One of the Reasons Why I Like Black-and-White Movies

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Eddie (Paul Newman): Well, you don't leave much when you miss, do ya, Fat Man?

Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason): That's what the game's all about.

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As I understand it, there were a few attempts to make a movie out of Walter Tevis' novel "The Hustler" before director Robert Rossen gave it a shot, but they all failed, probably because the earlier attempts emphasized pool too much. Rossen used pool as the backdrop to a more human story — a story about winning and losing and simply being human.

His version made it to the big screen and received nine Oscar nominations (two in the same category), winning for Best Black–and–White Cinematography and Best Black–and–White Art Direction. Only "West Side Story," the big winner at the 1962 Oscars, received more nominations.

(As I have written here before, I love black–and–white movies. It's a disappearing art form, one that depends on acting and story telling and camera angles that turn inanimate objects into characters in the story rather than flash and dash and special effects. And "The Hustler," which premiered on this day in 1961, is a great example of that.

(If you don't have to have a lot of "sound and fury signifying nothing," to misquote Shakespeare, you will enjoy movies like "The Hustler." No splashy special effects at all. Just a great story told well with great acting.

(If you've been hesitant to watch black–and–white movies, c'mon. What've you got to lose? In fact, you have everything to gain. "The Hustler" is a good place to start on your journey.)

Of course, it helped to have some heavyweights in the cast. I don't know who was cast in the earlier movies, but Rossen's film starred Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. Newman was a young pool hustler looking to break into big–time pool by beating the legendary Minnesota Fats, played by Gleason. It is a movie that should be seen so I will try not to give too much away if you haven't seen it yet.

But when you do see it, relish the performances. As I say, it is the acting that makes black–and–white movies special, and the acting in this movie was extraordinary — even as it dealt with very ordinary human shortcomings.

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Newman wanted to be a big shot, and he was willing to sacrifice just about everything — and everyone — for his goal. That included his girlfriend.

To be fair, his new manager played a pretty significant part in that last one.

Everyone in the cast was great. Gleason was impressive in a rare dramatic role. Newman was always worth watching, even when the movie wasn't too good — that was certainly not the case with this movie. George C. Scott played an unethical manager. Piper Laurie was Newman's rather jaded girlfriend.

Kenyon Hopkins' riveting score was nominated for an Oscar.

Telling the Story of General Patton

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"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country."

Gen. George Patton (George C. Scott)

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There are some movies I will watch whenever they are shown on TV.

"Patton," which premiered on this day in 1970, is such a movie.

The first six minutes are iconic — George Patton addressing an audience of American soldiers. They are not seen, but I have heard that the scene was based on a real–life speech that Patton gave to an audience of soldiers during World War II. The first time I saw the movie, I assumed he was addressing cadets at West Point. Either explanation is plausible, I suppose.

As I say, it is an iconic scene. It established the movie as a classic right from the start. It also established the fact that George Patton always did things his way — and sometimes his way was, well, bizarre.

He wouldn't tolerate "yellow bellies." They were cowards, in his eyes, looking for a "free ride" in the guise of battle fatigue, and he wouldn't permit them to share the same hospital space with soldiers who had been wounded in battle.

A Christian, he believed in reincarnation. Early in the movie, he took his staff to the scene of an ancient battle — and insisted, in a conversation with Omar Bradley (Karl Malden), that he had been there.

He wrote poetry and designed uniforms for tank crews.

When enemy planes attacked the place where he was engaged in a meeting with his staff, he ran outside and tried to shoot them down with his ivory–handled revolver. Folks in the press of the day wanted to call it a pearl–handled revolver, but he corrected them on that. "Only a pimp from a cheap New Orleans whorehouse would carry a pearl–handled revolver."

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"'Patton' is not a war film so much as the story of a personality who has found the right role to play," wrote film critic Roger Ebert. "Scott's theatricality is electrifying."

I would agree with that. Scott was electrifying, and it was the story of a personality who "found the right role to play." But it is a role that is no longer available.

The last time I watched "Patton," I found myself musing about whether it would be possible for another Patton to come along — and I concluded that it probably would not be. He's like the old–style football coaches — Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, Vince Lombardi — who were said to be molders of men. The times left them behind, and if a football coach rode any of his players today the way those coaches were known to ride theirs back in the day, that football coach would be out of a job and probably blacklisted.

