Thumbs Up

Stop the presses!  Only one other time in Letter From Elba history have I made a post switch.  Today’s post was supposed to be about the one enchanted evening I spent with the fabulous Albert Finney.  But I’m sure he won’t mind being bumped today.  It’s only fitting, after all, that one movie legend make way for another.

I’ve come to say ave atque vale to an idol and a role model- the brilliant newspaperman and Pulitzer-prize winning movie columnist, Roger Ebert, who passed away at the age of seventy on Thursday.

I hate to write a post so close to its publication time.  It doesn’t give me a chance to refine the final product to my satisfaction- or yours.  But I think it’s only right today that I am working on deadline.  It’s my tribute to him- as one fellow employee of the Chicago Sun Times to another.

His career of forty-six years there was storied.  The paper devoted six pages to his life and achievements.  My career as their humor columnist lasted ten, and I spent them working for the Pioneer Press-  twenty-six suburban newspapers owned and operated by the Sun Times.  (At my death, I’m hoping for six inches of column space.)

But we had more in common that a name on the bottom of our paychecks.  We shared a deep, profound, reverent, (and sometimes irreverent) love of the movies.  This was a bond that brought us together in the 1970’s when I first met Roger.

I heard somehow that he was offering a movie class.  Can you imagine how excited I was? To be able to sit at the feet of the undisputed master of film criticism and study with him.  What a glorious opportunity for a cineaste like me.

I had been a movie buff virtually my entire life.  One of my very first vivid memories is that of seeing Peter Pan at the State and Lake Theater downtown with my grandmother.  (I just ran it by IMBD and I would have been barely four at the time.)  I loved Nana the dog.

(This was the second attempt at seeing that movie, btw.  The first time around it had been sold out, and my poor grandmother, simply unaware of what she was getting both of us into, took me into the nearest downtown movie palace to see the next available feature.  It turned out to be Them, you know, the one about the giant ants.  I had nightmares for YEARS.  But that’s the fate of an ardent movie-goer.  Sometimes it’s Nana dogs and sometimes it’s giant ants.  You’re never quite sure when you lays down your money and you takes your chance.)

And I also vividly recall going to a drive-in movie and seeing No Time for Sargeants in my parents’ car when I was around seven.  And that started a love affair with Andy Griffith that continued unabated even today.  And when those latrine toilets “saluted,” that was it, brother.  Right there and then, I fell hook, line and sinker for the movies in toto.

I read everything I could about them.  I saw every “Saturday Night at the Movies,” and “Movie Matinee” on television.  I listened carefully to my father, and when he spoke of his affection for Citizen Kane, Laura, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Flying Down to Rio, The Gay Divorcee, Dinner at Eight, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, I watched- and loved- them too.  A great start for any budding cinephile, by the way.

Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, these were just some of my dad’s screen idols, and I eagerly adopted them as my own.  (And I had to be the only eight year old on the planet who was crazy about Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton.)

I was mad about the movies.  Their history, too.  And because I had a quirky brain that retained practically everything I read, I became a real expert in the field of early Hollywood and movie lore in general.

Which puts me right back in Roger’s class in 1976.  He was going to teach us all a thing or two about 1946’s Notorious, one of his favorites- and mine.  It had a stellar pedigree.  Story by Ben Hecht, directed by the maitre, Alfred Hitchcock, and what a love and acting triangle- suave Cary Grant, the beauteous Ingrid Bergman, and the superb Claude Rains.  It even had Madame Konstantin to give it a camp, gothic flavor.  And it had a fabulous MacGuffin.

But did Roger focus on any of that?  Nope, he just assumed that we already knew all about those elements.  Instead he showed us Notorious frame by frame.  And discussed Ingrid Bergman’s wardrobe- and what it signified.

Yep, I learned all about the moral ambiguity of stripes.  Of her character’s journey from black dresses to white ensembles- and salvation.  It was heady, brainy stuff and it absolutely forever changed the way I watched that movie.

Now all I see is Ingrid Bergman’s midriff-skimming top.

But I don’t have to ponder its meaning.  Roger had already thought about it for me.  He did all my movie legwork, in fact.  Whenever I was undecided about what to see or what I had just seen, I turned to him and his scintillating, insightful movie reviews.  If I couldn’t always trust my own judgement I knew that I could always rely on his.

A word here about his partner in crime, Gene Siskel.  He too, passed away, much too soon, in 1999.  And he, too, was a terrific critic and a great guy.  These frenemies might have disagreed about movies throughout their long association, but they were united by twin qualities of brilliance and menschmanship.  I like to think of them now, reunited once more and attending the Greatest Film Festival Ever Run.

Roger Ebert was a hero.  He faced horrible medical realities with unflinching courage and a great sense of humor.  And with the unflagging devotion of his wonderful wife Chaz, he managed to keep typing all the way.

I will forever be grateful to him.  And he will be forever with me whenever I watch a movie.

I’ll give him his usual seat on the aisle.  My father can grab another.

I’ll take the one in the middle.