"on-the-waterfront"

With the arrival of Spring and the sense of new beginnings, my contrarian spirit has me thinking about great endings. Great movie endings, to be precise.

Here’s a bold statement: Giving your children the chance to watch classic films can be just as vital as anything they learn in school. 

Why were so many of our very best actors born in April? It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but intriguing nonetheless. And in the rarefied world of movie stardom, the concentration of April birthdays is pretty remarkable.

A close inspection of Lee J. Cobb’s film career, spanning nearly four decades, demonstrates what a versatile actor he was. Still, today he is best remembered for playing bitter, caustic, angry men. 

It was 1971, and the financially-strapped Paramount Pictures was about to take a big risk — actually several of them — in bringing Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” to the big screen.

Any serious, discriminating film fan should know the work of Elia Kazan, a brilliant director of stage and screen who helped transform acting — and the movies themselves — in the mid-twentieth century.

It is sad and somewhat perplexing that while James Dean has become an enduring icon, Nicholas Ray, the director that mentored and influenced him, is nearly forgotten.

In an age when fewer young people exhibit interest or knowledge about classic films made before 1970, I am always amazed at the staying power of Audrey Hepburn, particularly among women.

Eva Marie Saint would never play showy roles in movies; she wasn’t temperamentally suited for them, and she didn’t need to do them. She was never one of those outsize personalities who always seems to be saying: “Look at me!” That, in fact, was a big part of her appeal. In her quiet, determined way, she also decided when fame hit that she would have a life and a career. She took time to raise her two children with her husband of 65 years, director Jeffrey Hayden. This meant fewer high profile roles.