Movies made from LECs or HPs which are of the quality of these books

There have been many movies which were suggested by LEC or HP books. But there were not so many which were of a high enough quality as the books were. I have listed a few below. To keep the list fair, only list those made as movies, not including those made for television, since those made for tv generally were of much longer duration. The first three listed were unique in that they starred the same Hollywood actor. Who was it?

1. The Moon and Sixpence
2. The Picture of Dorian Gray
3. Bel Ami
4. The History of Tom Jones: the early 60s movie starring Albert Finney.
5. The Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day-Lewis
6. The Age of Innocence also with Daniel Day-Lewis
7. Camille with Gretta Garbo
8. Gone with the Wind
9. A Street Car Named Desire
10. The Three Musketeers with Gene Kelley, Lana Turner and others
11. Anna Karenina with Getta Garbo, Frederick March, and Basil Bathbone
12. For Whom the Bell Tolls
13. The Grapes of Wrath with Henry Fonda and others
14. An American Tragedy (movie title A Place in the Sun) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Cliff
15. Notre-Dame de Paris ( name the movie title and star?)

How many more can you name which were made into movies or other ones than those listed?

I just saw the new Leonardo DiCaprio version of The Great Gatsby on Blu-Ray. It is an incredible production, but the soundtrack can occasionally be annoying. I didn't mind the modernized ragtime/beats music, but the rapping seemed slightly out of place. Regardless, the acting and camera work are superb. The Blu-Ray happens to be much less expensive than the LEC :-)

Your money is better spent on the LEC. Nevertheless, I would like to see the movie if my library gets it in. There is nothing worse than an apparent anachronism in a movie: the wromg dress, the wrong music, etc. I think it was during the filming of The Ten Commandments that a jet airplane was seen in the sky.

I think this is the problem with the Arion Press books which used photos to illustrate some books like
The big Sleep and the newer Day of the Locust. The photos do not capture the period about which the book was written.

If rapping was used in Gatsby, that would be a mistake i couldn't forgive. I keep hoping that DiCaprio will make a good movie but it wasn't The Aviator and Django was awful, even though they used our founder's name.

One could play this game in reverse, too:
What LEC book was
(a) made into a well-received 1935 Hollywood film whose cast included Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Aline MacMahon and an actor who is still making films?
(b) adapted for a live performance on BBC television in April 1938, which was so well received it was repeated (with a slightly different cast) – in June of the following year!
(c) adapted for the BBC again in 1956
(d) adapted as a US tv movie in 1951, 1955, 1959 and 1976?

I've never seen the film with Beery and Barrymore, so I'm guessing, with so many US films made, could it be A Christmas Carol?

Here's another LEC made into a fine movie, with John Mills and Alec Guiness. What is the movie?

>6 leccol: No, not a Dickens book, though I could imagine Beery and Barrymore together in A Christmas Carol - David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, too.
I can only remember seeing Mills and Guinness together in Tunes of Glory, a powerful film about regimental loyalties in which they really raised each other's game (Mills being particularly good in an untypical role).
Perhaps they were paired in a Dickens film? I'd have said Oliver Twist except that I am sure Mills wasn't Alec Guinness's Artful Dodger which is surely the part he would have played.

(Mills was another incredibly long-lived actor - first film 1932, last 2005, the year of his death aged 97.)

>5 featherwate: Ah Wilderness?

Not a Christmas Carol. Perhaps it was an HP book, and I'm not familiar with many of these that were not LECs. Give the others a chance to guess before you tell us. The movie with John Mills as Pip and Alec Guiness as his friend, Herbert Pocket, was, of course, David Lean's Great Expectations. A very young Estella was played by JEAN SIMMONS.

Another story taken from the LEC Short Stories of Oscar Wilde starred Charles Laughton and Margaret O'Brien.
What was the movie?

Ah Wilderness, the Eugene O' Neil play was a movie, although I've never seen it. However, that must be the movie you asked for since all three actors you named were in that movie.

Oliver Twist was never an LEC, but I think it was an HP book. Guiness played Fagin, but I don't know who the Artful Dodger was.

>1 leccol:

Notre Dame de Paris has been notably filmed 3 times (though there have been many more versions of indifferent quality). The First famous was the Lon Chaney/Patsy Miller silent version, a French version from 1956 with Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida, and most memorable, the 1939 version with Charles Laughton superb as Quasimodo and Maureen O'Hara a miscast but quite beautiful and touching Esmeralda. This version had by far the best acting, direction, and production design.

>5 featherwate:

Ken is right--it's Ah, Wilderness, which was remade as a musical 13 years later with Mickey Rooney having grown up enough to play the older brother this time, but sadly, without the charm and feeling for that age of innocence which Clarence Brown brought to the 1935 version. (Don, Beery and Barrymore were also together in a memorable MGM version of another LEC--Treasure Island.

>9 leccol:
The Canterville Ghost--also remade many, many times. In the Lean version of Oliver Twist the Artful Dodger was played, in one of his first major roles, by Anthony Newley.

Oh, and the actor who was in The Moon and Sixpence, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Bel-Ami was of course George Sanders--also in The House of the Seven Gables, Ivanhoe, From the Earth to the Moon, Moll Flanders, and the voice of Shere Khan in the Disney version of The Jungle Book, making him the second most prolific among actors who have brought characters from LEC editions to the screen--after Olivier, who in addition to his Shakespeare films also impersonated Heathclff in Wuthering Heights, Darcy in Pride & Prejudice, MacHeath in The Beggar's Opera, General Burgoyne in The Devil's Disciple, Mr. Creakle in David Copperfield (TV), and Van Helsing in the 1979 remake of Dracula. .

>9 leccol: Pip and Pocket, of course! The trouble with remembering Guinness is that he so often sank himself into a part you lose sight of the man himself.

