in a NYT profile a few months back, it said that she can hold her breath for SEVEN minutes. and then there's the story about her carrying Richard Branson's mother out of a fire...obviously, she can do ANYTHING.
something odd...I was looking for a theater and came across a Guardian review, but it was from September 2023. so this movie's been around for over a year. one wonders WHY it didn't get a US release until now.
I love The Guardian (and most days it's the first paper I check...I especially like its long and distinguished history as a left-wing publication and The Observer, which is (was?) its famous weekend edition. but its movie critics often sound like they've seen a different movie from the one I saw. Michael Billington's been their drama critic for, like, centuries, and he often has been a tad stingy with his stars when I've had the good fortune to catch the same productions he's reviewed.
I also think The Independent is an excellent paper, even if it's a relative newcomer to English journalism (it's now something like 40 years old). I have to admit (with plenty of shame, especially talking to YOU) that I avoided Max Hastings's superb (and by now, HUGE) body of work because I saw that he was editor of the Daily Telegraph, which is very old and very Tory.
You know what they say about critics:" "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers; those who can't teach teachers become film critics." (With apologies in advance to the good teachers here. Hollywood jokes are always in bad taste.)
Hastings is a conservative, but he's still my model for how to be an historian. He has yet to write an uninteresting book.
Tom, thanks for bringing this to our attention. Have we ever heard of Lee Miller? Hell no! She was a woman, so who cares? Will this open in major theaters?
Limited theatrical release in major cities. Might play longer if he audience finds it.
Among photographers, serious WW2 students and fans of the Surrealist Movement, Lee Miller is known, but to the general public, she's as well-known as Margueritte Higgins, liberator of Dachau and the first woman to win the Pulitzer for war reporting in Korea in 1950.
The magic of google... “Lee” plays tomorrow at two movie theaters in Chapel Hill, NC — after that, in one of them (the Chelsea, for local readers) for several more days. Let’s all raise a glass to the health of our independent movie houses, wherever they thrive.
Are you in Chapel Hill?! I used to sell tickets at the old Carolina movie theater when I was 15 years old. Only other movie theater back then was the Varsity, across Franklin Street. I lived there from 1963-1981. (My Dad taught there.) We're thinking of moving back there. Been in Charleston, SC for the past 43 years. It'll be hard to leave!
Thank you SO much!! Ever since I wrote the post above (10 minutes ago), I've been googling trying to find any articles she wrote. Instead I found tons of writing from a Mr. Olsen (man), but nothing by her.
Don’t give in too soon. It’s playing Wednesday/tomorrow in two Chapel Hill, NC, theaters & after that for several days in one of those. Never know when the goddesses of good cinema may visit close to home.
After I wrote that, I checked the one "independent" movie theater here in Charleston -- and it's showing: today, only! So I'm going to the 4:15 show. Thanks, Tom! Thanks, RW!
Thank you Tom. I will certainly put Lee on a must see list. I have long admired Kate Winslet. She doesn't care how she looks, she'd rather be authentic. I loved her performance in A Mountain Between Us.
She was great in "Mare of Easttown" on HBO where she played an often disheveled and distraught tiny town detective. I think it's still available on Max. Winslet dares to be a size 16 in a size 7 celebrity world, same size as Monroe, by the way.
I first learned about Lee Miller while reading Deborah Cohen's book "Last Call At The Hotel Imperial - The Reporters Who Took On a World at War", which focused on the first foreign correspondents writing for American newspapers after WWI: John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, James Vincent “Jimmy” Sheean and Dorothy Thompson.
Lee Miller was a prominent figure in their circle, and her story was intriguing. I got a copy of the biography on which the film is based. I recommend Cohen's book highly; I knew John Gunther's name from my high school English classes, where we read "Death Be Not Proud", but not much else. It's a vivid portrayal of the Americans who "explained" Europe to the American public, and tells much about how provincial a country it was in the 20's and 30's.
Here's a gift link to the NY Times review for our TCNLA gang:
that Hotel Imperial book is terrific. the real discovery was finding out how powerful and brilliant Dorothy Thompson was. it was also great to be reminded about how amazing Gunther's "Inside" series was. I've looked for copies on Amazon, but found only a few very expensive copies.
