"I don't have to live in New York. I could live in hell." Greta Garbo
Epigraph to Married to the Icepick Killer by Carol Muske-Dukes (New York: Random House, 2002) **
NEW YORK CITY'S JACOB BEACH
Jacob Beach in Manhattan was the descriptive phrase referring to a small area near the old Madison Square Garden. It was named for the noted fight promoter. Jacob's Beach was the principal market place for fighters, managers, promoters and their satellites to make arrangements for boxing matches etc.
Nat Fleischer. The Heavyweight Champions, 1948.
**
THE BIG APPLE
Paul Bloess: "The term 'Big Apple' was originally used in the 1920s and '30s by jazz musicians as a way of saying, 'There are many apples on the success tree, but when you pick New York City, you pick the Big Apple. '" **
* PRAISE FOR THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
“Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first world promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world… “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over the bridge,” I thought, “anything at all.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby.
Epigraph to New York Days by Willie Morris **
FAMOUS NEW YORKER #1
"Joseph C. Gayetty (c.1827 – May 2, 1895) was an American inventor credited with the invention of commercial toilet paper. It was the first and remained only one of the few commercial toilet papers from 1857 to 1890 remaining in common use until the invention of splinter-free toilet paper in 1935 by the Northern Tissue Company."
Wikepedia
* Many references cite that Joseph Gayetty was born in c. 1817, give or take a decade, in Massachusetts, USA. Not much is known about his early years, seeing as the first mention was in the U.S. census of 1850. He was living in New York City with his wife, Margaret Louisa Bogart, and their two children. ** RENTAL NEWS (2024) 27-year-old pays $1,850/month to live in an old NYC laundromat: ‘I knew true community as a child and I know it again now’ **
NOT ALL MOVIES ABOUT NYC ARE SUCCESSFUL
1946 film --SO THIS IS NEW YORK, produced by Stanley Kramer, With Henry Morgan, Rudy Vallee,Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey irected by Richard O. Fleischer, with music by Dimitri Tiomkin.
The film was savaged by the critics and it did poorly at the box office. One of the comment cards submitted at a preview screening was particularly brutal, saying, "What belongs in the toilet shouldn't be exhibited first in a theater."
iDMb Trivia **
NEW YORK CITY'S SUBWAY SYSTEM " The subway system runs for 840 miles with 34 lines and 469 stops, it is counted amongst the largest urban mass transportation systems of the world, taking five million people to their destinations each day. You can cover the entirety of the system in 21 hours and 49 minutes --do it quicker and you'll have broken the current world record."
Ace Rider. Now Wait Just A New York Minute & Other Fun Facts About The City (Orlando, Florida, 2023) * 110 Riverside Drive, New York, NY-- where Babe Ruth lived.
** The First known radio Commercial Aired in 1926
The first known radio advertisement was a real-estate commercial for the Hawthorne Court Apartments in Jackson Heights, Queens, broadcast by New York station WEAF in August 1922. There’s a bit of disagreement over whether the duration of the ad was 10 minutes or 15 minutes, but fortunately for listeners, it wasn’t long before the ad format was pared down considerably.
https://historyfacts.com/science-industry/article/5-facts-about-the-golden-age-of-radio/. ** THE MURKY WATERS OF HELL GATE
The murky waters of Hell Gate, between Queens and Manhattan, hide a mystery that has puzzled historians and treasure hunters for hundreds of years. A British ship, the HMS Hussar, went down in Hell Gate’s perilous waters after colliding with Pot Rock in 1780. The ship was rumored to be carrying a significant British military payroll. Despite these stories, no treasure has ever been recovered. Could remnants of the ship and its gold still lie beneath the waves? Whether or not there is a fortune waiting to be found, there are remnants of the Hussar shipwreck you can see without a diving permit."
In 1929, the New York Yankees at Sing Sing prison played the prison baseball team . The Yankees won and it was said that Babe Ruth slugged a 620 foot home-run.
The New York Daily News (January 4, 2005),p. 15 **
DON GULLETTAT THE CAR-WASH
Willie Stargell, the Hall of Fame slugger for the Pittsburgh Pirates, once said that (DON) Gullett "could throw a ball through a car-wash without it ever getting wet;"
Alex Williams. NY TIMES obituary for Don Gullett, Cincinnati Reds pitcher (Feb, 17, 2024) **
Rye Resident Now Owns the Most Expensive Baseball Card in the World! 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle Sells for $12.6 Million! For more than 50 years, the most valuable baseball card has always been the 1910 Honus Wagner. The baseball cards back then came in a pack of cigarettes, and recently that card sold for $7.25 Million. NEW YORK TIMES (September 1, 2022) ** ABOUT CATCHERS
" The catcher has more equipment and more attributes than players at other positions. He must be large, brave, intelligent, alert, stolid, foresighted, resilient, fatherly, quick, efficient, intuitive, and impregnable. These scoutmaster traits are counterbalanced, however, by one additional entry -- catching's bottom line. Most of all, the catcher is invisible." Roger Angell ** BASEBALL QUESTION #8754
Most readers are aware of the title of J.D. Salinger's classic novel -- CATCHER IN THE RYE. What ex-baseball player and humorist wrote a memoir titled CATCHER IN THE WRY? **
** MANHATTAN MERRY-GO-ROUND (1937)
It was while appearing as a guest star in this film that Joe DiMaggio first met his future wife, actress-dancer Dorothy Arnold, who was also appearing in it as a member of the Archive newsreel footage of Joe DiMaggio's home run in the 1936 World Series is shown in the film. iMBd Trivia ** ON PITCHERS
"Essentially pitching is this simple. You try to put the ball where you want it and where -- you hope -- the batter doesn't want it. You throw the curve inside, the fast ball outside. Then you bring the fast ball in, send the curve out. You move the ball around. You change speeds. You try not to throw your strikes over the middle of the plate."