Transatlantic time differences meant I was no longer awake to congratulate Ken and Don on identifying Ah Wilderness! :(

The actor from the 1935 film who is still in the business today is Mickey Rooney, who as Django points out was also in the musical of the play. Indeed he's another 'multiple-LEC' actor, having also had parts in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Huckleberry Finn, Pinocchio and Sinbad (though the last of these looks to be a rather indirect version of the original story). In addition, in a 1960s television show he played the only author to date who is:
a. published by the LEC;
b. a leading character in another LEC, and
c. known for certain to have been murdered.

I imagine that Django will know the answer to your puzzling question off the top of his head. I looked through all of the titles listed in the bibliography and couldn't immediately see the answer. However, I will take a wild guess that it is Ambrose Bierce. I am very curious about this, Django, so tell us the answer.

By the way, I saw an excellent remastered copy of Dorian Gray recently with comments thruout by Angela Lansbury. I always wondered what happened to Hurd Hatfield after Dorian Gray. He became lifelong friends with Lansbury. So much so that he induced her to buy a house in Ireland near his. He made the decorations in his house a lifelong project, accumulating many artifacts from the movie sets of Dorian Gray. These artifacts were in reality real, not movie props, since the director, Albert Lewin, was a stickler for reality. The movie won two academy awards: cinematography and art direction.

What was amazing to me was how beautiful Lansbury was in 1945, the year the movie was made. The long Victorian dresses she wore couldn't hide her very shapely ankles. She repaid Hatfield by casting him in three Murder She Wrote episodes.

It is interesting that George Sanders had star billing over both Lansbury and Hurd. Sanders has been described as having a perpetual sneer on his face. While he was good as Lord Henry Wotoon in Dorian Gray, I liked him best as the cousin in Rebecca who was also Rebecca's lover. He elbowed his way into the auto of Laurence Olivier and stole his chicken lunch during a recess into Rebecca's death investigation.

>11 featherwate:

Very obscure question, featherwate, and one that only someone addicted to Red Skelton would likely know, but I suspect the answers are

a. The Gallic Wars
b. Shakepeare's Julius Caesar), or, as the first of Suetonius' Lives of the Twelve Caesars, or one of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, or in Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" in Two Plays for Puritans. (Am I missing the specific one you had in mind?)
c. As a supreme example of casting against type, the Mick played the Great Julius in an episode on the Red Skelton Comedy Hour--I don't remember the date.

Good show, Django. I knew you would figure this one out.

Did you know that Red Skeleton was an LEC subscriber? When I was looking for a copy of Poe's tales of Mystery and Imagination for rebinding, I found Red's copy at an LA book seller. It had Red's book plate in it. The book cover was completely destroyed but the insides were excellent.

This was the second Hollywood star's LEC I have found. Sometime ago, I had an LEC from Buddy Ebsen's library, but I forget which LEC it was. Skeleton's Poe is posted rebound on my member's gallery.

Here's another one for you. This one will be easy for you,

What movie was about a man who pretended to be king?
Who were the male and female leads?
What noted star played the male villain?

Made into an LEC in the late 60s.

>15 Django6924: Spot on, Django! I was thinking of the Shakespeare, having forgotten the others despite owning both the Plutarch and the Shaw, and the Folio Society Suetonius. (Caesar also has a guest star cameo in Dante's Inferno, of course.)

"The Julius Caesar Caper" aired on 23 April 1968, the 589th episode of the Red Skelton hour. There are two song & dance clips from the show on You Tube but nothing, alas, from the Caesar sketch. One clip, however, is a snazzy performance of The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde by Lana Cantrell and the show's very sharp resident dancers and studio band, which is some compensation. Good voice, great phrasing, yet I'd completely forgotten her (Lana not Bonnie). Everyone else seems to have as well: so far as I can see there's only one song of hers available as a download, plus one 1998 CD and a handful of very pricey vinyls.
Well, that's what happens when you abandon show business to join a law firm (Ballon, Stoll, Bader and Nadler should you be in need of advice any time you're in New York).

Anthony Hope's Prisoner of Zenda - I think I enjoyed the film more than the book! Trying not to cheat by looking it up, I'd say Stewart Granger, Eroll Flynn's successor as Hollywood's swordsman of first resort, was the hero, Deborah Kerr the heroine and James Mason Prince Michael.

Looked it up: right on two counts (Granger and Kerr), wrong about Mason (who was in it but as Rupert not Michael).
But that was the 1952 version, memorable for me as one of the first big technicolor adventure films I saw in the cinema. But I suspect you're thinking of Selznick's much classier 1937 film with Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll and Raymond Massey - not to mention Doug Fairbanks, C Aubrey Smith and David Niven. Some cast! But I didn't see that until it came on television some time in the 60s.

Edited to credit James Mason with his proper role (thanks, Django).

Just got home from a day shooting at a lighting rental facility in Hollywood where many of the lights used on these movies are still in storage. featherwate beat me to it answering leccoll's puzzler, though if I may correct a mis-type of his, Mason did indeed play Rupert--Robert Douglas was Black Michael.

Incidentally, about two years ago I saw the first filmed version of The Prisoner of Zenda, from 1922 directed by Rex Ingram (not the great actor but the director of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and discoverer of Rudolph Valentino). An interesting movie, memorable for the luscious Alice Terry as Flavia, and Valentino's replacement, Ramon Navarro, who would later embody another LEC hero in the silent "Ben-Hur," and who is really wonderful here as the devilish Rupert--though not as wonderful as Fairbanks, Jr., at his best in the great 1937 version. (Mason is also superb in the 1952 version, but wisely he plays Rupert as a deadly serious, and deadly, career soldier and opportunist.) The oddest feature of the silent version is the choice of Lewis Stone(!) as Rassendyll/King Rudolf. "Judge Hardy" a swashbuckler? Stone was a fine actor, and having fought in the Spanish-American War and WW I had real grit--but he was in his mid-40s in this film, and lacked the romantic qualities and the self-deprecating charm which made Ronald Colman, who was the same age when he assayed the role, the ideal Elphberg. (Stone wasn't quite finished with the Hope story--he played the Cardinal who crowns Rudolf in the Stewart Granger remake.)

