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Memories...
For you children among us:
"I will not seek nor will I accept" was a reference to President LBJ's TV speech declaring himself out of the re-election running. And yes, the negotiation/bombing bit was a reflection of Vietnam. The "little old winemaker" was a character in a series of commercials. There are probably other TV ad references which I don't recall, (such as, I think, "grows for the gold," instead of "goes for the gold," probably Old Gold cigarettes. Yes, kids, they advertised wine AND cigarettes in those days). And there are probably quite a few other cultural and/or topical references which even I don't recognize after all these years.
If any of you find this clip interesting and want to, as they used to say on CBS TV, "read more about it," there's a very well received book by a writer named Mark Harris, "PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION - Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood," which examines its historical subject through the prism of those five Best Picture nominees Hope names in his monologue. And FWIW, Harris has an excellent new book out, "FIVE CAME BACK," which looks at WW II through the prism of the wartime service of five film directors: Ford, Capra, Stevens, Huston and Wyler.
***
Pardon me, please, old fogie that I am, if I now feel I must turn away to hide the tears I shed after re-experiencing, and therefor mourning, a moment in our history so unlike the present, a time when stars of the stature of Audrey Hepburn and Paul Newman strode the red carpet, and a man with the voice and gravitas of Gregory Peck took center stage...
(And God bless Mr. Poitier, still with us.)
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