They Were Sisters (1945)

Good morning!

Ready for another installment of "moody Mason"? 

Our next picture finds the star of the hour at the height of his handsomeness and onscreen viciousness...James Mason never looked as good or behaved as badly heretofore as he does in this movie, the first of the four pictures he was to make for Gainsborough. As he continues to build his reputation as a villain you love to hate, let's take a look at 1945's They Were Sisters.

While a weaker entry in his Gainsborough cycle, there's still a lot of Mason-based electricity coming off in the meaner scenes of They Were Sisters. And oh, the mean scenes of this movie. Featuring Phyllis Calvert, Dulcie Gray, and Anne Crawford as the trio of sisters mentioned in the title, the story follows their (VERY BRITISH) loves and losses in the between-wars England of 1919-1939, with a special spotlight on the acidic relationship between poor Anne Crawford and brutish James Mason.

I'm getting ahead of myself, let's talk synopsis. If you live in a region 2 country, you can order a PAL dvd of They Were Sisters on Amazon; if you're stateside like me, there's a fuzzy but serviceable print of the movie on archive.org.

The movie opens with Lucy (Phyllis Calvert), Vera (Anne Crawford), and Charlotte (Dulcie Gray) trading stockings and readying themselves for a thé dansant being held in town, year of our Lord 1919. As in any traditional women's picture, the sisters' initial motivation is single-minded-- find husband, get married. At the dance, a bow-tied Geoffrey (Mason) makes a pass at vivacious Vera on the dance floor, but is swiftly rebuffed. Undeterred, he finds a quick rebound with shy Charlotte, who fairly sees stars as Geoffrey pays her attention. From the get-go, Vera harbors a bad feeling against Geoffrey, which, naturally, only makes Charlotte all the more ferociously defensive of their relationship. At one point after their engagement, and a particularly ungenerous reaction to said news from Vera's camp, Charlotte vows never to speak to or see her again if she says ill of Geoffrey again and Vera knows wherever this is headed is not good. Spoiler: Vera is correct in her prediction.

But they marry anyway. Geoffrey and his friends get wrecked at the wedding reception and more or less spoil the occasion with their boisterousness-- Geoffrey is carried down the stairs at one point by his friends, hollering, "Here! I've got an appointment to keep! Leave go of my coat! Stop arsing about! Leave go of my foot!" before bounding over the banister and making good his escape to the newlywed's car. Lucy looks on hopefully, Vera dubiously, as their sister rides off in Geoffrey's roadster and into married life.

Vera and Lucy turn their beaux into husbands, to differing effect. Vera marries a man who is devoted to her, but her restlessness and roving eye make both of them miserable. Lucy marries happily but is unable to have children, leaving a void in an otherwise good match. And Charlotte....whoo, Charlotte. When the plot jumps some twenty years forward, the lovely, gentle girl of the first twenty minutes has been replaced by a nervous, overwrought creature. Why? Because guess who has been working full-time, full tilt on Charlotte for the last two decades-- generally breaking down her spirit as if it were a paying job. 

Charlotte's devotion to Geoffrey has never flagged, but it also has never paid any dividends-- her husband is indifferent at best and cruel at worst, picking her apart and then faking attacks of angina to get her sympathy. The youngest of their three children, Judith, says to her aunt Lucy, "I believe Daddy only has his attacks so Mummy will feel sorry for him...after he's been horrid to her, you know," with the simplicity of a known fact. Geoffrey strongly favors his older daughter/also his secretary Margaret (Pamela Kellino), while being more or less indifferent to Judith and her brother Stephen. Here's a good piece of weirdness, an exchange as father and daughter hold hands and she perches herself on the arm of his armchair: 

Margaret: Things seem to go from bad to worse with you and Mummy.
Geoffrey: You can hardly blame me for that.
Margaret: I'm not blaming anyone, but you do seem to get on each other's nerves. Wouldn't it be better if perhaps she went away for a bit?
Geoffrey: It would be much better from a domestic point of view, but one of the essentials of a successful business man is to keep up the appearance of having a happy family, even if he hasn't one.
Margaret: But surely...Mummy's happiness and yours is more important than successful business? [pause] It does seem so awfully miserable...
Geoffrey: And so it would be if we hadn't each other, Margaret...[looks up at here]

Me if I were Charlotte: Um....so....can you do me a favor and not discuss our relationship with my child while I'm not home as if the child were a contemporary? Ok, thanks, just wanted to clear that up. [eyes heavenward]

Can I add that Pamela Kellino, the actress playing Margaret, and our sainted James Mason were married in real life at the time of the filming? We'll talk more about the long time and first Mrs. James Mason in a future post, but doesn't that just add an extra frisson of creepiness to the whole thing!

The costumes are hard to make out on the archive.org copy of the film, but I am living for that tiny hat.

More from the echo chamber of oddness: Judith, on holiday with Lucy and her husband William, pointedly asks the latter of those two at one point during their visit, "Would you like to shoot an apple off my head, Uncle William?" "No, why should I?" "Just to show that I trust you like anything." Got to remember this in meeting new people, to show them they've gained my trust. Later, she returns home and thoughtlessly tells her brother, "I think Uncle William is the most rippingest man I ever met, and to prove it I said he could shoot an apple of my head if he wanted to." "Why? More fool you." "Why? I trust Uncle William like anything!" Whereupon, obviously, Geoffrey overhears and makes a show of asking Judith to play the William Tell act with him, there, in the house, which she rightly refuses. I would, too, as he would very likely just kill me for no reason, this character does not need motivation to make my life difficult and/or end it.

Petulant Geoffrey then has this exchange with his long-suffering wife, who tries to talk him out of a tantrum about her extension of her stay with her sisters and Judith by a day or two:

Charlotte: Geoffrey...I want you to understand why we spent those extra few days at Lucy's. We hadn't all been together since father died. The fresh and sunlight were doing Judith so much good-
Geoffrey: When I want an explanation, I'll ask for it.
Charlotte: I didn't think you'd mind if I stayed a few more days--
Geoffrey: Mind? You flatter yourself. It's a mystery to me anyone wants you.
Charlotte: Oh, Geoffrey. We're all very fond of each other, we always have been
Geoffrey: How wonderful. I'm not interested in mutual admiration societies-- when my own child comes back slopping over with praise for dear uncle William--you can't expect me to be enthusiastic.
Charlotte: Nobody could be kinder than he was.
Geoffrey: Reeeally. It's a wonder you managed to drag yourself back at all.
Charlotte: I knew I wasn't wanted here...so I decided that perhaps I--
Geoffrey: You decided?! Since when have you decided anything? Haven't even the guts to ring up and tell me yourself, making me out to be a bully I suppose so your precious sisters could pet and pity you.
Charlotte: Oh Geoffrey, you know that isn't true, you know that I'd never--
Geoffrey: Ohhhh, stop whining! You're no more use to me than a sick headache.
Charlotte: Oh Geoffrey, please, please don't talk to me like that, I can't stand these scenes.
Geoffrey: All right then, get out of here and stay out-- from now on this isn't our room, it's mine!
Charlotte: No, Geoffrey no! You can't do this to me! For seventeen years I've done everything for you! Put up with everything from you! Because, because...you can't do this Geoffrey! I won't let you!
Geoffrey: Get out.
Charlotte: [goes downstairs to cry and drink by herself]

"You're no more use to me than a sick headache." Yikes. Lesson learned: homeboy does not care. Things to think about in that exchange: one, how many times can one person say Geoffrey in a three minute scene? Answer: six, but it felt more like six hundred. Two-- how snappishly, almost preeningly arch James Mason plays the scene...he has a tendency in these early films, especially in more heated moments, to rush the lines so that you're surprised he can say all the words as quickly as he does without tripping over them. Every line is a sneer and yet somehow he gets away with it without sounding like Charles Nelson Riley (RIP, but it would ruin the scene for Mason to be any less believable as the lines themselves are already so catty/over the top). Three: Why is she so worried about moving out of the bedroom? Good riddance to bad rubbish! People in these forties' movies act like life itself will end if you're thrust out of the marital bed, I would be like...well, great, I guess I'm moving down the hallway of our spacious home and not have to deal with you bawling me out every time I open my mouth. Oh, we're not going to share a room as man and wife? Heaven forfend. What will the servants think. Anyway, Charlotte is upset and drowns her disappointments in a decanter of whiskey. Where does this selfless, slavish devotion come from? Where's her breaking point?

