Saturday
Aug102013
Happy Norma Day!
Saturday, August 10, 2013 at 8:37AM It's Norma Shearer's birthday today. Make an old movie wish!
Here's mine: I wish all movies were available in all formats for very reasonable prices. (Like, come on, I wanna see The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934, Best Actress/Best Picture nominee) but I'm not paying $20 for a used VHS copy!) It's the least Hollywood could do with their billions.
tagged Birthday, DVD, Norma Shearer
Birthday, DVD, Norma Shearer
Reader Comments (9)
I wish I liked Norma Shearer, but something (everything) about her has always turned me off. If you were to recommend one of her films that would make me appreciate her (not as an actress, but as a "person"), which one would it be?
I like your wish, Nathaniel!
I wish that all movie theaters with six screens or more were required to have one screen reserved for repertory screenings of old movies (in their original aspect ratio of course) ALL THE TIME. None of this "one night only" business.
Always loved Norma Shearer in The Divorcee (1930) and Romeo and Juliet (1936). I don't care if people say she was too old for the part. She and Leslie Howard are still the best actors overall to ever to play those roles.
My wish is that movie theaters would stop wasting screens to show both a 3D version of a movie and the 2D version. Just pick a format so other movies can be in the theater. Like independent movies or just all-around good movies. It's been my experience that 3D movies are rarely worth seeing and never worth seeing in 3D.
Shearer is great in "The Divorcese" although it's a bit creaky as a movie (you have to have patience with early talkies. I enjoy her in "A Free Soul". Her "great ladies of the stage' roles are not as much fun but "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" has its moments as does "Strange Interlude". The lavish "Romeo and Juliet" is worth seeing as is the somewhat overblown "Marie Antoinette" (but the ending of that one will get you!)
"The Women" is always a favorite but Norma's role in it ( a conventional wife) is very atypical of her. She plays it very skillfully, mostly by underplaying, and as critic Ethan Mordden pointed out Shearer shows how important marriage can be to a woman. The role appears to be close to Shearer's own personality.
I love her in The Women. The calm at the center of the storm.
I love the Hurrell photos (where he made her look like a vamp to convince her husband she could play a vamp.) If I had a wish, it would be to own one from the original cut (not the reprints from ebay,)
Funbud -- i love her in The Divorcee too... but since that and The Women are probably her most famous, I don't know what to recommend to Paul assuming he's seen both and i think she's great in both. I also love her in Marie Antoinette
I can't say I'm a great fan of Norma in general. You can so often she her ACTING in that old theatrical style, she just loved to grab her hair and wring her hands, a pearl clutcher if you will, but there are a few films where she either relaxed into the part or her theatricality suited the role.
She's most amusing in Private Lives and excellent in Marie Antoinette but both of those parts fit her style and I think her final scene in Antoinette is the best acting she ever did. She's good in The Women keeping the gestures down to a minimum. However my favorite of her films and the one where she gives the best overall performance is the little known Escape with Robert Taylor and Nazimova. A war picture it was the last really good film she made and she seems more comfortable on screen than usual.
Bette Davis tried to get her to do Old Acquaintance with her but she turned it down and retired. That's a shame because again her style would have been well matched with the flighty character and let her exit the screen on a high note. It also would have spared Bette another go round with her nemesis Miriam Hopkins.
@Funbud, Nathaniel & joel6: I've seen a lot of Shearer films, which is why I can't abide her. ;-)
But I will seek out Escape, it sounds promising.
I really came to love her. Her performance in Marie Antoinette is one of the best ever!