Tallulah is unforgettable and her words incorruptible, even by Lillian.

Wasn't Bankhead also supposed to have said, "I can say f**k: I'm a lady"? I've always loved that one -true or not.

Sounds very Tallullah-ish

And another Tallulah issuing a warning to Joan Crawford: "I f**ked your husband and if you don't watch out, I'll f**k you too!"

@@dontbefatuousjeffrey2494 Bankhead once did a play with Montgomery Clift. During that time, a reporter asked her if the rumors about Clift (that he was gay) were true. Her reply: "Gee, I dunno. He never tried to suck MY d***!"

I’ll second that!

Agreed!!

What a nice compliment.

They should be a required class for a film studies course.

omg I literally became obsessed and learned everything about golden age hollywood from this channel before I even registered what I was watching

Your comment makes me want to see this Channel cover some ground on Nora Ephron.

@@eamonndeane587 read her book " I remember nothing"... wonderful humor and lots of insight into life as a writer in Nyc

@@cafeAmericano I'll get that through my Amazon Kindle account.

@@eamonndeane587 the audiobook is also great. Lots of candor. I listen to it during covid LOL

I’m going to check it out but first I’ll see if I can get an old fashioned hard copy through my local independent book store and then my library.

I agree with you. Majority of movies about real stories or biopics specify that there can be parts based on fictional events or characters. And you're also right about stars and their 'come up' stories. For instance, I read that Clint Eastwood real story isn't the one he told about being a struggling kid from the depression era, etc., in order to match his all American & cow boy film characters. I wonder if they realize that everything will come to light one day lol.

She told lies about herself her whole life. It was part of how writers in that era tended to create larger than life public personalities. They were generally protected from the consequences of their lying by the power of the entertainment industry and the mainstream media. They were also often protected by the threat of legal action for libel. But by the time Julia was made, that protection system was breaking down. Celebrities couldn't get away with what they used to get away with.

rousseau's confessions are a testament to this

Oh so in writing class, they encourage you to lie - to lie about real world events and people?? Ok - nice. nothing gets people more interested and makes more money than written mendacity. Guess that is the American Way these days.

@@josephinekassongo4368 So you are ok with lies about real events and real people? How the heck do you formulate an accurate and true opinion so that you can calculate truth about an event or person? You say they..... "specify that there can be parts based on fictional even or characters." Ok, then what is the point of viewing the movie -- to go see an untruth so that the movie can make money off your nonchalance about truth? Instead of saying "based on" the qualifying statement should be " hey fools -we made some of this up just to get you interested and to take your money. ENJOY!" Sounds like the FOX network to me and how 65% of America appears to be ok with Orange Stalin overthrowing our government - all rendering truth absurd in modern times.

Agree about Jane Fonda not disappearing into the role. I find that's the case with most of her work as an actress. I believe they used to refer to these types of actors as "personality actors" who tend to present themselves similarly from one acting role to another. Cary Grant is another example.

@@1trschaefer78 Agree except, somewhat, in her comedy roles like "9 to 5" - just an insecure housewife making her way, but finding it. I felt I was watching Judy, not Jane, in that one

Absolutely agree and it's about time someone else said it. On another note with Sarandon, I felt the exact same way with her "portrayal" of Bette Davis in the Feud series. Like, when and where did she become Bette instead of playing herself? So disappointed 😞

@@1trschaefer78 And famously, Sean Connery!

On the other hand, I hate the trend nowadays of having to make the actor/actress look like the actual person they’re portraying through prosthetics. The prosthetics always look laughably fake and they don’t move, so the actors can’t express any emotion with their faces. Such nuances of expression are available through film and why anyone would want to forego that is beyond me.

same ! i didn’t know when the ‘controversy’ was going to come in but when she said that i audibly gasped

lmao sameeeee

Same! I actually gasped out loud

me too, I gasped. I don't know how I missed the controversy because I was fascinated with Hellman and I was very young, it would have been in the papers.

I remember finding out about this probably 25 or so yrs ago & being shocked & in disbelief. So back then I read what I could find about it. I thought surely she didn't do this! But as I read more & more, I realized, yup - I guess she did. It's very sad in It's way. It took me quite sometime before I could enjoy the movie once again. It's a really good movie. So now I do enjoy the film, but I know longer trust Lilian Hellman's "truths". A shame, really.

