JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG TIDBITS

According to producer/director Stanley Kramer, a young New York stage actor with a small part in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) held up production at one point. He was trying to understand his motivation in a brief shot which called for him to enter a room, cross to a table, and wait for Spencer Tracy to enter to hand him a folder. At 10:15 a.m., after sitting in his dressing room since 9:00 am, waiting to make his entrance, Tracy stormed onto the set and said, "Lookit, you come in the f***ing door and cross the f***ing room and go to the f***ing table because its the only way to get in the f***ing room. That's your motivation."

On the day Tracy gave his eleven-minute summation speech, the set at Universal Pictures was packed to the rafters with celebrities and studio executives. Kramer shot it in a single take, not because he thought breaking it up would necessarily lessen the impact of the words but because he knew he would get the maximum emotional payoff out of Tracy without having to start and stop. To be sure he had the coverage he needed without scheduling a reshoot, Kramer had the speech filmed with two cameras simultaneously from two different angles.

Montgomery Clift had difficulty with his lines, cues, and timing. He told Kramer he didn't know if he could actually get through the scene. Kramer did his best to reassure him, but it was Tracy who eventually helped Clift through it. Perhaps drawing on his own years of alcoholism, Tracy spoke to the younger actor with sympathy but with firmness, even relaxing his own dictum about sticking strictly to the script: "Just look into my eyes and do it. You're a great actor and you understand this guy. Stanley doesn't care if you throw aside the precise lines. Just do it into my eyes and you'll be magnificent." Clift spent four days getting through the seven-minute sequence, stumbling through and performing each take differently. At the end of his last take, the set broke out into spontaneous applause. "Monty's condition gave the performance an aura as though it were being shot through muslin, the way the words tumbled out and the disjointed, sudden bursts of lucidity out of a mumble," Kramer said later. "It was classic! It was one of the best moments in the film!" Some film historians and critics have since suggested that Kramer knew exactly what he was doing by casting such broken and erratic performers as Judy Garland and Clift in roles that called for expressions of pain, embarrassment, and terror...

HIGHEST GROSSING FILMS: THE 1960s

TOP FILMS OF 1960s (unadjusted domestic gross totals)

1. The Sound of Music (1965)
2. The Graduate (1967)
3. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
4. The Jungle Book (1967)
5. My Fair Lady (1964)

6. Thunderball (1965)
7. Cleopatra (1963)
8.  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
9. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
10. How the West Was Won (1962)

11. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
12. Funny Girl (1968)
13. The Love Bug (1968)
14. Goldfinger (1964)
15. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

16. The Dirty Dozen (1967)
17. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
18. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
19. The Odd Couple (1968)
20. Valley of the Dolls (1967)

HIGHEST GROSSING FILMS: THE 1930s

TOP FILMS OF 1930s (unadjusted domestic gross totals)

1. Gone With The Wind (1939)
2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
3. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
4. Frankenstein (1931)
5. Tom Sawyer (1930

6. King Kong (1933)
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
8. Hell's Angels (1930)
9. Cavalcade (1933)
10. Saratoga (1937)

11. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

12. A Star Is Born (1937)
13. Modern Times (1936)
14. Ingagi (1930)
15. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

16. San Francisco (1936)
17. Shanghai Express (1932)
18. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) (tie)
19. City Lights (1931) (tie)
20. Three Smart Girls (1936)

THE BOX OFFICE STARS: 1940

I wanted to start a new feature where I spotlight and remember the top ten box office champs of each year. It was great to see some of my favorite stars on here.

For this edition we are spotlighting 1940. The box office champ for that year was none other than Mickey Rooney...

BIGGEST STARS OF 1940

1. MICKEY ROONEY

2. SPENCER TRACY

3. CLARK GABLE

4. GENE AUTRY

5. TYRONE POWER

6. JAMES CAGNEY

7. BING CROSBY

8. WALLACE BEERY

9. BETTE DAVIS

10. JUDY GARLAND

                     

                                                       

MICKEY ROONEY: A LIFE IN PICTURES

The death of Mickey Rooney is the greatest blow to classic Hollywood since the death of Elizabeth Taylor. It is so hard to capture a career like Mickey Rooney's in a blog entry, but I wanted to capture his life in pictures. He was one of the greatest stars that Hollywood would ever know...

with Judy Garland

With Ava Gardner

With Elizabeth Taylor

With Spencer Tracy

 

With Sammy Davis Jr.

THE SON OF SPENCER TRACY

It is always interesting to look into the offspring of some of our favorite stars. Some of them - well a lot of them do not deal with having a famous parent very good. The lives of Hollywood children are filled with drugs, heartache, and often suicide. However, there are some children that seemingly live normal lives. The son of Spencer Tracy was born with huge physical obstacles - however, John Tracy seemingly overcame many of them to have a wonderful life. His story is an inspiration to not only other Hollywood offspring but to anyone fighting a physical handicap in general.

When actor Spencer Tracy and his wife Louise had a boy on June 26,1924 - John Broeck Tracy, Louise noticed he wasn't responding to their voices. When Tracy was 10 months old, his mother became alarmed when a door that accidentally slammed shut failed to wake him.

"I stopped suddenly.... I stood motionless beside his crib. I called his name again -- and then I shouted it. He slept on. And so I discovered our baby was deaf," she said years later. Afraid to tell anyone, even her husband, she consulted several doctors who told her that her son had "nerve damage, cause unknown." They also said he would never talk. The Tracys refused to accept doctors' advice to "wait -- in a few years he'll be old enough for a state school," a reference to deaf education that would start when he was 6.

"We went right on talking to Johnny, singing to him, telling him nursery rhymes, and as it turned out, that was just the right thing to do," Louise once said, according to a 1983 Times story.

A specialist in New York told them John could live a “normal” life if he learned to lip read and talk. As Louise worked with her son, she realized other parents need help too with their deaf child[ren]. She started a daycare in 1942, next to the University of Southern California. The business incorporated into the John Tracy Clinic (JTC) the next year with Walt Disney as one of the first board members alongside Spencer. Over the years it grew, developing a correspondence course as well to reach those who couldn't travel to them. In 1952 the clinic moved to more modern facilities. The clinic highly promotes oralism. JTC now servers over 25,000 families a year, focusing on those aged 0-5 years.
"As a child, John Tracy couldn't have known that he would be the inspiration of a whole movement to give new hope to parents of children with hearing loss," Barbara F. Hecht, president of the clinic, told The Times.

The clinic was among the first to start a hearing-impaired child's training in infancy and make parental education a critical component. It has helped an estimated 245,000 parents and children.

It tries to educate "deaf children through their mothers and fathers, who otherwise would not know what to do with them.... I hoped it would help a great deal," John Tracy wrote in 1946 in the Volta Review, the journal of the Alexander Graham Bell Assn. for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Despite a bout with polio at 6 that left him with a weakened leg, Tracy began riding horses at 9 and competed in Riviera Country Club riding contests, he wrote in Volta. He also became a dedicated polo and tennis player.

With his father's acting career taking off, the family put down roots in 1936 on an eight-acre ranch in Encino, where they lived for 19 years.

After attending what is now the California Institute of the Arts, Tracy worked for several years in the art props department at Walt Disney Studios; Disney was a close family friend. Tracy stopped working when his eyesight started to fail in the late 1950s. Well into adulthood, he learned that his deafness was due to Usher syndrome, a genetic disease that was also to blame for his fading vision. By the early 1990s, he was legally blind from retinitis pigmentosa.

In 1953, he married Nadine Carr, a neighbor with whom he used to ride horses. They had a son, Joseph Spencer Tracy, before divorcing in 1957. A year before his mother died in 1983, Tracy moved to a Santa Monica retirement home, then later to Acton. His father died in 1967.

When asked whether he had a message for the hearing-impaired children who attend the clinic that bears his name, Tracy told the Daily News in 2003 that "I want to let the kids know they can live a full life. Sports, schools, hobbies, interests, dating, marriage, have a family, drive a car -- all of it."

