War Of The Worlds

 

The movie War of the Worlds is breaking records, headed for the second highest box-office of any July 4 release in history.  It’s a great story, written by one of the world’s favorite sci-fi authors, directed by the world’s favorite director, and starring the world’s favorite movie star.  But no discussion of the film would be complete without a nod to the unprecedented events surrounding Tom Cruise in the weeks and months prior to the release of the film.

 

Cruise has been in the news on a daily basis.  He’s got a new fiancée and a new science fiction movie.  But that’s only part of the story, because Cruise has taken the gloves off to express his opposition to the use of psychiatric drugs.  Cruise is a Scientologist and the issue of psychiatric drugs is a central issue for Scientologists and Scientology-related groups, such as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) who support L. Ron Hubbard’s life-long crusade against psychiatric drugs and psychiatry in general. 

 

One of the controversies was when Cruise rebuked actress Brooke Shields for using psychiatric anti-depressants for post-partum depression.  Initially there was sympathy for Shields, but ironically, the very day she was featured on the cover of the New York Times promoting anti-depressants, the FDA issued a new warning that adults who use antidepressants cold be at risk of suicidal behavior and worsening depression. 

 

It is ironic that the platform for this brouhaha is Cruise’s part in the new movie based on the book by science fiction writer H.G. Wells – and the public discussion of psychiatric drug use is based on work by Hubbard, who was also a well-known science fiction writer.

 

The War of the Worlds story is not new.  Wells did his best work in the Victorian era in England in the 1800s.  But he was ahead of his time.  In 1898, Wells wrote the opening paragraph of his Science Fiction classic:

 

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria [microscopic animal life] under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.”

 

These words are almost exactly duplicated in the opening to the Spielberg/Cruise epic film, War of the Worlds.  The “last years of the nineteenth century” have been replaced with a reference to the twenty-first century. 

 

The original H.G. Wells book, which is now in the public domain, is available at no charge online at http://www.bartleby.com/1002/

 

Although the first publication is more than a century old, the story is still new.  Some alterations have been made for the film.  In the original story the creatures were specifically from Mars – today they are from some unknown place, probably because we have seen too much of Mars to believe there is life of this sort on the planet.  The original took place not on America’s East Coast but in London.  There are other alterations to adjust for the difference in reality and technology between the two periods.  And Cruises 19^th Century alter-ego is a man alone.  The family Cruise’s character is trying to protect is an effective additive element, as is the transformation of Cruise’s character from a selfish individual to a responsible father who will do anything to save his children; creating a compelling character arc in the story. 

 

The Spielberg/Cruise blockbuster isn’t the first time War of the Worlds has been big news.  In 1938 it was part of one of the most bizarre incidents in American history.  It was October 30, the day before Halloween.  Famous actor and director Orson Welles had a weekly radio show.  There was no television, and radio was to most Americans what television is now – an entertainment medium for evening listening.  Radio content was more than news and music and talk shows.  There were lots of fiction programs.  Regular radio series included The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Green Hornet and other fiction series. 

 

Welles’ series was radio plays, and he often acted in them as well as directing. 

 

When Welles rolled out his radio play for War of the Worlds he wrote the script as if it were a news broadcast.  It began with music playing, then Welles, as the news broadcaster, “interrupted” the music to bring terrifying news of an alien invasion.  It was so skillfully done that many people took it at face value and thought such an invasion was under way.  There was mass hysteria.  Many people took a few belongings and hit the road, away from New Jersey, where Welles said the aliens landed.  Others hid in cellars, often with loaded guns cocked and ready. 

 

News of the misunderstanding finally began to make the (real) news, and created a scandal.  There were calls for government regulation of broadcasting on one hand, and ridicule of those who fell for it on the other hand.  It was the kind of front page news we’ve seen recently with Tom Cruise – sometimes more than one story per day in major newspapers. 

 

One of the viewpoints that emerged from that incident, which took place after Hitler had begun taking over Europe but well before the U.S. entered the war, was a national understanding of how people can be easily influenced on a broad scale by what was then a relatively new radio media.  Many people saw it as a way to understand how many Europeans could have fallen for Hitler. 

 

But today the story still has teeth.  If you’ve got some courage, be sure to see the movie.  The only reason anybody wouldn’t like it is because it’s scary.  The scale is huge and the effect is enormous.  Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise have done justice to Mr. Wells’ great tale. 

Traudl Junge was 22 years old when Adolph Hitler asked her to accept a position as his personal secretary. She was one of a small pool of such secretaries that served him throughout WW II at his famous “Wolf’s Lair” bunker. She was 25 when he took his own life as the allies marched on Berlin in the last days of the war. She was a personal friend and confidant of Hitler’s shadowy girlfriend, Eva Braun, and she was present when Hitler married Braun in the days preceding the end.

There are no special effects, no locations, no actors, and precious little cinematic content of any kind in Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary. Frau Junge speaks German, and there are English subtitles available. The camera is locked off, and there is no camera panning, no zoom. In fact the whole film is octogenarian Junge talking about her experience working for Hitler. She speaks to an off-camera person, but the only voice on the film is hers. The only visual relief is an occasional change of clothes for Ms. Junge, based on the fact that the original interviews from which the movie was cut take place over many days Despite this lack of any of the elements of popular modern movies, this film has a breathtaking fascination.

Even at her advanced age, Jung is still a handsome woman with soft blue eyes and a regal bearing. She must have been a looker in 1942. She was working as a government typist that year when she participated in a competition for competence in shorthand and typing that was universally available to all the government secretaries in wartime Nazi Germany. She was a finalist in the competition, and she was taken to Hitler’s private compound, where she met him personally and accepted his invitation to stay on.

She describes that compound, a rather large fortified complex known as the “bunker” or by the name Hitler gave it, the “Wolf’s Lair”.

