spot the granny, and the witch
Jan. 11th, 2024 04:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacOne of the fun parts of watching movies or tv is spotting actors whom you already know from other roles.
I came across this photo, which is a still from a 1948 rom-com called Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven, and knew I had to watch it even though it had a mediocre reputation (only partially deserved, I'd say). It's free on Amazon Prime, which we have, so I went ahead.
It's about a young couple who take most of the run-time to figure out that they're in love. They're from Texas and are going to New York to seek their fortunes; at the end they move back to Texas, which they consider Heaven, despite what General Sheridan said about it.1
They're not in this photo. Impersonating siblings, for no particular plot reason, they've equally bafflingly adopted an old con woman as their supposed mother, and they're all living in a boarding house in Brooklyn. The woman in the spotted dress (Florence Bates) is the mother, and in this shot she's trying to teach her landladies to play poker. (She's a bad teacher, telling them what to do with their hands but not why to do it.)
The landladies are three dour, middle-aged sisters, and it's who's playing them that caught my interest enough to send me to the movie. They are, left to right:
1. Philip Sheridan was the Union general assigned to occupy Texas during Reconstruction. After being there a while, he said, "If I owned Texas and Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell."
I came across this photo, which is a still from a 1948 rom-com called Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven, and knew I had to watch it even though it had a mediocre reputation (only partially deserved, I'd say). It's free on Amazon Prime, which we have, so I went ahead.
It's about a young couple who take most of the run-time to figure out that they're in love. They're from Texas and are going to New York to seek their fortunes; at the end they move back to Texas, which they consider Heaven, despite what General Sheridan said about it.1
They're not in this photo. Impersonating siblings, for no particular plot reason, they've equally bafflingly adopted an old con woman as their supposed mother, and they're all living in a boarding house in Brooklyn. The woman in the spotted dress (Florence Bates) is the mother, and in this shot she's trying to teach her landladies to play poker. (She's a bad teacher, telling them what to do with their hands but not why to do it.)
The landladies are three dour, middle-aged sisters, and it's who's playing them that caught my interest enough to send me to the movie. They are, left to right:
- Angela Lansbury's mother (Moyna Macgill)
- Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies (Irene Ryan)
- The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton)
1. Philip Sheridan was the Union general assigned to occupy Texas during Reconstruction. After being there a while, he said, "If I owned Texas and Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell."
