Sunday, September 25, 2016

Conspiracy of Hearts


LILI PALMER  Partial filmography[edit]












Terry Russel4 weeks ago
There are thousands of unsung heroes such as these who are owed no less than an equal share of the debt the world owes to those in uniform who fought and died to win this, or any war against evil, for that matter.





LILI PALMER

Partial filmography[edit]

Partial filmography[edit]

Ronald Lewis
Ronald Lewis.jpg
Born11 December 1928
Port Talbot, Glamorgan, Wales, UK
Died11 January 1982 (aged 53)
Pimlico, London, UK
Cause of deathoverdose
Years active1953–1978

Production[edit]Reception[edit]

The film was a financial success being the 5th most popular film at the British box office in 1960.[4] (Doctor in Love was even more popular.)
US rights were bought by Barney Balaban of Paramount. Thomas says Balaban paid the largest amount Rank had received for a picture until then.[6]
The film version was written by Robert Presnell Jnr, who set the story in 1943. Presnell was reportedly a front for Dalton Trumbo. The script was optioned by Albert C. Gannaway in 1958 who could not get finance.[3]
Betty Box became enthusiastic about the movie and wanted to make it. She took it to the Rank Organisation. Box says Rank did not want them to make the movie but allowed her because of the success of the Doctor in the House series. "They said, 'It's religion, it's nuns, it's wartime, who wants to know? Tell you what, make us another Doctor and you can do it!"[4] Box and Thomas made Doctor in Love (1960) as a pay off for Rank financing the movie.
The film was shot on location in Italy and at Pinewood Studios in London. Some filming took place at La Certosa di Galluso monastery near Florence.[5]
Large cloister in the Galluzzo Certosa where 18 hermitages are located
It is still quite cold in Florence and wet. At least this past Saturday there was a little bit of weak sunshine in between the rainy days as I made my way south of Florence towards Galluzzo. This small town on the outskirts of southern Florence is well-known for its “Certosa” which also gives its name to the “Firenze-Certosa” exit off the A1 road that passes really close by. Just imagine, though, that when this monastery was built in the early 13th century on a hill between two rivers, this was countryside and quite isolated from the city of Florence.
The monastery is open every morning and afternoon for a few hours (except for Mondays) forgroup visits in the company of a lay brother acting as guide. The monastery is still alive as a religious community, even if the original Carthusian order departed in the 1950s. The Cistercianorder has lived in the monastery since then, restoring many areas. The order opened the monastery to visits and accepts donations to help maintain their enclosed monastic life as well as the monastery itself.

TV Production[edit]

The film was originally a teleplay credited to Dale Pitt, a writer who was acting as a "front" for blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Adrian Scott.[1] This teleplay was set in 1946 and concerned nuns helping Jewish children to get to Palestine. It aired in 1956 as an episode of Goodyear Playhouse directed by Robert Mulligan.[2]

The film version was written by Robert Presnell Jnr, who set the story in 1943. Presnell was reportedly a front for Dalton Trumbo. The script was optioned by Albert C. Gannaway in 1958 who could not get finance.[3]
Betty Box became enthusiastic about the movie and wanted to make it. She took it to the Rank Organisation. Box says Rank did not want them to make the movie but allowed her because of the success of the Doctor in the House series. "They said, 'It's religion, it's nuns, it's wartime, who wants to know? Tell you what, make us another Doctor and you can do it!"[4] Box and Thomas made Doctor in Love (1960) as a pay off for Rank financing the movie.
The film was shot on location in Italy and at Pinewood Studios in London. Some filming took place at La Certosa di Galluso monastery near Florence.[5]
 Picture Filmed in Italian Monastery Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 05 June 1960: G5.


