Spencer Tracy

Joan Bennett, an actress who matured from a winsome blond ingenue in movies of the 1930s to a sensuous brunette femme fatale in film noir classics of the 1940s, died of cardiac arrest Friday at her home in Scarsdale, N.Y. She was 80.Miss Bennett got her training opposite such stars as Ronald Colman in "Bulldog Drummond" (her first important role, at the age of 19 in1929), George Arliss in "Disraeli" (1929) and John Barrymore in "Moby Dick" (1930).She portrayed a personable waitress trading wisecracks with Spencer Tracy in "Me and My Gal" (1932)

The eternally vexing issue of race in America has been examined and dissected in so many ways by now that it's hard to say something new. So it's all the more surprising that a playwright should have managed to generate a fresh take on this subject out of dated material - the 1967 film “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.” Todd Kreidler re-examined the screenplay by William Rose and transformed it into a sturdy theatrical vehicle, as sobering as...

VIDEOWedding bill blues"Father of the Bride" is a remake, with Steve Martin in the Spencer Tracy role, but Steve Martin is no Spencer Tracy. The movie, nevertheless, does a good job of comically probing that most terrifying of all moments for all fathers, when he learns that his princess is to be another man's wife. It's panic time, but the movie doesn't probe this issue as deeply as it could, choosing instead to watch as the family comes to terms with an expensive wedding. Diane Keaton is wasted as Martin's wife, but Martin Short has an amusing turn as a wedding guru more expensive than an entertainment lawyer.

Caroline Kirwan Warfield, a former Baltimore News-Post feature writer whose many exploits included appearing in a movie with Clark Gable and sailing aboard an old square-rigger through a ferocious North Atlantic storm, died of heart failure Saturday at the Fairhaven retirement community in Sykesville. She was 91. Born Caroline Garner Kirwan in Baltimore and raised in Bolton Hill, she was a 1929 graduate of the Greenwood School and attended the Maryland Institute College of Art. She married Albert Gallatin Warfield in 1941 and lived for many years at Sunnyside Farm in Woodbine.

Incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich believes we can learn a lot from the movies -- like how to reform the welfare system.Build orphanages, he says. Many children of single welfare mothers would be better off in state-run orphanages or boarding schools, Mr. Gingrich says. And anyone who disagrees -- like first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton -- ought to rent "Boys Town," the 1938 film starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney that dramatized the founding of the famous Nebraska home for wayward boys.

Thomas Edison is the only scientist ever to have been portrayed by two different Hollywood stars, Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy. You don't make it to the silver screen even once unless there's something about your life that strikes a chord in the hearts of the plain people, and Edison definitely filled the bill. The idea of an all-American boy who skipped college to work as a telegraph operator, taught himself science after hours and invented the light bulb and phonograph was (and is) irresistibly appealing to the average middle-class American.

Peter Weir, the Australian director, says he chose to write an direct ''Green Card'' because he felt it was time to ''dust off this wonderful and abundant genre.''The ''genre'' is the Hollywood comedies of the '30s nd '40s, movies made by actresses like Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur and Claudette Colbert.''I didn't exactly grow up with them, but like all people who were raised during the '50s, the old Hollywood film was part of the decade. All those movies were being shown on television, in Australia, and I was taken by them,'' he said.

IT IS astonishing how much there is to keep up with, and how little time there is to do it. A few people -- President Clinton comes to mind -- seem able to keep up with everything, but everybody else has to say, "Sorry, dear Loni, but life is too short."I pick Loni at random as a human metaphor for all those things I am unable to keep up with because of the time shortage. I might just as well have picked Michael Jackson or the Uruguay round of GATT negotiations.I have been not keeping up with GATT, always pronounced "Gat," since 1972.

WASHINGTON -- Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr was Godzilla-size on the large-screen television at a local sports bar, but he and his history-making moment did not not seem to captivate the midday lunch crowd nearly as much as the bacon cheeseburgers."

Caroline Kirwan Warfield, a former Baltimore News-Post feature writer whose many exploits included appearing in a movie with Clark Gable and sailing aboard an old square-rigger through a ferocious North Atlantic storm, died of heart failure Saturday at the Fairhaven retirement community in Sykesville. She was 91. Born Caroline Garner Kirwan in Baltimore and raised in Bolton Hill, she was a 1929 graduate of the Greenwood School and attended the Maryland Institute College of Art. She married Albert Gallatin Warfield in 1941 and lived for many years at Sunnyside Farm in Woodbine.

"Into the Arms of Strangers," an Oscar-nominated documentary on British efforts to rescue German and other children targeted by the Third Reich, is this weekend's Cinema Sundays offering. Director Mark Jonathan Harris' film looks at the Kindertransport, a rescue effort that saved more than 10,000 children from the Nazi concentration camps. Transported to Britain, the children were placed in foster homes or hostels, with the idea that they would be reunited with their families at war's end. For most, the war ended with no family left to return to. One of those children was the mother of "Into the Arms of Strangers" producer Deborah Oppenheimer.

WASHINGTON -- Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr was Godzilla-size on the large-screen television at a local sports bar, but he and his history-making moment did not not seem to captivate the midday lunch crowd nearly as much as the bacon cheeseburgers."

Thomas Edison is the only scientist ever to have been portrayed by two different Hollywood stars, Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy. You don't make it to the silver screen even once unless there's something about your life that strikes a chord in the hearts of the plain people, and Edison definitely filled the bill. The idea of an all-American boy who skipped college to work as a telegraph operator, taught himself science after hours and invented the light bulb and phonograph was (and is) irresistibly appealing to the average middle-class American.

WHEN HILLARY Rodham Clinton called Republican plans for increasing the use of orphanages "unbelievable and absurd," Newt Gingrich urged her to rent the movie "Boys Town."But that 1938 classic -- which starred Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy -- portrayed an idealized orphanage that no longer exists, if it ever did.Any plans to revive America's ailing welfare programs on its model are nothing but Hollywood illusions.The truth about Boys Town was most famously revealed in a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1972 article in the Omaha Sun.That article reported that Boys Town's net worth was "at least $209 million -- possibly much more," which would have placed it among the 10 best-endowed universities in the United States, richer than Notre Dame or any other Catholic college.

Incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich believes we can learn a lot from the movies -- like how to reform the welfare system.Build orphanages, he says. Many children of single welfare mothers would be better off in state-run orphanages or boarding schools, Mr. Gingrich says. And anyone who disagrees -- like first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton -- ought to rent "Boys Town," the 1938 film starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney that dramatized the founding of the famous Nebraska home for wayward boys.

IT IS astonishing how much there is to keep up with, and how little time there is to do it. A few people -- President Clinton comes to mind -- seem able to keep up with everything, but everybody else has to say, "Sorry, dear Loni, but life is too short."I pick Loni at random as a human metaphor for all those things I am unable to keep up with because of the time shortage. I might just as well have picked Michael Jackson or the Uruguay round of GATT negotiations.I have been not keeping up with GATT, always pronounced "Gat," since 1972.

"Into the Arms of Strangers," an Oscar-nominated documentary on British efforts to rescue German and other children targeted by the Third Reich, is this weekend's Cinema Sundays offering. Director Mark Jonathan Harris' film looks at the Kindertransport, a rescue effort that saved more than 10,000 children from the Nazi concentration camps. Transported to Britain, the children were placed in foster homes or hostels, with the idea that they would be reunited with their families at war's end. For most, the war ended with no family left to return to. One of those children was the mother of "Into the Arms of Strangers" producer Deborah Oppenheimer.

The eternally vexing issue of race in America has been examined and dissected in so many ways by now that it's hard to say something new. So it's all the more surprising that a playwright should have managed to generate a fresh take on this subject out of dated material - the 1967 film “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.” Todd Kreidler re-examined the screenplay by William Rose and transformed it into a sturdy theatrical vehicle, as sobering as...

VIDEOWedding bill blues"Father of the Bride" is a remake, with Steve Martin in the Spencer Tracy role, but Steve Martin is no Spencer Tracy. The movie, nevertheless, does a good job of comically probing that most terrifying of all moments for all fathers, when he learns that his princess is to be another man's wife. It's panic time, but the movie doesn't probe this issue as deeply as it could, choosing instead to watch as the family comes to terms with an expensive wedding. Diane Keaton is wasted as Martin's wife, but Martin Short has an amusing turn as a wedding guru more expensive than an entertainment lawyer.

Peter Weir, the Australian director, says he chose to write an direct ''Green Card'' because he felt it was time to ''dust off this wonderful and abundant genre.''The ''genre'' is the Hollywood comedies of the '30s nd '40s, movies made by actresses like Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur and Claudette Colbert.''I didn't exactly grow up with them, but like all people who were raised during the '50s, the old Hollywood film was part of the decade. All those movies were being shown on television, in Australia, and I was taken by them,'' he said.