Archives for August 2019

Titus Techera, who hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation on which he and his guests discuss important films of the past and present, invited me back last week for the latest in a series of conversations about film noir and “noir-adjacent” films.

In the latest episode, we discuss Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, written by Robert Towne, scored by Jerry Goldsmith, and starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston (yes, that John Huston). Our hour-long chat is now available on line.

Here’s Titus’ summary of our conversation:

Titus and Terry Teachout discuss Chinatown, a story about the origins of Los Angeles and the doomed attempt to learn the ugly truth about these origins. John Huston plays the grand, corrupt aristocrat, Jack Nicholson the petty, corrupt democrat, and they come to fight over the future of America.

To listen to or download this episode, go here.

Imogene Coca performs her “Modest Stripper” routine on Admiral Broadway Revue. This episode was originally telecast simultaneously by NBC and DuMont on March 11, 1949:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“There is no more painful human illusion than that you can catch up on lost reading in old age. Old age is the busiest of them all. Things you used to do effortlessly take you forever, provided you can do them at all.”

S.N. Behrman, People in a Diary: A Memoir

“To be brought up in a poverty-stricken household, to know nothing but poverty in childhood and adolescence, is not so bad while you are enduring it; it is quite tolerable in fact, at least it was in my case. It is in later life that it takes its toll.”

S.N. Behrman, People in a Diary: A Memoir

Ethel Merman sings Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (from Annie Get Your Gun) on Shower of Stars. She is introduced by Red Skelton. This episode was originally cast by CBS on January 20, 1955:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“‘Isn’t it sad,’ he said, ‘that writers who, in their youth, break their backs to escape the bourgeoisie, end up by imitating them—at least the wealthy ones.’”

Siegfried Sassoon (quoted in S.N. Behrman, People in a Diary: A Memoir)

From 2009:

I wrote about film regularly between 1998 and 2005, and at the end of that time I drew up a double-barreled list of the movies I’d reviewed that I liked best. These were the top twenty….

Read the whole thing here.

“‘It is right,’ said the abbess. ‘It isn’t kind.’”

Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede