Joseph L. Mankiewicz – Search & Destroy

has anyone seen his Serling-scripted, nuke-themed Scrooge TV movie?

Sterling Hayden is the Scrooge figure, a wealthy businessman who has become a pitiless warmonger after his son’s death in WWII. He is visited, like Scrooge, by the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Steve Lawrence, who gave Mankiewicz’s favorite performance in the film), Present (Pat Hingle), and Future (Robert Shaw), the last of whom conducts Hayden through a post-nuclear world, inhabited by a band of survivors led by Peter Sellers.

http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2014/films/a-carol-for-another-christmas

People Will Talk (51), perhaps the oddest movie in the filmmaker’s career

This film is quite an odd duck. I'd say more, but that would require spoilers.

"a band of survivors led by Peter Sellers"!!!

Lis "is terribly touching" in SLS? Oh vey

Sellers' character in that Xmas show is called "Imperial Me" and he wears a Pilgrim hat

http://www.petersellersappreciationsociety.com/Pictures/PhotoGallery/CarolForAnotherChristmas/CarolForAnotherChristmas06.jpg

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?id=518186%7C535539

The Serling teleplay is fascinating -- preachy but not awful -- worth seeing once.

Last night I saw The Honey Pot, a fairly typical Old Master inflated mess of the period (like Wilder's Sherlock Holmes, or what Huston did for some of the '60s) with diverting pieces. Not only based on Volpone, the characters reference it constantly... Rex Harrison, unusually animated for his post-Oscar era, is a millionaire with a Venetian palazzo who invites 3 old flames to visit so he can play a prank re inheriting his fortune (or so it seems). Cliff Robertson is game tho miscast, but fortunately young Maggie Smith turns out to be the female lead, as Susan Hayward's nurse.

Rex is basically a heterosexualized Addison DeWitt, and he's in a bedroom clinch with Edie Adams (as a dumb Hollywood star) when he growls, "You're so... basic."

It's on Hulu.

i feel like mankiewicz's late career is riddled with such borderline grotesqueries

boy "mankiewicz" is hard to spell

Dragonwicz

a lot of the films the "old masters" made with the new freedoms of the late 60s and beyond have an element of the grotesque or simply the gauche. e.g. wyler's liberation of l.b. jones.

or, y'know, SKIDOO

they only showed There Was a Crooked Man once, couldn't get to it

Harrison character's one regret in Honey Pot is he never became a ballet dancer, there's a scene of a double whirling around his boudoir to "Dance of the Hours."

Rex is basically a heterosexualized Addison DeWitt, and he's in a bedroom clinch with Edie Adams (as a dumb Hollywood star) when he growls, "You're so... basic."

So, another gay catchphrase coined by Mank. Good job, straight dude!

Is it possible, even conceivable

new book on the brothers Mank:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6783-january-books

Dragonwyck is quite an auspicious debut, and only 4 years before All About Eve. Gene Tierney at her best, Vincent Price and Walter Huston as well (tho the latter comes and goes).

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that both Tierney and Teresa Wright performed truncated radio performances of the piece around the same time--I can't help thinking of Wright whenever I see Tierney. They look so similar... Wright was a better actress, but Tierney had the glow of a star. Such a shame their work is so limited (Tierney had her issues and Wright did her best work in the theater).