Who’s with Spartacus?
QUESTION Hollywood stars Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland are celebrating their 102nd birthdays this year. Have they met on or off screen?
Despite the similarity in age (Olivia de Havilland was born on July 16, 1916, and Kirk Douglas on December 9, 1916), and the many films they each made, these two stars never appeared together in a film.
Olivia de Havilland is a BritishAmerican actress and the sister of the late Joan Fontaine.
the double Oscar winner made her name opposite errol Flynn in swashbucklers such as Captain Blood in 1935 and the Adventures Of Robin Hood in 1938.
Her beauty and refined acting style allowed her to cross genres, from romcoms (the Great Garrick in 1937 and Hard to Get in 1938) and Westerns (Dodge City in 1939 and they Died With their Boots On in 1941) to period drama (My Cousin Rachel in 1952) and straight drama (Light in the piazza in 1962).
Kirk Douglas, born issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam to Russian- Jewish immigrants, with his famously dimpled chin, was a Hollywood action man.
Films such as Champion in 1949, paths Of Glory, Gunfight At the O.K. Corral, both in 1957, the Vikings in 1958 and spartacus in 1960 made him a superstar.
the two have certainly met. there was even rumour of a romance.
At the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, they were pictured in high spirits at a gala dinner and dancing together. One journalist reported: ‘ Kirk Douglas and Olivia de Havilland are giving the international set plenty to gab about. Acquaintances say they act like they discovered each other in a big way.’
However, Douglas married the film pR Anne Buydens the following year and the pair, aged 102 and 99, are still together.
Despite being married, Douglas was a well-known ladies’ man, as detailed in his 1988 autobiography, the Ragman’s son, published with his wife’s permission.
in it, he details affairs with Rita Hayworth, Gene tierney, patricia Neal, Marlene Dietrich, Faye Dunaway and Joan Crawford. He tried to seduce Lauren Bacall, but was unsuccessful.
He conspicuously does not mention Olivia de Havilland as a conquest.
Tom Brown, Nantwich, Cheshire.
QUESTION Strawberries and raspberries are sold in punnets. What is the origin of the word and before plastic, what were they made of?
tHe word punnet surfaced in the early 19th century and appears to be a diminutive of pun, a dialectal variant of pound. punnets, like other baskets, were a specific measure, in this case for fruit.
the original punnets were known as chip baskets and were made of thin laths of wood woven together.
Emma Cross, Dumbarton.
QUESTION What happened to RAF aircrew during World War II when they were charged with a lack of moral fibre?
tHe term first appeared on April 22, 1940, in an Air Ministry circular recommending that squadron commanders identify men who had forfeited their confidence, distinguishing psychiatric cases from those ‘lacking moral fibre’. it was a response to rising psychiatric casualties from the early operations of RAF Bomber and Coastal Commands.
At that time, Command suffered a 60 per cent loss rate and one can only imagine the level of fear when flying at 18,000ft, beset by anti-aircraft fire, enemy night- fighters and the relatively unreliable airworthiness of the aircraft of the era. Facing the threat of invasion and with a shortage of aircrew, the Air Ministry imposed severe penalties on those who had lost th the confidence of their commanders.
the service records of those classified lacking moral fibre (LMF) were stamped with a large red W (f (for ‘waverer’).
Officers would lose their commissions, si be refused ground jobs in the RAF and lose their flying badge ‘to prevent them getting a lucrative job as a pilot in civil life’. NCOs would be reduced to aircraftman second class and assigned menial tasks for months.
Wing Commander W. C. J. Lawson, head of the branch responsible for the policy’s execution, calculated that 2,726 cases were classified as LMF with more than 4,000 assessed.
the label ‘LMF’ was designed to differentiate cases from psychiatric diagnoses such as flying stress, aeroneurosis or aviator’s neurasthenia. these disorders attracted popular sympathy and carried an entitlement to a war pension, which the authorities were keen to avoid.
Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, a brilliant, sympathetic leader, wrote: ‘i was ruthless with LMF, i had to be. We were airmen, not psychiatrists. there was no time to be as compassionate as i would like to have been.’
By contrast, squadron Leader David stafford-Clark, a station medical officer and later a psychiatrist, argued that by failing to take full account of an airman’s psychological predisposition and the traumatic nature of combat, being designated LMF was ‘very harsh indeed’.
oliver Connor, Farnham, Surrey.
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