Professor Elam

Thursday Nov 17 2010

Most folks get interested in history a bit late in life, I suspect that most readers of 1776 were over forty. It takes a few decades before it dawns that people go on and on doing the same things over and over with pretty much the same results, and that is what finally sparks an interest in reading history. 

ON the Beach airs at 9 PM tonight on Turner Classic Movies. The movie was pretty faithful to a a best selling novel by Nevil Shute about a world wide nuclear holocaust. This was the subject of many movies and books in the 1950s. The memory of how WW II ended was alive and gee those pesky Ruskies had the bomb, what if some nut case hits the button and then all these things start flying?

This is the opportunity to see some famous actors from your grandparents day. Peck was  quite the leading man in films like Moby DIck and To Kill a Mockingbird,probably his most famous. Ava Gardner is showcased in The Aviator as the gorgeous gal in Howard Hughes; life, she later married and divorced Frank Sinatra. Fred Astair made his mark as  the most famous dance partner of Ginger Rogers in the glamorous musicals of the 1930s. The extravagance of those shows was intended to take the public's mind off the Depression. Anthony Perkins later played the creepy killer in Psycho.

But, the story here is all about what if. Peck plays a surviving submarine commander in search of survivors in Australia, but the nuclear cloud moves around the earth and….

Happily the two superpowers did not blow one another up, if you have not seen the ultimate parody, Dr. Strangelove, put that one on your list as well. But we of course still face the reality of smaller disasters. 

Watching the film will give you a better understanding of the worries of the Cold War. 

I was probably the last generation  of the great middle class to experience what a real university was all about, film festivals, affordably  low tuition which did not require exhausting work schedules, the Greeks, etc. Back then we had film festivals on campus, and actually sat around and discussed what the movies meant afterwards. Too bad that only happens on TCM these days. But at least Alec Baldwin and Roger Osborne do a pretty good job with The Essentials on televison. 

Funny how one conversation, one meeting more or less, one encouraging wink or smile can change an entire career path. After an undergrad major in Finance, I was a bit bored writing papers on the Italian lira and such. I visited with a professor in Radio Television Film about a graduate degree in RTF. He wanted to see my films and poems, of which of course I had none. Recall that VCRs had not been invented in 1970. Making a movie required tedious film work and mechanical editing.  He called back later, angry I had not returned with those in hand. Oh well, on to graduate business school. The technology was pretty intimidating back then, the equipment was the money barrier to the field. Now however digital tech and low priced cameras has made everyone a speilberg on You Tube. That was then this is now….