In answer to my question, Charlotte gathers up the shreds of pride she has left after the preceding incident and asks her maids (two, she has two maids) to pack her things and call a taxi. Of course, what does James Mason do? Bid her fond adieu as he really doesn't care for her in the first place? Nope, he fakes one of his phantom fits and she comes right back around to being a welcome mat. Also, notice that Mason, in this and The Wicked Lady, extends his hand over the girl's face when they close in for the clinch, a very deliberate move. This and his tendency to say a very barky "HMM" as its own word and in the place of an "ahem" in dialogue seem particularly idiosyncratic to me. [You're in too deep on this Mason project, Lisa! You're in too deep!]

Things go from bad to worse with Geoffrey generally escalating in bad acts-- he tries to undermine young Margaret's courtship with a local boy her age, gets a dog for the kids and then turns around and makes them give it away/threatens to drown it for almost no reason. He acts so badly towards Stephen that the boy decides to run away (but is brought back by kind, not-shooting-apples-off-kids-heads Uncle William) and continues to constantly berate Charlotte, who is seriously bad off in terms of physical/mental health at this point between the alcohol and the despair. Lucy tries to cook up a scheme for Geoffrey to be out of the house so a doctor can see Charlotte about her drinking and general deterioration, but is thwarted...which leads to a final confrontation between Geoffrey and his wife with tragic consequences. Again, it's high time you go and watch the movie to find out what happens, but let's say that it doesn't end well for either of them. Consolation prize: there's a pretty good courtroom scene towards the end and the picture does end on as "happy" a note as I guess it could, considering it's been a long slog of "let's see how bad Geoffrey can act towards this poor woman". But the main question to ask throughout the whole movie is why, why, WHY is he so mean to her? What does he get out of it? What motivates him? You can't even 100% believe that he's just "bad" because he's pretty all right if a little self-important at the beginning of the movie. Where is all this vitriol coming from? They never really come around to it, and that's honestly the biggest flaw in an otherwise shipshape enough melodrama.

Overall verdict? The script is almost too 1940's British-- if someone wrote it as a period piece or dialogue for one of those "set in postwar London" shows like Call the Midwife, I would think they were laying it on too thick, but this is actually almost contemporary for the time. Lots of "beastly", "ghastly", "don't lets quarrel", "thanks awfully", "thanks ever so much" and diction so sharp you could cut yourself on it. While James Mason's Geoffrey is ultimately a character with that whole "sound and fury signifying nothing" vibe going on, at least he brings some much needed energy to the dialogue and looks, as previously stated, as handsome as he ever will even as he's playing a very bad man.

Swedish poster from eMovieposter.com...Me to James Mason: "No, not to worry, you don't actually look anything like that in real life."

Have you seen They Were Sisters? Which of the three sisters are the most sympathetic to you? Can you make rhyme or reason of Geoffrey's singleminded meanness? Are there any British movies from this time period that you think of as almost over-the-top in their Britishness? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but more to come! Talk to you soon. Til then.

The Wicked Lady (1945)

Hello again! Ready for the first installment of James Mason movie info?

The above poster is for the 1945 release The Wicked Lady. My reasons for watching this first in the series of James Mason movies I've seen over the past few weeks were twofold-- one, it was available on Youtube in its entirety and two, I thought it was The Man in Grey. Not because it was labelled The Man in Grey, or I even favored one movie over the other, but because the clip from a Parkinson interview that preceded some discussion of Mason's forties' English filmwork had a particularly racy clip of James Mason in 18th century garb shouting down an equally distraught Margaret Lockwood. Hook it uuuuup, says I, thinking that might be a bit of histrionic viewing fun for the afternoon. Little did I know, these two pictures were easy to confuse to the casual observer-- Gainsborough films actually made several movies with a combination of Margaret Lockwood, Mason, Stewart Granger, and Phyllis Calvert in a short time period in the 1940's. I would probably say this is the best of those, but only because it is also the most COMPLETELY OFF THE RAILS costume drama/thriller you have ever seen. 

