I saw that today was Mr. T’s birthday and, for a while now, I’ve been reviewing T and T, a Canadian detective show that he starred in for three seasons. I figured I could have shared a scene that I love from T and T but there really aren’t any scenes from T and T that are worth loving. Besides, we all know what we immediately think of when it comes to Mr. T.
For today’s scene that I love, here’s Mr. T as Clubber Lang in Rocky III:
Today’s scene that I love comes from the 1940 film, The Philadelphia Story, and it features my favorite Golden Age actor, James Stewart, carrying Katharine Hepburn and singing a song that might sound a bit familiar to our readers.
This is the performance, by the way, that won Stewart an Oscar. Stewart himself often said that he felt the Academy rewarded him to make up for not giving him the Oscar for Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. That’s probably true but still, this film features Jimmy Stewart at his most charming. Teaming Stewart up with not just Katharine Hepburn but also Cary Grant makes The Philadelphia Story one of the best romantic comedies to come out of Hollywood’s pre-war era.
(Before the war, Stewart was Jimmy. After he served bravely in World War II and returned to America, he was definitely James.)
Today is Pete Townshend’s 79th birthday and today’s scene that I love features Pete Townshend (as a member of The Who) performing at Woodstock in 1969.
Roger Daltrey later said that this was the worst gig that they ever played and The Who did end up going on stage early in the morning, with the sun rising as they performed See Me, Feel Me. The majority of The Who’s performance was not included in the initial release of the Woodstock documentary but the noticeably grainy footage would later be included in various rereleases.
Unfortunately, no cameras recorded the moment when Pete Townshend became the hero that 1969 needed by kicking a ranting Abbie Hoffman off of the stage. But, audio of the incident survived.
Here is The Who at Woodstock:
Yesterday, the world learned the sad news that the great Texas character actor, Dabney Coleman, had passed away at the age of 93.
Today’s scene that I love comes from 1984’s The Muppets Take Manhattan. In this scene, the Muppets try to sell Coleman on their idea for a musical. Coleman, meanwhile, does his best to cheat the Muppets out of all of their money. It takes a truly great actor to give a convincing performance while acting opposite a very large group of puppets.
(I mean, we all know Kermit’s real but I’m pretty sure that the rest of them are puppets….)
Bill Paxton would have been 69 years old today. As a lover of both films and eccentric Texans, I still miss Bill Paxton.
Today’s scene that I love comes from Twister and it features Bill Paxton showing off some wonderful chemistry with Helen Hunt. One of the great things about Bill Paxton is that he was equally at home in both big blockbusters like Twister and Titanic and low-budget indies like Near Dark. He was an artist who also happened to be a star.
Today, we celebrate the birthday of Henry Fonda!
Fonda was born 119 years ago today and, over the course of his long career, he was often cast in role the epitomized everything great about America. It’s rare to find a Henry Fonda film in which he played an out-and-out villain, though he did just that in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. (Leone, in fact, cast Fonda as the evil Frank because he knew audiences would be shocked to see Fonda coldly gunning down settlers and their families.)
One of Fonda’s finest films was 1943’s The Ox-Bow Incident, in which he played a cowboy who finds himself drafted into joining a posse that ends up hanging three men for the crime of murder and cattle rustling. The members of the posse (including seven of whom voted against hanging the men) later learn that the men were innocent. In today’s scene that I love, Henry Fonda reads aloud the letter that one of the men wrote to his wife shortly before he was hung. This was one of Fonda’s most heartfelt and powerful performances.
On this date in 1905, the great actor Joseph Cotten was born in Petersburg, Virginia. A longtime friend and collaborator of Orson Welles, Cotten was one of the most dependable leading men of the 40s and 50s, an actor with the charisma of star and the talent of an artist.
Today’s scene that I love comes from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 masterpiece, Shadow of a Doubt, and it features Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Wright plays Charlie. Cotten plays her beloved uncle, who is also named Charlie and who might very well be a serial killer. In this scene, Uncle Charlie drags his niece to a seedy bar, where he confesses that, as she earlier deduced, he is a suspect in a murder investigation. With a mixture of charm and intimidating, Charlie tries to convince his niece to keep his secret to herself.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to director Robert Zemeckis!
Today’s scene that I love comes from Zemeckis’s 1980 comedy, Used Cars! In this scene, used car salesman Gerrit Graham interrupts a televised presidential address so that he can demonstrate the best way to deal with inflation.
(Of course, he does the demonstration at a rival used car lot.)
Jack Warden watches as his cars blow up while Graham’s boss (Kurt Russell) tries to keep his business partner (Deborah Harmon) from noticing what is happening on the television.
“That price is too high!”
On this date, 38 years ago, Top Gun was released and the movie changed forever.
From the opening shot, Top Gun captured the attention of audiences who understood that, though the film’s script may have been full of cliches and though the movie was basically just a remake of the old service moves of the late 30s and 40s, it didn’t matter because jets are freaking cool.
And that opening scene is today’s scene that I love!
Happy Top Gun Day!
On this date, 117 years ago, Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She would go one to become a cultural icon, a performer who survived being labeled box office to poison to eventually become one of our most acclaimed actresses. Hepburn was a total of four acting Oscars over the course of her career, a record that has yet to be topped.
Today’s scene that I love comes from 1940’s The Philadelphia Story and it features Katharine Hepburn acting opposite another one of my favorite performers, the great James Stewart.
Through the Shattered Lens 