Reporters Are Actors, Says Towers

Tom Towers, interviewed by another reporter here as the movie premiered, said a thing or two I hadn't heard from him before, particularly where he notes that reporters may need to become "actors" to get stories on occasion.  This was interesting because I have accepted for years the premise that writers in general are all actors -- and sometimes better at acting than established actors as they pursue their craft and appear in public.  Elsewhere today, we note that producer Clarence Greene brought documents to an interview with the Boston Globe, and we wonder whether these comprised long-missing things, including studio information, that Greene put into the hands of a Los Angeles security company which no longer has possession of them. (credit:  Barry Greenwood)

Hot Water and Wire Brushes

It was good to see the occasional newspaper article focusing upon key personnel other than Clarence Greene or Tom Towers.  In this collection, American Airlines pilot Willis Sperry and former Project Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt receive prominent mention.  We also find something we haven't seen in newsprint before:  A specific instance where a theater's advertisement for the movie involved painting flying saucer images all over the street.  Apparently, finding a guaranteed method to scrub away the images days later was difficult until the time-tested method of mixing boys, hot water and wire brushes was organized, kind of like a reverse (Mark Twain's) Tom Sawyer scene about whitewash and a fence. (credit: Barry Greenwood)

Cincinnati's Hometown Son

Articles from a Cincinnati newspaper make it clear that Tom Towers grew up in that city.  Also of interest is a reference to Dick Williams, another member of the newspaper industry who may have played his own very brief role in the movie, though this is not really clarified, the way the article is worded.  In a companion item a day earlier from the Cincinnati Enquirer, the newspaper honors Towers by including a photo from the movie (a better quality picture will be found among our earliest blog entries), but simultaneously degrades the entire effort when the motion picture is incorrectly titled as "U.F.I." with a short caption which should have easily been caught by an editor before -30- (Sorry, but I just had to show off my now irrelevant newspaper knowledge:  -30- was once a newspaper code number representing the end of a reporter's story.  Actually, there exists an old Jack Webb movie entitled "-30-"). (credit:  Barry Greenwood)