Hollywood Classics; Of the 30s and 40s

Drken Welcome to the Hollywood Classics of the 30s and 40s. Tonight we present to you the movie in which you may expect to hear a famous line that I strongly suspect was never spoken by anybody at all. Come with me to the Kezba. I bet nobody will say it. Nobody in Casablanca said, play it again, Sam. I don't remember what was said, but it wasn't that.

The Virginian didn't say when you say that smile. I think it was something like that if you want to call me that smile. I know there was more to it than when you say that smile. It should have been when you say that smile. In all these cases, the popular expression is better, at least out of context than the original. I am no great admirer of folk art or folk songs usually, but when it comes to little sound bites, the folk are frequently real artists. An outstanding example is Winston Churchill's famous blood sweat and tears. What he said was something like blood and toil, tears and sweat, which lacks rhythm and throws in an activity to jar with all the liquids. Blood sweat and tears is more consistent, grammatically and symbolically, because toil is literal, and the other three all represent something bigger than themselves. You follow me? May West did not say come up and see me sometime in Diamond Lil on stage, or she'd done him wrong in movies. I don't remember what she did say, but it was a wee tad less direct and universally applicable. Anyway, you listen, it'll be my luck to child boy, I will say. Come with me to the Kezba just to make me feel foolish, but I'll stand by my point just

to saying. Algiers is the movie they introduced to the Americans Queen, Hetty Lamar, who has, as often as any other woman, been labeled the most beautiful woman in the world. But it wasn't until recently that we were made to recognize another side of her, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored her work in developing the cellular telephone. Actually, what she had been working on was a system for controlling torpedoes, but the principle remains the same. Good Thompson's biographical dictionary of film, third edition, 1994, does not hint at any of this, but does agree with me on her reputation as a beauty and says she was a less than moral street level actress. Though variety said in 1938 that she was as good as her co-star, Charles Boyet, tonight. Thompson also points out that she did not have unfailing taste in material. She turned down the eventual Ingrid Bergman roles in Casablanca and in Gaslight Bergman's first Oscar movie, and eventually wound up trying to revive her career with not a biography ecstasy and me that was so outrageous that she sued her ghost writers for $21 million.

Thompson doesn't say whether she was a ward in anything. Her first husband was a millionaire munitions maker who was honored by Adolf Hitler and even made an honorary Aryan and spent a fortune trying to buy and destroy all copies of her native Hungarian movie ecstasy in which she appeared nude and simulated great facial passion, which Thompson says she was only once more in Cecil B. DeMille, Samson, and Delilah able to put a cross on screen. He says she tended to look worried too much of the time, presumably because she knew she couldn't act. If you don't find tonight's offering satisfactory, you might want to check the French version of the previous year, Pepe Lamoco was John Gabon or the second American version of 10 years later in 1948, Kezba was Tony Martin, but I imagine most of you will be satisfied with what we are about to show. It hardly seems fair for anybody to look like that and yet be able to work on torpedoes

and cellular phones. Some of us are just lucky and the rest of you just have to sort of trail along behind, I guess. Next week we have something equally remarkable, a flawless performance by an eight-year-old in a serious movie and furthermore a movie that had been described by at least two major critics as being virtually perfect. It's called the Fallen Idol and Ralph Richardson is a star you will recognize, but Bobby Henry eight years old is the one to watch. It's sort of a Hitchcockian thriller, something of a variation on that sort of thing, kind of a psychological thing, kind of almost a shaggy dog story kind of a thing. Interesting movie directed by Carol Reed, famous for Oliver and Oddman Out and things like that. The Fallen Idol with Ralph Richardson and eight-year-old Bobby Henry next time on Hollywood classics of the 30s and 40s.

The Fallen Idol with Ralph Richardson and eight-year-old Bobby Henry next time on Hollywood Welcome to the Hollywood classics of the 30s and 40s. Not too many weeks ago I had occasion to declaim, not to say, fulminate, upon the difficulty

of making grown-up movies about children in the Shirley Temple days. And among my remarks was a suggestion that European movies had frequently done much better than American ones, even back then with realistic treatment of children. One of the directors I had in mind was tonight's Carol Reed of England, who I read somewhere had a tendency to present children as more or less heavies even when they were themselves sympathetic. Tonight may be a typical example. Bobby Henry, who retired from movies two years after tonight at the age of ten, is a quite ordinary child who would not under any circumstances want to make trouble for his idol, Ralph Richardson. But he does not understand what is going on, and as a result, Mr. Richardson becomes the titular Fallen Idol. And maybe it was Graham Greene who used to take a rather skeptical view of children. Tonight's original story is his, and he wrote the screenplay from it. It was called the basement room if you want to look it up. I wouldn't want you to waste your time looking for a short story called the Fallen Idol. Mr. Halley Wells, Fussy Film and Video Guide, by the way, gives tonight's offering three

