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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | JULY 2026 21 By Steve Beno I am not a competent social person. It's not for lack of wanting to be. It's all in my DNA. Somewhere along the chain my memory switch got turned off. I've never had a good memory. Fortunately, when I took the bar exam it was all essay answers. And as Francis E. Jones, my favorite law school professor, advised, "romance the facts." That's how I passed the bar. But my poor memory inhibited me from many social interactions. What's the point of having a second conversation with someone if I can't remember what was said in the first. So, not being social, I wasn't among the popular people in school. (That's not to say I was unpopular.) Except for eighth grade. That's the year my family moved from the Fairfax area of Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. I had two friends from Hebrew school there, but no one else. Of course, I can't remember how, but I soon was "going steady" with the very popular Terry Cates. All of a sudden I was in the "in" group. The most lasting inf luence Terry had on me, or more properly her family, was to convert me from a UCLA fan to a die-hard lasting Trojan, although I have degrees from both. I'm sure it was Terry's popularity that resulted in my being elected vice president of my middle school. Alas, that popularity did not make the transition to high school the following year. One of the perks of such eighth-grade popularity was being invited to the weekly movie screening at the home of classmate Cindy Berman, the daughter of movie producer Pandro S. Berman. One of the memories I did manage to retain was where I saw the movie Blackboard Jungle in which "Rock Around the Clock" made its cinematic debut. We were literally dancing in the aisle of the Fairfax theater, not at the home of the movie's producer. A group of kids would lay on the f loor, no doubt with cushions to recline on, while the adults sat on couches at the back of the Berman screening room. This was well before video; films were loaded onto theater projectors manned by professional projectionists. I'm sure many of you had the same experience I had growing up in Beverly Hills. All of this ref lection brought me to wonder what movies I might have seen in this 1955-56 period. So, where would one go to see a list of these movies? Keep in mind such a list will not jog my memory sufficient for recall. That is reserved for the aforementioned Blackboard Jungle and for Saturday Night Fever which Martha and I saw at the Fox Westwood, after which we immediately walked down to a record store and bought the album. I downloaded apps called Movie, Letterboxed, 123Movies, Fandango, and Movies Box. The query was simple – movies from 1955. On all but Fandango I got no results. On Fandango, I got a huge list of movies with no apparent connection to 1955, a few of which had the number 5 in the title. How Escape from Planet Earth made in 2013 is included escapes me. Alas, where does that leave me. By now you should know the answer to that question – AI. Holy cow. I can't believe the list I got from ChatGPT. Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, Marty (won the Oscar), Oklahoma, To Catch a ief, e Seven Year Itch – all from 1955. 1956 produced e Ten Commandments, Giant, Around the World in 80 Days, High Society, e King and I. Looking at this list culminated in a faint recollection of seeing High Society on the f loor of the Berman screening room, but that's it. But just look at that list. What a glorious time for the big screen. If you use an app you'd like to share with others, let me know at steve.benoff@verizon.net. THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT! You don't have to clutter your brain with childhood memories anymore!

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