I just read Anne Thompsons’ article in the Aug. 6-12 weekly issue of Variety about Paul Greengrass’ much-talked about blockbuster, The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). The hyper-visceral handheld camerawork and editing has people buzzing (both metaphorically and literally). Which is fine. The cinematography in that film is top-notch – even if I do advise folks prone to getting motion-sickness (such as myself) to sit in the back-row.

At least The Bourne Ultimatum has the guts to make a case against the timely issue of the erosion of our civil liberties and takes a “valiant” stand against torture. I put the word “valiant” in quotation marks because it is valiant when compared to a Republican debate wherein the candidates are all trying to out-Gitmo each other to look tough, saying such things as how they’d call on Federal Agent Jack Bauer to help us in case of attack. (Hello? Did anyone else read that New Yorker article about how our very own U.S. military brass stepped in to ask the producers of “24” to tone down the torture because it was resulting in sadistic recruits? For some weird reason, this does not seem to be helping the U.S.) However, The Bourne Ultimatum’s stand against torture it is not so valiant when you realize that your sympathy, as an audience, is only being kindled toward outrage when you realize that (gasp) Americans are also being tortured and killed, not just foreigners! Still, the kindling of a conscience starts at home, I guess. But I have digressed. I had my own form of outrage when Thompson further referred to The Bourne Ultimatum’s form of spastic cinema as “intimate, in-your-face camerawork.” I certainly agree with the latter. But the former? A $130 million-dollar action film starring Matt Damon wherein no shot lasts longer than five seconds: intimate? Excuse me?

In 1958 avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) shot a 42-minute long film called Anticipation of the Night. Now this certainly qualifies as “intimate.” It was a kinetic bundle of images meant to represent (in the words of the director) “the day’s events as recalled by an infant who is, as yet, unable to organize his thoughts.” It has a lot of jump-cuts and handheld camerawork. When I first saw it in a class taught by Brakhage, back in the early nineties, I was so overcome with motion-sickness that I felt like making “I survived Anticipation of the Night” t-shirts. But I was nonetheless fascinated. According to Brakhage, the screening of this film went on to cause a riot when it was shown at the 1959 Brussels World Fair. Brakhage was especially savaged by such French directors as Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais who, from Brakhage’s telling, you’d think were the first to toss their chairs at the screen. Ironically, Resnais found great use for some of Brakhage’s techniques in Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Last Year At Marienbad (aka: L’ Année dernière à Marienbad, 1961), as did Godard in Breathless (aka: A bout de soufflé, 1960) and many titles beyond that.

In 1965 English director Peter Watkins releases The War Game – a film that felt so visceral and real that it won an Oscar for “Best Documentary” in 1967, despite it’s being about a nuclear attack on Britain. (For those weak on history: this event did not happen.) In 1966 Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006) released The Battle of Algiers (aka: La Battaglia di Algeri) – a film that used available light, real locations, and newsreel film stock to great advantage. It feels like a documentary and was nominated for an Oscar in 1969 for “Best Director.” It was also used by U.S. Federal Agents, after 9/11, as a valuable tool to show recruits the difficulties associated with being an occupier in a foreign land. It was also Greengrass’ inspirations for The Bourne Ultimatum. And, one suspects, also his previous United 93 (2006) and Bloody Sunday (2002).

I have no issues with talented directors making use of documentary-like styles to energize their films. Sometimes it works to great effect. Kubrick and Spielberg are just two big names that have “been there and done that.” But, to me, and more and more, it seems like an endless stream of low-budget, reality-based tv shows have now had their unholy matrimony with inept blockbusters aimed squarely at our multi-tasking youth, and their unholy union has brought forth a toxic sludge of something that I refuse to call “intimate” cinema. 