I think this must have something to do with it. I think there’s also some real possibility of people “colonizing” stories they hear - where you relate to it or to the person telling it so well that you forget where the story ends as separate from yourself. There’s a This American Life cartoon animated by Bob Staake where a guy is telling how he and his wife were at dinner with friends and he starts telling a story of when he waved at Jackie Kennedy and his wife tells him, you weren’t there. She told him after it happened and he basically adopted the story as his own. This happened to me and my husband. One time he told a friend right in front of me that he knew someone whose mom decorated Christmas trees professionally and one of her clients was a NBA player in Arizona. Only it was my friend’s mom. It’s truly bizarre! How did he start to believe this was his experience? I think your explanation makes utter sense, and with actual fascists like Cohn and McCarthy running congress at the time Hellman was facing blacklisting, there’s an element of serious unsafety and trauma around the situation. The more important truth might not be the actual facts but the larger moral issue, that fascism is is a true danger and, like she says in the video, too many of us shrug at it. Hellman, for all her faults, was correct in that assertion.

Spot on, IMO.

Why don’t you kids go find something else to criticize like your own lack of contributing anything of value to the world. How about making a film beyond comic books? Go to Palestine see for yourself what is happening to Palestinians. Go to Viet Nam and find out what happened there. You might learn something. As for Joseph McCarthy do some research into the lives his lies ruined as America’s premier communist with hunter. It’s easy to put this crap up for public consumption about people long dead and can’t answer this kind of shite. Hey why don’t you this kind of deep dive into Trump Maga and the current state of the GOP party.

@@barbiedesoto7054 Thanks for the phrase "colonizing stories they hear." BION, my mother does this to me all the time. I had no idea what to make of it. It is bizarre. But when someone is in a position to make $$$$$$$millions from it, and it involves Stolen Valor, it is wrong, even if it is unconscious.

@@marlenestewart7442totally! I didn’t mean to say it wasn’t wrong. More like trying to understand it. And I think “her” version of the story is right in what it was trying to do to warn about fascism. I find that our brains do funny things, and it’s all about self preservation, and a lot of what we rationalize is exactly because it benefits us - obviously- in some way, often in terms of power or material gain.

Undersign this wish! That would be amazing and BKR is just the person to do it, should she choose.

so true!

QQ Q

Movies had indeed become action-oriented and male-centered during that time, and these female-driven roles emerged and made us hopeful….briefly.

Yesssss

Thank you!!

There were other Austrian resistances-- 1936 to 39, some Austrians joined Ernst Thaelmann Batallion of Intl Brigades for Spanish Republic in Spanish Civil War. There was a 1945 little known battle between Austrian resistance, US army, etc. vs. Nazi SS units who wanted to massacre Allied VIP pows and Austrian resistors. All these have websites.

It's not Austria. It's Austria-Hungary. The eugenicists were a minority and eager to join the nazis and kill or enslave the Slavs. Today, Austrian neo-nauts are the wealthiest and biggest supporters of Holocaust denial. I take the word of the Resistance over LH. Long li/o/ve fake news. Am I writing poorly?

I completely agree!!

Me too !

Saw it when it first came out. Loved it!

The academy award was invented by Jews in the 20's and I forgot what a nut VR was. In the 30's, my dad loved Greta Garbo when he was young. I loved VR. (Blowup) So these pink ladies get the last laugh?

I'm with you. Whether LIllian Hellman lied about this being autobiographical or not doesn't matter to me. All artists are crazy but, they do bring visions of our own inner worlds which we wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm still grateful for "Julia"

Streep utterly shines in her one scene, creating a rich portrait of a snobbish socialite with a few lines of dialogue. The way she congratulates Lillian for being "so slim" is a wonderful combination of admiration and envy.

My favourite behind the scenes story of this movie is that Jane and Meryl did their first scene together and afterward Jane said something to the effect of “that was great, but it would be even better if you stepped forward into your light - because then you might be in the movie.” Lol.

It gets better, then, in Jane’s acceptance speech she said that in all her decades of acting only one person asked her how does she do it, and guess who that person was? Meryl, of course! And then she joked that all of Meryl’s success is because of her, lol.

@@EvaSofie I know exactly which moment you’re referring to - it was Jane’s acceptance speech for an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, and Meryl had introduced her. It was extremely wholesome, but also a cool insight into these huge names as artists who just love to sit and chat and explore creatively together like theatre geeks.

