Documentary: Raoul Walsh Biography

Discussion in 'Movies & Entertainment' started by Joe Riley, Nov 11, 2018.

  1. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    Raoul's younger brother, George. :cool:

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  2. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    "Following the conclusion of his acting career, George returned to horse training and horse breeding, his occupation between silents and talkies. In the 1940s, he married for a second time and enjoyed many years of happy retirement in California. The destruction/loss of two-thirds of his movies meant he could not be included in silent film compilations on TV in the 1960s/70s. Regardless, he was interviewed by historians and journalists who sought him out for profiles, articles and anecdotes."

    George Walsh
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    From Stars of the Photoplay
    Born March 16, 1889
    Manhattan, New York
    Died June 13, 1981 (aged 92)
    Pomona, California
    Occupation American personality, sportsman and screen actor
    Years active 1914-1936
     
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  3. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    Raoul and Brother George, with Jackie Cooper in 1933
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  4. Mikhail Bulgakov

    Mikhail Bulgakov Very Well-Known Member
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    Didn't even know George existed, thanks Nancy. I was just looking and he was indeed, a heart throb in his day. Speaking of, I just watched a couple of Raoul's mid career movies last night, "White Heat" with Cagney (1949), and "Gentleman Jim" with Errol Flynn (1942). Different types of films, but great fun to watch both. Alexis Smith costarred with Errol Flynn, and his manager in the movie was William Frawley, aka "Uncle Bub" and "Fred Mertz." I always thought Flynn and Tyrone Power were the best looking young men, and Flynn and Burt Lancaster were my favorite actors of the time--Lancaster just a tad later. Raoul did six movies with Flynn.
     
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  5. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    Even though Raoul spent time on both sides of the camera over his career, I have come to realize that he would have preferred to be in front of the camera. His penchant for "posing with the stars", seems to hint at that. He would have loved selfies!
     
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    Last edited: Feb 21, 2019
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  6. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    Could be, but Raoul's face shows more expression.

    The Live Wire (1935) with George, as Bull Dennis, 3rd billing. Lengthiest scene begins at ~ 32:40. George has an accent in that movie that reminds me a bit of Cliffy Claven in Cheers.;) Boston? Irish?

     
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  7. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    RAOUL WALSH, 93, DEAD; EARLY DIRECTOR OF MOVIES

    "Raoul Walsh, a dynamic movie pioneer and a major director for nearly half a century, died of a heart attack Wednesday night at Simi Valley (Calif.) Adventist Hospital near Los Angeles. He was 93 years old."

    "Mr. Walsh was noted for virile, swiftly paced action and adventure films that crackled with the fury of conflict and combat - in the military, the underworld and on the frontier."

    "The vigor, toughness and earthy humor of most of his best films showed the prowess of men as fighters and lovers, and reflected their mentor, a former cowboy whose wrangling and frontier adventures lent authenticity to the vitality and power of his work."


    Directing skillfully, quickly and exuberantly, Mr. Walsh's major aim was to entertain. He denied having any philosophy about moviemaking, once saying: ''I just did my job. I let others make up the theories.''

    He was widely respected for his patience and advice to actors, counseling one that a scene ''was fine for the last act of 'Macbeth.''' ''Now let's do it for us.''


    "Raoul Walsh was born in Manhattan on March 11, 1887. His father was Thomas Walsh, an Irish immigrant who became a noted men's clothing cutter and later co-owner of a profitable garment business. His mother, the former Elizabeth Brough, was of Irish and Spanish descent. Learned Riding in Mexico"

    "The youth attended Manhattan public schools and Seton Hall College, but had an early wanderlust, halting his studies to sail with an uncle on his cargo schooner to Cuba. The ship was crippled by a hurricane and towed to Mexico, where the teen-ager learned riding and rope-twirling from a friend and then struck out on his own, becoming a wrangler with a trail herd going to Texas."

    "He drifted up to Butte, Mont., then a rugged frontier mining town, worked for an undertaker, learned primitive surgery from a country doctor and later, back in Texas, broke horses for the United States Cavalry."

    "In San Antonio, he accepted an offer to rope a horse on a treadmill that was towed across a stage in ''The Clansman,'' a Civil War and Reconstruction Era melodrama. That opportunity, he recalled, determined his lifetime career."
     
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  8. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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  9. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    George Burns and Gracie Allen, on the set of College Swing, 1938.

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  10. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    "And so for 50 years Walsh made movies of his Irish fantasies. ....."

    "When Peter Bogdanovich was interviewing Raoul Walsh and mentioned Miriam Cooper, with whom Walsh had made 18 movies, Walsh replied:

    “I was married to Miriam Cooper. Don’t put it down, turn [the tape recorder] off: it’s a nice sunny day. Now the clouds will come and the wind is roaring when you mention [her] name.”

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    Raoul & Miriam

    "Walsh was 86. Forty years had passed since his split with Cooper. Yet the past he could not support still launched him into Irish images, taking us with him. Welcome to Walsh’s cinema, to love and adventure in the first person."

    "Living is adventure in Walsh’s movies, and usually begins as escape — from shame, crime, or life. Walsh left home at 15 when his mother died, unable to support the house without her, and for years propelled himself on an odyssey to nowhere — Cuba, Texas, Mexico, Montana, punching cattle, toughening himself, taking blows, forming callouses so thick he felt ashamed to shake hands. By accident he landed in show business, because he could ride a horse. Then D.W. Griffith decided to turn him into a moviemaker. And he met Miriam Cooper."

    "And so for 50 years Walsh made movies of his Irish fantasies. Like him, his heroes, and women too, have neither book learning nor ancestry, only themselves, youth, and infinite bravado. There are few families or children to get in the way, and scarcely a mother. Whether in soaring epics like The World in His Arms or hardscrabble tragedies like The Roaring Twenties (1939), Walsh’s heroes incarnate the dreams and miseries of first-generation Irish-Americans like himself, parvenus, with something to escape from."

    "Women are for loving. Walsh’s never cry. They like watching their guy being beat up, knocked down, given comeuppance — and coming up off the canvas to win. For their world is full of outrageous injustice, mutilated bodies, innocent lives destroyed. “You gotta fight,” says John Wayne in The Big Trail (1930). “That’s life. And when you stop fightin’, that’s death.”

    "Where your fights will take you and what you will find on the trail and who you will be when you get somewhere are unknowable. The only thing sure is that you will meet a damsel in distress, beautiful, erotic and alluring, and fall madly in love with her — to your ruin or regeneration. “In all my films,” said Walsh, “the whole story revolves around the love scene.”
     
    #55
  11. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    On the set of Manpower, 1941. . I see Eve Arden.

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  12. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    The Bowery 1933, directed by Raoul Walsh......when everybody wore a hat!
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  13. Nancy Hart

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    Photo from Richard Schickel's series The Men Who Made the Movies

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  14. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    We missed Raoul 's Birthday, which was on 11 March 1887, New York City, New York, USA .

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  15. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    Happy Birthday, Raoul!

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    Last edited: Mar 13, 2019
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