On one side of the do-it-yourself spectrum, I guess you could call The Blair Witch Project (1999) “intimate,” insofar as that is the polite term for the feeling of being trapped in a tent with a drooling idiot. I might prefer the terms “annoying cinema” or “stuck-with-very-irritating-people cinema.” But, on the other side of the spectrum , can we agree that when multi-million dollar budgets are used to give you diced-up, kinetic motion – all purely done to give you a thrill-ride designed to pump-up the heartbeat and give you visceral exhilaration – that this is not “intimate”? I’d prefer another term. Maybe: “spastic cinema.” Or: “spazema.” It doesn’t quite have the ring of “Cinerama” – but it gets the job done. And quickly. Which is key to a spazema experience, which (poetically, I think) also rhymes with “enema.” Anyway, the term spazema can also be used whether you are talking about a Michael Bay film or one of the many “fast zombie” films now out there. (Confession: I prefer my zombies slow. It mimics overpopulation more accurately, in my book. 20 years ago we had 5 billion people. Now we’re reaching toward 7 billion people. See how that works? One moment it’s a slow meandering zombie with a few buddies that you don't really worry about and you take a lunch-break, listen to some Muzak, and then in only what seems like a “suddenly” moment: you’re surrounded.)

Anyway, should you burn out on this new spaz-cinema (or spazema) style that seems to be taking over the big screen, not to worry, I have just the antidote: go rent a film by Béla Tarr or see Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). These masters will settle your nerves right back down, for they are not afraid to let you sit, in time, to enjoy, or inhabit, or study, (or, even, go crazy) in a given space (even if it’s outer space, as the case may be).

Throw a rock in any direction these days and you’ll draw the blood of a movie critic marking the 40^th anniversary of the release of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967).¹ To hear them tell it, Bonnie and Clyde was the movie that changed the rules, that changed Hollywood, changed the course of history, changed the world, changed us, blah-blah-blah, Bosley Crowther, blah-blah-blah, Pauline Kael, blah-blah-blah, balletic violence, blah-blah-blah, catharsis, redemption, ho-hum. The critics aren’t talking about the whole film so much as The End, when Dustbowl bank robber/lovers Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty are caught in a police ambush and aerated in a fusillade of bullets that have them both doing the St. Vitus Dance for what seems like five full minutes. Over at Newsday, Gene Seymour heralds “a movie with… a pervasive and resounding impact on culture and society” while New York Times’ critic A. O. Scott recalls that Bonnie and Clyde “seemed to introduce a new kind of violence into movies… raw and immediate, yet at the same time… almost gleeful.”

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not knocking Bonnie and Clyde. It’s a good movie and I think Bosley Crowther was wrong (albeit more fun to read than Pauline Kael). But I was 5 or 6 when that movie came out and I didn’t see it for many years. Ditto many of the movies that followed the example set by Bonnie and Clyde’s ultra-violence: Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969), Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1972), Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). I saw none of these films in their first run and only heard about them in a roundabout fashion, word of mouth, from fathers and mothers and the older brothers of friends who had been of age to buy a ticket. I remember thinking these movies sounded interesting but I had all the blood I could handle at the kiddie matinee, thank you very much.

Blood? We had it in gouts. In Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1965), a man is murdered, strung up by his feet and his body slit open like a piñata to reanimate the dry bones of Count Dracula. Later in that same film, a female vampire is pinned to a table by several bearded monks while a stake is driven between her breasts. In Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), the Count is staked not once but twice – the first time with a hunk of wood that looks like what Ishmael clung to at the end of Moby Dick and the second time by being impaled on a big metal cross. The film ends with Dracula struggling to pull this thing out of his back while blood rolls out of his eyes… I think that beats Bonnie and Clyde’s “ballet of violence” all to hell. I wasn’t one of the lucky kids permitted by dint of adult inattention to see a matinee of Night of the Living Dead (1968)² but I was there for Paramount’s Chuka (1967), a western of exquisite sadism in which everyone dies³ – Ernest Borgnine, John Mills, The Mod Squad’s dreamy Michael Cole (shot in the face) and even hero Rod Taylor. Rod Taylor! Thank God my mother was playing tennis that Saturday.

