The George Cukor Thread

I voted, rather obviously, for The Philadelphia Story, though there are good things to say about the likes of It Should Happen to You and The Model and the Marriage Broker. (A Bill of Divorcement is kind of awful, though.) I also have Dinner at Eight on my TiVo, but haven't gotten around to watching it yet.

Constance Bennett rules in Our Betters.

holiday rules all.

philadelphia story is good but a bit overrated. it's not as great as it should be considering it has the three best hollywood stars ever in the lead.

My vote's for Holiday, which has an intimacy that Cukor never repeated. All those scenes in the playroom with Edward Everett Horton, Hepburn, Grant, and a heartbreaking Lew Ayres (my all-time favorite screen alkie) are magic. Grant was at his ambiguous best.

The Philadelphia Story drags whenever its more implausible characters (we're supposed to accept Tracy's deadbeat showgirl-luvin' dad's running her down for being cold?!?) are trotted on stage to denounce Hepburn.

'Dinner at Eight' by a mile for me, though 'PS', Holiday', and 'My Fair Lady' all worthy.

I will admit that the last time I watched part of PS, I found Stewart's speech to Tracy about how goldarn special she is a little much.

adam's rib
copperfield
star is born
philadelphia story
gaslight

also, alfred, i don't think philadelphia story ever drags

oh! i forgot about dinner at eight

Jimmy Stewart drunk ain't as funny or poignant as Lew Ayres.

Of the three or four I've seen, Camille. Among those I haven't seen are both Holiday and A Star is Born.

camille's a weird flic, innit?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

bump

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oh god. WHY DIDN'T YOU FUCKIN PEOPLE VOTE?

This poll might've been more interesting for me had I not been completely booked up the month that the NFT did the Cukor retrospective the other year.

I didn't vote cuz I was on vacation. Always allow 2 weeks.

1. Adam's Rib
2. A 3tar Is Born
3. Phila Story
4. Holiday

Just read a raving Rosenbaum blurb for Sylvia Scarlett, which I've never seen.

Spencer Tracy is pretty amazing in The Actress.

After spending 7 hours+ with the new (non-Blu) DVD of A Star Is Born, I would downgrade it from that #2 ranking. Great stuff in there, but too long and uneven.

(Cukor didn't even shoot "Born in a Trunk")

Much as I love that movie at its best you will never not get me to roll my eyes at the studio extra goofs who are supposed to be downmarket late night jazz dudes during "The Man Who Got Away."

meh, standard movie stuff

The DVD has SEVEN other takes of that mumber, shot over 6 months.

The Marrying Kind tonight.

It's good - kind of dizzy having two character actors as leads. My roommate loves weepies, I guess, and she decided it is in her top 3 or 4. Holliday and Aldo act in a 50s/60s stage theater manner sometimes, but the performances are good. You don't want to strangle the kids. They're not overused or too cute, and you don't find yourself saying, "Where are the kids all this time?"

Inane question, but: is his name pronounced, "tsoo-kohr"?

I don't know. I say koo core.

xxpost - How'd you like that post office conveyor belt scene?

How the FUCK did "The Women" get 0 votes??

I say cue core

Weather Diary #5 was the best thing i saw last summer.

How the FUCK did "The Women" get 0 votes??

Not enough clawing hens voted? :)

This is not the gay thread.

just saw Girls About Town at the Film Forum... frequently delightful escorts-on-the-make comedy. Here's an opening taste with the great Kay Francis and the formidable Lilyan Tashman. (unseen here, the volcano-hot young Joel McCrea)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liF1Mi6dXA4

wow, nobody rates Gaslight?

My vote's for Holiday, which has an intimacy that Cukor never repeated. All those scenes in the playroom with Edward Everett Horton, Hepburn, Grant, and a heartbreaking Lew Ayres (my all-time favorite screen alkie) are magic. Grant was at his ambiguous best.

SO OTM

original UK Gaslight is better than Hollywood's

but POLA...POLA....

The Women and Our Betters are so funny, witty, and lighthearted and a lot of his other films are so NOT. What else shows Cukor at his wittiest?

Dinner At Eight perhaps? And Travels With My Aunt is a late triumph that's a throwback to that spirit.

I actually bumped this thread because I just watched Dinner at Eight thinking it was one of those wacky upper-class farces (or, for that matter, a comedy at all) but aside from the character Carlotta Vance it isn't at all

Like I just want to see a bunch of Auntie Mame-ish OTT rich people gushing about how impossibly lovely everyone and everything is and also being extremely passive aggressive and catty.

so many better movies about rich people gushing though. I watched AM a few months ago for the first time and was appalled, really.

Auntie Mame the character >>>> Auntie Mame the film

Also I was referring to the character and not the film

My bad. D@8 is surprisingly dark. Travels...though, still fits.

ick on both counts...

Well have YOU got any suggestions, Soto?

mega-retro in NYC Dec-Jan

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/george-cukor-katharine-hepburn-joan-crawford-judy-holliday-cary-grant

gayz, I dare you to fly in for The Women.

gayz, I dare you to fly in for The Women Our Betters.

This I would actually totally do except it is on a weeknight

IMO that is the real one to see here; it is crazy hard to track down iirc

Pretty sure I missed this poll and didn't vote, but I would have def voted for Adams rib. One of my favorite movies ever.

I'd fly in for Holiday, not the film classic version of "Born This Way."

