The Last Picture Show, or See You at the Movies
Charles Peek
You could actually see me at the movies once. Doris White, for whom the Flagstaff Community Theater is now named, rounded up a few of us as extras for a Jeff East movie called The Hazing being filmed in Flagstaff. A couple of us even needed equity cards, but I don’t think I was one of them. Otherwise, since all you need to be a star is an Equity card, just think of what might have been. As it is, you just see me calling roll in a class. It was just a blip on the radar screen of my life in the movies…a life enriched with media memories—picture shows and radio.
1942 was a blessed year for being born in terms of picture shows and radio—something like bliss to grow up on picture shows—they were still called that a lot then—about the only term I remember my grandparents using—and radio broadcasting. The radio lasted until the early sixties when television finally did it all but in, with the notable exception of Garrison Keillor. Now it is mostly a vehicle for some particular musical genre interrupted by talk or call-in hours with a reputation for one-sided opinions and fake news, often specializing in a kind of perverse ignorance and exhibiting a divisive mean spiritedness.
Before this sad era, however, I listened to The Shadow, Johnny Dollar, Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, The Shadow, The Great Gildersleeve, Amos and Andy, Captain Midnight, and Inner Sanctum into the mid-50’s when they got traded in for our first TV where we could watch Gunsmoke and Perry Mason, both now in perpetual re-run somewhere. (I’d see my first TV at my friend Mernie Green’s – Saturday morning cartoons in the late 1940’s.) Those old cartoons have mostly disappeared but you can still find almost all the old shows on Sirius Radio.
The picture shows survived, certainly called movies by the time my youth was ending and called films or cinema by those much more refined than I, even though their demise was often predicted and the drive-in theaters fell by the wayside. The medium survived though the names—moving pictures or picture shows—fell out of use. Hence, by my blog title “the last picture show” I did not intend a reference to the movie of that name but to the nomenclature itself.
An era passed, a new era began, and much as I miss the old movies, I’m no curmudgeon—movies are, indeed, better than ever. But, in those old days, my life in movies was enhanced by a thankfully short-lived experience. When I was about six—and how time blurs when you are nearly 70 years away from it—I was apparently a pretty sick boy. I have no idea what the matter was, but the treatment was to take me out of school, not allow me any excitement, and keep me still. (That sounds much like the treatment for “hysteric” women, so I’m a little suspicious these days of the diagnosis.) Keeping a child still could not have been an easy task for my mother, I’m sure, so she solved the problem by taking me to the daily matinees in the theaters and the evening showings of movies at the local (Evanston, Illinois) library.
I’m not in retrospect sure how she could have enjoyed most of it except in comparison to sitting home with a sickly child, but I, of course, not only enjoyed it immensely but living in the relative isolation that six-year-olds enjoy, pretty much assumed it was the life all kids lived.
Matinees consisted in those days of several serials or “cliff hangers,” any number of cartoons, and at least two feature films. I can’t begin to name all the serials or serial features. Some of them, often drawn from comic books, were Abbott and Costello, Flash Gordon, Boston Blackie, Crime Doctor, Ma and Pa Kettle, Hope/Crosby/Lamour “Road” shows, Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone/Bruce), Superman, Tarzan (Crabbe, Weissmuller, etc), The Three Stooges, and Topper. The westerns starred Hopalong Cassidy, Tim Holt, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott and Joel McRae, and a pretty young John Wayne. There was the Thin Man and the Bowery Boys with Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcy.
Sometimes, watching modern serial features, I wonder how much my enjoyment of them was conditioned by those early movies I saw with my mother. I still can’t bring much of a critical eye to viewing movies…still watch with the same childish pleasure the “thrillers” of today: Jason Bourne, Die Hard, The Godfather, Godzilla, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Lethal Weapon, Tolkein, Mission Impossible, Monty Python, Naked Gun, Narnia, Night at the Museum, Pirates of the Caribbean, Planet of the Apes, Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett), Shaft, Shrek, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, and Tarzan.