The allies were unable to find Hitler’s body when they marched through Berlin, and until I saw this interesting little film, I subscribed to the popular view that although he “may have” died in his bunker, his fate is virtually unknown. Junge’s story puts that mystery to rest. Her revelations on that fact alone justify the film. It also paints a macabre picture of Hitler’s inner circle during the war. Junge was there when Goebbels killed his six children rather than have them live in a non-Nazi world. She was there when the cyanide pills were passed out to her and everyone else. In the end she was stepping over bodies as she made her own decision to walk away from the Wolf’s Lair and continue her life. After she left she was trapped in East Germany when it was taken over by Russians. She subsequently escaped to West Germany, but lacking proper ID she was imprisoned by the Allies for 5 months before she was finally let go. “No one was much interested in my story,” she says in her matter of fact way, eschewing the irony that in a world where books have been written about the mystery of what happened to Hitler, his twenty-something blue-eyed secretary in the cell block may not have been able get anyone to listen to her tale. It is also possible that she didn’t try very hard to get anyone to hear it during that period, when the Nuremberg trials were in full swing and war criminals were being hunted down.

Within a short time after the end, Junge established a new life for herself, and she decided it was no longer in her best interest to chat about the events of the war. She dropped the story completely. She decided to tell it finally in her twilight years, in this 2002 film – 60 years after she first accepted her position with Hitler.

Much of her dialogue is a tortured attempt to analyze and justify her own actions and experiences. This is a woman who has been living in torment with a dark secret. She describes the original sense of honor and awe when she first achieved her position in the Third Reich. Then she juxtaposes that against the current view of those mad times and the sordid products and ruined lives Hitler left behind – not only for his enemies but for his own people, who were prisoners in a conquered and bombed-out land at the end of the war. She spends considerable time trying to justify not only her happy and whole-hearted participation but “everybody’s” participation in the Nazi experiment. There is an underlying theme of guilt and shame, and as her story progresses there is horror as well.

She describes the six Goebbels children who are being ignored by their father and mother when they are hungry. There isn’t much food left in the bunker. She sits them on a stairway landing and feeds them bread and butter sandwiches to a background of continuous bombing explosions in the distance. Within days they are murdered by their mother and father.

Even the Fuehrer’s dog gets into the tragedy. She describes sitting with Hitler as he strokes the dog, only hours before the dog and her puppies are euthanized at his order.

She describes Hitler himself; who transformed from the fiery orator of public events to a soft-spoken man in private who wouldn’t permit flowers in the building, but loved his dog.

She describes an atmosphere of bizarre apathy. She and the other secretaries and clerical people, along with Eva Braun, would sit around and discuss how they were going to die and when, and pass along horror stories about what the Russians did to the cities they had already taken – killing and raping.

After what must have been days of controlled emotions, recounting her experience in great detail, she breaks down at the end of the film and says she can’t go on.

We learn that she died of cancer the day after the documentary premiered in Berlin. She confesses in her last interview segment, “I think I am just now beginning to forgive myself.”

There is a lot of historic content to this little monologue. It’s not a “movie” in the full sense of the word, but as a study of a time and place, it is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the history of the period. Her story is a little shining light in the quest for understanding of how an entire culture went psychotic and followed a maniac down a primrose path to self-destruction, and the simplicity and clarity of her experience ought to be a warning to anyone who thinks “it can’t happen here”. If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, this film is an education anyone should have.

The sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard are littered with the names of great actors. But a great actor isn’t necessarily a great human being; and many of those who might have been great human beings fell prey to the slippery Hollywood environment and fell from the grace that might have been.

Fans that watch good actors in good films develop affinity for those actors. They follow them and look up to them. The covers on the magazine racks at the grocery store checkout counter are a gallery of today’s thespian elite. The magnetic images of these heroes are more interesting to people standing in line than the ingredient lists on their cereal boxes, or the political news of the day.

The vast majority of these stars don’t realize the power or the responsibility they have. Whether they wanted it or not, they’ve acquired enormous influence far beyond that enjoyed even by major politicians. (The average American can name 10 actors more quickly and reliably than 10 politicians or 10 presidents.)

Most actors don’t take responsibility for this. They cheat on their spouses, get early divorces and wind up in rag-tag photos on the cover of the tabloids being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol while stepping out with yet another love interest. Every time this happens, the world dies a little. The tenuous spark of hope that was fanned by the actor’s able representation of an inspiring hero in the last movie is dashed by stories of temper tantrums on the set and the reality of an unshaved, bloodshot face on the cover of The Enquirer.

Some actors, like the great Jean Harlow who died at the early age of 26, never had a chance to realize the life that might have been. Others, like the venerable couples of Bogart and Bacall, or Tracy and Hepburn, never failed their fans by throwing away their idyllic lives as so many movie stars do. But most actors and actresses set a poor example, and this flaw is magnified by the fishbowl life they lead.

Every once in a while an actor comes along with real personal integrity. To pull off any kind of respectability and sanity in Hollywood, an actor or actress must do more maintain a high level of professionalism and responsibility. They must also be aware of the swarms of bloodsucking parasites that inevitably try to attach themselves to anyone with power and charisma. The lives of many actresses and actors have been flushed down the tubes by falling for the line of false hope offered by psychiatrists, for example. Francis Farmer lit up the screen like a light bulb, but her career was cut short when she was institutionalized, drugged, raped and lobotomized. Marilyn Monroe died of an overdose of psychiatric drugs, and her psychiatrist was present in the house at the time she did it!

Tom Cruise jumped off the screen playing air guitar in his underwear in Risky Business in 1983. His winning smile and dynamic personality brought him instant fame. Since then he has been associated with hit after hit. He has amassed a resume that rivals any great actor. At the age of 42, the quantity and quality of his production is easily equal to or better than of any of the all-time “greats”. His total number of movies is roughly equal to the number Cary Grant had made by that age, for example. He is arguably the most bankable actor in the business today.

