movieboy wrote:Stewball wrote:Maybe she was, but then a large majority of actors/resses were lousy back then.
Acting in some of the successful 60s movies is quite bad.
And I am not even sure if all the blame can be laid on the actors - sometimes you have an actor doing reasonably well in one movie but terrible in another. There is probably other stuff at play - like what the director wanted from the actors.
Yes, the 60s was a transition decade. Of course there've always been good performances, though in a smaller percentage. And of course there are limitations by the equipment (pre-electronic age stage actors had to project to the back row) and directors. Nowhere is that more apparent than with child acting. Ron Howard in
The Music Man was a breakout roll for children at the time in 1962, but the same movie still had the old style phony child performance from the girl playing Amariluth. (I feel a thread coming.) All we can or should judge is what ends up on the screen.
I cannot just understand how Holly Golightly is considered Hepburn's iconic role. I found Hepburn to be terrible in the movie - whereas she is pretty decent in My Fair Lady. May be what the audience and directors considered as good acting then was different and actors performed accordingly.
I think she did well in both roles. But
Breakfast at Tiffany's was the darling of the critics, with a story that pandered to the Literati who decided to deem themselves to be the only ones who "got it" (generally speaking); based as it was on the Truman Capote novella, a
non-love story set in the 40s--and which I hope to God was more interesting than the movie. And unlike the great soundtrack of
My Fair Lady (it being a genuine musical), BAT stretched it's only, albeit good, song, "Moon River", all through the movie--and it was more popular than the movie.
But I digress.