Whitey Ford in The Saturday Review. March 3, 1962 **
WILLIE MAYS --DOES CATCH RHYME WITH WATCH?
Willie Mays Made one of the greatest plays In baseball history. Watch The catch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bLt2xKaNH0
** THE STRATTON STORY starring James Stewart
"Although Monty Stratton was a real baseball player who continued to play baseball after having a right-leg, above-knee amputation, much of the story was fictionalized for this film. For instance, in the hunting accident, the real Monty Stratton shot himself with a pistol, rather than with a rifle. Also, the game in which the real Monty Stratton returned to baseball after his amputation was not an All-Star game, as in the movie, but rather a 1939 charity game between the White Sox and the Cubs (the proceeds of which went to Stratton).
Monty Stratton played for the Chicago White Sox from 1934-38 and compiled a 36-23 won/loss record and 3.71 Earned Run Average with 196 strikeouts. He was a better than average hitter (for a pitcher) with a .224 (43/192) batting average, hitting four home runs and 24 runs batted in."
iMDb Trivia **
THE WINNINGEST JEWISH PITCHER
It’s the question that has cost many a bar bet: Who was the winningest Jewish pitcher in baseball history?
If you guessed Sandy Koufax, you’d be wrong. The honor goes to Ken Holtzman, who died Sunday night. He was 78.
Holtzman would end his 15-season career, which spanned the 1960s and 1970s, with 174 wins, nine more than Koufax. The MLB veteran threw two no-hitters, won four World Series rings and beat Koufax head-to-head once."
**
ANSWER TO BASEBALL QUESTION #8754 Bob Uecker
** WILLIAMS’ LAST GAME
“I felt nothing,” he said. “No sentimentality? No gratitude? No sadness?” “I said nothing, Ted said. “Nothing, nothing.”
Yeah, well, we knew it all along. If he had struck out we would have cried, If he had walked We would have lynched the pitcher & maybe The manager & well maybe the whole town of Baltimore.
But we knew something was going to happen Because he hadn’t done much all day, Walked in the 1st because Steve Barber Wasn’t throwing him much & you know if it’s only a 10th of an inch Outside the zone Williams Ain’t going to swing at it, just watch it
Ride by & then him loping off to 1st. He does more walking in Boston Than the postmen, if you know what I mean. So then in the 3rd he flies out to Jackie Brandt, So there really isn’t much to talk about
Until the 5th, what with the Sox trailing 3 to 2, but the Kid really gets hold of one, & the horsehair is flying, climbing, & 10,000 of us are up on our feet until Al Pilascik Grabs it at the 400 foot mark.
& so all of us sit back down & it’s damp & there’s not much wind. I’m telling you it’s a pretty gray day. Later the Kid says, “I don’t think I could hit one any harder Than that. The conditions weren’t good.” But Gus Triandos, The catcher, just squats back down
& the game goes on, all of us knowing That something has to happen Because that’s no ordinary ballplayer up there & if you can’t believe in that, What can you believe in, huh?
Ed Hurley Starts calling balls & strikes again & so we wait & then it happens Just the way it’s supposed to: Williams is up, see, & you know It’s going to be his last time at bat in Boston, Except Jack Fisher’s Pitching now & not Steve Barber,
& then it happens: it’s a 1 & 1 count, see, & Fisher lets go with a fastball, But he doesn’t get it in there low enough, The way he wants it. He goes a little too high & Williams Unloads one. I mean he unloads it,
& 10,000 of us are on our feet, Screaming like crazy WE WANT WILLIAMS WE WANT WILLIAMS & he’s circling those bases with his head down & you know it’s going to be the last time, & his head is down & everybody’s screaming, I mean Who in the hell cares about the score,
& then he’s in the dugout & we’re screaming WE WANT WILLIAMS, WE WANT WILLIAMS. But he’s not going to come out for us Until at the end of the inning Higgins sends him out to left field With Carrol Hardy Tagging at his heels,
& then Williams turns & runs back. Later The Sporting News says, SPLINTER TIPS CAP TO HUB FANS AFTER FAREWELL HOMER But that wasn’t the way it was. What he did was Hit a homer his last time up, His 521st homer,
& then walk away, not nodding, Not cheering, not tipping his cap, Just walking away Like a man who’s done a good job The best he can & knows it. Now maybe he wants to be alone Or with his friends in a bar somewhere. Anyway, hitting a homer your last time up, That’s the way to go, isn’t it?
Louis Phillips
from THE DOMAIN OF SILENCE and THE DOMAIN OF ABSENCE: New and Selected Poems 1963-2015. (NY:Pleasure Boat Studio, 2015)
for playwright Robert Karmon _____________________________________________________________\
"The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without its being it being plainly stated." Stanley Kubrick ** ON ARISTOPHANES
"... the most gratifying distinction conferred on him was the presentation of a wreath of wild olive made from the leaves of Athena's own sacred olive tree on the Acropolis. This was awarded him on the second performance of the Frogs , not because of his glorious poetry or his sparking wit, not because he was an artist or a humanist, but because he had given the city patriotic advice." Louis E. Lord ** KEITH BAXTER -- ON BEING INTERVIEWED
"Many years ago in Belfast, when I was playing Prince Hall, I was asked to give my first interview to a journalist. Afterward Orson Welles asked me how it had gone. "He only wanted to know who I was sleeping with and how much I was worth." Welles was amused. 'That's all they ever want to print, every single one of them." quoted in The Spectator (18 October 2003) ** A POET IS KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS BY A RHYMING DICTIONARY & DREAMS ABOUT SEEING THE PLAY SLEUTH
When I was visiting the city of Duluth To attend a production of the play Sleuth, I bit on hard candy & broke a front tooth, & cried out in pain “O forsooth!” I then turned to my friend Ruth & told her I had to leave Sleuth, Duluth, & Ruth. ** PIPER LAURIE GOES TO THE THEATER WITH HER FAMILY
"...for some family reason, we all had to go to New York City. While we were there, we had the rare and special experience of seeing Lee J. Cobb in the original Death of a Salesman. At the final curtain I saw my father cry for the first and only time in my life. If theater could do that, I knew I was touching something wonderful."
