Dinah W All Of Me

What do the Muppets, Pia Zadora, Django Reinhardt, Jimmie Scott, Billie Holiday, Anne Murray, Willie Nelson, Johnnie Ray, Redd Foxx, Louis Armstrong, Paul Whiteman, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Belle Baker, NOFX, Frank Sinatra and Mildred Bailey have in common?

They all covered this …

The July 1958 Newport Jazz Festival was the subject of the documentary Jazz On A Summer’s Day. Dinah Washington sings (and helps out Terry Gibbs on vibes) on “All Of Me,” a 1932 song by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons.

With Dinah and Terry are Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Sahib Shihab on baritone, Urbie Green on trombone, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul West on bass and Max Roach on drums.

Technorati tags: Dinah Washington, All Of Me, Gerald Marks, Seymour Simons, 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Aram Avakian, Bert Stern, Jazz On A Summer’s Day, Terry Gibbs, Blue Mitchell, Sahib Shihab, Urbie Green, Wynton Kelly, Paul West, Max Roach

Just so we are clear:

Visiting your grandmother while vacationing in Hawaii, the state where you were born – elitist.

Meeting a millionaire heiress in Hawaii, who you will soon begin an affair with and divorce your wife and then go on and buy a ton of houses, and then going on and honeymooning in Hawaii – not elitist.

— John King, CNN

Glenn Greenwald’s perspective.

Technorati tags: John McCain, Barack Obama, John King, CNN, Crooks & Liars, Glenn Greenwald

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Change is in the air this political season — in the ever-increasing likelihood that an African American will stand as the Democratic nominee for the presidency, and in the near-certainty that Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Senate’s liberal lion, soon will exit the institution he has bestrode like a colossus for nearly 50 years.

Just as Barack Obama’s primary victories remind us that change often goes hand in hand with progress, so the sudden news of Kennedy’s illness is a somber reminder that change also is inevitably loss. Call it tragic wisdom.

Watching the outpouring of emotion from both sides of the aisle Tuesday at the news of Kennedy’s condition, it was clear that his senatorial colleagues already are stricken by his impending departure. Partly, of course, that’s because Kennedy’s tenure in that chamber spans one of the most tumultuous eras in this nation’s history. He will exit the Senate as its third-longest-serving member ever. When he first took his seat in 1962, Jim Crow and its de facto shadow were a fact of American life, and women’s rights barely extended beyond the franchise. This year, Kennedy enthusiastically endorsed and campaigned for Obama in his contest against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A new world, surely, and one he helped usher in. But also one that seems to be unfolding without three qualities that distinguished Kennedy’s long service.

The first is empathy. It’s shocking just how tenuous belief in the possibility of empathy as a public emotion has become. Kennedy’s brother, Bobby, was fond of quoting the ancient Greeks. One of them, Thucydides, once was asked, “When will there be justice in Athens?” He replied, “There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.”

If Ted Kennedy’s 46 years in the Senate have stood for anything, it is for the enduring power of that antique insight. He is a rich, wonderfully connected Boston Irishman, and yet his life’s labors have been on behalf of blacks and women and Latinos, for people who sweated for a minimum wage and couldn’t pay their sick child’s doctor’s bill and asked for nothing more than a public school good enough to give their child a fair foothold on the ladder’s next rung. Their slights and injuries were his own.

Today, increasing numbers of Americans and their politicians are lost to narcissism and its communal expression — identity politics. We believe that no one can feel our pain but us, and we care for none outside our tribe. Kennedy’s career has been a half-century reproach to that crabbed notion of the American condition. He believed unshakably in solidarity and the common good, and if that now seems quaint, the fault — and the loss — is ours and not his.

Child of privilege that he undoubtedly was, Kennedy also stood for a second quality that is fading: the belief that after the accumulation of wealth came an ambition — indeed, an obligation — for public service. It’s a notion this new Gilded Age finds slightly ridiculous, but not long ago we expected our national leaders to amass their fortunes before taking office and not during or immediately after. There is a meanness of spirit to an age that commoditizes elective office into an economic opportunity.

Finally, one of the reasons Kennedy’s Senate comrades will feel his departure so acutely is that he always stood for a civil partisanship. There was no more committed liberal Democrat in that chamber.

A struggle with Kennedy was a bare-knuckle fight to the finish, but always according to traditional politics’ version of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. It was never personal, and differences never precluded friendship, which is why the senior Massachusetts senator could work with George Bush or John McCain or Orrin Hatch, and will leave office with a record as one of the most effective lawmakers of all time. Nothing deforms our contemporary politics in quite the way the loss of Kennedy’s old-fashioned civility does.

In his recently published memoir, Ted Sorensen, John Kennedy’s special counselor, recalled how the president secretly dispatched him, along with Bobby, to assist his youngest sibling in his first run for the Senate. Teddy’s opponent was the favorite nephew of Democratic House Speaker John McCormack, whose help JFK desperately needed, so it was necessary to maintain fictional neutrality.

Sorensen thought Teddy a callow candidate. But his brothers’ murders and personal tragedy changed that. For a time, it seemed he might become an American Parnell, a leader of vision and skill undone by personal appetites. That too was surmounted. Today, Sorensen judges him thus: “More respected and effective today than some presidents have been, Ted long ago came to terms with the fact that he need not be president to fulfill his portion of the Kennedy legacy. … I think he will ultimately die in the Senate. More active and at home in that body than either of his brothers, Ted was — and still is — the most relaxed campaigner of the three, with an easier style on the public platform, the best politician, better able to work with other senators in both parties.

“Always the liberal lion, he has proven to be a courageous battler on the cutting edge of issues both domestic and foreign, maintaining the liberal tradition of his brothers, even when others in the Democratic Party showed less courage. … Jack and Bobby would have been proud.”

— Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2008

Get well soon, Senator … we need you more than ever.

JDF PourMonRapprocher

From the Vienna Staatsoper production of Gaetano Donizetti’s La fille du régiment, Juan Diego Flórez sings “Pour me rapprocher de Marie”.

