Cool, an Eric Enders sighting! Not only does he comment on Weisman's assessment of Casablanca and Curtiz, he lists his own top 11 overrated movies.

Casablanca is no more overrated than Babe Ruth, and only a thoroughly dyspeptic human being could fail to love it. The most overrated film of all time is Citizen Kane. Way too much self-consciousness on Welles's part to raise it above the level of a slightly better than average art house movie.

And Jaffe's point about Curtiz and Alston is on the money. Alston knew that it wasn't about him, either.

A Hollywood historian once noted Curtiz would never have survived in the current Hollywood environment. Now directors are expected to be artists who create and develop projects into motion pictures."

This isn't true at all. Off the top of my head, there's Brett Ratner, Antonia Bird, Neil LaBute, and Curtis Hanson, all of them more craftsmen than artistes. Not to mention the directors of 90% of romantic comedies.

The most overrated film of all time is Citizen Kane. Way too much self-consciousness on Welles's part to raise it above the level of a slightly better than average art house movie."

Humbug. Kane does have a ton of "Look at me! I'm arty!" shots, but almost all of them work. And it has a brilliant script, acting, and editing. I'm not going to genuflect before it and tell you that it's the greatest film that ever was or will be. But it is very, very good.

Eric Enders, from the comments:

I don't think Casablanca is the slightest bit overrated. Certainly not the most overrated film in history -- for me, the shortlist for that honor would begin with Ben-Hur, Gone With the Wind, 2001, Chicago, To Kill a Mockingbird, Million Dollar Baby, The Dark Knight, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Gran Torino, Nashville, and Gladiator, just off the top of my head.

I have no problems with that list except 2001 and Nashville.

I don't think Casablanca is the slightest bit overrated. Certainly not the most overrated film in history -- for me, the shortlist for that honor would begin with Ben-Hur, Gone With the Wind, 2001, Chicago, To Kill a Mockingbird, Million Dollar Baby, The Dark Knight, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Gran Torino, Nashville, and Gladiator, just off the top of my head.


Obviously...Eric Enders dislikes John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Capt. Oveur.

If he's using Michael Curtiz as an example of a craftsman, rather than claiming he was an anomaly for the time, he'd be right. There were many fine directors during the heyday of classic Hollywood who were like that -- Mitchell Leisen, Jack Conway, W.S. Van Dyke, to name a few. None were Lubitsch or Capra, but all knew what worked, coordinated with the resources the studio had on hand, then got the job done. And the three directors I mentioned respectively made "Remember The Night," "Libeled Lady" and "The Thin Man" -- none of them admittedly "Casablanca" or "Kane," but excellent films nonetheless.

A Lubitsch, with his emphasis on story and characters rather than special effects, could never thrive in today's Hollywood. At best, he'd be a favorite of the art-house crowd, if that.

The most overrated film of all time is Citizen Kane. Way too much self-consciousness on Welles's part to raise it above the level of a slightly better than average art house movie."

Humbug. Kane does have a ton of "Look at me! I'm arty!" shots, but almost all of them work. And it has a brilliant script, acting, and editing. I'm not going to genuflect before it and tell you that it's the greatest film that ever was or will be. But it is very, very good.

All of which just goes to to show the essential subjectivity of all "best of" lists. It's not that I think Citizen Kane is a bad movie, just that it's placed so far up in the stratosphere among critics that it's easily the most overrated. I wouldn't put it in the top 100, let alone the top 10, but of course all this depends on what you're looking for in a movie to begin with. Eric had me nodding in agreement with most of his "overrated" list until he got to Million Dollar Baby, a movie which it's impossible to form any sort of objective opinion about, since so much of it's bound to be wrapped up in what you think of (a) boxing; (b) women in boxing; (c) Clint Eastwood; (d) pathos in general; (e) pathos as executed in this particular movie; and (f) your general opinion of Hillary Swank. I thought it was a terrific movie, but I can easily see why others wouldn't.

As for Citizen Kane, my problem with it is simple: I don't give a rat's patooie about any of the characters, and I know too much about William Randolph Hearst to see it as in any way biographical---even though Hearst himself saw enough of that in it to ban ads for the movie from his newspapers. It's one of countless examples of why Hollywood is almost (95% of the time) never much good at movies with social commentary of any type. Foreign directors are far better at that sort of thing.

The Kane character was a composite of several titans of industry, not only Hearst. Unfortunately, the Kane-is-Hearst gospel has led to Marion Davies being deemed Susan Alexander for several decades; only now is she being recognized for her skills as an actress, particularly in silent comedy. (And Davies was long beloved in the industry for her generosity.)

As for "Kane" the film, what makes it so special isn't so much the storyline as the approach, the effects it used, the camera angles and other things; they don't seem radical now, but they were then. It's the cinematic equivalent of Stravinsky's "The Rites Of Spring."

I don't give a rat's patooie about any of the characters, and I know too much about William Randolph Hearst to see it as in any way biographical"

I agree. It isn't a Hearst biography at all. Herman Mankiewicz took a few details from his acquaintance Hearst's life: a yellow journalist, catalyst of the Spanish-American War, Marion Davies ("Rosebud" apparently was Hearst's pet name for her clitoris), and San Simeon. Mankiewicz put in just enough true details to piss off Hearst, though not enough to make Kane actually resemble him. As I'm sure you know, Hearst was no tragic antihero. He enjoyed being rich, and had quite a good time of it. There was no lifetime of regrets or dying alone for Hearst.

The character of Kane is largely based on Welles himself. Blessed with brilliance, charm and power, he bursts onto the scene as a wunderkind. Through his arrogance and willfulness, he gradually drives away the people who love him. He loses most of his power. He becomes a caricature of himself. When he dies, those who knew him remember him as both a genius and a bastard. I don't think those similarities are coincidences. Mankiewicz knew Welles well enough to have seen both those sides of him. Welles also wrote some of the script, and Orson Welles's favorite subject was Orson Welles, so I can easily believe that he added a bit of self-assessment in there too.

For your point about the characters, I can't really argue about that. If they bore you, they bore you. It's purely subjective, so I'm sure I can't change your mind about that.

The Kane character was a composite of several titans of industry, not only Hearst. Unfortunately, the Kane-is-Hearst gospel has led to Marion Davies being deemed Susan Alexander for several decades; only now is she being recognized for her skills as an actress, particularly in silent comedy. (And Davies was long beloved in the industry for her generosity.)

