Sunday Recuperation

I'm a big old movie fan. So is my mother. When I was a kid, she and I would spend Sunday afternoons watching "Bill Kennedy at the Movies" on Channel 50 in Detroit. Bill was this flamboyant, sort of tipsy, ex-actor who professed to know everyone and everything in Hollywood. He would show these great old movies and, during the commercials, he would spout more Hollywood trivia than anyone I've every seen. What he didn't know about the movies my mother did. My love of old movies is due primarily to them.

Sunday as I recuperated from my bout with the stomach virus, I had an opportunity to catch a couple of old movies on Turner Classic Movies. The first - Mr. Deeds Goes to Town - stars two of my favorite actors, Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur and is one I had seen before. It's a 1936 Frank Capra classic. Most people know who Gary Cooper is. Fewer know Jean Arthur but she is one of my favorites. She is perhaps best remembered as the mother in Shane. But she cut her teeth as a comedienne in silent films and starred opposite Cooper in Mr. Deeds and James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

The second - On The Waterfront - I hadn't seen. Made in 1954, it stars a young, quirky, and very good Marlon Brando. ("I coulda been a contender... I coulda been somebody.") Elia Kazan directed this controversial movie. (The controversy arises because Kazan cooperated with McCarthy and the HUAC during the Hollywood communist witch hunts of the 50s. The movie attempts to vindicate a misfit who cooperates with authorites.)

It brought back old memories to be able to watch two great old movies on a Sunday afternoon.

If only Bill Kennedy had been there to provide the trivia.
K-