For the last two years, the Metropolitan Opera has been offering HD broadcasts of some of its Saturday matinees in movie theaters, and I’m kicking myself that it’s taken me this long to check it out. I certainly chose a good way to start (but then again, my first three live Met performances were Leonie Rysanek and Jon Vickers in Fidelio, Christa Ludwig in Der Rosenkavalier and Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto in La Bohème.) I can certainly report that it was well worth getting up early to take the bus to Century City for Flórez and Natalie Dessay in Fille.

The clips in this post are from the same Laurent Pelly production I saw yesterday, which originated at Covent Garden and has played in Vienna and Milan. Here, Dessay’s “Salut à la France”, complete with mosh pit:

On the opening night of the Met production, Florez did an encore (a “bis”, as they call it in opera-land) of his “money aria,” the Act I high-wire act “Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!”, in which Tonio convinces the régiment to grant him their daughter’s hand in marriage:

Flórez’s bis at La Scala may have been the first since Toscanini forbade the practice in 1922. His nine high Cs inevitably invite comparison with possibly the most famous interpreter of the role, whose performances with Joan Sutherland at the Met in 1968 made him internationally famous. I was going to post a link to a pirate recording of Luciano Pavarotti’s performance in that role, but I think the comparisons are unfair, in a way, both to him and Flórez.

Is Flórez the next Pavarotti? Ask me in thirty years. In the meantime, I will be getting up early on Saturdays a lot more when the next Met HD season starts up again later this year.

Technorati tags: Metropolitan Opera, Gaetano Donizetti, La fille du régiment, Juan Diego Flórez, Natalie Dessay, Pour me rapprocher de Marie, Salut à la France, Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!, Laurent Pelly, Marco Armiliato, Luciano Pavarotti

Above: Marie Dressler (foreground) and chorus girls from the Ziegfeld Follies picketing on Broadway, 1919.

My original screenplay Equity has been awarded a Silver Remi for Best Dramatic Screenplay at the 2008 WorldFest Houston International Film Festival.

I realized a long time ago that choosing a personal favorite from among my screenplays is like choosing which of your children you like best. Equity was the first script I seriously attempted to finish, and it had the longest and most convoluted gestation (during which time I set it aside to finish two other works).

So, even though people whose judgment I trust say I’ve written at least one better script, I freely admit that Equity has a special place in my heart.

Technorati tags: WorldFest Houston International Film Festival, Equity, Remi Award, Eighty-Eight Frequencies, Twin Bridges Screenwriting Salon

For the second year in a row, one of my screenplays has won a Remi Award from the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival.

This year’s award winner is Equity, my original script about the 1919 Actors Equity strike of Broadway performers, which will be honored in the category of Dramatic Screenplay.

Last April, I travelled to Houston to pick up my Platinum Remi for Eighty-Eight Frequencies. This year I’m not going to Houston, so I’ll have to wait until after the WorldFest awards banquet to learn the metallurgical level of my prize (bronze, silver, gold, platinum or the Grand Jury Prize a/k/a the Mithril Armadillo).

I was about to say that I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for these guys, but since I’m sitting at work at the moment and they had nothing to with that, I’ll just say once again how grateful I am for my Thursday night crew and their years of support.

Technorati tags: WorldFest Houston International Film Festival, Equity, Remi Award, Eighty-Eight Frequencies, Twin Bridges Screenwriting Salon

Immediately afterward, Lily Tomlin presents the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical:

Jeter went on to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor – Comedy Series for his role in the sitcom Evening Shade, and he had memorable roles in features such as The Fisher King, Dead Bang and The Green Mile.

Last Sunday was the fifth anniversary of Michael Jeter’s death of AIDS-related complications at the age of fifty.

Technorati tags: Michael Jeter, Brent Barrett, We’ll Take A Glass Together, Grand Hotel, Tommy Tune, Tony Awards, Luther Davis, Robert Wright, George Forrest, Maury Yeston, Vicki Baum, Menschen im Hotel

George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls and is expected to resign or be impeached, according to Congressional sources.

The prostitutes, some as young as 13, are among the 1.2 million desperate Iraqis who fled to Syria after Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the U.K. Independent.

Bush’s invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women’s Will Association.

“70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis,” 23-year-old Abeer told the New York Times. “The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available.”

According to the Times, “inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.”

Driving women and girls into prostitution violates numerous human rights agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. George Bush himself denounced sex trafficking at the United Nations in 2003.

Bush’s invasion of a country that posed no threat to the U.S. was illegal under both U.S. and international law, according to legal experts. Bush has been convicted of war crimes by citizen tribunals around the world, including New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Istanbul. Just las week, the towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro Vermont voted to indict and arrest Bush and Cheney.

In 2002 and 2003, Bush led a propaganda campaign to defraud Congress, the American people, and key allies into believing Iraq was a threat. Bush claimed Iraq had stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to use against the U.S., and was sharing them with Al Qaeda.

Speaking near Rochester NY, Bush later admitted, “See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

According to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity, top Bush Administration officials told at least 935 lies about Iraq on 532 separate occasions. These included 259 lies by Bush, 254 lies by Secretary of State Colin Powell, 109 lies by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 109 lies by Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, 56 lies by National Security Advisor Condi Rice, and 48 lies by Vice President Cheney.

The lies about Iraqi WMD’s were manufactured by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which included the most senior White House staff: White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Jim Wilkinson, Nick Calio, Michael Gerson, and Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby.

In July 2003, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exposed Bush’s lie that Iraq sought uranium from Niger in a New York Times op ed. Libby secretly sought retribution against Wilson by revealing the name of his wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, to several reporters. The scandal led to the appointment of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who won conviction of Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby was sentenced to to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000, but his jail sentence was commuted by President Bush at the urging of Vice President Cheney to prevent Libby from telling Fitzgerald the truth.

According to George Mason, the “father of the Bill of Rights,” it was unquestionably an impeachable offense for a President (or Vice President) to “pardon crimes which were advised by himself.”

