Other Worldly

I finally caught up to Westworld (1973) last night, courtesy of Movies!, channel 5–2 on over the air antenna in NYC. It was Michael Crichton’s first silver screen directorial effort, adapting his own novel. I nodded off somewhere in the middle and assume James Brolin’s character is killed off. In researching the flick, the career of one of the supporting players is almost as impressive as that of the aforementioned and Yul Brynner and Richard Benjamin. Now 90, Alan Oppenheimer, a native New Yorker, has been a Hollywood mainstay since 1963. There are 317 titles under his name at IMDb, and that number doesn’t include the multiple appearances he’s made on prime time TV shows. The latter half of his resume has been dominated by voice-over work in animation. He is still working, entertaining millions. Kudos, sir. His face should be familiar.

Westworld was followed by Face of a Fugitive (1959), a western starring Fred MacMurray. It was directed by Paul Wendkos, who worked mostly in TV. There are 115 titles listed under his name. Again, that tells only part of the story, as he did twelve episodes each of The Untouchables and The Detectives, eleven of I Spy, nine of The Invaders and eight of Dr. Kildare, among many others. His career spanned 1957-’99. He became a master of the TV movie. He received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Miniseries or a Special for The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story (1988). Despite all his work on the small screen, he will probably be remembered most as the director of Gidget (1959) and Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), which catapulted Sandra Dee to stardom. He entertained millions. He passed away at 84 in 2009.

And here is the lovely Dee in a publicity still:

In the category of “Can’t Make Things Like This Up,” this excerpt from an article at foxnews.com: On June 12th officials in “Seattle held a racially segregated employee training session aimed at White staffers and instructing them on ‘undoing your own whiteness’ in order to be held accountable by people of color.”

Maybe I’m just too stupid to see why this idea won’t fly. Why aren’t schools being fitted with UV light distributors? If they truly zap viruses, every public building in America should have them. Is such light harmful? Enlighten me.

The floating book shop returned to normal after back to back stellar sessions. My thanks to the gentleman who bought two books in Russian, and to Wolf, who purchased The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer.

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