Free Republic

It’s been said that “peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading.” For the brief moment between the two global wars of the 20th century, everybody who could afford it stood around gloriously drinking champagne. The sorrows of the Great War weren’t only personal — they launched a generation into the indulgence and excess that have become trademarks of their era. Perceiving the fragility of life, the partiers of the 1920s and ’30s took the eat-drink-and-take-pleasure advice of Ecclesiastes to heart, often in a less than biblical manner. A century later, the glamor still fascinates...

John Guillermin, a prolific British director best known for blockbusters like the 1974 disaster movie “The Towering Inferno” and the 1976 remake of “King Kong,” died on Sunday at his home in Topanga, Calif. He was 89. The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Mary Guillermin, said. In addition to big-budget extravaganzas, Mr. Guillermin (the name is French, but he pronounced it GILL-er-min) directed a raft of films in various genres from the end of the 1940s until he retired from filmmaking in the 1980s.