WHIG was chaired by Bush’s propaganda mastermind Karl Rove, who admitted under harsh questioning at the University of Iowa on Monday, “I fully expect to be indicted by the end of the year.”

After the invasion, 1,400 experts in the Iraq Survey Group scoured Iraq for WMD’s but found none. Charles Duelfer wrote the ISG’s final report in September 2004 and concluded Iraq ended its WMD program in 1991.

This publicly confirmed what the CIA had privately known since 1995, when Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan and told the CIA he had personally overseen the complete destruction of Iraq’s WMD after 1991 Gulf War.

In May 2005, the Times of London published the “Downing Street Memo” which revealed Bush’s pre-war intelligence was a deliberate fraud, according to Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency, who met with George Tenet in July 2002. “The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invading Iraq, Dearlove told a secret meeting of Tony Blair’s war cabinet on July 23, 2002, eight months before Bush invaded Iraq.

This publication of the “Downing Street Memo” led to widespread calls for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. John Conyers and other Democrats held preliminary impeachment hearings in the basement of the Capitol on June 16, 2005. In 2006, Conyers published his explosive findings in “George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying.”

After Democrats won Congress in 2006, Conyers became Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and has met repeatedly with impeachment advocates. Despite widespread reports that Speaker Pelosi is blocking Conyers from starting impeachment, Conyers recently declared, “I don’t know who’s ever stopped me before, I don’t know why Pelosi’s going to stop me now.”

In 2007, Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced three Articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney for his role in the Iraq War lies. Kucinich’s bill, H.Res. 333, has 26 co-sponsors.

The bill was debated on the House floor; last November the House voted 251-162 to refer it to the Judiciary Committee for further action, rather than kill the bill. (The bill was renamed to H.Res. 799.)

Last December, Rep. Robert Wexler and two other members of the House Judiciary Committee urged Conyers to begin hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Wexler posted an online petition and collected over 230,000 signatures.

Rep. Kucinich ran for President in 2007 and his calls for impeachment were enthusiastically received by voters. Last week, Kucinich fended off a primary challenge in his Congressional district and is expected to introduce the first Articles of Impeachment against George Bush.

But some in Congress believe Bush and Cheney will resign before they are impeached. “When the American people finally learn the truth about Bush’s crimes, Bush and Cheney will have to resign, just like Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew,” said a key Congressional Democrat. “The pressure on Eliot Spitzer is nothing compared to what we’ll see for Bush and Cheney,” he added.

The latest polls by Newsweek and AP-Ipsos put Bush’s approval rating at 30%, a record low. His disapproval rating is over 60%, a record high, and suggests more Americans now favor Bush’s impeachment than in earlier polls which showed strong support for impeachment.

— Bob Fertik 

Here he is with his one-time lover and most famous soprano partner, Maria Callas, in a 1953 recording of one of his most famous roles, Turiddu in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Rolando Panerai as Alfio, Anna Maria Canali as Lola and Ebe Ticozzi as Mamma Lucia, with the Teatro alla Scala chorus and orchestra conducted by Tullio Serafin.

Technorati tags: Giuseppe di Stefano, Cavalleria rusticana, Pietro Mascagni, Maria Callas, Rolando Panerai, Anna Maria Canali, Ebe Ticozzi, Teatro alla Scala, Tullio Serafin

Thanks to Joe Bratcher for the links.

Technorati tags: Barack Obama, Derrick Ashong

Eleanor Steber, that is, singing “Depuis le jour” from Gustave Charpentier’s Louise.

The (possibly apocryphal) story is that she recorded this for HMV because she was too hung over to sing the Mozart arias she had been hired to perform.

Back in the summer of 2006, my friend Bob was so scornful of bloggers, that to avoid his snark I told him the only reason I was setting up a … well, a non-blog … was to promote my writing projects.

By my calculation, this is my six hundredth non-post on my non-blog, representing at least one post per day pretty much without fail since I started.

Especially in recent months, almost half of those posts have been repeats, and even then I have found the tail wagging the dog, as the non-blog often seemed to become more important than what I started it to promote.

I’m very happy to say that I have started on a new and rewarding writing project. While I’m busy at it I will probably be non-posting no more than an average of once every ten days or so.

There is, and will continue to be, a sizable library of “my favorite things” available in the archives of this blog, sorted by subject under the “Not my tags” header in the sidebar.

If you’re one of those who regularly checks my blog, save yourself some effort by setting up an RSS feed by scrolling down this page to “Not my feeds”. It’s an easy way to keep up with this and all the other blogs you’re reading.

This is not the end of the non-blog. At some point in the indeterminate future I will be back to regular non-posting, maybe even daily, more verbose and unfocused than ever. The non-blog lives!

“Chattanooga Choo Choo” by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon, with the delicious Dorothy Dandridge and Harold and Fayard, the amazing Nicholas Brothers.

One reason the Nicholas Brothers never made it past the level of a novelty act in the movies was that there weren’t any black women performers in Hollywood who could even pretend to keep up with them as dancers. Dandridge comes closest, and who cares if she couldn’t tap very well if she could strut like that?

You may remember that Halle Berry performed a snippet of this number in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Dandridge and Harold Nicholas married a year after this movie; they divorced in 1951.

Technorati tags: Sun Valley Serenade, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Chattanooga Choo Choo, Dorothy Dandridge, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas, Harry Warren, Mack Gordon

… performing “I Got A Gal In Kalamazoo” from Orchestra Wives.

Technorati tags: Nicholas Brothers, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas, Orchestra Wives, Glenn Miller Orchestra, I Got A Gal In Kalamazoo, Harry Warren, Max Gordon

Technorati tags: Lucky Numbers, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas, Cliff Hess, The Black Network

• The song playing over the Three Whippets’ acrobatics is “Nagasaki” by Harry Warren and Mort Dixon.

• Adelaide Hall sings and dances the song “To Love You Again”

• The Nicholas Brothers perform in the penultimate spot, which was traditionally the headliner position in vaudeville.

