Learn about china painting. Meetings: 3rd Saturday of each month, 9am-2pm, Garden & Arts Center.
Meets every Friday night at 7 pm at Haynes Elementary School at 60th and Memphis. Open to new people...youth or adults who would like to learn to play the Scottish Bagpipes and Drums. For more info contact Hilton McLaurin at 744-9747.
Meetings: first Monday of each month, 9:30 a.m. AND 7 p.m. first Tuesday of each month, Covenant Presbyterian Church, 4600 48th St. 791-1199.
Artists of all skill levels interested in portraiture share costs of studio and model. The sessions have no instructor. Monthly dues, show options for regularly attending members. Daily fees for drop-ins (space permitting). Annual exhibition for attending members.
Contact artist Sharon Beauchamp at (806) 793-0281.
meetings: 7 p.m., 2406 33rd St. Cloth doll club. 828-5412 or 795-6639.
Meetings: 1st Tuesday of each month, Forrest Heights United Methodist Church, 3007 33rd Street; start time 7:00 pm.
For rubber stamp artists and enthusiasts.
meetings: fourth Tuesday of each month, 7 p.m., 797-3107.


Being empathetic and sensitive means we observe and consider all the time. We absorb our environment and the energy of the places and people that we encounter. Being so finely tuned to others' personalities, comments, and unspoken wants and needs, we process both good and bad.
Speaking for myself, I don't forget. For better or worse, I have a very long memory and a strong desire for justice and honesty. Once I have encountered someone who has lied to me, or about me, I cannot just brush it off. I will behave honorably because that is how I choose to live my life, and in the scheme of things, I want to be better than I was yesterday and continue to learn from the lessons that life has in store for me.
The dilemma is that I can see the craving for attention, the desire to engage, insecurities, and drive in someone else, but while being attentive, I have to protect myself. It is a delicate balance between head and heart all the time. It is easy, as a sensitive person, to get sucked into someone else's drama. Because we consider people to be inherently good, and seek to empathize, it can take a long time to accept that they have betrayed us or behaved so abusively. We could never imagine treating others like that, so when it happens to us, it can be a shock to the system. It is so different than how we want to approach the world and create positive change and lasting kindness.
Considering each step and each word is a delicate attempt to reach for the high road. Does it improve us, or the environment, for the better? I will be polite and courteous hoping that the future, and I, will grow more patient, tolerant, and kind.
I continue to whisper a prayer to accept what I cannot change and change what I can accept.
While describing what I try to achieve with each person that I meet in the course of my philanthropic work, I acknowledge that I am merely a conduit – a messenger for the one who is giving as well as for the one who is receiving. Sometimes, the best that I can do for someone is to send them back out into the world having been heard and, hopefully, strengthened with an act of empathy.
My empathy is because I recognize the pain. It mirrors my own life experiences of struggle, fear, betrayal, anxiety, sadness, grief and loss. There is a desperate need to take action on both of our parts. That effort of someone taking an active step to seek help, a desire to do something, that is brave and humbling.
In my opinion, passion is not merely an emotional free-fall. It is a commitment and conviction to make a difference in whatever environment you are in. I believe that passion can be doing the very best that you can do, despite limiting conditions, and trying to help someone else through the worst that life has thrown them. It is a conscious effort to make a difference and try to heal the world one person at a time.
When it comes to expressing how I feel, I have strong and intense opinions. Life has taught me, sometimes harshly, what I need in order to understand someone else's pain. Those lessons have prepared me to determinedly choose to take action because it is right, not easy. Creating positive change is a passion and I advocate for empathy every time.
Thank you for stopping by. I hope that you enjoy your visit and I would love to hear about your passionate efforts and convictions.


text:
Skerries RNLI and Howth RNLI respond to distress call from sinking vessel
Thursday 5 August 2021
Skerries RNLI and Howth RNLI were tasked by Dublin Coast Guard yesterday afternoon (Wednesday 4 August) following a Pan-Pan VHF call reporting that a small fishing boat with two persons on board was taking on water near the entrance to Rogerstown estuary in Rush.
RNLI/Gerry Canning
Skerries RNLI taking the vessel under tow
Shortly after 16.30pm, the volunteer crew at Skerries RNLI launched their Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat, while the volunteers in Howth launched their Trent class all weather lifeboat. With the possibility of persons entering the water, both lifeboats headed for Rogerstown at the maximum possible safe speed.
As the lifeboat from Skerries arrived on scene, they could see that the casualty vessel had sunk on the bar at the entrance to Rogerstown estuary. There were people in the water in the vicinity of the boat, however the water was shallow enough for them to stand. The lifeboat was maneuvered as close as possible before two of the crew entered the water and proceeded on foot to assess the situation further. Howth RNLI arrived on scene shortly after and stood by in case any further assistance was needed or if any of the casualties would need to be transferred for further treatment. A ground unit from Skerries Coast Guard were also on scene to assist.
It was quickly established that the casualties had initially made it to safety on the beach, however, one of them was now being assisted by another person in trying to lay out an anchor to secure the boat. With the aid of the volunteers from Skerries RNLI, they managed to turn the boat to bring the bow into the waves, this enabled them to bail the boat out and re-float it. With a large number of windsurfers and kite surfers in the area, the Helm decided that the boat presented a hazard and could potentially lead to a further call out if left where it was. It was decided to take the boat under tow to the nearest safe harbour at the slipway in Rogerstown. The casualty returned to shore and with the immediate danger passed, Howth RNLI were stood down and returned to station.
Once the tow was complete and the boat was safely returned at the slipway in Rogerstown, the lifeboat returned to Skerries where the boat and station were both sanitised and made ready for the next service.
Conditions at the time were Moderate with a force four southerly wind.
Speaking about the call out, volunteer Lifeboat Press Officer for Skerries RNLI, Gerry Canning said: 'There is always a great deal of concern when there is the possibility of someone ending up in the water. Thankfully on this occasion the boat grounded on a sand bar and they were able to make their way to safety. But it highlights that things can and do go wrong at sea and shows the value of carrying a means to call for help if needed'
Lifeboat Press Officer, Skerries Lifeboat Station
Skerries Lifeboat Station Howth Lifeboat Station

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
New disabled employees create harmony regardless of differences
Hwang Jin-joo
Lee Su-ho, one of the newly employed workers, washes dishes at Helen Hall Cafeteria.
Ewha students might be curious about the new faces they see at places of Ewha this spring semester. Among them, a boy wearing rubber gloves and collecting dishes at Helen Hall Cafeteria, named Lee Su-ho (21), is one of the five newly employed workers with intellectual disabilities.
Ewha is the first Korean college to hire people with intellectual disabilities in January this year. The move was part of the Ewha's new employment project with Korea Employment Promotion Agnecy for the Disabled (KEPAD), a state-run organization that helps provide more job opportunities for the disabled. KEPAD, founded in 1990 by the Labor Ministry, has been coordinating various employment programs for the disabled in private and public sectors.
Lee Su-ho and other four new employees, Park Jong-min (25), Park Seo-hee (23), Lee Jung-ik (22) and Lee Jin-kyong (23), have been working at several school installations, including the Main Library, an office in the Education Building B, the Helen Hall Cafeteria and the Fitness Center at Ewha Campus Complex (ECC). Their duties vary depending on where they work, from cleaning gyms and sorting out mail to re-shelving books at a library. Each works four hours a day, Monday to Friday.
Beginning in August, 2008, the five new employees went through an intensive six-month training program designed to help them adjust to the workplace, since this is their first employment. In order to learn about their responsibilities, and ease their transition to a working environment, they trained at their current place of employment twice a week for two hours.
"I am amazed at Jin-kyong's enthusiasm in the work place. She works hard by doing exactly what she has to do. It is good that we can share the workload together," said Lee Ji-hye (Physical Education, Graduate School) who works at the ECC Fitness Center with one of the five new employees, Lee Jin-kyong.
The most excited people are those five new employees who have the opportunity to work and earn a living.
"Working at Ewha is quite fun. All my other colleagues who were also hired at this time encourage me to do well," said Lee Su-ho, who works at the Helen Hall Cafeteria.
"My parents compliment me for doing fine at work. I have never come late for work. It is good that I could get a job just after my graduation from high school last week," said Lee.
Not only the employees, but also the Office of Welfare Service, is happy for the job opportunity Lee got.
"At first, I was concerned about the working environment because there are dangerous elements like fire and knives in a cafeteria kitchen," said Park Hyun-sook (Office of Welfare Service). "After the training, Su-ho learned how to work well and safely."
Since the new employees are working at school, it is important that students and the five employees work together to make a harmonious environment.
"What I was most worried about was the reaction of Ewha students. I was afraid that they might find it uncomfortable to see him in the cafeteria which they use so often," said Park.
After working for a couple of months, however, the result has been positive. According to Park, students do not regard him as someone to be afraid of or express any discrimination against him.
"As a result, Su-ho can commit himself fully to his work and I would like to thank students for it since he could gain confidence," said Park.
Professor Park Seung-hee (Special Education) who promoted this program with KEPAD is also satisfied with the outcome.
"To help those with intellectual disabilities adjust well to the work, there must be well-coordinated efforts among the co-workers, while adequate salaries and ongoing supports should also be provided," said Park. "All of these factors are well provided for this program."
Students are also supportive regarding the employment of five people with intellectual disabilities.
"I think both the intellectually disabled workers and the students of Ewha will learn from each other. Through becoming a role model for other universities, I am expecting a transition in students' prejudicial views against people with intellectual disabilities. Workers will gain self-confidence and live fruitful lives," said Yun Eun-jung (Life Science, 4).


This document describes how to install, configure and use the SEPA Credit Transfer Customer-to-Bank module for Openbravo.
SEPA Credit Transfer is an European Credit Transfer system for payments in EUR. It is the official credit schema since February 2014.
The SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) Scheme enables payment service providers (PSPs) to offer a core and basic credit transfer service throughout SEPA for either single or bulk payments. The scheme's standards facilitate payment initiation, processing and reconciliation, based on straight-through-processing (STP). The scope is limited to payments made in euro, within the 33 SEPA countries. The PSPs executing the credit transfer must formally participate in the SCT Scheme.
The SEPA Credit Transfer implementation for Openbravo is distributed as a commercial module that can be directly installed by the user through the Module Management window.