I feel that way too! This was my favorite movie in my teens, and made an indelible impression on me about the profound courage of fighting for principles that women are capable of which nothing else showed me then. I idolized Fonda (growing up in left-leaning L.A. with a single, working Mom z’l’), and was captivated by Redgrave (who was my favorite actress in the world after I saw & loved “Camelot” at 8 yrs old)! I read Pentimento after seeing the movie and loved the story too. For me, seeing it as fiction takes nothing away from how powerful, tragic, beautiful, and (for me), inspiring a piece of work it is!

@@boointhelotus5332 I loved it too, also during my teen years - loved the depiction of the writer's life, the political activism, and the relationships

That's nice, but the story and the movie insulted real people, both the victims of the Holocaust and Muriel Gardiner. It's using a real tragedy to build yourself a pedestal. The movie is perhaps one more lovely film that is secretly creepy, and Hellmann is the one to blame here. All the people you mentioned worked hard on this and it's a pity that their efforts were obscured by this controversy.

It was one of my favorite movies, ever.

To me it is a perfect period piece, I knew nothing of all the bru ha around it until now... Really, for me, it's a story that gets a point across about friendship, loyalty, courage and women, written by a woman which at that time(1970's) was very important to women. If it is true... Then what courage to publish!! 😒😏

I liked Turning Point, but had a hard time noticing that Anne Bancroft didn't dance altho I know she is not a dancer, but it cast a damper on the film in my opinion.

Yeah you ARE old 😂

Agree with all you say

I first read Julia, excerpted from "Pentimento," in Esquire Magazine in 1975. I thought it was one of the most powerful stories I had ever read. I couldn't wait to read "Pentimento" when it came out awhile later. I liked the movie, but thought Jane and Vanessa were about 12 years too old for the parts. I also had a hard time putting aside their smug, real-life political activism and accepting them as the characters. But, both did a competent job and the performances have held up. At the time the movie came out, I thought it was missing something. It had nowhere near the power that Hellman's writing had. I still think Hellman's memoirs, true or not, are some of the best I have ever read. I also agree that "The Turning Point" was a better movie.

I, too, was a regular Dick Cavett watcher, going back to That Was The Week That Was. Just because someone watched the program that was replaced by Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and every Gemini launch doesn’t make me old, it merely means that I had allergies and watched TV instead of going outside.

I second this, yes please.

Yeah! To be honest, even if they aren't factual, I find her books really fun to read. She is, after all, a great writer above all else!!

@@bkrewind I think you left your best line about Lilian to the comments of the video that seems to seek to cancel her. Probably a bit late "to be honest".

@@disconouvo3037 what was the best line? Also, Lillian is a writer. Great writers have great imaginations. Writers are also known for thier embellishments. Combine those 2 elements and...

This description sounds like consequences of dissociation and derealization, if it's not able to be controlled. Those are almost always symptoms that correlate with someone on the Dissociative spectrum. I have no idea why Lillian lied about the story that takes place in "Julia." The possibilities seem endless; money/knowing this lie could sell, a desire for fame, a desire to be thought of better than she thought of herself, narcissism, etc. If she truly had an inability to remember events and if she actually struggled with (and that's a big "IF") the truly crippling effects of Complex Trauma, that are derealization and dissociation, and maybe lying to herself to the point where even she believed the lies she was telling, and internalized them as part of her narrative, then I can see how that might lead her on a trajectory that ends with Julia, and inserting herself into another's narrative. It's also fascinating how she almost got away with it.

@@disconouvo3037 it’s incredibly ironic that the people that complain about cancel culture are unable to understand when someone is just being criticized and their actions reviewed. no one is trying to “cancel” Lilian

When I think of Jane Fonda films, I think of 'The China Syndrome' rather than any of those. I honestly wish she had won her Second Academy Award for that instead of 'Coming Home'.

I hated Klute, and I frankly didn't, and still don't understand how she won for that film. The scenes where she is talking to the psychologist or therapist are the most annoying of all; bitch, bitch, bitch, hand gestures galore, crappy method acting. I think she would've done better if she literally chewed up the set, snarling and drooling. Now Monster In-Law; dreadful film, but her acting in it was perfect and hilarious. I love Julia, but not because of Jane Fonda.

Wish I can share your enthusiasm for the film

And don’t forget 9-to-5 which was hugely popular, a real departure for her, and was the best female-centric comedy of hers till Grace & Frankie.

