‘MODERN WARFARE 3′ MAKES $775 MILLION IN 5 DAYS, BLOWS AWAY ALL RECORDS

Is this why Hollywood makes movies that recreate the experience of what it’s like to watch someone else play a video game?

DEMI MOORE TURNS TO MADONNA FOR DIVORCE ADVICE

The photo will make you wince. This one’s worse. Someone needs to turn to Kentucky Fried Chicken first.

He’s not worth it, Demi. Damn.

And turning to Madonna for advice about divorce is like turning to Obama for advice about creating jobs.

NETFLIX SELLS $400 MILLION IN STOCK TO RAISE CASH

This is to acquire the rights to more streaming content. As a Streaming only customer, that sure sounds good to me.

How about some “Wild Wild West.”

Oh wait, I just bought the whole series at Amazon for $35. I win.

‘EW’ MORON ASKS IF GEORGE CLOONEY IS THE NEW PAUL NEWMAN

Wait,  I thought Clooney was The New Cary Grant.

The bubble too many of these people live in is oh-so very real. Paul Newman was ALL movie star. And to become a movie star THE PEOPLE have to love you, not just the bubble-boyed entertainment media. Since 2000, Clooney has not carried a single movie to $100M without the help of Brad Pitt and Julie Roberts.

And most of his films flop.

And they blow.

And now a little context…

By the time Paul Newman was the same age Clooney is now, he was already well on his way to becoming a legend and had starred in: “The Long Hot Summer, ” “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” “Exodus,” “The Hustler,” “Sweet Bird of Youth,” “Hud,” “Harper,” “COOL HAND FREAKIN’ LUKE,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and “The Sting.”

How about a little respect for The Mighty.

Idiots.

Little hard to pin my feelings about this on Clooney’s politics when you consider Newman was a proud liberal his entire life.

STEPHEN KING NOMINATED FOR BAD SEX AWARDS

Just passing this link along. Haven’t read it. There might be photos.

ETHAN HAWKE PLANNING ANOTHER ‘BEFORE SUNRISE’ SEQUEL WITH JULIE DELPY AND RICHARD LINKLATER

I could never get into either of these. Many people I respect love both, but for whatever reason I never saw the appeal. When I need a dose of bittersweet, unrequited love this and this fit the bill just fine.

—–

—–

LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Zombieland (2009): Wasn’t a fan of this the first time I saw it. For some reason, the sequence everyone raved about, THE CAMEO, completely threw the movie for me. It was so hyped but also so gimmicky and self-referential that it brought the roof down on what had been a pretty entertaining ride.

Watching it again, though, helped. I knew what to expect and THE CAMEO part is actually pretty short. What I especially appreciated was that Woody Harrelson’s wild-eyed country boy character ends up being the hero and the one who teaches the pasty little metrosexual a thing or two about how you gotta “nut up.”  

—–

—–

SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINK-TACULAR

RANKED: DAVID CRONENBERG FILMS FROM WORST TO BEST

MARTIN SCORSESE TO DIRECT NORWEGIAN CRIME THRILLER ‘THE SNOWMAN’, BASED ON THE NOVEL BY JO NESBO

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA SAYS HE SHOULD HAVE STOPPED AT ONE ‘GODFATHER’

BACHARACH LOOKS BACK—AND FORWARD TO A MUSICAL

TEASER FOR GAME OF THRONES SEASON 2

FROM THE SET OF ‘SKYFALL’

HBO AND BBC DEVELOPING MINISERIES ADAPTATION OF HILARY MANTEL’S NOVEL WOLF HALL

DETAILS ON NEW ‘BOURNE’ FILM

DWAYNE JOHNSON TO STAR IN ‘MONSTER HUNTER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE,’ BASED ON THE COMIC BOOK MINISERIES

TOP 10 SCREEN COMPUTER GEEKS

JACK ELINSON, VETERAN TV COMEDY WRITER, DIES AT 89

SYFY DEVELOPING PARANORMAL PROCEDURAL SPOOF TO BE PRODUCED BY JACK BLACK

DIABLO CODY TALKS ABOUT THE EVIL DEAD REMAKE AND HER ADAPTATION OF SWEET VALLEY HIGH

PARKS AND RECREATION STAR NICK OFFERMAN: “OUR COUNTRY HAS BECOME SO EMASCULATED.”

GREAT IDEA! WHY WE NEED A TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES FOR TELEVISION

A RARE SITCOM VISIT FROM BILL MURRAY

5 ;CAPTAIN PLANET; EPISODES THAT WENT HORRIBLY WRONG

5 OF NATALIE WOOD’S MOST MEMORABLE ROLES

6 FAMOUS MOVIE LOCATIONS MAKING CAMEOS IN OTHER MOVIES

CAN COMEDIES WITH LONG-TERM ARCS SURVIVE ON NETWORK TV?

THE RETURN OF THE TV WESTERN

—–

—–

CLASSIC PICK FOR WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22

TCM:

2:00 PM EST: Tarzan, The Ape Man (1932) — A British lord raised by apes kidnaps a beautiful noblewoman exploring Africa with her father. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke Cast:  Johnny Weissmuller, Neil Hamilton, C. Aubrey Smith. BW-100 mins, TV-G, CC.