An enamored public waited for the bad news; the bad Cruise. But the doppelganger [evil twin] never surfaced. Cruise took control of his life. He is known for his gracious treatment of co-workers and fans, and his genuine interest in people. He doesn’t get arrested for drunkenness or drug use and he doesn’t get caught in the back seat of a car with a hooker. He deports himself with a level of intensity and professionalism that is appropriate for an actor making twenty million dollars per movie.

He credits his philosophy and motivation to his religion, Scientology, and the influence of Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Cruise supports a variety of social betterment programs in a big way. He isn’t just a “poster boy” that shows up annually for a day at the soup kitchen while lending his image to a series of print ads. He rolls up his sleeves and gets involved. He doesn’t represent a finger-in-the-dyke mentality, pushing for donations to institutions that are endlessly seeking cures to hopeless diseases, employing people whose jobs would disappear if that cure was ever found.

It began with Tom’s success in overcoming an early inability to study. He was diagnosed as a dyslexic when he was a child, and he believed that this supposed “physical” problem was the source of his difficulty with study. Then he found L. Ron Hubbard’s Study Technology and found that with a short course of training he completely blew his “problem” and was able to read and assimilate data at a rapid rate. He realized the ability to study was a matter of training, not heredity, and he became a fervent spokesperson for groups like Applied Scholastics that train people in Hubbard’s Study Technology.

Since then, Tom has expanded his outreach to include groups like the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights, a groups that is working to eliminate the influence of psychiatric principles in education and society, like the myth of drug use as a solution to behavioral difficulties, or the notion that man is nothing more than an advanced “animal” whose thoughts and perceptions are nothing more than electrical and chemical activity in the body.

As we watch our great civilization gradually slide away from the high hopes and exalted principles on which it was originally based, it is enticing to wonder whether a man like Tom Cruise, or a few men like Tom Cruise, might be able to change our expectations and our view of the world. This writer, for one, is impressed by his leadership, and would like to see more actors and other world leaders follow Tom’s example; be responsible for their influence and power and get involved instead of allowing themselves to be smashed in the meat grinder that often goes with success.

 

In October of 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that writer Daniel Handler and his wife Lisa Brown were expecting their first child on or near Halloween.  That would be an appropriate birthday for the child of Handler, who by the pen name Lemony Snicket has written a dark and spooky series of children’s books that have caught the imagination of just about everyone, including Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures.  The result has been a wonderful film, Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events, starring Jim Carrey as the evil Count Olaf and three charming young actors as the star-crossed Baudelaire orphans, who must depend on their wits to counter the ingenious and horrific attacks of the evil Count, a shirt-tail relative whose goal is to accede to the Baudelaire family fortune – over the dead bodies of the Baudelaire children if necessary. 

 

Lemony Snicket’s strange stories veer in a very new direction for children’s tales.  They are magically dark and wicked, but the tone is so tongue-in-cheek it captivates children, reportedly without any real damage to their fragile minds.  The flow of the literature, and the film, is a hard reverse on the usual direction of children’s stories.  The front page of the Lemony Snicket web site warns us:  “Please Run For Your Life!  You have undoubtedly reached this web site by mistake!”  The reader is cautioned that the gloomy site is not recommended for anyone, and a popup where you can enter your E-mail address so you can receive “news” about Lemony Snicket books and events says, “It is not recommended that you sign up below to receive notice of books, events, promotions, and news of Lemony Snicket.”

 

 

I am not prepared to pass on the suitability of the movie for young children, except to report that several who have seen it report their enchantment, without any sign of fear or incipient madness.  But without reservation the film is enthusiastically recommended for adults.  It is the most interesting and charming film released in the last few months. 

 

The Lemony Snicket story is incredibly imaginative.  Whether the intrepid children are trapped in a locked car on a railroad track in front of an oncoming train, or plying across tearful Lake Lachrymose in a shallow boat, picking their way through the “killer leaches”, their enthusiastic ingenuity and fierce loyalty to one another somehow always save the day… so far anyway. 

 

The film has much, much more to it than a fetching story.  It is very well produced.  The sets and props that are wildly esoteric, it has good lighting, acting and directing, and a top-of-the-line five-star sound track by Thomas Newman, who is in a class with the best contemporary film scoring composers.  The sound track alone is eminently listenable, and I play it over and over. 

 

If the Indiana Jones films are violent action movies, somehow cartoonized so they are entertaining to both children and adults, Lemony Snicket is a dark Hitchcock-like mystery film similarly caricatured.  The result of the effort is a breathless story that will have you on the edge of your seat and simultaneously smiling from ear to ear. 

 

Jim Carrey is a classic villain.  Whether or not you were a fan of Ace Ventura, you will become a fan of Carrey the actor in this spectacular role.  Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall, Catherine O’Hara and many other good actors and actresses lend their craft.  The three children are heart-breakingly fetching.  This film is a must.  It’s more than good entertainment.  It’s good for you.  It is great art.  Be sure to see it by whatever means necessary. 

The Aviator

 

Who is the richest man in the world?  Today’s generation would probably say Bill Gates.  But if you asked that question in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, most people would have named an eccentric hermit named Howard Hughes – the subject of The Aviator, the currently exhibiting film that has been nominated for eleven Academy Awards.

 

By the time Hughes died, he was completely reclusive, living in a penthouse in a hotel/casino he owned in Las Vegas.  The reason he owned the hotel is because the previous owner tried to evict him from the suite he occupied and from which he never emerged – not because he wouldn’t pay but because they wanted to do something else with the property.  So he bought not just the hotel, but the entire chain of hotels associated with it, in a typical Hughes solution.  His way of handling adversity was always hyper-expansion.  When he passed away, no one outside of his inner circle had seen him for so long he was unrecognizable to suspicious coroners, who ran fingerprint tests to make sure it was really his body

 

Hughes wasn’t always a recluse.  He was born in Texas.  His father invented a drill bit that became a standard in the oil drilling business.  The strong financial base of Hughes Tool and Dye Corporation gave young Howard the freedom in the 1920s to migrate to Los Angeles, where he began a meteoric rise to fame, wealth and power.  He was tall, very handsome, debonair, and probably the most eligible bachelor in Hollywood.  He had numerous affairs with the luminary actresses of the time, including Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Ava Gardner and Jean Peters.

 

When he got control of the lucrative Hughes Tool and Dye upon the death of his father, he decided to become a movie producer.   He was seen by the Hollywood “in” crowd as an invading rich-kid hick from the sticks.  He nearly bankrupted his company financing an early epic about the First World War called Hells Angels, which was by far the most expensive movie that had ever been made at the time.  But the movie was enormously successful – think of a 1929 version of Star Wars – and Hughes went on to develop his first successful tycoon role as a movie producer.  He celebrated success after success, usually with a new starlet on his arm.

 

 

Howard Hughes, circa 1938

 

An amateur aviator in the days when the aircraft industry was in its infancy, Hughes also spent megabucks on one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft that were cutting edge in their day.  He set the world speed record piloting an aircraft of his own design in 1935.  Not long after, he set a record for circumnavigating the globe in another aircraft he designed.  In the area of aviation he expanded rapidly and became the owner of what became the largest airline in the world (TWA) and the owner of Hughes Aircraft, a producer of military airplanes and helicopters.  Today his enormous “Spruce Goose” still holds a record as the largest airplane ever flown.

 

A daredevil pilot, Hughes took his own risks.  He was his own best test pilot.  He soared with his successes and crashed in his failures, almost losing his life on more than one occasion in airplane crashes. 

 

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of this colorful figure is peerless.  In what will probably always be the definitive film about the life of Hughes, Director Martin Scorcese focuses on the early years, before Hughes retired from the public eye. 

 

In the late 1940s, Hughes was the victim of an enormous, well-orchestrated attack by competitors, intended to destroy his rapid expansion in the airline industry.  This went to the extent of very suppressive “congressional hearings”, presided over by a “bought” senator.  This was in the period just before the mechanism of congressional hearings was used by an insane Senator Joseph McCarthy to destroy the lives of many people in the rabid anti-communist era of the early 1950s.  Following the demise of McCarthy, the Supreme Court put strict controls on the previously unbridled power of Congress in “congressional hearings”, guaranteeing citizens their basic constitutional rights, similar to those enjoyed in a court of law.  But at the time of the Hughes attack, the power of Congress in these hearings was almost unlimited.  Scorcese masterfully captured the nature of this attack, and Hughes brilliant handling of it, in what I believe to be one of the most important and fascinating details of Hughes’ story.  This was one of the most virulent attacks on American industry in history, and Hughes handling of it is a major factor in the preservation of entrepreneurialism and free enterprise in post-war America.  Yet even today, a quick scan of Internet data on Hughes’ life seriously underplays this episode.  It has disappeared from most accounts, swallowed up by the pulp stories about his affairs, his eccentricity and his riches.  But it is one of the more important things he did, and it is well chronicled in The Aviator. 

 

The film also handled his incipient psychotic tendencies tastefully.  The film didn’t dwell, as it might have, on the long years of seclusion after Hughes’ phobias about germs and dislike for public contact and crowds got the better of his social side.  But it does portray this development in an understandable way – underscoring the role of his loyal close staff in protecting him and his empire as his eccentricities became more pronounced.  The film touches on some of the factors in this deterioration, but doesn’t develop them as well as it might have; especially a life-long addiction to several medical drugs following heavy use of painkillers after a nearly fatal plane crash.  It shows the heavy outside attack in the congressional hearings, but it doesn’t explore who in his close personal staff might have been a factor.  It seems unlikely that he would have progressively manifested increasing social inabilities in the presence of nothing but people with his best interests at heart.  He must have been surrounded by at least some nuts, if not many.  This could have been researched better.

 

The acting is out of this world.  Aside from DiCaprio’s Oscar-quality performance, Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn is such a good caricature it is spooky.  All of the other primary and supporting actors and actresses were superior in their portrayals, with special mention to Alan Alda, Kate Beckinsale (as Ava Gardner) John C. Reilly, Danny Huston, Alec Baldwin and Jude Law.

 

This is one of the most enjoyable and informative films I’ve ever seen.  It is in a class with films like The Right Stuff (about the early space program) or Thirteen Days (about the Cuban Missile Crisis with JFK) or The Wind and The Lion (about Theodore Roosevelt’s handling of a Mideast crisis in the early 1900s).  It is a slice of American history served up with a very high aesthetic band and not much alteration from the truth of the story.  I will see it again.  All Americans should see it at least once.  I highly recommend it. 

 

In the 1964 film Zulu, the credits said it was “introducing” handsome young actor Michael Caine, who has since become the most respected and prolific British actor in history.  According to his record on Internet Movie Database, Caine actually appeared in several previous films, but in any case, this was his first starring vehicle.  After seeing him in this film, British producers cast him as Harry Palmer in a series of spy movies that were very popular in Britain, securing his star status there.  In America he broke out a few years later when he won his first Oscar in the original Alfie. 

 

Based on a true event, Zulu is a very inspiring story about a small garrison of about 150 British soldiers in 19^th Century South Africa who held off an attack from several thousand Zulu warriors until they finally gave up and went away.  Several hundred Zulus died.  The British losses were 17 dead and 10 wounded.

 

The small garrison was little more than a supply depot.  It was called “Rorke’s Drift”.  In South Africa, the word “drift” has a local definition meaning a place where a stream can be forded.  In fact, at the time of the attack, there was a detachment of Army Engineers at the depot who were building a bridge across the river.  When the hostilities began, it was discovered that the chief engineer, one John Chard, was the most highly ranked soldier, and he took over control of the garrison from a more inexperienced Lieutenant named Gonville Bromhead (played by Caine).  In the course of the battle, Bromhead matured quickly, and the two of them wound up coordinating well to control the battle.

