I tried to watch THE RAZOR'S EDGE last night

Which bathhouse?

R1 I'm currently in Europe

Glad to hear I'm not the only one, OP. This movie gets so much critical acclaim and I've never been able to sit all the way through it.

Was "The Razor's Edge" dull?

Well R4 I don't know because I never got past the first 5 minutes. It was so stagey and cringey, Whoever wrote the stale dialogue should've been fired by Ty the first day of shooting, and Anne Baxter just was too much to take. Shame because the association of Ty, Johnny Payne and Gene should've = fireworks

The book is terrible.

I disagree with all of you. I liked the movie.Tyrone Power was at his most beautiful and Clifton Webb was at his queeniest. The book filled in some of the blanks.

what about John R7 ? I'll try again to watch, just for him

I thought it was pretty good. The bill Murray version has less eye candy but is also rather good. I loved the book though too.

I watched La partida, a cuban movie about young guys in love. It didn't make me horny, though the boys were lovely. I drove past the cruise park and didn't stop to hoover cocks in the bushes.

Gene is always so ... ethereal. it works in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN but she's annoying. Also she can eat an apple through a picket fence

John Payne taking a supporting role in this movie sealed his fate.

Wiki says "Zanuck thought of him as a secondary Tyrone Power". They didn't know how to use him and they released him from his 7 year contract.

He appeared in Grade westerns after that.

Somerset Maugham stole all that Eastern Mumbo-jumbo that Tyrone spouts from this Englishman living in California.

Gerald Heard believed homosexuality was "an evolutionary phenomenon with a deeper spiritual dimension".

I'm a Millennial and I don't know the difference between a Gene Tearney and a Gene Kelly. So there!

I love Gene Tierney in this. Her reaction when she learns Ty Power is going to marry that slut Anne Baxter is classic.

One of my favorite books of all time but it simply doesn't translate to film. If you think this one is bad, did you ever see the Bill Murray version? One of the worst movies ever made. The deal was that he only agreed to do a sequel to Ghostbusters if they let him do Razor's Edge.

[quote] Bill Murray version? One of the worst movies ever made

I refuse to watch that one. He is so ugly.

He looks as though he doesn't wash. He's like that Jack Nicholson who thinks impertinence is attractive.

I bumped this thread for Datalounge's resident John Payne Fan who was so upset that the other thread was so rudely cancelled yesterday.

(Though I still don't know how you can claim this picture shows him naked)

Love the movie--but until 105 years back, I'd both never watched or knew it existed. Then I was unexpectedly hit and sideline with painful emergency surgery that had me recuperating at home for some time and I randomly caught it on TCM. Maybe it was the timing and the state of my mind at the moment, but its message, storyline, characters and outcome all really had a profound effect influencing thereafter how I appreciated both my life and my ability to decide what I control doing and healing in my life. :) I found it powerful. And, yes, Ty was magnetically gorgeous, Gene was bitchy beautiful, and Anne was a delightful mess à la pre-"The Ten Commandments." lol

^...Until 15 or so years back, not 105 -- I was a recuperating human, not a vampire healing up! (Sorry for typo.)

I love “The Razor’s Edge.” Way ahead of its time. Perhaps the first attempt to show a man willing to give up materialism for a spiritual path. Since it’s culturally transitional, it still uses the trappings of country clubs and villas in Paris. But the core of it is revolutionary. A great movie.

Can’t say the same for the Bill Murray version, which falls flat. And, sadly, for all his effort, Mr. Murray is miscast. (My older brother was a minor film critic in New York at the time, and he took me to a press screening, where we sat behind. Rex Reed and Judith Crist, no less! After it was over, as we all wearily proceeded out, I quipped, “Where’s Gene Tierney when you need her?”)

[quote] Where’s Gene Tierney when you need her?”

Yes, the first version was luxurious, glamorous with overly beautiful people.

The second version seemed determined to be as tawdry and ugly as possible.

