CineSage_jr

Inward-opening doors have been part of building codes for decades because outward-opening doors become impediments to timely escape in the case of fire or other diasaster (they create a series of obstacles crowds moving through corridors must overcome).

First cartoon, or first sound cartoon?

Actually, it's almost certainly an episode of the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Superman called The Clown Who Cried (1954, second season), which starred George Reeves.

That sounds like THE FIVE PENNIES to me (available on Paramount DVD in an excellent transfer). PS: It's THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN.

Um-hmm. Knowing that criminals can so easily impersonate Roman Catholic priests makes it much easier for me to sleep at night, too (it also explains a lot).

There was no interaction with the audience at either event, if that's what you mean. All the questions posed to her by Osborne (and, I presume, the host at the Museum) were approved by her in advance. Robert Osborne wasn't at the L.A.County Museum HEIRESS screening, owing to his having to be in Atlanta on TCM business. Of course, I wasn't taking notes or making recordings at the screening, but the recollection of Miss deH's that sticks with me is her going to New York to see the then-new Ruth & Augustus Goetz play on Broadway (at the suggestion of director Lewis "Milly" Milestone), with Wendy Hiller as Catherine (and old ROBIN HOOD 'nemesis' Basil Rathbone as Dr Sloper). While she was very complimentary toward Hiller's performance, she says ahe knew immediately that Hiller's stylized approach wouldn't work on film, and that she began to mentally formulate her approach to the material immediately (with, of course, no guarantee that she'd be able to secure the rights to the play). She apporached several directors she'd worked with in the past, including George Cukor, but they all had commitments that prevented them from joining her in trying to mount a film of the property. She then thought of William Wyler, with whom sher'd never worked, but whose films she'd long admired. At her urging, he left for New York to see the play, while she "waited in my kitchen for Willy to call.' He did and, DeHavilland related, said "I saw it, I liked it; let's do it." It's a good thing he did, too, because THE HEIRESS is, in my opinion, his masterpiece (from a director who made a habit and career of crafting masterpieces). As for your friend, that was my mistake. I should've begun a correspondence with her thirteen years ago; that way I wouldn't have had the trouble I encountered finding a ticket (and would probably have gotten fed at the reception).

Maureen O'Hara is beautiful and sweet. I don't know. A winsome Irish colleen on the outside, her screen persona was the proverbial "spitfire" -- tough ladies more than a match for the men who tried to tame them. In real life, she's also tough and savvy. She knows what she wants, and she won't back down once she's determined what she wants. That doesn't mean she's not nice; I've met her, and she was perfectly pleasant, but a friend of mine who knows her pretty well (and has had business dealings with her) tells me that she won't take crap from anybody (who does, really, except when forced by circumstances?), and that included her best friend, John Wayne. Frankly, you don't survive in show business for 65 years if you don't have a minimum amount of steel up your spine.

Don't jump the gun, maybe there is a place called the Motin Picture Academy! Of course there is -- for actors, anyway: the E-motin' Picture Academy.

What about CHAMPAGNE FOR CAESAR NEW WINE VINO IZ ODUVAMCHIKOV (Dandelion Wine, from the Ray Bradbury short story) THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA[/i]?

FATHER GOOSE.

Raines to Bogart in Casablanca Rains.

You're looking in the wrong place, Matt: Maybe it would'nt make any difference. It's [not this one] seems that every few weeks a good cable network will change it's format to appeal to the 18 to 35 moron demographic in an effort to pull down more advertising revenue. Contraction instead of possessive. Sorry, but there's no need fior me to joing the "Most Americans" club at this time.

I really can't understand why TCM isn't showing FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO as part of this series, since the film is part of the same Universal package that contains A FOREIGN AFFAIR, DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE LOST WEEKEND. And I think the channel has the Paramount package that contains ACE IN THE HOLE, but that's not being shown either. Wake up, TCM!

Seitz was Billy Wilder's preferred cinematographer from FUVE GRAVES TO CAIRO (1943) through SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950). As a child actor, if you'd played your cards right and gotten the right make-up, you might've been an excellent choice as Norma Desmond's late, lamented dead chimp. SEITZ: How do you want me to light the scene, Billy? WILDER: Oh, just your usual dead-monkey shot! A true exchange between the two men during the filming of SUNSET BOULEVARD.

"Surely you don't believe in all this supernatural baloney." This was said by either Stephen King, or Anne Rice. I can't remember which.

