#manchurian candidate on laurence harvey day

[britneyshakespeare]

marlon brando was so goddamn hot

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Angela Lansbury, the irrepressible three-time Oscar nominee and five-time Tony Award winner who solved 12 seasons’ worth of crimes as the novelist/amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher on CBS’ Murder, She Wrote, has died. She was 96.

Lansbury, who received an Emmy nomination for best actress in a drama series for each and every season of Murder, She Wrote — yet never won — died in her sleep at 1:30 a.m. (Tuesday) at her home in Los Angeles, her family announced.

She was five days shy of her birthday.

Lansbury went 0-for-18 in career Emmy noms but did get some love from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who gave her an honorary Oscar in 2013 for her career as “an entertainment icon who has created some of cinema’s most memorable characters, inspiring generations of actors.”

The London-born Lansbury, then 19, received a best supporting actress Oscar nom for her very first film role, as the young maid Nancy in the home of Charles Boyer and his new bride Ingrid Bergman in George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944).

For her third movie, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), she received another nom for playing the lovely singer whose heart is broken by the hedonistic title character.

(Her mother, West End actress Moyna MacGill, played a duchess in the film.)

Lansbury then took a turn toward evil and was rewarded with her final Oscar nom for portraying Laurence Harvey’s manipulative mother in the Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

The actress often played characters much older than herself, and in this case, Harvey was just a few years younger than Lansbury.

Her charismatic performance as the eccentric title character in a 1966 production of Mame vaulted her to Broadway superstardom and resulted in the first of her four Tonys for best actress in a musical.

She followed with wins for playing “the madwoman of Chaillot” in 1969’s Dear World, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman; for starring as the ultimate stage mother Rose in a 1974 revival of Gypsy; for dazzling as the off-the-wall Mrs. Lovett in the original 1979 production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd; and, in 2009, for portraying the clairvoyant Madame Arcati in a revival of the Noël Coward farce Blithe Spirit.

She was still on the road in Blithe Spirit as she approached her 90th birthday, and in December 2018, she was back on the big screen, as the Balloon Lady, in Mary Poppins Returns.

In June, she received yet another Tony, this one for lifetime achievement.

In the early 1980s, Lansbury was not interested in headlining a TV series when she was approached by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link to star in Murder, She Wrote.

The pair earlier had created Ellery Queen, another show about a crime-solving writer, and former All in the Family star Jean Stapleton had already turned them down.

“I couldn’t imagine I would ever want to do television,” Lansbury said in a 1985 interview with The New York Times.

“But the year 1983 rolled around and Broadway was not forthcoming, so I took a part in a miniseries, Gertrude Whitney in Little Gloria, Happy at Last [a dramatization of Gloria Vanderbilt‘s childhood].

“And then [there was] a slew of roles in miniseries, and I began to sense that the television audience was very receptive to me, and I decided I should stop flirting and shut the door or say to my agents, ‘I’m ready to think series.'”

Then 59, Lansbury signed on as the widowed Jessica, a retired English teacher, mystery writer and amateur detective who enjoyed riding her bicycle (she didn’t drive) in the cozy coastal town of Cabot Cove, Maine.

Late in the series, Jessica spent time teaching criminology at a Manhattan university.

Universal Television’s Murder, She Wrote ran from 1984-1996 (plus four telefilms) and was a huge ratings hit on Sunday nights following 60 Minutes.

Both CBS shows appealed to intelligent, older viewers, and Lansbury was the rare woman in the history of television to carry her own series.

The show went 0 for 3 in the Emmy race for outstanding drama series and won just twice in 41 tries overall, according to IMDb.

“Nobody in this town watches Murder, She Wrote,” Lansbury, referring to the TV industry, said in 1991. “Only the public watches.”

The show was ranked in the top 13 in the Nielsen ratings (and as high as No. 4) on Sundays in its first 11 seasons but plummeted to No. 58 when CBS moved it to Thursdays in 1995-96 against NBC’s then-powerful lineup.

The series finale, quite appropriately, was titled “Death by Demographics.”

“What appealed to me about Jessica Fletcher,” she said, “is that I could do what I do best and [play someone I have had] little chance to play — a sincere, down-to-earth woman.

