Then again, maybe not. Go HERE.
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48 Responses to 100 Mysteries: Marcus Welby May Be Nuts
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I wouldn’t have boasted about a Harry M. Popkins, myself.
Russian novel ending, Pyotr I. Thaikovsky score… might as well watch the new season of Jon and Kate Plus 8.
To me he’s Bill Anderson, not Marcus Welby. Must be the generation gap.
I always think of Robert Young as Oliver in The Enchanted Cottage. The second sappiest of war-influenced chick flicks, right behind Random Harvest.
I love those movies. They make me happy.
I had no idea he was Marcus Welby. (I take it in the TV version? Radio?) I’ve heard of Marcus Welby, at least. Bill Anderson is a head scratcher.
Never understood the popularity of Robert Young. Thought he was one of the worst actors of all time, especially as Marcus Busybody.
Marcus Welby knows best!
What is that strange horse doing in Mr. Ed’s barn? We might want to have a word with Wilbur & Carol Post. When we do, we should see if the Addisons next door still have that super keen Avanti!
And that dress in the last two images before the Talking Heads arrive to burn down the house in the final image:
LEGS: And she knows how to use them.
I assumed he was going to shoot the horse until JL mentioned in was “Rebecca.” “Don’t do it Wilbur, you have so much to live for”
Looks like they used Big Sur again (substituting for Cornwall in original, who knew they looked so much alike?). Hard to tell from the screen grabs but, they may have used the same rear screen projections used in Rebecca.
Don’t most people look alike if you don’t know them?
Irritable Bear keeps warning humans about storing firewood on the patio. Humans don’t listen.
IrritableBear Says:
May 29th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Irritable Bear keeps warning humans about storing firewood on the patio. Humans don’t listen.
I suspect that Irritable Bear likes to experiment with accelerants. Not that I am implicating him in this instance.
For this inferno, I would be investigating Dr. Steven Kiley. Bad boy on a Motorcycle makes for a swift getaway…
“But darling, I had to shoot Mister Ed. He’s gone over to the dark side, can’t you see that? . . . Paranoid? Why do you think I’m paranoid?”
The house screenshots look like footage from one of Captain Pike’s illusions on Talos IV.
“I love those movies. They make me happy.”
Me too. I’m a big fan of both ‘Enchanted Cottage’ and ‘Random Harvest’. Pure escapist fare. ‘Cottage’ was my favorite Young film and McGuire film.
Otherwise not a big Robert Young fan.
Somebody (I thought I remembered the name, but I got nuthin’; I think he was South American) wrote a satiric essay, years back, about an imaginary architect who “liberated architecture from the narrow bonds of habitability.”
That’s what I thought of when I saw the house in this movie. It was built for efficient airflow, to facilitate fast burning, and was useful for no other purpose.
Is Manderley on the road to Mandalay?
Never watched Marcus Welby, I only remember him from I think coffee commercials back in the 70′s (I think) He always seemed kinda sissy.
After that crack about “those people” I suspect Consuelo Lopez R.N. of the fire, and I don’t blame her amigo.
-el osito alegre
Robert Young just seems to be one of those people who wanders inexplicably into the movies with no obvious gift but likability. And he never wandered out again — IMDB says he started in 1931 and worked straight through until 1988, with never a significant pause.
He’s just … pleasant. Pleasant-looking, pleasant voice, pleasant manner… hard to like a lot, but he also makes it hard to work up a good dislike — even when he’s holding a gun on a horses or nodding along with crude cracks among the gentry. I guess that’s enough to keep you in the movies, or it used to be.
roger h (bgbear) Says:
May 29th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
After that crack about “those people” I suspect Consuelo Lopez R.N. of the fire, and I don’t blame her amigo.
-el osito alegre
Simply, en fuego.
Can’t stop her, you can only hope to contain her.
That’s one horse. Sigh.
(On the road to Manderley, where the flyin’ fishes play….)
I think I’ve seen that staircase before. Norman Bates was at the top of it.
Ah, I wasn’t the only one to spot “Mandelay” for “Manderley.” Y’all are quick.
Yeah, gotta love that postwar psychology.
Hitchcock in particular was fascinated with it: “Spellbound,” “Marnie,” “Psycho,” etc.
And Marty Balsam was at the bottom, with his eyes bugging out.
I recall Carol Burnett did a howlingly funny take of off Enchanted Cottage, called “Enchanted Hovel”; humor as only Ms. Burnett could do it, with the able assistance of Lesbian Van Penis.
hpoulter: Marty Balsam, or Marty Feldman? Eeegore or Igor?
And yes; Manderly. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again…” Never did like Joan Fontaine, she always played such sissies.
Ah, crud! Clearly I meant Penis van Lesbian, not the other way around.
Robert Young and Glenn Ford were peas in a pod.
Burnett also did “a howlingly funny take-off” of Random Harvest, called Rancid Harvest. I saw this way before I ever saw the original, which led me to this question: Is it funnier when you see the original first and then the parody, or vice versa? Despite what you might intuit, I think it’s the second, although people may wonder why you’re the only one laughing during some two-hanky scene.
You are right about parody first. The first time I saw “gone with the wind” I laughed at the drapes/dress scene because of the Carol Burnett parody.
Also, the funniest thing in the world is to see the film “Zero Hour” (drama) after you have seen “Airplane” (comedy). Some of the scenes are identical and verbatim.
(If this comment is repeated, it is not my fault) –other irritable bear
Ella, Bill Anderson was his character in “Father Knows Best.”
And I don’t see any, I mean any, similarity between Glenn Ford and Robert Young.
am I ursus non gratis?
rivlax, what I meant when I compared Ford and Young was how they were both so low-key, never really “big” stars (a la John Wayne, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, etc). And I can’t figure out how either of them had such long, steady careers. Except perhaps, as someone pointed out above, they were both simply likeable. (Along the lines of Van Johnson.)
I didn’t mean to imply that they looked alike.
Robert Young was good in at least one good film, “Northwest Passage” with Spencer Tracy.
And Joan Fontaine was no sissy in “Frenchman’s Creek.” Ooh la la.
Robert Young makes some of us think of Bill Anderson and others of Marcus Welby. I always think of his role as the father in Sitting Pretty. Clifton Webb has the leading role as an arrogant genius who is hired as the family babysitter, Mr. Belvedere. Young is the butt of a memorable Clifton Webb line (this is from memory):
Wife (Maureen O’Hara): I’ll have you know, my husband is a very modest man.
Webb: Madame, your husband has a great deal to be modest about.
A very enjoyable comedy that I recommend if you haven’t seen it.
Heavens, I think Glenn Ford was a pretty good actor, and certainly in a different league from the bland duo of Robert Young and Van Johnson. See the original “3:10 to Yuma,” in which Ford plays an pure and unrepentant SOB, alongside an understated (as he generally was) Van Heflin. It’s a great movie and a fine Ford performance — Robert Young couldn’t have done it in a million years.
(But skip the stupid, frantic, hopelessly earnest and really dopey “3:10″ remake. It’s one of those movies where you find yourself thinking, “A stampede? Well, sure, why the hell not?”)
Regarding long steady careers of less than stellar actors, the studio system helped but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a good work ethic that did it.
“We need someone for this part, how about good old Bob. He gets it done in one or two takes and he’s affable on the set.
Sue: You’re absolutely right about the work ethic. I was privileged to watch a showcase a few years back of a Sondheim musical that still hasn’t made it to Bway. Its current title is “Bounce.” This took place in a small theatre in NYC, with perhaps 100 in attendance (including Warren Beatty/Annette Bening, a few other notables, and Mr. Sondheim himself. Nathan Lane and Victor Garber played the leads.
What many people don’t know is that for a couple of decades, Victor Garber regularly got starring and featured roles in Bway musicals, and yet he was far from a household name. The guy we got the tix from was sitting next to me; he had known Garber since they were doing stock together years before. I said to him, “I’ve got a theory about Victor Garber. I bet he shows up on time, knows his lines, never throws a fit, and is always reliable and gracious.” The guy concurred, absolutely.