stars and calls it near-perfect, which may indicate what it takes to get four stars from Leslie Hallwell. Jerry Vermelius, the great British films, which we have to accept as authoritative because it has an introduction by Deborah Carr, agrees with Mr. Halley Wells by causing calling the Fallen Idol nearly faultless, and gives some detail on how director Reed coerced an unbelievably natural performance from Bobby Henry. It seems that Reed claimed, you can check this for yourself in a moment, that he never let children or amateurs speak their lines in the same shot that the adults spoke in. He said that children and amateurs always remember their lines, but always, that's a word he used, forgot their cues. So he either ended the shot before their lines came up or spoke their lines himself and later dubbed them in. I don't recall that I found this to be quite true tonight, but you know my memory, you better check it for yourself. However he did it, Reed won the New York Film Critics Best Director Award, and his movie was declared by the British Film Academy, the best British film of 1948.

There was a tendency for Shirley Temple movies not to be given such rewards. Those of you who know the story, the basement room, may protest that this movie follows the story, the way historical movies follow the fact of history. Well, it was Mr. Green's story, so I guess he had to write to do what he wanted with it. I was going to talk about the theme of justice, but I don't want to give away too much of the plot. Watch for the camera angles that put us into the point of view of the eight-year-old boy, and Vermilia admires the use of the set so much that he says that the main staircase becomes almost a living character. I hate that kind of remark, inanimate objects are not characters, period, but the setting is most effectively used. So is everything else. The Fallen Idol is one of our real winners tonight on Hollywood Classic to the 30s and 40s. Well, the Fallen Idol is sort of a high watermark, it's a little hard to follow, but I believe

that next time we are going to manage to maintain level. Our movie is a walk in the sun. One of those movies that came out late enough, it was made during World War II, released after the fighting was over, it was made late enough that it was no need to be a flag waver, super patriotic and so on, could tell a certain amount of truth about the war after all. And I remember it as being quite a realistic little study of a single platoon in a single battle situation. Although in my intro, I will point out that a great many people saw something very other than realistic and to them even more impressive in it. You have a look, you can decide for yourself. A walk in the sun, one of the best movies from World War II, next time on Hollywood Classic

until the 1930s and 1940s. Welcome to the Hollywood Classic till the 1930s and 1940s. Each movie has been so universally lauded that it has astonished me to find the claim in Charles Hyam and Joel Greenberg's Hollywood in the 40s that had been, quote unquote, repudiated

by producers at 20th Century Fox. Hyam and Greenberg give no reason for the supposed repudiation and I have yet to find any other reference to it. Hyam and Greenberg object to the, quote, windy, pretentious script and strange, self-consciously poetic style, but they seem to be referring to the very things that other critics praise. Harry Brown's novel, A Walk in the Sun, called by Newsweek, One of the Few Fine Novels to Come Out of the War, was according to Ann Lloyd's British movies of the 40s, followed almost verbatim by screenwriter Robert Rossin, reproducing the book's verbal cadences and almost folkloric style. The result was, according to Clyde G. Vaughan's pictorial history of the war films, Arrhythmic, folkloric parable of combat, punctuated by pleasantly incongruous ballads, the reminded Peter Gutmacher of legendary war movies of gospel music. Another stylistic device that was much admired was John Ireland's composing letters in

his head that in some ways describe in other ways comment on the action. These are supposedly what Norman Kagan's pyramid book on the war film, called Stream of Conscious soliloquies, though they are not stream of consciousness, if Ireland is consciously composing them. Kagan, I might mention, says The Walk in the Sun, was directed by Lewis Milestone from Harry Brown's novel as if there had been no screenplay at all. Let me assure you, no movie can be successfully made straight from a novel. I suspect that Mr. Kagan's book is one of the weak entries in the pyramid illustrated history of the movie series. But he does quote some of the ballad for me. It's a walk that leads down through a Philippine town and it hits highway seven north of Rome. It's the same road they had coming out of Stalingrad. It's the old Lincoln highway back home. It's wherever men fight to be free. The actual setting is Salerno Beachhead and six miles in. The time, a single day, the cast, a single platoon of 53 men, about 10 of which Gutmacher

says we get to know intimately. He also says that these men voice eloquent and chillingly honest insights through their dialogue. He echoes the fairly common complaint that The Walk in the Sun is a little talky, but he says it's also straight from the heart. I haven't seen A Walk in the Sun for a long time, but frankly, I do not remember it being as experimental as all this sounds. Maybe after the ballad in high noon, the use of a song as a narrative device doesn't seem remarkable, and voice over narrations of all kinds are familiar from film noir and quite a few movies from the past decade or so, when there was sort of a revival of narration in movies, maybe sparked by Terence Malik's Badlands. Malik's The Thin Red Line depended largely on genuine stream of consciousness or something very like it. What I remember is what a lot of reviewers and movie scholars describe, a simple story of a group of soldiers in their reaction to a wartime situation that is no less tragic for being common in any war.

