Richard Kimble

Whether or not you like Brando's performance in MOTB, I don't think he's miscast at all. I can very easily see him as Rasputin. Is his Nightcomers character really all that different? I can even see Brando giving FDR a shot.

In 1973 Terrence Malick arranged for Caril Fugate, the real-life model for Sissy Spacek's character in Badlands, to attend a screening of the film, at a motel near the prison where Fugate was serving time for her role in the Starkweather murders. Details on the Malick-Fugate meeting: http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/features/film/terrence-malick-badlands-and-caril-fugate.html For collectors of the macabre only -- an audio interview with Charles Starkweather on the night before his execution: Quite the James Dean fan

I just watched her in a Burke's Law last night. I think she was better in unsympathetic roles, which made her unusual among young actresses of that time. Maybe that's why she lasted so long. Trivia: MH was the original choice to play the wife on Green Acres. I don't know why she left the project, but thank heaven she did -- gloriously crazy Eva Gabor played the role to perfection.

July is Lesbian Adopted Midget Eskimo Pride month, I hope TCM is planning a LAME festival

Raymond Chandler's cameo in Double Indemnity: The original, now-lost ending, set in the gas chamber at San Quentin prison:

It was a '70s TV movie called The Gun, allegedly based on the history of the handgun owned by Sirhan Sirhan

How much do you get paid for this?

What is it with this "the one" stuff? And the gun is not a character in W'73. It's a plot device -- a "Macguffin" -- to get the characters interacting with each other. There are stories where the main character is an inanimate object -- The Little Engine That Could -- but the object has been anthropomorphized. According to the Guinness Book of Movie Records there was a film in the '70s set in a junkyard where all we see is machines moving around. That might come closest to your criteria.

Well that and Kirk's performance are the two most interesting things in the film, so the novel must have been pretty boring

Do you have any idea how many western movies and TV episodes this could describe?

Also Fox I see you have a great interest in yourself

Most people probably do it just to save a syllable -- the same sort of laziness that leads to "I could care less". I prefer it with the "The" -- it gives a fatalistic sense of inevitability. You can definitely go too far with indefiniteness. H.G. Wells supposedly insisted the title of his story was Man Who Could Work Miracles. The pun now present in the new title does not make up for the awkwardness of the language.

But did she have a title?

Oddly enough while just now researching the 1960s TV series Burke's Law with Gene Barry, I ran across this:

I can confirm that this sort of Civil Defense film was still being shown in grade schools in the South as late as the 1970s. While not grimly terrifying, it was not laughed at either. Robert Klein had a great routine about this sort of thing, suggesting that during a drill would be the ideal time for the Russians to attack (since no one will know it's real until it's too late), and the teacher's reaction: "No butting in line! I want an orderly nuclear holocaust!"

The way I heard it, Rogers was always a shrewd investor, even in high school, and actually supported himself that way as a young acting student in New York (trivia -- at one point his roommate was Peter Falk). Apparently acting has been essentially a second career for Rogers, and he made his real money as an investment counselor to the stars.

A few favorite examples: Francis Lederer is best remembered for Confessions Of A Nazi Spy in 1939. Earlier in the decade RKO had tried to make him a romantic idol in the manner of Boyer, but that didn't take. Lederer was never any kind of major star, but he took his relatively modest salary and invested it in San Fernando Valley real estate. By the time of his death he was said to be worth $12M. Like Lederer, Fess Parker put his TV salary into real estate and eventually became something of a mogul, owning hotels and vineyards. When he died his net worth was supposedly in the nine figures. All my life I've heard that Stuart Whitman is very rich, but I've never been able to get details about how much he has or how he got it. Sam Phillips the owner of Sun Records in Memphis and the discoverer of Elvis Presley (among many other legends), actually made relatively little money from the music business. However in the early '50s he invested in another Memphis venture, a motel chain called Holiday Inn, which would eventually make him a millionaire. And one last word about the California real estate business. Barry Keenan was convicted of kidnapping Frank Sinatra Jr in 1963 and was sentenced to life plus 75 years in prison -- but served only four and a half years, as he was found to have been insane at the time of the crime. Upon his release Keenan went into real estate and according to a 1983 magazine article, was worth $17M...

As a music fan and amateur historian, I've learned that there are actually careers associated with different musical genres. For country/rockabilly musicians, it's insurance. Some left the business entirely for it, while others set up agencies and devote themselves to it when the music biz is lean (or as an investment), then go back to performing when they can. For surf musicians -- indeed for much of the SoCal surf culture of the '60s -- it was real estate. The surf music craze was very short-lived, although the culture continues to thrive. I guess real estate allowed a decent living with time off for surfing. Real estate also became a career for many film starlets of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, those who never managed to achieve stardom. Research the bios of the era's glamor girls and time and time again you will find they ended up in the real estate business. Perhaps it's a field where it pays to be an attractive woman who presents herself pleasantly.

Didn't she do a Love Boat?

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo -- greatest title of all time The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies -- another masterpiece from Ray Dennis Steckler. For anyone else it would be the title of a lifetime, but for Cash Flagg, it's merely runner-up. I Dismember Mama Every Little Crook And Nanny The Dead Don't Dream -- sounds like a noir-horror from Cornell Woolrich, but it's actually a Hopalong Cassidy oater I Was Born, But... -- 1932 Ozu film Even Hitler Had A Girlfriend (yes this was an actual film) The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd -- a stage musical by Newley and Bricusse, apparently never filmed. "I'm Dreaming Of A Wide Isthmus" -- episode of the short-lived sitcom The Wackiest Ship In The Army Adolf Hitler, My Role In His Downfall -- film version of Spike Milligan's war memoirs 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, Or David Copperfield -- Book by Robert Benchley Twice A Fortnight -- English TV show of the '60s A Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing -- Album by the '70s rock band Sparks The Appallingly Vile, Sickeningly Depraved, Nauseatingly Repulsive and Disgustingly Perverted Life Of A Friend Of A Mine, Oh All Right, Me -- An imaginary memoir, as listed in a "bibliography" in one of the Monty Python paperbacks. I still hope someone will film it someday. And some curios: The Case Of The Dangerous Robin -- This was not a film. It was actually a TV series, starring Rick Jason as an insurance investigator. The title has always intrigued me -- is it about one single case he works on for the entire series run? And precisely how dangerous is this bird anyway? I've never researched the matter deeply, afraid I will be disappointed by the mundanely prosaic answers. Ice Cold In Alex -- For decades, after reading the title in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion as a young teen, I wondered what in the HELL this film could possibly be about...

From John Ford: The Man and His Films by Tag Gallagher: "This production still is probably all that remains of a controversial lynch-mob sequence removed from Judge Priest before release. Paul McAllister, Will Rogers, Charley Grapewin, Hy Meyer, Tom Brown."

Photo from a cocktail party thrown by George Plimpton, for a Life magazine article on the independent film production scene, December 1963: Backstory on the party here: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/plimptons-party/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1

Did Leonard Maltin plss in your cornflakes?

These are more visually interesting than the film itself.