I’m sure adults weaned on a diet of Rock Hudson and Doris Day comedies and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and Clambake (1967) probably were, in their own way, traumatized by the violence of Bonnie and Clyde. I suppose it was a rite of passage for them, the rounding of a corner. Things had changed. The movies weren’t safe for adults anymore… but we children knew the score, we’d seen it all by then and at half price. While their parents squinted at the violent world through trembling fingers, the kids⁴ were all right.

Notes:

1. Okay, since when did 40 years become an anniversary to celebrate? To my way of thinking, celebrations jump from Silver (25 years) to Gold (50 years) and everything in between is forgotten as if it never happened.
2. Ebert’s Chicago Sun Times review (later reprinted in Readers Digest) chronicled his dismay at seeing Night of the Living Dead booked into a Chicago cinema and shown to kids. For forty years, Ebert has been erroneously knocked for condemning the film when in reality he was merely speaking out against the negligence of the adults who booked the movie without knowing what they were showing to children. Ebert admired Night and was one of the first major critics to get behind George Romero's 1978 sequel Dawn of the Dead.
3. I half suspect Chuka was, along with Invisible Invaders (1959), Carnival of Souls (1962) and The Last Man on Earth (1964), a partial influence on Night of the Living Dead.
4. The kids being, of course, the youthful likes of Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Leigh Wannell and many other future boosters of what has been stamped (with starchy Crowtherian disdain) "torture porn" by the generation who thought Bonnie and Clyde the solution to the problem.
   

In honor of writer Herbert George Wells, better known as H.G., who died on this date, August 13th, we’re going to talk a little bit about the movies that this imaginative man inspired.  It seems hard to believe – at least to me – that he only died in 1946, a mere 61 years ago.  H.G. Wells was born in 1866,  and so a man with distinct ties to both the 19th and 20th centuries, although perhaps the image we have of him as a man is more 19th century, thanks especially to the popularity of a couple of Wells titles.

What films first spring to mind when talking about the influence H.G. Wells had on the movies, especially in the realm of the fantastic?  Hard to pick on winner on that one.  War of the Worlds or The Invisible Man?  The Island of Dr. Moreau or First Men in the Moon?  The Time Machine or Food of the Gods?   And perhaps a lot of us have our strongest impressions of H.G. Wells from a movie where he’s a leading character, the 1979 Nicholas Meyer-directed time travel romantic comedy Time After Time.  Wells is portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in one of his most charming performances, opposite Mary Steenburgen in only her second movie role. 

But it’s the adaptations of Wells’ novels that have earned him the lasting attention of science fiction and horror fans everywhere, with the two excellent – each in its own way – adaptations of his War of the Worlds, the many interpretations, including the especially memorable first, of The Invisible Man, and of course The Time Machine.  The eternal (of course) appeal of the possibility of time travel makes this adventurous journey into Earth’s tumultuous future a perennial favorite, especially as put to film by director George Pal in his 1960 version.  Actor Rod Taylor is the stalwart George – make that H.G. Wells — who takes off in his intricate Victorian time-tripping temporal buggy to go rescue the pale and limpid Yvette Mimieux from the clutches of the hideous underground Morlocks.  (Any resemblance to the denizens of this blog is strictly intentional.) 

I’m also very fond of the 1964 film of First Men in the Moon directed by Nathan Juran with visual effects by the master Ray Harryhausen.  With its visual  style a delightful combination of modern space age efficiency and quaint Victorian scientific gadgetry, and with an alien race definitely on the creepy side – unless you really love insects – First Men in the Moon isn’t quite as well-known as other Harryhausen movies (but should be), nor is it always remembered as a Wells signature piece.  A lot of the credit for the delightful quality of the movie lies in the performance of actor Lionel Jeffries as the discoverer of Cavorite, the gravity-defying substance which allows the moon-bound spacecraft to escape Earth’s orbit.  Jeffries is quintessentially British, proper, practical, a tad pompous but utterly dedicated to the quest for scientific knowledge and fearless, to boot.  His brave encounter with the alien ruler, as he walks up to its shimmering throne, is quite a scene. 

