You Can't Make Patriotic Movies in Hollywood

William Holden and Judy Holliday

I just watched Born Yesterday on Turner Movie Classics this evening. The movie IS one of the finest movies ever made. What made it a real classic this evening were Carrie Fisher’s comments to Robert Osborne during the introduction:

I always love the way they do in films… when they get somebody and want them to look smart they put glasses on them… so William Holden wears glasses and he plays a journalist who interviews Broderick Crawford and then, “You’re a smart guy…” and he hires (Holden) to be (Judy Holliday's) tutor and really also to train her just about politics and Washington and you could not make this film today… it’s so pro-American and it is the ideals of America and what our country was founded on and it celebrates all of that and, you know, it just would never – you just couldn’t do it.

Why not, Carrie? Why can't Hollywood’s non-stop freak show make a movie that celebrates the only country on the planet that gives bi-polar coke-addicted has-beens a second chance? And why couldn’t Robert Osborne defend the country where a kid from Colfax, Washington would find success watching movies and talking about them?

The movie was great because the actors, producers, and directors were proud to be American and proud to celebrate this great country. Those patriots would have burned the studios had they known what would infest this town 50 years later.

Then I read that Vanessa Redgrave posted bail for accused al Qaeda terrorist Jamil el-Banna, and understood why.

Emma 'Billie' Dawn turned out to be smarter than Hollywood is today.