From the Archives: The Light Touch (1951)

George Sanders is looking as affable as ever in this still from the 1951 thriller The Light Touch starring Stewart Granger and Pier Angeli. Pier looks like she is falling in love with Stewart..which is a shame because the film's poster foretells: "If she knew what he was, she'd never give him her youth and innocence!" You'll have to watch the film to find out if she really goes that far. 

From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos from the Silverbanks Pictures collection. Some of these may have been sold in the past, and others may still be available for purchase at our eBay store: http://stores.ebay.com/Silverbanks-Pictures

Cone of Silence aka Trouble in the Sky ( 1960 )

Captain Gort ( Bernard Lee ) has just been on trial for crashing one of the new Pheonix jets on takeoff. The verdict was pilot's error. Gort is in disbelief, as is his daughter Charlotte ( Elizabeth Seal ) who knows that her father always flies "by the book" and would never endanger the passengers or crew. Both believe that there was a fault with the new aircraft but the scientists investigating the crash are not convinced. After several months, Gort is allowed to return to his regular flight schedule but his flying ability is once again called into question when he has another low take-off in a Pheonix jet. This time, Captain Dallas ( Michael Craig ) begins to question the safety of the aircraft and investigates the matter, hoping to uncover the cause before another crash takes place. 

Cone of Silence is one of a multitude of aircraft-disaster pictures that were filmed in the 1960s. It seems like a film that Jack Hawkins would have starred in but instead it featured Bernard Lee ( best known for playing M in the James Bond films ). He does a great job of playing the dishonored pilot.

The script was based on the 1959 book of the same name by author David Beaty, which was loosely based on the de Havilland Comet crashes, much like the superior No Highway in the Sky ( 1951 ). 

Cone of Silence has some moments of excitement but overall it is more dramatic than adventerous. Michael Craig himself commented that "it wasn't much of a film and did nothing for anyone's career". However, it is worth checking out just to see the cast which was composed of a bevy of famous Brit actors. George Sanders portrays the prosceuting attorney at the trial, Charles Tingwell ( Murder She Said ) is a fellow pilot, as is Peter Cushing and Gordon Jackson; Andre Morrell and Geoffrey Bayldon have brief parts, and there is a small part for the beautiful Delphi Lawrence as well. 

The film was issued as Trouble in the Sky in the United States, but both titles have little to do with the story because most of the trouble is on the landing field at takeoff! Quite frankly, a film about Get Smart's "Cone of Silence" would be much more entertaining to watch.

Ivanhoe ( 1952 )

Sir Walter Scott's 1819 epic medieval novel "Ivanhoe" was brought to the big screen in 1952 as a gorgeous Technicolor adaptation released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Like many medieval films of the era, it combined romance, drama, and a good deal of swordplay into an adventure-packed 100-minute runtime. 

Ivanhoe was first brought to the screen in 1913, as a silent film starring King Baggot and Leah Baird. Surprisingly, it was not filmed again in the 1920s ( Ronald Colman missed out on a great opportunity here ), nor in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Finally, in 1952, when Pandro S. Berman undertook to produce it, he hired that old pro at MGM, Richard Thorpe, to direct the film. Thorpe whipped together a scrumptious feast of derring-do and the success of this film lead him to helm several other similarly themed pictures, including The Prisoner of Zenda ( 1952 ), Knights of the Round Table ( 1953 ), and The Adventures of Quentin Durward ( 1955 ), two of which starred Robert Taylor, the titular hero of Ivanhoe. 

Robert Taylor was "Taylor-made" for roles such as Sir William of Ivanhoe, convincing audiences that he was the embodiment of noble virtues such as bravery, honesty, gentleness, and honor. In this film, he is the famous chivalrous Anglo-Saxon knight who is on a mission to return the imprisoned king, Sir Richard the Lionheart, to his throne which has been usurped by his nefarious brother Prince John ( Guy Rolfe ). With the aid of Isaac ( Felix Aylmer ), the old leader of a Jewish community, he collects the necessary ransom amount to free the king but must first clash swords with the knight De Bois-Guilbert ( George Sanders ) before he sees Richard seated in his rightful place again. 

