Listy things -- Joel McCrea

Today is Joel McCrea's birthday! I'm delighted to be attending the open house at his ranch in Thousand Oaks and will report in on that later. But for now, here's my favorite films starring Joel McCrea:

1. Ride the High Country (1962)
2. Dead End (1937)
3. The More the Merrier (1943)
4. The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
5. Bird of Paradise (1932)
6. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
7. The Silver Horde (1930)
8. Foreign Correspondent (1940)
9. Union Pacific (1939)
10. Buffalo Bill (1944)

There are so many enjoyable Joel McCrea movies that this list was kind of hard! And I still have so many films of his left to see! Of course, Ride the High Country is still my absolute favorite by a long shot. I have a lobby card from that film on my wall. Makes me happy every time I walk back it.


(up next... George Raft)

Who is that guy??

So, I was watching Union Pacific (1939), with Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck not too long ago. Fun solid movie. I knew most of the actors in it but one. This guy:


I did not recognize him at all. He played a rather rougish gambler, not quite on the right side of the law. His smooth-talking charm was a nice foil for Joel McCrea's honest law-abiding character, and their scenes together were really good. Now, I'd even watched and read the credits in the beginning of the movie, seen his name go by... and I still couldn't put name to face. About 3/4ths through, I'd had it. He was driving me crazy. I had to know who it was. So, paused the film, looked it up on IMDb... it was Robert Preston.

Now, really, I actually wouldn't expect me to recognize him. I'm not familiar with him as much more than a name. I think the first thing I ever saw him in was The Last Starfighter, which I saw in the theater in 1984. No, I've never seen more than a few random musical numbers from The Music Man. I may love musicals, but never could get into that one. One of these days someone might force me to sit through the whole darned thing. So really, knowing him only in one of the last movies he ever made, how would I recognize him when he's 21 and quite the handsome young hunk?

Interestingly, his voice (if I'd paid attention) is very recognizable.

Since watching Union Pacific, Robert Preston has started popping up in all sorts of movies I've been watching. (So weird how that happens.) He showed up as the smooth-talking, ratfink bad guy in Best of the Badmen (1951) with Robert Ryan and Claire Trevor. He popped up in Wake Island (1942), in which, even knowing this time he was in it... I didn't recognize him in his first few scenes yet again. What is he, a chameleon?? Or is it just me? I had the Union Pacific and Best of the Bad Men curly-haired and moustached Robert Preston in my mind, and couldn't make the jump to clean-cut, burly marine. What finally gave him away in Wake Island was his voice.


And I notice he's also in Blood on the Moon (1948), with Robert Mitchum, which I'm due to watch next. Wonder what he'll be like in that one?

Weekend roundup

I finished the final draft of my Combat! fanfiction story "In Little Stars" last week. Nice to have that one out of my brain, as it was started in January 2008, and it was emotionally taxing. It went through four drafts during that time, more than my usual for fanfic, ending up at nearly 18,000 words. But then I can rarely write short fanfic stories. My brain still prefers to work in "hour-long" episode formats when it can. I'm also glad this one's done because I have just two more fanfic stories left in me, and one's already done (first draft-completed during last year's nano), and the last story is two-thirds written. And that nicely leaves most of my free time available for the new novel.

The new novel is shifting, growing, even as I still work on chapter one. Hero's voice continues to elude me, but that's okay. With the overall growth it's doing, I'd rather keep everything fluid and open right now. I'm waiting for one more piece to click in place. When it does, I'll be ready to jump into it more firmly. But I've had that lovely bouncy excitement every day as I wait for work and daily commitments to end so I can work on it. I love that feeling!

On the movie front, watched Barbary Coast with Edward G. Robinson, Miriam Hopkins, and Joel McCrea. Meh. Not bad, not good. Just... meh. Edward G. was awesomely cool as ever (dig that earring), and Joel earnest and love-lost and spouting poetry while making horribly, terribly bad decisions. Walter Brennan adds suitable color and made me grin every time he appeared. Walter Brennan is just the best, he really is. When he gives the money he stole from Joel back to him, he's priceless! Brian Donlevy's lurking about as an oddly dressed thug... it's funny, I always think of him as a rather imposing man (a lot of that is his don't-mess-with-me attitude and the tough characters he plays), but you know, he isn't. Particularly next to Joel McCrea. Okay, that's not truly fair, cuz Joel makes most other actors look small, but still. Donlevy's still young and thin here too... and that outfit. Gadzooks, he needs to lose the unflattering, high-necked outfit. Really. Badly.

And now, to Nicole at Classic Hollywood Nerd, a very very HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY!!!! I enjoyed a slice of Stir-Crazy Cake this evening to celebrate! (A truly yummy cake, easy to make -- very highly recommended!) Hope your birthday is a fabulous one!

Joel McCrea in Barbary Coast, broad-shouldered and handsome, as always!

"You said no rules, Colonel."

Hollywood Dreamland just posted a marvelous series of posts detailing his ten favorite actors, all amazing actors with great films under their belts. He had a little segment in each where he listed the first movie he saw for each actor, and his favorite movies for each of those actors. Made me really curious which was the first movie I'd seen my own favorite actors in. So, I thought I'd jog my memory and record it for myself here. I'm woefully behind in posting movie reviews and other things, so I'll ease myself back into posting this way. Favorites are always interesting to me because they're so subjective, and sometimes quite fickle. It's always intriguing to see how lists change over time.

Writing these out also made me realize that with the exception of William Holden and Dana Andrews, the movies I love my favorite actors for are all made in the 1950's on. Which then naturally led me to contemplating which 1930's and 1940's stars would be my favorites, without considering any of their films made after 1949. I'm still thinking about that, actually, and will post a list of those later.

• William Holden

First Movie I saw him in: The Horse Soldiers when I was a kid. Really, if I'd never seen him in another movie, it wouldn't have mattered. This is the William Holden movie for me, the one that imprinted on me and gave me the cynical, charming, smirky William Holden I love above all his other characters.

Three Favorite Movies: The Horse Soldiers, Sunset Blvd., Alvarez Kelly
Honorable Mention: Texas

• Lee Marvin

First Movie I saw him in: No idea. This could be any one of a dozen when I was a kid. It was probably a Western like The Comancheros or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, or possibly Donovan's Reef. There's no moment where Lee Marvin's movies aren't in my memories, where his name wasn't known and his face and voice and swaggering walk not instantly recognizable. He always stood out from the crowd for me.

Three Favorite Movies: The Dirty Dozen, The Professionals, Paint Your Wagon
Honorable Mention: Cat Ballou

• Dana Andrews

First Movie I saw him in: No idea here either. Probably Battle of the Bulge or In Harm's Way or Airport 1975 when I was young... but he was just a guy with a name I really liked back then. The first movie I saw him in where I sat up and paid attention was Best Years of Our Lives in Sept 2005.

Three Favorite Movies: Fallen Angel, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Swamp Water
Honorable Mention: Best Years of Our Lives

• Ralph Meeker

First Movie I saw him in: The Dirty Dozen when I was a kid. But I never saw him as more than the guy with the funniest, most-quotable lines in one of my favorite movies until I saw Kiss Me Deadly in April 2008. Then he leaped from the just plain cool balcony, to the oh wow, where have you been all my life center stage.

Three Favorite Movies: The Dirty Dozen, Kiss Me Deadly, The Naked Spur
Honorable Mention: Jeopardy

• Sam Neill

First Movie I saw him in: The Hunt for Red October, 1990, which launched the biggest (and still unrivaled) movie actor crush of my life.

