As most of you will, I’ll be watching the Academy Awards tonight. I can’t say I have any favorites among the contenders for best picture, best actor/actress, or best director. In truth, I think 2011 was a rather mediocre film year, perhaps one reason moviegoing attendance hit a 16 year low.
Contrast last year’s menu with that of 1939, considered by many to be the penultimate movie year, a period that gave us such classics as Gone With the Wind, Gunga Din and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Here’s my list of 22 exceptional movies from 1939. I could have easily added another dozen. If you haven’t seen any of these flicks, do yourself a favor and order them from Netflix, or see them on Turner Classic Movies when they appear:
Destry Rides Again
Drums Along the Mohawk
Each Dawn I Die
The Four Feathers
Gone with the Wind
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Gunga Din
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Little Princess
Love Affair
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Ninotchka
Of Mice and Men
Only Angels Have Wings
The Roaring Twenties
Stagecoach
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
The Wizard of Oz
The Women
Wuthering Heights
Young Mr. Lincoln
As good as 1939 was, a case can be made that 1962 provided equally engrossing film fare.
Here are 19 must-see films from 1962:
Advise and Consent
Birdman of Alcatraz
Cape Fear
David and Lisa
Days of Wine and Roses
Gypsy
Lawrence of Arabia
Lolita
Lonely Are the Brave
The Longest Day
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Manchurian Candidate
The Miracle Worker
The Music Man
Mutiny on the Bounty
Requiem for a Heavyweight
Ride the High Country
To Kill a Mockingbird
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
The pageantry of tonight’s Oscars telecast, red carpet walk and the coverage of the after-parties might be far superior to 1939 and 1962, but any objective view of filmmaking would find 2011 a mediocre year, not, to borrow the name of a film from 1982, my favorite year.
Showing posts with label Gone With the Wind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gone With the Wind. Show all posts
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Friday, August 6, 2010
J.R. Is Back
J.R. Ewing is back. In case you haven’t seen it, the Dallas villain we loved to hate is in a new commercial promoting energy efficiency, not from oil, but from solar power. “Shine, baby, shine,” is his new mantra. Here’s a link to the spot the TV character is doing (http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/07/13/science/1247468437145/jr-ewing-goes-green.html?scp=3&sq=larry%20hagman&st=cse), but if you just want to read about it, here’s a text link (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/business/media/14adco.html?scp=1&sq=larry%20hagman&st=cse).
Gilda and I were avid Dallas fans (maybe that partially explains why we named our daughter Ellie—Miss Ellie was the Ewing family matriarch). Being new parents when Dallas began its 13-year run in 1978, we were okay with staying home most Friday nights for a turgid visit to Southfork, home of the Ewing clan. The Texas-sized ranch played as big a part as Tara did in Gone With the Wind. It represented power. Family. Tradition. Continuity.
In May 1986, the discount store industry held its annual convention in Dallas. I penned a cover story for my magazine’s convention issue that forecast dire days for most of the remaining full-line discount stores, companies like Gold Circle, Richway, Venture, Rose’s, Clover, Gemco, and Jamesway. If you’re not familiar with those retail chains, it’s either because they operated in areas you never visited, and/or my predictions came true. None of those companies remains in business.
As part of the convention, one of the leading packaged goods suppliers sponsored a dinner reception at Southfork in the suburb of Plano. Naturally I responded positively to the invitation. As I drove up, Southfork loomed just as it did on Dallas. Once inside, however, Southfork lost its Texas grandeur. Sure, it was nicely decorated, but it was waaaay smaller in real-life than in reel-life. Instead of a row of second story bedrooms worthy of any Four Seasons hotel, Southfork had but one second floor bedroom. The first floor was nicely furnished but far from spacious. Turns out, Southfork served only as the exterior backdrop of the weekly CBS soap. The front façade and the pool in the back were the only actual Southfork features used in the filming. (Once home to a real Texas family when the series began, Southfork is now a tourist attraction and event venue with a separate conference building and rodeo arena.)
As I concealed my disappointment about the down-sized Southfork, I found my assigned dinner table and sat down amid executives from Gold Circle and Richway. Both chains were part of Federated Department Stores, the company that owned Bloomingdale’s, Filene’s and A&S, among others. Gold Circle was based in Columbus, Ohio; Richway in Atlanta. They had recently been combined for greater efficiency and marketing clout, but I had written they would probably be sold, possibly to Target (which happened two years later).
To say my dinner companions were frosty towards me would be an understatement. I still remember the CFO, Robert Glass, introducing me to his colleagues by noting this is the miscreant who wrote our company off in Chain Store Age (okay, so he didn’t say miscreant, but it was clear from his voice that he didn’t care for my analysis, even if he did tell me a few years later when he was with Loehmann’s he agreed with it, but just didn’t appreciate seeing it in print). I spent the next hour defending my position, hoping not to embarrass myself by knocking over a wine glass or doing something else to further imprint my notoriety into my dinner companions’ collective minds.
Gilda and I were avid Dallas fans (maybe that partially explains why we named our daughter Ellie—Miss Ellie was the Ewing family matriarch). Being new parents when Dallas began its 13-year run in 1978, we were okay with staying home most Friday nights for a turgid visit to Southfork, home of the Ewing clan. The Texas-sized ranch played as big a part as Tara did in Gone With the Wind. It represented power. Family. Tradition. Continuity.
In May 1986, the discount store industry held its annual convention in Dallas. I penned a cover story for my magazine’s convention issue that forecast dire days for most of the remaining full-line discount stores, companies like Gold Circle, Richway, Venture, Rose’s, Clover, Gemco, and Jamesway. If you’re not familiar with those retail chains, it’s either because they operated in areas you never visited, and/or my predictions came true. None of those companies remains in business.
As part of the convention, one of the leading packaged goods suppliers sponsored a dinner reception at Southfork in the suburb of Plano. Naturally I responded positively to the invitation. As I drove up, Southfork loomed just as it did on Dallas. Once inside, however, Southfork lost its Texas grandeur. Sure, it was nicely decorated, but it was waaaay smaller in real-life than in reel-life. Instead of a row of second story bedrooms worthy of any Four Seasons hotel, Southfork had but one second floor bedroom. The first floor was nicely furnished but far from spacious. Turns out, Southfork served only as the exterior backdrop of the weekly CBS soap. The front façade and the pool in the back were the only actual Southfork features used in the filming. (Once home to a real Texas family when the series began, Southfork is now a tourist attraction and event venue with a separate conference building and rodeo arena.)
As I concealed my disappointment about the down-sized Southfork, I found my assigned dinner table and sat down amid executives from Gold Circle and Richway. Both chains were part of Federated Department Stores, the company that owned Bloomingdale’s, Filene’s and A&S, among others. Gold Circle was based in Columbus, Ohio; Richway in Atlanta. They had recently been combined for greater efficiency and marketing clout, but I had written they would probably be sold, possibly to Target (which happened two years later).
To say my dinner companions were frosty towards me would be an understatement. I still remember the CFO, Robert Glass, introducing me to his colleagues by noting this is the miscreant who wrote our company off in Chain Store Age (okay, so he didn’t say miscreant, but it was clear from his voice that he didn’t care for my analysis, even if he did tell me a few years later when he was with Loehmann’s he agreed with it, but just didn’t appreciate seeing it in print). I spent the next hour defending my position, hoping not to embarrass myself by knocking over a wine glass or doing something else to further imprint my notoriety into my dinner companions’ collective minds.
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