When King Kong Ran Wild

---

---

Horror/monster movies have certainly changed since this day in 1933 when the original "King Kong" made its U.S. debut.

If 21st–century moviegoers could be magically transported back to that time, they would probably find the horror/monster movies of that time to be laughable.

But I suppose things haven't changed that much. I mean, the concept of a large beast on the loose in a populated area still sends chills down spines — witness "Jurassic Park," which continues to spawn sequels a quarter of a century after its release. Of course, it helps to have splashy special effects, but "King Kong" didn't need them. That man–vs.–nature theme is pretty effective by itself.

By comparison, it took more than 40 years for Hollywood to get around to remaking "King Kong."

That was partially due, I suppose, to the fact that moviemaking technology needed to advance beyond the rather primitive state that existed in 1933.

There were sequels to the original. Even in 1933, Hollywood knew a good thing when it saw one, and "King Kong" was a good thing, making nearly $3 million (more than four times its production budget) in Depression–era America.

Big uncontrolled beasts on the loose is always a scary concept, I guess — and audiences in 1933 apparently relished the chill that "King Kong" produced.

But I wouldn't underestimate the influence of the 1933 version of "King Kong." It broke the ground for its genre, established the rules by which such monster movies were made for decades to come.

Consequently, "King Kong" belongs to that rare class of film — a movie that defined its genre. There had already been horror movies, of course — most notably "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" — but "King Kong" provided a first–of–its–kind plot.

To make it work, of course, a vulnerable victim was necessary, someone with whom audiences could identify. The choice was Fay Wray, a heroine of silent westerns who made the transition to talkies, one of 13 starlets promoted in 1926 by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers as the most likely to be a success in movies (along with the likes of Mary Astor and Janet Gaynor).

Wray appeared in more than 100 big–screen and TV productions in her career — but she will always be remembered for "King Kong."

---

---

Really, I suppose, the plot isn't important — although it was important enough to Wray, who turned down an opportunity to make a cameo appearance in the 1976 remake because she didn't care for the script.

You know what happens, don't you? This giant ape carries Fay Wray away and is pursued through the jungle. He was captured and taken to New York, where he was to be presented to Broadway audiences as the Eighth Wonder of the World. He escaped, though, and scaled the Empire State Building with Wray in his massive hand. Kong is brought down by a fleet of World War I fighter planes.

To seal the deal with Wray, she was told she would "have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood." Initially, she believed her leading man would be Cary Grant. Instead, it was an 18–foot ape.

---

---

In reality, Kong wasn't so tall. He was an 18–inch model (built to scale with an inch equal to a foot) that was used for filming purposes.

Oh, and who could forget that Max Steiner score? It was the composer's breakthrough and paved the way for Steiner's most memorable work, the score for "Gone With the Wind." Steiner also composed scores for "Casablanca," "Sergeant York" and "The Searchers."

Interestingly, when Wray died in August 2004, "King Kong" reportedly was playing on the TV in the emergency room.

"I have come to believe over the years," Wray once said, "that Kong is my friend."

Apparently, he was a friend to the end.

The Return of the Space Family Robinson

---

---

I remember watching reruns of Lost in Space on TV in the afternoons when I was a child. For a time, it was second only to I Love Lucy in syndicated viewership.

It was light and campy for a science fiction series, not nearly as cerebral as Star Trek — but it never really tried to be. It was the adventures of the Robinsons, a family of space colonists whose mission had been sabotaged and thrown off course.

Original concepts — and apparently there were at least two — called for them to be called the Space Family Robinson — a 20th–century spin on "The Swiss Family Robinson," the 19th–century novel about a family shipwrecked far from home. I thoroughly enjoyed that book when I was a boy, and I long since concluded that the TV series would have benefited from putting more emphasis on the family's ingenuity in conquering its obstacles. That may have been what I found so appealing about the novel.

By the time the series made it to TV, it was called Lost in Space.

When I saw the movie that premiered on this day in 1998, it had been quite awhile since I had seen any episodes of the series — a lot of it came back to me as I watched the movie — but the story was darker and more ominous than anything I ever remember seeing on the small screen.

While Lost in Space was fun to watch on TV, "Lost in Space" was not much fun on the big screen.

---

---

Part of the problem — for me, anyway — was the fact that there didn't seem to be anything terribly original about "Lost in Space." As one would expect from a movie made in the last 25 years or so, the special effects were flashy, but most appeared to have been lifted from previous successful films — like "Star Wars," "E.T." and "Close Encounters."

Maybe part of that was the casting, much of which was at odds with the casting of the TV series — and that was distracting, to put it mildly.

Take Gary Oldman, for example. I have long been impressed with his skill as an actor and the variety of the roles he has played. But Dr. Smith was just too much of a reach. I sort of feel that role will always be defined as Jonathan Harris' role, and Oldman just isn't the Jonathan Harris type. Of course, the beard didn't help, but that was a minor point.

In the TV series Dr. Smith was frequently the source of comic relief. I never got that sense from Oldman's Dr. Smith. He was more sinister and conniving. Any laughter his character provoked was nervous laughter.

Matt LeBlanc probably worked a little better as the pilot, Major West, but his problem is that he is probably defined (or was when "Lost in Space" premiered) as Joey on TV's Friends. That was his breakthrough role, and it made a lot of things possible for him, but sometimes that can be a double–edged sword.

The actors and actresses who played the Robinsons were all right, but not quite as charismatic, shall we say, as their predecessors.

---

---

Frankly, I was disappointed in the story.

Telling a Story

---

---

The Grandson (Fred Savage): Grandpa, maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow.

Grandpa (Peter Falk): As you wish.

---

My mother loved "The Princess Bride," which premiered on this day in 1987.

That is what I most remember about the movie.

Mom saw it at a theater. I didn't see it with her. For years after that, she kept urging me to rent the video tape, but I never did. Finally, she gave me a copy of the video tape for Christmas — just a few months before she died in a flash flood.

At the time of her death, I still hadn't watched the tape. I still had it, but I hadn't watched it. So one night I decided I was going to do it for Mom.

I thought the movie was cute, and I could see why Mom liked it, why so many people liked it. Critics liked it, and it was a modest success at the box office, too.

I would have liked to talk with Mom about it. That was what we did almost every time we saw a movie together. Our discussions were brief sometimes, extensive other times, but they were almost always the best part of the movie watching experience for me.

I miss many things about my mother, but that exchange of thoughts and ideas may be what I miss the most. I have no doubt that our conversation about "The Princess Bride" would have been one of our best.

Reading Roger Ebert's review was almost as good. Not quite, but almost.

"'The Princess Bride' reveals itself as a sly parody of sword and sorcery movies, a film that somehow manages to exist on two levels at once," Ebert wrote. "While younger viewers will sit spellbound at the thrilling events on the screen, adults, I think, will be laughing a lot."

