Never Having to Say You're Sorry

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"Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Ali MacGraw, 'Love Story'
13th–greatest movie quote of all time, American Film Institute

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Arthur Hiller's "Love Story," which made its debut on this day in 1970, was phenomenally popular. Even after 45 years, it is still one of the highest–grossing movies in American history.

Of course, there is always a market for sappy love stories, and it doesn't get much sappier than blatantly advertising what it is in the title. Most love stories have the decency to try (or appear to try) to conceal the truth until the reader or viewer has made his/her commitment. Not "Love Story."

It was a tearjerker, all right, and proud of it. Ryan O'Neal played a well–to–do law student who fell in love with a free–spirited, even rebellious daughter of a blue–collar working man (Ali MacGraw). She called him "preppy" and "jock." He found her charming, her honesty refreshing. They fell in love. Then she got sick with what has been described as a "movie disease." The disease itself is undefined — although the implication in "Love Story" was that it was some kind of cancer — but it has shown up in many movies since — and whoever gets it is going to die. Of that, you can be sure.

And MacGraw died. There was no physical decline. She was just as beautiful when her character died as she had been when she was healthy.

"What can you say about a 25–year–old girl who died?" asked O'Neal's character in the second–most quoted piece of dialogue from the movie. "That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach? The Beatles? And me?"

In between, there were other issues. O'Neal's father (Ray Milland) threatened to cut off his son financially if he married MacGraw. Of course, O'Neal and MacGraw married, anyway, and then had to struggle to make ends meet. Especially after MacGraw got sick. That development forced O'Neal's character to swallow his pride and approach his father for some financial relief.

Erich Segal wrote the screenplay, then was encouraged by Paramount Pictures to write a novel from the screenplay. The novel was published on Valentine's Day 1970 and became a bestseller well in advance of the movie's release.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that he read the novel "in about 14 minutes flat, out of simple curiosity. I wanted to discover why 5.5 million people had actually bought it. I wasn't successful. I was so put off by Erich Segal's writing style, in fact, that I hardly wanted to see the movie at all. Segal's prose style is so revoltingly coy — sort of a cross between a parody of Hemingway and the instructions on a soup can — that his story is fatally infected."

But Ebert conceded that he felt the movie was better than the book.

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Based on his assessment of the book, I would have to say that it would just about have to be better.

I never read the book, but I saw the movie once. I was unmoved. But lots of people clearly were. MacGraw's character's pearl of wisdom — "Love means never having to say you're sorry" — took on iconic qualities, and the movie's theme song, sung by Andy Williams, was a huge hit. "Love Story" captured the culture's imagination.

Addressing the point that the makers of the movie obviously wanted to move the audience to tears, Ebert wrote, "Is this an unworthy purpose? Does the movie become unworthy, as Newsweek thought it did, simply because it has been mechanically contrived to tell us a beautiful, tragic tale? I don't think so. There's nothing contemptible about being moved to joy by a musical, to terror by a thriller, to excitement by a Western. Why shouldn't we get a little misty during a story about young lovers separated by death?"

Whether it was beautiful is a matter of opinion. That it was tragic was undeniable.

It went on to inspire many other movies, which gave viewers basically the same plot but with a few modest alterations, and most were successful, although none was as successful as "Love Story," the biggest moneymaker Paramount Pictures had ever had.

Today I suppose I find "Love Story" more noteworthy as the movie debut of actor Tommy Lee Jones. He's had better roles since then, but, heck, we all have to start somewhere, right?

The thing that I find really remarkable about "Love Story" is that it was actually nominated for seven Oscars — and won one. It was for Best Music, which I have always thought was more a response to the impressive sales the soundtrack generated than the quality of the score.

But "Love Story" was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, and both O'Neal and MacGraw were nominated for their acting.

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Huh?

O'Neal lost to George C. Scott, who famously refused the award, and MacGraw lost to Glenda Jackson.

Thank God cooler heads prevailed.

A Sweet Treat

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"Once upon a time there was a quiet little village in the French countryside whose people believed in tranquilite. Tranquility. If you lived in this village, you understood what was expected of you. You knew your place in the scheme of things. And if you happened to forget, someone would help remind you."

Opening narration

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Having grown up in a small town (as I have mentioned on this blog before), I can understand how slowly change can be accepted in one. My small hometown isn't so small anymore (as I have also mentioned here before), but it is still small enough that it is probably susceptible to some of the same mindsets that existed there when it was maybe one–fifth its present size.