>22 GoriceXII:, >23 GoriceXII:

I'm sorry you seem so desperate for attention that you feel it necessary to be rude, but I doubt it is having quite the effect for which you may have hoped. Luckily LibraryThing has provided a handy little "ignore" button which permits one to not be subjected to incivility or tedium.

Others here might be interested in the fact that artifacts from the Golden Age of Hollywood are still around in spite of a city which pays scant attention to its history. Since you aren't, feel free to apply the "ignore" button to me--as I now apply it to you.

I just read Chris' review of The Leopard on Books and Vines. The LEC, which was made into a great movie, is the perfect foil for being viewed after reading the book. I have read the LEC, and viewed the Italian version of the movie, then reread the book.

My question is two fold: who portrayed the two male leads in the movie. And also, could some one explain to me the meaning of the frontispiece, the only illustration in the LEC.

Not seeing this movie after reading the book would be like never viewing Gone with the Wind.

>26 leccol:

Don, by the two male leads I assume you mean the Prince and Tancredi--those roles were played, respectively, by Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon. Director Luchino Visconti had wanted Nikolai Cherkassov, a magnificent Russian actor memorable for his performance as Alexander Nevsky in Sergei Eisenstein's classic film, and then Laurence Olivier, who was too busy. Since 20th Century-Fox was co-financing the film, they insisted on Burt Lancaster, much to Visconti's dismay--but Lancaster eventually won the director over. I remember seeing the film when it came out and being disappointed by the photography, as I heard that it was sumptuous. Thirty years later I saw an original Technicolor print (which used a dye matrix process for color rather than the Deluxe photochemical process of the original American release) and saw what the viewers who saw the original Italian print of the film were talking about. Magnificent.

I happen to enjoy the film, but many find it long and boring. I remember a review at the time saying "Visconti may be, as some have quipped, the Tolstoy of interior decoration; perhaps, but he is the Zane Grey of interior cerebration." Like so much criticism, it's clever but unfair. The movie is a faithful adaptation of the book plotwise, but it does miss the elegiac quality of the novel, and although Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale are splendid to look at (especially La Cardinale!), they are too lightweight for the roles. (Warren Beatty and Horst Bucholz were both offered the part but turned it down; Beatty would have been interesting as Tancredi, judging from his performances in "Lilith," "Splendor in the Grass," and "Mickey One.")

Django, thanks for your views and the historical background. I think that many viewers would find the movie overly long and perhaps boring. But not those who have read the book and are seeking some sort of relevancy between the story line and the particulars of the period of Italian history covered. My second introduction to the book was much more pleasing than the first reading. Some books, especially those written about a period with which we are unfamiliar, require an extra effort. I can't see Beatty in the role, perhaps Bucholz. Perhaps because Cardinale and Delone were so beautiful to look at made them more appropriate for their roles. Lancaster, of course, was superb, and I saw the Italian version where Lancaster's Italian was dubbed in.

Have you seen the frontispiece of the LEC? I was hoping you would enable me to understand it. this illustration, and perhops those for Kafkas' In the Penal Colony, are not understood by me, and I haven't been able to find some one who can enlighten me as to their meaning.

The Island of Lampedusa has been in the new recently because of the drowning of multitudes of immigrants. One has to wonder how the Leopard would have felt about this tragic invasion of his island.

>28 leccol:

I have only seen a reproduction of it, and that, and the price, kept me from wanting to buy it, despite the beauty of the rest of the production. In my opinion, it has about as much relevance to the novel as Sean Scully's illustrations have for "Heart of Darkness." (I also passed on the Kafka for similar reasons.)

The first time I saw Visconti's "Leopard," it was the dubbed version (which was also abridged). The beautifully restored version I saw at the LA County Museum of Art was subtitled--and it is how I prefer it.

(I have been so out of touch with things the past month I hadn't heard about the Isle of Lampedusa--thanks for calling this to my attention.)

I only paid $125 for the Leopard around 1998. Scully's work in Heart of Darkness is incomprehensible. However, the one illustraion in The Leopard wasn't enough to turn me off purchasing it since all other factors (paper, typography, printing and even its size) including the storyline, were positive. I think some of the Shiff books were illustrated by artists that Shiff or Ben Shiff were afraid to criticize as their reputation preceded their LEC work which perhaps was of a lesser note.

Some of the later Shiff work was of a much better value. The O'Hara Poems decorated by de Kooning is one which comes to mind along with the Hemingway prose of The Old Man and the Sea illustrated with photographs.

To django and others: The Italian and English versions of The Leopard are combined on three DVDs and are in the Criterion Collection. Many libraries have The Criterion Collection as does my local library. I would urge all LEC collectors to read the book and see the movie. This LEC is somewhat affordable at $250 - $300. It is beautifully done in spite of the non-relative frontispiece.

Books published by the LEC in 1950 - 1952 include eight volumes of the Conan Doyle stories and novellas. I have had a love affair with the Sherlock Holmes stories since I received a copy of A Study in Scarlet for Christmas when I was twelve years old. The LEC 8-volume edition can still be found in Fine condition. The books are bound in 1/4 black linen and paper boards with a profile of Holmes stamped like a cameo would be. Also, the pock marks for for the initials VR are included, which Holmes shot in Mrs Hudson's wall. For a book published in the early 50s, it is a nice rendition of the Holmes stories. The price for the 8 volumes usually runs around $600, which is not too bad for 8 volumes.

Last year I found all eight volumes in Fine condition so I ordered the books which were in Fine condition, not counting the the ratty slipcases (three slipcases for the eight volumes). The Easton Press has a three-volume edition of all the stories and novellas for about $150 for those who do not want the more expensive LEC books.

