Some favourite films, in no order of preference . . .
American Graffiti
An Affair to Remember (and its grandchild, Sleepless in Seattle)
Apollo 13
Bang the Drum Slowly
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Broadcast of 1938
The Caine Mutiny
Cars
Casablanca
City Lights
The Cocoanuts
A Day at the Races
Duck Soup
Eight Days a Week
The Enchanted Cottage
Fantasia
Field of Dreams
From Here to Eternity
From the Terrace
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
The Great Dictator
A Hard Day's Night
Heavenly Days
Hidden Figures
I'll Be Seeing You (Ginger Rogers strictly acting, and very well)
Keeping the Faith
The Kid
Last Train from Gun Hill (Anthony Quinn and Kirk Douglas in that rarity---a Western with brains)
Lost in Yonkers
Monsieur Verdoux
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
National Lampoon's Animal House
The Natural
A Night at the Opera
The Odd Couple
The Pink Panther
Ray
The Right Stuff
Schindler's List
Sorry, Wrong Number
That Thing You Do
The Truman Show
Twelve O'Clock High
2001: A Space Odyssey
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out
Woodstock
. . . among others.
Some favourite television series, in no order of preference . . .
The Addams Family (Yes, it was and is funnier than The Munsters. And every damn Addams
Family film made decades later.)
All in the Family
The Bob Newhart Show
The Burns & Allen Show
The Danny Thomas Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Ed Sullivan Show (name one other variety series on which a classical music performance involving piano trios was
liable to be followed by a dog act and brought the Beatles live to the U.S. for the first time)
Frasier (the first spin-off in television history that was better than the show that birthed it)
The GE College Bowl (this quiz was required viewing at dinnertime in my house on Sunday nights, even if its
original host could be described occasionally as Allen Leaden . . .)
Hill Street Blues
The Honeymooners
House
The Jack Benny Program
The Jackie Gleason Show (the full variety hour was just as good, especially before it was turned into
an hour's worth of remaking The Honeymooners as lame mini-musicals; long live Reginald Van
Gleason III, the Poor Soul, Rudy the Repairman, and Joe the Bartender)
Jeopardy! (the original, hosted by Art Fleming, and the only quiz show my paternal grandfather swore by)
Love, American Style
Life with Elizabeth (Betty White's first series, making her a kind of pioneer since she was the first woman to create
and oversee a series with this charming half-hour of ten-minute comic vignettes hooked)
The Lucy Show (Yes, it's funnier than I Love Lucy. Wanna fight?)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
M*A*S*H
Moonlighting
NBC Saturday Night (the first season, before Chevy Chase's ego caused him to leave after that first season,
and when the show really was funny)
Newhart
Northern Exposure
Our Miss Brooks
Peyton Place (should be given a lifetime achievement award for doing what some think could never be done---
being a soap opera with brains)
The Phil Silvers Show (a.k.a. Sgt. Bilko, and I still think Steve Martin and company should be prosecuted for
assault with a dead weapon for what they did to it in that God-awful film)
Private Practice (the second spin-off in television history that was better than the show that birthed it!)
Route 66
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (which deserves to be restored in full and made available complete on DVD)
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
Taxi
Topper
The Twilight Zone
You Bet Your Life (Or, I Went to a Groucho Marx Concert and a Quiz Show Broke Out)
. . . among others . . .
And, since I'm an old-time radio nut, some of my favourite old-time radio series, in no order of preference . . .