I can't remember anything as unsettling there as the arrival — on a "clever" wind — of a single mother/chocolatier (Juliette Binoche) and her 6–year–old daughter in a fictional French town that had been stagnating for years, decades, perhaps centuries.

That happened in the movie "Chocolat," which made its debut on this day in 2000. I missed it when it was in the theaters, but I saw it recently on Netflix — and it is one of those movies I deeply regret missing the first time. It was, indeed, a sweet treat.

Small towns are notorious for being centered on one church. My hometown, for example, was mostly Baptists although there was a fairly sizable population of Methodists there. In the village in the movie, it was apparently a Catholic church, and everyone went to church on Sunday. If you didn't, everyone knew.

Everyone in this town, it seemed, had a problem of some kind, and Binoche's arrival summoned all sorts of things out into the open in one way or another. That is something I have noticed about serene small towns — the serenity often hides something more sinister lurking beneath the surface.

It seemed to be common knowledge that Binoche was an atheist and had an illegitimate daughter, and the villagers had seen her wearing dresses that were much more colorful than the ones the local women wore, but the movie never really resolved the question of Binoche's true identity. Some people thought she was a witch; Binoche's character hinted that she was a pagan princess. Presumably that was why she had a "knack," as she put it, for picking out which of the many varieties of chocolates in her shop was a customer's particular favorite — or, perhaps, more to the point, which one would have the greatest effect on a given customer's personality.

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Does that seem complicated? It isn't, really.

As film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "'Chocolat' is about a war between the forces of paganism and Christianity, and because the pagan heroine has chocolate on her side, she wins. Her victory is delayed only because, during Lent, a lot of the locals aren't eating chocolate."

Actually, there's more to it than that. (There always is, isn't there?) Binoche rubbed the mayor (Alfred Molina) the wrong way, and he forbade the people of the village from frequenting her shop, vowing that she would be out of business by Easter. She had already influenced two women in the village and changed their behavior, and the comte — whose control of the town was so complete that he wrote the sermons that the priest delivered on Sundays — resented the fact that Binoche was tempting the villagers with chocolate at a time when they were supposed to be abstaining from earthly pleasures.

One of the women Binoche influenced was her landlady (Judi Dench), whose daughter refused to permit her to see her grandson. The other woman (Lena Olin) was a victim of spousal abuse. She summed up the reality of a small town in a simple — yet elegant, in its way — sentence: "People talk."

Yes, they do. About all kinds of things. And people. That is, by far, their favorite topic of all.

The comte had problems of his own. The movie never really let the audience know what the situation was with his wife, but there were plenty of indications that she had left him. He would only admit that she was visiting Venice — but, as Dench's character remarked, she had been there for months. And everyone seemed to know she had left him. Everyone but the comte, who probably knew but refused to admit it, even to himself.

Well, Binoche's shop did not go out of business, but she found herself in a holy war with the comte.

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And in this holy war she enlisted the help of a gypsy (Johnny Depp).

Ebert wrote that the movie was "charming and whimsical," and I agree. There were places where the movie could have turned even more serious than it did, especially when the clash between the church and the atheist came to the forefront. But it kept its rather bemused distance and made no judgments.

It followed the Joe Friday storytelling approach — Just the facts. Even if it is a fictional tale. (If you're old enough to remember Dragnet, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, never mind.)

"Chocolat" was nominated for five Oscars — Best Picture, Best Actress (Binoche), Best Supporting Actress (Dench), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score — but lost all five. Pity.

A Most Unusual Board Game

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"I've seen things you've only seen in your nightmares. Things you can't even imagine. Things you can't even see. There are things that hunt you in the night. Then something screams. Then you hear them eating, and you hope to God you aren't dessert. Afraid? You don't know what afraid is."

Alan (Robin Williams)

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In the aftermath of Robin Williams' suicide last year, it was easy to reel off a list of his greatest acting achievements — "Awakenings," "Dead Poets Society," "The World According to Garp," "The Fisher King," "Good Morning, Vietnam," to name but a few — and start a debate over which was the best.

But, really, identifying those movies is easy because they were recognized at the time as being overall quality productions. Williams was always good — he was nominated for Oscars four times and even won once — but he was often made better by the people around him.

To have a truly representative discussion of his best performances, it seems to me it would be necessary to include movies that weren't generally well regarded, but in which he gave his customary brilliant performances. I wrote about such a movie a few days ago — 1980's "Popeye" — and another such movie premiered on this date in 1995 — "Jumanji."