And my tastes are still eclectic as all get out—including those movies that carry on the traditions of the swashbucklers—read Paul Henreid, Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., etc. My maternal grandfather had been a childhood friend of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and the first apartment we rented after we got married was rented from the sister of one of Flynn’s paramours! There are great films today, but put one of them up against a re-run of an old depiction of brave spies or decent citizens withstanding a horrid Nazi occupation or Commie infiltration (often in pseudo-documentary style, or put a great sophisticated comedy up against one of the old slap-stick routines, say Harold Lloyd or Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy or W. C. Fields, and I’m probably still a sucker for the brave spies and keystone cops. I’ve never belittled the talents of either John Wayne or Dustin Hoffman, Spencer Tracy or Johnny Depp. (And forgive my one political note: I think Meryl Streep is the best ever.)
Yet, the world was changing even in the late-1940’s, certainly in the decade following the late 1950’s, and my new movie loves were those films that captured that change and made it so appealing to me that I was hooked on the serious business of overturning injustice and oppression. That didn’t stop me from liking what I’m sure some friends who really know “Film” would call schlock. We had a Foreign Film series when I was in Graduate School…I recall liking one of them, Last Year in Marienbad, and being intrigued some by Bergman and Fellini, but falling asleep during most of them. Perhaps that had something to do with having just been to Casey’s bar before. At any rate, I came to love a host of films about the world just around the corner from the button-down, slide-rule world in which I’d grown up.
Many friends were sophisticated enough to enjoy art films immensely and became very good critics—the late Mike Cartwright, for instance, and Don Cunningham and Don Hanway. I’m still pretty much in the school of “if it won’t be playing in Kearney, I’m not much interested.” And about my favorite movie memories are of Sunday matinees during one Lent with Nancy when we were first married. Think Irma La Douce! Or possibly think the Cornhusker Hotel afterwards for hot buttered rum and reubens. I have fond memories of thrillers with Glenn Reed in Flagstaff, but I wouldn’t re-watch Nightmare on Elm Street ever again. There were lots of movies to which we took our kids as they were growing up, but I mostly remember their enjoyment, not the flicks. I should confess that my idea of an art film was what played at the Muse in Omaha when the four of us candidates for naval ROTC snuck off to see our first skin-flick when we were seniors in high school. You’d have to ask one of the others the name of the film, which with only two of us left alive will be pretty hard to do.
At any rate, I’m going to give you here my favorites, but with the usual caution about lists. Not all of these would get four stars from all of you—some two stars at the most. Some of your four-star movies won’t be listed. Some of you will wonder why in the world one or another film is listed here. I can’t help that—you didn’t have to like them—it’s my list! But some will wonder why some movie is not listed and on this point I’d probably meet you at least half way. I just looked the list over myself and said, “Where the heck is Fargo? Where is The Graduate? Where are Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Counterfeit Traitor?” These are all among my favorites and they somehow didn’t make the list when I made it up and would sure make it had I made the list almost any other day but the one which now I can’t recall when it was.
Another great favorite, the Dustin Hoffman version of Death of a Salesman, is missing because it was technically not a movie but a filming of a stage presentation…a technicality probably too technical to count. Maybe you will find a couple of movies on the list that you recall loving, too. (By the way, despite being the saddest movie I know, The Last Picture Show is on the list!—but the initial “the” in titles is always missing.)
