A friend sent me a video from Blank on Blank that she thought I would be interested in. If you're not aware of it, Blank on Blank is/was a PBS series with a promo line, "Famous Names, Lost Interviews," where they take obscure audio interviews with well-known people and then animate them. The reason she thought this particular segment would be of interest to me is because it dealt with the Ravinia Music Festival -- which I've often written about here, having worked there for several summers and attended countless concerts. It's the summer home of the Chicago Symphony and helped give the start to such conductors as Seiji Ozawa and James Levine, both of whom served as Music Directors for the festival early in their careers -- and also puts on pop, jazz, folk and rock concerts, as well as theater, ballet and opera. The interview in question was one done with Louis Armstrong when he had appeared at Ravinia one year. My initial response to my friend was -- "No, I didn’t see that animated interview. While it’s possible (if not likely) that Louis Armstrong appeared at Ravinia several times in those years you mention, the year I myself saw him there when I was a little kiddling was 51 years ago (it was the summer his recording of 'Hello, Dolly!' was released, which was 1964) – so it seems probably (if not likely) that this interview was, in fact, done during that very same appearance." Little did I know that the story would get even funnier and even more coincidental.. I went to the Blank to Blank website and tracked down the Louis Armstrong interview there. They give a little background about each interview and its history – and saw that it says it was “originally aired on WNTH, Winnetka, Illinois.” That was my high school radio station! The NTH part stands for New Trier High School. But it wasn't just the station for my school -- I had several radio show on the station during my years there and did some sportscasting. In fact my first show on WNTH was done with my pal Jack Moline -- who I've written about several times on these pages. In fact, if you look under "About Elisberg Industries" in the toolbar above and check "Our Corporate Board" in the drop-down menu, you'll see Jack (who is now an accomplished rabbi in the Washington D.C. area) listed as Vice-President of Telecommunications. But it goes even further. In reading the history of the interview, it says that it was done on June 24, 1964 -- so, it was during Satchmo's appearance at Ravinia the year I saw him! (I even wrote about being there at the performance here.) I then looked at the name of the high school students who did it. The first was Michael Aisner, but I didn’t recognize his name. Oh, well...not terribly surprising though since I was still too young for high school and wasn't a student there yet. But then it went on said said, "and James R. Stein.” And him...I did know! I didn't know him much -- but he was a classmate of my brother, Jim Stein. In fact, the story goes on -- years later, Jim Stein became a successful TV comedy writer, and when I was at UCLA, he was working on the “comeback” Smothers Brothers Show, and I contacted him and he invited me to come to CBS Television City for the day to watch the behind-the-scenes rehearsals. I recall that Linda Ronstadt was the guest that week. He won two Emmy Awards, and wrote for such programs as The Carol Burnett Show, Fernwood Tonight, Silver Spoons, One Day at a Time, Amen, and much more, Go figure, indeed! Here's the interview.
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It was a quiet week, back in November, 2010 where this comes from out of the archives. Carl Krebsbach tries a new and embarrassing method of leaf collection, the town celebrates Veterans Day, and newly widowed Becky Beckman keeps a final promise to her husband Bradley by taking his place on an annual deer-hunting trip.
While working on a project, I came across an articles that was bewildering. Actually, I came across a couple, but one leaped out, in large part because it came from a respectable source.The article was a movie-related list.