On to the movies. I read all 1500 plus pages of Sherlock Holmes this year. I believed the Basil Rathbone movies would be the best, so I checked out the Rathbone movies on YouTube. I soon found out that Rathbone made his Holmes' movies during the war years in the 1940s. I was surprised and dissapointed to find Sherlock Holmes fighting Nazis and not being in the millieu of 19th century London.

But I soon found out the best Holmes movies were made by an English actor in the late 80s and early 90s. These were the best Holmes' adaptions ever made since this actor threw himself into the project of making adaptations of the stories which followed those of the pen of Conan Doyle. This actor spent a great deal of time learning the mannerisms of Holmes such as how, he Holmes, would touch the fingertips of his hands together when studying a case. Altogether, this actor made over 40 of the Holmes stories primarily for TV since each story
was only about an hour in length. Unfortunately, this actor in my opinion the best ever Holmes, suffered a fatal heart attacj in the middle 90s so he didn't live to complete all the stories. Without consulting YouTube or Wikipedia, who was this best portrayer of Holmes?

>32 leccol: "I read all 1500 plus pages of Sherlock Holmes this year."

Great accomplishment, Don! And I assume you read the LEC editions you acquired earlier in the year?

As for the best Holmes, I'm going to have to go with Robert Downey Jr. He truly brings that character to life, IMO.

>32 leccol:

Jeremy Brett was the actor who so immersed himself in Holmes for the English TV adaptations--most of which were unmatched in bringing the stories to the screen--and even looked uncannily like Sidney Paget's illustrations of Holmes. I found it particularly interesting how Brett's portrayal became more weirdly idiosyncratic as the series went on, until at the end you could really understand how Holmes' particular genius was deeply rooted in misanthropy.

I think, in addition to Brett, special acclaim is deserved for Edward Hardwicke (Sir Cedric's son), who took the role of Dr. Watson during the second round of Holmes adaptations, and who was, for me, the definitive Watson (not at all like Rathbone's bumbling sidekick Nigel Bruce--a fine actor, but either directed poorly or who felt Watson had to be a moron to make Holmes brilliance more apparent).

I think Rathbone was fine, especially in the first few Holmes movies in which he appeared which stuck to the correct period. Like Don, I can't accept Holmes outside of the setting of the original books, and haven't seen Downey Jr. as Holmes, though I have seen Robert Stephens in Billy Wilder's butchered Holmes adaptation, Nicol Williamson in "The Seven-percent Solution," and Peter Cushing in th e1960s Hammer versions; in all cases, I have to paraphrase the Frenchman's comment after observing the Light Brigade's charge at Balaclava--c'est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas le Holmes."

I haven't seen the silent version of "Sherlock Holmes" starring John Barrymore, but I suspect he would have made a superb Holmes had the sound film been invented 20 years earlier, when it could have caught him at his peak.

I'm afraid picking Robert Downey Jr is a mistake. I see no relevancy between Downey and the pen of Conan Doyle. Most if not all of Jeremy Brett potrayals are on YouTube. Of the more than 25 actors who have played Holmes, Jeremy Brett is the leader of the pack. If you read a Sherlock Holmes story, then watch a Brett portrayal, you will see what I mean. Rathbone could have made a rather good Holmes, but without tv the stories could not be presented as one-hour segments. Also, I agree with Django that Nigel Bruce's bumbling Dr. Watson was a detraction rather than an attaction to Rathbone. Rathbone was a fine actor as can be 'sseen in his portrayal of Anna Karenina's husband, but Jeremy Brett was superb as Holmes.

Brett had a complex personality; he was bisexual and left his wife for another man. Shades of Oscar Wilde. Perhaps it was his complex nature that permitted him to immerse himself as Holmes. It is said that Brett read and reread the Doyle stories to get his mannerisms to coincide with those of the fictional Holmes. Like many people who feed off an addiction, Brett smoked cigarette after cigarette while preparing for a Sherlock role. He is said to have been a two- or three-packs a day person which of course contributed to his fatal heart attack. But regardless of Brett's personal life or addictions, he comes up as the best Holmes of all.

Another set of LECs from which superior movies have been made. Consider this: of all the LECs the Conan Doyle stories hold the lead in number of stories printed. The Doyle stories and novellas are not simplistic tales, but those which rank as some of the best ever written. Doyle found this out when he tried to kill off Holmes by having him perish with Moriarity. He received so much criticism from Holmes fans that he was forced to bring him back to life. Both the English and American Holmes followers, I think the American ones are called The Baker Street Irregulars, proved to Doyle that he had a following which he couldn't ignore.

>35 EclecticIndulgence:, 36

"I'm going to have to go with Robert Downey Jr. He truly brings that character to life, IMO."

I must admit I was being facetious. I just wanted to see how quickly you serious cinephiles would jump on that comment. ;-) I agree that Downey's portrayal of Holmes is a little caricaturish. He seems like more of an action hero, a la Iron Man.

Thanks for all of the great recommendations. I've seen parts of a BBC series, but I will have investigate who it was that I saw. Jeremy Brett's performance sounds interesting based on Don's description.

--

Does anyone have a favorite film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray? I just finished reading the LEC and have fallen in love Wilde. My only exposure to him previously was The Importance of Being Earnest and some aphorisms. I'd love to see a great Dorian Gray on-screen.

>37 andrewsd:

Though there have been several versions of the novel on film and television, including a few from the silent era, the only one I can comment on is the 1945 B&W version (with Technicolor interpolations featuring full screen depictions of the portrait), written and directed by Albert Lewin, an extremely bright, literate man of great taste who, because of these traits, was bound to fail in Hollywood. The movie is deservedly regarded as a classic, but it is not the most faithful of adaptations--changing Dorian's character from Wilde's impetuous, emotional narcissist to someone resembling Tennyson's Maud:

"Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.