Piper Laurie. Learning to Live Out Loud (New York: Crown Archetype, 2011) ** BORIS KARLOFF ON PERFORMING WITH THE HARRY ST. CLAIR PLAYERS MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA (CIRCA 1913-1914)
"We played in the upstairs Opera House over a large hardware store, and we had no money to do anything with -- we just got by. We were up in about eighteen plays and we played those in the first three weeks. So with no money to move on, we had to stay there and start expanding the repertoire. We did two new plays a week for fifty-three weeks. Three rehearsals and you were on! It was rugged, but good training, and it stood me in good stead. I was forced to become a fast study -- or starve to death. "I think we were really a veryn good company actually. Of course, frequently we would leave out an entire act and no one noticed, so maybe the audiences were just not paying attention. I'll say one thing for them, though. The audiences of the sticks were in no way unintelligent. When at the end of a run we'd ask for repeat requests, they invariably chose the best plays."
Cynthia Lindsay. Dear Boris (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975) ** THE RUINS OF NERO'S THEATER
ROME (AP) — Rome’s next luxury hotel has some very good bones: Archaeologists said Wednesday that the ruins of Nero’s Theater, an imperial theater referred to in ancient Roman texts but never found, have been discovered under the garden of a future Four Seasons Hotel steps from the Vatican. Archaeologists have excavated deep under the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere since 2020 as part of planned renovations on the frescoed Renaissance building. The palazzo, which takes up a city block along the broad Via della Conciliazione leading to St. Peter’s Square, is home to an ancient Vatican chivalric order that leases the space to a hotel to raise money for Christians in the Holy Land." July 28, 2023 ** HOW TO RAISE MONEY TO PRODUCE A PLAY
HEADS OR TAILS by H.J. Lengsfeoder & Ervin Drake (1942) "Heads or Tails produced by Your Theater Inc. waa one of the financially wackiest production of the decades: all those buying tickets before opening night automatically became stockholders. Unfortunately, they became stockholders in one of the worst plays of the century," TIME (May 12, 1942) ** TALLULAH BANKHEAD in CONCHITA (1924) or GREAT MOMENTS IN THEATER
" Again she played a dancer. But this time she carried a monkey with her in the second act. On opening night the monkey jumped onto Tallulah's shoulders, grabbed her black wig, and to her horror, ran with it to the footlights. There she stood, a Latin from the eye-brows down, a tawny blonde on top. The audience went from giggles to hysteria in seconds and Tallulah climaxed the situation by turning a cartwheel not in the script. At the end of the play Tallulah was afraid to take a curtain call, expecting to have to endure her first British booing. But she was persuaded to go out and face the crowd and when she did they howled their approval --of her-- not the play."
"Bugs Bunny wasn't nothing but Br'er Rabbit with a better agent." from The Sellout, a novel by Paul Beatty ** ON THE ROAD TO MORROCO (1942)
Paramount shot two endings for the film. The one not used had Bob Hope and Bing Crosby enlisting in the Marines and ended with the line "See you on the road to Tokyo."
iMBd Trivia
From light verse writer BRUCE NEWLING
" Louis, your reference to Veronica Lake reminds me of a joke when I was a schoolboy in England, where Veronica Lake was very well known. It was said that Robert Preston went missing and was later found bobbing up and down on Veronica Lake." **
"The movies got it all wrong. Cigarettes don't taste good when you're wounded." Frank Sinatra's character in Never So Few ** WHY I SHALL NEVER BE A MOVIE STAR
Alain Delon -- Oh how my wife longs For me to look & dress like Alain. Alas! Compared to him, I look like an alien.
** THE ORIGINAL TITLE FOR ANNIE HALL
"(WOODY)Allen's working title for Annie Hall was 'Anhedra,' a term coined by the French psychologist Theodule -- Armand Ribaud to describe 'the inability to experience pleasure from actors usually found enjoyable."
Philip Fiens. "Woody's Blues" in TLS (October 4,2013) ** ON HAVING A PRE-DISPOSITION TOWARD SHOW BUSINESS
Warner Baxter claimed to have an early pre-disposition toward show business: "I discovered a boy a block away who would eat worms and swallow flies for a penny. For one-third of the profits, I exhibited him in a tent." Current Biography ** YOU'RE TOAST & GHOSTBUSTERS
"The phrase "You're toast" gained prominence as a line from "Ghostbusters". This ominous declaration is uttered by the character Peter Venkman, played by Bill Murray, during a confrontational scene with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Since its cinematic debut, "You're toast" has transcended its ghostly origins to become a colloquial idiom, often used in a lighthearted manner to convey a sense of impending defeat or inevitable trouble."
DICTIONARY SCOOP (February 3, 2023)
** China banned time travel in TV and movies.
Most people have genres of film or TV that they dislike, and for the Chinese government, that genre is time travel. Back in March 2011, the country’s State Administration for Radio, Film & Television issued guidelines restricting the production and dissemination of TV shows and movies featuring time travel, saying that these tales “lack positive thoughts and meaning.” Ignoring the fact that some of the very best time-traveling TV shows (Doctor Who) and films (Back to the Future) seem to be bursting with meaning, the administration further explained that these programs “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism, and reincarnation.”
INTERESTING FACTS WEBSITE (February 5,2024)
** "I wonder what you'd look like dressed." Jane to Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man ** Clara Bow inspired Betty Boop
"Clara Bow was one of the women who provided Max Fleischer with inspiration for Betty Boop, the squeaky-voiced flapper icon. Other inspirations include singer Helen Kane, who sued Paramount for what she called Fleischer’s “deliberate caricature” of her. The court ruled against Kane, noting that Boop was a composite of several different women, including Bow."
Mental Floss ** THE FIRST FILM TO UTILIZE VITAPHONE SOUND-ON-DISC "Don Juan is a 1926 synchronized sound American romantic adventure film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length film to utilize the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system with a synchronized musical score and sound effects, though it has no spoken dialogue."
WIKIPEDIA ** LUC SANTE ON THE VOICE OF LEO G.CARROLL
"He could speak while moving only the very middle of his lower lip. If you believe in heaven you can imagine him manning the admissions desk."
Luc Sante. "Rogues Gallery" in O.K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors, edited by Luc Sante and Melissa Holbrook Pierson (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999) ** THE NON-UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
I tell you I belong in the Guiness Book of Records For I have lost more umbrellas Than anyone on this slapdash planet. Bought one in the rain for $3.00. Left it in the library, Between Vachel Lindsay & the Oedipus Cycle. Bought another from the Marquis de Sade. Left it on the subway. A third disappeared into a vat of mezzo-sopranos Prepared for a convocation of boatswains. Went to see the rerelease of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, & There was not one umbrella on the screen. I was informed the third reel had been misplaced, Left on the street on the way to the theater.
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not meant, then what ought to be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if morals and art deteriorate, justice will go astray; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence, there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.” Confucius ** SUBCONSCIOUS – What Admiral Rickover was
** ON BEING A BEAR LEADER OR A FRUMP
A bear-leader is “One who undertakes the charge of a young man of rank on his travels. It was customary to lead muzzled bears about the streets, and to make them show off in order to attract notice and gain money. Under favor, young gentleman, I am the bear-leader, being appointed your tutor. G. Colman, Heir-at-Law
Frump –“The modern dictionaries define this as a cross-tempered, old fashioned woman. This is just the reverse of its original signification which, according to Bailey, was ‘plump, fat, jolly’”
Fact, Fancy, and Fable. 1889
** “The grossest thing in our gross national product today is our language. It is suffering from inflation.” James Reston ** AIBOPHOBIA-- Fear of Palindromes
** MAIL BAGS FOR THE OLD PONY EXPRESS
"Mochila" means "knapsack" in Spanish, and it’s the name given to the mailbags used on the Pony Express. They were leather with four pockets and hung over the saddle. The pockets were always kept locked; three of them contained mail and could only be opened at military posts, and the fourth contained a timecard. Source: National Postal Museum
History Quiz (January 12, 2023)
** g= midnight **
LEXICOGRAPHY
“This, the OED in its compact edition, carried a reading glass, a standard extra. What did I search for? Just like anyone , looked up CUNT, to see it under the reading glass.” Gavin Ewart
** OBSCENITY LAWS & THE OED
"...many words were kept out of the OED: 'homosexuality' was included in 1933, 'lesbian' not until 1976. When it came to slang , (JAMES) Murray was cautious about obscenity laws; first editions of the 'c' and 'f' ' volumes remain clear of the obvious culprits."
Unsigned review of The Dictionary People by Sarah Olgive in The Economist (October 7, 2023 ** NRACOTIC—The biggest drug in the United States. Renders the Senate and House of Representatives completely numb.
**
OUT ON PAROLE
"For flapper women who were becoming increasingly liberated during the Roaring ‘20s, an engagement ring could be seen as a handcuff. In the same vein, the slang term for a wedding ring was “manacle,” while "out on parole" referred to being divorced."
Word Genius (June 15, 2023)
** A HOODOO
Chimney Rock is classified as a hoodoo, or a vertical pile of rock that was formed partly by volcanic ash.
Who do Voodoo? You do? Hoodoo? Hugh do.
** DEFINITION OF A LIBERAL (circa 1960’s)
“What is a liberal? A liberal finds it in his heart to forgive Jane Fonda for being in Hanoi, but not for being in Barbarella.” David Frost **
** ** chyron : a caption superimposed over usually the lower part of a video image (as during a news broadcast) "I sometimes fantasize about spending the rest of my life studying them. CNN and Fox News would then have me on whenever there was a major hummingbird story. The chyron would identify me as "Christopher Buckley—Hummingbird Authority." Christopher Buckley
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chyron ** THE IMPORTANCE OF ADVERBS
Suddenly You enter a tunnel Of despond, You travel endlessly, No end in sight,
Tirelessly You struggle To save yourself Or the self You believe you are.
Incredibly, The sky flickers Into flame. Is it the sun rising? At that moment you must
Reach out To grasp the light. Bring it to your chest, Hug the day Gladly.
The following memory of Charlie Chaplin performing Hamlet's soliloquy is recorded by Helen Hayes in her autobiography -- My Life in Three Acts.
"Chaplin mimicked an actor doing Hamlet's soliloquy. The actor suffering from a hangover absentmindedly picked his nose and was unable to remove from his finger what he had brought forth. Chaplin delivered the soliloquy as beautifully as I've ever heard it read, which made even more comical the actor's predicament."
** "Playing Shakespeare is so tiring. You never get to sit down unless you're a king."
Josephine Hull, quoted in Time (November16,1953)
**
SHAKESPEARE & CHRIST ?
"Shakespeare hit the nail on the head about every situation in life. And some of the most beautiful poetry comes from his terrible comedies. They're like German comedies. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, now don't say this because it'll sound sacrilegious, but Shakespeare was the reincarnation of Christ."
TALLULAH BANKHEAD, quoted in Tallulah,Darling by Denis Brian (New York: MacMillan Company, ** THE BEST WAY TO LEARN HOW TO SPEAK SHAKESPEARE
"I always said to students that if you really want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir John (Gielgud) and Frank Sinatra will teach you. Because one used to present the whole arc of a speech, and the other presented the whole arc of a song, without any intrusive extreme emphases."
Judi Dench. And Furthermore (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010)
** WALTER MATTHAU AT AGE 7
" He became a voracious reader, and when he was young as seven years old he began reciting Shakespeare. He may not have comprehended what he was saying but was transfixed by the by the beauty and fluidity of the language and its contrast to the Lower East Side dreariness. Often, he recited out loud for hours at a stretch, in the privacy of the bathroom. 'There'd be one for four families,' he recalled, 'and I'd be in there until someone threw me out.'"
Rob Edelman and Audrey Kupferberg. Matthau: a Life (New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2002)
** ** From light-verse writer BRUCE NEWLING
Because I was so young when my father died, I have only fragmentary memories of him; and almost all I know of him was derived from accounts provided primarily by my mother but also by a few family members. Michael Kirke, a first cousin fully a generation older than 1, for example, told me that my father had a fine singing voice and therefore he was often cast as the clown in such Shakespeare plays as "Twelfth Night," singing, as called for, during the course of the play. My niece Sian (Welsh for Jane) has a framed photograph of my father dressed as the clown or fool in cap and bells, sitting cross-legged and holding a lyre.
Coincidentally, in 1947, as part of the quatercentenary celebrations of the founding of the school I attended, Queen Elizabeth's School in Crediton, Devon, a non-speaking part was created for me in a production of "Twelfth Night." I was cast as the page to Malvolio, the steward to Olivia. My costume in black was the same as that worn by Malvolio, and we each wore a ruff; I carried a staff, as he did; and my role required that I mimic every gesture of Malvolio, as if I were a living shadow of him, you might say. I had to strictly confine my attention to Malvolio—no side glances at the audience—and the whole effect was to point up the vanity and insecurity of my master, complementing the cruel practical jokes played on him by Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
The play was performed on an openair stage backed with a tall yew hedge on the grounds of the girls' school next to mine. Malvolio was played by the town physician, Dr. Jackson, and it was he who proposed that Malvolio should have a page, having seen a London production of the play many years before in which Malvolio had not one page but six. Sir Toby Belch was played by the physics master Gordon Vasey, who produced all the school plays while I was there; and there might have been one teacher from the girls' high school in the cast. Otherwise, the roles were played by boys and girls from the two schools.
I have a photograph of the entire cast, 32 in number, standing side by side in a line across the entire width of the stage. I pose kneeling on one knee, with Malvolio standing behind me.
Orsino, duke of Illyria, was played by a senior boy named Peter Bagi, and his delivery of the lines with which the play opens remains with me still. "If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die." And very soon thereafter: "Enough, no more. 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before." Oh, my. \\
** SHAKESPEARE IN TOMBSTONE
The day of the movie-singing Cowboy has long passed. At 8 A.M. morning light, Like an ace-high straight. Is clear,bright,
But Tombstone is not as much fun As it used to be: Shot glasses smashed against mirrors, All that broken glass, gun-
Slinger after gunslinger coughing Out lungs Into what is left of their brains. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Wyatt Earp’s youngest brother, Plugged in his back, Has been discovered face-down In a driving rain. Another
Curtain lowered, his soliloquy Left unfinished, Crossing the bourn from which No traveler returns.
He was,Like his brother, A mess of personal problems. Wild Bill? Not a lot of heroes left.
Clementine loved Tombstone. Its desert flowers Smelled like shaving lotion. But her calicos are long gone.
Good guys galloping pell-mell Out of this place. Actors on a buckboard Play out a final scene:
"In the middle of a school day in 1943, Harry Belafonte walked into a Harlem movie theater and sat for a showing of the Humphrey Bogart World War II film 'Sahara.' He struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia and was blind in one eye, difficulties that contributed to him skipping lessons and, eventually dropping out of high school. The 16-year-old Belafonte was transfixed by Rex Ingram, a black actor who played a Sudanese soldier. One scene -- the camera zoomed in on Ingram's face as he suffocated a Nazi soldier -- led the boy to enlist in the United States Navy."
Reginald Dwayne Betts. "Harry Belafonte" in The New York Times Magazine (December 31, 2023) ** BANNING POPCORN IN MOVIE THEATERS
"The movie theater’s most popular concession wasn’t always associated with the movies—in fact, it used to be explicitly banned. Movie theaters were trying to appeal to a highbrow clientele, and didn't want to deal with the distracting trash of concessions—- or the distracting noise that snacking during a film would create. If those inside the theaters couldn't see the financial lure of popcorn, enterprising street vendors didn't miss a beat: they bought their own popping machines and sold popcorn outside the theaters to moviegoers before they entered the theater. As Smith explains, early movie theaters literally had signs hung outside their coatrooms, requesting that patrons check their popcorn with their coats. Popcorn, it seems, was the original clandestine movie snack."
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
WISETRIVIA (January 7, 2024)
** ON BEING A MOVIE STAR
Gary Cooper Was not super Pleased, & he was not forgiving When I asked what he did for a living.
LJP ** VERONICA LAKE WAS WRONG IN HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY WHEN SHE DESCRIBED THE FINAL MOMENTS OF THIS GUN FOR HIRE
“…poster art and publicity shots, combined with a thirty-year lapse, tend to play deceptive tricks on the memory. Veronica Lake writes, “Alan Ladd died in This Gun for Hire with his head resting in my lap, and Variety would comment, “Better men have died with their heads in less pleasant places.”
Beverly Linet in her biography of Alan Ladd points put that This Gun For Hire ends much differently from the way Ms. Lake remembered it: Alan Ladd’s character Raven “lies full of bullets in solitary splendor on an office couch as Lake stands clutching (ROBERT) Preston with romantic fervor. With his last breath, Raven asks for reassurance that she didn’t turn him in to the cops.”
Beverly Linet : The Life, the Legend , the Legacy of Alan Ladd (New York: Arbor House, 1979
**
HOW SMART ARE THE STUDIO BOSSES IN HOLLYWOOD?
“Studio executives loved it (FINIAN’S RAINBOW), and they decided to send it up against road-show blockbusters like Funny Girl and Camelot. To do this, they blew the 35mm original up to 70mm, going from a normal-screen ratio to a wide-screen ratio, and that meant hey had to crop the top and bottom of the screen – and that meant you couldn’t see Fred Astaire’s feet when he danced.”
Michael Goodwin and Naomi Wise. On the Edge: The Life & Times of Francis Coppola (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1989).
** ON THE HURRICANE IN KEY LARGO (1941)
In the film, James Temple describes the 1935 hurricane that devastated Matacumbe Key--one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history. Many of the victims of the storm were World War I veterans who were building the Florida Keys portion of U.S. Highway 1, also known as the Overseas Highway. A portion of this highway is seen in the film's opening shots. The storm also produced the lowest-ever recorded barometric pressure over land in the North American continent.
IdbM Trivia **
DECISION BEFORE DAWN (1951)
Based on a true story. Towards the end of the war, Allied military intelligence services did recruit, train and utilize German POWs to return to Germany and spy for them.
iDBm Trivia
** HOW WILLIAM FRIEDKIN DECIDED TO BECOME A FILM MAKER
" Friedkin decided he wanted to make movies after watching five consecutive showings of 'Citizen Kane' on a Saturday in a revival theater on the North Side of Chicago. He was in his mid-20s then and was working a director at a local TV station."
Jonathan Mahler. "William Friedkin, 1935-2023 in The New York Times Magazine (December 31, 2023) **
CHRISTOPHER TUCKER DESIGNS THE PROSTHETICS FOR THE ELEPHANT MAN, STARRING JOHN HURT
'The film had already begun shooting by the time Tucker started work, and very few people on the set had any inkling of what to expect. 'My recollections of the day when the makeup was first applied has got to be one of the most frightening days of my life,' Hurt later recounted. The makeover took twelve hours. 'I was brought onto the set to a stunned silence. If anybody had broken that silence with the slightest giggle the film would be finished. John Merrick as vulnerable as you could be.'"
Hua Hsu. "The Man Behind the Nose" in THE NEW YORKER (December 4, 2023) **
RICHARD BURTON WORRIES ABOUT MONEY "I worry enormously about the fact that we have no money." Richard Burton in his journals
My God! If Richard Burton worries about money, What about poor no-account me? Burton, at least, Had millions to toss around: diamonds for Liz, Private jets, a chalet in Switzerland, & last, But not least, job offers to see him thru any Thin spots that might lay ahead. Show-biz With all her charms lay down cunningly for him. He was, to say the least, multi-blessed. Wd money pack her bags & move out? Impossible. A million here, two million there, I guess It all adds up. But suppose your life is Nickels & dimes, free literary mags, phoney baloney Checks that wouldn't cover the Welshman's bar bill? I can teach him a thing or two: No money in the till.
Poetry is not the most important thing in life…I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.” Dylan Thomas **
EMILY DICKINSON’S FAVORITE LINE FROM SHAKESPEARE
“Her favorite quotation from Antony and Cleopatra, one of the few tags she does not distort for her own purpose – probably because this one serves her own purpose just as it stands – is a version of this problems of leavings: Antony says, as she reminds several of her correspondents, ‘take the hint/which my despair proclaims. Let that he left/which leaves itself.” Dickinson took the hint, proclaiming a perpetual departure. Forever leaving off, in order to get on: ‘Going is a drama/staying cannot confer.”
Richard Howard. Paper Trail: selected prose, 1965-2003 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004)
**]
A SHORT VERSE IN PRAISE OF THE IAMB
I love the naked Iamb With all my will & wit. I love the tuneful Iamb, That’s the long and short of it.
LJP ** CATCH & RELEASE RHYMING
For me, I touched a thought, I know, Has tantalized me many times, (Like turns of thread the spiders throw Mocking across our path) for rhymes To catch and let go.
From Two in the Campagne by Robert Browning
** ROBERT BROWNING
Robert Browning Was frequently seen frowning While swallowing one last chilled oyster. Later he recited his “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.”
** AMOS COTTLE—ENGLISH POET LAUREATE
“Oh, Amos Cottle –Phoebus, what a name To fill the speaking trump of future fame! Oh, Amos Cottle , for a moment think What meagre profits spring from pen and ink!”
Lord Byron
**
ON AMOS SIMON COTTLE (1766 - 1800)
“His principal work is Icelandic Poetry; or, The Edda of Saemund; translated into English verse, which was printed in 1797 with Robert Southey as a co-author.. It is not stated whether the translation is made from the original Icelandic or from a Latin version; it is not faithful nor vigorous. It is preceded by a critical introduction, and a poetical address from Southey to the author, which contains the panegyric of Mary Wollstonecraft, "who among women left no equal mind." (She died on 10 September 1797, and Cottle's preface is dated 1 November.)”
from Amos Cottle | Penny's poetry pages Wiki - Fandom
** QUEEN VICTORIA’S FAVORITE POET
Adelaide Anne Procter (30 October 1825 – 2 February 1864) was an English poet and philanthropist. Her literary career began when she was a teenager, her poems appearing in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, and later in feminist journals. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism seem to have influenced her poetry, which deals with such subjects as homelessness, poverty, and fallen women, among whom she performed philanthropic work. Procter was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria. Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day, after Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Few modern critics have rated her work, but it is still thought significant for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings.Procter never married. Her health suffered, possibly due to overwork, and she died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.
