Serendipity and epiphanies

So just last night, I started a whiny, complaining email to one of my friends about writing. I got just one sentence typed in it before I decided it was rude to inflict my selfish woes on her and saved the email to draft instead of finishing and sending it. The sentence was:

I've probably said this before, but I do not appear to write well when I am not obsessing over someone.

And I thought nothing more of it. Just went to bed reading, as I usually do. My current novel is in PDF form, so I switched to a new book and read the first three chapters of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Now, I'm not reading this book to learn how to draw (though I won't mind at all if my drawing abilities improve!), but this book is very highly recommended by Holly Lisle in her Think Sideways class. The lessons in the book are designed not so much to teach you how to draw as how to perceive things with the right half of your brain, so the drawing then comes naturally. Holly recommends this book for everyone, not just artists or even writers. I figured I'd better check it out, as I've really enjoyed the class and I respect Holly's opinion.

And right when I got ready to close the book for the night, that's when I realized (in a non-verbal right brain flash, LOL) that that's what "obsession" meant to me, and why I'd written that one sentence earlier. I've been using obsession to access the right half of my brain. It's my shortcut, my jumpstart. I mean, what happens when I obsess over some actor? I spend a lot of time daydreaming, a lot of time thinking in images not words. A lot of time letting the right half of my brain run completely and happily amuck while my left brain tries to tell me how completely silly I am, how useless it is to spend perfectly good hours lost daydreaming about dead actors, and to get back to reality. Right. This. Second. Every novel I've written has come during an obsession over one actor or another. From Sam Neill to Sean Bean to Vic Morrow to Dana Andrews to a little unknown actor no one has heard of named Fletcher Fist. I write very well when I can't get those actors out of my head.

So yes. My whining, complaining observation was actually valid: I haven't been writing well since November because I'm not obsessing over anyone anymore. Or in more logical words: I'm not accessing or listening to the right half of my brain as easily as I do when I'm gone over someone who appeals to me. And my left brain cannot write a novel without the right brain.

I guess this book has come along at a good time, as there appear to be no actor obsessions in my near future. I can use the book's techniques to get to the same place, and possibly in a better manner (though I can't see it as being quite as fun as my previous method.... :-D)

I am very interested now to finish reading this book and see where it takes me.

Hollywood Collector's Show

So, tootled down to Burbank on Saturday to attend this show. It was quite fun. There's two parts - the vendors selling lots of cool movie stuff, and then the actors attending. It's also quite pricey, and so I only got one autograph. That was Malcolm McDowell's. I've liked him since I first saw Time After Time when it came out in the theaters. Best part of meeting him? Listening to his voice... it is so much richer and lovely in person than in a movie. Mmmmm.

The two unexpected highlights of the day were talking with Garrett Wang (played Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager) and Kevin Sorbo of Hercules fame. Both were very nice, down-to-earth, non-ego-y, and super easy and fun to talk to. For someone who's pretty shy like me, that's a very welcome thing! I had good long conversations with both of them and it was just very very cool.

There were quite a few others I wouldn't have minded talking to, but I simply had no clue what to say to them, so contented myself with exchanging smiles and head nods. The one I really would like to have met was Debbie Reynolds. She was ADORABLE!! Looked absolutely fabulous, like she hasn't changed in forty years, and was all smiles. But she arrived late, and by the time my family returned from lunch, she had already departed. That's the way it goes.

Betty Hutton extravaganza

So, thanks to this really nice site, I've watched three Betty Hutton films I've never seen, each starring one of my favorite men:

The Fleet's In (1942) with William Holden
Somebody Loves Me (1952) with Ralph Meeker
Spring Reunion (1957) with Dana Andrews

Now, I have mixed feelings about Betty Hutton. Sometimes I really like her, and other times she's simply too loud and annoying for me. This goes for both her acting and her singing. My mileage definitely varies. For example, I don't particularly like Annie, Get Your Gun, but I do like The Stork Club. So, these three new films were an interesting mix.