John Tracy led a fullfilling life even though in the 1920s and 1930s being born with deafness was nearly a prison sentence, never being able to communicate with society. However, John and his parents changed that all. John died on June 15, 2007 - nearly 40 years to the day after his father Spencer Tracy died. In addition to his sister, Susie, and his son, Joseph, who is an artist, Tracy was survived by three grandchildren. He was not only survived by his family , but he was survived by the countless people and their families that he inspired through the years...

RECENTLY VIEWED: IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD

Two words that describe the 1963 fim It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World is epic comedy. That is exactly what this 50 year old film is and more. I caught the movie again on a lazy Sunday, and I was excited that my three year old son also got involved in some of the movie. While, I do not expect him to realize who Jimmy Dunrante or Andy Devine was, I was happy that he could still laugh at a movie that is well older than I am.

"Smiler" Grogan (Jimmy Durante), suspect in a tuna factory robbery 15 years before and on the run from the police, recklessly passes a number of vehicles on a twisting, mountainous road in Southern California's Mojave Desert before careening his car off a cliff and crashing. Five motorists from four of the passed vehicles stop to assist: dentist Melville Crump (Sid Caesar); furniture mover Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters); "Dingy" Bell (Mickey Rooney) and "Benjy" Benjamin (Buddy Hackett), two friends on their way to Las Vegas; and entrepreneur J. Russell Finch (Milton Berle). Just before he dies, Grogan tells the men about $350,000 cash buried--"under a big 'W'"--in Santa Rosita State Park in Santa Rosita Beach near the Mexican border. Two detectives (Norman Fell, Nicholas Georgiade) arrive, and the lead detective asks the men pointed questions about their interaction with Grogan. While not-so-artfully dodging the questions, each of the five internally changes from having had compassion for Grogan to becoming greedy to retrieve the treasure. The detectives permit the five to return to their vehicles after receiving Finch's contact information. The motorists then drive away from the accident site, initially testing each other's resolve on the road, then stop to try to reason with one another on how to share the money (in the "17 different ways" conversation), but when they can't agree on any one particular distribution, they run to their vehicles to engage in an all-out race to reach the loot first. All four vehicles are eventually abandoned.

  Meanwhile, Captain T. G. Culpeper (Spencer Tracy), of the Santa Rosita Police Department, who has been patiently working on the Grogan case for those 15 years, hopes to solve it and retire with honor. Learning of the fatal crash, he suspects that "Smiler" might have given one or more of the witnesses a clue to the stolen loot's location and has police units track their movements. Culpeper phones police (Andy Devine, Stan Freberg) in another jurisdiction about Grogan. Culpeper's switchboard operator (ZaSu Pitts) takes calls; later, Culpeper has his own disastrous phone conversation with his wife Ginger (Selma Diamond) and their daughter Billie Sue (Louise Glenn).

Everyone experiences multiple setbacks en route to the money. Melville and his wife Monica (Edie Adams) charter a shabby World War I-era biplane to Santa Rosita from an unlicensed pilot (Ben Blue) and arrive by cab to a hardware store. After telling the cabbie (Leo Gorcey) to wait outside, a store employee (Doodles Weaver) lets them in just before closing time. But the store's owner, Mr. Dinkler (Edward Everett Horton), closes it down and locks the door to the basement, into which the pair had just descended, intending to find and buy a pick and shovel. Melville wrecks the place in various failed attempts to escape before blasting a hole in the wall with dynamite.

Dingy and Benjy question an attendant (Charles Lane) and, against his objections, convince pilot Tyler Fitzgerald (Jim Backus) to shuttle them to Santa Rosita in his modern twin-engine aircraft. Fitzgerald carelessly lets them operate the controls while he mixes drinks in the back of the plane; soon Benjy's erratic steering knocks him unconscious and the pair have to fly and land the plane on their own. A group of air-traffic controllers (Carl Reiner, Eddie Ryder, Jesse White) are unable to assist them in landing, and a retired Air Force officer (Paul Ford) is brought in to help them land. Dingy and Benjy eventually land their aircraft, crashing into an airport terminal but escaping unharmed. Two other cab drivers (Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Peter Falk), who respectively whisk Dingy and Benjy away from the airport, and Melville and Monica from the hardware store, also get in on the hunt.

