BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:FILM #21

"Everyone out in Los Angeles huddled around the film industry as though it were a fire, stoking it with screenplays and starlets and deals. And the fire made you hot, depending on how close you could get to its center, how consistently you could string out your name or image with a recent hit. People behaved like heat-seeking missiles, and they would attach themselves to you as long as you were warm and glowing, as long as your name was the right size to fit over a marquee or at the bottom of a contract."

Carrie Fisher.Delusions of Grandma (New York: Pocket Books, 1994)
**

RAY BRADBURY READS THE FILM SCRIPT OF BUTTERFIELD 8

"Last week, MGM gave me a copy of the screenplay of Butterfield 8. My suggestion for a new title: Pigs at Trough. The whole project is so reprehensible I want to go out and campaign for the hydrogen bomb, one anyway, to drop on all the characters in the story."

Ray Bradbury in a letter to Don Congdon (August 22,1960).
Jonathan R. Eller, editor. Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury (New York: Simon & SChuster, 2023)
**
"Dame Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Mike Todd, had planned for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) to be her final movie, as she intended to retire from the screen. Todd had made a verbal agreement about this with MGM, but after his death, MGM forced Taylor to make this movie in order to fulfill the terms of her studio contract. As a result, Taylor refused to speak to director Daniel Mann for the entire production and hated this movie."
        IDMb Trivia for Butterfield 8


**

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS

"Davis is one of two actresses with five consecutive Academy Award nominations. She shares the honor with Greer Garson, who beat Davis to win for Mrs. Miniver (1942). In 1962, she became the first person to have been nominated for 10 Oscars, a feat surpassed only by Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, and Jack Nicholson. A write-in campaign for her part in Of Human Bondage (1934) adds another, unofficial, nomination. She won the Best Actress Award for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938). A win for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? would have made her the first three-time winner in a non-supporting category."

INTERESTING TRIVIA (APRIL 29, 2023)


*

HENRY MILLER GOES TO THE MOVIES IN GREECE TO SEE JUAREZ (1939)


" Despite the fact that Greece is under a dictatorship this film, which was only slightly modified after the first few showings, was shown night and day to an increasingly packed house. The atmosphere was tense, the applause distinctly Republican. For many reasons the film had some significance for the Greek people. One felt that the spirit of Venizelos was still alive. In that blunt and magnificent speech which Juarez makes to the assembled plenipotentiaries of the foreign powers one felt that the tragic plight of Mexico under Maximilian had curious and throbbing analogies with the present perilous position of Greece."

Henry Miller. The Colossus of Maroussi (New York: New Directions, 1941)

**

JUAREZ (1939)
 Because the film shows many of Maximilian's generals to be Mexican, many viewers attribute it to typical Hollywood historical distortions. It is, however, indeed accurate. It's a little-known fact that, although Maximilian was eventually overthrown and executed by Mexican revolutionaries, there were actually more Mexicans fighting on Maximilian's side than against him. This was due in large part to the Catholic Church's strong support of the French occupation of Mexico and its "encouraging" Mexican Catholics to fight against the revolutionary forces by joining Maximilian's army, which they did in large numbers."

iDMb Ttivia "Juarez"
**


BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S


"It’s hard to imagine any other actress besides Hepburn bringing Holly Golightly to life on the silver screen. But her casting faced some strong opposition from the book’s author. Capote had envisioned Marilyn Monroe in the role. He later stated, "Paramount double-crossed me in every way and cast Audrey. She was just wrong for that part."

from TRIVIA GENIUS (July 2022)
'**


MOVIE NIGHT IN CLEVELAND, 1949

Is every theater in the world named Rialto
Showing The Sands of Iowa Jima with John Wayne?
This I understand: Better to play soldier
Than to actually be one.
The underused piano in the pit
With its terrible yellowed ivories
Grimaces like Prisoners of War,
Then row upon row upon row,
Red chairs not exactly velvet,
Many with the stuffing pulled through,
Bayonets to the eye.
The red carpet soiled with black sand
(Called by the Japanese uzura seki)
is wild with wounds. Forrest Tucker
Is bayoneted by a Japanese soldier.
No Japanese in this theater.
The film is nearly over
When some tow-headed soldier dozes off,
Perhaps dreaming of Pas-de-Calais
Or some foreign landscape
Curiously labeled Theater of War,
Where tanks lined up in rows.
A parachute of popcorn
Descends from the balcony
As some teen-ager howls
With studied bravery.
Once the film stops, lights come on,
& all of us dig in 
For what we want. 
Sponsored by our local  Bank,
Invasion of lucky numbers
For prizes dangling 
Like Congressional decorations.
In front of our eyes
A lifetime supply of dishes,
Radios, nylons, 4 gallons of gas,
Black market residue.
The MC surrenders
Something new, a television set.
A pint-sized Marshall plan
Right in the middle of an American city.
Bob Feller pitching tomorrow.
Whistle, whistle, whistle.
What time does the next war start?


Louis Phillips



**



LJP