Be Frank With Me Recommended Film Viewing Brigadoon “How man little Los Angelenos who looked like they’d stepped off the set of Brigadoon could there be on that playground?” – Alice

Casablanca “We’ll always have Paris.” Frank looked very pleased with both of us. He shook a chocolate cigarette from the pack and arranged it between his third and fourth fingers between palming it to his face. “You know what I’ve always wondered? Why anyone would join the French Foreign Legion. Aside from the uniform. I like those hats very much. I wish I had one. I have a fez, named after Fez, the town in Morocco that had a monopoly on its production.”

Chariots of Fire “After Xander left I lay there listening for I don’t know how long to him play something that I finally realized was the theme from Chariots of Fire. Had Frank asked him to learn that one? I’d never watched that movie with the kid but I imagined he must like the Jazz Age English menswear in it very much.” – Alice

Clarence Darrow for the Defense “Frank was done up in a three-piece glen-plaid suit, bow tie and pocket square, gold knot cuff links and watch chain strung across his vest. Very Clarence Darrow for the Defense.” – Alice

Guys and Dolls “Frank was wearing a loud plaid zoot suit I’d never seen before, with taxi-yellow suspenders, yellow pocket handkerchief, dice cuff links, and two-toned shoes. Xander, in ancient jeans and a T-shirt, looked like he was having a session with his new bookie, Little Frankie, whom he’d met while working as a grip on the set of a remake of Guys and Dolls.” – Alice

The Hound of the Baskervilles “My favorite on-screen Sherlock was portrayed by Basil Rathbone, a cadaverous Brit who popularized the deerstalker hat, Inverness coat, and pipe. His films were made between the years of 1939 and 1946, a time when a war-torn world took solace in the idea of a lone gentleman of towering intellect rescuing the world from its demons. What does cadaverous mean?” – Frank

It Happened One Night “I am grateful that Frank, having decided he’d been forgotten and that he’d better walk home, chooses the route we take in the car. Did I say ‘walk’? because after several blocks, Frank decides to hitchhike. I find him on the corner of Bellagio Terrace and Linda Flora Drive, right hand hiking up right trouser leg to expose a tempting expanse of burgundy and navy argyle sock, left thumb awag. A pose, Frank explained once safely ensconced in the backseat, combining the hitchhiking techniques of both Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert from that famous scene in 1934’s It Happened One Night.” – Alice

It’s a Wonderful Life “Frank was wearing a straw boater tipped onto the back of his head, and two pieces of his hair had fallen forward on either side of his part, forming a parenthesis around a forehead gone rumpled with concern. An expression, I realized later, he’d borrowed from the tool kit of Jimmy Stewart, circa It’s a Wonderful Life.” – Alice

My Man Godfrey “Frank likes to imagine that William Powell is Eleanor Powell’s brother. After that, the Park Avenue accent started.” – Mimi

A Night to Remember “I was indulging in one of my favorite pastimes, pretending to be Captain Edward Smith on the bridge of the Titanic. Did you know that the Internal Revenue Service, more commonly identified by its monogram, IRS, selected April fifteenth as the date for the annual filing of personal income taxes as a tribute to all the wealthy individuals who died in that tragic event?” – Frank

On the Town “It was pretty clear Frank and Mr. Vargas had been having at least a little fun when I came home because I found the two of them wearing tweedy jackets with bow ties and pocket squares, watching Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and that other guy whose name nobody ever remembers trying to see all of New York in a day in On the Town.” – Alice

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next “It Happened One Night was the first film to win all five marquee Oscars, a feat not repeated until 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a movie I have never watched,” Frank says.

“Don’t,” I say.

Pinocchio “Reviewers of my mother’s ex-husband’s oeuvre say his smolder and physical presence were genuinely Oscar-worthy and that when he opened his mouth his acting was on par with Pinnocchio’s. Quite a compliment in my book, since Pinocchio, the eponymous Academy Award- winning film released in 1940 by the Walt Disney Studios, is one of my favorite animated movies.” – Frank

Public Enemy “Remember the scene where Cagney shoves a halved grapefruit into his girl’s face because she won’t shut up? Mimi’s ex-husband unscripted was like that girl. Mimi has a soft spot for lots of human frailties, but being stupid and boring aren’t among them.” – Xander

Robin Hood “What do you want for your birthday, Frank?” I asked.

