MGM, Clarence Brown, Greta Garbo and the Parade of Leading Men -- Garbo

In the current blog series, I've been working my way through Greta Garbo's films. We are up to 1937  and "Conquest," in which Garbo plays Polish countess Marie Walewska who is persuaded by the government of her country to use her beauty and charm to distract Napoleon Bonaparte from invading her beloved homeland.  In a previous post, I wrote a bit about this biopic and the real Marie Walewska.

Which leaves us to devote our post to the pairing of Garbo with actor Charles Boyer (don't confuse him with Maurice Chevalier!), and compare the French actor to other leading men with whom Garbo starred. 

 

These days, people are most likely to recognize Charles Boyer from the films "Casino Royale" and "Around the World in 80 Days," or guest star appearances on celebrity-studded television shows like  "The Name of the Game." Boyer was a capable actor and he ought to be remembered for his best work, including the films "Gaslight" and "Algiers." 

 I'm not sure he should be remembered for "Conquest," which is one of  those period dramas which doesn't have quite enough of any one thing to keep it going.I keep telling myself that it's not Boyer's fault that they combed his hair forward into a pointed forelock which suggest less Napoleon and more "My Little Pony."  The dynamic in "Conquest" is supposed to be this:  Napoleon is troubled and slightly mad, and Garbo's character Marie is helping him calm down and you know, make better choices. But I'm sorry to say that in much of the film Boyer looks as though he has indigestion and Garbo looks solicitous, as though she is offering him something to settle his stomach. Also, if you look at the two of them, Boyer appears to have no neck at all while Garbo has enough neck for the two of them. 

How does Charles Boyer measure up to other leading men who co-starred with Greta Garbo? Maybe we should start with how this movie convention -- big-name male star A on the movie poster with big-name female star B  -- developed. As Hollywood evolved during the 1930s, the movies depended more and more on these romantic pairings. The best-known  Leading Lady / Leading Man couples are  Katharine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy & William Powell, and Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall.  

This kind of match-up was central to films directed by 1920s sensation Clarence Brown, who often got his name on movie posters in as large a font (if not larger) than the names of the stars.  Brown had directed at Universal Studios before coming to MGM, where he directed Greta Garbo in seven films, most notably "Anna Karenina." Brown directed Joan Crawford in nearly as many films as he had Garbo -- six with Crawford) and like another MGM director, George Cukor, Brown was seen as a women's director, which often meant films with love stories at the center. 

Of course it was the heads of the studios who felt that they knew what audiences wanted, and these men decided that the combination of leading man plus leading lady was the key to selling movie tickets.  Since I'm always interested in the business of the movies as well as the artistic part, I'd like to look at four of Garbo's leading men and what I think MGM was trying to do.

Recently I did a whole post on Garbo with John Gilbert, so for today I will choose (besides Charles Boyer) the big-name leading men  Robert Taylor, Lewis Stone, and Clark Gable. 

Robert Taylor, in "Camille" and on the movie poster, sometimes eems to be looming over Greta Garbo, but in reality Taylor was six feet tall and Garbo was five feet seven inches. So he was five inches taller. 

In other publicity pictures and film stills, it's Garbo who towers over Taylor, sometimes taking his face into her hands as though he is a child.  

Then there's the imagery of spooky Armand: Taylor's dark slicked-back hair showing his widow's peak over his pale complexion. Both  Garbo and Taylor were kept out of the sun before "Camille" was shot. Garbo, a Swede, hated the sun and stayed out of it; Robert Taylor was a Nebraska outdoorsman and it was harder for him to stay inside. But both characters needed to appear washded-out. Marguerite has already been diagnosed with consumption and Armand, uncaring about his own health, pulls her to himself intimately and often Just to make sure he also gets tuberculosis? [Now sidestepping possible commentary on current social issues.]

But who's the victim within this couple? 

Look familiar?

All through "Camille" these two people have physical intensity which is -- well, beyond the pale. (S0rry.) We get this Mutt and Jeff height-difference thing, and the vampire-and-victim thing, till near the end of the film, when Camille has to lie on a velvet couch because of her weakening health. Armand devotedly sits beside her. She's actively dying so maybe now the two can be on the same level without all the power dynamics.  Though Garbo's smile seems strangely happy considering the situation. 

