James Mason Appreciation Thread

His Desert Island Disc. Beautiful choices.

wasn’t he a big Rethug?

His divorce settlement with wife Pamela was at the time the most expensive in Hollywood.

"Journey to the Center of the Earth"

R3 She did not deserve him.

R3 How much was the settlement? Come on, this is DL. You know we love talking about the finances of celebrities on this site.

Spill!

Oh yes Mandingo is so classy and elegant. And he is especially classy and elegant with that little black boy.

I liked reading about how they raised their daughter Portland.

He and Ava Gardner in "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman." You can't believe your eyes. The two most beautiful people on the planet.

R9 Oooh I haven't seen that yet.

He's great in those 1940's Gainsborough costume melodramas with Margaret Lockwood and Stewart Granger. I just watched him in a TV version of Ivanhoe as the Jewish father of Olivia Hussey. He got top billing even though he was supporting, but he commanded every moment he was on screen.

He's the best Doctor Watson. Ever.

Here he is trying to get his mouth on David Soul.

R13 He was the best part about Salem's Lot!

[quote] wasn’t he a big Rethug?

Who told you that, R2?

Mason's son Morgan (husband of Belinda Carlisle) was a Republican working as an assistant to Reagan in the early 1980s. Can't see anything that suggests James was also a Republican. He was a conscientious objector during WW II, which his biographer Sheridan Morley suggests may be the reason Mason was never knighted.

[quote] Sheridan Morley suggests

Did Morley have any more factual information?

I thought it was stupid how lovely James was given a small role in 'Genghis Khan' while Morley had the bigger role playing the emperor. Robert Morley was a comic actor and had none of the handsome menace that James could have provided in spades!

Loved him in "Heaven Can Wait".

Fun fact: His favorite dessert is cherry pie.

I love his voice. Would UK DLers consider it too affected or fake?

He was the only actor willing to play Humbert Humbert in Lolita.

R15, I made a mistake. I am mistaking him for the actor that was in Misery with Kathy Bates.

R16, Prior to his marriage, Morgan was in a longtime relationship with Louise Fletcher.

R20- I loved his voice too.

Something about the way he says "I need a job" in A Star is Born cracks me up everytime I think about it.

R24, He delivered Judy's eulogy.

R25, Gilbert Gottfried does an excellent impersonation of Mason giving the "I need a job" speech.

R27 Gilbert Gottfried

I don't think much of this. I assume it's impromptu.

His brother, Jackie, was no slouch either.

Another fun fact

Belinda Carlisle is his daughter in law

Best voice in Hollywood.

He was very well educated -- Marlborough and Cambridge (with a first in Architecture) -- and presumably deserved mention in that recent intelligent celebrities thread.

Rupert of Rathskeller’s tight pants!

For the ancients among us who still fondly remember and even rewatch movies directed by the great Max Ophuls: Mason is superb in two of the great Max’s films, as a lower Manhattan neighborhood doctor in Caught (opposite Barbara Bel Geddes and Robert Ryan) and as an Irish blackmailer (complete with very convincing accent) in The Reckless Moment, opposite an astonishing Joan Bennett, a harassed upper middle class Los Angeles housewife and mother to the life. Probably my favorite film of the first quarter century of the sound era. Let’s just say it has a lot going for it.

“Five fingers” is one of my favourites if his. With his being born in the north of England I wonder if his accents in “Georgy girl” and “pumpkin eater” were more like his natural accent. “Pandora” is one of the most visually stunning films alongside “the red shoes”. I also have a soft spot as did francois Truffaut for “bigger than life” where mason plays a terminally Ill man who becomes addicted to pain medication.

He always seemed to me like the quintessential creepy bisexual Brit you meet at literary cocktail parties in London. Loves cock but goes home to pussy.

R36 That's just the way Americans always view anyone in London with a posh accent.

^^ not so. I'm not American btw. There are so many guys like this who come into London for the weekend, stay in gay accomodation, get all the cock they can then go home to their families Sunday night. They're a strange lot IMO

Well as long as you bring home a big fat paycheck and give your family a very comfortable life what's the problem?

Perhaps live as the big queen you are?

No matter how bad the movie was, Mason always brought this gravitas to the production. Very few actors have that capability (Only John Gielgud and Jeremy Irons come to mind).

Morgan is getting his own thread

Mason is excellent in Sidney Lumet's Childs Play (1972) as an emotionally fragile teacher being gaslit by Robert Preston.

Alfred Hitchcock always talked very well of him. Hitch only liked James Mason, Cary Grant, John Dall, James Stewart, Leo G. Carroll, Grace Kelly, and Ingrid Bergman. He thought every other actor was cattle.

What about Eva Marie saint. How can anyone dislike her r44

I can, R45.

She got in the way. James Mason should have been pashing with Cary Grant. And James shouldn't have appeared in such a small role with third billing.

The only time Eva Marie saint was useful was when she trying to break down through the entrenched hatred of this one-eyed, blinkered religious zealot who was happy to kill the perceived enemy.

She’s very good in that scene. But back to mason, I actually must be one or the only ones not very keen on his voice. There’s something very smarmy about it in most of his films.

[quote] very smarmy about it in most of his films.

I read his memoir.

He said his life has to be separated between his younger years when he was confident and getting good 'smarmy' roles. The second half was full of regret and self-hatred for making so many mistakes and he tended to play failed 'smarmy' men.

R49 thanks for confirming what I always felt. So he was aware of that too.

