I just love this photo. It's one of my beloved childhood movie theaters. RKO Proctor's in Mount Vernon, New York. Doing some detective work, I can pin down the date of the snapshot. There's obviously been a huge snow storm. It's around Christmas time because you can see the wreath on the bank. And "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is played at the theater. That film was released in the fall of 1947. If you look at the weather records for New York, there was a huge blizzard on December 26. So, I am guessing that's about when this photo was taken.
Memories are made from pictures like this.
In the first year of this blog, I spent about 50 Sundays counting down my Top 25 Favorite Movies of All Time and my Top 25 Favorite TV Shows of All Time. Heck, back in that day, I was new to this blogging thing and was looking to fill content every week and every day. Since then, I've referenced some of these movies and TV shows from time to time. When I reran the list in one single post several years ago, it resulted in the blog entry that is my second highest in all time hits. Over 1100 as of yesterday.
So, as we celebrate the magical world of films today, let's see my film one more time.
This week, let's see my Top 25 Favorite Movies...in ascending order:
25. Since You Went Away
The ultimate movie on how a typical American family dealt with life on the World War II homefront. A wonderful time capsule of the last time this nation was unified in a single cause. I have to watch it every Christmas season.
24. Pillow Talk
The first Doris Day-Rock Hudson pairing and arguably the best. Before there were cell phones, there were party lines. Ridiculously innocent, but who cares? Thelma Ritter steals every scene she's in as a boozy housekeeper. And she appears on my list again in a similar role.
23. White Christmas
It wouldn't be the holiday season without me popping this into the DVD player or, thanks to being in Los Angeles, seeing it on the big screen. The movie I'm most likely to be watching on December 23 or 24. Next time you watch it, pay close attention to Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen and see how they virtually steal the film away from old pros Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.
Completely shot in the Bronx and I could recognize locations where my parents would take me shopping when I was a kid. A marvelous look at a single man and how he deals with perhaps finding the love of his life. Ernest Borgnine's Oscar win and nobody deserved it more. It looks, smells, and feel just like New York. It won Best Picture of 1955.
21. Radio Days
There are three Woody Allen movies I can watch over and over and over. Annie Hall. Manhattan. Hannah and Her Sisters. But the one that sings to me the most is his paean to growing up in the 30s and 40s when the radio was your family's sole source for nightly entertainment. Wildly nostalgic and the scene where an aunt takes her small nephew to Radio City Music Hall for the first time makes me misty-eyed on every single viewing.
20. One, Two, Three
Billy Wilder is my favorite film director and he shows up three times on my list. But, this movie is one of his lesser known efforts but brilliant nonetheless. James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola bottler in Berlin just before the Wall goes up. A performance that is so funny and rapid-fire that it literally forced Cagney to go into retirement immediately thereafter. He is talking the entire picture, but every line is a gem that's better than the last.
19. Mildred Pierce
My earliest introduction to bitch slaps. I first watched this with my mother one rainy Sunday afternoon when it aired on WNEW-TV Metromedia Channel 5. Joan Crawford's finest moment on screen and Eve Arden sets the standard for the wise cracking girlfriend. I wish people would slap each other like this in real life.
18. Giant
As big as all of Texas, this saga of a ranching/oil drilling family could have been the genesis for TV's Dallas. It's three hours long and doesn't feel it. Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor are simply marvelous, although the late James Dean is a trifle miscast. Still, I got to see this on a big screen out in Los Angeles and it's the only way to enjoy this George Stevens masterpiece.
17. City Lights
Charlie Chaplin's finest. The tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl. If that sounds a bit sappy, you're right. Nobody tugs on the heartstrings better than Chaplin. As thick as the schmaltz is layered, the final scene is the benchmark for all filmmakers who want their audiences to be bawling their eyes out as they leave the theater. If you can ever see it in a theater with live orchestration, run, don't walk.
16. The Band Wagon
Everybody says that Singin' in the Rain is MGM's greatest musical. And, since it shows up on my list later on, maybe it is. But The Band Wagon is no sloppy second. Almost completely devoid of plot, the movie still keeps you riveted through every delightful production number. Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse's "Dancing in the Park" routine is one of those film moments that I can't turn off when I run into the film on TV. Watch the dance once with the sound turned down. Even in silence, it's beautiful.
15. Ben-Hur
The 1959 edition, folks. My mom used to take me to all the Biblical epics, but, somehow, I missed this one. I never saw it until New Year's Eve day, 1987. I had suffered a hairline fracture of the shoulder the night before so I decided to rent the longest movie I could find at the video store. Even on a Zenith 19 inch portable TV screen, this film was so deeply powerful, yet amazingly intimate at the same time. I've since gotten to see it several times on a big screen. Yes, gang, Charlton Heston can act. But, Stephen Boyd as Massala does steal the picture. It won Best Picture of 1959.
