A Tale of Lust

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Baby Doll (Carroll Baker): I don't want to be in the same room with a man that would make me live in a house with no furniture! My daddy would turn over in his grave if he knew, he would just turn over in his grave.

Archie Lee (Karl Malden): If your daddy turned in his grave as often as you say he'd turn in his grave, that old man would plow up the graveyard.

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Tennessee Williams really knew how to get to the heart of things, and there may have been no better example of that than "Baby Doll," which premiered on this day in 1956.

It was a steamy story, all right — and the fact that it was almost totally implausible seems to have had no influence on moviegoers of the day. It was erotic and titillating and all that good stuff — and there wasn't a second of nudity to be seen! That may be the most implausible part of the whole thing for modern audiences — but you have to remember that this movie was in theaters at a time when the Hays Code was still in charge of things.

Consequently, anything of that nature took place in the viewers' minds. (This is purely speculation, of course, but it seems all but certain that "Baby Doll" be a much different movie if a remake was attempted today.)

That seems to have been the state of things when the movie began, too. Too much was happening in the mind — and not elsewhere.

Archie Lee (Karl Malden) was a middle–aged bigot, alcoholic and failing cotton gin owner in Mississippi. Carroll Baker, in an Oscar–nominated performance, was Baby Doll, his 19–year–old wife. They had been married for two years, but they had never been intimate because of a promise Archie Lee had made to Baby Doll's dying father.

He had promised they would not be intimate until her 20th birthday, and he had been faithful to his promise, but now Baby Doll's 20th birthday was drawing nigh, and she was dreading it. Archie Lee, meanwhile, had been impatiently waiting for it like a child waiting for Christmas morning. Baby Doll slept in a crib and sucked her thumb, and Archie Lee watched her through a hole in the wall, lusting for her.

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"Baby Doll" was about lust of all kinds.

Eli Wallach, in his big–screen debut, was Archie Lee's competitor. He ran a newer and better cotton gin that had been taking away Archie Lee's business — and Silvy wanted Archie Lee's business and his wife.

Archie Lee torched the competitor's business. Wallach's character suspected Archie Lee was behind it, and he came up with a plan to get even. He took truck loads of cotton to Archie Lee and asked him to process the cotton for him. While Archie Lee was busy with that, the competitor put the moves on Baby Doll.

It may well have been the dialogues between Baby Doll and Silva that best demonstrated Williams' flair.

"I wouldn't dream of eatin' a nut that a man had cracked in his mouth," Baby Doll said at one point.

"You've got many refinements," Silva replied.

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But it wouldn't be a Williams script without one of the characters enduring great emotional pain because of the actions of another character, and Malden's character was tortured by his tantalizing tease of a wife. She and Silva flaunted their flirtations in front of him, and Archie Lee got angrier and angrier.

Then Silva confronted Archie Lee with an affidavit he had forced Baby Doll to sign that incriminated Archie Lee in the burning of Silva's cotton gin. The police were summoned, presented with the affidavit, arrested Archie Lee and took him away.

The adaptation of Williams' earlier work, a one–act play called "27 Wagons Full of Cotton," was nominated for an Oscar but lost — as did Mildred Dunnock, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Baby Doll's senile aunt who lived with the couple.

"Baby Doll" was condemned at the time of its release as amoral. Ironically, by modern standards, it is so tame it is shown frequently on cable movie channels like AMC and TCM.

What Was It About 'Fargo'?

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"Mind if I sit down? I'm carrying quite a load here."

Marge (Frances McDormand)

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What is it, I have to ask, about "Fargo," which premiered on this day in 1996, that makes it one of my favorite movies?

I've seen other Coen brothers movies, and, to be perfectly honest, the story in "Fargo" doesn't strike me as being particularly remarkable when compared to those other movies.

I've seen William H. Macy in other movies, for that matter, and I think he is always good, no matter what kind of role he has been given to play — but I'm not sure I saw him in anything before I saw "Fargo."

The same is mostly true of Frances McDormand, who won Best Actress for her performance. I did see her in "Mississippi Burning" years before she made "Fargo," and I also saw her in "Short Cuts" before I saw "Fargo." She is consistently good.

Likewise, I had seen Steve Buscemi in movies before — "Reservoir Dogs," for example. I think he, too, is always good. His performance in "Fargo" was not an exception for him.

"Fargo" wasn't unique, nor was its cast.

And the supposed inspiration for the movie — a true story — wasn't unique, either.

However ...

"To watch it is to experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers have taken enormous risks, gotten away with them and made a movie that is completely original," wrote Roger Ebert, "and as familiar as an old shoe — or a rubbersoled hunting boot from Land's End, more likely."

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McDormand played a pregnant police chief investigating a murder that she connected with the apparent kidnapping of the wife of a Minnesota car salesman (Macy) who had been having financial problems. No one else apparently knew about these financial difficulties. The idea was for the wife to be kidnapped and held for ransom by a couple of criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare). The salesman's father–in–law was a wealthy man who would pay the ransom for his daughter's safe return.

The criminals were in on Macy's plot, you see. They would give the ransom money to Macy. In return the criminals would be paid half of the ransom money and a then–new vehicle — leaving Macy with more than enough money to pay off his debts.

Which led to an obvious question that Buscemi's character asked Macy in their first meeting, "Why don't you just ask him for the money?"

"Or your fucking wife, you know," chimed in Stormare's character.

"Well, it's all just part of this," Macy said in his smarmiest manner. "They don't know I need it, see. OK, so there's that. And even if they did, I wouldn't get it. So there's that on top then. See, these're personal matters."

However, as Ebert observed, "To describe the plot is to risk spoiling its surprises," and I feel compelled to, in Ebert's own words, "tread carefully."

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On the surface, the plan seemed simple enough. But the film had an ample supply of that eccentric irony that is always present in Coen brothers movies; thus, there were many little twists and turns, which prodded Macy into what may have been the best performance of his career. It was worthy of Hitchcock; as Ebert described it, Macy was trapped in "the unbearable agony of a man who needs to think fast and whose brain is scrambled with fear, guilt and the crazy illusion that he can somehow still pull this thing off."

As I say, things just didn't go according to plan. Right from the start — the kidnapping itself didn't go smoothly. En route to the kidnappers' cabin hideout, they were stopped by a state trooper, who was shot and killed. Enter McDormand, who was chief of police in the town where the murder occurred. McDormand's character pieced everything together perfectly.

I thought her interrogation of two hookers who slept with Buscemi and Stormare, then hung around long enough to watch late&night TV with them, was hilarious, especially their Minnesota accents. Every time I see it, I remember an appearance by Minnesota native Lea Thompson on The Tonight Show around the time "Fargo" was in the theaters. She said she had been back to Minnesota and had talked with some of her old friends about the movie.

"Yah, but you know nobody talks like that," she said one of her friends had said to her. In truth, everyone in the movie talked like that.

If you haven't seen the movie, I will leave it to you to discover how McDormand figured out what had happened — and how, in the process, she applied increasing pressure to Macy's character, who was totally incompetent when it came to carrying out a crime.

As each new problem surfaced — for example, illegible serial numbers on nonexistent cars for which he was trying to get a car loan company to pay — he got caught tighter in that vise.

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I'm really no closer to answering my original question: Why is "Fargo" one of my favorite movies?

I don't know, but, perhaps, Ebert came close to an answer when he wrote, "Films like 'Fargo' are why I love the movies."

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.

'M*A*S*H' Laid Foundation for TV Series

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"This isn't a hospital, it's an insane asylum!"

Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Sally Kellerman)

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Forty–five years ago, it was fashionable to ridicule the armed services. Mostly in the movies. TV still had a certain reverence for the establishment in those days, but it was mostly in movies.

To be fair, the military was an easy target. The mismanaged Vietnam War had already forced a president to voluntarily withdraw from a campaign for re–election four years after winning the presidency by an historic margin. Things were going so badly for the United States in Southeast Asia that Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, "Uncle Walter" to millions, made a rare editorial comment during one of his newscasts that the war effort was a lost cause. I knew many people who were skeptical of their government and the media, but they trusted Cronkite. I couldn't tell you how many times I heard, when I was a child, someone say, "If Cronkite says it, you can take it to the bank."

At times, it was true that the military leadership resembled the Keystone Kops.

But I guess the military has frequently been an easy target. Forty–five years ago today, the movie "M*A*S*H," which was adapted from a best–selling novel by Richard Hooker, directed by Robert Altman and later inspired a long–running TV series, made its debut. Its target was the Korean War.

If all you know of "M*A*S*H" is the episodes of the TV series that you've seen, you may want to adjust your thinking a bit before watching the movie. You'll recognize the characters — Hawkeye, Hot Lips, Radar — but the actors who played them (except for Radar) were nowhere to be seen on the TV screen.

In that sense, I suppose, it will be like a new experience. And, in truth, I guess it is a new experience. A different one, anyway. The TV series was great in part because it didn't try to do the work of a movie in 30 minutes. And the movie was great in part because it didn't try to be like a TV episode.

That seems so simple, but if you try to pack too much into a half–hour sitcom or too little into a 90–minute movie, you're setting yourself up for failure.

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Even so, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "M*A*S*H" the movie worked because "it's so desperate. ... The surgeons work rapidly and with a gory detachment, sawing off legs and tying up arteries, and making their work possible by pretending they don't care. And when they are at last out of the operating tent, they devote their lives to remaining sane."

I never really thought of it that way, but I guess there is a lot of truth in that. There was more of a sense of desperation in the movie than there was in the TV series. The surgeons still had a flippant attitude, Hot Lips and Frank still embodied the military establishment, but both seemed more extreme in the movie than the TV series. Perhaps that was because the movie, having received an R rating, was shown to an audience that was assumed to be mature enough to handle the material. On TV, anyone of any age could be watching.

So things were toned down on TV. I suppose that was kind of problematic for the Frank–and–Hot–Lips affair.

As far as Hot Lips and Frank were concerned, their movie characters were similar to yet different from their TV characters. They were gung–ho in the TV series, but that really was mild compared to the movie. And their sexual relationship really had to be muted for the small screen — implied far more than it was actually shown.

They really were fighting a different war in the movie. And their holier–than–thou attitudes came through loud and clear.

"I wonder how such a degenerated person ever reached a position of authority in the Army Medical Corps," Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) remarked at one point about Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland).

"He was drafted," replied Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois).

For his part, Frank's religious zealotry was only hinted at in the TV series compared to his extremely overt religious behavior in the movie. The first time he was seen, Frank was teaching one of the mess hall boys how to read — using his Bible.

The next time he was seen, he was kneeling in front of his cot, reciting the Lord's Prayer, which he amended to include requests for God's blessing on the fighting men, the commanders in the field and the commander–in–chief.

"Frank, were you on this religious kick at home," Hawkeye asked, "or did you you crack up over here?"

I guess the TV series proceeded as if the movie never existed — or as if it was intended to function independently of the big–screen story. Otherwise, someone would have noticed that Frank Burns (Robert Duvall in the movie, Larry Linville in the TV series) was taken away in a straitjacket after punching Hawkeye in the movie, never to be seen again — until he showed up in the TV series. No one, not even Hot Lips, ever asked him about his time in custody.

You know, I guess Ebert wasn't far off the mark when he wrote of the frantic pace of the movie. In 1970, the makers of the movie most likely had no idea their movie would inspire a long–running TV series so the movie tried to tell viewers everything about those characters in a couple of hours — or, at least, everything that the original book told readers about them.

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The makers of the hugely successful TV series expected that the bulk of their audience would know the inside jokes about everyone, even though the TV cast was almost entirely made up of people who did not appear in the movie.

A few of the characters in the TV series — notably Corporal Klinger — were nowhere to be found in the movie. He was created for the TV audience.

Ring Lardner, Jr. won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Paradox of 'Pulp Fiction'

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Vincent (John Travolta): And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

Jules (Samuel L. Jackson): They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

Vincent: No, man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.

Jules: Then what do they call it?

Vincent: They call it a Royale with Cheese.

Jules: A Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?

Vincent: Well, a Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it le Big Mac.

Jules: Le Big Mac. Ha ha ha ha. What do they call a Whopper?

Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King.

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I don't know precisely when I got wise to the fact that, if I was going to watch a Quentin Tarantino movie, I had to be prepared for the likelihood that the story would not be told chronologically.

And sometimes he throws in stuff that has no real meaning to the story. Just to make sure you're paying attention, I suppose.

Roger Ebert really liked the dialogue in "Pulp Fiction," which premiered 20 years ago today. So did I — and for pretty much the same reason. Ebert just expressed it better than I could.

"Dialogue drives Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction,'" he wrote, "dialogue of such high quality it deserves comparison with other masters of spare, hard–boiled prose, from Raymond Chandler to Elmore Leonard. Like them, QT finds a way to make the words humorous without ever seeming to ask for a laugh. Like them, he combines utilitarian prose with flights of rough poetry and wicked fancy."

That is the intriguing paradox of "Pulp Fiction," isn't it? A movie that is, ostensibly, about action is, as Ebert put it, driven by dialogue.

The conversation between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson about Quarter Pounders and what they are called in France is my favorite example. Ebert cites his own, which is just as valid. There are many examples in "Pulp Fiction." The dialogue really is what makes the movie work.

It could have clashed with Tarantino's non–linear style of story telling, but it didn't because, as Ebert wrote, his was a utilitarian prose. There was purpose in each thing that was said, even if it wasn't readily apparent. And when the movie was over, the viewer felt as if he/she had been told the whole story and understood it as if it had been told in a more traditionally linear fashion.

The story began and ended with the same holdup in the same restaurant pulled off by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer. By the time the robbery was seen for a second time, everything had fallen into place.

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It was the dialogue that made the movie the black comedy that it was. I guess that is always the case, but the subject matter in this movie was really pretty brutal. If the words prompted laughter "without ever seeming to ask for a laugh" — and they often did — that is why it is remembered as a great black comedy.

Of course, there was more of a purpose to the dialogue, as Ebert observed. "[T]here is a chronology in the dialogue," Ebert wrote, "in the sense that what is said before invariably sets up or enriches what comes after." In other words, the dialogue provided a context.

It was the movie that resurrected Travolta's career. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor (but lost to Tom Hanks for "Forrest Gump") and was in some pretty good movies in the years that immediately followed "Pulp Fiction," but his career seems to have slipped from the radar again.

Seems to me I could almost say the same thing about Uma Thurman, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (but lost to Dianne Wiest in "Bullets Over Broadway"). She's made some noteworthy movies in the last 20 years — the "Kill Bill" movies come to mind — but she has mostly dropped out of sight lately, too.

In all, "Pulp Fiction" received seven Oscar nominations and won for Best Original Screenplay.

"It's all in the dialogue," Ebert wrote, and I really have to agree. Tarantino richly deserved the Oscar he shared with Roger Avary for the original screenplay — and he also deserved his nomination for Best Director.

Taking Care of Family Business

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"It is so difficult to make a neat job of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms."

Louis (Dennis Price)

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The humor from Ealing Studios' black comedy, "Kind Hearts and Coronets," which made its British premiere 65 years ago today, is deliciously understated, as the humor in British movies often is.

Alec Guinness, who was in his mid–30s by this time, played eight members (of varying ages and genders) of an aristocratic family. They represented the blood line to inherit a dukedom, and they stood between Louis (Dennis Price), the son of a disowned woman and the opera singer with whom she ran away, and what his mother told him was rightfully his.

After his mother's death, Louis vowed to avenge her by claiming his birthright, and the only way to do that was to eliminate the eight family members who stood between him and his inheritance — so he set about doing precisely that.

The story was told in a flashback style. Louis sat in his prison cell, convicted of committing multiple murders and waiting to be hanged the next morning. While he waited, he wrote about his crimes, explaining how each of the murders was accomplished.

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His descriptions of his acquaintances with his unsuspecting victims were delightfully droll. At one point, he wrote of liking one of his victims and lamented the fact that he would have so little time with him.

Other regrets regarding his actions were equally understated.

"I was sorry about the girl," he wrote about killing his cousin and his cousin's mistress, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, "but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably during the weekend already undergone a fate worse than death."

