President Bartlet (Martin Sheen): Would you consider, instead of living in France with your boyfriend for three months, staying here, living in your room and being a candy striper or surfing?
Zoey (Elisabeth Moss):A candy striper?
President Bartlet:Or surfing. You could spend the summer working in a pet shop. We could play Yahtzee and watch movies at night.
Zoey:Dad, what fantasy is it that's going through your head right now?
President Bartlet:What daughters would do their whole lives if I had my way.
For most families, college commencement is a great occasion — a time of pride in the accomplishment of one of their own.
It is sure to be the same for a president's family — but with the added anxiety that comes whenever someone from the first family is involved. There is always a chance, however slim it may be, that something will happen to the graduate.
I don't know how many children of sitting presidents have graduated from college in our history, but I do know that nothing has happened to mar those occasions. They have all gone off as smooth as clockwork.
Such was not the case in the episode of West Wing that first aired on this night in 2003, "Commencement." The president's youngest daughter, Zoey (Elisabeth Moss), was graduating from Georgetown University, and her father (Martin Sheen) was to deliver an address at commencement. He was still wrestling with what to say when the big day arrived.
And there were a lot of other things going on. Toby (Richard Schiff) and his ex–wife were expecting a baby at any time, and Toby wanted them to remarry. He wanted it so much he had taken the step of investing in a house that his ex had told him was her dream home.
Primarily, though, Washington Post reporter Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield) had gotten wind of something the president really wanted to keep under wraps — the fact that, one year prior, he had ordered the assassination of the defense minister of a fictional Middle Eastern country who had been planning terrorist acts against the United States — among them destroying the Golden Gate Bridge.
At the time, the White House had manipulated news flow to bolster the impression that the United States had not been involved. That had eroded considerably, though.
Of course, there was also the matter of finding a replacement for the vice president, who had just resigned.
If that seems implausible, remember that within a decade of the passage of the 25th Amendment, which provided a procedure for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency, that procedure would be used not once but twice. It hasn't been used since, but odds are that it will one day. Nevertheless, no one thought back in 1967 that it would be used in 1973, when Gerald Ford was selected to replace Spiro Agnew, and 1974, when Nelson Rockefeller was chosen to replace Ford after Ford became president.
History is like that. When one event occurs, people know it probably will play a role in another event, but they never know how soon that will be. The Kennedy assassination in 1963 was the catalyst for the 25th Amendment. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, served with no vice president for more than a year — until he had won the 1964 election with Hubert Humphrey as his running mate.
Humphrey, therefore, was the occupant of the vice presidency when the 25th Amendment was approved, and few people probably thought there was a need for it. After all, the nation had been through such periods before, but the 25th Amendment spelled out that procedure — along with providing a line of succession.
Fast forward a year. Five suspected terrorists who had been under surveillance had disappeared, and the feds were under heightened alert.
Thrown into the mix was the fact that Zoey was planning to leave for France after commencement to spend three months in the French countryside.
But she never got there. At a party on graduation night, she was abducted and one of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect her was shot and killed.
West Wing had a reputation for being "The Left Wing" for its political slant, but the truth was that it was extraordinarily realistic. Even conservatives had to concede that.
And while it may seem unlikely that a president's child could become ensnared in a global political situation such as the one depicted 15 years ago tonight, it is really no less likely than many of the things we have witnessed in our nation's history.
Three days before the 66th anniversary, on this day in 2013, the movie "42" premiered in American theaters. It told the story of that event with Chadwick Boseman starring as Robinson and Andre Holland playing black sportswriter Wendell Smith, who played a significant role in encouraging Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to choose Robinson to be the first black ballplayer in the majors.
Blacks had already served with distinction in World War II yet the armed forces were still segregated. Robinson broke baseball's color barrier more than a year before Harry Truman desegregated the troops.
Last week, we marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who is widely regarded as the father of the civil rights movement. But King was a teenager when Jackie Robinson first played in the major leagues.
When Rickey presented the idea to Robinson, the future barrier buster asked if Rickey wanted someone who didn't have the guts to fight back.
Rickey replied that he wanted someone who had the guts not to fight back.
It was a different country in the 1940s, and Rickey knew that there would be obstacles every day in every city. He knew that whoever that first black ballplayer in the majors turned out to be, he would be subjected to all kinds of abuse — almost all of it sanctioned by the laws and attitudes of the time.
That is probably difficult for many people to comprehend in the 21st century.
But, as I say, it was a different country. And Jackie Robinson was one of those who helped change it.
The movie repeatedly made that point — as it should. To the black community, Robinson was a hero. It is fair to say he was considerably less than that in the eyes of the white community.
But he persevered.
And he inspired the many black ballplayers who followed — one of whom, Ed Charles, was depicted as a child in the movie. Charles, who died last month at the age of 84, was a member of the 1969 Amazin' New York Mets.
As miraculous as the Mets were, they weren't as miraculous as Jackie Robinson's barrier–breaking season.
While Charles was presented as a child of perhaps 9 or 10 in the movie, he was actually a teenager in 1947.
One more thing. Ford, who was 70 when "42" premiered, was better suited for the role of Branch Rickey than he was to play Indiana Jones again (as he had five years earlier) or Han Solo again (as he did two years later). In fact, Ford was five years older than Rickey was in Robinson's historic season.
On this night in 1973, MASH revisited a theme it first explored in the Christmas season of 1972 — a letter from Hawkeye to his father updating him on the activities at the 4077th.
"Dear Dad ... Again" followed the same format as its predecessor, but it did it a little better the second time around.
Take Hawkeye's update on Klinger (Jamie Farr), for example. Klinger had taken to wearing a white wedding dress.
Hawkeye was complimentary. "It's easy to go overboard with one of those things," he told Klinger, "but that's tasteful without being gaudy."
He did have some constructive criticism for Klinger, though.
"You must wear a slip! With the sun behind you, I can see clear through to your shorts."
Hawkeye began working on a letter to his father out of sheer boredom, and he claimed he wasn't the only one in camp who was bored and complacent. He made a bet with Trapper (Wayne Rogers) that he could walk into the mess hall naked, and no one would notice.
He lost that bet, and as he was leaving, he encountered Klinger, who said, "Now that's tasteful without being gaudy!"
Frank (Larry Linville) and Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) had a falling out, and a despondent Frank returned to the Swamp with a rare request. He wanted a drink from Hawkeye and Trapper's still. Then, while under the influence, he confessed to them that his brother had called him Ferret Face when they were younger.
Late arrivals to the MASH series probably heard folks at the 4077th calling him Ferret Face in subsequent seasons, but they most likely thought it originated in the camp — unless they saw the first–season episode in syndicated reruns.
Radar (Gary Burghoff) became a high school graduate via a correspondence course. He had to verify his final grades before receiving his diploma so he tried to sneak them past Henry (McLean Stevenson) along with other documents Henry had to sign. It didn't work; Henry insisted that the grades that were reported had to be legitimate.
Sometimes Henry's conversations with Radar were worth the price of admission. In this episode, they were pure gold. When Henry asked Radar about the document, Radar told him the contents were restricted.
"You can tell me," Henry replied. "It's got my name on it."
The primary story centered on a Capt. Casey (Alex Henteloff), a new member of the medical staff who was a superb surgeon. Everyone was wowed by the things he did in the O.R. — until Hawkeye learned through Radar that Capt. Casey wasn't really a surgeon. He was an impostor.