A Little Romance
1979; d. George Hill; w/ Lawrence Olivier; two youngsters run away together rather than be separated by a family move, aided by a wise oldster who loves their love
Americanization of Emily
1964; d. Arthur Hiller; w/ James Garner and Julie Andrews; Paddy Chayefsky script; unlikely romance of Garner/Andrews exposes weaknesses of both romanticism and cynicism
Bad Day at Black Rock
1955; d. John Sturges; w/ Spencer Tracy +; aging, one-armed man stumbles on a crime hidden by a mean and closed community and escapes the ensuing peril
Beckett
1964; d. Peter Glenville; w/ Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole; stormy and dangerous relationship between King Henry II and Archbishop of Canterbury; Edward Anhalt script from Jean Anouilh novel
Breakheart Pass
1976; d. Tom Gries; w/Charles Bronson, cameo by Archie Moore; undercover agent seeking gun runners in old West—almost all the action on board a train; based on Alistair MacLean script
Bridge on the River Kwai
1957; d. David Lean; w/ William Holden, Alec Guiness; what started as an exercise to boost morale among British prisoners ends up a potential help to the Japanese until the allies arrive in time; Carl Foreman/Michael Wilson script taken from Pierre Boule novel, but both were blacklisted so credit was given to Boule for the script
Casablanca
1942; d. Michael Curtiz; w/ Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman +; once lively romance broken off by the war resumes in Morocco but is sacrificed for the good of the allied cause; Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch script
Chinatown
1974; d. Roman Polanski; w/ Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway; alluring Dunaway leads detective Nicholson into a noir mystery with bizarre twists and ramifications to society (Sequel: Two Jakes)
Cool Hand Luke
1967; d. Stuart Rosenberg; w/ Paul Newman; a “life in a prison that makes you sympathize with the criminals” movie; George Kennedy won a best supporting Oscar
Country Girl
1954; d. George Seaton; w/ Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, William Holden; alcoholic actor/singer trying to make a comeback; Seaton’s adaptation of a Clifford Odet’s play
Dead Poets Society
1989; d. Peter Weir; w/ Robin Williams; the effect on students in a school for the upwardly mobile of a teacher who loves poetry and students; screenplay by Tom Schulman
Doctor Zhivago
1965; d. David Lean; w/ Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Rod Steiger; poet/doctor marries into aristocratic family but the Great War and Bolshevik revolution disrupt their lives and lead him into an affair with a commissar’s former girl; Robert Bolt screenplay based on Boris Pasternak’s novel, itself an allegorical critique of the Soviet Union
Godfather
1972; d. Francis Ford Coppola; w/ Marlon Brando, Diane Keaton, Al Pacino; the survival of a Mafia family amid their rivalry with other families and police; based on novel by Mario Puzo; baby in baptism is Sophia Coppola who played in sequel (sequels, II, III)
God’s Little Acre
1958; d. Anthony Mann; w/ Robert Ryan, Tina Louise, Buddy Hackett, Aldo Ray; funny tale full of the pathos of their condition of an eccentric family and the values their eccentricities reveal; based on novel by Erskine Caldwell
Gorky Park
1983; d. Michael Apted; w/ William Hurt, Lee Marvin; Moscow police investigation of a crime leads investigating officer into dangerous labyrinth of perils; Dennis Potter script from novel of Martin Cruz Smith
Holiday Inn
1942; d. Mark Sandrich; w/ Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire; a three-way romance takes place at the musical revues put on at an inn open only on holidays
Il Postino
1994; d. Michael Radford; w/ Massimo Troisi, Phillippe Noiret; the unlikely but moving and revealing relationship of poet Pablo Neruda and his mail carrier (Troisi died a half day after filming stopped)
Inherit the Wind
1960; d. Stanley Kramer; w/ Spencer Tracy, Fredric March; Robert Lee’s script loosely based on the Scopes “monkey” trial
Inn of the 6th Happiness
1958; d. Mark Robson; w/ Ingrid Bergman; young woman, realizing her improbably dream to be a missionary, rescues a number of children in China
Khartoum
1966; d. Basil Dearden; w/ Charleton Heston, Lawrence Olivier; “Chinese” Gordon battles the Mahdi in the Sudan
King Solomon’s Mines