With industrious preparations during the time after they found about the advancing Zulus, the Brits met the force in January of 1879.  They built a hasty fortification using mostly overturned wagons and bags of grain.  With greatly superior firepower, a high degree of discipline, ingenious tactical steps and great courage, the small group of men held off wave after wave of attacks by the equally courageous Zulus.  Armed mostly with spears and shields, the Zulus were losing men at a much higher rate than the Brits.  Eventually they had had enough, and they retired, leaving the remaining Brits to ponder the notion that they had somehow escaped almost certain death. 

 

Only slightly embellished, the movie is a very inspiring true-life adventure that should be seen by anyone who has a taste for exciting military stories. 

 

The original historical event is no less inspiring, and in fact more soldiers were awarded the Victorian Cross, England’s highest award for bravery in action, than in any other single battle in British history (a total of eleven.)  A look at the greater historical context in which the battle took place paints a darker picture, however. 

 

In 1878 there was much British interest in expanding their influence into the area held by the Zulus.  At the time, there was no conflict with the Zulus.  In fact, the famous Zulu chief Shaka Zulu had created the Zulu empire only about 50 years earlier by bringing together a number of smaller tribes, and he had been friendly to the British settlement in Durban, in Zulu territory, and had defended it against other less friendly native groups.  But the desire for expansion was great.  In one of the more suppressive actions in the history of the British empire, an insane British bureaucrat with a history of causing disasters in other parts of the empire decided to solve the problem by simply provoking a confrontation with the Zulu leader and sending in the army to chase the natives out.  He believed that a bunch of half-naked natives armed only with spears would quickly wither before the might of the g-r-e-a-t British army.  Almost immediately, the British found that they had misestimated their opponent.  The ensuing Zulu wars were among the bloodiest episodes in British colonial history.  On the 22^nd of January, 1979, the Zulus massacred a British force of about 1,500 soldiers at a place called Isandlwana (don’t try to pronounce that if you don’t want to). 

 

News of the massacre was carried to Rorke’s drift.  Afforded the element of advance warning, the soldiers there worked through the night to build a hasty pseudo-fort with the supplies that were stored at the facility.  They were attacked the next day, and the battle lasted for about 24 hours. 

 

The high Zulu losses, both at Isandlwana and at Rorke’s drift dispirited them somewhat.  By the end of those two battles, about 10% of the Zulu male population had been killed.  But the war was not over.  There were additional battles before the Zulus were finally subdued. 

 

It is only slightly comforting that the suppressive bureaucrat, one Henry Bartle Frere, got in some trouble for his decisions and was recalled to England.  He was under investigation for his part in the Zulu affair as well as for an earlier similar insanity he had perpetrated in Afghanistan, when he died in London.

 

A survey of the later history of the 11 Victoria’s Cross winners is an eye-opening commentary on the hard life of a British soldier in those days.  Almost none of them lived beyond their early 40s, succumbing to various fatal situations including tuberculosis, malaria, cancer, death in battle, and suicide.  One of them, a Dutch civilian who was awarded the medal for his courageous help during the battle, essentially starved to death within a couple of years when he couldn’t find work in Durban.  It was a rougher environment than the one we’re used to in today’s “West”.

 

The Zulu movie was a passion for actor Stanley Baker, who played the part of the brilliant Lieutenant John Chard.  Baker, a Welchman and childhood friend of actor Richard Burton, was inspired to make the film by a patriotic admiration for Chard and the small band of soldiers, most of whom were Welch.  He was unable to get financing for the film, so he sunk his own money into it.  The film was a box office success.  Baker went on to make several more films, but he died early, in his 40s, for the same reason his hero Chard died in his 40s, from cancer based on excessive use of tobacco.  Baker died of lung cancer.  Chard had died of cancer of the tongue, probably from chewing tobacco, on the eve of an invitation to visit Queen Victoria at her castle in Balmoral.

 

The sad epilogue of the many inspiring stories of brilliance and courage in battle always has been and always will be the story of how the war could have been prevented if the world would have been more enlightened at the time.  In their sad song “A Day In The Life”, the Beatles said, “I saw a film today, oh boy… the English army had just won the war…”

 

Little Elizabeth Thornburg was born on the wrong side of the tracks in Battle Creek, Michigan.  Her father left the family when she was only two years old.  Her mother, an alcoholic, made very little money, mostly by opening little “speakeasy” bars (illegal bars during the “Prohibition” era in the 1920s when alcohol was against the law in the United States) and running them till the police shut her down then going somewhere else and opening another.  Racked with poverty, the family bumped along on the road of life until Elizabeth discovered she was good on a stage.  She began singing and dancing for handouts when she was a young girl.  By the age of 13, “Betty” was singing with local bands in the Detroit area.  She later said she had no confidence at all in her singing voice so she decided to make up for it by “constantly moving”.  In an era when big band singers usually moved very little except perhaps to sway with the music and occasionally do a slight foot shuffle, Betty’s frenetic gyrations would be right at home in a 1980 Michael Jackson rock video.  Driven by an obsession to pull her family out of poverty by becoming a “big star”, she did exactly that.  By the early 1940s she was singing and dancing for Paramount Studios under her new stage name, Betty Hutton.

 

Betty was incredibly emotional, on stage and off.  Even in laid-back musical numbers, her heart was on her sleeve as she coaxed every word and phrase with her rubber face and electric body activity.  She was a good actress as well, and her fortunes soared in the 1940s and early 1950s as she became one of America’s favorite comedy and musical actresses.  Her blonde tresses, huge smile, bright blue eyes and athletic build made her a favorite during World War II.