I wanted to know which parts Mom found funny — and why. I think I know the answer, but I never truly will.

Ebert elaborated on that point, and I couldn't disagree.

---

---

"In its own peculiar way, 'The Princess Bride' resembles 'This Is Spinal Tap,' an earlier film by the same director, Rob Reiner," he wrote. "Both films are funny not only because they contain comedy, but because Reiner does justice to the underlying form of his story. 'Spinal Tap' looked and felt like a rock documentary — and then it was funny. 'The Princess Bride' looks and feels like 'Legend' or any of those other quasi–heroic epic fantasies — and then it goes for the laughs."

Without going into too much detail, the movie was the telling of a story by a grandfather (Peter Falk) to his bedridden grandson (Fred Savage) — and if Mom could be here, I have no doubt she would say that I shouldn't spoil too much for anyone who hasn't seen it.

I don't think it would spoil too much, though, if I told you that, in the context of the story, it was established that the phrase "As you wish" really means "I love you."

When I discovered that, I understood the meaning of the note Mom had attached to that Christmas gift. "I think you'll like this," Mom wrote. "As you wish."

I remember being puzzled by that at the time, and I asked Mom about it. But all she did was smile. She knew what it meant, and she knew I would understand only if I watched the movie.

'The Prisoner of Zenda' Was Rousing Swashbuckler

---

---

"Fate doesn't always make the right men kings."

Fritz (David Niven)

---

Several versions of "The Prisoner of Zenda" have been made over the years, and most have been pretty faithful to Anthony Hope's adventure novel.

But the first version I ever saw was one that was made in 1979. It starred Peter Sellers — and if you know anything at all about Peter Sellers, you know that just about everything he ever did was funny. As a result, Hope's novel got a rather irreverent treatment.

If you were familiar with the story, it was funny in the parody style of Mel Brooks. But I wasn't familiar with the original story so I assumed that all the versions of "The Prisoner of Zenda" that had been made earlier were comedies, too.

Regretfully, that led me to ignore the earlier versions for a long time.

That was a big mistake. I have often wished that I had seen the version that premiered on this day in 1937 first. If I had, I would have appreciated the humor in the Sellers version in a way that I didn't back when I saw it. I haven't seen all the movie adaptations of Hope's novel, but that is the best that I have seen.

The best word for it is swashbuckler — quite a rousing one.

And I would have known — as I didn't for a long time — that it was really an adventure story and not the parody that the Sellers version was.

---

---

But my mother was a huge fan of Peter Sellers. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. In fact, I am also a great admirer of Peter Sellers — I don't know how anyone could watch "Dr. Strangelove" or "Being There" and not be a Sellers admirer.

But he simply wouldn't have been the right person to play the lead in a movie that was faithful to the story as it was originally told.

Ronald Colman, on the other hand, was a pretty good choice.

Now, as a Sellers fan, I can understand why he was an obvious choice to play the role. It involved a doppelgänger — the main character was the identical distant cousin of the crown prince of a small country that was unnamed in the movie. Colman played both roles (as he did in "Dr. Strangelove," Sellers played three parts, but you'll have to watch the movie to find out about that third character).

Anyway, Colman's character was drafted to fill in for his cousin at the coronation because his cousin drank some wine that had been drugged by his half–brother (Raymond Massey) who was poised to seize power if his half–sibling did not show up for his coronation. The prince could not be roused, and his cousin agreed to fill in to keep the throne from falling into the wrong hands.

The rest of the movie was entertaining with adventure punctuated by a romance involving Madeleine Carroll as the prince's apparent arranged fiancee, who despite her status had always disliked him but now, having become acquainted with the pretender (but not knowing it was a different person), found the new Rudolf to be very appealing.

---

---

It made for a terrific combination of adventure and romance that was rewarded handsomely at the box office, which was hardly surprising. Its cast included the likes of David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Mary Astor.

And it received two Oscar nominations — for Original Music Score and Art Direction.

You know, in hindsight, I'm inclined to wonder if maybe Mom, who was a child when this version of "The Prisoner of Zenda" was in theaters, was drawn to see the Peter Sellers version more because she had seen the Ronald Colman movie and had fond memories of the swashbuckling classic than because of her fondness for Sellers.

Of course, I wouldn't rule out either possibility.

More Than Meets the Eye

---

---

In the early 1970s, there was probably no more popular work of fiction than "Jaws."

Nearly everybody read it, and then it was made into what was probably the first true summer blockbuster.

Author Peter Benchley's next novel, "The Deep," was also successful, and the movie it inspired, which premiered on this day in 1977, was one of the top moneymakers in the United States — a considerable feat when you think of the movies that premiered in 1977, movies like "Star Wars," "Smokey and the Bandit," "Close Encounters," "Annie Hall" and "Saturday Night Fever" to name a few.

But neither the book nor the movie did nearly as well as "Jaws."

In its own way, though, I thought the story was just as suspenseful — although it got overshadowed by off–screen controversy about something minor that was on the screen. Jacqueline Bisset played one–half of a vacationing couple (Nick Nolte was the other half) who discovered sunken treasure while diving on the reefs of Bermuda. In the diving sequences, Bisset could be seen in a rather revealing T–shirt.

It is still an iconic image. Ask someone who is over a certain age what comes to mind when Bisset's name is mentioned, and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the answer will be her wet T–shirt in "The Deep."

---

---

Given that Bisset has been in several dozen movies, that doesn't seem fair, and it almost certainly would not raise any eyebrows today, but remember this was 40 years ago.

It is also important to remember that "The Deep" was made when Bisset was 32 and still getting movie roles primarily because of her youthful beauty. Still beautiful but no longer young, she has continued to make movies into her 70s, proving that looks may change but talent never does.

There can be no denying the boost those shots gave the movie at the box office. Even its producer believed they made him a wealthy man, but the story was enough to keep audiences on the edges of their seats.

The divers found all kinds of treasure — the old–fashioned kind (jewelry and the like) and the new kind (ampules of morphine from a ship that sank during World War II).

And therein lay the plot of the movie. In the grand tradition of shallow summer escapism, the movie had nothing remarkable to say. It was just a good movie to watch on a summer afternoon or evening.

In 1977 that sort of thing was believed to be behind us. It was practically an article of faith that escapism movies would dwindle in the years ahead and deeper and more complex topics were the new order. But the summer of 1977 was loaded with escapism.

So much for that theory.

---

---

What made "The Deep" work for audiences, I suppose, was the fact that it was plausible escapism.

"Jaws" wasn't really plausible. It was inspired, as I understand it, by a real event — but the very rarity of that event (a great white shark in the North Atlantic) is what makes it implausible. Like most horror stories, believable implausibility made "Jaws" work.

The story of Nolte and Bisset was the kind of thing that, seemingly, could happen to anyone.

