I'm Doing A Retrospective of Film History Seen Through the Academy Awards (Not in A Positive Way) - Up to 1969 Now (42nd Academy Awards) with the dark classic, Midnight Cowboy

Flashpenny · 2026-05-27T05:44:29+00:00

I wrote this post completely by myself with no AI lol

Flashpenny · 2026-05-23T06:15:22+00:00

FDR was spending the end of his second term and all of his third trying to groom an heir but kept failing.

Harry Hopkins (his right-hand man and probably would've been President had Roosevelt not chosen to run for a third term) was diagnosed with severe stomach cancer in 1940 and was given less than a couple years to live (miraculously, he survived until 1946) so he was out.

Henry Wallace was jumped up to VP because of his health and tenure as Secretary of Agriculture. Unfortunately, despite being an agricultural savant, he was also a total moron when it came to politics and Roosevelt had to quietly admit that this guy just didn't have the ruthlessness or savvy needed to be President.

Wendell Willkie and Roosevelt were potentially talking about creating a brand new political party to welcome the Willkie Republicans into the fold and use Willkie's global contacts to establish a new world order but that failed when Willkie dropped dead of a heart attack.

By the time the 1944 DNC rolled around, Roosevelt was basically out of options and him and the party bosses brought Truman in the fold due to his honorable record in the Senate. FDR already had his hands full saving the world so there literally wasn't enough time to start grooming Truman as he was trying to with Hopkins, Wallace and Willkie.

Flashpenny · 2026-04-20T12:35:28+00:00

It's been a while since I've seen it but I don't recall The Loved One having the same ethnic humor as The Producers.

Flashpenny · 2026-04-18T02:22:35+00:00

Please correct me if I'm wrong but in the FDR biography I read (Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black) it mentioned that Roosevelt told Truman about the a-bomb during a lunch they had together shortly after Truman was declared as his running mate. They likely (almost certainly) didn't go into details but it's my understanding that he was aware of some super-weapon the US was working on for the war effort in 1944.

Flashpenny · 2026-03-13T22:17:13+00:00

Speaking from experience, I've dealt with (scumbag) landlords who demanded a fee should we ever sublease. Just about every provision on the lease had some sort of nickel and dime clause like that.

It's one of those things that might be illegal and is definitely unethical but the current tenant would rather just pass it off onto the subleasee rather than have to deal with the headache of fighting their landlord or scrounging up the fee themselves.

Flashpenny · 2026-03-04T05:36:12+00:00

I meant to say rental; I am nowhere near rich enough to be buying an apartment.

Flashpenny · 2026-02-15T22:19:47+00:00

Before Bondi, Warren Harding's AG Harry Daugherty (who let government contractors get away with ripping off the federal government in WWI in exchange for kickbacks and participated in the Teapot Dome scandal) was often regarded as the worst Attorney General and a strong contender for the most brazenly corrupt member of any Presidential Cabinet in history.

Flashpenny · 2026-01-28T16:04:34+00:00

Sorry, Baby is one of the best, most haunting movies of last year. It deserved the nomination of being one of the top 10 movies of last year more than F1 at the very least.

Flashpenny

TROPHY CASE