Laura, the film

Thank you. OP. Kepp watching. Love ya!!!

Oh, Deb, you are no match for Gene Tierney.

It's a known fact that Laura surrounded herself with gays and lezzies. What kind of man is named "Shelby"? I mean, really.

Shelby? Why? Why? I want to hit someone!!!

Tierney had the prettiest overbite.

Love Clifton Webb.

[quote]Tierney had the prettiest overbite.

Better that than trout lips, botox, fake tits, and Asian eyes.

The perfect murder mystery.

A "Laura" remake would be a great vehicle for me. I'm about the same age as Tierney in this. I should call my agent.

My grandfather was the doppelganger for a young Vincent Price.

Laura was common street trash.

Wonderful film. I had a blast doing it.

"Farley kisses well, but you kiss better."

Lee Radziwill to Robert Stack

That should be "Yes", not "Tes".

R23, Yish! It should stay forgotten.

Was Webb out in Hollywood? What's known about his private life?

They smoked a lot in that film.

All movies back then show people smoking. I always found it funny in ILL that in often showed them smoking but never drinking alcohol. What was up with that?

The idea that Clifton Webb would be lusting after Tierneys pussy ( perhaps her wardrobe) makes the film laughable.

[quote] I always found it funny in ILL that in often showed them smoking but never drinking alcohol. What was up with that?

This ain't ginger ale

Without looking it up, I thought Webb was out and lived with his mother.

I honestly don't think the Lydecker character was interested in her pussy. I think she was an idealized dress up doll to him. He wanted to possess her but not physically. Remember when he's telling the detective about how he introduced her to all the right people, advised her on her wardrobe and hair, etc?? He had a sense of "ownership" over her since he created her.

Forgot to add that Waldo Lydecker came across as asexual.

I don't think this film would have worked without Clifton Webb. He stole the movie and it's his character that I mostly remember about the film (Tierney was rather forgettable).

R22 is on the right track. Gay male characters who act as a sort of Pygmalion/Svengali mentor to young women appear in several films from this period. The central relationship in The Red Shoes is not between Vicky and her annoying husband who wants her to abandon her career as a ballerina-- it's the stormy relationship between Vicky and Boris Lermontov, the icy, controlling Diaghilev-like impresario played so magnificently by Anton Walbrook. He appears as the film's villain-- he's urbane and beautifully dressed and a confirmed bachelor, always a bad sign in 1940s cinema-- yet unlike her spouse he wants what is best for her: to help her become a great dancer.

Here's a portrait by the great George Bellows of a young Clifton Webb.

[R25] You are right. It can also be said of Addison De Witt in All About Eve too. It's gay male character code of the period. effeminate men who want to posses a talented or beautiful woman as an object of admiration not lust.

I also think 'Laura' is a very overrated movie and cannot understand what is so special about it. Clifton Webb was a hammy actor, and Gene Tierney a lousy wooden actress....so sorry fellow gays I don't get it!!

OUTSTANDING classic theme song!

One of my favorite films ever. I don't understand how anyone would not appreciate it, but then again, I hated WICKED and Les Miserables on Broadway, so what do I know?

Laura is kitsch of course, but some of us love kitsch.

(From the Oxford English Dictionary: "Art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way:")

And then there was the other remake of the film, but this time with better stunt work.

Young Clifton Webb was a tango partner of Rudy Valentinos. He kept one of Valentino's matador suits till his dying day. He also had a big crush on Ty Power. When my friend was going thru his dressing room at 20th at the bottom of the closet he found a framed photo of just Powers eyes. And yes Maybelle knew all about her Cliffie's "special friends".

[R15] I had SO forgotten that my beloved Mrs. Gabel was in that. I watched it but don't remember it ever being aired again. I remember (even as a wee tot) how wooden Lee was.

Laura is great film noir. But the film belongs to Webb. He symbolizes the rich, gay man with no one of his own so he steals or destroys others out of a sense of isolation which he equates as a class status. Laura is not an interesting person. She is just an object of desire. Webb's character believes in objects- since he can possess no lover or husband. He place in the world is as shallow as Laura's. It is only the murder that reveals all of the meanness that bigotry can produce in another human being.

Who thinks Laura and Dana Andrews will or will not stay together at the end?

Dame Judith Anderson is very subtle in this film, as she also is 14 years later in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", even though her Big Mama is far gentler than her Anne Treadwell. She is also very glamorous, one of the few times (outside of 1933's "Blood Money") where she gets to look attractive. She enjoyed working with Vincent Price on this film, and they would have fits of laughter which got to the point that Otto Preminger kicked them off the set until they calmed down.

The ugliness of the décor in Laura's apartment is distracting. And the actress playing the maid overdid it. Other than that, I love the movie thoroughly.