Three Favorite Movies: The Hunt for Red October, Dead Calm, Jurassic Park
Honorable Mention: Reilly: Ace of Spies

• Ewan McGregor

First Movie I saw him in: The Phantom Menace, 1999

Three Favorite Movies: A Life Less Ordinary, Brassed Off, Revenge of the Sith
Honorable Mention: Young Adam

• Joel McCrea

First Movie I saw him in: Sullivan's Travels, Sept 2008

Three Favorite Movies: Ride the High Country, Ride the High Country, and Ride the High Country. Really, I should drop McCrea off my favorite actors list, because despite the fact that I've been hunting down all his movies (a requirement to make my favorite actor list), really, no other movie of his has yet come close to matching his performance in Ride the High Country. In his early days, he made a ton of romantic comedy movies, and those just aren't my thing. They're fun for a one-time viewing, but they won't make a repeat viewing list for me, and favorite movies are ones you watch over and over.
Honorable Mention: Dead End - There I named something else!

• Aldo Ray

First Movie I saw him in: The Green Berets, sometime in childhood, but David Janssen was the guy who stood out at the time. First movie I paid attention to Aldo in was God's Little Acre, Dec 2005

Three Favorite Movies: Battlecry, We're No Angels, What Did You do in the War, Daddy?
Honorable Mention: Nightfall

• Richard Boone

First Movie I saw him in: It was either The Alamo or Big Jake, sometime in childhood. I remember waiting through The Alamo just to get to his big scene towards the end, cuz I liked him so much.

Three Favorite Movies: Big Jake, Have Gun-Will Travel series, The Alamo
Honorable Mention: The Tall T

• Vic Morrow

First Movie I saw him in: Combat! back in the early 90's. Not a movie, but that's okay. I knew his name because of his tragic death long before I actually saw him in anything. I didn't sit up and take notice until I started re-watching Combat! in 2004.

Three Favorite Movies: Combat!, Men in War, Cimarron
Honorable Mention: King Creole

20... er 10 Favorite Actors

So a 20 favorite actor meme is now making the rounds, and since I'm about to head out on a business trip, I thought this would be a good way to cheer myself up.

As I did for the 20 fave actresses meme, I'm actually only listing 10. Not that there's a shortage of actors I adore. Quite the contrary, I could ramble on for hours on all my favorite men, but I'd rather keep it focused on the ones at the top, the ones who are little more special than the others. Of course, the word "favorite" can mean so many things, so what I did for this particular meme was list thirty or so actors that I really really loved, then I ranked them accordingly to how loudly I'd whoop and how widely I'd grin if they turned up unexpectedly as a guest star in a "Route 66" ep, then I picked the ten at the top. Seemed a fair enough way to figure out who was important to me. The results surprised me a little, as some I thought for sure would be on this list, when I put 'em to this particular test, I found I didn't care quite as much as I thought I would. And vice versa.

So...

1. William Holden -- said it all already :-D

2. Lee Marvin - Yep, Lee Marvin beats out everyone else for second place. Like William Holden, I've loved him for as long as I can remember. Nobody, but nobody can play mean quite like he can, or play a good guy, or do comedy, or sing -- all while keeping that wonderful sexy swagger, and with that wonderful voice. He elevates every movie he's in, and if he's around, he always has my full attention.

3. Dana Andrews - Ah, Dana. It's hard to articulate what he means to me. There are some people who change your life, even if you haven't met them, and he's one of them. He conveys so much with those handsome eyes of his, and he has that smooth voice that never fails to melt me. He gets my full admiration and respect like no one else. More than anything in the world, I wish I could have heard him sing opera. I don't even know which opera roles he studied and sang, which opera was his favorite. His daughter told me that at the end, when he was suffering Alzheimer's and couldn't remember anything else, he was still singing opera in Italian. That makes me cry from both sadness and a strange sort of joy, that he still had that. Because love of opera is something I understand with every fiber of my being.

4. Ralph Meeker - Yeah, he's way higher on the list than I thought he might be, but man oh man, do I love him. I've seen him play pretty much all types of roles, and I like him best when he's playing morally ambivalent characters. He does Grey oh so very well, and as we well know, I'm a huge fan of Grey!

5. Sam Neill - Sam Neill was actually my first true actor crush as an adult. The first time I saw The Hunt for Red October, he completely stole my heart. There's very few movies he's made I haven't seen.

6. Ewan McGregor - He simply can play any role and make you believe in him. I can't think of any current actor I love quite as much as him.

