Collected Dailies 4

Many of my movie-watching choices are inspired by film discussions that I listen to on podcasts such as /Filmcast, B-Movie Cast, Movies 101, Double Feature, etc. Such is the case with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), featured on Filmspotting recently. First thing to impress me in the movie is its color. I wrote a review of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and I remember reading about the care and trouble taken with the color in that movie. Some woman – I forget her name – was the great Technicolor expert, I think. When Speed Racer (2008) came out, I remember a lot of chatter about the color in it (I liked the color, but not enough to finish the movie). We’re living in an age of greater subtlety in color palates, not to mention the ubiquitous blue light, but it’s still a pleasure to feast one’s eyes on the richness of a Colonel Blimp. And what happened to the “r” in “colonel”?

The first startup that I worked for encountered a rough patch and was acquired by the Arthur J. Rank company, which also made Colonel Blimp. Perhaps you’ve seen the big dude hitting the… the gong? Whatever that big cymbal thing is called… I never got to meet Mr. Rank, if he was in fact still living at the time. Rank Co.  eventually sold the company to some awful Texas conglomerate of three letters, the first being D, but I was long gone by then.

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Me and Orson Welles (2008) reminds me how much I loved the three seasons of  Slings and Arrows. I look forward to watching them again. I had Season 1 in my hand today, but decided to wait.

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For years I kept up with the Harry Potter books on tape, followed by the films. Then I ran out of gas or lost my momentum or whatever a third of the way through the Half-Blood Prince (2009). Watched the first part of the movie two or three or four times. Manohla Dargis obviously had the same problem, but she didn’t have the luxury of waiting a year or two. Now, with the Deadly Hallows in the offing, I’m going to try again…and… I’m glad I waited. It feels fresh, it’s dark, there are hormones, students and teachers and parents can get killed, which makes it matter, it’s noir, and… uh oh. The “seven” trope. Seven battles in Scott Pilgrim. Do I have to sit through seven pieces of Valdemort in the next two movies? Should I read the book first?

***

Finished Lost, Season 6. It didn’t disappoint. I’ve seen a lot of great series, but for pure entertainment, this one is my favorite.

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Well, I’m the first-round winner of the Cinexcellence UnScene contest. I get a dvd, which I’ll review here.

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Just Wright (2010) – How did Queen Latifah get that scar? Is it common knowledge?… She’s 40+ playing 35, but she looks younger than that. Makeup! She’s another entry on the long list of women working after 40 (along with Pam Grier in the movie) – once a rarity, now a commonplace… Common, btw, plays an NBA all-star but the cameraman in several shots makes him look shorter than Queen herself. And how come at 38, a top NBA player, he’s still single, but then falls hard for a transparent gold-digger like the Paula Patton character?… But no, I wanted rom com and I got it, because Latifah and Common have chemistry and whatever that means, whatever that is, it’s all you need to make the long wait for the final clinch worthwhile… I need to watch Chris Rock’s Good Hair (200), wherein Rock “explores the wonders of African-American hairstyles.” Latifah, Patton, and Grier don’t have a single curly hair among them; what’s the current zeitgeist?

***

Gunga Din (1939) is William Goldman’s choice of best movie ever. Starts out very cowboys and indians, filmed up near Owens Lake and Lone Pine, with those typical Hollywood-movie rocks in the landscape. I asked a couple of Indian friends about the movie, as it matches three British soldiers against hordes of Thuggees. My friends were not enthusiastic, about Gunga Din or about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

***

As I watch Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2010), a couple of questions:

– Is the movie borrowing from Season 6 of Lost?

– Why not find real Persians to play the  prince and princess? Disney could strengthen U.S./Iranian relations with such a move, even if Walt himself would have bombed Teheran by now. Well, you may say, Disney needed bankable stars, but stars are in a movie for one reason and one reason only, or so claims William Goldman, and that’s to open it. Since when has anyone counted on Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton to open a movie?

– For a guy who’s been knighted, Kingsley, who requires to be addressed as “Sir Ben,” sure seems to get a lot of thankless bad-guy roles.

Nice touch having the Persian prince and princess discuss Armageddon.

But just to be clear, loved the movie.

