The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 37

rrmnf mmmmtmmmiim m. Friday, July 31 1998 The Pantagraph IE E'N It 1 A if! I 1 "Afterglow," Normal Theater "Baseketball," University Cinemas "Everafter," Parkway Cinemas "The Negotiator," University Cinemas "Parent Trap 2," Parkway Cinemas "Dark City" "The Gingerbread Man" "Great Expectations" (remake) "Hard Rain" "Little Men" (remake) Tom Sizemore, left, and Tom Hanks ride a landing craft during the Normandy invasion in "Saving Private 'The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd," Corn Stock Theater, Peoria "Schoolhouse Rock Miller Park, Bloomington i TV: "60 Minutes," CBS Movie: Saving Pnvate Ryan Video Rental: The Rainmaker" Pop Single: "The Boy Is Mine," Brandy Monica Thanks to Left: Steven Spielberg, left, and Stephen Ambrose appeared together during a recent press conference. Special lo The PaniagraphSTEPHENIE AMBROSE TUBBS "Saving Private Ryan" "Mask of Zorro" V2 "Small Soldiers" V2 There's Something About Mary" thrusted leather oblong not-trophy, neither chal Below: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and Edward Burns size up German defenses during the final battle scene. ice, but rather palpable symbol of insatiable honor, impregnable, invincible but (Cm i it-1 Description of a football by winner of this year's Faux (William) Faulkner from the piece, "Pile On" (Inspired by Faulkner's Stephen Ambrose, Hollywood got it right By DAN CRAFT Pantagraph entertainment editor As one of the nation's most respected historians recalls it, on June 6, 1944, he was 8 years old and spending the summer with his Uncle Bern and Aunt Stella on the family farm north of Bloomington-Normal in Hudson Township. Born in Decatur and raised in Lovington (a tiny town south of Decatur), the boy had relatives all over Central Illinois, but nowhere more so than in McLean County, where he frequently visited and stayed over.

To this day, there are, in fact, approximately 20 of his cousins still living in Hudson and environs. That pivotal summer in American history, little Stephen Ambrose whose father was stationed in the South Pacific and whose mother was doing war work in Whitewater, Wis. was oblivious as to how that day D-Day would someday figure into his life in a monumental way. He had no idea that he would grow up to be perhaps the country's premier historical chronicler of D-Day and the founder of the museum erected in its memory. (SwE'E'N Ambrose's world Following are among the published highlights of Stephen Ambrose's career as one of the nation's most prominent historians, including his work as Dwight D.

Eisenhower's official biographer: "Upton and The Army" "Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff "Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment "Rise to Globalism: 8:30 a.m. Sunday; American Movie Classics With sword-playing Zorro and his signature back in the limelight via the surprisingly stylish and well-done "The Mask of Zorro," memories of earlier cinematic encounters with pulp writer Johnston McCulley's hero of Old California are resurfacing. It didn't take long after McCulley's Zorro (Spanish for appeared in print in 1919 for Hollywood to come a-courting via the silent cine- r- i. "American Foreign Policy 1938-1992" "Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors" "Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945" "Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point" "The Supreme Commander: The War Years Nor could he have guessed that slightly more than 54 years after that same June day, he would be sitting alone in a movie theater in New Orleans. And that he would be the first civilian allowed to see Steven Spielberg's latest movie, "Saving U.S.

troops land at Normandy. umn nnrtravpn thp rhnrantpr in 1Q9(1 Qiinprh 1 lie Mill ui jui 1 me SLdl illbl luii-sdu 1 swashbuckler. A lesser sequel appeared in 1925, Don The Son of Zorro, with Fairbanks ing both father and offspring. In the sound era, Zorro returned to the screen in a forgotten 1937 B-version, "The Bold Caballero," starring Robert Livingston, which was followed by a trilo- ev of increasingly frenetic Dan Craft reviews 'Saving Private Ryan' Page D3 Republic Pictures serials, "7nrrv-i RiHoc Ao-jin" of Gen. Dwight D.

