Word: benchley
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...wreck sites are shallow enough for snorkelers to view, including the Constellation, which sank in 1943 about eight miles off the coast of Bermuda en route to Venezuela with a hull full of medicines and whiskey. The ship, which now lies 30 feet underwater, was the inspiration for Peter Benchley's book The Deep and the subsequent film...
...feature, buttressed by selected short subjects. In the first years of sound, dozens of vaudeville acts achieved their only immortality. Blacks rarely had prominent roles in feature films, but Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith and a seven-year-old Sammy Davis starred in shorts. TCM runs Robert Benchley and Joe McDoakes comedy shorts and Fitzpatrick travelogs. The weirdest series: MGM's early-'30s Dogville Comedies, one-reel movie parodies (The Dogway Melody, The Big Dog House, Trader Hound), in which pooches were dressed up and made to walk on their hind legs and "talk" with fish wire. Paging PETA...
...brought chills to millions of summer vacations with Jaws and The Deep has returned. But this time out, Peter Benchley has jettisoned the oversexed surf-and-turfers in favor of Timothy Burnham, a fortyish journalist turned speechwriter whose only obsession is quoting the wisdom of Samuel Johnson, as in ''No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.'' Burnham writes not only for money but for President Benjamin T. Winslow, bullying, foul-tongued and Johnsonesque (Lyndon, not Samuel), and the assignments are rarely more demanding than ''Representative Whipple has told me a great deal about the fine work...
DIED. PETER BENCHLEY, 65, author who made landlubbers of millions with his 1974 novel, Jaws, about a great white shark that terrorizes an East Coast resort town; of pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive scarring of the lungs; in Princeton, N.J. Benchley's tale of a human-chomping fish sold 20 million copies, and the 1975 film adaptation epitomized the summer movie experience. Fascinated by oceans throughout his life, the Harvard-educated grandson of humorist Robert Benchley in later years became an outspoken protector of sharks. "Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today," Benchley wrote last month...
...DIED. PETER BENCHLEY, 65, author who made landlubbers of millions with his 1974 novel Jaws, about a great white shark that terrorizes an East Coast resort town; in Princeton, New Jersey. Benchley's tale of a human-chomping fish sold 20 million copies, and the 1975 film adaptation epitomized the summer movie experience. Fascinated by oceans throughout his life, the author eventually became an outspoken protector of sharks. "Knowing what I know now I could never write that book today," Benchley wrote last month. "Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges...