1) Just finished a cute little British novel called The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp, written in 1953 by Charles Terrot. A young, angelic woman pawns a harp to get some money for a vacation, and affects the lives of several people including Mr. Webman the pawnbroker, his old friend Ned, and his young and naive clerk Len, all of whom assume that she is, in fact, an angel who can perform miracles. I found this in our library's junk books and saved it; I'd never heard of it, but it seemed to have promise as a cute bit of whimsy along the lines of The Bishop's Wife, and it is indeed a charming, lightweight story, if perhaps a bit too predictable. I discovered it was made into a movie in England in 1954 (the poster is pictured), though it doesn't appear to be widely available. Though the pawnbroker is supposed to be the central character, it's Len, with his smothering mother and his long-time crush on a seemingly unattainable girl, who really draws you into the story. Perhaps because of the whimsy of Pushing Daisies, I was picturing a younger Lee Pace as Len, and Kristin Chenoweth as the angel (with a little less personality, as she isn't really a very active character). As I've probably made clear, it's cute and whimsical, nothing more.
2) I'm almost finished with Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master by Michael Sragow, a huge biography of the man who directed two of the biggest Hollywood hits of all time, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. However, Fleming's name has not endured like his contemporaries John Ford or Frank Capra, mainly, I think, because he didn't have an obvious personal touch (he was not what would today be called an auteur), and instead excelled at making mainstream middlebrow entertainments (Red Dust, Test Pilot, Captains Courageous) which are still highly watchable movies but which don't have cult followings or the air of genius about them. It's also interesting that his two biggest movies were projects that he did not initiate but instead inherited from other directors by studio decree--Richard Thorpe had done the set-up for Oz and King Vidor shot all the Kansas scenes; three other directors, most notably George Cukor, had put in time on GWTW.
This book is one of the best popular biographies I've ever read: it's well written and well researched, it does a nice job balancing the subject's life and works (and, without relying too much on unsubstantiated rumors, does find a place for the occasional bit of gossip), and its reach is both wide and relevant: unlike the
recent book on Reagan in Hollywood, this one includes lots of peripheral material--particularly about Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy--but manages to make it all seem important to Fleming's story. I only have one more chapter to go, but I'll be sorry to see it end. More importantly, I want to go back and re-view some of Fleming's work that I haven't seen in a while, primarily Red Dust (pictured, with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable) and A Guy Named Joe. I suspect most of his movies aren't really great ones, but they are well made and usually boast fine performances. This book is a must for classic-era movie fans.
1) Just finished a cute little British novel called The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp, written in 1953 by Charles Terrot. A young, angelic woman pawns a harp to get some money for a vacation, and affects the lives of several people including Mr. Webman the pawnbroker, his old friend Ned, and his young and naive clerk Len, all of whom assume that she is, in fact, an angel who can perform miracles. I found this in our library's junk books and saved it; I'd never heard of it, but it seemed to have promise as a cute bit of whimsy along the lines of The Bishop's Wife, and it is indeed a charming, lightweight story, if perhaps a bit too predictable. I discovered it was made into a movie in England in 1954 (the poster is pictured), though it doesn't appear to be widely available. Though the pawnbroker is supposed to be the central character, it's Len, with his smothering mother and his long-time crush on a seemingly unattainable girl, who really draws you into the story. Perhaps because of the whimsy of Pushing Daisies, I was picturing a younger Lee Pace as Len, and Kristin Chenoweth as the angel (with a little less personality, as she isn't really a very active character). As I've probably made clear, it's cute and whimsical, nothing more.
2) I'm almost finished with Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master by Michael Sragow, a huge biography of the man who directed two of the biggest Hollywood hits of all time, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. However, Fleming's name has not endured like his contemporaries John Ford or Frank Capra, mainly, I think, because he didn't have an obvious personal touch (he was not what would today be called an auteur), and instead excelled at making mainstream middlebrow entertainments (Red Dust, Test Pilot, Captains Courageous) which are still highly watchable movies but which don't have cult followings or the air of genius about them. It's also interesting that his two biggest movies were projects that he did not initiate but instead inherited from other directors by studio decree--Richard Thorpe had done the set-up for Oz and King Vidor shot all the Kansas scenes; three other directors, most notably George Cukor, had put in time on GWTW.
This book is one of the best popular biographies I've ever read: it's well written and well researched, it does a nice job balancing the subject's life and works (and, without relying too much on unsubstantiated rumors, does find a place for the occasional bit of gossip), and its reach is both wide and relevant: unlike the recent book on Reagan in Hollywood, this one includes lots of peripheral material--particularly about Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy--but manages to make it all seem important to Fleming's story. I only have one more chapter to go, but I'll be sorry to see it end. More importantly, I want to go back and re-view some of Fleming's work that I haven't seen in a while, primarily Red Dust (pictured, with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable) and A Guy Named Joe. I suspect most of his movies aren't really great ones, but they are well made and usually boast fine performances. This book is a must for classic-era movie fans.
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