That take is in turn part truth and part libel avoidance. That wasn't a steel baron or a Wall Street tycoon that Welles was portraying. Nobody was under any illusions that it was anyone else but Hearst who was Welles's intended target, if not his exact historical counterpart.

As for "Kane" the film, what makes it so special isn't so much the storyline as the approach, the effects it used, the camera angles and other things; they don't seem radical now, but they were then. It's the cinematic equivalent of Stravinsky's "The Rites Of Spring."

And that's exactly why I said that it all depends on what you're looking for in a movie to begin with. I've always seen Citizen Kane more as a movie made for critics and film students than for the average filmgoer. IMO if you're looking for serious social commentary, for the most part you have to look abroad (early Fellini, Pontecorvo, Pal Gabor, Hector Babenco, etc.), and if you're looking for a good story, you can find a zillion better examples in the Hollywood of Welles's time, including several that he made himself.

The character of Kane is largely based on Welles himself. Blessed with brilliance, charm and power, he bursts onto the scene as a wunderkind. Through his arrogance and willfulness, he gradually drives away the people who love him. He loses most of his power. He becomes a caricature of himself.

Good point. I'm old enough to remember Welles's final act of pitching wine on late night TV commercials. To me he was kind of like Marlon Brando: No question about his genius, but you have to wonder what more that there might have been if all the personal baggage hadn't gotten in the way.

One of the more interesting "readings" of Kane is by English critic David Thomson, whose thesis is that Kane is not about Hearst, but about Orson Welles himself. The depiction of a figure with a monumental ego, brilliance seemingly bordering on genius, who achieved amazing success at an early age, but said success was largely based on trickery and deception. And the remainder of the movie represents a startling foreknowledge on the part of Welles of what would happen to Welles (Kane) when he is "found out". Thomson also says that the relationship between Kane and his charges at the newspaper parallels the love/hate relationship between Welles and his stable of players at the Mercury Theater.

As for the movie itself, TerpNats has it right--the cinematic effects were radical in its time, but can now seem very quotidian.

So if Alston = Curtiz, then who = Welles?

Durocher? Dressen? Billy Martin?

I think Pete Rose maybe

So if Alston = Curtiz, then who = Welles?

Bobby Valentine, who wasn't such a bad actor himself.

I have no problems with that list except 2001 and Nashville.

I don't "get" Altman. Never have, probably never will.

I don't "get" Altman. Never have, probably never will.

I don't get Altman either and find his movies to be very hit or miss. I really didn't like Nashville, but really loved McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, and MASH.

Nashville -- as was MASH and The Player -- was a legitimately great movie. And The Long Goodbye had Jim Bouton in a pivotal supporting role.

In the recent ROBERT ALTMAN: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY, Bouton recalled that his character was found dead, lying naked, in a box of ice. Altman got Bouton to undress and then filmed the scene *very* discreetly. At the wrap party, Bouton remembered all the coasters had photos of his nude scene.

Oh, and Orson Welles = Billy Beane in 40 years.

I don't "get" Altman. Never have, probably never will.

I don't get Altman either and find his movies to be very hit or miss

Mostly miss, but then he gave us Short Cuts and his entire career was redeemed.

The most overrated film of all time is Citizen Kane.

Much the way Babe Ruth is the most overrated ballplayer of all time, and the Beatles are the most overrated rock group of all time. It's easy to overrate the greatest ever.

Enders in the comments from TFA:

Casablanca's a visual stunner, but I also think that owes more to the art direction/set decoration than the camerawork

That's a good point, and all those aspects of a film have little necessarily to do with the director – especially on a studio sound stage in the 1940s. The person who photographed Casablanca was Arthur Edeson, who was one of the very great Hollywood cinematographers. He had shot (among umpteen other films) the wonderfully inventive silent Thief of Bagdad with Douglas Fairbanks, and Frankenstein and The Old Dark House for director James Whale, and the Laughton/Gable Mutiny on the Bounty, They Drive by Night, The Maltese Falcon ... this was a guy who knew his way around a camera. I imagine that Curtiz just let him shoot the picture.

By the same token, Welles on Citizen Kane was lucky enough to converge with Gregg Toland, who was both technically inventive and had an artistic flair – and was given a lot of free rein on the set to do interesting stuff. I don't think that Welles, initially, knew much about cinematography, if he ever did. To me the really innovative stuff in Citizen Kane is the sound mixing and editing. Welles knew the stage and he knew radio: his element was sound. He must have woken up one morning and said "they've been making talking pictures for 15 years and nobody's done much yet except just record some dialogue and slap music over it."

YMMV, but I enjoy Citizen Kane – I don't think it's artsy, I think it's a corny biopic at heart and stays true to that vision straight over the top and into film history.

Part of the problem in assessing film directors is that there are several different concepts of what they should do. There are some directors (Chaplin is the archetype) who write, rehearse, shoot, design, star in, edit, write the music for, and generally obsess over every aspect of their films. There are others, as rightly observed of Curtiz here, who limit themselves to directing traffic on the first-unit set. Take an example: the opening sequence of Casablanca ("Perhaps tomorrow we'll be on that plane" ... "vultures, vultures everywhere." It takes a ton of good collaboration to pull off that sequence: stylish design, as Eric notes, coherent story-boarding on one side and editing on the other, Edeson at the camera, highly-polished character acting ... and the one guy responsible for getting everyone on the set and moving efficiently in the right ways is the director, who at this point doesn't give a damn about art. Curtiz was really good at that.

There are other directors who clearly have a big impact on the visual aspect of their films, but know nothing about how cameras work. John Ford is said never to have looked through a camera, but he worked with the best cinematographers (including Toland, on The Grapes of Wrath) and created a compelling visual style nonetheless. Something like the collaboration between a manager and a great pitching coach?

The analogies to baseball are among the problems involved in comparing Frank Chance or somebody like that, the Chaplin of managers, to somebody like Alston who just runs the guys out there, to somebody like Joe Torre who is frankly more of an executive producer, a veteran in the business who keeps everybody happy. Lasorda was an executive producer type, too.

Most film directors, and probably most baseball managers, in any day and age, are just people who fill the top role because there has to be a top role. They exist to be fired, though luckily quite a few films get wrapped without that happening.

Just one more thing before I actually do some work this morning: @#3, Neil LaBute is the last guy I would put in a list of non-artistes. He has collected a big check for the occasional A-list picture (Nurse Betty, Possession), but he's pretty much got the dream auteur existence as a playwright, occasionally filming something he's written. Though maybe that's just an extreme example of a kind of Hollywood dream ‐ check-collecting craftsman by day, enfant terrible of the black-box theatre companies by night ...

