Passages

[Mr. Deltoid]

Very sad. I always liked his energy on Whose Line is it Anyway, but it seemed (at least for the public) like
he spent a good chunk of his remaining years trying to simply cope with the business of living. I remember a
documentary about him that came out a few years ago which was a bit depressing.

Yeah, I used to watch Who's Line is it, Anyway as a teenager, but Slattery seemed to disappear from the landscape around the time that series finished (1999, I believe). When he re-emerged, a good decade and a half later, I remember being shocked at his considerably-aged appearance. Seemed like he really went through some turbulent times in those intervening years, notably reconciling with his sexuality, the drink and drugs, and his severe mental-health problems. Hope he's now found peace, poor guy. I always liked him, and I think that me and my brother must have been the only ones who remember watching his ill-fated ITV flat-share sitcom, Just a Gigolo during the '90's!

[colinr0380]

Tony Slattery was great on Whose Line Is It Anyway? but he was quickly pushed into being far too ubiquitous across television in the late 80s/early 90s, and his sarcastic persona might not have been best suited for such broad exposure and the subsequent backlash it inspired. There's a showcase of a Slattery-starring advert in this Bob the Fish episode. And he turns up in a celebrity challenge of Series 2 of Gamesmaster. Probably the biggest push into films came in 1992 with appearances in Carry on Columbus, The Crying Game and particularly amongst the ensemble cast of the Kenneth Branagh directed luvvie-tastic Peter's Friends (Kind of a proto-Gosford Park without the murder. Or Festen without the Dogme style and familial devastation), just before the breakdown.

This Is David Harper was great though!

[Fred Holywell]

Former child actor Claude Jarman, Jr.

[GaryC]

A late entry, but Eileen Kramer died on 15 November, seven days after her 110th birthday. She was an Australian dancer with one acting role on IMDB and also appearances as herself in documentaries.

Along with Norman Spencer last year, she joins the short list of people with IMDB credits (other than appearances as themselves) who lived to supercentenarian age. The others I know of are Frederica Sagor Maas, Mabel Richardson and Ruthie Tompson.

[TVC15]

Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc

[beamish14]

Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc

He had a really interesting career. Like Spielberg and John Badham, he got his big break on Night Gallery and continued to work for Universal. Somewhere in Time has developed a big cult following

[colinr0380]

Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc

There was an interesting story related on one of the 42nd Street Forever trailer compilations that Szwarc apparently got the job of directing Jaws 2 as a kind of compensation for the way that his 1975 horror film Bug was entirely overshadowed on its release by coming out only a week or two before Jaws hit cinemas and changed the landscape of exploitation film (and Hollywood cinema) entirely.

His big period was 1984-5 and his collaborations with the Salkinds on prolonging the Superman franchise with spin-offs. I'm well aware of its flaws in comparison to the Christopher Reeve films but I kind of loved Supergirl more as a kid with the beautiful Helen Slater, the invisible monster sequence which seems to reference Forbidden Planet and Fiend Without A Face simultaneously, the trip into the void with Peter O'Toole and the clinging to the edge of a deep pit that kind of feels like something the end of The House That Jack Built referenced(!), and the goofy trio of villains chewing the scenery with gusto in Faye Dunaway, Brenda Vaccaro and Peter Cook (Vaccaro is the MVP of that film). Plus Hart Bochner doing the dumb and ditzy love interest/woman in peril role! And a tiny role for Matt Frewer as a random thug, just after the Python Crimson Permanent Assurance short and just before he was Max Headroom!

And then straight afterwards Szwarc did Santa Claus: The Movie which amusingly repurposes the superhero genre, and the flying effects, to tell the story of Santa! (They really should have gone with "You'll believe a Santa can fly!" as a tagline! He's even got his own Ice Fortress!) With a great villain in John Lithgow (who gets an amusing death(?) scene as he exits the film, which to my mind is the way that every evil CEO in cinema should go out) exploiting the naive elf Dudley Moore. I saw that a lot as a kid, including at the cinema on its first release and then a screening for all the kids at school a few years later! (We were all given the choice between Santa Claus: The Movie and Santa Claus Conquers The Martians to screen on the last day before Christmas. I had already seen Santa Claus: The Movie a few times by that point so ended up voting for the chance to see Santa Claus Conquers The Martians! Naturally I was outvoted by an overwhelming majority, which was probably for the best in hindsight!)

[Orlac]

Santa Claus is definetly a guilty pleasure for me. It's weirdly nostalgic, given I didn't see it until I was 30 in 2016, but that maybe because I had one of the tie-in McDonalds books as a kid.

And that Sheena Easton Christmas song deserves far more exposure!

[colinr0380]

Along with the cheesily far too adult-focused advert being used to sell the products (forgetting that kids are the reason for the season), it may be the montage sequence of all of the children's toys turned dangerous due to shoddy construction which puts Santa Claus: The Movie (as opposed to Santa Claus: The Theatrical Play; or Santa Claus: The Visual Novel) up there with some of the darker material in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!

Its a film that is pushing a interesting message about the primacy of old-school traditional toys versus flashily marketed (but empty and hollow, full of nothing but hot air) fads of the moment, especially in the way that Dudley Moore's ambitious elf is torn between two extreme poles (pun intended) by being 'tempted' away from just being one of the anonymous worker drones in the commune underneath a decent but boring and set in his ways boss who isn't interested in new ideas to follow his dreams. But then falls in with the greedy capitalist who helps to promote and exploit the elf's ideas and talent but only for his own mercenary ends, and tries to make the elf's products into non-denominational products that can be consumed all year round!

[Orlac]

My sister and I love to shout "For FREEE????" at each other randomly.

[MichaelB]

Christopher Benjamin, another ubiquitous presence on British television for many decades, most notably in Doctor Who (multiple roles, although Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the one he'll be remembered for).

[flyonthewall2983]

Bob Uecker. I think he should have gotten some awards love for Major League, was a relatively small part in a movie that maybe didn’t earn the praise other movies of the period did but he played that role exactly to the rhythm of everyone else despite only sharing the screen with the guy who didn’t talk much.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc

He had a really interesting career. Like Spielberg and John Badham, he got his big break on Night Gallery and continued to work for Universal. Somewhere in Time has developed a big cult following

I really like Somewhere in Time and have a lot of time for most Matheson adaptations. A poignant John Barry score too. I also find it's fan club and it's traditions very charming. Few films have that kind of following.

[domino harvey]

David Lynch discussion moved here

[JSC]

Christopher Benjamin, another ubiquitous presence on British television for many decades, most notably in Doctor Who (multiple roles, although Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the one he'll be remembered for).

He also made three appearances in The Prisoner, not to mention appearances in any British television show
made between 1960-2000. A wonderful actor.

[MichaelB]

Joan Plowright, Laurence Olivier's widow and a fine actress in her own right.

[colinr0380]

Joan Plowright, Laurence Olivier's widow and a fine actress in her own right.

Notably the first murderess in Peter Greenaway's Drowning By Numbers! On the subject of murder, I particularly like her pushy mother in the bizarre 'based on true events' comedy I Love You To Death! (Here's Siskel & Ebert reviewing that one)

She also turns up vainly attempting to teach Shakespeare in Last Action Hero!
___
In more dramatic fare she is in Barry Levinson's Avalon; The Dressmaker from 1988; and I'd love to revisit A Pin For The Butterfly again.

[hearthesilence]

I really liked her and Olivier in The Entertainer, and on the other end of the spectrum, I really liked her in Dennis the Menace, though I haven't seen it since I was a kid. (At the time it seemed like a highly unusual parent-approved movie for having two strong and fully fleshed performances by Plowright and Walter Matthau).

[MichaelB]

I hope when Plowright signed up to the project that she was aware that it was the milquetoast American Dennis the Menace and not the much more thuggish British version, otherwise that might have been quite a disappointment.

(In a truly bizarre coincidence, both Dennises made their debuts on opposite sides of the Atlantic on exactly the same day, 12 March 1951, which presumably explains why there haven't been any lawsuits in either direction.)

[Fred Holywell]

Joan Plowright 1929 - 2025 | TCM Remembers

[Matt]

Joan Plowright 1929 - 2025 | TCM Remembers

They get these things made so quickly now that I didn't even know she had died until I saw this on TCM Saturday afternoon.

[The Curious Sofa]

I hope when Plowright signed up to the project that she was aware that it was the milquetoast American Dennis the Menace and not the much more thuggish British version, otherwise that might have been quite a disappointment.

(In a truly bizarre coincidence, both Dennises made their debuts on opposite sides of the Atlantic on exactly the same day, 12 March 1951, which presumably explains why there haven't been any lawsuits in either direction.)

I doubt she would have cared. She was born too early for Dennis the Menace to have been part of her childhood and even the British version would not have interested her, it's just not the sort of thing that would have appealed to someone like her. She was mainly a stage actress who also worked in prestige British drama and television, none of which paid that well. The Golden Globe win and Oscar nomination for Enchanted April brought Hollywood knocking at her door, and of course she jumped at the chance of a better pay cheque. That same year she starred in The Last Action Hero.

[MichaelB]

I doubt she would have cared. She was born too early for Dennis the Menace to have been part of her childhood and even the British version would not have interested her, it's just not the sort of thing that would have appealed to someone like her.

Well, that's shot my lightheartedly throwaway quip down in flames and no mistake.

[The Curious Sofa]

Just restoring decorum to this thread.

[pistolwink]

Joan Plowright 1929 - 2025 | TCM Remembers

They get these things made so quickly now that I didn't even know she had died until I saw this on TCM Saturday afternoon.

Is it possible it's like obits in the big newspapers, which for older folks are often written well before they're dead? (And in many cases the obituarist dies before the subject...)