My least favorite of the three... Spring Reunion. Sorry, Dana, but I did not like this film at all. This is like a chick flick from the 50's. I don't like current ones; I don't like old ones. Premise... the man and woman voted most likely to succeed in their senior year in high school meet again at their school's fifteen year reunion, find out they both have done nothing with their lives, and since neither's married, they fall in love in one day and run off immediately to get married because this will make their useless-to-date lives complete. *rolls eyes* Okay, now I'm not really arguing that a chick can't fall for and decide to marry Dana Andrews in one day, ahem, but really... it's just a completely nerve-grating movie where I want to slap all the characters at various points. Blech. But high points go to Jean Hagen -- always wonderful in whatever films she turns up in, and I loved Betty Hutton here. She's low key and very appealing, and she worked well with the material given. Dana... hm. His character was a very odd clash of opportunist and sincerity, with a bit of lonely desperation. Hard to get a fix on who he was really aiming to be here.

The middle-rated movie was The Fleet's In. Oh sigh. William Holden is absolutely adorable, Dorothy Lamour is sassy and snarky, and the premise simple, but cute. Navy sailor Holden gets photographed kissing a movie star (an accident of location) and his shipmates plug the naïve sailor as top wolf of the boat. A bet gets made that he can't get famous night club singer Dorothy Lamour to kiss him in public. That's it... simple and cute. I loved everything with Holden and Lamour. But unfortunately they're not the whole movie. And the movie was sideswiped way off track in the last half hour by a variety show put on for the sailors... the story ground to a halt, and every act in their show either creeped me out or was so far gone into slapstick I couldn't deal. Cut all that extra stuff out, and this would have easily been my favorite film of the three. And alas, this was also Betty Hutton quite loud and obnoxious (though she did have some very funny scenes), so I had a hard time getting through the parts minus Holden and Lamour. And oddly, this was another film with an overnight romance leading to marriage, but at least this one had the benefit of a WWII setting when men and women did need to act quickly sometimes. Spring Reunion had no such excuse.

And my favorite of the three films was Somebody Loves Me. I really loved Betty Hutton in this one. There's no brash hollering, no craziness; she's soft-spoken, emotional, pretty, and her singing is beautiful. This one's the story of the rise and fame of a real vaudeville singer and her husband, from 1906 to somewhere in the 1920s. It had a lot (a LOT) of songs, most as performances on stage, but I think with only one exception, I enjoyed them all. Ralph Meeker is at the beginning of his career and very young here. He's playing a character type he does very well... the scheming heel who ultimately redeems himself. Betty Hutton falls for him almost instantly, but his character simply uses her, her wealth, and her fame to get ahead in the show biz world -- until he realizes he's really in love with her. It's sounds a bit corny, but they play it straight and it never falls into yucky pretentiousness baloney sandwich material like Spring Reunion (no, I really didn't like that movie!). Only lousy part of this movie? Whoever they picked to dub Ralph Meeker's singing voice. I mean the voice itself is very lovely, it's just that Meeker has such a distinctive speaking voice (one of the things I love about him), the filmmakers couldn't find any baritone a little closer in quality than this? I mean, really?? Cuz it was such a bad match it yanked me out of the movie and just made me giggle every time he started "singing."

Dreaming

I love dreams. I have always had weird, cool, crazy, memorable dreams and the ones of the past few days got me thinking about movie and book dream sequences. I tend to have issues with fiction's dreams, as they never seem anything like real life dreams. Dreams, particularly in books, always seem to have Import with a capital I. In fiction, dreams seem mostly contrived to further the plot. Dreams seem to always mean something. Characters follow dream portents to reach goals in their fictionalized lives. My dreams may be pretty darned awesome, but they've never led me on a quest or given me any great truths about life. Unfortunately. :-D I have gotten story ideas out of some of them, but that's the extent of it. And all those fictional dreams-with-meaning miss out on the sheer wild beauty of the reality of dreams.