Eisenhower" "Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952 "Eisenhower: The President" "Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944" "Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962" "Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972" "Eisenhower: Soldier and President" "Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990" "Band of Brothers: Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle Nest" "Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West" "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II" "Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beach to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945" Private Ryan," which opens with a graphic, no-holds-barred re-creation of American troops landing at Omaha Beach in Normandy ground zero of D-Day. Hired by Spielberg to act as the film's official "historical advisor," Ambrose author of nearly two dozen books on American history, many of them best-sellers was essentially given carte blanche to order any changes that didn't meet his standards of authenticity and accuracy. In an exclusive interview with Steppin' Out "my last," he vows after having turned down ABC News and PBS' Jim Lehrer the same day Ambrose seems to have been overwhelmed by the publicity both he and the film have received in the last several weeks. As part of the official national press junket, comprised of Spielberg and star Tom Hanks, he says "I have never seen anything like this: It's kind of like combat you can train for it, but you're spent.

I don't know how these guys do it." The group traveled to Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Although just as renowned for his exhaustive, multi-volume biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon, Ambrose and his D-Day books June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of See RYAN, next page with John Carroll; "Zorro's Fighting Legion" (1939), with Reed Hadley; and "The Ghost of Zorro" (1949), with Clayton Moore (donning a mask several years before his "Lone Ranger" stint). The definitive sound-era Tyrone Power Linda Darnell Zorro arrived during this same period, but far afield of pictures and serials: 20th Century-Fox's 1940 release, "The Mark of Zorro," a plush and rousing answer to Warner 1938 hit, "The Adventures of Robin Hood," in which Fox's resident matinee idol, Tyrone Power, was handed his first major swashbuckling role, much of it opposite "Robin Hood's" resident villain, Basil Rathbone.

Whether faking it as an effete, handkerchief-flouncing nobleman or saving the day, incognito, as Don Diego de la Vega's heroic counterpart, Power is perfect in the role. With Rathbone handling swordplay duties from the nefarious end (nobody did it, or does it, better in tne movies ana unaa Darnell at ner loveliest the heroine role played by Catherine Zeta-Jones in the new version), the casting is complete. Credit the film's look and sound to director Rouben Mamoulian Me one of the master visual stylists of the 1930s and 1940s. His approach to "The Mark of Zorro" makes a case for black-and-white as the perfect palette for pvpn as scenic an nutrlnnr arlvenrure as this. Museum remembers D-Day Stephen Ambrose, born in Central Illinois and with strong family ties to Hudson Township in McLean County, is about to see a $17 million dream come true, one that has been facilitated through his work with Steven Spielberg as historical advisor on "Saving Private Ryan." His long-cherished project, the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, will open beyond doubt on June 6, 2000, in a rehabbed brewery, with a little financial boost from Spielberg.

Well, a lot, actually. t- With Spielberg's largesse, the money collected has been upped to $15 million, just $2 million shy of the total needed. "I'm confident we will go over that" by June 6, 2000, he says. In addition to his cash donation, the director is allowing his name to be used as a sponsor, and made a pitch for the museum at the film's premiere. "He did something he told me he had never done before: He came out and made a personal appearance before the movie began, and he read a speech he had asked me to write on D- Day and the museum." All of the artifacts and are in hand, Ambrose says, "and it's all a go.l can't tell you how wonderful it is." mostly by emphasizing shadows and the play of candlelight in interior scenes (Zorro's candle- snuffmg-by-sword bit is unforgettable).

Aoeitea Dy aiii ea iNewman viDrani, uscar-nominated score and Arthur Miller's cine-- matography, Mamoulian's perfectly paced and I played film virtually defines the Hollywood swasnoucmer at us Dan Craft I 1 Willi i SI Trivia question: Besides Basil Rathbone, what other cast member of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) appeared in the similarly plotted and paced Against heavy German resistance, U.S. troops gather for a counter-attack. "The Mark of Zorro" just two years later? (Answer at end of Billboard column on D4).