There were so many episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show that made me laugh the first time I saw them — and still make me laugh today.
There are the classic episodes that everyone remembers, but there are also episodes that are rarely mentioned. Such an episode — at least, in my experience — is the episode that aired 40 years ago tonight.
Titled "Lou's Place," it explored one of the secret ambitions of Lou Grant (Ed Asner), the news producer with the gruff exterior and the heart of gold.
Lou revealed that he had always wanted to have his own bar, but he didn't have enough money to buy one of his favorite watering holes when it became available so he tried to persuade Ted (Ted Knight) to invest in it with him.
But Lou, the hard–boiled newsman, didn't have the temperament to manage a bar — and certainly not with Ted, who kept inventing lame excuses to get his investment money back.
The bar's previous owner had been a gregarious sort who remembered everyone's name and encouraged his patrons to participate in group sing–alongs.
That wasn't Lou's nature, and he knew it. But something needed to be done. The bar was not thriving, so Lou resolved to be just like the previous owner and be lovable.
That proved to be a challenge for Lou.
"I never really cared about being lovable before," he said. "It was always enough that people were afraid of me."
So Lou set out to be just like the previous owner, establishing "happy hour," introducing himself to the patrons and then introducing them to each other, repeating the process every time someone new came in and then leading everyone in a sing–along.
But it didn't catch on with the gang. So Lou, reverting to his true self, decided to give it another try. He announced another sing–along.
"And this time," he said with eyes squinting as he glanced around the room, "Ireally want to hear it."
And he went around the room like a drill sergeant, barking out orders like "Sing it!" or "I can't hear you" as he went from table to table.
The group did perform better the second time around, but it was a forced performance, and, before they finished singing, Lou decided that he had to sell the place.
I guess some things must be learned the hard way.
But it worked out well for fans of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. After all, if Lou had found that running a bar was his true calling, he might have left WJM long before the series went off the air.
And, consequently, he might not have gone on to star in his own series, Lou Grant, further defining the character.
Father Mulcahy (William Christopher):He was an exceptionally good sport.
On this day in 1978, the M*A*S*H TV series was about halfway through its 11–year run.
It is often said of sitcoms that, when they have been on the air that long, the episodes tend to become stale.
And it is true that M*A*S*H had some misfires that year.
But the episode that aired 35 years ago tonight was pure entertainment from start to finish. I've always thought of it as one of the series' best.
It wasn't like many of the episodes in the latter years of the series — in which a somber angle was inserted into an otherwise upbeat story. It was strictly comedy, all the way through.
As it opened, the surgeons had just completed a particularly grueling session in the operating room. To unwind, Charles (David Ogden Stiers) took to playing his French horn, much to the dismay of Hawkeye and B.J. (Mike Farrell), who decided to abstain from bathing until Charles stopped playing his horn.
Charles refused to back down, of course, and so did Hawkeye and B.J. It was a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object.
And the rest of the camp was caught in the middle. Charles' French horn playing was, to put it mildly, annoying, and Hawkeye and B.J.'s stench was, well, irritating.
Something had to be done.
The odor became so bad that Hawkeye and B.J. were ordered by everyone else to eat their meals outside the mess hall. When Father Mulcahy strolled by and observed that it was a fine day to be eating outside, Hawkeye and B.J. invited him to sit and share the noontime meal. He refused, prompting them to inquire if it was because of their smell. Mulcahy admitted that it was.
"Jesus ate with the lepers," Hawkeye said.
And, in one of the best lines I have ever heard, Mulcahy replied, "He was an exceptionally good sport."
(An interesting side story involved Col. Potter and a suicidal patient. The patient's girlfriend or wife — I forget which — had been a beauty queen or something like that, and in high school they had been voted cutest couple. Now, disfigured by his injury, the patient could only think that they would be regarded as beauty and the beast.)
Inevitably, I suppose, there was a rebellion. The camp forcibly bathed Hawkeye and B.J. with teams assigned to wash, apply soap and dry the two miscreants.
