PhillipsMiscellany

BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF WRITING

THE MOST URGENT QUESTION FOR A WRITER

The most urgent question for a writer may seem to be, What experiences do I have as my material, what experiences do I feel able tonarrate? But that’s not right. The most pressing question is, What is the word, what is the rhythm of the sentence, what tone best suits the things I know.

Elena Ferrante in The Paris Review (Spring 2015)

JOHN Le CARRE

John Le Carre,
Reading Sister Carrie,
Wondered if his agent Smiley was wiser
Than many characters created by Theodore Dreiser?
**

I think the catalyst for a book is when the writer runs out of money.

Richard Gid Powers

HOW GROWING OLD AFFECTS CHARACTERS IN LITERATURE

The Two Musketeers

Little Adult Women

Tom Swift R.I.P.

OF POETS & NOVELISTS

“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.”

William Faukner. Interviewed by Jein Stein vanden Heuvel in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, edited by Malcolm Cowley (New York: A Viking Compass Book, 1959)

LIVING WITHIN THE STORY WE TELL ABOUT OUR LIVES

“I believe most of us tell a story about our lives and then come to live within that story. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell a coherent story about yourself. You can know what to do next only if you know what story you are a part of. ‘A man is always a teller oc tales,’ the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed.’ ‘He lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them, and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.”

David Brooks.”A Theory of Musk’s Maniacal Drive” in The New York Times (September 22, 2023), p. A24.

Dogs wag their tails, but tales wag the world.

BILLY WILDER ON THE WRITING OF LOVE STORIES

“And now we have Billy Wilder’s famous dictum posed as a Talmudic question, in re love stories: What keeps them apart?”

David Mamet. Bambi versus Godzilla (NY: Pantheon Books, 2007)

HOW GROWING OLD AFFECTS CHARACTERS IN

LITERATURE

The Two Musketeers

Little Adult Women

Tom Swift R.I.P.

NASA’s Million-Dollar Typo

“On July 22, 1962, NASA’s Mariner 1 spacecraft, designed for a mission to Venus, was set to launch from Cape Canaveral. But just minutes after liftoff, the shuttle had to be destroyed due to a course deviation. The culprit behind this mission-ending error was a simple coding mistake. While it’s been widely reported that a missing hyphen in the software coding was to blame, NASA has said that it was an “omission of an overbar for the symbol R for radius (R instead of R̅) in an equation,” as well as a guidance antenna on the atlas, that caused the failure. Mariner 1 was set to be America’s first interplanetary probe. It set NASA back $18.5 million (over $180 million today), an amount that led 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke to call it “the most expensive hyphen in history.” Just 36 days later, Mariner 2 successfully launched and flew by Venus, becoming humankind’s first successful scientific planetary mission.”

HISTORY FACTS (October 19, 2024)

EPIGRAPH

This book was written in those long hours I spent waiting for my wife to get dressed to goout. And if she had never gotten dressed at all, this book would never have been written.

Epigraph to Groucho Marx’s Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (New York: Bernard Geiss Associates, 1963)

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

Samuel Johnson

“George Orwell’s wife was a nasty snitch. The launch party for ‘Lolita’ was nearly a flop when censors threatened to spoil the fun. Saul Bellow was a needy fusspot. Mick Jagger could not tell a story. The biologist James Watson could, but he expressed such misogyny that readers, even in the 1960s, were alarmed. The anecdotes pile up in a new biograpy of George Weidenfeld, the founder of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a publisher”

unsigned review of The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing. in The Economist (September 23rd,2023)

**ON THE EXCLAMATION POINT !

“punctuation didn’t really get its start until the invention of the printing press standardized certain practices. Before that, a few scribes from the late Middle Ages used the interjection “io” at the end of sentences to indicate joy, or more generally, surprise or excitement. Like a lot of other things that were rolled out with positive associations, io got tied to a lot of other extreme emotions, but not before it started getting condensed into a sign that was less and less easy to parse as a pair of letters:” T. Campbell. Email post. May 9, 2024

SQUINK
I have spent most of my life
Speaking off camera,
Outside the frame,
Outside of somebody's world.

Where do our words go?
Inside & outside 
Of houses, offices, school rooms,
The entire menagerie

Of verbal kingdoms. What is it
We wish to say?
Allow me into your lives,
If only for a small wedge,

A squink of revelation.
We are all drowning
In misunderstandings,
Squinks of the word HELP!

Balooning from our mouths.

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF WRITING

"I didn't know you could do this! I didn't know you could write this way! It was so open. So close to the bone. So convesational . The Catcher in the Rye showed me you could write to someone you'd never met as if you were talking to someone you'd always known."

Elizabeth Berg in The Book That Changed My Life, edited by
Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen (New York: Gotham Books, 2006)
**

THE MOST TRANSLATED DOCUMENT IN THE WORLD

The most translated document in the world is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), created by the United Nations in 1948. Available in over 500 languages, this landmark text ensures everyone, everywhere, can read about their fundamental rights—even if it means translating it into Klingon. Drafted in the wake of World War II, the UDHR is a powerful reminder of the universal principles of freedom, equality, and dignity. Its widespread translation speaks to its global importance—though coordinating all those translations might have been a bigger diplomatic challenge than writing the document itself.
Source: United Nations
TRIVIA GENIUS (March 6, 2025)

WHEN ARTIE SHAW AND AVA GARDNER WERE DIVORCING

When Artie Shaw and Ava Gardner were divorcing
on account of cruelty, the judge asked Ava
what Artie had done that was so cruel.
"He made me read The Magic Mountain," Ava said.
She got the divorce right away.
(The story might not be true
but I love it anyway.)

Esther Cohen
**
RAY BRADBURY ON ADAPTING MOBY DICK TO THE SCREEN FOR DIRECTOR JOHN HOUSTON

"I never have given a damn for Fedallah. Houston and I discussed him the first day I arrived in Ireland. I said, 'Number one, do I kill off Fedallah before I start the script?' 'Oh, God, yes,' said Houston, 'throw him out.' And so I did, and nobody will ever make me feel sorry. He bungles the works. It's a shame Melville didn't get rid of him too. There's more than enough in the way of mystic symbols and action in the book to carry the message, without Fedallah creeping out,
"It's interesting to see that in two versions of Moby published, for kids, in the last two years, both have adopted my ending, rather than Melville's...."

Ray Bradbury in a letter to Sam Sackett (January 18, 1958)
Nathan R. Eller, Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023)
**

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
—Tom Clancy
**

GEORGE ORWELL'S WIFE

"George Orwell's wife was a nasty snitch. The launch party for 'Lolita' was nearly a flop when censors threatened to spoil the fun. Saul Bellow was a needy fusspot. Mick Jagger could not tell a story. The biologist James Watson could, but he expressed such misogyny that readers, even in the 1960s, were alarmed. The anecdotes pile up in a new biograpy of George Weidenfeld, the founder of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a publisher"

unsigned review of The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing. in The Economist (September 23rd,2023)
**
ON THE EXCLAMATION POINT !

