Good Stuff Comin'

Hi Stumpy

I saw They Died With Their Boots On and Captain Blood on the list with Elizabeth and Essex my all time favourite Flynn was Robin Hood followed very very closely by The Sea Hawk. Another reasonable one of his was The Charge of the Light Brigade which brought about the famous Michael Curtiz comment and gave the name to David Nivens autobigraphy 'Bring on the Empty Horses'.

Regards

Arthur

BTW, regarding They Died With...
did you notice the composer Max Steiner's link to The Searchers? Using the same march song for the 7th cavalry, the Gerry Owen - in the first film to let the cavalry appear heroic, in the second, The Searchers, to let it appear almost ironic when the cavalry comes from wiping off the whole indian village (it was used again as a cruel background music for the Washita river massacre scene in Little Big Man).

What? they have not released Charge of the Light Brigade yet? oh well, I guess i'll have my hands full getting The Seahawk first, They Died WTBO 2nd and Captain Blood after that. I've never seen Elizabeth and Essex, is that movie any good? Or should I say, what's it about?

Hi Ringo
It purports to tell the story of the love affair between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex. Obviously Elizabeth never married but she had two supposed favourites or loves The Earl of Essex and Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester.

Essex was sent to put down the Irish and got himself ensnared in a guerilla campaign. In real life after suffering a massive defeat he is supposed to have landed back in England and rode to Elizabeth to plead his cause he still had the mud on his boots. Elizabeth put him in the tower and lopped off his head.

Didn't do to fail the queen.

Regards

Arthur

Hi again

Making sure it was the same picture, apparently in the picture Bette Davis as the Queen had to slap Errol Flynn and she didn't pull her punches. The scene required a number of takes and on each take Davis gave Flynn all she had. At the time Flynn was suffering from a serious ear condition that if it sustained too much damage gave rise to the possibility that it might kill him. In the end he got so worried about it that he almost had to threaten Davis that if she didn't get it right he would start doing it to her.

IMDB gives a summary saying the picture is colourful, Korngold's music as always is wonderful but the picture itself is very dull.

Regards

Arthur

Thank you for the review Arthur. I have been wanting to see this movie but never have seen it listed on any station.

I wonder, now that they are doing a few Flynn swashbucklers, I wonder if this means they will finally get around to releasing other Flynn classics like: Edge of Darkness, Desperate Journey. I thought both these were excellent as well. In D.J, I think Alan Hale Sr. and Ronald Reagan stole the movie.

Quote

Originally posted by arthurarnell@Feb 7 2005, 07:00 PM

IMDB gives a summary saying the picture is colourful, Korngold's music as always is wonderful but the picture itself is very dull.

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a wunderkind who eventually had to escape Austria prior to WWII - movie buffs are the better for it with films he scored in the thirties and forties. A Korngold-scored movie moves a notch up simply because of the presence of his music. His best score was for "The Adventures of Robin Hood," of course!
The subject matter was picked up by another famous composer - Benjamin Britten - his opera "Gloriana." I had the pleasure of attending a performance of this work during the heyday of the "San Antonio Festival" in 1984 staged by the English National Opera - I didn't find this dull at all!

Cheers - Jay