The Sirk “legend” obviously wasn’t regarded as a major selling point by the Universal International marketing team.

William Freidkin’s The Caine Mutiny Court Martial begins streaming on Paramount + / Showtime between 10.6 and 10.8. Boomers and GenXers will be watching but not many under-45s, I suspect. Am I wrong?

A great many people took notice when Edward Dmytryk‘s The Caine Mutiny opened exclusively at Loew’s Capitol (B’way between 50th and 51st, directly across from the still-in-existence Winter Garden) on Friday, 6.25.54.

It was a much bigger deal to see Dmytryk’s Technicolor WW2-era film inside the cavernous Capitol (a deluxe 5000-seater where the Oscar-winning From Here to Eternity had premiered ten months earlier) than it will be for older viewers to flop on the couch and “watch” Freidkin’s film, paying sporadic attention while surfing-and-texting, feeding the pets, taking out the garbage, etc.

The Caine Mutiny’s biggest first-run competitor was Demetrius and the Gladiators, which had opened a week or so earlier at the nearby Roxy (153 West 50th, corner of 7th Avenue).

Roughly a month later Elia Kazan‘s On The Waterfront — a gritty, black-and-white, working-class drama set in wintry, down-at-the-heels Hoboken — would open at Loews Astor (1141 seats) on Wednesday, 7.28.54.

Jean Negulesco‘s Three Coins in the Fountain, a schmaltzy Rome travelogue romance, had opened on 5.20.54.

HE to Cameron Crowe: I know what Bernie Taupin used to look like. Longish hair, gentle features, sensitive eyes. Exactly like a sensitive lyricist would’ve looked in 1973.

Now he looks like someone else. Shaved head, pork pie hat, white goatee, leather jacket. Like a jazz musician from Marseilles, or the twin brother of French director Jacques Audiard. No resemblance at all to the yesteryear guy.

You and I look like older (but not too much older) versions of our youthful selves. Elton still looks like Elton, just older and heavier with artificially thick hair. Bernie looks like someone else entirely.

Snapped in ‘62: Gregory Peck was peaking with To Kill a Mockingbird. Cary Grant had peaked with North by Northwest three years earlier, but he was on the gradual downslide and would retire four years hence. The stout, moustachioed, Ugly American-ized Marlon Brando had peaked in the early to mid ‘50s but would resurge in the early ‘70s. Rock Hudson was peaking with Lover Come Back but…okay, he had Seconds to look forward to, I suppose.

Montclair’s tattoo-and-taxidermy store is called Unlucky Rabbit (123 Walnut Street). The red-frame tints are my own.

Us Weekly ‘s Yana Grebenyuk is reporting that Pete Davidson (aka “Mr. Bone”) is doing the old in-out-in-out with Madelyn Cline. The 25-year-old Cline costarred in Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, but I honestly don’t remember who she played or what she did or anything. Okay, I just looked it up — she played Whiskey, Dave Bautista’s girlfriend.

Baseball hats!

Here’s the original post (9.20.23).