(Love Is) The Tender Trap

Steyn On-line ^ | February 9, 2020 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

Tonight is Oscar Night in Hollywood, which I find all but unwatchable these days. It is our custom to have an Academy Award-winning Best Song on this night, but, for the first time, I'm beginning to wonder if we've exhausted the possibilities. Fifty years ago, the Oscar went to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", but we did that just the other day. Seventy-five years ago, it was "Swingin' on a Star", but we've done that, too. Seventy and eighty years ago, the winners were, respectively, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and "Over the Rainbow", but we've done both of them. Eighty-five years ago, they handed out the first ever Best Song statuette to "The Continental", but yeah, been there, done that.

So, while I'm brooding, enjoy a name that will surely figure in the In Memoriam sequence - the late Kirk Douglas, who left us a few days ago at the age of 103. Here he is at the 1958 Academy Awards warbling and hoofing with his old pal Burt Lancaster in a way that is almost impossible to imagine any current A-listers doing - with bonus appearances by Alec Guinness, Marlon Brando, Charles Laughton and the Tonys Franciosa and Quinn:

We'll have more Oscar Night japes before the end, but first: Who wrote that bit of material? Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen did.

[Twotone]

I missed reading this column when it first came out. Don't miss the video with Billy Crystal down at the bottom of the column...

[Jim W N]

Fun article. Gone seems to be those lighthearted days in Hollywood - everything and everyone is so serious now or their jokes are things like animal costumes behind the mike.

Oh well.

[Twotone]

Yep, leftism devours & destroys everything, including humor. I just posted another article, “I Don’t Miss the Nastiness of the Left.” It seems like folks are ever so slowly getting a clue.

[concentric circles]

"enjoy a name that will surely figure in the In Memoriam sequence - the late Kirk Douglas, who left us a few days ago at the age of 103."

The Life and Times of Hollywood.com - "Kirk Douglas died at 103. He was a sexual predator and possible brutal rapist (of Natalie Wood and others), possible murderer (Jean Spangler). Death does not erase crimes."