The film version was written by Robert Presnell Jnr, who set the story in 1943. Presnell was reportedly a front for Dalton Trumbo. The script was optioned by Albert C. Gannaway in 1958 who could not get finance.[3]
Betty Box became enthusiastic about the movie and wanted to make it. She took it to the Rank Organisation. Box says Rank did not want them to make the movie but allowed her because of the success of the Doctor in the House series. "They said, 'It's religion, it's nuns, it's wartime, who wants to know? Tell you what, make us another Doctor and you can do it!"[4] Box and Thomas made Doctor in Love (1960) as a pay off for Rank financing the movie.
The film was shot on location in Italy and at Pinewood Studios in London. Some filming took place at La Certosa di Galluso monastery near Florence.[5]

Conspiracy of Hearts
Conspiracy of Hearts British film poster.jpg
Original British cinema poster
Directed byRalph Thomas
Produced byBetty E. Box
executive
Earl St. John
Written byRobert Presnell Jr.
Based on"original material" by "Dale Pit" (Adrian Scott)
StarringLilli Palmer
Sylvia Syms
Yvonne Mitchell
Ronald Lewis
Music byAngelo Francesco Lavagnino
CinematographyErnest Steward
Edited byAlfred Roome
Production
company
Distributed byRank Film Distributors(UK)
Paramount Pictures(USA)
Release dates
1960
Running time
113 min
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Selected filmography[edit]




Sisters of Charity  were the unsung heroes of WWII  and saved the lives of many children.
Fausto Nicolini3 months ago
Sisters wear the habit of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Paul of Selly Park Birmingham in this film

Ronald Lewis, Wales' Son, from Port Talbot, Glamorgan, played a Convincingly Good Italian! A very decent and fine Actor. He, too met a tragic death, ending his own life because of a long battle with depression. Sad. God rest his soul.

Partial filmography[edit]



Peter Arne was a very strange and troubled man. He conspired to Blackmail a Novelist and was charged with the 

Reception[edit]

The film was a financial success being the 5th most popular film at the British box office in 1960.[4] (Doctor in Love was even more popular.)

US rights were bought by Barney Balaban of Paramount. Thomas says Balaban paid the largest amount Rank had received for a picture until then.[6]


jslasher1 
jslasher11 year ago
A terribly underrated film. A superb cast, excellent screenplay and direction. Memorable music score by Angelo Francesco Lavignino [the main title is particularly touching].

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Saturday, September 24, 2016

Above Us the Waves





Above Us the Waves (film).jpg
Original UK poster
Directed byRalph Thomas
Produced byWilliam MacQuitty
executive
Earl St John
Screenplay byRobin Estridge
Based onAbove Us the Waves
by C. E. T. Warren
& James Benson
StarringJohn Mills
John Gregson
Donald Sinden
Music byArthur Benjamin
CinematographyErnest Steward
Edited byGerald Thomas
Production
company
London Independent Producers
Distributed byGFD (UK)
Republic Films (US)
Release dates
  • 29 March 1955 (UK)

April 1957 (US)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Plot[edit]

The Royal Navy is concerned about constant attacks on convoys by Germansubmarines and having to keep "half the fleet" watching for the German battleship Tirpitz. The Tirpitz is 60 miles from the sea inside a Norwegian fjord and attempts by the Royal Air Force to sink her have failed. Commander Fraser (Mills) is determined to prove that an attack by human torpedoes is practical, despite scepticism from the higher echelons that such an operation would be feasible.
Fraser assembles and trains a force of British commando frogmen officers and ratings to use the Mk I Human Torpedo manned torpedoes (Chariots) at their Scottish base. After receiving a refusal to allow the operation to go ahead from an admiral, the team use dummy mines to attack the admiral's own ship using the Chariots.
An attack is authorised on the Tirpitz with the initial operation using the Chariots. The attack fails and the crew are forced to abandon ship and land in Norway. They walk to neutral Sweden from where they are returned to Scotland.
For the next operation the crews are trained to use three small X-Craft submarines: X1, X2 and X3. They are initially towed by conventional submarines and are then left to penetrate the area where the Tirpitz is anchored.They manage to approach the ship under their own power to lay their "side-cargoes", each containing 2 tons of amatol, under the ship's hull undetected. Two crews then scuttle the submarines and are picked up by the crew of Tirpitz, to be taken away as prisoners of war. The third (X2) is too badly damaged to re-surface and the crew decide to stay on board to prevent "giving the game away".
The mines explode as planned, badly damaging the Tirpitz. Meanwhile, X2's side cargoes have flooded. The flooding causes them to spontaneously explode, destroying X2 and killing her crew.