***

There is a scene in Ip Man (2008) ( a Grade-A movie) that reminds me that all cultures are not the same. Two martial-arts masters duel in secret. A young man sees them and reports the outcome of their match to others; meanwhile, the two men agree to keep the results of the match to themselves. Soon the whole town is talking about the match, and the loser is outraged. A scene follows in which the losing master, the young man, the young man’s brother, and a crowd from the town all argue about the rights and wrongs of the situation. The winning master, Ip Man, stands watching with a quizzical look on his face.

Watching the scene evolve, I wondered if the film was setting up conflict between Ip Man and the losing master. The losing master denied everything, demanding justice. Would he think that Ip Man spoke out of turn? He demands that Ip Man confirm his words. Ip Man stands quietly, a quizzical look on his face.

In our current Western culture of gossip, tell-all media, and 24/7 news cycles, the group onscreen and the audience with them would automatically assume that the cat has been let out of the bag. Everybody now knows who  won and who lost the fight, even if everyone isn’t already sharing a video of it on their   phones. The focus falls on the loser’s denials, or Ip Man’s superiority, and secondarily on the youthful paparazzi’s luck,  acumen, or culpability. The loser’s protests then seem pro forma and we watch Ip Man for his response and the losing master for his discomfiture.

In the scene as it plays out, however, the older brother scolds the young man. The masters are forgotten. How could the boy speak out as he did? He has brought embarrassment to a master. As an object lesson, his brother hauls down the young man’s trousers, exposing his bare buttocks to the crowd. Be part of the group! Consider the consequences of your actions to other members of the group!

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William Goldman’s “The Big Picture” was published  in 2000. It’s a collection of newspaper articles written over  a ten-year period (the 90s), predicting the performance of each year’s summer movies, guessing at Oscar nominations, and opining on the state of Hollywood cinema. I discovered Goldman in the 50s and have been following him ever since, and this collection of articles provides some great insights into the movie business. Among other things, Goldman reminds me to keep watching old movies and indies, because new and big and Hollywood are not necessarily, or even probably, synonyms for “good.”

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I was  killing time in a fabric store a long time ago, waiting for my spouse, and I picked up a copy of “War and Remembrance” that was lying by the cash register, and began to read it. By the time that we left the store, I was hooked, and I checked out a copy of the book from the library the same day, and read it through. Then, when the miniseries came out, I was excited to learn that the romantic lead was to be played by Robert Mitchum, whom I liked a lot. Sadly, he was too old to be credible in the role and I never finished the miniseries. I was remembering that as I watched Anzio (1968) last night. Mitchum is the perfect age for this one. Despite being made by Dino De Laurentiis, it’s a war movie with a brain… I checked out some reviews of the movie and found one for the Sun-Times by Roger Ebert. What a career. The review is 42 years old. But come to think of it, I used to watch Ebert on PBS with Gene Siskel in the 70s. A little Jack Russell terrier would jump up on the couch for the Dog of the Week pick and one week, Siskel picked Circle of Iron (1978), which I liked, and I jumped up on my couch in protest.

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Boy, the old comedies really rub your nose in the racial divide.

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Tough watching Make Way for Tomorrow (1937). Although a classic, no wonder it was a flop at the box office in 1937. Four grown kids with lives of their own are faced with a mom and dad who have lost their home. As my three sisters and I try to deal with a similar situation, I can only watch this one scene at a time. It’s too accurate. And I know it advance that it doesn’t have a happy ending.

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Watching You’ll Find Out (1940), available from NetFlix, was like walking down the street and going to the movies on a weekday evening when I was a kid. Fun and pleasant. Lots of references to popular radio, which in those days was our TV. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre get top billing on the movie these days, but Helen Parrish, Dennis O’Keefe, and the Kay Kyser band were the actual leads in the movie. Karloff in his scenes sounded an awful lot like Jeremy Irons in later life. His mouth looks like the Irons mouth. One thing I like about a lot of  ’40s movies, including this one, is the closeups. Let’s have more closeups! Or maybe they’re just better in black and white. The movie includes Ish Kabibble (Mrywyn Bogue). I can’t remember ever seeing Ish in a film before, but I do remember him from radio. He died in Joshua Tree, California, of all places. Not much happens in Joshua Tree, but if I had known he passed on there, I would have sought out the commemorative plaque.

