Hello!

A link from reliable Craig Reardon sends us on a reverie into the troubled genre of movie-clip obituaries. The howls of anger at the Academy’s show montages (awful!) never dies down, and even Turner Classic Movies’ remembrance montages are slowed up with musical distractions and too-busy graphics. This YouTube clip of the
First TCM Remembers montage from 1995 is wonderful. It’s all movie stars, supporting actors, composers, directors, writers… no agents, executives or crafts service people (although I knew a couple who deserved it).

Before corporate finagling and political correctness hurt the Academy Montages, they were wonderful too … we’d watch them and go “Ahhh…” each time the face of some beloved figure flashed on the screen. I think my young- teenaged kids learned something about sentiment and mortality in 1995 when, in the middle of many faces they’d never recognize, Peter Cushing came on screen, holding a crossed pair of candlesticks and looking ready to take on the Devil. The Academy audience cheered too… for a hero who wasn’t considered Oscar-level talent.

And loyal, faithful, reliable Dick Dinman has a new podcast on tap; this time he and George Feltenstein examine the legend and legacy of Errol Flynn in Objective, Burma!, which plays like a new movie on Warner Archive Blu-ray, picture and audio.

I hope they discuss Flynn’s odd string of bad luck around this time — the picture was reportedly a big hit in America, but was banned for several years in the U.K., over the charge that it misrepresented the composition of the Allied forces fighting in Burma. Were Flynn’s legal problems with opportunistic morals charges settled by this time?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson