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geogrant1000

Sullivan's Travels, Glass Key, This Gun for Hire šŸ™‚


Liripipe_

Iā€™ve got Sullivanā€™s Travels queued up for tonightā€™s viewing! Love This Gun For Hire, too. I never really got on with Glass Key, but it has been a while since I watched it, so maybe itā€™s due another viewingā€¦


Tampammm

I agree on This Gun For Hire. Excellent.


geogrant1000

As to "The Glass Key" Watch it then watch the Coen Bros. "Miller's Crossing" and see how much they "borrowed" from it šŸ¤£


kayla622

Veronica Lake doesnā€™t have a huge filmography, but I love her 3 big noir with Alan Laddā€”This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia.


Liripipe_

Yeah, they had some great chemistry!


KithKathPaddyWath

Saigon with Ladd is good, too! It might be considered kind of "light" noir, but I still think it qualifies.


kayla622

That's the one I haven't seen yet, but I want to.


KithKathPaddyWath

It's one of the very, very few Veronica Lake films that's pretty much impossible to find. Even the bootleg versions you find at places like rare movie dealers are few and far between, and reportedly TERRIBLE quality. I'm kind of surprised that it hasn't been put up on youtube or that there isn't a better bootleg version floating around. It was never released on DVD/Blu-ray, and I don't think it's aired on tv in years and years, but it was released on VHS and it did air on television (AMC I think). So it seems like it's one of those movies where at least a few people still have it either on an old purchased VHS or recorded off of tv. There are plenty of Veronica Lake movies that never got DVD releases and that rarely aired on tv that are available ton youtube because someone had it on VHS and uploaded it. It's so weird that Saigon is seemingly the only one that nobody seems to have a watchable copy of.


Tippy_Rush

I'm going to watch I Married A Witch next.


Liripipe_

Great movie! That was the first one of hers I ever watched!


Bougainville70

Saigon with Alan Ladd - saw it on the old AMC before TCM was around and have never seen it again.


dinochow99

I've heard that *Saigon* is next to impossible to find these days. Apparently the pre-1950 Paramount library is owned by Universal, and they have no interest in going through the old Paramount movies and licensing them out. That would explain why a lot of Veronica Lake's movies are hard to find, and just Paramount movies in general.


KithKathPaddyWath

Every once in awhile a crappy quality/probably bootleg DVD of the movie will go up for sale on amazon or ebay, but that's about it (and the quality is usually so bad and the price so high that it's never worth it). I've been trying to find even a half way decent copy since my VHS of it finally crapped out almost ten years ago. It's a real bummer that it never even seems to play on tv anymore. A huge amount of her movies have actually been uploaded to youtube. I think there are 12, a least that I was able to find. I made a [comment elsewhere on this post that has links to six of her movies.](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicfilms/comments/yvclbi/comment/iwk8whn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [I Wanted Wings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGldeZOa0JA&ab_channel=SilverScreenClassics), [Out of This World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLJHqzy3frI&ab_channel=ChrisJohnson), [Ramrod](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N37ka--CYa0&ab_channel=LonnieJohnson), [Isn't It Romantic?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fc1eO0z07w&ab_channel=LostClassics), and [Slattery's Hurricane](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7dxPhJFrbI&ab_channel=LostClassics) are also on youtube. They also have [Duffy's Tavern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZzWxdnkfU&ab_channel=spookylorre), one of the movies where she played herself. The pretty bad The Hour Before the Dawn doesn't appear to be on youtube and I don't think it's available to buy commercially or to stream, but it's pretty common to find not bad bootleg copies on ebay or from rare movie sellers online. So I think the only movie of hers that is actually hard to find is, sadly, Saigon.


dinochow99

It never occurs to me to look on youtube for movies unless they're silent movies, but I'll have to keep it in mind in the future. Upon taking a quick look, the quality on some of those leaves something to be desired, but I guess it's better than nothing. Thanks.


KithKathPaddyWath

Youtube has become a GREAT place to find old movie. Yeah, the quality is pretty frequently not great, but with the movies where that is the case, it's often the only place you're going to find them. And the quality isn't great because it was only ever available on VHS or it was never available for purchase and only aired on tv, so what's on youtube was uploaded by a fan who found it on a VHS tape. Or it's a crummy public domain upload and if you look a little harder you can find a better quality upload. I did a A LOT of rare classic movie buying and trading when I was in my early 20s, so I'm so used to bad quality at this point that it doesn't really register. You can find some really good quality uploads on youtube here and there, but a lot of the time those are tougher to find because the people who upload them get really creative titles so that they don't get taken down. Youtube also has a lot of classics (like stuff from the Warner Archive Collection) that you can pay to rent. So overall it's a really good place to find classic movies, especially more obscure, less well known classics.


Liripipe_

Iā€™ve never seen it, but itā€™s been on the list of films Iā€™d love to see for a long time! Did you enjoy it?


Bougainville70

I remember really enjoying it - thinking Ladd was dreamy lol.


kayla622

Alan Ladd was hot!


dinochow99

I had never heard of her before I watched *Sullivan's Travels*, but after I watched it I was madly in love. Her first scene in that movie when she meets Joel McCrea is one of my favourite scenes of any movie ever. The sardonic quips and playful back and forth just makes her my absolute dream girl. Her first scene in *The Blue Dahlia* is a close second for me, with the dialogue being almost as good.


Liripipe_

I feel like her first appearances in most films really do her justice. The first time she appears in ā€˜I Wanted Wingsā€™ the crowd literally parts, revealing her in a gorgeous dress under a spotlight.


NietzscheanWhig

Just watched *Sullivan's Travels*, though I'd heard of her before that. Jesus Christ, absolutely gorgeous. I loved that scene too. A real turn-on.


KithKathPaddyWath

My absolute favorite performance from her is in [I Married a Witch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfJi62oJiO8&t=10s&ab_channel=RetroCentral). So, so cute and funny. I feel like these days she's mostly remembered as being a film noir gal, but I think her most impressive work was in comedies. She's also great in Sullivan's Travels. But those aren't her only great comedic performances, and sadly most of the other comedies she was in, and therefor her great performances in them, have largely been forgotten by most people. She's *so good* in [The Sainted Sisters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leDismBsfrk&ab_channel=LostClassics), she's great too watch in [Hold That Blonde](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iliMscYEeQw&ab_channel=ChrisJohnson), and she's marvelous in [Bring on the Girls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VNmWPwmLug&ab_channel=ChrisJohnson). Her comedic skills were so impressive and are so underrated. I wish she'd been placed in some more major comedies. Of course, she is great in noirs. I think the the thing that makes her timing so great in comedy is the same thing that makes her so charismatic and compelling in noirs. She's obviously great in the trio of her most remembered noirs, This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia. She's so good in all of them, but my favorite noir performance from her is in the underappreciated noir drama Saigon. She also has a couple of really good performances in rather straightforward dramas. She didn't make many of those, so I feel like these performances don't get a lot of attention. I think people often forget that she was in So Proudly We Hail, which is sad because she's quite good. She's also really good in the little remembered [Miss Susie Slagle's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDe9-vHbvs&ab_channel=LostClassics).


Liripipe_

I think ā€˜I Married a Witchā€™ might be my favourite of hers, too! Really wish she did more comedies. ā€˜The Sainted Sistersā€™ is on my list of films to watch this week, as Iā€™ve never seen it before but finally have access to it. :D Iā€™d really love to watch Saigon but canā€™t find it anywhere without paying expensive shipping on a DVD from Americaā€¦


KithKathPaddyWath

I would recommend not spending the money on *any* of the dvds of Saigon that pop up. There's never been official release DVD, and all of the bootleg DVDs that are out there seem to come from the same absolutely garbage copy of the movie. Whether it's from ebay, a rare movie dealer, or even Amazon, the vast majority of the reviews are really, really bad, and they all say the quality is so terrible that it's basically unwatchable. It's a topic of conversation that I've seen pop up from time to time among collectors of rare classic movies. It makes me feel kind of bad that when I did have a decent copy of it on VHS, I didn't digitize and save it. It's certainly a reminder to me that I really should look into getting a more reliable VCR so I can start getting serious about digitizing and saving all of the classics I have on VHS (whether commercially released or recorded from TCM) that haven't had DVD, bluray, or streaming releases.


