In a picture filled with so many spectacular outdoor shots — in VistaVision and Technicolor — this segment on a studio set from The Searchers seems rather out of place. However with its layers of trees and snow it is one of the most striking scenes in the film – and what a film it was !!
These are recently released photographs of Marilyn Monroe during the filming of River of No Return 1954.
The cast and crew on this film had left Hollywood for Calgary in late June 1953. From there they travelled by special train to the Banff Springs Hotel, which would serve as their base during the Canadian filming. The 1954 film features the landscape of Jasper National Park and Banff National Park with quite a bit of location and studio filming.
A 35mm print of Colorado Territory (1949) will run at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Centre For The Arts on Sunday, July 27 2014
Raoul Walsh’s Colorado Territory is considered a great western film but it is not one that I know at all.
Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo are said to be very good in this one.
I remember Andre Morell for THREE film roles mainly – in His Majesty O’Keefe, and before that Trio and a while after both as Doctor Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Looking at his filmography I am reminded that he was also so in So Long At The Fair and with Alan Ladd in The Black Knight- Below
These also get onto my favourite films list.
Andre Morell was a very good character actor who was able to gain acting work regularly both on Television and in Films – of which there were a great many – and most of them memorable.
Looking at all three performances above the thing that impresses me is how he cleverly underplays his role and in a funny sort of way that almost boosts his importance in all of these parts. Particularly I would say Trio, although in His Majesty O’Keefe he comes over much better than Burt Lancaster who seems just a bit ‘over the top’. With Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes was a different matter – two top actors together
Andre Morell first appeared on screen on TV in the late 1938s, playing Mr Wickham in a version of Pride and Prejudice of all things. He worked nearly exclusively for TV in those early years, an indication of where Morell would create some of but some of the greatest performances seen on the small screen.
On film for David Lean, he played the Colonel in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Back to the small screen he then impressed as Dr Sloper in a sadly lost TV version of The Heiress before becoming the best of three original Professor Quatermasses in the TV original of Quatermass and the Pitd turned it down for the first two series and would again turn down a chance to reprise the role in the 1967 film)
As Professor Quatermass – left
before reuniting with his 1984 co-star Peter Cushing in Hammer’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Not only is he a wonderfully discrete Watson – one of the best to play this role – and he brings the best out of Peter Cushing. They brought out the best in each other. Around the same time he had time to play the outgoing Tribune Sextus in Ben Hur, and not only gave the best performance in the entire film, he suggested a more intelligent look at the politics of Ancient Rome than Hollywood was then willing to consider.
Despite this, he remained stuck in minor parts. After Cone of Silence and The Shadow of the Cat, he was again paired with Peter Cushing in Cash on Demand, cast as a Sheik in She and then there was another memorable part for Hammer, in The Plague of the Zombies. There was also a guest appearance in Doctor Who opposite the outgoing William Hartnell sandwiched between The Mummy’s Shroud and The Vengeance of She, before one final glorious small screen part as Tiberius in The Caesars. While Freddie Jones’ memorable Claudius and Ralph Bates’ Caligula drew most of the acclaim, it was Morell’s Tiberius who was the backbone of the series, at once stoic, pragmatic and cruel and absolutely imperiously Roman.
There would be a few other parts, as Cicero in the 1970 Julius Caesar, in 10 Rillington Place and snubbing Kubrick’s upstart Barry Lyndon. Then another role to treasure, Lord Palmerston in Edward the Seventh. Illness was taking hold and his performances were becoming even more fleeting than his glorious wife Joan Greenwood. He died of a heart attack in 1978 at the age of 69.
Any young kid growing up in England in the Fifties will remember The Range Rider – with Jack Mahoney as The Range Rider
and Dick Jones as Dick West – his sidekick in about 76 half hour episodes.
Sad to report that Dick Jones has recently died.
I know this cinema well as my daughter and family used to live in Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills area of South Australia and we have seen films there quite a number of times. This has been featured before on this Blog – it is a lovely place – a throw back to cinemas of the fifties and yet showing modern up to date films on a large screen. In the programme they include advertisements from local companies quite slickly done as well.
I am sad to have to print this notice below which appears on the Lobethal web site. It seems to old style projectors may not now be of use for the newer films that are now released in a digital format.
01 Mar 2014 – 31 Dec 2014
Unfortunately there will be no movies shown at the Lobethal Cinema until further notice. Movies are now only being released in digital format and the cinema does not currently have the equipment needed to be able to show them.
Good News … a ‘Save the Cinema’ group has formed and will be going public with their plans very soon. We will provide more information as it becomes available. Yeah!!!
Don’t these TWO look so alike !!!
Above: Jurgen Klinsmann – Footballer and USA World Cup Manager. Jürgen Klinsmann was born 30 July 1964 in Goppingen, Stuttgart, Germany. How strikingly alike these TWO look – I have noticed this for a number of years – every time I saw Klinsmann I was always aware of how much he looked like Lex Barker who played Tarzan in five films of the early fifties.
