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The terrific 1950 film 'Caged' with Eleanor Parker and Hope Emerson will be aired. Boy, was this film a hoot to watch, with a pair of incredible performances by the two aforementioned 'Ladies'.
(For the Straights out there...it's a 'Women in Prison' film you may want to tune in to and watch.)
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Posted: |
Jun 11, 2007 - 4:59 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....And it has a great score by Max Steiner.....
......And it has Eleanor Parker, one of my favorites---and yet with 3 Oscar Actress nominations (including this one), and above-the-title co-star appearances with nearly all the leading men from the Golden Age including, Bogart, Gable, Douglas, Ford, Heston, Reagan, Taylor, Garfield, etc---is probably the most-publicly-forgotten star from this period.
Incidentally, CAGED will be appearing on DVD on June 26 from Warner Home Video, on a boxed release called CAMP CLASSICS 2: WOMEN IN PERIL, also including THE BIG CUBE, with Lana Turner, and TROG, with Joan Crawford.
CAGED is a fine film and hardly deserves this kind of ignominious release, but I guess we're lucky to have it at all.
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And it has a great score by Max Steiner.
I agree. I heard tapes of the Steiner Society release of this score and found music there that didn't make it into the film, mostly some spooky cello solos.
Anybody have the tapes from The Steiner Society that can make additional comment?
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The terrific 1950 film 'Caged' with Eleanor Parker and Hope Emerson will be aired. Boy, was this film a hoot to watch, with a pair of incredible performances by the two aforementioned 'Ladies'.
(For the Straights out there...it's a 'Women in Prison' film you may want to tune in to and watch.)
I enjoyed the scenery-chewing in this a lot!
Eleanor Parker's son appeared at a screening and relayed some compelling info, which I will relay below, but
****BEWARE OF SLIGHT SPOILERS****
1) They put belladonna drops in the eyes of the actress who is shown to have just come out of solitary, so that her pupils would be dilated.
2) The stuff they used to put the kitten to sleep worked too well... (Brrr.)
3) Hope Emerson was just the nicest lady you could ask to meet.
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Posted: |
Jun 11, 2007 - 7:33 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....Hope Emerson was just the nicest lady you could ask to meet.....
Hope Emerson was another of those wonderful, wonderful character performers of the Golden Age. She always struck me as someone much like Marjorie Main---except even a bit more gruff---but always with a heart of gold.
Other performances which I remember well are those in ADAM'S RIB, with Tracy and Hepburn, and one of my favorites, William Wellman's WESTWARD THE WOMEN, a major high-budget period western MGM film from 1951 which is ripe for rediscovery. It's an exciting, and often touching, story of a large group of mail-order brides who make a harrowing trek westward to meet, marry, and settle the US west with the intended husbands they've never met. Emerson is, as always, a standout.
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.....Hope Emerson was just the nicest lady you could ask to meet.....
Hope Emerson was another of those wonderful, wonderful character performers of the Golden Age. She always struck me as someone much like Marjorie Main---except even a bit more gruff---but always with a heart of gold.
Other performances which I remember well are those in ADAM'S RIB, with Tracy and Hepburn, and one of my favorites, William Wellman's WESTWARD THE WOMEN, a major high-budget period western MGM film from 1951 which is ripe for rediscovery. It's an exciting, and often touching, story of a large group of mail-order brides who make a harrowing trek westward to meet, marry, and settle the US west with the intended husbands they've never met. Emerson is, as always, a standout.
Hi Manderley. I rushed home from work in order to catch this film - braving Grizzly and Cougar attacks! I remember Hope Emerson in only one other film, the aforementioned 'Adam's Rib' with Tracy and Hepburn - she was so funny in the courtroom in that film, something I didn't expect. Yet in 'CAGED', she's enough to give a little kid bad dreams for a lifetime.
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And it has a great score by Max Steiner.
I never noticed the music before Ray. I'll certainly notice it tonight, thanks!
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I enjoyed the scenery-chewing in this a lot!
Eleanor Parker's son appeared at a screening and relayed some compelling info, which I will relay below, but
****BEWARE OF SLIGHT SPOILERS****
1) They put belladonna drops in the eyes of the actress who is shown to have just come out of solitary, so that her pupils would be dilated.
2) The stuff they used to put the kitten to sleep worked too well... (Brrr.)
3) Hope Emerson was just the nicest lady you could ask to meet.