Wikipedia **
W.H. AUDEN AS POET-IN-RESIDENCE AT OXFORD
‘In The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll, a Christ Church don, wrote: ‘What I tell you three times is true.’ With Auden, also at Christ Church, it was the opposite. What Auden said three times you would begin to doubt, and when he said it a dozen times nobody cared anyway. Auden somewhere makes the distinction between being boring and being a bore. He was never boring – he was too extraordinary for that—but by the time he came back to live in Oxford he had become a bore.” Alan Bennett in the Introduction to his play The Habit of Art (New York: Faber and Faber, 2009). The play is about Auden & Benjamin Britten collaborating on the opera Death in Venice. ** **
PACIFIC LIGHT A documentary film about poet David Mason: Free on: https://vimeo.com/746745055
** A SPEECH FROM THE HABIT OF ART, A PLAY BY ALAN BENNETT
Auden: Poetry to me is as much a craft as an art and I have always prided myself on being able to turn my hand to anything – a wedding hymn, a requiem, a loyal toast…No job too small. I would have been happy to have hung up a shingle in the street: “W.H. Auden, Poet
Published by Faber and Faber, 2009
**
THE GREAT ESCAPE
Inside every poem like this one Is a more profound one trying to escape.
Louis Phillips
THE GRAVESTONE OF JONATHAN SWIFT ubi soeva indigation uleterius cor lacerare nequit
Poets frequently stand Where vain indignation No longer tears the heart, Thinking like the rain How reputations gather, Then fall, mist rising From landscapes Where heroes have fallen. Silence, like the rain, Touches every grass, Every leaf, everything That gets in its path. Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral Read the dates: 1667-1745. 63 years, mostly in Dublin. I have been in Dublin Less than a week. Dean Swift. Rain has no biography. It comes & goes, Not giving us a thought, Completely free of satire.
Louis Phillips ** NEW BOOK OF POEMS BY LOUIS PHILLIPS
"We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile." Will Rogers **
THE VERY EARLY MODEL T
"The driver of the old model T was a man enthroned. The car, with the top up, stood seven feet high. The driver sat on top of the gas tank, brooding it with his own body. When he wants gasoline, he alights, along with everything else in the front seat; the seat was pulled off, the metal cap unscrewed, and a wooden stick thrust down to sound the liquid in the well.' Lee Stroud White ** "England had marshes, bogs, and fens, but only America had swamps."
Dick K. Barnhardt and Allen A. Metcalf. America in So Many Words: words that have shaped America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1997) ** House Republicans move forward with their plan to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They wrote articles of impeachment even before holding hearings.
"In all our history, only one cabinet officer has been impeached. William Belknap, whose eight years as secretary of war under President U. S. Grant had been marked by ostentatious displays of wealth and apparent kickbacks from army contracts, was charged with corruption in March 1876 just hours after he tearfully handed Grant his resignation. "
Heather Cox Richardson -- January 30, 2024
Now 2 cabinet officers have been impeached. ** THE EINSTEIN VISA
"Among the hardest permanent-resident visas for immigrants to the United States to obtain is the EB-1A, known colloquially as the Einstein visa. It is reserved for those with extraordinary talents or accomplishments—the kinds of people who don’t just make it to the Olympics but win a medal. In a fascinating piece from this week’s Cartoons & Puzzles Issue, Natan Last tells the story of Mangesh Ghogre, a forty-three-year-old man from Mumbai, who was granted an EB-1A for his exceptional ability to write crossword puzzles. Ghogre’s journey reveals the ways in which the crossword, a uniquely American export to the world, has always relied on people and innovations from abroad—and how the form might open up to include more voices."
THE NEW YORKER DAILY (December 22, 2023) ** WHAT IS A JOHN WAYNE?
"Although he’d never served in the military, the Marine Corps dubbed a can opener attached to dog tags that was used to open C rations “a John Wayne.” It was used by servicemen for the next forty years."
Donald A. Ranard in his essay "Becoming John Wayne" https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGwJvhjxHCnJJpfQrjQWWjtxvzl -- ** GEORGE WASHINGTON OPERATED A WHISKEY DISTILLERY
Shortly after departing the presidency in March 1797, George Washington set out on an entirely new endeavor. The founding father was encouraged by his farm manager James Anderson to use the vast expanse of the Washington family estate, Mount Vernon, to open a whiskey distillery. Anderson believed that the estate’s extant gristmill and plentiful water supply would make for a thriving operation. Sure enough, the prediction came true, and the distillery blossomed into a highly profitable business venture for Washington."
HISTORY FACTS (Website) February 19, 2024
**
In 1900, the average payroll check taken home by a male working a 59 hour week was $12.74. ** MAKING ICE CREAM POPULAR IN AMERICA
James Madison and his wife, Dolley, helped popularize ice cream in America. Tastes in the treat, however, would be considered questionable today: chestnut, asparagus, and parmesan were all on the menu. Dolley’s favorite flavor was … oyster"
** SCOTT SHANE DISCOVERS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD" -FIRST USED BY THOMAS SMALLWOOD IN 1842
"Addressing in his usual antic style a Washington slaveholder whose 'walking property walked off.' as he once put it. Mr. Smallwood told the man 'It was your cruelty to him that made him disappear by the same 'underground railroad or 'steam balloon,' about which one of your city constables was swearing so bitterly a few weeks ago, when complaining the 'd--d rascals got off so, and no trace of them could be found."
