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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

It's funny to think that one of the greatest last-line endings in the history of movies occured because of a mistake, but that's what happened with the famous final words of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. The last scene, which takes place in a parking garage at night, was to show the protagonist (played by the great Paul Muni) receding into the shadows, and when his girlfriend asked, "How do you eat?", he was to respond, "I steal!" and the shot was to then fade out. But a light on the set blew out before Muni said the words, so the lines emerges from total darkness. Needless to say, when director Mervyn LeRoy saw how effective this new, serendipitous ending played, he kept it, and lovers of this picture have been thankful ever since.

73 years after it was released, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang can still evoke a feeling of outrage. Back then, it inspired the country to end the chain-gang system in the South. (No surprise, it was banned in Georgia, the unmentioned state it's set in.) It's the kind of movie we need today more than ever.

Anyway, the three-way gauntlet I threw down with this quiz was handily dismissed (or whatever winners do to thrown gauntlets) by the three I named-- Wayne Palmer, E. Yarber, and Hank Parmer-- but they were joined by a newcomer to the quiz. Welcome, Tammy, and congratulations to you and our regular trio of unstumpables. Your pardons are in the mail!

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 6, 2005 11:15 PM

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