And I know such things are all “personal opinion,” so there was nothing important to it, but there still are levels of standards and this reached the inexplicable. Yes, I know it's just a list of movies. So, it's hardly a critical issue. Nor does it reach the level of "This is an outrage! An outrage, I say!" It's a list of movies, after all. But if you're going take the time to put together a list of...well, anything, you no doubt want people to take your opinion seriously. Don't you?? The article, which you can read here, was from 2009 in Film Comment magazine, a perfectly respectable source. It was about the “The best movies made by actors who direct.” They listed their choice of the top 50, as decided on by the film critics and authorities who participated and were noted up front. The thing is, I don't even begin to understand the list, even granting the concept of "personal opinion." There were a lot of quirky little films, some of which had a good reputation, some not so much, but I'm not even including those in what made the list so bizarre, in part because they were little-known, so their names wouldn't mean much to most people reading this, who might consider their unfamiliarity part of their charm. More notable are the movies that were known -- not that they weren't good (some were, some were just passable), but surprising in that they were considered among the 50 best ever. But most of all what leaped out is the movies that weren't there -- shocking, even giving wide swath to the concept of "personal opinion." Starting ruminating in your mind the greatest movies you've seen that were directed by an actor. Got a few set now? Okay, let's jump in and take a look at what Film Comment came up with. On the top-50 list were Sharky’s Machine (Burt Reynolds), The Cable Guy (Ben Stiller), Quick Change (co-directed by Bill Murray), and The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, okay, I had to include one here that I'd never heard of). The list also included as the #28th best film ever directed by an actor Hickey & Boggs, highly anticipated at the time in 1972 because it re-teamed the mid-'60s stars of I Spy, Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, that Culp directed. The #5 best movie of all-time ever directed by an actor was Bulworth (Warren Beatty -- ahead of his excellent Reds), along with several other big head-scratchers, as I mentioned. But as head-scratching as all that is, it's all personal taste, so...fair enough, I guess. The thing is, the head-scratching pales in comparison to the movies left off this list. Movies that the experts didn't consider the equal of Quick Change, Tropic Thunder, Actresses or Drive, He Said. And that's the main point here. Not those included, but the ones left out among the 50 best movies of all time directed by actors. Among the movies omitted were -- Oscar-winning Best Pictures Ordinary People, Gandhi, Unforgiven, Dances with Wolves, and Singin' in the Rain (no, really), along with (wait, are you ready...?) Citizen Kane, On the Waterfront, Modern Times, The Maltese Falcon, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Bicycle Thief, as well as Laurence Olivier’s version of Henry V and Cabaret (both nominated for Best Picture), and other Oscar Best Picture-winners Annie Hall, Midnight Cowboy, Out of Africa and Million Dollar Baby. (To be fair, since it's all personal opinion, I'm not including omissions such as The Great Dictator, Casablanca, The African Queen, The Producers, White Heat, Becket, The Third Man, Midnight in Paris, The General, A Woman Under the Influence, All That Jazz, City Lights, A Beautiful Mind, This is Spinal Tap!, Big, Much Ado About Nothing, Umberto D., On Golden Pond, Norma Rae, Easy Rider, Rachel Rachel, Of Human Bondage, or The Treasure of Sierra Madre. After all, one man's Casablanca is another man's Sharky's Machine.) Once again, bizarrely, that list was in Film Comment magazine. Not a list that some guy, BusterFilm36, cobbled together for the Comments section of the iMDB website. And again, yes, I know “personal opinion” and all…but seriously??? Seriously? To be clear, this isn't about if the included Throw Momma from the Train was fun. It was. Or if Scarlet Diva was good or mediocre. I have no idea (though its rating on the the iMDB from people who did see it is just 5.2 on a scale of 10.) That's all, as I said, personal opinion. And fair enough. No, what this is about is -- what on earth thinking goes into leaving off Citizen Kane, The Bicycle Thief, Modern Times, and The Maltese Falcon, forget all the others for the moment, from a top 50 list? Not a "top 50 movies of all time" list (on which they might well belong), but just the 50 best movies that were directed by actors??? The only explanation I can think of is that the film critics and experts who participated just decided to be holier-than-thou and intentionally thumb their noses at the most-recognized classics, simply to be contrary. How else do you explain including The Two Jakes and omitting Citizen Kane? How do you explain including Quick Change and leaving out A Streetcar Named Desire? I would love to hear their argument. Then again, I'm not sure I would. Life is too short. Being Film Comment magazine, I'm certain that all the people deciding had a stature in their field. Of them, I myself only recognized one name from the list, Dave Kehr, who used to be the film critic of the Chicago Tribune. And knowing his involvement is a step towards confirming my theory. Mr. Kehr was a knowledgeable guy who seemed to like to be pretentious and contrary just for the sake of being contrary. (I'm going to guess that he is not one of those who voted to include Iron Man or War of the Roses, though he's more likely to have wanted The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things over . I know, too, that often when people put together a list, they specifically want to invoke controversy. Well, yeah, swell, okay. But invoking controversy is one thing, and losing all credibility is another. One thing I do know from the names of those who were doing the rating. If I saw them reviewing a movie, I'd be reticent to trust their judgment. This is what's officially known as a Real Incredible Find. One of the iconic song in the history of the musical theater is Ethel Merman's rendition of the showstopping "Rose's Turn" in Gypsy -- the tour de force performance when Mama Rose has her breakdown on stage, after a confrontation with her daughter in the backstage dressing room, finally telling her mother that she's had enough. Well...here is the audio of that number, with Ethel Merman performing it live on stage. And not just on stage, but in her emotional final appearance in the role, on March 25, 1961 -- rousing applause included. Making it all the better, even if you've heard the cast album recording, is that this clip includes the end of her confrontation scene with Louise (who takes the stage name, Gypsy Rose Lee) that leads into "Rose's Turn." Yes, it's "just" audio. But it's a treasure to have. "Well, what's wrong with slavery?"
