Carole Lombard and William Powell (as Godfrey). The two had been married from 1931-1933 and remained good friends until her death in a plane crash in 1942
What I Saw (And Liked)
After The Thin Man: Sequel to the 1934 classic featuring the detective duo of Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy). Jimmy Stewart playing against type, perhaps for the only time in his career, as the villain.
My Man Godfrey: William Powell again, as the titular butler who will not only save the rich but also the poor. A Depression Era fable disguised as a screwball comedy.
Petrified Forest: A roadhouse out west, a hostage drama and Humphrey Bogart, in his first leading role, as the bad guy.
Need To See
Modern Times: The last Charlie Chaplin classic, a mostly silent film.
Swing Time: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and lots of tapping.
The Great Ziegfeld: Best Picture winner. Stars William Powell and Myrna Loy again as husband and wife. They both had a very good year.
Mr. Deeds Goes To Town: Sort of a Crocodile Dundee tale, except he’s Gary Cooper and he’s from Vermont.
Sabotage: Early Hitchcock. Possible inspiration for a Beastie Boys song.
Then this, from a few nights ago, we’d kinda like to…
To us, this is not about politics or choosing sides. This is about proudly representing the United States of America. Whether your beliefs are Democratic, Republican, Independent, etc. we support that and are proud to represent the USA. It is an honor and privilege! 🏒🏅🇺🇸
The MAGA hats at a Donald Trump campaign rally are not patriotic, but partisan. Decidedly so. Let’s not kid ourselves. Most of these players, I assume, would proudly be wearing these hats anyway. That’s why they don’t think of the gesture as political.
As someone else wrote and succinctly summed up the moment, “It looks as if the Russians were playing the long game.”
The fifth season of a surprisingly fantastic TV spinoff, Better Call Saul, premieres tomorrow evening. There were moments during that first season that it felt as if the show was trying to figure itself out, but ultimately it has never skidded too far off course.
I wanted to return to this scene from the end of Season 1, one of those moments when you the viewer have the epiphany, not unlike Jimmy McGill, that you’ve been viewing the show through a skewed prism the entire time. Before we go further, the acting in this scene is just phenomenal, both by Bob Odenkirk (Jimmy McGill) and Michael McKean (big brother Chuck). I had to piece these two YouTube videos together to catch most of the scene and even then I’m unable to show you the :30 or so before it begins, where Jimmy is on the couch and pretending to be grateful to Chuck as Chuck pretends to be empathetic to Jimmy’s plight.
Of course, Jimmy has already figured out that it was Chuck who stabbed in the back, not Howard Hamlin. And Chuck of course knows it is he who has always put the kibosh on Jimmy working at HHM, even though he always behaves as if Howard is the heavy.
If you could see the clip :30 or so prior to the above, there’s this wonderful moment where Jimmy, in that raspy, vulnerable voice, acts as if he’s grateful for all that Chuck has tried to do for him (“Gee, thanks, Chuck”). But he already knows that he’s about to destroy his highly regarded, brilliant older brother because Jimmy has the truth on his side. Who’s the good lawyer?
This second clip gets the end of the scene, where Chuck unleashes his famous line: “Slippin’ Jimmy with a law degree is like a chimp with a machine gun.”
This rhetorical tussle between these two will act as a precursor to a much more impactful one at the end of Season 3, of course. Jimmy will win that sparring match, too (the great part about this scene, if you clicked on it, is that Chuck is right about everything, except the electrical current disease; but who would believe him?).
What I also love about this scene is that it delivers a secondary epiphany: Howard Hamlin may be well-coiffed and well-dressed, too handsome and polished for words but, and this is big, he’s not the ginormous douchebag we all though he was. He was just following orders.
That scene an episode earlier, I believe, that opens the show in which Howard enters the mail room and, behind a closed glass door so that we, the viewer, cannot hear what’s being said but can infer that Howard is informing Jimmy that he won’t be offered a job as a lawyer at HHM? That’s not Howard’s doing, that’s Chuck’s. Howard’s just delivering the news so that Chuck won’t look like an ogre. That scene in the conference room where Howard tells Jimmy he can’t have an office at HHM even after he delivered the RICO case to them on a silver platter? Again, that’s Howard doing Chuck’s dirty work.
So as Jimmy’s learning the truth about his brother’s feelings for him, we are also learning that Howard is not quite the pr*ck we thought he was. One of the better scenes in the history of a tremendous show.