That isn't really accurate, I guess, to suggest that "Jumanji" wasn't a good movie. "Jumanji" was a good movie, creative and all that. Critics were mixed, but audiences seemed to like it well enough. After all, it made more than $100 million.

At the time, I chose not to see it in the theater. What I had seen in the previews simply didn't appeal to me. I regretted that decision when I finally did see it on the small TV screen, though. The special effects of "Jumanji" really were quite good, well worth seeing on the big screen.

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But the acting was pretty good, too.

The focus of the story was a young boy named Alan, the heir to a shoe manufacturing business. Several things happened early to set up the rest of the story, although that wasn't immediately clear. I won't go into detail about them here. If you haven't seen the movie, take my word for it. Everything eventually makes sense — even though there's a lot of crazy stuff that goes on. The movie does its best to trick you — and manages to do so. Be prepared for that.

Young Alan found a board game called Jumanji — how he discovered it is what established this movie as a fantasy — and he and a female friend sat down to play it one afternoon. Turned out Alan got sucked into the world of the game. The adults never figured out what happened to him, and his companion needed years of therapy to come to grips with what she had witnessed.

Fast forward 26 years — when Alan's house was being acquired by a woman (Bebe Neuwirth) and her late brother's children (Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce). The children discovered the game and tried to play it — and, without realizing it, resumed the game that had been started in 1969.

And that summoned Alan back from wherever he had gone 26 years earlier — only he was an adult now, played by Williams. Well, physically he was an adult. Emotionally he was still that child from 1969.

I'm sure that kind of role was too juicy for Williams to pass up.

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And really, I can't imagine anyone else playing the role except Robin Williams.

There are roles that are like that. They might have gone to other actors, but they were played so well by the people who were cast in them that you simply can't imagine anyone else playing the role.

Of course, Robin Williams was such a unique talent that it is really hard to imagine anyone else playing any of the roles Williams played in his life. He always put his personal, manic stamp on every role he played — in the movies or on TV.

He was one of a kind, and he is missed.

Archie's Only Grandson

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Forty years ago tonight, a TV baby started to make his appearance in what was, perhaps, the most anticipated birth on TV since Lucy gave birth to Little Ricky. (I say started because this was the first episode of a two–episode story.)

It was on All in the Family, the top–rated program in America in the 1975–76 season. Fans of the show knew that Gloria (Sally Struthers) had been pregnant and was due to deliver in the late fall, but, as viewers learned on this night in 1975, Gloria was two weeks overdue. She was remarkably calm, given the situation; even so, Mike (Rob Reiner) tried to get her mind off things by taking her out to dinner at an Italian restaurant.

In fact, it was while they were drinking some wine that Gloria told Mike she was in labor. But I'll get back to that in a minute.

Archie (Carroll O'Connor) wasn't thinking about Gloria's problems. He was obsessing over a minstrel show at his lodge in which he was supposed to be a participant — but he desperately did not want to do it.

A couple of his lodge brothers came over to drag him to the lodge, but Archie resisted. He tried everything he could think to try, and his lodge brothers began to talk about having him kicked out of the lodging, threatening him with the loss of his benefits — a life insurance policy with "a cash value of $90" and a burial plot that would be weeded twice a year. Archie didn't want to lose any of that so he swung back to the lodge — until he was told he would have to do the minstrel show.

Then he swung back in the other direction.

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Well, Archie wound up dressing up in blackface to do the minstrel show, but the news that his daughter had gone into labor gave him the perfect excuse to skip out.

It wasn't perfect as far as his buddies were concerned, and they threatened him with expulsion as he left the building. "You're going to have a lot of grandchildren," one of his buddies told him, "but this is a big show!"

(In fact, this turned out to be Archie's only grandchild. Mike and Gloria moved to California a few years later, and their characters could have had another child, but there were never any reports of one.)

Meanwhile, back at the Italian restaurant ...

Gloria and Mike had gone into a couple of pay phone booths — if you're too young to remember those, it's OK; you can't find pay phones anymore anyway; they're prehistoric relics now, I guess — well, Mike and Gloria went into phone booths that were old–fashioned then. The kind with glass doors that you closed to give yourself a little privacy.

Keep that in mind. It's important.

Mike called Edith (Jean Stapleton) and told her the news. She made a beeline for the lodge to get Archie. Mike opened the door of the booth and stepped out into the restaurant.

Gloria called the doctor and told him she was on her way. Then she stood up and tried to open the door — but it wouldn't open. She tried to calmly inform Mike that she was stuck.