My grandparents had the Gunther books. I read them as a kid (the 6th grader with the college freshman reading level - when that actually meant something, unlike today)
you and me both. it feels like the Assistant Principal of the Junior High School where I attended the second grade saved my life when I was sent to his office for "disciplinary" reasons and I started to read an Eighth Grade level textbook. he called me over, asked me to read to him and told me that if I ever felt antsy I should just come to his office and read with him. interestingly, my horrible stutter didn't especially bother me during these sessions. a year or so later, it got much worse and I'd secretly practice poems I'd memorized because when I recited, I didn't stutter. by sixth grade, like you, I tested above twelfth grade level and had my local library give me special permission to check stuff out of the adult section.
this was back when it was a very respectable thing to be a NYC public school teacher and two married teachers could live very nicely here. and there were plenty of seriously brilliant, magnificent ones. nowadays, of course, NYC public school teachers are considered failures and, when they start out, it's a frequent thing to find four teachers sharing a slightly modified two-bedroom apartment and STILL having to shell out six or seven hundred bucks a month each. totally fucked up.
if you read a bunch of those Gunther books (I read a few from the library) as a kid, it helps to explain your current condition. that was a compliment.
My dad got tired of going to the library once a week for me to get three more books on my kid card and started letting me use his 10-book adult card. Fortunately, the Eugene Field Library in Denver (then housed in Eugene Field's home) didn't have anyone enforcing what a kid could read. So I read all the history books they had and airplane books they had, and one time I turned the corner away from the boring Y-A books and discovered Dr. Isaac Asimov lurking in the next book shelf - science fiction! - The first thing I read of his was "Foundation," followed by "Foundation and Empire" and "Second Foundation." Followed by all the robot stories (I loved it in the 80s when he wrote the fifth book in the Foundation Trilogy" and discovered that R. Daneel Olivaw, the robot who loved humans in "The Robots of Dawn" was the guy who set everything in motion that led to Foundation). When I went to the annual dinner of SFWA the year I got in for writing "The Terror Within," Asimov was there and liked me telling him he'd saved my life and I was invited to dine at the Great Man's table. Turned out he liked the movie.
Terry, your call-out re: “Last Call at the Hotel Imperial” has affected everything about my reading plans for the immediate future. Long recommended by a very good friend (& writer & vetted book recommender) & also long sitting patiently on my to-be-read pile.
I’ve been waiting for this one! Also, I’m reading another book called “Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Service Women Who Helped Win World War II” by Lena Andrews. It’s not as dramatic as Lee’s story, but certainly shows us what women did and what they were up against, including the people on our side.
Wow, Awesome TC. Can't wait to see it. Exactly what we could use right now as well: powerful, elegant-direct and poignant, and a reminder of what did happen and can happen.
I had seen interviews of Winslet and she couldnt say enough about Samberg's performance. I saw a trailer a bit ago. Movie looks like it would be hard to watch - some of the scenes.
I dont doubt it. Odd isnt it that so many really brave strong women existed years ago and we dont even recognize their names - wonder why that is! (sarcasm again).
I watched so many shows (mostly docs) with my late husband. Not sure I want to go back there. But the one that Hitchcock did was one he never wanted to see again. I love Kate W and would see most anything she does. I will quote a few lines from page 164 of “Adventurers of a Bystander” by Peter Drucker, if one wants to imagine, it’s in a conversation that Drucker had with a colleague as he was preparing to leave Berlin.…
“It’s All insane. But it frightens me. I know you told me a year ago that the Nazis believed these things and that I ought to take them seriously. But I thought it was the usual campaign rhetoric and didn’t mean a thing. And I still think so. Now that they’re in power they have to learn that one can’t do such things. After all this is the twentieth century. …And I probably am (scared)—they can’t mean these things and get away with them. But I’m beginning to be scared. You can’t imagine the things some of the higher-ups say to us when no one from the outside is listening.”
A few paragraphs down, Drucker wrote “I did not hear from or about “The Monster” until twelve years later when I read of his end in the ruins of what had been his parents’ home.” Drucker’s book was not fiction, but one that made by blood run cold.
That was the whole thing - as we have seen here. Believing they mean what they say. It's hard because what they say is so outrageous, and we don't want to believe it could happen.
I saw it last Friday at the AFI Silver. It is such a powerful film, excellently crafted, featuring a woman who should be known to all of us. Women's stories are overlooked. The film is built around the photos she took and was done so well. Winslet seems to have a goal to tell women's stories. This is the second "small film" I have seen of hers recently done. I agree that it deserves recognition and every film award there is. I still tremble recalling what I saw and at the outstanding performances. Well done.
