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  This is without question Billy Wilder’s most audacious film—with ACE IN A HOLE and SOME LIKE IT HOT coming in a close second and third. I remember when I first saw it as if it was yesterday. That’s how great an impression the film had on me even in my early teens. It was…

  I was all of ten years old when I first saw SOME LIKE IT HOT at the Wakefield Theater on White Plains Road in the Bronx.   I had never seen a Marylyn Monroe movie in a theater—at least by myself as my brothers had taken me to SEVEN YEAR ITCH but—and at that age…

  It’s A Wonderful life has one of the most interesting histories of any film I know. I first saw the film on a New York City afternoon TV showing—I don’t recall the station—where a considerable amount of material was cut to fit into a two hour time slot and of course I had to sit…

SINGING IN THE RAIN was supposed to have its first TV showing on NBC the week of the Kennedy Assignation in November 1963. But, considering the events, it was decided that the film (a light musical comedy) was not appropriate and the showing was postponed until (I think) January 1964 which is when I first…

    My relationship with Schindler’s List is an odd one and goes back before the film was even made. Flashback. Years ago while in college I was waiting for someone in a dormitory lobby and laying on the coffee table beside my chair was a tattered paperback copy of Albert Speer’s “Inside The Third…

    From Wikipedia: Dong Kingman was a Chinese American artist and one of America’s leading watercolor masters. As a painter on the forefront of the California Style School of painting, he was known for his urban and landscape paintings, as well as his graphic design work in the Hollywood film industry. He has won widespread critical…

  I first saw the ON THE WATERFRONT when I was five and my brothers took me to see it at a local theater in second run.  As adult memory doesn’t begin until about seven, I just remember fragments and most especially that the theater was so packed that I had to sit the petition behind…

                                                INTERVIEW AS PLAY   STARRING SULLY BOYAR/LAUREN JONES JONES/JIM SPINKS/BILL DUKE and JOSEPH EGAN   Of all the interviews I ever did this is, without question, my favorite. Why I had…

    THE GRADUATE and I have an interesting history. It opened when I was a sophomore in High School. There was a lot of talk about it at the school but I wasn’t into these low budget films (I think it came in for something around $2,000,000.) that were basically anti-Hollywood and what soon…

    Marlene Dietrich and Joseph Sternberg were one of the great Actor-director Hollywood matchings. Of the six films they made, in order of American release, MOROCCO did extremely well at the box office and established Dietrich as a star. The English Language version of THE BLUE ANGEL then solidified her star status. DISHONORED was…