Let us discuss. Spoilers all over the place, btw, so if you haven't seen it, there's an excellent Criterion print of the movie, or this slightly fuzzy Youtube copy which will do in a pinch.

The completely GORGEOUS Margaret Lockwood

The movie opens with two relatively marginal characters, the enfiancéd Caroline (Patricia Roc) and Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones), discussing their forthcoming nuptials on horseback before a very unconvincing back-projection of the English countryside. The bride-to-be makes the fatal error of inviting her childhood friend Barbara (Margaret Lockwood) to come down to Sir Ralph's estate in preparation for her role as maid of honor. From the moment Barbara arrives, things seem to bend to her will-- she schemes to take Ralph away from Caroline and does. Looking like young Joan Bennett, dark haired Lockwood frowns and flounces and flirts her way through the first thirty minutes, bored with life in rural England, until she loses an heirloom brooch in a card game with friends. As rumors of an infamous, masked highwayman robbing coaches have been circulating through the village for some time, Barbara makes use of a secret door in her bedroom to sneak out to the main road in disguise, impersonating the highwayman in mask and plumed hat to steal back the jewelry she lost in the card game. Her ruse is a such a roaring success and handy diversion from her domestic ennuis that she decides to try it again ...whereupon the real highwayman shows up. 

Enter Captain Jerry Jackson (our James Mason). And here's where the plot really takes off. Helllllloooo, handsome.

Not being into that whole Harlequin romance school of the dude in white stockings and velvet breeches, I wasn't sure how it was going to go with this whole "highwayman" thing, but...let me tell you, James Mason is working it. Not the costume or the long hair so much as a breathlessly wicked series of exchanges with Margaret Lockwood. They're bad in that they're lightly tossed innuendos-- but then they're amazing in that they're lightly tossed innuendos. I didn't expect this kind of frank sex banter from a wartime English release, let me tell YOU.

Examples:

Barbara: Do you always take women by the throat?
Jerry: No, usually I just take 'em. 

Jerry: I know an inn near here...will you do me the favor of supping with me?
Barbara: What have I got to lose?
Jerry: That is a matter for conjecture. 

Jerry: I can teach you better ways of avoiding boredom than trotting the highways.
Barbara: Not so fast, Captain Jackson, I've not deceived my husband yet.
Jerry: Then it's time you began. The careless fool deserves all he gets!!
Barbara: Wait a minute, what about the jewels and the money?
Jerry: Keep 'em. I can be generous if you can.
Barbara: I like to drive a hard bargain....
Jerry: [profound pause] So do I....

See the isolated scene below here.

Go get 'em, Jerry....

And while there's a tasteful cutaway, there is no ambiguity in the fact that Jerry and Barbara...yep, married Barbara...are whiling away some carnal hours at aforementioned inn, known criminal and lady of the manor in flagrante. Do you understand in the same year, David Lean's beautiful but emotionally exasperating Brief Encounter was another runaway success in England? I think of that movie as the embodiment of war/just postwar era English romance, and it couldn't be more buttoned and tweeded and chaste if it tried. Then apparently also this kind of you-couldn't-get-away-with-this-under-the-American-Hayes-code devilment going on! Color me shocked. Yet the only change the Hayes office demanded when bringing the movie stateside was that several scenes be reshot because the period-correct bodices of the women's dresses were deemed too low for American film standards. Me: DID YOU HAVE SOUND ON WHEN YOU WATCHED THIS MOVIE? I found myself way less distracted by the cleavage than by the fact that people were offscreen hooking up left and right. You can't account for some people.  

Ok, fine, the cleavage was a little distracting, but compared to entire racy subplots, far less so.