Casey told Hawkeye he had done other things — such as practicing law and working as an engineer — that required specialized training, but he had never had the patience to do things by the numbers. Hawkeye promised to report him to the authorities if he ever caught Casey practicing medicine without the proper credentials — and insisted that Casey (whose real name turned out to be Schwartz) look him up the minute he got those credentials. "You're a damn fine surgeon," he said.
What most people probably did not know at the time the episode was first broadcast — and what most people probably still do not know — is that the character was based on a real impostor from the Korean War era — a fellow named Ferdinand Waldo Demara.
Demara pretended to be many things — among them an engineer, a prison warden, a monk, a teacher, a cancer researcher. He also masqueraded as a Canadian war ship's surgeon and operated on 16 people during the Korean War.
The character in the MASH episode was based on Demara, but it wasn't the first time his life story was fictionalized like that. In 1960 the movie "The Great Impostor" was based on Demara's exploits and starred Tony Curtis in the title role.
"A young boy and his father were in a car accident. Both were injured and rushed to the hospital. They were wheeled into separate operating rooms and two doctors prepared to work on them, one doctor for each patient.
"The doctor operating on the father got started right away, but the doctor assigned to the young boy stared at him in surprise. 'I can't operate on him,' the doctor told the staff. 'That child is my son.'
"How can that be?"
The riddle
Good television is many things.
Mostly, I suppose, it is a reflection of its time. Watching an episode of a classic TV series is often like looking into a window to the past. Sometimes it reflects the reality that the writers and producers may have wished was so — but wasn't really. Other times, though, it can be brutally, unflinchingly honest.
And an episode of All in the Family that first aired on this night in 1972 — "Gloria and the Riddle" — holds up a mirror in 2017 to show just how far America has come (and how far it has yet to go) in its attitudes about certain things. In this case sexism.
Forty–five years ago, Gloria (Sally Struthers) had her family stumped by a riddle she had picked up while working with a friend of hers for what was known at the time as women's lib. You can see the riddle at the top of this post.
The answer to the riddle — that the surgeon who couldn't operate on the injured boy was the child's mother — seems to leap out at you in 2017, doesn't it? But it wasn't so obvious in 1972. I recently saw a survey of schoolchildren who were told the riddle, and a majority identified the surgeon as being the boy's mother. I doubt that the results of such a survey would have been anywhere close to that in 1972.
And the answer that most of the remaining children gave definitely wouldn't have been given by many (if any) respondents in 1972 — that the boy had two fathers.
Certainly sexism still exists today, but it is also beyond dispute that doors that were closed to women in 1972 are no longer closed to them in 2017.
In 1972 there weren't many positive role models for young women outside of the traditional ones. Well, successful ones, that is. The women's liberation movement promoted the idea of women achieving in previously male–dominated fields, but that idea really hadn't taken root in American thinking yet.
Girls and young women, for example, could admire and be proud of the achievements of the space program, but it would be more than a decade before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.
In the years that have passed since that time, many women have flown on space missions, and some have died there.
Any American could (and still can) take pride in Supreme Court decisions and opinions, but until Sandra Day O'Connor was nominated to replace Potter Stewart in 1981, only males could realistically dream of occupying a seat on the highest court in the land and writing legal opinions that would influence millions of lives.
Today women occupy three of the nine seats on the Supreme Court.
And, in 1972, no woman had ever been on a major political party's national ticket. There have been three since — Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin were their parties' first female nominees for vice president, and Hillary Clinton was the Democrats' first female presidential nominee last year.
No woman has been elected president or vice president — but that will change eventually, just as it did for Catholics and blacks.
Change comes slowly sometimes, and it depends upon many variables — not the least of which is the messenger.
On this night in 1972 All in the Family was the messenger.
"You best go find out who you are. Come on. Now what's wrong with you, you old buzzard? Come on. Don't be afraid. Out there you can kick up the dust. You can dance to fiddle music. Watch the alfalfa bloom. If you like, you can see gold teeth. Taste sweet whisky and red–eyed gravy. The air breathes easy, nights move faster, and you tell time by the clock. Now you don't wanna be a jailbird all your life, do ya? You're a highballin' sparrow. So you fly high, old cock. Go out there and bite the stars — for me. Find yourself a fat mama and make a family. You hear? Beat it."
Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster)
If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know of my love of history — and how I feel about the standards for movies that attempt to re–create historic events or tell the life stories of noteworthy people.
But the 55th anniversary of the premiere of director John Frankenheimer's "Birdman of Alcatraz" is an appropriate time to revisit that.
Simply put, I believe that a movie that proposes to tell the story of an actual event or life should be faithful to the facts. Well, most of the facts. I can overlook minor details.
"Birdman of Alcatraz" took some liberties with the truth. For openers, the title implies that Robert Stroud, the convict about whom the movie was made, kept birds at Alcatraz. In fact, he kept his birds at Leavenworth. When he was transferred to Alcatraz, he wasn't allowed to keep pets.
But I suppose you could get around that by saying that Stroud had already established himself as the Birdman before he went to Alcatraz so the title was a reference to his past, not his present, activity.
OK, I guess I can let that one slide.
The thing I find it harder to overlook, though, is the apparently considerable liberty the filmmakers took with Stroud himself. The movie did portray him as a bitter individual given to violent outbursts, but the clear implication was that he mellowed as he aged.
Former inmates have said the portrayal was inaccurate, that Stroud was not the amiable fellow of the movie but a "vicious killer" and troublemaker — and, indeed, the movie was candid about the events that led to his incarceration — but Burt Lancaster's Stroud could be a sympathetic character whereas the real one apparently was not.
Having said that, though, "Birdman of Alcatraz" had its inspiring moments — and a remarkable cast — in spite of its inaccuracies. Besides, the makers of "Birdman of Alcatraz" freely acknowledged, as did the makers of "A Beautiful Mind," that it was not a literal presentation of a life story, merely based on it.
If the movie did take liberties with the truth, though, it didn't gloss over the fact that Stroud was a hothead in his youth.
But Stroud also became an authority on sparrow diseases — all because he found some injured sparrows in the prison yard one day and began raising them.
So, to borrow a Huckleberry Finn observation from Mark Twain's classic novel, the makers of the movie "told the truth — mainly."
The movie received four Oscar nominations and lost all four.
Lancaster was nominated for Best Actor. He was nominated four times in his career — and even won once — but lost this time to Gregory Peck in "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Thelma Ritter was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Stroud's overbearing mother. She lost as well — to Anne Bancroft's magnificent performance in "The Miracle Worker," but I thought the role of Elizabeth Stroud was every bit as demanding as the role of Anne Sullivan.
Telly Savalas was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He lost to Ed Begley in "Sweet Bird of Youth." I'm not sure if Savalas' character was real. Perhaps it was a combination of several inmates who interacted with Stroud in some way — although Stroud spent almost his entire incarceration period in solitary confinement so he couldn't have interacted with other inmates much. Besides he would have been as likely to get into a fight with a fellow inmate as to make friends with him.
The fourth nomination was for cinematography, and "Birdman" lost that one to "The Longest Day."