14. Yankee Doodle Dandy
My very first movie addiction. When I was really young, WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York ran the Million Dollar Movie. The same picture ran every night and all day Saturday and Sunday for a week. I think I watched every showing of this terrific biography of George M. Cohan. Jimmy Cagney tapdancing down the stairs of the White House? Legendary.
13. It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
When I was a kid, I gravitated to all the comedians that my grandmother used to love on television. This was my very first exposure to the likes of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, and Buddy Hackett. When this finally showed up at the Loews Theater in Mount Vernon, I think I went three times the next week. And, when it later showed up on television, I watched it with my grandmother on her black and white Philco TV. Meanwhile, as good as Grandma's favorites were in the movie, keep your eyes on "young" Jonathan Winters as he rules the screen every time the camera's on him.
12. Bye Bye Birdie
This is the movie that jumpstarted my hormones at a very young age. Ann-Margret. Ann-Margret. Ann-Margret. Need I say more? This played at the Loews Mount Vernon theater and I went five times in a single week. And, in a rather bizarre display of crossed wires, the other main attraction for me in this film was Paul Lynde who I loved to imitate. Years later, I should have been a lot more worried about myself than I was at the time. When the movie soundtrack album came out with Ann-Margret on the cover....well, you don't really want to know what I did with that, do you?
Along with the aforementioned Since You Went Away, I was always fascinated by the impact that World War II had on the American homefront. I have my grandmother and her own Sunday Memory Drawers to thank for that. This film shows you what happened when those surviving GIs came home. The scenes with Oscar winner Harold Russell...well, they had me hooked. Wink wink. It won Best Picture of 1947.
10. Singin' In The Rain
The gold standard for MGM musicals from the 1950s. So many moments that you can watch over and over and over. Donald O'Connor making us laugh. Debbie Reynolds saying Good Mornin'. Gene Kelly showing us just how drip dry his pants really were. I can watch this once a month and not be bored. The new Blu Ray makes it look like the movie was produced last week. Meanwhile, despite the star power of those mentioned above, Jean Hagen almost commits a Brinks Truck-like heist of the film with her portrayal of a musical comedy star who can't sing.
9. The Music Man
A different day and a different time. Yes, the setting of this musical is the very innocent Midwest back at the turn of the century. But, this film also marked a major life event for me. It was the first time my parents let me go to the movies by myself. I suppose neither one of them was interested in seeing it. So, my father dropped me off at the RKO Proctor Theater in Mount Vernon, New York. He squared it away with the usherette to watch over me and he picked me up exactly three hours later. Originally, I saw "The Music Man" because my childhood hero was Ronny Howard. But, this is perhaps the quintessential Broadway musical comedy and the screen adaptation is just as wonderful.
8. Jaws
I saw it on the day it opened in June of 1975 in what had to be one of the oddest-shaped theaters ever built. It was this bizarre bandbox on Fordham Road. The theater was so rectangular that it gave you the illusion of watching a movie in a bowling alley. Meanwhile, none of us knew where the scares were, so, at the end of two hours, we were scared shitless. The glory of this movie is that, even if you've seen it over and over, it still works every time. A few years back, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica ran it on a Saturday night. The place was packed and parents were exposing their kids to it for the first time. They didn't know where the scares were, so the screams were real and organic. By the way, the Blu Ray edition which was just released makes the film look like it was filmed yesterday.
7. The Bridge on the River Kwai
My father shepherded me to all the really important war films. He really wanted to give me a sense of the vital moments in recent American history, as he had just lived through them himself. So, when "Bridge" first ran on network television, I got to stay up to the ungodly hour of Sunday night 11:30PM to watch it. Perhaps the most intimate of all war movies, I make this required viewing at least once every two years. Oddly enough, I have never gotten to see it on a big screen and I am waiting anxiously for some classic theater here in Los Angeles to unspool it for me. It won Best Picture of 1957.
6. Sons of the Desert
Laurel and Hardy's finest hour. Well, hour and about fifteen minutes. Whenever Stan and Ollie were on television, you'd find me and Grandma in front of the tube. She talked frequently about one of their movies which she claims to have seen in an open air theater somewhere in the Bronx. In it, they were selling Christmas trees and she said she never laughed harder in her life. Frankly, I thought she made it all up until I finally saw said short on Turner Classic Movies. She was right. It was hilarious. Meanwhile, "Sons of the Desert" is their finest feature-length movie. The boys lie to their wives so they can go to a convention. How simple a plot? How glorious a movie! It gave me one of the movie lines I have quoted most in my life. "Honesty is the best politics."