In that, it's very similar to The Thin Red Line, but less generalized, at least to the extent we always know who's talking. And Lloyd's book calls it The Ultimate Refinement of the Group Motif, achieved by a cute observation of individual characters and states of mind, unquote. Produced during the final months of World War II, and released after the fighting was actually over, A Walk in the Sun had no need to wave flags and make morale raising appeals like those in Mel Gibson's The Patriot, and it feels no need to protest the brutality of war. Clyde Givens is typical in noticing its acceptance of the fact of war that rather than rebellion against it. Though he also said it makes a strong statement about the futility and tragedy of war, which sounds a lot like Saving Private Ryan to me. And Lloyd's British book calls tonight one of Hollywood's final, masterly chronicles of the war period. Let's take a look. Well, that's about as good as the combat movie's got in World War II.

Next time we have a movie that is not quite up to that level, not near that level, as a matter of fact, about an incident that is not quite war, but it's of interest because it is the only movie I know of that commemorates the Berlin Air Lift of 1948, one of the astonishing heroic performances of the immediate post-war period. It's called The Big Lift, it stars Paul Douglas and Montgomery Clift, and it's worth a look if for no other reason that that subject deserves a much better movie. And considering the cost of the aircraft, well, maybe they can do a special effect now.

I have my doubts we'll ever get a better one. The Big Lift, next time, with Montgomery Clift on Hollywood Classics of the 1930s and 40s. Welcome to the Hollywood Classics of the 1930s. We Americans, and I suspect other people as well, have an annoying tendency to build memorials to things one wishes had never had to happen, especially to events in which we kill people.

I suppose there's a monument to the emancipation proclamation somewhere, but I'll bet there are a hundred monuments to the Civil War or battles in it. We're commemorating the heroism of the dead, of course, but I wish we were as eager to remember the people who did things more enjoyable to contemplate. Jonas Sock and his polio vaccine are frequently cited in this connection, and there's a civil rights act and Medicare and Social Security and the Peace Corps and the Mennonite Disaster Squad. There may be monuments to all of these, but all I seem to read about in the papers and get appeals for through the mail are big wars and little wars. And frankly, I don't contribute. I hope there's a monument to the Marshall Plan somewhere, but my historical consultant didn't know whether there was or not. And I sincerely hope that somewhere, preferably not just in Germany, there's a monument to the Berlin Airlift of 1948. I can't find out how many were accidentally killed in it. I think 77 or 78, maybe our movie will tell. But it was a fantastic effort that some people feel averted World War III and that certainly

should have persuaded the Russians that the United States and its allies were not as weakened and exhausted as the Russians probably hoped. The Russians decided to block Berlin and force the allies to abandon the four-part rule of it that planted an island of other than communism right in the middle of their zone of influence. The Americans, French and British, had a total of 6,500 troops in Berlin. The Russians had 18,000 with 300,000 available in their surrounding zone. And we'd been dismantling our air force in typical postwar fashion. So when Harry Truman, bless his soul, told General Lucius Clay that we were going to supply Berlin by air, General Clay was not so sure it could be done. And General Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force Chief of Staff, was afraid we were going to weaken ourselves dangerously in other places. At least one new airbase had to be built. And at one point, we were landing a cargo plane of some sort or other every three minutes 24 hours a day.

The lift lasted 14 months and included 277,804 flights and 2,325,809 tons of food and coal and whatever it takes to keep a big city going. And then the Russians gave up. It was no vacation. And the people of Berlin lived pretty thin that winter, but what an accomplishment it was. And our movie tonight will not be an adequate tribute to it. For one thing, it's corrupted by a stale, old love rivalry between Montgomery Clift and Paul Douglas of Broadway, born yesterday fame, over Cornell Borchers and who needs that. The theme of Douglass' hatred of all Germans is relevant, but Americans seldom take their history seriously when making movies, as witness Mel Gibson's The Patriots, in which the 30% of the Americans who favored the British during the Revolutionary War are ignored and even the British dogs desert their masters to join the rebel Americans, Dobermans too. I wouldn't care to rely on the political instincts of Dobermans.

