Journal Entry #68
June 30, 2010
Seems like old times: The Ritz will be running Yankee Doodle Dandy, with James Cagney (who is probably my all-time favorite actor), tomorrow evening. We’ve seen it several times, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to sit in a theater with an audience and watch something of this caliber. I can remember almost fifty years ago, when I was stationed in D.C., going to one of the theaters for a Humphrey Bogart festival. We went several nights running for different pairs of films. And that might be the last time going to a movie became more or less like attending a party.
Cagney, of course, plays George M. Cohan.
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So it’s got me thinking about favorite movies. Like Casablanca, which is the best I’ve ever seen. And I love good comedies, especially British stuff of the 50’s and 60’s. Maureen got me a few for Father’s Day. Included among them: The Green Man, with Alistair Sim as a guy who’s a clockmaker by day, and the mad bomber by night. Though he only takes out those self-absorbed windbags who need desperately to be taken out. He started in junior high with the headmaster.
Also included is School for Scoundrels, with Sim again and Terry-Thomas. It’s based on One-Upmanship, by Stephen Potter. The ‘school’ refers to a program that teaches you how to stay ahead of the opposition in the game of life, as, for example, making sure your tennis opponent has the side of the court that faces the sun. The motto is: ’If you’re not one up, you’re one down.’
Another of my favorites is The Ladykillers, with Alec Guinness and Peters Sellers, in which an armored car robbery goes horribly awry. While I’m on the subject, I‘ll also recommend The Man in the White Suit (Alec Guinness), which describes what happens when Guinness’ character develops a cloth that stays pressed, repels dirt, and consequently threatens the British economy. And Two-Way Stretch, depicting a group of prisoners who realize they have the perfect alibi for knocking off a convoy carrying an expensive set of jewels.
And, naturally, the St Trinian’s films.
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In a more serious vein, we’ve become Foyle‘s War enthusiasts. It’s a British mystery series starring Michael Kitchen and Honeysuckle Weeks, set during and immediately after World War II. The stories are sharp, but it’s their setting in the history of the period that makes the series especially effective.
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Ben Bova’s Able One is an absorbing thriller set in our own time. I haven‘t quite finished it yet but it’s been an exhilarating ride down a very steep slope. Hang on, baby.
I’ve also been reading Stephen Ambrose’s history of the building of the transcontinental railroad, Nothing Like It in the World. It’s one of those books that tends to remind me how little I know about the history of my own country. For example, when I’ve thought of Lincoln, he was always either trying to manage the Civil War, or sitting in his box seat at Ford’s Theater while his lone guard took a break.
But he was the heart and soul of the effort to build the railroad to the Pacific. Without it, he realized, the country would be as divided east and west, as it had become north and south.
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I expect to finish the first draft of Firebird within the next few days.