As for Charles, his French horn was taken from him and placed in the path of an oncoming Jeep that left it flat as a pancake while the camp cheered.
But the cheering died away as Col. Potter strolled onto the scene. He appraised the situation and announced to the hushed crowd, clearly fearing severe punishment, that they were to be confined "to the Officer's Club for the duration of the whiskey. Pierce, Hunnicutt and Winchester are buying!"
Winchester had an issue to discuss. "My French horn ..." he began, looking at the flattened instrument.
"By all means, bring it along," Potter told him. "We'd love to hear it."
Billy Flynn (Richard Gere):This is Chicago, kid. You can't beat fresh blood on the walls.
It probably isn't obvious to modern movie viewers, but, for awhile, movie musicals were frequently recognized as the best movies of the year — at least by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
But, after "Oliver!" won Best Picture in 1969, no musical won Best Picture again until 2003, when "Chicago," the film that was released 10 years ago today, beat, among others, the second installment in the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.
And, as a matter of fact, "Chicago" is the most recent musical to be nominated for Best Picture. (That isn't surprising, really. Musicals represent a much smaller segment of filmmaking than they once did.)
(As a one–time newspaper copy editor, I get a kick out of the way that newspaper front pages in movies always have banner headlines for the very story that the movie happens to be about. It will be that way in the filmmakers' universe even if the president is assassinated at the same time or nuclear tensions reach an all–time high.)
Renée Zellweger, who played Roxie, a housewife who coveted a career in show biz, and Catherine Zeta–Jones, whose character, Velma, already had a career in vaudeville, were the focal points of what was a truly satirical story.
Both women were accused of murder. Initially, Zellweger killed her lover after learning that he did not have the show business connections he told her he had, that he had only told her that in order to sleep with her. She convinced her husband (played by John C. Reilly), who showed up after the fact, to take the fall for her, claiming that the man was a burglar.
But Reilly's character got cold feet, and Zellweger was taken to the county jail, where she crossed paths with Zeta–Jones, who was in custody for killing her husband and her sister, and Queen Latifah, the jail's unethical matron who lived by one rule — when you're good to Mama, she's good to you.
Enter Richard Gere, who played Billy Flynn, a smooth operator of a lawyer of whom it was said he had never lost a case in which he represented a female client.
[BILLY (as Roxie)] Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes we both
Oh yes we both
Oh yes, we both reached for
The gun, the gun, the gun, the gun
Oh yes, we both reached for the gun
For the gun.
[BILLY and REPORTERS] Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes they both
Oh yes, they both
Oh yes, they both reached for
The gun, the gun, the gun, the gun,
Oh yes, they both reached for the gun
For the gun.
Of course, it helped if the client did and said everything as Billy instructed.
And Roxie was eager to do precisely that.
The story was clearly told with one tongue pressed firmly against the cheek. With music titles like "Cell Block Tango," "Mister Cellophane" and "Funny Honey," what would you expect?
If your answer was "bawdy musical," I'd say you were right.
If you haven't seen the movie, I will try not to let any cats out of the bag.
Let's just leave it at this:
When the final credits rolled and the last notes of the last song faded away, Roxie and Velma had patched up their jailhouse differences and appeared ready to take on the world together.
Roxie was skeptical until Velma observed that "there's only one business in the world where that's not a problem at all: show business."
Roxie couldn't argue with that. A partnership had been born.
And the groundwork for a possible sequel (although, whether that was ever a realistic possibility, no sequel has materialized in the last 10 years) had been laid.
Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," is one I would recommend to anyone.
One of my journalism students says he requires his children to read it when they reach a certain age, and I applaud him for that. More parents should encourage their children to read.
But that's another issue entirely.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the debut of the movie version of "To Kill a Mockingbird," and I would recommend it to anyone as well.
But I would recommend reading the book first.
