I can tell you that for the Spanish league but not for the NCAA, sorry. You need my brother for that. Does “knowing where to get your information” count? It did count for my college teachers, they weren’t big on memorization.
The OP reminds me of my SiL (then just married) getting between my father and the TV that was displaying a John Houston western and, upon seeing a particular scene, saying “oh my God, that’s such a cliche!” Dad explained that it had been the first movie to do that, it became a cliche once everybody else copied it. She didn’t believe it until her husband confirmed it. Funny thing is, her own Dad would watch every Western on TV, she just lumped them into a big sack named “movies with loud noises” which was defined as not of interest to her. Then again, she didn’t find out her husband likes movies with loud noises until they’d been married 5 years…
That not quite the same as seeing the reissue of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm from the middle seat of the front row. I was in the desert. I was there.
And then Doctor Zhivago has been my favorite movie for over forty years now. Those were the movies that were legend makers.
I haven’t looked it up yet, but I will bet that Bridge on the River Kwai got the Oscar for Best Picture in 1956 or 1957. I thought the movie was fascinating, but the music drove me crazy when I was 13.
/aside to Bryan: Sir Laurence Olivier died July 10, 1989. Mel Blanc died July 11, 1989. My father, a funny man himself, died July 12, 1989. This was in the paper the morning he died: SPEECHLESS. That rather took my breath away when I saw it on a later date./end hijack
Bear Bryant was known for his taste in houndstooth hats.
Sports play an important role in culture, but some of your questions on sports deal with trivia. Sir Alec Guinness was not trivial in film history. He’s more of a Vince Lombardi.
Give the young folks time to become culturally literate and allow them spaces to remain a little slack-jawed. We all have our gaps.
Well, Robert Heinlein thought that Alec Guinness’s reputation would last. He has the narrator of Double Star (1956), an actor a few hundred years in the future* say the following : "I needed a face as commonplace, as impossible to remember, as the true face of the immortal Alec Guinness. "
I’m not disputing that Obi-wan Kenobi is probably his best known role. But to say that he would have been unknown without Star Wars is, as many have stated, mistaken.
*The date of the setting is not specified AFAIK, but Venus and Mars are colonised and the Earth is ruled by an Emperor based on the Moon.
Actually, they could not have gotten the story of the bridge more wrong. It was finally destroyed at the tail end of the war, but by aerial bombing. The sole person who ever escaped was a Brit, not an American, and he never went back to try to destroy it. Even the name of the river got screwed: It’s spelled Kwae more often than not over here and is pronounced like “quack” but without the “ck” on the end.
All of this was, of course, Alec Guinness’ fault. This led to his long career slide into embarrassing minor parts like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Yeah, Contrapuntal - name some Spanish basketball players, quick! I can name several Spanish films, actors, and directors, although surely not as many as Nava can. On the other hand, I couldn’t tell you a thing about modern Spanish music or literature, so there’s that. Of course, I couldn’t name you a major living American poet who isn’t, like, Maya Angelou either. (Is Adrienne Rich dead?)
Guiness’ performance in Star Wars led me to never miss a chance to catch one of his other movies. His characters are always quietly having so much fun, even if they are getting killed over and over again as in Kind Hearts and Coronets. He was enigmatic enough in Star Wars to not only pull off the role, but allow Ewan MacGreagor to do a hell of a lot with the same interpretation in the prequels. So much so that MacGreagor stole every scene he was in.
Has anyone else seen The Man in the White Suit (1951)? Absolutely brilliant. Alec Guinness invents a fabric that never wears out or needs washing. Buy clothing made from it, and you need never buy any other clothes again. Dismayed garment manufacturers set out to bury the formula. As do labor unions, who are worried about jobs. Highly recommended.
Well, I find myself agreeing with Smiling Bandit, actually. Though we’re BOUND to get hung up on the definition of ‘cultural illiterate’ in any such discussion.
I would posit that this statement is true:
“Without appearing in Star Wars and the sequels as Obi-Wan Kenobi Sir Alex Guinness would be functionally ignored by 90%+ of the western world. His name would be known by some truly serious film fans. In addition, he would be known to some who rent old movies via Netflix but to the rest of the world he would be the equivalent of Ronald Colman, Charles Laughton, and Peter Ustinov: obscure.”
Cultural Literacy is, at best, a slippery concept. To some it seems to mean a fixation on the arts, to some the sort of pop culture that is shared by all, to some it means how a culture operates. It is just as valid to say that a thorough knowledge of baseball (to an American) is as much a requirement of ‘cultural literacy’ as a knowledge of film. Both pastimes (ha!) have done a great deal to define America as a culture over the last 100 years. That both are roughly equivalent in age is a bonus for the comparison.
So all get off your high horses. In the end we all have differing values for what is culturally important. Some would argue that television is relevant but I haven’t watched any regular television for more than 10 or 15 years. Does that make me culturally illiterate? I think not.
For that matter I could consider all of you culturally illiterate for your lacking my knowledge of politics (trust me, unless you’re a serious campaign consultant you’re behind me) and campaigns. But that’s because that’s what I value as important.
But it’s both rude in the extreme, not to mention arrogant and displaying one’s own lack of consideration for others and (possibly) insecurity, to mock someone for not sharing one’s own values and interests.
And, hell, I’ve seen at least 10 movies with Guinness in larger or smaller roles. And he’s still Kenobi to me first and foremost.
“Claire Beauchamp, the culturally literate snob” is never going to be as big a hero to children as “Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy” or even “Huckleberry Raskolnikov, the all-American boy with the Marxist orientation”*.
*this is not intended as a slam at Smash the State.
I find it amusing how some of us are taking the accusation of being “culturally illiterate” as being a serious dis.
*“You’re a slimy, lyin’, cheatin’ bastard.”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Saw it as a child on TV. I remember the pertinent details as you described and scenes where he gets splashed with mud which clears away easily. I was too young to appreciate any acting skills though.
Substitute “less well known” for “obscure” and I’d agree. Those actors should be familiar to anyone over the age of what? 40? 50?
But hey, it seems like you’re saying that any actor who played Obi-Wan would have become famous, and would be known for that role over any others. I think that puts the Star Wars movies on a level that they don’t deserve.
I totally agree with this. I watched the teen Jeopardy tournament last week, and I couldn’t answer a single one of pop music questions. I don’t listen to the same things they listen to. Young folks don’t watch old movies, old folks don’t know Obi-Wan from Genghis Khan. Young folks know Guinness from Star Wars, older folks know him for Kwai.
I’m culturally literate to know that if I ever encountered a woman with Joan Greenwood’s voice I’d wrap myself around one of her legs until the fire department pried me off.
I think the age at which someone should know those guys would be in their 70s. Remember, Bridge on the River Kwai was released more than 50 years ago. Get that fact: To have been an adult and seen it in the theaters one would have be now be on Medicare and Social Security. The fifties were a LONG time ago, now. Heck, Colman was nominated for his first best actor in 1929-30! That’s eighty years ago!
Of the three I mentioned I think Ustinov would be the least obscure to a modern audience and that only because he played the old man in Logan’s Run. Oy!
For further back up check these facts on the three I mentioned:
Colman was last nominated for Best Actor in 1947 (62 years ago)
Laughton was last nominated for Best Actor in 1957 (52 years ago)
Ustinov was never nominated for Best Actor
Guinness him was last nominated for Best Actor in 1957 (52 years ago)
If we look at Best Supporting Actor…
Guinness was last nominated in 1988 (21 years ago, painfully)
Colman was never nominated for BSA
Laughton was never nominated for BSA
Ustinov was last nominated in 1964 (45 years ago)
So I’m not saying they would be forgotten but I think obscure would be an appropriate word for the place that Guinness would be in without Star Wars. He’s an icon and known precisely because he played that role in Star Wars and the sequels.
As for whether it would have benefitted anyone in the role…I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t have hurt anyone’s career to have a supporting part in what is arguably the most successful movie of all time.