Karl Malden received no nomination — although I have long believed he deserved one as Stroud's first warden. Maybe it is because his character was entirely fictional whereas most, if not all, of the other primary characters were real, but aspects of their lives were fictionalized.
Was "Birdman of Alcatraz" Lancaster's best? That is really hard to say. He was always good. Some people will cite "From Here to Eternity." Others will say "Elmer Gantry" or "Atlantic City." I would say "Judgment at Nuremberg" or "Seven Days in May." But that's me.
When one thinks of any of the greatest people in any walk of life, it can seem — in hindsight — that they had a sort of historical inevitability. But such people seldom, if ever, achieve their success with no help from anyone.
Sadly, many of the people who are most responsible for others' successes are not recognized for what they accomplished.
It's hard to imagine, for example, where the Beatles would have been without Brian Epstein, who never performed with the Beatles and was probably largely unknown, even by the Beatles' fans at the height of Beatlemania.
They might well have reached the heights they reached, anyway. But it almost certainly would have taken longer to get there — much longer — if he hadn't been around to manage them. And there are those who believe that if the Beatles' implosion as a band was inevitable, it was hastened by Epstein's absence.
In the early '60s it was Epstein's faith in the Beatles and what he believed they could be that led to a contract with producer George Martin in May 1962 — and the hits started coming in bunches. "Please Please Me." "Love Me Do." "P.S. I Love You."
And that was just in 1962. There were many more hit songs to come.
And many hit albums, too, including "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," arguably the greatest album ever recorded. It had been in music stores only three months when Epstein was found dead in his bedroom in London on this day in 1967.
There is a pretty good case to be made that Epstein left enormous footprints on the world's cultural landscape. He first saw the Beatles at the now–legendary Cavern Club in November 1961 and became their manager shortly thereafter. With his experience in sales and promotions Epstein took the Beatles in hand and made them presentable by the standards of the day, and they became major hits in the U.K.
The time would come when the Beatles would rewrite those standards, but by heeding Epstein's initial counsel of conformity they were able to get their feet in the door. From that point, their success positioned them to have that kind of influence.
It is often said that Ed Sullivan gave the Beatles to the world. But that isn't entirely true. Sullivan gave the Beatles to America, launching the British invasion, which could be seen as the same thing as giving them to the world. Then, as now, America was the ground zero of global communication, and anything that was a hit here was sure to have ripple effects all over the planet.
But the invasion might never have happened if Epstein hadn't taken over as their manager.
And yet today, 50 years after Epstein's accidental death, caused by a combination of alcohol and an overdose of sleeping pills, he is forgotten by most — a real Nowhere Man.
But perhaps not entirely. He finally received a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in 2014, more than a quarter of a century after the band he discovered was inducted and at least 10 years since each Beatle (with the exception of Ringo Starr) was inducted as an individual performer.
"All gunfighters are lonely. They live in fear. They die without a dime, a woman or a friend."
Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster)
I love to watch movies that are based on famous people or events from history — like John Sturges' "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," which made its debut on this day in 1957.
But I seldom recommend such movies to people as reliable sources for, say, facts a student could use in a term paper.
For that kind of purpose, you're usually better off referring to books on the subject, and that is certainly the case here.
Not that the real gunfight at the O.K. Corral was lacking in drama, but, as is so often the case, the facts apparently weren't dramatic enough, which led to several historical inaccuracies.
None of those inaccuracies alone could change the outcome of the gunfight — but the cumulative effect was enough make you wonder who survived and, for that matter, who won the shootout.
Most of that would be speculation, but you would be right to wonder who was actually there. Johnny Ringo, a well–known outlaw played by John Ireland in the movie, wasn't there at all and shouldn't have been a character in the movie. Nevertheless he was.
Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas) apparently was in Tombstone that day, but the movie suggested that he came there with Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster). That wasn't true. He showed up much later.
And, while the movie indicated that Earp saved Holliday's life, it was actually the other way around.
Jo Van Fleet and Rhonda Fleming played the female roles in the largely male ensemble. Van Fleet played Holliday's girl, and Fleming played Earp's love interest. As I understand it Van Fleet's character was, in real life, a prostitute and Holliday's common–law wife. I haven't been able to find out anything about Fleming's character, but I do know that Earp came to Tombstone with a common–law wife of his own. He had three during his lifetime and none had the name of Fleming's character in the movie.
These inaccuracies didn't prevent the movie from being a big box–office hit.
It was entertaining, and I suppose folks were willing to overlook some things.
Like the fact that the actual gunfight lasted just 30 seconds, three men were killed in mostly face–to–face encounters and only a few firearms were involved. In the movie the gunfight lasted five minutes, and there were considerably more fatalities shot from medium range with a large arsenal.
But, hey, if you're gonna have a movie with the word gunfight in the title, you've got to have a lot of guns and a lot of gunshots, right?
"Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" was nominated for two Oscars and lost both — Best Sound Recording and Best Film Editing.
By the way: Dennis Hopper, who was appearing in only his fourth movie, was born and raised in Dodge City, Kansas, which is where Wyatt Earp was sheriff a few years before the gunfight occurred.
"Now, I don't propose to sit on a flagpole or swallow goldfish. I'm not a stuntman; I'm a flier."
Charles Lindbergh (Jimmy Stewart)
It was 60 years ago today that the story of Charles Lindbergh — "The Spirit of St. Louis" — premiered on the big screen.
I have often wondered why it premiered on April 20, 1957 — when, if the makers of the movie had waited 30 days, it could have debuted on the 30th anniversary of the historic flight it commemorated. That's right. Lindbergh's famous New York–to–Paris flight began on May 20, 1927.
I still don't know why it didn't premiere on May 20. It couldn't have hurt its earnings. It was a box office flop as it was.
But I do know a few other things about the movie. For example, I know that Jimmy Stewart was just about no one's choice to play Lindbergh.
As much as I admire Stewart's work in movies like "It's a Wonderful Life,""Harvey" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," I have always had a soft spot in my heart for "The Spirit of St. Louis." Maybe that is because it tried to tell a great story from history — and I have always loved history.
But, as far as I am concerned, Stewart was the wrong choice because he was nearly twice as old as the man he portrayed. Now, I don't feel that an actor or actress has to be precisely the same age as the person being portrayed, but Stewart was 47 trying to portray a 25–year–old. Maybe the movie can get away with that with modern viewers who have no memory of Lindbergh, but most of the people who saw that movie in 1957 must have had a memory of Lindbergh.
Producer Jack Warner favored a younger and less well known actor in the role. Warner called the finished product "the most disastrous failure we ever had."
And Lindbergh, I have been told, was not satisfied with Stewart's portrayal. I guess I can't argue with him there. When Stewart shrieked out the window of his airplane, he sounded like Lindbergh channeling his inner George Bailey. Some critics complained that Stewart's Lindbergh did not give viewers enough of a glimpse into his personal life, his motivations, that Lindbergh in Stewart's hands was a mechanical and routine character.
Perhaps those who complained that Stewart did not act so much as provide a character type that he did well were justified — to a degree.