My all-time favorite film franchise.

--Please send tips/suggestions/requests/complaints to jnolte@breitbart.com

And now a look back at a time when Hollywood fought for America and liberty, not against it. There are notable exceptions today, but sadly the word “exception” does apply.

—–

Much more below the fold…

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

Lee Marvin was wounded in Saipan.

Charles Bronson was a tailgunner.

Julie Child was a spy.

Charles Durning was a U.S. Army Ranger at Normandy

One-eyed peter Falk memorized the eye chart so he could become a Marine.

Carroll O’Connor was in the Merchant Marines.

Jack Palance was in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Walter Matthau, Robert Stack, Rock Hudson, Jeff Chandler, David Niven, Steve McQueen, Tyrone Power, George Kennedy, Rod Serling, Eddie Albert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., William Holden, Paul Newman, Ernest Borgnine, Brian Keith, and so many more…

Gone with the Wind (1939), Star Wars (1977), The Sound of Music (1965), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Ten Commandments (1956), Titanic (1997), Jaws (1975), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Exorcist (1973), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1939), 101 Dalmatians (1961), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Ben-Hur (1959), Avatar (2009), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Sting (1973), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Jurassic Park (1993), The Graduate (1967), Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999), Fantasia (1941), The Godfather (1972), Forrest Gump (1994), Mary Poppins (1964), The Lion King (1994)

If you said they all made scads of money, bravo — they are the top twenty-five domestic box-office champions of all time (adjusted for inflation, of course).

But consider another similarity: surprisingly few of them relied on established A-list movie stars — the most famous, the highest paid — for their moneymaking prospects. Gone with the Wind had Gable, yes. The Sting had Newman and Redford. The Godfather, Brando.

As for most of the rest, they either featured no A-listers at all, or used them before they became bonafide movie stars. In fact, many of those pictures can take credit for sending now-famous actors into the celestial Hollywood firmament in the first place. Gone with the Wind made Vivian Leigh known to the world. The Ten Commandments did it for Charlton Heston. The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman. The Godfather, Al Pacino. Star Wars, Harrison Ford. Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews.

Meanwhile, I note that Will Smith, the current top A-lister, is nowhere to be found on this rarefied roll call. Nor is Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Jim Carrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Roberts, or many others whose compensation has, at various times, made gasp-worthy headlines. Of the modern crop of top-salaried men, only Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, and wee Leonardo DiCaprio are up there, and only for movies where it can be argued that genuinely astonishing special effects and epic spectacle, brought to life by proven audience-pleasing directors, served as the real stars.

(It’s telling that four of those behind-the-scenes men — Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron, and Walt Disney — are responsible for over half of the list all by themselves.)

Is this being too dismissive of the contributions of highly-paid thespians to a movie’s bottom line? I don’t think so. Do you honestly think that Jurassic Park suffered at the box office because Harrison Ford turned it down and was replaced by Sam Neill? Or let’s go straight to the very heights of heresy: if you took Gable’s indelible, iconic performance out of Gone with the Wind, or Brando’s out of The Godfather, and replaced them with other well-regarded actors, would the movies still have made that Top 25 list? If the presence of these vaunted personalities is so magical in and of itself, how does one explain all the flops starring these very same actors?

There are other considerations that trump the movie-star effect in terms of improved profits. Consider that eight of the top twenty-five films were rated G, and eleven PG (four others had a PG-13 rating, and a paltry two were rated R). It’s clear common sense: make a movie suitable for the whole family, and you’ve just doubled or tripled your ticket tally, not to mention all the extra popcorn, soda, and candy getting sluiced through the digestive tracts of America’s moppets in direct violation of nanny-state health doctrine. That’s not to say that there’s no place for R-movies, just that a film’s potential for profit should always remain a healthy multiple of its budget.

Given all this, it’s high time that the stumpy tail of A-list Hollywood stops wagging the studio dog. Ten or twenty million guaranteed, up-front dollars to an actor for any movie (much less an R-rated one) is fiscal insanity. It’s the quality and appeal of the movie as a whole that counts. Once one comes to grips with this, paying a huge salary to a well-known celebrity begins to seem like a far poorer use of a studio’s money than spending the same amount of dough on better special effects, larger advertising buys, a great script, and/or a quality crew of cinematographers, editors, sound designers, and musicians.

Patrick Goldstein, who gets a lot of criticism round these parts, wrote an excellent article last year about the trend towards reduced star salaries. Music to my ears. Movie stars will always be with us, and at their best they add a great deal to a film’s artistry. But perhaps they will once again assume their proper economic place in the hierarchy of moviemaking (less money, less creative control), allowing Hollywood’s much maligned product to get better as a result.

CBS won’t comment, but the NY Times reports that on Tuesday night’s episode of the ”The Good Wife” the story revolved around an artist killed by a bomb after he drew a cartoon featuring Muhammad. It looks as though the episode used a number of camera dodges to ensure no one got a good clean look at Islam’s founder:

In a plot line on Tuesday’s episode of “The Good Wife,” the show’s law firm deals with a suit brought by the widow of a newspaper editor who was killed by a bomb after he published an editorial cartoon showing the Prophet Muhammad being searched by airport security officers. In scenes like the one above, the editorial cartoon is depicted only in small portions, obscured by shadows or pieces of paper, and never revealed in its entirety.