The unavoidable lesson of the story is that there are people in the world who do society's dirty work, and that is something that isn't always appreciated as it should be.
There are those who do the physically dirty work, of course — the ones who have to collect and sort through trash or debris, for example — and the ones who must do the psychologically dirty work — for example, the people who carry out state–mandated executions or whose work requires them to persuade juries to impose such death sentences.
Atticus Finch, the hero of "To Kill a Mockingbird," was such a person, another character observed — a man who was born to do society's dirty work. He was a defense attorney, and he had the most thankless job imaginable in the Depression–era South. He had to defend a black man charged with raping a white woman.
In half a century, the film has been praised repeatedly. The American Film Institute ranks it #25 on AFI's Top 100 movies list — and deservedly so.
AFI ranked Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch as the top film hero of all time, and that's a tough one to argue with. In both the book and the movie, Atticus was good and honest, the kind of man whose word was his bond, who felt actions spoke louder than words and who never felt inclined to draw attention to his actions.
If one were to choose a character from a book or movie to admire and to emulate, there could be none better than Atticus Finch.
There are many great scenes in "To Kill a Mockingbird," but, if I had to choose one that I simply had to see, it would be the one where Atticus shoots down a rabid dog in the street. From quite a distance. With a single shot.
His son, who was embarrassed because Atticus declined to play football for the Methodists and chafed at Atticus' refusal to let him have a gun, was astonished and it showed.
"What's the matter, boy?" the sheriff asked him. "Didn't you know your daddy is the best shot in this county?"
Atticus was full of surprises. But, in many ways, he was as transparent as glass. He was the essence of nobility because he was so unself–conscious about it.
Miss Maudie (Rosemary Murphy) saw what Atticus was and tried to explain it to his son at a point in the story where the injustices of the world were painfully clear.
"Some men in this world are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us," she said. "Your father is one of them."
It may be the most moving line in the movie — because it is so direct.
The book still holds up after half a century. So does the movie — and Gregory Peck's performance.
Melvin (Jack Nicholson):Sell crazy someplace else. We're all stocked up here.
I don't know why I have always enjoyed watching "As Good As It Gets," which made its big–screen debut 15 years ago today.
Maybe because it is so in–your–face honest. I sort of think it was that quality that made "As Good As It Gets" so appealing — even if, at times, it became brutally honest.
The story dealt with an unlikely threesome — an obsessive–compulsive, a waitress and a gay artist — who shared a bonding experience.
Melvin:Carol the waitress, Simon the fag.
It was at a time when Hunt was a hot property in Hollywood. She had been on a hit TV series ("Mad About You"), and she had had a hit movie ("Twister") before she made "As Good As It Gets" — and she was in another hit movie ("Cast Away") a few years later. But she had never been nominated for an Oscar before.
That changed 15 years ago.
Nicholson's credits speak for themselves. He had not only been nominated for Best Actor Oscars before he made "As Good As It Gets," he had actually won one — for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
On that occasion, he made movie history — of a sort. It was the first time in more than 40 years that a movie had won Oscars for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
With "As Good As It Gets," Nicholson made a different kind of history. He and Hunt both won Oscars, which isn't nearly as uncommon as a sweep of the big five, but it is still a rather rare achievement.
Of the two, Hunt's triumph may have been the more surprising. Nicholson, as I said, took home the Oscar more than 20 years earlier (and again for Best Supporting Actor in the 1980s), but Hunt, a first–time nominee, was at least a bit of a surprise, I suppose, considering that one of her rivals was Kate Winslet for her performance in the titanic blockbuster "Titanic" and three other women who were movie veterans.
But Hunt really brought qualities to her role that weren't necessarily in the script.
Everyone remembers Nicholson's lines — like his response to a fawning receptionist who wanted to know how he managed to write female characters so well ("I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability").
Or the time Nicholson told Hunt she made him "want to be a better man."
Heck, even the title of the movie comes from one of his lines — speaking to a psychiatrist's waiting room filled with patients, he said, "What if this is as good as it gets?"