Interestingly Lex Barker, later in his career, found that he was unable to get the parts he wanted in Hollywood and so moved to Germany in 1957 where he stayed until late in the sixties – and this turned out to be his most successful time film-wise. ![Lex Barker - Bravo Magazine [Germany] (29 August 1964)](http://img2.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/e/n/enm34m4yro61ne3o.jpg?djet1p5k)
Open
In 1949, when Walt Disney made Treasure Island, his first all live-action feature, in England at Denham Film Studios, he was not yet the instantly recognisable celebrity that he would become but his name was certainly well enough known, and so he found himself in the middle of a crowd of autograph hunters in the centre of London as the picture below :-
The photo Below above was taken in England in the summer of 1951, during the filming of The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men. Walt and Lillian’s visit to England that summer was the second of the extended trips to Europe they made with their daughters, Diane and Sharon. (The first such trip was in 1949, for the filming of Treasure Island.) That’s Robin himself, Richard Todd, at Walt’s right, and Maid Marian, Joan Rice, at his left.
The above picture was taken at Burnham Beeches where scenes were being filmed.
In an interview, Richard Todd spoke of Walt Disney as something of a “social climber.” For whatever reason Richard Todd was extremely well connected in British society of the day, to interesting and high-ranking people who Walt would have otherwise had difficulty meeting. One of them was Henry Tiarks, a merchant banker who was married to a West End actress and whose daughter ultimately became the Duchess of Bedford.
Diane Disney Miller remembers that the Disney family were invited to the Tiarks home for lunch. “As I recall,” she says, “Dad was invited solo first, and went horseback riding with Tiarks around his grounds.” (Walt was of course an accomplished horseman, after his years as a polo player.) “Dad was amused when Tiarks indicated a neighbouring estate as belonging to ‘the fellow who lost us the American Colonies.’ Mother and Dad did enjoy their friendship.”
Walt Disney was a very keen miniature railway enthusiast and had his own railway at his home in USA. One day whilst visiting London on business and as he had completed his work asking his chauffeur if he knew of any miniature railways in London, the chauffeur brought Walt Disney to Ridgeway Park in Chingford. That day the park was holding the Chingford Day celebration. Walt Disney drove trains around the track and allowed the press to take some photographs and generally had a good time.
When the public heard that Walt Disney was visiting the railway every body rushed over to see him, just as the Mayor of Chingford was about to open the celebration which he did almost on his own.
Note – The caption above gives the date as 1954 and on this same picture elsewhere I have seen 1952 – IN FACT I am fairly sure that this was taken during Walt Disney’s visit to England in the summer of 1951 to film The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men at Denham Film Studios.
Actor Francis Matthews has died aged 86 
Francis Joseph Matthews was born in York on September 2, 1927, and was the son of Rowntrees’ factory shop steward Henry Ernest Matthews and Kathleen, nee Empson.
He attended St George’s School in York and later St Michael’s Jesuit College in Leeds, before starting his theatrical career in the Leeds Rep.
In 1956, while shooting Bhowani Junction with Ava Gardner, he reportedly took the actress – then married to Frank Sinatra – to his parents’ suburban home.
Above – In Bhowani Junction with Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner
Said to be bored with studio orders to be seen out and about as pre-publicity for her films Ava Gardner rebelled and took up Matthews’ offer of tea with his Mum and Dad.
The actor’s sister later reported coming home from work to find the best china deployed and the world’s biggest film star sitting in the front room.
In 1962, Matthews met his wife actress Angela Browne when filming a BBC series in the Hebrides, and the couple married the following year.
Angela Browne above in The Avengers.
In 1969, the BBC gave him the role which many still associate with him: playboy detective Paul Temple, alongside Ros Drinkwater as his wife Steve and George Sewell as their down-at-heel sidekick.
Sixty one-hour episodes were made in colour before the series ended in 1971, by which time he was a household name.
Angela Browne died after a short illness in 2001, but Francis Matthews continued to work with guest appearances in The Royal, Taggart and Jonathan Creek among others, until illness forced him to retire.
His last major performances included playing Herr Schultz in Cabaret in the West End aged 81.
Although he moved from York at a young age, Mr Matthews often spoke fondly of the city and regularly returned for many years to visit relatives.
He told The Yorkshire Evening Press in 1971 that he hoped to retire to York. Three years later when he appeared in Sign of the Times at York Theatre Royal, he told the newspaper: “It’s the first time at this theatre for me and the realisation of a boyhood ambition. I always wanted to work here and wrote letter after letter begging to be allowed to play here, but I never managed it. I still have aunts and uncles up here and after we’ve got this opening over, I hope I can visit them.”
Fifteen years later, while starring in The Old Country at the Grand Opera House, he told the Evening Press that York was still in his soul, and recalled briefly attending dance classes opposite the Opera House as a young boy.
He is survived by his sons Paul, Dominic and Damien, five grandchildren, his brother, the actor Paul Shelley, and his sister Maura. His brother Anthony had pre-deceased him.
His brother Paul Shelley took his 8 mm film camera onto the set of Dracula, Prince of Darkness starring of course Christopher Lee AND Francis Matthews and the fascinating footage he got is as below :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QEn9uDCr5UA
Francis Matthews – Above in 2004
I remember Francis Matthews for quite a number of roles BUT the one that stands out to me was in the brilliant TV serial Brat Farrar from Josephine Tey’s book. What a great story that is !!