This modules is based on the Remittances infrastructure for Openbravo. It is highly recommend to read its Configuration Manual and the User Documentation before working with the SEPA Credit Transfer module.
The final objective of the module is to generate a XML file compatible with the SEPA Credit Transfer standard based on the ISO 20022, that can be sent to a bank to pay money to your vendors.
To install the module and its dependencies, you just need to login as System Administrator, go to the Module Management window, search for the SEPA Credit Transfer Customer-to-Bank module and install & rebuild the system as usual.
Go to the Enterprise module management window and apply the SEPA Credit Transfer Customer-to-Bank dataset as it is shown in the screenshot.
Remittance infrastructure dataset needs also to be applied.
Several Remittance Types that support different SEPA Credit Transfer schema versions. All these remittance types are associated to the previous payment method.
Each country and bank may support different schema versions. Contact your bank and ask about the right version to use. Currently, the most extended version is *pain.001.001.03.
As you can see in the previous screenshot, the remittance type contains a set of parameters that define the way the XML SEPA file will be generated. In general it shouldn't be necessary to modify these parameters, but depending on your country or bank specific rules, you may need to change any of them. It is recommend to use the default configuration and, if the bank doesn't accept the file, then try to change the configuration accordingly.
STRICT_VALIDATION: Set to Y by default. If set to Y (Yes), Openbravo will run a strict validation of the XML file against the XSD schema version. This kind of validation may detect some errors in the XML file structure or even into the data (for example an invalid BIC).
Use_Nm_ForIdentifiers: Set to Y by default. If set to Y (Yes), the business partner and organization identifiers will include the respective name as part of the identifier. In some countries, the identifier may not include the Name; in this case set the parameter's value to N.
Use_Id_ForIdentifiers: Set to Y by default. If set to Y (Yes), the business partner and organization identifiers will include an unique identifier based on the tax id. In some countries, the identifier may not include this Id, but only the Name. In this case set the parameter's value to N.
Use_AT-02_toGenerateId: Set to N by default. If set to Y (Yes), the identifiers for business partner and organization will be created using the algorithm defined in the SEPA Rulebook under AT-02. The final ID will be a combination of the 2-digits ISO country code + control digits (which are generated on the fly by Openbravo) + business code (from Business_Code parameter) + tax id. If this configuration parameter is set to N (No), the identifier will be directly the tax id. Note that when the Use_Id_ForIdentifiers is set to N, no ID will be included into the file, so the Use_AT-02_toGenerateId parameter won't be taken into account.
BIC_SWIFT_MANDATORY: Set to Y by default. If set to Y (Yes), the BIC (SWIFT) code associated to the financial account or to the business partner account will be required when creating the SEPA file; in case the BIC is not found for any of the accounts involved into the remittance, the process will fail informing about the problem. If your bank accepts to leave the BIC code blank, you can set the value to N, and the file will be created without this information.
GENERATE_BUSINESSPARTNER_IBAN: If set to Y (Yes), the business partner's IBAN code will be generated on the fly based on the account number and either the bank account country declared at the Business Partner's Bank Account tab or the business partner location. By default this parameter is set to 'N', because SEPA authorities recommend to force your business partners to inform about the IBAN code instead of generating it on the fly.
Business_Code (since 0.5.4): Represents the business code that is used by some banks to identify the debtor's contract. Specify here the value that will be used in case either DebtorIdentifier:Id+Business_Code or Use_AT-02_toGenerateId are set to Y. By default this value is set to ZZZ and it is not used by the SEPA Credit Transfer.
GroupBy_Duedate: Set to N by default. If set to Y (Yes) remittance lines can be grouped by due date in one <PmtInf> (payment information) section.
CategoryPurpose_Code (since 1.0.5): Blank by default. Represents the value of the CtgyPurp tag, which indicates the type of transactions available in the remittance file. Usually you can leave empty this value (so the tag won't be included into the XML file). For example, in Spain the value must be set to SALA to indicate a payroll remittance, or to PENS in case of a pension remittance.
If you haven't entered it before, you must define the IBAN and bank BIC (Swift Code) associated to the financial account. Openbravo will automatically validate the IBAN code format based on the bank's country.
This information is mandatory in order to generate the SEPA XML file. If you try to generate the file without providing this information, the process will fail informing about the problem.
Optionally, you can set the BIC (Swift Code) as not mandatory by setting the remittance type parameter called BIC_SWIFT_MANDATORY to N.
Finally, the SEPA Credit Transfer Customer-to-Bank payment method must be included into the list of payment methods for the financial account.
with an Automatic execution, linked to the "In Remittance" execution process.
without Upon Receipt/Deposit/Reconciliation accounts, because remittances have their own accounting process linked to the accounts defined at the remittance type.
either the Generic Account nº, if "Use Generic Account Nº" option or "Use SWIFT + Generic Account Nº" option is selected in the field "Bank Account Format".
In that case, Openbravo can generate business partner's IBAN code on the fly based on the Generic Account Nº entered by setting the remittance type parameter called GENERATE_BUSINESSPARTNER_IBAN to Y.
or the IBAN code, if "Use IBAN" option is selected in the field "Bank Account Format"
It is also possible to define the bank BIC (Swift Code) associated to each business partner.
Optionally, and in case it is not known, you can set the BIC (Swift Code) as not mandatory by setting the remittance type parameter called BIC_SWIFT_MANDATORY to N.
The remittances must be created and executed at the Remittance window.
The SEPA Credit Transfer remittance type version compatible with our bank, for example pain.001.001.03.
the Financial Account linked to the bank receiving the SEPA XML file.
After that you just need to select the payments/orders/invoices to be included into the file. This can be done through the Select Payments and Select Orders or Invoices buttons, which open a popup where you can pick the records. Remember that you can also add payments associated to any payment method by setting the Show payments for alternative payment methods to Yes.
Once you have included all the lines, you must process the remittance (clicking the Process button). This will enter the list of Bank Instructions that will be used for creating the file. Inside this tab, you can review or even modify some data.
To generate the SEPA XML file, just click on the Create Remittance File button. If everything is OK, your browser will download the file ready to be sent to the bank. In case of errors, the system show the error description and won't generate the file.
Finally, you just need to send the SEPA XML file to your bank that should import it successfully.
Common characters such as "á" or "Á" will be replaced as "a" and "A" in the SEPA XML file, same applies to characters "ñ" and "Ñ" which will be replaced as "n" and "N".
The character "\n" that indicates a new paragraph will be replaced as " ", that indicates an "empty" space.
This page has been accessed 5,475 times. This page was last modified on 13 October 2015, at 12:22. Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Spain License.


09/11/2017 seele presents two lectures at the symposium IASS (International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures), which takes place from 25th to 28th of September 2017.
The Symposium is between September 25th and 28th, 2017 in Hamburg. seele presents the following two topics: "Design and Fabrication of light and spatial constructions" of speaker Dr. Fabian Schmid and the lecture of Christoph Bauchinger together with Engelmann Peters about the free-form gridshell fo Chadstone Shopping Centre in Melbourne.


I'm not sure that experience of working on Spielberg's version of Tin Tin has rubbed off on Moffat. The Pandorica Opens more or less amounts to a gene-splicing of the Devil's Tower sequences of Close Encounters and the catacomb exploring of the Indiana Jones films and looks very pretty but I'm not convinced on this evidence he can do 'epic' in Doctor Who. The narratives that hold these glossy visual spectacles together are really what Moffat is interested in. The rest is a bit tokenistic. The two part story that concludes with The Big Bang also reflects an ancient literary tradition that you could say Spielberg himself has deliberately woven into many of his major films. It falls into the tradition of menippea - a form of satire that signifies a mixed, often discontinuous way of writing that draws upon distinct, multiple traditions. Both The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang act as reflections of each other, at once proposing an anti-epic visual presentation in counter-point to an epic narrative.
From the sky full of spaceships above Stonehenge to the alliance of monsters with their rather ridiculously contrived plan to trap the Doctor in the Pandorica, Moffat turns the whole thing on its head and in the The Big Bang simply has four people chasing around a museum whilst the universe shrinks outside the window and the Doctor cheats willfully with the time lines, bouncing around like a deranged cosmic Tommy Cooper. Bakhtin regarded menippea as 'the use of the fantastic internally motivated by the urge to create extraordinary situations for the testing of philosophical ideas'. Which sums up the finale for me and Moffat's own view of the entire Doctor Who series synthesised into a carnivalesque ambivalence for logic, an irreverent desire to break the rules and to cross boundaries. Sometimes it works spectacularly - not just in terms of visual spectacle but also in narrative complexity - and sometimes it's a way for him to cheat, avoid the implications of what he's done and refuse to answer questions left dangling by the preceding 11 episodes.
Thus we get no real answers to who was saying 'silence will fall', why the TARDIS was exploding and a reasoning for Amy's 'special' status. And presumably the missing ducks from the Leadworth duck pond ended up on the other side of the crack in time. Moffat knows his game and in the opening sequence with Vincent in 1890 he's clearly sending himself up rotten when the neighbour attending with the doctor looks at the painting of the exploding TARDIS and mutters, 'Look at this, even worse than his usual rubbish'.
Moffat's end game with this finale is to focus in on the triangular relationship between Amy Pond, the Doctor and Rory Williams. The messages carried through time via Van Gogh's painting, Churchill's telephone call, Liz Ten's meeting with River after she has broken out of the Stormcage facility are simply a means to an end whilst also cleverly rewarding the patient viewer with the pleasure of recognition in these pre-titles revisitations. They throw out a number of questions that in typical Moffat style aren't likely to be answered - why is Liz Ten still alive in 5154 and why is Bracewell still working for Churchill when it was more than suggested at the end of Victory Of The Daleks that he was off in search of his true love, Dorabella. These are, like many other sequences in the story, narrative conceits.
The Pandorica Opens is in effect one massive conceit. The significance of the Pandorica and the exploding TARDIS drive the story but in the end we never really discover the answer to the latter and the former is inevitably not what it seems with much of the episode heavily signposting the fact that it's a prison cell into which the Doctor is dumped by his enemies and not the home of an ultimate 'big bad'. The most effective twist in The Pandorica Opens is the resurrection of Rory, presumed erased from history at the end of Cold Blood. His reappearance is another layer to the themes of the series about remembering and forgetting and, significantly, he isn't the real Rory but a facsimile, a memory of Rory, created by the Nestenes. They presumably replaced the real Rory who did die at the end of Cold Blood. Or was he an Auton right from his introduction in The Eleventh Hour, then destroyed in Cold Blood, and then resurrected in The Pandorica Opens? It is narrative obfuscations such as these that Moffat deliberately ignores or refuses to clarify.