 

 

After a series of mid-level comedies and musicals, Betty landed her first major role in 1950 in Annie Get Your Gun.  The part of rootin-tootin pistol-packin’ Annie Oakley in a musical about the famous American markswoman and her role in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveling circus was made to order for can-do Betty.  She followed that with a turn as a circus acrobat in the Cecil B. DeMilles spectacle The Greatest Show On Earth.  In that film, Betty did her own acrobatic stunts on the trapeze! 

 

Betty had already begun to sour on her Hollywood career by this time, however.  After a couple more films, Betty precipitously abandoned it all, and practically disappeared.  She emerged after several decades, her money gone, living with a Catholic group, working as a volunteer as a cook in a soup kitchen on the East Coast, where she works still.

 

It’s hard to put a finger on the reason for her abandonment of this idyllic life.  She has her own story based on how poorly she was treated in Hollywood, but it seems unlikely to be the whole truth, because Hollywood had its own stories about how poorly she treated others.  She was known for her temper tantrums, and when she recounts her upset with sleights on the set of Annie Get Your Gun, one can only roll one’s eyes. 

 

Betty may have been an early victim of psychiatrists, the ghoulish parasites that feed on Hollywood stars and have ruined the lives of so many.  She was hospitalized for a time in a mental facility for recovery from addiction to sleeping pills.  This kind of treatment, often including psychiatric drugs or other medieval techniques often destroys sanity in the name of help. 

 

But regardless of the reason for Betty’s flight, the legacy she gave us in her great films, including Annie Get Your Gun, is a national treasure.  She was beautiful, vibrant and engaging and her animated style is bound to put a smile on your face whether you want one or not. 

A superhero hiding in a federal witness-style program?  The premise in the latest Pixar animation, The Incredibles, is funny enough to be entertaining as party conversation, much less as a big-screen animated cartoon.  It is filled with great caricatures, and it has a rare combination of sophisticated dialogue that entertains adults with exciting animation that captivates children.  It is the ideal family movie.

 

In The Incredibles, public has been sold a politically correct viewpoint that superheroes do as much harm as good.  Blind to the potential devastation that could have been visited by the monsters the superheroes stopped, the public sees only the collateral damage caused by the heroic battles between the good guys and the bad guys.  Identified as a public menace, the superheroes have been banished to anonymity, grudgingly protected by a federal agency that used to coordinate their anti-crime efforts, placed with assumed names in little Anywhere, America communities and given normal jobs.  From time to time one of them accidentally flexes his super abilities and overawes the people around him, blowing his cover.  Then the federal agency has to come in and relocate them, but with a tongue-lashing about how “we can’t keep doing this…”  It’s a gray little life for the once-proud heroes.

 

The story centers on a small nuclear family of superheroes.  “Mr. Incredible” has married “Elastigirl” and the two of them have begotten three super children.  The tongue-in-cheek situations with a mom and dad that have faced off against the most terrible interplanetary evil forces trying to keep their super children under control so they can remain anonymous are a scream.  In one scene, they must convince their young son to use “only enough speed to win” his foot races so nobody realizes he’s a superhero in hiding.  “Aww, Mom!!” the speedy boy objects.

 

Of course, the world is eventually attacked by someone so evil that the public must set aside their upside-down viewpoint and ask for help.

 

The film is entertaining in both incarnations:  the campy American suburban environment of the hiding-out Incredibles with a frustrated Mr. Incredible trying to deal with the impossible bureaucracy of the mega-corporation insurance company for whom he is a policy manager, and the exciting action-and-adventure Incredibles family who use their super-powers to stop an evil villain who unchecked would bring the world to slavery.

 

As this is written, this wildly popular animation feature has been in the top ten box-office films for five weeks already and it shows signs of staying in that rarified territory through the holiday season.  It is also breaking records overseas, and will undoubtedly live forever in video.  It may eventually be the highest-grossing cartoon feature in history.  It certainly adds another very big feather to the prestigious Pixar chain of successes, including the Toy Story series, A Bug’s Life, Monster’s Inc., and Finding Nemo.  All of the Pixar products have ranged in heady box office ranges.  Prior to Incredibles, the highest-grossing Pixar film was Finding Nemo, which is the ninth-highest box-office hit in history world-wide, at 856 million dollars. 

 

Pixar is the biggest star in the cosmic explosion of animated features producers since the advent of effective computer aid in replacing the slow, time-consuming animation methods of yesteryear when artists hand-painted animated films cell by cell, 24 cells for each second of film time.  The faster computer methods have resulted in a flowering of big features, and a wave of overseas animation, especially from Japan, where a distinctive style of “anime” has built a huge audience world wide.  The Pixar company was started by Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple Computer and the incredible Macintosh. 

 

Incredibles marks the second-to-last film in a contract between Pixar and Disney Studios.  Given the remarkable success of all of the Pixar features, one would expect Disney to want to continue the association, but Pixar walked away from glacial negotiations with controversial Disney boss Michael Eisner.  At this point, the walkaway appears to be a complete rejection by Pixar, to the point of saying the aggravation of working with Eisner isn’t worth it at any price.  The loss of Pixar is one of the biggest complaints for Disney stockholders calling for Eisner’s removal.  We predict Pixar will do just fine, and we further predict that whether Disney does just fine will depend on whether they can escape from Eisner’s greedy bottom-line shark-instinct viewpoint and return to the spirit of Walt Disney himself, whose primary purpose was to entertain the public and make the world a happier, better place, not just make money.

 

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen The Incredibles, be sure to catch it this Christmas.  You can drop by anytime – it doesn’t look like it’s going away soon.

 

Hitler bombed London for about three months in 1940, in what is called “The Battle of Britain”.  The movie Battle of Britain was made in 1969.  It’s one of the greatest films about modern history,  Produced before CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) the air war was filmed with real pilots and actors, not created electronically.  The assembled mass of WW II-era aircraft made this film production the fourth largest air force in the world, temporarily. 