Amos 'n' Andy (the original 1928-32 serial comedy; the later sitcom version would have made a dog's
breakfast)
Academy Award Theater
AFRS Mail Call
The Big Show (radio's last-gasp big variety show, hosted by Tallulah Bankhead and with Fred Allen as her most
frequent guest---excellent comedy, excellent music, excellent acting skits, and lived up to the wisecrack of New
York Times critic Jack Gould being "enough to make you wish you could have seen it")
Bob & Ray Present the CBS Radio Network (Which often included their classic old-time radio soap parody, One
Fella's Family)
Broadway is My Beat (the best crime drama of all time, radio or television)
The Burns & Allen Show
Cathy & Elliott Lewis On Stage
The CBS Radio Workshop
CBS World News Today (more of it survived than you think, and it was and remains excellent World War II
spot reporting)
Dragnet (the second-best radio crime drama of them all and still beats the TV version hollow)
Duffy's Tavern
Easy Aces
Escape
Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel (but---except for one surviving full episode---you have to buy the book
Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel: The Marx Brothers' Lost Radio Show, a collection of the show's
scripts, to get the idea)
Fibber McGee & Molly
The Fred Allen Show (in all its iterations from The Linit Bath Revue and Town Hall Tonight to
Hour of Smiles and Texaco Star Theater before reverting to The Fred Allen Show in 1945)
The Goldbergs
Gunsmoke (the radio original makes the TV version look like Gravy Train)
The Halls of Ivy
The Henry Morgan Show (this was edgy stuff even for the 1940s)
Information, Please
The Jack Benny Program
The Les Paul Show
Lights Out
Lum & Abner (like Amos 'n' Andy, the original serial comedy was tons better than its eventual sitcom
conversion)
Lux Radio Theater
The March of Time
Our Miss Brooks
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show
Quiet, Please (if The Twilight Zone could be thought to have a grandfather this short-lived but effective
psychological fantasy was it)
Richard Diamond, Private Detective (not even half as stiff---and way funnier in the bargain---than the eventual
TV version remembered best for introducing the world to Mary Tyler Moore's legs)
The Six Shooter (Lasted one season but it was the most wry Western on radio---and with James Stewart in the lead role)
Stoopnagle & Budd (only three have survived, but they were the antecedent to Bob & Ray)
Suspense
Vic & Sade (arguably the best purely conversational comedy of them all, in which you could know intimately enough
dozens of other local characters strictly through the talk of the two protagonists and their teenage son---who was
played by Bill Idelson, eventually Sally Rogers's mama's-boy boyfriend Herman Glimscher on The Dick Van Dyke
Show before becoming a respected television director and writer)
The Whistler (pioneered the idea of telling the crime at the beginning and keeping you listening by taking you
through the mind and thoughts of the alleged suspect---who didn't always turn out to be the actual criminal . . . the best
parody of the show had to have been Jack Benny's sketch, "The Fiddler")
Words at War (a terrific NBC dramatic anthology which made radio shows out of assorted books published during
World War II)
You Are There
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (the 1955-56 five-part-a-week version with Bob Bailey in the title role, turning the show
from stupid to smart almost overnight and for too short a period of time)
That movie you listed
@EasyAce called "Last Train from Gun Hill" is on Roku free this month on Pluto channel.... sweet... watching it now... so far so good... Thanks
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My new list of movies... in no order....