[quote]Anne Baxter is GROSS. She's SO bad. Another movie she's ruining. She was equally disgusting in ALL ABOUT EVE. She must have sucked dick like a champ, why did Zanuck ever give her a contract? she's the worst actress who ever lived, and she's fug.

And yet, she won the Oscar for that performance.

Plus, she was Frank Lloyd Wright's granddaughter.

Plus, she was Hitchcock's personal first choice for the leading role in REBECCA (he was overruled by Selznick).

[quote] And yet…Plus… Plus…

And yet she had a rather wide face and was incapable of subtlety.

Never seen either film but tried to read the novel and couldn't bear it. Horribly pretentious! I was surprised because I have enjoyed several of Maugham's other novels particularly The Painted Veil, Theatre and Cakes and Ale.

I wonder if this film was a big break for John Payne who had mostly starred in light weight B pictures and Fox musicals supporting Alice Faye and Betty Grable until then.

^ 1. The Razor's Edge is the longest of the four Maughams you mention.

2. The Wiki biography, below, suggests he had a bad relationship or bad contracts with the studios who owned him.

And all that messing around used up his valuable good-looking years and he suddenly got middle-aged and fat in the face.

John Payne may have aged rapidly (who didn't in those days?) but he never got "fat in the face" r26. Please post a photo if you think he did.

TRE is one my favorite novels and the film version with Tyrone Power is excellent. He was at his best as Larry Darrell, the man in search of himself. I won’t speak of that remake abomination with Bill Murray.

Tyrone Power was gorgeous. I want to lick the screen.

I like that Alamy stock photo of tyrone-power-outside-his-dressing-room-with-his-stand-in-tommy-noonan

I loved Tyrone in Nightmare Alley. He was gorgeous and evil.

I like Tyrone but there was always something old mannish about his appearance.

R31 Yes, he never looked really young. He was always looked mature on the screen.

That's not true about Ty Power. Check him out in one his earliest hits like JESSE JAMES, in technicolor no less. He and young Henry Fonda are absolutely gorgeous. But by the 1940s, true, he'd already begun his dissipation.

Power and Fonda

Power and Fonda had the jaw line that Robert Taylor craved.

R34 Thanks for that link. I never saw Power look that young! He's adorable, great jaw and nose.

He had beautiful eyebrows. Supposedly, Ty had a unibrow so constantly had to have those eye brows manscaped.

r36 and everybody else, just google color photos of Ty in Jesse James. He is magnificent!, made for color film!

He doesn't have his hair all greased back like usual and his tanned golden skin glows.

Gorgeous as a Sikh doctor in The Rains Came (1939).

R38 Tyrone had dental problems on this film. You can see the gap beside his right-side incisor.

He used a temporary filler to cover the gap with a strange Malayan name.

I’m currently reading “The Secret Life of Tyrone Power”, a bio written in 1979 all about his career and bisexuality.

R41

Does it have footnotes?

Does it have any documentary evidence with names, places or dates?

R42: not at all, it’s kind of poorly written but still interesting. Seems he was more centered on men but went through marriages, and had children, for the sake of protecting his career.

“The Rains Came” is wonderful. Myrna Loy walks off with it. Also based on a very good novel. Won an Oscar for special effects, which are still shockingly effective.

Power had a son who grew up to be Dad’s spitting image. Has a minor role in “Cocoon.”

R44, the Louis Broomfield novel is magnificent, and the 1939 film is great, especially those Oscar winning special effects. The 1955 remake - The Rains of Ranchinpur with Lana Turner and Richard Burton - is dire and makes dreadful changes from the book.

However, I'd love to see a new version, with modern effects and appropriate casting, like Fawad Khan as the doctor/heir to the throne.

That should be Bromfield

While shooting the movie "Jesse James" in the Missouri Ozarks, close to the town of Pineville, supposedly Power had an affair with a local girl who became pregnant. After the baby (boy) was born, she put the infant up for adoption.

The story was that Power later spent time and money looking for the child, but was not successful in finding him.

It was pretty much an open secret that Power was bi but a much, much more closely guarded one that he was into scat.

R48 Whether true or false, I love the story.

Shitty thread.