Jerry and Barbara continue their illicit affair while robbing people and trading barbs, though Barbara as pupil serves to surpass her teacher in viciousness, greed, and lack of empathy. When a robbery goes off kilter and a guard (who happens to be one of her husband's tenants, long story) pursues the pair, Jerry encourages Barbara to shoot the horse, having earlier explained that it's easier to gain an acquittal for robbery and a horse's demise versus robbery and murder... Barbara of course shoots the guy, who subsequently dies in the road. Jerry clucks at her and they part ways, he back to the inn and she back to her husband's estate. The next day, Hogarth, who's some kind of super religious, super old family servant, finds Barbara's handkerchief near where the body is found-- he confronts Barbara, who dissolves into a flood of crocodile tears and swears her compliance in the criminal goings on were only under duress. She swears she'll do penance and rededicate her life to the Lord....which for some reason this man falls for hook, line, and sinker. Her first article of business AFTER convincing Hogarth not to rat her out is to begin poisoning said Hogarth. Because she's a thief, adultress, murderer, and POISONER. Ugh, again, I was fairly spinning in my seat with anticipation of what Barbara would do next.

Nice hat, bro. Watch that flintlock.

There's a subplot where Barbara keeps meeting a nobleman she's actually in love with (Michael Rennie), and a considerable amount of sturm and drang over poor thrown o'er Caroline which I cannot confess any particular interest in-- the real draws in this movie are Barbara's badness and Captain Jerry's relationship with bad Barbara. What would the titular Wicked Lady do next! Of course, as is often the case in time of trial between accomplices, she proceeds to T old Captain Jerry under the B.

Barbara, after dispatching poor Hogarth off to his much discussed heaven, goes to see Jerry at the inn. Ohhh, misssstttaaake. In the interim between robbings, as they've been cooling their heels after the murder in the last one, Jerry has taken back up with his old girlfriend, and is found in bed with her by an extremely un-understanding Barbara. Me at this point: WHAT! THEY CAN'T! WHAT! While Mason is never shown and definitely his girlfriend is never shown, you can tell by Barbara's face and their voices off screen exactly what the frank is going on.

Jerry: Barbara! Where you been all these months, I've missed you! I never thought you'd come tonight.
Barbara: OBviously.
Jerry: Oh, her, she's, ahem, she's nothing to me, she's just a wench I brought to pass the time until you came back.
Barbara: You look very well together. I warned you if ever deceived me you'd be sorry. You'll find this wench cheap though she looks will cost you dear!

Yep. Pretty much. Yep.

Barbara then anonymously tips off her husband that the highwayman he's looking for (Jerry) is in the inn and pretty much primed to be arrested. Jerry is arrested and taken to the hanging grounds, where he is the old school Steven Tyler of the to-be-executed...exuberantly greeting the  huge crowd gathered by name ("Hello! Hey! Hi, Norma! Goodbye!") and throwing off his jabot and waist coat and all his nice things like, "Here, anybody need a necktie? Necktie?" The "gibbet at Tyburn" is the setting. Barbara goes to the hanging, and is in earshot as Jerry makes his last speech:

My friends. My friends. I don't care whether you're for me or ag'in me, all that matters is you've come here in your thousands to give me a grand send off. To the lovely ladies I say don't waste your love, your caresses, your tears, on villains like me. Save em for someone who's worth it, a faithful honest man...if you can find one!! [laughter] To the men I say...never put your faith in a woman, for however much you think she loves you, she'll like as not betray you in the end...in my short, and merry life, I've loved 'em all...but I've only once made the fatal mistake of trusting one of them and that's why I'm here now...but believe me....only a woman's hand would have put a halter around the neck of Lucky Jerry Jackson....May God bless all my friends....and may my enemies be hanged, as I am.