7. Joel McCrea - four things I've learned to appreciate from watching McCrea: 1 - How well some men can wear clothes. I used to think Dana Andrews was the best dressed man in a suit. Nope, I'm afraid McCrea cleanly stole that award away. I almost never pay attention to clothes, or how well a suit or tux actually fits a guy... until McCrea made me notice without even trying. 2 - How good a guy looks after getting dunked in a river. 3 - How important romance is. 4 - And how there's nothing quite as attractive as a truly good man.

8. Aldo Ray - I think he's my all-time physical ideal. If I was ranking actors solely by how lustworthy they were, he gets top slot. Love his brawny build, love his raspy voice, love how easily he laughs, love how often filmmakers get him out of his shirt...

9. Richard Boone - I was a little surprised at first to see him beat out so many of the others to make this list, but really, it's no surprise. I've adored him since the first time I saw Big Jake. Paladin is one of the coolest characters ever put on television, but he'd be nothing if he wasn't played to perfection by Boone. Richard Boone is a great combo of intelligence, honor, swagger, and meanness (when he wants to be). He intimidates the hell out of me, but there's nobody I'd rather have at my side in a confrontation. Like all the guys on this list, I think a movie is better if he's in it.

10. Vic Morrow - A good-looking, fine actor, but more than that... from watching him in films and on television, I've learned so much about how to write a story. That sounds odd, but it's true. There's a lot of acting in writing (at least for me), and Vic Morrow is one of those actors who, for whatever reason, I feel on a visceral level, and the things I've learned about acting from studying how he says his dialog, how he physically carries himself in different roles... he taught me, more than anyone else, how to completely become (and believe in) something I'm not, and that carries into my fiction writing every single day.

"He's kinda grand, ain't he?"

I am such a dork. I was in the mood for a Joel McCrea western, so I bumped this movie, The Silver Horde (1930), to the top of my netflix queue. There are a couple of big things wrong with this idea of mine:

1. I insisted on interpreting "Horde" as "Hoard," and, as the vague description was about an adventurer in Alaska making his fortune, I assumed it would be a Western reminiscent of The Far Country, just with silver instead of gold.

2. I know JMC didn't make any Westerns until a few years later.

Uh... duh, Deb! What were you thinking??

So, the silver horde referenced by the title is... salmon, and the movie was set in modern times (relatively speaking) and was about rival fisheries and salmon canning. No hoard of silver. No back-stabbing claim jumpers. Not a single cowboy or a horse within sight. Instead, there were manicurists (darned funny scene), evening gowns and JMC in one of his oh-so-wonderfully fitted tuxes, some lovely real Alaska scenery, and some sled dogs. Not to mention lots of salmon and the cannery operations...

After my initial disappointment (and laughing at my own blind wishful thinking), I found a fun movie with a few surprises. A few spoilers follow...

JMC plays one of those bright-eyed and rather naive do-gooder types, out to make his fortune, and having no luck at it. He's given a business opportunity by Cherry (Evelyn Brent), a famous woman of ill-repute that everybody's heard of -- except JMC. The villain is this "no one competes with my fishery, mwah-hah-hah *rubs thin moustache* kind of guy. He's also trying to marry (naturally!) JMC's wealthy scoiety girl, Mildred, who's played by Jean Arthur. Naturally, with the unknown help of Cherry, JMC's cannery succeeds, which forces the bad guy to implement various nasty plans to stop him and results in a very cool giant brawl -- on the fishing fleet, no less! Woo! This scene actually looked rather dangerous to film: the two rival fleets colliding mid-river, cannery workers from both sides jumping between moving ships, fighting and throwing each other overboard. Yikes! A love triangle between Cherry, Mildred, and JMC anchors the rest of the story. Of course, JMC eventually discovers Cherry's reputation and has an angry meltdown. There's also a couple fabulous confrontations between the two women. In the big one, Mildred, our respectable society girl is dressed all in white, Cherry's dressed in black... but when all's said and done, guess who JMC actually ends up with? Yeah, Cherry, the woman with a reputation from San Francisco to Sitka. I'm not sure that would have happened if this movie had been made a few years later. I actually cheered when he dumped Mildred to go to Cherry, because Mildred (cute as Jean Arthur is) was annoying and shallow and selfish and just so not the right match, but I was sure the movie couldn't possibly let him end up with a famous prostitute. Particularly after the villain is exposed as still being married to another prostitute!! But it did! WOOO! Happy ending!

