Movies that came out your birth year

[Stavros]

Right on Stavros,1948 it is! " Hamlet" won Best Picture and Sir Laurence Olivier Best Actor. Yes,his ashes were interred in Poet's Corner,Westminster Abbey,along with the Royals including Henry V,who he portrayed.
Hey, I like these puzzle posts,hope we can do more. But yours was much more challenging.

Ok then, here are two:

1) The theme is elocution lessons and the answer is the name of two actors and the film they appeared in, one of the most admired films of the last 60 years.

The elder one was born with a thick cockney accent which he got rid of, eventually giving elocution lessons at RADA to one of the most revered actors of the 20th century, who remarked that his teacher had been an influence on him, but that he believed he had failed at acting and emigrated to America. The younger one recalls in his memoirs the elocution lessons he had at RADA where he had to learn how to say Two Ghosts Sat on Posts Drinking Toasts To Their Hosts...

2) What actor is linked with the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway, the role of Han Solo in Star Wars, and a film by Ingmar Bergman...?

[fred41]

Stavros-The first is Claude Rains and Peter O'Toole in:" Lawrence of Arabia" (another film that came out during my birth year)

[Stavros]

Wow! Brilliant! I thought it was google proof, which suggests you have read some books....Rains was born in south London and tutored Sir John Gielgud at RADA who is alleged to have said of Rains : 'He was a great influence on me. I don't know what happened to him. I think he failed and went to America'. O'Toole refers to the elocution lessons he had at RADA in the first volume of his memoirs Loitering With Intent...

[fred41]

Wow! Brilliant! I thought it was google proof, which suggests you have read some books....Rains was born in south London and tutored Sir John Gielgud at RADA who is alleged to have said of Rains : 'He was a great influence on me. I don't know what happened to him. I think he failed and went to America'. O'Toole refers to the elocution lessons he had at RADA in the first volume of his memoirs Loitering With Intent...

I'm not as well read as you might think...it stopped being google proof when you included the quote "Two Ghosts Sat on Posts Drinking Toasts To Their Hosts..."

after that you can just work in reverse:Lawrence of Arabia fit the the bill...and so on...

[fred41]

Oh and the actor in the second puzzle is Glynn Turman, who was in the broadway production of"A Raisin in the Sun"...was considered for the part of Han Solo and played a role in Ingmar Bergman's film -"The Serpent's Egg".

[Stavros]

Hmph! I did google it first and it didn't come up, maybe it was Google UK or something. Never mind. And yes, Glynn Turman, who was also married to Aretha Frankling for a few years, and was Mayor Royce in The Wire. How did you get that one, from the Raisin in the Sun reference? I will have to think of something more obscure and google-proof in the future!

[fred41]

Hmph! I did google it first and it didn't come up, maybe it was Google UK or something. Never mind. And yes, Glynn Turman, who was also married to Aretha Frankling for a few years, and was Mayor Royce in The Wire. How did you get that one, from the Raisin in the Sun reference? I will have to think of something more obscure and google-proof in the future!

That took a while,but it shouldn't have...I'll explain:
The Raisin in the Sun reference was easy,most people older than 30 should know that one, but the problem is that Glynn Turman, though he has a huge body of work...isn't exactly a household name...not like Sidney Poitier for instance.
With the Han Solo reference I was pretty sure it had to be someone that got turned down for the part ..or was considered, but his name didn't immediately pop up for that either...and Ingmar Bergman? Probably most Americans, myself included, think that Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann were the only two thespians in all his movies...lol.
So it was an interesting head scratcher for quite a while....but it shouldn't have been, for if you simply google - 'raisin in the sun' along with 'han solo' you will find the answer.
Love this stuff though...the internet is a wonderful tool...and so are your brain teasers. Please keep them up when you have the time Stavros.

[Stavros]

Ok, two more. For the first one I am prepared if there is no progress, to offer a clue.

1) Before you start with the number, think of another, say 30 -but 'on the square' rather than 'squared'; then move to a mysterious woman called Myra, before discovering that he was at one time -in a sense, still is- Mae West's neighbour.
-Who is he?

2) An Hungarian Jew, and Hans from Belfast (who learned some of his trade with John Ford) failed to make a film that, when made by the son of Quakers from Croydon, became one of the highest rated films in history.
-What is the film?

[fred41]

a real puzzle...should be fun.
The second one can be found with a couple of minutes of research - I'll P.M.you the answer so as not to ruin it.

[Stavros]

There has to be a degree of difficulty without making a teaser impossible, but I thought I had gone through enough hoops to make no 2 harder than you are making out -or you just know more about films than most people! Or I should stop making them so damn easy!