Word: movieland
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Maybe Santayana had it wrong after all. "Those who cannot remember the past," he said, "are condemned to repeat it." But in movieland, it is those who can remember the past who seem to feel compelled to repeat it. In New York, New York, Director Martin Scorsese recalls the big-band era. His is not the actual historical period, of course; on V-J day, 1945, when the film begins, Scorsese was two, and Scriptwriter Earl Mac Rauch, who devised the original story, was not yet born. What Scorsese is evoking is an epoch of moviemaking: the heyday of lavish...
Died. William Lundigan, 61, perennial supporting actor; after a long illness; in Duarte, Calif. A radio announcer in his native Syracuse, N.Y., Lundigan caught the ear of a movieland talent scout with the resonance of his bass voice. Signed on the spot to his first film contract, a commercial for a Tarzan film, Lundigan went to Hollywood in 1937. He played in such rough-and-tumble epics as Dodge City (1939) and The Fighting 69th (1940); otherwise, he said, "nothing much happened" in a 17-year career during which he appeared in more than 125 films. Later Lundigan moved...
Hearts of the West, funny, jaunty and a little wistful, concerns Lewis' pleasantly unlikely adventures in movieland of the 1930s. Lewis (Jeff Bridges) is not far enough into adulthood to know he is there, but in any case his head is full of the prime fantasies of good pulp fiction. He wants to be a writer, particularly of cowboy stories, most specifically like those of his idol, Zane Grey. Lewis has the master's formula down pretty tight ("One thing leads to another, and pretty soon he's got a story"), and can emulate his prose with...
...copter flight into a Mexican prison to spring wealthy American Joel Kaplan. Nor, for that matter, did some of the scripted scenes; though the actual 1971 jailbreak went uneventfully, not so the movie version. Appearing unexpectedly on the set, Kaplan and Stadter watched in amazement as two Jeeploads of movieland police blasted away at Actors Bronson and Duvall re-enacting the escape. Said Stadter afterward: "I was more scared watch ing all this than when we did the caper...
Just like in real movieland, it's the arrangements rather than the filmmaking itself that seem to be getting all the attention. Brown says he is often most intrigued with the business aspects of filmmaking and, judging from all the fuss, this is what he does best. He says he had "fun" going through red tape to gain access to the Library of Congress and the Plaza Hotel, and lining up a cavalcade of actors for the show. Of Brown's $1200 budget only $350 went to the basic costs of filming: a sizeable portion of the rest paid...