This is the central gathering spot for all things Larry Ratliff and Movie Memories. The latest blog could be about your favorite celebrity, something funny or important on Larry’s mind or all of the above.
Funeral arrangements for Myra Ruth Littleberg, 91, of Ithaca, New York, who passed May 1, 2019 while reading a book at home, are pending at Ike’s Nondenominational Funeral Emporium on Hickory Street. Littleberg served as No. 2 Librarian for 25 years at the main Ithaca Library. She kept to herself, spoke in a whisper and was quick to “shush” loud talkers even outside the library. While researching Littleberg’s quiet life at work and at home with her three cats (Purrcy, Cuddles and Twerk), this reporter discovered, and thus must report, that Littleberg previously worked for years as a topless dancer who called herself Babs at the Check These Out Gentleman’s Club, located way down the gravel road on the shore of Cayuga Lake.
Let's face it, thanks to the Age of Social Media everyone is free to spew their political stance, opinion, jokes, opinion disguised in jokes, photos of cute kitties romping with lions (and/or mice, doggies, etc.), what we're having for breakfast, lunch, brunch and munch and things really much too personal for universe-wide distribution ("Does this look infected to you?")
The line between truth and fiction has become severely Mr. Magooed. For those of you who don't know and are probably under the age of 100, that means blurred. (Mr. Magoo, you see, was ... Oh never mind!)
Father's Day was June 16. So here's a question: Who is the best movie father in cinematic history?
(Courtesy: Walt Disney)
We could certainly make a case for Geppetto, the elderly woodcarver of Pinocchio, Walt Disney Productions second full-length animated feature of 1940.
Geppetto wanted a son so badly that he carved one out of wood. A Blue Fairy gave the puppet life and freed the lovable-but-gullible "boy" from his strings. My nose would grow and grow if I denied that Pinocchio made an indelible impression on me as a boy.
My heartfelt thanks go out to legendary San Antonio-based radio personality and good friend Sonny Melendrez, the nicest guy I know and one of the finest keynote speakers in the U.S., for having me on his radio show Sunday morning.
I had the honor of serving as sidekick and movie guy on Sonny's top-rated San Antonio radio show a few years back. Now Sonny is back on the air with the all new "Sonny Melendrez Show" Sundays at 11 a.m. on San Antonio's 930 AM The Answer. You can listen live by going to the station's website.
Sonny and I had a great time on his new show Sunday morning. It was like old times, but fresh and new.
What, you missed it? What if I said you didn't, not really?
Sonny, always on the cutting edge of radio and technology, archives his weekly shows as podcasts. If you're in the mood to have some fun and find out how yours truly slowly morphed from a shy guy afraid to even raise his hand in class in high school to a nationally known film critic, public speaker and comedian, click on this link to hear the podcast.
Have you ever pondered how you got to the place you're at in your life right now? This minute?
I have more times than I care to share. Usually it's in the wee hours of the night or early morning, when I'm tossing and turning in bed. I toss and turn sometime when I'm not in bed, which is not pleasant to witness and may be what "threw my back out" as they used to say.
My innermost self evaluations most often come down to "Why me?" or "Why now?" or the dreaded "Oh [EXPLETIVE DELETED], not now!"
Occasionally, though, there's a "Well, how about that. What a pleasant surprise." That's what today's contribution to literary history is all about.
I can't read your mind or anything, but I'm guessing you're looking for something a little different for your office, corporate or facility holiday gathering this year.
Well, look no further. I have two suggestions for you, and they both just happen to involve, ahem, me.
It was 50 years ago today Professor Mercer taught the band to play-by-play
Two days have passed, and I still can't get over the fact that legendary sportscaster Bill Mercer sent an invite to join him for lunch to me and about 20 others from his 35-plus-year University of North Texas (UNT) broadcasting and sportscasting teaching span.
Mercer is famous in the sports world for wrapping his feet with plastic wrap in an attempt to stay warm enough to call the famous “Ice Bowl” NFL championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers in 1967, not to mention the Cowboys first two Super Bowl appearances. He was in the booth when the Texas Rangers set up shop in Arlington and those slightly long of tooth will recall Mercer at the mic when "Studio Wrestling," taken seriously by many back in the 1960s or so, was taped before a small audience in the KRLD-TV (now KDFW) studios.
His credits are too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say that the Texas Pro Baseball Hall of Fame, Texas Radio Hall of Fame and Dallas Press Club “Living Legend of North Texas Journalism” member who shared the broadcast booth with Don Drysdale when the Texas Rangers first hit the field was/is larger than life.
I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. -- Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)
Looking for treasures? You might try the garage.
You know, lurking in those musty boxes weakened by time and multiple relocations over two or three decades
Digging through way too many of those boxes to admit we even had over the weekend in preparation for an upcoming garage sale, we came across my birth announcement from way back in 19-something or other.
Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty fumble through the not-so-grand Oscar finale. (Courtesy: www.google.com)
See, this is what happens when you trust Bonnie and Clyde to hand out the Best Picture award at the Academy Awards.
The only thing I can think of that would have been more bizarre would be if Warren Beatty, looking totally confused and lost (for good reason, it turns out) had said, "We're Bonnie and Clyde. We rob ballots!"
In case you missed it, the 89th Academy Awards telecast was putt-putting along fairly smoothly Sunday night until, of all things, the all-important finale.
And I bet the popcorn was rubbery and cold that first night in Camden, N.J. back on June 6, 1933.
That's when Richard Hollingshead Jr., an auto parts salesman, invented the drive-in movie by putting a projector on the hood of a car and parking it in front of two bedsheets tied together and strung up in the yard.
Nancy Reagan, who passed away Sunday (March 6), met her beloved Ronald Reagan in 1949.
The Reagans pose for a publicity still for "Hellcats of the Navy." (Courtesy: Columbia Pictures)
The future 40th president of the United States was serving in another office in the late '40s. Reagan, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, agreed to have dinner with actress Nancy Davis. Davis noticed that her name, which, according to reports turned out to be another Nancy Davis, had popped up in the infamous Communist witch hunt.
Attention all website owners and bloggers: When your spouse tells you it's way past time to change the post on your website, it's way past time to change the post on your website.
Suellen is right, but I do have an excuse. Does that help? OK, didn't think so.
The fact is that LarryRatliff.com, home of everything Movie Memories, is undergoing a major overhaul, and we've been planning and building something we think is eye-popping special.
It's a little premature to give too much away, so let's just say that very soon you will be looking at a state-of-the-art Movie Memories and Larry Ratliff website home that, hopefully, will take your breath away (But only temporarily, we hope; safety first).
But wait, there's more!
We are also excited about being very close to announcing that Larry will be digging out his old TV makeup kit for a new movie critic position on a nationally syndicated television show.
As they say on TV, stay tuned.
And as they also say, we'll be right back: Bigger and better than ever.
I'm Larry Ratliff, and I approved this message (right after I wrote it).
Jennifer Lawrence takes aim at becoming a successful entrepreneur in "Joy." (Google.com)
A quick note about joy, that inner-tingling feeling of delight, and Joy, the award-winning movie.
It is my pleasure to inform anyone who doesn't already know that The Senior Voice is now a dual North Texas publication serving both Dallas and Fort Worth with separate issues.
That makes the circulation of Carol Butler's soon-to-be-monthly brainchild to bring news, features and other articles of interest to seniors and those who deal with that special section of the population to a whopping 100,000.
It's an exciting new year for Carol and the staff, which includes this semi-humble scribe as the film columnist/critic.
The (soon-to-be) monthly format will allow more access to timely movie releases. We'll start the film review party with Joy, which earned Jennifer Lawrence, its star, a Golden Globe award as best performance by an actress in a motion picture - comedy or musical Sunday night in Los Angeles.
My review begins thusly:
Watching Joy, the mesmerizing dysfunctional family drama-with-comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper, this thought kept running through my mind:
“Is there anything Jennifer Lawrence can’t do?”
Click here to read my full Joy review. And, while you're on the Senior Voice website, take a little time to look around at a new major player in North Texas media.
Before we get to this week's guide to classic movies on television, I would like to personally invite you to a very special event in San Antonio Thursday evening at 6:30.
Elizabeth Taylor and Spencer Tracy in "Father of the Bride." (MGM)
Help us celebrate the grand opening of the brand-spanking new Emerald Oaks Retirement Resort, the state-of-the-art 55-and-over retirement community at 20302 Bulverde Rd. north of Loop 1604 on the Alamo City's North Side. I'll be onstage to inaugurate the spectacular theater that seats 150 in plush, stadium seating coolness.
There will be movies that I hope will surprise and delight you as we search for the most fantastic fathers -- and perhaps an offbeat guy or two -- in movie history. I can promise a fun-filled evening full of clips and quips that's a perfect tuneup for Father's Day.
Admission is free, but seating is limited and RSVP is required. Please call 210-740-8105 today to reserve your seats. Tell them Larry sent you.
I look forward to seeing you Thursday at Emerald Oaks!
Classic movies on TV this week
Looking for some good classic movies to watch this week at home? Well, I've got some suggestions in the latest weekly feature from Movie Memories with Larry Ratliff.
(Courtesy: MGM)
First up: A question. Who needs Botox when we've got movies like The Picture of Dorian Gray? George Sanders, Donna Reed and Angela Lansbury are on screen in this eerie mix of drama, fantasy and horror.