But anyway, according to Robert LaGuardia's biography of Montgomery Clift, the big lift was intended to see simply another militaristic pro-American propaganda effort, a semi-documentary whose main interest lay in all the exciting aircraft doings and the real life air force men. Most of the cast, except for our romantic trio, were veterans of the actual airlift. But Patricia Bosworth, in her biography of Clift, says Clift wanted to dramatize the contrasting American states of mind during the Cold War, and she emphasizes the terrible moral, corrupt, and in Germany as a result of Hitler. In either case, Clift did not act too much like a public-spirited citizen. He made such a fuss about his living quarters in a city whose condition of Paul even him, that General Clay had to move a colonel and his family out so Clift could have a garden for the few weeks of the shoot. And Paul Douglas, who claimed who had been warned by John Wayne, who had played with Clift

and Red River, about Mr. Clift, threatened to break his neck for some reason or sheen stealing, I believe it was. So they weren't speaking together except for their lines. But they did reportedly speak their lines extremely well. Let's see. Well, I guess that'll have to do, although I wish they would make a better, more ambitious, more historically concerned movie about the Berlin Airlift. I think it is one of the great, really inspiring, you know, stories of the century. And it lacks some of the grimness and gloom and, you know, gaspiness and so on and so

on of a lot of the others. But I don't suppose they ever will. Maybe television to do a mini-series, sometimes there's not perhaps too much hope for that they will do something like that. Next time we have a play by William Soroy and that won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Circle Award, but waited nine years to go on screen until James Cagney taught Soroy into letting him film The Time of Your Life. And the result was a film so satisfactory that when Soroy was watching it, he said he enjoyed it so thoroughly he forgot he had written it. I don't believe him, but that is a high tribute from a writer about a motion picture version of a stage play and especially from a highly idealistic writer like William Soroy. He actually rejected the Pulitzer Prize claiming it was a commercialization of art. Stay with us next time. It's interesting and quite unusual movie even now, although it was made in 1948 from a play that was been on Broadway in 1939.

The Time of Your Life with James Cagney, William Bendix and a bunch of other people. Next time on Hollywood Classic to the 1340s. Welcome to the Hollywood Classics of the 30s and 40s. Tonight we present the work of a man whose career closely paralleled that of Orson Wells and astonishingly strong start as a highly independent artist followed by a long descending

curve in this country but continued adulation overseas right up till the end. William Soroy was almost exclusively a writer while Wells was a writer actor producer director personality. But except for the matter of variety, William Soroy was a whole lot like him. Orson Wells broadcast the War of the World when he was 23 and made Citizen Kane when he was 26. Soroy was almost 30 when he wrote the stage version of tonight's movie but he brought him both a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Grammar Critics Award, the kind of recognition Wells never got. And Soroy claimed to have written the first draft to his play in six days and he refused to Pulitzer Prize because he thought it commercialized art. That's as idealistic as Wells ever was. The resemblances go further. We won't recognize it tonight because artists like Robert Altman have done the same thing so often but in his day, Soroy's unconcerned with normal plot development and structure was as experimental as anything Wells ever did.

Try, just for a study in futility, try to decide what is the main plot line in the time of your life. Soroy did have some United States success later in World War II. He wrote a song called Command of My House that Rosemary Clooney made a super hit of. But World War II brought a change in American thinking that's generally accepted as putting Soroyans cheerfully romantic, optimistic concept of life out of date. It's interesting that the Europeans who had always looked at life in a more gritty, sophisticated way than Americans remained Soroyanists to the last, just as they remained loyal to Wells. Both artists spent their last decade in Europe as a result of that sort of thing. The time of your life hit Broadway in 1939 just before World War II. During the war, Soroyan had a big hit with the human comedy and wrote, my name is Eram Novels, the first of which was made into a movie starring Mickey Rooney in one of his earlier non-musical parts, winning Soroyan an Oscar for Best Original Story and nomination

for Rooney as Best Actor and the Picture as Best Movie of 1943. But for one reason or another, Soroyan wouldn't let anybody film the time of your life for nine years until James Cagney was farming a new movie company in 1948, wanting to get away from the usual Hollywood-Bruha Ha Ha and become, believe it or not, a farmer. I suppose to get away from Hollywood intention by a major star, a finally loosened Soroyan up, or maybe he was already smelling the coffee that his great days were over. Anyway, he was delighted by tonight's adaptation, claiming he'd enjoyed it so much that for the time being, he forgot that he had written the original. If you can swallow that one, you have a more generous gullet than mine. But Ace Reviewer James A.G., who some people think is the greatest movie reviewer of them all, I'm a host, not a reviewer, so please withhold the mail, says that those who made the picture have given it something very rare.