Mostly, I’ve played very spectacular bitches. Jessica has extreme sincerity, compassion, extraordinary intuition. I’m not like her. My imagination runs riot. I’m not a pragmatist. Jessica is.”

During the course of 12 seasons, Jessica solved some 300 murders — and still had time to write more than 30 books!

Angela Brigid Lansbury was born on 16 October 1925 in London to a timber-merchant father and an actress mother, a star of the English stage.

She participated in school plays at Hampstead School for Girls and studied for a year at drama school, passing with honors at the Royal Academy of Music.

With the outbreak of World War II, she, her mother and her younger twin brothers, Bruce and Edgar, moved to the U.S.

(Her father had died when she was 9; her half-sister stayed behind and married actor Peter Ustinov in 1940.)

The blue-eyed Lansbury attended the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York City and graduated in 1942.

Although still in her mid-teens, she auditioned for nightclub appearances.

Her songs and imitations of comic actress Beatrice Lillie won her an offer from the Samovar Club in Montreal. She fibbed about her age and got a six-week engagement.

Her mother, who had wound up in Hollywood at the end of the war, brought her daughter to California.

The 18-year-old was signed by MGM and given the role in Gaslight. She then appeared in National Velvet (1944) with Elizabeth Taylor but spent much of the next several years stuck in small parts at the studio.

“I ended up playing some of the most ridiculous roles at MGM,” she said.

But Lansbury found a home in the theater. She made her Broadway debut in 1957 in the farce Hotel Paradiso, and her first musical came with the 1964 Sondheim production Anyone Can Whistle.

On the big screen, Lansbury also was memorable as Elvis Presley’s mom in Blue Hawaii (1961), as a cold-hearted parent in The World of Henry Orient (1964), as the English witch Eglantine Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and as the teapot Mrs. Potts in the animated Beauty and the Beast (1991).

Warming up for her Murder, She Wrote stint, Lansbury starred in two Agatha Christie projects: as a novelist in Death on the Nile (1978) and as the spinster sleuth Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack’d (1980).

When she was 19, she wed actor Richard Cromwell, then 37, but the marriage lasted less than a year. She later discovered he was gay.

In 1949, she wed British agent and producer Peter Shaw, and they were together until his death in 2003. They had two children, Anthony and Deirdre.

In 1971, after her house burned to the ground in Malibu, the family moved to a farmhouse in Cork, Ireland, and stayed there for a decade. She said that saved her kids from succumbing to drugs.

Her brothers also went on to show business careers, with Edgar working as an art director and producer, and Bruce, who died in February 2017, serving as a producer on Murder, She Wrote; The Wild Wild West; Wonder Woman; and other shows.

In addition to Edgar, Anthony and Deirdre, survivors include another son, David; grandchildren Peter, Katherine and Ian; and five great-grandchildren.

A private family ceremony will be held at a date to be determined.

Duane Byrge contributed to this report.

[brennerrama]

MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“He’s not a Communist. As a matter of fact, he’s a Republican!”

Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate

#TheManchrianCandidate #Frankenheimer #JohnFrankenheimer #GeorgeAxelrod #LaurenceHarvey #Moviequotes #MovieQuoteOfTheDay

[wausaupilot]

Today in History: Today is Tuesday, Oct. 24, the 297th day of 2023. There are 68 days left in the year.

On this date: 1962 "The Manchurian Candidate", directed by John Frankenheimer, starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey, is released

By The Associated Press Today’s Highlight in History: On Oct. 24, 1945, the United Nations officially came into existence as its charter took effect. On this date: In 1537, Jane Seymour, the third wife of England’s King Henry VIII, died 12 days after giving birth to Prince Edward, later King Edward VI. In 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph message was sent by Chief Justice Stephen J.…

[back-and-totheleft]

What I’ve Learned

Oliver Stone, Director, 58, Santa Monica

I'm not a great man. I'm a fuckin' man like you, struggling through the goddamn day.

I believe in this country. But I don't think it belongs to a certain bunch of screwballs who think we ought to dominate the world.

