Miscellaneous 109

1) Boy, does that Newt Gingrich ever have chutzpah. The dude's lost two consecutive contests to Rick Santorum (finishing behind him in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary) and he's saying that SANTORUM should get out of the race. Talk about some ballsiness, huh?............2) Conventional wisdom is that 1930s screen goddesses, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, a) didn't know each other and b) never even met. It isn't the sole/unanimous opinion, however. This, in that tabloid journalist and reporter, Diana McLellan, alleges that not only did they know each other they actually had a love affair back in 1925. According to McLellan (this, from her 2000 book, "The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood"), the two women (Garbo was 19 at the time, Dietrich 23) met on the set of the movie, "The Joyless Street", and proceeded to have a torrid six week love affair. McLellan also goes on to say that the relationship ended quite acrimoniously (Dietrich was allegedly jealous of Garbo's meteroric success) and that the two basically lied for 60 years that they had never even met each other. Youza, huh? Now, is it true? I'd certainly like to think so, no?............3) You'd think that it would be hard to steal any movie in which your costars were Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, and Carroll Baker. But that's exactly what Burl Ives did in the 1958 epic western, "The Big Country" (directed by the great William Wyler). Ives's turn as the uncouth, quasi moral rancher, Rufus Hannassey, is such a scene stealer that you almost forget about the star power in the film. And apparently his Hollywood peers agreed with this by awarding him an Academy Award that year. Pretty decent, huh? I guess that hard work, excellence, and determination can pay off after all.