A few days late, but Rest in Peace, Farley Granger, 1925-2011, best known for his parts in a pair of Hitchcock favorites, Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951). Granger is also in the cast of the next movie I plan to buy, a Dana Andrews led World War II film called The Purple Heart (1944). I'd seen most of this one on Fox Movie Channel a couple of year ago on Memorial Day but I just couldn't remember the name. You can catch Farley Granger on TCM this coming Friday morning at 6:00 am EST in Small Town Girl (1953) opposite Jane Powell.
If you'd like more about Farley Granger a recent Classic Links post on K.C.'s Classic Movies site includes excellent coverage of some of the obituaries that have been posted online in recent days.
I unfortunately don't have a slew of Farley Granger collectibles to show off like I did recently at the passings of Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Russell, as most of the items I handle were issued before his career really got rolling, but I did have the one neat card to share up above, a 1954 Klene gum card issued out of Amsterdam.
And yes, while it seems so many old-time stars have left us recently, Jennifer Garlen, the National Classic Movies Examiner, reminds us that Many Classic Movie Stars Are Still Alive in her latest post.
One of the big boys on that list is Mickey Rooney, the subject of a recent tweet by Carley of The Kitty Packard Pictorial which left me thinking, Mickey Rooney has actually appeared on film in ten different decades now! That is absolutely amazing!
And I'm not going to let that Rooney reference slip by without taking the opportunity to mention some sales items. I'm about halfway through the massive stack of 1930's-60's Mickey Rooney press photos that I've been auctioning in recent weeks after listing another 19 at auction on eBay earlier this evening. If you shop with me you might have noticed I've been handling more stills and vintage photos lately (big lots arriving soon featuring Spencer Tracy and Robert Young) but I am still listing a lot of vintage cards and other movie ephemera as well. I try to list new items on eBay 4-5 nights per week and at the same time I've grown the Immortal Ephemera Store to almost 4,000 individual listings now, including well over 500 that you won't find in my eBay Store.
Thank you to Patricia at Caftan Woman for tagging me with the Stylish Blogger Award. I've gathered a few of these awards before and wind up feeling very guilty about not participating, but this post seemed a nice way to make mention of this one and express my gratitude for being chosen. Patricia actually tagged me at my other site, Warren-William.com, but I haven't posted over there in several weeks so I chose to mention it here instead. The recipient of this award has to name seven random things about themselves, so let's see, I'll try to keep it somewhat random yet relevant to our world here:
1) While I've been a collectibles dealer most of my life I didn't actually touch movie collectibles of any kind until 2001 or '02 at the earliest. I was a sports collectibles guy and until I discovered eBay I never really had any exposure to the world of movie collectibles. Within a year or two I made what now appears to be the wise decision of selling off all of the sports stuff and buying up as much of the movie stuff as I could. I've been buying and selling almost exclusively vintage movie items daily now for at least seven years.
2) I bought my first VCR with the money I received for my confirmation in 1985. I proceeded to amass several hundred pounds of home recorded movies and really began to obsess over classic film for the first time then. (I miss the old AMC!). Much later, once I was on eBay and prices were reasonable, I bought hundreds of used VHS tapes and really widened my selection. Unfortunately after I realized VHS was dead I sold all of those off on eBay and Amazon before realizing I could have converted them to DVD-Rs. Oops.
3) My online friends already know this, but I'm a night owl. I work best from about 11pm-4am. I usually stay up until about 6. I think I got this from my grandfather on my father's side. I used to love spending the night over there because he worked in a restaurant and didn't get home until 11-12 o'clock at night. This gave young Cliff an excuse to stay up real late. For some reason I really seem to recall an image of The Life of Riley (Bendix version) ending around 4-5 am and giving way to the National Anthem as sign-off on one of the local channels.
4) I don't really talk TV shows here, but this a good excuse to do so and mention some of my favorites. The all-timers are really the usual suspects that head the lists of many: The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Odd Couple, All in the Family, The Honeymooners. Honestly I've seen all of those so many times that I probably never need watch them again. Basically they're banked to memory. Did a run of The Rockford Files recently and that was neat because I'd never exposed myself to them before. Of more recent vintage a friend of mine hooked me on 24 and Lost and after several failed attempts my sister finally pushed Mad Men on me and it clicked so now I can be as upset as everyone else about the wait. Also love the current run of Dr. Who, which pushed me into a BBC phase highlighted by Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes which featured probably my favorite series finale of all-time. Despite all that I don't really spend a lot of time with television shows anymore. Typically they play in the background on my computer when I'm putting together your packages to ship out the next day.
5) When I'm not watching a classic movie I'm either watching the MLB Network or a ballgame, preferably the Yanks. In fact baseball probably logs the majority of my viewing time. I also play fantasy baseball, and though I'm only in one league this season I'm coming off a year where I won in two out of three leagues. I also like Boxing, though not as much as I did in the 1980's-90's and I'm a fair-weathered Knicks fan who's trying hard to enjoy this season, watching games much later in the season than I have in several years! I do not like football.
6) I lied about my computer experience on my first, and I guess only, real job. I'm not typically a liar, but this was about my eighth interview, fresh out of school and I needed work pretty bad! If it mattered that much they probably would have tested me anyway. I'd gone to school a few years later than others my age and somehow managed to avoid classes requiring any kind of online participation (what'd I think this was a fad?). So I never really sat in front of computer until my first day of work, April 2000. I was in a two-man department and my hiring was timed to coincide with my immediate boss' taking a week's vacation. I was given little responsibility and a ton of freedom. I used the week to learn how to find my way around the internet and one of my first lessons was registering on eBay.