Ali G is the greatest comedian since Groucho Marx.

I've liked different women at different times in my life. I've been attracted to white women. I've been attracted to black women. I've been attracted to Asian women. I've been attracted to various subspecies of women. I can say with gratitude that I've been able to experiment.

I've had a very strange relationship with the feminine. All my life. Far beyond the musings of an interview. I could not describe it and feel comfortable.

Contrary to what some people may think, I'm a good listener.

I've been out of the country for seven of the last fourteen years. When I add up all the films, that's what I get. It gives you an interesting perspective on America. I was in Morocco during the Iraq war, and also in Cuba, Thailand, France, and England. I read the newspapers from back home, and I read the papers where I was. The difference was devastating. I was appalled and saddened by the coverage I saw in America, because the people were really being shielded and insulated from the truth. It was extreme. It was an absolute travesty.

What's the motivation for the war in Iraq? Oil and geopolitics. That's it.

The march of time is stunning. It's been one surprise after another. No one could ever have predicted President Reagan and his success. Never. We knew him as a General Electric actor. No one could have predicted the Bush dynasty, either. Such a strange story. In a sense, it's totally Manchurian Candidate. There's George Bush Sr., pushed around by his strong and stunning wife, a perfect match for the Angela Lansbury character. Barbara Bush is the brains and strength of that family, a true matriarch. Young Bush is like the Laurence Harvey figure. Very scary. Very spooky. Brainwashed. He has a vacancy in his eyes. We've all seen it. I don't know why more people didn't see it in the first place.

I take myself seriously. I respect myself because, frankly, some people invest a lot of energy in disrespecting me.

You don't want to be a director at seven in the morning with an actress who is not a great morning person.

Watching De Palma film Scarface taught me a lot about how to get past the ego, past the self. A director has to be like a baseball catcher. He's got to catch every pitch. He has to call the signals correctly. And he's got to hit. A good catcher has got to hit the ball.

There's so much negativity in the establishment press about what's happened to the young people of the sixties. I can't believe the revisionism: the spoiled American monsters. It's almost like if you were in any way a freethinker at that time, if you behaved freely, you are automatically dismissed today as if you're damaged goods. "Todd So-and-so, who was demonstrating in Berkeley in '68, is now a happily married real estate broker in Putztown, Pennsylvania." It's like, look what he did: He sold out.

I had houses, ranches, women, children--a lot of things. Everything went out in the divorce. It was a typical California divorce, very punitive, which destroys the ability of the income earner to really recoup a life. I got divorced at the peak of my earnings, and I've never again matched that peak.

It's very hard to make money, harder still to hold on to it. I've let a lot of money slip through my hands.

I don't know if you've ever read an economics book. They call it the dismal science for a good reason.

The Korean woman I was lucky enough to meet brings me a sense of proportion and grace. It's a tea ceremony, a grace under pressure; it's effortless. For me, it's one of the greatest pleasures in life. What a pleasure to watch this woman move.

I have three children: two boys, one girl. And they've all been raised under different circumstances. I divorced the mother of the boys, and now I'm with the mother of my youngest child, an eight-year-old girl who's very bright and fiery. She is imbued with a sort of independence, a sense of the Korean-Japanese Asiatic order of things. There is an understanding of a hierarchy in life. There is an inner respect for the higher idea, which I find lacking in American children. In American children, there is no spirituality.

All of men's problems stem from their mothers. The mother is so important.

People have such high expectations. There's no way I can live up to them.

I'm sitting here talking about myself. I'm saying good and bad stuff about me, but it's all self-cherishing. It comes down to this: I'm proud of how I am. I'm proud of having achieved something. I'm proud of being asked to do this. How could I not be?

-Oliver Stone as told to Mike Sager, Esquire, Nov 2004

[findmyrupertfriend]

If anyone is looking for a good movie in the genre of assassins, I recommend the classic from 1972, "Day of the Jackal". Like Quinn, the Jackal could do it all and he had a mysterious background. And he was just as cool. Directed by the great Fred Zinnemann. I especially like the scene where Jackal is discussing the design of the gun with the gun craftsman over Campari. This is one of my favorite all-time movies! (Not to be confused with the remake starring Bruce Willis.)