“Dr. Livingstone died without realizing his dream of locating the source of the Nile. When the British government asked for his body to be sent home, the tribe he had been living with cut his heart out and buried it under a tree because they believed his heart belonged in Africa. For my birthday I would like to have a bow and arrows.”

“No way.” “It’s true. Dr. Livingstone was born in Scotland but he had been living in Africa for a very long time.”

“I believe that,” I said. “But I’m not getting you a bow and arrows. You could put somebody’s eye out with an arrow.”

“I would also like an outfit like the one Robin Hood wore, circa Errol Flynn.”

Singin’ in the Rain “Dr. Abrams says the prefrontal cortex usually finishes developing around age twenty-four. That’s the part of your brain that controls impulsivity. According to her forecast, by the time I’m twenty-five I’ll be old enough to know better. If we’re lucky. It might happen later, when I’m thirty. Or never. Some people’s prefrontal cortexes mature earlier than others. Women’s, mostly. Debbie Reynolds was a teenager when she made Singin’ in the Rain, for example.” – Frank

Some Like It Hot “Frank’s facial expression was as inscrutable as ever, but the outfit he was wearing – a navy blazer with a gold insignia over the pocket, shirt plus cravat, captain’s hat and owlish horn- rimmed glasses – made him look as jaunty as Tony Curtis pretending to be the rich yachting guy wooing Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.” – Alice

Sunset Boulevard “I’m putting my socks in it. It being my mouth. Otherwise I will tell you that Gloria Swanson shoots William Holden before the movie even gets going, though she’s decades past old enough to know better than to do something impulsive like that.” – Frank

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre “I’d wiped Frank’s face and hands before we went to the hospital, but neither of us had bothered to change our clothes. We looked like fugitives from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a movie I’d never seen and prayed Frank hadn’t, either.” – Alice

The Thin Man “The Thin Man, I presume,” I said, once Frank settled on a smoking jacket over pajamas, a pencil-thin fake mustache from the set I’d given him for Christmas, and a plastic martini glass. The martini glass was the clincher.

“The ‘thin man’ is the skeleton in the movie The Thin Man. This,” Frank said, waggling the fingers of his free hand in front of his smoking jacket, “is an homage to Nick Charles, society detective, as portrayed by William Powell, brother of Eleanor Powell.”

“I don’t think they’re actually siblings,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Frank said. “But I like to imagine they are.”

To Catch a Thief “Around noon each day Frank and I would eat together, then I’d arrange Mimi’s lunch on a tray while Frank went outside to pick a flower to go with it. We’d put his offering, often badly mangled, in a juice glass on the tray and I’d carry the whole thing to her office and leave it on the floor just outside her closed door. I always made Frank swear to wait for me in the kitchen, but he’d trail me in the hall like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, pressing himself into doorways to hide if I happened to look over my shoulder. After I put the tray down and knocked, I’d hear a mad scramble behind me as Frank hotfooted it back to the kitchen. I’d count to ten before I returned to give him time to arrange himself under the table with a book and catch his breath. Then we’d have a cookie.” – Alice

White Heat “Once I took Frank to Disneyland with a boy from his class. We passed through a rough part of town down by the freeway, and the kid pointed to some guy on the street who looked like a drug dealer and said, ‘Look, a gangsta!’ Frank said, ‘Where? Is it Jimmy Cagney?’” -- Mimi

The Wizard of Oz “Xander swept Frank up and ran into the house with him. I followed. He lay the kid across his bed and I wrapped Frank up tight in a blanket. Then Xander sat on the edge of the bed and took him across his lap. He rocked and hummed something to him I couldn’t quite make out. Frank stopped making the walrus sounds and said, ‘”Over the Rainbow.” Louis B. Mayer tried to cut that number from The Wizard of Oz because he thought it slowed the story down.’ Then he fell asleep.” – Alice