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Post by Buppster on May 8, 2018 15:31:06 GMT -5
I've Just Watched They Made Me A Criminal (1939) with John Garfield and The Dead End Kids. It included the seventh of Ra Hould's sixteen movie appearances. It's amazing how quickly things change in the movie business. In 1936 violin prodigy Ra Hould came from his native New Zealand and was immediately snapped up by the movie industry. They saw him as the new Freddie Bartholomew, except to be frank he was far better looking that Freddie ever was. Ra made one movie in 1936 and then clocked up five in 1937, including sharing the billing with Gene Autry in one movie and with Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney in another. By the time of his fifth and final film of 1937 Ra had a new name too, Ronald Sinclair and then? Something must have happened but I have no idea what. Perhaps he was he seriously ill? He certainly hadn't lost his looks, but whatever the reason he made only one movie in 1938. From being a fast rising young star, in virtually no time he seemed to be struggling for small roles in B movies. For a boy who'd been the star of this third movie and whose star had clearly been in the ascendancy in 1937 by 1938 that star had inexplicably waned. Four small movies roles in 1939, four more in 1940, then only one each in 1941 and 1942. His appearance in Desperate Journey (1942) was his final role as an actor at just 18 years of age and only five years after he'd burst onto the movie scene as the 'next big thing.' It's a real pity, as Ra was not only astonishingly good looking and talented but he was a pretty likeable sort of lad too. Anyway back to They Made Me Criminal (1939) only two years after Ra was the star of a movie, and had shared top billing in two others, he was reduced to an uncredited cameo appearance in a Dead End Kids movie. Ra (Ronald) played a well spoken posh kid (what else) who the Dead End Kids took advantage of, conning him into playing strip poker with them, so that they could fleece him of the cine camera that he had. Ra was still exactly the same pleasant and very pretty boy that he'd been two years earlier but something had changed and his brief taste of stardom was well and truly over.
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Post by Buppster on May 10, 2018 17:21:47 GMT -5
My Ra Hould odyssey continued this evening with a viewing of Beloved Enemy (1936), which was the first movie that Ra ever appeared in. The then twelve year old Ra played the role of Jerry O'Brien, an Irish lad with a cut glass British/New Zealand accent. But he wasn't alone as virtually everyone in the movie who was playing an 'Irish' role came from anywhere and everywhere but Ireland. The story was a completely fictional account loosely based on the Irish struggle for Independence from Britain and was set in 1921, one year before the formation of the Irish Free State. The cast included Merle Oberon, David Niven and Donald Crisp. It was a watchable enough movie, in spite of the dodgy accents, and Ra proved that he had yet another talent, because as well as being a violin prodigy and pretty enough to put Sleeping Beauty to shame, it seems that he also sang as well as any top notch boy treble soloist. The fact that he seemed to be good at virtually everything makes his mysterious fall from favour even more difficult to comprehend. And unlike the other movies that I've seen, in which Ra appeared, there were no thinly disguised digs at Ra. The fact that he was picked up by a man who then took him to bed was simply part of the story.
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Post by Buppster on May 11, 2018 16:03:29 GMT -5
This evening I watched the fourth of Ra Hould's sixteen movies. This one was called Boots And Saddles (1937) and it starred Gene Autry. Ra played a young English nobleman who'd inherited a ranch. Gene was the ranch foreman. With the ranch came a pile of debts, but rather than sell the ranch to pay off the creditors Ra agreed to Gene's plan to supply horses to the army. Of course there were complications and as it was a Gene Autry movie there were also a couple of songs. Nevertheless it was an okay sort of movie, which was essentially a reversal of the Little Lord Fauntleroy story, because it was about a young aristocrat learning how to be a regular cowboy kid. And yes, in one scene Gene Autry did pick Ra up and carry him.
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Post by Buppster on May 13, 2018 16:13:56 GMT -5
I've just finished watching all 119 minutes of That Hamilton Woman (1941) which was the fifteenth of Ra Hould's sixteen movie acting credits. The movie starred Vivien Leigh as lady Emma Hamilton, the mistress of Admiral Lord Nelson, who was played by Laurence Olivier. Ra Hould played Josiah, Nelson's step son, who was a midshipman on board Nelson's ship. Ra was a very handsome young man of seventeen but he could no longer be correctly termed 'pretty.' The movie was interesting and held my interest but Ra's role was fairly small.
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Post by Buppster on May 14, 2018 11:55:57 GMT -5
I haven't seen any of them (yet) but Ra Hould/Ronald Sinclair played the recurring role of Jasper King in four 'Little Peppers' movies during 1939 and 1940, alongside Our Gang kids Tommy Bond and Edith Fellows. I don't think that any of the Peppers movies have ever been been officially released on VHS or DVD and I can't find any of them as downloads online either.
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Post by Buppster on May 27, 2018 17:04:29 GMT -5
I've just watched Way Down South (1939) which was essentially a Bobby Breen vehicle that provided him with a couple of excuses to sing. I'm not a fan of Bobby but the movie was part of a double Bill DVD, with the other movie being Fisherman's Wharf, which features Tommy Bupp alongside Bobby Breen. So I figured that I'd watched Way Down South first and then save the one that I really bought it for to watch on another day, when I can treat myself. So why am I making a post about Way Down South? There are a couple of reasons. As far as Bobby Breen movies go it isn't one of his best, casting Bobby as as the son of a slave owning plantation owner in 1854. However perhaps of interest to some of the members here was the inclusion of Matthew "Stymie" Beard in the cast, playing a young house slave called Gumbo. Matthew was older than he was when he was in Our Gang and even more striking was the fact that he had hair! On the right of the above picture is Clarence Muse. Clarence was fifty at the time, but he'd been made up to look older. Clarence co-wrote the movie and co-wrote several of the songs in it too. Clarence lived to be ninety and he died in 1979, just after the completion of his final movie The Black Stallion, with Kelly Reno and Mickey Rooney.
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Post by Buppster on Sept 10, 2018 5:46:06 GMT -5
I didn't manage to win a signed photo of Scooter Lowry on eBay because I'd already bought something else and was short of funds. Interested Hard-Boiled Harry?
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