Thanks DavidinBerkeley! I didn't even know she had a son. (by whom?) and, where did you meet him?
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Posted: |
Jun 12, 2007 - 1:32 AM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....Thanks DavidinBerkeley! I didn't even know she had a son. (by whom?) and, where did you meet him?.....
I believe the son davidinberkeley is speaking of is Paul Clemens, Parker's son by her 3rd husband, Paul Clemens, who was, I think, a well-known portrait artist of the '50s-'60s period.
The son is very supportive of his mother's career and has spoken on her behalf at various times. She apparently lives in personally busy, but publicly quiet, seclusion in Palm Springs with her 4th husband (since the mid'60s), Raymond Hirsch.
She also has 3 children by her 2nd husband, producer Bert Friedlob, at least several of which were girls, and all well into their fifties, having been born between the mid-'40s and early-'50s.
I once read somewhere that she, at one time, had learned braille, and was translating books into braille for the blind, in her retirement.
Though she was still making appearances in TV projects like HOTEL and MURDER, SHE WROTE in the 1980s, last thing I saw her in was a very obscure TV movie called DEAD ON THE MONEY, in 1991. She looked spectacular, with a very high-fashion style which she carried off with panache. That was 16 years ago, and she was born in 1922, so she would now be about 85.
One of our filmmusic friends, who unfortunately doesn't post on the internet, tells me that when he was a youngster, Eleanor Parker was his babysitter (in Ohio) before she moved onto the Hollywood scene. I shoulda' been so lucky!!!
There is an interesting book by Doug McClelland, not really a biography---actually billed as a Bio-Bibliography and Filmography---called, ELEANOR PARKER: WOMAN OF A THOUSAND FACES, which was published by Scarecrow Press in 1989. The title refers to the belief that Parker did so many different kinds of roles, and fit into them so completely, that she was never separated from them by her audience, and therefore was never recognizable as a personality away from her films. I also think that she was, apart from the studio press plants, very shy and wary of personal interviews and publicity. That, in the end, is never a good thing if you want to sustain a career.
I'm sorry to say that one day I will log onto the internet and read news of her death, and that will make me very sad. Beyond her "big" dramatic performances, she made quite a number of "entertainment" films which I've always loved, including THE WOMAN IN WHITE, ESCAPE ME NEVER, THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE, VALLEY OF THE KINGS, MANY RIVERS TO CROSS, THE KING AND FOUR QUEENS, THE NAKED JUNGLE, INTERRUPTED MELODY, and SCARAMOUCHE.
It might also be noted that her films were the recipient of wonderful scores by the likes of MIKLOS ROZSA, VICTOR YOUNG, HUGO FRIEDHOFER, MAX STEINER, ALEX NORTH, and ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD, among many others.
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There was a fair amount of music recorded for CAGED that was dialed-out in the final mix. Most notably was the Main Title. In the film, you get the WB fanfare and a few bars of the prison motif, then it fades out to the blare of the paddy wagon siren. The original cue plays all the way through the unloading of the "new fish".
One of the things that always strikes me when I see CAGED is how natural and pretty Jan Sterling was. After this she turned all pasty and made-up.
Hi Ray. Where'd you find this poster art-work? I greatly enjoyed the film again and with Davidinberkeley's 'spoilers', I noticed NEW elements which I hadn't known before. The dead kitten was not acting... and the woman who came out of solitary (her eyes WERE quite strange looking - like glass eyes). WHAT A TERRIFIC SUPPORTING CAST too! I kind of wonder just why/how all those women signed on to this film? I suppose most of them weren't big stars, but there was Jane Darwell as a prison matron too.
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I enjoyed the scenery-chewing in this a lot!
Eleanor Parker's son appeared at a screening and relayed some compelling info, which I will relay below, but
****BEWARE OF SLIGHT SPOILERS****
1) They put belladonna drops in the eyes of the actress who is shown to have just come out of solitary, so that her pupils would be dilated.
2) The stuff they used to put the kitten to sleep worked too well... (Brrr.)
3) Hope Emerson was just the nicest lady you could ask to meet.
I laughed out loud at one particular line of dialogue: When Hope Emerson is showing off her 'feminine' wardrobe and bragging to the inmates that her boyfriend was outside waiting for her in his new car. And 'Kitty' says to her: 'It must be a truck'.