If you combine this with Comedy Central’s over-the-top censoring of a recent “South Park” episode, we’re really only left with two explanations, right? Either Hollywood’s had a massive change of heart and has suddenly decided to treat religion with respect or they’re terrified of becoming the next Theo Van Gogh.

Right?

We should all be rippling with anticipation over how one or both of these moral revelations will alter upcoming Tinseltown product. If The Former Religious Bigots Known As Hollywood have finally come around and changed their ways when it comes to insulting people of faith — just for starters, who will the new bad guys be on all four of those “Law & Order” series? Who will be the new whipping boys in the independent film world? 

Just think of how this new era of religious tolerance will change everything; how it will force arty-types to address certain issues with a little – oh, I don’t know — creativity?  The result: Better product for us, more money for Hollywood. A win-win.

All together now: Kumba-freakin’-ya.

From Tuesday’s episode of ‘The Good Wife.’

On the other hand, if what this means is that Hollywood’s finally figured out that racist, sexist, homophobic Islamic extremists are the enemy, this is also a win-win.

Naturally, we can’t expect too much from The Cowards Who Make The Movies. They’re not going to take the enemy on. After all, this isn’t your grandfather’s Hollywood where men like Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable went to war while the rest of the industry rallied ’round protecting liberty. Hell, this isn’t even your father’s Hollywood where men like Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra and Charlton Heston risked their careers and faced threats of violence marching for Civil Rights before marching for Civil Rights became très chic. 

But maybe now that this current generation has figured out these fanatics do need to be defeated, our creative-types will stop losing hundreds of millions of dollars on embarrassingly bad movies churned out in the hopes of undermining America’s drive to bring about that defeat.

Or not.

Forgive my fit of optimism. It’s just too depressing to think that after all this we’ll still have to deal with a Vichy Hollywood’s hoary old anti-Christian prejudices.

Side Note: Has anyone seen the “Good Wife” episode mentioned above? If so, please don’t tell me the story ends with one of those “twists” where the real bomber is revealed to be some uber-patriotic, right-wing, Christian out to frame innocent terrorists through the act of becoming what he hates. 

And if that was the case… lemme guess: he wore a lapel flag?

My book Hollywood on the Potomac, chronicles many historic moments when Hollywood took a stand on the biggest political issues of the day — from World War 2 to Iraq, International Relief to Civil Rights.  In 1963, it was stars such as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Harry Belafonte at the Lincoln Memorial with Dr. King.

Actor Marlon Brando at the Civil Rights ‘March on Washington’ (to his right are playwright James Baldwin and actor Charlton Heston).  Brando also participated in the ‘freedom rides,’ protests that publicly tested segregation court decisions in the South.  After the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Brando scrapped his upcoming movie telling The Joey Bishop Show, ”I felt I’d better go find out… what it is to be black in this country; what this rage is all about.”

Dr. King’s historic march made an impact on folk singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan who were there.   Dylan was inspired to write “The Times They Are a Changin’” featuring a direct appeal to Washington: “Come senators, congressmen / Please heed the call / Don’t stand in the doorway / Don’t block up the hall.”  Less than a year later, the Civil Rights Act became law.

Actors Charlton Heston and singer Harry Belafonte review a speech for the crowd of 250,000 gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Heston remarked that he supported civil rights “long before Hollywood found it fashionable.”

Actor Paul Newman was there too.  Most came by bus, but Newman did what any modern day ‘A-Lister’ would do — he took a private plane from Los Angeles.

All photos Courtesy National Archives.

Sixteen of the top 20 box office earners have either a G or PG rating which should be a clue that R rated films ( “Titanic” being the exception) don’t do as well yet studios continue to add gratuitous irrelevant sex scenes that ruin the film. Why? It certainly can’t be artistic license because the principal reaction to them is usually-‘Ew!!! Why did they do that?” 

Movie-going statistics have dropped significantly among older adults and that’s understandable since most fare today cater to hormonal adolescents without a clue as to the true appeal of sensual art. Yet senior citizens today are former film buffs who would relish worthy theatrical offerings but their treks back to the wide screen lonely leave them disappointed. 

A few years ago I went with an elderly friend to see, “Love Actually,” because we’re both great fans of Alan Rickman. The film has various vignettes of romantic couples and their curious experiences pursuing the love game. One of these couples happens to be two individuals acting in a porn movie and although the intent was to inject irony in the sex scenes showing the relative naïveté of the participants as they try to hook up, it failed miserably. My friend later said that particular graphic display spoiled the otherwise charming film which she no longer would add to her DVD collection when it came out. 

Who decides to add these charm-busters to films? What is it about major appliances like washing machines that attract sexual activity? In the film, “Little Children,” Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson drop their drawers to perform sexual gymnastics in the laundry room and several other inappropriate venues. “ Annette Bening has her head banged against a motel headboard while her adulterous lover humps her energetically in the Oscar winner “American Beauty.” Did we have to see Viggo Mortensen’s bare butt as he had sex with his wife on the stairs ( note: stairs are a very uncomfortable place to indulge in this activity) in “ A History of Violence?” Of course not and every film would have generated better box office without these unnecessary insertions — pardon the double entendre. 

I could blame corrupt producers and directors but none of these quality-busting scenes would be possible without the cooperation of the actors and actresses involved. I’m continually flabbergasted that these so-called artists actually consider it of thespian merit to simulate raw sex before the eye of the camera. In a way, Eight Avenue peep shows are more candid about their industry. 

Madonna was said to be embarrassed about old nude photographs that might impede her adoption of  the Malawi child David. Her daughter Lourdes is rumored to be more conservative than her Mom. Big surprise that! 

I wonder what the children of Julianne Moore will think of her naked lap dance in “Boogie Nights” when they’re old enough to see the film.

Helen Mirren has managed to eclipse her “Caligula” and other nude, lascivious roles with an Oscar win for “The Queen,” in which she appeared fully clothed but she’s British so she’s can carry that off somewhat. 

As a teen and a young woman, I’d buy all the movie mags with their color pictures of beautiful people who could honestly be called STARS. Now I find it difficult to name one female star today who doesn’t dress or act like a skank. Sorry. I realize it’s a sign of the times but that doesn’t mean I can’t prefer a time when class was what determined stardom. 

When I look at today’s crop of movie denizens, every single one pales in comparison to our former screen legends. There is no one as gorgeous or as talented as the late Paul Newman. Ava Gardner may have had a checkered love life but her on-screen image is still a paean to her beauty and acting ability not her sexual proclivities. 

Supermarket tabloids used to be my guilty pleasure but for the past few years, I can’t drum up interest in any of the figures that the paparazzi chase down. The word “star” is applied to reality TV people who fail to excite my curiosity. I don’t care who’s sleeping with whom nor do I give a whit about what any of them have to say. 

Erotica is now dead in cinema and has been replaced by pornography. I’m trying hard to imagine which of today’s Hollywood elite could produce the same sexual heat that a long gone Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weismuller managed to generate in our own minds. I’ve drawn a blank. Any suggestions?

My apologies for bringing up old crap, but Clooney’s statement, especially the part about how he’s so proud to be out of touch, is one of the most bafflingly odd things I’ve ever heard coming from Clooney, who’s also famous for telling anyone who’ll listen that everybody tells him all the time how brave he was for making a black and white movie about the red scare. It’s very revealing that Clooney would say this, to cheers, a mere three years after a child-rapist was handed an award by that same Academy.

Cut to the present, the child-rapist is caught, and much of Hollywood is outraged. “He should be allowed to live his life,” wrote Peter Bart, his words practically streaked with tears. Hey, guess what, Pete? He has been allowed to live his life. They’re all like Clooney, proud be out of touch. But why? To answer this question, we turn to the genius of one George Costanza.

They’re different than the rest of us. They’re “delicate geniuses.”

Back to the Academy Awards, who can forget Sean Penn humorlessly, smugly, embarrassingly chiding Chris Rock for poking fun at fellow delicate genius Jude Law? Rock’s offense? A joke, dripping with truth, which pointed out that Jude Law is not a box office draw. The box office doesn’t matter to them. Hell, look at the movies they nominate nowadays. They’ve grown more out of touch than ever. You think “The Sting” would get nominated for Best Picture today? Much less win? Or “Jaws”?

And then there’s David Cross (of “Arrested Development” fame), who brags that he snorted coke near Obama. If you don’t think that’s super-cool, then you’re probably a stupid Christian. He’s one of those atheists for whom it’s not nearly enough to just not believe in God, he has to build a stand-up career out of his atheism. He’s always been strangely uninformed about Christianity, but that doesn’t stop him from cracking hipster jokes about Christians. Back in 1999, he joked that he couldn’t wait to make fun of Christians when Y2K turned out to be a global non-factor. In this hilarious segment, Cross discussed Y2K more than my Southern Baptist Pastor did in an entire year.

Cross’ cocaine story, coupled with the story last week about Academy Award fixture Hilary Swank–the she sashays around the house nude in front of her boyfriend’s six-year-old kid–illustrates what’s gone wrong with the delicate geniuses.  Hilary, please, put us on a need-to-know basis. You were way cooler when you were the underdog, the “Next Karate Kid” made good. We simply know too much about the delicate geniuses. The delicate geniuses would be more respected and adored by their audiences if they embraced a little mystery. Remember when Sean Penn crazily demanded privacy? He was sooooo much cooler then. We all knew Paul Newman was a liberal, but I never got the impression that he thought that made him smarter than his audience.

But that’s exactly how the current stars sound when they take credit for the Civil Rights Movement, or wish shame on the grandchildren of people with different opinions than their own (that’s you, Mr. Penn), or indulge us with their stories about getting a snootful of Bolivian Marching Powder while in the company of The Savior, or traipsing around nekkid in the company of kids. They’re enlightened, you see, and we’re the uneducated masses.

Here’s an excerpt:

Chapter Three

ACTORS TO ACTIVISTS

Sometimes activists happen to become actors and musicians. It happens more than we might think. And why not? It takes a natural drive and outspoken ambition to claw into stardom. So it makes sense that many famous names and faces have something to say – and it’s not off a script. 