I saw "Lee" this afternoon. It truly was overwhelming -- in all the senses of the word. I'd never have heard of it, if it weren't for you. I was just reading about her life and was BLOWN AWAY to find out that she was at the Art Student League in NYC (apparently "the" place that artists went in the U.S. to get excellent training) -- during the same decade that my Great-Aunt Lois (Lois Lenski) was there!
Aunt Lois's father (a rather famous theologian) was entirely against her desire to be an artist, and was angry at her when she left for NYC. She eventually became a very successful author and illustrator of children's books, and won the Newberry prize in 1946. Whether or not she and Lee overlapped during the years they were there (both were there in the 1920's), Lee certainly would have known the man who became Lois's husband: one of their teachers who was widowed while Lois went to London to pursue her dream. Upon her return, they married. What an incredible coincidence!!!
Sounds like a must-see.
Definitely!
On my post-election list, probably post-inaguration. Winslet is the best. Elegance, intensity, real things, many.
in a NYT profile a few months back, it said that she can hold her breath for SEVEN minutes. and then there's the story about her carrying Richard Branson's mother out of a fire...obviously, she can do ANYTHING.
something odd...I was looking for a theater and came across a Guardian review, but it was from September 2023. so this movie's been around for over a year. one wonders WHY it didn't get a US release until now.
That Guardian reviewer must have seen a different movie from the one I saw.
I love The Guardian (and most days it's the first paper I check...I especially like its long and distinguished history as a left-wing publication and The Observer, which is (was?) its famous weekend edition. but its movie critics often sound like they've seen a different movie from the one I saw. Michael Billington's been their drama critic for, like, centuries, and he often has been a tad stingy with his stars when I've had the good fortune to catch the same productions he's reviewed.
I also think The Independent is an excellent paper, even if it's a relative newcomer to English journalism (it's now something like 40 years old). I have to admit (with plenty of shame, especially talking to YOU) that I avoided Max Hastings's superb (and by now, HUGE) body of work because I saw that he was editor of the Daily Telegraph, which is very old and very Tory.
You know what they say about critics:" "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers; those who can't teach teachers become film critics." (With apologies in advance to the good teachers here. Hollywood jokes are always in bad taste.)
Hastings is a conservative, but he's still my model for how to be an historian. He has yet to write an uninteresting book.
I concur!! Although I will have to wait until it makes it to cable next year
I have a feeling it'll be available right after Oscar season. they always are...
I look forward to watching this movie about this fascinating woman. Thanks for this review. It has my attention.
Tom, thanks for bringing this to our attention. Have we ever heard of Lee Miller? Hell no! She was a woman, so who cares? Will this open in major theaters?
Limited theatrical release in major cities. Might play longer if he audience finds it.
Among photographers, serious WW2 students and fans of the Surrealist Movement, Lee Miller is known, but to the general public, she's as well-known as Margueritte Higgins, liberator of Dachau and the first woman to win the Pulitzer for war reporting in Korea in 1950.
Thanks. Higgins??? Never heard of her. (Response of 99% of Americans -- including me.)
The piece that won the Pulitzer: "Everybody down! We're going in"
https://www.pulitzer.org/article/marguerite-higgins-hits-red-beach
The Pulitzer jury noted: 'She is entitled to special consideration by reason of being a woman, since she had to work under unusual dangers.'
Her account of liberating Dachau (she was 24):
https://deadlineartists.com/contributor-samples/the-liberation-of-dachau-marguerite-higgins-new-york-herald-tribune/
The magic of google... “Lee” plays tomorrow at two movie theaters in Chapel Hill, NC — after that, in one of them (the Chelsea, for local readers) for several more days. Let’s all raise a glass to the health of our independent movie houses, wherever they thrive.
Are you in Chapel Hill?! I used to sell tickets at the old Carolina movie theater when I was 15 years old. Only other movie theater back then was the Varsity, across Franklin Street. I lived there from 1963-1981. (My Dad taught there.) We're thinking of moving back there. Been in Charleston, SC for the past 43 years. It'll be hard to leave!
Many thanks for this entire revelation to at least one of your readers.
