Golden Age of Hollywood Book Club discussion

Here's a few more sequels/series, Stallone had the Rocky series, then Rambo, and lately The Expendables. Tom Cruise with Mission Impossible and Jack Reacher and he's doing a sequel or is it a remake of Top Gun, Denzel Washington with the Equalizer series, they've still been cranking out the Jurassic Park series, Reese Witherspoon coming out with Legally Blonde 3 sometime, Clooney and crewe with the Ocean's 11 series, I do like the Kingsman series.

As Tara said, the action movies seem to have more 'legs'. New ideas are much harder than finding a character and exploiting that until the well is dry. Novelists do that too with their series, so the key is to find a main charactor or characters that the public likes.

The Pink Panther series is really good.

I will also put votes in for the Benji and Herbie series'.

Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray

If only the picture could change and I could be always what I am now....I'd give my soul for that.

Well, guess what, Dorian......you get your wish.

Spencer wrote: "The Pink Panther series is really good."

One of my favorite comedy series. I can't bring myself to watch the remakes with Steve Martin, that role will always belong to Peter Sellers in my mind. Apparently he was not meant to be the main attraction, but he ended up stealing the show.

I guess I must be one of the few people who didn't watch more than the first one of the series. That's the one with David Niven, right?

Betsy wrote: "I guess I must be one of the few people who didn't watch more than the first one of the series. That's the with David Niven, right?"

Yes. I would also highly recommend A Shot in the Dark

The last one with Sellers, they started and he passed away, so what they did was take this tiny piece of plot and added a montage of tidbits from other films. Pretty worthless, but all the previous ones are wonderful.

Tara wrote: "Betsy wrote: "I guess I must be one of the few people who didn't watch more than the first one of the series. That's the with David Niven, right?"

Yes. I would also highly recommend A Shot in the ..."

I forgot about 'A Shot in the Dark.'. I may have seen that too.

One of my favorites, Zachary Scott, describing himself to Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce

"I loaf -- but in a decorative and highly charming manner"

Good line. I loaf a lot, but no one would ever say it's decorative.

Don't be so sure that I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be

Bogart to Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon

I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one

Bogie to Peter Lorre inThe Maltese Falcon. There were some great lines in that film.

And Bogart had more-than-his-share of great lines. It's interesting that one of the most famous, 'Play it again, Sam,' never occurred.

I did not know about this site mem'rable 'lines. I should have recorded The Maltese Falcon. Next time I will just to hear the lines.

There were lots of great lines in Casablanca but "Play it again, Sam" wasn't one of them. I wonder how that got so popular when that is not exactly what Bogart said to Dooley Wilson.

I may have put this on another thread but it deserves to be here as one of the greatest closing lines in film. From A Star Is Born:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is Mrs.Norman Main.

You have to have seen the film(s) to understand the meaning which is extremely poignant.

I agree it was poignant.

Steve McQueen to Robert Vaughan in Bullitt.

Bull shit

It always takes me by surprise since there is a lack of cursing in that film.

Joan Crawford to Ann Blythe in Mildred Pierce.

Veda, I think I am seeing you for the first time in my life......and you're cheap and horrible

Orson Welles to Joseph Cotton in The Third Man

What can I do? I'm dead aren't I?

A great line from Bette Davis in probably her worst film, Beyond the Forest.

What a dump!

Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make

Bela Lugosi as Dracula speaking of the howling wolves.

Sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me.

Supernatural perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not.

Dialogue from The Black Cat with Bela Lugosi. One of Mickey Dolenz's channel flips in Head.

I think Mickey also catches a scene from 42nd Street.

Spencer wrote: "Sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me.

Supernatural perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not.

Dialogue from The Black Cat with Bela Lugosi. One of Mickey Dolenz's channel flips in Head."

The dialogue from the original Dracula with Lugosi was stilted and sometimes unintentionally funny. Especially when Lugosi said it.

There is still time

On a sign at the end of On The Beach.

If you want to call me that, smile

Gary Cooper to Walter Huston in The Virginian.

I wanted to be a dancer. Psychiatry showed me I was wrong

Fred Astaire in Carefree

Not a classic, but I am a big reader, read maybe 3 books a week, so I got a laugh from a line in "The Big Picture" - Kevin Bacon is a young filmmaker, his agent tells him he's got a batch of screenplays and "I've read almost all of them almost all the way through."

That's probably more than some deserved. 😉

One's too much and a hundred's not enough

Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend

One of my favorite films is That Hamilton Woman (1941) starring Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier (probably the most beautiful couple in film). It is about Admiral Horatio Nelson and his affair with Emma Hamilton and follows it to the end when Nelson is killed and Emma falls into disrepute and is basically "on the street". She tells her story to a fellow down and outer (Heather Angel) and Angel asks her what happened then and what happened after. And Leigh speaks this great line that always brings a tear to my eyes.

There is no "then". There is no "after"

One of the many,many ridiculous lines of dialogue from Plan 9 From Outer Space, often voted as the worst film ever made.

This is murder and someone if responsible

Duh!!!!

You don't have to like Groucho Marx to enjoy this line from Animal Crackers (1930)

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I'll never know

I love Groucho. His routines with Chico were brilliant, especially the viaduct, and the sanity clause ones. Also, his scenes with Margaret Dumont were hilarious. Before today’s comedians and hosts, Groucho was one of the early ones on tv to come up with lines on the spot in You Bet Your Life.

Geoffrey Rush is going to be playing him in a new film.

'Dinner at Eight' has a great conversation between Dressler and Harlow: KITTY: (Harlow) 'I was reading a book the other day.'

CARLOTTA: (Dressler) (Surprised, she trips.) 'Reading a book?'

KITTY: Yes. It's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?

CARLOTTA: (After looking her over.). 'Oh, my dear, that's something you need never worry about.'

Marie Dressler's reaction is priceless!

Fred Astaire in Top Hat (1935), speaking of the Ginger Rogers character.

If I had forgotten myself with that girl, I'd remember it.

Audrey Hepburn in Charade (1963):

'I don't bite you know... unless it's called for'

"Mama, I'm a Baptist! I don't go to Mass!"

Sidney Poitier
('Lilies of the Field')

"Mighty fine liquor. What do you call it?"
"Ehhh. Rub o' the Brush"

“You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”

"...unsheathing my Bowie knife, I cut a path through this wall of human flesh!!

cough cough

"... dragging my canoe behind me!"

--W.C. Fields in 'Mississippi', (1935)

Cody Jarrett: "You know somethin' Verna? If I turn my back long enough for Big Ed to put a hole in it, there'd be a hole in it. Big Ed. Great Big Ed. You know why they call him that? Because his ideas are big. Someday he's gonna get a really big one - about me. And it'll be his last."

"Hard-boiled eggs and nuts ...Harrrrumph!" --Oliver Hardy

Anthony Perkins in Psycho

A boy's best friend is his mother

It's pretty raw in 'Falcon' to listen when Sam sez to Bridgid O'Shaughnessey:

"I'm going to send you over"

Possibly the coldest brush-off I've ever seen in a movie

Herbert Marshall to his cheating wife, Bette Davis in The Letter (1940)

If you love a person, you can forgive anything