(It doesn't take Boston physician Julia Garth long to expe...)
It doesn't take Boston physician Julia Garth long to experience the genuine West after she arrives in dusty Santa Fe to set up practice. Her first patient is brought in by a youth folks call Billy the Kid. How Julia wins acceptance in what most people then considered man's work shapes the in-color sagebrush tale Strange Lady in Town. Auburn-haired Greer Garson adds to her career resume of confident, strong women (Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Miniver, Madame Curie), bringing to the screen this "Strange Lady" who introduces Santa Fe to new antiseptic procedures and new medical tools like the stethoscope, offers healing compassion and know-how for rich and poor alike, and along the way gains the respect and romantic affections of the town's established doc (Dana Andrews). Director Mervyn LeRoy (Madame Curie) balances light hearted moments with brawling drama as he guides Garson for the fourth time.
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(NEWLY REMASTERED VERSION
He was a riverboat pilot, repor...)
NEWLY REMASTERED VERSION
He was a riverboat pilot, reporter, penniless prospector, Civil War dropout, would-be entrepreneur, loving family man, world traveler, pomposity burster and raconteur. It turns out the man who created adventures for Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and a Connecticut Yankee led a mighty adventurous life himself.
“Truth is a very valuable thing,” says Fredric March’s Mark Twain. “I believe we should be economical with it.” And that sets the tone for what follows: a lovingly crafted Hollywoodized biopic tracing the immortal humorist’s life from Hannibal boyhood to Big River exploits to global literary lion and more. Riverboat’s a-comin’, hop aboard – with Tom, Huck, Jim and above all, Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
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(He looks like Marlon Brando, some reviewers said of this ...)
He looks like Marlon Brando, some reviewers said of this movie's 29-year-old star, but those comparisons would soon end. Soon to impress with his own intense brilliance, Paul Newman made his movie debut in this Biblical saga in the mode of Quo Vadis and The Robe. Set in Rome during the early Christian era, if focuses on an ill-fated sculptor sold into slavery and torn between his adoring wife (Pier Angeli) and a wily temptress (Virginia Mayo) - and threatened in his work by a power-mad sorcerer (Jack Palance) bent on overturning Christianity and becoming his own "true Messiah." The Silver Chalice's cast also includes Lorne Green, E.G. Marshall and a blonde Natalie Wood. But Newman is the movie's heart. "This young man," director Victor Saville predicted, "is destined for great things."
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(In 1461, French nobles fearing King Louis XI may seize th...)
In 1461, French nobles fearing King Louis XI may seize their lands, join
forces with the rebellious Duke of Burgundy to overthrow the king. One
of the Duke's captains suggests enlisting the aid of Francois Villon who is
known to oppose the king and is leader of the Vagabonds, a group that
robs the rich to aid the poor. In league with Burgundy, Villon and two of
his cohorts enter Paris, but are captured by the king's men. The king,
recognizing Villon's power over the people, proposes that Villon defend
Paris against Burgundy and help uncover traitors in the court.
(Swindled out of his birthright, a Frenchman journeys to G...)
Swindled out of his birthright, a Frenchman journeys to Guatemala in search of hidden treasure. Shown in 4:3 full frame presentation.
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Walter Hampden was an American actor, director and producer. He was a major stage star on Broadway, and made numerous television and film appearances, including All About Eve and The Vagabond King.
Background
Walter Hampden was born Walter Hampden Dougherty in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of John Hampden Dougherty and Alice Hill Dougherty. His father, a prominent lawyer, loved literature and the theater; his mother was an accomplished musician.
Education
Hampden attended Brooklyn Polytechnic Preparatory School and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, from which he received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1900.
In 1901, after several months of music and speech classes in Paris, Hampden went to London to study theater under the tutelage of Frank Benson, the noted English actor-manager. Benson was impressed with his talents, and encouraged him to pursue a theatrical profession.
Career
The young man dropped his surname for the more English "Hampden" and for four years appeared in English stock companies, playing a variety of supporting and utility roles under the sponsorship of Benson and such other leading managers as Sir Henry Irving, Hall Caine, and Granville-Barker. In May 1905, Hampden received the proverbial break when, as the understudy for Irving in Hamlet, he stepped in for the ailing star. His performance, while lacking finesse, possessed a vitality and artistic promise sufficient to merit critical encouragement.