Scott Shane. " The Man Who Named the Underground Railroad" in Sunday Opinion, The New York Times (September 17,2023),p.10.
**
POEM BY WORLD WAR II HERO & MOVIE STAR AUDIE MURPHY
THE CROSSES GROW ON ANZIO
Oh, gather ’round me, comrades; and listen while I speak Of a war, a war, a war where hell is six feet deep. Along the shore, the cannons roar. Oh how can a soldier sleep? The going’s slow on Anzio. And hell is six feet deep. Praise be to God for this captured sod that rich with blood does seep. With yours and mine, like butchered swine’s; and hell is six feet deep. That death awaits there’s no debate; no triumph will we reap. The crosses grow on Anzio, where hell is six feet deep. . . . Audie Murphy, 1948
"Everyone out in Los Angeles huddled around the film industry as though it were a fire, stoking it with screenplays and starlets and deals. And the fire made you hot, depending on how close you could get to its center, how consistently you could string out your name or image with a recent hit. People behaved like heat-seeking missiles, and they would attach themselves to you as long as you were warm and glowing, as long as your name was the right size to fit over a marquee or at the bottom of a contract."
Carrie Fisher.Delusions of Grandma (New York: Pocket Books, 1994) **
RAY BRADBURY READS THE FILM SCRIPT OF BUTTERFIELD 8
"Last week, MGM gave me a copy of the screenplay of Butterfield 8. My suggestion for a new title: Pigs at Trough. The whole project is so reprehensible I want to go out and campaign for the hydrogen bomb, one anyway, to drop on all the characters in the story."
Ray Bradbury in a letter to Don Congdon (August 22,1960). Jonathan R. Eller, editor. Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury (New York: Simon & SChuster, 2023) ** "Dame Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Mike Todd, had planned for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) to be her final movie, as she intended to retire from the screen. Todd had made a verbal agreement about this with MGM, but after his death, MGM forced Taylor to make this movie in order to fulfill the terms of her studio contract. As a result, Taylor refused to speak to director Daniel Mann for the entire production and hated this movie." IDMb Trivia for Butterfield 8
**
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS
"Davis is one of two actresses with five consecutive Academy Award nominations. She shares the honor with Greer Garson, who beat Davis to win for Mrs. Miniver (1942). In 1962, she became the first person to have been nominated for 10 Oscars, a feat surpassed only by Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, and Jack Nicholson. A write-in campaign for her part in Of Human Bondage (1934) adds another, unofficial, nomination. She won the Best Actress Award for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938). A win for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? would have made her the first three-time winner in a non-supporting category."
INTERESTING TRIVIA (APRIL 29, 2023)
*
HENRY MILLER GOES TO THE MOVIES IN GREECE TO SEE JUAREZ (1939)
" Despite the fact that Greece is under a dictatorship this film, which was only slightly modified after the first few showings, was shown night and day to an increasingly packed house. The atmosphere was tense, the applause distinctly Republican. For many reasons the film had some significance for the Greek people. One felt that the spirit of Venizelos was still alive. In that blunt and magnificent speech which Juarez makes to the assembled plenipotentiaries of the foreign powers one felt that the tragic plight of Mexico under Maximilian had curious and throbbing analogies with the present perilous position of Greece."
Henry Miller. The Colossus of Maroussi (New York: New Directions, 1941)
**
JUAREZ (1939) Because the film shows many of Maximilian's generals to be Mexican, many viewers attribute it to typical Hollywood historical distortions. It is, however, indeed accurate. It's a little-known fact that, although Maximilian was eventually overthrown and executed by Mexican revolutionaries, there were actually more Mexicans fighting on Maximilian's side than against him. This was due in large part to the Catholic Church's strong support of the French occupation of Mexico and its "encouraging" Mexican Catholics to fight against the revolutionary forces by joining Maximilian's army, which they did in large numbers."
iDMb Ttivia "Juarez" **
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
"It’s hard to imagine any other actress besides Hepburn bringing Holly Golightly to life on the silver screen. But her casting faced some strong opposition from the book’s author. Capote had envisioned Marilyn Monroe in the role. He later stated, "Paramount double-crossed me in every way and cast Audrey. She was just wrong for that part." from TRIVIA GENIUS (July 2022) '**
MOVIE NIGHT IN CLEVELAND, 1949
Is every theater in the world named Rialto Showing The Sands of Iowa Jima with John Wayne? This I understand: Better to play soldier Than to actually be one. The underused piano in the pit With its terrible yellowed ivories Grimaces like Prisoners of War, Then row upon row upon row, Red chairs not exactly velvet, Many with the stuffing pulled through, Bayonets to the eye. The red carpet soiled with black sand (Called by the Japanese uzura seki) is wild with wounds. Forrest Tucker Is bayoneted by a Japanese soldier. No Japanese in this theater. The film is nearly over When some tow-headed soldier dozes off, Perhaps dreaming of Pas-de-Calais Or some foreign landscape Curiously labeled Theater of War, Where tanks lined up in rows. A parachute of popcorn Descends from the balcony As some teen-ager howls With studied bravery. Once the film stops, lights come on, & all of us dig in For what we want. Sponsored by our local Bank, Invasion of lucky numbers For prizes dangling Like Congressional decorations. In front of our eyes A lifetime supply of dishes, Radios, nylons, 4 gallons of gas, Black market residue. The MC surrenders Something new, a television set. A pint-sized Marshall plan Right in the middle of an American city. Bob Feller pitching tomorrow. Whistle, whistle, whistle. What time does the next war start?
PhillipsMiscellany 