MORE FILM FIRSTS (pre-1995, see earlier post: L-M)

Barbara Stanwyck in THE LADY EVE (1941) The first time I saw this on TV as a kid I got Stanwyck’s appeal at last. I knew her from the movies of the time (late1940s, early ‘50s) but didn’t “get” her until I saw this, despite the lousy British accent. I felt what Henry Fonda’s character was feeling when I watched it, a fool for love
Everyone in THE LADY VANISHES (1938)* First pre-Hollywood Hitchcock film I saw
Most of the cast of THE LAST DETAIL (1973)* First time I dug Nancy Allen, Carol Kane, Michael Moriarity and Randy Quaid, and one of my favorite Nicholson roles, where his surly resentment works for the character—I hadn’t thought about my over-four-years in the service and the consequences of my rebellion against the petty rules and oppression there, until I saw this flick and left it with a headache from the memories
Stephen Lang in LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN (1989)* I was overwhelmed by the power of his performance in this, as well as Jennifer Jason Leigh’s
Dyan Cannon and Ian McShane in THE LAST OF SHELIA (1973)* One of my all time favorite whodunits, written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim (!) this was the first time I got Cannon’s appeal and talent or noticed McShane amid a terrific cast
Madeleine Stowe in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992)* I was awed by her beauty in this, the first time I remember seeing her, and by Daniel Day-Lewis’s as always exemplary performance, as well as by Michael Mann’s direction and the soundtrack
Jeff Bridges et. al. in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971)* Despite a slew of incredible performances in this movie, Bridges impressed me the most, because I felt like I knew his character best—this was the first in a lifetime of impeccable performances by him, one of our greatest and most underrated actors
Giulietta Masina in LA STRADA (1954)* The first Fellini film I saw, and the first time I saw his wife, Giulietta
Me in LAST RITES (1980)* Later known as DRACULA’S LAST RITES, my first movie as a professional film actor, though not in the union yet so billed as “Michael Lally” and often confused with an older actor who owned that name for movies
Maria Schneider in LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1973)* This movie was a first in so many ways, e.g. the first time a movie star—Brando—mooned the camera, in one of his most powerful and memorable roles, full of improvisations that actually revealed more about his own youth and inner life than any role he ever played, but also the first time I saw Schneider, and, of course, fell instantly in love with her screen persona
Ingrid Boulting in THE LAST TYCOON (1976)* The movie had all kinds of problems, but an amazing cast, including Robert Mitchum, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Jeanne Moreau, but Ingrid, in a mostly silent role, radiated such calm beauty she almost stole the film
Gene Tierney in LAURA (1944)* First time I saw her in a film and was smitten
Rita Tushingham in THE LEATHER BOYS (1963)* First time I saw this great young British actress, a fixture in the early ‘60s flicks that began the English film resurgence
Edward G. Robinson in LITTLE CAESAR (1930) First time I got Robinson’s genius as an actor, being familiar with him as a kid playing old bad guys, nothing as dynamic and original as this role that made him a star
Gena Rowlands in LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962)* First time I saw her, a great actress from the start, in this Kirk Douglas black and white independent film written by Dalton Trumbo from a novel by Edward Abbey, and a great movie
Most of the cast of THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH (1974)* If you’d have predicted who would become a star out of this one, it probably would have been Perry King, though Sylvester Stallone almost steals the show and Henry Winkler went on to great success
Everyone in LOS OLVIDADOS (1950) First Luis Bunuel film I saw, and dug, and even identified with somewhat as it’s about juvenile delinquents not many years before I was one—my favorite, if atypical, Bunuel movie
Elizabeth Perkins in LOVE AT LARGE (1990)* Don’t know if it was the first time I saw her, but first time I dug her and her talent, among a terrific cast in a great movie dismissed by critics and audiences alike, but one of my favorites, starring another great underrated movie actor (in everything since PLATOON) Tom Berenger, in one of his most appealing roles, and the first movie, maybe only one, in which Neil Young acts
Elisha Cook Jr. in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)* First time I dug most of this cast, but especially Cook who became a fixture in the movies of my childhood—though this was made before I was born it still stands in my memory as the first time I noticed him
Mariel Hemingway in MANHATTAN (1979)* First time I saw her and first time Woody Allen played a character closer to his own reality, not the nerd who never gets the girl or has any success, but the successful nerd who gets to choose between Hemingway and Diane Keaton
Everyone in MAN OF ARAN (1934)* Robert Flaherty’s documentary about survival off the coast of Ireland was the first non-fiction film to make me see that form as art and gave me my first real take on aspects of my immigrant Irish grandparents’ reality
Loretta Young in MAN’S CASTLE (1933) First film I saw her in that I got her appeal, as I remember it she even swims nude in it, and one of Spencer Tracy’s great early roles
Sean Connery and Michael Caine in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975) I’d seen them both in films before, but not together—as a team they rival any screen pairing in history, and in a great film
Glenda Jackson in MARAT/SADE (THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE)* First time I saw most of this cast in this incredibly powerful film that had a huge influence on the politics of the 1960s, an instant classic by Peter Brook
Betsy Blair in MARTY (1955)* One of my favorite films, with Ernest Borgnine’s greatest performance as well as Betsy Blair’s, and maybe Paddy Chayefksy’s best script
Julie Andrews in MARY POPPINS (1964)* One of those film debuts it’s hard to appreciate now, because of her image in later years, but it was a sweet revenge for Hollywood rejecting her for the lead in MY FAIR LADY, a character she basically created for the stage and I saw in the only Broadway musical I went to as a teenager, decades before I went to another Broadway play, and was knocked out by her in both
Half the cast of MASH (1970) and Altman’s first commercial hit, plus when reissued in ’73, according to the guide I’m taking all this from, the soundtrack was redone with music by Ahmad Jamal, the jazz great who influenced my own piano style
Everyone in MEAN STREETS (1973)* Scorcese’s first masterpiece, and the first time most of us saw De Niro and Harvey Keitel, as well as the Carradine brothers, Robert and David, and the actor/poet Harry E. Northup
Margaret O’Brien in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944)* First film I saw her in and first child movie actor I had a crush on, since by the time I saw the movies she starred in I was almost her age, plus she was obviously “black Irish” like me and had those sparkly Irish eyes I loved
Marlon Brando in THE MEN (1950) First film he was in and I saw him in, and was already taken with his acting power, also another great Teresa Wright performance, a local girl from my Jersey hometown
Almost everyone in MENACE II SOCIETY (1993)* First film I ever saw to capture what it really looked and felt like at some of the parties I went to in all black neighborhoods in East Orange and Newark when I was a wannabe black teenager back in the ‘50s
Klaus Maria Brandauer in MEPHISTO (1981)* First film I saw him in, terrific
Everyone in METROPLOITAN (1990)* First Whit Stillman movie I saw and I dug it and everyone in it
Most of the cast of MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)* Including some downtown scenesters I knew a little, but mostly John Voight’s incredible performance and impact as a new force in film acting
Natalie Wood in MIRACLE ON 34th STREET (1947)* Saw it at age five and loved it and her, though not in the way I fell for Margaret O’Brien—there was always something too coolly professional about Wood, no matter how old or what role she was playing
Patty Duke in THE MIRACLE WORKER (1962)* Incredible performance for a child actor, and even more incredible one by Anne Bancroft who I’d seen before but didn’t realize until this flick how great an actor she was, even if her Irish accent was often off
Everyone in THE MISFITS (1961) Not because I hadn’t seen them all before, but as Kevin said in his comment on the first of this series of film firsts, this was the “last” time for many here to act in a film—Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable in particular—and the first time a cast of this stature and longevity made up an ensemble in a serious, very serious, sometimes too serious, story written by none other than Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston
Ken Ogata in MISHIMA (1985)* Paul Schrader’s greatest achievement, though a commercial flop, captures the life and creativity of a writer better than any movie on the subject, using three different type film stock, one in black-and-white, one in washed out colors and one in vivid colors, to tell three different aspects of Mishima’s story, documenting the day he died, filling in his history, and illustrating aspects of his novels
Frederic Forrest in THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976)* First time I noticed him in a flop of a film mostly dismissed by critics but the first and only time Brando and Nicholson got together, and Brando kicked ass in what some see as an over-the-top performance that ruined the film but I see as an acting lesson that could have saved the film if the director let everyone else cut loose too in an otherwise too static and too serious Western
(see THE DEPARTED)
Most of the cast of MONA LISA (1986)* Especially Bob Hoskins, who I hadn’t noticed before, Robbie Coltrane and Cathy Tyson
Almost everyone in MOTEREY POP (1969)* Best documentary on the 1960s music scene, shot at Monterey Pop festival in 1967, captures the unfolding of “The Summer of Love”
David Warner in MORGAN! (1966)* I love this movie and him in it, as well as one of the first films I saw the incomparable Vanessa Redgrave in
Katherine Hepburn in MORNING GLORY (1933) Earliest film I saw her in as a kid on TV, having known her as an older star then, and her first Oscar-winning performance—Hepburn is, with Vanessa Redgrave and Gena Rowlands, the three great divas of film acting from their first appearances on screen as young actors
Dick Powell in MURDER MY SWEET (1944) First time Powell played a tough guy, and though initially I had trouble buying it, he won me over in one of the great film noirs (or is that films noir?)
Everyone in MURMER OF THE HEART (1971)* First film of Louis Malle’s I saw and dug enormously and still do
Daniel Day-Lewis in MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985)* First film I saw him in, maybe the greatest actor of his, or any, generation
Marisa Tomei in MY COUSIN VINNY (1992)* The rumors at the time that the Oscar was mistakenly given to her was a disservice to her pitch perfect performance
Henry Fonda in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946)* First film I saw Fonda in as a little boy, and one of my all time favorites ever since
MY FAIR LADY (1964) First Lerner and Loewe musical I saw and completely dug
Brenda Fricker in MY LEFT FOOT (1989)* I took my grown children to see this because she reminded me so much of my own mother, God rest her soul

I’ll stop here for now. Is this all just too self-indulgent? Ah, ain’t that what makes this whole blog/My Space/You Tube/internet/world-wide-web thing so much fun? Hey, I’m diggin’ it—what an outlet for compulsive list makers like me. How about you?