Benchley, of course, is not remembered for "The Deep." He is remembered for writing "Jaws" and the series of movies it inspired.

Ironically, I guess, two members of the cast of "The Deep" appeared in the "Jaws" movies — Robert Shaw played the shark hunter in the original, then played a treasure hunter in "The Deep" and Louis Gossett Jr. was a drug kingpin in "The Deep," and then played a SeaWorld park owner in one of the "Jaws" sequels.

Same Old Same Old

---

---

Steven Spielberg is probably the most gifted filmmaker of my lifetime.

But I'll be the first to say that sequels are just not his thing.

He's a terrific story teller, but his inclination is to tell the story in a single sitting, usually not in installments — even when the response to one of his movies appears to be a cry for more — and move on to the next project.

"Jaws," for example, was great. The sequels, not so much. But Spielberg really didn't have a hand in them.

Inexplicably, he was the director of both the original "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," which premiered on this day in 1997. The original was a first–rate example of Spielberg's filmmaking at its best; the second was an uncharacteristic example of giving in to the temptation to make some easy money essentially repeating yourself.

Well, it might have been better if Spielberg had repeated himself. Instead he tried to concoct an entirely new story with basically the same ingredients. Spielberg knows how to push all the right buttons to get the desired response from the audience, but these movies centered on the dinosaurs that had been created by Richard Attenborough's character in the first movie. It was almost as if Spielberg directed a documentary.

(That would have pleased my journalism professors. Their advice to us was always that, whenever we wrote about something, we should be like flies on the wall. "The reader shouldn't even know you're there," one of my professors said.)

Attenborough had a cameo role in the sequel. So did the child actors who played his grandchildren in the earlier movie.

And Jeff Goldblum was back — but none of the others returned. Instead you had Arliss Howard, Julianne Moore and a whole new cast of good guys and bad guys, all brought together to explore an island where the dinosaurs had been bred before being brought to Jurassic Park where they would be the main attraction. When the park was abandoned, the isolated supply island was forgotten.

Except by the audience. If I remember correctly, there was nothing to forget because this island was never mentioned in the original.

That was just one of the many hurdles Spielberg had to clear in order to make this movie. And I guess he succeeded in most of his objectives, but when the movie was finished and showing in the theaters, it lacked the one thing it needed the most, the one thing that just about every Spielberg movie has — a sense of awe, of wonderment.

Call it the Wow Factor. It is when Spielberg merges all the best elements of filmmaking that are at his disposal at the time.

I remember that moment in the original "Jurassic Park." It was when all the guests saw a wide assortment of dinosaurs in an open field. There was no comparable moment in the sequel.

I'm not saying Spielberg didn't try. But the dinosaurs in his sequel were always aggressive. The audience knew why, of course, and understood. But it got in the way of what one expects from Spielberg. He is the gold standard, always on the cutting edge.

His imagination takes us places we never dreamed we would go. He does the dreaming and turns it into movie reality. To borrow the words of 19th–century British poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Spielberg is "the music maker and the dreamer of dreams."

Sequels just aren't his thing.

---

---

Making movie magic is his thing.

Spielberg has never struck me as a director of violent movies. I know he directed "Jaws" — but the shark never became a malevolent monster. It did what animals do — it hunted for food. In "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," the dinosaurs were malicious. They killed indiscriminately. Hunger had little to do with it.

Oh, there was a sense of wonder — initially — from some of the cast members — and most of the folks in Spielberg's audiences.

It could hardly be avoided. Spielberg's dinosaurs appeared to be the real thing. It was hard for audiences, whether watching the original or the sequel, not to be astonished by what they saw.

---

---

But where Spielberg came up short was by not reimagining the material and coming up with a unique story that did the visuals and the human characters justice.

That's when Spielberg has always been at his best — when, in addition to the movie making bells and whistles, he also gave audiences a story that surprised them, that wasn't what they expected.

Film critic Roger Ebert agreed with me, by the way.

"Perhaps the time to do the thinking on this project was before the first film, when all the possibilities lay before Spielberg," Ebert wrote 20 years ago. "He should have tossed aside the original Michael Crichton novel, knowing it had given him only one thing of use: an explanation for why dinosaurs might walk among us. Everything else — the scientific mumbo–jumbo, the theme park scheme — was just the recycling of other movies."

Recycled is the right word, I think. When I saw "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," at a theater, I kept thinking that I had seen it before — just not with dinosaurs. I still can't say that it reminded me of a specific movie, just a genre — the monster movie.

Another thought that I had was that Spielberg's dinosaurs were always getting loose and terrorizing humans in the rain. In the original movie, it was during a rain storm — at the time I presumed it was some sort of tropical storm — that the dinosaurs escaped their pens and roamed the island.

They did essentially the same thing under the same circumstances in the sequel, and when I watched the movie, I presumed again that it was some sort of tropical island.

But then the plot called for one of the adult dinosaurs to be taken to San Diego where, sure enough, it was raining. Now, San Diego has a very agreeable climate most of the year with little rain — maybe a foot or so all year.

So that part, that this vessel carrying a living dinosaur, arrived in San Diego on one of the few rainy days of the year, probably surprised some people in the audience — but that really isn't the kind of surprise I've been talking about.

It was more recycling.

---

---

Taking a Roller-Coaster Ride With Indiana Jones

---

---

Marion (Karen Allen): You're not the man I knew 10 years ago.

Indiana (Harrison Ford): It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.

---

When George Lucas co–wrote "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which premiered on this date in 1981, his intention was to re–create the movie serials of the 1930s and 1940s.

That was before my time, but my parents used to watch the movie serials when they were children, and I gathered from their reaction to the movie that Lucas succeeded in his objective.

Film critic Roger Ebert apparently agreed with them, even though he was born in 1942. Movie serials continued to be made into the early 1950s so he was probably old enough to witness the end of that era — but certainly not its heyday. Nevertheless, his homage to the serials was as entertaining as it could be. I watched it again recently, and I probably enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I saw it.

Ebert wrote nearly 20 years after its debut that the movie "plays like an anthology of the best parts from all the Saturday matinee serials ever made," but he added that "I haven't seen much discussion of the movie's other driving theme, (director Steven) Spielberg's feelings about the Nazis."

Ebert went on to observe that Spielberg gave us his adult treatment of the Holocaust in movies like "Schindler's List," but it was Spielberg's inner teenager who made "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

It was full of edge–of–your–seat adventures from Nepal to Cairo with snakes, spiders, explosions, Nazis — and Karen Allen, who played Ford's sidekick, his best of the series, in my opinion. And it had moments that one remembers years after seeing them — like the iconic scene at the beginning of the movie in which Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) outran the big ball.

---

---

That was in the first seven minutes. After that, no one should have had any doubt about what to expect in the next hour and a half. And what followed was most of the stuff that tends to appeal to teenage boys — primarily action and pretty girls.

