How bad can a movie be yet look fantastic? Ocean’s 11 (1960) is a heist film famous for its slick Rat Pack, mid-century modern trappings, but altogether a heaping, floppy mess. It’s a movie you want to like but can’t. It has no real highs, no lows, no drama, little humor. Interminable parts of the movie happen at Spyros Acebo’s Ladera Drive house in Beverly Hills, where the boys just talk and talk forever. Even one hour into the movie, they have only talked about the heist. The only real spark of life is with Cesar Romero, as Peter Lawford’s father-in-law-to-be, an unspecified Las Vegas fixer-gangster who wises up to the boys’ heist and exposes it.
Yet the movie has a great look, as the boys progress from casino to casino: Flamingo, Sands, Desert Inn, Riviera, and Sahara. This slavish progression through the five hotels not once, but twice (first casing the joints, then later on, robbing them) is a huge drag on the movie’s storyline, but it’s a great crosscut of 1960s Las Vegas.
Flamingo Bar
Flamingo Hotel and Casino Bar from Ocean’s 11 (1960)
Sands Cashier/Guard Stand
Sands Cashier/Guard Stand from Oceans 11 (1960)
Sands Hotel and Casino Phone Area
Sands Hotel and Casino Phone Area from Oceans 11 (1960)
Sands Hotel and Casino Coffee Shop
Sands Hotel and Casino Coffee Shop from Oceans 11 (1960)
Sahara Casino Nightclub
Sahara Casino Nightclub from Oceans 11 (1960)
Flamingo Hotel and Casino Entrance
Flamingo Hotel and Casino Entrance from Oceans 11 (1960)
Talk about humble and unassuming. A man builds a painstaking recreation of some elements of Disneyland’s Fantasyland in his basement, uploads a less than two minute-long video to YouTube, and all he says is, “This is a short video about my Fantasyland basement.”
But there you have it. An as-yet-anonymous maker known only as Travis shows us his basement with “facades that recreate attractions like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride or restaurants like Pinocchio’s Village Haus,” according to The Disney Blog. Thankfully, the blog spoke briefly with Travis and found out that he’s been building out the basement according to his fantasy since 2006. Working from thousands of Disneyland photographs, many of the elements, such as copper lamps, were created entirely from scratch. For the stone-look building facades, he cut foam blocks to size, then covered the blocks with mortar for an authentic, textured stone look and feel.
As with so many war stories, this one is hazy and sounds like it’s ready-made for a movie. Particulars are hard to pin down, since the only person who might corroborate them has been dead since 1955. This is the story of a U.S. soldier whose “super-salesman” silver tongue persuaded German soldiers to surrender to U.S. troops. And he didn’t just do this once. He did it twice: 150 in the first lot, 12 in the second.
Lawrence Malmed, a silk salesman who resided at 1313 Spruce St. Philadelphia, entered the Army as a private in May 1942, then was later commissioned as a second lieutenant. After shipping out of Fort Benning, Georgia, he arrived in Europe with the 3rd Batallion of the 35th Infantry Division.
In Orleans (France), August 1944, Malmed crossed behind the German lines and, for 23 hours, talked to a German colonel. He then came back to Allied lines with 150 German soldiers in tow.
On September 29, 1944, during the Forêt de Grémecey battle, Malmed, wounded and captured by Germans, again crossed back to Allied lines. He had talked five Germans into surrendering, and along the way picked up another seven German soldiers.
Malmed was eventually awarded the Silver Star and a Purple Heart. After he was decommissioned, Malmed was employed in Gimbel’s adjustment department. Malmed died in 1955 at the age of 40. He left behind a widow and two children.
Many of the dates are difficult to match up. For instance, Malmed received his Purple Heart for injuries sustained on July 17, 1944, yet his first foray over German lines happened barely a couple of weeks later. Also, one of the lines uttered by Malmed sounds suspiciously like something you would hear in a war movie, though most likely it was cooked up by the newspaper writer (“OK boys, give me a gun and I’ll kill your officer when he gets here.”).
Lawrence Malmed…had set up his command post in a captured German pillbox. Suddenly a strong German patrol confronted his position, attacking it with machine pistols and hand grenades. In the ensuing firefight, the two enlisted men who were with Lieutenant Malmed were wounded, and the entire group captured. At this moment, reinforcements, whom the Americans had requested from the battalion before their capture, arrived and forced all the men to seek shelter in the pillbox while the battle continued. Lieutenant Malmed then persuaded the Germans to release him and his men, become his prisoners instead, and render first aid to the wounded soldiers. At the conclusion of the engagement, he was thus able to return to his lines with twelve prisoners of war.
Lawrence Malmed was clearly a war hero. Malmed is interred at Roosevelt Memorial Park, Trevose, Pennsylvania.
Above, The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 16, 1944
The last we hear of Lawrence Malmed before his obituary is this, from Wisconsin State Journal, March 1, 1945:
When Lawrence Malmed…of Philadelphia marched off to war his uncle, A.T. Malmed, a cement manufacturer, promised he would give him $5 for every German Lawrence captured. Since then Malmed, now a captain, has bagged a total of 250 Heinies and Uncle A.T. wants to call the bet off.
Many character actors might bristle at the idea of being branded a character actor. Because, after all, who wants to be branded as a type? If in your last ten movies you played that type, are you destined to play that type again and again? On the other hand, if you’re good enough, it means steady work.
Edward Andrews was spot-on perfect in mid-20th century movies and television as a character actor who got tons of steady work because he perfectly hit a certain character role target. In his horn-rimmed glasses, Andrews embodied the imperious, officious, smug, and stuffy role better than any other actor working at that time. So perfectly did he play the part that I have a hard time believing that there was a real person behind the roles.
In the early years of his career, Andrews was rarely, if ever, cast in a purely sympathetic, heart-warming role. He was always a mayor, military brass, banker, doctor, school principal, or religious leader. Only in the last few years of his career did he receive more benign roles.
In 1964’s Send Me No Flowers, with Rock Hudson and Doris Day, Andrews delivered one of his more neutral and least unsympathetic characters as Hudson’s doctor, lacing the role with humor and only a few traces of the characteristic Andrews smugness.
Andrews as the sinister authority figure Carling from The Twilight Zone’s “Third From the Sun,” dancing on the fine edge between practiced courtesy and quiet menace:
Andrews’ most quietly disturbing man-next-door role, though, was as Oliver Pope in The Twilight Zone’s “You Drive.” Is Oliver Pope evil for evading the law after running over and killing a young boy? Maybe. What makes Andrews’ role so mesmerizing it that he could be one of us.
Instant death from falling off of precipices at Yosemite National Park is a long-standing tradition at that park. One time, at Yosemite, time melted away as I found myself mesmerized by the Yosemite installment of the “Death In…” series of national parks books about all of the ways visitors meet their demise in our country’s most beautiful public lands. Yet for every person who hurtles off the edge of Nevada Falls, there are countless thousands who gleefully tempt fate and survive. What about these two waitresses?
Kitty Tatch was a maid and waitress at the Sentinel Hotel in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Dressed in long wide skirts identifying her clearly as a woman, she danced and did high kicks at Overhanging Rock, 3,000 feet above the Valley, on Glacier Point with her friend Katherine Hazelston as George Fiske photographed them. (View famous photograph.) These pictures were later made into postcards, autographed by Tatch, and sold for years.
And that’s that for Kitty Tatch and Katherine Hazelston; I’ve lost their trail.
In the 1980s, horse owner Sharon Maloney named a horse Kitty Tatch, and it ran successfully for many years. But that’s pretty much it. What happened to them?
