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The Long, Hot Summer (1958)

 
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Bud Brewster
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Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17020
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:42 am    Post subject: The Long, Hot Summer (1958) Reply with quote



On March 3, 1962 NBC aired The Day the Earth Still — the first time it was ever shown on television — and I loved it.

Hey, who didn't?

NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies promoted their upcoming movies each week by showing trailers during the commercial breaks, with each trailer preceded by the announcer giving an enthusiastic countdown.

"Four weeks from tonight, on Saturday Night at the Movies!" — and then, Wham! A trailer would blast across the TV screen.

So, I first learned that The Day the Earth Stood Still was coming on a full month before it aired. And since I'd never even heard of it before the moment I saw the first trailer, the thrill of anticipation nearly gave me a nervous breakdown at the tender age of fourteen.



_____________ Day the Earth Stood Still Trailer


___________


But here's my point.

After it aired as a summer rerun and I got to enjoy the thrill of anticipation a second time, I experienced a goofy kind of withdrawal. I wanted to keep on feeling that tingling sensation I'd enjoyed for a whole month while waiting for Gort to kick some Earthling asses.

Unfortunately nothing remotely like The Day the Earth Stood Still ever aired again on SN@tM — but in February of season two, I saw a trailer for an upcoming movie called The Long, Hot Summer with Paul Newman, Orson Welles, and Joanne Woodward. It looked pretty steamy. And remember, I was only 15.

Next to robots and death rays, I liked steamy the best. Very Happy

So, I decided to try an experiment. I made a conscious effort to psyche myself up for this sexy melodrama, which promised scandalous situations with several very attractive ladies, by watching the trailer each week during the four movies that preceded it, and by telling myself I could hardly wait to see this steamy, sultry, southern drama.

Here's the trailer that got me so hot and bothered.


______________ The Long, Hot Summer Trailer


___________


Wonder of wonders, my experiment worked, and the movie became an unexpected favorite of mine, which I still enjoy to this day.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:39 pm; edited 5 times in total
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17020
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 11:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

IMDB has some interesting facts about this movie in there trivia section, and while watching this movie again tonight for the umpteenth time in that last 50 years, I thought it would be fun to post those facts here, mixed in with some nice jpegs I found and spent a few hours enhancing the color, contrast, and sharpness on.

So, here we go. A few interesting facts about a favorite movie of mine, along with some nice pictures from it.

________________________________




This film marks Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman's first cinematic collaboration.





A month after production wrapped, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward got married in Las Vegas.





Joanne Woodward became pregnant during production only to miscarry on her and Paul Newmans honeymoon, less than a month before the world premiere.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward channeled their off-screen chemistry into their characters and worked beautifully together. "They seemed to have such a total understanding of each other," said co-star Angela Lansbury in a 2001 interview, "that they were able to work in scenes where they were at each others throats or falling under each others spell."






Shooting began in the sweltering heat of September 1957 near Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a budget of approximately $1.5 million.





The scorching Louisiana heat didn't help Orson Welles' temperament on the set. "He was having terrible difficulty living in his own skin," said Angela Lansbury. "He was very very heavy. We were working under dreadful conditions of heat and he was perspiring and he seemed to have a lot of very thick makeup on."





Part of that heavy makeup was a prosthetic nose that Welles wore - something he often did for his acting roles. The heat made Welles sweat so much that his fake nose would often come unglued and ruin the shot.





Orson Welles always wore a fake nose when he worked, so when he would sweat on this film, his fake nose would slip. Make-up people had to keep applying material to keep the fake nose from falling.





During post-production, Martin Ritt found that it was nearly impossible to understand any of Orson Welles' dialogue. He and his team worked overtime to improve what they could through post-dubbing. Some cast members thought that Welles had done it quite deliberately as a way to show contempt for the "mumbling" method actors of the Actors Studio, but no one could ever be sure.





Director Martin Ritt was forever known after this movie as the man who tamed Orson Welles. During filming Ritt drove Welles into the middle of a swamp, kicked him out of the car and forced him to find his own way back.





Angela Lansbury relished her role and thoroughly enjoyed working with director Martin Ritt - "He had a wonderful enthusiasm and earthy sexy quality himself. He loved the idea of the dirtiness of the carryings on, and he certainly brought every bit of kind of naughty sexuality out of me in that role."





Orson Welles had a rough time making the film and caused plenty of trouble. Used to being in control of his own projects, it was hard for him to do things someone else's way. According to Angela Lansbury, "He was always nudging and pushing for things and wanted to change lines, but had to be carefully handled so that he didn't always get his way because his way wasn't necessarily the best way for everybody else in the scene."





Welles would irritate his co-stars by overlapping his own lines with their dialogue, ad-libbing, and mumbling to the point where his lines were barely comprehensible.





Orson Welles was 42 years old, but was cast as a 61 year old man due to his weight. He had already played a similar older fat man the year before in Moby Dick and the following year in his Touch of Evil.





"There was something you couldn't resist about Orson," said Lansbury, "even though he was a son-of-a-bitch at times. I mean, there's no question about it, he was very difficult." Joanne Woodward added in a 2001 interview, "Orson had a hard time. It must have been a terrible, terrible feeling for him to be confronted by all these young hot shots who thought they were so great because they came from New York and the Actors Studio. It was a problem."





It took five days to film the barn-burning scene because the sky, winds, or amount of sunlight were not acceptable to the director.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:34 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17020
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Last Saturday night I watched this movie using one of the DVDs I have of my favorites from the Saturday Night at the Movies features.

I watch it every few years because, for reasons I can't explain, it's the most fondly remembered film from that network presentation each week of great 20th Century Fox films.

The picture quality of the DVD is far superior to what I saw on February 16th in 1963, on the pitiful black & white TV my family owned back then. But it still managed to capture my young heart and make me love this movie, right up to the present.

Part of the reason for my undying affection is the fact that when this feature was shown on Saturday Night at the Movies I made a reel-to-reel audio recording of it by hooking directly to my TV's speakers (with the help of my Delta Air Lines engineer father), and then listened to the tape in my room for several years after that, memorizing the story, the sound effects, and the dialog.

As a result, I ended up being able to quote large sections of the movie. And it became an important part of my life.

In later years, I watched it several times with my teenage daughter, and we became mutual fans who could both quote portions of the movie. It's a shared experience we both cherish. Very Happy

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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