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Karen Black was one of the "countercultural possible stars" who emerged with the men of the 70's. You can find Karen Black in Easy Rider with Fonda and Hopper, and in a major role with Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. That her looks weren't conventional was part of the deal. She did play sexual parts, too -- like in "Portnoy's Complaint" with Richard Benjamin(Black plays a gal nicknamed "The Monkey" for her sexual moves), and in Drive He Said (with Bruce Dern, also of "that generation") for director Jack Nicholson. Black and Bruce Dern reteamed to support Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby, where Black's role was "white trash among the wealthy," -- rich man Dern's mistress.
The trouble began for Karen Black when various studios and directors tried to make a "regular star" out of her. I guess she must have taken on a contract with Universal and Universal put her in "Airport 1975," and she didn't quite fit the cheapjack melodrama.
Black's biggest opportunity to become a major "serious" film star came with "Day of the Locust" (1975) by director John Schesinger (Midnight Cowboy)...prestige director, prestige novel, prestige Paramount movie, Karen Black top billed. And it was a big arty flop. The material was simply too downbeat and symbolic to be a hit.
Came 1976, Karen Black and her old pal Bruce Dern reteamed yet again -- surprisingly -- to star in Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot. A Universal contract deal for Black. Everything about that movie seemed "wobbly" -- Hitchocck was no longer in his prime(despite a recent hit in Frenzy) and Black and Dern turned out to be "the lesser stars who said yes" after Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson(Dern's pal) turned them down. "Family Plot" ended up as Hitchocck's final film, a small film but not a bad one, but Karen Black didn't seem much of a star in it(she was outclassed by co-star Barbara Harris in the film.)
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In other words, "a fictional guess"(Weiner assuming that mother Betty Draper wouldn't notice her kids wearing lethal bags on their heads) versus "reality" (I was told NOT to wear such bags on my head.)
This MIGHT translate to sexual harrassment 1960 workplaces , too. Fictional(TV show on the workplace) versus reality(REAL workplaces.)
Maybe -- in SOME businesses -- even in 1960 women were treated with the requisite respect by men. I mean there is a history of many women "even back then" making it in the business world.
I know this: modernly and for a long time now, I am nothing but professional with women in the offices in which I work. I no longer even say "that's a nice dress" or "your hair looks good." And I figure some women would LIKE that compliment but...no can do.
BTW, Otter, I expect I am near your age, a bit older, but I have come to the very nice feeling now that the later years are here that one can stay pretty damn "young in the mind" even as the body starts to fail. As Clint Eastwood says, "the key is to keep the old man out," and I just don't feel old.
In the mind. Physically, uh, some things have needed to be dealt with. And will. But the mind remains fertile.
none of the women were out to marry these guys, so things were more subtle than they were on "Mad Men". Like the guy who'd only exchange polite "good morning" chatter with th youngest, best-looking women who worked there.
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A couple of points. When Mad Men premiered in 2007, its first episodes were set in 1960, and we got the "newbie secretary" Peggy Olsen(Elizabeth Moss) under rather constant sexual harrassment by a bunch of "frat guy" young advertising men. I mean, these guys never stopped. I personally felt it was overdone. I have no background on 1960 workplace for real, but it just seemed too much...like showrunner Matt Weiner BELIEVED that sexual harrassment was this overt.
However, in the first episode, Peggy as Don Draper's new secretary did make a romantic gesture to him -- she put her hand on his in a sexually inviting way -- and he firmly refused her. The message here seems to be: young secretaries went on the make for men in the office as much as men went for women. Hey, maybe.
This IS true and MeToo rather besmirched it: once you get out of high school or college and into the workplace as a single person, the workplace is where you ARE going to find possible lovers and spouses. Its only natural, it happens a lot(in my experience, including my own) and then somebody usually has to switch jobs if the couple is going to last. Complicated.
One more thing about Mad Men being "wrong" about the 60s: they had a scene where Betty Draper didn't notice or care that her kids were wearing dry cleaner bags on their heads and faces. Didn't she know they could SUFFOCATE! It was meant to be a dark joke about Betty being clueless but hey...I WAS a kid in the 60's and my mother was ALL OVER us not to put those bags on our heads, we could suffocate.
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So, Billy Wilder was wrong and so was Saul Bass. Hitchcock had done MANY scenes of this technical nature before.
What a bunch of liars.
Well, they all have their reasons. "Success has a hundred fathers" and Psycho was (ultimately) a success. So Hitchcock wouldn't reveal to Truffaut that Bass drew a storyboard for the shower murder. And Saul Bass would claim that he directed the shower scene. And Billy Wilder(more of jealousy) would contend that Hitchcock did NOT direct the shower scene.