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Harry Brown (2009) – Too bad actors have to get old and poop out. Caine is 77 and I’ll be sorry to see him go when that happens to him. In the meantime, he’s still able to man up and keep the slums safe by shooting and stabbing wayward youth.

***

Near Dark (1987) reminds me how badass Lance Henriksen could be. 70 years old, 166 roles, most of which are in movies and TV shows that I’ve never heard of. Still working,  cranking them out. He was in The Slammin’ Salmon (2009) and Appaloosa (2008), but sadly I didn’t remark him in either. Maybe I’ll go to Netflix and list his films and watch him in several of them for a bit.

***

Ahh. Lost Season 6. Finally.

And as I watch, I’m as interested and engaged as ever. Happiness is having a whole season to watch of a show that you like.

***

I had an urge to watch Taken (2008) again.Didn’t remember most of it and enjoyed it all over again. Of the multitude of silly parts, the only one that bothered me – because it was just so lazy? – was the scene in which Neeson pretends to be a French policeman shaking down some Albanian lowlifes, and the whole thing is done in English. Weird… Maggie Grace, 25, playing a 17-year-old, that was a little weird as well.

Just Wright (2010)

Just Wright (2010) – How did Queen Latifah get that scar? Is it common knowledge?… She’s 40+ playing a realistic 35. Makeup! She’s another entry on the long list of women working after 40 (along with Pam Grier in the movie), once a rarity, now a commonplace… Common, btw, plays an NBA all-star. The cameraman in several shots makes him look shorter than Queen herself. With Rajon, Dwight, Dwayne, and Jalen all in the frame with him, it’s important that Common not look too small. Plus, in the romance scenes, it’s best not to have Queen’s head look 50% larger than his. And how come at 38, a top NBA player and future Hall-of-Famer, he’s still single, but then falls hard for a transparent gold-digger like the Paula Patton character? And… and… wait a minute… “Common”? Who the heck is “Common”? My God, life is passing me by. I wouldn’t know Common if he snuck up and bit me on the ass. The man had a feud with Ice Cube in the ’90s. How could I not know that? Somebody go update the man’s Wiki page. I think that it stops three or four years ago.

Well, I wanted rom com and I got rom com, because Latifah and Common have chemistry and whatever that means, whatever that is, it’s all you need to make the long wait for the final clinch worthwhile… I liked the movie. It’s got a great example of the it’ll-be-a-while-before-we-smooch-but-now-our-lips-need-to-get-accidentally-close-to-each-other’s-and-we-both-need-to-look-a-little-shocked-with-a-hey-i-think-i’m-in-love-expression-stealing-over-our-faces. In the final clinch, the skinny muscular dude has  got an armful.

Movie notes:

I need to watch Chris Rock’s Good Hair (200), wherein Rock “explores the wonders of African-American hairstyles.” Latifah, Patton, and Grier don’t have a single curl among them.

Nice touch: the 40-year-old’s parents counseling her about meeting the  right man.

Class: the piano scenes feature a Steinway.

Checking the producers: Queen’s got her own money in it.

Common’s mother is described as “a pill.” I’m glad to see that the expression is still used.

The meet cute happens at a gas station where Queen and Common are pumping their own gas; you can’t pump your own gas in New Jersey.

I checked out that scar. Happened when Queen was three, playing with her brother. She tripped over a phone cord and bonked her head.

Dial 1119 (1952); The Phenix City Story (1955)

Michael Troutman at I Shoot the Pictures is watching all the movies on the 1000 Greatest Movies list. He rates those that he’s seen and I searched amongst the ones he has listed in his Highly Recommended category for something to watch. I chose Dial 9111 (1952) and ordered it from Netflix. It comes on a double-feature disk with The Phenix City Story (1955).

Troutman’s take on Dial 1119.

First and foremost: any connection between 1119 and the current emergency number 911? Not that I know of.

Second and nextmost: I’m always surprised when I find a good Hollywood movie that I haven’t heard of before, even though I should be used to that by now. There are plenty of good movies that I haven’t seen, of course, but not so many that I’ve never even heard of. I didn’t recognize any of the actors in Dial 1119, either, except for William Conrad, and he doesn’t stick around in the movie for long.

