Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

The Oscar winning character actor, star of 1955's Best Picture Marty, died today at 95. His career was so healthy that his IMDb page requires much scrolling through 200+ titles. The prolific filmography obscures the fact that he didn't even get started until this thirties.  Starting late isn't always a drawback when you've got the goods... particular for character actors; you can't have matinee idol looks and sell an everyman schlub like "Marty". Borgnine's career was so enduring that his latest completed role was a starring one: The Man Who Shook The Hand of Vicente Fernandez (2012) just recently debuted on the festival circuit. 

A career that long is bound to have its rough patches, its controversies and divisiveness. Borgnine generated some deserved internet ire seven years back for publicly refusing to see Brokeback Mountain (2005) despite voting on the Oscars. [The Film Experience's position on this has always been that AMPAS members should be required to see all nominees in order to vote on a win in any particular category. Currently you have to for foreign film but most categories do not require that you actually watch the movies.]

Ernest Borgnine bullying Monty Clift in "From Here To Eternity"Borgnine had been very active for a 90something actor. In addition to Vicente Fernandez, he'd done a lot of television, voicework on Spongebob Squarepants and popped up in a memorable cameo in the action comedy Red (2010). But it's his work in the 1950s and 1960s that will be his legacy: McHale's Navy, The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch and two best picture winners From Here to Eternity (1953) and Marty (1955) among them.

Have you ever seen Marty? What role first pops to mind when you think of Borgnine?

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Picnic"

In the Best Shot series we all watch a pre-selected movie and pick what we think of as its best shot.

If watching Picnic (1955) taught me anything it's that you really need to exercize caution. Caution about whose filthy shirts you'll launder, who you'll let kiss you in the car parked by the river, which daughter you'll vicariously live through, which college friend you'll drop in on unannounced and empty-handed, which man you'll drunkenly throw yourself at to tear off his clothing (Rosalind Russell you crazy bitch!), and so on. Above all else Picnic reminded me to use caution before renting DVDs! I had never seen this Best Picture nominee and had only heard tales of its beautiful photography but the version I got was a terrible transfer in *gasp* "Pan and Scan".

In this slinky sexy scene pan and scan robs us of the beautiful lines of Novak and Holden's bodies as they dance romantically around each other.

If that's what you watched I apologize profusely for assigning this movie. But let's talk about Young Beauties, Old Maids, and Hunky Men anyway. The movie demands it...

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'you are an odd one, aren't you?'

Leslie: You are an odd one, aren't you Jett? But I like you.
Jett: I like you too. 

I guess you're about the best looking gal we've seen round here in a long time -- I think the prettiest in I think I've seen... down here. 

Leslie: Why thank you, Jett. That's a very nice compliment.

...And I'm going to tell my husband I met with your approval.

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Juliette or Guilietta?

Have you heard that Juliette Lewis will be starring in a film called The Days of Mary (2013?) loosely based on Federico Fellini's Oscar-winning Nights of Cabiria (1957)? It feels like her first lead role in ages so we hope it actually happens.

poll by twiigs.com

It's now in Reno -- practically Rome's twin ! (kidding) -- and Juliette is a girl looking for love in, we presume, the wrong places. Bad things tend to happen in movies where Juliette is entangled romantically: mass murder (NBK), end of times chaos (Strange Days), thumbsucking (Cape Fear) but this project doesn't feel as shocking / sacrilegious when you remember that Nights of Cabiria has already been reimagined once as Sweet Charity (1969) starring Shirley Maclaine.

Okay, wait, we need to remake reboot reimagine that poll now...

poll by twiigs.com

Have you seen Nights of Cabiria and Sweet Charity? If not, get on that, will ya?

Centennial: Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia's voice heals the blind in "St Louis Blues"Mahalia Jackson was born 100 years ago on this very day in 1911 New Orleans as Mahala Jackson (she added the "i" sometime in the early 1930s). After a troubled childhood she moved to Chicago where her music career began in earnest. Despite never recording any secular music -- she refused to -- international fame hit in the late 1940s and she's been virtually canonized sense. Though she's never had a biopic (why not?) her history is closely tied with the story of Black America. She was part of The Great Migration in the 1930s. She was the first gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall and became famous all over the world. She sang at the March on Washington in 1963 and later at Martin Luther King Jr's funeral. (When she died in 1972, Aretha Franklin returned the favor and sang at hers.)  

As is true with most music icons, there are film connections. Spike Lee's Jungle Fever uses her music prominently and she also appears in archival footage in his documentary Four Little Girls.  Though she wasn't an actress per se, she did appear in films as a singer. You can watch her performance in the musical St Louis Blues (1958) on Netflix Instant Watch currently. (It's a treasure trove of famous African American celebrities: Nat "King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, etcetera). Two-thirds of the way through the film, her voice actually heals a blind man! You have to have a voice like Mahalia's to get away with that even within a spiritually-minded melodrama.

Mahalia's most indelible contribution to cinema came a year later. The Douglas Sirk classic Imitation of Life (1959) halts in its gorgeous colorful tracks to listen to Mahalia's soulful wail to the heavens. "Trouble of the World", indeed.

Her voice is so emotionally acute that even Ice Queen Supreme Lana Turner couldn't help but be visibly shaken by it.