But Lindbergh's flight was a rousing success, and it was a story that deserved to be told. It is sure to be lost on most living Americans that Lindbergh's feat required enormous courage, which makes it a valuable resource for anyone who wants to learn about the history of aviation. The movie, directed by the great Billy Wilder, was based on Lindbergh's own autobiography, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
I have always assumed that meant the film was mostly accurate in its facts, but I do know of at least one tidbit in the movie that was incorrect. In the movie, Lindbergh is shown as being in bed the night before his flight, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Later, during his 33–hour flight to Paris, he observed how tired he was and lamented not having taken advantage of a warm, soft bed the night before.
In reality, the 25–year–old Lindbergh was out partying most of the night. Well, you can get away with that kind of thing when you're 25.
(Those who may be inclined to criticize the reality and praise the fantasy ought to remember that several pilots had already died in their pursuit of the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 prize — that's more than one–third of a million dollars in modern currency — that was offered to the first to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. Lindbergh — and any other pilot who accepted the challenge — could be forgiven for taking the chance to live it up the night before departure.
(But the movie gave no hint of that.)
And the movie appears to have developed a following in recent years that it didn't have in the 1950s — it was judged a flop, primarily, it seems because the project went well over budget.
Stewart was nominated for Oscars five times in his career, and he even won it once for his work in "The Philadelphia Story," but "The Spirit of St. Louis" received only one Oscar nomination — for Best Visual Effects.
You would think its odds were pretty good. There was only one other nominee for that Oscar — but it lost.
"The poor have only one advantage; they know when they are loved for themselves."
Anastasia (Ingrid Bergman)
Of all the women who have graced the silver screen, few have combined great beauty with great talent the way Ingrid Bergman did.
In the '30s and '40s, she shared billing with some of the top actors in Hollywood and was directed by some of Hollywood's top directors. Many of her movies are still regarded as being among the best ever made.
But Bergman did not always live a charmed life. From 1949 until this day in 1956, Bergman was essentially — and hypocritically — blacklisted in Hollywood for having an affair with director Roberto Rossellini — and eventually giving birth to his child — while she and Rossellini were married to other people. The fact that Bergman and Rossellini married in 1950 and had two more children together apparently made little difference.
For more than half of the '50s, Bergman collaborated with Rossellini on foreign films while living in exile after being denounced by Colorado Democrat Edwin Johnson on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Bergman made eight movies during her exile; most have been seldom seen by Western audiences.
Then Bergman made her triumphant return to the American silver screen with "Anastasia," which premiered on this day in 1956. Her performance in the title role won her an Oscar, her second.
For such an actress, only an extraordinary role would do for such a comeback, and the subject matter truly was extraordinary. It was one of history's intriguing mysteries.
History contains many mysteries. Who was Jack the Ripper? What happened to Amelia Earhart? Or Jimmy Hoffa? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Did he even act at all?
And Bergman's comeback subject was — and, to an extent, remains — one of the 20th century's greatest mysteries. What became of Anastasia, the 17–year–old grand duchess of Russia who supposedly perished with the rest of the Romanov family in 1918? For years there were rumors that she escaped the executions that her family suffered after the Bolshevik revolution.
Did she?
That was the question facing some of the characters in the story, but that was not a question the movie sought to answer. "Anastasia" was about a criminal plot to collect money being held in a trust for the real Anastasia.
The ringleader of the plot, a manipulative Russian businessman, was played by Yul Brynner, and he knew Anastasia didn't have to be perfect, merely convincing. As he presented his case to his fellow conspirators, Brynner asked, "Would you recognize the smile of a girl you knew 10 years ago?"
He went on to observe, "You're examining her as if she was the real Anastasia. There is no Anastasia! She was shot to death 10 years ago by a firing squad. We're not looking for her, gentlemen. We're seeking only a reasonable facsimile."
His mission was to persuade Helen Hayes, who played the sole surviving Romanov, that Bergman was legitimate. And she wasn't easy to convince. She had known the real Anastasia as a girl, and her memory was keen.
"I like the past," she said at one point. "It's sweet and familiar."
At the Oscars, Bergman received the Best Actress award. Brynner received Best Actor that night — but for his performance in "The King and I."
"This road is the afterwards of the Civil War. It began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and ended at a place called Appomattox. It's littered with the residue of broken battles and shattered dreams."
Opening narration
As the episode of the Twilight Zone began on this night in 1961, viewers saw a lonely country road with Civil War–era soldiers marching along, most with visible wounds and/or bandages. They marched in silence past a house where sat a solitary woman (Joanne Linville) in a rocking chair.
One soldier, played by James Gregory, stopped and asked the woman for a drink of water. She said he could have one, and they struck up a conversation.
And as the soldier sat under a tree and strummed the guitar he carried with him, the woman recalled the start of the war and the men's boasts that they would vanquish the Yanks in a month.
The women had cheered the men as they left on their mission, she lamented, believing they would soon return. "How wrong we were," she said, confessing that her own husband had been killed in the war.
So many of the soldiers on both sides did not go home — not alive, anyway.
She carried many things within her — anger, mostly, over her husband's death and the devastation of her home — but she also carried some sort of unnamed "fever."
Her anger led her to promise the soldier that if a Yankee ever walked by her home, she would take an old shotgun she had inside her house, aim it at him and fire after telling him he could consider it the final shot of the Civil War.
(Note: I've studied a lot of history in my life, and while I don't claim to be an authority on the subject I really don't think Civil War was a phrase that was in use at that time — at least not very much. Most people in the North, both civilian and soldiers, seem to have called it the "Great Rebellion," and the Southern equivalent seems to have been "War of Northern Aggression.")
Shortly thereafter, a Yankee soldier came riding by. He was obscured in the shadows, but the Confederate soldier was sure he had seen the Yankee before. And then he remembered. When he had been wounded on a battlefield, the Yankee soldier had stopped his bleeding.
The Confederate started to introduce the Yankee to the lady of the house, but then he saw that she had emerged from the house with the shotgun in her hands. She aimed it at the Yankee, and it appeared she was intent upon fulfilling her pledge. The Confederate tried to stop her, but she fired, anyway.
And the Yankee didn't move. Didn't slump over. Didn't fall. He just sat astride his horse as if nothing had happened.
"I couldn't have missed you," the dumbfounded woman said.
And then the Confederate soldier remembered something else from that battlefield encounter. A shell had exploded overhead, and he had believed the Yankee had been killed that day.
Turned out, he had been right.
The Confederate soldier came to a conclusion.
The road that passed by that house had been filled with soldiers from both sides, all going in the same direction, some helping each other along the way. Then, during the night, they stopped coming.
"There's something at the end of that road," the soldier told the woman, "and I'm going to find out what it is."
The soldier had a good idea what was at the end of that road — and his suspicion was confirmed when the woman's husband, believed to be dead, came walking along the road. The woman ran to embrace him. He told her that they were both dead — he had been killed in battle, and she had died of a fever.
She resisted the idea, but she watched as her husband proceeded down the road.
And along came Abraham Lincoln, who told her he was the last man on the road, "the last casualty of the Civil War."
(In fact, Lincoln was not the last casualty of the war. After Lee surrendered to Grant and Lincoln was assassinated, there were still skirmishes for awhile. A little more poetic license, I suppose. Lincoln's assassination has always served as a convenient conclusion for the Civil War — even though it wasn't.)
It was one of those Twilight Zone episodes in which each viewer had to draw his or her own conclusion about the point of the story. Sometimes the moral of a Twilight Zone story, as it were, was clear; other times not so much.
