sewhite2000

Steve Ditko, the co-creator and original artist of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, as well as most of the classic villains who originally faced those characters, has passed away at the age of 90. The notorious recluse hadn't given an interview since 1968, and there is no published photo of him since about that time either. For the last 15 years or so of his life, the only way one could see new material by Ditko or read his thoughts in the form of essays were via snail mail transactions with his publisher; Ditko had absolutely nothing to do with the Internet and/or social media. Ditko drew the first 38 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, then abruptly quit the title and Marvel in 1966. The reasons why are murky. For half a century, urban legend had it that he and Spider-Man scripter Stan Lee had a falling out over the revelation of the identity of the Green Goblin. Lee felt the readers deserved a dramatic payoff - that the villain needed to be someone Peter Parker knew in his personal life. Ditko thought the Goblin should turn out to be no one anybody had ever heard of - evil being faceless and nameless and without easily discernible motive, just like real life. Lee got his way, the story had it, and Ditko quit. Ditko finally dispelled this notion in a 2015 snail mail essay, saying he quit because Lee had stopped talking to him, and that he didn't want to work for someone who wouldn't even communicate with him. I don't know that Lee has ever directly addressed Ditko's version of events; he did say in a 2002 Los Angeles Times interview that he never knew why Ditko left. Ditko was a disciple of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, the polarizing conservative notion that weak-willed moral relativists enable social decay and that those who have principled self-interest and bold individuals who dare to create should be celebrated. This worldview increasingly characterized the themes of Ditko's work over the past half-century, to the point where Objectivism had pretty much been all he wrote and drew about for the past 15 years. Ditko rarely discussed his early life, and what little that is known about him comes almost entirely from public record. He was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the child of Eastern European parents of working-class stock. He was a member of his high school science club and became obsessed first with the newspaper comics of the 1930s and then the super-hero comic books of the 1940s. After serving a stint in the Army in postwar Germany, he attended the prestigious Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City, where he studied under pioneering Batman artist Jerry Robinson, co-creator of Robin and the Joker. Ditko met Lee in 1950 when the latter visited the school in his capacity as editor-in-chief of Atlas Comics, which would later become Marvel Comics, seeking new talent. After six years of freelancing, Ditko joined Atlas in 1956. This was just before DC kicked off the big Silver Age super-hero revival. It was a few years before Atlas/Marvel got into the super-hero game, so Ditko cut his teeth on science fiction and horror stories. After the success of Fantastic Four by Lee and artist Jack Kirby in 1962, Lee says he commissioned five pages from Kirby about a hero who had the powers of a spider. Lee says he decided Kirby's version of the character was too bulky and conventional (Kirby did draw the cover of Spider-Man's first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15) and gave the character instead to Ditko. Though Lee probably deserves credit for the name and concept, the look of Spider-Man, the cross-hatcheted costume, the Mexican wrestler mask, the webs, the radiating lines indicating spider-sense, the split-face closeups of Spider-Man/Peter Parker - those are all attributable to Ditko's genius. Ditko's other major creation for Marvel, Dr. Strange, became a figure of adoration to the counterculture and the hippies. His work on the sorcerer took readers to "universes that followed no discernible physical laws and yet had an internal consistency," as longtime DC writer and executive Paul Levitz put it. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe notes that Ken Kesey was absolutely obsessed with the character. I believe it was future comics publisher and critic cat yronwode who described descending on the Marvel offices en masse with her Greenwich Village hippie compatriots to meet the genius responsible for Strange's creation, clearly someone who was a fellow traveler, only to find the eager-to-please huckster Lee only too happy to have an impromptu meet-and-greet and the prickly Randian Ditko, who wasn't interested in meeting them at all, both men in shirts and ties. Ditko had other memorable, if not as impactful, creations for other companies - Captain Atom and The Question for Charlton (Alan Moore's Rorschach is a tribute to The Question - in fact, he was supposed to be the Question until DC decided not to use the actual Charlton characters they'd just purchased in what became Watchmen), the Creeper and Hawk and Dove for DC, Mr. A for mostly self-published comics; and Speedball and Squirrel Girl in a return to Marvel. Lee and Ditko even tentatively planned to reunite on a Marvel series called Ravage 2099. According to witnesses, they met, embraced and sat down to talk over the concept. However, Ditko blew a fuse when a 1998 Time magazine story credited only Lee for Spider-Man's creation, and in an interview of Lee by Comic Book Marketplace that same year, Lee took credit for concepts Ditko felt were his ideas. The planned reunion fell apart, and by 2000, Ditko had again left Marvel and mainstream comics altogether, this time for good.