Hurd Hatfield is perfect in that conception, and it works for the movie, but isn't faithful to Wilde's Dorian. Angela Lansbury, impossibly young-looking and gorgeous, looks just right for Sybil, and George Sanders, who starred in Lewin's version of Bel-Ami, is excellent as Lord Henry. The BBC did a version in the 1970s with Peter Firth as Dorian, Jeremy Brett (discussed above as the ideal Sherlock Holmes) as Basil and Sir John Gielgud as Lord Henry, and this version is acknowledged by many to be the closest to Wilde's novel.

Django: see #12 above for my comments on Lansbury, Hatfield, Sanders et al. As I say in the post, I recently saw a remastered dvd of the Dorian Gray movie with comments thruout by Lansbury. While Wilde's book was not followed exactly, the movie is a pleasure to watch because of the artifacts used, the cinematography, and the beautifuk Lansbury. I believe she was 20-21 at the time of the filming.

#34

It seems there are several schools of thought on Watson, each favouring a different degree of stupidity (relative to the preternaturally brilliant Holmes). Rathbone's Nigel Bruce and Ronald Howard's H. Marion Crawford would be the "hearty dumb oaf" type (and I think are wonderfully skilful interpretations both.) This type takes broad comic flourishes well and is probably a crowd pleaser. David Burke and Edward Hardwicke played the "ordinary mortal" Watson--intellectually inferior to Holmes (as who isn't), but a wise and sensitive human being who would balance Holmes' lack of emotionalism.

Nigel Stock's Watson (to Douglas Wilmer's and then Peter Cushing's Holmes) is somewhere between these two categories, less comical OR sensitive than earnest man of action.

Oddly enough, James Mason, who played Watson to Christopher Plummer's Holmes in Murder by decree, gravitated more to the first interpretation.

Don't lose sight of the fact that almost all of the Holmes' stories and novellas didn't follow Doyles' writing. The Jeremy Brett interpretations of Doyle in the 40 odd tv episodes he made are all we have which follow Doyle's writing. And those movies written by other writers certainly don't qualify as Doyle originals, no matter how much you like them

One of my favorite LECs is Jack London's The Call of the Wild. With the slipcase and book covered in lumberjack shirting, the book is a standout production. The book and slipcase are covered in an itchy, scratchy all wool fabric. It is not covered in a flannel as someone suggested recently. Flannel is a soft wool blend, usually cotton. For those old enough, flannel is the fabric your mother covered you chest with after rubing your chest with camphor when you had a cold. If you tried to put the lumberjack shirting on your chest, you wouldn't be able to stand it for more than a few minutes. For those of you thinking of buying this unusual book, be sure to check for moth holes first.

The movie inspired by the London story doesn't follow London's writing at all. After all this is a book about a dog which probably has some wolf in him. The movie has a love interest injected in it which is not in London's novel. The movie just plays on the well-known London title with some comedy thrown in by actor Jack Oakie.

However, the movie generated another story. The male and female leads had a torrid romance during the filming. After the movie was filmed, the female lead found she was pregnant. In 1935, legal abortion just wasn't there. Also, having a baby out of wedlock could cause a tyranical studio head to cancel your contract and ruin your career. So the female star went to Europe for nearly a year. When she returned, she had a baby which she passed off as an aopted, orphaned baby. The male actor was never told he had a daughter. Other relationships were formed and the baby daughter was never told, until she reached her majoriy, that the female actress was her real mother. The father didn't know he had a daughter until much later. Can you name this pair whose story is more interesting than the movie they made together

I don't mean to ignore your most recent post, leccol, but I'm curious, having not read much Doyle, and watched even less, what you guys think of the current "modern"
BBC reworking of Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch - obviously, it doesn't exactly follow the originals, but has Mr Cumberbatch managed to get the right feel of the character?

#45

I loved the books since I was a kid (I received a full set for my 12th birthday, but I knew the character from comics before then). I'd always recommend first meeting the literary Holmes. Without that, I don't know whether I'd care for any televisual adaptations. But as a fan of the literary Holmes first, I'm always interested and amused by all the variations on the theme.

That said, I soured big time on the newest BBC Sherlock after the disaster they visited on the character of Irene Adler.

But there are other problems with that version, IMO (and note, I was praising Season 1 enthusiastically, although I had misgivings about the Orientalising second story). This Holmes is an avowed "sociopath" and a cad. I think the character has been unduly pathologised. Another detail is that he doesn't play the violin, which was a mark of culture and emotional depth in the literary Holmes.

I have made my opinion quite clear: the only stories fairly true to Doyles' Holmes are the 40 or so stories and novellas in which Holmes is played by Jeremy Brett. All ohers are Holmes imposters. Not only are the stories factual to Doyles' writing, but Brett's portrayal down to the slightest idiosyncratic gesture is the way Doyle saw Holmes.

The Brett stories are not exactly adaptations, but they are an attempt to make all the stories faithful to Doyles writing by using an actor who has studied the character so that Holmes' mannerisms down to his most insignificant gestures are a compilation of all that has been written.

The only way Brett's acting and the tv screenplays can be analyzed is to read a story, then watch an episode and see how they coincide. That is what I did in evaluating the screenplays, the sets, the cinematography, and Brett's acting. I watched all 40 or so episodes immediately after reading a story.

A Scandal in Bohemia, the only story in which Irene Adler appears, is carried off by Brett to perfection.
One poster said that Brett's performances made him become wired or nervous. That's because this series is the first one true to Doyle's writing and those that watch the stories for the first time are seeing Holmes as Doyle potrayed him in words.

>44 leccol: "The book and slipcase are covered in an itchy, scratchy all wool fabric. It is not covered in a flannel as someone suggested recently."

Interesting! I suppose when most speak of 'flannel,' they are usually referring to the pattern of squared lines and colors instead of a particular material. Is the binding then itchy to hold?