"Punctuation didn’t really get its start until the invention of the printing press standardized certain practices. Before that, a few scribes from the late Middle Ages used the interjection “io” at the end of sentences to indicate joy, or more generally, surprise or excitement. Like a lot of other things that were rolled out with positive associations, io got tied to a lot of other extreme emotions, but not before it started getting condensed into a sign that was less and less easy to parse as a pair of letters:"
T. Campbell. Email post. May 9, 2024
**
HOW MICHAEL CONNELLY, AT AGE 16, RENEWED HIS INTEREST IN CRIME & MYSTERIES

The following paragraph comes from the Wikipedia article on Bosch’s creator:

"At age 16, Connelly's interest in crime and mystery escalated when, on his way home from his work as a hotel dishwasher, he witnessed a man throw an object into a hedge. Connelly decided to investigate and found that the object was a gun wrapped in a lumberjack shirt. After putting the gun back, he followed the man to a bar and then left to go home to tell his father. Later that night, Connelly brought the police down to the bar, but the man was already gone. This event introduced Connelly to the world of police officers and their lives, impressing him with the way they worked."

**
ON NIGHT OWLS & THE CREATIVE MUSE

Night owls who find the creative muse during the dark hours should learn the verb “lucubrate,” which means “to write or study, especially by night.” It comes from the Latin verb “lucubrare,” which specifies working by lamplight. Horror fiction author H.P. Lovecraft insisted lucubration was most suited to his craft: “At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.”

WORD DAILY (November 20, 2024)

https://worddaily.com/words/Lucubrate/
**
JOHN STEINBECK'S DOG ATE HIS HOMEWORK

A "minor tragedy stalked," Steinbeck wrote in a letter to his literary agent on May 27, 1936. "My setter pup [Toby], left alone one night, made confetti of about half of my ms. [manuscript] book. Two months work to do over again. ... There was no other draft." Yet whatever anguish the author initially felt over seeing his months of hard work reduced to shreds had clearly tempered by the time he sat down to write the letter. "I was pretty mad but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically," Steinbeck continued. "I didn't want to ruin a good dog for a ms. I'm not sure is good at all. He only got an ordinary spanking with his punishment flyswatter. But there's the work to do over from the start."

Fortunately, Toby's drastic edits proved but a temporary obstacle in the gestating story's path to completion. Inspired by his new surroundings, which included a study crafted to his liking, Steinbeck restarted his tale of codependent migrant workers George and Lennie and furiously plowed through revisions until submitting what became Of Mice and Men to his editors in August."

HISTORY FACTS (January 22, 2025)
**

ON WRITING WITH A QUILL PEN

The use of quill pens dates back to the sixth century CE, when the feathers of large birds — primarily geese, turkeys, swans, and even crows — replaced the reed pens that had been used previously. Though it’s an obsolete writing utensil today, the quill pen remains a symbol of education, literature, and artistic expression. Many important historical documents were written using quill and ink, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence, and white quills are still laid out every day the U.S. Supreme Court is in session. "

HiSTORY FACTS Website (February 7, 2025)

https://historyfacts.com/science-industry/article/we-tried-writing-with-a-quill-and-heres-what-we-learned
**

Whizz-bang--coined by Charles Dickens

“Whizz-bang” was used in The Pickwick Papers to describe the sound of a gunshot. Today, “whizz-bang” (or “whiz-bang”) refers to a resounding success, as in, “She ran a whizz-bang campaign.” During WWII, it had a meaning closer to how Dickens used it, as a small-caliber shell.

WORD SMARTS (March 18, 2025)
**
ON WRITING POETRY

I have stood on the high ridges
Of abandoned mines,
Studying whatever Nature does
Under such conditions,
Half-singing to myself
"I am standing on the high ridges
Of abandoned mines."

If I were standing on a beach
Watching high waves
Crash against the face
Of once rugged rocks,
Would I sing to myself
"I am standing on the high ridges
Of abandoned mines."

Of course, I would.

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: BASEBALL

“Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a communist.” Alvin Dark

THE BIGGEST BLOW-OUT IN MLB HISTORY

The biggest blowout game in major-league history was on August 22, 2007, when the Texas Rangers beat the Baltimore Orioles, 30-3. That’s a 27-run differential. It eclipsed the 25 runs between the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Browns on June 8, 1950, at Fenway Park, a game that ended up 29-4..

BASEBALL’S SECOND LONGEST HITTING STREAK

By the time DiMaggio’s streak ended two months and 55 games later, he had set a record that many baseball experts consider to be unbreakable. So far, they have yet to be proved wrong. While DiMaggio himself said that he believed that someone would one day surpass his 56-game hitting streak, in the 80 years since he set the record, nobody has even come close. The longest American League hitting streak since, achieved by Hall of Famer Paul Molitor in 1987, was just 39 games long, a full two weeks shy of Joltin’ Joe’s seemingly immortal record.” Pete Rose had a 44 game hitting streak in ’78. .

BABE RUTH IN THE BABE COMES HOME (1927)

Babe Comes Home is a 1927 American silent sports comedy film produced and distributed through First National and directed by Ted Wilde. The film is a baseball-styled sports film centering on Babe Ruth and Anna Q. Nilsson and was based on the short story “Said With Soap” by Gerald Beaumont.^[1]

The film was released in the short-lived Vocafilm sound-on-film process, presumably a music and effects soundtrack but with no dialogue. Babe Comes Home is considered to be a lost film.

WIKIPEDIA

The film was briefly banned from some Chicago-area theaters in response to a scene with Babe Ruth using chewing tobacco.

iMDb Trivia

That feller runs splendid but he needs help at
the plate,which coming from the country chasing
rabbits all winter give him strong legs, although
he broke one falling out of a tree, which shows
they can’t tell, and when a curve ball comes he
waves at it and if pitchers don’t throw curves
you have no pitching staff, so how is a manager
going to know whether to tell boys to fall out
of trees and break legs so he can run fast
even if he can’t hit a curve ball?

Casey Stengel

from THE RANDOM HOUSE TREASURY OF
HUMOROUS QUOTATIONS, edited by
Louis Phillips and William Cole (New
York: Random House, 1996)

HISTORY FACTS (June 27, 2024

” Mays was in the prime of his career in 1963, but his finances were a mess. The Giants’ star outfielder had plunged into debt amid divorce proceedings. Even with more than half of his career home runs under his belt, he was staring down bankruptcy. Then he met Jacob Shemano.