Once upon a time, I read some article on one theory that dreams were simply the brain's way of clearing out the mental trash. A mental garbage dump, so to speak. That stuck with me as it always seemed to fit a little better than theories trying to give real meaning to dreams. I mean, if you look hard enough, you can assign meaning to just about anything. I prefer thinking my dreams are simply the product of my brain cleaning house at the end of the day. I also have my own pet fictional theory on dreams that I've been trying to turn into a novella but have yet to find the right story to go with the idea. One of these days!

I was trying to think of movie dream sequences and couldn't really come up with many, though I know there's really a lot out there. Most just don't stick in my head, because, again, they're not representative of the dreams I have. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are in Murder, My Sweet, though it's drug-induced, so I'm not sure it quite counts. The Marrying Kind has a really funny one that I rather like because it does display some of the sheer randomness of dreams. And I loved Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World. I always wanted one of those dream recording devices!

But probably my favorite dream sequence of all is from Vertigo. Now, that one, to me, hits everything right. It's got the right sense of disconnect, hits some of the things that are bothering Jimmy Stewart's character at that time but doesn't try to make sense of them or Scotty, it just is. Add in Bernard Hermann's score and that makes it truly nightmarish.

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.

"M Squad"

I've been watching the first disc of the 1957 - 1960 "M Squad" series and, I have to admit, despite the awesomeness of Lee Marvin, it's not keeping my interest. It also made me realize something else about what I need in my entertainment, because why doesn't this show work for me? Very simply: it's too straightforward.

How's that for an odd criticism? Those who know me well, who know my writing, who know my likes and dislikes are probably just nodding and going, "yeah, wanna tell us something new there?" Cop gets case, solves case. Sure there's some twists, people aren't what they seem, people lie and try to lead Frank Ballinger on a merry chase, there's action and shoot outs and some nice fisticuffs... but it hasn't yet engaged me.

I couldn't help comparing "M Squad" to "Peter Gunn," both half hour shows, both made late 50's, both dealing with crime. But "Peter Gunn" sucked me in immediately, particularly the first half of the first season. It wasn't straightforward at all, though on the surface, it's no different from "M Squad": detective takes on case, detective solves case. So what's the difference? "Peter Gunn" swings right away into noir territory and the Land of Grey, where "M Squad" is very black/white so far. It also gives me characters I care about, emotion, and the most important: things at stake for the leads. Peter Gunn, Edie, Mother, and my favorite Lt. Jacoby - they lead lives outside the case that draw me in. They make promises to each other that they can't always keep, or that get interrupted, that make me worry. They make me invest in what happens to them.

And that's what's missing from "M Squad" so far... something at stake. Something that makes me care whether Ballinger succeeds or fails. Something personal. There's nothing that takes it beyond a cop doing his job. Now, really, that's an unfair desire by me for a show like this, because I doubt it was created to be anything other than what it is: a nice straightforward cop show. But that doesn't stop me from being a little disappointed anyway.

On the other hand... Lee Marvin. Watching him brings a grin on my face a mile wide, and really, if he wanted to swagger around reading the phone book, I'm in. So I'll happily keep watching, even if the eps don't quite glue me to the set and maybe, just maybe, it'll develop into something more down the line.

Books read in 2008

Following Rachel's entry (since she's the one who got me logging my reading habits two years ago), 2008 was not a particularly big reading year for me, though I was pretty much reading steadily throughout.

January

• Scardown - Elizabeth Bear
• Worldwired - Elizabeth Bear (These two comprise the rest of the trilogy following the first book, Hammered, which I read in Dec 2007. I enjoyed this trilogy a lot; they're my favorite Bear books so far, particularly the first book, Hammered, as it was the most personal of the three. The two sequels were a little more far-reaching in scope, a little less intimate-feeling, so what happened to characters didn't hit home quite as hard as it did in the first book. But all in all a fine, exciting trilogy. A very fast read.)

February

• Giacomo Puccini - Conrad Wilson

March

• The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer (this book, as I said before, took me months to read, cuz it was heavy wading through each character's section. I've read several books this year that really helped me pinpoint what I like and don't like in books. This was one of them.)
• Dust - Elizabeth Bear (based on the back cover's description, this novel sounded right up my alley... only it simply didn't work for me. There's a few reasons for this. 1) I don't think I'm the right audience for this book, 2) I think a lot of references that might have helped me understand things went right over my head due to my own ignorance, 3) the main characters never engaged me, and I think I need to read it again to figure out why, cuz I liked them, I just couldn't feel them or feel with them. I felt the entire book was telling me what to think, but not letting me truly feel along with the characters, which is an odd reaction to a Bear book; and 4) I'm told (there we go again with the telling) who the main villain is, and I'm told she did bad things, but I never actually saw them firsthand (other than briefly in the beginning, but while she did rather gruesome things, she didn't seem evil), so the entire end didn't work for me because I couldn't buy why I was supposed to be rooting for one team over another. Now, secretly, I'm hoping the assumptions the main characters make with their second-hand knowledge about the villain's supposed evil deeds is going to play into some greater plan (because this is the first book of a trilogy after all), but that could be wishful thinking on my part. This whole book was a surreal reading experience, like I was outside looking in at where all the good stuff happened, and I could see it and hear it, but not feel it, not get it. It was supremely frustrating because I like her work. I will read the rest of the trilogy when she finishes it and it comes out and hope the second two books work better for me.)

April

• The Satan Bug - Alistair MacLean (A re-read. While MacLean is the author of my all-time favorite book, I'd only ever read Satan Bug once before, back in high school. I should have known there was a very good reason for that. This book just makes me angry. It's a prime example of how not to write a book, particularly in showing authors what information they should never keep from their readers.)

July

• South by Java Head - Alistair MacLean (A re-read - This one got rid of the bad taste left by Satan Bug. This is one of the best by him. Personally, it gives me everything I want out of book. Very satisfying.)
• A Darkness Forged in Fire - Chris R. Evans (loved it! If Sharpe was an elf and had to fight the evilest of magic and his own past, that would be this book. I was mildly disappointed that one of the characters seemed headed towards the predictable, and I'm really hoping that's authorial deception and the next book will prove me wrong! But still a quick exciting read and I can't wait for the next book!)
• Atonement - Ian McEwan (Ugh, not even worth going into again)

August

• Foot Soldier: A Combat Infantryman's War in Europe - Roscoe C. Blunt, Jr.
  
• Odalisque - Fiona McIntosh (One of my favorite fantasy authors. This was the first book in the Goddess series, and I devoured it in one day. Fiona McIntosh's one of those author's whose books I start only when I know I don't need to do something else, because I will not stop until the book is done. So far, I have loved every book of hers I've read. They are exciting, adventurous, violent, scary, heart-breaking, never boring, characters grow and change, no one is safe, no one is spared. They always leave me satisfied and remind me that yes, I still really do love books, and not to be discouraged by the bad ones. I think I've bawled my eyes out somewhere in every trilogy of hers.)
• Emissary - Fiona McIntosh (book 2 of the Goddess series, finished the very next day. Unfortunately, I didn't have book 3 then, can't remember why, now, and I got left hanging but good! I was just able to get the concluding book a couple weeks ago, and Goddess was the first book I read of 2009. Again in one day, all 550 pages of it, because there was no way I was stopping until I found out exactly what happened to everyone.)

September

• Casino Royale - Ian Fleming (quick, easy read)
• Diplomacy of Wolves - Holly Lisle (a good exciting read... again, I got left hanging because I don't own the next books in the series. Grrr.)