It was a roller–coaster ride, from one adventure to the next, each one loosely connected to the central theme of the race between the Nazis and the good guys to find the Ark of the Covenant.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about it was that it worked.

I have seen only a few original serial episodes, but that was probably enough to get a good idea what the serials were like, and my impression was that they were, in a word, preposterous.

I suppose they had to be. The plot, as it were, existed solely to get the hero into some kind of predicament so, no matter how unlikely the premise might be, the viewer would accept it — it was the price that had to be paid to see the hero hanging from a cliff by his fingernails or something like that.

(It is much like the strategy my journalism professors encouraged for prodding a reader to read one's story all the way through. Newspaper readers, we were told then, give — on average — less than half an hour to the daily newspaper, and with so many news sources available today I am sure the average is much lower now. Most newspaper readers, our professors told us, skim the headlines and read the first paragraph or two of stories with headlines that intrigue them.

(My professors told us never to reveal everything we knew about a story in the first paragraph — or the second or the third ... Instead, we should give just enough information for the reader to want to be hungry for more and continue to the next paragraph — and the next and the next. Before they knew it, the readers had read the entire story — even if that had not been their original intention. Well, that was how it was supposed to work. And sometimes I guess it did — or does.)

And, too, I suppose that the serials seem more preposterous to me in 2016 than they did to someone in 1946 because moviemaking technology is so much better now with computer–generated graphics and all that stuff that didn't exist during the serials' heyday. It can make even the most preposterous plot seem plausible.

And yet ...

---

---

Was it so implausible to think that the Nazis would devote all those resources to locating a biblical artifact that may or may not have existed outside of the pages of the Bible?

After all, it is pretty well known that the Nazis sought supernatural support and justification for their cause — and, according to legend, any army that possessed the Ark was invincible. Could the Nazis have resisted such a concept?

It is beyond doubt that the Nazis actively sought any advantage they could get in World War II. The prophecies of Nostradamus, for example, were used as propaganda tools, and we know the Nazis were in a race with the West to develop a nuclear weapon.

Is it so far–fetched to think they might have been looking for the Ark, just as Spielberg and Lucas suggested?

I guess that is a matter of opinion. But the truth of the story was mostly irrelevant because, as Ebert noted, it was "just plain fun" — whether you were a teenage boy or not.

Who Knows What the Tide Could Bring?

---

---

"We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and knew she had to let me go. I added it up and knew that I had lost her. 'Cause I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when and how and where it was going to happen. So I made a rope, and I went up to the summit to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log snapped the limb of the tree, so I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing, and that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope and all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in and gave me a sail. And now here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass. And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"

Chuck (Tom Hanks)

---

If the general story of "Cast Away," which premiered 15 years ago today, seemed familiar to you, it should have. It was based on a poem ("Enoch Arden") that was written more than 150 years ago by Alfred, Lord Tennyson when he was England's poet laureate.

It served as the basis for a number of movie projects long before "Cast Away," which premiered on this day in 2000, was made. In the silent era, D.W. Griffith made a film called "Enoch Arden," as did Christy Cabanne. An Australian movie named "The Bushwackers" was made in the 1920s.

Then, after talkies had been around for about a decade, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne appeared together in a movie called "My Favorite Wife" in 1940, which was being remade with Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin as "Something's Got to Give" in the months before Monroe's death in 1962. When that project was canceled, a remake was made with Doris Day and James Garner called "Move Over, Darling."

Another movie from 1940, "Too Many Husbands," starred Jean Arthur and Fred MacMurray. It was remade more than a decade later as "Three for the Show" with Jack Lemmon and Betty Grable.

And 1946's "Tomorrow Is Forever" starred Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles — and was the first credited film appearance for Natalie Wood.

All those movies were inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, which was about a fisherman who went to sea and was shipwrecked. He was missing for 10 years, then was rescued, only to find upon his return that his wife (and presumed widow) had married his childhood friend, with whom she had had a child. Not wishing to spoil her happiness, he never revealed his identity to her and died of a broken heart.

---

---

Each adaptation had different circumstances — and, in some, it was the wife, not the husband, who was marooned on an island — but it was basically the same story — a significant other was missing and presumed dead.

The story usually picked up after that significant other had been rescued, but "Cast Away" was different. The viewers followed Chuck (Tom Hanks), a FedEx employee whose plane went down in a storm, through his years of isolation on an uncharted island.

The audience had no idea what had become of Chuck's girlfriend, Kelly (Helen Hunt), until he was rescued and brought back to Memphis (which, for those of you who do not know, is the base city for FedEx). It was then he learned that Kelly had married someone else after she had given up all hope of finding him alive. It wasn't a childhood friend. It was Chuck's dentist.

Hanks was nominated for Best Actor, which I thought was appropriate, and he lost, which I didn't necessarily think was appropriate. I thought Hunt deserved a nomination as well — not for Best Actress, because she didn't have nearly enough screen time for that, but as Best Supporting Actress (hey, if Beatrice Straight could win for five minutes of screen time in "Network," why not Hunt?). Her part was important to the beginning and the end of the story.

Of course, Hunt won Best Actress for her work in "As Good As It Gets," and she got a Best Supporting Actress nod for "The Sessions." Many actresses would consider their careers successful if they had those to put on their resumes, and I don't doubt that Hunt is proud of her career, but I have felt strongly about this for a long time now. I really believe she deserved a nomination for "Cast Away."

"I always knew you were alive," she told Chuck when they were reunited. "I knew it. And everybody said that I had to quit saying that, that I had to let you go."

Then she said the words every person would like to hear from another: "I love you. You're the love of my life."

And Chuck replied, "I love you, too, Kelly. More than you'll ever know."

When I saw her deliver this line the first time, I wished the movie had given some attention to what was going on in what had to have been a frantic search for Chuck. That must have been a poignant story. We saw Chuck's transformation from a clock–driven courier to man isolated on an uncharted island where time was, by and large, irrelevant. But we didn't see the emotional roller–coaster ride Kelly's character must have gone through in the search for evidence of what had become of Chuck.

We only got hints of what it must have been like for Hunt's character, first from her husband when he came to Hanks' welcome–home rally and then from Hunt herself.

---

---

That part of it was never really explored in those other movies I mentioned, either. That was a missed opportunity.

A Most Unusual Board Game

---

---

"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)

---

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.

---

---

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.

---

---

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.

Making an Escape to 'Boom Town'

---

---

"Now, how can a guy be breaking the law when he's trying to save the resources of this country? He didn't know that he was doin' anything that you might call conservation, but bein' one of the best oilmen there is, he's got the right hunch about oil. He knows it took billions of years to put it there, and takin' it out at the rate we're goin', there won't be any oil left in the good U.S.A."