Rory is that most human of non-humans, embodying the crisis of subjectivity at the heart of this revelation. He struggles with his Nestene programming and conflicting human emotions, just as Amy evoked the same contradictions in the Dalek's android Bracewell back in 1941, to reaffirm his love for Amy, only to then destroy the object of his feelings. That this death takes place simultaneously with the Doctor's capture and imprisonment in the Pandorica, the destruction of the TARDIS and the death of the universe offers the spectacle a much needed emotional grounding. Rory's non-human status and his subsequent murder of Amy is the single most powerful scene in The Pandorica Opens and legitimises what is in effect a Doctor Who episode that resembles a Busby Berkeley tap routine performed by a sweating Steven Moffat sporting a fixed grin. It's hard to be 'epic'.
Moffat uses such conceits to again fuel the narrative expectation in The Big Bang where the audience is given a linear narrative - of the Doctor escaping from the Pandorica and the dead - now alive - Amy taking his place - that is broken into non-linear and often repetitive moments, planting visual and verbal information about scenes that haven't happened but will happen or that have happened and we don't know why they have until the explanation appears further along the narrative. He's testing our ideas about time and the use of empirical and metaphysical paradoxes in the science fiction genre. For me, however amusing it is, and - in the way Matt Smith performs these sequences - it is, it really amounts to more grandstanding, including the revitalisation of the Dalek as a token monster to chase our heroes down corridors, that delays the story getting to the roof of the museum and the ultimate fate of the Doctor, the Pandorica and the TARDIS.
What's more interesting in the story are the binary oppositions between men and women. Amy truly is the fairy tale figure of the mysterious Little Red Riding Hood that the series has been constructed around. She is not only the absent woman in search of her self, her journey starting as a girl, with the adorable Caitlin Blackwood returning as the younger Amy, and continuing through to impending womanhood and that wedding but the story is also a science fiction satire about getting the bride to the church on time, about getting the adolescent Amy married off.
Typically, the finale also underlines of some of the problems I've been having with this series. Firstly, the series as a whole has evidently suffered from a cut in budget. This is unfortunate because television is a visual medium these days and you need to spend money on it to engage audiences. Otherwise, you might as well do all this on the radio and a great deal of The Big Bang might as well have gone out as an Afternoon Play on Radio 4. No matter how much of a clever clogs Moffat is, he can't just rely on characters running around a museum engaging in time travel screw-ball comedy to define the nature of the threat to the audience. The difference here to Series Three or Four, for example, is the inward and insular way Series Five has been structured around Amy and the Doctor, including the world in which these characters are seen to exist and the way they counter the threats to this world.
There is less show and more tell in many of the scripts with, I'd argue, only The Time Of Angels/Flesh and Stone really achieving the winning mix of the epic and the personal that uses the visual medium of television well. There are undoubtedly instances where location filming abroad has paid off, as in the Vampires Of Venice and Vincent And The Doctor, and the threats have been placed on a broader canvas (unlike the exploding TARDIS which is only ever seen on a canvas). On the whole I get a sense that the world building that's so necessary for a high concept series like Doctor Who is being presented to us in shorthand.
If you look at The Pandorica Opens the money has clearly been spent on the Stonehenge locations and the visual effects. By the time we get to The Big Bang the Stonehenge location is gone as is the visual misdirection of the massing alliance space fleet and what was indicated as threat has, ironically enough, become as fossilised as the remaining Daleks (no doubt another addition to the Character Options range). The Big Bang tells us about the threat to the universe but never actually reveals why it is there in the first place, why it is happening and who caused it. It's an unsatisfying finale because we never have a 'big bad' on which to pin the focus of the story. That conflict is absent and the Doctor spends most of The Big Bang fire-fighting whilst Moffat brings the story of Amy full circle.
Much of the series has therefore been set within a self-referential bubble, with the effects of conflict on those outside that bubble all happening off screen. We're told about the consequences from the Doctor, Amy and Rory but we never really see it actually affecting other people. As the TARDIS burns itself out we get the barest indication through dialogue that Richard Dawkins is slightly concerned about the shrinking of history and the lack of stars in the sky. These are powerful concepts that Moffat is creating but I keep feeling I'm being placed at a distance from them and I am only allowed to hear about them, never mind see them, through Amy or Rory. You have to have very strong, very identifiable supporting characters to be able to pull that switch from the broadest to the narrowest world view and to convince an audience that the apocalypse is mostly taking place off screen.
Although RTD's use of his characters families and the extended repertoire of supporting characters in Harriet Jones, Captain Jack et al might be seen as too much a reflection of soap opera, the audience accepted that world view because of its familiarity and because the conflict between the Doctor and the villain of the week was often staged on screen in familiar surroundings, often showing us the consequences. In the end we are left only with Amy and Rory as the audience identification figures and there isn't enough context to care about the threat to them and to us, as the audience. I've stopped caring, to be honest, because the series won't let me care.
Secondly, try as I do, but I don't much like Amy. I find her a rather unsympathetic character. It culminates with her finally waking up on her wedding day and getting married. How do we accept that Amy then casually waves goodbye to parents that she's desperately fought to bring back into existence, and who occupy a minimum of screen time, as she and Rory abruptly leave in the TARDIS. We don't even see them wave back! After all the reunions, I find it rather callous of her to reject that new world with her parents in it, and after restoring the Doctor through the power of suggestion, to spend her honeymoon with him in the TARDIS. Has this woman an obsession about father figures?
I'm afraid there's a whiff of a straight male fantasy (the kissogram's a bit of dead giveaway) deliberately being projected onto the character possibly as as an extension to Moffat's own fantasies of a woman who doles out a form of sadomasochism to the men in her life. Moffat and Moffat's analog, Rory, bask in the power of a strong, controlling woman. Amy as the idealised woman, ironically, may both evoke in them the feelings of safety and protection associated with childhood and likewise from which Rory, and by extension Moffat, may derive satisfaction from earning the approval of that figure. Very much a case of bringing yourself to what you write I think.
Amy spends a lot of time belittling both the Doctor and Rory, trying to dominate and to an extent emasculate them (her attempt to seduce the Doctor is clearly an extension of that but he's strong enough to reject it) and it is very telling when, at the wedding reception, the Doctor congratulates Rory with, 'From now on I shall be leaving the kissing duties to the brand new Mr. Pond' after Amy has ordered the Doctor to 'kiss the bride'. Here, the Doctor firmly rejects her dominance but also confirms that Rory is no longer Rory Williams but Rory Pond. 'No, I'm not Mr. Pond. That's not how it works.' 'Yeah it is' confirms the Doctor with Rory's status underlined as victim of his own self-defeating personality disorder.
Rory is for me the best thing about The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. As I said, he's the Moffat analog and in being such is a far more humane character, even when he's an Auton, than the horribly idealised Amy Pond. This is the plastic man that hangs around for 2000 years protecting the Pandorica, marries the woman inside it and settles down to a life of hen-pecking in the TARDIS. He's a man who engages in excessive self sacrifice in order to get a response from the woman who allegedly loves him and then happily takes the humiliation from Amy when he is reluctant to find any pleasure in all the dangers that travelling in the TARDIS throws at him. He's a deeply flawed man whom most of us can relate to - 'the boy who waited' guarding the gift of hope in the Pandorica (definitely symbolically similar to Pandora's box itself) and who emerges into manhood.
The finale is flawed, lacking a really decent conflict between the Doctor and whoever it is that caused the TARDIS to explode and told us 'silence will fall', but they are good, solid and entertaining episodes. The scripts are witty and full of life even if Moffat plunges into self-indulgence in The Big Bang. The death of Amy at Rory's hand, literally, is the pinnacle of The Pandorica Opens whilst the allegedly show stopping gathering of the alliance of monsters is just a sop to keep the kids happy (and bearing in mind my thoughts about the budgetary necessities of the anti-epic, how must they have been disappointed to find it all reduced to one pathetic Dalek screeching for mercy in The Big Bang?).
The Big Bang is more satisfying emotionally with it being the conclusion of the series long Amy arc. The stand out scene between the Doctor and Amy, the conversation with her as he prepares to hurtle into the heart of the burning TARDIS, is one of the best of the series. It adds the full stop to the whole series subtext about remembering and forgetting that has been drip fed into stories from the beginning and the notion that the Pandorica ultimately symbolises hope after both forgetting and remembering, much as in the ancient story of Pandora, even if it does stray rather too close to a big reset button.
Moffat's story arc, in which all of history is erased and then rebooted, in which the very act of remembering is a macrocosmic event (the key to saving the universe) - and a microcosmic event (bringing back your long vanished parents) is surprise, surprise a main tenet in fairy tales. Amy's Red Riding Hood journey through time, symbolised very powerfully in the forest scenes in Flesh And Stone, is one about avoiding the threat of being devoured wherein the hungry wolf of the old fairy tale is now the crack in the bedroom wall. But like many readings of fairy tales, is this also a story about a girl's desperate avoidance of womanhood, her impending marriage to Rory, and to remain a child by jumping aboard the TARDIS to avoid the predations of the wolf (Rory and the crack in time)? Might this explain her defensiveness to Rory in some of the earlier stories?
The interesting thing about Red Riding Hood and other fairy tales is that they are concerned with the control of women, the control of desire. Amy as a Red Riding Hood princess whose final trajectory is marriage is a fascinating reading of a transgressive woman, acting on her own desires but who in the end must be rescued by two friendly male figures - Rory and the Doctor - the husband and the father. River, cycling through a number of identities and appearances - from earth mother to seductress - is positioned here as a trickster heroine and as literally, the figure of the old wive's tale, the woman as storyteller and an analog to Scheherazade, as one who spins her narrative ('spoilers') throughout the Doctor's timeline. Plus, of course, she's his wife and by extension she's symbolically Amy's wicked stepmother.
As ever, Matt Smith completely steals the show and is particularly impressive in The Big Bang, giving us a mesmerising range of performances within one episode, capturing ancient wisdom and youthful recklessness in one big eccentric package. He truly is the biggest success of what I think has been a fairly middling series this year and remains the sole reason for continuing to watch the show. I have no problem with Karen Gillan's abilities but I'm hoping that now we've got Amy married off the character will acquire some warmth and sensitivity.
