Bloopers

Sean Connery (left) and Kevin Costner in The Untouchables: collar error.
BLOOPER ALERT
To err in movies...

By TOM SOTER
written for EMPIRE, 1991

To paraphrase the old saying, to err is human, and in movies they do it every time. Don't believe us? Just take a peek at one sequence in the recent Soapdish, in which a doorman tells Sally Field that Kevin Kline lives in Apt. 2D – and then in the very next scene we see him in Apt. 2A! Or how about Sean Connery's collar mysteriously opening and closing itself between shots as he talks to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables? Or the gloves in Mary Poppins that change from white to black to white while Mary is reading a letter?

Then there's the Flubbed Line (one character in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms refers to the well-known Legend of the Loch LomondMonster), the Roving Anachronism (watch for a 20th Century truck in the 11th Century epic El Cid, and the Fast-Changing Wardrobe (Captain Kirk is inexplicably wearing one type of shirt when he enters an elevator in the Star Trek TV episode, "Charlie X," and
another when he exits).

Since films are constantly being rewritten, shot out of sequence, and edited (and re-edited) to fit a producer's ever™changing specs, none of this should be surprising. Still, as John H. Irving points out in the 1985 British tome, The Killjoy's Book of the Cinema, how does one explain The Bandwagon's train sequence in which an eight-windowed train cabin has daylight coming out of two windows and night time from the other six? Or the ambushed deputy sheriff in Captain Apache who is shot twice outside his office and then falls back into a room – with a knife in his chest?

Some errors are easily explained: a visiting friend obviously didn't know Judy Garland was actually filming "The Trolley Song" in Meet Me in St. Louis when he called out, "Hi, Judy!" And the little boy holding his ears before Cary Grant is suddenly shot in North by Northwest probably grew tired of the gun's loud bang during rehearsals.

But how on earth can anyone explain the moment in The Greatest Show on Earth when the janitor runs in with this exciting announcement: "The cat had six kittens! Four girls and one boy!"

That's show biz.