 

Can you call a battle 65 years old “modern”?  From the viewpoint of the roll through Iraq, with instant electronic communications, supersonic stealth aircraft and smart bombs that can be aimed precisely from a warship hundreds of miles away, this WW II battle may no longer appear to be particularly modern.  But in fact it certainly was.  It was entirely an air war, the first of its kind.  Hitler was trying to soften up the defenses of Britain in preparation for a ground assault.

 

The rest of Europe was already overrun by Nazi troops.  The only remaining outpost fighting the Nazis was Great Britain.  The U.S. had not yet entered the war, and there was no assurance they would do so.  Pearl Harbor hadn’t yet happened.  Russia, later a big factor, was still dormant, and an “ally” of the Nazis, at least on paper.  The Brits were going it alone. 

 

The British military were forced off the continent of Europe by Hitler’s armies, only months after the beginning of hostilities.  In the hasty retreat they had lost most of their ground hardware, including their tanks, trucks and big guns, left behind on the beaches of France.  It was up to the British Royal Air Force to defend against Nazi bombers who attacked London every day and every night. 

 

The British (and the rest of Europe) had not taken the Nazi threat seriously during the years of Hitler’s military build-up, and they were hardly ready for war.  At the beginning of the Battle of Britain, Nazi superiority in numbers was overwhelming.  Hitler sported a Luftwaffe (air force) of about 2,400 airplanes.  Britain had only 600 fighters to defend the island.  In the words of Chief Air Marshall Hugh Dowding, “…the essential arithmetic is that our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we're to keep pace at all.”  It was a desperate time.  For the English, who had been the preeminent military force in the world for centuries, it looked like the end was near.

 

 

But in an amazing display of courage and determination, with some superior technology and little bit of luck, the British carried the day.  The Nazis started bombing on July 10^th.  By the end of October, the confrontation was virtually over.  Nazi air superiority had been crushed, with the loss of more than 1600 planes.  British industry had kept up with their losses, producing 100 new airplanes per week.  The Nazis went home to lick their wounds.  Britain would not be invaded.  Instead it would become the platform for allied operations with the United States that would eventually win the war, retaking Europe over the next few years with the help of Russia who was attacking from the Eastern front.

 

Now it all seems so antique – like a war between toys; little propeller-driven fighter airplanes that didn’t even go as fast as today’s commercial airliners, and tiny bombers that lumbered along at less than the take-off speed of a Boeing 747.  But at the time it was life and death, and it was about as close as anything in the recorded history of this planet to the story of Luke Skywalker fighting the evil Empire. 

 

It seems every male actor in Britain had a part in this movie.  The all-star cast includes Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Robert Shaw, Ralph Richardson and dozens of others.  The only woman of note was very attractive young Susannah York, playing a female military officer.  Director Guy Hamilton and Producer Harry Saltzman collaborated on most of the early James Bond flicks before and after this movie. 

 

An interesting aspect of the film was the reaction of people younger than me who watched it.  Terms that were old hat to any child of the 1950s were foreign and required explanation.  To use this film as a historical tool in a modern classroom, a number of words and concepts would have to be cleared for younger audiences.  Some examples:  “Jerry” was British slang for German Nazis.  (“I wish we knew what Jerry was thinking…”)  The British fighter plane of the day was the Spitfire, or “Spit”.  (New trainees assigned to a fighter squadron are asked, “How many hours in Spits?”)  The film opens with a depiction of the last days on the European continent as the English were being pushed off, but casually expects everyone to know what occurred.  Not everyone my environment knew about the British defeat and withdrawal through the French sea town of Dunkirk, and it was necessary to stop the film and explain what was happening.  Even clues showing the difference between British and the German soldiers, such as uniform style, painted symbols on vehicles, etc., were lost on some of my people.  Watch the DVD with the subtitles turned on and the pause key handy.

 

The British used radar (a recent British invention) to see incoming waves of Nazi bombers, and were able to use their limited resources very effectively as a result.  The radar warning of incoming planes gave them enough of a head start to get Spitfires wherever they needed them, making the Nazis think there were many more Spitfires than there really were.  In fact, the Spits were running up and down the island, meeting bomber invasions wherever they occurred, giving the impression that they were everywhere.  The Nazis were aware of radar; even put a little attention on trying to knock out the radar installations at first.  But they never really understood the importance and effectiveness of this tool.

 

British airmen often bailed out when their planes were hit.  In many cases, an airman parachuted to safety and got another plane back up the same day.  The Germans, on the other hand, were over enemy territory, so whether or not the crew survived, they were lost when the plane was shot down.  Trained pilots were at a premium for both sides, so the pilot attrition factor favored the Brits. 

 

Fuel supply and aircraft range were an enormous factor in World War II for both sides.  The Luftwaffe officers could see England with binoculars across the channel from the beaches in France, but their fighter planes had such a limited range they could only fight for ten minutes over London before heading back or they wouldn’t have enough fuel for the return trip.  Bombers had a greater range, but when they tried to attack things further inland, they were on their own, without fighter support.  They were sitting ducks for the Spitfires when they did that. 

 

In the early days of the campaign, Hitler was knocking out airfields and manufacturing centers.  His greatest mistake may have been the switch to bombing London.  Despite the devastation to the city and the people in it, this tactic freed up the airfields and manufacturing facilities.  The PR factor was deadly in the United States.  A nation that had been somewhat indifferent to the war in Europe suddenly saw the Nazis as ogres for bombing London’s civilian population.  Is it possible Hitler could have won the battle if he wouldn’t have made this decision?  It’s hard to say.  But the stress on the Royal Air Force was much greater when they were the ones under attack rather than the City of London. 

 

Like most war history films, there is a certain amount of maudlin, candy-coated material that is supposed to represent the emotional life of the people enduring this nightmare.  But in this film it was tastefully done, and it avoided flights of fancy into non sequitur love affairs and other personal matters except for the purpose of illustrating life during the period.

