Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks, 1953
His Kind of Woman, John Farrow, 1951
With Robert Mitchum in Macao, Josef von Sternberg, 1952
Joe was really something. He told me, "We both know this is a piece of shit and we're saddled with Jane Russell. You and I know she has as much talent as this cigarette case." I replied, "Mr. von Sternberg, Miss Russel survives, so she must have something. Lots of ladies have big tits." —Robert Mitchum, 1973, interview with Dick Lochte for the Los Angeles Free Press.
That’s a great quote. I wish the average contemporary “piece of shit” was half as effortlessly entertaining as MACAO.
She had something alright. Her onscreen friendship with Marilyn in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES is just so much fun to watch.
I love parts of MACAO. The first ten or so minutes on the boat are very Sternberg, as is the quiet tragedy of the gangster who rules the island but can’t sail past its 3-mile limit – and then tries, suicidally, anyway. There are scenes in the casino that I like better than their counterparts in THE SHANGHAI GESTURE. I don’t think that Russell and von Sternberg really mesh, though; she’s much more of a Hawksian type. And, a little surprisingly, she did very good work for Ray in his own film, HOT BLOOD.
Mitchum was just one of a frickin’ kind.