But Hunt's lines were frequently the most sincere. Most likely, they were intended as setup lines for Nicholson, but so often Hunt did things with her eyes or her voice that conveyed so much more — and told the audience so much more about the character.
Today is a milestone anniversary in the story of Charlie Chaplin.
On this day in 1977, the silent movie icon died in Switzerland at the age of 88.
And 15 years later, on this day in 1992, a movie about his life (directed by Richard Attenborough) made its debut.
I couldn't say how old I was when I first saw a Charlie Chaplin movie. Not very old, I'm sure. I just know that I have always enjoyed his work.
Nor am I sure how long I have admired Richard Attenborough.
It probably began whenever I was first exposed to his work as an actor, but who knows which film that was? He was acting in movies long before I was born so it may have been in a movie that was shown on TV (i.e., "The Great Escape") or it may have been a movie I saw at the movie theater ("Doctor Dolittle").
I'm sure my first introduction to Attenborough was not through a movie he directed — that was probably "Gandhi," and I know I was aware of him long before that.
That is, indeed, a shame. His skill as a director surely exceeded his talent as an actor, and "Chaplin," his biopic that was released 20 years ago today, is a fine example of that.
As I have written here before, I truly admired his biopic of Gandhi — but Gandhi's life was so publicly inspiring that it always seemed to me just about anyone could hit that softball out of the park.
Chaplin's life story was a lot more challenging — but, in its way, every bit as inspiring.
As I say, that life ended 35 years ago today. I can't say with any certainty that I remember what was said about the timing of the release of the movie about Chaplin's life, but I'm just about convinced that it wasn't coincidental.
I must say, though, that I found Robert Downey Jr.'s frenetic portrayal of Chaplin to be revealing in unexpected ways — not the least of which was the obvious, albeit unspoken, comparison of Downey to his subject.
For all his talent, Chaplin had a private sort of greatness, and I suppose the same could be said of Downey.
Lisa Kropiewnicki of AllRovi wrote that the movie was "a thoughtful mixture of melancholy and humor, juxtaposing Chaplin's private loneliness and loss with his professional comedic talents and fortitude."
That's probably an accurate assessment of both Downey and the man he portrayed. But Downey's downfall after "Chaplin" really is another story, isn't it?
I can't help reflecting on the irony, though.
Downey was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Chaplin, yet Chaplin was seldom recognized with an Oscar nomination during his life (although he was given an honorary Oscar five years before his death).
Chaplin was a "genius," said George Bernard Shaw, and he was the world's best–known movie star by the end of World War I.
Twenty–two years after Chaplin's death, he was named the 10th–greatest male star of all time by the American Film Institute
Downey's performance was a fitting tribute to Chaplin's remarkable life, warts and all.
"Goooooooood morning, Vietnam! Hey, this is not a test! This is rock and roll! Time to rock it from the Delta to the D.M.Z.!"
I've been following Robin Williams since his "Mork and Mindy" days.
Few people have been as manic in public as Williams, and there have been few professional opportunities for him to let his wild side take over completely.
(I suppose one could argue that Williams only has one side, he is just judicious with its wildness.)
But I'm inclined to think that Williams' portrayal of disc jockey Adrian Cronauer had to be one of those opportunities. And he took advantage of it.
I've heard that most of Williams' radio broadcasts in the movie were improvised, and that would make sense.
Who else, after all, would think to say this while imitating Walter Cronkite?
"I just want to begin by saying to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt, what it is, what it shall be, what it was. The weather out there today is hot and shitty with continued hot and shitty in the afternoon. Tomorrow a chance of continued crappy with a pissy weather front coming down from the north. Basically, it's hotter than a snake's ass in a wagon rut."
How about this?