He made mention also of the two women who divided his affections — Sibella (Joan Greenwood), a friend from his childhood, and Edith (Valerie Hobson), the widow of one of his victims.

"While I never admired Edith as much as when I was with Sibella," he wrote, "I never longed for Sibella as much as when I was with Edith."

Then, at the very end of the movie, evidence was brought to the prison that saved him from the gallows, and Louis left the prison in triumph.

As he left the prison, he was approached by someone in the British media about his memoirs — and he realized with a start that he had left his manuscript in his cell.

The audience was left to speculate about what happened next.

Of course, he didn't actually kill all of his relatives — the admiral, for instance, went down with his ship and thus spared Louis the responsibility for his death.

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But, by and large, he was responsible for the deaths of most.

It was a classic black comedy from Ealing Studios, which has been a movie/TV production facility for more than a century, but its true golden era was the period just after World War II, when Ealing was producing movies like "Kind Hearts and Coronets."

"Kind Hearts and Coronets" may just be the best of Ealing's black comedies — with the possible exception of 1955's "The Ladykillers," which the Coen brothers remade 10 years ago.

How Are Your 'Precious Bodily Fluids' Holding Up?

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

President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never fails to make me laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Recommend ...

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I don't often do this. Really.

But Turner Classic Movies will be showing a really good — and underappreciated — Walter Matthau movie tonight at 7 (Central).

It's called "A New Leaf," from 1971, and it was actually written and directed by Elaine May, who co–starred with Matthau.

May apparently tried (unsuccessfully) to have her name removed from the credits when the studio made considerable changes. In spite of those changes, the movie remained a dark and extraordinarily funny story about marriage, money and murder.

I don't want to give too much away because the fun of watching "A New Leaf" is experiencing it for yourself, but I feel I must give you at least a taste.

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Matthau, you see, played a thoroughly self–absorbed playboy who had wasted his inheritance and had no marketable skills.

His first thought was to commit suicide — "All I am, or was, is rich," he lamented, "and it's all I wanted to be" — but he couldn't bring himself to do that so he went for his second option — he had to borrow money from his uncle to keep up appearances while he tried to find a wealthy woman to marry. If he found such a girl and married her in a certain length of time, he would pay back his uncle and resume his extravagant lifestyle.

If, on the other hand, he failed to find someone to marry, his uncle would seize all his assets, and he would be poor. But that was no worse than the predicament in which he found himself. That did not really sink in, though, until his gentleman's gentleman observed that "in a country where every man is what he has, he who has very little is nobody very much."

So Matthau reluctantly embarked on his journey to find a mate — and had no success at first.

(While I know I'm going at this out of sequence, I must say that I think one of the funniest moments in a movie filled with funny moments comes early when Matthau's financial adviser, played by character actor William Redfield, tries to tell him that he is broke.

(He explains to Matthau that he has even dipped into his own pocket at times to cover bills for which Matthau had insufficient funds. He did this, he says, so he could have the satisfaction of knowing that he did not in any way contribute to Matthau's inevitable poverty.

(Matthau, of course, seems oblivious to what his adviser is telling him, insisting that he explain why shares of a stock that he owned had been sold without authorization. Those shares had been sold to raise funds to cover debts.)

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But then he met Henrietta Lowell (May), an isolated and eccentric young heiress, and he set about wooing her. To the amazement of his uncle, he won their wager by marrying May — but was already planning her demise for their honeymoon. However, his plans went unexpectedly off the track, thanks to a number of obstacles, not the least of which was the zany cast of supporting characters played by the likes of James Coco and Jack Weston.

And, if you only know Doris Roberts as the 60–ish matriarch of the Barone family for whom housework was a labor of love in Everybody Loves Raymond, you owe it to yourself to see her when she was about 40 and playing a paid housekeeper whose primary occupation was finding creative ways (which had nothing to do with love — except for the love of money) to supplement her already–extravagant pay.

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Roberts and the rest of May's household staff were not eager to share their cash cow with Matthau — and Matthau had no intention of sharing it with anyone.

Inevitably, there was a clash, and I'm sure you can guess which one won — but it's still fun to watch it happen.