[quote]Who told you that, [R2]?

C-3PO did

James Mason is one of my very favorite actors. He could make you love the character he played, hate him, pity him, distrust him, like him, but I could never look away disinterested. He was absolutely compelling in every role he acted in. He was the epitome of class. Peter Sellers really annoyed me in Lola. He just took up screen time that should have belonged to Mason, imo. Plus, his amphetamine abuse was so obvious at that point.

R52- Lolita, lol. I must stop posting and cooking dinner at the same time!

Eta: Did you know coke, or any soda, makes a wonderful steak tenderizer in an emergency?

R52 I agree. In The Verdict, he is called "the Prince of Fucking Darkness" by Jack Warden. But when he is on screen, you can't help but like him. It's not until the "the reveal" and his monologue do you realize he is trapped.

[quote] And he is especially classy and elegant with that little black boy.

Times have changed, R7.

Back in the 19th century they had things like The Miasma Threory, they believed disease could be spread in different ways, air-borne, water-borne, blood-borne and by touching. They believed in 'hands-on-spirits' and Prenology. They took cocaine and opium as medicines.

People of means asked their staff to go and warm the bed sheets before they retired for the night. I think the character in the movie thought he could cure his lumbago by foot contact with the young flesh.

One of the greatest ever to grace the silver screen.

The very definition of class.

[quote] His divorce settlement with wife Pamela was at the time the most expensive in Hollywood.

She was a bitch. She knew she was and she played up to her reputation.

She plays the scheming bitch in this clever melodrama—

Loved him in To Kill A Maltese Falcon

The wife played the tinny-voiced bitches in this little home-made movie called 'Charade'.

It's so cheap it looks like 3 TV pilots. Nasty characters and it's sloppily directed by her ex-husband.

Another of James' many mistakes.

Girls!

No nudes? No sizemeat?

[...]

[quote] Going on the photo though

Which photo are you talking about, R62?

[...]

R63 He's an actor not a model or Instagram star. He spent his life playing other people, ugly people, failures, corrupt people, people who weren't himself.

James Mason didn't get cosmetic surgery.

LOVE his transatlantic accent - real or not I feel like all movie stars should speak that way.

I should see more of his older films - pretty sure the only movies I’ve seen him in are Heaven Can wait and of course my favorite The Verdict - he was so good in that, he should have won the Oscar that year.

James Mason's performance in Odd Man Out was not impressive at all.

What you mean to say, R67, that it didn't impress YOU.

I like Carol Reed and James Mason but he was playing a dumb, idealogical zealot who was happy to die for his cause. I hated the moronic stupidity of the characters as well as the cardboard studio sets and (I assume) the fake snow.

He aged like a fine wine. Loved him in Heaven Can Wait. I always get turned on when he says "You must abide by what is written". Such a great voice!

I think it's a couple of years since I saw Odd Man Out last and I remember that the cinematography was amazing but I that I wasn't impressed with Mason's characterization at all. He didn't do anything with it, during the whole time I had no idea who he was. He remained a stranger to me the whole time. I don't think Mason had a clue about who Johnny was either.

I loved Robert Newton in the movie though. He was the only highlight in the whole boring 2 hours.

*remember

Came here to mention his two excellent Ophuls films, but R34 beat me to it.

I have a cool old record of Mason reading from Lolita. I always thought George Sanders would have made a good Humbert as well (he was even born in St Petersburg, like Nabokov).

Here's James and the awful Pamela dressed up for some kind of Roman show.

I can see Raymond Massey dressed up as Abe Lincoln and is that Helen Hayes next to him?

Helen Lawson as Lady Godiva was removed by studio security.

This website says James and wife appeared with Gloria Swanson at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway for 3 weeks in 1947!

Just discovered him. Sign me up for the fan club. He's lovely.

I'm late to this thread...he was great in Lolita. OMG, he captured his lust for Lo, his disgust for mama, and his pitiful attempt to keep Lo at his side. Brilliat!

^let me Oh Dear myself for 'brilliat'.

Always the same--stilted from that stick up his backside.

The funny thing about Lumet's comment is that one of Mason's lesser performances is in Lumet's mediocre film of Chekhov's THE SEA GULL.

Pamela Mason wound up in Grade Z crap like SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE, starring Miss Mamie Van Doren. Serves her right.

Loved his voice. Hamm did a good impression...

bump

This thread is so thoughtful and well considered, i feel i must contribute to it. James Mason as exquisite and pitch perfect as a retired civil servant of the Raj in a little chamber piece of a film for the BBC called The Autobiography of a Princess directed by James Ivory.

I just saw him in this 1958 film on some obscure movie channel.

It wasn't bad. With Inger Stevens (being too hysterical I wanted to slap her), Rod Steiger, Jack Klugman, Angie Dickenson (as a brunette moll), other familiar character actors and Patty Duke's dad.

It was directed and written by an Andrew L. Stone. I just looked up his interesting filmography.

He is Humbert Humbert. Jeremy Irons came close but James Mason owns the role.

Today was his 114th birthday

"He was just so classy and elegant."

OP, please see link--

He was terrific in The Verdict. I also love him in Murder by Decree . He made an excellent Watson to Christopher Plummer's Sherlock Holmes.

I assume he came up in that transatlantic accent thread I saw hanging around these parts.

The gayling husbear used to see him walking around Lausanne. Mason's fabulous home was a few miles away in Vevey.

R90 I love the snow pic!