In the 1979 movie "Going in Style" (1979) George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg play elderly buddies who decide to rob banks.
(Digression: These guys were elderly in 1979, when the Solipsist wasn't even a teenager. Were they ever young? Was Burgess Meredith ever young? Bea Arthur? Just wondering. EOD)
As the presence of Burns and Carney would suggest, the movie was a comedy.
Police in New York and elsewhere didn't laugh, though, when 63-year-old career criminal Arthur Williams, armed with a Saturday Night Special and an oxygen tank (seriously), left his dialysis session and embarked on one last multi-state crime spree. He robbed a loan company in Alabama, an upscale boutique in Manhattan, and two motels in Maryland before engaging in a high-speed chase with police. At the end of the chase, Williams' Cadillac flipped over, throwing him from the car. He died from head trauma.
The moral of the story: Senescent criminal masterminds are hysterically adorable, until someone loses an eye (or, in this case, flips a Caddy).
(Digression: These guys were elderly in 1979, when the Solipsist wasn't even a teenager. Were they ever young? Was Burgess Meredith ever young? Bea Arthur? Just wondering. EOD)
As the presence of Burns and Carney would suggest, the movie was a comedy.
Police in New York and elsewhere didn't laugh, though, when 63-year-old career criminal Arthur Williams, armed with a Saturday Night Special and an oxygen tank (seriously), left his dialysis session and embarked on one last multi-state crime spree. He robbed a loan company in Alabama, an upscale boutique in Manhattan, and two motels in Maryland before engaging in a high-speed chase with police. At the end of the chase, Williams' Cadillac flipped over, throwing him from the car. He died from head trauma.
The moral of the story: Senescent criminal masterminds are hysterically adorable, until someone loses an eye (or, in this case, flips a Caddy).
(Image from imdb.com)
Putting aside your age-ist/breath-ist comments (why SHOULD'NT a man in his sixties with an oxygen tank have the same opportunities as any other crook?), I'll get to your OTHER (and far more pertinent/impertinent) question: No, as far as "show-biz" is concerned, George Burns never was "young". Like the Marx Brothers, he was in his late 30s/early 40s when he first hit it big in films & radio. Art Carney (putting aside "The Honeymooners") was never really old. He always played older than he was (e.g. He was in his mid-fifties when he won the Oscar for playing a septugenarian in "Harry & Tonto""... he was Harry... Tonto was a cat). "Buzz" Meredith was one of the youngest leading lights of Broadway in plays like "Winterset" and "Peer Gynt". Like many a stage star, his appeal as a leading man never was caught on film, so he didn't come into his own until later in life on the Sliver Skreen. The less said about Lee Strasberg, the better. Bea Arthur became a star on "Maude" in her mid 40s. Prior to that, she didn't HAVE that much of a career (a featured part in "The Threepenny Opera" ... AS AN INGENUE-ish SORT) being her major claim to fame until then. Any other questions????
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