At least one entire book has been devoted to the question of what was the first rock & roll record ever. It's a fun parlor game, though I don't believe there's really a correct answer. Definitely before "Rock Around the Clock," though. The Girl Can't Help It has a rep as the Citizen Kane of rock & roll movies. Being a Fox film, it's only aired on TCM twice. I definitely need to see it. That lineup for Go, Johnny, Go, is pretty extraordinary too, however. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum is in Cleveland because of Alan Freed, plain and simple. Sadly, his career was pretty much brought to an end by the payola scandal, while the easier-to-like-by-the-establishment Dick Clark skated through the whole thing and remained a media presence for another 50 years.

I like both these actors. I'm not a Backlot member, but I guess I'm hoping they vote for William, who hasn't been SOTM before (Powell has one time). I would say no matter who wins, Gold Diggers of 1933 is almost guaranteed to be on the schedule in December, since they play brothers in this movie.

This is maybe a matter of semantics, but isn't Shoah like nine and a half hours or something? I think it was Pauline Kael who said that she felt like a kid looking out his classroom window at a beautiful spring day while watching it. I haven't seen it, but I know it has drawn near-universal praise. I'm not denying it's an important work, but I'm a little uncomfortable with labeling something you can't possibly watch in one sitting as a "movie".

Nipkow, you hadn't posted in so long, I thought you were dead! And now you return just to repeat the exact same thing you already said and add a laughing a emoji as if your point is somehow so painfully obvious everyone on earth but you must be laughed at. You don't have any interest in seeing classic films in their original theatrical dimensions and sizes? And in the environment and atmosphere in which they were intended to be shown? "It's already been on TV" actually doesn't strike me as a very strong argument.

Yep.

Edward Arnold was definitely a favorite heavy for Frank Capra. I've noticed in my many viewings of Meet John Doe that he's wearing these frameless glasses that he frequently takes off and wipes or otherwise plays around with. I guess I'd kind of always thought that was an acting choice by Arnold specific to that movie's character, but just a couple of nights ago I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and he's wearing frameless glasses in that movie, too! He doesn't mess around with them nearly as much in that movie as he does Doe, but there are a couple of scenes where he removes them and plays around with them. Once you're cognizant of it, it's almost impossible to ignore. Kind of like Cary Grant's chin. Does anyone more observant than me know if Arnold wore frameless glasses all the time, in all or most of his films? I've worn glasses since I was 13, and I marvel at the very concept of frameless glasses. How do they even stay on? Have you got be squinting or flexing the muscles around your eyes every second of conscious life? I feel if you relaxed those muscles for just a nanosecond, the glasses would just fall to the floor. Sorta of the same concept as the monocle, which was once apparently very popular but seems kind of ridiculous in retrospect. However, Arnold does seem to hold those glasses in place without any apparent effort or strain.

Thanks. It appears, however, they're trying to also set the shorts in the same geographical region as the full-length movies on a given night!

Well, that's interesting. I can't say if they appear in the short or not. I was looking for some musical act or something, not knowing what they were! Maybe the credits are accurate after all.

I didn't know the answer to your question, so I had to go to the website homepage. Apparently, it's a continuing theme running every Monday and Tuesday night the entire month.

Watching this right now, between A Summer Place (Maine) and Lolita (New Hampshire, apparently. Is that where Humbert and Lolita end up? The movie starts in Ohio). Is this considered one of the 50 movies, 50 states? Because it makes a point about being set in Vermont, which fits in the theme of New England night. Amazingly, this very website neglects to include Chill Willis among the cast members, even though he plays the leading role. You can look it up yourself! It appears from reading the cast and crew that includes the Avalon Boys, that there has been some screw-up, where tcm.com has listed the credits for some completely different short. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/401911/Immortal-Blacksmith-The/ Edit: Okay, I'm hearing Humbert stopped over in New Hampshire on his way to Ohio, and it's in New Hampshire where he meets Lolita. Guess I had it backwards.

I clicked ha ha on this post like 15 times in rapid succession and got a message I'd never seen before saying, "Sorry, but there was a problem reacting to this content" and my only option was to click "OK", but after I did so, a laughing emoji finally appeared.

I wanted to put a laughing emoji on James' post, but I click and click and click and nothing happens. Anyone else having this problem?

Yes, whoever barred you from entry clearly didn't know the law! On the opposite end of the spectrum, I'm exhausted with going to R-rated or extra-intense PG-13 movies only to find parents have brought children ages eight or under with them. Sometimes crying infants. Civility in movie theaters is loooong dead.

Thought of a few others I saw on HBO between the ages of 12 and 14: 10, Zapped, Risky Business, Tarzan the Ape Man, Bachelor Party, The Star Chamber, Friday the 13th, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Blame It on Rio

Taxi Driver at six! Holy crap! Did you understand it? I was a good kid. I never once snuck into a rated-R movie. The first one I ever saw in the theater (an important distinction; we'll get to HBO in a minute) was Aliens, when I was 18. My parents weren't terribly concerned about shielding me from anything except sex, it appears. I recall when I was 10, we were going to see The Goodbye Girl, but maybe some friends of my parents had said there was a sex scene it, so at the last second we saw Casey's Shadow instead. The first movie I can recall seeing with an inordinate amount of profanity was Smokey & the Bandit, which my dad took my brother and I to when I was 10. I remember my dad being really depressed after seeing it. Jackie Gleason was one of his favorite performers of all-time. He was devastated to see Gleason uttering so much profanity. I also saw Foul Play when I was 10, in which two people get stabbed to death, and Heaven Can Wait, in which Warren Beatty gets killed in a traffic accident five minutes into the movie (implied); and then at 11, my parents took me to The China Syndrome, in which Jack Lemon gets shot in the chest, and the whole state of California almost blows up. My parents, like most of their generation, had no thoughts or qualms at all about shielding me from violence or language, only sex. I saw some movies with my brother that, though they were PG, my parents probably would not have approved of - The Bad News Bears Go to Japan at 10; 1941 at 11; and Airplane! at 12. My parents got HBO when I was 12, and that was where I saw all my first rated-R movies. Just some of the movies I would have seen on HBO between the age of 12 and 14 were Altered States, Looker, Fast Times at Ridgmont High, Blade Runner, Saturn 3, Paradise, The Blue Lagoon, Endless Love, The Elephant Man, Victor/Victoria, All That Jazz, Animal House, Coma, History of the World Part 1, Little Darlings, the '70s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Poseidon Adventure, Shampoo and Salem's Lot. Some of those were PG, but they all had mature themes.

BTW, the guy who does the voiceovers for "Arby's - we have the meats" is Ving Rhames, probably still best known for Pulp Fiction. He doesn't seem to work much on-camera these days, though he is in the new Mission: Impossible film.

In just the last year, a comic book graphic novel adapting Ellison's original unaltered script for The City on the Edge of Forever was released. I don't have any publishing info, but I'm sure you could find it rather easily in an internet search.

Dargo, in modern years, I've heard a slight variant of "bats" to describe "crazy", one which I'm sure would be autocensored if I tried to type it, but "bat poop", except substitute "poop" with a stronger word!

I think I kind of thought of one? "With or without?" being the only question ever asked in old movies when a hamburger is ordered. You've got a lot of topping and condiment choices in the post-"Have It Your Way" era: cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, not to mention the modern craft burgers with bacon or avocado or a fried egg or kimchi or Lord knows what else. But in the classic movie era, burgers came with exactly one item you could choose to have or not have in addition to the meat and bread: onions! In some movies, they ask, "with or without onions?", but in others they just say, "with or without?", and it was assumed everyone in the audience knew what that meant. I would think most people my age or younger would have no idea what that question meant.

Boy, definitely some people on there I didn't know were still living. Nancy Olson! Doc Severinson! Mikis Theodorakis! Hope they're all living happy lives and have happy birthdays.

It's certainly not a TCM staple, but this was the eighth time TCM has shown it, according to moviecollectoroh's database, so I'm sure it will be on again someday. Ann-Margaret got an Oscar nomination for it, so it's been part of the 31 Days of Oscar lineup at least twice that I can remember.

I don't know if the man in question even deserves further mention, but just in case you were wondering, he was an heir to the Bloomingdale department store fortune. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_S._Bloomingdale Interesting she chose not to name the director who set up the date in the first place or what his reaction was to the way that date turned out. Possibly she never told him.

I was curious about that. I'm not really old enough to remember girls being sent out West firsthand, though there were a couple of girls from my high school who discreetly disappeared for a while, though I think they just mostly stayed indoors until the babies were born, not sent off to another state! Nowadays, I don't see much stigma associated with that anymore. Those girls would just keep right on going to class.

Well, along those lines, anyone who had an unplanned pregnancy in the old movies was shuffled off to the desert in some Western state, also the site for old movie quickie divorces.