Archive for the ‘Classic Money Movies’ Category

Executive Suite

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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This is an awesome movie. If you have seen and enjoyed Rod Serlings “Patterns” you will love Executive Suite”. This is all about how corporate america works behind the scenes. The fictional Treadway Corporation is full of back stabbers corporate higher ups who are predigious lairs, cheats, drunks and flim flam men willing to do anything they must to beef up the bottom line.

With these people running a business is nothing but a bottom line driven process. People, employees, towns and everything else is expendible tho those in this companies executive suite. Sit and watch while the corporate elite play God with the lives of rank and file blue collar workers, their town, their lives. Look at the class system in America laid bare as lines are clearly drawn in the Executive Suite.

Actually this 1950’s movie shows the Executive Suite in a much more tame light than it is in real life today. The guys in this movie are too sweet and gentle for todays corporate cut throat where human life is not worth anything that can not be translated into a bottom line profit! If I sound cynical to the max its because thats the way life is in the executive suite. Look at the shabby way the executive hero treats his own son interrupting all their family time together because, the corporation comes first even in front of family!

See it all for yourself in Executive Suite!

Cast

  • William Holden as McDonald “Don” Walling
  • Barbara Stanwyck as Julia O. Tredway
  • Fredric March as Loren Phineas Shaw
  • Walter Pidgeon as Frederick Y. Alderson
  • Paul Douglas as J. Walter Dudley
  • Louis Calhern as George Nyle Caswell
  • Dean Jagger as Jesse Q. Grimm
  • June Allyson as Mary Blemond Walling
  • Nina Foch as Erica Martin
  • Shelley Winters as Eva Bardeman

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Kelly’s Heroes

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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A dark comedy about an infantry platoon that goes behind enemy lines to steal gold bars. Their leader is Kelly (a young Clint Eastwood), an ex-officer who lost his commission after a fratricide incident. With Kelly is the reluctant Sergeant (Telly Savalas), a tank commander (Donald Sutherland), and a scheming supply sergeant (played well by Don Rickles).

The humor is good, though dated with Sutherland acting like a “Hippie” throughout the picture – you have to see it to believe it. Surprisingly for a film of this theme, the film production did an incredible job of recreating WWII scenery with numerous authentic vehicles and weapons; jeeps, Sherman tanks, even T-34 tanks modified to look like German Tiger tanks (these were acquired from a Russian source that used them for one of their films, and are very likely the same ones used in “Saving Private Ryan”).

Humor is mixed with action and some dramatic moments. Probably one of the most unusual scenes is midway through the movie when the tank platoon, under command of “Oddball” (Sutherland) attacks a railroad installation occupied by German units. Bullets and cannon shells erupt in all directions with the tanks oblitering the place, all while Oddball’s crews play country-western music through loudspeakers mounted on their tanks.

The film keeps your interest. It’s interesting to note that it was filmed in the ex-Yugoslavia region.

Cast

  • Clint Eastwood as Private Kelly
  • Telly Savalas as Master Sergeant “Big Joe”
  • Don Rickles as Staff Sergeant “Crapgame”
  • Carroll O’Connor as Major General Colt
  • Donald Sutherland as Sergeant “Oddball”
  • Gavin MacLeod as Moriarty
  • Hal Buckley as Captain Maitland
  • Stuart Margolin as Private “Little Joe”
  • Jeff Morris as Private Cowboy
  • Richard Davalos as Private Gutowski
  • Perry Lopez as Private Petuko
  • Tom Troupe as Corporal Job
  • Harry Dean Stanton as Private Willard

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How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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“How to Succeed…” on film is not a total disaster. There are some very good moments in it, such as Rudy Valee hamming it up in “Grand Old Ivy” and Robert Morse doing the same in “Brotherhood of Man” and “I Believe in You”, but some moments in the film are completely uncalled for.
Michelle Lee singing “I Believe in You” as a romantic song towards the end of the Act I absolutley ruined the sardonic, unromantic tone of the show. This scene, while only lasting three minutes, ruins the entire story and concept.

Most of the songs sung by Lee’s Rosemary from the stage play are also cut from the film, ruining her characther, turning her into a sympathetic romantic lead, not a tough as nails broad.

Bud Frump is also given less to do here. His two big numbers are cut, making him more of a straightfoward antagonist than a comic villan.
While Morse, Sammy Smith, Valee and Ruth Kobart are preserved wonderfully on the screen, the rest of the film flops rather badly.

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The Producers

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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With a stroke of genius, the young accountant Gene Wider observed that “a producer (Zero Mostel) can actually make more money with a flop than he does with a profitable one”. Thus unraveled the pursuit of the greenback by Zero Mostel and Gene Wider, the new partner he coaxed into a bold venture.

What to look for are the two faces. Zero Mostel has a versatile look. He can beg (ladykiller), howl at (Gene Wilder) and be as tame as a little kitten (just to calm the hysterical Gene Wilder down) within seconds.