• Eunice Wilson sings “I Don’t Know Why” by Fred E. Ahlert and Roy Turk, accompanied by The Five Racketeers …

• followed by the Racketeers’ rendition of “Tiger Rag” by Edwin B. Edwards and Nick LaRocca.

Adelaide Hall (1901-1993) made her Broadway debut in 1921 in the chorus of Eubie Blake’s Shuffle Along, and she costarred with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in Blackbirds of 1928 in which she premiered “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby”.

She married a British sailor, moved to London in 1938 and spent the rest of her like in the U.K., achieving the status of a British Josephine Baker without the latter’s ups and downs. Her final stage appearance was at Carnegie Hall in 1992 at the age of ninety-one, a year before her death.

Technorati tags: An All-Colored Vaudeville Show, Nicholas Brothers, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas, the Three Whippets, Adelaide Hall, To Love You Again, Nagasaki, Harry Warren, Eunice Wilson, I Don’t Know Why, Fred E. Ahlert, The Five Racketeers, Tiger Rag, Edwin B. Edwards, Nick LaRocca, Vitaphone

Can you spot the cameos from Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers and Cyd Charisse?

Technorati tags: Janet Jackson, Alright, Cab Calloway, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas, Cyd Charisse

Technorati tags: Cab Calloway, Jumpin’ Jive, Stormy Weather, Nicholas Brothers, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas

From the 1996 Met tribute to James Levine, tenor Roberto Alagna and baritone Bryn Terfel, conducted by Levine.

And if that wasn’t good enough, my favorite recording of the aria … hell, just about my favorite recording of any aria, ever. Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill.

It’s true — Georges Bizet wrote an opera that isn’t called Carmen. This may be the most popular duet of all time from an opera that no one I know has ever seen produced. There’s a reason Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) isn’t done very often, and it sure isn’t because of the music. For starters, the characters who sing this duet are named Zurga and Nadir …

Technorati tags: Au fond du temple saint, Les pêcheurs de perles, The Pearl Fishers, Georges Bizet, Roberto Alagna, Bryn Terfel, James Levine, Jussi Björling, Robert Merrill

In 1991, the year after a successful West End production, EMI assembled a dream cast to record the first complete recording. Here’s the overture …

And here’s a synopsis if you need it.

The chorus numbers, in particular, come off much better in superior recorded sound. That’s Judy Kaye as Meg Brockie:

Although the original 1947 production ran for a year and a half and it’s been revived three times on Broadway, none of the revivals lasted more than a few performances. Brent Barrett as Tommy and Rebecca Luker as Fiona:

Virtually the entire cast is American, which is amazing considering how well they got the brogues. John Mark Ainsley as Charlie:

The original cast album is very well performed, but it’s almost an hour shorter. Here, again, are Barrett and Luker:

At the intermission, Harry Beaton has run away, threatening to leave Brigadoon and end the magic that keps the town alive. In yet another number not heard on the OBC album, the second act opens with the Tommy, Jeff and the villagers chasing him:

Any musical would fortunate to have one love duet as memorable as these — Brigadoon has three:

In his book Beautiful Mornin’: The Broadway Musical in the 1940s, Ethan Mordden notes how perfectly Lerner’s escapist book fit the post-Hiroshima age of paranoia and blacklisting. Which is exactly why a good production would be an almost surefire hit on Broadway.

Technorati tags: Brigadoon, Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, Ambrosian Chorus, John McGlinn, Brent Barrett, Rebecca Luker, John Mark Ainsley, Judy Kaye, Donald Maxwell, Ian Caley, Down On MacConnachy Square, The Heather On The Hill, I’ll Go Home With Bonnie Jean, Almost Like Being In Love, The Chase, From This Day On, There But For You Go I

Obviously influenced by the success of Oklahoma!, this 1944 musical featured two of that show’s stars, Celeste Holm and Joan McCracken, and its choreographer Agnes De Mille, in a show with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Yip Harburg, the team best remembered for The Wizard of Oz.

I’d like to see the kinescope of the 1956 TV version starring Barbara Cook, and it was concert-staged by Encores! in 2001, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for a full-scale revival. The show’s politics, progressive for the time, are more than a bit outdated today (the same reason you don’t see Finian’s Rainbow revived) and the score as a whole isn’t up to the best of Arlen and Harburg.

My favorite number from Bloomer Girl is this show-stopper performed by Dooley Wilson, who will always be best remembered as Sam in Casablanca. That movie’s producer, Hal Wallis, was either misquoted or very mistaken when he said that Wilson “couldn’t sing” and was dubbed. Sam’s piano playing was dubbed, but you’ll instantly recognize Wilson’s voice in “The Eagle And Me,” in which the escaped slave Pompey sings about freedom to his former owner:

Technorati tags: Bloomer Girl, Harold Arlen, E. Y. Harburg, Dooley Wilson, The Eagle And Me

A washed-up Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright gets hired to adapt his most famous work into a musical … thirty years after the original. And he dies before rehearsals have begun.

The star is best known for his Vegas act, and he’s never appeared on Broadway.

The producer will probably be best remembered for this.

The songwriters had a big hit four seasons before — a bubblegum-rock musical.

What a recipe for disaster.

What an unexpected surprise.

Don’t get me wrong — Golden Boy (1964) will never be revived. It was too much of a star vehicle for Sammy Davis, and its politics and zeitgeist are very much of its time.

But who would have thought the songwriters best known for Bye Bye Birdie and Annie would be capable of opening a show with this?

Clifford Odets‘ hero, played by John Garfield on Broadway and William Holden in the movie, was Joe Bonaparte, the quintessential boxer‑with‑a‑heart‑of‑gold who really wants to be a concert violinist. William Gibson (The Miracle Worker), who took over the book chores after Odets’ death, turned him into Joe Wellington (get it?) and dropped the violin.

Wellington is seduced by his manager’s blond white girlfriend (Paula Wayne, an actress with more than a passing resemblance to Davis’s blond white wife, May Britt). His first solo may be the most famous number from the show.