Unlike some studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer never made films in a half-hearted fashion, and Ivanhoe was no exception. It had a budget of nearly $4,000,000 which permitted the cast to be sent to England for interior and exterior shooting at the MGM British Studios in Borehamwood and Ashby de-la Zouch, villages steeped in English history. Alfred Junge designed the interiors of all of the sets, with Roger Furse ( Henry V ) providing the scrumptious costumes for the knights and ladies, which included Joan Fontaine as Rowena and Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca.

Elizabeth Taylor was only nineteen-years-old at the time, but so expressive in her acting and certainly the most beautiful actress to ever portray Rebecca. Also in the excellent cast was Emlyn Williams as Wamba, Robert Douglas, Finlay Currie, Basil Sydney, Megs Jenkins, Francis de Wolff, and Harold Warrender as Robin Hood. 

Some have claimed that Ivanhoe is not entirely faithful to the book, but surely some allowances had to be made for the sake of condensation. The thrill of seeing the story that unfolds onscreen inspires one to read the novel. This should be the aim of any great literary-to-film adaptation, and Ivanhoe accomplishes this. 

Upon its release, Ivanhoe was a huge earner at the box-office, both in the States and in England, grossing over $10,000,000 in sales. It also triggered the birth of a medieval genre of films that had not been popular since Errol Flynn starred in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938. 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ( 1947 )

"Haunted.....how perfectly fascinating!" 

Recently widowed Lucy Muir desires to start a new life. In pursuit of this, she has left her London lodgings, and her in-laws, to come to Whitecliff-by-the-sea with her daughter and loyal housemaid. There, situated atop a lovely coastal cliff, she finds her ideal home....Gull Cottage. It is up for rent.

"And priced at only 54 pounds per week. That's very inexpensive for a furnished house."

Strong-minded Lucy will not even let the thought of a ghost scare her away from Gull Cottage. The idea of returning to London and the life she led before is not a choice she wants to consider. Even the gruff and determined Captain Daniel Gregg - the apparition she comes to meet there one dark and stormy night - yields to her wish to remain at his beloved home.

He had been frightening away, with his boyish pranks, all prospective tenants to Gull Cottage for the last several years and the fact that Mrs. Muir chooses to stay in spite of knowing he haunts the house wins her his admiration. 

During their coming year together, a gentle love blossoms between this ghost of a roguish sea captain and the spirited Victorian widow. She comes to see Captain Gregg not only as a dear friend but as an anchor and a pillar of support. Their relationship deepens when Lucy – forced to earn money for payment of the cottage – pens the captain’s memoirs, “Blood and Swash”. However, when she meets the suave author Miles Fairley (George Sanders) while at the publishing house, the Captain realizes that his “Lucia” may be wanting the love, companionship, and reality of a mortal man.

"Real happiness is worth almost any risk…. but be careful me dear, there may be breakers ahead" 

Joseph Mankiewicz's wonderfully whimsical fantasy was released in theatres in 1947 to great commercial success. It was based on the novel, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" written two years earlier by author Josephine Leslie, who - like her character Lucy Muir - published her book under a much more masculine pseudonym...R.A. Dick.

20th Century Fox purchased the rights to the story shortly after its publication and selected Philip Dunne to rework it into a fitting screenplay for a feature film. Philip Dunne was a very talented screenwriter who had been nominated for an Academy Award in 1941 for How Green Was My Valley. He retained much of the essence of the book, and much of the plot, too - with the exception of eliminating the character of Mrs. Muir's son. 

What resulted from his penwork was a sweeping romance like none other of the era. The script, the actors, Mankiewicz’s direction, the breathtaking cinematography (by Charles Lang Jr.) and Bernard Herrman’s beautifully haunting score all combined to make The Ghost and Mrs. Muir one of the most enchanting, timeless, and delightful films ever made in Hollywood.

Rex Harrison is superb as our beloved sea captain – handsome, brawny, and blazed-eyed….a man in every sense of the word. While Gene Tierney is his perfect mate - beautiful, prim and respectable. What they both shared was the spirit of adventure in their souls.

"How you’d of loved the North Cape and the fjords and the midnight sun…to sail across the reef at Barbados where the blue waters turn to green….to the Falklands, where a southerly gale rips the whole sea white…..Oh, what we’ve missed Lucia! What we’ve both missed." 

The rest of this excellent cast includes George Sanders (playing his usual deliciously sly self), character actress Edna Best as Mrs. Muir’s right hand arm and dear companion Martha, little Natalie Wood as daughter Anna, English stage legend Isobel Elsom as Lucy’s mother-in-law,Robert Coote as the real-estate agent, Anna Lee as “the wife”, and Austrian actress Vanessa Brown as the grown-up Anna. 