The themes in this year's series about the journey from childhood to womanhood didn't quite make it across in the performances until the very end of the series. Less flippancy and that awful shouty emphasis she puts on the ends of certain line readings would also help. I'm very pleased that Rory appears to have permanently joined the crew. He is the 'everyman' figure that the series must hold on to and Arthur Darvill is completely charming in the role. Now all we need are better monsters (the new Daleks and Silurians were design disasters in my opinion), decent scares and better realised worlds as a context for the journeys the Doctor, Amy and Rory go on.
Christ, you can smell the testosterone from here. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it's that new Lynx fragrance 'Monkeys, Monkeys'. Or the smell of omelettes.
Ah, I wondered when we were going to get to this point. Let's face it, when you've got Messrs Moffat, Nye and Curtis all lined up and writing for Doctor Who by the law of probability someone was bound to introduce the whole crisis of modern masculinity schtick into the series at some bloody point. All three writers have, during their careers, paraded a number of male characters across the screen with many of them desperately attempting to come to terms with the modern man's place in a rapidly changing culture.
Traditionally, scripts from all three writers have had an emphasis on the burdens of masculinity or the crisis of male identity which have been examined with humour and irony but from an essentialist point of view which presume that there was and still exists a relatively stable masculine 'essence' that defines men and distinguishes them from women. This essentialism was one that was then reconstructed as an extension of the media created New Lad or New Man. Here, we're in the post New Lad territory of the metrosexual 'caring' man struggling with his sense of self-esteem and a severe case of unrequited love. It is the centre of a script that frames the traditional tropes of male behaviour ('I'm a normal bloke. Tell me what normal blokes do.' 'They…watch telly, play football, they go down the pub.' but looks at them from a slightly different angle.
That's because the writer here is Gareth Roberts, adapting the story he presented in the comic strip of the same name where the Doctor and Mickey do the whole flat share thing. Whilst it's clear that Roberts is having immense fun exaggerating the Doctor's eccentricity within the domestic human context of a flat share, you could argue that this urgent desire to emphasise how eccentric the Doctor actually is out of his natural habitat. It somewhat contradicts his history with, and knowledge of, Earth, including his long period of exile where he was seen regularly hobnobbing with politicians and scientists, scoffing their cheese and draining dry their wine cellars. An amusing reference to Pertwee singing in the shower reminds us of that previous Doctor's vast experience with human lives that Roberts rather conveniently puts aside to raise the script's comedy stakes.
Roberts is also perhaps too busy churning out the charming sit-com romantic triangle between the Doctor, Craig and Sophie, that highlights how the alien Doctor is actually the epitome of humanism even though we already knew that, to recognise that he delays for too long the Doctor's solving of the mystery, allowing several nasty deaths to occur whilst the Doctor is cooking omelettes and building scanner devices out of bric-a-brac. This is one of the major problems with the script along with the fairly rushed ending. For all the 'fish out of water' humour, the Doctor's reasoning and behaviour is shown at its most illogical here and the script tantalises, rather infuriatingly, with the mystery of the TARDIS-like time-engine and its unknown owner or owners but then goes no further.
Despite these problems, the set up is interesting and the threat from the man upstairs is wonderfully evocative as he or it lures in his victims one by one. The disturbing thing is that he or it uses a number of disguises, all equally suspect, to lead them to the slaughter. There's a slightly unsavoury aspect to the first sequence where the ship's autopilot lures in the young Leonardo Dicaprio lookalike and as he innocently mounts the stairs his doom is clearly in the hands of an older, more mature man who awaits his arrival. Later, what looks like a prostitute dressed like Donna Summer and someone from Eastenders are given the routine from the emergency auto pilot thing and are reduced to damp patches on Craig's ceiling whilst the Doctor diddles about nattering to Amy, who seems to spend most of the episode hanging from a trapeze, or he indulges his male bonding with Craig by playing football.
'You're weird and you can cook. That's good enough for me.' admits Craig and in doing so he pretty much sums up how many heterosexual and homosexual partnerships get off the starting blocks these days. The suggestion here is then further compounded by Craig's explanation of the customary arrangement between the flat's male occupants. 'In case you want to bring someone round' says Craig. 'A girlfriend…' and then Craig looks the Doctor up and down and crucially appends 'or boyfriend' to frame the relationship between the two men as one of male homosocial bonding with the dynamic for the Doctor's inferred homosexuality framed within that. The episode surfs along with many references to these themes and ideas with Roberts using the differences between the Doctor and Craig to deconstruct some of the masculinities on display and the wider questions of change and continuity in contemporary identities.
When we first see Craig and Sophie and they discuss the flat share advert, Sophie offers Craig a 'mission in life. Find me a man!' which he inadvertently does in the form of the Doctor and, whilst initially too reluctant to share his feelings with her, he increasingly feels his chance has gone simply because the Doctor has opened her eyes to how she can widen her horizons and escape her suburban rut. It's interesting that, even though it is done as a humorous contradiction, Craig bursts out of the front door yelling 'I love you!' at the Doctor, a mock declaration of the love that dare not speak its name.
At first rather taken aback by the Doctor's rather unmanly behaviour (the double air kisses and the Doctor's compliments on Craig's taste in decoralso connote the episode's witty view of metrosexual, suburban mores) Craig's initial discomfort switches to a sense of defeat when the Doctor demonstrates that he is better at the things Craig does - the things that define him as a man. The Doctor might be weird and wear a bow tie but in the end Craig feels inadequate as the Doctor presents his abilities as a footballer and as a temp where Craig works and even as a man who can seemingly relate to women better when he convinces Sophie of her potential.
The whole issue of men and work is explored with Craig's job. In a culture of recession, downsizing and market driven policies, he represents the rising occupational insecurity and sense of precariousness in the male workforce, especially when he finds the Doctor sitting in the office. There is a sense that when Craig turns up for work after the Doctor's gentle, almost feminising, administrations to his sickness, that he is immediately emasculated by the Doctor's further interruption into his working life. He has seemingly usurped Craig, is clearly using his intellect and charm to influence company policy, tell awkward customers the way things will be from here on in and is generally being praised by Craig's boss. Perhaps doing all the things that Craig himself secretly desires.
The episode also explores further notions about men, fear and weakness. Craig puts a brave face on the world, disowning his fear of rejection and yet he's weak enough to capitulate to it when faced with his relationship with Sophie. He regresses from intimacy as much as she does and this is only resolved at the end of the episode when their survival relies completely on the expression of their desire for each other. The regression and repression that Craig is acting out is also the very thing that protects him from the time-engine's search for a pilot.
His seeming contentment with the status quo is at first challenged by the 'man' upstairs when the noise of what he does to his victims disturbs the male flat share but he is again rejected ('Thank you, Craig. But I don't need your help') by the threat. The time engine and its pilot emphasise his entanglement in the roots of suburbia and his lack of ambition beyond 'beer, pizza and telly'. Is he man enough to become the pilot? The only way he can do that is to want to move on, to embrace change, to be the 'man' upstairs. This can only come about when Sophie herself begins her journey to self-fulfilment under the Doctor's influence and finally when she is threatened by the 'man' upstairs too.
The episode succeeds through the three lead performances of Matt Smith, James Corden and Daisy Haggard. When he and the Doctor literally knock heads and Craig instantly discovers the Doctor's real identity and history, Corden's playing of Craig's reactions is amusing and well judged. I had my doubts about Corden but he confirms here that he's very much at home in drama and that frankly he should leave sketch shows, horror film pastiche and football punditry behind him.
Where the episode falls down is in its conclusion. The 'love conquers all' solution to the threat from the time engine teeters over into tweeness and the threat is resolved in such as way that we are left with no real explanation of where it came from in the first place, reducing it to simply a device for articulating all of the character's inner desires. However, there is that interesting coda - about relationships found and lost - as Craig and Sophie are finally brought to their senses by the Doctor in contrast to Amy's discovery of the engagement ring and a relationship that has been wiped from time that leaves Amy and the audience asking any number of questions.
The 1950s is usually regarded as a time when British cinema devolved into a catalogue of films that either wallowed in a rose-tinted post-war nostalgia or took rather arch and regionalist comic pot-shots at insular local communities. A string of what appeared to be formulaic A and B pictures followed after a very rich period of British film experimentation - the Ealing films, Powell & Pressburger's vivid fantasies, David Lean's early literary adaptations amongst them - and during a period where most British actors skedaddled to Hollywood in pursuit of more lucrative work and fame. This view of the 1950s doesn't entirely ring true. Many of the formulaic A and B films of the period often hide their true colours and intentions beneath their apparently hackneyed exterior and many post-war B movies have as much to say about the aftermath of war and the changes in British society as their more legitmate cousins from the bigger studios.
Adelphi Films was one of many British production and distribution companies operating during the 1940s and 1950s and produced well over 30 odd films. They made noirish thrillers, musicals, comedies and melodramas that featured many iconic British actors and personalities at the beginning of their careers. Sid James, Peter Sellers, Dora Bryan, Thora Hird, Diana Dors, Terence Alexander and many, many more. Adelphi made B pictures that would ordinarily form part of a traditional 'double bill' of a main feature and a supporting film. Three hour programmes were the norm in cinemas at this time and Adelphi was one of many companies, among them Exclusive/Hammer, Merton Park, Butcher's Film Services, Tempean, Danziger Productions and New Realm that would produce supporting features to fulfill the demand.
The bulk of the Adelphi Films collection is now held and preserved by the BFI and they are being restored in high-definition for DVD release. The BFI have already released two Adelphi features; Penny Points To Paradise and Let's Go Crazy, both early appearances for Peter Sellers. This month they release a double bill of Diana Dors films, made in 1952 and 1953 a few years before graduating to her more regarded roles in A Kid For Two Farthings and Yield To The Night. Dors was originally seen as the British 'blonde bombshell' equivalent of Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe and Jean Harlow but went on to prove that she was an actress of some significant talent. The British public regarded her as something of a national treasure and she was one of many British actors and personalities for which there was a great deal of affection and she is remembered as much for the many entertaining interviews she conducted on the chat show circuit of the early to late 1970s, the various television roles in the likes of The Two Ronnies (the Commader in the future satire The Worm That Turned), Queenie's Castle, Hammer's House Of Horror and The Sweeney. And who can forget her cameo in Adam Ant's Prince Charming video?