What is even more fun to watch is the effect of May's endearing personality on Matthau in spite of his worst intentions.

Roger Ebert, the movie critic who died recently, wrote that "A New Leaf" was "hilarious and cockeyed and warm."

That about sums it up. Don't miss it.

How to Change the Subject

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Tracy (Kirsten Dunst): What would they do to me if I did tell someone about this?

Conrad (Robert De Niro): They could come to your house in the middle of the night and kill you.

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I thoroughly enjoyed "Wag the Dog," which debuted on this day in 1997, and to no small extent because I understood and appreciated the nature of the title. But it did require a little explanation.

When I first heard the title, I thought it was the name of a character — you know, like Bozo the Clown. Logically, I figured that it was a dog named Wag and, if the title character was a dog, it must be a cartoon — you know, kind of like Felix the Cat — although perhaps not (this was around the time that "Babe" was in the theaters).

But then I discovered it was a variation of the old saying that "the dog wags the tail, the tail doesn't wag the dog."

When applied to a political context — as it was in this movie — it meant to distract public attention from a matter of great importance to focus on a matter of lesser importance — or, in the case of this movie, a matter that didn't really exist.

In the movie, the president is facing the voters in his bid for re–election. Foolishly, he sexually assaults a member of some Firefly Girl group that is visiting the White House in the closing days of the campaign, and he needs the help of a spin doctor played by Robert De Niro to get him over the hump (as it were) to Election Day.

(In my own defense, the plotline encouraged some really bad puns.)

De Niro, in turn, recruits a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman), who is bitter over never receiving the recognition he craves for the work he has done, to help him create a phony war to distract attention from the abuse allegations.

And, thus, an elaborate deception was born.

Hoffman's character put together such an impressive visual depiction of a war that he himself observed it was "the best work I've ever done in my life, because it's so honest."

Well, honesty was relative.

Or, in the words of the movie's producers, "Why does a dog wag its tail? Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail were smarter, the tail would wag the dog."

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Hoffman's undoing was in not being satisfied with the knowledge that it was his "best work." He wanted the credit that had been denied to him throughout his career.

"You're playing with your life," De Niro's character warned him, but he wouldn't listen — and he wound up dying shortly thereafter, officially of a heart attack while sunning himself by his pool.

Overseeing all of this was Anne Heche's character, Winifred the presidential adviser who acted as the buffer between the president and everything else. At times, she was severely tested, as when she was informed that the hand–picked "hero" of the fictional conflict — played by Woody Harrelson — was an unsavory sort who had been convicted of raping a nun.

"Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God," she kept muttering.

Hoffman assured her that, as long as the "hero" took his medication, "He's fine."

What if he doesn't take his medication, Heche's character wanted to know.

"He's not fine."

To be fair to Hoffman's character, he did design a credible war backdrop for the cover story, enlisting Kirsten Dunst to play a peasant girl running from assailants with a kitten in her arms (the kitten and the scenery and sound effects would be edited in later — Dunst was told to run through a sound stage carrying a bag of tortilla chips).

In a classic example of the misdirection used by the spin doctor and his associates, De Niro's character urges people like the press secretary to make up denials about non–existent rumors — such as the one about the B–3 bomber.

There is no such thing, of course, and no one had been talking about it, but De Niro's character still protests that he doesn't know how such rumors get started — and the direction of the conversation is changed.

Roger Ebert made an intriguing observation in his review of the movie in the Chicago Sun–Times: "It's creepy how this material is absurd and convincing at the same time. ... Even when a conflict is real and necessary ... the packaging ... is invariably shallow and unquestioning; like sportswriters, war correspondents abandon any pretense of objectivity and detachment, and cheerfully root for our side."

Coincidentally, the movie came out around the same time that Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky was in the news, and he was facing impeachment. The Clinton administration also engaged in some saber rattling against Iraq — which critics alleged was an attempt to shift the focus of the public conversation. It was, they said, a real–life "Wag the Dog."

"['Wag the Dog'] is a satire that contains just enough realistic ballast to be teasingly plausible," Ebert wrote, "like 'Dr. Strangelove,' it makes you laugh, and then it makes you wonder."

It still does.