It's obvious that they love the play, compare what atrocities current movie makers flicked on Shakespeare, and their work on it, and their affection and enjoyment are highly contagious. They have done so handsomely by Soroyan that in the long run everything depends on how much Soroyan you can take. At his best, A.G. said, Soroyan is a wonderfully sweet, natured, witty, and beguiling kind of Christian anarchist. And so apt, a lyrical magician that the music designed for one medium still works in another. Sounds as if he should be at his best tonight, let's hope so. Myself, I quit drinking a great many years ago.

But I tell you, you can find me a bar like that one. I would go back. I wouldn't drink. I drink soda pop. You know, you can buy soda pop in the pictures in some places. I was surprised to find how many of my friends, by the way, had been drinking soda pop all along, and I didn't know it. I would be tempted to go back, but I don't think there's ever been a bar quite like that, not even curbs in its great days. However, anyway, that is romanticism of a kind that I think does little harm. Next time we have romanticism of a kind that I have always rather resented, and was happy to find out James A.G. also rather resented. But an absolute classic based on a stage play that was far more successful than the time of your life could ever hope to be. William Powell in life with father, one of those Victorian ideals about the lovable old cute family tyrant, sort of a domestic Mussolini. But everybody seems to love it, except me and James A.G. Give it a look.

It was very notable on Broadway. It was tremendously successful on film. It features a, I believe, 15-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, plus Irene Dunn and William Powell. And it is a super American classic, no matter what you think about it. You don't always have to agree with me, you know, some of you have indicated that in the past. Give it a try. Life with father. Next time on Hollywood classics of the 30s and 40s. Welcome to the Hollywood classics of the 30s and 40s. And you will have to excuse me if I seem a bit cross tonight.

One of the kind of romantic falsity I can tolerate least is the kind that makes those old Victorian family tyrants seem cute and cuddly beneath a crusty exterior. That's why I prefer the eras, or even the Barrett of Wimple Street, to deny too much more popular offering, life with father. Clarence Day's original memoir came out in 1935, hailed by Dorothy Canfield as enchanting, delicious, riotously comic, profoundly human, wise, and above all true, accurately, incredibly true. The stage play of 1939 was a pretty accurate representation of day, and tonight's movie from 1947 is a pretty accurate representation of the stage play. So I will leave it up to you to decide how much truth we witnessed tonight. 1947 was still a delicate year. The closing words of the stage play, damn it, will not be heard tonight, though it is eight years since Gone with the Wind fought for the word damn. But the trouble is not a sensible thing.

It's a whole concept of family life and masculine authority. Tonight may be fun for a couple of hours. It earned Oscar nominations for William Powell as father, Marley and Shull's photography, Max Steiner's music, and the art direction of Robert Haas. But ask yourself whether this is the family you would care to grow up in, or even spend a vacation with. You don't have to be a feminist or a youth rebel to wonder why Papa should have to be treated with so much loving guile. My such Christian virtues as humility and patience were not required of the masculine parental role. I remember when I was a child believing that nasty temper was part of the male ideal. After all, all the fathers I saw around me showed it, and they were all much admired. But I'm certainly taking this silly little fantasy too seriously. The Broadway version ran for 3,224 performances, and a stonishing number of them, starring one co-writer Howard Lindsay and his wife Dorothy Stickney as Mon Pah.

The other writer was Russell Krauss, and our writer tonight is Donald Ogden Stewart, who also interestingly enough had already screenwritten the Barrett's of Wimple Street for Charles Lawton as another concept of father. Stewart's other credits include Kitty Foil and the Philadelphia story and the Prisoner of Zinda. There's no cheap talent among us tonight, except me, and we all know about that. Our movie was the sixth biggest moneymaker of 1947, following the best years of our lives, anybody cared a guess what was the last year that a picture of that quality was the top box of the year? Dual in the Sun, already number two seems more like today. The Jolson story, Forever Amber, and Unconquered by Cecil B. DeMille, maybe things weren't so different after all. Ace Reviewer James A.G. blesses his insightful soul, said, fun, I suppose, but I can't really enjoy laughing at tyrants, least of all tyrants, who are forgiven because of their innocence.

