was the renowned playwright Sir Terence Rattigan, at that time resident at 29 Eaton Square, London SW1. In February 1967 it passed into the ownership of actor Peter Sellers, who had it re-sprayed silver. The original logbook records the third private owner, from April 1971, as Benedict James Colman, another resident, like Rattigan and Sellers, of London SW1 – so it appears this vehicle never went very far.
I recall a story that Peter Seller’s son Michael told many years later – he was then a small child, of say, 6 years old and overheard his father saying that he needed the front bumper re-painting for some reason. It was probably the Rolls Royce pictured above. Michael later decided to give his Dad a nice surprise, so he found a pot of paint in the shed and a paintbrush and, in his own way, he painted the whole of one front wing. Needless to say, when Dad arrived home and saw the surprise we can say, as an understatement, that he was not well pleased
BELOW – Liz Taylor with a classic Rolls Royce
Before Jayne Mansfield signed a six-year agreement with Twentieth Century Fox, she worked various small gigs, including selling books door-to-door, as a restaurant photographer, model, dance teacher, and selling candy at a movie theatre.
In 1956 she starred in “The Girl Can’t Help It,” which interestingly enough earned more at the box office than 1953’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
Jane Mansfield had quite a short film career, however she did win a Golden Globe award for her appearance in the adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, “The Wayward Bus.
A thriller from 1964 that has quite a lot of very familiar faces in the cast including Bernard Lee and Margaret Tyzack – just before she found BBC TV fame – and International fame – in ‘The Forsyte Saga’
Then running down the cast we have David Kossoff, Thorley Walters, Patrick Barr, Justine Lord who I recall from ‘Act of Murder’ one of the very best of the Edgar Wallace series – Philip Latham and further down the list Paul Eddington, Garry Marsh ( from the George Formby films), and Geoffrey Palmer
It is British spy thriller; A story about a British navy clerk assigned to a top secret research facility. He is blackmailed into stealing vital secrets for the Russians in exchange for cash. Set during the height of the Cold War, it is based on the true events of the Portland Spy Ring, where daily duels play out between Soviet Intelligence and British counter-espionage. Tension builds wthin the espionage activities which is quite absorbing.
Bernard Lee gives a solid performance in a rare leading role His ally, played by Margaret Tyzack, is initially innocent, but seems drawn into things as the story progresses.
I have to say, that the above ‘Front of House Stills’ for this film were a pretty poor selection – when trying to sell a film you would have thought that this is one area that must be concentrated on – but in the case of this film, it just seems that there was little interest or zest put into the selection.
Coming back to Margaret Tyzack who I liked – she played in the Miss Marple Episode of ‘Nemesis’ opposite Joan Hickson as Miss Marple – and they played out one wonderful and intense scene which saw them both, in my opinion at the very top of their game. Brilliant. I think this is my own favourite Miss Marple adaptation.
This Technicolor Western is due for release on Blu Ray soon
Directed by Rudolph Maté
Starring Tyrone Power, Piper Laurie, Julie Adams, John McIntire, Paul Cavanagh, John Baer, Ron Randell, Ralph Dumke
Rudolph Maté’s The Mississippi Gambler (1953) to be released on Blu Ray Blu — and that’s good news
We could ask the question “Why is this called a Western?” Well, does it really matter !!
THE MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER is a 1953 period adventure drama. Set in the pre-Civil War days, the action takes place in and around New Orleans, and on the riverboats that paddled the regional waters.
Tyrone Power seems perfectly cast in the title role, and seems to win the admiration or envy, love or loathing of all he meets, including Piper Laurie, Paul Cavanaugh, and a batch of Universal players including —William Reynolds, Dennis Weaver, Guy Williams, Ron Randell among them.
Rudolph Mate directed with some pace with duels, brawls and a voodoo dance from Gwen Verdon .
The film is in glorious Technicolor and benefits from above-average costume design and set decor.
A running time of 99 minutes, with Julie Adams, John McIntire, John Baer, King Donovan and Anita Ekberg . A Successful production (took in over $6,600,000) and was Oscar nominated for its Sound Quality
We are now going back to the very early fifties – At that time a visit to the Cinema was a big event and when the Cinema came to your village What a thrill that would be. I can confirm that because in the Village where I live in the mid 50;s we had a ‘once a week’ professional film show with a full programme including Newsreel, Advertisements, Supporting Picture and the ‘big’ film.
However I have come across this article that centres on two brothers who, after the War, purchased equipment and set up a travelling cinema – this is the one at Little Shelford Nr Cambridge.
ABOVE – Russell Oddy is setting up the ‘film stills’ board outside of the entrance. This evening the ‘big’ picture will be ‘Mrs Miniver’ plus supporting programme
Russell hen went inside to set up the projection room and make sure that all was ok there/
The projection room was made in such a way as to eliminate the projector noise from the main hall
Russell Oddy was born in 1916 and at the age of 11 he had his own hand-cranked projector and held little shows in his father’s woodshed
ABOVE Russel’s brother Douglas was busy at the other end of the hall setting up the screen and the curtains that he made to open and shut professionally when the film programme was about to start
Outside a large crowd gathered – the Hall is next to the local Pub ‘The Chequers’ and the Pub Landlord Mr Beebe is very supportive of the venture – in fact his wife had attended and enjoyed the first house showing
ABOVE – Tickets Please !!
