Vautrin

If I remember it correctly she also played Adam's fiancee on Bonanza. Then his cousin, played by Guy Williams, came along and she fell for him and Adam was out of luck. One more Cartwright wedding to be that never came off.

Jan Sterling. In the later part of her career she appeared mostly on the small screen.

Dumb old me. I thought the 25 people who put the most dead presidents into the Mankman's hand got to introduce their favorite flicks.

Susan Strasberg. Likely better known as a movie star, but she did a fair amount of TV too.

For the slightly less intellectualy inclined--Linda Thorson. The lovely Elizabeth MacRae. You've got to go to Pixley to get these duds. They sure don't sell 'em in Hooterville.

A significant part of Reconstruction, though not everything about it, was, while admitting the former Confederate states back into the Union, an effort to help the newly free slaves in adjusting to life after slavery and giving them political rights and trying to limit the continued oppression of black people. No doubt it didn't work perfectly in practice, but some good was accomplished. Who knows if things would have worked out for the better or the worse if it was not ended in 1876. I think the reason it was abandoned in 1876 was the political moves around the disputed presidential election. As so often happens, politics and winning an election were more important than what happened to people, in this case the former slaves. We'll find out tonight what the series covers in its last two hours.

I sometimes watch TMTMS on FETV where it plays every weekday from 1 to 2 o'clock. While it's sad to hear of her death, the Georgette character was often one of those where a little of her goes a long way. I guess Engel kept it from going over the edge of yucky sweetness. She was also good as Robert's mother-in-law in ELR. She was surprised by her son's satanic metal crossword puzzle with 1,000 pieces of head banging fun.

I couldn't recall if I had seen this one before or not. It looked familiar but I wasn't sure until the Walter Brennan character showed up. How can one forget a guy who charges a dime to look through his telescope (while he tries to pick your pocket). To me it's more of a grifter film than a noir. I got a kick out of the golf mad adviser to Fitzgerald, but those crummy suits that Coulouris wears. Yikes. Whatever one wants to call it, pretty engaging though not top drawer. Never eat at a place called Mom's, engage in a bs showdown with a guy named Pop, or go into a con with a man called Doc.

Reconstruction was mostly a pro forma procedure that the Confederate states didn't have much trouble in accepting. Then they mostly went back to their old way of doing things, minus actual slavery. And while there was oppression of black people throughout the U.S., it was worst of all in the former Confederate states. So from the viewpoint of today that is probably the most significant thing about Reconstruction.

Perhaps the reintegration of the confederate states into the union was the immediate concern, but in hindsight it was the return to the continued oppression of blacks after the war that would be the most important factor for the future. I know there's a long-term debate among historians about how harmful the carpetbaggers actually were. Likely still going on.

Buy a rowboat, go out onto the water late at night and punch a hole in the bottom. Voila.

I think most people would agree that history is a selection of data and trying to use that data to build a certain narrative as objectively as possible. While the anti-Semitic historian might write that Jews dominated certain professions, and assuming for a minute that is borne out by the numbers, just because his purpose is to enhance his anti-Semitic views doesn't make that fact, if it is a fact, any less true. I'm not sure that one factual narrative is more or less true than another. The history of Nazism from the standpoint of its victims is not more true than the economic, political, and social factors that led to the rise and ultimate coming to power of the Nazi party. They are merely different perspectives on the subject of Nazism. I place moral and ethical "truths" on a different level than those of science and math. It's difficult to see how the former can ever be objective.

I can understand why it focused on the freed slaves. Their future was the main concern of Reconstruction. I think the struggle between Johnson's Reconstruction "lite" and the more stringent one of the Radical Republicans was given its share of the program as was the story of Grant trying to get a hold on the violence of southern resisters. And the election of 1876 and how the political deal making around it put an end to Reconstruction was explained pretty thoroughly.

If one spells it correctly, it will be asterisked out. Oops, I've got to go to the terlet.

There are a number of times I've read philosophy professors on the net replying to folks who talk about the idea that post-structuralists believe everything is an opinion, there are no facts, that there is no such thing as objective reality, the profs usually say that this is a gross exaggeration and an erroneous popularization of their views. I think the profs might have something there. Nietzsche the father of post-structuralism. That's not a fact, just an interpretation.

I think it's pretty clear for the most part. The question is what period of time will part two cover. Part one ended in 1876/77, which is considered the end of Reconstruction. Maybe it will cover the years immediately after Reconstruction or go up to the 1960s. Sometimes these programs will wrap up everything up to the present day in the last twenty minutes or so. I'm still waiting for the first hint of some fiddle music.

Four hours on the Reconstruction seems okay, though I'm not sure how far along the last two hours of the program will go. I wouldn't call it a definitive version of history as one could make the argument that there is no such thing and that if there was a four hour program wouldn't even come close. Before history is deconstructed it's necessary to have a pretty detailed knowledge of the topic, whatever it is. I wouldn't want an average high school student trying to deconstruct the Reconstruction period. I agree with the Sergeant that books are the most effective way to go with a subject like this.

It's just so obvious that Hollywood left-wing preverts are destroying this great country reel by reel, film by film. They are sociopaths wrapped in a nama inside Fidel's old cigars.

I believe the whole program is four hours long with the concluding two hours to come next week. I found it informative to a degree, filling in some of the details of the overall period. The main theme that I saw was that white southerners did everything in their power to return to the antebellum days short of slavery, which had been outlawed. I got a laugh out of the minor point of poorboy Andrew Johnson taking revenge on the planter class that he despised by making them come to him individually to receive pardons.

And if you go to Petersburg, Va. you'll bump right into the Appomattox river. So I'm not surprised that some of the river scenes could have been filmed there. Petersburg, Va. was also the hometown of Joseph Cotten. Not too hard to notice his soft southern accent.

Some of the performers I'm not interested enough to buy CDs and I've already got more of them than I can listen to. Since I don't pledge maybe I'll leave a little chunk of change in my will. No pledge drives in hell. I hope.

I think it's very obvious that Depardieu is jealous of Ogier's work and the time spent with her clients. He wants to have control over what she is doing and she isn't going along with that. That can't be making him very happy.

I don't what it was like in the early 1950s, but Petersburg, VA did have its rundown areas in the early 2000s.

Many of them are just comparisons to anything that came out after 1970 or so. If it's in b&w and from seventy years ago, it's got to be great. I don't watch soaps, but I know that the afternoon American lineup ain't what it used to be, at least in quantity.