And while the moral of this story may be clear to others, it has not always been clear to me. I'm not sure it ever was.
After her encounter with Lincoln, the woman went running after her husband, who was walking down the road.
Perhaps the moral was acceptance of the inevitable.
"We prepared for everything. Not for this. Not for something this size. There's no plan."
John (Nicolas Cage)
No one who lived through Sept. 11, 2001, will ever forget it. Most of us didn't experience the life–or–death struggle that some did, but that doesn't mean that most of us weren't affected by what happened that day.
That, I suppose, was what I liked about Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," which premiered on this day in 2006. In the first few years after those infamous attacks, there was a real effort to make sure people didn't forget what had happened. Only a few years after those terrorist attacks, we were already seeing movies about them. There was a made–for–TV movie that essentially dramatized all the now–familiar recordings from that day.
Then there was "United 93," which premiered nearly 3½ months before "World Trade Center," and it basically told the tale of the passengers whose revolt led to the crashing of their plane in a Pennsylvania field instead of the White House or Capitol building.
I can't help wondering if those movies took the edge off that experience. Did the movies contribute to a perception that the attacks of 9/11 didn't really happen, that they were dramatizations for our collective entertainment?
How incredible it is to think that many of the most painful lessons we thought we learned on Sept. 11, 2001 have been all but forgotten by our country's leadership less than 15 years later.
"World Trade Center" told the mostly unknown story of how the families of the victims reacted to what was happening.
For those on the ground, that may have been the most traumatic image that played in their minds that day — how the families of the victims had to watch helplessly while the drama played out. In the office where I was working on that day, I heard many people speaking of the horror they imagined the passengers on the plane experiencing. In the absence of the actual horrific images of that morning — there was no TV in the office at that time — nothing else so moved them to emotional displays as that mental image.
At the time I found it easier to function if I did not think about things like that. But you couldn't ignore it forever, and movies have always been powerful providers of provocative images. Combine that with Stone's directorial skills, and you have an impressive force.
It was also an heroic tale.
The movie, critic Roger Ebert wrote, "is about two men who, against all odds, survived the collapse of the Twin Towers."
Clearly, that is a compelling story line, and ostensibly it was a true story; many parts of it undoubtedly were true, but some parts apparently were exaggerated.
And some parts were not given adequate treatment — in the eyes of some. There were some widows of victims of the attacks who were critical of the involvement of family members of other victims, producing what they thought was a slanted treatment of the subject.
The treatment was a little heavy handed at times, too.
For example, at one point, a closeup of an open Bible could be seen. It was open to a passage in Revelation and was followed by a shot of a cross, which was "piling it on a bit thick," Ebert observed.
Ebert also pointed out that Stone "Christianize[d]" the story "in ways that go beyond the beliefs of his characters."
"The problem with movies about individuals in such extreme situations," Ebert wrote, "(perhaps especially those that try to hew closely to the accounts of the survivors who lived the events depicted) is that they are stripped of some of their individuality. They are, by necessity, reduced to human essentials, and that doesn't always make for good movie drama. Yes, anyone in this situation would think, and probably say, something like, 'Tell my wife and children that I love them.' But since we don't know much about who these guys were before 9/11 (presented here as a hazy day rather than the crystal clear fall morning we remember — where's CGI when you need it?), some moments in 'WTC' feel more generic than personal or universal."
I think a big problem with dramatizing events that most if not all of your viewers are likely to remember is that people remember things through the prisms of their own experiences. What they saw meshes with what they were thinking and what they were doing.
And the families are bound to have the most vivid memories of all. Pleasing them must be a nearly impossible objective to achieve.
So I don't fault Stone for failing to live up to their expectations. They want others to feel what they felt, and that is not possible. Only approximations are possible. But isn't that, ultimately, a filmmaker's mission — to make the audiences experience what the characters in the movie experienced?
I'm glad that filmmakers took on the topic of 9/11 quickly. But as I suggested earlier, perhaps they acted too quickly.
Of course, even when Stone has taken on events that were decades removed — "JFK" comes to mind — he has encountered resistance. Even so, there is something to be said for not dramatizing something until a couple of generations have passed.
But I guess that depends on the director, the subject matter and how it is handled. While there were many complaints about Stone's "Nixon," I heard from many people who shared my assessment of Anthony Hopkins' performance in the title role — and we were all old enough to remember Nixon. Hopkins didn't look like Nixon, and he didn't sound like Nixon, but he captured Nixon's persona perfectly.
The characters in "World Trade Center" were not familiar to audiences, only to those who knew the originals, so perhaps the two movies aren't really comparable.
Then again, perhaps Ebert was on to something when he observed that, since the audience was not familiar with the characters, some of the movie's moments felt "more generic than personal or universal."
Is that the fault of the cast or the director? The cast can only work with what it is given in terms of a script and directorial guidance.
Ever since Playboy magazine stopped publishing nude centerfolds earlier this year — and even before that — I have seen milestones marked for the publication's centerfold models.
For example, whenever Marilyn Monroe is mentioned, it is almost sure to be observed that she was Playboy's "first playmate of the month" — which, technically, she wasn't. She was the first centerfold, which at that time, I believe, was called "Sweetheart of the Month." Someone else had the distinction of being the first playmate.
Being the first playmate to be or do anything is usually a good thing — but not always.
Marilyn was the first centerfold model to die — but not the first playmate to die. That was Tonya Crews, Miss March of 1961, who died in an automobile accident 50 years ago today.
Crews tends to get overshadowed when the topic of conversation is playmates who died young, especially if 1992 playmate Anna Nicole Smith is part of the discussion.
Part native American, Crews was born in Oklahoma in February 1938. She had just turned 23 when the issue of Playboy containing her centerfold hit the newsstands.
In 2007, following Smith's death, Jessica Gresko of the Associated Press lamented Smith's "exclusive" membership in the club of playmates who didn't live to see their 50th birthdays. Crews, of course, is a charter member of that club.
There have been so many other tragic deaths among the playmates that Crews' death rarely gets mentioned.
But it was 50 years ago today that Crews became the first playmate to die. It's a dubious distinction, but it's one to which she is entitled.
Corp. Miller (David Niven):There's no guarantee, but the theory's perfectly feasible.
No one would ever conclude that I am a fan of war movies. I grew up that way. My parents were decidedly antiwar when I was growing up, and I grew up believing as they did.
As an adult, I have amended my position, acknowledging that sometimes it is necessary to fight, but that doesn't mean that my attitude about war movies has changed much. I've never really been much for splashy special effects and explosions. I'm a writer. I like dialogue. Lots of it.
I do like some war movies, just as I do like some westerns and some love stories. Just not all of them. Not even most of them.
My overriding preference when it comes to movies of any genre is that the movie tell a good story. And that is what "The Guns of Navarone," which premiered on America's movie screens on this day in 1961, did.
If it had been one of those war movies where two sides just begin shooting randomly at each other for no apparent reason other than the fact that they represent two opposing sides in an armed conflict, it wouldn't have interested me. I'll grant you, that is how most wars seem to be fought. Still, I want a story, something that gives the movie context.
"The Guns of Navarone" was a fictional story about World War II, and it was a darn good story.