“…: Shemano, a banker and financial adviser, offered to help on one condition: He wouldn’t take a dime for his work. What began with Shemano rescuing Mays from bankruptcy evolved into a close friendship that spanned generations, and made Mays an honorary member of the San Francisco Jewish community. He appeared at events so often that Mays was eventually invited into the local Concordia-Argonaut Club — a Jewish social club — as the first Black member.”

Louis Keene. THE FORWARD (June 19,2024)

))

Babe Ruth Calls His Shot

One of the most famous home runs in baseball history occurred in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the New York Yankees. At the top of the fifth inning, Yankees slugger Babe Ruth, often considered the greatest baseball player of all time, faced off against Cubs pitcher Charlie Root with two balls and two strikes. Just before the pitch, Ruth pointed toward the outfield, and when the pitch came, he hit a towering home run to center field. In the newspapers the next day, ecstatic reporters announced that Ruth had “called his shot,” and that his gesture toward the bleachers was a prediction of the home run he would hit on the next pitch. Thus was born one of the greatest legends in baseball history. Although the exact details of where exactly Ruth was pointing and why are disputed, the home run that became known as the “called shot” has nevertheless become an immortal part of the Great Bambino’s legacy.

HISTORY FACTS website

THE FIRST WOMAN TO PLAY PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL FOR A BIG LEAGUE TEAM

When Hank Aaron left the Negro American League to play for Major League Baseball, Toni Stone was called up from the minors to replace him, making her the first woman to regularly play professional baseball for a big-league team.

ONE GOOD FACT website (March 07, 2024)

DEWOLF HOPPER PERFORMING “CASEY AT THE BAT”

…(actor once tried to count the ‘countless times’ andgave up around ten thousand, or at least that’s his story). He committed ‘Casey’ to andv –though he wasn’t involved in the first two one-reel motion pictures bearing the title of his most famous recitation (the first filmed by Edison in 1899, the second by Vitagraph in 1913 with Harry T. Morey in the lead) –it was inevitable that DeWolf Hopper would star in a feature length version of Casey at the Bat.

“The film was produced in early 1916 by Fine Arts….”

Hal Erickson. The Baseball Filmography: 1915 through 2001 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company,

2002)

WILLIE MAYS

“He often had a strange sort of premonition about that. Lying down at night, watching TV, suddenly a flyball would come out to him, and he’d know how to deal with it. The next day he would recognize that very ball, because he had seen it the night before. But second, where the Catch was concerned, that was not the most important bit of the play. The vital part was to instantly do a 180 , whirl around (cap off) and hurl the ball to the infield, so the runners at the bases couldn’t score.”

GROVER CLEVELAND ALEXANDER

Although Grover Cleveland Alexander was one of baseball’s all-time great pitchers (having won 373 big league games), he suffered from epilepsy and sometimes had seizures in the dug-out. When his life story was brought to the screen, he was portrayed by Ronald Reagan,

FRENCH AUTHORS & BASEBALL

“Mr. Flaubert, who always threw them perfectly straight, hard, high, and inside. Then , Mr. Baudelaire, that I learned my knuckle ball from, and Mr. Rimbaud, who never threw a fastball in his life.”

Ernest Hemingway, quoted by Lillian Ross in her New Yorker profile in The New Yorker (May 15, 1950)

TED WILLIAMS’ ADVICE ON LIFE

“You gotta be ready for the fastball.”
 Sure. But Life throws
 Curves & spitters.
More sliders than all
The fastballs put together.  Shows
No compunction about tossing
A high fast one
At your head, sending you
Sprawling to the ground.
You can’t count on the Umpire
To show any compassion.
 Once in a while
 A l00mph fastball 
 Will enter your wheelhouse,
 So swing from your heels.
 If you miss
 Well,it’s not the only game in town.

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF A MISLAID LIFE: AMERICANA

In 1997 David Bowie raised $55 million by selling investors securities backed by the royalties of 25 of his albums. The so-called “Bowie Bonds” had a 7.9% return over 10 years, higher than the 6.37 percent of a 10-year U.S. Treasury note.

ONE GOOD FACT website June 06, 2024
**
Benjamin Franklin Designed the First Penny

"Long before Abraham Lincoln’s portrait graced the face of the one-cent piece, founding father Benjamin Franklin reportedly conceived of an early coin design now known as the “Fugio” penny. Franklin’s concept was first approved and manufactured under the watchful eye of the Congress of the Confederation in 1787, predating the U.S. Mint’s production by several years. The Fugio penny’s obverse depicts a sun and sundial accompanied by the Latin word “fugio” (translating to “I fly”), as well as the phrase “Mind Your Business.” On its other side, the reverse, the cent features the words “We Are One,” surrounded by 13 chain links to represent the original 13 colonies. All told, U.S. pennies have featured 11 different designs throughout history."

INTERESTING FACTS website (March 8, 2025)
**

THE SMALLEST UNIT OF U.S CURRENCY

For now, the penny survives as the smallest unit of U.S. currency — but that wasn’t always the case. When the U.S. Mint was established in 1792, it made 10 denominations of coins, and the smallest was the half-cent. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed the half-cent for two reasons: so America’s poorest residents could buy smaller quantities of items for less money, and so merchants could price their wares more competitively in smaller increments. Average wages in the 1790s were around $65 a year, so a half-penny made sense for purchasing everyday items.

**
HANGMAN PRESIDENT

Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump are the only U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms, but Grover Cleveland also holds another record—the only president who was also a hangman. As sheriff of Buffalo, New York, Grover Cleveland personally operated the lever of the gallows during two men’s executions.

INTERESTING FACTS (May 17, 2023)
**
At 3 O'clock
on Saturday afternoon
Theodore ROOSEVELT
WILL WALK
on the
WATERS OF LAKE MICHIGAN

Spurious flyer distributed at the Republican National Convention (1932)

Nancy McPhee. The Book of Insults: Ancient and Modern (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1994)
**
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN THE WRESTLING HALL OF FAME

"Standing 6 feet, 4 inches tall, Lincoln was a formidable opponent in amateur wrestling. At age 19, he reportedly defended his stepbrother’s river barge by throwing potential hijackers overboard. In 1831, he wrestled and defeated Jack Armstrong, the leader of a local gang in New Salem, Illinois. While some reports claim the pair may have actually fought to a stalemate, the bout earned Lincoln respect and a reputation for being tough. Lincoln continued to wrestle while studying law, and legend has it that he amassed more than 300 victories during a 12-year period, losing just one time. Lincoln was honored with the National Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Outstanding American award in 1992."