October

• The Road - Cormac McCarthy
• The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway
• The Crazy Man - Pamela Porter
• Cairo Kelly and the Mann - Kristin Butcher
• I, Coriander - Sally Gardner
• Silk - Alessandro Baricco
• Catalyst - Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Foreshadowing - Marcus Sedgwick

My, but October was the month, wasn't it? The first three I read over my birthday weekend, while visiting a friend. All these books were picked for me by my friend, and all these books were fantastic. Favorites were: The Road, a post-apocalyptic setting, very dark, very affecting, very sparse and yet so vivid. It'll stay with me a long time. Catalyst - wow, powerful book. The Foreshadowing - great combo of WWI, family, and what one can do with the ability to see the future.

December

• Vellum (This book took me forever to read. I started it a year and a half ago, gave up, then started re-reading in earnest back in September. It took me the full four months to get through it. And it is another book, like Dust, definitely not written for me. I like the writing, I like the characters, but honestly? This book made me work too hard for too little payoff. It's told in multiple little circles that all interconnect and swirl and re-tell each other's little mini-stories to produce the big picture. And that's cool and rather beautiful, but I prefer a straightforward narrative, it's that simple. I stuck with it, got to the end, and came away still not knowing what the hell it was really all about or what I should carry away with me when I closed the book. I know a lot of this one referenced things that went right over my head, although, because of following the wonderful journal of writer Catherynne M. Valente, I actually knew the story of Inanna. Loved the WWI bits, and everything with Finnan, but... ultimately Vellum is not for me.)

First impressions

I'm down with the latest incarnation of illness that keep circling through the family, so I've spent the day either sleeping or on the couch watching two Route 66 eps and Key Largo (cuz I was still in a Humphrey Bogart mood after High Sierra). And while half out of it, I had a scene stuck in my head that I could not, for the life of me, place. It finally came to me.

It was from ffolkes (1979), a highly underrated, wonderful Roger Moore action film that my family used to watch all the time. Which made me realize that this movie gave me my first, rather against-type, impression of Anthony Perkins, and it wasn't as the twitchy, nervous, self-conscious character he often played in other films. No, my first impression of Anthony Perkins was as a cold-blooded, intelligent, scary murderer/hijacker. That's still the image I get when you mention his name and I realized I've never really shaken it. I've learned to accept the nervous version, but I still expect to see that cold calculating look appear any second, no matter who else he's playing.

The only other against-type first impression I can think of off the top of my head is Stewart Granger in The Wild Geese (1978). That was the first thing I saw him in, and I have never, ever been able to see him in anything else without distrusting him and waiting for him to doublecross somebody. I just can't shake that first impression.

And now I'm really in the mood to watch ffolkes, except, alas, I don't own it. Great cast (Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins, James Mason, David Hedison!), cool action, "Cigarette, Kramer?", and cats and more cats! I used to want three little white kittens, just so I could name them Esther, Ruth, and Jennifer.

Happy New Year!

May this be a grand and gay night, with no bad news lurking to ambush you by phone (or other modern method), and may 2009 bring us all what we're looking for.

"Missing's the word."

18,000 words on the cursed fanfic story, just a few thousand words left to reach the end... and I'm stuck. I've outlined the whole thing up to present (after writing it) to make sure everything's in the right order (almost, but not quite). I've freewritten. I've daydreamed. I've played with the dog. I've read more of the novel I'm reading. I've watched half of Alvarez Kelly again (I've decided I think I need to own that one - the subject line is one of my favorite smug WH quotes from it, only I'm feeling anything but smug). I've done more freewriting but, mostly, I keep rewording the same damned question, the one I can't answer, the "why" question that's halted me in my tracks, hoping that maybe if I reword it just so, the answer will jump out at me.