It was set with a real event as the backdrop — the Dodecanese Campaign, in which the Allied forces sought to capture the Italian–held Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea in 1943, a mission that failed — on a fictional island called Navarone. Specifically, it was based on events surrounding the Battle of Leros, the central event of that campaign. The Italians had installed two powerful guns on the island that controlled the seas, but they were captured by the Germans in the battle.
Using that as the inspiration, Scottish writer Alistair MacLean penned the novel "The Guns of Navarone," in which a group of commandos sets out to destroy the island fortress and liberate more than 1,000 British soldiers.
Well, that's how it was in real life. In the novel (and the movie it inspired), there were 2,000 British soldiers. The British Navy planned to send in ships to rescue them, but first, those guns had to be neutralized. That's where the commandos came in.
Don't get me wrong. "The Guns of Navarone" had plenty of shooting and explosions — in fact, it won an Oscar for its special effects — but it also had a lot of dialogue that really told the story. (Carl Foreman was nominated for an Oscar for his adapted screenplay, but he lost to "Judgment at Nuremberg.")
Then, along the way, the movie's stars — Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn — kept propelling the commandos forward. Each brought a special qualification to the enterprise. Peck played a spy from New Zealand, talented at what he did but inexperienced as a leader; Niven was an explosives expert, and Quinn was a Greek patriot.
There were breathtakingly dramatic moments as the commando unit made its way to the objective. If you are part of the millennial generation and you've never seen "The Guns of Navarone" before, you may well see similarities between it and "The Lord of the Rings" when you do. The characters and circumstances are different, but the similarities are undeniable. Peck and Niven, in their quest for the guns, are not unlike Frodo and Sam in their journey to Mordor.
And both stories were about the clash between good and evil.
When I was a child, I had no idea there was a movie called "Anna and the King of Siam," which made its American premiere on this day in 1946.
I knew about "The King and I," the musical version of the story starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr that was made about a decade later. My grandmother was a fan of musicals, and I remember watching that one with her on television when I was about 5 or 6 years old.
Set in the 1860s, "Anna and the King of Siam" told the story of an Englishwoman (Irene Dunne) who accepted a position teaching English to the children of the king of Siam (Rex Harrison). It was essentially the same story — minus the music.
Dunne's character got off on the wrong foot when she was greeted by the prime minister (Lee J. Cobb), who proceeded to ask her several personal questions. Dunne's character did not realize that was customary in Siam and took offense — only to be advised afterward to make amends with him on the grounds that she didn't understand. She took that advice, but things still weren't smooth. Dunne and her son had been promised a house of their own in which to live, but upon their arrival she learned that she was to live in the palace where she would be accessible for the king and any of his children at any time. The king did not remember making the promise of a house and, apparently, felt under no obligation to honor a promise he didn't recall making.
It was, I quickly determined, the same story — except that, apart from the music, "The King and I" was a much more light–hearted telling of what was a culture clash. I guess the music made it seem breezy. No problem like that in "Anna and the King of Siam" although as I understand it the king was portrayed as being much tougher and more traditional in that movie than he was in real life.
Both movies were based on the true story of Anna Leonowens, a British writer, educator and social activist who became the governess/teacher of the Siamese king's 39 wives and 82 children. I don't remember if the movie ever mentioned the number of children she taught, but I am quite sure I did not see 82 children in the movie — and very few of the king's wives were seen, either. There was one, sort of the top wife (Gale Sondergaard, in an Oscar–nominated performance), who knew English and interpreted for Anna, but, as I say, few others were seen.
While much of "Anna and the King of Siam" was fictionalized, one of my favorite scenes in the movie apparently was based in fact. In the movie, the king dictated a letter to American President Abraham Lincoln in which he offered Lincoln gifts of elephants to breed for transportation purposes — although the offer was actually addressed to Lincoln's predecessor, James Buchanan, or, since the king was mindful of the presidential election taking place when he sent the gifts, Buchanan's successor.
(Buchanan was not a candidate for re–election. Lincoln was elected to succeed him.)
As a history buff, I always liked that part of the story. I can't tell you how pleased I was to learn it was true — mostly.
Anna was a bit of a feminist, at least as far as her times were concerned — and certainly as far as the place where she was living and working was concerned. Women simply had no rights in Siam, and no one, male or female, challenged the king on anything and in any way. But Anna spoke her mind to the king, and she frequently made sense. It just took him a little while to mull things over in his head.
Then, when he came around — like as not in the wee hours of the morning — he would wake her up to go over the details with her. She became perhaps his most valued adviser by the end of the movie.
But there were still times when Anna's European sensibilities came into conflict with Siamese tradition.
It was a story about a culture clash that still has valuable points to make.
In addition to Sondergaard, "Anna and the King of Siam" received four other Academy Award nominations and won Oscars for Best Dramatic or Comedy Score and Best Black–and–White Art Direction.
"Nobody hates history. They hate their own histories."
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks)
I kind of had an unfair advantage over many people who saw "The Da Vinci Code" after it premiered on this day in 2006.
Less than two months earlier, I was laid up for a couple of weeks after shoulder surgery. That's kind of a long story, and I really only mention it because, during my convalescence, I read Dan Brown's "preposterous" (in Roger Ebert's words) novel on which the movie was based.
The novel was published three years earlier, which is probably when most people read it — it was outsold only by the latest in the Harry Potter series — but I didn't read it then. I was busy with other things. Then, when I found myself with time on my hands in early 2006, I read a secondhand paperback copy of that novel.
That worked in my favor when the movie came out, though, because the plot was fresh in my mind. The people I knew who read it when the book was a best–seller in hardback had forgotten some of the finer points of the story, and I am sure they weren't alone.
(I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that it was considerably more challenging for moviegoers to follow the plot if they hadn't read the book. I mean, you at least had to be aware of about 2,000 years' worth of religious rumor and innuendo — as well as history. Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte [N.C.] Observer wrote that "unlike most Hollywood blockbusters, this one assumes audience members will be smart." I worked for newspapers long enough to know that was probably a mistake.)
But I was fortunate to have the father I had. Dad was a religion professor when I was growing up so I got a lot of exposure to things about which most of my friends knew little, if anything — at least when it came to religion. Dad was a great resource for me when I was reading Brown's novel.
But he was a good resource in another way. Dad has always been an avid fan of mystery novels. As such, he was invaluable in helping me to differentiate between elements of genuine religious and historical significance and elements of good mystery writing. In such a novel, they are bound to overlap; without his help, it would have been easy for me to confuse the two.
On top of that, I saw the movie with Dad. We saw it on Father's Day that year — about a month after its premiere. We figured the crowds wouldn't be as great after a month. Boy, were we wrong. Around the time we saw it, "The Da Vinci Code" became the second film of 2006 to exceed $200 million in the United States.
It was still packing 'em in.
Ron Howard's movies always pack 'em in, though, and they are almost always good so that was understandable. What's more he had two–time Oscar winner Tom Hanks in the leading role and two–time Oscar nominee Ian McKellen in a supporting role. French actress Audrey Tatou, who was largely unfamiliar to American movie audiences at the time, co–starred with Hanks. How could Howard go wrong?
Well, apparently, he did.
The response to the movie was, at best, mixed. I think most people recognized the controversial nature of the subject matter — as well as the fact that considerable resistance could be expected from the Roman Catholic Church. More than a dozen countries censored the film — if they didn't ban it outright.
