Douglas Day Stewart AND Paul Brickman Went to Claremont McKenna?

A few weeks ago, I wondered if Claremont McKenna college students ever made forays into film or the movies, given its proximity to Los Angeles. Sure enough, they were involved big time.

Little did I know that two of the greatest screenwriters in film history went to our fair college.

They are Paul Brickman and Douglas Day Stewart

Brickman wrote and directed Risky Business, probably one of the best comedies of the last twenty-five years. It certainly launched Tom Cruise's career.

Stewart wrote An Officer and a Gentleman which probably ranks as one of the best military dramas of '80s.

If Only Benson Were Here To Talk Political Corruption... With Update

In light of the rather hilarious and rather tragically stupid case of corruption from the governor of Illinois, and for true practitioners of political schadenfreude such as I, it is incumbent upon us to leave you with a great, pithy line from the founder of our college, George C. S. Benson, pictured in the center way above.

In Political Corruption in America, George C. S. Benson concludes that "most election frauds occur in areas of one-party dominance." (169)

Chicago, Alaska, or New York, anyone? Still like one party rule, my Democrat friends?

As luck and irony would have it, today is world anti-corruption day. What a pity the Feds didn't arrest Blagojevich on his birthday, which falls tomorrow.

UPDATE: I had nearly forgotten one my favorite quotations from Benson. Let me quote from another priceless book of Dr. George C. S. Benson. This one is called Amoral America and it was printed in 1975. Benson wrote with co-author Thomas S. Engeman,

"Our astounding crime rate is largely due to lack of ethics, which, in turn, is due to lack of ethical instruction in the schools and other opinion-forming institutions."

How true.

Henry Salvatori on Ronald Reagan, According to Gore Vidal

p. 991 of Gore Vidal's rather lousy United States.

On the drafting of Reagan by Henry A. Salvatori et al. for the California governor in 1966. The quotations are sloppy and appear here as they do in the original. The bolding is mine.

". . . Salvatori didn't think you could run an actor against an old political pro like the Democratic incumbent Pat Brown. But when Ronnie went national with The Speech on television, Ronnie was in business as a politician, and his friends decided to finance a Reagan race. To these new-rich Sunbelters, "Politicians and candidates, even Ronnie, were an inferior breed. 'Reagan doesn't have great depth,' Salvatori admits, 'but I don't know any politician who does. He's not the most intelligent man who ever was, but I've never met a politician with great depth. I don't know of any politician who would be smart enough to run my business, but Reagan just might.'"

Nixon Goes to China; Henry Salvatori Fires Off a Letter With Jaffa

Here's the paragraph with the relevant names in bold. It was taken from Eric J. Ladley's Nixon's China Trip

“Professor Henry Joffa [sic] of Claremont Men’s College on July 19 sent a letter to Nixon from a Henry Salvatori, who had helped formulate a position in 1960 on the reality of the Sino-Soviet split for the Republican National Committee. While Salvatori said he agreed with Nixon, he predicted the president’s policy would break the Republican Party apart. He later recommended explaining the long range thinking behind the move to conservatives, and possibly recruiting Reagan as a spokesman. (59)”

The citation is purportedly from “Kissinger memoirs, pp. 280-281.”