The audience were all given a brochure / programme on the film
ABOVE: Ice Cream is served just before the main feature
ABOVE – The queue for the ‘second house’ in the cold and rain – the rain later turned to snow
ABOVE – The second house audience is seated and ready. Just a view also at the back of the Hall of the small box like projection room which was soundproofed. Also a Poster for ‘Mrs Miniver’ on the side wall of the Hall
Much of the material above was taken from a magazine article dated March 1950 – so the pictures would have been taken just before then – maybe January or February 1950 – or even March 1950
A footnote about Russell an d Douglas Oddy
Russell had been in the forces during the War in the RAF on flying duties uin the Middle East. Later after being grounded, he worked in the Entertainments branch and after a while he was put in charge of setting up and running an open air cinema in the desert. This gave Russell the insight and interest in 16 mm films and after the War, with a budget of savings of £ 50 he and his brother Douglas who had been a Prisoner of War and had also some savings teamed up to set up the type of operation there now was at Little Shelford, Nr Cambridge.
Their first venture was at Bourn, Cambridgeshire where the programme was ‘Rainbow on the River’ and ‘Beau Chumps‘
After that the films steadily were more ‘up to date’ and they operated at least at a couple of locations including Little Shelford
I find this a fascinating and inspiring story
This is a low budget film but I found it very watchable when it appeared on Talking Pictures last weekend.
Susan Stephen is the very attractive young wife of Jack Watling, who somehow gets involved in a potential robbery at an Airport. Jack Watling works there in the freight section along with a friend played by Terence Alexander, who is not all he should be.
With a running time of about one hour and a quarter. we have to get straight into the plot and the characters and the film does that well. There are scenes quite early on in the film at the couple’s very nice country cottage which I found appealing
As you can see from the above still, the story has a happy ending
An airport security officer, Tim Matthews (Jack Watling), meets a former army mate, Harry Preston (Terence Alexander), who is employed by a master criminal called Pliny (Karel Stepanek).
Harry gets Tim into debt through gambling and then takes him to see Luigi (John Le Mesurier), Pliny’s second in command, who, of course, has the ideal solution to his problems. For £500.00, Tim will have more than enough to clear his debts but, naturally, there is a catch – Luigi demands that Tim hands over the schedule for a bullion plane’s arrival into Heathrow Airport. When Tim refuses, the gang abduct him and threaten him with his wife Jane (Susan Stephen). He then is forced to co-operate and the gang force him to act as an inside man by getting him to drug his colleagues’ tea and to gain them access to the vault where £250,000 worth of gold bullion is being stored.
This is a British thriller from ACT Productions, a company founded by the film technicians union
It went out on the Gaumont-British circuit supporting the Rita Hayworth picture, Miss Sadie Thompson in 1954.
Dangerous Cargo is better than you might expect for a second feature with director John Harlow generating some tension and suspense.
Acting-wise there are good performances from a cast that includes many familiar faces including John Le Mesurier (Dad’s Army) and Terence Alexander (Bergerac)
On the screen he was a thug, a convict, a leper and a psychopathic killer. Off screen, he was the son of well respected parents – he was a shy and devout man who had been an exceptional athlete, an esteemed journalist, and above all a beloved friend and wonderful husband.
Rondo Hatton achieved a distinction that survives to this day.
He played his most famous role as The Creeper towards the tail end of the Hollywood horror cycle
The ABOVE Picture story tells in very simple terms the The Rondo Hatton Story – a very sad one really for such a nice person
He later took the role of The Creeper again in ‘Brute Man’ and this seemed to be teamed up with quite a lot of different films on release, so it really was shown over and over again over a long period
ABOVE – The film trailer
Rondo Hatton began acting in films in 1930. During the 30s and 40s he was mainly seen in small roles, always cast in similar roles to The Creeper. He had contracted acromegaly after being gassed during the First world War which led to his being deformed facially and otherwise, and he won these roles because of that – What a sad fact !
In 1944 he was cast as The Hoxton Creeper in a Sherlock Holmes film, The Pearl of Death, and achieved brief stardom-or at least cult stardom-until his early death from a heart attack at age 52 in 1946 shortly after this, his last film, was released.
In real life he was a wonderful and gentle man, and a loving and loved husband. This is how he should be remembered
John Bentley back in action as Richard Rollison alias ‘The Toff’ and this time the lovely actress Carol Marsh with him – I really liked Carol Marsh – her lovely face and looks really appeal to me and I find her so magnetic – every scene she is in, her looks just draw you to her.
She had a meteoric start to he film career when she had the female lead in ‘Brighton Rock’ opposite Richard Attenborough and then went on to play Alice in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and then after ‘A Christmas Carol’ things seemed to stall. ‘Salute the Toff was made in 1951.