He is cunning and sophisticated, a wolf under sheep’s skin. He is no longer the Fiddler in the Roof, his another stage success. Gene Wider is the good-natured, timid and interesting guy who was nudged along by the persistent producer to join the farce. He is naïve yet meticulous. He has the brains and delivers the lines softly yet powerfully.

These two characters have been copycats for a number of subsequent movies. Yet their performances are not surpassed. Just watch them waiting at the bar celebrating their would-be-disaster play but, alas, the rich people love it! Thus, it is these two people who put magic in the movie and make it a very special piece of art.

Cast

  • Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock
  • Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom
  • Kenneth Mars as Franz Liebkind
  • Lee Meredith as Ulla
  • Estelle Winwood as Hold Me-Touch Me
  • Christopher Hewett as Roger De Bris
  • Andréas Voutsinas as Carmen Ghia
  • Dick Shawn as Lorenzo St. DuBois (L.S.D.)
  • Renée Taylor as Eva Braun

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The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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1948 was an Oscar duel between the British import “Hamlet” by Laurence Olivier (with six nominations) and the American production of “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” by John Huston (with four Oscar bids). Both dramatic pictures were B/W and were heavy favorites to dominate the awards (and did so with seven wins between them).

John Huston deservedly won best director and best screenplay (with the joke that William Shakespeare wasn’t eligible for “Hamlet” that year). The film is a dark one that explores the themes of greed and madness with superb all-around performances, especially by Walter Huston and Humphrey Bogart. By directing his father, a veteran character actor of stage and screen, to the best suporting actor prize, John Huston made Oscar history — it mark the first time that a father and son won Oscars in the same year for the same film.

Inexplicably, Mr. Bogart was not even nominated for best actor in what arguably was his finest performance of his long career — this oversight would contribute to his win three years later in another John Huston production of “The African Queen.” He is mesmerizing as the American who literally and ever so slowly goes insane over his pot of gold.

At the end of the 1948 Oscar awards, “Hamlet” and “The Treasure Of Sierra Madre” were tied with three Oscars each — “Hamlet” would break the tie by winning best picture and giving Mr Olivier his second Oscar win of the evening (to go with his best actor win). Similiar in themes, both films are worth seeing and the viewer can decide which they prefer more.

Cast

  • Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs
  • Walter Huston as Howard
  • Tim Holt as Bob Curtin
  • Bruce Bennett as James Cody
  • Barton MacLane as Pat McCormick
  • Alfonso Bedoya as Gold Hat
  • Arturo Soto Rangel as El Presidente
  • Manuel Dondé as El Jefe
  • José Torvay as Pablo
  • Margarito Luna as Pancho

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It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a 1963 American comedy film directed by Stanley Kramer about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 of stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers. The ensemble comedy premiered on November 7, 1963.

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Although well known for serious films such as Inherit the Wind and Judgment at Nuremberg (both starring Spencer Tracy), Kramer set out to make the ultimate comedy film with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. At more than three hours in its original roadshow version, including overture, intermission and exit music, the result is certainly one of the longest.

Filmed in Ultra Panavision 70 and presented in Cinerama (becoming one of the first Cinerama films originated with one camera), it also had an all-star cast, with dozens of major comedy stars from all eras of cinema making appearances in the film.

The film followed a Hollywood trend in the 1960s of producing “epic” films as a way of wooing audiences away from television and back to movie theaters. Television had sapped the regular movie going audience and box-office revenues were dropping, so the major studios experimented with a number of gimmicks to attract audiences, including widescreen films.

The title was taken from Thomas Middleton’s 1605 comedy A Mad World, My Masters. Kramer considered adding a fifth “mad” to the title before deciding that it would be redundant, but noted in interviews that he later regretted it.

The film’s theme music was written by Ernest Gold with lyrics by Mack David.

In the 1970s, ABC broadcast the film on New Year’s Eve. The last reported showing of the film on major network television was on May 16, 1978. The movie aired on December 30, 2008 on the Retroplex network.

Cast

  • Edie Adams as Monica Crump, wife of Melville Crump
  • Milton Berle as edible seaweed company owner J. Russell Finch
  • Sid Caesar as dentist Melville Crump (a role originally meant for Ernie Kovacs before his death in a car accident)
  • Buddy Hackett as comedy writer Benjy Benjamin
  • Ethel Merman as Mrs. Marcus, mother-in-law of J. Russell Finch and a very cranky woman
  • Dorothy Provine as Emeline Marcus-Finch, wife of J. Russell Finch
  • Mickey Rooney as comedy writer Dingy ‘Ding’ Bell
  • Dick Shawn as Sylvester Marcus, Mrs. Marcus’ son and Emeline’s brother
  • Phil Silvers as the out-of-work piano player Otto Meyer
  • Terry-Thomas as Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne
  • Spencer Tracy as Captain C. G. Culpeper
  • Jonathan Winters as truck driver Lennie Pike

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Ocean’s Eleven

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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Ocean’s Eleven (or Ocean’s 11) is a 1960 heist film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring five Rat Packers: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.