Thirdlymost: Checking out some of the other work by the actors in this movie, I’m reminded of all the great drama on TV in the 50s. Lux Video Theater, Front Row Center, Screen Directors Playhouse, Studio One in Hollywood, Playhouse 90, G. E. True Theater, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Armstrong Circle Theater, and many more. Dial 9111 plays like a presentation on one of these shows; it runs 75 minutes, uses a couple of sets and a stable of contract players, gives us some drama, a couple of closeups, gunplay, an ice-cream truck pulling up to the crowd at a hostage situation, lots of 50s hats, one of those movie air ducts that a man can crawl through, and a satisfying climax (this being the 50s, there is not much doubt about what the denouement will be). Troutman mentions the lack of a score in the movie; another reason that it might have seemed like a 50s TV drama to me. This was back when a phone number in the big city required only 4 digits; where I lived, you picked up the phone and told the operator the number you wanted. I had several dvds competing for my attention, but this one kept me to itself all the way through.

Kudos to Troutman and the others who are watching the movies on these humongous lists of notable films, instead of or in addition to Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009). I watched the IMDB Top 250 and it almost killed me. In fact, I quit with 9 left, all partially viewed; I couldn’t take it anymore. The good news is that by preying on Troutman’s list, I can now check off at least one of the great-film listees. And maybe by now, the 9 that I didn’t finish have dropped off the list, replaced by movies that I’ve seen. I see that Inception (2010) is presently ranked 4th-best movie of all time.

Anyway, so much for Dial 1119, the fun movie. The Phenix City Story, also on the disk, I was familiar with but had never watched. I grew up in the South and when I was ten or eleven I began hearing about Phenix City. Nothing good. It’s across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia, and Fort Benning, and back before it was cleaned up, it enjoyed at least 50 years of profitable vice in all its usual forms. But another 50 years, and in 2007 it was voted “most affordable suburb.” It’s also not far from Auburn University, which is a lot bigger now than it was then and which beat Clemson on the gridiron today as I write this; the cheerleaders for the game were dressed so as to make the old Phenix City proud.

When I moved to Phoenix for high school, “Phenix” just seemed plain weird.

The difference between Dial 9111 and The Phenix City Story is that in Dial 9111, Marshall Thompson plays an in-dramas-only mental case holding as hostage a collection of in-dramas-only bar customers, occasionally plugging one of them for our entertainment, whereas in The Phenix City Story, actors demonstrate the courage required of community members when they’re up against a corrupt city government and a criminal culture that treats murder like a public utility, for indiscriminate use against men, women, and children.

For example, the chief of police, speaking casually to a patrolman: “Somebody just threw a dead nigger kid on Sam Patterson’s front lawn. Go out there and have a look.”

The Production Code wanted the movie’s child murders and some of its other violence removed, but everything stayed in, probably because on one level, the film is a documentary. Don’t be put off by the twelve-minute intro, in which a real-life reporter interviews some of the real-life participants in the events depicted in the film; it’s the real thing, not B-movie posing.

The story centers on the murder of the Democratic nominee for State Attorney General, Albert Patterson, a long-time Phenix City lawyer. The movie was shot on location in Phenix City while the trial of his murderers was going on. John McIntire, who plays Patterson in the movie, wore the suit that Patterson was killed in, and the film was shot on 14th Street, the center of the sin part of “Sin City,” despite threats from the mobsters in charge there.

Movie notes:

Edward Andrews is the baddest of the bad guys and the most familiar face to me in the movie. He went on to play innumerable  parental and business guys in innumerable family movies, Disney and otherwise. He was Molly Ringwald’s grandpa in Sixteen Candles (1984). Lucky for him this film didn’t typecast him permanently as an evildoer.

The movie was written by Daniel Mainwaring, who also wrote Out of the Past (1947) and  Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), both also about small towns with problems. 