No, that's just a design. Flannel itself is a soft wool material combined with another material which makes it soft. Even as soft as it was, I hated when my mother applied camphor and wrapped my chest in flannel. The book covering is unadulterated wool, and is scratchy to the touch. Moths love it, and I've seen several books with moth holes in the wool covering. I sprayed my copy with a moth proof spray, and I hope it is moth resistant. Personally, I love the exotic materials used to cover LECs. It's part of their charm.

Staying in bed all day amd listening to the radio serials was part of growing up in the 1940s. The camphor and flannel technique actually did work as your chest opened up to a healthy cough if you had what the doctors called "the croop". This was before penicillin or other miracle drugs, and before doctors stopped making house calls.

Don, do you suppose Clark Gable was wearing a wool flannel shirt when he was cozying up to Loretta Young? (Probably not during the encounter when Judy Lewis was conceived.)

I love wool, and had, at one time, close to 20 Pendleton wool shirts, including many of the finest quality Sir Pendleton, but unhappily the moths, which were never a major problem back in Missouri, are like ravening wolves here in sunny Southern California, and now I'm down to perhaps two wool shirts that don't have holes. They have also ruined a camel's hair jacket and my Tom Mix Stetson hat. Needless to say, when I was going through my relative's LEC collection of books prior to their sale, The Call of the Wild had also provided a tasty--and expensive meal.

Loretta Young's and Gable's daughter must be about my age if she was born in 1935, my birth year. The shirt I liked were the Viyella blends of cotton and wool. They are still being made today in many remarkable plaid colors.

Sorry about your Tom Mix hat. You must have been a Ralston Straight Shooter. I had the Tom Mix secret decoder ring. Today's kids probab;y couldn'r be satisfied with sending in box tops for trivial stuff.

Another favorite LEC is another Jack London novel. The Sea-Wolf. Published in 1961 and capably illustrated by Fletcher Martin. London sold his novel, The Sea-Wolf, for $4000 as his bank account was reduced to $20.00, according to the Monthly Letter. Then London was off to the Russo-Japanese War as a correspondent. When he returned, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the book trade had ordered 40,000 copies of The Sea-Wolf. This rough and tumble story about a ship's captain with the appellation of Wolf Larsen and his conflict with the mild mannered Van Weyden on Larsen's ship, the Ghost, becomes a fight between the scholarly Van Weyden and the brutal Wolf Larsen who is also a scholar of sorts with the library of classic books held in Captain Wolf Larsen's cabin. As the conflict continues, the slave Van Weyden rises to defeat the master Larsen in one of the most exciting sea stories ever written.

Then a movie was made of the book. Maybe not the greatest movie, but a pretty good one starring a classic movie star who gave a rousing performance as Wolf Larsen. Can you name this classic star who, contrary to Larsen's personality became a collector of priceless canvasses. Toward the end of his career, this actor was in a movie in which the never-to-be-forgotten lines were uttered, "Soylent Green is people!"

---------A microscopic examination of the nature of faith---------
------------------------------1. The Book------------------------------
“Yes, we have no Bernanos!” cried an American Catholic historian in 2001, bewailing the USA's dearth of Catholic intellectuals, writers and film-makers able to convey the central richness and importance of religion as a life-changing experience. Her absent exponent was George Bernanos (1888-1948), a leading French Catholic writer whose 1936 prize-winning novel Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) achieved international fame and eventually became the June 1986 offering of the LEC's Forty-eighth series.
Designed by Ben Shiff, the LEC was illustrated by the 85 year-old Fritz Eichenberg - his final Club commission, I think, rounding off an association that had lasted over forty years. Three of the other contributors to the book had already worked with Eichenberg on LECs: Heritage Printers of Charlotte, NC, had printed 1981's Adventures of Simplicissimus; the typesetter, Michael Bixler, had designed and set 1982's House of the Dead, and Daniel Keleher's Wild Carrot Letterpress had printed Dead's illustrations. In a 1984 interview for the New York Times, Books Regain Former Glory, Keleher described how he had made Eichenberg extremely nervous by insisting on printing the illustrations direct from the artist's woodblocks rather than from an intermediary metal plate. Curiously there is no mention of this initiative in the Dead's Monthly Letter; back in his day George Macy would have surely and quite rightly pounced on it with enthusiasm! The letter for the Bernanos book simply states that 'The woodblocks were printed at Wild Carrot Letterpress.', which could be taken to mean direct printing again. I haven't handled either of the books but a comparison of the two might indicate if this was so – Keleher firmly believed that the results justified the risks: printing from the blocks was noticeably better.
Books Regain Former Glory is an interesting four-page article that surveyed the revival of interest in fine printing, binding, paper, design etc.

------------------------------2. The Film------------------------------
In 1951, Journal d'un curé de campagne was adapted for the screen by French cinema's most succinct director, Robert Bresson. The film was widely acclaimed by critics and film-makers, for example coming joint second at that year's Venice Film Festival, where it was also won the award for best cinematography. But Bresson's style of film-making never brought him popular appeal - no surprise perhaps given his philosophy:
“Cinema is interior movement.”
“A film is not a spectacle; it is pre-eminently a style.”
“Empty the pond to get the fish.”
These are not the words of a man pitching to direct the next in the Transformers or Fokker franchises.
I have not read the book and I did not see the film until the late 1960s when, I am embarrassed to admit, I fell asleep halfway through. But then it was the fourth film in a day-long Bresson retrospective...
He had, however, a more enlivening effect on several directors, among them Kubrik, Godard, Malle and Tarkovsky. Martin Scorsese and his occasional writing colleague Paul Schrader have both cited Bresson as an influence on their work, in particular linking his Country Priest with their Taxi Driver. It sounds unlikely on the surface; but in fact the inner life of both the nameless French priest and the violent American Nam vet is a search for redemption in a maelstrom of despair, isolation and rejection.

