"The Lost Weekend" LbNA #29562

Most recent find: Tuesday, 10 May 2011

log and container replaced 2/16/08

The Series

This is the second in a series of letterboxes which replicate the hides
in academy award-winning movies for which the hides played significant roles. This
letterbox is actually a geocache/letterbox hybrid. Their descriptions
differ mainly in that the geocache clues include the coordinates of
the location whereas for the letterbox only gives verbal directions.

Synopsis

"The Lost Weekend", filmed in black and white, is not about a
letterboxer who scores zero for twenty on a weekend; rather it's about
an alcoholic ("I'm not a drinker, I'm a drunk"), Don Birnam, played
by Ray Milland, who goes on a life-threatening four-day binge. This
is not a funny drunk like W. C. Fields, "the Thin Man", or
"Arthur", or even a sympathetic drunk as in "The Days of Wine and
Roses" but a deeply disturbed, sick man. While conning his brother,
his girlfriend (Jane Wyman), his housekeeper, his barkeeper and
even his barfly, he loses all self-respect, drinks enough rye to
kill a horse, gets thrown into the tank, experiences the DT's
(delirium tremens)and seems destined for a tragic ending.
However, at the last moment he is rescued and turns his efforts
into writing a novel entitled "The Bottle".

The hides

The only comic relief comes in the form of the many interesting
places he hides his booze - inluding dangling from a rope
outside his window, in an umbrella stand, under a mattress, behind
books in a bookcase, in an air duct, behind the radiator, in a
vacuum cleaning bag, and in the ceiling light fixture - and
then in his stupor he can't find them.

Awards (1945)

• Best Picture


• Ray Milland for Best Actor


• Billy Wilder for Best Director and for Best
  Screenplay

Directions

Exit #66 on I35; head in a westerly direction on Millersburg Blvd (Rice County #1). The Millersburg Store (Boonie’s) is 1.7 miles. Stay on the curvy Millersburg Blvd for another 0.6 miles until you reach the gravel road known as Circle Lake Trail (not Circle Lake Lane and not Bluff). Turn left. Sights along the 1.1 mile trail include an ice fishing house painted white with black squiggly lines to maybe represent trees, parked next to a double car garage on the right. I suspect that if you visit the letterbox in winter the ice house will be on the lake so it is a seasonal site. Next on the right is a chateau with a three-car garage. Next an old barn is on the left across the road from a house that is set back and down from the boulevard. Continue between the ponds until you reach the lake and the “round” house at 4601 Circle Lake Trail and then on to the public parking lot on the lakeside. Another 0.1 mile places you beside the treasure which is on the north side of the road hanging in a stump(umbrella stand) between a nest of stones and a bigger than average four-trunked tree.