Free Republic

Fifty years ago this coming week - May 2nd 1968 - the world heard for the first time one of the great instrumental movie themes of all time, composed by Neal Hefti to accompany Jack Lemmon as he pads through a seedy Times Square at night and checks into a fleabag hotel to hurl himself to death from his bedroom window. Instead, he finds the window nailed shut, and, in frantically trying to open it so he can throw himself out, instead throws his back out. He winds up at a go-go bar and, uninterested in the dancers, throws back...

YOU might not think a movie about a fellow who lends his rooms to the married executives of his office as a place for their secret love affairs would make a particularly funny or morally presentable show, especially when the young fellow uses the means to get advanced in his job. But under the clever supervision of Billy Wilder, who helped to write the script, then produced and directed "The Apartment," which opened at the Astor and the Plaza yesterday, the idea is run into a gleeful, tender and even sentimental film. And it is kept on the side of...

<p>February 20, 2004 -- Remember "Missing," the 1982 movie by left-wing director Costa-Gavras, which starred Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek? The hit film accused the U.S. government of complicity in the disappearance and murder of a young New Yorker in the days following the 1973 military coup that toppled Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende, from power.</p>

Recently watching reruns of the classic TV series on the ME TV channel is the inspiration for today's feature, the hit comedy film which served as its basis. To quote the intro from the TV series: "Can 2 divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?"

The Prince of Wales was a "most likeable person", President Gaddafi a "mad clown" and Michael Jackson was "surprisingly shy". The private diaries of Ronald Reagan, which are about to be published for the first time, reveal a US president who was worried about imminent Armageddon but who also fretted about how he would handle chopsticks in front of the Chinese. The man who was credited with ending the Cold War reveals that he was "lonesome" when his wife, Nancy, was away and refused to talk to their son, Ron Junior, after he hung up on him. His carefully handwritten...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053291/