Production notes[edit]

The screenplay was based on the book Above Us the Waves by C. E. T. Warren and James Benson, which had been published in 1953.[1] [2]
Director Ralph Thomas says the film was made because producer William MacQuitty "was very involved with the Navy and he loved submarines."[3] MacQuitty had a production company in partnership with Sydney Box called London Independent Producers, which tended to use the same core creative personnel.[4] They purchased film rights in 1952, before the book had been published. [5]
The book became a best seller, selling over 350,000 copies[6] and MacQuitty obtained finance from the Rank Organisationunder Earl St. John. The British admiralty provided full co-operation.[7] Thomas was given the job of directing after his tremendous success with Doctor in the House. Several of the cast from that film would appear in Above Us the Waves.[8]
Shooting began on 20 September 1954 in Guernsey. Commander Donald Cameron, who commanded X-6 as a lieutenant and won the Victoria Cross during the operation, was an adviser to the film. [9][10]

MacQuitty was an experienced diver, having spent over 500 hours under water. He personally supervised many of the underwater sequences.[11]
Events in the film had minor differences, for example, the boat Arthur that carried the Chariot human torpedoes was namedIngebord in the film, and the X-class submarines used in Operation Source in 1943 were numbered X-5, X-6 and X-7, and X-5 was the craft that was lost.
The score was by Arthur Benjamin and performed under the direction of Muir Mathieson.
John Gregson played an Australian.[12] "Australians are husky, types," said producer McQuitty. "Gregson has made his part of Alec Duffy, midget submarine commander, good and husky."[13]
"I am proud to be playing the part of an Australian," said Gregson. "During the war, when I was in the Royal Navy, I met many Australian fighting men. They were good fellows."[13]
Donald Sinden's character was based on the true-life exploits of Sub-Lieutenant Robert Aitken, who died a few weeks after Sinden.[14] In his first autobiography, A Touch of the Memoirs, Sinden said "I had to re-enact a deed originally performed by Commander Donald Cameron. While his X Craft was being towed across the North Sea, the cable picked up a floating mine which then moved along the cable and made straight for his midget. Cameron rushed forward and, lowering himself over the prow of his craft, managed gingerly to push the mine clear with his feet. Donald was our advisor on the film and told me modestly, "I couldn't think of anything else to do." He was awarded the VC. I wasn't because we used a dummy. But Donald could swim!"[15]
The cast also included Anthony Wager, who had played a young Pip in Great Expectations]] (1946). John Mills, who played the older Pip, appeared opposite him.

Main cast[edit]


Above Us the Waves is a 1955 British war film directed by Ralph Thomas, about human torpedo and midget submarine attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz. It is based on two true-life attacks on the Tirpitz by British commando frogmen, first using Chariot manned torpedoes in Operation Title in 1942, and then X-Craft midget submarines in Operation Source in 1943. Some of the original equipment was used in the film.



Ralph Philip Thomas MC (10 August 1915 – 17 March 2001) was an English film director, born in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire. He is perhaps best known for directing the Doctor series of films.

Post War Career[edit]

Biography[edit]

Early Career[edit]

Born in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, Thomas studied law at Middlesex University College. He entered the film business as aclapper boy at Shepperton Studios in 1932 during his summer vacation while at college. Following graduation, instead of becoming a lawyer he decided to enter the film industry, and became an apprentice at Shepperton Studios, working as a clapper boy and then in the editing room, the sound department and art department. From 1932-34 Thomas worked predominantly on "quota quickies". He discovered he loved editing the most and worked predominantly as an editor for the next few years, including a stint working alongside David Lean. When his employer, Premiere Stafford, went broke he worked for a while as a journalist at the Bristol Evening Post for over a year. He returned to editing before joining the army in 1939.[1]
Thomas left the army in 1945 and re-entered the industry, although he could only get work as an assistant editor. He assisted editing Odd Man Out then began making film trailers for the Rank Organisation. He worked his way up to becoming head of Rank's trailer department as well as writing films. Thomas later said making trailers was "enormously useful" because he "learned a lot of the technique of how the varying directors whose pictures I had worked on operated. Also, it teachers one a great deal of discipline about brevity in story telling."[3]