So you’re probably right about ol’ Bob Young. God bless him.
It didn’t hurt that Glenn Ford was really cute. He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous like Cary Grant, but there’s nothing wrong with cute.
Bridey Says: He’s just … pleasant.
Agreed. And if you squint a little, he looks like DeForest Kelley.
Shirley Ballard – The Twilight Zone “Person or Persons Unknown”.
OK, I had to look that up.
No one mentioned Robert Young’s tendency to YELL his lines. “MARGARET, I’M HOME!!” and “HAVE YOU BEEN DRINKING?” come to mind. Welby was the last doctor to take house calls.
How could anyone dislike Van Johnson? If you want to see penultimate Van Johnson, forget his later appearances on “Love Boat” and its ilk, and catch “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.” Also a great appearance by (IMHO) the best actor who ever lived, Spencer Tracy. Well worth the two hours.
Glenn Ford did well in war movies and cowboy flicks. One of his last appearances was as a bad-good guy in “The Sacketts” with Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott.
I was puzzled by the name of the house, so I goggled mandelay to see what was wrong. What a surprise.
Young is an interesting actor, in the sense that he was so benignly neutral, with a range of about 1/4 octave. But within that limited range he never missed a note – not hard to do when you only have three or four acting notes to hit. Here’s the diff between Young and Ford. If I came across a B&W movie on AMC starring Glenn Ford that I never heard of, I’d watch a bit to see if it was interesting. If it starred Robert Young I’d switch to the Weather Channel.
Is there any actor of the modern TV era with the same vibe as Young? None comes to mind.
Dang it. Someone else beat me to the Mr. Ed reference.
Robert Young is a good example of a little noted phenomenon of male actors who were second bananas in the 40′s. When they were young, they often played bad guys or at least menacing characters. As they aged, they graduated to benign father figures on TV family sitcoms. Robert Young as Jim (not Bill) Anderson, Hugh Beuamont as Ward Cleaver, Fred Mac Murray on My Three Sons (and in that case William Demarest as a benign grandfather figure) or Brian Keith on Family Affair.
Bad guys turned good dads.
Women who played sexy bombshell roles in their 20′s and 30′s in the 1940′s movies were generally “over the hill” by the 1950-60′s sitcoms and when television came in most of them were cast aside. Donna Reed and to a lesser extent Yvonne De Carlo (as Lily Munster) and maybe Lucy (altho that was a pure comic turn) were the exceptions. For some reason, the shows either went with younger moms or ones that weren’t as well known from the movies.
@LarsWalker: sounds like one of Jorge Luis Borges’s gags.
Garry: I do believe you’re correct.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be Robert Young. See http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/05/27/a-second-look-at-robert-young/#more-10563
While the studios may have made careers for actors like Young and Ford, they’d have dropped them like a rabid skunk if audiences weren’t coming to their movies. Heck, at one point their respective studios dropped Hepburn and Davis fairly early on because they couldn’t figure out how to use them(thus practically ensuring poor ticket sales). And both Young and Ford remained popular after the system disintegrated(Young just switched to TV). And, as I mentioned in a previous post, you can’t have seen many Glenn Ford movies to compare his controlled menace to Young’s rather limited range.
As for Van Johnson, while he made his name as a pleasant, OK-voiced song & dance man, he was good comic actor and even turned in excellent performances in two classic war films(“Battleground” & “The Caine Mutiny”–the former got a big thumbs up from my uncle, who actually was at Bastogne w/the 101st).
I’m sure few will read this late comment but I personally award Robert Young an award of courage for going public with his long battles with depression and alcoholism. In fact, he attempted suicide in the early 90′s and I remember it being big news. He may not have been a superstar actor but he was a hard working actor that gave his best despite huge struggles.
James, how did you not title it “Marcus May Welby Nuts”?