NOT YOUR AVERAGE BEAR: A large bear was spotted roaming the streets of Monrovia, California, seemingly taking in the sights, enjoying the amenities of residents' backyards, and not minding all the attention at all. https://t.co/E6KoREtsXnpic.twitter.com/Eo5PdTHDee
It was a Friday, the 21st day of February, just like today. The U.S.A. was in the doldrums as the hostage crisis dragged on (fortunately, the U.S. and Iran no longer engage in hostile sword-waving). And this was a time when America was so much more in love with the Olympics than we are currently.
Speedskater Eric Heiden was the unquestioned Greatest American Hero, in the midst of winning a then unprecedented five gold medals at one Games. Team U.S.A. was about to face the juggernaut of juggernauts, the Russians, in hockey later that day. The same two teams had faced off a month or so earlier in New York City and the C.C.C.P. had won by a score of, I believe, 12-1. We viewers were anxious but not at all hopeful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaPMDESD-es
Here are the two things that anyone who was alive that day and remembers will tell you about it: 1) America was watching this hockey game on tape delay (it had taken place at 5 p.m. local time) in prime time and most of us had no idea who’d won as we watched (and didn’t want to know). And remember, this was taking place in Lake Placid, N.Y., not overseas and 2) It is the most exciting sports event we’ve ever watched. I know this still holds true for me.
My mom had been listening to the radio (most likely KTAR 620 in Phoenix) and she knew who’d won. But she wouldn’t tell us. And we didn’t really care to know. There was no Twitter. No Facebook. No computers in anybody’s home. Almost no cable television to speak of and most of us did not yet have it. You could’ve turned on the radio, but why spoil the drama?
I remember my entire family sitting in the den on 2115 W. Del Oro Circle, Mesa, enraptured by what we were watching. We didn’t understand hockey all that well but knew enough to recognize that USA goalie Jim Craig was playing out of his mind and that this dude Eruzione was the heart of the team, if hardly the most skilled player.
At the time, the Soviet Union seemed the greatest threat to world stability and democracy (again, funny how times have changed). Fans were aware that the Russian team had enough talent to beat quite a few NHL teams. The American team was made up entirely of college kids or recent grads. No NHL players. None.
Russia was in hockey what the USA was in basketball. And the loss in 1972 in Munich in hoops was still relatively fresh in people’s minds. This night might be payback.
The U.S. trailed 3-2 entering the third period and I imagine most of us thought, Oh, well, we gave it a good try. But then two goals in the first 10 minutes of the 3rd put the U.S.A. up 4-3. What do I remember? I remember the arena in Lake Placid chanting “U.S.A.” non-stop. I remember how agonizing it was to sit through those final 10 minutes as Craig repelled shot after shot after shot. I remember Al Michaels’ and Ken Dryden’s excellent call. I remember seeing the camera close-ups of Herb Brooks, who looked intense but confident. I remember thinking, Will these 10 minutes ever end?
“Do you believe in miracles?” Michaels shouted as Eruzione, I believe, tossed his stick into the air. “YES!”
Euphoria. Ecstasy. Like a drug.
Thinking of the most thrilling sports events I’ve ever watched, on TV or in person. Catholics versus Convicts. The Eli Manning-to-David Tyree Super Bowl. Duke-Kentucky Elite Eight. Valvano versus Houston. I’m sure there are others; these came to mind first.
Nothing tops the Miracle on Ice. Nothing. Maybe it was the fact that I was a 13 year-old boy. Maybe it was where this country was and how desperately we needed a pick-me-up (again, how times change). But that Friday night in Lake Placid, which became a magical Friday night in homes all over the United States, may never be topped.
The world will never be that remote again. Everything today is so close and also so immediate. A bear roams through a neighborhood in Monrovia, Calif., and it’s up on my computer in a matter of minutes. Forty years ago Lake Placid, N.Y., may as well have been on Mars for all we knew. And it was cool.
The icing on the cake, after the obligatory win over Sweden Finland on Sunday (an anti-climactic gold medal game and yet, again, another game in which the Americans were playing way over their heads; I challenge you to name another single weekend in which one team won two games against such superior opposition fueled primarily by adrenalin), was the Sports Illustrated cover. It was perfection. No words. No headline. Just that magical, miraculous shot by Heinz Kluetmeier.
An aside: Heinz is ailing pretty badly these days. A stroke and Parkinson’s. A week or so ago a bunch of SI photo department alums went by his place here in Manhattan to visit him. Some visit him often. Keep him in your prayers.
Anyway, SI closed on Mondays so that magazine did not appear in most of our mail boxes until Thursday or Friday. I didn’t care. I knew that issue was as gold as the medals themselves. Like most young boys of the time, I still have it.
*****
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