Mike seemed to react rationally — at first. "You're not stuck," he said soothingly to Gloria. "These doors are a little bit sticky. They can be opened. There's no problem. Trust me." He tapped on the door a couple of times, then swung around and, in an hysterical voice, shouted, "She's stuck! My whole family is stuck in a phone booth!"

As the episode ended, viewers saw Gloria, still in the phone booth — only it was on its side. Emergency workers were trying to extricate her.

And her contractions, which had been 20 minutes apart, were now 10 minutes apart. Mike was hysterical, and Gloria was calm, answering a call from her doctor and explaining to him that she was still in the phone booth.

Viewers were left to await the resolution of the episode the following week.

And that was a television cliffhanger circa 1975.

Life's Choices

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Robin (Cobie Smulders): You know, that was really cool what you did. When we all needed it, you got us back on the right path.

Ted (Josh Radnor): It's what I do.

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Five years ago tonight, How I Met Your Mother did one of the things it did best — it told a tale of how one character's life (o, in this case, two characters) could have ripple effects in the lives of those closest to him/her.

It was a 36 Hours in the Lives of Robin (Cobie Smulders), Ted (Josh Radnor) and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) story, sparked by a positive home pregnancy test that Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) had. The news that they had conceived and were expecting a child made the other members of the group reflect on their lives and where they were going.

It was a story about doubts and hopes and fears and insecurities. Those forks in life's road that everyone encounters sooner or later. Hasn't there been a time in your life — at least one — when you faced a life–altering decision? Of course. Sometimes it has been a decision for which you believed (at first) that you were ready, but, upon further review (as they say in football games), you weren't really ready at all.

And that is one of life's lessons, too, isn't it? Life won't wait until you are ready for it. It happens when it happens. (One of my favorite quotes of all time is attributed to John Lennon: "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.")

Robin, for example, was faced with a career decision. Should she take a lower paying, more demanding and less glamorous job as a behind–the–scenes researcher? Or should she take an easy on–camera job as a "coin flip bimbo" — think Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune — on a network game show?

Barney, who had been the recipient of an apparently huge Christmas bonus, had gotten a taste of the joy of philanthropy and, because of Lily and Marshall, he resolved to give even more.

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And Ted?

Well, Ted, was in a perpetual state of introspection, anyway.

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"Now, kids, when your friends have great news you're happy for them ... for, like, a millisecond. And then you start thinking about yourself."

Older Ted (Bob Saget)

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And both Robin and Barney were on the verge of making what would have been, for them (at those moments), really bad decisions (although their decisions wouldn't necessarily have been seen as bad by others) when they got texts from Marshall and Lily advising them that the pregnancy was a false alarm. The pregnancy test had been mistaken.

And both reversed course.

Through it all, Ted tried to act as the voice of reason. And, eventually, he did guide his friends back to where they probably should have been all along.

The thought that kept coming back to me — or, more accurately, the quote that kept coming back to me — was from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland."

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"Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked. 'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat. 'I don't know,' Alice answered. 'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter.'"

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This episode of How I Met Your Mother showed how, when we are young, we see ourselves as invincible. Our decisions don't take long–term ramifications into consideration because they haven't been factors for us yet.

There was an exception to that — kinda — in this episode. Robin explained her career decision this way: "I just realized that I am about to have a little niece who looks up to me, and I don't want to be sad Aunt Robin the aging coin flip bimbo who gives her the creeps. I want to be cool Aunt Robin, the respected journalist who gives her beer."

That, of course, was when everyone thought Lily was pregnant. When they found out she wasn't, it changed everything for everyone.

When we get older, we think of the long–term consequences because we know they are inevitable. We're more deliberate in our actions as we get older — and, as a result, sometimes life passes us by while we're making our life decisions.

Whatever it is that one wants — Happiness? Love? Peace of mind? — to make a change, it is necessary to act. Clearly, that means choosing one thing over another. You really can't get around that.

Sometimes choices intersect with other things, other objectives — like Robin's desire to be a cool aunt instead of a sad aunt — which is probably more long term than most people in her age group tend to think.

Still, I thought it was a good, thought–provoking episode.

Robin Williams' First Starring Role

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Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston): Children. They cry at you when they're young, they yell at you when they're older, they borrows from you when they's middle–aged, and they leave you alone to die — without even paying you back.

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I remember watching Popeye cartoons when I was a child, but I don't think those cartoons ever told the story of how Popeye came to be in the coastal town of Sweethaven or how he met his future bride Olive Oyl. So I never knew how that happened — until the movie "Popeye" was released on this date in 1980.

