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Movie Profiles & Premiums
Volume 4, Number 6. June 15, 2006
*** Please go here for a note regarding a couple of problems that I had with the e-mailed edition this time. Again, sorry about those couple of things! *** Been swamped this week, but very glad to be able to get this together because of all of the new additions to the site. I've been slacking off on my Classic DVD List, but did do a write-up for Stagecoach, which was recently released as part of the the John Ford - John Wayne collection that I'm sure a few of you have already bought. I didn't buy the set, but I've actually picked-up and watched Fort Apache as well, though I'll need to watch that one again because I did it on no sleep the first time and am pretty sure a half hour or so disappeared from the second half of the movie when I nodded off. I also picked up The Man Who Came to Dinner recently, but haven't had a chance to watch it yet (I've seen that one a few times before though). This is another single I purchased from a set, but to be honest this Monty Woolley picture was the only movie in the latest Bette Davis collection that I was interested in. Also backed-up on my list and waiting for both a viewing and a review is Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which I actually have not seen before but need to find a nice block of free time to do so. And this Tuesday marks the release of the Clark Gable Signature Collection, which is a set a definitely will buy -- this one includes Dancing Lady, China Seas, San Francisco, Wife vs. Secretary, Boom Town and Mogambo, and retails for $59.98 but is on sale at Amazon.com for the first week for just $41.78. I had all of these, except Mogambo I think, on VHS, but sold them off, so I'll be anxious to grab this one ASAP. One last note on the movies themselves, I also just bought a couple of out-of-print films copied to DVD from Brad Lang of ClassicMovies.org. Brad runs the Your Movie Finder service, which for either a small individual or even lower annual fee, you can have Brad hunt down classic out-of-print titles for you (note: the fee is for the search, not the movies themselves), but he is also offering several rare titles for immediate sale at $8.95 per title. So, I ordered up both Between Two Worlds (1944) and Zoo in Budapest (1933), neither of which I have seen before. I just wanted to give a little plug in advance of receipt, because knowing Brad (well, knowing him online at least), I'd be shocked to be anything other than extremely pleased with these movies. I've noticed his list of titles growing a little with each visit (I've got my eyes on Arsene Lupin for next time!), which is hopefully a trend. Anyway, those two flicks will eventually make their way to my DVD List as well. So, back over here, Stagecoach is new, and based on those few paragraphs there will be plenty of other titles soon reviewed, or at least talked about, on my Classic DVD List page. Oh, final DVD note, I had an extra set of the Hammer Horror Collection, that I placed on eBay available for immediate purchase at $49.99 plus shipping. It may not come up as the cheapest offering, but since I'm actually charging real shipping rather than the $10-$15 that several other sellers are applying (ahem, I do think that may be about to change), it's a pretty fair deal. This is the Region 1 set containing Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the classics The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, and Taste the Blood of Dracula. It's brand new as received and still sealed in shrink wrap. Here's the listing if you're interested. I need to read up on all of the occurrences and proposals myself, but that little shipping aside refers to the happenings and announcements coming from last week's eBay Live event. If you were there, good for you, hope you had fun. My feet stay on the ground, so until they move one east to New York or Atlantic City, I won't be there, but it always looks like a great time. As I said, I do need to read a little more, so this next opinion is written somewhat out of ignorance, but I'm not a big fan of the new blog and wiki features that eBay will be adding, especially the wiki. Yes, I'm sure if you create these things for eBay you'll get some extra customers, and you'll help some people out, but quite honestly I see no possible incentive to create content for eBay. Again, maybe I'm missing something here, but if you're feeling antsy and want to run your mouth like me, why not just start your own site? I'm sure I'll read all of the FAQ soon enough and then there's a good chance that I end up retracting this opinion next issue because I'm missing something really neat, but as a general idea I'm not on board yet. Returning to the new content on things-and-other-stuff.com, next up is a new Photo ID Guide. It's more or less eye candy, as I'm not really ID'ing anything, rather just showing off some covers and inside pages to the recent group of Picture Show from 1923-24 that I picked up. These are actually up at auction this week, but please be sure to read the condition notes carefully if you decide to bid, as these are pretty old, on newsprint, and as might be expected not holding together too well in a few cases. Each cover, and a few of the really neat inside pages featuring stars such as Our Gang and a 13-year-old Douglas Fairbanks Jr., is shown on the Picture Show page. I think my favorite cover is the one with Erich Von Stroheim and Zasu Pitts at the time of Greed's release. Just click on any thumbnail to open up a larger version of the cover where you can actually make out who the actors and actresses are. Go here to view the Picture Show Photo ID Guide. Sticking with magazines, I recently won a December 1911 issue of Motion Picture Story Magazine on eBay with my main thoughts being how useful such an issue can be for both of my sites (at least until I look to make a few dollars on it, heh heh). Motion Picture Story is the first of the fan magazines and its first issue was dated February of 1911, so this is early stuff! Well, I've scanned the photo gallery page that it opens with and created pages on the site for those scans. You can find the names listed to the right near the top of the Profiles Contents page. My plan was to write-up the profiles for these old-time stars myself, but I stalled as soon as I Googled Yale Boss and then came up even emptier when trying to mine info on him from my book shelves. Sure, Florence Lawrence, Alice Joyce and one or two others won't be a problem and I'll detail them when I find the time. For now it's basically just the photos of these early stars for you to look at, with a little text written by yours truly under the first two entries, Anne Schafer and Anna Nichols...and I do mean just a little bit. Finally, for new content, our profile fits the season for a change, what with Independence Day fast approaching for us here in the U.S.A., as we take a look at Jimmy Cagney -- and I had saved my old Cagney images so there's an accompanying slide show as well! Have a look and I dare you not to hum "Yankee Doodle Dandy" at some point, if you haven't already: James Cagney by Susan M. Kelly James Cagney Collectible Slide Show Now when you finish reading Susan's excellent profile of Cagney, keep scrolling down past the Google ads and past the other links and you'll find another new feature. This is pretty cool I think, it's called a Swicki and it's populated with terms related to Jimmy Cagney that I found relevant. If you click a term the Swicki searches the entire internet, and since I created it all of my links come up first, but all of the other sites are there too following me. I didn't block out any sites because I wanted this to be as useful to you as possible. After you click the term and launch the search, you actually leave things-and-other-stuff.com, but because of their templates it should look like you're still here. The search is interactive, meaning you can type in your own related terms (which with my approval will be permanently added to the search cloud) and tag your favorite sites to move them up the list. If you're already familiar with all of this I apologize, as it's all pretty new to me, but I had fun putting it together. So much fun actually that I did the same thing for two of the other popular stars on this site, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. Again, you'll find their Swickis at the very bottom of their profile pages. If I see that you guys are using these, well, I'll keep on building them and adding them to the bottom of the profile pages. I had also built one for general movie collectibles, you may have even seen it on the home page for a day or two, but I honestly preferred a more standard search from there. I did keep the general collectibles Swicki on the site, it's now found on the Profile Contents Page, but as I learn more about this toy I begin to think this may be too general a topic to be worthwhile. If I keep working with these perhaps I'll create some more specific collectibles Swicki's in the future. And now with my last mention of Swickis, I'll just say what a silly word, I'm sorry I just used it so much! But, speaking of silly words, I do want to announce that my blog is now more relevant to you if you were never really interested in any of those magazine notes that seemed to fill it recently. If you were interested I do feel obliged to tell you the reason for this is that I've created a separate Magazine Collecting and Auction Notes blog over at collecting-old-magazines.com, and so while the Movie Profiles & Premiums blog will see fewer postings on the whole, they will be much more relevant to this site. That's all for now, a bigger mouthful than anticipated as usual, but always because it's so much fun to keep spitting it out. Please do be sure to read Susan's piece on James Cagney, check out the new Photo ID Guide for early issues of Picture Show, and as always feel free to buy any of my stuff! The
next issue of The Movie Profiles and Premiums Newsletter is scheduled for
July 15 and will include a new entry into The Silent Collection by Tammy Stone. Thanks, and have a great month!
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