Night And Day | Cole Porters song defines his life.

"Night and Day" is a popular song by Cole Porter. It was written for the 1932 musical play Gay Divorce, and is perhaps Porter's most popular contribution to the Great American Songbook.

Fred Astaire introduced "Night and Day" on stage, and his recording of the song was a #1 hit. He performed it again in the 1934 film version of the show, renamed The Gay Divorcee, and it became one of his signature pieces. The song itself became an American standard and has been recorded by dozens of artists.

Porter was known to claim that the Islamic call to worship he heard on a trip to Morocco inspired the song.

The song was so associated with Porter that when Hollywood first filmed his life story in 1946, the movie was entitled Night and Day.

Night and Day, is a 1946 Technicolor Warner Brothers biographical film of the life of American composer and songwriter Cole Porter. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Arthur Schwartz, with Jack L. Warner as executive producer. The screenplay was by Charles Hoffman, Leo Townsend and William Bowers.

The music score by Ray Heindorf and Max Steiner was nominated for an Academy Award. The film features several of the best-known Porter songs, including the title song, "Night and Day", "Begin the Beguine" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy".

The film stars Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Alexis Smith as his wife of 35 years, Linda Lee Porter Monty Woolley and Mary Martin appear as themselves and the rest of the cast includes Jane Wyman, Eve Arden, Alan Hale, Dorothy Malone, Donald Woods, and Ginny Simms.

The film is a highly fictionalized and sanitized version of Cole Porter's life, leaving out amongst other things references to his homosexuality. A later film biography of Porter, the 2004 De-Lovely with Kevin Kline, dealt more frankly with his sexuality.

The Story of G.I. Joe | Figurine of "Ernie Pyle" War Correspondent seated at his typewriter

The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) is a war film directed by William Wellman, starring Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Mitchum's only nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The story is a tribute to the American infantryman ("G.I. Joe") during World War II, told through the eyes of Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle, with dialogue and narration lifted from Pyle's columns. The film concentrates on one company, ("C Company, 18th Infantry"), that Pyle accompanies into combat in Tunisia and Italy. The friendships that grow out of his coverage lead Pyle to relate the misery and sacrifice inherent in their plight and their heroic endurance of it. Although the company has the designation of an actual unit, that unit did not participate in the combat in Italy that makes up the preponderance of the film, and actually represents the units of the 34th and 36th Infantry Divisions that Pyle did cover in Italy, and thereby all American G.I.s.

Although filmed with the cooperation of Pyle, the film premiered two months to the day after he was killed in action on Ie Shima during the invasion of Okinawa. In his February 14, 1945, column "In the Movies", Pyle commented: "They are still calling it "The Story of G.I. Joe." I never did like the title, but nobody could think of a better one, and I was too lazy to try."

I discovered this terrific figurine of "Ernie Pyle" War Correspondent seated at his typewriter who wrote the classic "The Story of G.I. Joe"

The "companion piece" to DD076 is our seated at his typewriter "Ernie Pyle" War Correspondent. This terrific little figure is full of character another "tribute" to the war correspondent Ernie Pyle who wrote the classic "The Story of G.I. Joe" which was later made into a great WW2 movie starring Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith as Pyle himself. Sadly, Ernie was killed later in the war. MORE»