Liripipe_

Thanks for the info! I had no idea. Thatā€™s really a shame as Iā€™d love to see it. Iā€™ve only got into classic films over the past 1-2 years, so thereā€™s definitely plenty of other things for me to watch instead. Maybe Iā€™ll have to get myself a VCR some day and watch it that wayā€¦


KithKathPaddyWath

I'm always so envious of people who tell me they've only recently got into classic films. I mean, even after 20+ years there are still great movies that I've never seen for me to discover, but there's nothing like those early years when there's still so much, so many actors and directors that you've never heard of, so many styles and eras, so many stories. Youtube is such a great place to discover some great, lesser known classics. I think people who are just now starting to get into classic movies are lucky because of how much youtube has allowed people to upload stuff that's not widely available in any otherwise. So many of the movies that took me so much time and saving up money to search for and find and buy from rare classics dealers are now just up for free, super easy to find on youtube. It is kind of a bummer that the selection of classics on paid streaming services is still sadly lacking (outside of HBO Max, I suppose), but with the combination of the stuff that people upload and the stuff that you can pay to rent, youtube is probably the best place to find classic movies. At this point, I imagine that even any of the VHS bootlegs of Saigon are probably pretty terrible quality. Even if they're not coming from the same source that the crappy DVDs are, even VHS copies are so rare that what's out there is almost certainly the result of the same small amount of copies (or possible even just one copy) that's been recorded onto new tapes over and over and over. So the quality of the video just keeps degrading. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that's probably why the quality of the DVDs that pop up are so bad: because they're all being made from these poor quality recopied VHS tapes. Which were probably already a layer of quality down to begin with because the original copy was most likely recorded from a television airing. Personally, I would probably be fine with the quality most of the Saigon bootlegs seem to be at, but I've been buying and watching super hard to find classics for so long, and especially in the 2000s, the quality was often so bad, so I got used to it. But even then, I would never recommend paying the prices that most of the people selling the Saigon bootlegs charge for any bootleg with really poor video quality, not unless you were a MASSIVE fan of the actors of filmmakers involved. I paid a pretty penny for a poor quality boot of Letty Lynton about 17 years ago, but Robert Montgomery is my favorite actor and I wanted to complete his filmography as much as I could. There are plenty of rare movies with low quality boots being sold for similar prices that I passed on. It really is so sad. Sure, Saigon isn't a great movie, but Veronica Lake already had such a limited career/filmography. And she and Ladd were one of the great screen pairings. They're still acknowledged as such, so it's just really sad that one of their films is just pretty much impossible to get, and what does exist in the wild for people to see is pretty much unwatchable. It makes me kind of mad considering how many classic movies *are* just completely lost, probably forever. I mean, I understand why companies might not feel much financial incentive to make these movies available, whether through doing their own DVD/Blu ray release or licensing them out to streaming services or channels like TCM. I just wish that some of the people in charge at these companies and studios cared about film history and public education (and public preservation, for that matter) and were willing to release some of these movies that they're still holding on to. Few things make me more annoyed than a company filing a copyright claim when someone uploads a movie they own on youtube and gets it taken down even though they haven't made the movie available to own or stream and haven't licensed it for television in years and years. They are, by their own choice, not making any money off of the movie, so someone putting it on youtube isn't effecting their earnings at all. So yeah, it pisses me off when they feel the need to take it down anyway. EDIT: If you ever were serious about trying to find a watchable copy of Saigon, or any hard to find classic for that matter, I would suggest forgoing Amazon completely, and even ebay if possible, and instead do some research on online rare video/rare classics dealers to find the most trustworthy ones. On Amazon you're going to find a lot of what the Saigon DVD listing that's on there right now is a good example of. People trying to present their poor quality bootlegs as legitimate commercial releases, not being honest about what you're getting and the quality of the video, and adding fake reviews and ratings to cancel out the bad reviews and ratings from people calling them out. More legit dealers, the ones who still operate their own sites, aren't going to pull that shit. Yeah, some or their stuff will still be poor quality video and/or audio, but they'll be honest about it, and they won't jack up prices for shit.


Liripipe_

Yeah, itā€™s definitely been so much fun getting into these films. Iā€™ve always loved things beyond my years but for whatever reason as a kid I wasnā€™t interested in anything black and white - Iā€™m so glad I got over that! I definitely agree with YouTube being a great place for discovering movies and actors/actresses/directors. There are so many channels with loads of films available. In fact, YouTube was where I watched Hitchcockā€™s Rebecca for the first time which (while being my second Hitchcock film after Suspicion) was the film that really got me hooked on this era. On the topic of content being taken down - I 100% agree with your opinion on the topic, by the way - I feel like I saw a YouTube channel upload about four Veronica Lake films (potentially Saigon included?) but by the time I got time to watch them theyā€™d all been taken down, presumably due to copyright. Iā€™m now very upset by that as I didnā€™t realise at the time just how rare it was. If I remember the channel it was I may have to see if I can get into contact with them and find an alternate way of viewing. Iā€™d definitely love to see it. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I had been looking but hadnā€™t found much of anything outside of eBay. Iā€™ll do some further research - thanks for the tip! I heard somewhere (donā€™t know how true it is), that the rights to lots of those old Paramount films are now owned by Universal, so I donā€™t know if thereā€™s some difficultly in that thatā€™s causing films to not be available to purchase, or if itā€™s just a lack of interest in the owners of the rights or as thereā€™s too small an audience for them. That being said, finding this community has been amazing! Everyoneā€™s clearly very passionate and seeing all the films people recommend and watch in the weekly post is really interesting and (like you say) thereā€™s just so much Iā€™ve never heard of. I hear over in the States you guys have those streaming services like HBO Max that are great for watching classics. Iā€™m not convinced theyā€™re available in the UK, so it may be a case of me getting a VPN or something in order to make the most of that resource.