Popeye was one of my favorites when I was a little boy. In fact, there was a time — when I was probably 4 or 5 — when I really believed that my muscles would grow like Popeye's if I ate my spinach. And I remember eating spinach and then flexing my muscles, and my mother would ooh and ahhh — not because my muscles really grew but probably because I was eating at least one of my vegetables. Like all mothers, she liked that idea.

Like most kids, I suppose, I didn't care for vegetables. I love spinach today — and not because I think it will make my muscles grow, either. I just honestly like it. But I can't eat spinach, even today, without thinking of Popeye. He has had a permanent influence on my life.

For those of us who grew up with Popeye, the movie was a treat. In his first starring role in a movie, Robin Williams played Popeye, which was something I struggled with before I saw the movie. In hindsight, I have to say it was the right role for him at the time. He was in his Mork from Ork period, arguably the most outlandish, off the wall phase of his career — and the role of Popeye gave him an opportunity to really spread his creative wings.

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I thought the casting of Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl was positively inspired. Since the movie's debut 35 years ago, I have heard many people say that Olive Oyl was the role Duvall was born to play. I don't know if I would take it to that extreme, but I do think Duvall was the only actress in 1980 who could have been a plausible Olive Oyl.

Ray Walston, who was probably best known for his sitcom My Favorite Martian, was a little over the top as Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's long–lost father, but he was only in the movie in its last half hour.

At the time I recall reading reviews of the movie that were rather lukewarm, but critic Roger Ebert said it was "lots of fun," and I agreed.

Ebert was one of those critics who said Duvall was born to be Olive Oyl. As I said earlier, I'm not sure I would go quite that far, but I can't argue with Ebert on this: "She brings to Olive a certain ... dignity, you might say. She's not lightly scorned, and although she may tear apart a room in an unsuccessful attempt to open the curtains, she is fearless in the face of her terrifying fiancé, Bluto."

I guess "Popeye" came along at the right time for me. John Lennon had been shot and killed only a few days before, and I badly needed something like "Popeye," a reassuring reminder of my childhood.

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Calling the comic strip (which of course was where Popeye began) "one of the most artificial and limiting of art forms," Ebert acknowledged that director Robert Altman's movie "suggests that it is possible to take the broad strokes of a comic strip and turn them into sophisticated entertainment. What's needed is the right attitude toward the material."

As I recall, Harry Nilsson's score was pretty well received, as it should have been. As Ebert wrote, the songs "fit into all of this quite effortlessly. Instead of having everything come to a halt for the musical set pieces, Altman stitches them into the fabric. Robin Williams sings Popeye's anthem, 'I Yam What I Yam' with a growling old sea dog's stubbornness. Bluto's 'I'm Mean' has an undeniable conviction, and so does Olive Oyl's song to Bluto, 'He's Large.'"

Nilsson's music was dripping with irony, which may well have been lost on younger viewers.

"Popeye" got a bad rap from the critics of the day. It was better than many thought and deserves to be seen again through fresh eyes.

The Best-Laid Plans ...

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Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson): Simply try for one hour to behave like gentlemen.

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Among my fondest memories of times with my parents are of movie experiences we shared. Sometimes one of us had seen the movie before and was sharing it with the others. Other times the movie was new to all three of us. Rarely did we watch a movie that we had all seen but separately from each other — unless it was a movie that we all enjoyed, even after repeated viewings.

On one occasion, my mother was reading the TV listings in the newspaper and she spotted a movie that made its debut on this day in 1955 — "The Ladykillers." She and my father had both seen it before, but I never had. They told me I should watch it, and I did — and I have recommended it to everyone ever since.

My parents were fans of the movies that came out of Britain's Ealing Studios — which is the studio that made "The Ladykillers." Through my parents, I have seen many of the Ealing Studios movies, and it is my opinion that "The Ladykillers" was the best.

If it wasn't the first time American audiences saw folks like Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom, it was one of the first times. And it was in a delicious black comedy.

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British actress Katie Johnson was the star of the show as a sweet and eccentric elderly widow. Johnson had been on the stage and screen for decades but was only getting the recognition she deserved in her mid–70s.

In "The Ladykillers," Johnson's character was prone to make outlandish reports to the police, who had grown accustomed to her ways and humored her whenever she came in. Guinness approached her about rooms she had for rent. He told her that he and a group of four others wanted to rent a room so they could practice as a string quintet. In reality they were a group of hard–core criminals who wanted to use the space to plan a robbery. Upon securing the room, they played a recording of Boccherini's "Minuet" as a cover — over and over.

