Even more Home Movie footage online...!

...and some odds and ends, as well.

Magda from Get On The Carousel has posted another scene from the recently discovered Joan Crawford home movies showing JC with her son "the first Christopher" (whose life story, after his psychotic biological mother "reclaimed" him from Joan, is too painful to think about for very long). The footage (about three minutes in length) shows a loving mother feeding her child, and then attempting (unsuccessfully, apparently) to burp him. Although the footage is charming, like any home movie is, and though she clearly adores her child, the thing that stopped me dead in my tracks is how beautiful Crawford was (and in glorious color--in 1941!).

In 1941, Joanie was no longer an ingenue (she was about 35) and there's a few moments here, her face bent down toward the infant, when she looks up at someone who's talking to her off camera and it's just like WHAM!

How perfect was that face?!?!

I'm so grateful to Magda for bringing these clips to our attention (I check her Tumblr site on a daily basis--work permitting--and I always find something interesting there. And really, anyone who loves The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie is a class act, as far as I'm concerned)!

And a comment from Toon got me thinking about an awesome old SNL Mommie Dearest skit that I haven't seen in years (why do they only show re-runs from the last decade on TV, instead of episodes from back when Saturday Night Live was still good?! Although I scouted around online, I couldn't find the parody to link to here, but it was pretty funny (and, if memory serves correctly, kind of subtly ripped on tina)  and Gilda Radner embodied christina Crawford.

(although really, wouldn't any vacant bleached blonde with a sense of entitlement embody christina Crawford? Just being rhetorical here...)

Which leads me to yet another online find, an original review of Mommie Dearest that pretty much says everything I feel about this entire sordid saga:

"It is not easy being a working mother—especially if your boss happens to be Louis B. Mayer and your job category is movie star. It is especially not easy if one of your adopted children turns out to be the spoiled and charmless brat portrayed in this silly movie about the domestic life of Joan Crawford. The sympathy one is supposed to feel for the poor little rich waif (played at different ages by Mara Hobel and Diana Scarwid) slides away from her and onto the fashionably padded shoulders of the actress, whom Faye Dunaway's makeup artist, Lee C. Harman, gets just right. It was Crawford, after all, who had the career problems, the man problems, the drinking problem and, finally, the aging problem. That she sometimes lost her temper at home is hardly the stuff of tragedy, or even good melodrama. Yes, she occasionally raised her hand to her daughter. But thousands of children suffer far more terrible abuse every day—and don't have backyard swimming pools to soothe their feelings. Or get to write vindictive autobiographies that become bestsellers because Mommie Dearest was also Mommie Famous."

Truer words were never spoken.

And a day or two ago, Debbie Reynolds held an auction of her Hollywood memorabilia.

Ann Blyth's suit

from Mildred Pierce fetched a pretty penny ($5000),

but Joan Crawford's waitress uniform raked in $22,500!

Kind of amazing. 

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Personal note: lately I'm feeling kind of guilty that these latest posts have been sort of of "check out what's new online and throw it out there for people to see"...it feels kind of lazy, but I've been working like a son of a gun, and the BF is rather impatient and demanding of attention.

However...

I just got back a couple hours ago from seeing Insidious with one of my best friends.

It

was

TERRIFYING!

Up until tonight, the scariest movie I've ever seen was 28 Weeks Later (I always feel kind of guilty that The Exorcist didn't scare me at all,  but what the heck, I'm not Catholic, I'm Lutheran and I don't really get all that demon/possession stuff).

So, how spooky was Insidious?

Well, I made an ass of myself, and actually exclaimed out loud in the theater a few times. Me and my bud were both freaking out from about ten minutes in, but we were both grinning from ear to ear whenever we looked at each other.





And Rose Byrne is the bomb in this movie, just amazing and tired, frustrated and increasingly terrified, but her husband was even better. Just mister nice guy who gets pulled into this horror (and sure, it doesn't hurt that he's cute!) but he's brave, and he ends up paying for it. 

I really didn't like the ending, but it was logical, and I hope there's a sequel.

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And just to wrap all this up, Last night I stumbled across a picture of Joan Crawford I've never seen before.

Oscar Night, 1946:

So all in all, this has been a pretty terrific day, despite the thunderstorms and torrential rain hereabouts; I found out a few new things, saw a few new images and I got scared off my ass in the movie theater. 

Hope y'all are doing as well.