#Douglas Fowley

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Bela Lugosi, Douglas Fowley, and Roland Varno in Scared to Death (1946)

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Singin’ in the Rain (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly

January 9th 2023

[kwebtv]

From the Golden Age of Television

Series Premiere

Public Defender - The Case of the Parolee - CBS - March 11, 1954

Crime Drama

Running Time: 30 minutes

Written by Howard J. Green

Produced by

Directed by Erle C. Kenton

Starring

Reed Hadley as Bart Matthew

Chris Drake as Mark Collins

Mary Ellen Kay as Alice Parker

Douglas Fowley as Fred Davis

Fay Roope as Mr. Marshall

John Close as Hamlon

George Lloyd as Bartender

Snub Pollard as Barfly

[randomrichards]

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG:

Girl raises an ape

Who repeats King Kong problems

Thanks to stupid drunks

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One Body Too Many

One Body Too Many

One Body Too Many (1944) starring Jack Haley, Jean Parker, Bela Lugosi One Body Too Many – insurance salesman Jack Haley stumbles onto an eccentric millionaire’s will, and the murder mystery among his relatives. (more…)

[clemsfilmdiary]

Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly)

8/28/22

[loudrats]

Loud Rats Book Club 2023

This year the rats became literate!

We suggested a number of books each month and then voted on one to read (somehow Fish managed to read all 12 of them… wild!). The ones in red are the winners, but there are some other really good books in there.

Hopefully you can find your next favourite read below! :)

January

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

The Butchering Art by Lindsay Fitzharris

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Pirates and Prejudice by Kara Louise

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

February

Adua by Igiaba Scego

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

March

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Humans by Matt Haig

Cane by Jean Toomer

Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (#1 Broken Earth Trilogy)

Young Mungo by Douglas Stewart

April

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrel

Dubliners by James Joyce

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

May

Mary: An Awakening of Terror by Nat Cassidy

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

Where You Come From by Saša Stanišić

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

June

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Our Hideous Progeny by C. E. McGill

Swimming in the dark by Tomasz Jędrowski

Girls like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko

Diary of a Wimpy Kid 17 by Jeff Kinney

Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

July

Kid Youtuber 9: Everything is Fine by Marcus Emerson, Noah Child

Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella

Hit Parade Of Tears by Izumi Suzuki

When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's Book by Naja Marie Aidt

Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes

The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

Mapping the Interior by Stephan Graham Jones

August

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

Small Game by Blair Braverman

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

September

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

October

Linghun by Ai Jiang

Eyes Guts Throat Bones by Moira Fowley-Doyle

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers

The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić

Kindred by Octavia Butler

November

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Life For Sale by Yukio Mishima

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Liberation Day by George Saunders

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

December

Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes by Maurice Leblanc

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

[byneddiedingo]

Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952)

Cast: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell, Cyd Charisse, Douglas Fowley, Rita Moreno. Screenplay: Betty Comden, Adolph Green. Cinemtography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Randall Duell, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Adrienne Fazan. Music: Lennie Hayton, songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Free. 

