In response to Gene Stavis' rather hostile comments about my GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT posting--- I am aware that GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT was a prestige picture and won the Best Picture Oscar (which, by the way, doesn't mean much. Lots of high minded but perhaps not so great movies have won the award). I am also aware that Darryl F. Zanuck was not Jewish. I was going to mention this in my posting but I didn't want my comments to get too lengthy. I do think Elia Kazan is Jewish (born in Turkey) but, as I don't have his autobiography with me, I cannot verify this. Furthermore, I agree that the "auteur theory," does not apply to movies made under the studio system. It was imprecise of me to say that >Kazan< took a condescending attitude towards prejudice against Jewish people. What I really meant to say is that GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT seemed to me to echo the ambivalent attitude that Jewish people in Hollywood had towards their own Jewishness (not a new subject, check out Neal Gabler's book AN EMPIRE OF THEIR OWN). Mostly, however, in my posting I only wanted to make the point that topical movies frequently don't hold up very well. My comments were off the cuff. Isn't the Internet an informal method of communication? Many postings, I've noticed, contain major and minor factual errors. For example, in a discussion of the movie THE DRESSER a few weeks ago, the actor Tom Courtenay was called Tom Courtney in many postings. It didn't matter much. We're not writing dissertations here on the list, we're just talking. Mary Kalfatovic