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) (Criterion)

SPOILERS

My neighborhood used to be crisscrossed with open ditches that handled runoff during storms. When the rain was heavy, the ditches became dangerous, running fast and often overflowing into the streets. During the dry season, an occasional car would back into a ditch or run off the road into one. Then one day, fliers were posted and distributed throughout the neighborhood, announcing that the County would fill the ditches and install storm drains. Shortly thereafter, a couple of earnest souls appeared at my door, representing a neighborhood association that I didn’t know existed. The two explained to me in great detail why the drain project was a terrible idea. I don’t remember the specifics of their argument, but the couple was very convincing. Probably something to do with taxes and government and how the ditches added character to the area, how crocodiles infest drainpipes, so forth. I was presented with an anti-drain petition, which I declined to sign. The ditches were filled in, the storm drains were installed, the overflow flooding and dogs and babies swept away and cars backing over the edge ceased, and I never heard from the minions of the neighborhood association again.

Up until 1940 in the U.S., if you got old without a pension or children to support you, you were screwed. Because of the Democratic landslide in 1932, FDR was able to get a social security bill passed in 1935, over Republican cries of pain, hysterical screams, dire threats, and predictions of crocodiles in the drain pipes of Washington. Socialism! End of the U.S. as we now know it! Once again, poor prospects for the Washington Senators (finished 6th in the American League in 1935, 67-86). Etc. The new program began phasing in in 1937, but no payments were made to seniors until 1940. Before then, you were on your own. Sort of like Logan’s Run (1976), only you weren’t forced to retire at 30.

Leo McCarey successfully directed Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, and Harold Lloyd in hit comedies. He was a big man at RKO. In 1937, McCarey’s father died and McCarey set out to make a movie to honor him. He chose as his subject the economic plight of the elderly in depressed times in this great nation of ours – specifically, how five grown children are to deal with their destitute mom and dad. His movie, Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), is not a comedy. Studio execs, up to and including Adolf Zukor, visited Mcarey’s set and pleaded for a star or two in the cast, and especially for a happy, or happier, ending. McCarey would not provide either and MWFT tanked at the box office. Folks had enough to worry about without watching this downer. Even Umberto D. (1952) had an upbeat ending, in the sense that ***spoiler*** Umberto’s dog Napoleone didn’t get squished by the train at the end. Paramount did not renew McCarey’s contract; in effect, he was fired.

The critics loved this movie. Directors like Capra, Welles, Lubitsch, and Renoir praised it. McCarey received a warm letter from George Bernard Shaw. At the time, Harry Cohn was feuding with Frank Capra and asked McCarey to do a movie for Colombia. McCarey asked for a fortune and Cohn laughed at him, but the two spent some time together and McCarey ended up making the classic screwball comedy The Awful Truth (1937), and winning an Oscar for it; he thanked the academy for the Oscar but famously noted that they gave it to him for the wrong movie. He went on in the 40s to make Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945).  After first run, The Bells of Saint Mary’s was  RKO’s top grosser up to that date and Going My Way was the same for Paramount. McCarey had the top reported income in the nation in 1944. His name appeared above his movies, an honor accorded to few directors. MWFT remained his favorite film. So let that be a lesson to you. Do the right thing!

The movie concerns a couple, married for 50 years, who lose their house to the bank. They have five grown children who immediately offer to help, within their ability to do so, but it’s clear to us from the start that trouble is coming. In the case of my own family, my three sisters and I were faced with, and are still faced with, a similar challenge: how to help mother, who is no longer able to live independently even with assistance? The obvious solution: have her take a turn in each of our homes. This worked for a while and then stopped working. We’re talking about years and years here; my mom is 97. (The movie is based on a book, “The Years Are So Long.” Time flies when you’re having fun, but not when you’re arguing with your mother.) The problems that we encountered were not events of a moment. They stretched out over time. In the movie, the action is condensed into specific incidents in dramatic scenes.  These can play a little hokey, but anybody with a headstrong but incapacitated parent in the house will recognize what McCarey is getting at – the duty, the problems, and especially the guilt, no matter what you do. In the movie, the presenting issues are financial, in our case health-related – but the moral dilemma is the same and the final cost to the kids is in the time spent by all concerned. McCarey used improvisation to avoid contrivance, to keep the characterizations balanced. His mastery in this movie was to demonstrate the pain-in-the-neckedness of the parental behavior and then to turn on a dime and nail you with mom and pop’s humanity, jerking sudden tears out of nowhere.