If you haven’t watched First Men in the Moon, or The Time Machine, or War of the Worlds lately, they’re well worth taking in again.  Though the recent WotW remake is a great deal gooier than the original, and of course is a Tom Cruise vehicle, it has some terrific moments, though fans of the 1953 version are probably safe in declaring it the definitive version, not counting Orson Welles and his radio triumph from 1938.

In addition to Malcom McDowell in Time After Time, the real H.G. Wells was played last year by actor Michael Sheen (The Queen’s Tony Blair) in a BBC production entitled H.G. Wells — War With The World, which will be worth looking for if it turns up over here.  Of course H.G. Wells was about more than just his popular novels; he was a progressive political thinker and historian who felt comfortable challenging the popular notions of his time, and also an unswerving advocate for peace on earth.  If Wells were indeed able to step into his Time Machine, what would he think of the world today, a mere 60 years after his death?  I’m sure he’d set the dial ahead many more years and try again, to see if somebody might have finally gotten things right, sometime out there.

I don’t know if you’ve ever given this much thought, perhaps you discovered old movies for yourself, but maybe there was someone in your life that’s at least partially responsible for your love of classic film. Richard wrote about his movie mentor in one of his first articles. For me, that person was my mom. While it was my father that would take us to the movies, it was my mother that discussed them with me. When I was in my teens, I received a 9-inch B&W TV for Christmas and, late at night instead of studying or sleeping, I would frequently watch old movies on it. While most of my friends talked about what they saw on Johnny Carson (the night before) during lunch period, I would only listen. But after school, I’d sometimes discuss a gem that I’d found on channel 17 (TBS), WGN or WOR with mom.

There was another factor which contributed to my love for older movies – since my family had recently moved from the neighborhood where I’d lived as a fifth grader through the first two years of high school to another community five miles away, my friends were no longer readily available (I’d have to get a ride or permission to use the car). Feeling somewhat isolated (that first summer away) from our regular activities – bike riding to the pool, corkball in the park, etc., my younger brother and I began skateboarding with the kids in our new neighborhood because it was the only thing we had in common with them. However, on hot afternoons and especially Saturdays, I would often stay inside to be entertained by an Abbott and Costello or a Bowery Boys comedy. Obviously, not everything I watched was a classic, but it was better than watching reruns from all the syndicated shows – Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, The Wild Wild West, etc. – over and over again, even though I often had to tolerate the many commercials and Million-Dollar-Movie call-in contests.

One of the first true classics that I remember finding and watching, which I later discussed with my mom, was King Solomon’s Mines (1950) with Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger, which next airs September 2nd on TCM. I didn’t even realize that the movie was in color (in fact it won the Oscar for Color Cinematography) until years later! Of course, now many of the movies that I watched in my youth at the movie theater are considered classics (yeah, I’m that old).

While I wasn’t as blessed – as several of my fellow Morlocks – to have lived near or visited one of those great old movie theaters, I do remember the magic of the more common movie-going experience which included a grand ballroom-sized auditorium with floor to ceiling curtains on the walls and (if not chandeliers) elaborate lighting. Curtains at the front of the theater would open to reveal a magnificently large curved screen. Cartoons (in lieu of endless loud previews) would precede the feature film, which began with a numerical countdown sequence that featured a spinning hour-hand and a beep to mark the passing of each second. It was in a theater such as this that I can most vividly recall first seeing Oliver! (1968), The Wind and the Lion (1975) and (what must have been a re-release of) Lawrence of Arabia (1962). I also remember being bored by the comedy Murder By Death (1976) which, now that I’ve seen all the associated characters in their original movie roles on TCM, I now find to be hilarious (as my parents inexplicably did).

I’m not sure when it first happened, perhaps when I’d returned home during a college break one year, but we developed a habit of watching a movie together (sometimes at the theater, but just as often at home on television). But besides just viewing the film itself, my mom and I would try to find (and be the first to come up with the name of) the inevitable character actor or actress that would pop up in an obscure role at some point during the show. This game would usually start with one of us naming another of the actor’s roles and continue until we were pretty sure we’d gotten the name right (this was before the Internet). It’s a developed memory skill that I still use today to identify uncredited actors for my website’s movie synopses (and/or correct the errors that I find on IMDb.com).