5. The Godfather
The last movie I went to see with my dad in an actual theater. Now, I had read the Mario Puzo book as did all the boys in my neighborhood. You read Page 27. Over and over and over. Sex education courtesy of the Mafia. So, when the film came out, I couldn't wait to see how they put Page 27 on the big screen. Imagine my horror when my own father, caught up by the film's frenzy, announced he wanted to take me to see it. Ummm. Er. Ummmm. Er. Well, Page 27 came pretty early on in the movie. It was tame by comparison to the book. But, still, I sat there stone-faced and never once did I look at my dad throughout the entire sequence. There are just some things you don't share with a parent. Meanwhile, the movie itself was then and is now still a masterpiece. The Best Picture of 1972.
4. Rear Window
Only Alfred Hitchcock could keep a camera trained on the windows of a New York apartment building and get a riveting two-hour movie. Sheer magic happens whenever I see it. The true mark of a successful movie is if you can find something new in it with every successive viewing. I just saw it again about two years ago at the Aero Theater and I found myself looking for little nuances in some of the apartments that Hitch doesn't focus on primarily. There are gold nuggets all over the place. Suspense that holds you in its grip no matter how many times you see it. Thelma Ritter again is the snappy housekeeper you want to hire for your own apartment. And how cool a villain's name is "Lars Thorwald?"
3. North by Northwest
Back-to-back Hitchcock in my Top 5 and why the hell not? Both films are as perfect as they come. There is not a single wasted shot in all of "North by Northwest." The perfect blend of comedy and suspense, which never crosses the line into either category. Cary Grant is the ideal "wrong man at the wrong time and at the wrong place," a device Hitchcock used over and over and over. As dire as his situation is, he pops off one-liners that have you giggling through the terror. His best line when he sees Eva Marie Saint working together with villain James Mason: "You here with her. That's a picture that even Charles Addams couldn't draw." Meanwhile, the crop dusting scene is legendary and required repeat viewing for any movie fan.
2. Some Like It Hot
For years and years, I called this terrific Billy Wilder concoction my absolute favorite movie of all time. And it's damn good. The film provided me with my very first occasion of actually hearing people laugh in a movie theater. My parents took me at a very young age. I had no clue where the hell I was. But, it was in the Loews Theater in Mount Vernon, New York. As was always the case back in the day, you entered a movie theater regardless of where you were in the double feature. And we walked into "Some Like It Hot" during the last ten minutes, when Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are being chased around the hotel dressed as women. The theater was enveloped in laughter. And so were, in a rare moviegoing moment together, my parents. Don't get me wrong. This is and always will be a perfect comedy. But, as I grew older and more experienced in life, there was another film that seemed to fit me even a little comfortably as my #1 Favorite Movie of All Time...
1. The Apartment
Indeed, this Billy Wilder comedy-drama is most representative of life itself. With its ups and downs. Its joyous moments. Its disappointments. People connecting and un-connecting and then connecting again. Sometimes, it makes sense. Other times, it does not. As time and I wore on, I realized that "The Apartment" continually says more to me about the world we live in than any other movie. Wonderfully funny and harrowingly dramatic. Two diverse reactions that can occur within seconds of each other as the characters of C.C. Baxter, Fran Kubelik, and Mr. Sheldrake play out their lives which could be the same issues confronting you and I. Meanwhile, there is still a smile on my face throughout. To enjoy "The Apartment" is to experience life itself. Jack Lemmon, Shirley McLaine, and Fred MacMurray have never been better. I've been in screenings of the movie where grown adults hiss at Fred from the audience. Reactions like that show you that the film, as crafted by Herr Wilder, is working. The Best Picture Oscar winner of 1960 and my Best Picture winner of my life. What? You haven't seen it? Well, "just shut up and deal."
So there's the list again, gang. For those of you into weird trivia, you can pay attention to the following:
Billy Wilder has directed three of the movies on this list.
Alfred Hitchcock has directed two of the movies on this list.
William Wyler has directed two of the movies on this list.
Those actors appearing in films more than once on this list: the aforementioned Thelma Ritter, James Cagney, Buddy Hackett, Cyd Charisse, and Jack Lemmon.
By decade, there are 2 films from the 30s, 4 from the 40s, 11 from the 50s, 5 from the 60s, 2 from the 70s, and 1 from the 80s.
And, speaking to the state of Hollywood today, there is not one movie on this list made after the year 1987.
Dinner last night: Grilled bratwurst and macaroni salad.
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