Whether the movie deserved the Best Picture Oscar over 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' doesn't matter.Those Awards are based on a lot of things but popular opinion or importance 68 years later is not part of the criteria. Well, the response of future critics or audiences is never part of Academy voters' consideration when they choose nominees and Oscar winners. That said, the test of time is surely a better indicator of a film's merit as art and entertainment, than the awards and reviews it wins when new, in the same way that finishing the regular season with the best record in its league is the test of a superior baseball team; the outcome of short, artificially conceived playoff series and World Series prove little or nothing. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD played at the L.A. County Museum of Art last Friday night as part of its Olivia deHavilland retrospective. I defy you to find a film of its, or any other, vintage that plays better than TAoRH. While I can't say for sure that YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU has never played in revival at the Museum or elsewhere, or that it won't in the future, it can't possibly have the hold on modern audiences that ROBIN HOOD does, and will continue to have. It never dates precisely because it's the perfect fairy-tale.

The British actress June Duprez THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD, THE FOUR FEATHERS) was more beautiful than any of her Hollywood contemporaries. Though she made a few films in Hollywood, she never caught on here, and spent most of her career in Britiain.

I had a lovely lunch with Sherman at a restaurant near his Malibu home, about six years ago. He was sharp and erudite, full of stories and ideas for movies, well into his nineties. He was truly the last of a breed. OBITUARIES Vincent Sherman, 99; Director for Warner Bros. in the 1940s By Dennis McLellan Los Angeles Times Staff Writer June 20, 2006 Vincent Sherman, who directed Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis and Errol Flynn during their 1940s heyday at Warner Bros. and was one of the last surviving studio-era contract directors, has died. He was 99. Sherman died Sunday night of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, his son Eric Sherman told the Associated Press. An actor-turned-screenwriter, Sherman began his directing career at Warner Bros. in 1939 with the low-budget "The Return of Dr. X," which is memorable only as Bogart's sole foray into the horror genre: He played a criminal who died in the electric chair and was brought back to life by a doctor who restores life to corpses. Working on pictures assigned by the studio, Sherman quickly established a reputation as a competent technician with a flair for melodrama. Among his credits are "All Through the Night" (1942), starring Bogart; "The Hard Way" (1942) starring Ida Lupino and Jack Carson; "Mr. Skeffington" (1944), starring Davis and Claude Rains; "The New Adventures of Don Juan" (1948), starring Flynn; "Goodbye, My Fancy" (1951), starring Joan Crawford; "Lone Star" with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner (1952) and "An Affair in Trinidad" (1952) with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. Sherman later directed Paul Newman in "The Young Philadelphians" (1959) and Richard Burton in "Ice Palace" (1960). In the 1960s, after the demise of the studio system, he turned to directing for television. "He was a very capable craftsman whose theater training and upbringing stood him in good stead in the Hollywood system," film historian Leonard Maltin told The Times a few years ago. Sherman was born Abraham Orovitz in Vienna, Ga., on July 16, 1906. (Sherman said his Russian-born father, who ran a small dry-goods store, changed the name from Horovitz to "Americanize it.") Sherman graduated from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta in 1925 and planned to become a lawyer. But in 1927, while working as a newspaper police reporter in Atlanta and studying law at night, he and a former classmate wrote a play and decided to move to New York City to seek fame and fortune in the theater. When they failed to sell their play, Sherman, who had gotten his first taste of acting while at the university, began looking for work as an actor. Renamed Vincent Sherman by a receptionist at a talent agency, he began landing small roles in Theater Guild productions. During the summers, he worked as a social director at a camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where he acted in and directed dramatic and musical shows. In 1932, Sherman was hired for a role as a young communist in the Chicago company of Elmer Rice's play "Counsellor-at-Law." A year later, he was brought out to Hollywood to re-create the role in director William Wyler's film version, starring John Barrymore. Sherman stayed in Hollywood six months, playing small gangster parts in a few films before returning to New York, where he appeared in and directed numerous plays, including playing a role in Clifford Odets' "Waiting For Lefty." He also continued to write his own plays. In 1937, a part in the road company of Sidney Kingsley's "Dead End" brought Sherman back to Los Angeles, where he met Bryan Foy, head of the B-picture unit at Warner Bros., who asked him if he would like to try writing for films. Assigned to Foy's B-unit, Sherman began by rewriting old screenplays into new movies. "I rewrote a Jimmy Cagney flick, 'Mayor of Hell,' and they filmed it as 'Crime School,' " he told the Toronto Star in 1997. "It became the studio's most profitable movie of the year. I took a Paul Muni picture, 'Dr. Socrates,' changed the lead to a woman, got Kay Francis [to star] and we shipped it out as 'King of the Underworld.' " One day Foy asked Sherman to shoot a brief scene of a radio broadcast of a sporting event with a young actor the studio had recently signed: Ronald Reagan, whom Sherman later directed in "The Hasty Heart" (1949). "I absolutely hated directing Ronald Reagan, who had a huge ego and little talent," Sherman told the Toronto Star in 1997. After directing "The Hard Way" ? the 1943 film earned Ida Lupino the New York Film Critics Award as best actress of the year ? Sherman established a reputation as a women's director. His next assignment was taking over as director of "Old Acquaintance," a 1943 drama starring Bette Davis and her Warner's nemesis, Miriam Hopkins. "The director Teddy Goulding faked a heart attack rather than have to go through directing Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins once more," Sherman told the Toronto Star in 1997. "Miriam made faces in the background during every close-up of Bette. "The day Bette had to hit her [in a scene], the gallery was filled with onlookers. Everybody hated [Hopkins] so. Bette smacked her so hard Miriam's head bobbled and everybody cheered." In a 1995 interview with Daily Variety, Sherman looked back on those early years at Warner Bros. with mixed emotions. "It was very contradictory," he said. "We were always [complaining] about the scripts and money and conditions. But it was like a family. You went from one picture to another, and with each success you had a little bit more power. In some ways, it was wonderful, because when you went to work on a script you pretty much knew who would act in it." Sherman wrote about those days in his 1996 book "Studio Affairs: My Life as a Film Director" (University of Kentucky Press). The title refers, in part, to his affairs with Davis and Crawford, as well as a fling with Hayworth. In his book, Sherman praised his late wife of 53 years, Hedda, who put up with his occasional unfaithfulness. "She was very understanding and a truly sophisticated human being," he told the San Jose Mercury News. During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, Sherman was "gray listed" in Hollywood for a number of years, losing what "should have been my best, most productive years as a director." "I wasn't a communist, but I knew people like John Garfield who'd been blacklisted and I stood beside them," he told the Toronto Star. When the gray list was lifted, he returned to Warner Bros. to direct several more pictures. After turning to television directing, he worked on numerous series such as "Medical Center," "Baretta," "The Waltons" and "Trapper John M.D." He also directed such TV movies as "The Last Hurrah" (1977) starring Carroll O'Connor; "Women at West Point" (1979); "Bogie: The Last Hero" (1980) and "The Love Goddess" based on the life of Rita Hayworth (1983), as well as the syndicated miniseries "The Dream Merchants" (1980) with Mark Harmon and Morgan Brittany. Late in life, Sherman received a degree of critical attention from film scholars and film buffs who came to appreciate his talent for storytelling and for eliciting strong performances from actors. At the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado in 1996, Sherman's "The Hard Way" was screened as part of a series of forgotten masterpieces. Sherman, who appeared at the festival, had a clear sense of his place in film history. "Of the 30 films that I made, I really liked only 10 or 12 of them," he told the San Jose Mercury News. "The rest were what we called bread-and-butter pictures." In addition to his son Eric, Sherman is survived by his companion Francine York, daughter Hedwin Naimark, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Do your three fully-grown no-neck monsters also confuse the contraction "it is" (it's) with the possessive form (its)? Of course, most Americans do ("it's" is, I think, the only possessive word in the English language that doesn't employ the apostrophe-"s" or "s"-apostrophe combination). Why, I'll bet even the President of the United States does it, too (when he's not discussing "NOO-kyu-luhr" proliferation)!

