Monthly Archives: February 2016

Memories-College

Reflections on Films during Years at University of Rochester, 1962–1966

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So, as I was reminded today of the announcement of the Academy Awards, I got to thinking of the movies that were in contention and won during our time at the U of R (and one year before and one year after). I’ll list the material that appears in http://www.filmsite.org/oscars60.html–first, the best pictures, and then a fuller list of the top five awards. I am no film scholar, but some reflections appear at the end of these lists. (copied from my-moderated University of Rochester Facebook site–open only to members of the class of 1966)

Short List
The best pictures (1962-1967) were Lawrence of Arabia (’62); Tom Jones (’63); My Fair Lady (’64); The Sound of Music (’65); A Man for All Seasons (’66); and In the Heat of the Night (’67).

Long List:
1962
Movie
Lawrence of Arabia
Actor:
GREGORY PECK for “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Burt Lancaster in “Birdman of Alcatraz”, Jack Lemmon in “Days of Wine and Roses”, Marcello Mastroianni in “Divorce – Italian Style”, Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia”
Actress:
ANNE BANCROFT in “The Miracle Worker”, Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”, Katharine Hepburn in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, Geraldine Page in “Sweet Bird of Youth,” Lee Remick in “Days of Wine and Roses”
Supporting Actor:
ED BEGLEY in “Sweet Bird of Youth”, Victor Buono in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”, Telly Savalas in “Birdman of Alcatraz”, Omar Sharif in “Lawrence of Arabia”, Terence Stamp in “Billy Budd”
Supporting Actress:
PATTY DUKE in “The Miracle Worker”, Mary Badham in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Shirley Knight in “Sweet Bird of Youth”, Angela Lansbury in “The Manchurian Candidate”, Thelma Ritter in “Birdman of Alcatraz”
Director:
DAVID LEAN for “Lawrence of Arabia”, Pietro Germi for “Divorce – Italian Style”, Robert Mulligan for “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Arthur Penn for “The Miracle Worker”, Frank Perry for “David and Lisa”

1963
Movie
Tom Jones
Actor:
SIDNEY POITIER in “Lilies of the Field”, Albert Finney in “Tom Jones”, Richard Harris in “This Sporting Life”, Rex Harrison in “Cleopatra”, Paul Newman in “Hud”
Actress:
PATRICIA NEAL in “Hud”, Leslie Caron in “The L-Shaped Room”, Shirley MacLaine in “Irma La Douce”, Rachel Roberts in “This Sporting Life”, Natalie Wood in “Love with the Proper Stranger”
Supporting Actor:
MELVYN DOUGLAS in “Hud”, Nick Adams in “Twilight of Honor”, Bobby Darin in “Captain Newman, M.D.”, Hugh Griffith in “Tom Jones”, John Huston in “The Cardinal”
Supporting Actress:
MARGARET RUTHERFORD in “The V.I.P.s”, Diane Cilento in “Tom Jones”, Edith Evans in “Tom Jones”, Joyce Redman in “Tom Jones”, Lilia Skala in “Lilies of the Field”
Director:
TONY RICHARDSON for “Tom Jones”, Federico Fellini for “8 1/2”, Elia Kazan for “America, America”, Otto Preminger for “The Cardinal”, Martin Ritt for “Hud”

1964
Movie
My Fair Lady
Actor:
REX HARRISON in “My Fair Lady”, Richard Burton in “Becket”, Peter O’Toole in “Becket”, Anthony Quinn in “Zorba the Greek”, Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying…”
Actress:
JULIE ANDREWS in “Mary Poppins”, Anne Bancroft in “The Pumpkin Eater”, Sophia Loren in “Marriage Italian Style”, Debbie Reynolds in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”, Kim Stanley in “Seance on a Wet Afternoon”
Supporting Actor:
PETER USTINOV in “Topkapi”, John Gielgud in “Becket”, Stanley Holloway in “My Fair Lady”, Edmond O’Brien in “Seven Days in May”, Lee Tracy in “The Best Man”
Supporting Actress:
LILA KEDROVA in “Zorba the Greek”, Gladys Cooper in “My Fair Lady”, Edith Evans in “The Chalk Garden”, Grayson Hall in “The Night of the Iguana”, Agnes Moorehead in “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte”
Director:
GEORGE CUKOR for “My Fair Lady”, Michael Cacoyannis for “Zorba the Greek”, Peter Glenville for “Becket”, Stanley Kubrick for “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying…”, Robert Stevenson for “Mary Poppins”