It is Hurd Hatfield who plays the tormented, but never-aging womanizer in director Albert Lewin's 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's wild novel.
Mr. Gray, you see, never ages, but the portrait of him locked away in a special room does. It turns into quite a grotesque demon, in fact.
Well, you just have to see for yourself how it all works out. The Picture of Dorian Gray airs at 7 p.m. Saturday on TCM. (Please check local listings to confirm the time.)
I also likeGet Shorty (1995), which is set for 5 p.m. Friday on MGM HD. It's great to see John Travolta and Gene Hackman chewing the scenery in this comic crime-thriller also featuring Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina and James Gandolfini based on Elmore Leonard's novel.
Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black, Wild Wild West), one of Hollywood's most underrated directors, calls the shots.
Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier take center stage in Stanley Kramer's comic-drama classic Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? (1967) at 7 p.m. Thursday on TCM. Tracy huffs and puffs a lot, at least at first, when daughter Joey (Katharine Houghton) brings home an unexpected fiance.
Murder, deceit and romance are the name of the game in the original 1946 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice set for 5 a.m. (Yes, a.m.) Friday on TCM. John Garfield plays the handsome stranger who drifts into town and woos a married woman portrayed by sultry Lana Turner in this one.
And if you enjoy a good submarine action war drama, you could do a lot worse than Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), pairing Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. This is my choice this week for night owls and insomniacs. Run Silent, Run Deep ships out at 1 a.m. Wednesday on MGM HD.
If I were just going to see one this week, I guess I'd have to dust off The Picture of Dorian Gray (Saturday night at 7 on TCM).
That presentation begins and ends with Alamo movies and includes Academy Award-winner Giant, the larger-than-life, star-studded 1956 tale of cattle, oil and bubbling emotions starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean.
My host, Joan Pyle, who is "Jo" to her friends, met me at the door when I arrived. The entire staff couldn't have been nicer or more helpful. I can't wait to return to Eagle's Trace to make more Movie Memories in the Bayou City.
What's in a title? Well, ...
Let's get right to the point. Some movie titles, like Of Mice and Men, It's a Wonderful Life and Thank You for Smoking (a personal favorite from Jason Reitman) are perfectly in tune with what the film is about.
They either intrigue, entice or, for whatever reason, make you want to throw down your hard-earned money and see the movie.
That's not what this item is about, however.
Let's consider for a moment the worst movie titles of all time. Often an unfortunate or carelessly planned title provides a hint that something wicked this way comes. That almost always turns out to be the case.
George Clooney and friend in "The Men Who Stare at Goats." (Overture Films)
For every lousy film title you can think of that fronted a movie that wasn't all that bad, such as The Shawshank Redemption, for instance, I can counter with something like The Men Who Stare at Goats. In my humble opinion, that was one of the few awful clunkers George Clooney has ever appeared in.
Then there are the real stinkers like Freddy Got Fingered, a nearly unwatchable little ditty starring, if we can call it that, Tom Green as a cartoonist who moves back in with his parents.
Maybe you can name some yourself. I'd love to hear from folks who over the years have come across some movie titles they feel are so bad they make it nearly impossible to appreciate even a good movie that follows the title.
If you could use some suggestions to refresh your memory, the folks over at The Hollywood Reporter have come up with a list they call The 50 Worst Movie Titles of All Time, which does, by the way include both The Men Who Stare at Goats and that disgusting Freddy one. (Click here for the link.)
Oh, and there's this one: Dude, Where's My Car? Really, dude?
Sorry, I just had to ask, primarily because mine is going so well.
Not that I want to gloat, but I've lost enough weight that our bathroom scale is now down into the numbers range. It wasn't always that way.
For longer than I care to remember, that little window on the scale -- the dreaded eye into our soul of self-loathing, if you will -- didn't show any numbers at all, just letters or words.
"One at a time" was probably my favorite at the highest point of actual weight and lowest ebb of self-esteem.
Then, after some half-tries to do something about my situation, I eased down into the "OMG!" range and, finally, after self-discipline which I figure equals the resolve of "The Little Engine That Could," I got the scale to merely whimper "Help" for a while.
Now I'm down into numbers, baby, and descending with the not-so-blazing speed of a packed elevator at the end of a long day touring the refried bean factory.
I guess you're wondering how I pulled off this amazing success. Easy ...
We got bikes!
We bought them at night, in a hurry. What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, actually. My wife Suellen's fun-on-two-wheels machine actually turned out to be a semi-rusted demonstrator suffering from MacArthur Park syndrome. You know, the song? Except it wasn't the cake left out in the rain. In this case, it was her bicycle, which will actually reluctantly shift a gear or two after five or six squirts of WD-40 and some serious handlebar-grip twisting.
