Happy Birthday Alec Guinness 2nd April 1914 - 5th August 2000
An actor is usually no more than an assortment of odds and ends which barely add up to a whole person. An actor is an interpreter of other men’s words, often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child, and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerise a group of innocents.
Appointment With Crime [1946] is a grim little Brit Noir, with a host of good character actors and a rare lead role for William Hartnell as a petty crook in over his head and bent on revenge. It’s a good watch, and stands up fairly well in comparison to other more well known films in the same vein (They Made me a Fugitive 1947, Brighton Rock 1948).
The cast is great, Bill Hartnell is excellent, terrifying in his focus, often brutal, an unlikeable character in a sea of unpleasant characters. Raymond Lovell puts in a great turn, simultaneously bullish and craven, and the host of petty criminals are well defined and characterful.
And then there’s the mysterious Big Boss, Gregory Lang who is of COURSE Herbert Lom, suave and unruffled as an art dealer of impeccable reputation. What drove me to gifs was a) Herbert of course because he’s always great, but mainly b) thevery not heterosexual way he’s coded. That is not the cigarette holder of a straight man.
And just when I was delighting in Herbert, in oozes Alan Wheatley as Noel Penn, and he’s not even queer coded, he’s just delightfully queer. Waspish, cutting, clever, and very familiar, ready to delegate murder for a fee, and a few of Gregory’s drinks, of course. You will have to prize my totally boyfriends headcanon from my cold dead hands.
Alan Wheatley - probably best known as Fred Hale in Brighton Rock (which of course also features Bill Hartnell) - is a revelation here, a far cry from the terrified weaselly Fred. Herbert Lom is as ever understated and compelling, heightening the rare moments where he loses his cool. There’s no gloss in this film, it’s all rather shabby and callously violent, and while it doesn’t reach the heights of Brighton Rock or They Made me a Fugitive (both of which are genuinely great films) it’s a really good little watch, and yet again belies the idea of cosy 1940s britain.
worlds slowest fanfic author tries really really hard
everyone in the notes we are all holding hands. everyone who hasnt worked on a wip in weeks or months or years, its okay. we are going slow but we are going
Happy (110th) Birthday Michael Redgrave 20th March 1908 - 21st March 1985
For the real actor the only place where he is truly at home is on the stage - whatever kind of stage it may be. The true actor is in fact one who is ‘á l’étroit chez-lui’; in the spiritual sense, he is only at home when he is not himself. To be at his real home he will tear himself away from loved ones, lover, life itself. ‘I am grateful’ said Joseph Jefferson in an interview after his retirement ‘for this life of illuminated emotion’.
- Michael Redgrave, The Actor’s Ways and Means, 1953.
everyone should be allowed to pick one long dead person to go back in time and have sex with. it should be an inalienable right like life liberty and property
