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Showing results for tags 'Jeff Corey'.
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I'd heard about "Little Big Man" since it was released in 1970, but had never seen it until the past two days. After having seen it through, I can say that it's one of the finest, little-known American films, post-1970, that I'm aware of. It's a magical story, and yes, I truly believe that it was a major inspiration for "Forrest Gump"; I don't see how it could have possibly been otherwise. Dustin Hoffman plays 121-year-old Jack Crabb - the oldest man in the world, and the only white survivor from the Battle of the Little Big Horn, i.e., "Custer's Last Stand." Hoffman's grotesque makeup is mercifully shown for only the small parts of the movie; the rest of it is shown in flashback, and what magical flashback it is, too - Hoffman's "right place at the right time" tendencies were surely an inspiration for "Forrest Gump" - once you see it, you'll notice the same thing. You'll meet General George Custer (nailed by Richard Mulligan) and Wild Bill Hickok (Martin Balsam) along the way. This fairly long film (about 2'20") is well-worth the time to watch, and is a wonderful "yarn" (as Roger Ebert puts it). This has a 96% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it deserves it. It is an *extremely* progressive film, dealing with Native Americans as intelligent, philosophical people, and even introducing what surely must be the first-ever gay native-American role in cinematic history (does anyone know of any earlier than this?) Bigamy plays a large role in one scene, and I suspect the two of these really pissed off some conservative critics, but not any more. This is a fine movie, that may be one of the better movies, post-1970, that you've never heard of - do yourself a favor and watch it. -
Jeff Corey (1914-2002) is another fine character actor who merits his own thread (if I see about five different performances, I'm going to give any of these talented actors and actresses their own thread - they deserve it). For those of you who've heard the term, but have never really heard it defined, a "character actor" is someone whose face you've seen a million times, but can't come up with the person's name - there are a lot more of them, both in Hollywood and on television, than you think, and Jeff Corey was certainly one of them. This is but a small portion of what he has done - just what *I've* personally seen in the past couple of years, which should tell you he's done a *lot* more than this. Actively involved in television in the 1960s (Corey was blacklisted from Hollywood for refusing to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s), he played a major role as Byron Lomax in the somewhat Orwellian, 1963 episode of "The Outer Limits," - "O.B.I.T": It's fitting that Corey played in Hollywood during the seminal year of 1967, as Mr. Hickock (Dick Hickock's father), in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood": In 1969, Corey played High Advisor Plasus in an episode of "Star Trek" clearly influenced by Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" - "The Cloud Minders": Back in Hollywood, he plays a vital role in the 1969 film, "True Grit," as Tom Chaney, committing the murder near the very beginning which is the raison d'être of the entire film: From that same, fertile year for Corey, 1969, he played Sheriff Bledsoe in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid": The following year, 1970, he would play a well-received role as the logical Dr. Miles Talmadge on "Night Gallery's" "The Dead Man":
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Despite "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" getting many bad reviews, I liked it as a child, and I like it as an adult. If nothing else, it is good entertainment (and if you want to term it "escapism," that's okay too). I think many critics, e.g. Roger Ebert, were wrong to pan this film. This film was Sam Elliott's first role in California as anything more than an extra - he had previously acted in New York, but this was his first foray into television or film. Elliott has now had a 36-year-long career - he was only 25 when this film came out, and I didn't recognize him. I didn't like "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" (sung by B.J. Thomas) in 1969, and I don't like it in 2015. I don't think it had anything to do with the movie, and it annoyed me endlessly that it rose to #1 on the American Top 40. The entire bicycle scene was stupid, and should not have been in the movie, which did not need any comic relief. The chemistry between Newman and Redford (in this early version of a reverse "chick flick") was fantastic. This was one of only two movies they starred in together, the other being "The Sting." I remember reading the Mad Magazine satire entitled "Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid."
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*** SPOILERS FOLLOW *** "True Grit" is a continuance of 'Hollywood Classics which I've never before seen.' It begins with a surprise murder by Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), then a distressingly *non*-surprising gathering at the Courthouse, where they're going to be hanging three men that day. Why people have always wished to gather to witness others being violently killed is beyond my capability of understanding. And in case you think our species has evolved since the days of the Wild West: Aug 14, 2014 - "20,000 Watched the Last Public Hanging 78 Years Ago" by Mark Murrmann on motherjones.com Hating human beings, but loving cats and dogs, is perfectly justified, don't you think? Hey, I have an idea! Let's all have a get-together, and push our kids on swings while three men await their deaths! Anyway, daughter Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) is understandably furious at the murder of her father, Frank Ross (John Pickard). Mattie is one of the witnesses to the public hanging, and thinks the cold-hearted judge (who "flips the switch") is *just* the man she needs to try the murderer of her daddy, and it's hard to blame her. Interestingly, Kim Darby was 21-years-old when she portrayed 14-year-old Mattie - she really does have a youthful appearance. Mattie reveals to us that she's from Dardenelle, in Yell County, Arkansas, establishing the setting of "True Grit." Frank Ross (Mattie's dad) was killed in Ft. Smith, just west of where the courthouse is, and one of the westernmost