Maybe you’ve thought of your movie mentor, or perhaps you never had one. One of the reasons why I love classic movies now is that they remind me of a simpler, less complicated world; the dialogue was more important than the special effects and it was easier to find a film that the whole family could watch together, and have everyone enjoy it (e.g. without having to wince at all the foul language, or other inappropriate subject matter, the kids were hearing, or cover their eyes for the gratuitous sex or too real violence).

Shortly after Irving Lerner completed MURDER BY CONTRACT (the focus of last Saturday’s blog) he moved on to CITY OF FEAR (1959), another low-budget crime drama for Columbia also shot on location in Los Angeles, using several of the same people who worked on MURDER. Among them were producer Leon Chooluck, cameraman Lucien Ballard, art director Jack Poplin, co-stars Kathie Browne and Steven Ritch (who also wrote the screenplay for CITY OF FEAR and played the title role in THE WEREWOLF in 1956), and in the lead, Vince Edwards.

The film has a terrific premise – so what if KISS ME DEADLY featured a similar plot twist back in 1955? Vince Ryker, an escaped convict, is on the loose in Los Angeles with a sealed cylinder that he stole from the prison hospital thinking it was heroin. Instead it’s a deadly form of radioactive cobalt (what the hell was THAT doing in the prison? Who cares? It’s the Macguffin.) As the police race against time to apprehend him, Vince contaminates everyone and everything he comes in contact with along the way.  READ MORE

I’m afraid we’re seeing the gold rush days of the DVD market coming to an end. With sales rapidly decreasing in relation to the number of films being released on DVD, the major studios are starting to re-think their sales strategies and cut back drastically on their DVD release agendas. Instead of going deeper into their catalogs, they are concentrating instead on tried and true successes in more elaborate editions – The 40^th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of THE GRADUATE, The “Don’t Call Me Shirley” Edition of AIRPLANE!, The 50^th Anniversary Edition of 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (in both the original black and white & a new colorized version authorized by Ray Harryhausen). As a result, we are probably never going to see those wonderful second tier titles or lesser known favorites we’ve been waiting for on DVD. They might appear as digital downloads in the distant future sans any packaging. But for those of us who have become as fond of DVDs as our once treasured LPs, this is not the same thing. We like the packaging. We like the shape and size and the cover art. And we like to hold and study the liner notes and inserts – it’s a tactile thing.   READ MORE

I sometimes imagine I’m a film noir antihero, brooding and mad at the world, and how I’d be un-seducible by the likes of Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner or Veronica Lake. Yes, they’re all stunningly attractive women, they smolder like smoldering is going out of style, they can turn the strongest, most lantern-jawed men into puddles of Joe Louis Pomade and their beauty is deservedly the stuff of legend – but I’d never be fooled into believing these tigers could love a chump such as I. I’m clearly out of their league, so no bullets in the back for me. I’m immune to seduction… unless they send Eve Arden.

I get a little shiver just typing that name. It’s an alias, you know… her real name was Eunice Quedens… so already she can’t be trusted, which is exciting. Eve Arden, I’m sure TCM regulars know, was forever cast as a towering, pillbox hatted motormouth with a quick wit and sharp tongue. Probably the best example of this is in Mildred Pierce (1946), where she's Joan Crawford's wisecracking gal pal. She cuts through that movie like a cool breeze that slaps you awake. I also like her as Loretta Young’s buddy in Eternally Yours (1939) and who could resist her in Russian uniform in The Doughgirls (1944)? In a word… woof!

I’m probably in the minority, but Eve Arden sends me. That long, slightly horsy face and prominent nose, those imperious eyes and that bewitching mouth from which would fly the most withering retorts. (I’ve always gone for retorty women.) I've tried to imagined that kissing her would have carried a hint of her last cordial… intoxicating. She could have driven me to murder, gotten secrets out of me, bade me give my life for the cause… anything. I would have bashed Cecil Kellaway over the head for her, I would have bashed him good for the forbidden love of Eve Arden… and I love Cecil Kellaway. Just not as much as I love Eve Arden.

The funny thing is that I grew up watching Arden on shows like The Mothers-in-Law (1969-1971) with Kay Ballard and in Grease (1978). She was older then, obviously, grandmotherish. Although her rapier wit was intact, she didn’t quite have the same praying mantis sexuality of her roles pre-Our Miss Brooks (which I’ve never seen). And to look at pictures of her from early in her career she looked vastly different than she did in her heyday. In those early studio portraits, she looks willowy, still pretty but somehow insubstantial. Well, some looks take some growing into.

There’s a little featurette on the life and career of Eve Arden running between movies on TCM these days, narrated by Joan Cusack, who I suppose is somebody’s idea of a young Eve Arden. That's how programmers think — "let's get one unconventionally attractive actress to sing the praises of another." Oh, whatever. Don’t get me wrong—Joan Cusack is a funny lady, a talented actress and not at all unattractive… but she’s no Eunice Quedens.

Okay, so maybe I’m the last one to glom onto this, but today I happened on a terrific article about the Wilhelm Scream, the trademark howling man-scream sound effect that has showed up in countless motion pictures since 1951.  Believe me, you’ll know it when you hear it, and you’ve undoubtedly heard it over the years without paying much attention.  But now that you know, you’ll fall in love with it even more.

Although it (along with several other related screams) was recorded for and first heard in the 1951 Warner Bros. film Distant Drums, the unique scream got its nickname from a scene in the 1953 film The Charge at Feather River, in which a character called Pvt. Wilhelm took an arrow to the leg during an Indian attack.  It showed up in many Warner productions throughout the years, including, for you musical fans, in the charming and funny “Someone At Last” musical production number that Judy Garland acts out for husband James Mason at their beach house in 1954’s A Star is Born. 

Up-and-coming sound effects professionals/film buffs like Ben Burtt became enamored with the scream after noticing it in many movies.  When he began his career designing sound for Star Wars, he got the chance to discover, after archival research in studio vaults, its august provenance, and started using it in a slew of George Lucas productions.  Burtt and his sound colleague friends adopted the Wilhelm Scream as a trademark, including it wherever feasible in their big budget assignments.  It’s still in wide use today, not only a silly favorite of sound guys but also with its own fan club among directors, including Joe Dante, Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson and others, who love to include it in their productions. 

The web is full of good Wilhelm information; the best is Steve Lee’s Hollywood Lost and Found, which has the full history of the scream, plus an ever-growing list of movies containing the Wilhelm.  Steve appears in a nice video report on the scream available here on YouTube.  NPR’s audio show On The Media did an episode on the scream back in February of 2001, and it can be accessed here, via transcript and audio.  There are also a couple of video compilations of film clips with the scream, one here and a slightly slicker version here.  Both are worth watching and will crack you up.

And who was the brilliant set of pipes behind the Wilhelm Scream?  While no definitive, set in stone paperwork seems to exist, the trail points to the late actor/singer Sheb Wooley, who appeared in Distant Drums and was called in later to lay down some sound effect tracks, including screams.  Wooley was a talented performer (remember “Purple People Eater”?) and though the mystery may never be completely cleared up, you couldn’t find anybody more talented than Sheb Wooley to have given the world the Wilhelm.

I recently returned to one of my many childhood hometowns and had the opportunity to visit something quite unique; since it was established in 1991, the St. Louis Walk of Fame didn’t exist when I last lived (or visited) there. Though I’m sure it pales in comparison to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame (a place I’ve yet to see), it does include a descriptive plaque along with the imbedded star, which I found helpful for some of the names not easily recognized. Though the St. Louis walk includes national luminaries from art, music, architecture, literature, journalism, civil rights, education, science, and broadcasting, I was surprised at how many were from acting and entertainment.