The most overrated film of all time is Citizen Kane.

Much the way Babe Ruth is the most overrated ballplayer of all time, and the Beatles are the most overrated rock group of all time. It's easy to overrate the greatest ever.

Well, there's that, but in the case of Ruth you've got objective criteria that puts him in the top handful of players no matter how you'd place him within that mix. In the case of the Beatles and Citizen Kane there's obviously no such way of measuring "greatness" other than popularity among critics and / or the public, both of which present their obvious flaws. Thank God that the sabermetricians haven't figured out a way to quantify greatness in music or movies.

Thank God that the sabermetricians haven't figured out a way to quantify greatness in music or movies.

the park effects would be a bitch to figure...

I can see where Andy is coming from. Citizen Kane is a great movie, but it has become so venerated, you can't even discuss the qualities (and limitations) of its greatness. I like it's brashness, its verve--it's a young man's project and bursting with energy. I particular treasure this quality in an artist because it's one he quickly loses. It's like those transcendental grins and smiles of glee that can transfix a young child's face. Purity like that never survives childhood.

Walter Kerr's Famous Schizophrenic Attack on Welles

I link Kerr's famous, and maybe premature, elegy/putdown of Welles to show the extreme reactions that Welles elicited in his early years--here the extremes are from one very famous theater critic. "Perhaps the youngest has-been now living." That's hard. He concludes that Welles's big problem maybe was that he spread himself too thin:

Welles is once supposed to have arrived somewhere for a lecture engagement only to be confronted with a dismally small audience and no one on hand to introduce him. He is thereupon supposed to have introduced himself as Orson Welles, producer, director, scenarist, magician, editor and actor, concluding with the remark that ‘It’s a pity there are so many of me, and so few of you.’

The trouble with Orson Welles is that there is just one too many of him, and a quick—and for the rest of us, painless—amputation might restore an invigorating talent to a theatre which could make use of it.

Substantively, though, he locks-in on the young Welles's main deficit:

As an emotional actor Welles is without insight, accuracy, power or grace. In short, without talent. The only parts he could ever play were parts that were cold, intellectual, emotionally dead.

This is Kerr on Welles the actor, but I think it has merit if it is applied to Welles the auteur film maker, too. Especially Welles the young film maker. His work is uninformed sometimes, at points, by a lack of the emotional emphasis. He has the craftsmanship to go through the right motions, but it's like what Mark Twain told his wife when she tried to cure him of his profanity by engaging in it herself: "Livy, you got the lyrics down, but you can't carry the melody." He's got the mind but not the feel. Many child prodigies are like hot-house produce. Forced to mature mechanically, they don't quite have the taste of the real thing. Welles, to a great extent, overame it,proably at great personal cost, but you can't get over the sense you have sometimes that he know more than he feels. I often get the feeling that his intellect overwhelmed his experience. I still think he's great.

Technically, Welles had a phantom master always at his side--John Ford--and if you have to have one, might as well be the best. He prepared for Citizen Kane by running Ford's stuff over and over. He assimilated well, but when you stop and think about, the influence is pretty palpable--in his later work, too, but especially in CK. He did, later, add a documentary hand-held camera feel to his stuff, but in pacing and cutting, in angles and perspectives, and in rarely moving the camera, he was very much Fordian.

Oh, and Orson Welles = Billy Beane in 40 years.

With the Yankees, Red Sox and 2006 Tigers being his Boss Geddes.

Well, there's that, but in the case of Ruth you've got objective criteria that puts him in the top handful of players no matter how you'd place him within that mix. In the case of the Beatles and Citizen Kane there's obviously no such way of measuring "greatness" other than popularity among critics and / or the public, both of which present their obvious flaws. Thank God that the sabermetricians haven't figured out a way to quantify greatness in music or movies.

Perhaps we should say, not just yet; since the idea of having a sabermetric formula to quantify greatness may not be beyond the realm of possibility.

If any such formula could ever be developed to quantify greatness in the arts, I imagine that it would combine the two elements that you've mentioned (critical acclaim and popular appeal) along with timelessness (i.e. the ability to continue to appeal to future generations of the above two groups). Anything else? Of course, such a formula would be biased against contemporary works; because who can say definitively which (if any) of the current top songs or films will still be popular with both critics and the masses in the future.

However, greatness, even if quantified, still would not translate into the emotion that goes with fandom. That is, just because song A may one day be deemed superior to song B on a purely objective basis does not mean that song A will be more beloved than song B. Of course, as baseball fans we already know this, as we are not all fans of the objectively best team in MLB; nor do we necessarily view the objectively best player on our favorite as our favorite player to root for, and to cheer for, and to identify with.

DB

As for Casablanca, for some of us striking (unusal or novel) shots stay with us more than an integrated procession of shots paced perfectly in regards to the entire context of the enterprise. Still, I remember a critic not being able to get over the showcasing of Bogart's head, especially the wide expanse of his forehead. That straight on closeup when he's drinking himself stupid with Sam in the bar after he meets Ilsa. Ilysa, as idealized object, is often in soft focus. But, really, it's the seamless integrity of the visual composition that mostly comes to my mind when I consider this aspect of the film.

Howard Hawks was initially set to direct this movie, and Curtiz was going to do Sergeant York. Hawks claimed that he didn't feel he had an affinity for the material so he and Curtiz traded assignments. Did he regret it? Hawks says no. He said Curtiz did a great job, one that he couldn't have done. That's something of a compliment, I think, on Curtiz's movie-making skills. Had Hawks directed you can bet it wouldn't have been the straightforward romance that we have now.

As an emotional actor Welles is without insight, accuracy, power or grace. In short, without talent. The only parts he could ever play were parts that were cold, intellectual, emotionally dead.

This is Kerr on Welles the actor, but I think it has merit if it is applied to Welles the auteur film maker, too. Especially Welles the young film maker. His work is uninformed sometimes, at points, by a lack of the emotional emphasis. He has the craftsmanship to go through the right motions, but it's like what Mark Twain told his wife when she tried to cure him of his profanity by engaging in it herself: "Livy, you got the lyrics down, but you can't carry the melody." He's got the mind but not the feel. Many child prodigies are like hot-house produce. Forced to mature mechanically, they don't quite have the taste of the real thing. Welles, to a great extent, overame it,proably at great personal cost, but you can't get over the sense you have sometimes that he know more than he feels. I often get the feeling that his intellect overwhelmed his experience. I still think he's great.