Robin Bronk heads The Creative Coalition, the leading political advocacy group for show business. Bronk says nowadays “celebrities need an agent, a manager, a publicist and an issue.” Saving the spotted owl or protesting against landmines isn’t necessarily good for an acting career, but it shows how the power of celebrity can be used to change minds. “There’s no need to check your citizenship at the stage door,” says Bronk.  All of this idealism can come off as goofy to a Washington desk-jockey. But it is wise not to brush it off; celebrities at the top of their game can successfully push an agenda straight through the stuffiest bureaucracy. 

Senate Dining Room, Washington, D.C., 1970’s Actor Marlon Brando dines with Senator Charles Percy (R-IL).  Brando wrote in Songs my Mother Taught Me, “Simply because you’re a movie star, people empower you with special rights and privileges.”  Brando grew to understand those privileges using his influence to stump for civil rights, better treatment for Native Americans and fair housing. (Photo courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office)

Political media sage and songwriter Mark McKinnon notes, “musicians especially almost always represent the anti-establishment, the voice without power.” Think of activist musicians like Bob Dylan, Bono and Peter, Paul and Mary.  McKinnon continues, “part of the Hollywood-Washington relationship is finding the art of the possible.” 

The result of all this goodwill and ambition can lead to some offbeat alliances — exotic film actress Angelina Jolie plots refugee camp security with Sen. Richard Lugar, trailblazing baseball player Jackie Robinson turns up the heat on President Eisenhower for civil rights and rock star Bono and President George W. Bush buddy up over AIDS policies. 

Grand Foyer, The White House, October 1985 Pres. Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan pose with action star Sylvester Stallone and his wife actress Brigitte Nielsen during a State Dinner for Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.  What better way to impress a head of state – invite Rambo to dinner. (Photo Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.)

There is plenty historic evidence that Hollywood is a powerful mouthpiece for political candidates or issues. In World War II, Rita Hayworth, Bing Crosby, and Fred Astaire asked Americans to buy War Bonds to support U.S. forces. Hollywood played a prominent role in the civil rights movement as stars such as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Sammy Davis Jr. led marches on Washington in the 1960’s. Dan Glickman sees Hollywood from both the political side and within the film industry as the president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America. “When a celebrity shows up at your hearing on Capitol Hill,” he notes, “you are guaranteed to have a full room of reporters, staff members – and it usually means more congressmen show up too.” Whatever the result, it is always great theater when actors turn into activists.

During a recent interview on my radio program “The Andrea Shea King Show”, Hollywood conservative Burt Boyar, longtime friend and biographer of the late great Sammy Davis, Jr., said he’s concerned that the true story about the talented entertainer who fought and broke through racial barriers will never be seen on the silver screen. Two years ago, Boyar had negotiated a deal to sell his two biographies to filmmakers who were all set to tell the story on celluloid.

Reflection: Sammy Davis Jr. snaps a photo of himself and Jerry Lewis posing in the reflection of a mirror.

What entanglements are keeping the former member of the Rat Pack’s compelling life from being made into a movie?  A life studded with Tinseltown’s glittering constellation of stars whose orbits intersected his?   Luminaries like Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Liz and Burton, Paul Newman, Berle, Bacall, Bennett, Damone… when Hollywood was at its most glamorous?

Who is Burt Boyar? And why does he care?

The treasure hunt for answers begins on Broadway, circa 1954 when Burt and his wife Jane were moving within the inner circle of New York City’s theater district.  His daily column  “Burt Boyar’s Broadway,” a widely read ‘who’s who’ of the theatrical world, was prominently positioned on the front page of the Morning Telegraph.

The Boyars were hitting the hot spots — the El Morocco, the Copa, the Latin Quarter, the Stork Club — gleaning tantalizing tidbits to toss to ten million readers as they sipped their morning coffee over the morning news.  “Burt Boyar’s Broadway” was published in every Newhouse and Annenberg newspaper.  A mere mention in the column was gold, shining nuggets of priceless publicity coveted by actors and their press agents.   Manhattan’s most sought after couple were out every evening.  “Jane and I would go to every nightclub in town to see who was around and form the basis of what I was writing about. We went to virtually everything,” Boyar begins.

“In fact, we were on the ‘first night’ list, which was a wonderful thing and often a horrible thing at the same time.  Every show that opened, we automatically received tickets for opening night and we had our same seats, just like all the critics.  And you think, ‘My gosh, how glamorous can you be?  You go to every theater opening in New York!’  But if you think about it, there are some 200 shows every year. Of them, there are maybe five hits. And you have to sit through every one of the others.  You cannot imagine what it was like. You sit there wondering, ‘How did they ever pay for this?  Who would put up money to finance this?  How do we get out of here?’  But you couldn’t leave early, because then you’d be accused of writing about something you hadn’t seen,” he jokes.

Boyar also wrote a weekly column for TV Guide.  “I had a lot of audience and so naturally I got invited everywhere,” he says.

At about this time, Sammy Davis, Jr. was performing in “Mr. Wonderful,” a dog of a show that was getting lousy reviews — except for the last 40 minutes when Davis was onstage.  Critics loved his Vegas-Copa-Miami Beach nightclub act.  Boyar took note, and rang him up.

