#ernest truex

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[letterboxd-loggd]

Island of Lost Men (1939) Kurt Neumann

March 31st 2024

[gatutor]

Ernest Truex-Una Merkel "Whistling in the dark" 1933, de Elliott Nugent.

[eternal--returned]

Rod Serling ֍ Steve Cochran & Ernest Truex in The Twilight Zone Season 1 Episode 12: What You Need (1959)

You're looking at Mr. Fred Renard, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape - any escape, any way, anything, anybody - to get out of the rut

[of-fear-and-love]

His Girl Friday (1940)

[character-actor-tournament]

Round 2, match 25

Ernest Truex vs Edward Arnold

[howardhawkshollywood]

Porter Hall and Ernest Truex in a screencap from His Girl Friday (1940). Ernie was born in Kansas City and had 134 acting credits from a 1913 short to two 1965 and 66 episodes of Petticoat Junction. He was also in two episodes each of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[citizenscreen]

Rehearsing a scene for HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) at Columbia: Director Howard Hawks, Rosalind Russell, and the extraordinary supporting cast including Porter Hall, Roscoe Karns, Ernest Truex, Frank Jenks, and Regis Toomey.

[ronmerchant]

Edgar Kennedy, Ernest Truex, and Bela Lugosi clown around.

[kwebtv]

From the Golden Age of Television

Our Town - NBC - September 19, 1955

A presentation of "Producers' Showcase" Season 2 Episode 1

Musical

Running Time: 90 minutes

Stars:

Frank Sinatra as The Stage Manager

Eva Marie Saint as Emily Webb

Paul Newman as George Gibbs

Ernest Truex as Dr. Gibbs

Sylvia Field as Mrs. Gibbs

Paul Hartman as Mr. Webb

Peg Hillias as Mrs. Webb

Anthony Sydes as Joe Crowell

Shelley Fabares as Rebecca Gibbs

David Saber as Wally Webb

Carol Veazie as Mrs. Soames

Charlotte Knight as Mrs. Slocumb

Harvey B. Dunn as Mr. McCarthy

[byneddiedingo]

Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)

Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Billy Gilbert. Screenplay: Charles Lederer, based on a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Cinematography: Joseph Walker. Art direction: Lionel Banks. Film editing: Gene Havlick. Music: Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills.

I can never make a list of my ten favorite movies because once I get started I keep remembering the ones that absolutely have to be on the list. But His Girl Friday always claims a place somewhere, higher or lower. It's a movie without which life would be just a little poorer. The play on which it's based, The Front Page, was no slouch to start with. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur crafted the single best portrait of what it might have been like -- according to the accounts of others -- to be a newspaper reporter in the first half of the twentieth century, when there was neither television nor the internet to make one's profession obsolescent. We don't have to believe that it was always like that, but just that occasionally reporters in the big cities had moments like the ones shown in the movie. And then Charles Lederer, with uncredited help from Hecht, Howard Hawks, Morrie Ryskind, and a cast skilled at ad libbing, turned it into a romantic screwball comedy by changing the sex of one of the leads, Hildy Johnson, from male to female. And after lots of actresses who would have been just fine in the part (Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur) turned it down, Hawks cast Rosalind Russell in probably her greatest role. Is there a better matched team than Russell's Hildy and Cary Grant's Walter Burns? We can see both why they got divorced and why they could never be separated. And adding Ralph Bellamy as the patsy was a masterstroke, even though it's essentially the same role he had played three years earlier in The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937): the stuffy guy who loses out to Grant, perhaps because, as Burns observes, "He looks like that guy in the movies, you know ... Ralph Bellamy." The whole thing moves so brilliantly fast that you don't have time to reflect on the film's flaws, which include a racist gag about "pickaninnies" and a deep confusion about whether it's satirizing or valorizing its characters' callous indifference to other human beings -- notably the moment when Hildy sardonically refers to her fellow reporters as "Gentlemen of the press" after their harassment of Mollie Malloy (Helen Mack), but then immediately reverts to get-the-story-at-any-price behavior. What keeps it all skimming swiftly above reality is the astonishing skill of the leads (notice how long some of the takes are to realize how great their timing and command of dialogue was) and a gallery of great character players: Gene Lockhart, Roscoe Karns, John Qualen, and especially the hilarious Billy Gilbert as Joe Pettibone: If you can tear your eyes away from him long enough, watch how hard Grant and Russell are working to keep from cracking up at his performance. Oh, hell, stop whatever you're doing and just go watch it.  

