tugs@utcsrgv.UUCP (Stephen Hull) (08/04/83)
I think it was in the film "55 Days at Peking" that the last word on David Niven's style was made. Niven was the British ambassador to China at the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion. At one point in the film all hell has let loose, there's rioting, looting and general bad vibes throughout the city. Through it all walks Niven, calm and self-posessed as always, despite the great danger he, as representative of the nasty British, is in. Someone reflects on Niven's attitude and bearing and comments to the person beside him, "When I look at him I realize that God must truly be an Englishman." Hear, hear... steve hull decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!tugs P.S. As everyone knows or ought to know, famous people's deaths in any given walk of public life always occur in threes. However, FOUR such people have died in the last week: Mr. Niven, Luis Bunuel, Lyn Fontanne and Raymond Massey. That means that two more people have to go real soon to keep the books straight (unless you make the distinction that Fontanne was just a theatre person, or that Bunuel was director, not an actor, in which case you still need two deaths, but in slightly more specific areas). So, any ideas for who you think will go next? Who you'd like to see go next? My candidates are as follows (Gawd, isn't this gruesome!): 1) Two actors who I think are due to die soon (much as I hate to see them go) are Laurence Olivier and Walter Matthau. 2) Two film types that I wouldn't miss at all are Randall Kleiser (director of such cinema greats as Grease, The Blue Lagoon and Summer Lovers) and - uh - gee, I don't really hate anybody else enough to wish this on them. Maybe whoever was responsible for "Private Lessons". What a shitty concept for a film (Sylvia Kristel, schoolteacher, gives (ahem) special instruction to randy young high school boy - as if she can't find anything better). Not that I wouldn't have liked it to have happened to me, but I think it would be a real test of peoples' attitudes about such things to remake that film with a MALE teacher screwing around with a FEMALE student. What kind of response would that garner from our enlightened society?
tugs@utcsrgv.UUCP (Stephen Hull) (08/05/83)
Carolyn Jones just died. Who's next? steve decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!tugs