China Syndrome

Loved Hud, gorgeous cinematography

A Julie Christie Oscar video would be super interesting - especially in the context of the Academy obsession with British cinema in the mid-60's and why that happened

I love Patricia Neal - an underrated film with her in her later years is an Altman film called "Cookie's Fortune." Great cast and setting, but who would expect anything else from Altman? I watched an interview with Patricia Neal one time and she kept talking about all the roles she was offered and how she had to turn them all down because that poor woman was literally pregnant all the time (I think she said had been pregnant 13 times total, and Loretta Lynn 9 times in an NPR interview, counting miscarriages that they shared about), a symptom I believe of her extremely controlling and abusive husband, Roald Dahl.

"Being happy should be the easiest thing in the world...I wonder why it isn't?" My favorite line

I liked her mayonnaise, too!

Don't feel bad. When I first saw the film, I had no idea of the controversy surrounding it. Even after I found out, I still love the film; Fred Zinnemann knows how to make a great movie.

Watch the movie, it's far more interesting than the controversy around the writing of the book. Hellman was and still is, a Goddess to American literature.

WHEN THIS FILM CAME OUT I KNEW nothing about it, I just loved it, I went with my mother to see a horror dirge, she wanted to see this instead; she fell asleep and I was fascinated!

@@maureenleigh4724 while I was enjoying the film when I first watched it, I think the real clinch for me was when Maximilian Schell walked onto the screen. His mysterious character, and yet his gentleness was just so impressive. Heck, he would convince me to purchase him a roll with an egg, and a glass of milk. Jason Robards yelling at Jane was a highlight for me as well (Jane annoys me).

SHAME on jou!!! L0L

I like you father’s concern

Oh my god, Cherry Jones would be excellent in that part.

Cherry Jones ALMOST managed to make Moon for the Misbegotten work - something ONLY Colleen Dewhurst ever managed to accomplish. I saw Cherry as Hannah in Night of the Iguana and she was ethereal.

@@poetcomic1 Sorry, you saw Cherry or Colleen as Hannah? It is just occurring to me that I could easily get them confused in my head.

@@martinsorenson1055 Cherry did both Colleen as Hannah? I'm trying to imagine!

@@poetcomic1 As you have probably figured out, I don't know Night of the Iguana very well!

Yes I wondered that too. But as I recall that was added in the movie (as most movies alter stories from fiction & nonfiction to make them work on the screen). I don’t think all those helpers appeared in the Julia story as Hellman wrote it in Pentimento.

Recently saw the movie "A Call to Spy" which starred Sarah Megan Thomas as Virginia Hall. It was quite fascinating telling the story of three women involved in the underground in France during WWII.

@@devonrains6580 womens heads were shaved if they mingled w germans, spy or not. repression. my cousins didnt make it & died sabotaging germans

I agree completely, she simply heard this story however she did and reenigeered it into a fictionalized version of her life. Honestly watching the film of Julia, I never assumed it was accurate to reality, but it was an interesting story.

I think this is an excellent point. Yes, lots of writers of literary nonfiction have, cough, honesty issues. But given that Holocaust denialism is such a scourge, I think there is an additional burden not to play with the truth like Hellman did.

You're so lucky that you still have a professor that you can contact and I think it's a brilliant idea good luck

Please get back to us with your professor's assessment of this movie and book. And don't be too quick to accept the "story behind Julia" on face value based on this video alone. :)

GA are you aware that her mother who was actually the woman who held the wealth in her family was called Julia while her father was in essence a used car salesman. I'm sure it was her mother that provided her the lifestyle that enabled her to be the narcissist that she became, thus enabling her to embrace a life of lies and be applauded for it and paid in kind

@@ladybug5859 No, I was not aware. Thank you for the reply and the insight!

Yes! I was going to compare this to Sleepers and the James Frey/Oprah situation but basically ran out of time.

@@bkrewind Sure! I really like Sleepers, when I was young I had a massive crush on Jason Patrick and Brad Pitt. They were sexy as hell in that film... Anyway. It's a lie? Yes, but it entertain us. Julia is a amazing character, but the film is a little weird. Jason Robards shoudn't have won the academy award. He was completely forgetable!

@@victorrodrigueesoficialI forgot it too.Forgettable indeed.

I wonder if Lillian Hellman would be a Zionist today?

