Attending was a gesture of support for the director, who happened to be a friend of mine. The film's distributors had made a halfhearted lurch toward an old-style Grauman's opening, breaking out a hastily dyed red carpet. A couple of searchlights swept the murky night sky over downtown Hollywood. By then these occasions were exhausted flickers of the past, so there were none of the much-parodied rituals some of us watched in black-and-white newsreels at the corner Bijou. No more flashbulbs or narrators with society lockjaw telling us what the talent was wearing. Neither simpering interviewers nor doomed starlets walking the walk. The camera flashes and the demented fans crowding the velvet rope were all memories. Hollywood Boulevard was even rattier then than it is now. The only people around the marquee that night were frightenedlooking Japanese tourists and bright-eyed street freaks with slack smiles. The picture was no good. It was the forced sequel to a 1960s hit with a plot cribbed from a John Ford movie of the fifties.
