Barry Norman Recommends...

During the early 90s Barry Norman was invited to give a series of talks on the P&O cruise ship Arcadia At that time, I was looking after the crew video library. The library had several sections: Thriller, Comedy, Musical etc.
I thought it would nice to have a 'Classic Film' category 'as recommended by Barry Norman'. I wrote to him with this suggestion and a couple of days later received the following handwritten reply.

Dear Mr. Marshall,
I'm afraid that once I started listing, I couldn't stop. There are so many excellent films. So feel free to pick the bones out of this lot:

COMEDY

'Bringing Up Baby' - Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant

'Gregory's Girl' - Director Bill Forsyth

'The Full Monty'

'About a Boy' - Hugh Grant

'Hear My Song' - Adrian Dunbar, Shirley Ann Field

'What's Up Doc' - Barbara Streisand

DRAMA

'Citizen Kane' - Orson Wells

'Matter of Life and Death' - Powell and Pressburger

'About Eve' - Bette Davis

'Zulu' - Michael Caine

'Gladiator'

ROMANCE

'Casablanca' - Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman

'Gone with the Wind'

'Romancing the Stone'

'Notting Hill' - Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts

'I Know Where I'm Going' (very sweet - my wife's favourite) Powell and Pressburger again

THRILLERS

'Godfather (One)'

'Godfather (Two)'

'Pulp Fiction' v. violent but excellent

'LA Confidential'

'Thirty Nine Steps' The Hitchcock version with Robert Donat - the rest don't match up

WESTERNS

'The Searchers' - John Wayne

'Stagecoach'

'The Outlaw Josie Wales' - Clint Eastwood

CHILDRENS' FILMS OF APPEAL TO ADULTS

'The Railway Children'

'Wizard of Oz'

'The Thief of Bagdad' (the 1930's version with Conrad Veidt and Sabu)

The fact that Barry recommended a John Wayne film shows his objectivity. In one of his talks he described Wayne as 'having a problem finding a suitable political candidate to support after the untimely death of Genghis Khan' which in itself was pretty restrained considering Wayne had once described him as 'a goddam liberal pinko faggot".