Yuku free message boards

rayban wrote:

---

"Madame X" - 1929 - Lionel Barrymore-Director - with Ruth Chatterton and Lewis Stone

Based on Alexandre Bisson's scandalous play, this film begins badly by looking like such a dated antique and a very false performance from Chatterton, but, then, something kicked in, besides the strength of the material, that is, and the film just gets better and better and Chatterton starts to give a very storng performance. Of course, the material gets to be spellbinding in its outspoken frankness and everyone seems to grab a very tight hold on it. The final scene in which Chatteron finally realizes that her long-lost son is actually defending her and listens to him as he tries so very hard to save her life and then dies really does guarantee that there cannot be a dry eye in the house. It becomes a first-rate example of a naughty, naughty, naughty pre-code film that takes itself very seriously indeed and gathers a lot of power from that very conviction.

I watched it yesterday for the first time. Initially I was bored to death, but once Chatterton was kicked out of the house and refused a glimpse of her suffering son, her performance took on new depth. That made it a lot easier to accept the naturally primitive staging of the whole thing.

Chatterton went through much of the same in Wellman's FRISCO JENNY which will be in the upcoming Forbidden Hollywood 3 DVD set that we've discussed before.

I'd love to see the Gladys George version again, it's been more than half my lifetime since I've seen that one.

rayban wrote:

---

Clore, I would like to see the Gladys George version, too. I'd also like to see the Lana Turner version again. (And, if only Douglas Sirk had agreed to come back from Europe and direct that one.)

Clore, I also liked Raymond Hackett as the son, Raymond Floriot.

Have you ever seen the TV version, which was directed by Robert Ellis Miller and which starred Tuesday Weld.?

I was so impressed with Raymond Hackett that I went to the IMDb to check his credits but there's nothing else that I've seen him in. Having been in THE CAT CREEPS and an early version of THE SEA WOLF, as well as MADAME X, it seems that the guy was in quite a few perennials. He disappeared from films in 1931. Interesting to note that he was screenwriter Albert Hackett's brother.

I saw the Tuesday Weld version, and actually much preferred it to the Lana Turner one. Weld at that point could still manage to play the younger scenes convincingly, while Lana wasn't exactly at her best, even as the older version of her character. Heck, Constance Bennett wasn't looking much older. The 1981 film also looks better than the 1965 one, which I thought lacked the usual Ross Hunter gloss and looked more like a Universal movie-of-the-week. I'm sure that under Sirk it would have looked much better, who knows, he might have done something to boost Lana's appearance.

rayban wrote:

---

So, Clore, Raymond Hackett has become one of those mysteries - good-looking guy, excellent actor, pivotal role in a early MGM talkie - and somehow he managed to disappear from the world of movie-making.

We can account for a few more years here:

http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=67695