Thanks, Anon! 

A few more assassin movies for the end of the summer blues/back to school blues:

Grosse Pointe Blank — a dark comedy starring John Cusack and Minnie Driver

The Manchurian Candidate —the original starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey (Do not watch the remake! This movie is a must see!)

Collateral — starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx

[wittypenguin]

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

I’ll unashamedly say right off the bat I love this movie. It’s a shame that there’s a whole heap of baggage around this film, because it’s an excellent Science Fiction thriller of a sort we don’t see anymore. Let’s get all the ridiculous rumour and here-say out of the way first, though.

According to urban legend, Frank Sinatra removed the film from distribution after the John F. Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. Ballocks. While it certainly seems in poor taste at that point to be screening a film dealing with the assassination of a candidate for President of the United States, John Frankenheimer, the director of the film, states in the book John Frankenheimer: A Conversation with Charles Champlin that the film was pulled because of a legal battle between the film’s producer, Mr Sinatra, and the studio over Mr Sinatra's share of the gross sales. In the end, it was re-released to great acclaim in 1988.

Michael Schlesinger — who was responsible for that 1988 reissue — also denies the rumour. According to him, the film wasn’t removed from distribution per se, there was merely a lack of public interest in it by 1963. The idea that any film a year after its release would have the same level of interest in the marketplace — even with two Academy Away nominations (one for Angela Lansbury for Best Supporting Actress, and one for Best Editing) — is not just simply ‘glass half full,’ but downright wishful thinking. The distribution rights were held by the studio for ten years, and in 1972 those rights merely reverted to the film’s production company. Mr Sinatra’s lawyers held on to those rights so that no one would profit from a revenue stream which his lawyers had badly negotiated originally, and sitting on the film prevented it film being released for VHS home rental or ownership. Thus the falsity, “it was pulled from distribution.”

Left to right: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Khigh Dhiegh, James Edwards, Richard LePore, and Tom Lowell in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

For fairly obvious reasons, this film has become a part of JFK/RFK Assassination Conspiracy lore: there’s a Presidential candidate being shot with a high-powered rifle, wielded by a former soldier located somewhere fairly high-up in what can be described as a public place. The book came out in 1958, and cannot possibly have been a blueprint for the assassination of President Kennedy, given he didn’t announce his candidacy until January 2nd of 1960. Even if one was to say ‘oh, but, see, that’s how they worked out how to do it: they read the book!’ beggars belief. First, in order for someone to use it as a template to kill President Kennedy, the entire Secret Service, the FBI, and the CIA had to collectively ignore — for four years — the possibility that someone might use the idea of the novel to kill the President, whose life is the single most important thing they are assigned to protect. Then, someone has to put everything into place in about two years, including bringing in people working with Project MKUltra (which, admittedly, had been sanctioned in 1953, so there is opportunity for that bit… kinda…) to provide a suitable subject to perform the act, re-target them from whatever they were originally programmed for to the President instead, then cover over everything involved with what is the most treasonous plot in the history of the country, keep everyone involved silent for over six decades; all while the files from the FBI Field Office in Media, Pennsylvania were leaked, exposing the COINTELPRO programme; then the publishing of ‘the Pentagon Papers,’ exposing the history of the United States’ political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967; then the ‘Watergate scandal’ and the associated charges of corruption and influence peddling by Vice President Agnew were navigated; then the revelation of…

C’mon…!

Another aspect of the film which caused the conspiracy nutcases to go insane was the fact that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the man who fired the gun at Senator Robert F. Kennedy, appears to have either unwittingly or accidentally hypnotized himself prior to the incident using a series of LPs produced by the Rosicrucians, and then became obsessed with Senator Kennedy’s “sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 [fighter jet] bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians,” as he told David Frost in 1988. The parallel with this film’s plot becomes worse, as Mr Frankenheimer had became a close friend of Senator Kennedy during the making of The Manchurian Candidate so that, in 1968, the Senator asked Mr Frankenheimer to make some commercials for his campaign for the Democratic nomination. On the night Senator Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, it was Mr Frankenheimer who drove him from the Los Angeles Airport to the Ambassador Hotel for the acceptance speech.