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have His Girl Friday 1940

[gatutor]

Gale Sondergaard-Ernest Truex "Noche en el paraiso" (NIght in paradise) 1946, de Arthur Lubin.

[twilightzonecloseup]

3.21 Kick the Can

Director: Lamont Johnson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

“Maybe the fountain of youth isn't a fountain at all. Maybe it's a way of looking at things--a way of thinking.”

[outoftowninac]

RITZY

1930

Ritzy is a three act comedy by Viva Tattersall and Sidney Toler. The original production was produced by L. Lawrence Weber and staged by Sidney Toler. The play was first known as Dress Parade. 

The play takes place at  the Georgian Hotel in New York City, in the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The stage setting depicted the entire apartment, including bathroom and kitchen. 

The story concerns Edgar Smith, insurance man, who learns that his wife Nancy has inherited $200,000. For a day they spend their new-found wealth and grow into snobs before learning it's all a mistake. Meanwhile Edgar has met rich friends and sold a million dollar policy, so the blow doesn't fall too hard. 

Sidney Toler (1874-1947) is probably best remembered as the actor who played Charlie Chan on screen in 22 films between 1938 and 1946. In 1930, he was married to Vivian Marston. A month after her death in 1943, he married divorcee Viva (nee Vera) Tattersall, a British-born actress and co-author of Ritzy. 

The original cast featured Ernest Truex (as Edgar Smith) and Miriam Hopkins (as his wife, Nancy). Truex later had a prolific film and television career. Hopkins would be nominated for an Oscar in 1936 for playing the title role in Becky Sharp.  The supporting cast includes Sydney Riggs, Josephine Evans, Katherine Renwick, Effie Afton, J.H. Brewer, and John Junior. 

The world premiere of Ritzy was on February 3, 1930 at Nixon’s Apollo Theatre on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Both the stars were recently acting on the London stage, and were welcomed back to the US by the press. The theatre advertised that “You Can Have Dinner at Home This Week” because of their 8:30pm curtain time. The show was billed as “A New Comedy About Swankomania”. 

RITZY & SWANKY

In 1930, the term Ritzy was seemingly everywhere due to Irving Berlin’s hit song “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.  The informal adjective ‘Rtzy’ implies luxury that's a little over the top. It was coined around 1910, inspired by the famously elegant Ritz Hotels that César Ritz opened starting internationally in the late 19th century. In the USA, the play was performed in just two cities: New York and Atlantic City, both of which had Ritz-Carlton Hotels. The New York hotel was demolished in 1951. The Atlantic City Ritz (built in 1921, above) still stands as a condominium. 

The definition of swanky is someone or something that is fancy and stylish and often very expensive. 1913, from the Germanic root ‘swank’ meaning "to swing, turn, toss". Perhaps the notion is of "swinging" the body ostentatiously, similar to swagger.  

The play opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre on February 10, 1930 and ran for 32 performances.  

“As a study of how to spend 200,000 non-existent dollars, its trifling plot (which brewed busily but not so merrily for two hours) hardly needed the services of two players as competent as Mr. Truex and Miss Hopkins, though what it would have done without them is also something of a problem.” – NEW YORK TIMES

After the play closed, there was talk of a tour, but none materialized. Instead, the play was offered for regional production. 

The Broadway production of Ritzy introduced a new way to get theatre tickets: telephone!  No longer would patrons need to que up at the box office or deal with brokers. 

Miriam Hopkins returned to the Great Wooden Way in December - but on celluloid - in the motion picture Fast and Loose playing at the Steel Pier.

By July 1930, Sidney Toler was back at the Atlantic City Apollo, this time acting in David Belasco’s It’s A Wise Child. But that’s another blog!