And they hang the S.O.B. But wait! He's left a letter for Barbara to read!!! I LOVE THIS MOVIE! The contents are read by voice-overed Mason as Lockwood holds the last minute missive in hand:

So, my bold, bad Barbara, you're afraid of me at last. You needn't be, we had some good sport together, and Jerry Jackson's not the one to whine now the reckoning has to be paid. You'll have to pay yours too, never fear. In the meantime if you feel you owe me some kindness, give a share of our earnings to the girl beside my coffin. She was with me that night at the inn. She was my doxy before I ever met you and she's stood by me ever since. Farewell then, my lovely Barbara, til our next new meeting....

Words added to my vocabulary by this movie that I will never have occasion to use: gibbet, doxy. And you think that's it, but in the ensuing fracas after the hanging, Jerry was cut down by his friends! HE MIGHT NOT BE DEAD! And he sure ain't dead when he shows up all Phantom of the Opera in Barbara's bedroom. Here's perhaps the most "Whoa, what....what!" part of the whole movie. Also, I want every movie here forward to have as many twists and bad turns as this one, it's really entertainment at its best. Just as Barbara is trying to hook up with the Michael Rennie character that she still has a crush on after all this time, Jerry shows up.

"Soooo...I'm back from the dead, in case you were wondering..."

There's some discussion of what it's like to be hanged and some light choking (yeah, sure, why not) before we get to this exchange. Which is so crazy I don't even know what to do with it.

Barbara: And now that you've found me? 

Jerry: We've got to pick up our life together just where we left off.

Barbara: What do you mean?  

Jerry: I meant to kill you at first, then I began to remember those crisp, clear nights when we rode together...the thrill of the hours that followed when you put aside your trappings of the road and lay in my arms....warm, yielding, lovely...I knew then that it wasn't vengeance that I wanted...it was you!

Barbara: No! NO!

Jerry: Have I suddenly become so distasteful?

Barbara:  Things are different now, I'm in love, deeply sincerely in love

Jerry: So my caresses would be repulsive?

Barbara:  I told you, I'm in love!

Jerry: [laughing] Twould be a new experience, to take you against your will...

Barbara:  You wouldn't!

Jerry: You underrate me.

Barbara: I'll call for help!

Jerry: And give yourself away? No, Barbara, you're as much in my power as if we were on a desert island. [gathers her up into his arms to carry her]

Barbara: No! No! Please, please!

Jerry: This must be what they mean when they say revenge is sweet!

ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW. That shrieking cat emoticon is pretty much the sum total of my feelings at the moment. No means no, Captain Jerry, good God! Do you understand in 1945 you could hardly show people kissing onscreen in America for longer than two seconds, and here Jerry's about to seriously "have his way" with Barbara sans consequence. The difference being, I suppose, that all this is implied rather than shown. I still think if you were making this movie in America at the same time, the production code wouldn't have let them get away with a full half of the movie. See also that scene in Gone with the Wind, where drunk Rhett Butler picks up an unwilling Scarlett O'Hara and says "This is one night you're not turning me out" before carrying her upstairs...but at least they were married? I don't know, I am still scandalized.

I wasn't able to get a good screen shot of this scene, but it's mesmerizing.

I've taken you through the larger part of the movie already, but not to worry, the last ten minutes are just as hell-for-leather as the first 90, and I won't give them away. My only criticism of the film as a whole is that the movie doesn't fully commit to being "The Wicked Lady AND JERRY" because all the scenes with Caroline and Michael Rennie and Sir Ralph come off as essentially waiting periods in between seeing Barbara and Jerry together again.

James Mason credits this film, in conjunction with the other Gainsborough movies from the same time period, with a surge in his popularity as a star in England...while he himself seems to downplay the quality of the writing (Shakespeare it ain't), I think he really shines, adding a rakish energy and credibility to lines that could have easily seemed banal coming from another actor.

"Ok, now one smiling...ok now one brooding..."---> acting range

Promotional spots from Life magazine touting the film's American release, December 1945. I love that they call James Mason "the man of mood and menace"! You can't get enough alliteration in these old advertisements.

Have you seen The Wicked Lady? If you have, which section struck you as the most "wicked" or outrageous (correct answer: all of them)? What are your thoughts on Gainsborough melodramas? If you're a James Mason fan, can you remember the first movie you took notice of him in?

