Mickstermeister

Mick of my Heart:

You rascal. I should have known that you wouldn't have been silent for over two weeks unless you had deleted all communication with the outside world. Great work on the history lesson on Butch & Sundance. Sundance, Wyoming is only a small burg now, just a few miles from the Devil's Tower. I drove through it a few years ago. I had forgotten that Longbaugh was born in NYC. Did you pull some of this data out of your arse, or did you actually do some research? I knew one or two other people that thought George Roy Hill missed the boat on his comic carnival atmosphere, and B.J.Thomas just puts my eye teeth on edge! Still it will always be considered a classic Western. It's just that it could have had more emotional punch if the Carnie vibes has been lessened. Actually I never have appreciated a single note of Burt Bacherach's. The only good thing he did was be married to Angie Dickinson for a time. Henry Mancini he wasn't.

I had forgotten about Louis Calhern's suicide in ASPHALT JUNGLE. Your recall is immense, beyond reason, beyond belief. It defies logic and gravity, sir. Norma Jean, ah, what a sweet screwed up piece she was. Yes, in some ways BEN CASEY was a stronger show than Chamberlain's DR. KILDARE. But Kildare had all those old movies going for it as a legacy, and it had Raymond Massey as well. Vince Edwards was a Method actor with hairy biceps who often was in dramatically over his head. So, maybe we should combine our memories of the two shows, and label it BEN KILDARE, M.D. Would that work for you? Actually in those years, my favorite medical show was MEDIC (1954-56), with Richard Boone as Dr. Konrad Styner. The show won 2 Emmys for its accurate medicine scenes, and the unflinching looks at surgery. I remember Charles Bronson on it a couple of times, and Denver Pyle, and Diana Douglas. Didn't see the Steiger episode on Dr. KILDARE. Yes, I remember Nick Cravat's scene in SPARTACUS. He wasn't much of an actor, but he was a muscular midget with an accent, which made him watchable. Still mixed him up with Nick Dennis too much though.

Yeah Tom Poston was almost Maxwell Smart. And kudos for your trivia, sir, because he did marry Suzanne Pleshette in 2001, and they are still together. He was married three times before that, twice to Kay Hudson. Poston was in the Army Air Corps from 1941-45, and flew bombers over Europe. On THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW (1956-60), the only thing I remember about Poston was that he played the Perennial Amnesiac. Don Adams was on the show a couple times in 1960, likewise Jerry Lewis, Johnny Carson, Jonathan Winters, and Bob Hope. Martha Raye was on it 11 times.

As to THE SWIMMER, it is not a classic really, but it might be worth your reviewing it. As odd as it seemed to you, it hit me dead on. I liked the emotion and the intellect of it, watching the layers of this character peel away until nothing was left but a shivvering hulk, banging on the door of an empty house in the rain. That and marveling at his physical prowess in his late 50's. I loved that film that he and Kirk Douglas made late in their careers, TOUCH GUYS (1986). Kirk Douglas was still in tremendous shape too, until his stroke, he seemed indestructible.

God, the Richard Loo quote was much too esoteric for me, sir. Great trivia though. Yeah, The Jap We Loved to Hate. THE PURPLE HEART was released in 1944, about that incident in 1942 when there were 8 down flyers after the Doolittle raid. Some in China, and some in Japan. This film would make a good double bill with THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (1944). I remember a wonderful speech Dana Andrews had as Capt. Harry Ross. It was a marvel of propaganda, something to stir the hearts of America. I looked it up.
" No, your excellency. It's true we Americans don't know much about you Japanese. And we never did. And now I realize that you know even less about us. You can kills us. All of us, or part of us. But if you think that that act is going to put the fear of God into the United States of America, and that it will make them stop from sending their flyers coming back and bombing your country, you're wrong. Dead wrong. They'll by night. They'll come by day. Thousands of them. They'll blacken out your skies, and burn your cities to the ground, and make you get down on your knees and beg for mercy. But remember, this is your war. You wanted it. You asked for it. You started it. And now you are going to get it. And it won't be finished until your dirty little empire is wiped off the face of the earth." Stirring stuff.
Lewis Milestone directed this epic. Besides Dana Andrews, there was Richard Conte, Farley Granger, Don "Red" Barry, and Sam Levene. I hadn't thought about this film in yours. Good trivia, sir.

Here is an easy quote. Who said,"Well as long as I have a foot I will kick booze. As long as I have a fist, I'll punch it. And when I am old and gray and toothless and bootless, I'll gum it until I go to Heaven and booze goes to Hell!"

Good twister, sir.
Victor McLaglen in RIO GRANDE with John Wayne.
Duke in THE COWBOYS with Slim Pickens.
Slim in DR. STRANGELOVE with Peter Sellers.
Great, you made it in three! I would have done:
McLaglen in WHISTLE STOP (1946) with Ava Gardner.
Ava in 55 DAYS IN PEKING (1963) with David Niven.
Niven in THE PINK PANTHER (1963) with Peter Sellers.