1965
Movie
The Sound of Music
Actor:
LEE MARVIN in “Cat Ballou”, Richard Burton in “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold”, Laurence Olivier in “Othello”, Rod Steiger in “The Pawnbroker”, Oskar Werner in “Ship of Fools”
Actress:
JULIE CHRISTIE in “Darling”, Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”, Samantha Eggar in “The Collector”, Elizabeth Hartman in “A Patch of Blue”, Simone Signoret in “Ship of Fools”
Supporting Actor:
MARTIN BALSAM in “A Thousand Clowns”, Ian Bannen in “The Flight of the Phoenix”, Tom Courtenay in “Doctor Zhivago”, Michael Dunn in “Ship of Fools”, Frank Finlay in “Othello”
Supporting Actress:
SHELLEY WINTERS in “A Patch of Blue”, Ruth Gordon in “Inside Daisy Clover”, Joyce Redman in “Othello”, Maggie Smith in “Othello”, Peggy Wood in “The Sound of Music”
Director:
ROBERT WISE for “The Sound of Music”, David Lean for “Doctor Zhivago”, John Schlesinger for “Darling”, Hiroshi Teshigahara for “Woman in the Dunes”, William Wyler for “The Collector”

1966
Movie
A Man for all Seasons
Actor:
PAUL SCOFIELD in “A Man for All Seasons”, Alan Arkin in “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming”, Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, Michael Caine in “Alfie”, Steve McQueen in “The Sand Pebbles”
Actress:
ELIZABETH TAYLOR in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, Anouk Aimee in “A Man and a Woman”, Ida Kaminska in “The Shop on Main Street”, Lynn Redgrave in “Georgy Girl”, Vanessa Redgrave in “Morgan!”
Supporting Actor:
WALTER MATTHAU in “The Fortune Cookie”, Mako in “The Sand Pebbles”, James Mason in “Georgy Girl”, George Segal in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, Robert Shaw in “A Man for All Seasons”
Supporting Actress:
SANDY DENNIS in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, Wendy Hiller in “A Man for All Seasons”, Jocelyn Lagarde in “Hawaii”, Vivien Merchant in “Alfie”, Geraldine Page in “You’re a Big Boy Now”
Director:
FRED ZINNEMANN for “A Man for All Seasons”, Michelangelo Antonioni for “Blow-up”, Richard Brooks for “The Professionals”, Claude Lelouch for “A Man and a Woman”, Mike Nichols for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

1967
Movie
In the Heat of the Night
Actor:
ROD STEIGER in “In the Heat of the Night”, Warren Beatty in “Bonnie And Clyde”, Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate”, Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke”, Spencer Tracy in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”
Actress:
KATHARINE HEPBURN in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate”, Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie And Clyde”, Edith Evans in “The Whisperers”, Audrey Hepburn in “Wait Until Dark”
Supporting Actor:
GEORGE KENNEDY in “Cool Hand Luke”, John Cassavetes in “The Dirty Dozen”, Gene Hackman in “Bonnie And Clyde”, Cecil Kellaway in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, Michael J. Pollard in “Bonnie And Clyde”
Supporting Actress:
ESTELLE PARSONS in “Bonnie And Clyde”, Carol Channing in “Thoroughly Modern Millie”, Mildred Natwick in “Barefoot in the Park”, Beah Richards in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, Katharine Ross in “The Graduate”
Director:
MIKE NICHOLS for “The Graduate”, Richard Brooks for “In Cold Blood”, Norman Jewison for “In the Heat of the Night”, Stanley Kramer for “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, Arthur Penn for “Bonnie And Clyde”

Quick Reflections:

I do remember seeing many of these movies! But I don’t remember where I saw them or who I saw them with! Sorry!!!

I can’t help but think that, in a sense, these movies collectively capture a sense of a changing time–invoking a surfing image, a wave that we the members of the class of ’66 as a group gradually mounted and rode over the years that would follow!

Think of it: “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “In the Heat of the Night,” — two films that get at the state of race relations in our time (still unsettled, regrettably) (As a midshipman on the cruise, between our freshmen and sophomore years, this denizen of New York City discovered the ugly reality of Jim Crowe in Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi. I had made friends with a black sailor on the USS Beatty and suggested we run into town for dinner. He knew better. I had no clue.

“Seven Days in May,” which told of a plot to overthrow the president because he was supporting a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets–c.f. the comment of former CIA director Michael Hayden, who said military leaders would disobey orders from Trump to do some of the things he is saying he would order. Then there was, in a similar vein, “Dr. Strangelove.” “Bonnie and Clyde” and “In Cold Blood,” looks at violence in our society, without exactly glorifying it.

And who knew–until very, very recent years that the novel “Dr. Zhivago,” included in this collection of films, only existed because of CIA machinations to get it published. And in this group, “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” would define spycraft and its dark tensions, which I came to learn about in my career. People still see it as the ultimate definition of the business of espionage.

And at the same time, the cotton candy of ” The Sound of Music,” “My Fair Lady,” and “Tom Jones.”