Egos and tall tales drive a lot of people in a lot of industries(try Silicon Valley!) so its not like one ends up "hating" Hitchocck, Bass and Wilder for what they said here. It is more a matter of being amused, and in HItchcock's case, a reason why I may be a fan ...but not a fanboy. I can read where Hitchocck self-aggrandizes his work and refuses to share.
That said, Hitchcock DID give music man Herrman a bonus for Psycho and contended "30 percent of the impact of the movie is due to Mr. Herrmann." And Hitchcock DID invite Saul Bass to do more than the credits on Psycho, and DID give him a "Pictorial Consultant" credit. (But Hitchocck and Bass never worked together again, on credits or posters or ANYTHING, whereas Bass did Otto Preminger's posters for over 20 years.)
Its a mixed bag. Sometimes credit is given, sometimes it is not.
I think that Saul Bass himself said that the "quick cut montage" nature of the shower scene was something that he brought anew to Hitchcock. In which case, unfortunately, evidently neither Mr. Bass nor Mr. Wilder really KNEW Hitchcock's work.
Because these "quick cut montages" are visible in Hitchcock from as early as his silent films and on through his American career starting in the forties:
Saboteur: Bob Cummings fight with Norman Lloyd over the button to push to blow up the ship; Lloyd's sleeve giving way on the Statue of Liberty, thread by thread.
Shadow of a Doubt: The final to-the-death struggle between Young Charlie and Uncle Charlie between cars on the moving train.
Strangers on a Train: The cutting between the out of control carousel and the two men fighting ON the carousel.
Rear Window: The final to-the-death(almost) struggle between Raymond Burr and James Stewart.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions but especially 1956): The "stop the assassination" finale at the Albert Hall concert and in the '56 version, the stab in the back murder of Louis Bernard.
The Wrong Man: Vera Miles crazed swing of a hair brush at Henry Fonda's forehead -- connection, blood.
North by Northwest: the fast cutting on both the drunken drive and the Mount Rushmore sequence; the "slowed down montage" of the crop duster sequence and its final "death moments."
...so by the time Hitchcock reached Psycho, he had done quite a lot of "quick cut montage scenes." It was the CONTENT of this one(bloody butcher knife murder of a naked woman in a shower) and the CONTEXT of this one(alone at a deserted motel down the hill from a house of horrors) that took it to new levels.
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And now Billy Wilder comes in. Through film history from what I've read, it seems that Hitchcock was nicer to Wilder than Wilder was to Hitchcock. Hitchcock sent him a congratulatory telegram on "Double Indemnity" and they exchanged playful trade ads based on the Spellbound ad in 1945.
But elsewhere and later, Wilder was less kind towards Hitch: Wilder lived over 20 years after Hitchcock's death and noted in some interview: "Oh, Mr. Hitchcock. I'm glad I don't have HIM to compete with anymore. Always the super-solution, always the corpse." Hmm...a bit jealous?
Elsewhere he said "Mr. Hitchcock is quite good, but he only makes one kind of picture. I make many types of pictures." Oh, fair enough, but we know that Hitchocck found great VARIETY in his thrillers(romance, action, horror -- serious vs more entertaining.) And while Wilder didn't make thrillers regularly, crime and murder figured in quite a few: Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17(a traitor in the camp; killings); Witness for the Prosecution(which Wilder CALLED "My Hitchcock Movie" and which star Marlene Dietrich confused with Stage Fright which she did for Hitchcock.) And gangland murders drive Some Like It Hot. And there are deaths in Wilder's Sherlock Holmes film and his version of The Front Page. In Wilder's final film, Buddy Buddy, Walter Matthau plays a mob hit man.
So you could say that there were any number of corpses in Billy Wilder's films too. A good thing.
Anyway, in this same article where Hitchcock is busted on lying about Saul Bass's storyboards for the shower murder, we get Billy Wilder himself electing to lie in support of Saul Bass. Wilder is quoted in some inteview as being questioned about Saul Bass REALLY directing the shower scene and Wilder says: "Of course he did. Look at the scene. Its not like anything you will find in any other movies of Mr. Hitchcock's."
Really?
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And i don't think Tarantino will quit after his 10th film,
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I'm starting to think that ...nobody thinks this.
Tarantino has "couched this" by saying something like "well, this will be the last one of my serious work. Maybe I will do a few after that but they will be considered to be after my main period of work.)