So there were some headwinds facing the movie when it made its debut. But that didn't seem to dampen audience enthusiasm. As mentioned earlier, it was the second–highest grossing film that year. Anyone looking for evidence that critical endorsements' have little effect on consumer behavior need look no further than "The Da Vinci Code."
Still, the critics could be harsh, and Howard said he found their responses "frustrating."
And I guess they were.
But that is to be expected, I suppose, when a movie challenges people's religious beliefs, and that is precisely what "The Da Vinci Code" did. How could anyone think otherwise? Hanks' character was a professor of religious iconography and symbology involved in a quest for the Holy Grail.
What was not expected — at least, by me — was the negative reaction to Howard. After all, who didn't like Opie? Or, depending on your age, Richie Cunningham? Getting rough with Ron Howard is like getting rough with the Easter bunny.
I agreed with his assertion that the book on which the movie was based was "preposterous" — and with that stuff about the movie being preposterously entertaining.
If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, I encourage you to do so.
Just remember that it is neither purely history nor purely mystery. Perhaps a little of both.
"The war on terror begins with 40 ordinary people."
Tagline
Anyone old enough to remember the tragic day of Sept. 11, 2001 — and that must mean anyone who is at least 23 or 24 now — will never forget anything about it.
For many people, it was the first time they had given much thought to terrorism, its practitioners and its purpose. Prior to 2001, most folks gave terrorism superficial attention at times and at best — after the jumbo jet was blown from the sky over Lockerbie or the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center was made or the successful attempt to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City occurred.
But terrorism really came to America in 2001 when the al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes and flew them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
The fourth airplane, United 93, slammed into a field in Southwestern Pennsylvania, killing all on board but failing to reach its apparent target, the Capitol or the White House. The exact target is not known.
There are many things about that flight that are not known. Oh, sure, there are some things that are known. We know about the telephone calls that passengers made to loved ones. We know about Todd Beamer's conversation with an airphone supervisor on the ground. We know about recordings that were made on the plane that day, including the events just before the plane crashed when some of the passengers tried to storm the cockpit.
But many of the details that we believe we know are myths that sprang up almost immediately — like the notion that the plane was filled with modern–day patriots who heroically and unselfishly sacrificed themselves in the first battle in the war on terrorism.
That brings me to the part that I liked the most about "United 93," a movie about that flight that had its first–ever showing (at New York's Tribeca Film Festival) on this day in 2006. It opened across the nation two days later.
What did I like best about it? I liked the fact that the movie showed the plane's passengers and crew as the humans they were. Based on what we have heard from recordings, there clearly were those on board who refused to go down without a fight. But there must also have been those who huddled in the back of the plane.
It is tempting, from our perspective, to criticize those who may have remained in the back, clinging to the hope that the flight would not end the way it did. They were only minutes from their deaths, we might say to ourselves. What did they have to lose?
We have the advantage of knowing how it all turned out, but no one on board the plane that day knew what was going to happen. It seems entirely plausible to me that, given the way children have been raised in America for generations, some of the passengers did as they were told in the futile belief that they could save themselves by cooperating.
I always knew that the events of Sept. 11 would be dramatized in at least one feature film, but "United 93" — which was the first full–length big–screen dramatization about that day — came along even earlier than I expected. It had been fewer than five years since the hijackings, after all.
A deliberate decision was made not to use well–known actors and actresses in the film — so as not to detract from the story. Probably the only person viewers might have recognized — and they really would have had to search their memories to place her — was Rebecca Schull, whose greatest claim to fame probably was as the ticket agent on the TV sitcom Wings. (I don't think she had any lines in the movie and relatively few on–screen moments.)
You might have seen one or two others, but they almost certainly played small parts in those movies or TV shows, and you would probably never remember in what you had seen them. It was best not to dwell on such things too much, anyway — at least while you were watching "United 93" — even though we all know the story.
As I say, there are many myths that continue to swirl around that flight. One is that the passengers were heroic to the end — and, human nature being what it is, I find it hard to believe that some of the passengers didn't become hysterical or burst into tears. No one on that flight spoke of the big picture or a war on terrorism that had not begun — at least as far as Americans were concerned.
The passengers were, as the tagline said, "40 ordinary people," and that is precisely what "United 93" sought to convey through its casting. Unlike the hijackers, they boarded that plane with no political agendas, and they died not knowing if anyone outside their families and circles of friends would know who they had been.
"It is not too soon for 'United 93' because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11," wrote Roger Ebert. "The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims."
I agree with that.
And I think the decision to go with largely unknown actors was the right one. With a few exceptions, the victims on Sept. 11 were unknown, too. That is what made their deaths so compelling. They could have been any one of us. The victims had been people who casually boarded airplanes to fly across the country, either for work or for pleasure, and people who casually went to work as usual. Just a normal day. Normal people.
It wasn't many years before those terrorist attacks that I was flying fairly frequently as part of my job. I wrote for a trade magazine and often had to cover trade shows in other parts of the country. On Sept. 11, I definitely had a sense of there but for the grace of God go I.
(I had a similar sensation several years earlier — after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. I was teaching at the University of Oklahoma in those days, and I often did research at the Oklahoma City library, which wasn't far from the federal building. In fact, I walked past the federal building on am untold number of occasions.)
Of course, knowing what we know now about the terrorists' plan, the odds would have been strongly against my being on a hijacked plane. The hijackers were looking for planes that were carrying enough fuel for a cross–country flight, and the flights originated on the East Coast so the hijacker pilots wouldn't have far to fly to reach their targets in New York and Washington.
My base of operations was here in Dallas. I flew to both coasts in the course of my work, but I always started in Dallas, in the middle of the country. Such a flight would not be a candidate for participation in such a plot. Still, I didn't know that on Sept. 11.
(As for the bombing in Oklahoma City, I wouldn't have been a likely victim of that one, either. The bombing occurred about 30 minutes before I was supposed to teach a class. I wouldn't have been in Oklahoma City that morning. But I had been there on other mornings.)
U.S. intelligence personnel may have known more details on the night of Sept. 11 than most folks in the general public did, but the movie managed to capture the sense of bewilderment that I and most of the people around me experienced that morning. I have no doubt it reflected the atmosphere in most places across the United States. Perhaps also in some corners of the intelligence community.
Most of the people with whom I worked fit Ebert's description of what movie viewers knew in the context of "United 93." There was no TV in my office at that time, and we got updates from friends and relatives who called the office to report what was happening.
No one in our office understood what was happening — or why it was happening. Few of them, frankly, knew anything about Osama bin Laden, and no one knew anything about al Qaeda — until George W. Bush mentioned it in his speech to a joint session of Congress more than a week later.
In that way, and in every other, "United 93" was true to the moment in time that it sought to recapture. And that is what I look for in movies about historical events. I'm willing to give a movie some wiggle room in its portrayal of an event or series of events — if it needs it and if it doesn't contradict the facts.
Some events need no embellishment. Sept. 11 was such an event. And I saw nothing that seemed to be an attempt to embellish the dramatization of that day.
We know there was some kind of revolt on Flight 93. Beyond that, so much — what was said, what was done and by whom — is largely speculation.
The speculation in "United 93" was reasonable. The passengers didn't mount a counterattack with patriotic music swelling in the background. "The passengers are a terrified planeload of strangers," Ebert observed. Some of the passengers wept, some prayed, some joined in the revolt.
