Combing Memory for a Screen Favorite

Honeycomb candy bars were the best, but they were crunchy and made too much noise. I liked Abba Zabas, too. They were fine if you weren’t wearing braces, and a bar in every 5,000 or 6,000 had an orange strip around it that entitled you to a free one. Abba Zabas were tubes of vanilla taffy filled with peanut butter.

Our theater was the Beverly on Beverly Drive, now an avenue of overly elegant shops. The Beverly had a Taj Mahal-shaped dome on top. I think I saw a glimpse of the dome the other day, well covered by a corporate front.

It is almost impossible now to remember anything I saw there, or at Jensen’s on Melrose. They were just golden afternoons, now remembered with nostalgia as sweet as a Honeycomb bar. We probably saw a great deal of junk, but it was a capsule of time that, for kids, and had nothing to do with the capitals of the 48 states or fractions.

Now some people are building a theater with 18 screens where 18 full-length movies can be shown at once. From the artist’s drawings, it will look like the hangar for the Starship Enterprise. It will have two cafes and be the last word in elegant showplaces.

They are asking that people send in the name of their favorite movie of all time; for that, they will be among the first guests in this electronic pleasure dome and get to eat all the popcorn and drink all the Coca-Cola they want.

I think they have set us an impossible task. We like different movies for different reasons. It’s like choosing your favorite dress of all time. It depends on where you wore it and, more important, whom you were with. Was it raining? Was there music? Was there a yellow convertible?

And movies really have to be put in categories: Sad, funny, spooky, historical, sports, wartime. Almost any movie that was made from a favorite book starts out with a terrible handicap. What you see in your mind’s eye cannot be equaled. Unless, of course, the movie was directed by Frank Capra, William Wellman, Sam Wood, Billy Wilder, John Ford or one of half a dozen others.

There are movies that featured your favorite stars, films blindly acknowledged to be great movies. Anything with Carole Lombard was my kind of movie, although I can only remember the name of “My Man Godfrey,” in which she starred with William Powell, the paragon of urbane charm.

Powell brings up the series movie, like the Thin Man films he made with the incomparable Myrna Loy and a wire-haired terrier named Asta. And the Topper series from the Thorne Smith books, with Charles Ruggles, I think, and the soignee Constance Bennett with hipbones that stuck out like coat hangers.

I have always liked anything with Katharine Hepburn, most notably and about 35 years apart, “The Philadelphia Story,” and “The Lion in Winter.” That’s the first “Philadelphia Story,” with Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Ruth Hussey as the magazine photographer. With those Philip Barry lines and that cast, it’s hard to imagine a miss.

The next one (a musical version, called “High Society”) was a good movie and had Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and the immaculate Grace Kelly, not to mention Louis Armstrong, but the definitive movie had already been shot. Almost always, the second time around may be more comfortable, as the song says, but the skyrockets have already left the launch pad.

“Born Yesterday” was a great movie and it, too, came from the theater. “Casablanca,” of course. “Best Years of Our Lives,” because of the time of my life. It had the Fredric March-Myrna Loy performances and my love, Doug, had just come back from four years in the infantry of the United States Army.

I have taken an unscientific poll, and I can tell you that the winner will be “Gone With the Wind.” But there is no end to the added starters. Kay Murphy, a woman of wisdom and judgment, votes for “The Sound of Music.”

Patsy’s favorite is “Dark Victory,” the Bette Davis tour de force, but she also wants “42nd Street” and all the “Our Gang” comedies.

A male friend of mine whose friendship has meant steadfastness and laughter chooses “Gilda,” because one of the highlights of his early youth was his crush on Rita Hayworth.

My favorite, if my feet were to the fire, would have to be “Lives of a Bengal Lancer.” I saw it repeatedly to see Franchot Tone do the “this sceptered isle” speech from “Richard II.” He said it to the comrade in arms who had betrayed Franchot and the good guys.

There is the slightest possibility that it was the “we happy few, we band of brothers,” speech from “Henry V.”

I do know that when Tone finished the speech, which he had delivered without emphasis, he said, “If I’d known I was going to say all that, I’d have brought my violin.”

That was a performance with none of the machinery showing. Just good acting.

How can you choose one movie? Just pick your movie and send in the coupon. They can’t show “Gone With the Wind” on all 18 screens.

And you can tell me if they have Honeycomb candy bars and where they keep them in that huge plant. Popcorn is great and the candy bars are the size of your thumbnail, but movies are still the greatest escape from dailiness since the wandering minstrels came through, telling of love and high deeds of chivalry.

I want to sit by you if you’ll bring the Abba Zabas.