In the film The Bandwagon Cyd Charisse plays a ballerina named Gabrielle Girard. Or maybe her name is Gabriel Gerard. Her name is listed one way on the marquee of a theater, and another way in the very next shot when a program from the play in which she is appearing is shown.
In Summer Stock Ray Collins tells Judy Garland that the New England town in which they live has not allowed a theatrical performance since 15–something or other. Judy Garland replies that they may have had a good reason back in 16–something or other. My guess is that the mistake was caught, but the director figured people would never be able to rewind and so they would figure they just misheard.
In The Champion Lola Albright spends a good deal of effort in sculpting a clay figure of Kirk Douglas. Then he crushes it in his hand. In the next shot the statue has miraculously sprung back to its original form.
In The Talk of the Town Jean Arthur and Cary Grant live in a town called Lochester. It is called by that name many times throughout the film, and it is even shown on a local newspaper. In the last scene of the film Jean Arthur visits Ronald Colman and they both say they will never forget the time he visited Sweet Water.
The Val Lewton classic Cat People was about how certain people can turn into panthers. The Hammer Film The Werewolf has a title which is self-explanatory. The Werewolf starred Oliver Reed. In Cat People Kent Smith played the hero, named Oliver Reed. I’ll admit this last one is kind of weak.
In The Senator Was Indiscreet PR man Peter Lind Hayes says: “I know–we’ll say the candidate smoked, but he didn’t inhale!” Surprisingly, I never heard this mentioned in all of the discussions about Clinton’s famous remark concerning marijuana (which he said had been intended as a joke).
Unfortunately, I don’t recall which film it was, but in one of the Basil Rathbone-Sherlock Holmes from Universal, Holmes and Watson walk into a room and find a dead body on the floor. Watson (Nigel Bruce) immediately exclaims “Good Heavens! He’s been shot with a revolver!” Granting that he saw a bullet hole (which they wouldn’t show in a 1940s Hollywood film), how, exactly, did he know it was a revolver?
This last one isn’t entirely my own discovery. In the film The Day of the Locust, as in Nathaniel West’s original novel, one of the main characters, is a thick-headed loser named Homer Simpson. This has spawned the legend that the cartoon character was named after him. Matt Groening, however, has said that as a teenager he wrote a novel in which the hero was named Bart Simpson and, after he chose to reuse the name, he decided to name Bart’s parents after his own parents, Homer and Marge Groening.