1950; d. Compton Bennett; w/ Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr; adventures on a safari looking for lost diamond mines; Helen Deutsch script from H. Rider Haggard novel
Last of the Mohicans
1992; d. Michael Mann; w/ Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeline Stowe, Russell Means; sweeping and beautifully filmed version of James Fennimore Cooper’s pre-Revolutionary War saga; remade from script for earlier film
Last Picture Show
1971; d. Peter Bogdanovich; w/ Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cloris Leachman; how lives entwined in a small 1950’s Texas town—possibly the saddest film I know; from Larry McMurtry’s novel
Lion in Winter
1968; d. Anthony Harvey; w/ Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn; one Christmas Eve, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine bicker over who will succeed to the throne
Man for All Seasons
1966; d. Fred Zimmerman; w/ Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern; a pretty a-historical paean to virtue in the person of a fictionalized Thomas More facing the issue of Henry VIII’s divorce and remarriage; from the Robert Bolt play
Much Ado About Nothing
1993; d. Kenneth Branagh; w/ Emma Thompson; rowdy and wonderful romp through Shakespeare’s “courtship” story
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
1989; d. Jeremiah Chechik; with Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid +; the Griswold family meet “what could go wrong?”; script by John Hughes
Night of the Iguana
1964; d. John Huston; w/ Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr; alcoholic former clergyman, now a bus-tour guide, and his involvement with a group of tourists that poses choices of judgment or acceptance; from the Tennessee Williams’ play
O Brother, Where Art Thou
2000; d. Joel Coen; with George Clooney, Holly Hunter; three escaped convicts on an allegorical odyssey that turns them up as old time hit singers; script by Ethan and Joel Coen
Odessa File
1974; d. Ronald Neame; w/ Jon Voight; German newspaper reporter tracking down Nazi war criminals; from Frederick Forsythe novel
Out of Africa
1985; d. Sydney Pollack; with Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Klaus Brandauer; based on the life of Karen Blixen in Nairobi, on her way to become author Iskc Dinesen; collated from her own writings
Paint Your Wagon
1969; d. Joshua Logan; w/ Lee Marvin, Jean Seberg; musical comedy set in gold run in No Name City; screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky
Patton
1970; d. Franklin Schaffner; w/ George C. Scott, Karl Malden; serious study of eccentric genius in warfare; script by Francis Ford Coppola
Picnic
1955; d. Joshua Logan; w/ William Holden, Kim Novak +; old college friend who has never made much of himself arrives in town and steals girl from wealthy buddy, the town scion; secondary players as good as the stars; from play by William Inge
Pink Panther
1964; d. Blake Edwards; w/ Peter Sellers, David Niven, Claudia Cardinale; Inspector Clouseau bungles his way through ‘the Phantom’s’ crimes; famous for opening title visuals
Pretty Baby
1978; d. Louis Malle; w/ Brooke Shields; New Orleans, circa the Great War, 12-year old kept in brothel sold to photographer; Sven Nykvist photography highlights the film
Pride and the Passion
1957; d. Stanley Kramer; w/ Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren; war spectacle set in Spain in the 19th century surrounding capture and transport of a giant canon; romance v. patriotism; from C. S. Forester novel
Quiet Man
1952; d. John Ford; with John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen; local Irish customs stand in the way of romance of O’Hara and boxer returned from America; Maurice Walsh story scripted by Frank Nugent
Robin and Marian
1976; d. Richard Lester; w/ Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn; with the aging of Robin and Marian, the times lose their magic but not their challenge—good study of mortality; script by James Goldman
Romeo and Juliet
1968; d. Franco Zeffirelli; w/ Olivia Hussey (debut) and Milo O’Shea; music (Nino Rota) and photography (Pasquale de Santis) and costumes (Danilo Donati) all exquisite
Russia House
1990; d. Fred Schepisi; w/ Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer; Russian woman draws British publisher into espionage; Tom Stoppard adaptation of John Le Carre novel
Separate Tables