So, not at all what I was expecting, but quite enjoyable. Highlights were the fishing fleet brawl, the scathing social-commentary dialog between the two women, a sequence showing the entire process from netting the salmon through the various processing to the canning and crating, and seeing all the main actors actually working and getting fishy in the cannery. Actor Louis Wolheim any time he's on screen. He steals the show! He gets the hilarious manicurist scene, and I love when he physically restrains JMC (no easy feat) and gives him a piece of his mind. And, of course, there's JMC himself, so darned cute when he's angry and sad. Or happy. Or dancing. Or tired. Or punching out the opposition....

Bird of Paradise (1932)

This movie reminded me of something I'd almost forgotten: how much of a complete sucker I am for a romantic South Seas Island story. It reminded me that my favorite, most-read part of "Mutiny on the Bounty" is not actually the mutiny or even anything having to do with Fletcher Christian, but rather the swimming contest between Tehani and Byam. Yeah, seriously -- I mostly read Mutiny on the Bounty for everything that happened on the islands. And when I watch South Pacific, it's really to get to the parts with Lt. Cable and Liat on the island. What can I say? I really am a complete sucker for a romantic South Seas Island story.

So, did I get what I wanted from Bird of Paradise?

Romance? Check! Natives enthusiastically greeting boat and subsequent wild party? Check! Shark attack? Check! Boy gets, then loses girl, check! Unexpected brutal violence, check! Lots of boats and swimming, Joel McCrea tied up not once, but twice, lots of beautiful scenery, coconuts, everyone (including our handsome hero) scantily clad... yeah. All of that. Oh, and did I mention the romance?

Bonuses: 1) The volcano. 2) Snappy dialog, particularly among the ship passengers/crew. 3) And the absolutely wonderful native lady that Joel McCrea bribes with a record player. I loved her!

So, yeah, this version of Bird of Paradise was a lot of fun for me. It gave me everything I want out of a palm tree flick, and quite a bit more. Sailor falls for native girl, only she's off limits (of course) being a princess. She falls for him too, so her dad hurriedly shoves her into marriage with a prince on another island. Only Joel McCrea follows, steals her right out of the middle of the wedding ceremony (now that takes guts!). Off they run to their own little tropical island, where he builds a house and she shows him what they can eat and he teaches her English, and life is oh-so-sighingly indolent and lovely. Then the volcano starts erupting, and everything goes south from there.

I think it's kind of ironic how good the special effects were back in the 30's (Wizard of Oz's tornado still looks better than any CGI crap they do nowadays. Ditto, The Hurricane's typhoon) compared to even just a decade later. This movie gets a lovely lava flow with real footage, and the volcano itself looks pretty good in all but a couple shots.

The only very minor disappointment was that I was expecting an ending more like the Debra Paget remake's ending, and this one sort of faded to black before it quite got there. This movie was far superior in every other aspect, I thought (though it's been ages since I've seen the remake, so that might be an unfair comment).

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

Ahhhh, habit. Writing habits are a good thing, and I'm finally settling back into mine. It's a really good feeling, particularly after a night like tonight, where I whipped right through 1800 words in an hour. It was quite nice to realize I wasn't stopping every paragraph to check my word count (oooh, look ma, another 101 words... how exciting!), I just immersed and went. I did the math and I need 2000 words a day between now and Nov 30 to complete Nano. Definitely can't afford any slackage. And short stories, I've found, are a far more difficult thing to tackle in a Nano sprint than a novel. On a novel, you can just blithely plow ahead no matter what, and there's room to roam. That doesn't work so well with shorts. At least not with my shorts.