I swear, I did not know he had said that when I started writing these words. A.G. thought that Powell was pretty good, but that Dunn couldn't keep her tongue out of her cheek as mom. Variety was happier, praising the two leads, as well as Elizabeth Taylor at 15, Zazoo Pits at 49, Edmund Gwyneth 73, the year after his Oscar as Santa Claus in Miracle on 34 Speed, and Jimmy Liden for once not playing Henry Aldrich of Radio fame. Taylor, by the way, is three years past national development and star status, and about three years before her first marriage to Nikki Hilton, who had a violent temper, so much for people learning about life from art. Maybe she thought Irene's Dunn's life tonight would be some kind of a paradise. Let's see how likely that is. Never live with a guy like father, IQ's clearance day of lying, and everybody else connected

with all the whole history of this production as lying. However, that's one behind me. Next time we have a more for me cheerier subject, female alcoholism and ambition. With Susan Hayward in a role which a lot of people feel she should have got an Academy Award for, in smash up story of a woman, and I'll give you a little quick rundown on Susan Hayward's career, which seems to have been a good deal more remarkable than I had noticed when she was around. Supposed to be a, well, they say it got less attention that should have gotten because it came too soon after the last weekend with Ray Muland, but it's supposed to be an early and quite realistic presentation of the problem of alcohol, unusual for as early as it actually was. Next time, smash up story of a woman starring Susan Hayward on Hollywood Classic to the 30th and 40th.

Welcome to the Hollywood Classics of the 30th and 40th. I never took Susan Hayward very seriously as an actress, but I have a book by Edward O. Moreno called The Films of Susan Hayward that makes a pretty good case for her. Moreno calls tonight's movie, Smash Up The Story of a Woman, a major turning point in a star career that eventually outlasted Linda Darnell, Jean Tierney, and Baxter

June Haver, Jean Crane, Betty Grable, Katherine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine, Irene Dunlorette, Young Maragher, Sullivan, Joan Bennett, Heddy Lamar, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamar, and Sheridan Deanna Durban, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, Carmen Miranda, Rita Hayward, Ingrid Bergman, Esther Williams, Burl O'Baroni, Vandicarlo, and Arlene Dahl. And while some of these people seem to be hardly in the same generation as Hayward, it's an impressive list. And only horror movies keep Betty Davis and Joan Crawford off it, I suspect, Hayward never made a horror movie, not even in her later years. She's probably best known now for her Academy Award performance as a pretty cleaned up Barbara Graham going to the Electric Chair in I Want to Live in 1958. But she was nominated tonight to in 1947, and there are those who feel she should certainly have beaten out already young in the farmer's daughter, which I myself have always regarded as a pretty lightweight choice.

Among 20th Century Fox stars in the 50s, Moreno Claims, only Hayward gave competition to Marilyn Monroe, and Hayward kept her clothes on while doing it. She had her reputation as hard to work with, though nothing like Marilyn, and like Betty Davis among many others, she always insisted she was simply trying to do it. Trying to get people to live up to professional standards. I'm never late, she said, with pretty obvious reference to Monroe, and I don't delay productions. People who are that unprofessional make me very angry, I can't stand it. Still, there must have been something about her. Even Moreno can't deny the first book about her was called The Divine Bitch, and he cites a few movies that he says come pretty close to showing her as she really was. I can get it for your wholesale, scheming career woman, lusty man, fighting for her man and her beliefs, untamed, determination, and bouncing back from misfortune, and value of the dolls, a ruthless aging star fighting to stay on top. I can get it for you's wholesale was from a novel written about a man, which may be

of some significance, and Hayward's role in value of dolls was not very sympathetic. You may recall she wound up with her wig in the commode. Nevertheless, she was highly respected by Daryl Efflannick, who credited her with the two qualities most desired in any actress she is beautiful and she can act. In 1949, the American Abutations Congress called her the most beautiful girl in the world. And in 1952, she was listed among Hollywood's most legogenic actresses. She was five foot three and measured 36, 24 and a half, 35 and a half if you must know. Her story tonight was taken by some, so says Marino, all of my facts are from Marino, to be modeled on Bing Crosby and Dixie Lee, but they are surely innumerable other role models. Her singing voice is that of somebody named Peg LaCentra. Our director is not the one she threw a lamp at after threatening to punch him in the nose.

Among our writers are Dorothy Parker and John Howard Lawson of the famous Hollywood Ten, who wouldn't cooperate with the House on American Activities Committee and thereby all but destroyed their movie careers. Marino says the fight between Hayward and Marsha Hunt is one of the most violent fights between two women in film history, but he was writing in 1979. So relax and take a look at the woman who was called the Red Headed Betty Davis. Well, one thing you can't accuse us of on Hollywood classic is not offering you variety. We go from this time with Susan Hayward as an alcoholic socialite to next time with Ben Kingsley as an Indian, not American Indian, sink in Gandhi, which is also three hours

long. That's a rather novel length for us. I will try to cut my introduction just a little bit short. A remarkable movie and I'll be commenting on what historical inaccuracies there are in it, which I think are easily excusable and perhaps inevitable with the film medium after all they didn't want to make a six hour mini-series. It's a remarkable, well-worthier while the facts in it are basically accurate, the difficulties are matters of omission. Watch it and see if you can imagine people behaving the way history shows they did very effectively getting England kicked out of India without firing a shot. Gandhi, a man who inspired a lot of the civil rights movement next time on Hollywood classics to the 30s and 40s. Welcome to the Hollywood classic to the 30s and 40s.

