Burton . . . the scene stealer
QUESTION Was a Richard Burton film made from pieces of another movie? RAID On Rommel, starring Richard Burton, was released in 1971 and featured action and location footage from the 1967 film Tobruk, starring Rock Hudson and George Peppard.
Tobruk was loosely based on the British attacks on German and Italian forces in Libya in September 1942, codenamed Operation Agreement.
To enable as much footage as possible from the earlier film to be re-used, Raid On Rommel had a similar plot, with the destruction of huge guns and a gasoline depot as the climax.
Hollywood director Henry Hathaway, famous for westerns such as True Grit, somehow found himself at the helm of Raid On Rommel. Burton’s career was undented by this B-feature.
While stock footage was re-used many times over in the early days of Hollywood, the practice became less prevalent in later decades. However, TV shows such as The A-Team and Knight Rider would borrow the odd explosion or action scene from their studio’s feature films.
Rather like Raid On Rommel, Oakmont Films’ low-budget Mosquito Squadron in 1969, often erroneously cited as a sequel to 1964’s 633 Squadron — which depicts the exploits of a fictional World War II British fighter- bomber squadron — borrows most of the earlier film’s airborne scenes. It also uses footage and soundtrack from 1965’ s Operation Crossbow for its pre-credits sequence.
In fact, the climactic explosions from Operation Crossbow can be seen in at least four other feature films. John Hunter, Grinton, N. Yorks. QUESTION
Does searing meat really seal in the juice?
THe idea that searing meat seals in the juices has been debunked, though doing so can improve its taste.
The seeds of the myth were sown early. In Aristotle’s Meteorology, which dates from the 4th century BC, he wrote: ‘Thus as the exterior pores contract, the moisture contained in the object cannot escape any more, but is imprisoned there when the pores close.’
This theory was given a scientific boost by 19th-century German chemist Justus von Liebig. In Researches On The Chemistry Of Food in 1847, he stated that searing created a ‘crust’ on the surface of the meat, which would keep juices in. His conclusions were supported by the famous French chef and culinary author Auguste escoffier, who repeated Liebig’s results in 1902’s Guide Culinaire.
In 1930, a controlled study at the University of Missouri showed that beef rib roasts seared at a high temperature and then cooked only until they were rare lost a little more fluid than roasts cooked in a constant oven.
Harold McGee, in his 1990 book The Curious Cook, describes several experiments proving increased juice loss in seared meat.
None of this is to say you shouldn’t sear meat. It serves the important purpose of building flavour and texture. A hot pan can create a golden, caramelised crust.
Mary Blyth, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland. QUESTION
There is a scene in the film Darkest Hour when Churchill uses the Tube and talks to fellow passengers to gauge their opinions as to whether the country should settle for peace with Germany or fight on. Did this happen or is it poetic licence?
FURTHeR to the earlier answer, which confirmed this incident was created for dramatic purposes in the film, Churchill might not have frequented the Tube following his marriage in 1908 at the age of almost 34, but he was certainly no stranger to the Underground.
He later recalled that for six months he was stationed at Hounslow, Middlesex, before sailing with the 4th Hussars for India in the autumn of 1896. He lived at his mother’s London home and travelled to the barracks ‘two or three times a week by the Underground Railway’.
Wilfred Attenborough, Lincoln.
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