Friday, November 5, 2010

Day #21,506

Movie #1470 (#257 this year): The Blob(1958, Irvin S Yeaworth Jr)

This is a tie-in with the book that I read a little while back called "The Family". It seams that this Yeaworth guy was at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. He had an idea for an anti-Communist movie disguised as a horror/scifi flic. This red blob would invade small town America and the only way to stop it would be for all Americans to band together to stop it. How to stop it? Freeze it ("the cold war").
I saw this movie years ago and I'm afraid that I didn't get the blob/Communism connection at all. Of course, I watched on a b&w TV so I couldn't see that the blob was red. But even so.....
I loved Steve McQueen's last line. You see, they transport the blob to the Artic so it'll stay frozen forever. So Ste says, "as long as the Artic stays cold". How in the world did these people know about global warming in 1958?
UPDATE: after further research, the screenwriter that Yeaworth hooked up with at the National Prayer Breakfast was Kay Linaker. She had been primarily an actress appearing in 56 movies between 1936 and 1945. At the time of meeting Yeaworth, she had had only one script produced: a TV episode of the United States Steel Hour in 1955. "The Blob" was her only produced movie script. And after re-reading that part of "The Family" concerning Yeaworth, I cannot tell who originally came up with the idea of the blob as a symbol for communism.

Movie #1469 (#256 this year): Fools For Scandal(1938, Mervyn LeRoy)

Allen Jenkins with the annoying Fernand Gravet

OK, who is this Fernand Gravet fellow? I've seen a lot of movies in my day but I've never heard of him. And he's co-starring here with Carole Lombard? Surely someone at the studio must have made a huge mistake. He is so annoying. He makes this movie quite a chore to watch.
I'll have to check IMDB but my guess is that he probably died of embarrassment shortly after this movie's release.
Update: I've checked IMDB and it appears that I'm mistaken. Fernand Gravet continued acting right up until his death in 1970.

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