Talk:The Spirit of St. Louis (film)

message: I am curious where an editor found the reference to James Dean being considered for the role of Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis film biography. I read and reread biographies of James Stewart and could find only a reference to studio head Jack Warner offering the part to John Kerr in 1954 who turned it down. A well-known incident involving Stewart and his father making a plea to producer Leland Hayward for "Jimmy" Stewart to play Lindbergh also occurred in 1954. Stewart went on a prolonged diet to better fit the gaunt look of a younger man. Before he found out that he got the part, he had dropped so much weight that he looked ill. The role was cast late in 1954 with production shooting begun in August 1955. At that point, James Dean had just come to Hollywood to make his first film. Is this part of an urban myth?  FWIW Bzuk 02:41, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The editor claims an IMDB reference which is routinely reverted as being user-created and full of inaccuracies, of which this one is an example of an urban myth. If no other sources are found I will revert this submission in one week. FWIW Bzuk 03:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Val Holley in his biography of James Dean lists the following projects that James Dean was considering at the time of his death: The films, "A Gun for a Coward" which was specifically developed for him and the biopic, "Somebody Up There Likes Me" along with a Broadway production and a TV production, "The Corn is Green." Bzuk 00:04, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

text: A sufficiently long time has transpired in this claim and now that IMDb has removed the note that James Dean was considered for this film, there does not seem to be corroborating evidence to substantiate the purported James Dean connection. FWIW  Bzuk 19:59, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: James Dean reference in [[The Spirit of St. Louis (film)]]

message: WP:ORDINAL Numbers as figures or words
"As a general rule, in the body of an article, single-digit whole numbers from zero to nine are spelled out in words; numbers greater than nine are commonly rendered in numerals, or in words if they are expressed in one or two words (16 or sixteen, 84 or eighty-four, 200 or two hundred, but 3.75, 544, 21 million). This applies to ordinal numbers as well as cardinal numbers." Any questions? Rjaklitsch (talk) 18:45, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, missed the first bold section.  FWiW, so this boils down to you want words, I don't see the need as the numerals were used earlier. I'm now out for the day. There isn't a resolution yet to this as I characterize it, veeeery minor point of style.  Bzuk (talk) 18:50, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds like a reasonable compromise. Keep numerals for the compound adjectives and retain the the original words for the one and two syllable numbers. Rjaklitsch (talk) 12:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem remains that the application of an inconsistant standard would be in place, for no other reason other than it "looks pretty" or for stylistic reasons. Nothing prevents other editors from revising the article to follow the general rule of writing out numbers as words. FWiW, I wouldn't necessarily be so picayune, but with the raft of errors that were evident in the first drafts, the intention was to more closely adhere to conventional grammar and style useage in a rewrite.  Bzuk (talk) 13:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Numbers