  Pike crashes his furniture truck into the car containing Finch, his wife Emmeline (Dorothy Provine), and his overbearing mother-in-law, Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman). Finch persuades Pike to ride off for help on a bicycle, then the three flag down British army Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne (Terry-Thomas) to get them to Santa Rosita and ignore Pike on the roadside nearby. The four stop at a service station owned by two brothers (Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan) who decline Finch's request to rent the station's tow truck. After many arguments, most caused by Mrs. Marcus, she and Emmeline refuse to go any farther, and Finch and Hawthorne leave them behind.

Pike tries to get motorist Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) to take him to Santa Rosita but foolishly tells him about the scheme, prompting the greedy Meyer to race for the money himself. Pike, outraged, destroys the aforementioned service station at which Meyer has been forced to stop due to a tire blowout. After the rampage, Pike steals the station's tow truck and later picks up Mrs. Marcus and Emmeline. Mrs. Marcus calls her beach-bum son Sylvester (Dick Shawn), who lives near Santa Rosita, to look for the loot, but the Oedipally-obsessed Sylvester, who is dancing with his laconic girlfriend (Barrie Chase), races hysterically to the defense of his mother instead. Meyer experiences his own setbacks, including losing his car in a river. After flagging down a nervous motorist (Don Knotts), persuading the motorist by a conspiracy theory suggesting that he is a CIA agent hunted by Russians, Meyer steals the motorist's car. All the while, the police secretly track their activities while Culpeper bides his time.

  Eventually, all of the interlopers arrive at the state park and begin searching for the "Big W," overseen by Captain Culpeper, secretly disgruntled and intent on keeping all of the loot for himself on being promised only a too-small pension, despite solving the Grogan case. He orders all policemen to leave the area and waits for the others to retrieve the money. Emmeline, the only one who wanted no part of the scheme, is the first to recognize what the "Big W" actually is. As the watching Culpeper steps out of the bushes and greets her, she unwittingly reveals the location to him, albeit not explicitly saying so, and suggests they split the money. Soon Pike, then the others, notice the "W" as well and frantically begin digging while Culpeper quietly mixes in with the non-diggers. After a suitcase containing the loot is dug up and opened, the group argues about the money's distribution. Culpeper then identifies himself, takes the suitcase, and suggests to the stunned ensemble that a jury might be more lenient if they turn themselves in. Initially taking Culpeper's advice, the defeated claimants climb into the two taxis and drive out of the park.

When the two taxicab groups notice Culpeper heading away from Santa Rosita with the money, they immediately reverse direction and chase him, foiling his plan to store his police vehicle with the help of Jimmy the Crook (Buster Keaton) in a seaside garage and hop a boat bound for Mexico. After a number of unsuccessful attempts to reach Culpeper by radio, Police Chief Aloysius (William Demarest) realizes what Culpeper is doing, revokes his newly-trebled pension — which Aloysius had secured by arm twisting the mayor (Lloyd Corrigan) less than a half hour before — by tearing up the envelope that the mayor yielded and the pension papers that it presumably contains, and orders Culpeper's arrest.

At the end of the chase, stranded high up the decaying fire escape ladders of an abandoned building are the eleven men in the group, each of whom is continually trying to keep the other ten men from possessing the suitcase containing the money, despite warnings from a speech-maker (Joe E. Brown) that the ladders are unsafe. While the men are trying to avoid falling off the building's disintegrating fire escape, the suitcase accidentally opens, spilling the cash into the air to flutter upon the crowd below. The ladders break away from the building and a fire engine arrives to rescue the men, who then simultaneously attempt to climb down an extended fire truck ladder. But their combined weight breaks the ladder's hydraulic system, causing it to gyrate uncontrollably, flinging or dropping them off to various locations.

The dejected men, now immobile in a prison hospital in bandages and casts, blame one another for their predicament and criticize Culpeper for seizing the money. Replying that their sentences may be lighter because he will probably take most of the blame in court, ex-Captain Culpeper adds that perhaps in 10 or 20 years, there will be something about all this he can laugh about. Benjy throws his banana peel toward a wastebasket, but it misses and lands on the floor, moments before the nagging Mrs. Marcus enters, flanked by Monica and Emmeline, scolding all of the hospitalized men for everything. Mrs. Marcus slips on the banana peel, falls flat on her back, and is hurriedly carried off on a gurney...while Culpeper and all the other injured men laugh hysterically.