For anything other than Word applications, I find it easier to copy-and-paste letters with diacritical marks from a website that offers them. The one I use most often is http://www.initium.demon.co.uk/charactr.htm As for FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, I should have known. I have an original script from the film (240 pages long!) which its author, the late Charles Bennett, autographed for me when I spent a lovely afternoon at his home about fifteen years ago.

Just saw it Saturday night at the L.A. County Museum of Art, as part of its deHavilland restrospective. Quite a wonderful and affecting drama, and certainly one of its star's finest hours (or hour and fifty-six minutes, to be precise).

DeHavilland made her appearance at tonight's screening of THE HEIRESS at the L.A. County Museum of Art, at which she was, if anything, even more engaging and charming than she was at the Academy tribute last Thursday (of course, this evening I was in the scond row, whereas I was much farther back at the Academy). Close-up she sure looked like the same Olivia her fans have come to know and love from her films, and one could not help but be struck by the genuine twinkle in her eyes and delight at having an audience who cared about the life she's lived, and the thoughts she consented to share with us. She was self-deprecating, almost apologizing for being above her weight at her prime, though what a number of those of us up front couldn't help but notice is that this 90-year-old lady still has a pretty darn fetching pair of legs! And for Susan, Miss deH was wearing a silver-blue skirt-suit with pearls, pearls, pearls at the neck, some of which had t have been the size of robbins' eggs (and you can bet they're real, too).

Slime? Enough about Dick Cheney, Tom Delay and Bill First, already!

One of the great mysteries is why this static filming of an overrated stage play won the 1938 Best Picture Oscar over the incomparable THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (or any of the other nominees that year, for that matter).

Hilarious, David. One more: dispatching the hero quickly, when he has the chance, is never good enough for a diabolical villain, whose ego compels him to goad and toy with the hero for as long as it takes for said hero to figure out a way to turn the tables on him.