There is something to be said for hard work and how it shapes character, and perhaps that is why drill sergeants did continue to get away with that kind of thing long after football coaches had to change their ways. But they can't get away with it to a great extent anymore without being accused of abusing their positions of power as well as the boys over whom they have that authority.

And generals, of course, probably can't get away with it at all. Certainly, Patton couldn't get away with slapping a victim of battle fatigue. He couldn't even get away with it then.

There is a point in the movie where the empathetic, human side of Patton could be clearly seen — when one of the American soldiers was killed in battle, and the audience saw Patton standing next to the caisson that would carry the body to a field for burial, and Patton's voice could be heard reading the letter he had written about the soldier's death. It reminded me of the grave marker that Tommy Lee Jones carved for Danny Glover in "Lonesome Dove."

"Splendid behavior," he wrote.

In "Patton," the general wrote in the letter that the soldier "was a fine man and a fine officer, and he had no vices."

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"Scott's performance is not one level but portrays a many–layered man who desires to appear one level," Ebert wrote. "Instead of adding tiresome behavioral touches, he allows us small glimpses of what may be going on inside."

Or perhaps German Capt. Steiger summed it up better when, by way of explaining Patton's battlefield strategy, he told Gen. Jodl, "Patton is a 16th–century man. ... Patton is a romantic warrior lost in contemporary times."

Such thinking may have been why the Germans tended to underestimate Patton. Perhaps he was right for the time — and Scott was right for the role — but I wonder if either would be possible today.

A Flawless Dramatization of a Murder Trial

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"Twelve people go off into a room: 12 different minds, 12 different hearts, from 12 different walks of life; 12 sets of eyes, ears, shapes and sizes. And these 12 people are asked to judge another human being as different from them as they are from each other. And in their judgment, they must become of one mind — unanimous. It's one of the miracles of man's disorganized soul that they can do it, and in most instances, do it right well. God bless juries."

Parnell (Arthur O'Connell)

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Jimmy Stewart is one of my favorite actors, and he gave many astonishing performances in his career.

One of my favorites was in Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder," which premiered on this date in 1959. My personal opinion is that it was flawless.

In the movie, Ben Gazzara played a young soldier who killed a man for allegedly raping and beating his wife (Lee Remick). One small problem, though. No evidence of a rape could be found. Stewart, a small–town lawyer, was retained to defend him in court, and Stewart discovered via interviews and his own observations that the defendant was jealous and possessive and his wife apparently had been promiscuous.

That would be a hard sell in court.

The alternative theory of what happened went something like this: Remick and the man were lovers. Gazzara found out about it, killed the man and beat up Remick, then coerced her into backing up his version of events. That would sound more logical to a small–town jury, especially given Gazzara's defense.

Gazzara said he was not guilty because he had been in the grip of an irresistible impulse, a rather complicated mostly legal concept that seemed to offer a plausible explanation for what happened — but was seen as hard for juries to get their minds around.

And I speak from experience.

At one time, I covered the police beat in a rather modestly sized county in Arkansas, which also meant covering local trials from time to time. In that capacity, I observed the usual courtroom procedures, from selecting a jury to examining and cross–examining witnesses.

I witnessed attempts to explain complicated legal concepts to largely rural juries, and I have a great deal of respect for any lawyer who tries to do it. It's a lot more difficult than a casual observer might think.

I also got to observe judicial sidebars, in which the attorneys for both sides would approach the bench and confer on issues, usually out of earshot of those in the courtroom.

Such a conference in "Anatomy of a Murder" never fails to amuse me. It concerned the alleged rape of the defendant's wife and the panties she had worn that night, which were unaccounted for.

The rape had been mentioned in a witness' testimony, and the judge felt it was necessary, at that point, to fully address the subject of rape, and that meant introducing the topic of the panties.

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"There's a certain light connotation attached to the word 'panties,'" the judge said. "Can we find another name for them?"

"I never heard my wife call 'em anything else," the local prosecuting attorney said.

The judge looked at Stewart. "Mr. Biegler?"

"I'm a bachelor, your honor," Stewart replied.

"That's a great help," the judge said and turned to the prosecuting attorney from the state capitol (George C. Scott). "Mr. Dancer?"

"When I was overseas during the war," he said, "I learned a French word. I'm afraid that might be slightly suggestive."