There are merely coincidences — profoundly unfortunate ones — and they wouldn’t be seen as anything more than that, save for the involvement of a Kennedy family member in public office. That same reason is why anyone gives a damn about the ‘Chappaquiddick incident,’ other than the fact that one of the ‘great and the good’ was kept from serving any time in jail for their involvement in a death of an innocent person.

I do think that something happened that day in Dallas in addition to what we have thus far been told, but what it was and whom it was done at the behest of, we will never know. It certainly wasn’t something involving this film.

Angela Lansbury [left] and James Gregory [centre and on TV screen] in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Okay… now let’s get to the movie.

It starts as what seems like a standard war movie, set during the Korean War, with a group of men captured, thanks to a double-crossing Korean guide and interpreter, by Russians with helicopters bearing a simple five-pointed star (which indicates China, but could also indicate the Soviet Union…? North Korea…? Texas…?). Then the same voice which at the start of Spartacus, told us that Christianity brought about the fall of Rome, informs us here that Raymond Shaw has a Medal of Honour and has come home to glory; a glory his mother (played by Angela Lansbury) and step-father wish to bask in the reflected warmth of, thus aiding the Senate career of the opportunistic, bombastic McCarthy stand-in (played by James Gregory).

Shaw has a mid-Atlantic accent which works well with Ms Lansbury’s. He’s the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being anyone’s ever known in their entire life.

Some of the side character’s’ performances are super wooden. “Zilkov” especially seems to have no experience beyond Christmas play in grade 4.

During a scene in New York City, the Manchurian scientist is doing origami, a Japanese art of paper-folding. So… Hollywood really doesn’t know the Orient at all.

Mr Frankenheimer had film and two more he directed released the same year: Birdman of Alcatraz (starring Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, and Telly Savalas) and All Fall Down (starring Eva Marie Saint and Warren Beatty). I think it’s safe to say that Mr Frankenheimer didn’t sleep for much of 1962.

Speaking of that year in film, I was surprised at the competition Ms Lansbury had for Best Supporting Actress Oscar. In this film, Ms Lansbury is fantastic: energetic, focused, she’s got great timing, and is entirely believable in every scene. Every single level of her performance is perfect, as she is laser-sharp in knowing what she needs from everyone at every moment.

Originally, I was looking to see who won instead of her, and then who her votes were split with, as typically a performance this good is split with someone equally deserving, meaning someone comes out of left field to win [cf Marisa Tomei]. So, why didn’t Ms Lansbury win?

Because 1962 was an insanely fantastic year for film, no matter the category you sample.

In a year where Marilyn Monroe was found dead (August 5th) and the ‘James Bond’ franchise starts (October 5th – Dr. No); you have dramas like Lawrence of Arabia, The Longest Day, Mutiny on the Bounty, To Kill a Mockingbird, Billy Budd, Days of Wine and Roses, How the West Was Won, The Day of the Triffids, La Jetée (which was the inspiration of 12 Monkeys), Jules and Jim, Lolita, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Miracle Worker, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Sweet Bird of Youth; the musicals Gypsy and State Fair; plus The Manchurian Candidate, Birdman of Alcatraz, and All Fall Down from Mr Frankenheimer. It very much was a transition period from one generation of film making to the next, and the best of everything was on display. I don’t think you could consider 1962 ‘another 1939’ for film, but it was pretty damned close! Needless to say the Oscar Awards the next spring were pretty full; mostly full of Lawrence of Arabia and The Miracle Worker, but many other people as well.

I’d forgotten how much violence there is in this film. Much of it is corralled in opposite ends of the film, but there really is a bunch, and it is very shocking when it arrives. It’s still effective now, too, which makes things so very exciting.

On this disc, there’s a wonderful twenty minute documentary about the sociological factors involved in the creation of the hysteria surrounding “brain washing” and mind control in general from the early-1950s onwards. It really sews together so many disparate and interconnected threads: McCarthyism, fear of both the Soviet and Chinese varieties of Communism, imminent nuclear annihilation (an all-too real threat when this film was released, literally in the middle of the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’), the phobia of ‘too controlling mothers,’ distrust of anyone from another country, the differences between psychoanalysis and actual programming of thoughts, the focus on advertising through the pop culture book The Hidden Persuaders, and the idea that TV was a new insidious way to make ‘soft’ men instead of the ‘tough’ men the USA needed in the nuclear-powered time of the 1960s!

Anyway; all in all, it’s grand, and the times when shots are a bit out of focus, you don’t care, the story is so strong and the acting is grand, and… oh, I wish more films were like this; big, messy, multi-influenced tales of humanity. Thankfully people like Terry Gilliam and Duncan Jones are doing that sort of thing.

★★★★★

[dannyreviews]

Dirk Bogarde vs. Laurence Harvey

About a year ago, I did a post comparing the acting abilities of Faye Dunaway and Jane Fonda, where I favored Dunaway for the spark she brought to her performances and shamed Fonda for being lackluster. This time, it’s two men of the 1950s/60s British cinema that like Dunaway and Fonda did similar roles and were probably in contention for the top films around. I find the cinema that came out of the whole of Britain during this time to be chock full of masterpieces. 95-97% of the leading actors and actresses gave all the gusto in the world to perfect their performances. One of these two men is among the lion’s share of legendary talents, while the other one was not only mediocre in my eyes, but in the eyes of his colleagues. 

I always found Dirk Bogarde to have the Anglo charm that could be served as a side dish to a meal of Shepherds pie and scones. It was that charm that made it possible for him to play different types of personas. He could be devious, shy, tortured, bewildered, regal or a mixture of one or more of these traits. The role that made it official that he would be among the best was Dr. Simon Sparrow in Ralph Thomas’ “Doctor In The House”, where his dry wit was a great contrast to co-star Kenneth More’s extravagant behavior. A year later, he did an about face in Lewis Gilbert’s “Cast A Dark Shadow” playing a heartless black widower. Going into the 60s and 70s, Bogarde’s roles became much more varied. In Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” and Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter”, Bogarde played men with mysterious pasts. His facial and bodily language tantalizes the crowd to the point where they want to know what he is capable of. Basil Drearden’s “Victim” has Bogarde as an empathetic character, where you feel his constant pain that was the consequence of vicious blackmailing. In Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned”, Bogarde’s aristocratic tyrant rules with an iron fist, where you would fear his presence. Fassbinder’s “Despair” shows a once successful businessman on the brink of insanity. Finally, in Jack Clayton’s “Our Mother’s House”, Bogarde plays a deadbeat dad returning into the lives of his 7 children after his estranged wife’s death. The extreme climatic scene is one that fills your entire body with goosebumps. Dirk Bogarde did it all, and left the acting world with people wanting more.

Laurence Harvey was always the dull presence in some of the most fascinating films of the era. Whenever he was on screen, his characters just seem unlikable and his acting was not convincing to say the least. To begin with his Oscar nominated performance in Jack Clayton’s “Room At The Top”, the angry young man persona that made Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Alan Bates, Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney stand out was nowhere to be seen in Harvey. I would have dubbed him "the stoic young man" because there was no legitimate angry characteristic traits evident. Why Harvey was even recognized by AMPAS for such a nothing role is a mystery, but at least it was his only nomination. Harvey’s performances only got more irritating. In Carol Reed’s “The Running Man”, in order to allude capture, Harvey’s Rex puts on an Australian accent that seemed so fake that it was just ridiculous that anyone would believe the facade. John Frankenheimer’s “The Manchurian Candidate” had excellent performances from Angela Lansbury and James Gregory, but Harvey (and Frank Sinatra) weakened things. His staleness may have been appropriate for his hypnotized character but Harvey hammed it up when he played drunk and frustrated. In John Schlesinger’s “Darling” (with Bogarde and Julie Christie in the first photo) Harvey’s lowlife character was empty inside, as if he had no personality. It made him all the more to loathe his presence, but not for the right reasons. His worst performance was in Anthony Harvey’s “A Dandy In Aspic”. The protagonist in any spy film is supposed to be an animated spectacle. Harvey’s Eberlin spoke with a monotone voice that got annoying after 10 minutes and his visible character flaws made you want him to fail. Even sharing scenes with Tom Courtenay and Per Oscarsson couldn’t help alleviate Harvey’s bad acting. Then again, being in the same room as Olivier or Gielgud wouldn't have helped either.

Great acting and a classy personality is always a prerequisite to allow your audience and colleagues to embrace your craft. Dirk Bogarde got a huge “This Is Your Life” like tribute held by BAFTA in 1988 where his co-stars and friends feted a legend who was loved by all. The day before he died, Bogarde spent the day with close friend Lauren Bacall. It just shows that people were still close with him and enjoyed his company even to the end. Harvey’s legacy: being hated by people he once worked with. Robert Stephens said “he was an appalling man and even more unforgivably, an appalling actor. ” Co-stars Sid James, Sarah Miles, Lee Remick, Barbara Stanwyck, Kim Novak and Jane Fonda, were either turned off by his bad acting, his arrogance or both. It’s no shock that by the time of his death in 1973, Harvey was a washed up has-been that alienated everyone (except Elizabeth Taylor and a handful of others) in mainstream Hollywood and Britain with his bad acting, alcoholism and unruliness. 

[topmoviesinclassics]

The Manchurian Candidate - John Frankenheimer

A U.S. Army platoon, captured by Communists during the Korean War, is whisked to Manchuria for three nightmarish days of experimental drug-and-hypnosis-induced "brainwashing." The aftermath transforms one of the captors (decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor) (Laurence Harvey) into an operational assassin with a mission...and with a domineering mother (a menacing Angela Lansbury) who has intensions to promote her henpecked, Joseph McCarthy-like husband's political career. This classic spinetingler, which comes to a stunning--and suspenseful--climax at a political convention at Madison Square Garden, is a stunning cinematic triumph for director John Frankenheimer. With Frank Sinatra as another "brainwashed" officer who realizes that something is very, very wrong... http://dlvr.it/Q2HpVt

[thecraggus]

The Manchurian Candidate (2004) Review

Today, another day which will live in infamy, life imitates art. The Manchurian Candidate (2004) #Unpresidented #Review

A remake of the 1962 Frank Sinatra/ Laurence Harvey classic thriller, Jonathan Demme’s version may substitute The Gulf War for The Korean War and the contentious villainy of a foreign power for the relative safety of pointing the finger at the more anodyne target of a mysterious multinational corporation (after all, in 2017 who would believe the idea of a Russian plot to subvert the will of the…

[topmoviesinclassics]

The Manchurian Candidate - John Frankenheimer

A U.S. Army platoon, captured by Communists during the Korean War, is whisked to Manchuria for three nightmarish days of experimental drug-and-hypnosis-induced "brainwashing." The aftermath transforms one of the captors (decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor) (Laurence Harvey) into an operational assassin with a mission...and with a domineering mother (a menacing Angela Lansbury) who has intensions to promote her henpecked, Joseph McCarthy-like husband's political career. This classic spinetingler, which comes to a stunning--and suspenseful--climax at a political convention at Madison Square Garden, is a stunning cinematic triumph for director John Frankenheimer. With Frank Sinatra as another "brainwashed" officer who realizes that something is very, very wrong... http://dlvr.it/PvBBDn

[topmoviesinclassics]

The Manchurian Candidate - John Frankenheimer

The Manchurian Candidate - John Frankenheimer: A U.S. Army platoon, captured by Communists during the Korean War, is whisked to Manchuria for three nightmarish days of experimental drug-and-hypnosis-induced "brainwashing." The aftermath transforms one of the captors (decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor) (Laurence Harvey) into an operational assassin with a mission...and with a domineering mother (a menacing Angela Lansbury) who has intensions to promote her henpecked, Joseph McCarthy-like husband's political career. This classic spinetingler, which comes to a stunning--and suspenseful--climax at a political convention at Madison Square Garden, is a stunning cinematic triumph for director John Frankenheimer. With Frank Sinatra as another "brainwashed" officer who realizes that something is very, very wrong... http://dlvr.it/N5bxsB