In 1907 Hampden returned to America, hoping to build a production company capable of establishing an audience receptive to him in roles of his choice. On September 9, 1907, New York audiences saw Hampden's inauspicious debut in the trifling Comtesse Coquette, by Robert Brace, followed by a commanding performance as Solness in Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder. In these first American acting assignments Hampden fell under the umbra of the celebrated actress Alla Nazimova. Thereafter he found work mainly outside New York, starring in forgettable frivolities.
During the years before World War I he tried in vain to form a producing organization. A short-lived alliance with playwright Charles Rann Kennedy was unsuccessful, although out of it emerged The Servant in the House, a script that determined Hampden's early acting style through its central character, the messianic Manson, the first of a series of "spiritual lovers" that Hampden was to play. His 1908 run in Servant nonetheless fueled Hampden's ambition to play in the Shakespearean repertoire, but he was unable to find producers willing to risk Shakespeare at their box offices, and he temporarily had to curtail his ambitions. In 1918 Hampden and some equally frustrated theatrical friends chanced a series of Shakespeare matinees on Broadway. Audience response was surprisingly enthusiastic.
By April 1919 Hampden had formed his own company, convinced that he could "sell" Shakespeare. He toured with his first independent production, Hamlet, only to meet recurring problems: theater booking agents demanded exorbitant rates and house managements were unwilling to publicize his troupe. The growing recognition of his talents as an actor helped him survive these stormy years and enabled him to offer road audiences Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Merchant of Venice), along with the appealing Servant and the less successful George Washington. Although Hampden surmised that he could survive outside New York, he was yet determined to test his enterprise against the demands and rewards of Broadway.
In 1923 he reached a turning point in his career when he leased the National Theater and in November opened Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac to overwhelming critical acclaim and public support. Many years and more than 1, 000 performances later, audiences still cheered his performance. Bolstered by the earnings from Cyrano and gambling on permanency, Hampden leased the Colonial Theater on Sixty-second Street. On October 10, 1925, he opened Hamlet, his favorite play, at the theater, which he now renamed Hampden's. His five-year tenure there attested to his unusual if not universal appeal. He supplemented revivals of his earlier Shakespearean production with newer plays, including Ibsen's An Enemy of the People and Arthur Goodrich and Rose Palmer's Caponsacchi, both of which were moderately successful. He fared poorly, however, with The Immortal Thief, by Tom Barry, Bonds of Interest, by Jacinto Benavente, and Bulwer Lytton's Richelieu, and none of his plays won the approbation given Cyrano, which he periodically revived to bolster steadily declining box-office sales.
Hampden found artistic pleasure in many of the heroes that he played - fervent iconoclasts offset by backgrounds that ranged from social irresponsibility to empty mysticism. But such characters did not suit audience tastes in the 1920s and, as a result, Hampden's acting style began to seem archaic. He closed his theater in March 1930, and spent most of the following decade on tour under his own management. By the end of the 1930s he was an actor of the past.
In his ebbing years radio, television, and movies stoked Hampden's reputation. In the late 1940s he could be heard regularly on radio, and in 1949 he made his television debut as an aged Macbeth. Hollywood welcomed his name but cast him only in minor character roles, frequently as a patriarch, aristocrat, or priest. He made more than a dozen films; among them are The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1940), All This and Heaven Too (1940), All About Eve (1950), and Sabrina (1954). He bid farewell to the theater in several strong supporting roles, among them Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII (1946) and the professor in The Traitor (1949). His last stage role was the deputy governor in Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953).
He died in Los Angeles in 1955. His ashes are buried at The Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Certainly Hampden's physical attributes - his impressive stature, great agility, resonant baritone voice, and dignified, sharp-featured handsomeness - lent themselves to heroic figures. He believed, perhaps with a naïveté and stubbornness too strong to sustain success, that audiences would be eclectic in their tastes.
Connections
On July 17, Hampden married Mabel Moore, a young English actress. They had a son, Paul Hampden Dougherty, and a daughter, Mary Moore Dougherty.