And how about that line that was uttered once by the police to the women getting out of the paddy wagon - and uttered by the matrons of the prison 3 times in the course of the film: "OK, LINE UP YOU TRAMPS!"
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Thanks DavidinBerkeley! I didn't even know she had a son. (by whom?) and, where did you meet him?
I only know that he was a nice-looking man who read from a letter she'd given him. He was determined to finish reading it to the audience and resisted ending finishing it prematurely (they were rushing him so the movie could start).
It was a screening at the DGA, and the person doing the introducing was a woman who told us that they were showing CAGED because it was an example of camp movie that lesbians have in their history. As I was trying to recall what the screening was for, I realized that this last recollection makes me believe it was an OUTFEST screening.
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A little-more cleaned up and reduced-to-one-hour version of the movie was done for radio on SCREEN DIRECTORS PLAYHOUSE.
The leading lesbian (the powerful woman prisoner) was played by the wonderful Eleanor Audley (voice of Maleficent in SLEEPING BEAUTY and the stepmother in CINDERELLA, and the mother-in-law on GREEN ACRES). She had too few lines in it, darnit! Hope Emerson, played her original role.
I could possibly dig it up and post it for download (public domain) if someone approaches, takes off his cowboy hat and says, "Shucks, ma'am, I'd be right-obliged if you was to put that ol' show up fer me!" Just let me know.
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I decided to post it anyway.
Several versions, including HQ ones, are available here for free. Get them while they are up!
http://www.archive.org/details/ScreenDirectorsPlayhouse
BTW, no Steiner music in this version, but it does have some of those great camp lines like, "Another one of you will be just that much more velvet to me!"
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I decided to post it anyway.
Several versions, including HQ ones, are available here for free. Get them while they are up!
http://www.archive.org/details/ScreenDirectorsPlayhouse
BTW, no Steiner music in this version, but it does have some of those great camp lines like, "Another one of you will be just that much more velvet to me!"
SHUCKS, MA'AM, THANKS FOR PUTTING OUT FER ME! Well, putting it up fer me, and the rest of us Cow-Pokes.
(I just finished watching 'Suddenly, Last Summer' on TCM and there's no way I'm sitting through 'Reflections in a Golden Eye' a second time. I'm gonna give this a listen. Very familiar with Ms.Audley and her famous voice.)
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Posted: |
Jun 14, 2007 - 3:25 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....Eleanor Audley was not in CAGED. Kitty Stark was played by Betty Garde. One of Garde's other memorable roles was as the Kramden's maid on THE HONEYMOONERS. Betty always reminded me of a latter day Louise Carver!!
If you were referring to the Vice Queen, Elvira Powell, she was played by Lee Patrick - best known as Sam Spade's gal Friday Effie in THE MALTESE FALCON (and, by the way, in THE BLACK BIRD too!).....
Hi Mr. Ray.....
I don't know how old you are, but I suspect you are closer to my age than not and so, at least in my case, I find I sometimes don't read things as carefully as I should. 
Davidinberkeley's reference to Eleanor Audley was in relation to a RADIO performance of CAGED on the old "Screen Director's Playhouse", not the movie (though she'd probably have been good in that, too!)
I've always thought that one of the major differences between the memorability of the stars of yesterday and the stars of today is the voice. Once sound arrived in the movies, and once radio took off, stars were prized for their unique and memorable voices, phrasing, and general line delivery. Think Orson Welles here. Or Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Cagney, Gable, Hepburn (both), Bogart, Taylor (both), right down to the supporting players, Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride, Veda Ann Borg, Walter Brennan, Hugh Herbert, Gladys George.....and Eleanor Audley, and so many more, all of whom you'd recognize if you were blindfolded. Heck, I'd even recognize Vera Ralston's voice blindfolded! 
The list goes on and on. Perhaps it's so because more people---audiences and producers---actually LISTENED to voices then, and made it an important part of their requirements.
Frankly, without a face attached, I doubt if I could tell you whether it was Tom Hanks speaking, or Robert Downey, Jr.
Is this why we don't have many impressionists left, and when we do see one they are still doing Cagney or Cary Grant?
There was once an old coffee table photo book called, THEY HAD FACES THEN. I'd add that "They Had Voices Then", too. But, of course, this was part of the "star selection" process at work, they were "selected" for their looks and their voices (and often not for their acting ability).
Heavens!....I've forgotten June Allyson, with a voice so memorable you KNOW it had to be one of the key elements of her major stardom!
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