Before we get carried away with what a Grand Statement this show was making about equality and civil rights, it’s worth pointing out that outside of the actors not one person who worked on this show was black.

Not everything in Golden Boy was quite so grim. Here, Wellington bids farewell to the ‘hood:

Billy Daniels (1915-1988), a popular band singer/radio host best known for his recording of “That Old Black Magic”, appeared as Eddie Satin, a Mephistophelean fight promoter who tempts Wellington with fame and fortune in the first-act finale:

(Betcha didn’t guess that was going to turn into a rap song …)

For what it’s worth, Davis’s last number in the show was praised by no less than Martin Luther King:

Thanks to Odets’s death and a longer-than-expected out-of-town shakedown tour, Golden Boy may have been the first — but certainly not the last — Broadway musical to run over a year and still close in the red.

Technorati tags: Golden Boy, Sammy Davis Jr., Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, Clifford Odets, William Gibson, Hillard Elkins, Paula Wayne, Billy Daniels, Johnny Brown, Night Song, Don’t Forget 127th St., This Is The Life, No More

Forgotten by myself, amongst others.

When I did my series of non-posts about the Nicholas Brothers, I forgot that they co-starred in a musical by one of my favorite Broadway composers.

The book for St. Louis Woman was by Harlem Renaissance stalwarts Countee Cullen and Arna Bontemps, based on Bontemps’s novel God Sends Sunday. This was considered a Significant Novel, appropriate for the post-Oklahoma age of Significant Musicals. It was, in fact, a rather tawdry turn-of-the-century melodrama of black jockeys and horse-race hangers-on. It even has a shooting in the middle of the second act … just like Oklahoma.

Except that no one had told composer Harold Arlen or lyricist Johnny Mercer how to write Significant Songs. Which is just as well, because their work is far and away the most memorable thing in the show.

The show was staged by Rouben Mamoulian, director both of Oklahoma and Porgy and Bess, who took over as director from Oklahoma‘s designer, Lemuel Ayers. During pre-production, the leader of the NAACP condemned the novel as offering “roles that detract from the dignity of our race.” At which point, Lena Horne, the star for whom the show was being created, pulled out. And Cullen died just before rehearsals began.

For reasons not entirely clear, Mamoulian fired ingenue Ruby Hill in the middle of rehearsals … and then rehired her after a cast revolt led by co-star Pearl Bailey. Based on her opening number, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would have wanted to get rid of her:

Harold Nicholas played the lead role, jockey Lil’ Augie, paired romantically with Hill, while Fayard played the second lead with Bailey (left). Augie and Della pledge to love each other …

Lil’ Augie shoots Della’s former lover, Biglow Brown, who curses Augie and causes him to fear he has lost his luck. But after he wins the big race, Augie says he’s “Ridin’ on the Moon” …

Technorati tags: St. Louis Woman, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicolas, Nicholas Brothers, Ruby Hill, Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home, Come Rain Or Come Shine, Ridin’ on the Moon, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen

After a look at Offenbach’s take on the Iliad, we segue to a unique Broadway take on both the Iliad and the Odyssey, an all-but-forgotten masterpiece that Offenbach himself would have been proud to have authored.

The Golden Apple, with music by Jerome Moross and lyrics by John Latouche, opened off-Broadway at the Phoenix Theatre on March 11, 1954. It was a critical and audience smash, and became the first off-Broadway musical to make the jump directly to Broadway … where it played a disappointing 125 performances and closed. It hasn’t been performed in New York since.

The Golden Apple is “through-sung”; that is, there’s no dialogue — Moross called it a “musical comedy opera”. It’s a retelling of Homer, transplanted to the town of Angel’s Roost, Washington, at the foot of Mount Olympus, at the turn of the twentieth century.

The story opens with Ulysses (Stephen Douglass, the original Shoeless Joe from Damn Yankees) and his men returning from the Spanish-American War. Ulysses recounts their many exploits:

Paris, a traveling salesman (Jonathan Lucas in an all-dancing mute role), is seduced by Helen (Kaye Ballard), the wife of Sheriff Menelaus:

As Paris and Helen fly off in a balloon bound for the city of Rhododendron, Ulysses leads his men off to war yet again in a fury of patriotic revenge:

In act II, the various Fates and Furies of the big city pick off Ulysses’ men one by one, such as a crazy Lady Scientist (Portia Nelson) who shoots the men into outer space before realizing she can’t bring them back:

Eventually, Ulysses returns to his Penelope (Priscilla Gillette, the original Alexandra in Marc Blitzstein’s Regina). At first she is furious at Ulysses for his irresponsible wanderings:

But a chastened Ulysses convinces her that he is home to stay:

The cast album of this wonderful show drives me crazy, as it preserves less than half the full score. I’d be ecstatic if someone recorded it complete; I’d be in metrosexual heaven if they revived it.

Technorati tags: The Golden Apple, Jerome Moross, John Latouche, Homer, Ὅμηρος, Iliad, Ἰλιάς, Odyssey, Οδύσσεια, Stephen Douglass, Jonathan Lucas, Kaye Ballard, Portia Nelson, Priscilla Gillette

Don’t click the More… tab until you’ve listened to this sound clip:

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The singer (and star of the show) is making his only appearance in a Broadway musical. Who is he?

Yep, that Anthony Perkins.

On an off-day during rehearsals for the 1960 Frank Loesser musical Greenwillow, a bunch of the cast members decided to go see the new movie that Tony had been working on … the one he seemed rather reluctant to talk about. Something called Psycho …

The transition from Norman Bates to Gideon Briggs must have been as much of a shock for Perkins. The musical based on the B. J. Chute novel takes place in the town of Greenwillow, where the eldest son of each generation of the Briggs clan must obey the “call to wander,” while the women they leave behind care for the home and rear their children in the hope that someday their husbands will return.

