by John Walters

Jimmy Thing

To answer faithful reader’s question from yesterday’s comments section, Yes, I have seen both Call Northside 777 and The Mortal Storm (the latter for the first time just a month or so ago). If you’ve ever seen George Kennedy’s tribute to Jimmy Stewart on TCM, I believe he hits it right on the nose. Stewart embodies the ideal American, that version of ourselves we’d most like to think ourselves as being (though we all fail). and Kennedy even pointed out that while many would answer “John Wayne,” it was Wayne who fancied himself (and no small number of his characters) a war hero but it was Jimmy Stewart who actually was, having flown two dozen or more combat missions over the English Channel and into Europe.

I remember enjoying Call Northside 777, but it has been a few years. But I will highly recommend The Mortal Storm, a 1939 film about the encroachment of Nazism on a peaceful Austrian college town. Stewart is terrific as is Robert Young; Marcus Welby, M.D., is a little too convincing as a Hitler Youth. Then there’s Robert Stack, very handsome as a young man, and Margaret Sullavan, who for some reason a lot of folks thought was the paragon of beauty but to me, more than a little overrated (she’s that era’s Kirsten Dunst). Anyway, it is a film that reminds you a little of The Sound Of Music minus the happy ending. Well worth seeing.

A few other Jimmy Stewart gems beyond the obvious ones such as The Philadelphia Story (for which he won an Oscar), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (for which he should have won an Oscar, but his best friend Henry Fonda did… the TPS Oscar was a makeup call), Rear Window, Vertigo and It’s A Wonderful Life:

• Rope… his second-best Hitchcock role.

•Anatomy Of A Murder… arguably the film that taught all TV courtroom procedurals how to do it. Lee Remick is sin in tight pants.

*Harvey… his Forrest Gumpian role.

•After The Thin Man… no spoilers! (But it’s killing me)

• The Shop Around The Corner… which bequeathed us You’ve Got Mail

• Winchester ’73… an underrated Western with a young Rock Hudson as an Indian brave, a newcomer named Tony Curtis and Dan Duryea doing his best Dan Duryea impersonation.

•Thunder Bay… a Yukon/Alaska western

•The Naked Spur… a High Sierra western with a young Janet Leigh who never takes off her overcoat—what were the producers thinking?

There are more, and I’m sure Faithful Reader will scold us for not including The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (title character played by…?) or Destry Rides Again or even The FBI Story or No Highway In The Sky ….

A Shot Of Sanity

Here’s Bill Maher ranting about how ridiculous and intolerant the woke crowd can be. I have a ridiculous story of my own to add to his anecdote here, and maybe some day I’ll share it. I promise the details are no less ludicrous than what The Real Time host is spouting off on here. The administrators who believe they are doing our youth and the next generation a favor by being ultra hyper-sensitive are actually doing the exact opposite: They’re teaching them how to be good little Nazis, just at the opposite end of the shallow pool. And they’re doing it because either deep down they need the approbation of these kids to further their self-esteem (as opposed to knowing that good parenting or good mentorship involves the capacity to say “No” and to stick to it) or they’re doing it over some self-imposed guilt about how the world works that they in fact had no part in causing.

Related: I just had a job application for a teaching position at a prestigious university forwarded to me. The only thing the school asks of me besides a resume and basic facts about how I identify, whether I’m a veteran and ethnicity is an essay about why I feel diversity and inclusion is important. It’s like asking me to explain why I feel water and air is essential. The fact that I have to dignify the question by pretending to take it seriously as opposed to simply answering, “I believe that common sense is important and that as an educator I treat everyone equally regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, political leaning or ethnicity.” The fact that I simply cannot use that as my response, particularly as a white male in his fifties, well, that’s wrong. Never mind that they don’t seem to care too much about MY ACTUAL QUALIFICATIONS.

Related

I’m not someone who agrees with much of anything Joe Rogan has to say, but I will point this out…

this is disgusting antisemitism. https://t.co/A8KHpesTcE

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 7, 2023

Now, you might agree with Mr. Sherman here. I’d say that reducing any one ethnic group to a stereotype as if to say ALL are like this is just stupid. I’m Italian and I’ve never whacked anyone (though I did have a cousin who met his end this way… no lie… which is kind of the point).

Anyway, if you venture onto Netflix, find the episode where Jerry Seinfeld’s guest is comic Hasan Minhaj. At one point, late in their date, Jerry looks across the table at his young Indian-American colleague and says, “I’ll tell you one thing Jews and Indians have in common: we both love money.”

No one canceled Jerry for saying this. Maybe not enough people on Twitter saw it. Or maybe it’s like when Chris Rock or Dave Chapelle talk about black people. I can say it; you cannnot.

By the way, I loved this line from Chapelle when he hosted SNL last November: “a group of Italians together in business is a mob, a group of Mexicans is a cartel… but a group of Jewish people is… a coincidence.” LULZ.

Executive Suite Wisdom

Yet another reason to love TCM… tuning in to learn about a film you never even knew existed. In this instance, on Sunday, Executive Suite from 1954 with an All-Star lineup of William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March and Walter Pidgeon. So here’s the climactic scene, and remember this if nearly 70 years ago, but it’s even more true today than it was then. This is why capitalism is broke. The Fredric March types won. Tune in. Again, from 69 years ago.

Dollar Quiz

1. Name two six-letter states that border one another.
2. Who played Liberty Valance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?
3. Name a film in which a female is never seen nor given a speaking part off-camera.
4. Name a country whose capital city is the exact same word, same number of letters (there’s more than one).
5. Who was born first, Beethoven or Mozart?