In the 1930s, people who knew the cast of "Camille," and reporters who asked each of the leading stars later in life  about the other, all seemed to give the same impression:  Taylor had started out as intimidated by his leading lady, but had to come to find her friendly and kind. He said several admiring things about her acting abilities. Garbo described Taylor as well-mannered and kind; she had felt physically ill during the production of "Camille," and Taylor had brought in what Garbo called a 'gramophone" to cheer her, as he knew she liked music.

Offscreen as well as on, Robert Taylor certainly loomed large. Taylor and his wife Bqrbara Stanwyck thought the (often Jewish) European expatriates were too soft on Russia because Stalin fought Hitler, and when the JUAC anti-Communist Hollywood hearings began, Robert Taylor was vindictive toward lefties he disliked. He then tried to soften or take back some of his testimony, and he got a couple of people blacklisted. Taylor was in a prolonged battle with MGM, as he wanted to quit the movies and be a fighter pilot during the war, but the studio retaliated for his reluctance to make the film "Song of Russia." This fact-filled podcast goes into this stuff in depth. 

Despite Robert Taylor's politics, I greatly prefer him as Garbo's co-star over Lewis Stone. Stone, best-known for playing Judge Hardy in the Mickey Rooney / Judy Garland movie series, actually made dozens of films, including three with Greta Garbo: "A Woman of Affairs," "Romance," and "Wild Orchids." In one film he played a kindly doctor trying to help sort out some tangled relationships, in another he played an old creepy guy whose soiled the reputation of Garbo's character so that it's hard for her to develop a healthy relationship with a man who own age, and once he's an aging adventurer who brings his young pretty wife along and then is surprised that she doesn't stay bome wiating for him while he goes off to do interesting things. 

Creepy? You betcha. Note Garbo's schoolgirl hairdos in both these film stills. In the era before feminism shook the world, a "fatherly" husband was a staple of the movies. Wives were childish creatures who needed an experienced man to keep order in the household and teach his wife about life.

 

 

Last on my list for today of Garbo's leading men is Clark Gable. It's been said that Gable and Garbo didn't like each other in real life. She apparently thought he couldn't act, and he thought she looked down on him. I don't know how it was, but onscreen I don't think the chemistry is bad. It seems less like passion and more like two souls trying to figure out if they are better off together or apart. We get both grizzled working-man Gable, and swmooth-shaven, dimple-cheeked sweet Gable in his only picture with Garbo, "Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise."

 Here are a couple of books I consulted while working on this post. The Star Machine has better overall information, while The Leading Men of MGM has some good images.

Next week: Garbo's film career is coming to a close

Garbo

 

‘With You By My Side . . .’

 by whiteray

Just as readers getting to know one another check out each other’s bookshelves, so, too, do music lovers cast inquiring eyes on the record and CD collections of folks new to their lives. And I was rifling through the LPs owned by my new lady in June 1987 when I came across an album by a group I’d never heard about: The Pozo-Seco Singers. 

The album was I Can Make It With You. 

“Oh, that’s one of my favorites,” my ladyfriend said. And when I heard the album later that day or maybe that week, her love of the record made sense. The folk rock of the Pozo-Seco Singers’ second album, a 1966 release, fit right in with the folk and the folk-rock that made up most of her collection: Joan Baez, the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, Gordon Lightfoot, Simon & Garfunkel, the We Five and more. 

And I Can Make It With You became one of the albums we played on occasion when we whiled away time at her place that late spring and summer. After that, I doubt that I heard it again until sometime about ten years ago, when a digital copy of the album came my way. And when the title track popped up on the computer not long after that, I got to thinking about the Pozo-Seco Singers and I did some digging. 

The group – in a couple of incarnations – released a total of four albums. In 1966, Time went to No. 127 on the Billboard 200, and the following February, I Can Make It With You went to No 81. With some personnel changes, the group renamed itself Pozo Seco, and its last two releases, 1967’s Shades Of Time and 1970’s Spend Some Time With Me, did not chart. 

Perhaps better remembered these days for the presence of eventual country star Don Williams, the group had eight singles in or near the Billboard Hot 100, starting with “Time,” which went to No. 47 in early 1966 and ending with “Strawberry Fields/Something” (credited to simply Pozo Seco), which bubbled under the chart at No. 115 in late 1970. Of their eight charting or near-charting singles, the best performing was “I Can Make It With You,” which peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard chart on October 1966. 

I don’t recall the record from its time on the chart, but I wasn’t really listening in the autumn of 1966, and from what I see at a couple of references online, “I Can Make It With You” never charted at the Twin Cities’ KDWB anyway. A few years later, I might have heard it late at night on WLS, but as it happened, I likely never heard the record until I heard it on my lady’s stereo some evening late in the spring of 1987. 

And I learned, as I dug around a few years back, that the Pozo-Seco Singers weren’t the only ones who released “I Can Make It With You” as a single. Jackie DeShannon actually recorded the Chip Taylor song first, and her version reached the Hot 100 the same week that the Pozo-Seco Singers’ version did, on September 10, 1966. But DeShannon’s version – a slower ballad-like take backed with a near Wall of Sound – peaked at No. 68 in early October and was gone from the chart by the time the Pozo-Seco Singers’ version was at its peak. 

If I were forced to do so, it would be hard to choose one of the two. I love almost everything I’ve ever heard from DeShannon’s catalog, and her take on “I Can Make It With You” is no exception. But the visceral tug of memory is hard to resist, so I’d probably go with the Pozo-Seco Singers on a warm, late spring evening: 

When the world was on my shoulders
And all hope for tomorrow was gone
You touched my hand, and baby
You made me see: There’s a future for me

I can make it with you, baby
I can make it with you, girl
I can make it with you, baby
With you by my side

And when life has lost its meaning
And my dreams had been shattered by time
You touched my hand, and baby,
You made me see there’s a future for me

I can make it with you, baby
I can make it with you, girl
I can make it with you, baby
With you by my side
With you by my side

I remember when I was down
I was lost but I’ve been found
I can make it with you, baby
I can make it with you, girl
I can make it with you, baby

Florida, Oddly Enough

 

Ohio house

Thirty years ago, there were three large old maple trees on the small lot, now two. The third and most beautiful had to be removed after an ice storm had caused it to be a liability for cars parked in the street. The removed maple had branches that curved beautifully and provided nice shade for cars parked underneath. Looking out the front windows was a joy in all seasons as the tree changed its costume, but autumn was perhaps the most beautiful. A few times, squirrels would carry the small pumpkins from the festive pumpkin arrangements on the steps of the house, up into the curving branches where they would leisurely consume them over a week or so. Children wondered how little pumpkins got up into the tree. In the fall wet leaves would slap down upon the heavy roots of the trees, and squirrels would nestle into the branches hiding loot from the nearby walnut trees.

The life of the house, inanimate as it seems, was rich with imprinted memory. Whose footsteps had crossed the porch and climbed the stairs? The house wouldn't know except that small sparks of light had remained, no doubt caused by the people. The house contained the sparks. Different sparks for different people, over time. Dreams had been dreamt in sleeping heads, upon pillows in beds, set upon its old pine floors. Dreams left cloudy scented layers in the house's walls. In the 1940's Mabel had lived there. She had a label maker and had marked the washing machine and basement cabinets with her name. The Germans who built the house had made sure the bedrooms had curved ceilings so no ghosts, not even Mabel's, could disturb the slumber of the people who would live there.

A mock orange tree, a lilac bush, spirea, had all sunk their roots into the clay soil. Roses, a few times, had been attempted in flower beds, but only the rambling rose on the back fence grew strong, red and fragrant. Hollyhocks came and went, but the honeysuckle on the alley fence was triumphant. Strawberries, planted too close to the house, were rabbit gifts.

From the windows, scenes of other houses could be seen, and in winter it was beautiful to look north from the upstairs window. Three tall and sisterly pines flanked a slate roofed home, and on gray evenings when the sun was setting, a beautiful picture was painted in a person's mind, more than once.

The house was a setting for many scenes, tragic, beautiful, sweet, and terrible scenes, scenes from stories, as all old houses are. When new people settle in, with beds and babies and silverware, they'll make new stories.

~Dorothy Dolores

Art Alphabet: C - Esther

I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again: the Art Alphabet might become a huge regret when I reach particular letters, but in the meantime, I’m happy to be able to find a stack of C-related art facts, media & ideas. As tempting as it is to devote the entire blog post to my favourite artist, I’ll restrict myself to one section. Discipline is required when imposing rules on oneself. Anyone else trying to impose rules need not bother to try…

C

1. An Artist (Clarke): Illustration for “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Harry Clarke (Ireland, 1889-1931)

Quite frankly, I’m making the most of any excuse to extol the virtues of Harry Clarke’s artwork. Here we have an example of one of the things he does best: creepy black & white illustration. One of the many illustrations he made for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the 1933 image of Lady Madeline is at once beautiful, well composed, detailed, restrained (by his standards) & macabre. 

2. A Material (charcoal): Armor by Odilon Redon (France, 1840-1916)

A brilliant artist in charcoal, Redon also does creepy cool more effectively than most. Great charcoal artists know how to use fixatives to their advantage. You can easily colour a surface & alter the tone using a layering & smudging of the charcoal & intermittent applications of the fixative. We can also see how Redon has erased the charcoal to create highlights on the face & smudging to produce softer & darker areas. He has then applied darker areas & detail with the sharp end of the stick. Charcoal is a more versatile medium than it might seem & many different effects can be created.

3. A Surface (canvas): Spatial Concept: “Waiting” by Lucio Fontana (Italy, 1899-1968) 

It’s a classic. Most of the greats used canvas for painting. It’s durable, it holds various types of paint & can be made using manmade or natural threads. I prefer to use a flat, smooth surface myself but there are many different grains to a canvas. Fontana was best known as the originator of Spatialism & I like this particular piece since it highlights the fragility of the canvas surface should anyone wish to do it harm. Perhaps it invites us to consider the destroyers of great masterpieces (such as Dalí’s Christ of St John of the Cross) to be contributors in the creation of a new piece… 

4. An Art Movement (Classicism): Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David (England, 1748-1825)

Technically, this is a Neoclassical piece as it was made in the domineering Age of Enlightenment. Pure Classicism has a purposely decorous standard based on ideas about the cultural aesthetic & intellectual balance of ancient Greece & Rome. This makes it sound deadly dull & often it is, but David’s such an expert, is so analytical & has such an eye for a dramatic scene that he’s irresistible.

5. A Random Pick (Cadell): Afternoon 1913, Francis Cadell (Scotland, 1883-1937)

Doubles up for C as a Scottish Colourist. Yes, once again, I bang the drum for this stunning group. But look at this masterpiece! The textures, the surfaces & figures are painted with feather-light strokes to striking effect. & “colourist” or no, Cadell’s minimal palette with tiny dabs of orange across the composition unite all the features of this spectacular piece.

6. An Artwork (creation): The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo (Italy, 1475-1564)

We all know it so well. But I’d urge you to take just a few moments to look at a high-resolution version of this one piece of the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco. Perhaps there's a figure or face in it you haven’t noticed before. Look at the brushstrokes! The very light & sketchy rendering of the green cloth. We’ve spent so much time focusing on arguably the two most famous hands in art that we might have missed something…

7. A Place (Cookham): Cookham Rise by Stanley Spencer (England, 1891-1959)

Cookham is synonymous with Stanley Spencer & it featured in many of his works. It’s as if he found the world in microcosm there but he also considered it “a village in Heaven.” Actually, he brought Heaven to Cookham, depicting scenes from the Bible in a Cookham setting. He spent the bulk of his life there & in return, Cookham has built the Stanley Spencer Gallery there. Yes, it’s on my to-do list.

8. Street Art (Cochran): Usain Bolt by James Cochran a.k.a. Jimmy C (Australia, 1973)

There’s something of Seurat in Jimmy C’s street artworks. Rather than using the aerosol can like a paintbrush, with strokes & the occasional dab or dash, he makes it all about the drip & dot, building up pieces in layers of drops or blobs. The result is a kind of textured pointillism that has progressed our understanding of what graffiti art can do as a medium.

9. A Genre Painting (curiosity): Curiosity by Gerard ter Borch the Younger (Netherlands, 1617-1681)

Genre painting is a vastly underrated area of art history. Or perhaps it just chimes less with modern tastes & interests. After all, it’s all about the ordinary, everyday lives of real people, but long ago. I’d argue genre painting still exists by that definition, but that’s for another time. It’s fun to apply modern situations to these older works – some internet sites are quite frankly specialists in the field. Of course the thing to take away from this painting is “Hooray! There are women depicted writing in the 17th Century!” (Dutch) but I can’t help look at this & think the older woman is writing some particularly scathing insult to a politician or letter of complaint about something on TV. The dog clearly approves & if it had been the age of the internet, he’d be on there front & centre. 