While “flesh and blood”, Captain Gregg must have been a magnificent seaman and one can imagine the loyalty he inspired in his men aboard ship. Square shouldered, steadfast and weathered from his voyages, he was wise beyond his years, or as he described himself…

"I did not lead a very wise life but it was a full one and a grown-up one. You come to age very quickly through shipwreck and disaster and at the heart of the whirlpool some men find God."

Lucy Muir is quite an independent woman for the turn-of-the-century. Young, innocent and idealistic, she had married a man who had swept her off her feet, only to discover that he was not the romantic she had thought him to be. After his death, she wants to live a life of her own, free to make decisions without anyone warning her of society’s views on her actions. She finds her true self and her peace at Gull Cottage. And there amongst the splendor of the ocean she does not dream of her husband returning to life, but rather of a Gothic hero, a spirit like the Flying Dutchman, a man who worships her as much as the fairest lady he ever knew...the mighty Sea herself.

But is Captain Gregg a dream, or is he a man full of life and vigor just as much as Lucy? 

Years later, when Mrs. Muir’s hair is white and the driftwood by the beach battered and worn by the crashing tide, she still reflects upon her “dream” of the captain. In spite of being a very beautiful woman, she had chosen to live her days in the seclusion of Gull Cottage. We have the notion that men were not something Mrs. Muir ever pursued again. The ideal nature of the captain and the comradery they shared would be hard for any mere mortal man to duplicate.

Instead, all of Lucy’s real relationships are with other women….her maid being the only lasting friendship she has known. Her daughter has her own life to lead and as she grows older she becomes as remote as the rest of the world that Lucy has turned her back against. But loneliness is something our heroine never knows, for she feels content and secure in her memories and secretly lives in hope of something as real as what she was dreaming of all those years.

In the hands of another director, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir may have been a tragic story, a story of lost love and regret and of a woman living out an empty life of isolation. But instead, under the direction of Joseph Mankiewicz, it becomes a magnificent mystical romance. Gentle and warm and humorous, too. It is a tale of love transcending all boundaries.

Nugget Reviews - 23

Johannisnacht ( 1956 )  14k 

An opera singer divorces her husband shortly after an extended performing tour in America. Years later, she returns to Germany to see her daughter whom her husband hid away in a chalet in the valley. Willy Birgel, Hertha Feiler, Erik Schumann, Sonja Sutter, Wolfgang Grunner. MGM Pictures. Directed by Harald Reinl.

A sweet romance from Delos-Film studios. Austrian-born Hertha Feiler, who often starred in comedies with her husband Heinz Ruhmann, is given a decent dramatic part here and the location filming of this "Heimatfilm" is beautiful. There is also a nice sub-romance going on between Erik Schumann and Sonja Sutter. 

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A Royal Scandal ( 1945 ) Elect.

A young idealistic lieutenant warns Catherine the Great of treachery within her court. She finds his loyalty and good looks very appealing and makes him her boy-toy, much to the chagrin of his true love, Queen Catherine's lady-in-waiting, Anna. Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Coburn, Anne Baxter, William Eythe, Vincent Price, Mischa Auer. 20th Century Fox Pictures. Directed by Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch.

Ernst Lubitsch was a master at creating frothy comedies. He reached his prime in the early 1930s with such classics as Monte Carlo, The Smiling Lieutenant, One Hour with You and Ninotchka, but even he couldn't save this film from Preminger's heavy-handed direction. While there were a few amusing sequences in A Royal Scandal, overall the comedy seemed force. Tallulah Bankhead gave a grand performance as Catherine the Great, with some excellent support from character actors Charles Coburn and Sig Ruman, in spite of the circumstances.

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King Richard and the Crusaders ( 1954 ) 14k.

While encamped in the Holy Land, two noblemen plot to murder Richard the Lionheart and make his death appear to be from a Saracen attack, but his loyal knight Sir Kenneth discovers the plan. Rex Harrison, Laurence Harvey, George Sanders, Virginia Mayo, Robert Douglas. Warner Brothers. Directed by David Butler. 