The double bill opens with Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? In this frothy bedroom farce scripted by Talbot Rothwell, who went on to write nineteen Carry On films, Dors plays Candy Markham, allegedly the ex-wife of American air-man Laurie Vining (Bonar Colleano - you'll probably recognise him from the Archer's A Matter Of Life And Death as he made a speciality of playing American servicemen in British pictures) who has arrived back in England with his new wife, Gillian. As they settle down to the first night of their honeymoon in a London hotel, Candy sets out to remind Laurie that technically she's still married to him and he's committing bigamy. Laurie turns to his batman Hank Hanlon (the redoubtable Sid James who is here already perfecting that iconic peal of laughter he's recognised for) and a seriously insecure lawyer Frank Betterton (a sweet performance from David Tomlinson who would later make a virtue out of his Britishness in Disney's Mary Poppins, The Love Bug and Bedknobs And Broomsticks) for help.
What ensues is a series of farce elements as Laurie tries to hide fashion model Candy away in the spare room of the hotel suite to prevent his other wife finding out that she's, in effect, still wife number one; Candy mischievously refusing to accept a divorce and demanding that Laurie give her $5000 for her trouble; Candy pretending to be Laurie's wife (and Laurie claiming Gillian is his mother!) when he's forced into a briefing with Admiral Fields. The film really hits it stride when both Dors and Tomlinson enter the fray; she as a sexually confident woman of the world and he a timid, insecure rather tight arsed British civil servant; and their comedic timing is rather effortless, confirming Dors' instinctive abilities in light comedies and Tomlinson's beautifully timed physical comedy as he bumbles and stumbles through the story. Gillian's ignorance of all the shenanigans going on does stretch the credibility of the various situations being played out in the various bedrooms of the suite but even she in the end rises to the occasion and cannily admits that she knows precisely what's going on. The laughs may be gentle but it's a delight to watch Dors and Tomlinson at work.
Beneath all the slapstick and gentle innuendo is the film's use of the three way relationship between Laurie, Gillian and Candy as an attempt to understand the special relationship between the US and Britain in the early 1950s. There is also an interesting contrast here between what eventually becomes a story about two couples - one American and one British - as Laurie's lawyer Frank, having to persuade Candy to go through with a divorce that will be recognised by the British legal system rather than the divorce he already has that's only valid in the US, then falls in love with her. At this point in time, the US was rolling out the Marshall Plan to aid the economic recovery of Europe from the devastation of the Second World War.
In effect, the film offers the idealised American couple of Laurie and Gillian to both the audience and to the singletons Frank and Candy as a vision of post-war 'you can be like us' Marshall Plan propaganda of how to culturally, economically and emotionally deal with the effects of war on both on the homefront and internationally. The focus on what could be seen as rather brash American characters with Laurie, Gillian, Hank and a transatlantic sounding Candy perhaps also echoes the kind of comedy that was already being popularised in The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy at the beginning of the 1950s. It's entirely possible that writer Rothwell could have seen some of these shows. The film ends by suggesting that Laurie is a serial womaniser, perhaps as a result of long periods spent in various countries during the war, and that Gillian is merely the latest in a line of brides whilst Candy and Frank's relationship suggests a transatlantic union actually based on monogamy.
The second film on the double bill, My Wife's Lodger could at first be seen as a rather pale imitation of Hobson's Choice and certainly lacks any of the subtlety of David Lean's celebrated film. It is set in Lancashire and tells the tale of private Willie Higginbottom (music hall star Dominic Roche who also wrote the original play that film is based upon) returning to his humble home, hoping to be welcomed as hero of the war, only to find his wife Maggie (Olive Sloane) has taken in a lodger who has usurped his place in her heart. Roger, the lodger (wonderfully played by Leslie Dwyer), is in fact a rather underhand, coniving spiv and is planning to steal a lorry full of cigarettes. Diana Dors plays Willie's daughter Eunice and her concerns are with snagging an American soldier, wearing the latest fashion and going out dancing. She is in effect one of those 'teenagers' that 1950s culture was so obsessed about.
What on the surface seems to be a comedy of manners about the hapless Willie wishing for a hero's welcome and finding none available in home and hearth is actually a rather dark tale about what happened on the home front whilst the men were away fighting and what they would find on their return. The desire to come home and expect to continue where they left off was uppermost in the thoughts of most husbands but to return to find not only a young son and daughter fully grown and taking up adult pursuits of drinking, smoking and courting but also a wife who has taken in another man and with whom he must fight for her affections must have been pretty shocking. Whilst you can laugh at the music hall, often rather pantomime like, physical comedy here and heavy Northern accents that sound like someone running their nails down a blackboard, the situation reflects the vast changes that the war wrought upon traditional British domestic behaviour and social mores.
The film surprisingly, and with some sensitivity, looks at the expectation that women, who had more or less run their families and gone out to work for the war effort, would return to domestic servitude once their husbands were back home. It's an interesting view of what working class families must have been faced with - a husband and former head of the household actually with no power over his wife and children and a wife whose attitudes have changed towards him - and including views on crime, law and order and the presence of American GIs on British soil. One of the key scenes is right at the beginning of the film where Willie and a small boy create complete havoc in a train carriage and one of the passengers yells at him, 'Haven't you grown up yet!'. It's part of a subtext in the film about children maturing into adults - namely Willie's son and daughter embracing their new found freedoms - and adults reduced to the state of children - Willie playing with toys he brought back for his kids and later his drunken wrecking of the home and Maggie's undisguised threat to run off with Roger and her demands to be upwardly mobile signifying their attempts to cope with the chaotic disruption of the war on adult married relationships.
Dors is excellent as Eunice, providing a very naturalistic performance amongst a raft of slightly shrill and theatrical performances from Roche and Sloane where they clearly haven't altogether mastered the differences in acting on film and acting for the stage. They do come across as Northern caricatures rater than full bloodied characters. As for Dors, there just isn't enough of her in the film but she does at least show that she can sing and she's charming and glamorous throughout. One of the loveliest things is the triumvirate of the three leading female roles representing three generations of women affected by the war; Maggie as played by Sloane, Dors as Eunice and the wonderful Vi Kaley as the deaf mother-in-law sporting an ear trumpet and grumbling to great comic effect throughout the proceedings.
Leslie Dwyer is certainly the best of the male leads here and despite getting his comeuppance at the end of the film, his ducking and diving as the spiv is very entertaining. Alan Sedgwick plays the American GI hunk Tex who rather symbolises the dominance of American culture (also rather hilariously lampooned in the cinema programme that Roger and Maggie watch) and its freedoms in the post-war years and changes the lives of the Higginbottoms as the bearer of a legacy from the States that sees the entire family transformed into a Lancashire version of The Beverly Hillbillies.
There are some genuinely laugh out loud moments here and the humour derived from the antics of such a dysfunctional family reflect many of the tropes that would find their way into British sit-coms of the late 1960s and 1970s where other ideological wars would be fought - based on gender, class, race and religion.
Both films look immaculate and the restoration in hi-def is superb in these 1.33:1 transfers. There are occasional little scratches here and there but the picture is pretty much rock steady, full of real depth and contrast, with good detail, the requisite film grain and consistent blacks. Very impressive indeed and so lovely to see these rarely seen films looking so good and now available. The PCM mono audio is perfectly serviceable apart from some heavy distortion when Dors gets to sing to Tex in My Wife's Lodger. The package comes with a superb illustrated booklet featuring original promotional materials and specially commissioned essays, including Diana Dors, My Mother by Diana's son Jason Lake, David Tomlinson and I by David Tomlinson's widow Audrey and That Diana Dors Moment by Damon Wise, author of Come By Sunday: The Fabulous, Ruined Life of Diana Dors.


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text:
Family & Companions
Anthony Curtis, Bernard Schwartz, James Curtis
Bronx, New York, USA
Hollywood heartthrob Tony Curtis soon developed into one of the most versatile leading men in movies of the 1950s and 1960s. He brought tremendous charisma and energy to both his comic and dramatic projects, including "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), "The Defiant Ones" (1958) - which earned him an Oscar nomination - "Some Like It Hot" (1959), "Spartacus" (1960), "Captain Newman, M.D." (1...
David & Fatima (2008)
Play it to the Bone (1999)
Hardball (1998)
Star Games (1998)
Elvis Meets Nixon (1997)
Louis and Frank (1997)
Lenny Star Springer
Operation Petticoat - Movie Posters
Sex And The Single Girl (1964) -- (Movie Clip) Not Because I'm Attractive
Kings Go Forth - Movie Posters
Don't Make Waves - Scene Stills
Winchester '73 - (Re-issue Trailer)
Actor. Married in 1951; divorced in 1962.
Christine Kaufman
Lisa Allen
Married in 1968; divorced.
Lisa Deutsch
Lawyer. Married in February 1993; filed for divorce after 17 months of marriage; born c. 1962.
"Tony Curtis: The Autobiography"
Tony Curtis and Barry Paris, William Morrow (1993)
"Kid Andrew Cody & Julie Sparrow"
Tony Curtis, Doubleday (1977)
In his autobiography, Curtis wrote of a brief affair with Marilyn Monroe before she had become a star. They would later co-star together in "Some Like It Hot".
"I was the handsomest kid in town," he says, of his early days as a star. "But I happened to be Jewish and I was portrayed as a homosexual when it was something not to be talked about."The pain of being ostracised, vilified, denied, not having a relationship, all those feelings we romp through as young people, have subsided. But I don't forget anything. I was driving along in the car the other day and I remembered some girl, Rita, was despicable to me and I got angry and then I wonder what I'm angry about. They're dead. Forget about it." --Curtis on his treatment by Hollywood in the days before he achieved stardom, quoted in London's The Daily Telegraph, March 20, 2001.
Hollywood heartthrob Tony Curtis soon developed into one of the most versatile leading men in movies of the 1950s and 1960s. He brought tremendous charisma and energy to both his comic and dramatic projects, including "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), "The Defiant Ones" (1958) - which earned him an Oscar nomination - "Some Like It Hot" (1959), "Spartacus" (1960), "Captain Newman, M.D." (1963), and "The Great Race" (1965). By the late 1960s, Curtis was maintaining a busy schedule in European features and on television, playing against type as the title role in "The Boston Strangler" (1968). In later years, he enjoyed a successful second career as an artist, while lending his comments and experience to television shows and documentaries about the Golden Age of Hollywood - particularly when it came to remembering his "Some Like it Hot" co-star, Marilyn Monroe. Having been one-half of one of the most beloved off-screen couplings of the 1950s - the other half being actress Janet Leigh - Curtis enjoyed watching his daughter Jamie Lee Curtis blossom into an actress of great skill herself, proving the apple did not fall from the Curtis/Leigh family tree.