Morty, I also like one particular sentence of the Kerr piece that you link to but don't quote, as it pertains to the question of Kane's relationship to Hearst:

Citizen Kane was an astonishing film not simply because Welles had dared come within an inch of libeling Hearst.

IMO both Kerr and you (with an assist from Twain) have it right about Welles's main shortcoming, and I have to admit that his greatness never did much for me. Too much acclaim at too young an age can screw up actors and directors every bit as much as high school basketball phenoms.

And DB, that's a good try, but it's still kind of circular, since even if you make the proper adjustments for weighing contemporary opinion, you're still talking about what amounts to a glorified popularity poll. You seem to realize in your final paragraph that it's an impossible task. How on Earth can you ever measure a Hollywood blockbuster like GWTW or The Godfather, shown over and over throughout most of the world, against (for instance) an obscure Hungarian movie like Angi Vera that was seen by 1/10th as many critics and 1/1000th as many viewers, and which is no longer available anywhere? What point of valid comparison could we possibly have? To call it an impossible task is, if anything, an understatement.

I propose that Kurosawa get no credit for any time his films spent playing in Japan.

I propose that Kurosawa get no credit for any time his films spent playing in Japan.

Careful, Bob, or you'll be giving Ray another crusade to carry on for another ten threads.

For objective measurement you need, among other things, general agreement as to, well, the objectives. I don't think that's possible with film.

I'm old enough to remember Welles's final act of pitching wine on late night TV commercials.

How could you not?

A classic image of Orson Welles.

I'm old enough to remember Welles's final act of pitching wine on late night TV commercials.

How could you not?

God, watching those outtakes, and even worse, that accompanying "Nashua Paper Copier" commercial with a bust of George Washington as a backdrop, reminds me of the time I opened up a vintage copy of a 1933 Sporting News and saw Babe Ruth in a cartoon telling some kid that the "secret" behind his home run power was that he "keeps regular" with Feen-A-Mint laxative chewing gum. OTOH at least the Babe hit a fair number of home runs after that Feen-A-Mint ad, whereas Orson Welles more or less just dropped dead after those commercials.

Howard Hawks was initially set to direct this movie, and Curtiz was going to do Sergeant York. Hawks claimed that he didn't feel he had an affinity for the material so he and Curtiz traded assignments. Did he regret it? Hawks says no. He said Curtiz did a great job, one that he couldn't have done. That's something of a compliment, I think, on Curtiz's movie-making skills. Had Hawks directed you can bet it wouldn't have been the straightforward romance that we have now.

I'm not disputing your accuracy, but that's a new one on me. IIRC, "Sergeant York" came out in 1941, "Casablanca" in late '42. (And wasn't "York" a Samuel Goldwyn film? "Cadablanca" was, of course, a Warners product.) At the time Hawks might have be involved with the project, wouldn't it still have been known as "Everybody Goes To Rick's" with George Raft and Ann Sheridan? (Contrary to legend, I don't believe Ronald Reagan was ever a serious candidate for this movie.)

A Hawks "Casablanca" would have been fascinating, probably along the lines of "Only Angels Have Wings."

Obviously, things change a lot in the film industry from proposal to furition; for example, the film we know as "It Happened One Night" was initially to be a programmer at Columbia called "Night Bus" with Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy. After Loy withdrew to work back at her home turf at MGM, Harry Cohn pursued Carole Lombard, one of the few actresses who liked working for him. Carole said no, as her home studio of Paramount was planning a grade-A vehicle for her, a dance film with Raft called "Bolero." (Lombard returned to Columbia a few months later for what would be her breakthrough film, opposite John Barrymore in "Twentieth Century.") It wasn't until Frank Capra got on board that "Night Bus," now renamed, wooed Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert from MGM and Paramount, respectively.

And speaking of Welles, anyone recall the parody of his famed diatribe while taping a commercial on "Pinky and the Brain"? (Maurice LaMarche does an excellent Welles.) It's hilarious.

I'm old enough to remember Welles's final act of pitching wine on late night TV commercials.
How could you not?

Oh good lord. It took me 10 minutes to recover from that, I was laughing so hard that I cried.

Actually, one of the final things Welles did was introduce a black-and-white episode of "Moonlighting," presumably as a favor to Cybill Shepherd (whom he knew from his friendship with Peter Bogdanovich.

IIRC, Welles also had a voice part in the first "Transformers" animated film (as did Robert Stack). How the mighty fell...

The tragedy of Welles's career is that RKO hacked apart The Magnificent Ambersons because of a bad preview audience experience when that somber film followed a light hearted fluff film. It was a little like a studio asking people who came to see a Jerry Lewis film to comment on Scenes from a Marriage and then chopping up Bergman's film because it was too downbeat.

Ambersons was going to be a better film than Kane, much more emotionally involving. The camera work was amazing for its day but the studio had Robert Wise chop it up and film ridiculous fill in scenes while Welles was off furthering his reputation for being irresponsible in Brazil.

And, yeah, Welles was never a particularly good actor but he was fine as Harry Lime in The Third Man.

Fans of Welles might enjoy this 30 minute short from youtube with Vincent D'Onofrio as Welles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-4PPr3r_r0

Neil LaBute is the last guy I would put in a list of non-artistes. He has collected a big check for the occasional A-list picture (Nurse Betty, Possession), but he's pretty much got the dream auteur existence as a playwright, occasionally filming something he's written."

And I thought Curtis Hanson is the one people would dispute.;) LaBute is an acclaimed playwright; I've read some of his work and liked it. But look at his directorial style: simple, utilitarian, and with no flourishes. The camera mostly just watches the characters speak their lines. In Nurse Betty (one of my favorites), he wrote a great script and had a great cast, and his direction basically just follows his characters around as they trade great lines ("I will shoot that ##### like she scratched my car!"). (Much the way Joseph Mankiewicz did as a director.) Now that I think about it, LaBute's probably a great director of actors. His writing certainly has artistic cache*. I was referring only to his mise-en-scene, which if it was a ballplayer would be described as "gritty" and "scrappy".

*Except The Wicker Man remake. That's indefensible.

Except The Wicker Man remake. That's indefensible.

You obviously haven't seen the Director's Cut.