Tarantino makes the point -- backed by the movies -- that once old-time directors like Hitchcock, Ford, and Wilder reached their 60's, they slowed down, their movies didn't fit the times and they turned in some of their worst movies. Yeah but that was then and this is now. Health regimens are better; lifespans are longer; guys like Spielberg and Scorsese and Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood have made some great films while in their seventies(and even Hitchocck made a damn good one right near the end -- Frenzy.)
But as you say:
yeah there will be a hiatus of like 5years where he's like 'nope I'm done for good, I mean it' then he'll come up with a new (theatre) movie , maybe Kill Bill 3 or Pulp Fiction 2 or he'll finally get offered Bond or Star Trek and he'll be like well these don't count as they're sequels or its not my franchise so its fine
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There you go. QT can invent his own rules for what is "an OK exception to his rule."
Still, he has been clever about announcing this as his last. In some ways it is a preemptive strike: critics won't be able to say "he's old and out of touch." HE is already saying that he doesn't want to BE old and out of touch. Smart showman.
I would like to add that even Paul Newman, with a "gifted" career that brought him most of the major projects in Hollywood in the 60s(there were few other leading men after all the old ones retired or died)...made quite a few stinkers to go with his classics, and felt being a movie star was somewhat beneath him. So he raced cars(very well) and he "did politics." (Back when it was more noble to do so.) Even HE felt guilty about being a star.
Nice analysis, RR has a pretty appalling movie resume tbh especially these recent near unknown Netflix movies he's been doing.
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I have Netflix and I've come to simply ignore the new RR films as they arrive. I can't even keep the titles straight. The Gray Man? Various action movies with car chases. "Red Notice" with its superexpensive team of RR, Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot -- major stars all -- anybody remember what it was about?
Striking Hollywood writers are upset that AI may start writing their scripts. I mean, isn't that ALREADY happening with RR's movies?
(By the way, this makes Tarantino SUPER valuable. He writes his own scripts, his dialogue is pretty unique and magical...HE isn't AI.)
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creatively he must feel quite empty so maybe why he's done all those business ventures (including Wrexham FC, a kind of save the club/save the town/save the people redemption tale to make him feel some worth)
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Movie stars have always made big money, but these Netflix paydays are insane. Any of us would take that pay, sure, but the overkill and overwealth probably "gets" to these performers in a world of abject poverty and strife. I recall Jim Carrey saying that at a certain point he had so much money "it feels like Monopoly money." Meaningless. But he kept it and stars sometimes NEED it to keep all those mansions and yachts paid up.
But wouldn't it be great if RR could make that kind of dough and have a "Cool Hand Luke" type drama on his resume? Or a buddy movie with a really good SCRIPT(like The Sting, not like Red Notice.) Probably impossible to do in today's Hollywood.
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She was quite good in her one Thriller episode, The Storm, in which she moves into hysterical mode again,
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Yes, Good Lord is she hysterical in The Bad Seed...the performance is full bore hysteria for most of the movie.
In the play, this guilt-ridden mother kills herself and her murdering daughter goes Scot free. In the movie, it is only a suicide ATTEMPT, the mother lives, and lighting kills the girl killer. I don't care if that betrays the story...I liked both outcomes.
Note in passing: Henry Jones, the unctuous coroner in Vertigo, all upper class and patrician in THAT one, here plays a twanging, slow witted rube of a handyman in The Bad Seed. He makes the mistake of trying to blackmail that cute little girl ...and gets a horrific death scene carried out entirely UNSEEN by the audience. But we HEAR his screams as he is burned to death from a fire in the pile of straw upon which he sleeps in the basement of the house. Unforgettably horrific...Hitchcockian.
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Miss Kelly's career was undercut at Fox when the studio hired on beautiful Gene Tierney, who got the better parts that Nancy deserved, as her career faded soon afterwards.
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That's showbiz. Somebody gets the part, somebody doesn't. There was an actor named Rod Taylor who did well enough in movies in the 60's before being relegated to TV in the 70's. Key to his "downgrade" I think, was that there was always some "bigger" actor who got parts he wanted in the 60's: James Bond(Connery), The War Wagon with John Wayne(Kirk Douglas), Planet of the Apes(Heston) Taylor could never get that BIG part that makes you a BIG star.
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Once again, I digress.
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Not while I'm around!