HISTORY FACTS (Feb. 23, 2025)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQZTMSlSjbRvPwQBtVxHJGPrPTg
**
Amelia Earhart Once Took Eleanor Roosevelt on a Nighttime Joyride

"Although her aviation career lasted just 17 years, Amelia Earhart remains one of the most famous people ever to take to the sky. In addition to being renowned for her many firsts — including being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and the first person to fly alone from Hawaii to the mainland U.S. — she’s known for her 1937 disappearance and the many theories it spawned. Less well known but considerably more fun to imagine is the time she took Eleanor Roosevelt on a nighttime joyride from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore on April 20, 1933. The brief flight took place with both of them in their evening wear following a White House dinner party.
“I’d love to do it myself. I make no bones about it,” the First Lady told the Baltimore Sun after the flight. “It does mark an epoch, doesn’t it, when a girl in an evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night.” In fact, Roosevelt herself had recently received a student pilot license and briefly took over the controls of the
twin-engine Curtiss Condor, borrowed from Eastern Air Transport at nearby Hoover Field. Eleanor’s brother Hall also ditched the dinner party in favor of the flight that night..."

INTERESTING FACTS (March 8, 2024)

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CARRIE NATION ON STAGE

"For years in the 1900's Carrie Nation not only demolished saloons with her hatchet but publicly knocked cigars from
men's mouths and berated women for wearing evening gowns. Nothing daunted her until the night she did her 'hatchet act --
for $300 --on the stage of Meiner's Burlesque on the New York Bowery, when she was almost drowned in the heaviest barrage
of eggs ever laid down by an Amerian audience."

Frelig Foster. "Keeping Up With the World" in Colliers (July 25, 1936)
**
SPEED TRAP

Heading toward that tourist destination:
Fame & Fortune,
I took exit ramp 10A & ended up
In a town with a 5 MPH speed limit.

Police on motorcycles,
Appearingj from behind billboards,
With alacrity escorted me
To the nearest judge.

I was fined a zillion dollars for speeding.
Then slapped into a cell
Labelled obscurity
When I could not pay.

Ah, well. Sour grapes galore.
The Goddess of Fame
Is far too fickle
& obvioudly not at all my type.

Louis Phillips

BITS AND PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM #31

OPENING REMARKS TO THE YALE LAW SCHOOL FILM SOCIETY

"I have been asked what it is like to be a personage of the cinema. [long pause] It's like being trampled to death by geese."
Robert Mitchum. Reported by Brad Darrach in Penthouse, 1972
**

WHEN BRADFORD CRAWFORD DRANK FRANK SINATRA'S WIG

"He drank Sinatra's piece. We were trying to pull it away from him. He's got this hairpiece halfway down, and he takes a glass of vodka and downs the goddamn thing. So, I called Frank -- Frank was in Palm Springs -- I said , 'Guess, what? The Crawford just drank your wig.' He said, 'Good, I don't have to show up Mondays.'"
Jerry Roberts. Mitchum In His Own Words (New York: Limelight Editions, 2000)
**
ON MOVIE-GOING AT A VERY YOUNG AGE

"My mother used to take me to the movies when I was as young as three or four. She did menial work and factory jobs during the day, and when she came home, the only company she had was her son. So she'd bring me with her to the movies. She didn't know she was supplying me with a future. I was immediately
attached to watching actors on the screen. Since I never had playmates in our apartment and we didn't have television yet,
I would have nothing but time to thing about the movie I had last seen. I'd go through the characters in my head, and I would bring them to life, one by one, in the apartment. I learned at an early age to make friends with my imagination.

Al Pacino. Sonny Boy: a memoir (New York: Penguin Press, 2024)
**
THE CAR CHASE in THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)

The car chase was filmed without obtaining the proper permits from the city. Members of the NYPD's tactical force helped control traffic. But most of the control was achieved by the assistant directors with the help of off-duty NYPD officers, many of whom had been involved in the actual case. The assistant directors, under the supervision of Terence A. Donnelly, cleared traffic for approximately five blocks in each direction. Permission was given to literally control the traffic signals on those streets where they ran the chase car. Even so, in many instances, they illegally continued the chase into sections with no traffic control, where they actually had to evade real traffic and pedestrians. Many of the (near) collisions in the movie were therefore real and not planned (with the exception of the near-miss of the lady with the baby carriage, which was carefully rehearsed). A flashing police light was placed on top of the car to warn bystanders. A camera was mounted on the car's bumper for the shots from the car's point-of-view. Hackman did some of the driving but the extremely dangerous stunts were performed by Bill Hickman, with Friedkin filming from the backseat. Friedkin operated the camera himself because the other camera operators were married with children and he was not.
iMBd Trivia
**
HOWARD HAWKS & CAROL LOMBARD

Howard Hawks allowed John Barrymore and Carole Lombard to improvise freely during filming. "When people are as good as those two, the idea of just sticking to lines is rather ridiculous," he told Peter Bogdanovich in an interview. "Because if Barrymore gets going, and he had the ability to do it, I'd just say, 'Go do it.' And Lombard would answer him; she was such a character, just marvelous." Hawks then told a story about Lombard coming to him one day to complain about studio head Harry Cohn making passes at her. Between them, the director and star worked out a plan to embarrass their boss. Hawks was in Cohn's office, having a serious discussion with him, when Lombard burst in to exclaim, "I've decided to say yes!" As Cohn watched in shock, she made as if to begin removing her clothes. Hawks said self-righteously, "I'd better get out of here if this is the kind of studio you run." A shaken Cohn asked Lombard to leave, and she never had any further problems with him.

iMDb Trivia for TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934)
**
The Uncredited Cat in “The Godfather”

"The opening scene of The Godfather, in which Vito Corleone opines on the meaning of friendship to a justice-seeking Amerigo Bonasera, was part of the script. The friendly cat nestled into star Marlon Brando’s lap? Not so much. Director Francis Ford Coppola recalled he “saw the cat running around the studio, and took it and put it in [Brando’s] hands without a word.” But while the feline’s presence helped magnify the tension of the scene, its incessant purring reportedly drowned out much of Brando’s distinct mumbling, forcing sound editors to redub the dialogue."
INTERESTING FACTS website (February 13, 2025)
**
AVA GARDNER FLUFFS A LINE DURING THE FILMING OF
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA

" He (JOHN HOUSTON) was certainly capable of being displeased, and his sarcasm and cold shoulder could be withering, but with Ava he never showed impatience or disappoinytment (not even when for more than a dozen takes she persisted in blowing the same line, saying "My husband Frank" instead of "My husband Fred").
Lee Server. Ava Gardner: 'Love is Nothing' ( New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2006)
**

Martin Luther King Jr. paid for Julia Roberts' birth

"Julia Roberts, the actress best known for her roles in Pretty Woman, Erin Brockovich, and Steel Magnolias, was born in Smyrna, Georgia, in 1967. But when it came time for her parents, Betty and Walter Roberts, to take home their new bundle of joy, there was one hiccup: They couldn’t afford the hospital bill. That’s when Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King — friends of the Roberts’ — stepped in to help, covering the cost of the future actress’s birth. "

INTERESTING FACTS (February 12, 2025)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQZTCqZGbRwTMPjPbdqdHkQpkTh
**
WOODY ALLEN IN THE NUDE

Playboy: It's rumored that you always contrive to be seen
nude in every film you make. Is this true?