My shiny new ride is a Huffy. I like to refer to it as a Huffy Puffy, mainly because we have some gently sloping hills in our neighborhood that appear to transform into Pikes Peak with speed bumps once I'm on the saddle.
(Saddle: The proper name for a bicycle seat, which I think was invented by a disturbed man or woman who enjoyed watching others suffer. Also, "bicycle seat sore" just doesn't have a ring to it like "saddle sore" does.)
The hills in our 'hood may not actually jut 14,115 feet into the sky like that Pikes Peak thing, but it sure feels that way when I'm pedaling at about a thousand RPMs and tipping the speedometer at somewhere between 3/4 and 1 mph.
Not that I have a speedometer on my bike. I just know I'm not setting any speed records because a newborn puppy-dog just learning to stand on all fours beat me up the hill the other day. Also, it's common for people on that street to come out in their front yards to snicker at me (and, I suspect, place bets) as I sweat and pedal my way up the gradual slope.
Whatever. My diet and exercise program is working, so what do I care about how the neighbors feel? And just for the record, I'm pretty sure that little doggie is part greyhound. In fact, I'm declaring success. My New Year's resolution of 1979 has finally been accomplished. So congrats to me.
Now I can get serious about the next year's resolution: Become a world famous standup comedian before 1980 comes to an end.
I can't worry about that right now, though. Gotta go. It's time for my snack.
Mama Ratliff told me two things while I was growing up that have always stuck with me:
Always keep a $20 bill in your wallet in case of emergencies, and
If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.
I've never had much luck with that first one. Every time I have folding money at the ready, there's always an irresistible temptation lurking within arm's reach. Like a half gallon of Blue Bell for $4.99 or Girl Scouts armed with cookies setting up tables at the entrance of grocery stores. Luckily, the Girl Scout thing is only seasonal.
Neil Patrick Harris, working the Oscar crowd.
Saying something nice or keeping my big trap shut has been problematic as well. I'm going to try really hard to find something nice to say about last night's sluggish, basically non-eventful, overlong, boring telecast of "The 87th Academy Awards" on ABC. (In case you missed it, here's a link to CNN's list of Oscar winners.)
I'm not even going to mention that first-time Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris, a veteran of working tough pat-each-other-on-the-back-rooms hosting the Tony Awards and television's Emmys, appeared overwhelmed either by an audience of about a billion worldwide or the sea of bright lights and serious Academy voting members (or both) he faced -- at least once dressed only in his tidy whities -- for what seemed like about half my life. (And not the good half, either.)
See, I told you I have trouble saying nice things. So this Academy Awards wrap-up is for you, Mama Ratliff:
I really enjoyed the musical numbers, with one exception: Lady Gaga.
Lady Gaga gets classy, sort of.
Before you look for the comment button to rave on about how wonderful the often-outlandish Gaga was singing a tribute to Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music in honor of the Best Picture Oscar-winning musical's 50th anniversary, let me state my case.
And Mama Ratliff, forgive me for whipping this out:
Lady Gaga's tats (Read carefully; that's tats) took me completely out of what could have been a lovely, moving tribute both to the movie that took five Oscar wins in 1965 and to Andrews.
I have no problem with the gifted singer who until fairly recently liked to sing while a performance artist threw up all over her doing a 180-degree turn going semi-legit.
Gaga can really warble. But when she rolled into the finale of Climb Every Mountain and thrust out her sleeveless arms to reveal an inked rendering of a trumpet on her right arm and inspirational script in German on the left, let's just say those were not two of my favorite things.
I'm no prude and I have nothing against tattoos on sailors, especially Popeye the Sailor Man, but Ms. Lady should have worn some elegant sleeves to kept her tats under wrap last night.
Now, for the untarnished good stuff:
Tim McGraw's rendition of Glen Campbell's I'm Not Gonna Miss You from Campbell's autobiographical documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me froze me to my recliner. So much so, in fact, that I had a little trouble catching my breath when McGraw calmly, beautifully sang the lyrics inspired by Campbell's ongoing losing battle with Alzheimer's disease.
Anyone who has a history of Alzheimer's disease in their family, as we do, can appreciate the power of words that cut right to the frightening graphic honesty of the brutal disease so much that it rips one's heart in two.
The other powerful musical moment came from gifted singers and performers John Legend and Common.
Common, left, and John Legend bring down the house.
Glory, the emotional anthem from Selma, the best picture nominee about the civil rights struggles to secure equal voting rights in 1965, brought the Oscar crowd to its feet.
In a perplexing Academy Awards year when no non-white men or women were nominated, it was a befitting tribute that brought tears to the eyes of some, including British actor David Oyelowo, who portrayed Martin Luther King Jr., but who was not nominated.
The heart-melting title tune ends with the word "glory" repeated several times.