 

A depiction of the German side of things was well done, too.  A lot of brave young men and competent officers struggled under the yoke of insane leaders who were on a homicide/suicide trip worthy of someone on Paxil.  High morale in the air corp at the beginning of the incident degenerated into a morose state by the time most of their fellows were no longer present at the dinner table.  While we’re clucking about the British state of affairs, we can remember the Germans soldiers were victims too, sometimes more violently so.  This is not to make less of the crimes of the psychiatrists and Gestapo who ran the death camps, but the average soldier was just a kid like the ones we relied on for our own defense – caught in a different time and place, fighting on the wrong side.  The ones who died were somebody’s sons.  The ones who didn’t are the fathers of the generation who came after.  There is nothing wrong with letting a chill run up your spine regarding a good win, but it’s important to maintain the big picture – nobody really wins in a war.  Both sides lose a little civilization, lose a little wherewithal and lose a little freedom, regardless of who “wins”. 

 

The scale of the aerial confrontations was enormous and very real.  Planes were gathered up from various small air forces around the world that were still using antiquated WW II aircraft.  The cinematography was spectacular in the aerial footage.  It could never be duplicated again using the real planes of the time.  Used with study help for younger people unfamiliar with the events and jargon of the period, this film should be useful for as long as anyone wishes to look at one of the most interesting and inspiring battles in the last or any other century.  The film is certainly a tip of the hat to the hastily trained young men who bravely climbed into rudimentary flying machines and flew to the rescue of civilization in its darkest hour.  There were only about 3,000 pilots who saw action in this battle on behalf of Britain.  In the inspiring words of Winston Churchill, “Never was so much owed by so many, to so few.”

 

The facts don’t check with the story when hubby gets back from a supposed business trip.  How could he have been relaxing on the beach in Florida if he has no tan?  His wife isn’t at home when he arrives, so other friends precede her in questioning his explanations.  By the time she does return, he is already on the defensive. 

 

She finally arrives and explains her absence.  She shows up in formal wear, with her “voice teacher” in tow wearing a tuxedo.  It seems the two of them were forced to shack up on a hotel overnight (in separate rooms?) because the car in which they were driving broke down. 

 

In the beginning of this fast-paced screwball comedy, their “happy marriage” quickly begins to snap like a bag of popcorn in the microwave, and then it suddenly boils over in pandemonium. 

 

Handsome husband, played by Cary Grant, and sleek wife, played by Irene Dunne, are on the road to divorce within minutes.  In New York, there is a prescribed period of waiting before any divorce is final.  The remainder of the film takes place during this waiting period.

 

With a snap-and-pop dialogue and all-around high-grade acting and directing, this comedy takes its place with the best and most charming of the period. 

 

Husband and wife alternately flip-flop between seeking other love interests or deciding to try to put the marriage back together again.  Usually, either direction taken by one of them is the opposite of the direction the other is taking at the moment, and the results are painfully funny. 

 

Wife is running around with a rich but goofy Oklahoma oil man.  Hubby is courting a high-end society girl.  Both find the best communication and understanding they have is with each other, even when they disagree.  Alternately each tries to make the break to freedom.  Alternately, each repents.  Alternately, each tries to sabotage the other’s new love affair.  With a dialogue that doesn’t quit, and a director that understands comic timing, the film is irrepressible from beginning to end.  Whether Cary Grant is crashing a romantic moment between his wife and her new suitor to “visit” their pet dog (to which he has visitation rights) or Irene Dunne is pretending to be drunk and crashing her husband’s engagement party at the hoi-polloi mansion of his terribly correct society girlfriend, the laughs never stop.  Racy for its time, and with the kind of sophisticated dialogue that marked screwball comedies in general, this early one (1937) is a riot. 

 

Director Leo McCarey won an Oscar for his effort.  Irene Dunne was nominated for one, and so was her rich-hick Oklahoma boyfriend, played by a young Ralph Bellamy.

 

The “society girl” that Cary Grant was going out with in the movie may have been inspired by a real front-page society girl, the very rich and beautiful heiress Barbara Hutton, whom Grant married five years later.  This marriage was not destined to last, as was the case with a long list of marriages for both Grant and Hutton, but they remained lifelong friends. 

 

Irene Dunne made her first film in the 1920s.  Before that she trained as an opera singer and picked up acting jobs to keep her going while she tried to break into the opera.  Her stage presence is wonderful, and her acting quickly overtook the singing career.  Then she wrestled with another desire when she tried ardently to avoid comedy for the “meatier stuff” of drama.  She did both genres, but her greatest contributions were in comedy, where she excelled, in spite of (or perhaps because of) her serious operatic/dramatic interests.  Her dry delivery and sophisticated expression seemed to make already funny dialogue even funnier.

 

She made the moderately successful drama Love Affair in 1938, the first version of the story that became one of the great classics when it was remade twenty years later as An Affair To Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr and directed by the same Leo McCarey.  Her operatic talents were employed in a moderately successful early version (1936) of Showboat, later remade in 1951 in the version that has become the greater classic, with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel.  She was Anna in the original Anna and the King of Siam in 1946, which was remade in 1956 with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner in the unforgettable musical The King and I.  So as a serious actress her legacy is eclipsed by others who followed in her footsteps.  But her comedic films are the ones that reach through the years to take your heart away.  She was quick, cute as a button, and very accessible.  Her sense of timing was perfect, and she never broke character.  Her personal life was distinctly un-Hollywood.  She was happily married to her husband all of her life until his eventual death.  She later migrated to business, religious charity work and politics, eventually becoming the United States representative to the United Nations under Dwight Eisenhower, and a member of the board for the Technicolor corporation.  

 

Another character of note in this film is the charming little dog shared by the divorcing couple, played by Asta – a star in his own right who played in the popular “Thin Man” series of films with soave detectives Nick and Nora Charles, and the hilarious bone-burier “George” in another Cary Grant screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby.