Wait Until Dark

  

Just finished watching the 1969 Movie “Wait Until Dark” again, and MAN! I’d forgotten how GOOD it was! Audrey Hepburn is one of my very favorite actresses, and this was the very FIRST movie I’d ever seen her in! I had no idea how much I would come to love her later when seeing her in movies like “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, “Roman Holiday” or “Love In The Afternoon”, but it was her role as blind Susy Hendrix where I first discovered how awesome she was and prompted me to seek out all her other movies!

Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark

  I had been talking to a friend about Audrey (having just recently rewatched the aforementioned “Breakfast at Tiffany’s’) and he mentioned Wait Until Dark. “You Know”, I sheepishly admitted, “though I love Audrey and have quite a few of her movies, Wait Until Dark is one the that I didn’t own on DVD! I did own a VHS copy of the movie  I dubbed off TV years ago, but my VHS player has seen some better days, and I’m not even sure the tape would have played at this point! I decided right then that I HAD to get a proper copy of this classic movie!

  Good old Amazon- not only did I find a seller who was selling it for a very reasonable price, the shipping was free and arrived at my doorstep within the week! As SOON as I got that package in the mail, I immediately popped it in my DVD player and sat down to catch up on the movie! Like I said, I was blown away by how good it was even after all this time,  Audrey as perfect as ever, and one other element I’d forgotten about was how freakin’ awesome ALAN ARKIN was in this movie, playing the role of the oily and VERY sinister Roat!

Alan Arkin as Roat

  I’m so used to seeing Arkin as this old curmudgeonish guy, I forgot how slick and deadly he could be! With only her sweet sensibilities to guide her, poor Audrey is put through the wringer with the ruthless killer, as he tries to track down a doll with a hidden cache of heroin in it!

 Audrey didn’t make all that many movies after this one, but what a way to go out! Not only was this Terence Stamp (he of James Bond fame) directed movie as good as any Hitchcock flick, they even got Audrey’s music scorer Henry Mancini from Breakfast at Tiffany’s back to do the music for this chiller! VERY COOL!

Samantha Jones as Lisa

PS, Who’s this Samantha Jones actress they got playing the role of doomed drug trafficker Lisa anyway? So VERY pretty in that groovy swinging sixties kind of way, but I don’t think she appeared in anything after that!

PPS: Happy Birthday, Audrey!!

Karin Dor in "Topaz"

Was watching the awesome 1969 Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller Topaz the other night, and was simply blown away by how unbelievably gorgeous actress Karin Dor was in it! She was SO achingly beautiful in every scene she was in, I could hardly stand it!


This is kind of funny in that I’m a HUGE James Bond fan, and yet for all the times I’ve watched “You Only Live Twice”, Karin (as agent Helga Brandt) never seemed to me to be more than another one of those agent-babe-who’s-going-to-get-killed-early-on-in-the-film throwaway characters. Little did I know how she’d set my senses on fire later!

TOPAZ was an espionage movie centered around the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 60’s, and Karin plays Juanita de Cordoba, a beloved widow of a famous hero of the people who is secretly working with the French to keep tabs on the Russian going-ons in Cuba. Karin (a German actress who easily slips into other ethnicities like Indian and Latino) breathes lush life into the very “Evita-Peron”-ish Juanita character, making her both feminine, refined and strong hearted. When Juanita is first introduced, you are IMMEDIATELY captivated by those EYES of hers- sensual AND commanding at the same time!

My attraction for her only grew as the scenes went by- MAN! I'm ALL about 60's fashion, and she displayed it very well. Looking so classy, I didn’t think things could get any better, then suddenly there she was in front of me with her luscious hair down, looking ALL KINDS OF SEDUCTIVE in this smoking, sexy, lacey nightgown!!!!

YE GODS, I couldn’t TAKE IT! I had severe Babe-Overload!!!


Ah, yet ANOTHER actress falling into my category of “Distractingly Beautiful”, Karin Dor really DOES IT for ME, at least in THIS movie!

*  *  *  *  Addendum, *Spoiler Alert*  *  *  *  *

Thought I’d said all I had to say on the subject, but just HAD to mention this one INCREDIBLE scene in Topaz that I just can’t stop thinking about.

Working as an undercover spy in Cuba is, as one would suspect, a deadly occupation with a high mortality rate, and in the end Juanita is one of the many who end up sacrificing her life for the cause, and here Hitchcock directs probably one of the most beautifully shot deaths ever put to celluloid- Juanita is held in an embrace and is shot at close range. As she slowly slumps down to the ground, her velvety purple gown pools out across the floor like blood pouring out of her, this is such a haunting and MESMERIZING scene to behold!!

Elizabeth Taylor 1932-2011

Elizabeth Taylor in one of my favorite movies from her, the 1949 movie Little Women, 

as the adorable Amy March. Farewell, Liz, You'll be missed!

Favorite Movies: The Divorce of Lady X

Back in the days of High School, I met a classmate who shared the same great love of Classic Movies as I did, and we spent many a night enjoying the works of all those great actors and actresses of the “Golden” era of film! Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, Bogie and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, we watched ‘em all!

 Now, this gal was a HUGE fan of Laurence Olivier, and had a whole cupboard full of various beta tapes (Beta! WOW, does THAT sound nostalgic!) of Sir Laurence’s vast career, and she took the time to re-introduce me to an actor that I’d only known from movies where he played a Nazi (Szell in Marathon Man) and Nazi-Hunter (in The Boys From Brazil), fine films to be sure, but hardly representative of his great body of work! Ahahahaha!

Well, over the weeks, we saw quite a few of Olivier’s films including Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, and (a fave of both of ours) Hitchcock's Rebecca, but the one film that stood out, just absolutely won me over and had me laughing and giddy throughout the whole film was the United Artists movie The Divorce of Lady X starring Sir Laurence and an UNBELIEVABLY ADORABLE Merle Oberon as fated lovers who are hindered by cases of mistaken identity!

Olivier is Everard Logan, a divorce lawyer who gets fogged in at a glitzy hotel. A fancy costume ball is winding down as he checks in, and several ball-attendants are needing lodgings to weather out the storm, and shrewd attendee Leslie Steele (Merle Oberon) targets Logan as a man she can playfully manipulate into sharing a room together- and that’s exactly what she does!

Though the night is a completely innocent affair, Leslie’s cheerful and candid manners have severely affected Logan, and he finds he’s falling in love with her! But before he can act upon his impulses, she leaves, without him even getting her name!

The next day he is visited in his office by an old friend who wants to divorce his wife on the grounds that she’s spent the night in a hotel with some mysterious gentleman. It’s the same hotel LOGAN was at the night before, and after a brief interview, becomes convinced that the lady he spent the night with was none other than this man’s WIFE!

Lots of laughs as the mischievous Leslie gets wind of his misdiagnosis and decides to continue the charade, pretending to be the soon-to-be-divorced mystery woman, as Logan falls deeper and deeper in love with her!!

Though I’ve managed to pick up quite a few of those classic movies we watched on DVD over the years, there are still a lot of them that haven’t been given the digital treatment yet, and it was with great excitement that I was able to obtain a copy of Divorce of Lady X from online store MOVIES UNLIMITED, a place that I remembered ordering VHS copies of some of my Garbo movies from oh so many years ago!

Well, I just finished watching it again, and I’m here to assure you people: The magic is STILL there! I fell in love with it all over again; the show is still so funny and fresh! I’ve always stated that Divorce of Lady X was a very favorite film of mine that everyone should see, and my opinion is forged anew! You MUST see this film!

PS: Though I’ve mentioned it three or four times already, I cannot overstate how adorable Oberon is in this film!!! Every scene she is in just makes you feel good! And Pretty? MAN! I read somewhere that Oberon is part Sri-Lankan, and that would certainly explain the almost exotic features she has. Man, is this woman gorgeous! And when she smiles, you just feel so…happy!

Favorite Garbo Movies Still Unavailable on DVD!

As a fan of Garbo, I was tremendously excited when they released the beautiful Box Set of some of her more famous moves, including my favorites from her, Queen Christina, Mata Hari, and Ninotchka, but it’s now been over 5 years since that set came out, and what I want to know is:

Are they EVER going to get around to remastering and releasing any of her OTHER movies on DVD? For while the first Box Set contains many Garbo classics I love (and introduced me to a few I hadn’t seen before) there are still a LOT of her movies of hers I love that I’ve only ever seen available as VHS tapes! Theses are the ones I saw thru rental shops or via the Late, Late Shows back in the day!

Movies like “As You Desire Me”, “Susan Lenox (Her Fall And Rise) and “The Painted Veil” (is Love in the Time of Cholera a remake of this?) are BIG sentimental favorites of mine, and I don’t care what ANYONE says, “Two Faced Woman” is a HILARIOUS, FUN movie that I’ve always loved and is a MUST HAVE!

Sigh- Looks Like it will be quite a wait. Though there have been recently a few unreleased-on-DVD Garbo movies available on DVD-R thru Amazon’s “Createspace” service, what I’m really crossing fingers for is the authentic, remastered DVD treatment these movies truly deserve! 

Favorite Actresses: Diane Baker

So years ago I was working with this guy that was a real classic movie buff, and we got to talking about our favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies. After realizing I hadn’t seen what he felt to be one of Hitch’s best,he generously lent me his copy of MARNIE to "turn me on to it".

This was that thriller starring Sean “Bond James Bond” Connery and Tippi Hedren as his kelptomaniac fiance…

 A few days later I was discussing the movie with him, and he said "Yeah, and isn't that Tippi Hedren a beauty in this movie?" I interjected by saying, Yeah, she was alright, but HEY, who was that super-fine chick with the black hair?" He paused. "Black Hair?" "You mean Diane Baker?!"

Well, yes, although I didn’t know it at the time, that's exactly who I meant, and after finding out just who she was, I delved deeper into her movies, checking out the incredible "Mirage" with Gregory Peck (another fine Alfred Hitchcock flick, that one!), and even the Walt Disney Movie "The Horse In The Grey Flannel Suit"! Now THAT’S Obsession!

Nowadays Diane is still keeping busy on TV shows, (Yes, that Judge on those Law and Order reruns is Ms. Baker, you betcha!) and I must say she still looks as good as she did then!