Gideon’s father Amos (Bruce MacKay), returns for a brief visit from his call, and he and his son extol “the music of home”:

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Gideon is committed to breaking the curse, and he declares as much to Dorrie (Ellen McCown), his beloved:

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Among Greenwillow’s many eccentrics are its two Reverends, the dour pessimist Reverend Lapp (William Chapman) and the sunny optimist Reverend Birdsong (Cecil Kellaway):

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Birdsong’s unconventional view of the Devil:

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Gideon and his two younger brothers, Micah (Ian Tucker) and Jabez (seven-year-old John Megna, who almost stole the show), baptize the family’s new calf:

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As it seems Gideon is lost to the call, Dorrie bemoans their fate:

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Eventually, with Birdsong’s help, Gideon breaks the curse and wins his Dorrie:

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Now, if this plot seems to you as if it’s going to lift off and float away, then you agree with most of the Broadway critics and the audience. At ninety-seven performances, Greenwillow was far and away the biggest flop of Frank Loesser’s Broadway career.

It didn’t help that it opened in the middle of the most extraordinary season in Broadway musical history. During Greenwillow‘s run, theatergoers looking for an original musical had their choice of My Fair Lady, The Music Man, Flower Drum Song, Redhead, Once Upon a Mattress, Gypsy, Take Me Along, The Sound of Music, Fiorello!, Bye Bye Birdie and West Side Story!

Which is not to say that Greenwillow isn’t one hell of a score; at its best it’s up there with with The Most Happy Fella and Where’s Charley? if not in the stratospheric heights of Guys and Dolls. It may be too slight for a full Broadway revival but it would be just perfect for an Encores! concert treatment.

Tony Perkins’s understudy in Greenwillow was Grover Dale, who had been a Jet in the original cast of West Side Story and who was Perkins’s lover for over a decade. Dale became a leading choreographer/director on Seesaw, The Magic Show and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway.

Two years after Greenwillow, John Megna played Dill, the neighbor boy in the movie of To Kill A Mockingbird (the character based on Truman Capote). Gideon and Jabez may have escaped the Briggs family curse, but Perkins and Megna were less fortunate: both died of AIDS-related complications.

Technorati tags: Greenwillow, Frank Loesser, Anthony Perkins, Bruce Mackay, Ellen McCown, Grover Dale, John Megna

It may be apocryphal, but I’ve read that Woody Allen thinks this is the worst movie he ever made, and he begged United Artists not to release it.

I guess they’re right … he must be nuts.

Technorati tags: Woody Allen, Manhattan, Gordon Willis, George Gershwin, Rhapsodi In Blue

Today would have been the one hundredth birthday of the greatest jazz violinist of all time.

Above, from 1991, the eighty-three-year-old Stéphane Grappelli performs “How High The Moon” by Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis, accompanied by McCoy Tyner on piano, Marc Fosset on guitar and Jean-Philip Viret on bass.

Here’s a clip of Grappelli appearing on Michael Parkinson’s BBC program with the classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, playing “Tango Jalousie” by Jacob Gade. It was the beginning of a collaboration that led to several wonderful records.

And here is Grappelli with his most famous collaborators.

Technorati tags: Stéphane Grappelli, Mccoy Tyner, Marc Fosset, Jean-Philip Viret, How High The Moon, Nancy Hamilton, Morgan Lewis, Yehudi Menuhin, Tango Jalousie, Jacob Gade, Michael Parkinson

Given the numbers worshipping at the Altar of the Church of Sondheim, you might question whether SITPWG was ever really “forgotten”. I think it had the best original production to date of his mature works, which ironically may have led to its being underappreciated since there has been less clamor for a revival. And indeed, except for a one-night-only tenth-anniversary reunion of the original cast, the West End production that opens tonight on Broadway is its first NYC revival in twenty-three years.

I disagree with the conventional wisdom that the second act is weak; lose the second act and you lose “It’s Hot Up Here”, “Putting It Together” and “Move On”, not to mention the best line in the show: “I’m going back to NASA. There’s just too much pressure in this line of work.” (Yes, that’s Brent Spiner, Star Trek: TNG‘s Data, as first-act Franz and second-act Dennis.)

If Sweeney Todd deserves to be performed in opera houses and movie theaters, then so does this:

DOT
Are you working on something new?

GEORGE
No.

DOT
That is not like you, George.

GEORGE
I’ve nothing to say.

DOT
You have many things.

GEORGE
Well, nothing that’s not been said.

DOT
Said by you, though, George.

GEORGE
I do not know where to go.

DOT
And nor did I.

GEORGE
I want to make things that count,
Things that will be new …

DOT
I did what I had to do …

GEORGE
What am I to do?

DOT
Move on …

Stop worrying where you’re going —
Move on.
If you can know where you’re going,
You’ve gone.
Just keep moving on.

I chose, and my world was shaken —
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken,
The choosing was not.
You have to move on.

Look at what you want,
Not at where you are,
Not at what you’ll be —
Look at all the things you’ve done for me:

Opened up my eyes,
Taught me how to see,
Notice every tree —

GEORGE
… Notice every tree …

DOT
Understand the light —

GEORGE
… Understand the light …

DOT
Concentrate on now —

GEORGE
I want to move on.
I want to explore the light.
I want to know how to get through,
Through to something new,
Something of my own —

BOTH
Move on.
Move on.

DOT
Stop worrying it your vision
Is new.
Let others make that decision —
They usually do.
You keep moving on.

GEORGE (over)
Something in the light,
Something in the sky,
In the grass,
Up behind the trees …
Things I hadn’t looked at
Till now
Flower in your hat.
And your smile
And the color of your hair.

DOT (over)
Look at what you’ve done,
Then at what you want,
Not at where you are,
What you’ll be
Look at all the things
You gave to me
Let me give to you
Something in return
I would be so pleased …

GEORGE
… And the color of your hair.
And the way you catch the light.
And the care.
And the feeling.
And the life
Moving on.

DOT
We have always belonged
Together!

BOTH
We will always belong
Together!

DOT
Just keep moving on.
Anything you do,
Let it come from you.
Then it will be new.

