LOOKS BACK!

actors Ray Milland and Jean Arthur in the film, Easy Living, 1937.

My father was 5 years old when the movie, Easy Living, came out in 1937, the Depression was in full swing, and Daddy's father was one of the few who owned his land, and his house. During the Depression that was a significant reality. Strategically, it provided a basis for the assurance that one's family could live through so hard a time! For those like Granddaddy, who cared for those around him he became a centered and central force that created the feel of being held in a community of poor folks. It was during one of the heights of the violence of big city crime bosses, Jim Crow's reign of terror, and a time Colored folks, in the South, were purposely being forced to accept no more than a 4th grade education. That decade was struggle and accomplishment, survival and denial...

The movies were important. They held sanity together for thousands bringing together everyone in dark theaters in suspended reality that blocked the depression of the era!- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/19/18

Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons and Tony Curtis behind the scenes in Spartacus (1960).

The movie, Spartacus, was good, and for the times extraordinary! But, the novel? It was the book that turned the country upside down! It was banned in the South! I did not understand that until I read it! The author's mastery interpreting Roman history gave the spiritual and the intellectual basis for the governing business of American life: slavery. It was an extraordinary read! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/19/18