It's director René Clair's birthday today. One more opportunity to urge you to put Le Million and À Nous La Liberté on your Netflix queue. If you like the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy or any of that kind of comedy, and you're the least bit curious, there's no reason not to take a chance on either of these films.
(And a happy birthday to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, too. If it's 1931 in my blog, he would have been a nine year old boy in Indianapolis, no doubt making his way to the local theater to soak up Warner Baxter in The Cisco Kid, a sequel to the Oscar-winning Western In Old Arizona. Or if he was lucky, he was watching Jean Harlow in Platinum Blonde. But let's face it; nine year old boy? It was The Cisco Kid.)Oh, and if you're in a mood to remember why we take the day off every November 11th, track down a copy of All Quiet On The Western Front and meditate for a while on "the war to end all wars." The first of several such wars, as it turned out ...