“When I called Sammy, he said, ‘What do you say we have dinner one night?’  So that very night we went out to dinner, Jane, Sammy and I, to Danny’s Hideaway, which was a theatrical steak house.  It’s closed now but it was a very hot spot in those days.  As dinner was coming to an end, he excused himself and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go do the show, but what do you say we have dinner…’ And he thought a second and then he said,  ‘how about having dinner five nights a week?’   And as it turned out, we had dinner seven nights a week!”  It would be the beginning of a long friendship.

Boyar does his best Jolson imitation for Sammy's camera while Jane Boyar enjoys the show.

“We were always together from then on.  It’s one of those wonderful things that happens occasionally in your life — you meet someone with whom you have an enormous chemistry — and it was just instantaneous best friends.  I admired his talent tremendously.  He was unquestionably the world’s greatest entertainer. And he was such a charming man offstage. He dressed beautifully and he conducted himself with such courtliness.  It’s hard, really, to believe he had never had any education whatsoever. His education was the theaters that he played since the age of three. So I guess that has very good value because when you consider that in vaudeville, he would play before six audiences a day.  You’d get a lot of touch with the public, and you’d learn a great deal from people.”

In Black and White

A white hot star onstage, black negro offstage, Sammy Davis, Jr. “wasn’t treated well because of his skin color, at least not until he was such a big star that they couldn’t keep him out.”  Boyar recalled the denigration Davis endured.  “I cannot describe the pain of seeing a friend receive standing ovations in those days when they had to be earned, then leave the theater and be called a ‘nigger.’

“He was not treated well by either the whites or the blacks.  I remember when he was playing New York City, he was playing the Copacabana and I got him a reservation at the hotel around the corner — the Sherry Netherland — and he was completely criticized, roundly criticized by both the white press and the negro press for not staying at the Hotel Teresa in uptown Harlem, which is what all black entertainers would do when they played the Copa.”  The Teresa Hotel, known as the ‘Waldorf of Harlem,’ was built in 1913 and wasn’t desegregated until 1940.  Frequented by local celebrities, it was a Harlem hot spot.  By comparison the Sherry Netherland, in the heart of midtown Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, was always considered five-star, world class.

“Sammy said, ‘Look. I’m going to go as first class as my fame and my money will allow. I want to live as well as anybody else in my position.’  So he stayed at the Sherry Netherland, which was wonderful.”

In his prologue to “Sammy, An Autobiography,” Burt wrote: “After an especially hurtful racist outrage, Sammy murmured ‘We really should let them know.  We really should tell them.’  We talked about how, and it evolved into a book…”

“I began writing ‘Yes I Can’ and the column at the same time.  I thought I could do both,” Boyar says.  “And we’d travel with Sammy.  We’d go to Las Vegas and Chicago, and Tahoe and Florida, wherever there was entertainment, wherever I might possibly write a column at the same time.  But it became impossible to serve the two masters.  You really couldn’t do justice to either of them.  So we took what we thought was a one year leave of absence on the column, and six years later we finished the book, and so the column was gone.  The only thing about it that made me feel badly was a man by the name of Bruce Horton who was the head of the Register and Tribune syndicate, and he was out there selling our column — he sold us to the Detroit Free Press and the Toronto Star, a lot of big papers — and here I was, about to take time off and tell him I can’t produce. I’m sure I embarrassed him and he had every right to be furious with me, although he never said a word.  But that was the only misgiving I had about it.”

The couple lived on the road with Sammy on and off for the next four years, running a tape recorder every night into which Sammy would reminisce and recount the gems and shards that made up the mosaic of his life.

“We did (hang out with Sammy) for the first couple of years,” Burt says.  “The rest of the time we were on our own, just writing and rewriting.  After “Yes I Can” came out in 1965, we had no column, and suddenly we were making a lot of money and it was ‘Wow! This is a great life!  We don’t have to be up until four or five in the morning, we get up when the sun comes out!’”

The Boyars later moved to Spain where they resided for 28 years.  There they wrote two more books, “World Class” about the world of tennis, and “Hitler Stopped By Franco,” a book that evolved from their friendship with Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s daughter Carmen and her family.  Over the years, they kept in touch with Sammy by mail and telephone.  Following Jane’s death in 1997, Boyar subsequently combined both biographies into a single edition titled “Sammy – An Autobiography.”  He eventually returned to America, settling in the Los Angeles area where he still makes his home today.

The present scene:  An empty theater, a darkened screen.  Somewhere in the distance, Sammy is dancing and singing on an ethereal stage, entertaining a roomful of heavenly hosts.

The movie version of ‘Yes I Can’ is mired in litigation and has been for some time.  Burt explains, “I often hear people say, ‘Such and such a movie took ten or fifteen years to make.’  I now know why.  It is the most extraordinary thing.  What happens is you have a property that looks like it could be a moneymaker.  People come out of the woodwork that claim to have rights, and no movie company wants to invest 60 or 70 million dollars and are unable to distribute it because of a lawsuit.  So they insist that everyone must sign off — every potential rights holder must sign off.   In our case, I own half of the copyright.  Sammy owned the other half, and when he died it was left to Altovise, his wife.”  Altovise Davis, Sammy’s wife of twenty years, died March 14, 2009, nine years after Sammy passed away from throat cancer.