7) And just to get it to seven facts and quell any curiosity (I flatter myself) that job was as advertising assistant in the classified department of Wine Spectator Magazine. Further fact, don't assume I know anything about wine.
I'm going to pass on naming seven other Stylish Bloggers, heck doesn't take much to be more stylish than blue jean/tee-shirt wearing me. Anyway, I think I'm the last guy to get this, but if not feel free to have at it!
Another meme making it's way around the net is the cinematic alphabet, which I spotted on True Classics who traced it back to Rupert Pupkin Speaks and citizenrobot.com.
I have mixed feelings about lists: I love reading them and I hate composing them! I always feel like I'm forgetting something, but this seemed like fun so I thought I'd give it a shot.
I'm not going to bother with an image for each entry as the others have done, that just seems like a lot of work, but I will put a little twist on it and include only pre-code films in my list. You knew everything was going to be pre-1950 anyway, why not zero it in a little tighter. Here we go:
A is for All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
B is for Baby Face (1933)
C is for Call Her Savage (1932)
D is for Dinner at Eight (1933)
E is for Employees' Entrance (1933)
F is for Frankenstein (1931)
G is for Grand Hotel (1932)
H is for Heroes for Sale (1933)
I is for It Happened One Night (1934)
J is for Jewel Robbery (1932)
K is for King Kong (1933)
L is for Little Caesar (1931)
M is for The Mummy (1932)
N is for Night Nurse (1931)
O is for One Way Passage (1932)
P is for The Public Enemy (1931)
Q is for Queen Christina (1933)
R is for Red-Headed Woman (1932)
S is for Skyscraper Souls (1932)
T is for The Thin Man (1934)
U is for Union Depot (1932)
V is for The Vampire Bat (1933)
W is for Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
X is for Doctor X (1932)*
Y is for You Said a Mouthful (1932)
Z is for Zoo in Budapest (1933)
*Yeah, it's a bit of a cheat, but it is X!
Some of these were tough, others were a bit overwhelming as far as choices went. For instance it killed me to leave Three on a Match (1932) off the list but I tried to come at this with the attitude of what would hurt more if I never had a chance to see it. It's hard to throw away The Thin Man under that reasoning.
If you drilled me on another day I might choose I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) over It Happened One Night. Or Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) over Grand Hotel, that was very close one. And for this Warren William fan M was murder (No Match King, Mind Reader or Mouthpiece, ouch!) I was lucky to remember Zoo in Budapest which I've only seen once and don't recall especially liking.
Hope you had fun with this. Since this is one of my chattier posts in awhile I'll add that I'm currently working on my TCM Star of the Month post featuring Ray Milland. I was surprised how many card and collectible images I had on file picturing him, so it will be a little better illustrated than I initially expected. Not sure when that will be up (it's up!), but it'll be before TCM starts with the Milland movies next Tuesday.
misspaddylee says
“…several hundred pounds of home recorded movies.” Boy, can I relate!
So, you’re a fan of the DOCTAH!, eh? I was a fan of the original series in my younger years and tuned into the reboot with what I thought was only mild curiosity. I’m obsessed!
“Q” is for “The Quiet Man”.
Cliff Aliperti says
The Quiet Man doesn’t make the cut on a pre-code list. I’m very limited.
Yeah, I remember watching Tom Baker on, I think, WOR Saturday afternoons, and I’ll ever so often watch one of the oldies on Netflix, but the production values have improved a little since those days. Just great story-telling and I love all of the little details that are weaved in throughout the season leading to the finale. It’s always worth watching the whole thing over again later to spot them.
misspaddylee says
“The Quiet Man” is my standard reply – for just about anything.
How about “Queen Kelly”? Maybe you could start a rumour about a lost film. “Quite the Fellow” about a roguish ladies man who causes turmoil among the upper set. Cast? Director? Before you know it, there would be blogs and historians claiming to have seen footage.
Anonymous says
“Queen Kelly” also starts with Q. For Y, I can imagine that there would be something starting with ‘you’ or ‘young’ or ‘your/s’.
Cliff Aliperti says
Wow, your “Y” suggestion really struck me as genius, so I went back to see how many movies I must of overlooked–there had to be a ton of such movies I thought! I found one, but at least I’d seen it, Joe E. Brown and Ginger Rogers in “You Said a Mouthful.” I’ll take it!
citizenrobot says
X was the hardest for me. I’m not super into those X-Men movies, nor do I like Xanadu all that much, but I went with Xanadu in the end because at least – at least – it makes me larf. Thanks for the shout out and great list! Nice ‘n classic.
Cliff Aliperti says
I stretched it some to include “Doctor X” for “X” when I updated!
Cliff Aliperti says
Okay, I filled the rest of the A-Z pre-code list in … with a little cheating. I caught enough of The Vampire Bat this morning to use it as a “V” (Voltaire, also occurred to me) and with JustAudrey’s suggestion below I went with a Joe E. Brown movie for “Y”. “X” just wasn’t going to happen, so I stretched things a bit to include “Doctor X,” and while I still haven’t watched “Queen Christina,” I wasn’t going to be left with one blank space!