Allen: I have done a nude scene for every picture, but you can't
tell because I have Dacron flesh.

PLAYBOY Magazine Woody Allen interviewed by Sol Weinstein (May 1967)
**

HOW DO THE MOVIES DO IT

7:43 A.M.
I do not wish to be entertained,
By lovers unknotting
Picture-perfect bodies.
Nobody, not even my doctor
Wants to see me naked.

How do the movies do it?
With music over
& under all, violins, harps,
As men, women, & others
Backlit & keylit,
In frame after frame,

Tumble over each other,
Yet there is
No more love in the world
Than there was before.
When properly lit,
How seductive are

Kingside beds unmade.
Time to go to work.
How about some lipstick
On my cheek or collar?
Have I learned nothing
From silver-screen romance
Except that there is

More of it than I shall
Ever need or learn from.
Do atmosphere people count?

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF READING

READING IN MOVIES

Harry is shown reading the Stephen King novel "Misery". The film adaptation Misery (1990) would be the next film directed by Rob Reiner.
iMDb Trivia for When Harry Met Sally
**
THE OLDEST SURVIVING WRITTEN TALE

The “Epic of Gilgamesh” Is the Oldest Surviving Written Tale
The ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh is often cited as the oldest known surviving story. This epic poem tells the tale of King Gilgamesh, the part-divine ruler of the ancient city of Urek, who battles terrible monsters sent forth by spiteful gods and seeks out a plant that brings eternal youth. Derived from sources that date back to approximately 2100 BCE, the first full version of Gilgamesh appeared on cuneiform tablets early the following millennium.
But while this would be an early example of a story that could be held and read, it’s more accurate to refer to Gilgamesh as the oldest known work of narrative literature. If you consider visual art capable of telling a story, then there are plenty of surviving creations that predate the written word."
"
HISTORY FACTS (February 2, 2025)
https://historyfacts.com/arts-culture/article/what-is-the-worlds-oldest-story/
**]
ONE OF TOLSTOY'S GREAT STRENGTHS

"One of Tolstoy’s great strengths is his understanding of just how much lying there is in war —- lying to one’s enemies, lying to one’s own side, lying to oneself. At times, the Russians wildly underestimate Napoleon and overestimate their own military skill; at other times, they’re ready to give up and declare Napoleon completely invincible. There’s a bit where a character is fleeing Moscow even as she claims Moscow will never be invaded, and when called on this, she stammers, “Well, I’m just leaving because everyone else is leaving!”

T.CAMPBELL, editor of WORDPLAY
**

ON THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

"We know a good deal about the genesis of the novel from Dostoevsky's letters and notebooks. When he went abroad in July 1865 , he had plans in mind for two separate works -- one, a long novel to be called The Drunkards, dealing with 'the current problem of drunkeness' as he wrote when proposing it to the editor of Fatherland Notes (who turned it down); the other ,'the psychological account of a crime,' an idea that had first come to him in prison fifteen years earlier.'"

Richard Prevear. Forward to Crime and Punishment, translated and annotated by Richard Prevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Classics,1993)

**
FICTIONAL CHARACTERS AND HOW OLD THEY ARE

"Since they are not properly alive, people in books can be any age—they can be five hundred and two as easily as they can be twenty-seven. An age does not just fix a character in their book’s internal timeline; it establishes characters in relation to each other. In Great Expectations, decrepit Miss Havisham is, however improbably, in her mid-thirties when Pip first meets her as a boy, but if we understand her as somebody who has willingly thrown her youth away, her age makes a little more sense. Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet, is thirteen, which puts her firmly still under the control of her mother and father. Middlemarch’s Dorothea Brooke is nineteen, as is Jane Eyre, but their respective husbands are around forty-eight and forty. The near-thirty-year age gap between Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon is one of many signs that they are ill-matched in marriage; older, discouraged by his failures, Casaubon experiences her youthful enthusiasm almost as mockery. Jane’s Mr. Rochester’s age, on the other hand, marks him out as somebody who is old enough to have damage and a dark secret or two. The gap in their ages is a gap in experience. An older woman would recognize Casaubon’s insecurity, for instance, for what it is—vindictive resentment that cannot be healed by adoration. Inexperienced Jane offers Rochester the chance at a new life unstained by his past mistakes. (Or, at least, he thinks she does; things don’t turn out that way.)'

Anne Elliot Is Twenty-Seven
B. D. McClay in THE PARIS REVIEW (WEEKLY) MARCH 3!, 2024
****

BRITAIN'S OBSESSION WITH PIRATES

"The end of British piracy was, oddly, the start of Britain's pirate obsession. There was a hit play in 1713, 'The Successful Pyrate.' In 1719, Daniel Defoe published 'Robinson Crusoe,' seemingly based on the travails of a famed buccaneer who'd been marooned. (Defoe wrote a proper pirate novel in 1720.) In 1724, the much read 'General History' set the terms for how we still discuss piracy. Just as pirates were dying out, they were becoming immortal."

Daniel Immerwahr. "The Power of the Pirates" in The New Yorker (July 22, 2024)
**

HORATIO AT THE BRIDGE
"I hope my young readers will never know
the hungry craving after food..." Horatio Alger

Horatio's heroes
In ragged clothes
Are sure to know
Sorry orphan cries
Of selling matches
Door to door,

Miseries of blacking boots.
But hard work,
Piety, attending church,
Regular savings,
A lucky break or two,
Striving for what is

Useful ("Povery is no bar
To advancement")
WIll land you squarely
In America's soft lap.
The winds of fortune
Are sure to blow

Into the aching arms
Of Ragged Dick,
Or Sam or Joe,
For they surely know
That up....Up, up,
Up, up, up, up

Is the only way to go.

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:COMICS &COMIC STRIPS

Nelson Breen, Emmy Award Winning Film-maker & COMIC STRIPS

I was a religious reader of every comic in both The Daily News and The Daily Mirror throughout high school. So much so that when I went off to the University of Virginia, my mother would cut out the strips every day, put them in order along with the complete Sunday comic sections and mail them to me every Monday for all of my college years. I didn't detoxify from my comic addiction until I began my film career, in Greece of all places.
**

LOIS LANE & LOIS AMSTER

An October 29, 1975, article in The Washington Star by John Sherwood claims that Lois Lane was named after Lois Amster, a Cleveland girl whom Joe [Shuster] had a crush on. She was not even aware of his existence. 'She's a grandmother now in Cleveland, ' says Joe, 'but I don't think she has any idea that she was the inspiration for Lois Lane.'

DELANCY PLACE COM. (APRIL 11, 2024)
**
ZASU PITTS & OLIVE OYL

"When the comic strip "Thimble Theatre" became the animated series "Popeye", the producers used Pitts' hand-wringing and nervous speech pattern to characterize the on-screen persona of Olive Oyl."

iMDb TRIVIA
**
E.C. SEGAR'S POPEYE & THE WORD GOON

"Practically everyone read Popeye the Sailor frequently enough to feel almost as though friends of the sailor man were next-door neighbors. That was the case with a lumpy look hulk whom Segar called 'Alice the Goon' -- first drawn in 1919.
"It took only a few frames of sketches to learn that the Goon was tough as well as rough. Borrowing from the funny paper in the roaring Twenties, its devotees persuaded the world to call any hired thug a goon."

Webb Garrison. Why You Say It (New York: MJM Books, 1992)
**
TARZAN DURING WORLD WAR II

The Ape-Man has also been involved in international political chaos that includes fighting in World War I….
“ The Ape-Man battled the Axis in another time, as Tarzan in another media – motion pictures. In the 1943 film Tarzan Triumphs, Nazis invade the jungle and Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, after uttering that immortal line, ‘ Now, Tarzan make war!’ goes out and thrashes them.”

from Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture by David Lemmo | 2016
**

SATIRISTS IN AFRICA

"...all over Africa, where satirists are often the boldest commentators on politics and vice. 'Cartoonists use visual imagery as a kind of mask, to conceal in order to reveal,' says Ganiyu Jimoh, a Nigerian cartoonist and scholar. He compares the wit and allusions in cartoons to the traditional masquerades in Yoruba culture, in which masked performers would ridicule the powerful. As an adage has it, 'Oba kii mu onkorin': the king does not arrest a satirist."

"Political Cartoons in Africa: the king does not arrest a satirist." in The Economist (June 17th-23rd 2023)

BRENDA STARR

Brenda Starr was originally created as a “girl bandit” character, but creator Dale Messick was encouraged to make the Rita Hayworth-esque Starr a reporter instead so that the Chicago/New York syndicate would pick it up. Not only that, but the creator was using a pen name: Knowing that the publisher had sworn off “women cartoonists,” Dalia Messick switched to the more male-sounding name Dale Messick professionally. But even after it was accepted, Brenda Starr, Reporter still got second-class treatment, at least initially — when it first published in 1940, Brenda was relegated to the Sunday comic book supplement rather than the daily paper. Luckily, Brenda was a star, and the strip was a success long after Messick stopped writing it in 1982.

From INTERESTING FACTS website (September 29,2022)

**
THE EISNER AWARDS

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are awards for creative achievement in American comic books. They are regarded as the most prestigious and significant awards in the comic industry and often referred to as the industry's equivalent of the Academy Awards.[1][2]
The first Eisners were conferred in 1988, for works published in 1987. The Eisner Awards ceremony has been held at San Diego Comic-Con every year since 1991.[3] The awards are named in honor of pioneering cartoonist and writer Will Eisner, who was a regular participant in the ceremony until his death in 2005.[4

WIKIPEDIA

"'Terry and the pirates ' showed both the full-scale Japanese invasion of China and the Japanese attack on
the United States well in advance of their actual occurrence. 'Long before German-Japanese collaboration in the Far East was a known fact, stiff monocled German officers appeared as confederates of 'the invader.'"Several of Caniff's fiction weapons have turned out to be sober military fact; of one torpedo raft he portrayed, the Navy Department wrote Caniff an official letter asking him to let them know before putting such ideas in the funny papers."
...

super-ace Flip Corki (is) a faithful portrayal of Caniff's even more incredible college friend Philip Cochran.

Current Biography 1944
**
THE KATZENJAMMER KIDS

The Katzenjammer Kids isn’t widely known anymore, but it holds a few Sunday Funnies distinctions. Cartoonist Rudolph Dirks was 20 years old when his comic following the mischievous duo of Hans and Fritz, two young troublemakers who get into tiffs with their parents and school officials, first ran. Dirks created the series for William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal in 1897, but when he took a job at New York World, Hearst kept the name of the comic. This led to a lawsuit and Dirks’ creation of a competing, near-identical strip called The Captain and the Kids, which ran from 1914-1979. The Katzenjammer Kids was drawn by a number of other cartoonists until it ceased syndication in 2006 — an amazing 109-year streak. Dirks, most notably, is credited as the first cartoonist to use speech balloons to express character dialogue, a practice that is still very much used today."
INTERESTING FACTS (June 29, 2024)
https://www.interestingfacts.com/sunday-comic-longestrunning/Yx_TpEKJ8wAItd7t?liu=a28bbdc7f2e0154569dc36b4f43a3c0e&utm_
**
from the philosopher and mathematician Ricardo Nirenberg

Dear Louis: My childhood, indeed, was inundated with comics of diverse origins. Walt Disney to start with. When I arrived in the US I went on buying Disney's comics so as to learn the colloquial lingo. I had a big pile of
Disney comic books, which my kids and their buddies proceeded to wear down to shreds. But my childhood was enriched by other comics of local Argentine origin, like Patoruzú and Patoruzito, of some historical importance because they inspired the French comics (bandes dessinnées) Astérix et Obelisc. Then I discovered the Belgian adventures of Tintin et Milou, and Capitain Haddoc, that I still read on occasion. One of my daughters in law, the Spanish one, is a fan of Tintin, and she has given me undershirts and other clothes adorned with drawings of Tintin. Oh, do I have stories to tell about my favorite comics!
Shazam!

“
**
WORDSMITH on the wordv GRAWLIKS
(GRAW-liks)

MEANING:
noun: The characters, such as @#%$*!, used to convey profanity in a comic.
ETYMOLOGY:
Coined by the cartoonist Mort Walker (1923-2018). Earliest documented use: 1964.
USAGE:
“This title contains ... negligible cursing (sometimes represented as a grawlix).”
Adult Books 4 Teens; School Library Journal (New York); Mar 2019.
**
DICK TRACY CAST OUT OF PARADISE

How wonderful
With your 3 way wrist radio,
& battery-powered TV camera,
To be (like this poem)

Decades ahead of your time,
Nabbing dead beats
Burdened with B.B. eyes,
Or The Blank, his face

Covered by porous cloth,
Before toothy Evil
Clamp down upon us
For good. "Notify

The FBI that Piggy Butcher
Is wanted for murder!"
Cities rarely sleep,
Citizens snapped awake

By sirens wolfing,
Gun shots in alleys,
Red lights blasting
From tops of police cars.

Because Tracy has eaten
Fruit from the gnarled Tree,
Knowledge of Good & Evil,
He snaps bracelets on wrists

Of creeps who have
More aliases than eyes,
Burdened with monikers
Such as Oily and Mole,

The Brow, Pruneface,
Gravel Gertie, & 88 Keyes,
Upper case lost souls
Smeared across police blotters.

Flattop warbles "I'll kill
Every copper in town,"
But he won't because Tracy

Is much too smart for him.
The Mumbles Quartet,
Sings "I've got you
Under My Skin." But what

We have under our skin
Is rage for order,
Hope that some hero
Can keep chaos at bay.

"It's a nice place, Pat,
We'll have to come back."

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF WRITING

"It is a truth only fitfully acknowledged that whom the gods
wish to destroy, they first give an opinion column."
            Parul Sehgal. The New Yorker (October 21, 2024)
**

STORY TELLING & SELF KNOWLEDGE

I believe most of us tell a story about our lives and then come to live within that story. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell a coherent story about yourself. You can know what to do next only if you know what story you are a part of. ‘A man is always a teller oc tales,’ the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed.’ ‘He lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them, and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.”

David Brooks.”A Theory of Musk’s Maniacal Drive” in The New York Times (September 22, 2023), p. A24.

Dogs wag their tails, but tales wag the world.

BILLY WILDER ON THE WRITING OF LOVE STORIES

“And now we have Billy Wilder’s famous dictum posed as a Talmudic question, in re love stories: What keeps them apart?”

David Mamet. Bambi versus Godzilla (NY: Pantheon Books, 2007)

HOW GROWING OLD AFFECTS CHARACTERS IN

LITERATURE FILM

The Two Musketeers Fiber (new title for ROPE)

Little Adult Women The Silence of the Rams

Tom Swift R.I.P. James Bond (Social Security #007-007-007)

NASA’s Million-Dollar Typo

HISTORY FACTS (October 19, 2024)

The most urgent question for a writer may seem to be, What experiences do I have as my material, what experiences do I feel able to narrate? But that’s not right. The most pressing question is, What is the word, what is the rhythm of the sentence, what tone best suits the things I know.

Elena Ferrante in The Paris Review (Spring 2015)

I think the catalyst for a book is when the writer runs out of money.

Richard Gid Powers

ON RECEIVING BAD REVIEWS FROM MICHIKO KAKUTANI

“Nicholson Baker joked that reading her review of A Box of Matches was “like having my liver taken out without anesthesia.” Lorrie Moore once slyly remarked that “a writer friend” likes to lean over babies’ bassinets and bless them thus: “May you never be reviewed by Michiko Kakutani.”

Dan Kois. “Michiko Kakutani Was the Most Feared (FEB 20, 2024)

**”…I can’t make a discovery about the emotions of people without being deeply moved myself, partly by the discovery and partly by their pain and sorrow.”

William Saroyan. Letters From 74 rue Taitbout or Don’t Go But If You Must Say Hello to Everybody (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1969)

“:Don’t describe it, show it. That’s what I try to teach all young writers—take it out! Don’t describe a purple sunset, make me see that it is purple.”

James Baldwin. PARIS REVIEW interview

SIX WORD SHORT STORY WITH A SAD ENDING

Swapped wives. He got better deal.

WHAT INSPIRED SALLY BENSON TO WRITE JUNIOR MISS

“Mrs. Benson got the idea for her first July story while riding on a Fifth Avenue bus and seeing a 13 year-old girl snubbed by her mother and older sister when she dropped their fares.”

Current Biography (1941)

“If a story can make me cry after four scotches, it’s good.”

Alfred McIntye, editor at Little Brown

BOOK DEDICATION

For all the men and women of the CIA who continue

to strive for excellence and to serve our country,

despite the obstacles placed in their way.

Lindsay Moran. Blowing My Cover: My Life As a CIASpy (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005)
**

GOSSIP IN THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

unsigned review of The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing. in The Economist (September 23rd,2023)

ON THE EXCLAMATION POINT !

HOW MICHAEL CONNELLY, AT AGE 16, RENEWED HIS INTEREST IN CRIME & MYSTERIES

The following paragraph comes from the Wikipedia article on Bosch’s creator:

“At age 16, Connelly’s interest in crime and mystery escalated when, on his way home from his work as a hotel dishwasher, he witnessed a man throw an object into a hedge. Connelly decided to investigate and found that the object was a gun wrapped in a lumberjack shirt. After putting the gun back, he followed the man to a bar and then left to go home to tell his father. Later that night, Connelly brought the police down to the bar, but the man was already gone. This event introduced Connelly to the world of police officers and their lives, impressing him with the way they worked.”

MAJOR RUSSIAN NOVELS

Florida. I was 10 or 11.
My father told me
The Hungarian who owned
Shore’s Liquor Store
Had been gunned down
The night before,

Sometime around 10
Shot & killed by 2
Black teen-agers
Hopped up on drugs.
They ran off
With slightly less than 5

Dollars, vodka bottles,
& a few checks
They couldn’t cash.
So much grief
For so little return. 50
Yrs. Later,

Not having Wisdom
To bring to the table,
I have forgotten
Plots & characters,
Of major Russian novels,
But my father

At the steering wheel
Of our old Dodge,
Driving past Shore’s &
Telling me the news —
That story

I have not forgotten.

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM #30

THE ACADEMY AWARDS BIG FIVE

In the history of the Oscars, only three films have swept the so-called “Big Five” categories, which include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. The first was 1934’s “It Happened One Night,” earning Frank Capra, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Robert Riskin individual awards in the latter four categories. The feat wasn’t replicated until “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1975.

What was the 3rd film? (answer below)

**
FOLLOW THE MONEY

The 1997 smash “Titanic” was the first movie to earn more than $1 billion at the box office, and it did so just 74 days after its release. “Jurassic Park” (1993) also crossed the $1 billion mark, but only recently thanks to myriad big-screen re-releases. Eventually topping $2 billion, “Titanic” remained the king of box office returns until it was dethroned by “Avatar.” Both were directed by James Cameron.
Source: USA Today
History Quiz website
**
THE MAKING OF SUNSET BOULEVARD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZvdKjKL7hQ

**
GHOST SINGER

Audiences never suspected that Eleanor Powell did not perform her own singing vocals because Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer linked her with ghost singer Marjorie Lane from the outset of her career. Lane had only one other film credit to her name, appearing on camera in a 1930 short subject. As such, her voice was unknown to movie audiences and, when matched with Powell's visual interpretation, it cemented the notion that Powell could sing as well as she danced, beginning with her very first film, Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935). M-G-M kept Lane under contract solely to serve as Powell's voice double for Born to Dance (1936), Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) and Rosalie (1937). Further completing the illusion is the fact that Eleanor Powell provided her own singing voice for several numbers during the course of her career that did not require finessed singing (principally Broadway Melody of 1940 [1940]), and some of her films required no vocals at all, such as Honolulu (1939), Ship Ahoy (1942) and I Dood It (1943). Decades later, with all of the studio's history at his disposal, not even Jack Haley, Jr. suspected Powell's dubbing history and the narration he wrote for That's Entertainment! (1974) professed that Powell was singing "Easy to Love" with James Stewart in Born to Dance (1936)."

iMDb Trivia for BROADWAY MELODY OF 1936
**
JACK LEMMON TELLS PLAYBOY WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE A YOUNG ACTOR STARTING OUT IN A VERY DIFFICULT PROFESSION

Playboy: Did it ever occur to you to quit?

LEMMON: No, it didn't, but there was an awful lot of fear and insecurity the first few years. Still, I would not have quit. The terrible thing is that it isn't a matter of just getting a little job now and then or a small part. An actor really can't begin to know how good he might or might not be until he gets a couple of good parts with a good cast, in a good piece, with a good director. The rest of the time, you don't really know. And it may be ten years and you're going to have to look in the mirror, finally, after all of that time, and say, 'I'm a journeyman,' or 'I can't cut it."

"20 Questions: Jack Lemmon " in Playboy (June 1981)
**
Films for persons over 75:

THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Instead of sword fights,
duels are settled on shuffleboard courts.

THE GRADUATE: "I have a word for you."
"Plastics?"
"No. Fiber."
Remake of Niagra --- Viagra
**

ALFRED HITCHCOCK CHANGED HOW MOVIES WERE VIEWED THEATERS

Before 1960 most movie theaters did not have set times when screenings began—movies were constantly looping. Patrons would walk into the theater in the middle of a film, watch to the end, and wait for the movie to begin again to see what they missed. Alfred Hitchcock is credited with disrupting this practice. He insisted that no one be allowed in after the start of a Psycho screening to prevent spoiling its ending.

ONE GOOD FACT website for January 5th, 2025
**
SMALL TIME CROOKS & SHERLOCK HOLMES

"The film contains several references to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story 'The Red-Headed League,' including the plot to break into a bank through the basement of an adjacent storefront and Frenchy's attempt memorize the contents of the dictionary."
iMDb Trivia
**

BETTE DAVIS AT THE SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN 1989

"In 1989 Davis attended the San Sebastián film festival to accept the lifetime-achievement Donostia award. The festival was playing host to a James Whale retrospective and invited Davis because she was the only person to have worked with him who was still alive. She stayed at the rather more upmarket Maria Cristina, room 451, since christened the Bette Davis Suite. The only times she left the room were to attend a press conference, to accept her award and to see a single film in the Whale retrospective – Waterloo Bridge, released in 1931, in which she had a small role. She was too ill after the festival to return to the US, so travelled to France to finish an expanded version of her autobiography, The Lonely Life, and to die."

Lillian Crawford. "Cut! The films the stars saw they died" in TLS online (July 4, 2024)
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/arts/film/last-movies-stanley-schtinter-book-review-lillian-crawford/
**
LEARNING MAGIC FROM HOUDINI

Born on September 10, 1915, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, Edmund O'Brien learned the craft of performance as a magician, reportedly tutored by neighbor Harry Houdini.

iDMb Trivia
**
ANSWER TO THE BIG FIVE: Silence of the Lambs
**
ON BEING A MOVIE STAR

Gary Cooper
Was not super
Pleased, & he was not forgiving
When I asked what he did for a living.

Louis Phillips

BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THIS & THAT

PAINTING BY RUSSELL CONNOR. from MASTERS IN PIECES

"What Irishman ever took seriously what he put down on a piece of government paper?
P.J. Kavanagh
**
GERMANY & CHINESE CHECKERS

Contrary to its name, however, Chinese checkers has nothing to do with China — it’s a variation of a game called Halma (meaning “jump” in Greek). Halma features a square board, and a star-shaped version was invented in Germany around 1880. Originally called Stern-Halma, the star-shaped game was published by the German game and puzzle company Ravensburger in 1892.

The game arrived in America in the late 1920s under the name Hop Ching checkers, and, later, Chinese star checkers. It was advertised as “a game from the Orient for all ages,” but this backstory was invented entirely for marketing, to give the product an air of mysticism..."

HISTORY FACTS (June 2, 2024)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQVwndFmSrJWpZTvwngFRSZtrhS
**

HAPTIC TECHNOLOGY

"In electronics, “haptic technology” is also called “kinesthetic communication” or “3D touch,” and its goal is to give users more feedback when a task is accomplished — for example, when a button on a glass screen is tapped, a haptic buzz gives an acknowledgment. For many, the first introduction to haptic technology was through gaming controls, which introduced haptic features to make players feel more deeply invested in the games. However, the technology also has lifesaving applications in aviation, where haptic signals delivered through controls can be used to warn pilots of potential dangers, and automotive design, where haptic alerts encourage drivers to monitor lane departure."

https://www.wordgenius.com/words/haptic?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1765100155
**

STOP SIGNS

"There’s a reason stop signs in the U.S. are generally red and octagonal, yield signs are triangular, and so on. Mix that up, and you create a version of the Stroop effect. The viewer could take a second or two longer to process a green stop sign—and sometimes that second or two can make more than 100 feet of difference."

T. CAMPBELL
**
THE OLDEST BREWERY IN THE WORLD

On 14 February 2021, Egyptian and American archaeologists discovered what could be the oldest brewery in the world dating from around 3100 BCE at the reign of King Narmer. Dr. Matthew Adams, one of the leaders of the mission, stated that it was used to make beer for royal rituals.[19][
Wikipedia

**
SANTA'S REINDEER

Best known for his Wizard of Oz series, L. Frank Baum wrote The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus in 1902. In it he gave Santa’s reindeer new names that never quite stuck: Flossie, Glossie, Racer, Pacer, Fearless, Peerless, Ready, Steady, Feckless, and Speckless.

ONE GOOD FACT website

**
HEAT & THE HUMAN BODY

“The human body has evolved to shed heat in two main ways. Blood vessels swell, carrying heat to the skin so it can radiate away and sweat erupts onto the skin, cooling it by evaporation. When those mechanisms fall, we die. It sounds straightforward; it’s actually a complex, cascading collapse.”

Elizabeth Royte. “Too Hot To Live” in National Geographic
(July 2021)
**

GRATITUDE

This short verse
Is blessed
Simply by having
Your eyes
Passing over it.

It cannot express
In simple terms
Its eternal gratitude.

Louis Phillips