Mrs. Wilberforce was forever interrupting their rehearsals to ask if they wanted some tea. During one of her interruptions, she asked one of the members of the gang where he had studied his instrument. He replied — truthfully — "I didn't really study it anywhere, lady. I just picked it up."

Mrs. Wilberforce was only too happy to have musicians in the house. She really knew nothing about them, only the tales she had been told — which, of course, were all lies, masterfully told by Guinness' character, the mastermind of the plan, which was to include Mrs. Wilberforce (but without her knowledge). The gang would pull off the robbery, then have it delivered via railway to a station where Mrs. Wilberforce would pick it up for the gang. No one would question a little old lady.

Mrs. Wilberforce was vital to Guinness' plan. And he kept up with its progress on the day Mrs. Wilberforce retrieved the stolen money; he spoke with an accomplice who was in a pay phone across the street from the station. Guinness and the rest of the gang were elsewhere, and Guinness was speaking from another pay phone. Their conversation was priceless.

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Now, you must understand that Mrs. Wilberforce had a tendency to meddle, which caused some problems in getting the money back to her house. At one point, the money, in the trunk that was used to convey it from the scene of the crime to Mrs. Wilberforce, could be seen standing in the middle of the road.

"It's just sitting there," one of the members of the gang, who trailed Mrs. Wilberforce to be sure of her movements, observed with a sense of incredulity. "Look, couldn't we ... ?"

"No one, I hope, is going to suggest we steal it," Guinness' character replied dryly.

The trunk finally got back to Mrs. Wilberforce's home, and the gang was so close to getting away with it, but then a string of unrelated events, like a domino falling into other dominoes, allowed Mrs. Wilberforce to connect the dots, and she threatened to go to the police with what she knew.

This set off one of the funniest negotiations in movie history. Guinness and his accomplices told Mrs. Wilberforce that she would be treated as an accessory because she carried the loot from the station to her house.

Besides that, they argued, the crime was a victimless one. The insurance company would merely raise everyone's insurance rates by a fraction to make up for the loss. The police probably wouldn't even accept the money if she took it to them.

Mrs. Wilberforce was a law–abiding citizen, but she could see the logic in their argument.

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And she told them she would sleep on it.

Unfortunately, during the night the gang members killed each other off, leaving Mrs. Wilberforce with the money. She tried to turn it in to the police, but they thought it was another of her fantastic tales — and they told her to just keep the money.

A nice touch at the end reminded viewers of a small detail from earlier in the movie. In one of her frequent trips to the police station, Mrs. Wilberforce absent–mindedly left her umbrella at the station. An officer chased after her to return it to her, and she was very grateful to him.

She did the same thing in the closing scene, but when one of the policemen chased after her to give her the umbrella, she said she didn't want it. She never liked it and, besides, now she could afford to buy a dozen new ones.

The 50th Birthday of 'Rubber Soul'

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"Rubber Soul," the album the Beatles released on this day in 1965, is musical proof of the Theory of Evolution. As Rolling Stone observed when naming "Rubber Soul" the fifth–greatest album of all time, "The moptops were evolving in remarkable ways."

In fact, if you judge by the rankings on Rolling Stone's list, "Rubber Soul" — even at #5 on that list — is the third–best Beatles album behind "Revolver," which hit record stores nine months later, and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," which followed "Revolver." Creatively, I suppose, the Beatles were in their prime — even though that rather simplistic approach overlooks the creativity of later albums like "Abbey Road" (my personal favorite) and "Let It Be."

After all these years, "Sgt. Pepper" still gets most of the press, but diehard Beatles fans will tell you that "Rubber Soul" was the true turning point, the start of the Beatles' experimental phase. And when I say that, I'm not just speaking of the substances they ingested although there certainly was plenty of that going on. The Beatles were experimenting musically — with different sounds, different themes, different studio techniques. They stopped doing covers of other people's songs and did exclusively their own stuff — until a dab of "Maggie Mae" popped up on the "Let It Be" album.

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"Rubber Soul" was one of the first Beatles albums I ever owned — albeit a cassette tape — along with "A Hard Day's Night." It really had something for nearly every musical taste — folk rock, pop music, soul, R&B, even the still–emerging psychedelic style. Their work was influenced primarily by Bob Dylan, the Byrds, the Beach Boys and the popular soul groups of the day.

Many people think George Harrison introduced listeners to the sitar in later albums, but the sitar made its first official appearance in a song on a Beatles album on "Rubber Soul" — even though technically, I suppose, you could say the sitar made its debut on the soundtrack for "Help!" as one of several instruments featured on instrumental versions of songs that appeared on the Beatles' "Help!" album.

The sitar made a significant contribution to "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," which has always been one of my favorite Beatles songs. But you could pick just about any song on "Rubber Soul" and say it was your favorite on the album — and you could make a good case for it, whichever song it turned out to be.

The best — and probably most recognizable — tunes on the album are "Drive My Car," "Nowhere Man," "Michelle," "In My Life."

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But that doesn't mean the others aren't just as good — "You Won't See Me," "The Word," "What Goes On," "Girl," "I'm Looking Through You," "If I Needed Someone."

Harrison, who was really coming into his own as a songwriter, said the album was "the best one we made ... we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren't able to hear before." Ringo Starr observed, "There was a lot of experimentation ... influenced, I think, by the substances."

Be that as it may, "Rubber Soul" has long been regarded as a landmark album in the establishment of what came to be known as "world music." In the next few years, instruments that had not been heard in popular recordings suddenly were everywhere. Even now, half a century later, the heirs of that genre can be heard.

One song on the album would be regarded as politically incorrect if it was released today. Just the title of the song — "Run For Your Life" — sounds menacing, but the more you realize that the singer is singing about his girlfriend and addressing her with the belittling moniker of "little girl," the more you realize how menacing it truly is.

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"Well I'd rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or I won't know where I am
You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand, little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end, little girl"

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The song was credited, as most were, to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, but it was mostly penned by John Lennon, and it is my understanding that it was inspired by an early Elvis Presley song, "Baby, Let's Play House."

Well, that's what Lennon said. It may also have had some autobiographical elements to it. It is known that, as a young man, Lennon was jealous and possessive and admitted hitting his women. "Run For Your Life" hit the record stores in the third year of his first marriage, a marriage that would end in divorce three years later.

Lennon said it was his least favorite Beatles song; later he said he regretted writing it, although reportedly it was George Harrison's favorite "Rubber Soul" song at the time it was released.

It has been argued that Lennon returned to the theme in a kinder and gentler fashion in "Jealous Guy" from his "Imagine" album.

The Interchangeability of Perfection

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I don't remember how old I was when I first saw the Twilight Zone episode — "The Lateness of the Hour" — that made its debut on this day in 1960. I do remember that I didn't care for it.

It really had nothing to do with the story — I rather liked it when I watched it the second time — or the people in it. As a matter of fact, I recall having a brief crush on Inger Stevens, who played the daughter.

You see, "The Lateness of the Hour" was one of about half a dozen Twilight Zone episodes that were shot on videotape instead of film, then transferred to film (a process called "kinescoping"). My understanding is that it was a cost–cutting tactic; trouble was that the quality suffered. As a child, I didn't know what it was, but when I got older I learned it was a loss of depth perception that made the episodes look like live on–stage performances. All I knew at the time was that it looked different — so different that it distracted me from the story. I probably couldn't have told you much about the episode right after I saw it for the first time.

In the end, the savings amounted to an average of $5,000 per episode, which really wasn't worth all the trouble, and the rest of the Twilight Zone episodes were filmed, not videotaped.

The story was about a small family, the family of a scientific genius. The genius had designed everything in the house to fulfill its function with perfect efficiency, and the family's every need was tended to by five servants who were robots designed by the genius to perform specific roles. One of the robots gave expert massages.

The daughter (Inger Stevens) was concerned that her parents had grown so dependent on the servants — as well as the perfect environment — and she advocated shaking things up. She looked upon her isolation in her parents' perfect home as a sort of imprisonment.

"I've kept you from harm," her father replied. "I've protected you against disease, and insulation in this 20th century is no crime. It's a service. You've never had to look into the face of war or the face of poverty or prejudice. You've been isolated, yes, but what you think of as imprisonment just happens to be asylum and security, yes, and survival."

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The daughter was undeterred. She insisted that her father dismantle the robots. She went from request to ultimatum in a bit of a hurry, insisting that she would leave if her father didn't dismantle the robots, and her father yielded to her.

The daughter was overjoyed and started gushing about having parties and making friends and going on trips. And then she started talking about meeting a nice young man and producing grandchildren — which forced her parents to make a rather awkward confession.