Square John (Spencer Tracy)

---

Interesting thing about the movies — well, actually, this particular stream of consciousness began when I was watching a movie from 1939, which is often regarded as the greatest year in the history of the movies, and it re–emerges from time to time, usually when I am writing about one of the movies of the '30s or '40s.

As I am today.

It was 75 years ago today that "Boom Town" an adventure about some oil wildcatters (Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy), made its debut. It wasn't the best movie ever made, but it was enjoyable enough, and it featured four of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time — Gable, Tracy, Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr. (Frank Morgan, who may be best remembered for his part in "The Wizard of Oz," made it five names.)

And that is where my stream of consciousness comes in.

The movies of the '30s and '40s were almost entirely about escapism. In the '30s, nearly all the movies that dealt with the economic realities of the Great Depression were presented in such a way that the protagonist(s) rose above the circumstances and found success anyway. In other words, those movies encouraged hope. There were a few — like "The Grapes of Wrath" — that told it like it was and pulled few, if any, punches. But, mostly, the movies of that day were about other times, other places, other people. They were adaptations of great works of literature, Day–to–day life in the Depression was bad enough — for awhile, about a quarter of America's adult population was out of work — and money was precious enough that people would seldom pay to sit in a theater and watch other people struggling as they did.

They couldn't afford to go anywhere, so they went to the movies for a couple of hours — to escape. My grandmother once told me that the movie stars of that time were more than movie stars. They were like friends. People had their favorite stars, and they went to see every movie they made. Then as now, studios were interested in pairings that were profitable; what could be more profitable than bringing together four popular stars?

A few modern movie stars inspire that kind of loyalty — but not many. Maybe they are overruled by the prices that are charged for movie tickets these days.

---

---

"Boom Town" reunited the stars of "It Happened One Night," the unexpected hit of 1934 — Gable and Colbert. Their partnership didn't have the same sizzle that it had six years earlier, but it must have been great for fans of Gable and Colbert to see them together again — even if it was in an inferior movie. Turned out, it was their last on–screen pairing.

If one is bound and determined to find an agenda in a movie, it probably isn't too hard with "Boom Town." Its message of unfettered capitalism does seem obvious — it may have seemed just as obvious to audiences three–quarters of a century ago — and it also extols the virtues of entrepreneurship.

The story was far from perfect, but it made up for it in sheer star power. Well, unless you were a fan of Spencer Tracy. Seemed he was always getting the short end of the stick from Gable — mostly in matters of the heart.

---

---

Both named John, Gable's character was called "Big John" and Tracy's was called "Square John." For starters, Big John stole Square John's girl (Colbert). Then, when Square John discovered that Big John had been having an affair (with Lamarr), he offered to marry the mistress in order to save Big John's marriage.

But in matters of the head, my memory is that Square John always came out on top. They both had their times of booms and busts, but my impression, by the time the movie ended, was that Tracy's character had enjoyed more economic success.

Tracy, I have heard, was fond of Gable, but "Boom Town" was the third — and last — movie they made together. It was a capsule of all the things that Tracy didn't like about working with Gable. He didn't like taking second billing to Gable in movie credits, and he didn't like being Gable's "eunuch."

"Boom Town" was nominated for two Oscars — Best Black and White Cinematography and Best Special Effects.

Trouble in Paradise

---

---

"There's so many things I don't understand, like why do the fish stop swimming and lie on top of the tide pools after a heavy rain? Why do you hear the waves inside the big shells? Why are all these funny hairs growing on me?"

Richard (Christopher Atkins)

---

In the weeks leading up to the premiere 35 years ago today of "The Blue Lagoon," I remember seeing many tantalizing and provocative movie trailers and TV commercials that emphasized the forbidden love aspect of two young cousins, a boy and a girl, being marooned alone on an island and surviving there for years, ultimately succumbing to sexual curiosity and the urgings of nature. I guess it wasn't quite as forbidden for cousins as it would have been for a brother and a sister. (They were cousins in the turn–of–the–century novel upon which the movie was based, too. The makers of this movie, as I shall discuss shortly, apparently had no interest in altering the original story in any way.)

Incidentally, film critic Roger Ebert said it was "the dumbest movie of the year," and that really is a difficult conclusion to contradict — especially when you read his summary of the story:

---

"It could conceivably have been made interesting, if any serious attempt had been made to explore what might really happen if two 7–year–old kids were shipwrecked on an island. But this isn't a realistic movie. It's a wildly idealized romance, in which the kids live in a hut that looks like a Club Med honeymoon cottage, while restless natives commit human sacrifice on the other side of the island. (It is a measure of the filmmakers' desperation that the kids and the natives never meet one another and the kids leave the island without even one obligatory scene of being tied to a stake.)"

---

Ebert's conclusion is rather remarkable, considering that, while 1980 produced some of the finest movies in recent memory, it also saw such bombs as "Can't Stop the Music," "Herbie Goes Bananas," "Little Darlings," "Motel Hell" and "Wholly Moses!" Competition for designation as the year's dumbest movie was pretty steep.

The girl was played by Brooke Shields, who was just barely 15 when the movie hit the theaters but was already an old pro in front of the camera. She wasn't even a week old when her mother declared that she wanted her daughter to be in show business. She was a child model before her first birthday and continued modeling even after she started appearing in movies.

In fact, it was around the time of the premiere of "The Blue Lagoon" that Shields appeared in a suggestive advertising campaign for Calvin Klein jeans. "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?" she purred. "Nothing."

In addition to sending Calvin Klein's sales into orbit, I'm sure the publicity didn't hurt the movie. It earned nearly $59 million in the United States and Canada after being made for less than $5 million. It was the ninth–most successful movie of 1980. It even received an Oscar nomination (Best Cinematography) — and, from what I could see of it when I watched it on TV several months later, it deserved it. How could it miss with all that great scenery?

Of course, there was the matter of nudity — as there had been a few years earlier when Shields, then 12 years old, played a prostitute in "Pretty Baby," in which she allegedly did some scenes in the nude. I've only seen that movie once — like "The Blue Lagoon," it was on TV — and my memory is that the scenes involving Shields were dimly lit, but that did not keep people from complaining about the implications of child pornography. At the time, I heard that Shields actually did her nude scenes wearing a flesh–colored body suit.

I guess Shields and her mother learned from that experience. Or maybe the makers of "The Blue Lagoon" learned from it. Perhaps both. There was nudity in "The Blue Lagoon," but it was indistinct and fleeting, like underwater views of the young couple swimming, or otherwise obscured, as in a scene showing them beneath a waterfall. Shields herself tried to put to rest the allegations by saying that older body doubles were used for the nude scenes of her and co–star Christopher Atkins.

I don't know if that is true or not, but it made a satisfactory story for those who desperately wanted to believe that no one would abuse underage people like that. That was kind of a strange mindset, given what was driving people to the theaters to see "The Blue Lagoon."

