By David in TN
sunday, june 16, 2024 at 11:54:00 p.m. edt
Here is what Red Eddie Muller said in his outro about Jimmy Stewart's performance in Call Northside 777:
"Jimmy Stewart was not an actor you found in too many noir films of this era. His 'aw shucks' manner and forthright honesty wasn't a good fit with the genre. It wasn't until he made a series of Westerns for director Anthony Mann that Stewart went over to the Dark Side playing characters driven not by decency and altruism but greed, jealousy, and vengeance. He would not be a contemporary noir character until 1958 when he portrayed obsessive detective Scotty Ferguson in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo."
A strange comment. It would seem to me that Jimmy Stewart's air of decency and altruism fit his character in Call Northside 777.
By Nicholas
monday, june 17, 2024 at 12:12:00 a.m. edt
David,
I saw the doubleheader last night. I told myself that I'd only watch the opening to Vertigo (I thought to meself, "We own the video"), but once it started, I was of course hooked.
I'm sure that Red Eddie had heard of Jimmy saying that he got into working with Anthony Mann, "I'd had three straight bombs" after The War, and so when someone suggested making a Western, he figured he had nothing to lose, and it looked like his career as a Hollywood leading man was over. But Red Eddie just assumed, based on Jimmy's box office struggles that he wasn't a fit. As you noted, he was perfect.
One thing Red Eddie was right about: "Call Northside 777 wasn't just one of the greatest movies about newspapers of Stewart's era, it was one of the greatest movies about newspapers of all time."
I was very much moved, which I didn't expect from a 1940s Henry Hathaway picture.
N.S.: 2025 follow-up: Red Eddie may have been taking a cheap shop against Stewart, which he loved to do to patriots, as he did to Bob Montgomery, regarding Montgomery's 1947 masterpiece, Ride the Pink Horse.
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JUNE LOCKHART--SUPPOSEDLY HEALTHY UNTIL THE END--LEAVES LASSIE AND THE JUPITER 2 BEHIND,PASSING OF NATURAL CAUSES AT 100
GRA:The only other comparable actress,for being well preserved,is Barbara Eden,who was just on the Bill Maher show and at 93 or so,looks and talks like she's 50. SHE is the greatest anomaly of youthfulness I've ever seen.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — June Lockhart, who became a mother figure for a generation of television viewers whether at home in “Lassie” or up in the stratosphere in “Lost in Space,” has died. She was 100.
Lockhart died Thursday of natural causes at her home in Santa Monica, family spokesman Lyle Gregory, a friend of 40 years, said Saturday.
“She was very happy up until the very end, reading the New York Times and LA Times everyday,” he said. “It was very important to her to stay focused on the news of the day.”
The daughter of prolific character actor Gene Lockhart, Lockhart was cast frequently in ingenue roles as a young film actor. Television made her a star.
From 1958 to 1964, she portrayed Ruth Martin, who raised the orphaned Timmy (Jon Provost), in the popular CBS series “Lassie.” From 1965 to 1968, she traveled aboard the spaceship Jupiter II as mother to the Robinson family in the campy CBS adventure “Lost in Space.”
--GRA
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