Hitchcock turned down The Bad Seed -- I think he saw that it was just too damn depressing. In the play, the little girl gets away with her murders. In the movie,director Mervyn Leroy and his writers add a new ending: the girl literally gets hit by a lighting bolt and killed while trying to recover evidence at the ocean pier. Yep...God kills her. Francois Truffaut, then a film critic and not a film maker, wrote of his dislike for The Bad Movie: "I shall never see a movie directed by Mervyn Leroy again!" Wow, that's a self-destructive critic. So Truffaut missed The FBI Story and Gypsy.
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(Kelly) was an attractive, decidedly feminine woman, and sister of actor Jack Kelly, of Maverick fame. Jack had the charm, and some flair as an actor, Nancy had more the acting chops.
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I used to watch Maverick as a kid(reruns) and I liked how the stories would switch from James Garner to Jack Kelly (they played brothers) and how sometimes they would work as a team. Maverick started as a James Garner vehicle, but he fought the studio so much that they brought in Kelly to help carry the load. Some other brothers and cousins were added over time(including Roger Moore!), but matinee idol James Garner and the less handsome, more middle-aged, slim and amusing Kelly were the best two. I LIKED Jack Kelly on Maverick, I LIKED how he was less traditionally handsome than Garner -- I could relate to him more.
I didn't know that Nancy Kelly and Jack Kelly were siblings. Neither one particularly rose as a star of sorts; he carried on in TV and I assume she went back to the stage?
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I agree as regards Ruth Roman's "butch" quality, noticed it the first time I saw the movie.
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This quality probably was even more pronounced when Roman is "mentally compared to" Grace Kelly and Kim Novak and Eva Marie Saint and Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren. She just didn't fit in! (Though with Suzanne Pleshette maybe.) These are all other Hitchcock actresses , of course. Mostly blondes.
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This may just be a matter of our observations. Even Nancy Kelly, no one's idea of a beauty, was better looking; and yes, even in The Bad Seed.
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The Bad Seed , from a hit Broadway play, was certainly a suspense film of great power to me. That "innocent little girl" is a murderess, and her first victim is a little boy who really didn't have it coming at all. Eileen Heckart got an Oscar nom for playing the boy's distraught mother trying to confront the little girl who murdered her boy. MY mother refused to ever watch The Bad Seed again after watching Heckert's performance.
Nancy Kelly played the little girl's guilt ridden mother(another Oscar nom?) Imported from Broadway, she joined Gwen Verdon(Damn Yankees) and some other stage stars in not making it in movies. But she has "The Bad Seed" as powerful epitath.
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Using "honey" to a customer is IMHO okay within limited circumstances, when things are already established as friendly and sexual interest has been tacitly ruled out.
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Yes.
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And of course it's fine between two people, when sexual interest has been firmly established, as in this movie, although strict professionalism would say that it's better used when they're alone together.
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I suppose indeed even in this movie, Heston continually calling Black "baby" while guiding her on flying the plane is a bit...unprofessional. Some of it is Heston's wooden acting, as well -- you never really FEEL these two are a couple.
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Now wasn't addressing female employees and co-workers by demeaning or sexual terms part of the whole "Mad Men" culture of the mid century? Back then men with the best jobs liked to play cock-of-the-walk at work, which must have been pretty damn hard to deal with.
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Oh, yeah. I don't go back THAT far for working environments, but I saw it in the 70's and 80s. The power dynamic was such that male bosses could say that to female underlings and MALE underlings couldn't do anything about it(this continued on as a corollary to "Me Too" harrassment.)
But I'd say its gotten a lot better, a lot more respectful and I simply don't see this anymore between men and women in my workplaces. On the other hand, I HAVE seen perfectly respectful men and women working together eventually reveal themselves as a romantic couple. They got that done in private. Heh.
Heh...the closest Charlie Sheen has come to a Tarantino flick was when he played the US President in Machete Kills(billed as "Carlos Estevez," in honor of brother Emilio Estevez, I guess.)
Because "Machete Kills" was the sequel to "Machete," which was based on a mere "fake trailer" in the double-bill movie Grindhouse, which had QT's "Death Proof" as one of the two features. Robert Rodriguez directed the other double bill movie(Planet Terror), and the Machete trailer, and the two Machete movies.
But you have to figure QT was around all of the "Machete" productions and crossed paths with "Carlos Estevez."
So...maybe.
One Tarantino flick left.
Thank you for reading.
..and if there are parts for them. Has QT written a script with a LOT of parts -- some maybe "one day cameos"?