Egotism is accounted a sin, or at best a character flaw, but what would art, at least since the Renaissance, be without it? Imagine the history of motion pictures without the egotism of John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, or Orson Welles, not to mention countless movie stars. So it comes as a bit of a shock to find David Thomson, in his essay on Singin' in the Rain in Have You Seen ...?, making reference to "[Gene] Kelly's rather frantic ego." But I do know what he means: I've always found the "Broadway Melody/Broadway Rhythm" number overlong and overdone, suggesting Kelly's attempt at being regarded as "serious" dancer, especially in the pas de quatre with Cyd Charisse, her train, and a wind machine. And its ending, with the zoom-in-close of Kelly's face, does seem a bit de trop. Thomson also hints that producer Arthur Freed may have been indulging his ego by loading the film with his and Nacio Herb Brown's catalog of songs, instead of those of better songwriters. Freed, as the head of the legendary "Freed Unit" at MGM, had won a best picture Oscar for another Gene Kelly musical based on a songwriter's catalog, An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), which was wall-to-wall George Gershwin. And even though Singin' in the Rain is a better movie, it might have been nicer if it had songs by Harold Arlen or Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hart. Porter at least gets plagiarized in Donald O'Connor's "Make 'em Laugh" number, the tune for which is virtually identical to that of "Be a Clown," which Porter wrote for the Freed-produced The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948). That said, the Freed-Brown songs are entirely appropriate to the era depicted: They date from such 1929 MGM musicals as The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont) and The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Charles Reisner), exactly the ones parodied in Singin' in the Rain's montage of early movie musicals. My point is that egos are not enough to spoil the wonder that is Singin' in the Rain, widely regarded as one of the greatest movie musicals, and in my opinion just plain one of the great movies. Much credit goes to the expert comedy writing of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and to Harold Rosson's cinematography. Kelly and Stanley Donen wisely did what directors of movie musicals so often fail to do: rely on long takes and full-body shots during dance numbers. As for the performers, no one in the film, and that includes Kelly and O'Connor, ever reached this peak again. Debbie Reynolds was too often betrayed into perkiness, but she is human and appealing here. Jean Hagen stole scenes from everyone and received one of the movie's two Oscar nominations -- the other was to Lennie Hayton for scoring -- but her movie career stalled and she wound up doing TV guest appearances. As for egotism, it pains me to remember that Singin' in the Rain was not nominated for the best picture Oscar winner for 1952. The winner was The Greatest Show on Earth, directed by one of the great egotists, Cecil B. DeMille. Some egotists are geniuses; others are hacks.

[citizenscreen]

Allan Dwan’s ONE MILE FROM HEAVEN, starring Claire Trevor, Sally Blane, Douglas Fowley, Fredi Washington, and Bill Robinson, premiered 85 years ago today (1937)

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Flaxy Martin

For all the great stars Warner Bros. developed, one sometimes wonders if Jack Warner had any eye for talent. Among the actors who slipped through his fingers were Bob Hope, June Allyson and Betty Hutton. He never developed Olivia de Havilland to her fullest potential. Bette Davis only became a star through her own determination, and Humphrey Bogart was pushed through by Hal Wallis. Warner bought Virginia Mayo’s contract from Sam Goldwyn, but it took him nine films to put her into the musicals for which she was best suited. Her first film under contract was Richard L. Bare’s FLAXY MARTIN (1949, TCM, YouTube), and the initial attempt to turn her into a femme fatale just fizzles. She could do good dramatic work with strong directors like William Wyler and Raoul Walsh, but on her own she doesn’t seem to have the resources to carry a dramatic film. Not that FLAXY MARTIN gives her a lot to work with. Zachary Scott is a mob lawyer who doesn’t know his girlfriend (Mayo) is being paid by his boss (Douglas Fowley) to keep him in line. When he finds out a witness who’d alibied one of the gang’s hired guns was paid to lie, he threatens to go to the district attorney, so Mayo helps Fowley frame him for the perjurer’s murder. Most of the cast is hobbled by bad writing, but at least Scott gets some sardonic lines he can work with. Mayo has one line that rings with conviction, talking about singing in a nightclub while men make jokes, but a lot of her other readings sound hollow, and she has one big dramatic moment that’s giggle-worthy.

Bare and cinematographer Carl Guthrie give the film a great, moody look, but with that script it’s like perfuming a corpse. It’s rife with improbabilities and cliches. While trying to kill Scott, hired gun Elisa Cook, Jr. consistently misses him. When he finally can shoot him point blank, he’s out of bullets, so he throws his gun at him. On the way to prison, Scott escapes by jumping from a speeding train. He rolls down a hill rapidly and crashes into a large rock, but only has a few bruises. And he rolls right into the arms of a woman (Dorothy Malone) lonely enough to tend his bruises even when she realizes he’s an escaped convict. This was Malone’s first major dramatic role, and she goes after it with an intensity no bad writing can withstand. Through personalization, she creates a character out of next to nothing. When she looks at Scott with those great, sad eyes of hers, you may wonder if Jack Warner was so besotted with Mayo’s blonde beauty, he couldn’t see that he had a major dramatic actress on his payroll. Maybe that was a problem with Hollywood in general, as it took a bleach job to get Malone the types of roles she deserved.

