The following news items were reported in Film Daily during the week of October 21, 1963

Stephen Boyd in "The Fall of the Roman Empire"

Paul Lazarus Jr., executive vice president of Samuel Bronston Productions, is lining up tours to the Bronston Studio in Spain for exhibitors who have expressed interest in (and booking) Fall of the Roman Empire. The trips, on which theater men will be on their own, especially for transportation, are expected to start shortly after mid-November.

Steve McQueen in "the Great Escape" (Like we really had to tell you!)

United Artists' The Great Escape rolled up $205,915 in the second week of its Golden Showcase run at 21 theaters in the greater New York area.

Arthur Kennedy, Victory Jory, Sal Mineo, George O'Brien, and Dolores Del Rio have been signed for key roles in Cheyenne Autumn Warner Bros. film which John Ford is directing.

Britain's Shirley Eaton will fill the sole femme part in MGM's Rhino in production in South Africa.

Executive Council of British Film Producers Association will support the move by the Association of Independent Cinemas to reduce the admittance of teenagers to "A" pictures from 16 to 14. Films classified as "A" by the censor are forbidden to children under 16 unless accompanied by an adult. Films tagged "X" are forbidden to those 16 and under while "U" films are for the entire family.

How the West Was Won has passed the 500,000 admission mark at the Warner Hollywood Cinerama Theatre, where the MGM production has grossed more than $1,000,000 since its opening October 21...Ticket orders are being taken into December and the engagement will continue indefinitely.

 (Above: advert for London engagement of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)

Stanley Kramer and many of the stars of his It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World will appear on The Jerry Lewis Show, ABC-TV November 2, the night before the UA Cinerama comedy has its international press preview at The New Cinerama Theatre in Hollywood.

Almost a decade after Paul Newman won universal praise for the 1966 detective film "Harper" (UK title: "The Moving Target"), he returned as wiseguy private eye Lew Harper in the 1975 sequel "The Drowning Pool". Critics and audiences were relatively unimpressed this time around, but the film has many delights and showcases Newman at his most charismatic. The movie also has a helluva suspenseful and exciting final scene in the titular location. Enjoy the original trailer and click here to order the film from the Cinema Retro movie store.

Here's a great musical number: the only on-screen teaming of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in the 1964 Warner Bros. film "Robin and the Seven Hoods", which boasts a terrific score by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. In the film, Crosby plays a meek accountant for Sinatra's mob. Sinatra and Dino decide to show Crosby how to spice up his image by performing the marvelous musical number "Style". The film also features the classic song "My Kind of Town" and a show-stopping one-man number by Sammy Davis Jr. that tears up the screen. If you've never seen this underrated gem (directed by the equally underrated Gordon Douglas), you can do so by clicking here to order the Blu-ray from amazon. 

Director Mark Robson's tragic boxing drama "Champion" was widely praised when it premiered in 1949, earning six Oscar nominations including one for Best Actor for rising young star Kirk Douglas. It was this film that made Hollywood studios take serious notice of Douglas and there would be no looking back. Douglas would be a bonafide star throughout his entire career. The original review of the film in the Hollywood Reporter lavishes praise on Douglas, calling him a "vigorous, manly, exciting actor". Click here to read the full review.  

Relive the hilarity of Mel Brooks' brilliant 1977 homage to Alfred Hitchcock, "High Anxiety". In issue #26, we published an exclusive interview with Mel in which he discusses his interactions with Hitchcock during the making of the film, which are also very funny, indeed.

Here's the early scene in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" that established the tone and style of the film, directed with perfection by George Roy Hill from William Goldman's brilliant and witty screenplay. Paul Newman's Butch Cassidy has the unenviable task of engaging in a knife fight to the death with the towering figure of Ted Cassidy- but he proves brains can be worth more than brawn.

Margaret Hamilton with Ray Bolger and Jack Haley in an MGM promotional photo for "The Wizard of Oz".

Movie lovers associate actress Margaret Hamilton almost exclusively with her immortal portrayal of the Wicked Witch in the 1939 MGM classic "The Wizard of Oz". However, as writer Veronika Bondarenko points out in a column for Pocket Worthy, there was much more to the woman and her talents. Hamilton was proud of her performance in "Oz" but ultimately resented the fact that her other career achievements were largely ignored by the public and critics. She appeared in such diverse productions as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "13 Ghosts", "My Little Chickadee", "The Red Pony", "Brewster McCloud" and "The Anderson Tapes". She was also a veteran of stage productions and appeared in countless hit TV shows.

To read about her remarkable life and career, click here.

Here's a trip back in time: Bob Hope's opening of the 1966 Academy Awards broadcast in 1966, the first to be telecast in color.  Interesting to note some of the quips about current events and people of the day including Ronald Reagan's political ambitions in California, George Hamilton escorting President Johnson's daughter Linda to the ceremonies, quips about Lee Marvin's drinking and Richard Burton's prowess as a lover and references to "The Agony and the Ecstasy". Some of it still remains funny, thanks to Hope's inimitable delivery.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Writing on the Mental Floss web site, Jake Rossen recalls the impact of the 1983 ABC-TV airing of the controversial film "The Day After" starring Jason Robards. The movie was director Nicholas Meyer's warning to the world about the dangers of a nuclear war. At the time, the Cold War was very much in play and the stakes were high. ABC found they could get scant advertisers to sponsor a program with saw the destruction of America through the eyes of residents of a small Kansas town. To the network's credit, it aired the film anyway. What they lost in advertising revenue over two hours, they made up for in prestige. The show, which aired in the days when cable TV was in its infancy, attracted an astonishing 62 million viewers. (It would later be released overseas as a theatrical feature film in a slightly extended version.) Those of us of a certain age who recall watching it were left deeply moved and very upset as we watched the "lucky" survivors cope with facing a slow, torturous death. Perhaps in this modern era of a pandemic, it would still  be difficult to watch even in the post-Cold War era, as our nightly news presents scenes of an America that seems scarcely recognizable, with desperate teams of physicians and nurses working in hellish, over-crowded hospitals- much like the scenario presented in "The Day After". The film represented a time period in which the three major networks were proud to produce and telecast controversial productions that often had a societal impact (think "Roots".) "The Day After" certainly did and it's been theorized that President Reagan was so moved by what he saw that he redoubled his efforts to finalize important arms limitation deals with the Soviets.

Click here to read.

Click here to order the Blu-ray special edition from Amazon containing both the TV and theatrical versions.