"What's the demilitarized zone? It sounds like something from the Wizard of Oz. 'Oh no don't go in there!' 'Ohhh wee ohh. Ho Chi Minh.' 'Oh look you've landed in Saigon. You're amongst the little people now.' 'We represent the ARVN army, the ARVN army. Oh no! Follow the Ho Chi Minh trail! Follow the Ho Chi Minh trail!' "
Who else would be irreverent enough to say this?
"Here are the headlines. Here they come right now. Pope actually found to be Jewish. Liberace is Anastasia and Ethel Merman jams Russian radar. The East Germans today claimed the Berlin Wall was a fraternity prank. Also the pope decided today to release Vatican–related bath products. An incredible thing, yes, it's the new Pope On A Rope. That's right. Pope On A Rope. Wash with it, go straight to heaven."
Certainly not the real Adrian Cronauer, who reportedly was nowhere near as hyperactive as Williams' character. I've heard he used no comedy in his broadcasts and simply left Vietnam when his tour of duty ended.
(Williams' Cronauer was taken off the air and given an honorable discharge provided he left quietly under shadowy circumstances.)
The real Cronauer story transferred to film wouldn't have made enough money to cover the producers' bus fare anywhere.
But the Williams treatment resulted in an Academy Award nomination.
He didn't win the Oscar (he lost to Michael Douglas). He deserved the nomination, though — it was, after all, his show, and his performance was dazzling — but he might not have been nominated if he hadn't been surrounded by a top–notch supporting cast.
Of all the noteworthy acting talent that provided that support, I think my favorite was Forest Whitaker as Eddie Garlick. Whitaker had been around for awhile — I first remember seeing him in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" — but I had never seen him like he was in "Good Morning, Vietnam."
For lack of a better term, Whitaker was Williams' sidekick, his straight man.
"No," Whitaker said at one point, "he's not all right. A man does not refer to Pat Boone as a beautiful genius if things are all right."
At another point, speaking of the stuffed shirt character (Bruno Kirby) who took over on–air duty when Cronauer was ushered out, Whitaker said, "We got one letter from a man who thought that Hauk's comedy was 'visionary and interesting.' The other 1100 calls say that the man can't do comedy to save his dick! That's a direct quote, sir."
And, boy, could he deliver a straight line.
But he could deliver punch lines, too. Like when he was asked why Bob Hope wouldn't come to Vietnam.
"He doesn't play police actions, just wars. Bob likes a big room, sir."
Mid–December has been a good period for Dustin Hoffman.
As I observed earlier this week, mid–December is when some of his best movies were released — "Tootsie" and "Wag the Dog" observed milestone anniversaries a few days ago.
Hoffman had been appearing on stage and screen for several years, but "The Graduate," which was released on this day in 1967, was his first major role.
It was a truly remarkable performance — especially since Hoffman was 30 when it premiered. If you're too young to remember the 1960s, that was the time when the admonition "Don't trust anyone over 30" was popular with young Americans, and Hoffman's character, from all appearances, was well under 30.
He gave every indication of being a traditional college student — i.e., one who entered and completed college after finishing high school rather than one who entered the work force out of high school and returned to school several years later. He came from an affluent family, the kind of family in which it would be expected that children would go on to college after completing high school.
It seemed to me, when I saw the movie for the first time, that "The Graduate" was all about expectations, what was expected of someone and what was not expected. And 1967, with the emerging "generation gap" and the growing rebellion of the young of that time, provided the perfect backdrop for such a story. The music of Simon and Garfunkel was the icing on the cake.
Now, just because one is a traditional college student does not mean one follows the same path as his/her classmates. And Benjamin Braddock's post–college path was almost certainly not like the one many of his classmates followed.
"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"
Benjamin was drifting, both in fact (in his parents' pool) and metaphorically, and he drifted into an affair with the wife of a family friend (Anne Bancroft), a situation that became even more complicated after he was introduced to her daughter (Katharine Ross) and fell in love with her.
It was already pretty comical. Clearly not very experienced in that sort of thing, Hoffman's clumsy meandering through the minefield of extramarital relationships was amusing in its way.