Give us more to see …

Technorati tags: Sunday In The Park With George, Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Brent Spiner

In this clip from International House (1933), the strangest film W. C. Fields ever made (and that’s saying a lot), Cab Calloway And His Orchestra, featuring the legendary Al Morgan on bass, perform “Reefer Man” on television.

No, I’m not making that up.

And shut up with the reefer jokes.

Technorati tags: Cab Calloway And His Orchestra, Al Morgan, Reefer Man, International House

I’ve always been fascinated with child prodigies, having been a little bit of one myself.

Lucy, the heroine of my screenplay The Arch Conspirators, is a child prodigy. And so was violinist Sarah Chang, who auditioned for Juilliard at the age of six. Here she at the age of fifteen, playing the Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 by another prodigy, Felix Mendelssohn, accompanied by Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic.

Above and below, the first movement, allegro molto appassionato:

Many famous violin prodigies have started their careers with this piece, including Jascha Heifetz, who gave his first public performance of it at the age of seven.

The second movement, andante:

When I was first enrolled in kindergarten, I had already known how to read and write for a couple of years. On our first day in class, Mrs. Burke showed us how to write the letter “a”, and then gave us an assignment to write two rows of “a”s. I finished my two rows and stopped, but then I noticed that Patty Sitkowski was writing more than just two rows. So I proceeded to write more rows of “a”s, then turned the page over and filled the other side. Just as Mrs. Burke was telling us to put our pencils down, I turned back to the first page and wrote “(Continued on the other side)” before turning it in …

The third movement, Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace:

Technorati tags: Sarah Chang, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Violin Concerto in E minor, Kurt Masur, New York Philharmonic, The Arch Conspirators

Click the thumbnail for a full-sized image.

My favorite strip in the Los Angeles Times.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hoped that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for whites only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today my friends – so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi – from every mountainside.

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring – when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children – black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963.

Distribution statement: Accepted as part of the Douglass Archives of American Public Address on May 26, 1999. Prepared by D. Oetting. Permission is hereby granted to download, reprint, and/or otherwise redistribute this file, provided this distribution statement is included and appropriate point of origin credit is given to the preparer and Douglass.

Technorati tags: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., I have a dream, March on Washington, Douglass Archives of American Public Address

… at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Den Haag, Holland, July 11, 1980. Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Randy Brecker on trumpet, Neil Jason on bass, Richie Morales on drums, Barry Finnerty on guitar and Mark Gray on keyboards.

Technorati tags: Brecker Brothers, Some Skunk Funk

Watercolor by Virgil “Vip” Partch. Left to right: Sam Cobean, Tony Rivera, Bill McIntyre, Vip Partch, Reginald Massie (foreground), Dick Shaw.

This probably dates from late 1941 or 1942, after the Disney strike in which they all participated. All five would have been in their late twenties to early thirties at the time …

Along with Reg Massie and Walt Kelly (later of Pogo fame), Sam Cobean was in charge of publicity for the 1941 Disney strike. He was a frequent cartoon contributor to The New Yorker, and published several books. He was killed in a car crash in 1951.

Tony Rivera was Grim Natwick’s assistant on Snow White. He worked for UPA, John Sutherland and DePatie-Freleng. He was one of the original Flintstones layout artists, and continued working for Hanna-Barbera until shortly before his death in 1986.

Bill McIntyre was in and out of the animation business for many years; at one time he also ran a bookstore in Laguna Beach.

Virgil “Vip” Partch went on to fame and fortune as a comic artist, contributing to Collier’s, True, The Saturday Evening Post, and the newspaper panel comic Big George. Like Cobean, he died in a car crash, in 1984.

During WWII, Reg Massie was in charge of special effects at the Army Signal Corps Photographic Center in Astoria, L.I. In the late 1940s he worked for George Pal, designing several of the Puppettoons such as “John Henry and the Inky-Poo” and “Rome-Owww and Julie-Cat”. He went on to be an art director for such magazines as Stage, The Reporter and Gourmet; he died in 1989.

A close friend of Vip Partch with whom he shared a love of boating, Dick Shaw is the only one of this group who returned to Disney, as a storyman on Make Mine Music and Donald Duck shorts. Later he went to UPA where he wrote dozens of Magoo shorts.

None of them ever exactly faded away, but they never went back to inbetweening, either.

Vip got the pipe right, but unlike me, my Dad never lost any of his hair …

Technorati tags: Disney strike, Virgil Partch, Tony Rivera, Bill McIntyre, Reg Massie, Dick Shaw, inbetweeners, Animation Guild, Jeff Massie

The narrator of “John Henry and the Inky-Poo,” Rex Ingram, had become famous as De Lawd in the movie of Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures, as the genie in the 1940 The Thief Of Bagdad and as Jim to Mickey Rooney’s Huck Finn. “John Henry” was George Pal’s Fantasia, his attempt to atone for the not-so-subtle racism of his Jasper shorts.

In 1948, the year after “John Henry and the Inky-Poo,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that movie studios had to divest their theater holdings. There was no longer a profit motive for studios to maintain shorts departments, and very shortly afterwards Dad and most of the Puppetoon unit were permanently laid off.

After subsisting on industrial films for a few years, George Pal made a second career for himself as the producer and special-effects wizard behind such classics as The Time Machine and The War Of The Worlds. Reg Massie’s second career was as an art director for such magazines as The Reporter and Gourmet, at which he made a happy and comfortable life for himself and his family — myself eventually included.

Dad was the inspiration for the character of Max in my screenplay Tabula Rasa, and my screenplay Equity is dedicated to my parents.

Here are other Puppetoons designed by Reginald Massie.

Technorati tags: George Pal, Puppetoons, Reginald Massie, Rex Ingram, John Henry and the Inky-Poo

Reg Massie, 1945

Unlike clay animators like Nick Park, Will Vinton or Art Clokey, George Pal’s animators worked in a “replacement technique” using hand-carved wooden puppets. A separate puppet (or puppet part) was used for each motion, rather than clay or hinged parts. A single walking sequence, for instance, could involve 12 pairs of legs for one character. An average Puppetoon short would use 9,000 puppets.

