HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD, or not: Don't they make great films anymore?

What is the greatest film ever made?

Oh, you know it but you'd never guess what and why. Well, I'm about to tell you.

With the Golden Globes happening February 28th and the Oscars April 25th, this may be an opportune time to talk about the best picture ever made.

A touch of background: Most listers of the top 10, or the top 100, or whatever. best movies of all time usually start with Citizen Kane, or Casablanca, The Godfather, Grapes of Wrath, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With The Wind, The Graduate, On the Waterfront, etc. and these are good. They however don't offer what we seem to need most in a movie that tells a story, makes us smile and offers a life lesson. 

There is one though. And don't laugh or think I'm crazy (well, maybe that), but this one offers joy--both overtly and subliminally--in a belief that has been told over and over again but hidden in the ways it braces our spirit with love, hope and redemption seasonally, year after year.

You can start guessing but you'll never get it... until now. Miracle on 34th Street won three Academy Awards in 1948: for Best Story, Best Writing and Best Supporting Actor, Santa Claus/Edmund Gwenn. OK, so it's not Christmas but just live with it, will you?

It was the black and white original version that best told every child's story. It spread a spirit and the hope that prevails at the appropriate time every year* despite the arguments that Santa isn't real. But he is, and the United States Postal Service officially proved it.

Historically, Santa Clause/St. Nicolas, was first 'real' about 300 years after Christ's birth, revered as a kind and generous monk. He was born in where modern day Turkey is on the map, and was admired for his piety and kindness. He was the subject of many legends because he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick. There are many supporting stories. Perhaps he was Mother Teresa before she was.

Over the years he became known as the protector of children and sailors. And, as we learned as kids, if
you say 'St. Nicholas' 10 times faster and faster, it turns into 'Santa Claus.'  

Told you so. 

Though you've probably seen Miracle on 34th Street many times, it should be most remembered for what it expresses through the eyes of a child, our tomorrow. 

This was not the first time such irrefutable proof was offered. In 1897, a newspaper writer for The New York Sun was given a task to to make something good happen by answering a little girl's  'Letter to the Editor.'  Who doubts his answer was truth itself.  

That Question:

Dear Editor--

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O'Hanlon

115 West Ninety Fifth Street 

His response, written with all verbosity and lacking some of today's correctness, nonetheless focused on the spirit and goodness of Santa that we all hold childlike within us to recreate annually for our little ones... and all the rest of the world. Remember, this was 134 years ago:

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.

We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Believe in Santa or not. But to continue without wonder and awe means there is no magic beyond what we know, experience and see. And that would be very sad indeed, especially for the young whose minds should be filled with the wonder and belief in the magic of good. The world we call 'real' will come soon enough, when we can no longer hear the bells.

*That original version of Miracle on 34th Street, is now only available to stream on Disney+ so you will not see it broadcast at Christmastime, or elsewhere to stream. It can still be purchased for home viewing. 

We're all going to the dogs

We're all going to the dogs...at least, the old dogs. When I wrote about Max, the oldest dog in the world at 26, I heard from Eric Shackle in Sydney. (FYI: Eric is copy editor of Seattle-based A Word A Day -- wordsmith.org -- a free newsletter for 'wordies.' He blogs at lifebeginsat80.blogspot.com Eric likes the old stuff and recently did a run-down of old dog age claims. One was reported to be 141 years-old... actually a mere 20 in dog years.)

Anyhow, reading his blog, I found out that someone thinks Scoobie Doo, who turns 40 this year, is the oldest 'non-real' dog. Sorry, not even close. He is, however, the best at discovering ghosts, and to this day, remains scared-to-death of 'em. I could swear it almost sounds like Scoobie is 'talking' when he whines.

So who are some of the other old dogs still around today?

Snoopy is 69... today, in fact. He first appeared on Oct. 4th, 1950. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SNOOPY! Give us one of those happy, levitating moves... you know, the one where your eyes squint and your ears wiggle.

Lassie, the world's most famous dog (so says her website) first appeared in the 1957 movie, The Wayfarers. Being a real dog, she would be pretty old... except Lassie was played, over time, by 10 different dogs... all males. (Is there a dog glass ceiling too?) My favorite Lassie movie line: "What is it Lassie? Timmy's in the well?" If it wasn't for Lassie, Timmy wouldn't be here today.