-- conservative talk show host, Jan Mickelson Yesterday, I made a quip here that while so many Republican candidates for president were talking about repealing the 14th Amendment, it was worth noting that the passage in the amendment about how "All Persons born in the United States were citizens" was written to ensure citizenship rights to slaves. To which I added, "So, Republicans can't want that, one hopes." Just a day later, it's so nice to see Mr. Mickelson make me this prescient. Thanks, guy. It will not shock you to learn that the radio host didn't stop there. A few moments later, he laid out his plan for dealing with immigration, the heart of which was...well, slavery. (I won't explain the details, it's up to him how to spread the word.) But when he finished, he added, just to drive the point home to the caller, "You think I'm just pulling your leg. I am not." Actually, to set Jan Mickelson's mind at ease, the truth is, no, I don't remotely think he's just pulling my leg. He'll be happy to learn that I take him at his word. He can rest assured that I believe that he doesn't know what's wrong with slavery, and wants to create a plan that perpetuates it. I want to be clear -- I don't think this means the Republican Party supports slavery. The party doesn't. I also don't think conservatives do, either. Nor even the Far Right. I do, however, think that there are pockets of people among extremists in the GOP who don't think slavery is all that bad a concept and others dotted throughout the party who still think it's a shame the South didn't win the Civil War, and they're populated with far more such members than is healthy for a balanced society. The GOP today makes it difficult not to believe that. Again, not that the Republican Party even remotely believes it. It doesn't, period. But it gives safe haven to those who do. As I also wrote yesterday, its leading candidate for president has poll numbers that rise when he smears Mexicans as rapists, and calls women fat and ugly and pigs, without being taken to task by most of his fellow competitors. When Republican leaders go around blithely demeaning children of Hispanic heritage born in the U.S. as nothing more than "anchor babies." When for six years, we've seen the black President of the United States referred to as a Nazi Kenyan Socialist traitor and worse, with all manner of racist disparaging smears piled on him by Republican Party members. When the Confederate flag remains a mark of pride and honor for many in the GOP. When conservative hosts, analysts and callers give support to the George Zimmermans of the world and to police who shoot and kill unarmed black men and women. When Republican presidential candidates want to repeal the amendment that gives due process and equal protection under the law to all Americans. No, none of this is the same as being okay with slavery. There's a huge gap. But it's all part of a groundwork that gives aid and comfort and protective cover those within the party who do, and to those in the party who know they can say such things to a big enough audience while not creating a party outrage that will drive them off the air into the backwoods hiding. The important thing here isn't that there is small pocket of racists in the GOP who are okay with slavery and others who have radio shows and listener support. It's that everything I mentioned two paragraphs above this is becoming the norm for too much of today's Republican Party, at least to the point where it's understood and accepted without indignation. All political parties have outliers on the fringe. (Though, in fairness, in most parties the outliers are so far on the edge that they are at precarious risk of falling off. In the GOP, however, it seems as if the outliers have been given enough land on the distant horizon to set up camp -- and even have their own radio frequencies, just to stay in touch.) But most political parties do not have weighted centers which tilt the balance so much that those on the remote fringe have a better chance of sliding to the middle than they do of dropping into the abyss. I don't know many people to watch this full video, but it makes a nice companion piece to a couple of earlier posts -- and is worth it for 30 seconds. Over the past couple of months, I've had a few videos of Patricia Morison, who starred in the original Broadway production of Kiss Me, Kate, and also appeared with Yul Brynner in The King and I (though not the original cast). As it happens, Ms Morison is still around, and only this past March 19 she celebrated her 100th birthday! I though you might want to seen her just two years ago at a fairly-sprightly 98. This is a 50-minute interview with Scott Feinberg of the Hollywood Reporter. And she's sharp and charming. As I said, though, I don't expect most people to watch it all, but it's worth watching the first few minutes at least, just to get a good sense of her, and then you can jump to the 50:25 mark, because Mr. Feinberg gets her to sing a bit. It's only briefly, but all things considered she's in respectable voice. The opening is fun for another reason. It appears that the interview begins with Patricia Morison wearing an ostentatious hat. But if you keep watching, it turns out not to be a hat at all, but rather her pet parrot that's perched on her head. It eventually decides to go flying around, though keeps returning to her. (They have quite a fine rapport...) In fact, you can see it in the frame below, to her left sitting on the sofa cushion next to the lamp. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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