OTOH at least the Babe hit a fair number of home runs after that Feen-A-Mint ad, whereas Orson Welles more or less just dropped dead after those commercials.

Ruth was dead at the age Welles was selling himself out. I don't want to over react but I pretty much feel about the ragging on Welles the same way Bill James in the NBHA justifies his ranking Mickey Mantle so high: people talk too damn much about his alcoholism and too damn little about his accomplishments on the field. Welles's career is a disappointment only relatively--only when we expatiate hypothetically about what he might have done. He still had a hell of a career.

Post 36: yeah, right on.

That immaturity I remarked on in my initial critique was not evident in The Magnificent Amberson. That is a movie as full-bodied as the supposed wine he hawked. The argument for adding the copout ending has never pass the giggle test with me. I don't want to come down on Robert Wise too much, and if I had been and young editor on the make, I, too, I'm sure would have jumped at the opportunity. Still, the first three-quarters of Ambersons doesn't not support the contention that footage for Welles's ending was incoherent or a mess. It indicates instead that Welles was fully in command of his material and how to present it.

I'm not disputing your accuracy, but that's a new one on me. IIRC, "Sergeant York" came out in 1941, "Casablanca" in late '42. (And wasn't "York" a Samuel Goldwyn film? "Cadablanca" was, of course, a Warners product.) At the time Hawks might have be involved with the project, wouldn't it still have been known as "Everybody Goes To Rick's" with George Raft and Ann Sheridan? (Contrary to legend, I don't believe Ronald Reagan was ever a serious candidate for this movie.)

The pre-production for Casablanca went on for some time, I believe. However, my contributions here (and elsewhere, too) are often on the run. I should have noted my source, and made it clear that it may be apocryphal (not that Hawks made the claim, but that the claim is true and otherwise corroborated):

Hawks had said in interviews that he was supposed to direct the now-beloved Casablanca (1942) and Michael Curtiz was meant to direct Sergeant York (1941). However, the two directors had lunch together and Curtiz complained that he knew nothing about the "hill people", while Hawks was struggling to make this "musical comedy", so they switched films. Hawks said that he always considered Casablanca (1942) a musical comedy because of the number of singing scenes in the café, namely the "La Marseillaise" scene. Later, Hawks said that Curtiz shot the film "beautifully and the whole picture came out different because of the two people in it (Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman). They made you believe something. When I saw Casablanca (1942) I liked it, but I never had any faith in my doing anything like that." (Source: "Who the Devil Made it..." by Peter Bogdanovich).

Howard Hawks's Bio at IMDB

Not that IMDB is to be taken at face value necessarily--au contraire--but the entry on Hawks seems way above the run of the mill gossip-mongering sometimes associated with IMDB bios. And it is sourced to an interview with Bogdanovich, so it's likely that Hawks at least made the claim as detailed, and it may even be true, although Hawks was a notorious puller of leg in interviews (read liar) sometimes, since he is pretty specific on a number of things. But I have to repeat: I don't know if the claim has been independently corroborated.

A Hawks "Casablanca" would have been fascinating, probably along the lines of "Only Angels Have Wings."

Or To Have and To Have Not.

(Contrary to legend, I don't believe Ronald Reagan was ever a serious candidate for this movie.)

I wonder if Cary Grant was? Seems like he'd be the no-brainer first choice.

Welles was never a particularly good actor but he was fine as Harry Lime in The Third Man.

His Falstaff, and as director, too: Chimes at Midnight is possibly the best Shakespeare ever on film.

Nobody was,,,Hal Wallis asked for Bogart and no one else was considered.

OTOH at least the Babe hit a fair number of home runs after that Feen-A-Mint ad, whereas Orson Welles more or less just dropped dead after those commercials.

Ruth was dead at the age Welles was selling himself out. I don't want to over react but I pretty much feel about the ragging on Welles the same way Bill James in the NBHA justifies his ranking Mickey Mantle so high: people talk too damn much about his alcoholism and too damn little about his accomplishments on the field. Welles's career is a disappointment only relatively--only when we expatiate hypothetically about what he might have done. He still had a hell of a career.

Analogy and point granted, just so long as you're not trying to rank Welles's overall film career remotely as high as Mantle's baseball career, relative to his peers. And while it's certainly true that his career had some magnificent moments (I'd put Touch of Evil rather than Citizen Kane at the top, but that's just opinion), it's also fair game to speculate on what he might have been without the personal baggage. That sort of criticism goes with the territory if you're granted the precocious gifts that both Welles and Mantle were. And you hit on the key point yourself back in #22 when you pointed out his lack of emotional depth---IMO that's what drops him below the top ranks.

Contrary to legend, I don't believe Ronald Reagan was ever a serious candidate for (Casablanca).

If I remember what I read correctly, that rumor was aided and abetted by gossip maven Louella Parsons, who happened to hail from Reagan's hometown (Dixon, IL) and spent much of the 1930s and 1940s championing his Hollywood career.

And another thing: Reagan would have only been 30 when Casablanca was filmed, a decade or so younger than Bogie. Rick really has to be old enough to have had a past for the character to work...

What happened was Warners put out a press release stating that the film would star Ann Sheridan and Reagan but the film was an independant production by Wallis who wanted nobody but Bogart , the press release was apparently an attempt to publize "Kings Row" and nothing else.

simon bedford>> That sounds more accurate.

Ilsa, as idealized object, is often in soft focus.

This and the beautiful final shot argue against the claim that Casablanca doesn't have any memorable directorial touches.

I'm not disputing your accuracy, but that's a new one on me. IIRC, "Sergeant York" came out in 1941, "Casablanca" in late '42. (And wasn't "York" a Samuel Goldwyn film? "Cadablanca" was, of course, a Warners product.) At the time Hawks might have be involved with the project, wouldn't it still have been known as "Everybody Goes To Rick's" with George Raft and Ann Sheridan? (Contrary to legend, I don't believe Ronald Reagan was ever a serious candidate for this movie.)

The pre-production for Casablanca went on for some time, I believe.

I read a book on the making of Casablanca some years ago (that's largely what inspired my comparison in the link, actually). One factoid I still remember from the book: the provisional script that served as the genesis for the movie was read by WB on December 8, 1941. (The date stuck with me for the obvious reasons). Given that York came out in '41, I doubt Hawks-Curtiz ever switched assignments on those two movies.

