Rinaldo

Yes. Goldman made some changes when adapting Westlake's book, but not that.

The character always seemed like a man in drag to me too, from my first viewing all those decades ago. But I've looked around, and apparently Lynne Gordon is/was a real person, with an IMDb entry (7 acting credits, 4 "self" appearances including a self-titled talk show) though no actual bio or terminal dates. I'd love to know the behind-the-scenes story of casting this role, which is already a bit of an awkward contrivance (here's this hypnotist out of nowhere for 45 seconds to solve a plot challenge), with this particular person.

That's a very Westlake sort of comedic line, and it makes me inwardly chuckle every time I encounter it. Hair that's so uninteresting, the world can't even bestir itself to pin down a color.

It's frustrating for a Westlake fan, because none of those Dortmunder castings have been quite right. Wikipedia describes him as "tall, with stooped shoulders and "lifeless thinning hair-colored hair" and has a disreputable "hangdog" face; he rarely smiles." Fans like me try to come up with the right casting, but skinny hangdog weathered men don't become movie stars. Ideas? A younger Harry Dean Stanton? Ty Burrell playing it straight?

This is a favorite of mine; I can't with a straight face call it a "great" movie, but it's an entertaining one, and an adaptation of the first book in the hilarious Dortmunder series by one of my favorite writers, the late Donald E. Westlake. Westlake wrote 14 novels about John Dortmunder and his band of fellow criminals (it's typical to characterize them as "bumbling," but that's not right -- they're very good at their work, they're just usually very unlucky). In movies made of various novels in the series, Dortmunder has been played by Robert Redford, George C. Scott, Paul Le Mat, Christopher Lambert, and Martin Lawrence... not much typecasting there! I've seen them all, and they vary greatly in quality, to put it nicely, but some of them have their memorable moments, and The Hot Rock has the best of all versions of Dortmunder's right-hand man Andy Kelp: George Segal. Whenever I reread any of the books (and I've done it plenty), even if I'm not picturing any of the many other actors in their parts, Segal's is the face I picture as Kelp.

Robert Benton has a number of memorable titles on his resumé, but the one that means the most to me is The Late Show. Two unlikely, hugely different people, finding their way to a friendship that's deep but in no way romantic... all within a nostalgic genre framework. For some reason, that's it for me, easily in my all-time top 20.

Nick Adams was also in Teacher's Pet, which paired Doris Day with Clark Gable, with Gig Young and Mamie Van Doren in support, and Adams as the copy boy who idolizes the editor (Gable).

The only thing I previously knew about Twilight of Honor was that Nick Adams was nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar for it. That was back in an earlier time of my life when I liked to amuse myself by memorizing all 20 acting nominees for the years 1960 to the present (I gave it up around 1990). Because Nick Adams's first big break was in Rebel Without a Cause, alongside James Dean and Dennis Hopper, I had always assumed that he was part of the wave of Actors Studio "method actors" around that time. But that was just my ignorance; he had a quite different backstory. I had known him mostly from The Rebel on TV, and as Andy Griffiths's sidekick in No Time for Sergeants. Further reading up on the movie tells me that it was the film debut of Joey Heatherton (Linda Evans, too). Those with long memories will recall that her "sexy gyrations" were part of the TV landscape, back in the days of musical variety shows. That being so, some might be amused/surprised to know that she was in the original stage production of The Sound of Music, at age 15. (Her father Ray Heatherton had starred in one of the Rodgers & Hart shows.) I doubt that her ensemble duties included singing in the nuns' chorus! -- they all had operatic voices (and some eventually had big opera careers, like Tatiana Troyanos). Undoubtedly she took part in scenes like the party, and she also understudied two of the Von Trapp daughters.

It's unpredictable, often they've been subsumed in the previous feature's time slot. But I think I've noticed lately more of an effort to give them their own named space in the grid.

I can heartily endorse this recommendation. It's full of good archival statements from people both famous and not, from the multitude of professions that contribute to moviemaking. Jeanine Basinger's name on the book is a virtual guarantee of quality. She is, to my mind, one of the best writers on film, bringing good information, passion, and humor to the subject. She teaches at Wesleyan U and has built its film-studies curriculum and archive into something formidable. She has done DVD commentaries and written books about individual movie people, but I think her most distinctive writing is about more general topics: The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960 The Star Machine I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies The Movie Musical She's always refreshingly open-minded and non-doctrinaire (pointing out, for instance, that movie audiences in the past weren't as dumb as is often assumed, and knew how to dismiss the last-minute punishments in order to enjoy the 90 minutes of yummy luxury and wickedness that came before). On the subject of contract players making the move to star unexpectedly, Porky Pig is one of her examples. And her proposal for the best marriage in movies is Tarzan and Jane. I love the way she writes.

I don't know... I think you may be a deeper thinker than the film warrants (I mean that as a compliment!), and may be giving its makers too much credit. As I remember it, it really isn't aiming at a spiritual experience, despite the chalice connection. (The book was partially inspired by the discovery of an elaborately decorated silver cup from the period, which someone speculated might have been made as a container for the cup from the Last Supper.) A great deal of the story has to do with adoption, inheritance, magicians, concubines, silversmithery, and suchlike, as it jumps from one time or place to another. I've not found a specific explanation of the design choices (I would love to discover that there is one somewhere), but my feeling is that it was somewhat arbitrary and maybe market-inspired, as in "everybody's making these sorts of epics now, and we can't compete in the on-location-spectacle department, so let's make ours look deliberately different." It would probably be best to see it for yourself! I do like Newman's quip after turning down the chance to star in Ben-Hur: "I'm not making another movie where my costume is a cocktail dress."

That's what I was getting at, perhaps too obliquely, with calling them "stage sets." Rolf Gérard worked primarily in theater, ballet, and opera, with barely half a dozen movies to his credit (Gene Kelly's Invitation to the Dance is probably the best known of the others, and of course that frankly evokes the stage). So they clearly wanted what he had to offer for The Silver Chalice: a level of nonreality that's totally its own thing. One may decide that it doesn't work, but it's what they meant.

Every lover of old movies should see The Silver Chalice at least once. There are plenty of film adaptations of the Bible-adjacent novels that were once so popular (Ben Hur, The Robe, all that), but none so bonkers as this one. Although the Costain book is quite a sober example of the genre, the movie goes rogue with designs that are deliberately not only ahistorical (check out that long-sleeved onesie in the photo), but unrealistic -- stage designer Rolf Gerard creates stage sets with clean right angles and shiny surfaces, scorning the dust and dirt of your typical Bible epic. It's totally its own thing, to an extent that has been known to embarrass the participants (Paul Newman went public about that), but from this distant date makes it a singular artifact.

Though I don't think it's as hilarious a comedy as Ben does, I'm a bit surprised that this movie isn't a regular feature of the TCM schedule. It's essentially a pop quiz for faithful viewers to identify the sources of scenes from old movies.

For some of those years I didn't have a driver's license. Then followed my college (and miliarty-band, as aforementioned) years. But from 1980 through 1982 I was living back in Chicagoland, and I made constant use of the rep theaters that were flourishing then, in Chicago and Evanston. That's when I first saw Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, It's Always Fair Weather, Touch of Evil, and many more. It was probably my biggest catch-up period before we began getting national channels dedicated to old movies. Youngsters may not realize how hard it was to see a special classic film in those days; for instance, knowing She Loves Me, I was desperate to see The Shop Around the Corner, but only TCM gave me the opportunity to do that.