Movie Remakes

As a very young actor, Kevin Rodney Sullivan played a school-age extra in Sidney Poitier's 1970 crime drama "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" It was Sullivan's first paying role as a film actor, and a fleeting part at that, yet it marked the beginning of Poitier's long influence over Sullivan's career. Sullivan counts Poitier's groundbreaking "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" as one of his inspirations for pursuing a Hollywood career.

On the fifth floor of the Georgetown University library, carefully preserved in manila folders and cardboard filing cases, lie the remnants of a great love affair. It is here that any voyeur off the street can trade a license as collateral for a peek at the correspondence between novelist Graham Greene and the love of his life, Catherine Walston, whose torrid extramarital union formed the basis for his impassioned 1951 novel, "The End of the Affair."

One of the first outsiders to visit the closely guarded set of "Psycho," Gus Van Sant's hotly debated shot-by-shot "re-creation" of Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic, was Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell, the cinema master's 70-year-old daughter and onetime actress, who had played a bit part in the 1960 movie. She was easy to spot, since she was accompanied by daughters and granddaughters, all of whom bore an uncanny resemblance to the most recognizable member of their family.

"I Am Legend," which opens Friday, is the third official adaptation -- there's also a made-for-DVD poseur -- of Richard Matheson's seminal 1954 novel of the same name. Here's a look at the three previous versions: (1964) Released the same year as the apocalyptic "Fail Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove," this low-budget Italian production features the great Vincent Price in the title role.

The remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 black-and-white horror classic "Psycho" has been shrouded in secrecy. Ever since Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment announced in March that Gus Van Sant would direct a modern version in color, film buffs have hungered for details, mostly in vain. That's why Jeffrey Kitchen's screenwriting seminar last Friday night at a West Hollywood hotel was such a treat.

Remakes have no better track record than original movies. Yet they continue to be made. For the two redos that worked fairly well in the last year, "Angels in the Outfield" and "The Three Musketeers," there were many more that failed big, such as "Miracle on 34th Street," "Love Affair," "The Getaway" "Black Beauty," "Lassie," "Body Snatchers," "Frankenstein" and "The Browning Version."

Fox, the network that brought the world the now infamous "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" special earlier this year, is now offering advice on how to marry a billionaire. But don't look for Darva Conger or Rick Rockwell to pop on this holiday offering. Premiering Wednesday, "How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale" is actually a two-hour holiday romance based on the 1953 film classic "How to Marry a Millionaire."

For one night anyway, the Bates Motel looked like Chinatown on New Year's. When "Psycho" director Gus Van Sant was ready to start shooting at the new Bates house set last July, his production team organized a lavish feng shui ceremony designed to ward off any Hitchcockian evil spirits that might be lurking on the Universal Studios back lot. A kung fu master and his disciples blessed the house by performing a costumed lion dance in front of a Chinese temple altar.

Walt Disney's classic 1961 animated film "101 Dalmatians," a tale about the abduction of Dalmatian puppies by the arch-villain Cruella De Vil, will be made into a live-action movie for release at Thanksgiving in 1996, Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth said Tuesday.

It's been 10 years since Jean Cocteau's transporting 1946 "Beauty and the Beast," as romantic a film as has ever been made, played theatrically in Los Angeles, and a lot has happened to it in the intervening decade, all of it good. In 1995, as part of France's celebration of the 100th anniversary of cinema, the film underwent a comprehensive restoration.