One other thing I remember from that book - a lot of the early pre-production info that came out about it was purely studio PR. Yes, the studio did say that Reagan was the actor originally slated to play Rick, but there was nothing to that other than an attempt to get the name of the movie and one of the studio's actors in the media. [a point which post #47 apparently just made]. Maybe the Hawks-Curtiz story comes from something similar. I don't remember reading of such a switch in the Casablanca book, anyhow.

This and the beautiful final shot argue against the claim that Casablanca doesn't have any memorable directorial touches.

Touche. That said this doesn't quite knock down the comparison I make in the excerpt. The memorable directoral touches are things easy to miss if you're just a casual viewer or perhaps better yet things that a casual viewer (re: 95%+ of the audience) wouldn't ascribe to the director in the first place. All the nice directoral stuff are things that don't really draw attention to the director, just as Alston helped his teams without necessarily drawing much attention to himself.

I read a book on the making of Casablanca some years ago

Was it Round Up the Usual Suspects by Aljean Harmetz? It's excellent.

Monty - I believe that was it.

The Ebert comment came elsewhere - one of his movie books. I think it was just one of his annual ones where he had some special essays out back. Don't have it anymore, though.

Billy Beane is NOT a baseball version of Orson Welles. Beane is not an exile, nor is he an expatriate. He is still in baseball; Welles had to leave Hollywood--twice.

Nor is he Charles Foster Kane. Beane has some complexity in his life, but it has to do with his failure to maximize his athletic gifts. He reinvented himself once his playing career tanked. Kane was a trust fund rebel whose fortune and grandiosity allowed him to throw his weight around on a large scale, and whose grandiosity eventually got the better of him. Beane has always had to do more with less.

It's wonderful to see that people have more rounded interests here, but Jaffe's analogy of Curtiz and Alston is far-fetched and doesn't hold up. Curtiz did leave the studio system, and he did so almost as soon as that became possible in the late 40s. He was very savvy about the cameramen he used, and he was hands-on with all of them--including Edeson, the great Woody Bredell (DP on PHANTOM LADY and THE KILLERS who made Curtiz' THE UNSUSPECTED into one of the most lushly menacing noirs in the cycle), and the virtually unknown Ted McCord, whose work on THE BREAKING POINT is perfectly tailored to the unfolding action--for an increasing number of film lovers this film, independently produced by Curtiz in 1949-50, is now recognized as his finest achievement.

It's not as if managers have been freed from a "studio system" the way directors were. It is simply not a valid analogy. Players have been freed; managers now have to kow-tow in several directions at once. Directors were once hired hands, now they are auteurs. Managers (at least some managers) used to be auteurs (especially when they also owned the team...); now they are hired hands and the GMs are the auteurs. Some of them may try to ACT as if they are auteurs, but outside of TLR no one is actually close to the way it used to be.

Alston was (mostly) very good with kids, and the Dodgers had two massive youth movements during his tenure (59-63, 69-73). But deciding that he handled Koufax well because he was "leveraged" is silly. As a bonus baby in '55 and '56, he was virtually unusable: Alston simply couldn't afford to take a chance with him when his own job was on the line (after all, he'd replaced Dressen after a '53 season where the Dodgers were 105-49 and finished second in '54). That 30% of his GS against the Cubs looks like a big deal until you realize that Koufax got less than 10 starts per year in '55-'57 and the average pct of starts per opponent in an eight-team league is 14%. "Leveraging" was a lot more plausible in a small league and with smaller pitching staffs where usage patterns were far less structured than is the case today.

And the point about Drysdale saving the Dodgers' pennant chances with so many games against the Braves is also silly. Don was 3-3 against the Braves that year. The Dodgers had a pretty solid group of above-average hurlers in '59; Roger Craig had his best year (205 ERA+). Drysdale was good (122), but he wasn't light years ahead of six others who were reliably above average. Heck, Drysdale lost to Bob Buhl and the Braves in the Coliseum in September, and he left trailing in the second playoff game, 4-2, which the Dodgers pulled out with three in the ninth to tie before pushing across the winning run in the 12th. He got an extra start against the Braves because he was knocked out against the Cubs in early September and was shifted up in the rotation as a result. Some of these occurrences are due to random chance, not Alston's planning.

Finally, Hawks's TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT is a pretty blatant attempt to remake CASABLANCA. Curtiz' THE BREAKING POINT is from the same Hemingway source novel, and is a significantly better movie, Bogie and Bacall notwithstanding.

Casablanca is no more overrated than Babe Ruth, and only a thoroughly dyspeptic human being could fail to love it. The most overrated film of all time is Citizen Kane. Way too much self-consciousness on Welles's part to raise it above the level of a slightly better than average art house movie.

I always felt that another Welles movie was the most over rated film of all time. That film was the Maginificent Andersons which I always thought was godawful.

McCoy, I agree. I assume I'm missing something and I'll probably give it another chance at some point, but I hated the Ambersons. But I love Citizen Kane and am a big fan of Touch of Evil and the Third Man.

Garrh, I knew it was Ambersons but when I did a google search it came up as Andersons, bastard Google!

It's wonderful to see that people have more rounded interests here, but Jaffe's analogy of Curtiz and Alston is far-fetched and doesn't hold up. Curtiz did leave the studio system, and he did so almost as soon as that became possible in the late 40s.

Interesting - that's news to me about Curtiz. Checking wikipedia - that source for those of us too lazy to check out a real source for, I find this: "In the late 1940s, he made a new agreement with Warners under which the studio and his own production company were to share the costs and profits of his subsequent films. These films did poorly, however, whether as part of the changes in the film industry in this period or because Curtiz "had no skills in shaping the entirety of a picture".[8] "

Yeah, he did go solo, but based on the results, I'm not sure it hurts my analogy. In terms of skill, he was better off in the studio system. Curtiz worked best when the studio bosses gave him asssignments, rather than shaping something himself. What I find especially intersting about the above quote from wikipedia, is the quote/cite it gives at the end. Wikipedia is quoting "Round Up the Usual Suspects" - the same book mentioned a little bit ago in this thread. It's nice when my source pops up as easily as that.

It's not as if managers have been freed from a "studio system" the way directors were. It is simply not a valid analogy. Players have been freed; managers now have to kow-tow in several directions at once. Directors were once hired hands, now they are auteurs. Managers (at least some managers) used to be auteurs (especially when they also owned the team...); now they are hired hands and the GMs are the auteurs. Some of them may try to ACT as if they are auteurs, but outside of TLR no one is actually close to the way it used to be.

