I gotta say, I have always loved a Bob Redford film. His handsome panache always added an air of youthful energy.
Top left to bottom right:
Out of Africa
The Great Gatsby
Jeremiah Johnson
The Great Waldo Pepper
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
The Sting
All the Presidents Men
The Way We Were
3 Days of the Condor
80’s and 90’s actor Val Kilmer passed away a couple of days ago at the age of 65. Several notable roles in many successful movies. Ice Man in Top Gun, Doc Holliday in Tombstone to name a couple. His Jim Morrison in The Doors was memorable. I met him in New Mexico many years ago and he recognized my Geordie accent due to some time filming The Saint in Newcastle.
La Motocyclette
A 1968 erotic romantic drama film directed by Jack Cardiff, starring Alain Delon and Marianne Faithfull. It is based on the 1963 novel La Motocyclette by André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Released as Naked Under Leather, it was the first film to receive an X rating in the United States.
She achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her hit single “As Tears Go By” and became one of the lead female artists during the British Invasion in the United States. Faithfull’s maternal great-great-uncle was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose erotic novel, Venus in Furs, spawned the word “masochism”; also inspiring one of the best songs written by Lou Reed and John Cale for The Velvet Underground.
Marianne Faithfull 1946-2025
“Okay. Why Not?”
Famed racing legend Mary McGee who passed away a couple of weeks back at the age of 87 started her motorcycle racing career as a suggested sidetrack from her car racing shenanigans. In 1960, while she was racing a Porsche Spyder in Santa Barbara, California, the car’s owner, Czech race-car icon Vasek Polak, suggested to McGee’s husband that she should ride a motorcycle to improve her car-racing skills. When he told her, McGee responded with, “Okay. Why not?” She became the first woman to hold an roadcracing FIM (Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme) licence. Friend Steve McQueen suggested she get into dirt bikes and attend SoCal desert races. She rode Husky’s well into her 70’s after moving to Nevada. Mary McGee nee Connor 1937-2024
Donald Sutherland plays a nazi agent in this 1981 film The Eye of the Needle. Knowing plans about D-Day he needs to report back to Berlin with a U-Boat meet-up off Scotland. Ending up on a remote “Storm Island” he takes up with a woman who is emotionally estranged from her husband who lost his legs in an automobile accident on their wedding day just as he was about to head off as a Spitfire pilot. As our protagonist is being pursued by Scotland Yard he commandeers a Velocette motorcycle to hare through the glens of Scotland. He ditches it in the sea after just crossing the Connel Bridge which crosses Loch Etive. The film was directed by Richard Marquand who went on to direct Return of the Jedi for George Lucas.
Film
We went to see this film tonight. Based on photography and recorded interviews from the late 60’s and early 70’s it follows a bike club in Chicago as they make their way through the Midwest on Harleys clad in oily leather jackets emblazoned with “Vandals”. Tom Hardy is leader, Austin Butler the too-cool-for-school member and Jodie Comer is marvelous at his wife. Two-Thumbs up!
Proud youth with his ape hung, hardtailed rear, extended forked, bicycle headlighted Triumph Tiger Cub. The wooded setting sets off the red paintwork superbly. As George Hanson said whilst imbibing on a Jim Beam quart bottle “Here’s the first of the day, fellas! To old D. H. Lawrence.” The whilst flapping one arm like a chicken: “Neh! Neh! Neh! Fuh! Fuh! Fuh! Indians.”
At 95 Gina Lollobrigita had a full and interesting life. As a sex symbol in post-war Europe she acted in several films opposite leading men such as Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Burt Lancaster, and , as seen on the lower right image, Rock Hudson. Later life saw her move to the other side of the camera, where, as a photojournalist, she managed to get an interview with Fidel Castro. (1927-2023)
Blurb from the back of the VHS box: “After a rare comet sighting, teen sisters Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Samantha (Kelli Maroney) find that they’re among the only survivors of a zombie attack. The girls partner with another survivor, Hector (Robert Beltran), but as they try to avoid the zombies, they’re sought by scientists who want to experiment on their bodies in the hope of finding an antidote. Dodging both the doctors and the undead, they keep moving in the hope that they can continue to stay alive.” A Triumph motorcycle is the vehicle of choice for the protagonists.
– another passing this week was Sidney Poitier. He flew the door wide open for minority actors. This lesser known film that he directed and starred in sees him as an american, Dr Matt Younger, who travels to Britain to take part in scrambler races. Whilst there he falls for a young woman who is an African Ambassadors daughter. Romance ensues. Sidney was 94. The bike is a BSA B50 MX which, incidentally, was the very last competition model from the Small Heath factory. Models were still rolling off the line during BSA’s demise.
– One of the “New Hollywood” directors from the seventies, Peter Bogdanovich, passed away this week aged 82. His first foray into movies was as an assistant director under Roger Corman in Wild Angels. A pivotal film that set the scene for what was to come. I’ve always got time to watch his first directorial debut triplet: The Picture Show; What’s up Doc? And Paper Moon. here he looks on as Corman discusses a scene with Peter Fonda.
– John Philip Law and Jane Fonda running around on a period Norton in the late Sixties.
– someone has a travel laden Bonneville passing through Wyoming. Waiting for UFO’s to appear over the porphyry columns looming over the Belle Fourche River.
– with over a year waiting for its eventual release; the latest Jane’s Bond outing is all you could want in a 160-odd minute action movie. The initial bike chase sequence, through the narrow and steep streets of Madera, Italy, sets up the film in true 007 fashion. An exciting final outing for Daniel Craig as the agent protagonist.
geordiebiker.com 