Based on the children’s book by Paul Tripp (and not to be confused with the inferior 1970s feature), Tubby The Tuba was one of two George Pal Puppetoons designed by Reg Massie to be nominated for Academy Awards in successive years.

Here are other Puppetoons designed by my father.

Technorati tags: George Pal, Puppetoons, Reginald Massie, Paul Tripp, Tubby The Tuba

This was released in May 1942, so it’s possible my father worked on it before he went in the Army earlier that year.

That was fun, even if it did totally rip off this movie.

* ich benutze gern eszett
Technorati tags: Johann Strauß, George Pal, Reginald Massie, Mr. Strauss Takes a Walk, Puppetoons, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, The Great Waltz

This was the best of the Puppetoons headlining “Jasper.” As we’ll see in Friday’s offering, Pal was sufficiently enlightened to insist on black actors and singers at a time when it would get his shorts banned in the South (yes, even when they didn’t appear onscreen). Does that cancel out the stereotyping — okay, the racism — of the Jasper shorts? No, but it deserves consideration.

Here are other Puppetoons designed by my father.

Technorati tags: George Pal, Puppetoons, Reginald Massie, Charlie Barnet, Peggy Lee, Jasper In A Jam

Below: George Pal

George Pal (1908-1980) had worked as an animator in his native Hungary and elsewhere in Europe, including Germany where he briefly ran Ufa’s cartoon division. He realized that while the flatbed animation cameras needed for cel animation were expensive and rare, if he worked with puppets he could use any camera. Fifty years before John Lasseter and Pixar, George Pal pioneered 3D animation techniques without the use of computers.

Below: Reg Massie self-portrait, 1945

Not long after Paramount signed Pal to a contract in 1939, Reg Massie came to work for him briefly between gigs at Disney. Along with much of the Disney studio’s best and brightest, Dad walked out of Disney in the 1941 strike, where he met my mother on the picket line. During WWII he was in charge of effects animation at the Army Signal Corps Photographic Center in Astoria, Long Island, working with Frank Capra and John Huston on animated maps and special effects. After the war, he returned to Pal in time for the Puppetoon’s brief golden era.

Although he was only credited for “backgrounds”, Dad was essentially the art director, responsible for the overall look of the shorts.

From 1946, “Together In The Weather”.

Technorati tags: George Pal, Puppetoons, Reginald Massie, Together In The Weather

Directed by Chuck Jones; written by Mike Maltese and designed by Maurice Noble. With the voices of Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny and the underappreciated Arthur Q. Bryan as Elmer Fudd (although it’s Blanc who yells “SMOG!!!”).

Music by Richard Wagner, arranged by Milt Franklyn, with excerpts from Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tannhäuser and The Flying Dutchman.

Technorati tags: Warner Bros. Cartoons, What’s Opera, Doc?, Chuck Jones, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan, Michael Maltese, Maurice Noble, Richard Wagner, Milt Franklyn, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tannhäuser, Der fliegende Holländer

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Everybody do the Michigan Rag
Everybody likes the Michigan Rag
Every Mame and Jane and Ruth
From Weehawken to Duluth
Slide, ride, glide the Michigan
Stomp, romp, pomp the Michigan
Jump, clump, pump the Michigan Rag
That lovin’ rag!

— “The Michigan Rag,” music and lyrics by Milt Franklyn, Chuck Jones and Mike Maltese

Additional songs:

• “Hello! Ma Baby”, words and music by Ida Emerson and Joseph E. Howard

• “Come Back to Erin”, words and music by Claribel (pseudonym of Charlotte Alington Barnard)

• “I’m Just Wild About Harry”, words and music by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle

• “Throw Him Down, McCloskey”, words and music by John W. Kelly

• “Won’t You Come Over To My House”, words by Harry Williams, music by Egbert Van Alstyne

• “Largo al factotum” from “The Barber of Seville”, composed by Gioacchino Rossini

• “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone”, words and music by Sidney Clare, Sam H. Stept and Bee Palmer

Technorati tags: One Froggy Evening, Warner Bros. Cartoons, Chuck Jones, Mike Maltese, Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson, Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Robert Gribbroek, Philip De Guard, Milt Franklyn, The Michigan Rag, Michigan J. Frog, Hello! Ma Baby, Ida Emerson, Joseph E. Howard, Come Back to Erin, Claribel, Charlotte Alington Barnard, I’m Just Wild About Harry, Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Throw Him Down, McCloskey, John W. Kelly, Won’t You Come Over To My House, Harry Williams, Egbert Van Alstyne, Largo al factotum, The Barber of Seville, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Gioacchino Rossini, Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone, Sidney Clare, Sam H. Stept, Bee Palmer

Technorati tags: Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good To You, Andy Razaf, Don Redmanaudio

I celebrated Valentine’s Day by posting “Isn’t It Romantic” from Love Me Tonight (1932).

Here we see the remarkable opening sequence from this bubbly and innovative Rodgers and Hart movie musical directed by Rouben Mamoulian.

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Technorati tags: Love Me Tonight, Rouben Mamoulian, Maurice Chevalier, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart

The character of Harry Paget Flashman is based upon the villain of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, the eighteenth-century novel of English public-school life that has influenced everything from the movie if … to Harry Potter. (There’s a delicious irony in that Harry is played in the movie Royal Flash by Malcolm McDowell, who also starred in if … as the victim of bullies not unlike Flashman himself.)

Flashman is an unremitting cad and coward who falls into impossible scrapes and improbably emerges time after time with his reputation intact, until he eventually becomes a hero of the Victorian era. The Flashman novels are meticulously researched and written and give a full-blooded accounting of Victorian military history.

Fraser is also the author of The Hollywood History of the World: From One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now, which argues that classic Hollywood movies did a better job of accurately reporting history than they are given credit for.

Technorati tags: George MacDonald Fraser, Harry Paget Flashman, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Malcolm McDowell, The Hollywood History of the World: From One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now