"Let's face it," Ebert wrote. "Going into this film knowing what we've heard about it, we're anticipating the scenes in which the two kids discover the joys of sex. This is a prurient motive on our part, and we're maybe a little ashamed of it, but our shame turns to impatience as [director Randal] Kleiser intercuts countless shots of the birds and the bees (every third shot in this movie seems to be showing a parrot's reaction to something)."

---

---

The two young versions of Shields and Atkins were shipwrecked along with a cook who gave them guidance until he died, leaving the children to fend for themselves — which they did quite well, thanks to his instructions. He warned them about berries on the island that he believed to be poisonous, but he used words ("never–wake–up berries") that 7–year–olds would understand. They sounded odd coming from the lips of teenagers later in the movie — until you remembered that they hadn't had any instruction from adults in quite some time.

That was one of the things Ebert either forgot or failed to comprehend for one reason or another. The absence of adult supervision could be seen in many ways, but the staying power of the cook's lessons was evident, too. For example, at the end of the movie, the boy and the girl and the baby they conceived were adrift at sea, and they ate some of those berries the cook warned them about, fully expecting to die. It just so happens that, after they had eaten the berries and, as the cook described, fallen asleep (or lapsed into unconsciousness), who should come by in a ship but the boy's father, who, according to the original story, had been looking for his son ever since the first ship was lost.

---

---

Ebert thought the movie left the viewers hanging because it was never determined whether the berries had merely put them all to sleep or fatally poisoned them. The movie did leave the audience hanging, but the problem was, so did the book.

"The movie cops out," Ebert complained. "The burden of contriving an ending was apparently too much for such a feeble movie to support."

He was wrong to blame that entirely on the movie. The original sin was Irish author Henry De Vere Stacpoole's more than 70 years earlier. But that certainly doesn't absolve Kleiser and everyone else in the cast and crew of all responsibility for giving their audience an ambiguous ending to the movie — they could have changed it if that had been what they wanted, and, apparently, it was not. They chose a faithful re–telling of Stacpoole's story — and it can only be interpreted as a choice. Stories are "re–imagined" in the movies all the time. Sometimes they are done well. Sometimes not. But it is a choice to do that.

It's a calculated risk, especially if the movie is likely to draw armies of fans who are dedicated to the original book(s). For example, it is my guess that millions of the people who went to see the "Lord of the Rings" movies were fans of the J.R.R. Tolkien books and were likely to notice even the slightest deviation from the original text. In this case, however, I doubt that there were armies of Stacpoole fans going to see how faithfully his story was told; apparently, the story was told as it had been told for decades — there were other film versions before the 1980 edition. I've never seen them, but it is my understanding that none of them changed the ending, either.

Would a different ending have improved the movie? I don't know. A movie is what it is, with the beginning, middle and ending — and all the other decisions — the director made. Speculating on whether a movie would have been better if any part of it had been changed is an exercise in hypotheticals. Suppose someone else had played Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Would it have been better or worse?

That is a matter of personal taste and opinion. The only thing that could be said for certain would have been that the movie was different.

And that was what the makers of "The Blue Lagoon" could have given their audiences 35 years ago — something that was different from what previous generations had been given. But they played it safe. Ebert thought that was a copout. What do you think?

The Windbag and the Lion

---

---

As I have mentioned before, I like movies that are based on actual historic events.

It goes with the territory, I suppose. I have always been something of an amateur historian. I even minored in history in college. Historical movies (sometimes they are called "biopics" even if they aren't biographical in nature, although I usually reserve the term biopic for movies that really are biographies, not just movies about events that played prominent roles in the subject's life).

But, in a way, I feel torn about "The Wind and the Lion," which premiered 40 years ago today. It isn't really a biopic. It is loosely based — very loosely based — on a rather obscure event called the Pedicaris incident.

Now, I like to think I'm a reasonable guy — and, even though I'm that history geek you were warned about, I'm not as rigid as you may think. I can be flexible about movie adaptations as long as they are basically faithful to the truth. I'm willing to allow for some poetic license in the crafting of dialogue, for example, or some other details. I don't get bent out of shape, say, if the cars in a movie did not exist until a year or two after the event in the movie took place. My brother is the one who inherited the mechanical aptitude in the family, and he might get worked up over something like that, but, to me, it is a general detail that I can overlook.

What I find significantly more difficult to overlook is a movie that rewrites history. It doesn't have to be as blatant as, say, a movie about Pearl Harbor in which the blindsided Americans waged a counterattack that drove the Japanese from the Hawaiian islands before they inflicted as much damage as history tells us they did. It can be more subtle than that.

It wasn't hard for "The Wind and the Lion" to be subtle, being as very few people knew about the Peridcaris incident, which took place in 1904, at the time it happened — or for decades thereafter — much less in 1975 or after.

---

---

So the folks who made the movie apparently felt free to fudge on some details — like, for example, the fact that a man, not a woman, was abducted by turn–of–the–century Arabs who provide an interesting contrast with groups like Isis today.

The leader of the gang, played by Sean Connery, proudly asserts that he doesn't kill women and children; the leader of radical Muslims today could make no such claim — although that leader no doubt would agree with Connery's character when he asserts that he is merely Allah's instrument and that whatever happens is Allah's will.

That's a pretty common assertion from anyone who absolutely believes God is on his side — and that it is a blank check for him to do as he pleases.

The woman was played by Candice Bergen, who was 29 and rather pretty when the movie premiered. The man who really was kidnapped in the incident on which the movie was based was a rather plain businessman in his 60s. In the movies, sex appeal trumps the truth — but that really isn't a surprise, is it? Sex is profitable; the truth rarely is.

Speaking of truth, I have my doubts that the portrayal of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was seeking a full term after becoming president following the assassination of President McKinley three years earlier, was entirely accurate. Teddy, who faced the challenge as president of doing something to save the hostages, was played in a cartoonish way — always a belligerent windbag who frequently appeared to be more concerned with his image than anything else — by Brian Keith.

Now, I have no doubt that Roosevelt possessed such qualities — I have read many books about his life and presidency — and I agree that he was a strong–willed man, a rugged individualist who craved adventure — but I don't think he was always the blowhard that he appeared to be in "The Wind and the Lion."

Of course, I could be wrong.

---

---

At the Oscars, "The Wind and the Lion" received two nominations — for Best Original Score and Best Sound Mixing — and lost both to John Williams' score for "Jaws."

A Routine Courtroom Drama

---

---

"The Wreck of the Mary Deare," which premiered 55 years ago today, might have been an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

MGM approached Hitchcock about directing it, and the idea was tempting. Hitch had wanted to work with Gary Cooper for quite awhile, but, after reviewing the script, he reached the conclusion that it could not be done without becoming a routine courtroom drama.

So Hitchcock opted out and began another project, this one with Cary Grant — "North by Northwest."

Michael Anderson ended up as the director, but, in spite of any efforts to the contrary, I don't think the finished product varied from what Hitchcock anticipated.