Stevie, I've seen this one! Joel McCrea at the peak of his youthful smashability too, Alfred. (New Years Day):

GIRLS ABOUT TOWN (1931) 79 min, 35mm
Two girls, out to make their fortune in New York, loving and leaving wealthy businessmen, take a trip on a yacht, where they meet a Michigan millionaire and his young associate. Cukor said: “This was the period of the gold-diggers or playgirls, in reality, whores who charged 50 dollars an evening. Zoë Akins wrote these parts to perfection.”

now with all 50 films

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/winged-victory-completes-our-cukor-retrospective

rowr

Bogdo opens up his card file

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-george-cukor-file-part-1

and more... he likes almost everything

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-george-cukor-file-part-2

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-george-cukor-file-part-3

critics (also Jeffrey Wells for some reason) pick their favorite:

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/george-cukor-films-favorites-film-society-2013

cukor was very up-to-date on world cinema, and had much more catholic tastes than most in hollywood (and probably way more eclectic than you might expect a studio director to have)

he struck up a correspondence w/ bresson, was known to like warhol's films (and later paul morissey's), praised fassbinder, admired dreyer

not many (any?) hollywood filmmakers of his generation who were anything like that

Added 2013: While I still enjoy all the performances in this picture, I don't really like the intentions of the script, which were to dethrone and demystify the goddess Hepburn had become in the 30s. She is blamed for her own divorce, even though her husband was an alcoholic, as well as blamed for her father's philandering! Holiday, with the same two leads, the same writer and the same director, is an infinitely better movie. But this one is much more famous, unfortunately.

otm

yeah, well at least she doesn't burn breakfast like in Woman of the Year.

I'm seeing the one with Lana Turner today, which I'd never even heard of before, abd probably The Actress, in which Spencer Tracy is amazing as the father.

I saw Candice Bergen introduce Rich and Famous a couple weeks ago, and she said the first A.D. essentially directed the last 3 weeks cuz the work just wore GC down. "81 then was not like 81 today" was her explanation; Cukor became confused about where he was at some times. Bergen says quick pacing was his primary concern: "At a good clip, ladies!" R&F manages not to be awful despite a pretty bad script.

Also, Sylvia Scarlett, wow.

I was going to rent it until my records told me I did already in December '11.

i wasn't as impressed w/ sylvia scarlett as i wanted to be, but it's probably time to revisit it after a decade.

Grant and Edmund Gwenn do a lot of rough-hewn hoofing/movement -- it's like they're fresh from the music hall.

I remember seeing Richard Burton rave about Tracy in this scene -- he watched them shoot it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kltwQK3Mhs

the actress is a paddy chayevsky script or adaptation, right?

just checked: it's not. what movie am i thinking of?

...

it's the goddess: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051667/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_22

yes, The Actress was scripted from her own autobiographical play by Ruth Gordon. It's really solid; Tracy is near his best, supported by JS and Teresa Wright, looking plausibly older than 34 as Ruth's mother.

teresa wright moved frighteningly quickly from ingenue to playing matronly roles

teresa wright is the bomb btw

Brody on Cukor's themes of secrets and disclosure

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/12/the-celebrity-masks-of-george-cukor.html

The discreet charm of Cukor

David Phelps compares him to McCarey and LaCava as a "piano" director:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-second-hand-illusion-notes-on-cukor

Hepburn and Olivier really got a star vehicle worthy of them in Love Among the Ruins, which won a bunch of Emmys. It's maybe her flat-out funniest performance aside from Bringing Up Baby, and he does some really great Oliver Hardy takes reacting to her. (The tender stuff mostly works too.)

It's "unavailable" but seems to be on YouTube in its entirety -- shame about the quality, very nicely shot by Douglas Slocombe.

It Should Happen to You and Born Yesterday are two faves but I can't get anyone to watch them more than the first few minutes with me.

more Bogdo index cards -- nice Welles story at the very end.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/00000143-5a25-d395-a377-7e6faa680000

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-cukor-file-part-5

holy shit alfred otm abt lew ayers in holiday. completely robbed the movie for me. his monologue to k-hep abt what it's like to get drunk just stopped it. the realest saddest thing. runners-up: "mother tried to be a seton a while, till she gave up and died" and his exit line: "and... to grandfather!"

Here's a list..

A Woman's Face is addled in the best way.

Rich and Famous comes to the Warner Archive: https://www.wbshop.com/products/rich-and-famous-1981-mod

Koresky on Sylvia Scarlett

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/queer-now-then-1935-katherine-hepburn-cary-grant-george-cukor/

A marvelous read, and I've enjoyed his series.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/films/05f931fc02d365516a299774f13732fb/w0FMh8OYztwqUX6hYASaLhdr7lmeXL_small.jpg

Coming In January!

The 20% of Dinner at Eight that is pure soap opera I'm happy to ignore, given how dazzlingly crafted the rest of it is. Harlow, Dressler, Billie Burke, Lee Tracy (who has two great long scenes with John Barrymore) all near career heights. Wallace Beery and Harlow are doing an early (better) version of Born Yesterday.

And Lionel Barrymore is almost... restrained? How the hell did Cukor pull that off? (Maybe just by whispering "Dressler will eat you alive.")

also... Marie Dressler's Carlotta has a dog named Mussolini, but they redubbed it as "Tarzan" by release date.

The Garland/Mason A Star Is Born is one of those movies I would have long told you I’ve seen, but I just watched it on Criterion and now I don’t think so. I would have remembered the lengthy “Born in a Trunk” sequence, as well as the goofy “Someone At Last.”

Based on my only memories, alcoholism and drowning, I think I saw the 1937 Janet Gaynor version, but I probably came in more than half way through a TV showing sometime in the late 70s.

Since they’re both leaving Criterion soon I watched both versions back to back and preferred the original, creaky though it is.