Speaking of shorts, Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" has always been one of my favorites. I had this very treasured book growing up called A World of Events that had all sorts of fiction and non-fiction in it. I read "The Most Dangerous Game" over and over until I had sections memorized. Probably one of those early influences that led me to believe that the scariest villain will always be another human being. Here's a photo from that book (of course, I still have it!). I always loved this particular picture. I always thought Zaroff looked like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in this drawing (click pic to make big). And Ivan always scared the pants off me, as I'm sure he supposed to. And yes, this book was a teacher's edition and has all sorts of interesting annotations in the margins.

So, since I did so well on writing tonight, I had time to watch the 1932 version of The Most Dangerous Game and not feel guilty. The movie changes a few things, naturally, from the short. Mostly in adding a woman to the mix. It is Hollywood, after all. Gotta have a woman around for the hero to protect. Fortunately she's played by Fay Wray and is a nice mixture of spunky, brave, and understandably a bit freaked. And despite her, the movie rather eerily captured exactly the feelings and atmosphere reading the story gave me. Weird. I didn't expect that at all. The jungle sets (same ones used in King Kong), the foggy swamp, they all looked like I used to imagine when I was a little girl. Being chased by a bloodthirsty pack of hounds... eiiii! Now there's something that always makes me cringe and hide on the couch. (Too much of The Hound of the Baskerville when I was young, I think!)

I expected the movie to be corny, and it wasn't at all, exact opposite, in fact. It was tense and the violence and a couple of the deaths quite gruesome. Some of the dialogue was even straight out of the short story. They shortened the timeline from the story's three days to 24 hours, and that suits the movie quite well. Injects a lot more tension into it, as there's no time for the hunted to rest. This Zaroff's also quite mad, where I never quite got that impression from the story version. That makes him quite creepy in the movie. Him and his forehead scar, and his post-kill cigarette, and mad buggy eyes. AHHHH! I have to admit, if I were Fay Wray in this movie, I'd rather take my chances in the jungle too than be anywhere near Zaroff. Particularly as going into the jungle means going with Joel McCrea, and I'd go with him anywhere.

Ah yes, Joel McCrea. The real reason this movie got bumped up to the top of my Netflix queue right now. Thirty years younger here than in Ride the High Country, still learning how to act, but he's still a wonderful combo of earnest and athletic and naturally relaxed. And he's already got that intense way of looking at his female co-stars, like time just stopped for him when they entered his view and nothing else in the world matters but them. Something about the way he's so laidback the rest of the time just makes it that much more arresting. He does this in every film I've seen so far where he's the romantic lead, and it's one of the absolute sexiest things I've ever seen from any male actor, and, out here in the audience, it melts me every time.

The Most Dangerous Game only has an hour running time, so I'll probably watch it again before I return the DVD. I've always wanted to see the Richard Widmark movie variant of this story, Run for the Sun, but somehow I don't think it will be nearly as satisfying as this one.

Halfway!

Hah! I made the halfway mark in Nano. Minor miracle considering all the fits and starts, but it's taken this long to get back into the daily habit of writing. I'm finally actually sitting down and writing, instead of checking out internet sites I've already visited sixteen times that day alone. I've also set my movie watching and reviewing aside for now, like a good girl, until I can finish out the month.

I've now finished drafts of two stories, "In Little Stars" and "Crossroads." I'm about halfway done with "Blood of the Air" and the one everyone really wants me to finish, "Murder's Melody"... well, I've gotten a couple thousand words on it, but other than that, it languishes. Naturally. I don't want to write that one. But BotA is not going to last me another 25K, so I'll have to get to it eventually before November ends.

(Joel McCrea in Buffalo Bill, sprawled and scribbling a letter...
my reward movie, and another writing picture for my collection!)

Reason #1 not to read TCM's schedule

Dang it. I really really wish I could get just subscribe to one cable channel sometimes: Turner Classic Movies. Cuz they're having a Ralph Meeker night tonight, and as I don't have cable or satellite, I can't watch any of it. Sniff. And if I'm going to procrastinate on Nano writing, I can't think of a better way to do it.

