Hollywood's machine

lisztnet says > Hollywood made a bunch of bad movies in the 40'...

On some level you're right. The studios cranked out a lot of movies in the early days; not all of them were made for quality. They were in the business of making money and, since movies were a relatively new medium, audiences probably were not very discerning. If they were entertained and went home feeling they'd gotten their money's worth; they were happy and so were the studios.

...unfortunately spoiling great actor's carriers, like for Hedy Lamarr, Gable, etc. James Steward played to much of theses.

In those days it seems the actors worked day in and day out. They had to be in the studios anyway so they were assigned to make a lot of movies; sometimes more than one at a time. Naturally the studios wanted to get the most out of their investments. Some people they didn't know what to do with but once they had a star; a reliable money maker on their hands, they often put them in movies they the actor may not have wanted to be in. Again, the studios had to make money.

On the other side of the equation, the actors often turned down roles that may have helped their careers. Hedy, for instance, supposedly turned down Ingrid's role in Casablanca. Who knows if it would have worked as well with her in the role but it may have, at least, led to other work. The studios weren't the only ones in control. Some actors looked for projects and lobbied for roles but the truth is it's hard to know what will work with audiences so mistakes were made. To avoid that the studios and the actors sometimes stuck with whatever worked so they got typecast. Audiences tastes also change. It's all a gamble.

Personally, I love a lot of the movies that were made during that time and tend to enjoy them more than a lot of the movies being made today. Today the budgets may be a lot bigger; there are more special effects; and movies are more 'real' but many barely have a plot. It's sometimes hard to distinguish one of these movies from the next or one sequel, of which they are usually many, from any of the others.

You can enjoy per contrast what a genius Hitchcock was, who avoided uni-dimensional characters, stereotypes, etc.

I'm a big fan of Hitchcock's movies too but that's because he was a good story teller. He probably also looked for good scripts and modified them to suit his vision. Not all directors approached the job in the same way but many were good story tellers even if they only made smaller, or even B, movies.

This film isn't absolutely bad, it's historically interesting - at least.

I happened to like this movie and thought it had good themes. All three girls went after the same thing but they went about it in different ways and each had a different outcome. It showed how people can get caught up in the razzle-dazzle and forget or miss out on what really matters in their lives; sometimes too late. It also showed, as was the case with Judy's character, that sometimes dreams really could come true.


Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]

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