We can't forget Marmaduke. This loveable great dane was first seen in the spring of 1954, so he is 53... still pretty old for a dog... especially an overgrown lap dog.

Hagar the Horrible's dog, Snert, is just a kid in cartoon dog years at 46. He is supposed to be a hunting dog but never pays any attention to Hagar. Snert occupies a special place in my heart because one of my favorite, early dogs was a poodle-mix character of characters that I named Snert. He loved me more than any other person, place or thing ever could. That's what dogs do. Snert did have a companion dog, Hagar.

Can't forget Disney's Pluto. His first movie was The Chain Gang in 1930. So Pluto started collecting Social Security 14 years ago. Only one Disney character was more 'goofy' than Pluto.

However, the crown goes to Chic Young's Daisy, who beat out Pluto by a few months. Daisy, of course, was Blondie and Dagwood's dog... the one who helped raise Cookie and Alexander. I'd say she did a fine job of it except that those kids are still... kids. I wish I aged like comic strip characters.

Since Daisy (I wrongly thought) wins the oldest dog title, real or imagined, I looked her up on Blondie.com . Interesting website filled with fun facts (if comics are facts). The Blondie strip (and it is called Blondie) originally began with Dagwood as her beau.

Blondie Boopadoop was a looker who every 1930s zoot-suited guy dreamed of, even though she came from the wrong side of the tracks. But it was Dagwood, with all his clumsiness, that caught her eye. Now Dagwood had credentials. He was the bumbling son of J. Bolling Bumpstead, the fabulously wealthy railroad man who not only owned all the property on this side of the track, he owned all the property on the other side too... and the 3,000 miles of track that separated them.

The 'strip' changed abruptly when the depression hit America and millionaires went out of vogue. So Dagwood was disinherited when he married Blondie, his true love, forsaking all the money. A 'true' fake love story.

Whoops! The Queen is dead. Long live the King. Just recalled Buster Brown's dog TIGE, who first appeared in a comic on May 4, 1902. So Tige, an American pit bull terrier, is 107 years-old and still appears regularly in the inside sole of every pair of Buster Brown children's shoes. Buster's side-kick is Mary Jane, another shoe type. (Hmm. Coincidence?) The Buster (named after Buster Keaton) Brown association with the shoe company happened early in Tige's 'life,' at the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis where a shoe company purchased the rights to the name and it's characters.

I do remember an early kid's radio show, Let's Pretend, sponsored by Buster Brown Shoes. My favorite show character was 'Froggie, the Gremlin,' who was invisible to do his pranks until he "plunked his magic twanger. BOINGGGG!" The Buster Brown commercial lead off with a barking dog, Tige. Buster would say, "That's my dog, Tige. He lives in a shoe. I'm Buster Brown. Look for me in there too."

OK. That's enough old dogs for now. You can't teach em new tricks anyway.

Best Baseball Movie Ever

"Field of Dreams," of course. It was the best... and it was also one of Kevin Costner's three movies about baseball. (Can you name the other two?)

A key character in the film was Archie, 'Moonlight' Graham, played by Burt Lancaster. (I just found out that Graham was a real person!) The film didn't get everything right--like his meeting with fictional characters Ray Kinsella and Terrance Mann in 1972. The real 'Moonlight' died in 1965--poetic license, they call it. 'Moonlight' Graham did OK for himself though, in depiction and real life.

He was well known and highly respected as a kind and benevolent physician from Chishelm, Minn... just like in the movie. He really did play minor league baseball (in Charlotte and Scranton every summer from 1902 until 1908) and once, played a few games with the New York Giants against the Brooklyn team that later became the Dodgers. He always desired to be a doctor first, a baseball player second. He moved to Minnesota for his health. He had a lung condition and he wanted to live where the air was clean.

I learned all this from a synopsis of a biography soon to be released, "Chasing Moonlight: The True Story of Field of Dreams Doc Graham," by Brett Friedlander and Robert Reising. I'll no doubt give it a look.

Kevin Costner's other two baseball movies? "Bull Durham" (another classic) and "For the Love of the Game." And no, ladies, his is not bare-butt naked in either of those. You have to see "Dances With Wolves" for that.