"Most French words are," said the judge.

Always makes me laugh. Never fails.

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Then the judge announced to the court, "For the benefit of the jury, but more especially for the spectators, the garment mentioned in the testimony was, to be exact, Mrs. Manion's panties."

As one might expect, hoots of laughter greeted this announcement, and the judge continued.

"I wanted to get your snickering over and done with. This pair of panties will be mentioned again over the course of this trial, and when it is, there will not be one laughter, one snicker, one giggle or even one smirk in my courtroom. There is nothing comic about a pair of panties that resulted in the violent death of one man and the possible incarceration of another."

That is precisely the sort of thing that the judges I covered would have said, too.

The conclusion of a courtroom drama, like that of a murder mystery, should never be revealed to someone who has not yet seen (or read) it — so, to be on the safe side, I won't tell you what happened.

I will tell you it was a very realistic depiction of a trial. It even took on some legal subjects about which I often wondered when I was covering the police beat.

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In particular, I wondered the same thing that Gazzara's character wondered when the judge instructed the jury to disregard a certain piece of testimony.

Gazzara leaned over to Stewart and whispered, "How can a jury disregard what it's already heard?"

And, in perhaps the most honest line in the movie, Stewart replied, "They can't, lieutenant. They can't."

"Anatomy of a Murder" received seven Oscar nominations, including two for Best Supporting Actor (Scott and O'Connell), but not one for the Duke Ellington jazz music that gave the movie such a distinctive flavor.

It probably wouldn't have mattered if the music had been nominated, though. It was the year of "Ben–Hur," and "Anatomy of a Murder" lost four Oscars to that movie alone.

How Are Your 'Precious Bodily Fluids' Holding Up?

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Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers)

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I am a fan of movie director Stanley Kubrick's work. I really like all of his films — can't think of one that I don't like — but my absolute favorite is probably the one that premiered 50 years ago today, "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

Actually, "Dr. Strangelove" isn't my favorite Kubrick movie all the time. Sometimes my favorite is "2001: A Space Odyssey," and sometimes it is "A Clockwork Orange." Sometimes it's "The Shining."

Occasionally, it is "Lolita" or even "Eyes Wide Shut." Heck, as I say, I like 'em all.

But none of Kubrick's other movies match "Dr. Strangelove" in terms of producing lines that I love ...

Like when Peter Sellers, as President Merkin Muffley, tells an American military official (George C. Scott) and a Russian ambassador who have come to blows, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" (The American Film Institute named that the #64 quote in movie history.)

But, really, there are so many wonderful lines in "Dr. Strangelove" that I can't narrow it down to a single favorite line. I discover new lines to enjoy and appreciate every time I see it.

There are some lines, of course, that have amused me from the start.

Just about every time that Slim Pickens opens his mouth is funny, whether he is preparing his crew for "noo–klear combat, toe to toe with the Rooskies" or whooping while he rides a bomb to his death.

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Everything is built around a really simple premise — an Air Force officer, aptly named Jack Ripper, issues an order for bombers in the air to attack Russia, and the movie is about the attempts on the ground to stop that attack. A very similar movie, "Fail–Safe," was in the theaters that year as well, but, whereas Kubrick's movie was a black comedy, the other was definitely a drama.

I've always been an admirer of George C. Scott. His performance in "Patton" is one of the great portrayals of an historical figure in cinematic history, but I always enjoy watching him as Gen. Buck Turgidson, an adviser to the president. Scott was a complete actor, able to do comedy as well as drama.

The lines were great, but a big part of that was hearing them from the mouths of just the right people.

Peter Sellers has long been one of my family's favorites, but he was never funnier than he was in "Dr. Strangelove," in which he played three parts. Three times as many chances to be funny — and two were with foreign accents that he could exaggerate as he wished.

Still, some of my favorite scenes are when Sellers is playing the American president. At one point, for example, he asserts that Ripper (Sterling Hayden) is a psychotic.

"I'd like to hold off judgment on a thing like that," Scott's character replies, "until all the facts are in." (This is after Ripper has already sent the bombers on their mission.)

And, of course, it is always funny to watch Hayden rant that "I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

I also enjoy Ripper's description of his personal battle to protect those "precious bodily fluids."

"I first became aware of it," he tells Mandrake, his British attache, "during the physical act of love. A profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence."

Never fails to make me laugh.

As it is with every Peter Sellers movie I have ever seen, it gets better with each viewing, too. Perhaps that is because I know what is going to happen, and I can focus my attention on the lines that always make me laugh.

And that, in turn, permits me to "discover" other lines on subsequent viewings.

I thoroughly enjoy watching Sellers as Mandrake, timidly declining Ripper's order to help him fire his weapon at incoming troops. Sellers' gift for physical comedy was evident — even though he took no pratfalls.

But it is as the movie's title character, Dr. Strangelove, that Sellers is at his most entertaining.

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He projects a very Nazi–esque demeanor when he rhapsodizes on the benefits of a Doomsday Machine, then chastises the Soviets for keeping their development of one to themselves.

"The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost," he says, "if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world?"

In 50 years, it's never been a secret how funny "Dr. Strangelove" is. AFI ranks it #3 among the comedies (#39 overall).

Some of us might rank it higher than that. Much higher.

Rebels With a Cause

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Chicago Sun–Times film critic Roger Ebert compared "Taps" to "Lord of the Flies," and I always felt that was a pretty good comparison.

William Golding's book about a group of boys trying — and failing — to govern themselves on a deserted island also was the story of "Taps," in which a group of boys from a military school — metaphorically stranded in the deserted island of the extensively walled campus — tried to function while under siege from outside influences.

Without giving away too much of the story, the school's commander (authoritatively played by George C. Scott) announced during an end–of–year parade/review that the school would be closed at the end of the next academic year. A real estate company had other plans for the property.

For awhile, hope that the school could be saved prevailed, but conflict soon reared its ugly head.

During a post–commencement dance at the school, a fight broke out between the cadets and some local boys. Scott's character tried to break up the fight, and his handgun was grabbed by one of the locals. It discharged, killing another local boy, and Scott's character was taken into custody under suspicion of manslaughter.

It was announced that the school would be shut down immediately, and the cadets closed ranks.

Conditions weren't quite as primitive for the cadets as they were for Golding's boys — at least, not at first. But, as the siege wore on, things got worse. The cadets ran short of food, then the water and the electricity were shut off.

The resourceful cadets, under the leadership of Timothy Hutton, attempted to restore electricity with an old generator, but the gas they were using ignited and one of the cadets was seriously injured. That led to a temporary truce so the cadet could be taken to the local hospital.

Hutton's character offered to end the standoff if asked to do so by Scott's character, but then he learned that Scott, who had suffered a heart attack after being arrested, had died.

The death of Scott's character seemed to break the resolve of many of the cadets; several had already chosen to leave when given the opportunity, and most of the ones who remained seemed to be too young to be dealing with combat–related issues.

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Eventually, Hutton decided to end the occupation, but some diehards remained — including Tom Cruise (appearing in only his second movie), who opened fire on the National Guardsmen assembled outside the gate. Hutton and Sean Penn tried to stop him, but Hutton (along with Cruise) died when the Guardsmen returned the fire.

The movie came to an end with a flashback, but, as I recall, there was a clear sense that the surviving cadets would surrender, and the conflict would come to a peaceful conclusion.

To be honest, I was never really sure what the lesson of the story was. I gathered that it was some kind of cautionary or morality tale, but, whereas "Lord of the Flies" had some valuable things to say about topics like human nature, "Taps" never really seemed to make any statements or useful observations.

It seemed more inclined to criticize the military culture than praise it, which wasn't unusual at that time. The Vietnam experience was still fresh in the public's mind, and returning soldiers were greeted with derision and ridicule — a far cry from today.

The fact that the soldiers' reception after returning home has changed for the better is certainly a good thing, but it is important to remember that it had not changed that much when "Taps" was made. Ronald Reagan, after all, had just been elected president in a campaign in which his assertion that the mission in Vietnam had been a "noble cause" came under heavy fire.

In the late '70s and early '80s, the military was viewed with considerable suspicion by many — even though the draft no longer existed (registration did, however), and the nation was being defended by an all–volunteer Army.

If "Taps" was being remade today, three decades later, I believe the story would have to be drastically rewritten. I'm not entirely sure that would be possible, either.

"Taps" may only have been possible at the time it was made.

And that makes it a unique story.