MAE WEST:'COME UP AND SEE ME SOMETIME'

I recently bought a mae West Collection for $12.00 and watched it for two nights,recalling that I had seen some of them as a child....many will dismiss her and her movies on various grounds, and usually because they have never really seen them or watched them with any intentions or understanding,etc. and it is interesting to see some of the styles, the cars, the lingo, and the sets and effects used.....BUT, also to see some of the actors involved, such as, George Raft,Cary Grant,Randoph Scott,Fuzzy Knight, Jack La Rue, and, of course, W.C.Fields... Mae wrote some of the scripts and things it would seem and she had a pleasant voice and a specific style, full of 'wise cracks' and the music is really an 'ear-opener'....NIGHT AFTER NIGHT has a nice 'fisticuffs' scene with George Raft doing a sort of face slapping scene which I slowed down to watch carefully...and noted how even the mirror reflections were taken into account during the filming....I do this with similar fight scenes to see how they were choreographed,filmed, etc. and we can learn a lot of 'standard' tricks employed, that require timing and agility,etc. I' NO ANGEL is also standard 'circus' fare and the plots of Mae's movies always end up with her getting the right man, that is, winning the man of her choice, a reversal of the 'hero's' winning the heart of the right girl.....Her audacious statements have become,along with WC Field's, quotable ones and assembled recently into some 'philosophy' of sorts that still can amuse and interest moderns whose mouths are full of foul-mouthisms restricted to single 'f' words.....

THE FILMS OF MARLENE DIETRICH

Recntly, I have been watching a 'special' collection of the films of the late MARLENA DIETRICH($12.00) and found that my favorite thus far, is GYPSY EARRINGS with Ray Milland, of 'THE LOST WEEKEND' fame, a movie I saw while in the fifth grade that the lady in the ticket office tried to dissuade me from attending at the time, but to no avail). I saw Marlena in DESTREY RIDES AGAIN on the screen as a child and later the 'in'famous BLUE ANGEL and then in Judgment in Nuremburg and, when in Germany, I purchased some of her records which I still have. Of course, we all fell in love with LILI MARLENE....I even took German in college and can still do a fair imitation of Adolph when called upon.... Anyway, the movies on the screen have a charm and power lacking in TV and other smaller screens...and the power of black and white, to my eyes, will most always surpass 'colorizations' of such......more on Marlena another time...