His last one was pretty good in that regard. The script had room for (1) Big star Leo and (2) equally big star Brad and(3) aged legendary star Pacino(in only three scenes, only one of which was long) and (4) newly hot female star Margot Robbie ...and then..."others": Kurt Russell as a stunt coordinator (and narrator) and Zoe Bell as his hot tempered wife;;Timothy Olyphant and Luke Perry as the "Lancer brothers" stars; Bruce Dern in a role first accepted by Burt Reynolds, who died before filming could begin. Dakota Fanning in the film's OTHER major female role as the tough and menacing Squeaky Fromme(Jennifer Lawrence turned this down; she also turned down Daisy Domergue in Hateful Eight; I'm guessing she regrets at least ONE of those turn downs, her career is kind of cooling off.)
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As to other parts, I assume he will do his best to fit actors based on what the script requires. Will he play himself? :)
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He might take a role(he has in the past), but if the movie is set in 1977, he was a teenager then. Playing himself won't work.
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If not, whom will he cast?
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I dunno but I think its going to be exciting finding out.
Side issue: So often in his career, QT has "rescued" some faded or little known actor. I'd take this all the way back to Lawrence Tierney(the old bald guy) in Reservoir Dogs, and then Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Michael Parks, David Carradine, Don Stroud, Tom Wopat, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lee Horsley, Bruce Dern, Clu Gulager..maybe he'll find someone like that to "save" in his new (final) film.
Its going to be fun, I tell ya.
What i wonder is, how many of these guys are already booked for the next couple of years? Eisenberg, for example, has two upcoming projects listed in IMDb. Cera has eight. Would they really be available by fall? Or, more likely, has QT already cast someone? Or, is he not really that serious about fall and looking to film it further out?
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All good questions, and all go to the "unreliability" of the Hollywood moviemaking machine. For instance, QT might have to move the filming date to later...or choose to, if that means that somebody's schedule will open up.
On the other hand, sometimes actors and their management can "move heaven and earth" to make a movie they want to make. They delay ANOTHER movie start date. Or they work on two at once...travelling back and forth to locations and soundstages.
QT has gone ahead and put a massive urgency on "The Movie Critic." He says it is his last movie. Actors of all star levels will probably want to get into it if they can.
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Such a handsome man...so believably butchered in the face after the mid-air collision -- especially his eye.
There's a lot of "corn" in Airport 1975 but once the crisis goes into action, there is a some gripping realistic drama , too.
I like how the flight attendants offer to give Zimbalist morphine or something to "put him out," but he strains to say "No...I can help." Even semi-consicious. And of course, later he does when Karen Black loses all radio contact with the ground and Zimbalist manages to say a few words that save the day ("Thrusters forward, about an inch.")
George Kennedy was an amiable presence in 70's movies, no longer ALWAYS a villain(but sometimes) and in the Airport series a good guy. Here he gets a scene talking by radio to his wife and son who are on the possibly doomed plane and suddenly "pulls off" great emotion, choking back tears as a man WOULD who might be about to lose wife and child. After all, he did have an Oscar.
Movies like "Airport 1975" are not ALL bad. Generally actors want to play good scenes or lines. SOME of the cast in Airport 1975 get SOME such lines and scenes. (Not Helen Reddy and Linda Blair though!)
Such a handsome man...so believably butchered in the face after the mid-air collision -- especially his eye.
There's a lot of "corn" in Airport 1975 but once the crisis goes into action, there is a some gripping realistic drama , too.
I like how the flight attendants offer to give Zimbalist morphine or something to "put him out," but he strains to say "No...I can help." Even semii-consicious. And of course, later he does when Karen Black loses all radio contact with the ground and Zimbalist manages to say a few words that save the day ("Thrusters forward, about an inch.")
George Kennedy was an amiable presence in 70's movies, no longer ALWAYS a villain(but sometimes) and in the Airport series a good guy. Here he gets a scene talking by radio to his wife and son who are on the possibly doomed plane and suddenly "pulls off" great emotion, choking back tears as a man WOULD who might be about to lose wife and child. After all, he did have an Oscar.
Movies like "Airport 1975" are not ALL bad. Generally actors want to play good scenes or lines. SOME of the cast in Airport 1975 get SOME such lines and scenes. (Not Helen Reddy and Linda Blair though!)
Well, that's true.
I am mixing apples and oranges here -- affection between two loving partners (as Chuck Heston and Karen Black are in Airport 1975) would seem to allow for "honey" and "baby" all the time.
Male bosses calling female underlings "baby" or "honey" is out of line. Or frankly bosses to employees across all sexual persuasions. Professional terms are always better and I use them.
I'm not sure why I get called "honey" sometimes by female clerks, but it doesn't strike me as a romantic overture. Just friendly, I guess. Still...I notice it, every time.