Truly pacifist movies are rare and certainly do not come out of Hollywood where Mel Gibson in the Patriot and Gary Cooper in Friendly Persuasion as well as Sergeant York end up as we always want them to do with a gun in their hands blowing the guts out of the violent people. So tonight we turn to England for what is probably the most famous and popular pacifist movie in the world, Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, the Academy Award movie from 1982. As history this is probably more accurate than most certainly more than things like Mel Gibson the Patriot, but the Society of American Historians book passed in perfect history according to movies had a few squawks about it. But importantly, it leaves out, perhaps for reasons of time, Gandhi's internal struggles which were extremely important to him.

The book says that Gandhi had convinced himself that he was personally to blame for the chaos that accompanied independence not because he made political decisions but because he had failed somehow to be truly faithful to his vows of renunciation. To test his success along these lines I quote, he took to sleeping naked alongside the young female disciples that were his constant companions. So much for his chances of being elected president of the United States. Less importantly maybe he was a brutal family man quote, obsessed with the workings of his own and other people's bowels unquote and the subject to depression. He also made some pretty unfortunate wartime decisions and the movie does not give enough detail about the genuine religious squabbles in India that were not the fault of the British occupation, such as the fear the Muslim minority had of what the Hindu majority would do and the fact that the man who killed Gandhi, okay, going away, giving away the ending, he was

a member of a fundamentalist group whose descendants now, 1995 when the book was published, threatened what is left of India's unity. And of course the movie doesn't go on to reveal what the book claims as a neglect of Gandhi's ideas since his death as he became a saint and a figurehead and a symbol but no longer an active force like other religious figures we could name. Nero of India had warned Attenborough not to make Gandhi a saint saying he was too important a man for that but in emphasizing what is really important about him, Attenborough probably had to fall into that trap. And oh yeah, Gandhi was never beaten up by the South African police. In fact one of the two times he was knocked out once by civilians and once by Indian Muslims he was rescued by a British policeman's wife. All of this is relatively minor in a movie dedicated to what is important about a public figure's life which Europeans have never understood why Americans think it's sex.

Our story is pretty much the truth. Even the freedom marchers of our own civil rights movement might find it hard to believe some of the things Gandhi's supporters did but the record is there. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were both followers of Gandhi. I don't know whether any major use of his message is going on now but they left their mark on history and we owe him a lot. Our movie was not universally loved. Pauline Kale for one didn't like it but it was given Academy Awards for Best Actor, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction and Best Editing and it was nominated for Best Musical Score. The British Academy of Abotion Picture Arts and Science agreed on film, actor and director and added awards for Ben Kingsley as most promising newcomer and Rohini Hatton Gady I think it is as Mrs. Gandhi.

But we have over three hours to go so let's proceed. It's a great movie but it's getting a little late for older folks like us so I will simply say that thanks for staying with us all this time I think it was worth your while though. And next time we will have Betty Hatton in Parallel's of Pauline a comedy about the early days of making movies that should be interesting if for no other reason then it gives you sort of a picture of what it would like back in the silent days when making movies was really a confused, followed up mess. Parallel's of Pauline next time with Betty Hatton Gady I was classy class three and four years later.

to the Hollywood classics of the 30s and 40s. I actually sat to a whole feature starring Betty Hutton not long ago. And boy, did it ever not change my opinion. I don't find her physically attractive, convincing as an actress, or tolerable as a personality. But the movie going public certainly did.

No movie starring Betty Hutton ever lost money at the box office, and her career spanned 15 years. From the fleets in in 1942 to spring reunion in 1957, 19 fixtures at all, and in none of them was she less than a star. Tonight's apparel of Pauline is from 1947, and even fussy, Leslie Halleywell calls it, an agreeable recreation of old-time Hollywood with plenty of slapstick chases, but a shade too much sentiment also, which sound like the type of thing Betty Hutton did best, or at least specialized in. James A.G. was less admiring, but then he practically worshipped the silent comics. He said, people who can accept such stuff as our movie as solid gold have either forgotten a lot or never knew what real first great slapstick was when they saw it 20 or 30 years ago when it was one of the wonders of the world, unquote. Well, who's to quarrel with James A.G.?