Born Bernard Schwartz in The Bronx, NY on June 3, 1925, Curtis was born to a Hungarian immigrant family and endured a miserable childhood that would affect future relationships with both his wives and his own children. His mother was schizophrenic and frequently beat him and his brothers Julius and Robert (who was later diagnosed with the same disease). Sadly, at the age of eight, Curtis was placed in an orphanage because of his parents' extreme poverty, and later, after his brother Julius was killed in a traffic accident in 1938, Curtis was sent to identify the body. He finally got a whiff of a better life when he landed his first acting role (as a girl) in a neighborhood play about King Arthur's adventures. After serving in the Navy during World War II - where he witnessed the surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay in 1945 - Curtis returned to civilian life and studied acting at New York's Dramatic Workshop, while practicing his craft in the "Borscht Belt" circuit in the Catskills. He was discovered by casting director and talent agent Joyce Selznick (the niece of famed "Gone with the Wind" producer David O. Selznick), and headed for Hollywood in 1948. Billed initially as James Curtis and later as Anthony Curtis, he was signed to a contract with Universal and began appearing in bit and supporting roles in a string of largely forgettable dramas and genre pictures - save for the Western classic "Winchester '73" (1950) - which capitalized on his darkly handsome features.
In 1951, he married Janet Leigh, an attractive starlet on the rise, and their photogenic qualities made them popular news items in the Hollywood gossip magazines. With Leigh, Curtis scored his first success as a leading man in "Houdini" (1953), a fictionalized biopic of the famed magician; he also became a father to two daughters, Kelly Curtis (born 1956) and Jamie Lee Curtis (born 1958), both of whom would go on to enjoy acting careers of their own. Though Curtis and Leigh appeared the idyllic picture of an attractive married couple, the gossip columns frequently whispered about or hinted at the true nature of his sexuality.
Curtis had become exceptionally popular by the mid-1950s - so much so, in fact, that Elvis Presley borrowed his signature ducktail hairstyle from him, but he yearned for more substantial work than lightweight fare and costume dramas like "The Black Shield of Farnsworth" (1954). It was this film which was erroneously credited as the one in which he said, "Yonder lies the castle of my father" in his thick New York accent; Curtis, in fact, never uttered any such line of dialogue. Despite posing shirtless for pin-ups and being regarded by studio suits as their resident dark-haired pretty boy, his determination began to pay off by the late 1950s; first with the circus drama "Trapeze" (1956) and later with "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), an acidic take on the vagaries of show business life which cast Curtis as a desperate and morally questionable press agent. Both pictures starred and were produced by Burt Lancaster, who shared production credit with Curtis on "Sweet Smell." Critics took notice of Curtis' burst of dramatic talent, and began affording him greater respect.
Curtis surpassed these successes with "The Defiant Ones" (1958), a poignant drama about two chain gang escapees (Curtis and Sidney Poitier) who must overcome their own prejudices while evading the law. The film received several Academy Award nominations, including one for Curtis as Best Actor; also receiving nods from the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes. And he scored again a year later in Billy Wilder's sparkling comedy, "Some Like It Hot" (1959), starring opposite Jack Lemmon as Depression-era jazz musicians who masquerade as members of an all-female band (led by Marilyn Monroe) to evade Chicago-land gangsters after they witness the fabled Valentine's Day Massacre. Because of the troubles she stirred up on set - mainly causing delays for seemingly endless takes - Curtis was widely quoted as stating that kissing Monroe was like "kissing Hitler," but refuted the statement in a 2001 interview, possibly realizing it seemed callous in light of what later happened to the troubled star. He was definitely on a roll, and Curtis' string of hits led him to be cast in the small but significant role of Antoninus, slave to Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and eventual soldier under Kirk Douglas' Spartacus in the Stanley Kubrick epic of the same name (1960). A scene in which Crassus attempts to seduce Antoninus was cut from the original release, but restored for its 1991 reissue. Curtis was enlisted to re-record his dialogue - the original track had gone missing - and Anthony Hopkins was tapped to provide a note-perfect imitation of Olivier.
After 1960, Curtis divided his time between dramas and light comic fare, both of which yielded a string of solid hits for the actor. Among his better films during this period were "The Outsider" (1961), about Ira Hayes, the Native American who helped to raise the Iwo Jima flag during World War II; "The Great Imposter" (1961), about the real-life imposter Fred De Mara; the Oscar-nominated "Captain Newman, M.D." (1963), as a streetwise officer who makes life difficult for military doctor Gregory Peck), and Blake Edwards' Oscar-winning slapstick comedy "The Great Race" (1965), which later became a cult hit, thanks to repeated TV airings. There was also the surreal sight of an animated, Stone Age version of Curtis - named, naturally enough, Stony Curtis - in a 1965 episode of "The Flintstones" (ABC, 1960-66). But by the mid-sixties, Curtis' career was beginning to show signs of a slowdown. Now entering his forties, Curtis' matinee idol looks were changing - most notably, his lush head of hair - and he was losing ground as a leading man to younger actors. His personal life was undergoing changes as well; after carrying on an affair with 17-year-old German actress Christina Kauffman, his co-star in the costume drama "Taras Bulba" (1962), he split from Leigh and married Kauffman in 1963. The union produced two daughters, Alexandra (born 1966) and Allegra (born 1968) before they divorced in 1968.
Curtis fell back on his comic chops to essay middle-aged cads and the like in lightweight comedies like "Don't Make Waves" (1967) with Sharon Tate and "Not with My Wife, You Don't" (1966). He also began turning up in European features - mostly forgettable fare like "Monte Carlo or Bust" (1969) - and even on episodic television. Curtis did, however, manage to remind moviegoers of his talent with a chilling performance as real-life killer Albert De Salvo in Richard Fleischer's bleak police procedural "The Boston Stranger" (1968). He was widely praised for his performance as the psychologically damaged De Salvo, and for his efforts, earned a Golden Globe nomination, but the film did not prevent his career from continuing its slow descent from the limelight. In 1968, Curtis married for the third time to Leslie Allen, who later gave him his first sons, Benjamin and Nicholas.
Despite the fact that he no longer commanded box office respect as he once did, Curtis was exceptionally busy in the 1970s, starring in the breezy British adventure drama "The Persuaders!" (ITC, 1971-72), which cast him alongside Roger Moore as two roguish millionaires who enjoyed hijinks and expensive fun across Europe. An American attempt to recreate its charm came with "McCoy" (ABC, 1975-76), with Curtis as a good-natured con man, but the series failed to earn a viewership. Curtis was also fairly active in film during the 1970s, most notably in Elia Kazan's "The Last Tycoon" (1976), an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel about 1930s-era Hollywood, which gave him second billing opposite Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson. But for the most part, Curtis floundered in second-rate productions (or worse) like the ill-advised Mae West comeback vehicle "Sextette" (1978) or the unnecessary "Bad News Bears Go to Japan" (1978). In 1977, Curtis published a novel, Kid Andrew Cody and Julie Sparrow.
Curtis launched the 1980s with an Emmy-nominated turn with a touch of nostalgia, in which he played David O. Selznick, whose niece had discovered him some three decades prior, in "The Scarlett O'Hara War" (1980). He also enjoyed a choice role as Kim Novak's producer husband in a camped-up film adaptation of Agatha Christie's "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), and appeared on stage in a production of Neil Simon's "I Oughta Be in Pictures" that same year. Like many older stars, Curtis remained a regular presence on television as well, most notably in a recurring role as Robert Urich's casino owner boss on "Vega$" (ABC, 1978-1981), and later as real-life mobster Sam Giancana in the Susan Lucci starrer, "Mafia Princess" (1986). But Curtis began to develop interests outside of acting during this decade. After a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic in 1984 for drug and alcohol dependency, he began experimenting with painting, and displayed a particular knack for portraits, including those of his former co-stars, like Marilyn Monroe. Eventually, his artwork began fetching top prices among collectors, and was featured in major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Curtis' personal life remained tumultuous; he divorced Leslie Allen in 1983, and married his fourth wife, Lisa Deutsch, in 1993. The marriage lasted only a year.
Eventually, art replaced movies as Curtis' primary creative outlet, though he remained active in features throughout the 1990s. Few were consequential, and his last projects of any substance came in 1986 as a Joseph McCarthy-esque senator in Nicolas Roeg's experimental comedy-drama "Insignificance," and later in a cameo for the indie-minded romance "Naked in New York" (1993). Otherwise, he could be seen in countless low-budget action and comedy features, as well on television in episodes of "Roseanne" (ABC, 1988-1997) and "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" (ABC, 1993-97). He also dished the dirt about many of his famous co-stars on the tawdry documentary series "Hollywood Babylon" (syndicated, 1992). But Curtis was best utilized as the voice of experience in several quality documentaries about the movie business, including "The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal" (1985), "Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time" (1992), and "The Celluloid Closet" (1995), which explored homosexuality in Hollywood. Curtis was also the subject of television biographies, including a 1999 retrospective on Turner Classic Movies' "Private Screenings" (TCM, 1996- ), and a 2001 episode of "Biography" (A&E, 1987- ), as well as penning an eponymous autobiography (with Barry Paris) in 1993. Curtis' long and storied career received several significant awards during the late 1990s and early 2000s, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and recognition for lifetime achievement from the Empire Awards UK, but Curtis was vocal about his disappointment at never receiving an Oscar for his efforts.
The peace and success afforded to him by his art career and the celebration of his movie work by the international filmmaking community was shattered by the 1994 death of his son Nicholas from a drug overdose. In interviews, Curtis commented that he had suffered terribly after the loss. In 1998, he married his fifth wife, horse trainer Jill Vanderburg, who was some 42 years younger than him. In 2002, Curtis revisited one of his most enduring features in a musical version of "Some Like It Hot" at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA. In the play, he played eccentric millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown's role in the film), who delivers the picture's memorable closing line: "Nobody's perfect." The actor passed away on Sept. 29, 2010 of cardiac arrest.