They didn't do so right away, though — but the expressions on their faces told the daughter that something wasn't right. Then she recalled that, in all the photos in the family photo albums she had been looking at, there were no pictures of her as a child. When she pursued the point, her father made the confession that she was already realizing as she connected all the dots. She, too, was a robot. More highly developed than the servants, but a robot nonetheless.

They had been childless, her father told her, and desperately wanted someone to love. The daughter was so distraught by the revelation that her father decided he had to remove her from the family. But he couldn't bear the thought of not having her around anymore.

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So he transformed her into a maid — apparently she became the maid who was so good at giving massages.

The audience never saw who the new daughter was. I guess I always assumed it was the robot who had been the previous massage–giving maid.

I didn't really think about that. There was something else I noticed when I watched the episode a second time. OK, all the servants — and the daughter — were robots. And Inger Stevens' character aptly demonstrated that robots couldn't feel physical pain when she repeatedly slammed her forearm on the banister of the stairs and lamented, "No pain! No pain! No pain!" Then she collapsed in a heap, sobbing. It was very dramatic — and very contradictory. Robots couldn't feel physical pain, but they — or, at least, Inger Stevens' character — clearly could feel emotional pain.

By the way, if the father looks familiar to you, there is a reason for that. About six months later, the actor who played the father, John Hoyt, was a Martian in "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" which was filmed in the normal way.

Ann Sheridan's Little Known Gem

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Inspector (Robert Keith): Don't you eat anything but dog food?

Eleanor (Ann Sheridan): He's not particular, and I'm lazy, so we eat out.

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With its snappy dialogue, I'm kind of surprised that "Woman on the Run," which debuted on this date in 1950, didn't receive an Oscar nomination for its writing.

But not really. A film noir seldom seems to have been recognized by Oscar in those days — unless a big name was involved.

It was still a good story. When the movie began, a fellow was out at night walking his dog, and he saw someone in a car talking about a crime. That person was shot at point–blank range by the driver of the car, who then saw the shadow of the fellow and fired at it twice, thinking it was a person and, consequently, missing both times. Unseen by the audience, the killer then drove off in a hurry.

Turned out that the person who was shot had been planning to testify in court against a gangster. He wisely went into hiding.

The police then tried to get information from his barely wife (Ann Sheridan), who didn't seem to have much love left for her husband but did appear to be loyal to him. When he called her and the police tried to trace the call, the wife warned him and he promptly hung up.

Dennis O'Keefe played a newspaperman who was after an exclusive story, and he managed to enlist the wife in helping him search for her husband.

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And thus was launched a kind of competition between the wife (with the newspaperman) and the police.

As the story went on, Sheridan's character learned that her husband was still in love with her — and the audience learned that O'Keefe's character was really the killer, trying to find — and silence — Sheridan's husband with her help.

At one point, the police thought they had found Sheridan's husband — or what was left of him. The body had been badly beaten, and the police had to ask Sheridan to come in to make an identification. When she saw the body, she got weak at the knees and had to be helped from the room. But she later confided to O'Keefe that the corpse had not been her husband.

And, in a scene that foretold an event early in Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train," which made its debut the following year, Sheridan and O'Keefe found themselves in a seaside amusement park at night — and Sheridan took a harrowing roller coaster ride.

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Before Sheridan rode that roller coaster, the movie had one of my favorite dialogue exchanges. It's the kind of snappy dialogue that was sprinkled throughout "Woman on the Run," so much so that it may well have been overlooked by audiences then — and now — simply because it came late in a movie in which that kind of dialogue was commonplace.

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Eleanor: I don't like this place.

Danny (Dennis O'Keefe): It's a good spot. I used to come here with my girl when I was a kid.

Eleanor: It's more frightening than romantic.

Danny: It's the way love is when you're young ... life is when you're older.

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Sheridan's character was a hardened woman of her times who probably would be uncomfortable in the modern world. In a conversation with the police early in the movie, she spoke of how her husband was a drifter who drifted from job to job and city to city. When she was asked if she had ever gotten a job to help the couple through the rough patches, she observed that supporting the family was his responsibility, not hers.

Saying that her role in "Woman on the Run" may have been the best of Sheridan's career probably doesn't mean much to modern viewers. Few have ever heard of her. If they have seen any of her movies, it was purely by accident, and they may not even remember seeing her.

But if "Woman on the Run" had been recognized at the time, Sheridan might be better known today.

As I say, a film noir typically does not receive that kind of recognition. But "Woman on the Run" wasn't a typical film noir.