CineSage_jr

Well, it's really not a steeple, architecturally speaking, but a bell tower, or campanile as the Italians call them.

Alex Trebek (it's okay; I've yet to meet anyone who's met him who likes him, anyway).

Astaire or Kelly? Both were working on the MGM lot at the same time, for the first time, while Kelly was making ANCHORS AWEIGH and Astaire YOLANDA AND THE THIEF in 1945.

What private message?

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

Do you mean who was responsible? The MGM studios construction department, under the supervision of production designer Robert Boyle, and art directors William Horning and Merrill Pye.

Tomorrow, will you be shipped off to fight in Vietnam?

Joseph Cotten.

A Brothers Karamazov moment, if ever there was one.

Even before Miss deH became one of the last living exemplars of Hollywood's Golden Age, AFI's (unwritten) criterion for receiving the Life Achievement Award had become If you're not still boxoffice, forget about it.

PSYCHO forms a clear line of demarcation in Hitchock's career; never again would he make his patented chase-thillers (NORTH BY NORTHWEST was the last) and, while it would've been unrealistic to imagine that he might have had another VERTIGO in him, the change in direction was very unfortunate (though, to be fair, N by NW was the apotheosis of his chase-thillers, and Hitch might've felt that there was really no direction to go but down from there. TORN CURTAIN does go in that direction, but the film is both too somber, and too cheesy [as were most of his Universal films] to recreate the spirit of NORTH BY NORTHWEST. And his final break with composer Bernard Herrmann during the production of TORN CURTAIN surely didn't help; Herrmann was an integral part of Hitchcock's growing success through the 1950s and early '60s, which Hitch was loathe to admit). In a sense, PSYCHO was the most disastrous even of Hitchocock's career because, ironically, its immense success made him and the Universal executives think that they could make profitable films on TV budgets, if only they were exploitative fright-fests like PSYCHO (albeit a vastly accomplished one).

TCM most certainly does have I ACCUSE! in their permanent library. They've shown it many times.

Not a "permanent" set in the sense that a TV series keep sets standing on a soundstage (often adding to them over the years) all through the show's run, or Universal's leaving the 1925 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA theatre standing for over seventy years; like all studios during the "Golden Age," MGM stored the components from its sets in "scene docks," that could be reassembled as necessary. The Grand Central Station set components were obviously used frequently. In a similar vein, the GCT sets built at Fox for HELLO, DOLLY! (1969) were re-used (in wildly re-dressed form) in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970).

It's called THIS SPORTING LIFE, Michelle (and please leave one-space gaps after puctuation marks; your postings are very hard to read without them). Thanks.

As we say in Milano, this is the short end of the stick that stinks! -- Generale Sebastiano (Fortunio Bonanova) to Cpl. J.J. Bramble (Franchot Tone) in Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett's FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO (1943) Thanks, Susan.

The "what if..." plot is, of course, used quite a bit for television episodes. Star Trek's--"what if the Roman empire did not collapse", "what if aliens were prohibition era (Earth) gangsters". My favorite television thing is the Saturday Night Live skit--"what if Spartacus had had a Piper Cub". Kirk Douglas (the guest host) is a passenger in the Piper Cub and gets to fly over and drop rocks(?) on the grounded Roman soldiers. Big laughs. Speaking of Kirk Douglas, an example of the "what-if" film is THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (1980), which recounts the improbable tale of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz being transported from the present (c. 1982) to the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the United States into WWII. Enjoyable in its somewhat cheesy way, this low-budget film falters when the time-warp suddenly, and inexplicably, reappears to summon the Nimitz back to the present before its F-14 jet aircraft can turn the tide of battle against the Japenese, therefore gutting the very dramatic question the film has spent ninety minutes setting up. Perhaps MGM's La Boheme would have starred Rosa Ponselle, Beniamino Gigli and Chaliapin instead of Lillian Gish, John Gilbert and Edward Everett Horton... Then we wouldn't have had to wait till 2003 to have to suffer through GIGLI.

SYLVIA SCARLETT is an RKO title, in TCM's library, and has been shown a number of times.

I'm familiar with the Kaye movie. It's no COURT JESTER, of course, but was made by the same team of Norman Panama (whom I met several years ago) and Melvin Frank. Kaye's paramount films were, in most ways, superior to those he made at Goldwyn, for all their production polish, and KNOCK ON WOOD is no exception.

Apparently, the film is one of those being considered for a future batch of WBHV DVD's.

Well, frankly, a lot of his intros were obviously culled from old studio pressbooks, which were usually the product of studio publicists' fantasies as much as anything else (a problem, to a lesser extent, with Bob Osborne's copy at TCM, I'm sorry to say). Maybe it's just a problem with guys named 'Bob.' While it's at least as much the fault of the writers and producers as the host, there's really no excuse for it, because there are loads of people with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the material (but who know better than to trust their memories other than to have a firm grasp on where to find authoritative information), who'd gladly vet the copy and provide correct pronunciations for free (or a few DVD's, anyway).

Bitte means "please," depending on the context (it can mean the equivalent of "you're welcome" in response to danke -- "thank you"). In THE LONGEST DAY, the Germans, by saying, "Please, please" (with their hands clearly raised) are offering their surrender, asking not to be killed. It's therefore ironic, and a little disappointing, when they're mowed down due to the U.S. troops' inability to understand this basic phrase.

Well, I don't know the offical story, but it seems to have been a combination of what I call a "For Good and Faithful Service" movie, rewarding Morgan for his long service with the studio (not unlike what they did for Louis Calhern with THE MAGNIFICENT YANKEE), the opportunity to make something resembling an all-star production at minimal cost -- since, as you point out, a lot of the footage was already in the can -- to fill out the production schedule which back then mandated a minimum number of films produced per year.

Got to the Academy bright and early on Thursday, the first day the tickets for the tribute were to go on sale, only to find that they'd already sold out! Want to know why? Because they put a four-ticket maximum on purchases, instead of a more sensible two (who needs four, except to scalp two of them?), which the folks at the Academy admitted to me was, in retrospect, a mistake. They've only been holding such events for the last thousand years, or so; you'd think they'd have figured out how to run things properly by now. Now I've got to try to call in one of my innumerable markers (none of which is Shirley Temple) to try to score a couple of tickets. Morons.

Well, of course, Hirschfeld (not "field, though, "feld" means "field" in German) drew the profile of Hitch that became famous from its use in Alfred Hitchcock Presents intro (it adorns the exterior wall of the Hitchcock Theater on the Universal Studios lot to this day). As to which film, I'm going to venture REAR WINDOW.

That story's since been debunked, though I don't think anybody knows who did sing for Bacall.