Actually, the analogy deals with two things not covered in the quote Weisman gives: 1) the development of the position of manager (a theme covered at times throughout the book), and 2) Alston's own reputation when he began managing (and how that relates to the first point).

About the development of manager - at turn of the century, they were generally THE man in charge - days of McGraw and Mack and Griffith and all that. In the 1920s, the GM position came into its own. Originally (and here I'm going off what Bill James said in his book on managers) GMs only were responsible for the farm system, and managers had power over vets. That slowly changed. James figured the first GM to really take full control of the roster was MacPhail and that at mid-century was the big tipping point across the game.

As for Alston - he wasn't well thought of when he first came into MLB. That's fairly well-established by many sources and I don't want to retype everything I wrote about it in the book. The key point is how it relates back to the first paragraph: Alston was probably the first prominent manager in MLB history to never have real authority over the roster. He came up right after the tipping point occurred, and the more prominent managers were teh ones most likely to retain some control. O'Malley wanted him to manage in part because Alston could be dictated to in a way that would be diffitult with someone with more stature. Durcoher had been MacPhail's manager, and as I noted MacPhail was the first guy to control the full roster - but Leo Durcoher DID gain considerable input in the roster when he came to the Giants. And Leo's Giants won the world title just before Alston's manager league managerial debut.

I think I'm going off a bit on a tangent here. Short version: Alston seemed like a cog in the O'Malley Machine. He didn't much respect when he came to the majors because he appeared to have less stature than other managers, including Stengel and Durcoher - his rivals in town in 1955. Hence the cog line.

handled Koufax well because he was "leveraged" is silly. As a bonus baby in '55 and '56, he was virtually unusable: Alston simply couldn't afford to take a chance with him when his own job was on the line (after all, he'd replaced Dressen after a '53 season where the Dodgers were 105-49 and finished second in '54). That 30% of his GS against the Cubs looks like a big deal until you realize that Koufax got less than 10 starts per year in '55-'57 and the average pct of starts per opponent in an eight-team league is 14%. "Leveraging" was a lot more plausible in a small league and with smaller pitching staffs where usage patterns were far less structured than is the case today.

Few thoughts - first, I'm not sure whey the term leveraging is in quotation marks every time you use it. Don't buy it happened with Koufax? OK. The practice still occurred. I looked up 91% or so of all starts from 1876-1969 and there were clearly times teams matched up starters against certain teams. Yeah, random happenstance plays a role and it thus isn't clear when this stuff happened.

The Koufax thing fits a pattern, though. When I was figuring this stuff out 2-4 years ago, I noticed a lot of times a young pitcher just coming up face a disproportionate number of starts against dregs. It wouldn't necessarily be anything serious, but it did happen, and Koufax is any example of it. In fact, he's not the only future Hall of Famer Dodger on that staff this happened with. In Drysdale's 1956 rookie year, 11 of his first 12 starts came against the NL's bottom four teams. That's frankly starker than anything Koufax encountered. (And makes me wish I'd used that example in the book, because it's a better one). 12 starts ain't much and random happenstance can occur - but 11 out of 12 is considerable.

If you'd rather, I could mention how in Drysdale's rookie season in 1956, 11 of his 12 starts came against the four second division teams. Both Drysdale and Koufax fit a pattern, and it's a common one.

Also, you're comment is based on a misperception. I didn't say he handled Koufax well because he was leveraged. This quote Weisman selected comes from a portion where I discuss how Alston was flexible with using his pitchers. When he came up, he used his pitchers normally as he occassionally leveraged his pitchers. Then he shifted, and was at/near the forefront of the starting pitcher revolution (the move away from leveraging of starting pitchers - and Alston's role in it - is covered in greater detail a few chapters earlier where I discuss that phenomeonon head on; in the Alston section I just refer to it). Then, an Alston-managed team (in the early 1970s?) set a record for most GS on exactly four days rest by a pitcher, indicating he used the five-man rotation more than anyone at that point.

The usage of Drysdale in '59 was just another example of how Alston used pitchers when he first came up. You say "Some of these occurrences are due to random chance, not Alston's planning." Yup, sometimes it is. But not with nine starts in a season. That's just doesn't happen. One was in an extra series? OK - eight starts in a season is an almost impossible hill to climb. Put it this way - let's look at Whitey Ford for a second. Popular folklore says Stengel loved to use Ford against the best rival teams (here in CHicago the old Sox fans still remember how he used to battle Billy Pierce), and the numbers confirm he was extremely well leveraged in those years. Yet despite being intentionally placed against the best rivals year-in, year-out for almost a decade, Ford started eight games against a rival only once (1956, against the White Sox). He never made it to nine. Even when managers tried to match up pitchers against particular teams, 8-9 starts in a year was exceptionally difficult and pretty rare.

Could Drysdale's 69.1 innings be random? All evidence indicates no. Among other things, Alston was fighting for his job that year and the Braves were the team to beat. Drysdale was the bright young pitcher leading the league in strikeouts and making it to his second all-star team even though he was only 22 years old. And I do think that helped the Dodgers force the playoff. Even if his record wasn't brilliant against them he's still the better arm than Danny McDevitt or a 23-year-old Koufax, or Johnny Podres.

One thing you're absolutely right about is my missing Roger Craig. That's humiliating and I'm really p1ssed at myself for botching that up. As near as I can tell, I just looked at the ERA+s, saw Drysdale and a line of "_00s" and just plain missed it. This is not an excuse - the error is inexcusable - I'm just trying to figure out how I missed that.

First, Drysdale only made seven starts in the regular season against the Braves in 1959. The eight appearance was in relief, it came with six days rest as a result of the All-Star break.

It's possible to do that only in an 8-team league, with 22 games per opponent, with eight separate series between teams. We'd have to see if the schedule in '59 was anomalous in the NL due to the presence of West Coast teams, but it could be that there just weren't as many series in other league-years. They might have played six or seven series. (As I look at this more, it doesn't seem that it's all that anomalous: in fact, Drysdale made eight starts against the Braves in 1958. It's clear from the splits that Drysdale had exceptional early success against the Braves--even in '58, when he struggled badly in the first half of the season, he still had the Braves' number, and went 5-0 against them. Going into '59, his lifetime record against them was 8-1, which certainly would've motivated Alston to get him on the mound against them as often as possible.)