Filmography[edit]

53-Aitken.jpg

Sub-Lieutenant Robert Aitken: Diver and navigator who narrowly escaped death in midget submarine and helped wreck the mighty Tirpitz

Aitken made an escape within a hair's breadth of death from 120ft under water where he was almost trapped with two comrades
Robert Aitken was one of the handful of men who on 22 September 1943 with midget submarines disabled the German battleship Tirpitz, mightiest vessel of the Nazi Reich. Aitken also made an escape within a hair's breadth of death from 120ft under water where he was almost trapped with two comrades who had already suffocated after the craft sank following the attack. The tiny 40ft submarine, too small for a man to stand up in, penetrated multiple layers of defences to get at the monster in her lair, a hideaway decreed by Hitler himself, in the narrow finger of Ka Fjord in occupied Norway, 60 miles inland from the coast.

Tirpitz had lurked for two years, catastrophically disrupting supply convoys to Russia. At 40,000 tons she was one of the most powerful battleships afloat. A desperate attempt with a fishing-smack to smuggle in attackers, who would have sat astride their warhead-loaded craft, had failed, these "chariots" having tumbled adrift and vanished at sea.
But this time the raiders overcame all, crouched amid their instruments, observing through periscopes slim as fountain pens. Two of the three "X-craft" placed their explosive charges and blasted her six feet out of the water at her stern. X-5 was lost, but the four two-ton saddle-charges carried by X-6 and X-7 exploded, stopping her setting sail again: the following year the RAF caught her under tow during repairs and finished her off.
Twenty-year-old Sub-Lieutenant Aitken was X-7's diver and navigator in a crew of four commanded by Lieutenant Godfrey Place. They had been towed 1,000 miles, then under their own diesel and electric power they traversed a minefield and scrambled through layers of entangling steel mesh anti-submarine nets to place the charges under the shadow of the great ship. There was one hour to get away.
But X-7 was forced to expend air-creating buoyancy to help extricate herself from the nets. She managed to slide over the nets' top at 7.40am, with minutes to go until the expected blast. As she surfaced machine-gun bullets pinged off her casing: glimpsing what they first thought was a porpoise, the Germans were alerted and she had to dive again. But damaged by the nets she was no longer manoeuvrable and impossible to keep submerged. She got stuck in the mesh again, then at 8.12am the blast blew her free, and she resurfaced.
Place thought he would be shot when, to safeguard his crew, he emerged from X-7's hatch. But the firing ceased, and the others would have followed him had X-7 not begun to founder. Place stepped on to a gunnery practice target afloat near by. His men, having shut the hatch to avert an inrush of water, were carried yet again to the bottom of the fjord.
They donned escape apparatus and started to flood the craft to release the hatches, but vents were stuck and she filled too slowly; fumes released from fused circuits poisoned what air was left and the cramped space impeded movement. After two and a half hours, Aitken felt his comrades, Lieutenant Bill Whittam and ship's engineer Bill Whitley, slump down and die.
During his own last supreme effort to get the hatch open, he blacked out, having wrenched the tops from his only remaining two small steel oxygen canisters, and finding that at that pressure they yielded no more than one breath each: he had no air but what was in his lungs.
Yet his fumbling must have succeeded: bubbles streamed past as he regained his senses, and soon he joined his skipper and the crew of X-6 as a prisoner on board the badly damaged Tirpitz. The enemy, full of admiration despite their fury, gave them hot drinks and Schnaps.
The attack, which Winston Churchill praised as "audacious and heroic", was described in an official report as one that "will surely go down in history as one of the most courageous acts of all time." It would be immortalised on film in Above Us The Waves (1955), starring John Mills and with Donald Sinden playing Aitken.
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Friday, September 23, 2016

Lakota Woman (1994)







Mary Crow Dog, daughter of a desperately poor Indian family in South Dakota, is swept up in the protests of the 1960s and becomes sensitized to the injustices that society inflicts on her people. She aids the Lakota in their struggle for their rights: a struggle that culminates in an armed standoff with US government forces at the site of an 1890 massacre


She dreamed of justice and fought for it in a place called Wounded Knee.
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