A California Reader has put James Mason in my head, plus I’ve been intermittently reading Ronald Haver’s 1988 book, A Star is Born, about the 1954 George Cukor/Moss Hart masterpiece, which co-starred Mason and Judy Garland, and which I saw three times in a month last summer.
It turns out that a wealth of wonderful Mason pictures are available for free online. We recently broadcast Odd Man Out (1947), which ACR considers to have been his greatest performance.
The following, acclaimed picture is also a very big deal. Joe Mankiewicz made it between his two great masterpieces, All about Eve (1950) and The Barefoot Contessa (1954).
Michael Wilson got sole credit for the script, though Mankiewicz, who was one of the greatest screenwriters ever, of course worked on it, as well. (Whenever I need to recall Mankiewicz’ name, the name “Manischewitz” instead comes to mind.)
Michael Who? Michael Wilson was one of the ten or 20 greatest screenwriters ever, but aside from his agitations as a card-carrying and later blacklisted Communist, he was a quiet, private man. In 1951, he wrote A Place in the Sun for the super-chief, George Stevens; in 1957, he and Carl Foreman co-scripted The Bridge on the River Kwai for David Lean; and in 1962, he and Robert Bolt co-wrote Lawrence of Arabia for Lean. Wilson won Oscars for Place and
If you check new york magazine’s list of the Top 100 screenwriters, you will find Wilson nowhere.
1 comment:
Five Fingers. Wasn't that a Bruce Lee movie.
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