Agree. Maybe even better than academia's ongoing lowering of standards....

Yes it retains its power in multiple viewings even after many years!

Here here! Fully agree!

Yes, Redgrave is positively incandescent as Julia. Years later I saw Redgrave on stage in a relatively small theatre in London and she was equally compelling. I realised then that the incandescence was not necessarily down to the lighting. She could generate that all on her own.

@@joshdrayton1230 She's wonderful. Even in "Letters to Juliet", sort of a teen film, she was incredible. Her chemistry with Amanda was superb, and the way she was holding her in one scene, while doing curls in Amanda hair with her fingers, was so touching. Her Isadora Duncan performance is also one I adore. You're so lucky, Josh! See the greatest actress alive on stage, and in London? MY DREAM!

I agree. I was introduced to Vanessa in the film Mary, Queen of Scots and I was hooked. I will watch anything she is in. However, the more I read about her, I came to see that politically she and I were on opposite sides. However, that didn't stop me from loving her as an actress. So now when someone says "I hate so and so (singer/actor, etc) because he's a liberal or she's a conservative", I just shrug and say "I have no problem separating politics or beliefs from talent, heck, I was and am a fan of Vanessa Redgrave". :)

@@victorrodrigueesoficial She is the only reason I watched Letters to Juliet with my grandson who had a little boy crush on Amanda Seyfried. I liked Isadora too but I really loved Mary, Queen of Scots and Playing for Time as far as Vanessa's films go.

OK ..thoughtful theories. I mean that genuinely, and so not to be dismissively snarky, if she was a high level communist, she was a deceiver at her core.

Lillian Hellman was a Stalinist apologist who wrote the script for "The North Star," a vile piece of pro-Soviet propaganda that depicts the happy life on a Ukrainian collective farm at a time when the real Ukraine was the object of Stalin's genocidal Terror Famine. Running cover for Stalin's crimes is no different to being a Holocaust denier.

Exactly

People like her in the entertainment industry constantly either take stories other people have told them and make those stories about themselves. Or they take something from their own life and put a layer of exaggeration around it. Often they tell a story for so long, they come to believe it themselves. Especially decades after when they get older. "Julia" is also far from the only instance where she told stories about herself that were not strictly true. Its not good or bad. Its just how these people were.

@@Jim-Tuner Personally, I cannot find any good in this level of deception. A lie is a lie.

Well said. “Julia” sets the standard for the Bechdel test!

Agreed!!

Yes absolutely! I was 13 when I saw and loved both films! That scene you mention in the German pub made such an impression I think I can still quote from it. I think the word for Redgrave there would be numinous.

@@boointhelotus5332 That's a good word for her.

@@boointhelotus5332 When one is 13 one tends to be gullible.

One shouldn't find lies (especially self serving ones) moving.

@@steve3131 And yet

Maybe one answer is that the Julia story pattern leaked into Hellman’s memory unconsciously, (like George Harrison famously did with “My Sweet Lord” years after the popularity of “He’s So Fine”), conflating what she heard from her lawyer 20 years before Pentimento with real actions and people she knew 20 years before that. Her childhood friend whose family were terrible people, and who died abroad during the 1930s after having a baby who was given up for adoption may have been a real person in Hellman’s life. Those details weren’t paralleled in the real life story of the woman whose code name was “Mary.” Perhaps the real friend was an anti-fascist in Spain (where many Americans went to help fight Franco during the Civil War) or was beaten up by Brownshirts in England (where plenty of Americans hung out before the Blitz) but Hellman may have conflated that story consciously or unconsciously with the one her lawyer had told her after the war but years before she wrote her 2nd memoir in 1973. I realize if true this doesn’t absolve her of amplifying her own role in the story as having smuggled money in to help Jews trapped in Nazi Germany, but it’s something to consider. And she may have physically brought some garment abroad with money sewn in to give to others doing underground anti fascist work in France before the war. (Sewing money and jewelry into clothes was also how some fleeing Jews smuggled money out with them when they couldn’t take anything they owned or even a suitcase). Maybe Hellman embellished details or changed things around for dramatic effect but subconsciously conflated other details. I think it’s entirely possible.

I like that your personal feelings about its leads didn’t interfere with your appreciation of the movie. Such nuance is missing from discourse in today’s world.

I think she may have unconsciously been finding her way to the treatment that would have come closer to the truth she wanted to show than the other venues she could use.