"The Lion in Winter" anti-curse

Cafe Society
1

I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned here before, but I was just reading about it and it’s still impressive.

The Lion in Winter - a great film. Made in 1968 - thirty-eight years ago.

The cast:
Henry - Peter O’Toole - 74 years old, still living
Eleanor - Katharine Hepburn - died in 2003 at the age of 96
Richard - Anthony Hopkins - 69 years old, still living
Geoffrey - John Castle - 66 years old, still living
John - Nigel Terry - 61 years old, still living
Philip - Timothy Dalton - 62 years old, still living
Alais - Jane Merrow - 66 years old, still living

The director - Anthony Harvey - 75 years old, still living
The producer - Martin Poll - 84 years old, still living (and produced the 2003 remake)
The writer - James Goldman - died in 1998 at the age of 71
The composer - John Barry - 72 years old, still living
The cinematographer - Douglas Slocombe - 93 years old, still living!
The editor - John Bloom - age unknown, still living

Not only are all but two of these people still alive; all but two of the living people (Merrow and Slocombe) still have active careers.

2

THe numbers aren’t really that remarkable. According to official statistics (2001), males in Great Britain who reach the age of 65 live an average of 15.94 years more. Females who reach the age of 65 live an average of 19.03 years more.

3

Yeah, but we’re not talking about people, we’re talking about movie stars.

4

Oh, great, give them all a kina hora, why don’t you?

(Goes off to check today’s obits)

5

I love Lion in winter.

John, whingingly: Mother, he’s got a knife!
Eleanor: Of course he’s got a knife! We’ve all got knives! It’s 1183 and we’re all barbarians!

6

Which Hepburn made sound so much classier than: “That’s not a knife…This is a knife!”

7

Can you find another example of a movie in which the entire cast was alive 35 years after the movie was made?

8

But the “entire” cast of The Lion in Winter isn’t alive. Katharine Hepburn is is dead.

MASH (1970): 10 of the top 12 cast members are alive.
Five Easy Pieces (1970): 14 of the 16 cast members are alive.
Lovers and Other Strangers (1970): 10 of the top 12 cast members are alive.
The Last Picture Show (1971): 11 of the top 12 cast members are alive.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971): 11 of the top 12 cast members are alive.
Carnal Knowledge (1971): The entire cast is alive, as are the writer and director.
Summer of '42 (1971): 6 of the 7 cast members are alive.
The Sterile Cuckoo (1969): The entire cast is alive.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969): 10 of the top 12 cast members are alive.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967): 7 of the 9 cast members are alive.

9

Katharine Hepburn was alive 35 years after the movie was made. She died later that year.

10

Dalton was born in '46. He’s only 60. He was, like, five minutes out of drama school when he made a movie with his hero, Peter O’Toole. Cool!

11

After doing some research for another thread, I’ve found that the best way to live to a ripe old age is to write science fiction.

12

I got my dates off IMDB. They say he was born in 1944. Admittedly, they’re often wrong.

13

Actually, that’s a spoon.

14

There is no spoon.

15

This is my favorite Christmas movie. I watch it every year. It’s a marvellous film, and it cuts through all the treacly glurge of the season like a … spoon?

16

Ah. Very well. I see you’ve played knifey-no-spooney before.

17

Sadly, it didn’t help Octavia Butler much.

18

Daws Butler (Elroy, among other things) once bragged about how the entire cast of The Jetsons was still alive and came back to perform in their original roles when they started making new episodes in the 1990s, about thirty years after the original series. Howe many other shows could make that claim?

19

ROF etc.