From Those Were the Days:

1943 - The Adventures of Nero Wolfe debuted on the NBC Blue radio network. Nero Wolfe was “the detective genius who rates the knife and fork the greatest tools ever invented by man.” The ‘gargantuan gourmet’ continued on the air until 1951.

1948 - My Favorite Husband, with Lucille Ball, became the gifted redhead’s first regular radio program on CBS. Lee Bowman, and later, Richard Denning, co-starred with Lucy as “two people who live together and like it.”

1951 - The Silver Eagle debuted on ABC Radio as a late entry into radio’s action-adventure lineup. Jim Ameche starred as Jim West. The program continued for four years and marked the last of radio’s long list of adventure shows.
9:25:08 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“Home again, home again, jiggedy jig…”

I had a nice but all-too-brief respite at my sister Kat’s place Sunday—it would have been nice had I been able to have Monday off, too, but then I wouldn’t have gotten paid for the holiday. I took along a few Gunsmoke CD’s to listen to on the trip, but I never quite got around to them—due largely in part to the fact that I have been furiously turning the pages of Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies as of late.

I never really was a big fan of Ebert’s, to be perfectly frank—I think it’s due to the fact that I never cared for the movie review series he did with Gene Siskel (Sneak Previews, Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, etc.); the whole “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” deal reeks of lions, Christians and Roman emperors. But as far as the written page goes, I consider Ebert a damn good critic; one edition of his Video Home Companions has one of the best articles on film that I’ve ever read, discussing why black & white movies aren’t necessarily a bad thing.

The Great Movies consists of 100 columns (originally composed by Ebert in a series for The Chicago Sun-Times) dealing with 100 films ol’ Rog has affection for, and while I agree that most of his choices are sound there are one or two that still have me scratching my head in bewilderment. (He includes The Shawshank Redemption, one of the most overrated films in cinema history, and Body Heat—which is a good but not great film.) I’ve noticed that a good many of the movies on his list are some that I haven’t gotten around to seeing, particularly some foreign titles like Grand Illusion (1937) and The Exterminating Angel (1962). I have made myself a mental note to add some of these to my rental queue at Netflix, and will include my impressions on said movies in future blog entries.

It’s almost impossible for me to get into any kind of regular sleep schedule whenever I’m visiting my sister or vacationing, and 3:00am Monday morning found me couch-bound in her living room, surfing channels like mad. (Fortunately for me, she has the satellite system I cannot.) I usually try to catch whatever’s on Turner Classic Movies when visiting, but TCM was showing The Bishop’s Wife (1947) and I already have that at the house. I settled for some scattered Twilight Zone reruns and an episode of Coupling before I found that the Fox Movie Channel was showing a movie that I have been meaning to see for some time but just never got around to it.

It’s a 1967 suspense thriller called The Incident, and it’s about a pair of seriously disturbed street punks (Tony Musante, Martin Sheen) who terrorize the inhabitants of a NYC subway car. (It was originally done on television in 1963 as Ride With Terror, and Musante played the same role in that production as well.) The movie was directed by Larry Peerce, who started his career with the groundbreaking One Potato, Two Potato (1964) but sort of fizzled out after that (although he also did the 1969 film version of Goodbye, Columbus). The Incident is a truly harrowing film; claustrophobic and unpleasant to experience at times but I’d strongly recommend at least one viewing as it is still potent and topical today. The incredibly eclectic cast includes Beau Bridges (the unlikely hero of the film), Ruby Dee, Jack Gilford, Mike Kellin, Ed McMahon(!), Gary Merrill, Donna Mills, Brock Peters, Thelma Ritter and Jan Sterling.
9:23:29 PM    comment []  trackback []