Thank you SO much!! Ever since I wrote the post above (10 minutes ago), I've been googling trying to find any articles she wrote. Instead I found tons of writing from a Mr. Olsen (man), but nothing by her.
WOW!!!
Probably won't come to Charleston, then. Sigh...
Don’t give in too soon. It’s playing Wednesday/tomorrow in two Chapel Hill, NC, theaters & after that for several days in one of those. Never know when the goddesses of good cinema may visit close to home.
After I wrote that, I checked the one "independent" movie theater here in Charleston -- and it's showing: today, only! So I'm going to the 4:15 show. Thanks, Tom! Thanks, RW!
Thank you Tom. I will certainly put Lee on a must see list. I have long admired Kate Winslet. She doesn't care how she looks, she'd rather be authentic. I loved her performance in A Mountain Between Us.
She was great in "Mare of Easttown" on HBO where she played an often disheveled and distraught tiny town detective. I think it's still available on Max. Winslet dares to be a size 16 in a size 7 celebrity world, same size as Monroe, by the way.
Thanks, Tom. I've been awaiting its release.
I first learned about Lee Miller while reading Deborah Cohen's book "Last Call At The Hotel Imperial - The Reporters Who Took On a World at War", which focused on the first foreign correspondents writing for American newspapers after WWI: John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, James Vincent “Jimmy” Sheean and Dorothy Thompson.
Lee Miller was a prominent figure in their circle, and her story was intriguing. I got a copy of the biography on which the film is based. I recommend Cohen's book highly; I knew John Gunther's name from my high school English classes, where we read "Death Be Not Proud", but not much else. It's a vivid portrayal of the Americans who "explained" Europe to the American public, and tells much about how provincial a country it was in the 20's and 30's.
Here's a gift link to the NY Times review for our TCNLA gang:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/books/review/last-call-at-the-hotel-imperial-deborah-cohen.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Q04.qrle.PvbWUkT5mUvv&smid=url-share
Cohen's book is excellent. Provided me with some different views of people I knew of, and introduced many I didn't. Highly recommended.
that Hotel Imperial book is terrific. the real discovery was finding out how powerful and brilliant Dorothy Thompson was. it was also great to be reminded about how amazing Gunther's "Inside" series was. I've looked for copies on Amazon, but found only a few very expensive copies.
My grandparents had the Gunther books. I read them as a kid (the 6th grader with the college freshman reading level - when that actually meant something, unlike today)
you and me both. it feels like the Assistant Principal of the Junior High School where I attended the second grade saved my life when I was sent to his office for "disciplinary" reasons and I started to read an Eighth Grade level textbook. he called me over, asked me to read to him and told me that if I ever felt antsy I should just come to his office and read with him. interestingly, my horrible stutter didn't especially bother me during these sessions. a year or so later, it got much worse and I'd secretly practice poems I'd memorized because when I recited, I didn't stutter. by sixth grade, like you, I tested above twelfth grade level and had my local library give me special permission to check stuff out of the adult section.
this was back when it was a very respectable thing to be a NYC public school teacher and two married teachers could live very nicely here. and there were plenty of seriously brilliant, magnificent ones. nowadays, of course, NYC public school teachers are considered failures and, when they start out, it's a frequent thing to find four teachers sharing a slightly modified two-bedroom apartment and STILL having to shell out six or seven hundred bucks a month each. totally fucked up.
if you read a bunch of those Gunther books (I read a few from the library) as a kid, it helps to explain your current condition. that was a compliment.
My dad got tired of going to the library once a week for me to get three more books on my kid card and started letting me use his 10-book adult card. Fortunately, the Eugene Field Library in Denver (then housed in Eugene Field's home) didn't have anyone enforcing what a kid could read. So I read all the history books they had and airplane books they had, and one time I turned the corner away from the boring Y-A books and discovered Dr. Isaac Asimov lurking in the next book shelf - science fiction! - The first thing I read of his was "Foundation," followed by "Foundation and Empire" and "Second Foundation." Followed by all the robot stories (I loved it in the 80s when he wrote the fifth book in the Foundation Trilogy" and discovered that R. Daneel Olivaw, the robot who loved humans in "The Robots of Dawn" was the guy who set everything in motion that led to Foundation). When I went to the annual dinner of SFWA the year I got in for writing "The Terror Within," Asimov was there and liked me telling him he'd saved my life and I was invited to dine at the Great Man's table. Turned out he liked the movie.