Thinking about it now, I did let myself go slightly astray in the story, which might have been a bad idea. It gave me a new cool scene and direction, but I think all I did was complicate matters. And to go this direction, I had to throw out a scene that's been in my head from very early on... I'm wondering what might happen if I yank the new scene and re-write more along the original lines, might that eliminate the problem? No, cuz the nasty question still remains unanswered, and I can't move forward until I know the answer. Grrr.

Can't write a nice simple story, no... it has to have enough subplots, character arcs, and povs for a novel. Seems to be a commonality in my longer fanfic stories lately... and that makes them both logistical nightmares and, despite my frustrations, very fun.

(And I think I need to write a post sometime about the Movie Clothes I Wished I Owned. Like Dana's jacket in The Ox-Bow Incident.)

"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....

Bend of the River (1952)

And that wraps up my Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart Western viewings. I saved this film for last because it was the only one I'd seen before, when I was young. I'd completely forgotten Rock Hudson was in it, but, well, he had almost no part and should have been cut out anyway. Not that I have anything against him, it's just the plot would have been tighter without him. He didn't add anything other than an extra gun. Besides, he's just so vanilla next to Arthur Kennedy and James Stewart.

Ahhh, Arthur Kennedy. This was the first movie I ever saw him in, and I've liked him ever since. It was kind of funny, because watching it now, I realize the first thing that attracted me to him -- was his horse. Horses were big in my family, well with my mom, anyway. My dad, not so much. She'd always owned and ridden horses, was always talking and watching horses. We watched Westerns as much to see the horses as the shoot-outs and barroom brawls. And in Bend of the River, Mr. Kennedy is riding a buckskin, and that was always my favorite coloring. Hee. But he's fabulous in this, just like in Man From Laramie. All the right shades of charming, brave, shifty, determined, and desperate.

I think it's fascinating how similar his character and Jimmy Stewart really are, how it could easily have been Jimmy Stewart who betrayed Arthur Kennedy instead. They're both skirting the edges of their pasts and future, looking for a new life. Kennedy's just a little greedier, where Stewart wants redemption. Their scenes together are the best in the film and make me grin grin grin. I love the way they each realize who the other is in the beginning, how it's mostly conveyed in looks, not words, because they both have a lot to hide, and they respect each other enough not to give each other away to the settlers. Gotta dig that. I love their Oriole/Indian talk. I love how quick Kennedy is to defend Stewart (a lot quicker than the reverse) multiple times. I love Kennedy's horse. :-D (Hah! Just re-read my review of Man from Laramie, and apparently, he's also riding a buckskin in that movie. That I also had to comment on.)

Julie Adams is the love interest in this, and I couldn't help but be cross with her. This isn't her fault so much as her character's. I seem to have encountered a rash of fickle Julie Adams characters lately, and I'm still mad at her for messing with Joel McCrea's heart in The Gunfight at Dodge City. I think she's just as cold and fickle here. I mean, she's clearly attracted to Arthur Kennedy the moment he appears. She spends months with him in Portland, and then she condemns him completely in less than a minute flat when he turns on Jimmy Stewart. Now, honey, don't you even want to hear his side of it? Stand by your man just a little? Particularly after knowing he's a gambler and already deciding to stay in Portland with him and ignore your family? Sheesh! I would have. At least let him 'splain things. Maybe there was more to his plan, maybe he had grander ideas. But nooooo. She tells him instantly to get lost. Hmph. Silly fickle woman.

But really, I loved the movie very much. And the Mann/Stewart collaborations really are a great series of Westerns. I'd personally rank them as follows:

1. The Naked Spur
2. Bend of the River
3. The Man from Laramie
4. The Far Country
5. Winchester 73

Probably an obvious order for anyone who knows me, me being the plot-girl I am: The Naked Spur is the only one with a really tight story. The others are a little too sprawly, a little too segmented into different sections. And, of course, Naked Spur has Ralph Meeker. And as much as I love Arthur Kennedy, I love Meeker a lot more, even if he doesn't ride a buckskin. LOL!