Maybe it's a good thing, because my goal is to get 5000 words today. (The most I've done is a little over 6000 in a day, so I know 5K is doable.) I'm thoroughly distracted already by Joel McCrea right now... add a healthy dose of Meeker back into the mix (including two movies I've never seen that aren't out on DVD) and I'm doomed.

But what a pleasant doom it would be.

Ride the High Country (1962)

Okay, I had to pick this Joel McCrea movie out of all the netflix movies to watch first?? Because, if there was ever a Joel McCrea movie written just for me that will make me love him for life, this is it.

Here's another film that fits in my newly-understood love of aging, worn heroes with a code faced with a changing world. Only, as opposed to The Wild Bunch, this Peckinpah movie is kinder and gentler and far less bloody and dissolute (though it has its moments). And it deals with my all-time favorite themes of friendship, betrayal, redemption, and honor.

Oh sigh. Where to even begin? At the beginning... I love George Bassman's main title theme. It's beautiful, melancholy, and coincidentally completely encapsulated my mood yesterday. That theme seemed written just for me yesterday. The rest of the score... meh. Obtrusive and annoying, but that main theme is wonderful and suits the movie to a T.

Randolph Scott's back, and I have to admit, from not knowing him as anything other than a name, I've watched a dozen or so of his films over the past year and really come to like him. He and McCrea work wonderfully together here. Both bring such class and dignity, even when one's scheming and fast-talking. It's hard to believe they never actually made any other films together.

What I didn't like... the female character played by Mariette Hartley. Now, I really do like the actress a lot, it's just that her character drives me a bit crazy and her side story interferes with screen time that I'd rather be spending with Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott. Okay, okay, that's also entirely unfair, as hers is not just a random subplot, it ties in with everything and sparks some moral dilemmas, changes of heart, and the climax, but I just personally could have done without it.

And Joel McCrea? Mmmmmm. Dig him dig him dig him. He aged well. His character hides his misgivings and fears behind a solid wall of confidence, and he can back it up, easily whupping a young whippersnapper, as well as standing his ground against superior numbers. McCrea does so many wonderful little things in this movie that help define his character. The defiant/embarrassed look he shoots Randolph Scott when he picks up his dime, the uncomfortable shoulder roll when his prospective employer eyes his frayed cuffs, how far he has to move the paper away to be able to see where to sign. He even made me cry at one point. Yep, I's in luv!

I also get to watch my beloved Sierra Mountains. Those places are so familiar to me, I can smell the air, feel the streams. There's still nowhere on earth I'd rather be then in those mountains. This was Eastern Sierra and was one of the movies on my Inyo County viewing list. And when the young guy tosses his food wrapper into the bushes, Joel McCrea snaps at him, "Pick that up. These mountains don't need your trash." Right on! Couldn't have put it better myself.

How to avoid Nano prep work

So, just two days left until nano insanity begins and last night, after struggling with determining my new novel's world's naming conventions, I gave up and watched Foreign Correspondent instead.

You know I don't think it would be very hard at all to develop a crush on Joel McCrea. This is the second film I've seen him in recently (the other was Sullivan's Travels), and in both he's so unpresuming, laid-back, and earnest, just an all around nice guy. And he's pretty darn cute besides. After Nano, I'll have to see what else he's got out there.

This movie was quite fun and entertaining. Nothing truly unexpected or twisty, just a good, solid spy yarn. Built some excellent tension and creepy suspense in places, and it has that spectacular plane crash. Dude, they don't make plane crashes look that good nowadays. Not just the crash itself, but the sinking aftermath. Yikes! I was pleased George Sanders got to play a good guy for once, just as suave and cool as always, but on the right side of the law. It was also nice to have someone as tall as Joel McCrea around so he didn't tower over everyone. And Ian Wolfe... was he ever young? LOL! He looks perpetually old. From this film to Star Trek twenty-eight years later, he doesn't seem to change hardly at all. He's even more unchanging than Walter Brennan!

Oh, and for the record, between Alistair MacLean's "Puppet on a Chain" and this movie's creepy windmills, I am never visiting Holland. I'm sure there's nothing scary about the real Holland, but the fictional versions are always so damned freaky.