She was busy though in this period – she appeared in a BBC Drama adaptation of ‘Time and the Conways’ in 1950 – that would have gone out ‘live’ in those days and she also played Alice – this time on stage – in ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ at the Princes Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue and that was in 1954. I have seen a picture of her in this production with Margaret Rutherford and that was from the Wimbledon Theatre – so maybe it was transferred there
Much later she played again in the West End in the very famous Agatha Christie play – ‘The Mousetrap’
It does appear that the production of ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ toured quite extensively – Above at Her Majesty’s Theatre Brighton. The cast is impressive – Margaret Rutherford and her husband in real life Stringer Davies, Michael Denison and Griffith Jones among many others
Back to ‘Salute the Toff’ – it was a film made in the late summer of 1951 and Nettlefold Studios and was the second of the The Toff films made there – one after the other apparently. The fist to be made and released was ‘Hammer the Toff’ released in January 1952 with this one out in May of that year.
I enjoyed ‘Salute the Toff’ as it kept the plot moving well and was sprinkled with outdoor scenes and action too at times. John Bentley played The Toff each time
I do have the Radio Dramas of The Toff which starred Terence Alexander and he is very good in the role. There are quite a number of these plays – I have listened to them all and can recommend them
Roddy Hughes who played ‘Jolley’ the Toff’s faithful manservant, had perhaps the most interesting and accomplished career of any of these actors.
He was born in Portmadoc North Wales and began his sacting career on stage after the First World War. He didn’t enter the film world until 1932 but after that was very busy in many productions.
His stage work saw him as a regular performer in the West End and on Broadway
Originally in 3 D and now to be released in that format on BluRay in the next year we are told. Also it is in PatheColor – maybe not the early tinted type but the later spin-off or re-name from Eastmancolour
Directed by Ray Nazarro
Starring Joanne Dru, Rod Cameron, John Ireland, John Dehner, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, Morris Ankrum
This was one of only two films for which the original 3-D elements were lost. However, 3D Film Archive founder Bob Furmanek confirmed that the four missing reels were located in a UK film lab in 2018. The UK lab had acquired the inventory of a bankrupt Italian lab, and the reels in question had been labelled as “Camels West”, which someone realised was the film’s UK title. The film is now in the process of being restored by the 3D Film Archive and released on Blu-ray 3D in 2024
Rod Cameron and the then married team of Joanne Dru and John Ireland star in Southwest Passage about an expedition to test the feasibility of using camels in the American Southwest. Apparently after the experiment was eventually dropped, the camels were turned loose on the Arizona desert – even now some of their decendants can be spotted to this day on occasions
Rod Cameron plays the real life character of western explorer Edward Beale
Here he’s on a surveying party with camels, mules, and horse and soldiers. Add to them a fugitive John Ireland posing as a doctor and his girlfriend Joanne Dru as someone they rescue in the desert you’ve got quite a mix facing the Apaches who eventually turn hostile.
John Ireland has just robbed a bank and one of the crew on the expedition, John Dehner, recognises him. He also quite fancies Joanne Dru who in turn has taken a liking to Rod Cameron. What a mixture !
There’s a desert shootout with the Apaches which must have been something to see in the original 3-D and on the big screen
Southwest Passage is a good action packed Western where the camel experiment is just a side issue.
Joanne Dru (the former Joanne Letitia LaCock) was unusually effective in westerns in a time when the casting of most female roles was a secondary consideration at best. She married John Ireland in 1947, and one result was their collaboration in this cavalry and camels vs. Apaches story.
Although Rod Cameron seems to get top billing Joanne Dru is the best thing in the Film.
Filmed on location in southern Utah, near Kanab.
Joanne Dru was good in Westerns, but she didn’t always enjoy them. “I simply hated horses,” she said in a 1957 interview with Hedda Hopper. “And those long gingham dresses with boned bodices are miserable things to wear.” By the end of the 1950s she had drifted almost entirely into television work, and she and Ireland were divorced in 1957.
Edward Fitzpatrick Beale and his involvement with camels in the American southwest is based on actual history. In 1857, Lt. Beale, with the support of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, used 25 camels to survey a route for a wagon road from Fort Defiance in Arizona to the Colorado River, then took the camels on to California. The Santa Fe Railroad and U. S. Highway 66 subsequently followed this route. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Camel Corps was largely forgotten, although there were reports of feral camels in the southwest well into the 1900s—even as late as 1975 in Baja California. Hadji Ali, an Ottoman citizen, was the lead camel driver of the Camel Corps beginning around 1856 and lived in this country until his death in 1902 in Arizona.
I took these colour pictures from a Children’s Book from Christmas 1960 showing ‘behind the scenes’ preparation for what looks like major drama. At first I thought that the sets looked too lavish for a TV programme of that era but looking more closely there are Television cameras as opposed to film cameras.
BELOW – this looks more a a Drawing Room type play – lovely set though
ABOVE – No real idea of the actual play in the two scenes – snow outside.
I am trying to guess – could it be something like ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ or maybe ‘Waters of the Moon’ or what about ‘Dr Finlay’s Casebook’
Probably none of these – but I will re-read the book and try tro ascertain just what this studio play is.
Fascinating – also seeing these pictures in Colour when the drama would not be shown in Colour adds another dimension.