1. Shane 1953 (Western)
2. A Hidden Life 2019
3. The Emperor of Paris w Sub 2018
4. Falling Down
5. The King 2019
6. Drishyam India Film 2015
7. The Blind Side (Football) 2009
8. Roza 2011 Great Anti Communist
9. The Last of Mrs Cheyney (1937) William Powell
10. The Treasure of Lost Canyon (1952) William Powell
11. Goodbye Mr Chips 1939
12. Dunkirk 1958
13. To Hell and Back 1955
14. Oscar 1991
15. The Searchers (1956 John Wayne)
16. Pygmalion (1938) (Early My Fair Lady w/o musical songs)
17. Dark Passage 1947
18. Ashes in the Snow 2018 (Anti Communist)
19. The Pianist
20. Dickenasian (Series)
21. China Cry (Christian Anti Communist)
22. The Shop Around the Corner (Jimmy Stewart 1940)
23. Seven Days in Utopia (Golf Christian Movie 2011)
24. I See You/Kita Kita (Philippines love story 2017)
25. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
26. Wind River
27. Time Changers (Christian 2002)
28. Tora Tora Tora (Good Pearl Harbor movie)
29. Paul Apostle of Christ 2018
30. Night Crossing (Disney 1982)
31. North by Northwest (1959)
32. Land of Mine (Denmark after WW2 Mine cleanup)
33. Katyn (anti-communist)
34. The Railway Children (1970 Family)
35. The Cuckoo (Kukushka)
36. The Odessa File
37. Riphagen
38. The Day of the Jackal
39. Naked Among the Wolves
40. The Yearling
41. All Mine to Give (1957)
42. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
43. Au Revoir les Enfants
44. Battle Royale
45. Coup de Torchon
46. Zelary
47. An American Romance
48. Father is a Bachelor
49. David Copperfield
50. The Bothersome Man
51. L.A. Story
52. One Way Passage
53. Dead Silence
54. The Battle of Britain 1969
55. Cherish
56. The Ex-Mrs Bradford
57. Crocodile Dundee
58. 12th Man
59. One Foot in Heaven
60. Maverick
61. Highlander
62. Places in the Heart
63. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
64. Laddie
65. School for Scoundrels
66. Lone Star
67. A Return to Grace: Luther’s Life and Legacy
68. Twelfth Night
69. Captains Courageous
70. Memories of Murder
71. Nullification: The Rightful Remedy
72. The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
73. Summer Magic (Disney)
74. Whisky Galore!
75. PCU
76. The Lost City
77. Under Jakob’s Ladder
78. Waterfront
79. Sullivan’s Travels
80. Alone Yet Not Alone
81. Vir Altyd
82. The Replacement Gods (documentary)
83. Tap Roots
84. The Last Days of Disco
85. The Measure of a Man
86. I Remember Mama
87. Changeling
88. Sicario
89. Uncle Buck
90. Up for Love
91. The Book of Henry
92. I am David
93. Roy Roy: The Highland Rogue
94. Vor
95. The Teacher (Uciselha) Anti-Communist
96. Double Indemnity
97. Instalater
98The Duellist (1977 French version, 2016 Russian one is not good)
99. Ride the Pink Horse
100. An American Story
101. America Anarchist
102. Doctor Thorne
103. A Time Out of War
104. Three O’Clock High
105. The Last Remake of Beau Geste
106. The Conversation
107. The Lives of Others (Good Anti-Communist)
108. Dune
109. Doctor Zhivago
110. Red Dog
111. Explorers
112. Last Man Standing (series)
113. Burn Notice (series)
114. Cheaper by the Dozen (older version)
115. The Women
116. Doctor at Large
117. Only the Lonely
118. Planes, Trains & Automobiles
119. Without a Clue
120. Genesis
121. My Man Godfrey
122. This Beautiful Fantistic
123. The Bride Came C.O.D.
124. Key Largo
125. Twin Town
126. It Runs in the Family (My Summer Story) 1994
127. The Taming of the Shrew
128. The Quiet Man
129. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
130. The Crimson Rivers
131. Becket
132. Northanger Abby
133. Lorna Doone
134. Ivanhoe
135. Life with Father
136. Cyrano de Bergerac 1950
137. Rag Nymph
138. Meet Me in St. Louis
139. The Mayor of Casterbridge
140. Firelight
141. Nicholas Nickleby
142. Whisky Galore!
143. The Red Violin 1998
144. The Visual Bible (series)
145. Rob Roy
146. Quigley Down Under
147. My Life in Ruins
148. The Claim
149. Broken Trail
150. The Legend of 1900
151. McLintock
152. Swiss Family Robinson
153. Where the Red Fern Grows
154. Fright Night
155. The African Queen
156. Young Frankenstein
157. The Killing Fields
158. Downfall
159. George of the Jungle
160. Babe
161. Amelie
162. A Man for All Season
163. Bicycle Thieves
164. A Private Function
165. Safe Haven
166. Thieves Highway
167. Little Dorrit
168. Extremely Loud and Incredible Close
169. God’s Not Dead
170. Moonrise Kingdom
171. On Guard (Le Bostu)
172. Groundhog Day
173. The Gods Must Be Crazy (I and II)
174. Gone with the Wind
175. Pride and Prejudice
176. The Civil War
177. Cranford (series)
178The Good Earth
179. Roxanne
180. Risen
181. Les Miserables
182. Kingsman: The Secret Service
183. Kings Row
184. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
185. Shooter
186. About Time
187. The Lord of the Rings (all three)
188. Poldark (series early, got PC after while)
189. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
190. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
191. Breaking Away
192. The Thin Man (movie series)
193. The Incredibles
194. Life is Beautiful
195. It’s a Wonderful Life
196. Jesse Stone: Stone Cold
197. Big Fish
198. Starbuck
199. The Good the Bad and the Ugly
200. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
201. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
202. Bleak House
203. Restless Natives
204. Woodlawn
205. Harvey
206. Woman in Gold
207. Into the White
208. The Magic of Ordinary Days
209. The Counterfeiters
210. A Bag of Marbles
211. The Last Train to Auschwitz
212. Son of Saul (little strange)
213. Suskind (can be found on YouTube without subtitles)
214. Bitter Harvest (anti-Communist)
215. Max Manus: Man of War
216. The Way Back
217. The Book Theif
218. The Eagle has Landed
219. Wartime in Winter
220. Eye of the Needle
221. Anthropoid
222. Leap Year
223. UnPlanned 2019
224. The Good Earth (classic gold)
225. The African Queen
226. Five Graves To Cairo 1943 (War good dialog)
227. Gallipoli 1981 (Mel Gibson War Movie)
228. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 2011 Rated R