"74"

Ever since I first saw “The Awful Truth” on New Years’ Day, 1985 at New York’s Cinema Village Theater, I have been a vocal champion of this timeless screwball classic from 1937. Even with a crushing hangover, my (then-future) wife and I were convulsed, and I knew I had found a film I would return to for the rest of my life.

In the years after the smashing success of Mike Nichols’s “The Graduate” (1967), Anne Bancroft came to believe that her portrayal of Mrs. Robinson, the bored middle-aged wife and mother who seduces newly minted college grad Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), overshadowed the rest of her career.

There are just a few authentic  geniuses in the history of cinema whose names and work must be remembered. High on that list is Jacques Tati.

Eli Wallach was known as one of our most versatile performers. Though Jewish, he played Mexican, Italian, and assorted other ethnic characters with the same fluency and assurance.

With the gradual passing of opening movie credits, we also lost a vital element that distinguishes many so-called “classic” movies: the original music score, including a heroic, memorable opening theme. What’s the last film you remember that had a score you could hum while walking home from the theater — a piece of music you knew you'd always remember and associate with the film?

At the outset, many in Hollywood pigeonholed her as “kooky.” As most of us now realize, she was — and is — considerably more than that: smart, funny, complex, and yes, quirky, but in a thoroughly winning way. She is, in short, wonderfully human.

In 1910, the prestigious Fred Karno theatrical troupe in England got the chance to tour America.  Its star attraction, a twenty-one-year-old performer named Charles Chaplin, was on-board that first ship crossing the Atlantic.

It always irked Gene Kelly that dancing was considered an effeminate activity for men. When his mother first enrolled him and his brother in dance classes when Gene was still a boy, he had to endure taunts from his classmates which he promptly settled with his fists.

Early in 1973, producer David Brown was scanning the literature section of Cosmopolitan, a magazine edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown. His eyes fell upon a brief plot description of an upcoming novel by Peter Benchley called “Jaws,” which concerned an immense great white shark terrorizing a summer resort community in New England. The book editor ended his summary as follows: “Might make a good movie.”