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Al Capone is America’s best known gangster and the single greatest symbol of the collapse of law and order in the United States during the 1920s Prohibition era. Capone had a leading role in the illegal activities that lent Chicago its reputation as a lawless city and an interesting variety of Hollywood stars have had the leading role as Al Capone in the many films that have been made that featured him as a character.

The first film about Capone was produced when he was still making headlines. The main character may be named Antonio Camonte, but there’s little doubt as to who producer Howard Hughes had in mind when he and director Howard Hawks filmed Scarface during the Great Depression. Camonte shares more than the same initials with one Al Capone, who was about to begin his eleven-year sentence for tax evasion when the movie was released...

Yusef Lateef, who died on Monday after a bout with prostate cancer, was a devout Muslim who did not like his music to be called jazz because of the supposed indecent origins and connotations of the word (although those origins are still debated). He preferred the self-coined phrase "autophysiopsychic music." Furthermore, his music encompassed an impressively broad range of styles, and the only Grammy he won was in the New Age category -- for a recording of a symphony. Think about those things amid the flood of Lateef obituaries with "jazz" in the headline.

That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).

A Detroit friend,...

Martin Balsam: Oscar winner has ‘Summer Under the Stars’ Day on Turner Classic Movies Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winner Martin Balsam (A Thousand Clowns) is Turner Classic Movies’ unusual (and welcome) "Summer Under the Stars" featured player today, August 27, 2013. Right now, TCM is showing Sidney Lumet’s The Anderson Tapes (1971), a box-office flop starring Sean Connery in his (just about) post-James Bond, pre-movie legend days. (Photo: Martin Balsam ca. early ’60s.) Next, is Joseph Sargent’s thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). Written by Peter Stone (Father Goose, Arabesque) from John Godey’s novel, the film revolves around the hijacking of a subway car in New York City. Passengers are held for ransom while police lieutenant Walter Matthau tries to handle the situation. Now considered a classic (just about every pre-1999 movie is considered a "classic" these days), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was...

The Western was a movie staple for decades. It seemed the genre that would never die, feeding the fantasies of one generation after another of young boys who galloped around their backyards, playgrounds, and brick streets on broomsticks, banging away with their Mattel cap pistols. Something about a man on a horse set against the boundless wastes of Monument Valley, the crackle of saddle leather, two men facing off in a dusty street under the noon sun connected with the free spirit in every kid.

The American movie – a celluloid telling that was more than a skit – was born in a Western: Edwin S. Porter’s 11- minute The Great Train Robbery (1903). Thereafter, Westerns grew longer, they grew more complex. The West – hostile, endless, civilization barely maintaining a toehold against the elements, hostile natives, and robber barons – proved an infinitely plastic setting. In a place with no law, and where...

Veteran actor Dick Wilson has died at the age of 91. Wilson, who appeared in TV shows including Hogan's Heroes, passed away at the Motion Picture And Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. He is best known for starring in over 500 television ads for toilet paper Charmin as Mr. Whipple between 1964 and 1985. In a career spanning more than 70 years, Wilson also had role in theatre, movies and on the radio. Wilson is the second Hogan's Heroes star to die this month - actress Sigrid Valdis, who played sexy secretary Hilda on the beloved TV comedy, lost her battle with lung cancer at the age of 72 last week.