Terry, your call-out re: “Last Call at the Hotel Imperial” has affected everything about my reading plans for the immediate future. Long recommended by a very good friend (& writer & vetted book recommender) & also long sitting patiently on my to-be-read pile.
It just moved to the open-now spot.
Many thanks.
It's on my list. Thanks for a great review.
I’ve been waiting for this one! Also, I’m reading another book called “Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Service Women Who Helped Win World War II” by Lena Andrews. It’s not as dramatic as Lee’s story, but certainly shows us what women did and what they were up against, including the people on our side.
Wow, Awesome TC. Can't wait to see it. Exactly what we could use right now as well: powerful, elegant-direct and poignant, and a reminder of what did happen and can happen.
On my list for home viewing
Tom and thanks for not only
the review but the added
incentive to research
Marguerite Higgins. I've never
seen a mention of her as
liberator of Dachau, or any
woman for that matter.
I had seen interviews of Winslet and she couldnt say enough about Samberg's performance. I saw a trailer a bit ago. Movie looks like it would be hard to watch - some of the scenes.
Shes wonderful in everything she does.
It's definitely a film that "sticks with you" afterwards.
I dont doubt it. Odd isnt it that so many really brave strong women existed years ago and we dont even recognize their names - wonder why that is! (sarcasm again).
I watched so many shows (mostly docs) with my late husband. Not sure I want to go back there. But the one that Hitchcock did was one he never wanted to see again. I love Kate W and would see most anything she does. I will quote a few lines from page 164 of “Adventurers of a Bystander” by Peter Drucker, if one wants to imagine, it’s in a conversation that Drucker had with a colleague as he was preparing to leave Berlin.…
“It’s All insane. But it frightens me. I know you told me a year ago that the Nazis believed these things and that I ought to take them seriously. But I thought it was the usual campaign rhetoric and didn’t mean a thing. And I still think so. Now that they’re in power they have to learn that one can’t do such things. After all this is the twentieth century. …And I probably am (scared)—they can’t mean these things and get away with them. But I’m beginning to be scared. You can’t imagine the things some of the higher-ups say to us when no one from the outside is listening.”
A few paragraphs down, Drucker wrote “I did not hear from or about “The Monster” until twelve years later when I read of his end in the ruins of what had been his parents’ home.” Drucker’s book was not fiction, but one that made by blood run cold.
That was the whole thing - as we have seen here. Believing they mean what they say. It's hard because what they say is so outrageous, and we don't want to believe it could happen.
That book shocked me to my core. At the time chump was a NY joke. But I never forgot those two pages…
I saw it last Friday at the AFI Silver. It is such a powerful film, excellently crafted, featuring a woman who should be known to all of us. Women's stories are overlooked. The film is built around the photos she took and was done so well. Winslet seems to have a goal to tell women's stories. This is the second "small film" I have seen of hers recently done. I agree that it deserves recognition and every film award there is. I still tremble recalling what I saw and at the outstanding performances. Well done.
Going to see it tomorrow.
I'll be interested in your take on it, Gloria.
I’ll look for it.
By the way, you didn’t tell us what you thought of “Civil War”.
Haven't had two uninterrupted hours to watch. It's here, lurking.
I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.
I saw "Lee" this afternoon. It truly was overwhelming -- in all the senses of the word. I'd never have heard of it, if it weren't for you. I was just reading about her life and was BLOWN AWAY to find out that she was at the Art Student League in NYC (apparently "the" place that artists went in the U.S. to get excellent training) -- during the same decade that my Great-Aunt Lois (Lois Lenski) was there!
Aunt Lois's father (a rather famous theologian) was entirely against her desire to be an artist, and was angry at her when she left for NYC. She eventually became a very successful author and illustrator of children's books, and won the Newberry prize in 1946. Whether or not she and Lee overlapped during the years they were there (both were there in the 1920's), Lee certainly would have known the man who became Lois's husband: one of their teachers who was widowed while Lois went to London to pursue her dream. Upon her return, they married. What an incredible coincidence!!!
Looking forward to viewing Samburg in a dramatic role. Comics seem to be able to shift to tragedy more effectively than tragedians to comedy.
That's because comedy is hard.
it certainly is. I figure that if I apply myself, I MIGHT be able to learn to tell a joke properly by, say, 82.
actually, that was me being optimistic.