  There is a whole other story of the background of the movie, but that is another story for another day. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World had its world premiere at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California on November 7, 1963, on the Dome's own opening night. The East Coast premiere was on November 17, 1963, at the Warner Cinerama Theatre in Times Square, New York City. The day before, the film was shown in a special charity preview to benefit the Kennedy Child Study Center and the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Institute. President John F. Kennedy sent his brother Bobby to the East Coast premiere instead of attending with his wife Jacqueline and would be assassinated less than a week later in Dallas.

Distinguished by the largest number of stars to appear in a film comedy, Mad World opened to acclaim from many critics and tremendous box office receipts, becoming the highest grossing American film of 1963, quickly establishing itself as one of the top 100 highest-grossing films of all time when adjusted for inflation. The film's great success inspired Kramer to direct and produce Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (also starring Tracy in his last role). So much can be written and said about this classic comedy. It is fun to watch for the cameos in the movie from Jerry Lewis playing a crazed driver who runs over Spencer Tracy's hat to Jack Benny who stops on the side of the road only to get yelled at by Ethel Merman. The movie is long but does not seem long, and it is the perfect movie to lose yourself in on a lazy afternoon...

MY RATING: 10 OUT OF 10

SAN FRANCISCO: THE FIRST DISASTER MOVIE

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I got to see all of the popular disaster movies of the day from Earthquake (1974) to Dante’s Peak (1997). With the special effects and CGI of modern movies, it is pretty easy to create a disaster movie. However, in my opinion one of the first disaster movies was San Francisco (1936). The movie has been listed as a musical as well as a drama, but I consider it a disaster movie. For 1936 the special effects are pretty good, and like many modern disaster movies there are central characters that seem to over come terrible hardships.

Based on the April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the film was the top grossing movie of that year, stars Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy. The then very popular singing of MacDonald helped make this film a hit, coming on the heels of her other 1936 blockbuster, Rose Marie. The Internet Movie Database reports that famous silent film directors D. W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim contributed to the screenplay without screen credit. Griffith also helped direct the famous earthquake sequence.

The earthquake montage sequence was created by montage expert Slavko Vorkapich. The Barbary Coast barroom set was built on a special platform that rocked and shook to simulate the historical temblor. (Similar sets were built for the 1974 disaster film Earthquake).

There are two versions of the ending. The original release features a stylish montage of then-current (1936) scenes of a bustling San Francisco, including Market Street and the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. When the film was re-released in 1948, it was thought these scenes were dated and the film fades out on a single long shot of the modern business district. However, the TV and 16mm versions of the film seen in the 1950s and 60s were struck from the original version which includes the montage. The current DVD and cable version features the shorter, 1948 version.

Gable and Tracy also made two other films together, Test Pilot and Boom Town, before Tracy eventually insisted on the same top billing clause in his MGM contract that Gable had enjoyed, effectively ending the American cinema's most famous screen team. Gable had played a similar character also named "Blackie" two years earlier in the smash hit gangster epic Manhattan Melodrama, with William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Even though many movie books and critics consider the film a musical, it really only contained the title song in the film. The title song may be the best-remembered part of the film. It was composed by Bronislaw Kaper and Walter Jurmann, with lyrics by Gus Kahn. It is sung by Jeanette MacDonald a half-dozen times in the film, and becomes an anthem for the survivors of the earthquake. It has now a popular sentimental sing-along at public events such as the city's annual earthquake commemoration. Early in the film the song "The Darktown Strutters Ball" can be heard; this is a historically inaccurate inclusion, since the song was written in 1917. During the two operatic scenes in the film, MacDonald sang excerpts from Charles Gounod's Faust and Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata.