Rex Harrison and Laurence Harvey give engrossing performances in this otherwise run-of-the-mill Crusades adventure, based upon Sir Walter Scott's novel "The Talisman". George Sanders makes an unconvincing King Richard, and Virginia Mayo's presence serves merely as eye-candy, but the Technicolor is beautiful and it's fun watching Rex Harrison tackle an Arab role.

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Scaramouche ( 1923 ) Elect.

A quiet French lawyer becomes a revolutionary after a nobleman kills his friend in a duel. Ramon Navarro, Alice Terry, Lewis Stone, Julia Swayne Gordon. Metro Pictures. Directed by Rex Ingram.

Production standards were high in this Rex Ingram silent classic, but the film fails to capture the excitement of Rafael Sabatini's novel and lingers on a bit too long. The zest that Stewart Granger brought to the part of Andre Moreau in the 1952 remake was non-existent in Novarro's portrayal. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford would have been ideal casting choices instead. However, the French Revolution sequences at the climax were truly hair-raising.

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The Toy Wife ( 1938 ) 14k

A flirtatious and frivolous Southern belle marries her sister's serious-minded fiancee. He later comes to regret not having found himself a more sensible wife. Luise Rainer, Melvyn Douglas, Barbara O'Neil, Robert Young, Alma Kruger. MGM Pictures. Directed by Richard Thorpe.

Luise Rainer was fresh from her Oscar-winning performance in The Good Earth when she starred in The Toy Wife, MGM's consolation project after losing the book rights to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind". This southern belle story put the spotlight on Rainer, allowing her - as "Frou-Frou" - to swoosh her hoop skirts around New Orleans and playfully toy with the heart-strings of not one, but two, gentlemen. It makes for engrossing soap. Barbara O'Neil earned the role of Ellen ( Scarlett's mother ) in Gone with the Wind, thanks to her performance in this film as Frou-Frou's sister. 

The Undying Monster ( 1942 )

“ When stars are bright on a frosty night, Beware thy bane on a rocky lane ”

Coastal England at the turn of the century…. High atop a cliff stands the Hammond estate, the ancestral home of the Hammond family. Legend has it that the family is cursed to falling prey to a flesh-eating beast of a man ( a werewolf, no doubt ) whenever “the stars are bright on a frosty night”. And lo! ‘tis a moonlit frosty night it be. 

Inside this stately manor resting beside a warm, gently glowing fire is our heroine Helga Hammond ( Heather Angel ), heir to the Hammond estate along with her brother Oliver ( John Howard ). Within a short span of a week - a sprightly 61 minutes to us viewers - she will feel the danger of the mad beast close at hand while he prowls the desolate moor grounds in search of his latest victim. Eeek!

The Undying Monster is a little known gem of a mystery from the vaults of 20th Century Fox studios. It was made in direct response to Universal Pictures’ huge commercial success – The Wolf Man. Right after Lon Chaney took ill with a bad case of lycanthropy, Darryl Zanuck was busy getting the wheels of productive competition turning. Five months later Fox released two films of a similar horror vein to the blood-thirsty public - Dr. Renault’s Secret and The Undying Monster. 

Universal Horror fans will recognize a slew of great character talent in The Undying Monster including Halliwell Hobbes, Holmes Herbert, Eily Malyon, and Bramwell Fletcher as a capital red herring. Alas, our leading man – James Ellison - is not as well-embraced as these fine actors.

Whilst the film has a wonderful atmosphere and superb cinematography ( by Lucien Ballard ), it lacks a strong performance from its main character ( Ellison's Scotland Yard detective Robert Curtis ) and noticeably lacks a romantic aspect as well. Werewolves and fog and no romance? How dreadful. 

The inimitable George Sanders was originally slated to play this forensic scientist/Sherlock Holmes investigator but was not available, and so James Ellison was brought in as a last minute replacement. Oh dear, such a poor poor substitute he was. He delivered his lines with the least amount of flair or wit and simply failed to inspire any interest in his character. 

In spite of this miscasting and the film's weak story plot ( we never do get a clear understanding of what’s going on ), The Undying Monster remains a budget horror classic will worth watching. James Brahm, the brilliant German director of The Lodger and Hangover Street and cinematographer Lucien Ballard took a standard run-of-the-mill werewolf story and turned it into an atmospheric visual feast for the eyes. Arresting angles, striking shadow play, and sweeping camera movement take this simple thriller one notch above the rest.