Last night Grimsley came over, hence no blog because no movie. One cool thing did happen yesterday that's worth reporting, however. I received in the mail the new triple-cd by Bill Nelson, called "Auditoria". The album features 46 tracks (holy smokes!) that Bill recorded throughout 2018. He released "Auditoria" to coincide with a live concert marking his 70th birthday. Bill Nelson has a niche market, and so he only has 500 cds of his albums manufactured. That way, they are guaranteed to sell out, and latecomer fans can thereafter order a digital download. I am one of those fans who wants to have a disc, so I always make sure and order right away when Bill releases new material, so I can obtain a cd before they sell out. I did so with the triple album "Auditoria" and was lucky to get one, because they had already been on sale at the Bill Nelson 70th Birthday Concert. The morning he put the remaining cds onsale on his website, there were only a couple hundred left, and they sold out very quickly. Many fans in England were disappointed not to have scored one.
I lucked out, therefore, and lo and behold, my copy of "Auditoria" arrived in my mailbox yesterday, December 18th, which was Bill Nelson's birthday. And not only that, but to my surprise, when I opened the mailer, I saw that the album had been signed by Bill himself. So that was pretty doggone cool and worth reporting, I think, that I got a rare copy of Bill Nelson's new triple album commemorating his 70th birthday on his 70th birthday, and he had signed it as well.
The shabularity meter registers as "negligible" in this case, as I'm sure you will agree.
Tonight I did watch a movie, an old fashioned classic called "The Corn Is Green" (1945), starring Bette Davis and a young actor named John Dall, who would go on to obtain cult status for his role in the noir classic "Gun Crazy" from 1950, which had a chase scene filmed right here in Reseda on Sherman Way. So it really is a small world after all. I discovered this movie through a Bette Davis library search, and when I checked it out I was surprised to see Dall in the cast, because I had only ever seen him play Bad Guys (he was a psycho in Hitchcock's "Rope"). Here he has to go toe-to-toe with Davis in one of the greatest roles of her career, and he did well enough to earn himself an Oscar nomination for his performance.
The movie takes place in Wales in 1895, so right away you know you are in for a sentimental, heavily-accented ride. Bette Davis is a highly motivated teacher, a graduate of Oxford. She is newly arrived in this provincial Welsh mining town. She has money (the source never specified) that she has used to buy a local rooming house which she intends to turn into a school for the children who work in the coal mines. Here you have another brutal aspect of childhood life in England in the 19th century, kids toiling in mines. The town landowner, known as "Squire", doesn't want Davis to open her school. He fears that if the mineworker youth become literate, they will have the means to escape their class-established employment. But Davis is headstrong and does establish her school. To her first group of students, their faces still black from the mines, she issues an introductory exam, the tried-and true "what did you do on your vacation" that we all remember from our own schooldays.
Most of her students are fumbling for grammar. They lack the skills to express themselves and can barely spell. But one young man stands out. He is older than the other boys, and while his spelling needs work too, he clearly knows not only how to use words, but to write an essay that exceeds what teacher Bette Davis was expecting from her unwashed, uneducated students.
She then singles out Dall and begins to tutor him daily. He advances quickly, learns Greek and Latin, and soon Bette Davis is proposing him for a scholarship to her alma mater, Oxford.
What you have as your main theme is a "Pygmalion" story in a Welsh setting. But then other subthemes come into play, the main one having to do with a local girl who is very sure of herself and very resentful of Davis. This role is played by an actress named Joan Lorring. She was also nominated for an Oscar for her performance, and though she, like John Dall, did not go on to have a major career, she nevertheless creates a character, that is lifelike - of the young, poor, oversexualised seductress who uses the only thing she has going for her in an effort to keep John Dall in his place, in the coal mine. Lorring's character is what you would call a trollope. She not only resents the intelligent and assured Davis, who as Dall's teacher has control over his future, but she secretly envies both of them. She uses her sexuality as a taunt against the repressed and somewhat cold Davis, and tries to pull John Dall away from her.
But he is proving to be too exceptional a student, and the testing period for his Oxford scholarship looms.
The point of the movie, adapted from a book by Welsh author Emlyn Williams, is to depict the effort to lift the illiterate villagers out of their pre-determined station in life. We have seen in the works of Charles Dickens that class and station pretty much set limits on what a person could aspire to in England at that time.
But then, at the start of the 20th century, things began to change.
"The Corn Is Green" is a tremendous acting movie. You've gotta have some big time chops to match scenes with Bette Davis at the height of her powers, and the newcomers Dall and Lorring step up as her equals in this movie. That both of them were nominated for best supporting Oscars proves the point, and in my opinion each should've won.
It's a fantastic movie. You've gotta be in a Welsh mood to watch it, and for myself I suppose I am never far off from that state of mind (even though I have no Welsh in me that I am aware of). But still, I'll betcha I could sing all of those coal miner songs no problem.
I give "The Corn Is Green" two Gigantic Thumbs Up. You've gotta have a sentimental streak to like it, and you've gotta be an Anglophile, but if you are, you will enjoy one of the great acting movies of the era, with a well rounded cast in support. ////
That's all I know for tonight. Starting tomorrow, I will be writing from home for a few days, off work until the day after Christmas. We will talk a little more about the KK Downing book, and from here on in we should be reviewing mostly Christmas movies. I have some classics waiting at The Libe.
I hope you are enjoying The Season, and I will see you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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