While I was impressed with the screen compatibility of Clark Gable, Jeannette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy, to me the true star of the film was the earthquake itself. The finale of the earthquake which is what we are waiting for. And what a spectacle it is!! It is very well done in those days before sophisticated special effects; with tumbling buildings, crashing walls and the inevitable fire. There are a couple of poignant scenes when the firefighters must blow up buildings and homes to control the fire thus destroying lifetimes of work and memories.

The ending is a little bit over the top as those who have lost their families and all that they own, joyously sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic and march up the hill to view the destruction (I'm not sure I would be that upbeat)......but it is still effective. The fade to the modern day (1936) San Francisco is just the right ending note. Before the earthquake, you see people stressing over trivial things, and then after the earthquake people realize what is important in life. History repeats itself from earthquakes to the terrorism on September 11, 2001. Society faces hardships and continues on. I think that San Francisco in 1936 was one of the first movies that showed this kind of a disaster that hits humanity every generation. It may have been the first disaster films but it won't be the last...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: SPENCER TRACY AND HIS LEADING LADIES

Without question Spencer Tracy is considered one of the greatest actors of all time. This past month was his birthday. He would have been 112 years young. Tracy has left behind some great cinema magic with some of the most beautiful co-stars of all time...

with BETTE DAVIS (1908-1989)

with JEANETTE MACDONALD (1903-1965)

with JEAN HARLOW (1911-1937)

with MYRNA LOY (1905-1993)

with KATHERINE HEPBURN (1907-2003)

with ELIZABETH TAYLOR (1932-2011)

MY FIVE FAVORITE MALE ACTORS

Not suprisingly all of my five favorite actors are from the golden age of Hollywood. I like a lot of the movies made today, but the actors of yesteryear had much more personality and talent. Some of the great actors like Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne did not make my list, but that does not mean I do not like them. I just have my specific favorites:

5. SPENCER TRACY (1900-1967)
I am embarrassed to admit that even though Spencer Tracy made my list, I have not seen a ton of his movies. I have never seen a Tracy-Katherine Hepburn movie all the way through. However, the Tracy movies I have seen like "San Francisco" (1936), "Boy's Town" (1938), and even "It's A Mad,Mad,Mad, Mad World" (1963) show a perfect example of what a geniune acting style he had. Today he is mostly remembered for his movies with Katherine Hepburn, but even his fellow actors said that he was the greatest actor of their generation.

4. CHARLIE CHAPLIN (1889-1977)
People seem to love or hate Charlie Chaplin. I got interested in Chaplin and silent movies in general because of his film biography "Chaplin"(1992) starring Robert Downey Jr.. Even though Chaplin started out in vaudville as a comic, I think every movie he made had a serious message behind it. His masterpiece "City Light"(1931) had a message about class society, "Modern Times"(1936) had a message about the work place and industry, and "The Great Dictator"(1940) had a profound message about the destruction of the world by hate. Of all Chaplin's movies I think "Limelight"(1952) is my favorite. It is his most personal and best example of what a great film maker he was.

3. BING CROSBY (1903-1977)
Anyone that knows me, knows that Bing Crosby is my favorite singer of all-time. After over 30 years collecting his music there are still new items I am discovering. Bing was more than just a crooner though. In his movies he showed a ride range and could have been a great actor. His first real acting movie was in "Pennies From Heaven" (1936) where he played a reformed convict. Bing would go on to be nominated three times in 1944, 1945, and 1954 for an Oscar. He would win in 1944 for his role as Father O'Malley. If you really want to see great Bing Crosby acting, I recommend "The Country Girl" (1954) and the underrated "Man On Fire" (1957). Also, he played a dark doctor in the television movie "Dr. Cook's Garden" (1971).

2. JAMES CAGNEY (1899-1986)
Did James Cagney ever make a bad movie? I would say he probably made a few bad movies, but his acting made any movie worthwhile. From his turn as a gangster in "Public Enemy" (1931) to his return to films in "Ragtime" (1981), Cagney made every movie he was in great. I have a soft spot for his commanding role as gangster Cody Jarrett in "White Heat" (1949), and it is my favorite classic movie of all-time. Cagney should have won an Oscar for that role. Surprisingly he was not even nominated. He did win one for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942). Another favorite Cagney role of mine was Marty Snyder, the boyfriend of singer Ruth Etting, in the musical "Love Me Or Leave Me" (1955). The film was a musical but Cagney added the drama that was needed.

