Attn: Godfather Fanatics!...Today TCM is featuring our own Captain McCluskey, Mr. *Sterling Hayden*, all day today as TCM's "Summer Under The Stars" continues. Yesterday was Gene Hackman, and I got to see FFC's The Coversation (1974) for the first time. A film also starring John Cazale, it was very cool stuff.

Just now it was Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Stragelove (1964). This is a film that usually graces a lot of critic's top 10 lists, and is also considered one of the best comedies ever, though not necessarily intended by Kubrick to be a comedy - it just sort of happened that way. It has incredible writing and character development with that subtle dark-humor touch from Kubrick, a very serious humor that gets its laugh from the seriousness of the situation at hand - a delusional and fervent anti-Communist US Air Force general (Sterling Hayden) orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union that leads up to a possible WWIII. One of the best pictures ever concerning the Cold War scare, it portrays the people and circumstances behind the wars we fight in a twisted and facetious (albeit realistic) manner.

Hayden's performance along with George C. Scott really helped make this the masterpiece that it is. This is a film that deals very seriously with the issue of Communism as it existed after WWII. In real life, Sterling Hayden is said to have revealed he and other actor's Communist ties to a congressional committee. Something he later said he regretted for the rest of his life.