Now for my titty twister I must get from Howard da Silva to Richard Egan. Gosh, sir, is this a trick question There is a film called WYOMING MAIL (1950) directed by Reginald Le Borg. It starred Stephen McNally and Alexis Smith. In the cast were also Howard da Silva, and a very young Richard Egan, along with Ed Begley, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Arness, Richard Jaeckel, and Gene Evans?

Your titty twister is how to get from Dean Jones to Merle Oberon. Have fun.

Glenny Malloy; who could have been a contender, instead of a bum, which is what I am.

Mick wrote:

I honestly don't know what happened to your last email that you sent March 10, but I PROBABLY ACCIDENTALLY DELETED IT. I would like to blame the pc but that would sound like the flat tire excuse to your boss or the alarm didn't go off. I may be getting more forgetful due to my terminal dumbshitism but my excuses have a flair for the original and a tad of credibility so please accept my Lordship, the most humble of humble apologies from your devoted leige and servant for my delinquent behavior. Whoopee, how's that for beknighted, benign and befuddled BS.

On to bigger things.Butch's real name was Robert Leroy Parker. He picked up the moniker of Butch from his teenage days when he worked as a butcher and Cassidy came from the man who showed him the ropes of cattle rustling. Sundance real name was Harry Longbaugh who was born and raised in NYC, some say it was in Jawsee and picked up his appelation from the time he spent in jail in Sundance, Wyoming when the judge showed him leniency and curtailed his sentence. You have the right to dislike the music from the movie "but Butt" you are the only humanoid on the planet that dislikes it. George Roy Hill went to Burt Bacharats house and explained to him how he wanted some carnival like background music to exploit the devil may care atmosphere of the legend of the boys along with inserting B.J. Thomas, Raindrops, to put the boys in a vastly changing world and their times were over but lets be optimists to the end; ergo, the last scene. Butch: Did you see Joe LeFlores out there?Sundance: LeFlores, no!Butch: Good, for a minute there I THOUGHT WE WAS IN TROUBLE!The brand on the burros ass was a touch of class by the film to honor my favorite movie but I wasn't aware of it until you mentioned it.

I also loved Sam Jaffe in the Asphalt Jungle and it was that movie when Louis Calhern said his two cents to a very young and character naive Marilyn Monroe to send her on her innocent way only to put a bullet in his head did I realize why a man would commit suicide when there was no way out. I must have been about ten years old and that has always stuck with me. Sam was great as DR. Zorba and I loved the Ben Casey series even more than your buddy Dick Chamberlin in Dr. Kildaire. Do you remember the episode of Ben Casey when Rod Steiger was dying and his three gorgeous daughters were licking their chops over his inheritance and right at the end he pulled a fast one on them and switched his inheritance and they were stuck with each other!

Do you remember Nick Cravat in Spartacus when the slaves escaped and he sat on the wall saying "food, who needs food when we have wine? I don't remember Don Adams very much after Get Smart and Tom Poston is great trivia. I had read about 15 years ago that Tom Poston married Emily, Suzanne Pleshette, from the Bob Newhart show years after they did that show together. Do you remember Tom Postons character name on the Steve Allen show when Steve would interview him along with Louis Nye and Don Knotts?I know about all that existential and anti materialism backdrop from the Swimmer and I love Burt and all his work behind and in front of the camera but I STILL didn't like the movie even though he still could pull off a macho role in that setting but somehow it didn't click in my cinematic cranial causeway of a good movie at the time and I PROBABLY should see it again. Maybe I was just in a bad Mick mood when I saw it back in the 60's. Errol Flynn won that sobriquet, In Like Flynn, when he was acquitted of a rape charge of an under age girl. Some guys get all the luck because I've never been raped by a tribe of teenage nympho girls but I'm still waiting!

Richard Loo, The Jap we loved to hate in those WWII movies was the one in the movie Purple Heart who said to Dana Andrews when he was being interogated by Loo "Captain, A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, insinuating torture will ensue if you don't tell us where your bombers took off from on their raid over Tokyo. Richard Loo was actually of Chinese descent, born in Hawaii and educated at, I think, UCLA, and played great Oriental roles but will always be remembered by our generation as "The Jap we loved to hate."

Okay Kids, its titty twisting time back on the farm!
Victor was in Rio Grande with Duke;
Duke was in The Cowboys with Slim Pickens,
Slim was in Dr. Strangelove with Peter Sellers.

Your chore to catch up is the Richard Egan to Howard de Silva connection. Kudos on Leo Durocher and David Brian in Mr. District Attorney.

Regards: the man who never could say no to a hard luck hooker, Mickstermeister!

P.S. How was Melbas trip to the big apple and the Gypsy train is right on schedule with some dress rehearsals next week. I had the Classic Colonostomy last week and I'm a much bigger asshole now!