The Road is Rougher

If you missed it this afternoon -- if, for example, you were on the three o'clock Cornell bus from New York City to Ithaca, ETA 7:30 -- Judy Garland as Vicki Lester in A Star is Born sings one of the greatest movie tunes never to win an Oscar, "The Man That Got Away" (music Harold Arlen, words Ira Gershwin), plus such other songs as Rodgers and Hart's "You Took Advantage of Me." Movies and poetry department: after Norman Maine (played by James Mason) drowns, the Jack Carson character quotes "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." Our TV host informs us that Mason was offered the part only after a bunch of others (Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Stewart Granger, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, Laurence Olivier, and Ray Milland) turned it down. Which, in view of Norman Maine's character, is apt. Mason was nominated for best actor that year but lost to Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. There's a James Mason festival going on today on TCM. I wish they'd show Odd Man Out, Julius Caesar, and Lolita. Nyet. But North by North by Northwest at 10 PM is must viewing  -- DL