“It was complicated before that, but she had a manager who had made some kind of a contract with her in which he wound up controlling more of Sammy’s life than she.  He had far more to say about it than she.  And we had a this fabulous deal through two wonderful producers, Craig Zaden and Neil Meron who produced Chicago and Hairspray and the last Jack Nicholson movie, “The Bucket List.”   They were really, really excited about it and they sold it to New Line and everybody was really ready to go, we’re ready to sign it.  And the deal that was negotiated after six or seven months of negotiating was really as good as it can get.  And then this manager suddenly appears on the scene — a man with whom I had gotten along with perfectly well earlier, and he suddenly said, ‘We have to quarterback this’.

“I guess he meant ‘We have to be in charge, we have to continue the negotiations’.  Well, I thought, this is ridiculous.  It’s already ready to sign, and he said, ‘No, we have to  quarterback it because it involves Sammy Davis Jr.’s life rights.  Which doesn’t exist — there’s no legal term such as ‘life rights’.

“Anyway, I thought, ‘Well all right, what harm can be done?’  So he brings in this lawyer from New York who was not a movie lawyer, and the man decides he’s going to teach Hollywood how to be Hollywood!  And he makes demands that are deal breakers.

“The first one was Altovise, who was originally a dancer, but had not danced in probably 30 years, and had never been a choreographer.”

Altovise, a trained actor and dancer, met Sammy in the mid-1960s when they were both appearing in Broadway musicals, he as the lead in “Golden Boy” and she in the chorus line of “High Spirits.”  She successfully auditioned for a London stage production of “Golden Boy” and, after its run, she joined his nightclub act as a dancer.

“The first demand was that Altovise had to be the choreographer of the movie.  Complete deal breaker.  There’s no way that you can take a major musical and have a novice attempt to choreograph it.  Nor did she want to, which I learned later.  At the time I wasn’t in touch with her and so I didn’t realize that it wasn’t she who had demanded it.  It was the manager.  He was just looking for more revenue.”

“Then he had to own the soundtrack.  That was another deal breaker.  Obviously, if you’re a studio and you invest 60 or 70 million dollars in a movie, you want every revenue source there can be, and you’re not going to give it to a man who has no track record as a record producer or anything.  It was all just a hustle.

“So we finally went to court to get rid of him, and we have been in court for 680 thousand dollars, which is one way of putting it – those are the legal fees we’ve run up on this project so far.  And more to come.  I could not imagine that these people would be so idiotic to hang on when they had absolutely no grounds for the thing that they were asking for.  They were killing a golden goose.”

“Also, according to the copyright law, at the time in 1965 when ‘Yes I Can’ was published, the law was that when a man dies, his copyrights go to his wife and to his children, without specifying in what percentages or what way – fifty-fifty?   It’s up to them to decide.  And Altovise had very generously agreed to split evenly with the children – there are four children, so that was no problem.

“The problem is not that I can’t go out and do the movie on my own, but no studio will take the risk of a major investment when there’s a potential of a lawsuit, even if they’re nuisance lawsuits.  If that potential exists, they don’t want to get involved.  This has happened before and they have wound up having to pay as much as 15 million dollars in blackmail, actually, to be able to release the film they’ve already shot.  So they don’t ever want to get involved in that again. And who can blame them?”

So the film project sits on a shelf, hamstrung through greed and avarice.  However, Boyar managed to salvage thousands of Sammy’s photos and negatives. “Everybody who was close to him knew he was taking pictures because he always carried a camera,” Boyar says.

“The photos were in a warehouse just stuffed away in boxes, not protected, not really taken care of the way you should take care of them.  Thousands of prints, thousands of negatives.  And probably within a few years, they would’ve been lost.  They’d be worthless.  They weren’t sorted, they weren’t in any particular order because Sammy never cared.”

He recalls Sammy’s obsession with the latest and best equipment. “Of course once I had a little education, Sammy once said, ‘I needed a new Nikon this and a Canon that, both with eighteen lenses and sixty-two filters.  In terms of addiction, I think there is nothing more powerful than men’s toys.  This may sound a little paranoid but I am positive that somewhere in Germany, in Japan, there are men awake in the middle of the night thinking, ‘Now Sammy Davis has an extra $50,000, let’s think of something he doesn’t have that we can sell him, the ultimate, the definitive… he’ll jump to be the first one to have it and we’ll get that $50,000.’ I am positive of that.’”

Burt knew Sammy didn’t have plans for his photography.  “He never thought, ‘Well, I’ll publish pictures of Frank and Peter and Dean.’  His pleasure in photography was to take pictures of people that he liked, and if he liked the picture, he would send it to you — an 11 by 14.  He had no future plans for his photography.  It was purely for pleasure.  So he never bothered keeping records carefully and keeping the negatives attached to the proof sheets.  So it was a tremendous job separating them, but we did it.”

In a labor of love that came close to matching the affection Davis had for his latest single lens reflex, Boyar selected hundreds of images that have been included in a coffee table book collection of Hollywood’s glory days, seen through the lens of Sammy’s myriad collection of Nikons, Canons, and Rollieflex cameras.  ‘Photo By Sammy Davis, Jr.’ went into print in 2007, the last book published by Judith Regan.

Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin preparing to go on stage.

“The book contains photos of Hollywood stars that no one else had access to.  For example, Frank Sinatra in his pajamas.  Now only someone like Sammy would be there to take that picture and Frank would only allow someone like Sammy to take it.