Put any three dozen or so people together in such a situation and you will have that kind of mix. Some people succumb to fear. Others overcome it. You never know how you will react to a situation until you find yourself in it. And, looking back on it, it is inevitable, I suppose, that some things will seem hackneyed and cliched the more they have been retold — and re–spun.
"There has been much discussion of the movie's trailer," Ebert wrote, "and no wonder. It pieces together moments from 'United 93' to make it seem more conventional, more like a thriller. Dialogue that seems absolutely realistic in context sounds, in the trailer, like sound bites and punch lines. To watch the trailer is to sense the movie that [director Paul] Greengrass did not make. To watch 'United 93' is to be confronted with the grim chaotic reality of that September day in 2001."
Yes, it was a grim day. Yes, it was chaotic — on the ground, I know, and I'm sure it was even more chaotic in the air.
It is a story that should never be forgotten — and "United 93" did its best to make sure it isn't.
"Let's say that you go back in time. It's October 1929, the day before the stock market crashed. Now, you know that, on the following morning, securities are going to tumble into an abyss. Now, using this prior knowledge, there's a hundred things you could do to protect yourself."
Millard (Raymond Bailey)
I am something of an amateur historian, and one thing I have noticed about historians is that they have a secret — or maybe it is not so secret — wish to go back to a particular time and place.
I guess that is a byproduct of that particular preoccupation. If one ponders a certain event enough, it is only natural that one should start to think about actions that could have been taken that would have changed the course of said event — or perhaps prevent future events.
Knowing what you know, would you go back in time to that battlefield and tell that soldier what Hitler would do if he lived past that day in 1918?
Put in a 21st–century context — Given what we know now, who among us wouldn't want to go back to Sept. 10, 2001, to warn the people of New York and Washington that terrorists planned to strike the next day?
Back in the days of the Commodore 64 computer, I owned an all–text game that could simulate presidential elections in the second half of the 20th century. The player(s) acted as campaign managers(s) as well as candidate(s). Through this game, it was possible to replay an actual campaign (i.e., the 1960 cliffhanger between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon) and see if you could change its outcome, or you could change one or all of the nominees in an election and see if a different party or candidate would win, or you could change the economic and international situations to see if that would have an impact on things.
Or it could be a combination of the above. The possibilities were virtually unlimited.
For someone with the desire not just to study history but to go back in time and change its course, it was an addictive game. I learned, after playing it several times, that it was difficult to change outcomes of elections, especially landslides but even cliffhangers. I suppose the game was predisposed to favor certain parties in certain years — and that is consistent with actual voting patterns, anyway. Since the end of World War II, the same party has won three consecutive elections only once.
So it was also a pretty good lesson in predestination. Most things — perhaps all things — are intended to turn out in a certain way. No attempts to intervene will succeed. Well, on second thought, I suppose anything is possible.
But even without computers, I'm sure historians have been fantasizing for centuries about traveling through time. What–if questions obsess them — as well as creative writers. There have been more movies and TV episodes about a person going back in time (or into the future, although that has been far less common) than I can count. Usually, the lesson of the story has been that if something is meant to be, it will happen, and no one can change it. Not even a visitor from the future.
(Five years ago, I wrote about such an episode from the mid–1980s incarnation of the Twilight Zone. That blog post led to a kind of modern–day pen pal relationship — strictly via Facebook — with the author of the story. Apparently he did an internet search to see if anyone had written about the 25th anniversary of the first showing of that episode and determined that I was the only one who had. Anyway, he sent me an email and, well, the rest is history.)
These movies and TV episodes can take many forms. They don't always deal with historical figures and events in which those figures were prominent participants — sometimes they deal with the times and their technologies — but the episode of the Twilight Zone that first aired on this night in 1961 did.
It didn't have an actor portraying Lincoln — but it did showcase a few actors who became pretty well known on TV series within a few years. The most prominent actor was Russell Johnson, who found fame as the Professor on Gilligan's Island.
In a then–present day Washington, D.C., gentlemen's club, Johnson (playing a professor, of course) got into a spirited discussion with Raymond Bailey (who became better known as banker Milburn Drysdale in The Beverly Hillbillies) about the nature of time travel. Bailey took the position that, if time travel were possible, there would be nothing to prevent the time traveler from altering history's course. Johnson argued that historic dates were fixed dates that could not be changed.
The debate went on for a few minutes, then Johnson excused himself, saying he was tired and found the subject too theoretical for his taste. As he was leaving, he bumped into an attendant named William and started to feel faint. He felt confused and disoriented upon stepping outside, where he found horse–drawn carriages where before there had been cars and gaslights where there had been electric lights. His clothes were changed, too. Instead of his 20th–century suit, he was wearing 19th–century garb.
He decided to go to the place where his home had been, but it was now a boardinghouse. He went in and spoke to the landlady when a young couple, an Army officer and his lady friend, came down the stairs on their way out to the theater. Johnson spoke with them and connected the dots — it was April 1865, the day Lincoln would be shot in Ford's Theater.
There were still a few hours before anything would happen so Johnson's character ran to the theater and began raising a fuss. He struck everyone as being some kind of wild–eyed lunatic, and the police were summoned.
Back at the police station, the arresting officer brought Johnson before a police sergeant, played by actor Paul Hartman (who had an extensive career as a character actor but probably is best remembered as Emmett, proprietor of the Fix–It Shop on The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D.), who listened to Johnson's story then ordered him taken to a cell to "sleep it off."
About that time, a man calling himself Wellington came in to the station and offered to take custody of Johnson. It was granted, and back at Wellington's room, he gave Johnson a drugged drink. When Johnson passed out, he left to go to the theater — not to prevent the assassination but to be sure it succeeded. Wellington was John Wilkes Booth.
When Johnson came to, the deed had been done.
A patrolman who was with Johnson when word reached them of the assassination was played by long–time character actor Jimmy Lydon. He had been in the police station when Johnson was brought in and became convinced that something would happen to Lincoln. So he had gone all over the city trying to find someone who would authorize increased security for Lincoln's box, but he had found no takers.
Johnson had been unable to prevent the assassination in spite of his knowledge of the past.
In the blink of an eye, Johnson found himself back in the present time — at the gentlemen's club. Only now, the attendant who bumped into him earlier was one of the participants in the discussion Johnson had left.
Apparently, Johnson's excursion into the past had altered William's family fortunes. That patrolman had gained so much attention for knowing what would happen that he had been rapidly promoted, did some wheeling and dealing in land and became a millionaire. William, his descendant, had benefited via inheritance from his great–grandfather. In the previous timeline, William's great–grandfather apparently didn't go much beyond his job as a patrolman, and that would have been a barrier to future generations.
But the family had money. So Johnson's character did alter history — although not in the way he wanted.
As the closing narration put it, "Mr. Peter Corrigan, lately returned from a place 'back there,' a journey into time with highly questionable results, proving on one hand that the threads of history are woven tightly, and the skein of events cannot be undone, but on the other hand, there are small fragments of tapestry that can be altered. Tonight's thesis to be taken, as you will — in The Twilight Zone."
I suppose the only conclusion to be reached is that, if time travel is possible, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to alter major events, but it is possible to, as the Twilight Zone put it, alter "small fragments of (history's) tapestry."
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
