jack lemmon

Days of Wine and Roses

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Jack Lemmon with drink in hand

You might know the title Days of Wine and Roses from Ernest Dowson’s 1896 poem Vitae Summa Brevis – “They are not long, the days of wine and roses/Out of a misty dream/Our path emerges for a while, then closes/Within a dream”. Or you might know it from Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini’s Oscar-winning theme song to this film, made famous by Andy Williams, whose lines replay Dowson’s sentiments. “The days of wine and roses laugh and run away like a child at play/Through a meadowland towards a closing door… etc”. If you’ve never actually seen the 1962 film repurposing the phrase, it comes as a shock to discover that the “wine” Dowson and … Read more

The China Syndrome

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Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 10 October Nuclear plant Windscale catches fire, 1957 On this day in 1957, the nuclear plant at Windscale in North West England caught fire. Hastily conceived and built after the Second World War, Windscale was originally part of Britain’s attempt to build a nuclear bomb. At this point there was very little nuclear expertise in the world and Britain was definitely not in the vanguard. So the plant was poorly designed and badly maintained, leading to a fire in Pile 1 which burned away for 48 hours before anyone realised what was going on. No one knew what to do. Do … Read more