Nominees for the St. Louis Walk of Fame must fulfill two main criteria:

Among the more recognizable names on the city’s walk (from acting and entertainment fields) were:

Buddy Ebsen, who was really born just across the Mississippi river in Belleville, IL; he’ll be forever known to many as TV detective Barnaby Jones and Jed Clampett (of the Beverly Hillbillies), the backwoodsman who struck black gold in the hills of Tennessee and moved his family to one of California’s richest areas where be became the bane of banker Mr. Drysdale (Raymond Bailey). He was also cast as the original Scarecrow for The Wizard of Oz (1939) before he switched with Ray Bolger (who coveted the role) to become the Tin man, but an allergic reaction to the toxic aluminum powder makeup forced him to give way to Jack Haley. He did, however, appear in several memorable films including the Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), with his sister Vilma, Born to Dance (1936), and as Audrey Hepburn’s ex-husband in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).

William Inge – the Oscar winning writer of Splendor in the Grass (1961) was born in Kansas but came to work as a drama critic for a St. Louis newspaper; once there, fellow inductee Tennessee Williams inspired him to write his first play. He also taught at Washington University while he wrote Come Back, Little Sheba. His other works include Picnic, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize (St. Louis Post-Dispatch founder Joseph Pulitzer is also an inductee), and Bus Stop. A star for writer T.S. Eliot can also be found on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Scott Joplin, whose compositions like The Entertainer were adapted by Marvin Hamlisch to win one of the seven Academy Awards that Best Picture The Sting (1973) received.

Though born elsewhere, Agnes Moorehead lived in St. Louis as a child; she appeared in stage productions, danced with the Municipal Opera, and debuted as a radio singer on the city’s flagship station KMOX before moving to New York where she appeared on Broadway and became a charter member of Orson Welles's Mercury Theater (and things really took off for her).

While the name Marlin Perkins is not known because of any association to classic movies, most people my age will remember the host of TV’s original (before Animal Planet and Steve Irwin) nature show – Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, which was regular viewing in our household every Sunday night before Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.

Vincent Price – my fellow Morlocks can do a much better job recounting the film, stage, and TV career of "The King of Horror", so I won’t even try. However, I did find it interesting that Price graduated from the Country Day School, a private high school that some of my friends attended.

Character actress Mary Wickes was born and raised in St. Louis, where she graduated from high school and college before making her way to Broadway; her first success was as Nurse Preen in The Man Who Came to Dinner. She can also be seen in such notable films as (a nurse in) Now, Voyager (1942) and another Bette Davis vehicle June Bride (1948), three of Doris Day’s early features, White Christmas (1954), The Music Man (1962), as a nun in The Trouble with Angels (1966) and Sister Act (1992), and as Aunt March in the Winona Ryder version of Little Women (1994), among countless other roles in the movies and television series. She was also Wicked Witch Margaret Hamilton’s understudy for The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Tennessee Williams attended high school, including University City where the Loop that’s home to the Walk of Fame is located, and Washington University in St. Louis before moving on to find success elsewhere.

Shelley Winters, a two time Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner (for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965)) was a St. Louis native whose family moved to Brooklyn, NY when she was still young, before she left high school to become a model while studying acting.

Also – John Goodman, who ironically shares his name with a friend of mine that acted in several of our high school’s plays, Betty Grable, Supporting Actor Oscar winner Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda (1988)), the former Mrs. Neil Simon – Marsha Mason who earned three of her four Best Actress Oscar nominations in movies written by him, Virginia Mayo, and the multi-talented Kay Thompson.

Some of those not (yet) on the St. Louis Walk of Fame include: Max Factor, character actor Frank Faylen, Oscar nominated Supporting Actress Linda Blair, a Morlocks favorite, five time Emmy winner Doris Roberts, two time Emmy and DGA winner Betty Thomas, character actress Mary Treen, and writer Sally Benson.

I found a pretty good compilation of webshots of these street stars and placards on the Internet, but I wasn't able to figure out how to use the pictures here.