But in our less fortunate times, when humor seems to be some kind of gastric attack, we may be pretty well satisfied tonight. Variety was happier than Mr. A.G., calling the perils of Pauline a fun fest for the actress, and she makes the most of it. Well, I can believe that. Whatever one thinks of Miss Hutton, she never gave less than her most, which was usually her best. Settletey and suggestion were unfamiliar to her, and I am not the only one who found or finds her exhausting. Variety appreciated the recreation of old-style production techniques, and the mixed confusion that was possible when lack of sound allowed half a dozen movies to be made simultaneously on what amounted to the same set. Director George Marshall had been on set since 1912, a new where of he directed. He started with Harry Carey Westerns, and proceeded on to W.C. fields as you can't cheat an honest man, and Laurel and Hardy and pack up your troubles, excuse me,

both of which must have taught him to keep out of the way of a star in full gallop. He directed Bob Hope and Lucille Ball in fancy pants, and Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart in Desperi rides again, as well as epics like tap roots and the railroad sequence that ends how the West was won. He was a studio workhorse who directed 400 features, and is not much attended to by the cinematic literati. But he may well be the right man tonight. Looking over his filmography, I am surprised at how few of his movies I've seen that I didn't like. He might even be the one to make me tolerate Ms. Hutton. Gerald Mast can't help singing the American musical and stage and screen. I shares my opinion of her enough to call her the loud next door, but says Paramount was trying to tone her down tonight. I doubt that I will hang around to check the result, but it may be my loss. Our male lead, John Lund, has just become a star in his first movie to each his own,

Olivia de Havelin's Oscar movie, and will go on from tonight to even bigger things, upset Marlene Dietrich in Billy Wilders, a foreign affair. And in his career, we'll start stumbling and never quite get going again. Patrick Agons, whatever happened to, says his biggest handicap was that Paramount regarded him as its answer to Clark Gable, and so never gave him a chance to do much except gruff manly roles, which did not bring out his best. He started as an advertising copywriter before a stretch on a miniature railroad at the New York World of Fair, gave him footlight fever, and he had a brief stage career before becoming a writer for radio cereals like Porsche Faces' Life, then came Hollywood, and what must have seemed like a really distinguished career beginning. Well, when I started on this job, never mind. The answer is, Our clothes are a little more complex tonight

than it usually is, but I think you may find it worth your wait. time at this time. We will not be among you, but we will be replaced by something with great fascination. A live broadcast of a stage production of the man who came to dinner, starring Nathan Lane, who has made a bit of a career playing people of the gay persuasion, presumably as shared on white side, the role immortalized by Mati Willie. It should be sort of fascinating. They don't do this very often anymore. A live television broadcast of a stage production actually in progress, so we don't feel too bad about being missing next time. But the big news is a time after that. We don't know what the movie is, but we're working on changes in the introductory apparatus, leading up to me and me. We may even have a new title. So be with us, well, we'll be in the audience. Our next time to see a live stage play, man who came to dinner, starring Nathan Lane,

and after that tune in on what may no longer be called, the Hollywood classics of 1340, tune in and see who knows what. The average accumulation fund was $150,000. If that were invested at 6%, that would pay that individual and that would earn that individual's trust fund $9,000. The average individual, according to your figures, was 78, I had 800 around ballpark figure. They would receive $800 a month or $9,600 a year. If that individual lived 20 years in your retirement, he would only have taken out $12,000 out of his accumulation fund. But jagger the interest figure down a little because it would change. Let's take out $25,000. He still has $125,000 left in his accumulation account. Now let's go back to 1989.

And let's say 1 million people retired in 1989. They all lived 20 years and died on July the 4th of the year 2009. You realize you'd have $125,000,000 left in the trust fund if the people in Washington, D.C. would have kept their fingers out of your trust fund. I'm not a baby, boomer. I'm from the Great Depression. And this has been discussed, but I still am not satisfied. Why can't the government be stopped from siphoning off the Social Security funds to cover off the deficit? There's no connection between the two. They have no right to do it. It's criminal. Well, I can give you my quick answer on that. And I think that they should separate them off into a separate fund. And I've supported that proposal on the House and supported it in the Senate to do that as well. The point is made here, OK, we do that. We set it into a separate account. And I think we ought to do that. I think it should be set aside. This is a Social Security account. OK, what are you going to do with the money?

Do you just, you leave the money there or are they going to invest it in something? Are they going to invest it in safe securities? Are they going to invest it in the very highest safety? Or do you put it in the lottery? You know, well, generally, that's the way it rains. But you're not going to put it in the lottery. You're going to try to put it in the safest, probably, obligations that you can. And most of that, then, will be back in government securities. OK. ��. ��. . .

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