Last night when
I couldn't sleep I watched a whole
Charlton Heston western with
Elaine Stritch in it! If that sentence doesn't interest you, just stop reading, I won't mind. It only goes downhill from here. For example, I also thought I saw Jamie Farr and Robert Blake standing around in a few scenes. As brothers! And today I checked imdb and I was right. But back to Elaine Stritch. At first I thought it was odd to see her in a western. She didn't make that many movies, did she? I'm not going to look it up. But when you think about it, she was kind of born to play a cynical dance-hall madam, as she did here. I wanted to illustrate this "post" with a nice shot of Elaine Stritch from the movie, but there doesn't seem to be one on the "internet." They used this as a publicity still, apparently.
That's Stritch sitting at the desk, signing a document. Wow! What action! You can see why the publicity department wanted to use it. Speaking of which, the title of the movie is THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE, ha ha! (I added the ha ha.) Sounds like it took the whole
marketing department and a couple of focus groups to come up with that. And there are way more than three violent people in it. And one of the "three people" we're supposed to infer is violent isn't violent at all! Anyway, "internet," why no color pictures of Elaine Stritch in THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE, in her green silk dance-hall madam get-up, say? I mean, look, there's even a good one of Forrest Tucker:
Forrest Tucker! I saw him in some
Katharine Hepburn movie the other day and I was like, "Who is this guy?" If you're my age you mostly recall him mugging his way through awful live-action Saturday morning goofball comedy. But in this Katharine Hepburn thing he was like a weird, brooding, mysterious, silent hunk.
Look! Look how he broods. Ah, time. Who can escape you? Speaking of Jamie Farr - ha ha! - You should really listen to "Conversation Parade." It's a podcast all about
ADVENTURE TIME. On a recent episode,
Steve Wolfhard revealed that his inspiration for the character of
BMO's creator (see below) was Jamie Farr. That's the kind of information you won't get anywhere else! Except here, apparently. There's going to be a brand new episode today featuring
Olivia Olson, the voice of
Marceline the Vampire Queen.
CHECK IT OUT! This must be the worst publicity they've ever gotten. People who are googling "Elaine Stritch + Jamie Farr + Forrest Tucker" are gonna love "Conversation Parade." In conclusion - no, NOT in conclusion! - I decided to watch THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE because I am curious about costar
Thomas Tryon. He wrote the fine horror novel THE OTHER which
I taught in a couple of classes on the recommendation of
Laura Lippman. And the other day I found a mass-market paperback of his other horror novel HARVEST HOME at
that used book stall I like. And he quit acting and became a novelist because
Otto Preminger was such a hateful, screaming lunatic as a director. He once fired Thomas Tryon right in front of Tryon's parents! At least that's the way I remember the story from
Chris Fujiwara's Preminger book, but I'm not going to get up and go into the other room and find it and check the index. In conclusion, the conclusion of THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE features Anne Baxter embracing Charlton Heston, and a big puff of dust and dirt rises off of him. It had to be on purpose, didn't it? But it looks like an accident. But it's kind of thematically fitting, you'll see. Wait, I lied! Here's Elaine Stritch.