Centered around a series of Las Vegas casino robberies, the film’s other stars included Angie Dickinson, Cesar Romero, Richard Conte, Akim Tamiroff, Henry Silva, Ilka Chase, Norman Fell, Harry Wilson, and Buddy Lester, as well as cameo appearances by Shirley MacLaine, Red Skelton, and George Raft.

A remake, directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts (among others) appeared in 2001.

Filming

Peter Lawford was first told of the basic story of the film by director Gilbert Kay who had heard the idea from a gas station attendant. Lawford evenutally bought the rights in 1958 imagining William Holden in the lead. Sinatra became interested in the idea and a variety of different writers worked on the project. Shot on location in Las Vegas, “Ocean’s Eleven” is considered to be the first of the Rat Pack films, but it is not the first in which its members appear together. This film formed a framework for subsequent vehicles tailored around Sinatra, Martin and Davis (Sergeants 3, 4 For Texas and Robin and the 7 Hoods).

Shot during the day and the wee hours of the morning on and around the Las Vegas strip, Frank Sinatra not only filmed his scenes in “Ocean’s” but also a cameo appearance in the film Pepe along with performing on stage during the evenings at The Sands hotel. Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop joined him at the Sands on stage during filming. During the crime film’s iconic closing shot, the Sands marquee can be seen in the background featuring the performers’ names.

Influences

While the concept of a casino-heist was used in the more serious film-noir’s Five Against the House and Bob le Flambeur, the idea of a Las Vegas-related heist during a New Year’s Eve celebration was seen in the equally grim Guns, Girls and Gangsters in 1958. An unofficial companion to Ocean’s 11, released in the same year, was Seven Thieves, which although set in Monte-Carlo follows the same plot as well.

Popular culture

Oft referenced over the years, Ocean’s 11 has become hailed as the definitive outing for The Rat Pack and one of star Frank Sinatra’s most popular films. The iconic image of the main players was emulated by Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs (1992) while a remake starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon signalled the start of a lucrative franchise for the actors. Two sequels to the remake were made, Ocean’s Twelve in 2004 and Ocean’s Thirteen in 2007, the latter referencing the original Danny Ocean, Frank Sinatra, in the plot and featuring one of his songs, This Town.

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The Sting

Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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The Sting is a 1973 caper film set in September 1936 and revolving around a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss (Robert Shaw). The story, created by screenwriter David S. Ward, was inspired by some real-life con games perpetrated by the brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. However, in the 1951 Orson Welles radio show, The Third Man, in an episode airing in November titled “Horse Play”, the plot is very much the same, along with many similar details, so the actual genesis of the idea may be in question. The movie was directed by George Roy Hill, who also directed Newman and Redford in the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The title phrase refers to the moment when a con artist finishes the “play” and takes the mark’s money. (Today the expression is mostly used in the context of law enforcement sting operations.) If the con game is successful, the mark does not realize he has been “taken” (cheated), at least not until the con men are long gone.

Info

  • Plans were made for a prequel to The Sting. The film was to be based on the early days of Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). His mentor was to be the infamous 19th century confidence man Soapy Smith, known as “the king of the frontier con men.” Plans were scrapped after the failure of the sequel, starring Jackie Gleason.
  • Harold Gould’s character, “Kid Twist,” shared that nickname with (though apparently not the profession of) at least two different mob hit men, Max Zwerbach and Abe Reles.
  • At the beginning of the film, the Universal Pictures logo from 1936 (the glass Art Deco globe with the words “A UNIVERSAL PICTURE”) is used instead of the contemporary version to establish the film’s time setting.
  • In 1974 The Big Con author David Maurer filed a $10 million dollar lawsuit claiming at least part of the film’s story had been taken from his book. The matter was resolved out of court in 1976.
  • The movie was filmed on the backlot of Universal Studios.
  • Robert Weverka later wrote a novelization of The Sting.

Cast

  • Paul Newman: Henry “Shaw” Gondorff
  • Robert Redford: Johnny “Kelly” Hooker
  • Robert Shaw: Doyle Lonnegan
  • Charles Durning: Lt. William Snyder
  • Ray Walston: J.J. Singleton
  • Eileen Brennan: Billie
  • Harold Gould: Kid Twist
  • John Heffernan: Eddie Niles
  • Dana Elcar: FBI Agent Polk, aka “Hickey”
  • James Sloyan: Mottola
  • Larry D. Mann: Mr. Clemens
  • Sally Kirkland: Crystal (“Hooker’s hooker”)
  • Jack Kehoe: Joe Erie

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