10. A Collaboration (Claes, Coosje): Bicyclette Ensevelie (Buried Bicycle) by Claes Oldenburg (1929-) & Cooseje van Bruggen (1942-2009)

Personally, I find collaboration difficult. I can’t deal with the slower working pace other people often prefer & I don’t do well waiting around. It seems this collaborative duo had no such issues, or at least could overcome them successfully because married couple Claes Oldenburg & Cooseje van Bruggen collaborated on over forty amazing large-scale projects across different continents. Bicyclette Ensevelie is installed at the Parc de la Villette in Paris & was initially inspired by Beckett’s Molloy who falls off his bike.

Rejuvenating Spirits - November 26 - Friday Video Distractions

 

   Black Friday, and for this year it's the final Friday of the month. Next Wednesday it'll be December.
     If you're here in the states, you at least have a shot at this being an extended holiday weekend. Workplace and other complications, blended with the all of the food prep, took over this past week through midday Thursday, followed by too much food and a necessary collapse. Now I'm regrouping, and trying to enjoy the momentary calm.
     Last Week's post still has some things I haven't yet gotten to (seriously, there's so much I've mentioned in this series of posts that I've not made the time for, that it's almost daunting), though I did watch and enjoy the full run of South Korean supernatural thriller Hellbound in the first half of last weekend.

     I've generally been enjoying the CW's 4400, (which I wrote a little about back in October, before it was launched) a reboot of the 2004 series built around the idea of 4400 people who had gone missing in wildly disparate places over the course of decades, all mysteriously reappearing in one spot, none of them appearing to have aged a day, and none of them seeming to remember any passage of time since the moment they disappeared. In each case they each gradually came/are coming to realize that somewhere in the process each one picked up a different paranormal ability.
     Even aside from other issues, the series concept is something to roll over in the viewers' mind at the level of wondering how it would be to be suddenly plucked from your life, then dropped back down years or even decades later. The people and world you knew, rolling on without you -- worse, them not being sure if something horrible happened to you, or if this was a choice you made. Depending upon how long the absence, there may not even be people to attempt to reconnect with. If there are, the reality is that they've gotten on with their lives -- lives that no longer included you.  As a point of necessity, they adjusted. The space you occupied in their lives has in some way been filled. Are you even welcome anymore, or have you long since become settled business?
     So far I'm letting this new series unfold as its own thing, rather than look to the earlier series (which ran 4 seasons/44 episodes) for how things were explained there. We've only had five episodes so far, and the cast is large, so it's taking time to establish and develop even just the characters they've been giving the attention to.
     The new series finds the reappeared people to mostly be people of color and minorities, though it also includes gay and transgendered people such that the general sense seems to be that what they have in common is that they're all representatives of marginalized communities.

     I watched and enjoyed the first two episodes - newly-arrived this Wednesday - of Disney's latest Marvel Cinematic Universe series: Hawkeye. The start of a reluctant mentoring process, as the now mostly former-Avenger finds himself tangled up in the life of a gifted superfan during a holiday reconnect trip to New York with his kids.
     So far it's the farthest along in the timeline that we've gone, with a battered and weary Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) trying to reforge bonds with his kids, and sort out his life while there's time. The situation Thanos' bejeweled glove snap - and the similar corrections made by the heroes -- left everyone's lives scarred. For Clint, specifically, five years passed where his wife and children were gone - turned to smoke - and he was in a dark, dark place, on a vengeance tour of criminal and terrorist organizations as the sword-wielding Ronin. At great sacrifice, the vanished were restored to being in a compromise move (in Avengers: Endgame) which brought everyone back as they were, to a world where the other half of the people had felt five, hard years pass.  As mentioned above, for Clint those

were especially dark years. Part of what this series will be about is his dealing with the legacy of his actions during that time, when he thought his life as husband and father was dead. Humor and pathos, the present and the past wash over him and the audience as we see events going back to the 2012 Chitari invasion of New York - the debut of The Avengers - and how it set the course for Kate Bishop, the above mentioned superfan, who is well on the path to taking on the mantle of the man who inspired her during the darkest day of her childhood. Part of the humor mentioned above comes in the form of a Hamiltonesque musical, Rogers, celebrating the life of the former Captain America. A production rife with factual errors, and understandably more than a little difficult for the long-suffering Clint to take in stride; the show is part of his family trip itinerary in New York.
     Anyway, I've been enjoying that so far. The first two episodes dropped this week, and the remaining four will drop one per week, each Wednesday, through the week before Christmas.
     Also as mentioned last week, and also on Disney+, Thanksgiving saw the arrival of part one (of three) of Peter Jackson's documentary Beatles: Get Back. I made it about halfway through that first

part before the odd hours, the holiday prep work, and the extreme fat and carbs of the holiday meal caught up with me. It's a terrific project for any fan of the group, really taking us inside what were the final few weeks of the Beatles, even though none of them really knew that's what they'd turn out to be.
     That first episode starts with a history of the group, going back to 1956 and the formation of The Quarrymen, quickly moving up to where the events of this documentary begin: The small stretch of time where the band was under the gun to pull together what would be the Let It Be album. They had a narrow window in which to adjust to a production space at Twickenham studios, compose (in some cases dusting off old, unrecorded songs) and rehearse the songs, and record them for both the album and a live performance, and to do all this in 21 days. Indeed, the production space they're using is booked to be rebuilt for the filming of the Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers film The Magic Christian, immediately after they vacate. (That also reminds me that I wrote a little about that film back in September of 2020, during the first year of this blog. The piece even includes a still-working link where one can watch the film on YouTube.)
     The mythology of these sessions in the past 50 years have been dominated by the dark elements, as the enduring take-away from the album was that the band broke up. This project is a fresh look at the reality, which reveals a great deal of camaraderie among a quartet who were bonded by years of collaboration, friendship, and head-spinning experiences.
     The second part arrives on Disney+ today, and the final one on Saturday.
     Shifting hard, I did want to take a moment to note an odd addition to my recent viewing. USA and

Syfy have been running a limited series (8 parts) continuing the story of Chucky, the serial killer who mystically migrated his soul into a child's toy, a Good Guy doll. I'd seen the early films in the franchise, going back to the debut Child's Play (1988), but had long since lost count. It turns out there were seven films in the franchise, the most recent of which was 2017's Cult of Chucky. This series follows the events of that film, and allowed them to have 8 hours (minus commercials) to both advance the story and answer numerous questions its fan base had about the character's history.
     Somewhere along the line in the movies, and particularly emphasized in this series, the story's gotten enmeshed in gender fluidity, queer identity and relationship issues, along with related (mostly) dysfunctional family dynamics, and bullying. The series even features contemporary versions of multiple characters from the film franchise, and even includes a fourth wall busting part for Jennifer Tilly as Jennifer Tilly, now inhabited by the soul of the homicidal character she played earlier in the franchise - who turned out to be a big Tilly fan. If you have a means of moving onto someone else's body, becoming your favorite star becomes an option. It's a bit of a head-spinner, but somehow it all, oddly, works.  Here's the trailer for the series.

     The resounding critical and fan success of this series, combined with the general bombing of the recent attempt to reboot the franchise, seems to put character and series creator Chuck Mancini in the driver's seat, should he be interested in staying there. The eighth and final episode will air next Tuesday. Whether or not there are plans to continue hasn't been stated - at least not where I've seen - and I'm not sure how much this project was built as a final word on the character. As it's a property tied to corporate interests, and appears to be making money, it's unlikely it's just going to be abandoned.
     It's all very violent and profane, as you might expect. Somewhere in the blur of quick research on the details someone stated that one of the odd rules negotiated allowed the Chucky character to say the word "fuck" up to 10 times in an episode. I find the accounting style intersection of prudish decorum and someone's odd notions of artistic expression to be a hoot, conceptually. It's a strange, new world out there. If you have cable you almost certainly have Syfy and USA, which also means you have access to these On Demand.
     Speaking of decorum defied, I was very happy to see that starting next Wednesday, December 1st, FXX will see the return of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia for a new season - its 15th. This is the season dreamed up during the pandemic, and the first new episode immediately takes us into what The Gang was up to during it all. The remainder of the season appears to, paradoxically, see them traveling more than usual. I'm looking forward to it.

     They remain a set characters one only wants to encounter as fiction - where they're entertaining demons. No sane person would want real-life versions of these characters anywhere near their lives.
     We'll be getting two episodes each week, with them appearing on Hulu the following day.
     That same Wednesday, over on Netflix, we'll see the return (for a third and final season) of that streamer's reboot of '60s series Lost In Space. I was fairly recently able to let one fan know that this was coming back for a final season, which was welcome news to him because he'd presumed it had simply, quietly, been canceled as the second season arrived way back on Christmas Eve 2019 -- just weeks shy of two years ago.

     The trailer reminded me I should do a little memory refreshing about how and where everyone was left at the end of season two. The full series will arrive all at once, as things generally do on Netflix.
     There's a long tradition of shows being created in other countries only to have U.S. versions produced. One recent addition to that category is the current CBS paranormal sitcom Ghosts.

The thumbnail core is that a young couple inherits a run-down estate from a recently-deceased, not-quite-aunt the wife didn't know about, they check it out, and the idea to turn it into a bed & breakfast takes root. There's some misgivings in the mix, but circumstances eventually get the couple on the same page. An incident (more on that in a moment) sees the wife momentarily killed, but revived. Upon recovering, she gradually comes to realize that she can now see and hear the spirits of the dead. Moreover, she learns that the estate she inherited has a cohort of disparate spirits from various eras, all geographically bound by their deaths, and apparently having some unresolved issues that prevent them from doing what most spirits do -- disappearing into a white light.
     The spirits have generally gone a little buggy in their years of being incorporeal, unable to interact with the world of the living, and doing so on an isolated piece of property. Having a "Living" who can see and hear them is a great joy for them, but a major distraction and general burden to poor Alison (BBC)/Samantha (CBS), who constantly has to remind herself that they're not physically there, and no one else can see or hear them. Their appearances, including dress, are essentially how they were when they died. As much as being able to interact with someone who's alive is a treat for them, in general the living are an annoyance. Not only noisy and intrusive, and inclined to rearrange the physical environment, the sensation of having someone walk through them is disruptive and painful. Consequently, when they overhear the plans to convert the place into a bed & breakfast/hotel, potentially disrupting their afterlives with waves of vacationing invaders, they're strongly opposed. Initially they try to use their abilities to scare the couple off.
     The BBC One version began airing in 2019, is in its third series/season (the six episode series already aired, but with a Christmas special coming), and has been renewed for a fourth. Here in the states it's part of the vast, deep archive of material to be found on HBO Max, which is where I'm catching up on it. Here's the BBC version's trailer.

     CBS is still currently rolling out its first season of the show, and I recently caught up with the 8 episodes aired so far via Paramount +. The U.S. version has Rose McIver as the wife/one who can see and hear the ghosts, and it took me a few beats to realize I knew her from her lead role on the CW series iZombie (2015-19. There she was a reanimated, undead character who could absorb the memories and personalities of others (deceased) by eating their brains -- which makes this latest role a little funnier. Here's the series trailer for the U.S. version.

     Early indications are that the U.S. version is going reasonably well for CBS, beating out the viewing numbers on all but Young Sheldon among CBS' sitcoms, but it's still far too early to tell if this will be enough to see it renewed for a second season. I've no idea what the show is costing them to produce, between the size of the cast, effects and whatever licensing agreement is involved with the folks across the pond.
    The U.S. version's ghosts are largely North American analogues of those found in the BBC version, perhaps the greatest difference in versions being that while the BBC version's oldest ghost is a caveman, the U.S. version is a viking. They each died due to a lightning strike, and each have a ghostly ability to disrupt electrical lighting.
     In general, both versions are entertaining and the characters varied (if simple) enough to be interesting. The formulaic sitcom elements can wear a little, primarily when a gag is telegraphed and one is faced with the painful roll-out of some awkward situation anyone without severe brain damage saw coming several beats earlier, but generally it's innocuous fun, and we find ourselves wanting to find out more about some of the characters' back stories, along with seeing if any of them will be allowed to grow as characters.
     A quick TCM note for this Saturday: They have a theme pairing, with 8 pm (Eastern) showing It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) and at 9:30 Alien (1979).  Each with the same core plot of a long space voyage where a dangerous, alien stowaway is picking off the crew, one by one. The earlier film's age and extremely limited effects budget is going to suffer in the comparison - how far the tech and industry respect for the genre changed over those 21 years! - but it was one of those fondly-remembered films from childhood.