This seems to be an example of a novel that became both a worthy LEC and a worthy film. Clearly time, then, for a new project. Buy the LEC and a crate of Pelforth Brune, rent the Bresson and the Scorsese and plunge into an inchoate search for meaning that is startlingly followed by the decisive and transformative moment. (Mark Conard, The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese, University Press of Kentucky, 2007).

I enjoyed Jude Law's Watson, with the steadfast qualities bumped up a notch.

I have obtained a copy of The Diary of a Country Priest and it is only three down on my to be read list. I'll have to look for the movie. It may have been in the Criterion Collection.

featherwate, it's interesting to compare the films of Bresson with those of his spiritual forerunner, Carl Theodor Dreyer (interesting that both made great films about Joan of Arc). Bresson did not have the painterly style of Dreyer, who struck off so many memorable images that most of his films seem like a succession of Old Masters etchings. But Bresson was not as static as many critics make him out to be--his style was quiet but fluid. "The Diary of a Country Priest,""A Condemned man Escapes," "Pickpocket," and "The Trial of Joan of Arc" are all moving films, in the kinetic as well as the emotional sense, but the camera moves when it needs to move, and his Joan film never seems, as does Dreyer's, a succession of exquisitely composed tableaux. I confess I haven't seen his later films (I am extremely sentimental about animals, and couldn't bring myself to see "Au hasard Balthasar"), and from the comments I heard about "Lancelot du lac" there may have been a decline in his powers, though some day I want to see "Mouchette," based on another novel by Bernanos.

Don, there is a Criterion DVD of "Diary of a Country Priest." I have it, but feel that the transfer was not made from the best materials, as the photography seems less brilliant that it did in the original film when I saw it. (But, that may be my mind playing tricks after 40+ years.)

Unfortunately, all the librarues I have access to (dayton metro libraries) do not have the Criterion Diary of a Country Priest. I will try to get them to purchase a copy.

The Picaresque novel is no stranger to the LEC. Briefly, the Picaresque novel is one about the adventures of a rogueish character, often satirical in nature. The Picaresque novels published by the LEC include Gill Blas, Peregrine Pickle, Don Quixote, Tom Jones, and on down to Huckleberry Finn at the end of the 19th century. But since this post is about movies made from LECs, I must say a few words about Tom Jones, the History of a Foundling.

This 1963 movie garnished a bevy of Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screen Play, and Best Actor. I wasn't an LEC member when this movie was released in 1963, but there were several paperbacks issued to coincide with the movie. So I purchased a paperback to read while I was waiting for the lines to go down at the movie houses.

Subsequently, I managed to get the two LECs previously issued prior to the movie: the 1931 book in a single volume illustrated by Alexander King and the 1952 book in two volumes illustrated by T. M. Clelland. Personally, although it is a bit bulkier to handle, I prefer the King version. The author, Henry Fielding, is considered to be the father of the English novel since Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Huckleberry Finn had authors who were not English. If you haven't yet read this novel, I would urge you to do so. It is purported to have been the favorite novel of Thomas Jefferson who sold his library to the US Government for $25,000. After carrying his books by wagon from Montecello to Washingto DC, congress wouldn't pay the ex-President for his library, many books of which were bound in fine French leather. Jefferson purchased them in Paris when he was the Frech ambassador before he was President. As now, there were idealogical differences between the first Democrat and congress. Eventually the bill was paid and Jefferson's library became the basis for the Library of Congress.

But back to the movie of Tom Jones. Can you name those who won the four awards listed above which won nine academy awards?

I can remember Tom Jones winning Best Film (we British don't win so many of those they easily get forgotten), so Tony Richardson might well have won Best Director. Albert Finney might have been nominated for Best Actor - he certainly gave an extraordinarily assured performance for someone in only his second or third film - but I'm sure he's one of Oscar's bridesmaids (never won despite several nominations). The pace of the film was exhilarating so the editor and/or cinematographer probably deserved one.
Beyond that I can't venture any guesses. Perhaps a supporting actor or actress? Lord knows the cast was stuffed with the cream of the industry's scene-stealers from Edith Evans downwards.

>59 leccol:

It was the days of Swinging England, when the US was conquered not by the soldiers of the King (Queen), but by the 4 moptops, Mary Quant, and James Bond. Anglophilia was so out of control the Academy awarded the statues to the movie, the director, Tony Richardson, Albert Finney, the actor portraying the eponymous hero, John Osborne, the writer who really deserved it more for "Look Back in Anger," and "The Entertainer." (I believe John Addison also won for his music score.)

All of these winners have done far better, Oscar-worthy work, (Richardson and Addison had collaborated the previous year on the superb filmed version of Sillitoe's "Loneliness of the Long-Disatnce Runner'), so one doesn't begrudge them their statues, and Martin Ritt, who directed the best English language movie of the year, "Hud" (which wasn't even nominated), should take solace in the fact that Orson Welles and "Citizen Kane," were also slighted by the Academy. The best film of the year, Fellini's "8 1/2," wasn't eligible under the rules.

>60 featherwate:

featherwate, the editing really was the star of the movie (technically speaking), but wasn't nominated--the Academy giving consolation nominations to the salt miners who slaved on making something out those bloated nominees "How the West Was Won," "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," and the movie that nearly sank 20th Century-Fox--"Cleopatra." (How the West Was Won"...won.

Though I find the film barely watchable today, it is most enjoyable for the supporting actresses, Diane Cilento, the magisterial Dame Edith Evans, and the delectable Joyce Redman--all of whom were nominated--and especially the too-beautiful-for-her-own-good Susanna York, and the incomparable Joan Greenwood ("I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade"), who weren't even nominated. Talk about an embarrassment of riches!