If you saw "The Perfect Storm," "Titanic" and "The Caine Mutiny," you probably have a pretty good grasp of the story. "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" combined elements of all three.

There were more than two people in the cast, but, ultimately, the story was about Cooper and Charlton Heston.

Heston's character was the captain of a salvage ship that was nearly struck by a freighter that seemed to be abandoned. Heston went aboard the ship looking for property to plunder and encountered its looney captain, played by Cooper.

Despite their efforts, the Mary Deare sank.

---

---

Anderson deserved credit, too, for keeping the suspense level up through much of the movie — I'm sure his experience with special effects ("Around the World in 80 Days,") helped. But, ultimately, the story turned out the way Hitchcock expected it would.

Heston's character believed Cooper's character when he claimed that the ship had been sabotaged to collect insurance on the cargo — which had been unloaded earlier — but the court did not. That led Cooper and Heston to dive to the sunken ship in search of evidence to prove Cooper was telling the truth.

Cooper worked right up until his death from cancer in 1961. He made other movies after he made "The Wreck of the Mary Deare," but he isn't remembered for any of them. He is remembered for "Sergeant York," "Pride of the Yankees" and "High Noon," and those movies, as well as a handful of others, were his legacy. And that is as it should be.

He should not be remembered for a routine courtroom drama.

The Continuing Partnership of Fonda and Ford

---

This black–and–white trailer accompanied the 1947 re–release of
"Drums Along the Mohawk," director John Ford's first color feature.

---

"Oh, Almighty God, hear us, we beseech thee, and bring succor and guidance to those we are about to bring to your divine notice. First we are thinking of Mary Walaber. She is only 16 years old, but she is keeping company with a soldier from Fort Dayton. He's a Massachusetts man, and thou knowest no good can come of that."

Reverend Rosenkrantz (Arthur Shields)

---

John Ford and Henry Fonda teamed up for the first time earlier in 1939 when they made "Young Mr. Lincoln."

They wasted no time making their second film together, "Drums Along the Mohawk," which premiered 75 years ago today.

It had some things in common with "Young Mr. Lincoln," such as the fact that both were set in specific periods in American history. "Young Mr. Lincoln" was about Abraham Lincoln's early life, and "Drums Along the Mohawk" was about life in colonial America.

Fonda and Claudette Colbert played 18th–century newlyweds trying to set up their home in the Mohawk Valley of central New York. It was a region that had a great deal of importance in Revolutionary War times, a passageway between the Atlantic Ocean and the interior of the New World.

Their story was not one for the faint of heart. Colbert's character suffered a miscarriage. Beset from all sides by Indians and the British, they lost their home. Along with other settlers, they were forced to relocate at a fort, from which they could see their homes and lands being destroyed.

You really had to believe in what you were trying to do to survive. For a movie that was made within the limitations of filmmaking in 1939, "Drums Along the Mohawk" did a pretty good job of presenting a realistic portrayal of the travails of colonial life.

Edna May Oliver, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (but lost to Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in "Gone With the Wind"), played a widow who owned a big farm and hired Fonda to work it. She took in Fonda and Colbert after their farm was burned by Indians.

In a way, it was sort of like the old Green Acres TV show without the jokes. Colbert's character was raised in affluent and comfortable surroundings; she wasn't prepared for the rugged life of a settler. In time, though, she adapted to it and even came to love it.

And, in true John Ford fashion, the movie ended on an upbeat, patriotic note. The Indians had been turned back, and the American flag was raised above the fort.

Oh, the Stories Bacall Could Have Told

---

---

"You know, you got to be careful of dead bees if you're goin' around barefooted, 'cause if you step on them they can sting you just as bad as if they was alive, especially if they was kind of mad when they got killed. I bet I been bit a hundred times that way."

Eddie (Walter Brennan)

---

There was an ... I don't know ... impertinence about Lauren Bacall in Howard Hawks' "To Have and Have Not," which was released 70 years ago today, that was very appealing.

She was 19 when the movie was filmed and pretty ... and making her big–screen debut opposite Humphrey Bogart in a movie directed by Howard Hawks. How could it be much better?

Bacall and Bogart later married and co–starred in three other movies together, each memorable in its own way, but "To Have and Have Not" was always the standard against which the others were judged.

There was an electricity between Bogart and Bacall that simply could not be duplicated completely in their other movies. Part of that may have been the story, but a lot of it, I think, was due to the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall as they began one of the most successful Hollywood relationships of all time. It practically crackled on the screen.

---

---

Like when Bacall told Bogart, "You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

That line, by the way, is #34 on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 movie quotes of all time.

Lots of movie fans came to think of the character Bacall played as being Bacall herself. I guess that was — and still is — a fairly common misconception.

In fact, as I have heard it, Bacall's character was modeled in many ways after Hawks' wife, who was also known as "Slim," wore captivating dresses, had long blonde hair and a sultry voice and was perplexing.

Ernest Hemingway wrote the original story, but, beyond the title, there really were few similarities between the book and the movie.

I felt it was like a remake of "Casablanca" — perhaps better. Bogart played the same I–stick–my–neck–out–for–nobody kind of character. He wasn't running a night club this time; he was a fishing boat captain in the Caribbean who sometimes smuggled French Resistance fighters to the island of Martinique. His faithful sidekick wasn't Dooley Wilson playing the piano but alcohol–swilling Walter Brennan.

And he had a beautiful love interest — who was even younger than Ingrid Bergman had been. (Was she more beautiful? That's a matter of personal taste.)

Several members of the "Casablanca" cast were in "To Have and Have Not" — primarily minor characters, probably not readily recognizable to anyone who isn't familiar with "Casablanca." But they were there.

---

---

As I mentioned earlier, Dooley Wilson wasn't around to play the piano, but Hoagy Carmichael was there.

There's an old story that says Andy Williams, who would have been about 16 at the time, did the singing for Bacall, but it isn't true. It was confirmed that Williams and some female singers were brought in to audition to do the dubbing because of fears that Bacall wouldn't be able to handle it. But, apparently, those fears were overridden by the wish to have Bacall do her own singing.

And, while I will admit that she wasn't perfect, she wasn't bad, either.

I regret that she didn't live to see this anniversary, the 70th of her movie debut. It would have been great fun to hear the tales she had to tell.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

---

---

"There's no place like home; there's no place like home; there's no place like home."

Dorothy (Judy Garland)
(#23 on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 movie quotes)

---

(1939 is widely regarded as the greatest year ever for the motion picture. Ten movies were nominated for Best Picture that year, and today I take a look at the sixth of those 10 movies to hit the theaters.)

I don't know how old I was the first time I saw "The Wizard of Oz." Probably 5 or 6. I do know that it was long after it made its general theatrical debut on this date in 1939. My mother and father might have seen it at the theater — they were children then — but maybe not. It wasn't a blockbuster in 1939. That came later.

I don't remember much about that experience — except that the winged monkeys scared me enough to give me bad dreams for several nights.

I still think of that whenever I sit down to watch "The Wizard of Oz." I thought about it back in February when I watched it during Turner Classic Movies' annual salute to the Academy Awards, "31 Days of Oscar."

And I concluded that there are some movies that are so closely linked to childhood that every time we see them, we feel almost as if we are children again. "The Wizard of Oz" is such a movie — for me, anyway.

See, there are parts of that movie that I appreciate as an adult that escaped me as a child; even so, I always feel like a child when I watch it — at least a little bit and for a little while. I suppose that is part of the movie's enduring magic.

I'm sure I don't have to recite the plot for you. Surely, everyone has seen "The Wizard of Oz" at least once — probably more than that — so I may simply refer to specific scenes. Warning: This will not, in any way, be written sequentially. I probably will jump around a lot. (So hang on. It's apt to be a bumpy ride.)

Anyway, when I watched it most recently, I found myself questioning some parts of the story — and I had to remind myself that it is, after all, a children's story. It would help if everything made perfect sense — but this is a fantasy. By definition, a fantasy doesn't make sense. Things happen in fantasies that simply do not happen in real life — like monkeys with wings.

The movie version of "The Wizard of Oz" is so familiar that the characters need no introduction, do they?

---

---

"You are under the unfortunate delusion that simply because you run away from danger, you have no courage. You're confusing courage with wisdom."

Wizard of Oz (Frank Morgan)

---

Oh, and before I forget ...

Dorothy said, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

She did not say, "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," which is how people have been misquoting it for decades.

(Wow, it feels good to get that off my chest. Kind of like knowing that Bogart actually said, "Play it, Sam," not "Play it again, Sam," in "Casablanca" but not saying anything about it.)

While we're on the subject of "The Wizard of Oz" trivia, as I said earlier, the movie wasn't successful in its first theatrical run, earning about what it cost to make. But it got in the black about 10 years later when it was brought back to theaters, and its annual airings on TV, which began in the 1950s, were moneymakers.

And this doesn't qualify as trivia, exactly, but I'd like to mention Billie Burke, who played Glinda the Good Witch of the North, Dorothy's defender in Oz. Her role didn't require her to speak many lines, but it is the role for which she is remembered — even though she is hardly ever mentioned.

She was 55 the day "The Wizard of Oz" premiered. I would never have guessed that.

For awhile, I worked in an office that encouraged employees to wear costumes for Halloween. It became a competitive thing, and groups of employees would come up with themes. Sometimes the costumes were very elaborate, very detailed. It was quite entertaining.

One year, a group came dressed like the protagonists from "The Wizard of Oz" — the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and Dorothy (carrying a basket with a little stuffed dog doll in it). Everyone knew who they were, and they were the unanimous winners of the office contest.

As universal as those characters are, it's hard to believe that "The Wizard of Oz" was a big disappointment at the box office. And that iconic foursome might have been quite different.

Judy Garland is so closely associated with the role of Dorothy that most people probably can't imagine anyone else playing it. But it is my understanding that she was the second choice. The first choice was Shirley Temple, but she dropped out of the project. In hindsight, it's hard for me to imagine Shirley Temple singing "Over the Rainbow" as well as Garland — although it would be a mistake to assume that whoever played Dorothy would sing "Over the Rainbow." It was almost dropped several times.

She wasn't the first actress to play Dorothy, either. There were three other versions made before hers.

Buddy Ebsen was slated to play the Tin Woodman, but he had an allergic reaction to the metallic makeup he had to wear to play the part, and he was replaced by Jack Haley.

W.C. Fields was the first choice to play the wizard, but MGM couldn't meet his demands. He was replaced by Frank Morgan.

(An interesting piece of trivia about Morgan: The somewhat shabby coat he wore in the movie was a thrift–store discovery. It was later determined that the coat actually did belong at one time to L. Frank Baum, the author of "The Wizard of Oz."

(Apparently, his name was stitched inside it, and his widow confirmed that it did, indeed, belong to him.)

I notice little details now that I didn't notice when I was younger. Strangely, I never really noticed the winged monkeys flying away after grabbing Dorothy and Toto. Maybe I blocked that part out. Maybe I was too traumatized by my first glimpse of the winged monkeys to process their departure.

In general, though, I am impressed with the movie every time I see it. Color was still rare in the movies in 1939. Out of 10 Best Picture nominees that year, only two — "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind" — used it. And "The Wizard of Oz" only used it part of the time, bookending the color segment with two black–and–white segments.

That was a creative way to draw the line between the real world and the dream world. Dorothy's real world really was varying shades of gray as nearly as I could tell. Her dream world came alive with vibrant colors — the Yellow Brick Road, the Emerald City, ruby slippers — even though I've heard it said that we don't dream in color.

To be able to imagine the color scheme of a world that is not your own is a rare gift, it seems to me — whether in dreams or conscious thought.

I don't know if that's true. I honestly don't know if I dream in color or not.

---

---

Economically, the decision to use color is fairly easy to comprehend. Because of my experience working for newspapers, I know that the color process was — and, to an extent, still is — more expensive than black and white in print, and I'm sure that was the case when movies were being made in the 1930s and 1940s. It became more commonplace in both pursuits when it became more feasible.

In 1939, though, its very rarity made it an effective way to differentiate between the real and the fantasy.

I was unaware of the color part of it when I saw it the first time. My parents had just bought our family's very first TV. It was a black–and–white portable, and it was our only TV for many years so the color part of the movie looked black and white to me. I probably didn't see the color part in color until we got our first color TV.

The first few times I saw the movie, the Yellow Brick Road looked gray. So did the Emerald City and Dorothy's ruby slippers.

And I completely missed out on what has come to be one of my favorite sequences in the movie, the Horse of a Different Color that drew the coach carrying Dorothy and her friends into the city.

---

---

It's a subtle thing, really. The horse is a different color with each shift in the camera angle, but no fuss is made over it. It is hardly mentioned, except for a point when the coachman tells Dorothy, "That's the horse of a different color you've 'eard tell of."

The last time I watched "The Wizard of Oz," I counted the horse's color changes. There were six.

When I first saw the movie, those color changes probably appeared as varying shades of gray on our black–and–white set. I wonder what I must have thought ... if, indeed, I thought anything ... about that.

I never felt that I got the full effect of "The Wizard of Oz" the first time I saw it. People who first saw it in movie theaters in 1939 saw that horse changing color, witnessed the brilliance of the Emerald City and the Yellow Brick Road.

It was all black and white to me, and it wasn't the same. By the time I saw the horse of a different color — in color — it was anticlimactic to me.

In all, "The Wizard of Oz" was nominated for six Oscars and won two — Best Original Score and Best Song ("Over the Rainbow").