     Certainly, as ever, TCM has a wide and sometimes wild array of programming, so it feels foolish to narrow the selection this way, but this was one of those instances where the pairing was what made it pop for me. I'll be recording them mainly for the intro and outro presentations for each, as they're prime time selections and are almost certain to have them. I don't know if a guest host is involved.
     As I don't have a ready link to a free copy of that film, I'll add both the trailer:

     ... and five and a half minute intro and outro piece from a TCM evening where guest-host/curator John Carpenter discussed the film with late, lamented TCM front-man Robert Osborne. Poor video, but a good frame of reference for the film.

     It's likely I've forgotten to spotlight a few things, but not only are there still too many things I've already brought up in recent columns that I haven't made time for,  I also simply don't want to delay this week's piece. Nothing prevents me from adding something to this later in the day, if it comes to mind.
      My personal schedule's largely suspended for the holiday weekend, my hours in disarray, and I'm having the twin urges to make a breakfast plate of Thanksgiving leftovers and catch this week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery... because it's a semi-holiday Friday and I wanna.
     Once more, I hope this finds you well, warm, fed, and with some time to enjoy something. I hope to see you back here next Friday. -- Mike

Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  And for all of us in the USA, it's Thanksgiving, a holiday with...complicated underpinnings of invasion and religion and such.  But it's also a holiday to come together with family and...well, that's complicated as well.  But I do hope that those of you celebrating have a good holiday with as little stress as possible.  Also, please don't laugh at my Bears too much if you watch that game.  

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Let's start with this find, the complete series of The 4400.  One of the more interesting weird series to come out of the Canadian-filmed science fiction boom of the Aughts that continues to this day, this was an interestingly weird series about 4400 people who suddenly appear from a ball of light on the shores of a Washington state lake.  Of course, it's more complicated than that when we find that all of them are people who had mysteriously disappeared over the last 60 years. Federal agency nonsense ensues, they all have certain powers, oh why were they returned and by whom? All of this shown off by a real banger of a USA Network theme song.

Lovely singing by Amanda Abizaid!  And hey, there's a name you might have noticed in the credits: Mahershalalhashbaz Ali.  Now usually credited as Mahershala Ali, this was the first time I noticed the future two-time Oscar winner.  He's quite good as one of the returnees, in his case a Korean Conflict vet taken in the '50s who has returned to a vastly different world for him.

This brings me to why I want to check out the new reboot of The 4400 on the CW,  Apparently the returnees are a primarily African-American cast who've been thrust into the future and I'm very curious what the thrust of this new series might be.

The original series of The 4400 is all on Netflix.  The new series is on the CW app.

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It's been quite a while since I started reading the Outlander series (Wiki tells me the first novel came out 30 years ago and I simply cannot believe that).  It's a series I quite love, with time travel and romance and fighting and Celts of all stripes.  I'm years behind on the TV series (I think Netflix has the first four at the moment) but I've seriously loved the casting for it.  And two of them, Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish, put together a series for UK TV (and Starz in the US) titled Men In Kilts about their travels across Scotland.  This is the companion book to it and hooooooo boy even flipping through it it is a lot of fun busting each others chops about motorcycles, kayaking on Loch Ness and 9 AM whiskey flights.  This really might be might light reading for this holiday weekend.

Also, let's enjoy the fantastic theme song for Outlander.

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A few years back, Emily St. John Mandel published a fantastic pandemic novel titled Station Eleven, mostly set 10 years after a global flu that, well, wipes out most of humanity.  Now, it might feel a little bit too close to home right now and especially the upcoming HBO miniseries based on it (which weirdly enough was apparently filmed mostly before the shutdown).  But it's a lovely, sad novel that is very much worth your time and now I found this, another novel of hers that I've never read and will get to soon.

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One last thing for this week, my Batman Hallmark decoration.  And yes, it does say various Batman things.  So please, enjoy this holiday season as much as you like!  Decorate early if you like!  Keep the decorations up as long as you like!