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Armored Car Robbery (Armoured Car Robbery) (1950) Richard Fleischer

August 18th 2022

[kwebtv]

Character Actor

Douglas Fowley (born Daniel Vincent Fowley, May 30, 1911 – May 21, 1998) Film and television actor in more than 240 films and dozens of television programs, He is probably best remembered for his role as the frustrated movie director Roscoe Dexter in Singin' in the Rain (1952), and for his regular supporting role as Doc Holliday in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. He is the father of rock and roll musician and record producer Kim Fowley.

For several seasons, Fowley played the key supporting role of John H. "Doc" Holliday in the 1955-1961 western television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp after having appeared as Doc Fabrique in the show's premiere season. This role allowed Fowley to demonstrate his flair for comedy and other acting skills as a clever, sharp-witted, sardonic, cynical, alcoholic, poker-playing foil to the square-jawed, milk-drinking, church-going Wyatt Earp (Hugh O'Brian), whom Holiday nicknamed "Deacon" due to his rigid sense of morality. Not at all so encumbered Doc would occasionally take the law into his own hands behind Earp's back to protect his friend from legal action or even death when the marshal was legally or morally ham-strung. Holliday, as played by Fowley, having no problem working around morals or the law, could be either hilarious or cold-blooded.

From 1966 to 1967, Fowley portrayed Andrew Hanks in Pistols 'n' Petticoats,  a CBS sitcom. Hanks was the patriarch in a family of gun-toting women who seemed to have little need for male assistance.

Fowley portrayed retired businessman Robert Redford in Detective School (1979).

In the 1950s, he appeared as himself on NBC's The Donald O'Connor Show. In 1954, he demonstrated his comic appeal when he appeared alongside Gracie Allen in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. He was cast in 1956 as Bob Egan in the "Two-Fisted Saint" episode of the religious anthology series Crossroads. He portrayed a con man in two episodes of the NBC sitcom It's a Great Life. He also guest-starred on Reed Hadley's CBS legal drama The Public Defender. He appeared, too, on the ABC situation comedy The Pride of the Family and on the NBC Western series The Californians and Jefferson Drum. He was cast on two Rod Cameron series, the syndicated City Detective and the Western-themed State Trooper, and in John Bromfield's series, U.S. Marshal. He guest-starred in the David Janssen crime drama Richard Diamond, Private Detective and guest-starred in season two, episode four of the Robert Culp Western Trackdown.

In 1959, Fowley appeared with Frank Ferguson in the episode "A Race for Life" of the CBS Western series The Texan, starring Rory Calhoun.

In 1964, Fowley made a guest appearance on the CBS courtroom drama series Perry Mason playing agent Rubin Cason in "The Case of the Bountiful Beauty". In 1965, he was cast as Sorrowful in episode 83 of the series The Virginian. In 1966, he appeared as "Rufus C. Hoops" in "The Search" season 2, episode 24, of the series "Daniel Boone". Original air date for this episode was March 3, 1966. In 1967, Fowley guest-starred on the short-lived CBS Western Dundee and the Culhane with John Mills.

In 1968, he appeared in episode 273 of My Three Sons as an old pal of Uncle Charley's. He had a role in the syndicated 1959-1960 Western Pony Express in the episode "Showdown at Thirty Mile Ridge". (Wikipedia)

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Mighty Joe Young

Mighty Joe Young (1949), starring Terry Moore, Robert Armstrong On an expedition to Africa, show business promoter Max O’Hara meets Jill Young. She has raised her pet gorilla, Joe, since she was a child. And the promoter wants to use Mighty Joe Young to promote his nightclub. What could possibly go wrong? (more…)

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Singin’ In The Rain (1952) dir. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly