Earlier this week we bid adieu to 2012, and I gotta say, it was a pretty good year. Not my favorite, but a good year none the less. Thirty years ago last October, MGM released a movie called "My Favorite Year." Charmingly innocent and replete with plenty of 80's era sentimentality, it basically fictionalized the youthful experiences of one of the filmmakers, the legendary Mel Brooks. 

Early in his career, Brooks had worked on Sid Caesar's "Your Show Of Shows." One of the guests on the show back then was matinee idol Erol Flynn, and although the actual appearance of Flynn on the show was uneventful, the idea of a forgotten movie star resurfacing for a TV appearance led to the concept for "My Favorite Year." 

The film embellishes the plot by having its hero reemerge as a washed up drunk, along with subplots involving the criminal underworld and a romantic interest for the narrator. But it's a Peter O'Toole film, and he is unforgettable as the aging matinee idol. O'Toole's character sits alongside Clint Eastwood's William Money and Willem Defoe's Max Schreck, although O'Toole's is a much more comedic interpretation. In deference to perhaps the greatest swashbuckler of cinema's golden age, the screenwriters gave O'Toole's character a name which sounds awful close to Erol Flynn, but not quite. What was the name of Peter O'Toole's character in "My Favorite Year?"