Many of us who grew up in Tampa Bay fondly recall whiling away summer vacations watching old movies on WTOG-Ch.44. Before there was video and cable, that's what you'd do — watch whatever old classic was on the tube, whether it was Creature Feature Saturdays with Dr. Paul Bearer, The Three Stooges, Little Rascals, a corny 1950s comedy starring Doris Day or Sophia Loren, black-and-white classics by Elia Kazan and Billy Wilder or Technicolor epics like Spartacus and Cleopatra.
Some of the promos for the movies had montages with the voiceover slogan, "When movies were movies," and my mother scoffed and said, "No, it was when stars were stars." I always thought she was right on with that little nugget of wisdom, and no finer example of a real-deal movie star illuminated the screen like the sultry and complicated Elizabeth Taylor.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2011.