In the film’s third act, the senior couple spends an afternoon and evening on foot in NYC, prior to their forced separation. Echoes of Sunrise (1927). The wife’s apparent equanimity at the prospect of separation from her husband put me in mind of those cultures that consign their elders to an ice floe when their teeth are too worn down to tear and chew blubber anymore, or of the tribes that leave the oldsters behind to await the wolves when the travois are packed up and dragged away. A generation of boomers can descry senility on the far horizon now, with few pensions in prospect for them. Be interesting to see how they make out, even if they’re spared the privatization of their social-security benefits. Thoughts like these were juxtaposed in my mind with the fact that in the movie, everyone whom the couple encounters during their city walkabout behaves in a pleasant, kind, thoughtful, respectful way toward them. I suppose I expected the two to be ignored, brushed past, invisible. Have them treated in so loving a way was a dramatic stroke of great power by McCarey.

If you happen to be watching Harry Brown (2009) at the same time as MWFT, you might ask yourself why the senior couple, in such extremis, doesn’t just acquire a brace of Sig 9s and start shooting. The answer: in 1937 the Sig 9 hadn’t been invented yet.

MWFT is said to be one of the greatest of unknown movies. Its full title would properly be “Make Way for Tomorrow by Dying When You Get Old, Instead of Lingering, to the Inconvenience (not to say Annoyance) of All.” This whole situation can be avoided in future if you all just remember not to get old. Don’t let it sneak up on you, because it ain’t pretty! McCarey handles the problem by hiring Beulah Bondi to play the old lady. Beulah was 49 at the time (nice makeup job).

You’ll Find Out (1940); Zombies on Broadway (1945)

Boy, the old comedies really rub your nose in the racial divide.

Apart from that, for a good time and a primer on radio taste in the ’40s, I recommend You’ll Find Out (1940), available from NetFlix as part of a double feature that includes Zombies on Broadway (1945). Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre get top billing these days, but Helen Parrish, Dennis O’Keefe, and the Kay Kyser band are the actual leads in YFO. Oh, and Ish Kabibble (Merwyn Bogue). I can’t remember ever seeing Ish in a movie before, but I do remember him on the radio. He passed away in ’94 at the age of 86, in Joshua Tree, California, of all places. Not much happens in Joshua Tree, I can tell you, but if I had known that he met his Maker there, I would have sought out the plaque and combed my hair into bangs in memoriam.

One thing I like about a lot of  ’40s movies, including this one, is the closeups. Let’s have more closeups! Or maybe closeups are just better in black and white… After typing that, I found myself watching an episode of Lost. There were closeups. Sweaty ones. But none so lovingly, lingeringly done as those in YFO.

Mouth and teeth notes from YFO:

– Karloff is this movie could be Jeremy Irons. Sounds like him, mouth looks like the Irons’ mouth.

– Lorre is sporting false teeth in this one. Sort of Bogart teeth. Why??

– More teeth: Ginny Simms’ choppers – what a set! As she croons, “I’d know you anywhere… from my dreams” the screen is full of teeth.

You may wonder what you’ll find out, exactly, in You’ll Find Out, or what the protagonists find out. I won’t spoil it for you. In fact, I can’t.

I’m old enough to remember going to movies like YFO and ZOB in the ’40s. We’d walk downtown (a few blocks), choose between the Onslow and the State, and catch some advertisements, previews, a newsreel, a cartoon, and a double feature. Our parents might pick up a free bowl or plate on Wednesdays as well. The only time that I remember going to a movie that wasn’t a double feature was a revival of Gone With the Wind.

This was years before we had a TV and we had a full roster of favorite appointment radio shows. I was thinking about that as I watched YFO, because it features Kay Kyser’s band (and Kay himself) and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge, which was popular on NBC.

Zombies on Broadway features Wally Brown and Alan Carney, RKO’s answer to Abbott and Costello. Brown and Carney are no Abbott and Costello, but they made me smile in this one. They’re more like two lesser Costellos. Lame dialog but some good gags. Their zombie work might have inspired the later Abbott and Costello monster movies. This one had lots of big 40s hats and Anne Jeffreys at 22 looking 32; a lot of 30-somethings in the 40s played teenagers or 20-somethings; here’s a case of the opposite.

Sheldon Leonard also appears in ZOB. For some reason, I’ve always loved Sheldon Leonard.