"It's like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up."
In hindsight, I guess, it was an unbeatable combination — Mike Nichols, not too far removed from his directorial triumph with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in the director's chair producing a film on a topic that was the hottest around.
By the time I was born, Walt Disney had an established reputation as the first — and last — word in animation.
My memory is that Disney and family entertainment were synonymous terms — and it was implied that animation was a big part of that although I have vivid memories of seeing Disney productions that had no animation whatsoever.
Hand–drawn film animation is a pretty crowded field (although perhaps the field is dominated by computer graphics artists today) — but, like anything else, it had to start somewhere.
And, 75 years ago today, it did.
Animated films had been around for awhile, but they had been in the short–feature form. My parents saw them in theaters when they were children; my generation knew them as Saturday morning cartoons. But, until this day in 1937, no one had made a feature–length movie in that format. And no one had produced an animated feature film in full color.
It's likely that animation would have progressed eventually, anyway, although I think it is equally likely that it would not have come as far as quickly as it did if not for Walt Disney.
And the root of that, it seems to me, has to be "Snow White," which premiered on this day in 1937.
It's hard to imagine the mindset, but the primary objection to the project was the belief that no one would be willing to sit through a 90–minute cartoon. Critics called the project "Disney's Folly" — yet, five years ago, the American Film Institute recognized it as one of the Top 100 movies of all time.
But Disney was a master showman who understood his audience better than almost any of his contemporaries. He knew that, for feature–length animation to be commercially successful, he needed to appeal to adults as well as children.
"Snow White" combined more realistic human features in the prince and Snow White, who faced the most dramatic circumstances, with the cartoonish dwarfs, who provided most of the comic relief.
One can argue that, with its tale of Prince Charming awakening a slumbering (and beautiful) Snow White with a kiss, the story and characters perpetuated stereotypes under which women have struggled for the last 7½ decades.
But, recently, Judith Welikala and Emily Dugan wrote in The Independent of how Disney's female characters have — to borrow an old advertising expression — come a long way, baby.
(I suppose it could be argued that they might not have come as far as they have in Disney movies if Disney had not died in 1966.)
The heroines of Disney's early movies, wrote Welikala and Dugan, had to have "a handsome prince, a tiny waist, a pearly white smile and an urgent need to be rescued."
Queen:Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?
In three–quarters of a century, they have evolved to be more independent, more self–reliant. More liberated.
Princess Merida of this year's "Brave," they observed, is "the first Disney princess who does not have a love interest."
That may be, as a columnist and Disney historian told Welikala and Dugan, more a reflection of the times. Women were more dependent on men in the 1930s. They entered the work force during World War II and many were reluctant to leave it after the war ended.
More and more women found themselves having to make the choice between their professional and personal lives. Although women were frequently told they could "have it all," most have found it a tricky — and elusive — accomplishment.
In many ways, "Snow White" is a glimpse into the values that prevailed in the 1930s — much as TV shows from the 1950s are said to epitomize that time in our social history — a time when children were told fairy tales they continued to believe into adulthood.
Last April, on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I watched the 1997 James Cameron film that was based on that event — and, ultimately, matched records for both Academy Award nominations and wins.
That film was released to theaters 15 years ago today.
I guess I hadn't watched that movie all the way through since I saw it on the big screen, but the movie brought back all kinds of memories of the time when I saw it.
I was deeply, passionately in love with a woman from my office, and we had just begun what turned out to be a very brief relationship — sort of like a shooting star one sees on the deepest of dark nights. It was a confusing, mysterious relationship that ended abruptly and painfully. Even now, there are things about it that I don't understand — and I'm not sure I want to so I don't think about her much.
But the centennial earlier this year of the actual Titanic's sinking — and now the anniversary of the release of that record–setting movie — have forced me to think about Liz and that time in our lives.
When "Titanic" made its debut, she had left town to spend the Christmas holidays with relatives in another state, and I didn't know she had returned until I received an e–mail from her. She was almost casual in her e–mail. She didn't announce "I'm back!" She just launched into a conversation.
(If she is still living, that's probably how she texts with the people in her life when she returns from a trip somewhere. She probably just picks up threads of weeks–old conversations — as if the intervening gap had never happened.)
"Have you seen Titanic yet?" she asked me. "I saw it the other day. It was really good."
I hadn't seen the movie yet, and I tried to get her to go see it with me, but she declined. She encouraged me to see it, but once was enough for her, she said.
So I went to see it alone — and first thought, when I walked into the viewing room at the multiscreen theater, that I had walked into the wrong room by mistake. On the screen were scenes from an undersea exploration, and I didn't make the immediate obvious connection — that this was a modern–day expedition to the wreckage site on the ocean floor.
I almost walked out to look for the correct viewing room when I saw some of the ship's wreckage, and I put two and two together.
Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio):Do you trust me?
Rose (Kate Winslet):I trust you.
Actually, I saw the movie twice in the first few months of 1998. The second time was with a woman who had been my first serious girlfriend many years earlier. She and her husband were in Dallas for some sort of professional conference, and I wound up taking her to see "Titanic" one Saturday afternoon while he was in a conference session.
That was weird and wonderful at the same time. I had rarely seen her since we broke up, but we got caught up on things quickly, and going to see a movie with her again really felt like old times — minus the awkward pressure of the teenage years. We treated each other like the old friends we were instead of the old lovers we used to be. She had been married for several years by that time, anyway, and she and her husband had had two children together.
Our lives had gone in different directions, and we both knew that. There were no attempts to recapture a past that was long gone, but we both were interested in each other and earnestly hoped the other was happy. I confided in her that I was in love, but, at that point, the relationship was sputtering. In my heart, I didn't think it would last much longer.
And it didn't. It went down — although not quite as spectacularly as the Titanic did.
But that's another story, anyway.
The re–creation of the sinking of the Titanic was about as accurate as it could be. I had read quite a bit about that event before I saw James Cameron's movie, and everything I saw lined up with what was known at the time.
The success of "Titanic" brought international acclaim for Leonardo DiCaprio, who was not nominated for an Oscar for his performance. His co–star, Kate Winslet, was nominated, but her performance was not generally well regarded. In fact, she was panned by many.
But, frankly, any talk that linked DiCaprio and/or Winslet to the blockbuster was a shot in the arm for their careers.
DiCaprio and Winslet were just appearing on moviegoers' radars at the time. Consequently, they generated the most talk.
But I felt that perhaps the most unheralded member of the cast was Gloria Stuart, who was a mere toddler when the actual Titanic sank and whose career began decades before her co–stars were born.
She played the old version of Rose, who appeared on the screen more often in the person of Winslet.
But Stuart's Rose had the wisdom that comes with age. Winslet's character was a teenager, flighty and uncomprehending about many things. It was hardly surprising when the dialogue that came from her mouth was inane.
Rose (Kate Winslet):It's so unfair.
Ruth (Frances Fisher):Of course it's unfair. We're women. Our choices are never easy.
Old Rose, on the other hand, had this reasonable response when told that no evidence of Jack being on board the Titanic had ever been found.
"No, there wouldn't be, would there? And I've never spoken of him until now. Not to anyone."
That, I suppose, was the net result of the Rose character's wisdom as she matured.
But even Stuart was capable of similarly schmaltzy dialogue — thanks to the writers.
"A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets."
That was a bit much for me, but it came near the end of the movie — and apparently it struck a responsive chord with many of the women who saw it.
And I had to admit that it didn't take anything away from what I thought had been a pretty good performance.
The Academy apparently agreed. Stuart was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (she lost to Kim Basinger). The actress who played Stuart's younger self, Winslet, also lost (to Helen Hunt).
Those were the exceptions to the rule. "Titanic" was nominated for 14 Oscars — and won 11.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