1. CARY GRANT (1904-1986)
The biggest blunder that Hollywood ever made was not awarding Cary Grant an Oscar for acting. He started out as Arcibald Leach in England, but he immigrated to California in 1931 and never looked back. His early movies in Hollywood were pretty forgetful, but by 1937 he was making great light comedies like "Topper" and "The Awful Truth". He should have won an Oscar for his role in the tearjerker "Penny Serenade" (1941). In my opinion, he should have at least been nominated for his role in the brillant comedy "Arsenic And Old Lace" (1944). Cary Grant also became one of Alfred Hitchcock's favorite actors and starred in some of the director's best movies like: "Suspicion" (1941), "To Catch A Thief" (1955), and "North By Northwest" (1959) to name just a few. After Grant's only daughter was born in 1966, Grant left movies - never to return...

Who are your favorites....

25 THINGS YOU DID NOT KNOW ABOUT HEPBURN AND TRACY

25 Things You Didn't Know About The Katharine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy Movies
by Gary Susman

Fans of classic movies know that "Woman of the Year" marks the beginning of the 25-year partnership, on- and off-screen, between one of film's most beloved and enduring couples: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

Released 70 years ago this month, "Woman of the Year" came to define combustible romantic chemistry, thanks to the two fiery, evenly-matched leads. It launched a partnership that lasted until Tracy's death in 1967, a quarter-century union that resulted in nine films and an extramarital affair that was Hollywood's worst kept secret.

What fans may not know is how the partnership came to be, who the real-life inspirations were for Hepburn's high-minded columnist and Tracy's earthy sportswriter, or the forgotten screen pairing of the two stars that came four years earlier. Read on for the untold story of "Woman of the Year" and its long afterlife in the realms of Broadway, TV, and magazines.

1. "Woman of the Year" was not actually Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's first on-screen pairing. That forgotten milestone occurred when they were both cartoon caricatures who were pictured together in the Silly Symphony cartoon "Mother Goose Goes Hollywood" in 1938.

2. The screenwriters had Clark Gable in mind for the male lead of "Woman of the Year," but then MGM player Spencer Tracy became available. He'd been committed to a production of "The Yearling" that suddenly fell through. (It would be made a few years later, with Gregory Peck in the lead.)

3. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was producing the movie, introduced the two stars on the MGM lot. In her memoir, Hepburn recalled that she was wearing high heels at the time and said, "I'm afraid I'm a bit too tall for you, Mr. Tracy." Mankiewicz replied, "Don't worry, Kate, he'll cut you down to size."

4. Hepburn had been a Hollywood star for a decade, yet "Woman of the Year" was one of the first movies to play up her sex appeal, thanks to the MGM team of Adrian (costumes), Sydney Guilaroff (hair) and Jack Dawn (makeup).

5. Actor/director/playwright Garson Kanin came up with the initial story idea, but in 1941, he was drafted into the Army, so he farmed out the screnwriting duties to his younger brother, Michael Kanin, and fellow screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr.

6. The inspiration for foreign affairs columnist Tess Harding was real-life journalist Dorothy Thompson, well known to Americans as a columnist and radio pundit, and generally considered the second most-respected woman in America at the time -- after Eleanor Roosevelt.

7. The apparent inspiration for Sam Craig was Lardner's father, Ring Lardner Sr., who had been a nationally syndicated sportswriter, one who is still famous today for his short stories.

8. With the help of Hepburn (a friend of Garson Kanin's), Michael Kanin and Lardner sold their screenplay to MGM in a record-breaking deal, for $211,000. $100,000 of that was for the screenplay, another $100,000 was for Hepburn's services as star. Hepburn took another $10,000 for her agent and pocketed the last $1,000 for her expenses.

9. Much was made at the time of the screenwriters' relative youth. Lardner was just 26. Kanin was 31.

10. Hepburn suggested MGM borrow George Stevens from rival studio RKO to direct. He'd already directed her twice, in 1935's "Alice Adams" and 1937's "Quality Street."

11. The movie initially ended with the couple trying to reconcile by walking a mile in each other's shoes: she tries to cover a boxing match, while he tries to learn French and Spanish. The ending was scrapped after a test screening. There was a sense that Tess didn't get enough of a come-uppance, though whether that sense came from viewers or from MGM brass taken aback by such a strong proto-feminist character, Lardner never knew. The revised ending, in which Tess tries to cook Sam a breakfast but proves hopelessly inept in the kitchen, certainly seemed to put Tess in her place; Lardner grumbled that the new ending undid all the effort the rest of the movie had made in establishing Tess as a confident, competent, and independent woman.

12. The film marked the first major screen roles of frequent TV character actor Dan Tobin (Tess' annoying assistant, Gerald Howe) and "Life of Riley" star William Bendix (bartender Pinkie Peters).

13. MGM publicity materials for the movie called Hepburn "Kate the Great," a nickname that stuck for the rest of her career.

14. The movie was nominated for two Oscars. Hepburn earned a nod for Best Actress, while Lardner and Kanin won the Academy Award for their screenplay.

15. Tracy and Hepburn reprised their roles in a half-hour radio drama version in 1943, on "Screen Guild Theatre." It was their only joint radio appearance.

16. Michael Kanin went on to earn another Oscar nomination, along with wife Fay Kanin, for the original screenplay of 1958's "Teacher's Pet," in which Kanin finally got to write a part for Gable.

17. Garson Kanin had been in love with Hepburn when he came up with the story idea for "Woman of the Year" that he passed along to his brother. He had even wanted to marry the actress, though she seems not to have shared his feelings. A few months after the movie's release, Kanin married writer and future Oscar-winning actress Ruth Gordon. The couple went on to write two movies for Tracy and Hepburn: "Adam's Rib" (1949) and "Pat and Mike" (1952). In 1971, Kanin wrote a book about working with the couple, "Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir." He and Gordon were married nearly 43 years, until her death in 1985.

18. Producer Mankiewicz, who introduced Tracy and Hepburn, became an acclaimed writer/director of such films as "A Letter to Three Wives" and "All About Eve." Two decades after serving as the catalyst for the long-running Tracy-Hepburn affair, he was responsible for pairing an even more notorious, adulterous Hollywood couple when he cast Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in his epic "Cleopatra."

19. Stevens remained one of Hollywood's A-list directors, peaking in the 1950s with such landmarks as "A Place in the Sun," "Shane," and "Giant." Curiously, despite their more than pleasant experience working with him on "Woman of the Year," neither Tracy nor Hepburn ever made another film with Stevens.

20. Lardner's career was derailed in the late 1940s by the Hollywood blacklist. He was one of the Hollywood 10, the best-known group of blacklistees; like the others in the group, he served a year in prison for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation of erstwhile Communists working in Hollywood. After his release, Lardner continued to write without credit, mostly for television. His name didn't appear in a movie's credits for 16 years, until 1965's Steve McQueen drama "The Cincinnati Kid." In 1970, he wrote the screenplay for Robert Altman's groundbreaking film version of "M*A*S*H." His work adapting Richard Hooker's novel earned him his second Oscar, 28 years after his first.

21. In the 1970s, McCall's magazine created a Woman of the Year award. Hepburn was its first winner.

22. A 1976 TV movie version of "Woman of the Year" starred real-life couple Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna

23. "Woman of the Year" was adapted into a 1981 Broadway musical, with songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb (of "Chicago" and "Cabaret" fame) and a book by Peter Stone ("1776," "Titanic"). It starred Harry Guardino and Lauren Bacall, who won a Best Actress Tony for her performance. The showran for two years, with Raquel Welch, then Debbie Reynolds taking over the lead.

24. The musical was filmed for TV in 1984, starring Barbara Eden and Don Chastain.

25. The first meeting of Tracy and Hepburn, as they began work on "Woman of the Year," was dramatized in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" in 2004. Kevin O'Rourke played Tracy, alongside Cate Blanchett's Oscar-winning turn as Hepburn.

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