The Continued Adventures of Reptile Man (And His Faithful Sidekick Tadpole) (1996)
Jack Steele
Roger Moore: A Matter of Class (1995)
The Celluloid Closet (1995)
The Immortals (1995)
Naked in New York (1994)
A Perry Mason Mystery: The Case of the Grimacing Governor (1994)
The Mummy Lives (1994)
Center of the Web (1992)
Christmas In Connecticut (TNT) (1992)
Prime Target (1991)
Marrietta Copella
Thanksgiving Day (1990)
Lobster Man From Mars (1989)
Walter og Carlo i New York (1989)
Tarzan in Manhattan (1989)
Welcome to Germany (1988)
Mr Cornfield
Midnight (1988)
Mafia Princess (1986)
Agatha Christie's Murder In Three Acts (1986)
Charles Cartwright
The Last of Philip Banter (1986)
Charles Foster
The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (1985)
Where Is Parsifal? (1984)
Parsifal Katzanella-Boden
Othello (1982)
Balboa (1982)
Portrait of a Showgirl (1982)
BrainWaves (1982)
The Million Dollar Face (1981)
Chester Masterson
Inmates: A Love Story (1981)
Little Miss Marker (1980)
Blackie Ryan
The Mirror Crack'd (1980)
The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980)
Title Shot (1979)
Frank Renzetti
The Manitou (1978)
Harry Erskine
The Bad News Bears Go To Japan (1978)
The Users (1978)
Vega$ (1978)
Bernie Roth
Sextette (1978)
Casanova & Co. (1977)
Giacomino; Giacomo Casanova
The Last Tycoon (1976)
Lepke (1975)
Louis "Lepke" Buchalter
The Big Ripoff (1975)
The Count of Monte Cristo (1975)
Mondego
The Third Girl From the Left (1973)
Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (1970)
Shannon Gambroni
You Can't Win 'Em All (1970)
Adam Dyer
On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who ... (1969)
Guerrando da Montone
Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969)
Chester Schofield
The Boston Strangler (1968)
Albert DeSalvo
Voice of Donald Baumgart
Don't Make Waves (1967)
Carlo Cofield
Arrivederci, Baby! (1966)
Not With My Wife, You Don't! (1966)
Tom Ferris
Chamber of Horrors (1966)
Mr. Julian
Boeing Boeing (1965)
Bernard Lawrence
The Great Race (1965)
The Great Leslie
Paris When It Sizzles (1964)
Second policeman
Goodbye Charlie (1964)
George Tracy
Wild and Wonderful (1964)
Sex and the Single Girl (1964)
Bob Weston
Captain Newman, M. D. (1963)
Corp. Jackson Laibowitz
Forty Pounds of Trouble (1963)
Steve McCluskey
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
Taras Bulba (1962)
Andrei Bulba
Ira Hamilton Hayes
The Great Impostor (1961)
Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr., and various aliases
Pepe (1961)
The Rat Race (1960)
Pete Hammond, Jr.
Who Was That Lady? (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Antoninus as
The Perfect Furlough (1959)
Corp. Paul Hodges
Operation Petticoat (1959)
Nick Holden
Joe, also known as Josephine and Shell Oil, Junior
The Defiant Ones (1958)
John "Joker" Jackson
Kings Go Forth (1958)
Britt Harris
The Vikings (1958)
The Midnight Story (1957)
Joe Martini
Mister Cory (1957)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Sidney Falco
The Square Jungle (1956)
Eddie Quaid [also known as] Packy Glennon
The Rawhide Years (1956)
Ben [Matthews aka Ben Martin]
Trapeze (1956)
Tino Orsini
The Purple Mask (1955)
[Count] Rene [de Treviere]
So This Is Paris (1955)
Joe Maxwell
Six Bridges to Cross (1955)
Jerry Florea
Beachhead (1954)
Johnny Dark (1954)
Johnny Dark
The Black Shield of Falworth (1954)
All American (1953)
Nick Bonelli
Forbidden (1953)
Eddie [Darrow]
Houdini (1953)
Flesh and Fury (1952)
Paul Callan
Meet Danny Wilson (1952)
Nightclub patron
Son of Ali Baba (1952)
Kashma Baba
No Room for the Groom (1952)
Alvah Morrell
The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951)
Julna [also known as Hussein]
Kansas Raiders (1950)
Kit Dalton
Captain Jones
Winchester '73 (1950)
Doan
Sierra (1950)
Brent Coulter
I Was a Shoplifter (1950)
The Lady Gambles (1949)
Criss Cross (1949)
Dance partner
Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949)
Joey Hyatt
Take One False Step (1949)
Hot rod driver
City Across the River (1949)
Producer (Feature Film)
Music (Feature Film)
Song Performer
Art Director (Feature Film)
Tales from the Crypt (1972)
Thank You All Very Much (1969)
The Tomcat (1968)
The Sorcerers (1967)
Special Thanks (Feature Film)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Cast (Special)
Playboy's 50th Anniversary Special (2003)
Inside the Playboy Mansion (2002)
Tony Curtis: Tony of the Movies (2001)
Ernest Borgnine: Hollywood's Uncommon Character (2000)
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs (2000)
Private Screenings: Tony Curtis (1999)
The Rat Pack (1999)
Burt Lancaster (1997)
The GI Bill: The Law That Changed America (1997)
Sidney Poitier: The Defiant One (1997)
Hugh Hefner: American Playboy (1996)
AFI Salute to Sidney Poitier (1992)
Charlie (1990)
The American Film Institute Salute to Billy Wilder (1986)
Circus of the Stars (1983)
Magic With the Stars (1982)
Playboy's 25th Anniversary Celebration (1979)
Annie and the Hoods (1974)
Super Comedy Bowl 2 (1972)
The Red Skelton Revue (1954)
Cast (Short)
World News - 1954 (1954)
Cast (TV Mini-Series)
Bandit: Beauty And The Bandit (1994)
Made film acting debut in "City Across the River"
First film appearance, had a bit part dancing with Yvonne De Carlo in "Criss Cross"
First major success, playing the title role of "Houdini"; co-starred with then-wife Janet Leigh
Surprised critics with his performance in Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success"; film produced through Curtleigh Productions
Made his TV acting debut in "Cornada," an episode of "General Electric Theater" (CBS)
Co-starred with Sidney Poitier in "The Defiant Ones"; film produced through Curtleigh Productions; earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination
Teamed with Cary Grant in Blake Edwards' "Operation Petticoat"
Most memorable role was in Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot," co-starring Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon
Portrayed chronically flexible Ferdinand Demara in Robert Mulligan's "The Great Imposter"
Starred with Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier in the swashbuckling "Spartacus"; directed by Stanley Kubrick
Met second wife Christine Kaufmann on the set of "Taras Bulba"
Played a neurotic orderly in "Captain Newman, M.D."
Cast as the white-suited daredevil in "The Great Race"
Played title role in "The Boston Strangler"
TV series debut, co-starring with Roger Moore in "The Persuaders" (ABC)
Co-starred with Robert De Niro in "The Last Tycoon"
Published first novel, <i>Kid Andrew Cody & Julie Sparrow</i>
Performed onstage in a production of Neil Simon's "I Ought to Be in Pictures"
Played David O. Selznick in the NBC miniseries, "Moviola"
Appeared in a restored version of Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus" (1960), included additional footage of the notorious bath scene with Laurence Olivier
Hosted the short-lived syndicated series "Hollywood Babylon"
Published <i>Tony Curtis: The Autobiography</i>
Co-starred in the ensemble romantic comedy "Naked in New York"
Appeared as himself in "The Celluloid Closet," a documentary based on Vito Russo's groundbreaking book about Hollywood's portrayal of homosexuality
Played a ballroom dance instructor in an episode of "Roseanne" (ABC)
Had a cameo role in "Play It to the Bone," starring Antonio Banderas and Woody Harrelson
His painting "The Red Table" was on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
Featured with wife in the documentary "The Jill & Tony Curtis Story," about their efforts to rescue horses from slaughterhouses
Here are a few original release American movie posters for Operation Petticoat (1959), starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis.
Here are a few original release American movie posters for Kings Go Forth (1958), starring Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood.
Here are several scene stills from Don't Make Waves (1967), starring Tony Curtis, Sharon Tate, and Claudia Cardinale.
Sex And The Single Girl (1964) -- (Movie Clip) Not Because I'm Attractive Tabloid reporter Bob (Tony Curtis) is posing as his married friend Frank Broderick, trying to entrap newly famous sex therapist Dr. Brown (Natalie Wood) in an affair, in their second official session, in Sex And The Single Girl, 1964.
Great Race, The (1965) -- (Movie Clip) The Great Leslie Opening scenes from director Blake Edwards, establishing his live-action cartoon approach, Tony Curtis introduced as "The Great Leslie," Jack Lemmon as his rival "Professor Fate," Peter Falk his aide Max, in The Great Race, 1965.
Great Race, The (1965) -- (Movie Clip) I Never Mix My Pies Jack Lemmon in two roles, first as Professor Fate impersonating the prince, later as the prince, with the general (George MacReady), Leslie (Tony Curtis), Maggie (Natalie Wood), Max (Peter Falk), Hezekiah (Keenan Wynn) et al, in Blake Edwards' famous pie fight, from The Great Race, 1965.
Who Was That Lady? (1960) -- (Movie Clip) That Was My Wife Director George Sidney shooting on location at Columbia University in Manhattan, where Tony Curtis is a chemistry teacher, caught canoodling by his (real) wife Janet Leigh, co-star Dean Martin backing up with an original tune by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen, opening Who Was That Lady?, 1960.
Who Was That Lady? (1960) -- (Movie Clip) In The Performance Of My Duty Columbia professor David (Tony Curtis), with conspiring TV-writer buddy Mike (Dean Martin), ambushes his wife Ann (Janet Leigh, also Mrs. Curtis), who has caught him cheating, and launches their elaborate lie justifying his infidelity, in director George Sidney's Who Was That Lady?, 1960.
Who Was That Lady? (1960) -- (Movie Clip) You Think The Stork Brings Us? Philandering chemist David (Tony Curtis) at first isn't buying his T-V writer buddy Michael's (Dean Martin) claim that he's an F.B.I. agent in director George Sidney's Who Was That Lady?, 1960.
Don't Make Waves (1967) -- (Movie Clip) California Welcomes You The title song composed to order by Jim McGuinn and Chris Hillman and performed by their band The Byrds (also the flip-side of their single "Have You Seen Her Face"), and director Alexander Mackendrick's introduction of leads Tony Curtis and, at a distance, Claudia Cardinale, from Don't Make Waves, 1967.
