SPECIAL: Revisiting the Channing campus

Filmed December 1962

As I am nearing completion of my 10^th year on this trek, I am remembering my original intent was to revisit the many sets I had filmed on and provide for my potential viewers a fly-on-the-wall-view of the happenings before and behind the camera. But now I am realizing the journey has provided for me an experience beyond my expectations. I am aware that one spending that much time viewing his own work is remindful of Norma Desmond in SUNSET BOULEVARD. I reject that. I am a movie nut! I have over 3500 movies, DVDs and computer digitals, in my collection dating back deep into Silent films. I watch at least one of those films each day, usually two and many times on a weekend three or four. As I progressed in my career, my mother jokingly wondered if she had had an effect. She told me that when she was a young 23-year old, pregnant with me, she would go often in the afternoon to the Cecil theatre and with difficulty climb the many steps up to the cheaper seat in the second balcony (irreverently back then referred to as n-word heaven).

I (like most directors) do not view films the way normal people do. I view them emotionally for enjoyment, while at the same time observing them critically. That’s the way I viewed my films preparing the clips I’ve included on my posts. And that proved interesting. As many of my avid STAR TREK viewers know, I’ve softened my judgments of the 5 STAR TREKs I directed after Paramount bought Desilu Studios to the point that I finally did a post on RETURN TO TOMORROW, a task I had avoided for many many months. More interestingly I discovered that some films with something to convey beyond enjoyment resonated even more strongly today. My post SPECIAL: I Remember (http://senensky.com/special-i-remember/) had a scene between Efrem Zimbalist and Dean Jagger, originally seen on my post for THE ASSASSIN (http://senensky.com/the-assassin/, that was as relevant currently as it was when I filmed it in 1966. That proved even more so with my recent post, SPECIAL: The Fire Storm rages again (http://senensky.com/special-fire-storm-rages/), a revisit to THE FIRE STORM (http://senensky.com/the-fire-storm/) filmed in 1976.

I have recently reviewed my post for A HALL FULL OF STRANGERS (http://senensky.com/a-hall-full-of-strangers/), an episode of a very short-lived series, CHANNING. I directed it in 1962, but it was over a year and half into RALPH’S CINEMA TREK before I did a post on it. That was one for me that had really fallen through the cracks. It was my 6^th film (4 of those had been in my protected days at MGM); it was my 2^nd time at Universal, my 2^nd time filming an hour show in 5 days and it included the inane time-involving situation of a white concert grand piano. My opinion of the film made a 180-degree U-turn. What intrigued me the most was the way its message resonated in what is happening today.

A HALL FULL OF STRANGERS was a people story. A distinguished German concert pianist, Georg Linzer, has been invited to make his American debut in 2 concerts on the Channing College campus. Dr. Thielman, also a German and a professor teaching music theory in the school, objects to his coming appearance – at first quietly, but increasingly forcefully. But he meets a wall of strong and firm opposition: the dean of the school, faculty professors, a student, a local woman-supporter of the concert. One of the college professors, in an attempt to help, comes to see him, to try to persuade him to refrain from his opposition.

Then came the night of the first concert.

One of the COMMENTS left on that post:
This was a brilliant play of “those who go along just to get along!” The message was clear for those who chose not (to) get involved, and the consequences of their inaction.

But today, as committees in the House of Representatives are trying to resolve the issues raised in the Mueller Report, the Senate majority leader recently announced, “Case Closed! CASE CLOSED!”

I am anxious and troubled.

The journey continues