places in all of Arkansas. A pretty telling scene occurs when the Sheriff tells Mattie that Tom Chaney is now in "Indian Territory," which is out of his jurisdiction, and only U.S. Marshals can pursue him there. He names three of them for Mattie: the best tracker, the most merciless (Rooster Cogburn, played by John Wayne), and the straightest - Mattie immediately asks the Sheriff where she can find this "Rooster Cogburn" - she's out for vengeance, plain and simple. I'm very curious why Cogburn wears the eye-patch. This seems to have caught on as a generic "tough guy" symbol, and I wonder if this picture had anything to do with it - I suspect some older, pirate-based movie started it before this. Rrrrrrrrrr there any you can think of? Defense attorney Goudy (I didn't name these people) was played by Alfred Ryder, a character actor who was in many television shows, including "The Man Trap" - the first (non-pilot) episode of "Star Trek." (Darby, by the way, had the lead in the "Star Trek" episode "Miri" as the eponymous character - an important role.) In the same scene, there's a man sitting in the very front row of the courtroom, in what can only be described as a "bit part" - non-speaking, uncredited, and only on camera for maybe thirty seconds total. "True Grit," it turns out, was Wilfred Brimley's very first movie, and this is him - I think (but am not sure) that he's the somewhat stocky, somewhat balding man in the beige leather jacket towards the right of the photo: The only reason I even knew he was in here was because Amazon X-Ray listed him - there is *no way* I would have picked this up on my own. Brimley was personal friends with Robert Duvall - who plays Lucky Ned Pepper - and I strongly suspect that's how Brimley got the part - he was born in 1934, so he would have been only 35 when this was filmed. I'm not convinced this man is Brimley, but he's somewhere in the courtroom: When you see this film, concentrate on the initial, extended, one-on-one conversation between Mattie Ross and the Texas Ranger, Mr. La Boeuf (Glen Campbell). This conversation came across as stilted and poorly directed - essentially, an interplay between two inexperienced actors (which they both were) - nevertheless, this one falls on the Director, Henry Hathaway, and he didn't make it work. It didn't ruin the film, of course, but it was simply not a good scene. A very interesting note: I later read, long after I wrote the preceding sentences, in the "Trivia" section of the IMDB website, that Hathaway hated Campbell's performance, calling it "wooden," and only had him in the movie so he could have a hit song associated with it. If this *isn't* the worst scene in the movie, then that worries me. I. Do. Not. Like. Kim Darby in this role. I hope to God she gets better, because I have a feeling this film is going to hinge on her acting abilities. So far, Darby is every bit as "wooden" as Campbell - maybe more so. However, *this* gentleman, Chen Lee (H.W. Gim) knows how to slice bacon! As of right now, I'm 50 minutes into a 2'10" movie, and two of the three leads can't act worth a damn. I know that Duvall is going to show up soon, and so is Dennis Hopper - right now, I'm praying for a miracle, or at least that these two, along with Wayne, can act "louder" than Campbell and Darby - it must be so in order for this to be a good film: fingers, crossed. The film is half over, and we just met two horse thieves: Emmett Quincy (Jeremy Slate) and Moon Dennis Hopper (thank goodness - btw, when is the last time Dennis Hopper has been spotted in a role that involves being very "off?"): Maybe now, we won't have to watch Wayne attempt to carry the entire movie by himself - Wayne was a good actor, but he wasn't good enough to carry a film when he's handicapped with Campbell and and Darby. Well, five minutes later, so much for either Quincy or Moon possibly saving the film. Now, we have to hope for Pepper (Duvall), who will be along shortly. For those of you into biker flicks, Jeremy Slate played the leader of the gang, "The Born Losers," a sub-par but highly influential movie that was the first of the "Billy Jack" enterprise. For those few of you who saw the film, here's a little memory stimulant to help you remember Slate's role, that of gang leader and lead antagonist, Danny Carmody, Billy Jack's (Tom Laughlin's) nemesis and gadfly: With Quincy and Moon gone, and over halfway into "True Grit," I'm painfully reminded that - just as with all the other art forms including the culinary arts, wine, music, and sports - I don't like "movies" per se; I like *good* movies. And so far, this simply isn't one due to the sub-par acting and the plot, which is thus far moving at a snail's pace. Why have I heard so much about "True Grit" throughout my life? I refuse to look until it's over - I'm just going to try and enjoy it, or at least to glean whatever I can from it. The extended, character-developing dialogue that Darby and Cogburn had, about 1:15 into the film, was *so much better* than the dialogue that Darby and La Boeuf had early on, that maybe it was mostly Glen Campbell, and not as much Darby, who was completely devoid of acting talent. I really enjoyed listening to those two talk with each other, and the viewer really learned quite a bit about Cogburn in the process. This is a *very* imposing gang that Pepper has, and that Cogburn, La Boeuf, and Darby are going to have to face by themselves (Duvall is third from the right): The whole, extended attack scene, complete with rattlesnake pit, made up for a *lot* of the film's first half of ennui. It was exciting, dramatic, well-acted by everyone, and just plain fun to watch. In many ways, it might have been an inspiration for "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It is, by far, the high-point of the film, and enough on its own to make the movie arguably worth watching. Yes, it was a long, painful build-up, but it was one heck of an extended piece of suspense - even La Boeuf died a complete hero, winning over the hearts of all viewers. The near-mythical lawyer "Dagget" ended up being played by John Fielder, another famous character actor (who also played in "Star Trek," as Administer Hengst in "Wolf in the Fold.") He, too, deserves his own thread - he has done so much with his career, including being the voice of Piglet in "Winnie the Pooh." Dagget, to a much lesser degree, was to "True Grit" what "Keyser Söze" was to "The Usual Suspects." How do you not at least "like" a film that ends with such a sweet shot?