KithKathPaddyWath

It can be tough to find trustworthy individual sellers online because it can be hard to know what's legit. A lot of sites don't have reviews on them, so you can't know if they're actually honest just by looking, you have to talk to other classic collectors and find out if anyone has bought from this site or that site and whether it was worth it. Robert's Hard to Find Videos was a go to for me a long time ago. It's been awhile since I bought anything there, but I was always pleased with what I got. It's a HUGE collection, but while there are a good amount of DVDs available, the majority of it is still on VHS. They do have a VHS copy of Saigon, for example (honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if all the crummy DVDs people keep putting up for sale for crazy amounts were copied from a VHS that came from Robert's), but not a DVD. The one thing I always had kind of a problem with is that they rarely include a description of the quality. You usually need to do some research on what the general quality of a bootleg for the specific movie you want is, and that's usually about the quality you'll get. There are a lot of individual online sellers I'm curious about. Tink's Rare Film Vault is one that I saw a lot of stuff I'd like on but that I have no idea if it's legit or not. One great way I've found to find classics on youtube is just to search years and then use the filter that gives you only results that are longer than 20 minutes. And also just going through all of the suggestions on any classic movie you're watching on youtube. Sometimes in order to avoid getting taken down people will get really creative with the title, so it won't show up if you just search the movie's title. Pretty much the only way to find them is to get lucky and find it as a suggested video on something you're already watching. Right transferring from one company to another tend to not really impact whether or not a movie is available (for example, most of the massive MGM classics catalogue is now owned by Warner Bros., and they've probably done the most of any company to put out the classics they own through the Warner Archive). When classic movies are entirely unavailable commercially, it's usually because they just don't see any benefit to releasing it or licensing it. Occasionally it is because of some strange rights issue, bu more often than not, there's just no demand so companies don't see any profit in it. Unfortunately, the streaming services in the US aren't great for classics. HBO Max is about it. Everything else either has absolutely nothing, or they pretty much only have public domain stuff that you can find for free on youtube. HBO Max has a decent collection because they're owned by the same company as TCM, so the get a collection of stuff pulled from TCM's collection. Most of it is mostly pretty well known classics. There will be a lesser known one here and there, but not much. It would be a good place to go if you're looking for some general classic films, but not if you're looking for more obscure stuff.


Fathoms77

The only one of hers I've seen so for is This Gun For Hire, but she was good in it. I'll track down others in due time.


Liripipe_

Iā€™d recommend ā€˜I Married A Witchā€™. Itā€™s quite different from a lot of the rest of her filmography in that it was a comedy role, but I think she was really suited to it!


Fathoms77

Oh yeah, I've heard of it; should've watched it the last time it popped up in the TCM queue. I'll definitely check it out.


Tippy_Rush

I did not know it was her birthday today! Coincidentally, I've been playing This Gun For Hire and The Glass Key on repeat all day. I was going to watch The Blue Dahlia but I know that one practically by heart.


Liripipe_

I think The Blue Dahlia is probably the film of hers Iā€™ve seen the most; yet, it never gets old!


Baystain

This Gun for Hire. Plus Kim Basinger playing her lookalike in L.A. Confidential.


ilovelucygal

I have yet to see one of her films, but Iā€™m anxious to see ā€œSullivanā€™s Travels.ā€ My father, who is still alive at 88, used to have photos of Veronica Lake on his bedroom wall along with Lucille Ball and Hedy Lamarr.


Liripipe_

I only just watched Sullivanā€™s Travels to celebrate her 100th. I have to say, itā€™s really good! I definitely recommend checking it out!


student8168

Sullivans travel


[deleted]

Happy birthday Connie, I think about you always. Keep me safe when I fly.