I think it's partly due to a schedule fluke that the possibility existed. Alston had the luxury to use Drysdale as frequently as possible against both top rivals (Braves and Giants), and with Craig on the sidelines for the first 66 games of the season, he was sure to get him into as many early series as possible. Drysdale could actually have made an eighth start on July 11--he would have been on 3 days rest after pitching in the first of TWO All-Star games played that year, but Alston started Koufax, who was ineffective enough that Alston decided to switch to Drysdale in a very unusual way--he had Drysdale bat for Koufax in the top of the fourth inning (during the Dodgers' five-run rally) and then continue on the mound.

Similarly, the second All-Star game on 8/3 (which Drysdale also started), allowed for some more schedule manipulation. Drysdale had pitched in that game with one day of rest--something that would never happen today--so Alston could spot him against the Braves with four days rest. Absent that, it might not have been possible to squeeze out that extra start.

Look, there's no question that managers "spotted" their starters more in the days of small staff chaos. (And the reason I use "leverage" in quotes here is because the term has another, prior usage that I think is more appropriately named--Tango's notion of situations within games. For the sake of not creating confusion by redundancy, I think it's preferable to concoct a different term. But that's just my opinion.) The schedule often allowed it to happen, and the vagaries of pitching performance and the significantly higher number of doubleheaders demanded it. (The Dodgers played 11 DH in 1959.)

In September 1959, however, the pitchers who led the Dodgers were Craig (4-0, 1.01 ERA, 44 IP) and Larry Sherry (3-0, 1.35 ERA, 33 IP in 10 G, 2GS). Drysdale was 2-3, 4.14, 37 IP, 8G, 6 GS. Craig had four complete games and two shutouts in September.

The Dodgers were 34-32 when Craig made his first appearance in 1959. After he returned, they went 54-36.

What's interesting here is how often teams would start pitchers on short rest in this time frame. We don't have the data prior to 1954, but in the NL we see that starts on one day of rest peaked in '56 (54) and fell off into the sixties, until the practice was less than half of what it had been. (The Dodgers did it 13 times in 1959, the most in the league and a bit more than one-third of the NL total for the year.) Those games came about because pitchers were pulled quickly from games (it happened to Drysdale three times in 1959) and because even guys at the top end of a starting rotation would get called on in relief, especially if it was their "throw day" (this happened to Drysdale eight times).

All of this indicates that Alston was willing to ride Drysdale hard, and not just against the Braves. But it doesn't mean that this is the primary reason why the Dodgers won the pennant. Just as significant: Craig's performance, the emergence of Sherry, and the fact that Danny McDevitt managed to win four games against the Reds, a team that gave LA fits in '59 (especially in Crosley Field, where they were 8-3 against the Dodgers). Oh, and Johnny Podres went 3-0 against the Braves in County Stadium.

But most important, maybe, was simply that <u>the Giants blew the pennant by losing seven of their last eight games</u>. They had a two-game lead on 9/19/59 when they began a three-game series in Seals Stadium against the Dodgers, and proceeded to get swept. Then they lost two one-run games in Wrigley Field--both walk-off losses--and they were toast. (Another moment that Treder would like to exorcise from his memory banks.)

As for Curtiz: there will be a new bio of him in a few years by one of my film noir colleagues that I fully expect will set the record straight, especially with respect to the triumphs of his immediate post-WB solo career. THE UNSUSPECTED and THE BREAKING POINT have played recently in San Francisco and L.A. and captivated their audiences; dozens of folks came up to the festival programmers afterwards with effusive praise, noting that they'd never had any idea that Curtiz had it in him to make films with such visual and thematic presence. They'd assumed that CASABLANCA was the serendipity of chaos and the guiding hand of Hal Wallis, who left WB after being snubbed at the Oscar ceremony when Jack Warner preemptively accepted the Best Picture award for the film (which had been Wallis's baby from the beginning of the development process). Like many directors from the studio era, Curtiz quickly tired of working with actors whose power and ego had inflated once the system had begun to crumble, and his output later in the 50s reflects the fact that he had little interest in sharing decision-making with actors.

One minor nitpick with Don's last post:

Alston simply couldn't afford to take a chance with [Koufax] when his own job was on the line (after all, he'd replaced Dressen after a '53 season where the Dodgers were 105-49 and finished second in '54).

Alston's job was mostly "on the line" in the mind of the press, as O'Malley valued stability in managers. Dressen wasn't fired after 1953; On the dubious advice of his de facto "agent" (his wife}, Dressen simply refused to sign a one year contract. Alston never got a multi-year contract either.

And considering that the Dodgers ran away with the 1955 pennant right from the jump, winning 22 of their first 24 games, by the time Koufax arrived on the scene in late June with the Dodgers 13 games ahead, the risk involved would have been minimal. Of course 1956 was another story altogether.

As for Curtiz: there will be a new bio of him in a few years by one of my film noir colleagues that I fully expect will set the record straight, especially with respect to the triumphs of his immediate post-WB solo career. THE UNSUSPECTED and THE BREAKING POINT have played recently in San Francisco and L.A. and captivated their audiences; dozens of folks came up to the festival programmers afterwards with effusive praise, noting that they'd never had any idea that Curtiz had it in him to make films with such visual and thematic presence.

Both of those movies were recently screen on TCM, and after watching them, it's hard to argue with those audiences. But then there are so many forgotten gems from that noir period that I long ago lost count.

First, Drysdale only made seven starts in the regular season against the Braves in 1959. The eight appearance was in relief, it came with six days rest as a result of the All-Star break.

D'OH! Right - clearly, I lazily looked at the wrong column. Guess what I get for writing a long post just before going to bed. (Sure - I'll blame sleepiness for the error, nevermind the fact that I routinely make such stupid error at all hours of the day).

Fascinating stuff about the 1959 season and pennant race. And I understand why you used the term leveraged in quotation marks. (Actually, I borrowed the term leveraging from the Leverage Index for relievers, in the sense that both LI and examinations of spot starting attempt to look at the situations a pitcher was used in, whether it be reliever with LI and starter with AOWP+ stuff).

As long as we're on the subject of short starting pitchers, the managers who were most interested in doing that back in teh 1950s were Bill RIgney and Birdie Tebbetts. With Rigney, it was because he liked using his ace starters in relief situations on a semi-regular basis. That had been common for decades, but he was the last one to really do it. There's never been another season quite like Dean Chance's CYA campaign.

Interesting stuff on Curtiz, also. Everything I know about him I got from Round Up the Usual Suspects, so if that book presented him in too minimal a light that would come off in my comments. I'll like for the new book you mention when it comes out.