>62 Django6924: I have a personal interest in the film, because I nearly got into it as Man Holding Horse's Head. It was mostly filmed in the English Westcountry during the summer of 1962. One of the main locations was Nettlecombe Court, about 20 miles from my home village. This rambling country house set in parkland on the edge of the north Somerset moors is ideal for film makers because it has a range of architecture covering several centuries, including a full-sized 15thC parish church almost literally on the front doorstep. The local paper carried a call for extras so I cycled to Nettlecombe and hung about for three or four hours while they were filming inn interiors in the old stables (the stableyard itself stood in for the film's climax at Tyburn.) Then a handful of us were rushed over to the house and pushed in front of Tony Richardson and assorted minions. Casting person: "This one for the horse's head?" Minion: "Too tall." Richardson: "Sorry."
But I did get some pleasure out of a day's actor spotting. No Finney or Redman, tho' they were inside filming their famous scene, and alas! no Cilento or York. But Hugh Griffiths was there sitting on a grassy bank holding riotous court to a circle of young actresses (or they may have been pupils, the place was a girls' school at the time). I also received an excellent canteen lunch, very welcome, and a less welcome but very polite sexual suggestion from one of the actors, after which I got on my bicycle and cycled home.
That was the end of my conscious attempt a movie career. My shadow does, however, appear in a Jules Dassin film - Phaedra, I think - and my actual self in a back-projection shot of a Seychelles street that appears through the rear window of a car in "Emmanuelle 3". Given what Sylvia Kristel was up to in the back seat, I don't suppose anyone noticed me. I didn't.

BTW, Finney didn't win, but you're right about Addison (I've been looking at imdb). The cameraman was Walter Lassally, just now embarked on a career as an actor in busywine's film of the year so far, Round Midnight.

Edit: Oops! That should be Before not Round. Round (properly 'Round) was another great film with a different aged great non-actor embarking on a new career.

>63 featherwate:

How my memory is slipping! I don't know what made me think Finney had won as I was sure he had since my own favorite that year, Paul Newman in "Hud" lost. Of course it was the year Sidney Poitier made history by winning. "Lilies of the Field" was a very enjoyable movie (probably better in retrospect than "Tom Jones"), but it certainly isn't one of the imperishable classics of the cinema.

"Phaedra"! What a glorious mess that was! Has anyone ever really accomplished a good filmic version of a Greek tragedy, updated or not?

I didn't see "Emmanuelle 3," but did have the pleasure of working with Ms. Kristel on a film, the incredibly dopey "Airport '79" where she was seen to much less advantage, I'm sure.

"Round Midnight" is a wonderful film, and Dexter Gordon (who had actually appeared previously in a few movies) was nominated for, but lost, the acting Academy Award for his performance.

>59 leccol:

Don, I got carried away with movies and overlooked commenting on the LEC versions of Tom Jones. I have the Cleland version but would prefer the King-illustrated version also. I have previously remarked that Tom Jones, while great, has tended to overshadow two novels of the period which I find superior--Richardson's Clarissa and Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. I can understand why Richardson's work never became an LEC--it's longer than Les Miserables--but why Humphry Clinker didn't baffles me. It's much shorter than Tom Jones, and the one Smollett novel the LEC produced--Peregrine Pickle. Were I to wish for one exquisitely produced, well-illustrated LE today, it would be Humphry Clinker.

Has anyone ever really accomplished a good filmic version of a Greek tragedy, updated or not?

Cocteau? (Orpheus)

I'm enjoying this thread to pieces.

Somewhere in my memory I am told that Trojan Women was made by Katherine Hepburn and otherrs. But prhaps I am wrong. Maybe Django knows.

I remember watching Pasolini's late 1960s Oedipus Rex (Edipo Re) which was set in both Mussolini's Italy and Ancient Greece but I can't remember being much moved by it. (The audience I saw it with, on the other hand, were definitely moved - most of them left well before the end.) It was a typically provocative approach by Pasolini, who conjured up some powerful images and sequences of a truly primitive world. But there was no sense of a theological (mythological) framework holding this world together - or at bay.
I could ascribe my lack of involvement with the film to the fact that I saw it at a time when I used to pay more attention to way films were shot rather than what they were about; and Pasolini filled his very wide screen with space and movement - people running for joy or (or their lives) in exhilarating lateral takes or engaged in hand-to-hand fighting (shot with hand-held cameras (and frequent lens flare). (All very sixties, of course - cf. a British Oscar-winning film called Tom something or other...). However, critics less easily swayed by appearances did not generally find it a wholly satisfactory reworking of the ur-tragedy.
He also filmed Medea (which I haven't seen) with Maria Callas. Perhaps that was more successful?
Personally I wish Kurosawa had tried his hand at Greek tragedy. Japanese film-makers seem to be much more at ease than their European counterparts when it comes to creating a convincing world shared by the human and the supernatural.

Edited to add: Cocteau's whole trilogy is fascinating, especially the Orpheus section, although I find it misses real tragic power - probably because I find Jean Marais an actor hard to empathise with (except in Beauty and the Beast).

>66 leccol:

Right you are, Don. I haven't seen this film by Michael Cacoyannis, nor his other two versions of Euripides--"Electra" and "Iphigenia," though I suspect "Electra" with Irene Pappas might be excellent. I frankly put off "The Trojan Women" because Katharine Hepburn in a serious role has never convinced me (though I think she is a superb comedian in "Bringing Up Baby," "The Philadelphia Story," and "Adam's Rib").

>67 featherwate:

I passed on Pasolini's "Oedipus Rex" when it showed up on a Pasolini revival--after being burned by his "Canterbury Tales," "Arabian Nights," and "Decameron," I didn't want to see another travesty on a classic work of literature (I still don't understand how he could have succeeded so brilliantly with "The Gospel According to St. Matthew").

Cocteau's Orpheus films have no antecedents in Greek tragedy with which I'm familiar, but they are quite satisfying as movies--especially the first one with its echoes of the Nazi occupation of France.

I really wish Luis Buñuel would have tackled Euripides.