Don't Make Waves (1967) -- (Movie Clip) Smell The Picture? Evening at the Malibu home of flighty Italian painter Laura (Claudia Cardinale), who earlier in the day destroyed the car (and pants) owned by baffled tourist Carlo (Tony Curtis), she's supposed to be finding her insurance documents, in the MGM beach farce Don't Make Waves, 1967.
Paris When it Sizzles (1963) -- (Movie Clip) Rather Like Tony Curtis Screenwriter William Holden and secretary Audrey Hepburn are writing and narrating a screenplay which features a girl who looks like Audrey and an actor who looks like (and is) Tony Curtis, in Paris When it Sizzles, 1963.
Defiant Ones, The (1958) -- (Movie Clip) Open, Long Gone Producer-director Stanley Kramer begins what is perhaps his first altogether topical social-issue film with Sidney Poitier singing a W.C. Handy song, handcuffed to Tony Curtis, events leading to Sheriff Muller (Theodore Bikel) on the radio, in The Defiant Ones, 1958.
Some Like It Hot (1959) -- (Movie Clip) Like Jello On Springs Fleeing the gangland massacre, musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) make the big change and meet Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) on the train platform, in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, 1959.
Some Like It Hot (1959) -- (Movie Clip) The Whole Town's Under Water The introduction of musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) in a Chicago speakeasy, where cop Mulligan (Pat O'Brien) faces down proprietor Spats (George Raft) in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, 1959.
Winchester '73 - (Re-issue Trailer) A man (James Stewart) combs the West in search of his stolen rifle. Co-starring Shelley Winters. Directed by Anthony Mann.
Great Race, The - (Original Trailer) A bumbling villain (Jack Lemmon) plots to win an early 20th-century auto race in Blake Edwards' The Great Race (1965).
Boeing Boeing - (Original Trailer) A playboy (Tony Curtis) uses airline schedules to maintain "exclusive" relationships with three flight attendants at the same time in Boeing Boeing (1965) co-starring Jerry Lewis.
Beachhead - (Original Trailer) Tony Curtis and a group of Marines must find a plantation owner and his daughter on an enemy-held island in Beachhead (1954).
Rosemary's Baby - (Original Trailer) A young woman (Mia Farrow) fears the baby she's carrying is the son of Satan in Rosemary's Baby (1968), directed by Roman Polanski and based on the bestseller by Ira Levin.
Rat Race, The - (Original Trailer) A musician (Tony Curtis) newly arrived in New York takes in a taxi dancer (Debbie Reynolds) in the drama The Rat Race (1960).
Vikings, The - (Original Trailer) Two Vikings (Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis) fight over a throne and a beautiful captive (Janet Leigh) in the epic adventure The Viking (1958).
Criss Cross - (Re-issue Trailer) Burt Lancaster is an armored-car driver pulled into a bank heist in the film noir classic Criss Cross (1949).
Trapeze - (Original Trailer) A trapeze star (Burt Lancaster) loses his grip when he and his partner (Tony Curtis) fall for the same woman (Gina Lollobrigida) in Trapeze, 1956, directed by Carol Reed.
Boston Strangler, The - (Original Trailer) Federal and local law officers try to catch a deadly serial killer (Tony Curtis) in The Boston Strangler (1968).
Kings Go Forth - (Original Trailer) Original Trailer for Kings Go Forth, 1958 in which soldiers Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis fall in love with the same French girl (Natalie Wood) then discover a family secret.
Sweet Smell Of Success - (Original Trailer) Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis in their best roles as a power-mad newspaper columnist and the press agent who supplies him with dirt in Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
Manitou, The (1978) -- (Movie Clip) Guard Well The Pips! After the opening medical scene about a freaky growth on Susan Strasberg's back, the apparently un-related first scene for Tony Curtis as psychic for-hire Harry, Jeanette Nolan his customer of the moment, from The Manitou, 1978.
Emmanuel Schwartz
Tailor. Hungarian immigrant; came to USA in 1921; amateur actor; died at age 58; married Curtis' mother on May 22, 1924.
Helen Schwartz
Hungarian immigrant; married Curtis' father on May 22, 1924; diagnosed as schizophrenic; died on March 19, 1974 at age 71.
Born in July 1929; died c. 1938 from injuries sustatined when he was hit by a truck.
Born in 1940; died on August 22, 1992; diagnosed as schizophrenic.
Kelley Lee Curtis
Actor. Born c. 1956; mother, Janet Leigh.
Actor, author. Born on November 22, 1958; mother, Janet Leigh; married to Christopher Guest.
Alexandra Curtis
Mother, Christine Kaufman.
Allegra Curtis
Nicholas Curtis
Musician. Mother, Leslie Allen; born c. 1971; died on July 2, 1994 at age 23 after suffering a seizure related to heroin use.
Benjamin Curtis
Mother, Leslie Allen.
Jill Vanden Berg
Horse trainer. Born in 1970; announced engagement in summer 1998; married on November 6, 1998 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
On his relationships with his children, Tony Curtis told London's The Daily Telegraph (March 20, 2001): "I did the best job I could; I had to work just to give the money so they could go to fancy schools, but their mothers hated me and that hate permeated through them. When they came for weekends, I could feel their animosity. ... every one of them is realising I did the best I could do when I did it. All I could give them was affection. I never slapped them. I was always on best behavior."


text:
Home business Google Finalizes Acquisition of Fitbit
Google Finalizes Acquisition of Fitbit
Daniel Bouch
Google announced that it has completed acquisition the popular wearable maker, Fitbit. Google's official says that the focus of acquisition is on the devices, instead of data. The search engine giants promised that users' health and fitness data won't be harvested for targeted ads. Smartwatches themselves are not an ideal hardware platform for delivering marketing messages. However, acquired fitness and health data could be used to make ads on smartphone and desktop more relevant. Fitbit users can choose whether they will continue storing fitness data on their account. Even so, investigation by the Antitrust Division remains ongoing and it hasn't made a final decision. There's concern that tech giants are becoming more dominant and this could harm consumers and market competition. Consumer trust is essential in the tech sector. Strong security and privacy will need to remain in place since day one of the acquisition. We would see whether Google could remain transparent about collected data. The company has its own online advertising program and it's not ethical to subject Fitbit users to unwanted Google ads.
Despite Google's promise, Fitbit feels like another piece of the puzzle. Google has access to granular and massive information about its users through Chrome, Drive, Calendar, Gmail, Maps, YouTube and other services. With Fitbit, the company finally has a way to monitor lifestyle and daily activities of its users. This is a great opportunity to fill the data gap. Fitbit boasts unparalleled user dataset, because smartwatches are worn and they continue to collect metrics using various sensors. Google may refrain using current existing Fitbit user data. However, as future Fitbit-branded products become more integrated into Google's ecosystem, users may consciously decide to integrate Fitbit smartwatches with other Google's services. This allows Google to start accumulating user data.
At the end of the day, tech sector is about acquiring, analysing and using data. Google may eventually get a new unobstructed way to collect data, once users give their consent. The company will know about the current health and fitness status of users, whether they have hypertension, common cold or sedentary lifestyle. However, Fitbit has been focusing itself more on fitness implementations. This is indicated by the Fitbit Premium service that provides fitness coaching for users. Fitbit devices are popular, because they offer longer battery life and lower pricing. This is achieved through underpowered processed and stripped-down operating system. That being said, Google can still gain benefit by capturing a share in the low-end market segment. Alphabet has subsidiaries in healthcare sector, such as Verily, that applies data in healthcare solutions. Calico focuses on the longevity and anti-aging research. As a huge tech conglomerate, Alphabet also has an ambition in healthcare with hundreds of patents related to life science. It also collaborates in pharmaceutical companies. As an example, Sanofi, the French pharma company uses Google's cloud data solutions and machine learning capabilities
Looking at the big picture, the acquisition of Fitbit opens new opportunities for Google, despite the commitment not utilize data of Fitbit users. With the increasingly deteriorating public sentiment towards major tech companies, Google may face regulatory penalties and bad publication if it uses data inappropriately.
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How about a hello pancake?
They may not taste great, but the pancakes that Olin College of Engineering students have cooked up might be the best-looking out there.
For their final project in their Principles of Engineering class last semester, Trent Dye and three classmates created the "Pancake CNC Machine," a device that automatically "prints" pancakes onto a griddle based on images designed on a computer screen.
"You can make anything: cartoon characters, geometric shapes, a yin yang symbol," said Dye.
The entire process, from start to finish, took the four Olin students nine weeks, three iterations of the original design, and several homemade pancake batter recipes to complete. Dye and his classmates also had to produce the contraption on a shoestring budget of $250.
The course was an introduction to getting students to integrate their mechanical, electrical, and programming skills.
"We thought, 'Hey, a pancake printer has a nice intersection'" of all those elements, said Kevin Crispie, another co-inventor.
Dye came up with the idea for the Pancake CNC Machine during a brainstorming session with his three teammates. Then, by leveraging each person's expertise, they were able to build out the concept and create a working prototype in time for a demo day at Olin College, where students from the class showed off their inventions.
"We made a big pancake in the shape of a rocket," at the event, said Dye.
The device operates by shifting a condiment bottle filled with batter back and forth over a griddle using a drivetrain on a gantry structure.
The team then created a computer program that can be used to design patterns to be drawn on the griddle, which was temperature-controlled.
After consulting research about pancake art, the team conjoined two bottles to get the perfect flow of batter. The flow was regulated by an electronically-controlled valve. The result was "clean lines of batter," the team said.
The project was messy at times, Dye said.
They relied on a pump typically used in aquarium tanks to pressurize the bottle. Too much pressure caused too much batter to come out at once, while too little resulted in a "thin, wimpy stream," Dye said.
All they had to do from there was flip the pancake by hand with a spatula — and add the butter and syrup.
The entire process was documented in a video posted to the students' website about the project. A second video, posted on Jan. 16, shows the students building the machine.
Aaron Hoover, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Needham-based school, said Dye and his team produced a "fantastic" device that was delivered right on deadline.
"They did a really great job on the execution, and they took it to a level of finish that is fairly uncommon. And that's what makes the difference," Hoover said.
The project required a lot of attention to technical details and repeated testing. It also required a lot of eating.