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Post by topbilled on May 16, 2023 0:07:44 GMT
There are still a few more releases for RKO...six in 1958 and two in 1959. But those last two were released by other studios, having been auctioned off when Desilu took over the studio for television production. But yeah, it's a sad end for a once glorious motion picture company.
When I go back and do 1930 to 1939, you will see how much more prolific the studio was in its earliest days. Looking forward to it. It's amazing what damage Howard Hughes' personal insecurities and idiosyncrasies did to hasten the demise. When I was reading up on that era of RKO, I was surprised to learn how many times RKO had been sued due to decisions that Howard Hughes made. They lost a lot of those lawsuits. Either he didn't seem to care, or he just felt like he could ignore all that, offload the company and move on...but after he finally relinquished control of RKO, it was in tatters.
To be fair, he did turn out some interesting pictures during those years (1948 to 1955)...but I think he was better as an indy producer, not an executive in charge of a whole studio.
Another thing that happened is he led the charge to ferret out the so-called "commies" in Hollywood, so he was firing people that he suspected of having leftist leanings. Some of those people were members of the communist party, but many of them were caught in the crossfire, and the studio's workflow and business operations became collateral damage.
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Post by Swithin on May 16, 2023 22:51:34 GMT
I was the loveliest woman of 1957, yet I am not on this list! My friend the Tabanga is on the list, and that cheap looking bird, but not a class act like me! I take some solace in the fact that the devil didn't make it, either, and he was in Roger Corman's best movie!
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Post by topbilled on May 17, 2023 0:00:29 GMT
What movie is that?
I haven't been doing American International Pictures...is that an AIP film?
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Post by Swithin on May 17, 2023 0:50:08 GMT
What movie is that?
I haven't been doing American International Pictures...is that an AIP film? Yes, both that lovely lady and the devil are in AIP films: Voodoo Woman for the former; The Undead for the latter.
Plenty of old favorites on your 1957 list, though. The Man Who Turned to Stone, an interesting take on the search for immortality; Zombies of Mora Tau, which offers an ethical approach to recovering sunken treasure; Edgar Ulmer's The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, which encouraged one of Andrew Sarris' most amusing comments in The American Cinema; The Incredible Shrinking Man, one of the great films depicting the mystical experience; She Devil, a film in which two perhaps gay doctors inject a woman with a serum that cures her tuberculosis and enables her to will her hair color to change from brunette to blond; All Mine to Give, which caused the only stir in my grade school, because all the kids went home crying when they showed it; and many other favorites, including The Pajama Game and Witness for the Prosecution.
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Post by Andrea Doria on May 17, 2023 13:29:27 GMT
They made a movie about a little orphaned boy who had to give his brothers and sisters away? You got to watch movies in grade school?
Now I'm crying.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 17, 2023 14:45:37 GMT
They made a movie about a little orphaned boy who had to give his brothers and sisters away? You got to watch movies in grade school?
Now I'm crying. The two movies I remember seeing in school were "The Grapes of Wrath" shown to us by a self-described-socialist teacher and our advanced English lit class went to see "Ordinary People" after reading the book, which felt like a big deal at the time.
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Post by Swithin on May 17, 2023 14:54:19 GMT
They made a movie about a little orphaned boy who had to give his brothers and sisters away? You got to watch movies in grade school?
Now I'm crying. In grade school (meaning through grade 6, so ages approximately from 6-11), they showed a film a month in the auditorium. Some odd choices: A Star Is Born (Judy Garland) certainly didn't seem like a film for kids, but they showed it. Others I remember are Gulliver's Travels, and The Red Pony (which I didn't see). I guess they showed All Mine to Give because it featured kids and pioneering, but they didn't count on the response. How could little kids not respond that way at the end, when the boy has to give away his little brothers and sisters, on Christmas Eve, then go trekking off alone in the snow?
They would occasionally show us a documentary short during our weekly assemblies (boys had to war white shirts and red ties; girls had to wear "middy" blouses). One documentary short I remember was a film about Yaws, produced (as I recall) by the United Nations. It showed a lot of people in North Africa with the disease, which we had never heard of. (Of course after the film, kids said to each other, "You'll get Yaws!)
The school was a New York City public school in the Bronx. Each weekly assembly (Wednesday, I think it was) opened with a teacher reading a passage from the Bible. Many (if not most) of the kids were Jewish, and it was always an Old Testament passage. Appropriately, the teacher who read the weekly passage was Mrs. Moses!
The school produced musicals each year. When I was in first grade (age 6), I was in the chorus of Hansel and Gretel. But the real thrill for me was at the age of 11, when I was in the school production of Carousel, as a sailor and fisherman, so in all the choruses. I can sing those songs today! I think that was an enlightened choice for 10 and 11 year-olds. Carousel is not a light comedy.
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