 

Memories-USMC

Reflecting on Super Bowl I: January 15, 1967

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All the hoohah surrounding yesterday’s playing of the 50th Super Bowl game led me to think a bit about the first Super Bowl on January 15, 1967.

First, I have no memory of that game. I was six months into service as a US Marine 2nd Lieutenant after graduation in June 1966 from the University of Rochester and on my way across the Pacific to join Marines in the Vietnam War. I had been a Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship student at the U of R, en route to an AB  degree in English, fully paid for by Uncle Sam in exchange for four years of service as an officer in either the Navy or the Marine Corps. I choose the latter, as earlier posts on this blog explain.

Today, en route to 50th anniversary reunions of the U of R class of 1966 and the Marine Corps officer Basic School training class I attended with nearly 200 other newly commissioned Marine Corps officers during the second half of 1966–including three from the U of R–Dick Hulslander, Tom King, and Bob Rivers–I have come to think of those days relative to yesterday’s event.

First, and most strikingly different from that day in January 1967, is the place of the military in the opening ceremony. It featured a large mixed service chorus of uniformed military personnel singing “America the Beautiful.” That was followed by Lady Gaga (I held my breath to see what ludicrous thing she wore–not as ludicrous as my worst fears offered), with her rendering of the National Anthem. She has a magnificent voice, and any objection to her performance would be quibbling, in my view.  Striking, I’d say in contrast to 1967, was the tribute she offered to the military people surrounding the stage and the flag behind her–gesturing toward the chorus and other uniformed people and the flag around her stage as she closed with “home of the Brave.” No viewable video exists of the opening of Super Bowl I. Does any one remember who sang the National Anthem and who carried the flag and so forth?

So I turned to the New York TimesMachine (which reproduces issues of the paper from the past– (http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/01/16/issue.html)) to get a sense of the nation’s and the world’s doings the day after the game.  Prescient some items were, in retrospect of course. The front page carried only a photo of Vince Lombardi accepting the winner’s trophy.

Then, I turned to a characterization of the event in the sports section by Bernard Weintraub:

“Husbands Stare—and Wives Glare (City’s Males Spend Day at TV Sets at Home, in Bars)”

“New York was gripped by a giddy fever yesterday that began rising at 4 pm, reached a peak at dusk and began dropping at nightfall.

“Before the fever finally broke, a vague madness swept the city: little boys refused to go to the movies, big boys refused to speak, girls—little and big—stormed into kitchens, slammed the door and waited. And waited.

“It’s impossible,” cried Mrs. Lucrecia Amari of Brooklyn, while her husband, Dr. S. N. Amari, stared at the Super Bowl football game on television. “He’s obsessed with watching all those big lugs on the idiot box, and I’m obsessed in the exact opposite way. Blah.”

“If the women of the city shrieked “Blah,” the men simply sat hypnotically and watched the Green Bay Packers tangle with the Kansas City Chiefs. …”

Guess that was a pretty good portent of the game’s future.

The day’s news was more telling of the times:

–-“Hanoi says it doesn’t want to annex the south.”

—“Marines kill 61 VC after defector tip.” The article begins with a comparison of the cost of the war relative to the gains that were being touted at the time (body counts): It pointed out that it was costing $250 thousand dollars to kill one Viet Cong [based on budget figures for the conduct of the war], though the 61 killed in the action referred to in the article were made possible by a “turncoat” who had been paid $44 a month.

–462 on Yale faculty urge halt to bombing of North Vietnam.

–Perhaps most telling, in the Books of the Times: Arthur Schlesinger on Vietnam By Eliot Fremont-Smith, “The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, 1941-1966.” By Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. 128 pages. Houghton Miflin, $3.95.  According to the reviewer, Schlesinger challenged the use of history to justify action in Vietnam. In particular, in Fremont-Smith’s words:

Mr. Schlesinger clearly believes that the historical analogies—principally that of Munich—invoked on behalf of our Vietnam policy are faulty and fraudulent rationalizations that have acquired a life of their own, grossly distorting our perception of the realities of our past and present involvement in Vietnam, and estranging us from our allies, from each other and, perhaps worst of all, from the future—the young, “who watch our course in Vietnam with perplexity, loathing and despair.” [emphasis added, AV]

  Signs of the last sentence existed in some abundance on our campus during 1966, and we all know how that played out in years to come. I know for many who served in Vietnam, there is bitterness. For me, on reflection, there is none, only the wish that anger had not been directed at people who were doing their duty as honorably as they could.

P.S. I did not see Super Bowl II either. Along with a few hundred thousand others, I was in-country at the time, with no access to television. And the Tet Offensive of 1968 was only two weeks away–the event that completely turned attitudes about the war.