That's all for today, but I'll be back with more James Mason material tout de suite. Talk to you soon! Til then. 

Meet James Mason (Welcome, Welcome)

Hello out there!

Hi-ya, handsome!

My name is Lisa and I blog over at She Was a Bird about various vintage goings on...a couple of weeks ago, I was in the middle of preparing a post about my favorite actor, James Mason, when I realized there isn't a collected wealth of information about Huddersfield's most famous son on the world wide internet. I've spent the ensuing time, right up to the present, combing various online and print resources to learn more about his life and work, when inspiration struck. I thought I might put together some individual posts so that future Mason fans would be able to easily clap hands on details and digital archive findings about his not-unexciting life and movie career. So if you're just tuning in, welcome! And let me begin by saying a little about what got me into this in the first place.

"Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan?" says one who should know.

My sister and I first took notice of James Mason in one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, North by Northwest. While an abiding love of Cary Grant and Hitch drove us toward repeat viewing of the midcentury suspense caper, the quote we kept returning to as an injoke was simply James Mason's line reading of the Grant character's mistaken identity. "Kaaaaplan...Geooooorge....Kaplan....." was short hand for a quick, warm laugh over Mason's indelible performance as an urbane spymaster Phillip Vandamm, and I would always think, "Hey, it's got James Mason in it!" as a boon towards buying this, that, or the other movie.

In another memorable (infamous?) moment from the third movie incarnation of A Star is Born, this one 1954 with Judy Garland.

Years later, and at to the present day, I was trawling Youtube for classic Hollywood movie actor interviews to listen to while working. The BBC Two series, Talking Pictures, features compiled archival interviews with actors and actresses, unified by biographical information and stills narrated by Sylvia Sims. I watched one of handsome, unpredictable Robert Mitchum, and chatty, darling Laurence Olivier before coming across one of James Mason that I ended up watching several times. More than voice, which is always perfectly singular, Mason's choice of words was hypnotizing. He didn't like something, but that he was "bewitched" by it. He didn't find a film trashy, he was impressed by its "gross breaches in taste". For someone who loves the spoken word almost as much as the written, I sat up and took interest in his off screen personality more so than I hitherto had his onscreen roles. There's a real shortage of people, including classically trained actors from that time period, with enough erudition and sheer chutzpah to pull of speaking in the way James Mason does. And with such flair. I wanted to know more about this character.

On the lam in Odd Man Out (1947)

Being the film autodidact I've always been, I pulled his filmography from Wikipedia and started working down the list, expecting the run of the mill post war British movies Trevor Howard became famous in and for which I can claim little enthusiasm. Was I wrong....which! Brings us to this blog.

My marked up filmography-- still trying to fill in some of those blanks!

My main goal, in this blog, is to re-assess the trademarks ascribed to JM on his IMDB page."Sophisticated upper-class demeanor... deep mellifluous voice," is accurate but seems to leave out so much of what makes his performances special. As MGM director George Cukor said of his A Star is Born leading man, "If James Mason is in front of the cameras, just leave them rolling! He never makes a mistake." While perhaps some of the pictures he appears in aren't top drawer (I'm looking at you, Cold Sweat and Kill!), what he brings to the screen himself is always at least a little, and habitually very, worth watching. What more could you ask from an actor?

Dame shaking his real life wife Pamela Kellino...will this man never learn?

As time permits, I'll be posting my own movie reviews of the thirty-two (and counting!) James Mason movies I've seen over the past few weeks, along with what I could find of old time radio and print appearances from almost fifty-year screen career. Think of it as a modern version of a newsletter from the (oddly numerous) star-specific fan clubs of Hollywood's yesteryear (more about that later). If you're already a Mason fan, I hope you'll find something you didn't know before about him-- if you're unfamiliar with his works, come dive in with me!

I welcome (and look forward to!) your thoughts, questions, or just shoot-the-breeze comments in the comments section at the bottom of each post...if there's anyone who wants to talk turkey about James Mason with you, believe me, it's me. :)

Have  a great rest of the day and keep checking back for more content...it's coming!