“There is a characteristic picture of Sinatra playing with his fingernails. When he was just about to go on, he was always very nervous and he would work out his nerves on his fingernails.  And so there’s a picture of him standing with Dean and he’s working on his nails.  These are things that only Sammy understood,” Boyar explains.  “The stories that accompany them are from taped conversations Sammy and I had over the course of our friendship. We used a handful of them in Sammy’s autobiographies.”

Sammy caught Peter Lawford the morning after a big one.

There are other pictures – Peter Lawford with a hangover.  “He looked like he was desperately in need of a steam room,” Boyar comments.

“There is a picture of me in the book.  It’s about three quarters of the way in.”  Sure enough, there’s Boyar captured in Sammy’s lens, vamping an Al Jolson routine as wife Jane laughs in delight. But the back-story wasn’t so funny.

“What happened is one night we were out, and somebody called Sidney Poitier a black, and in those days that was a very negative statement.  And it drove Sammy up the wall.  I’ve never seen him so upset.  He generally was very, very put together and he was very accustomed to racial epithets, so things didn’t bother him.   But I guess because he loved Sidney, it really did bother him and he was really, really angry, just really upset.  And we got back to his hotel room and he looked at me and he said, ‘Do that corny Jolson thing you do.’   Which was — I used to love Al Jolson, so I would do Jolson.  I knew all the songs. And so I started singing and I didn’t realize that Sammy was actually taking pictures of me at the time because I was so involved with my performance.  Imagine the audacity of singing to the world’s greatest entertainer!  Anyway I did it until finally he was laughing and the moment had passed and it was done.

“I didn’t know the pictures existed until Vanity Fair was doing a ten-page take-out for the magazine, a ten-page article on the book, and David Friend, who does special features for them, came here to look at the pictures and he says, ‘Hey, this is you!”  It was a negative and I would have never spotted it because I don’t have an eye for that sort of thing, but David had been a Life Magazine photo editor and as a photo editor he had a very, very sharp eye.  I was delighted to have it.  Sammy played the greatest role in my life.  Having the opportunity to write those books really made a whole life for Jane and myself.”

The legendary entertainer’s images, confined within the cover of a book, might not be moving pictures projected on the silver screen, but somehow there is sweet irony that Sammy himself created the montage of his life, directing and choreographing his story through his own camera lens, from beginning to end.

Books by Burt Boyar:

“PHOTO BY SAMMY DAVIS, JR.” Text by Burt Boyar

“YES I CAN” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

“WHY ME?” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

“SAMMY – An Autobiography” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

Other books by Burt Boyar:

“HITLER STOPPED BY FRANCO” by Jane and Burt Boyar

“WORLD CLASS” by Jane and Burt Boyar

 
Sinatra and Ava for Democrat Adlai Stevenson

Where classic Hollywood mostly held their activism to advocating for their causes, too many of today’s classless breed defines their activism through the hurling of invective at the other side - at 50% of the customers. They do it up on the screen and they do it while hiding behind a Hollywood media-machine owned and operated by sycophants who mostly agree. There’s nothing wrong with passion, humor, disagreement and debate, that’s what Big Hollywood is all about, but ad hominem that dehumanizes is the tactic of a new generation eager to fit in with the A-list.  

Today we have “Transformers” star Megan Fox, joining a growing club — spouting this hateful nonsense:

“Transformers” bombshell-cum-uninhibited philosophizer also contemplates — reluctantly — what she would say to Megatron to keep him from destroying the world. “I’d barter with him,” she muses to the July, issue Total Film UK, “and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?”

Any consequence is predictable. Worse case, if it looks like her display of ignorance might become a distraction in the coming “Transformers” hype-machine, Fox will apologize/explain on some venue like the “Tonight Show.” But the bottom line is that there will be no consequence within a community that finds that kind of talk about “those kinds of people” all okey-dokey.

Just for giggles, compare Megan Fox trashing mainstream Middle America with, oh, say, this…

“Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much.”

Now, “Transformers” is going to make a ton of money no matter what Megan Fox says, but the fallout from this kind of star-behavior has already done irreparable damage. Today, the definition of what used to define a true movie star is all but dead.

People used to go to the movies to see stars, but with the possible exception of Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Adam Sandler (arguably there are a few others), those days are over. Most stars can’t even guarantee an opening weekend anymore.

 
The great (and very liberal) Paul Newman

George Clooney couldn’t open a supermarket without the word “Oceans” in the title; the combined firepower of Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. did “The Soloist” little good; “Duplicity” might have made more money without Julia Roberts, and Harrison Ford’s a flop away from competing with Steven Seagal in the direct-to-video bin. Walk the aisles at Blockbuster and marvel at the familiar faces starring in films no distributor would invest a theatrical release on.

The days of “names” putting butts in seats are over. Today, the star of the movie is the concept. No concept, no profit. Doesn’t matter who’s in it.

Not every actor’s behaved as poorly as the usual suspects, not all of them deserved to lose their firepower, but there have been too many like Megan Fox spoiling it for the rest. And so the movie star has managed to accomplish the one thing capable of causing their own extinction: they’ve deconstructed themselves.

The myth and aura has vanished, and without that all we’re left with is mortals, and way too many unpleasant ones…