1958; d. Delbert Mann; w/ Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, David Niven; no one is who they seem to be at this sad seaside lodging; screenplay by Terence Rattigan
Sink the Bismark
1960; d. Lewis Gilbert; w/ Kenneth More, Dana Wynter; British Navy hunting German war ship; Edmund H. North script
Some Like It Hot
1959; d. Billy Wilder; w/ Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe; two witnesses of Valentine’s Day Massacre escape capture by joining an all-girls band
Sons of Katie Elder
1965; d. Henry Hathaway; w/ John Wayne, Dean Martin, Martha Hyer; frontier woman’s sons set out to discover why she died penniless
Spy Who Came in from the Cold
1965; d. Martin Ritt; w/ Richard Burton, Claire Bloom; an agent embittered by his experience as a spy is trapped into a last fatal adventure; from the john le Carre novel, script by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper
Stalag 17
1953; d. Billy Wilder; w/ William Holden +; a POW’s cynicism leads fellow prisoners to think he is the camp “rat” until he uncovers the real mole; Edwin Blum and Wilder script taken from Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski play
10 North Frederick
1958; d. Philip Dunne; w/ Gary Cooper, Suzy Parker; politics saps a man who is saved by a romance with a young woman; from a John O’Hara novel
To Kill a Mockingbird
1962; d. Robert Mulligan; w/ Gregory Peck, Mary Badham +; in a backwoods Alabama town Atticus Finch defends a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of rape; decency triumphs for mentally challenged white neighbor but not for Tom; Horton Foote screenplay from Harper Lee novel
Tom Jones
1963; d. Tony Richardson; w/ Albert Finney, Susannah York; the bawdy adventures of a young man in 18th century England; John Osborne adaptation of Henry Fielding novel; sumptuous!
Top Banana
1954; d. Alfred E. Green; w/ Phil Silvers, Rose Marie; a filming of a Broadway play about a comedian, with great song, dance, and humor
Usual Suspects
1995; d. Bryan Singer; w/ Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Spacey; a police line-up brings together several suspects in a crime, none guilty, no one aware at first what has brought them together; Christopher McQuarrie script
Von Ryan’s Express
1965; d. Mark Robson; w/ Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard; POW leads an escape by high-jacking a train carrying prisoners
Where Eagles Dare
1968; d. Brian G. Hutton; w/ Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood; a crack unit parachutes into Germany to free an American officer being held in a castle; script by Alistaire MacLean
White Christmas
1954; d. Michael Curtiz; w/ Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney; former General, now unsuccessful innkeeper, rescued by the show biz men who served under him
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1988; d. Robert Zemeckis; w/ Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd +; in a mix of live action and animation, a seedy detective hunts down a murderer, with uncredited cameo performances
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1966; d. Mike Nichols; w/ Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Sandy Dennis, George Segal; an exploration of truth and fiction as two couples drink away a night; from Edward Albee play
Wild Bunch
1969; d. Sam Peckinpah; w/ William Holden, Ernest Borgnine; the dying of the old west has resigned an outlaw band to make one final, and it turns out fatal run.
Wind and the Lion
1975; d. John Milius; w/ Sean Connery, Brian Keith, Candice Bergen; a Moroccan chieftan kidnaps an American woman, starting an international incident that draws in Teddy Roosevelt; some basis in historical fact
Witness for the Prosecution
1957; d. Billy Wilder; w/ Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester; courtroom drama in which a clever defense exonerates a guilty man, but the shows not over; from the novel by Agatha Christie
Wizard of Oz
1939; d. Victor Fleming; w/ Judy Garland +; a cyclone-borne visitor to Oz assists the scarecrow, cowardly lion, and tin woodsman to find their own value in a fantasy/allegory of the west; from the L. Frank Baum novel.
Young Lions
1958; d. Edward Dmytryk; w/ Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin; American and German soldiers at the end of WWII; from the Irwin Shaw novel, adapted by Edward Anhalt
Kearney, Nebraska
January 21, 2017
capeek 