THE TREASURE OF JOHN HUSTON

Huston would have agreed with [Orson] Welles, who declared, “I’m awfully tired of old men saying they have no regrets. We’re loaded with, burdened with, staggering under, regrets.” –Jeffrey Meyers, from his biography JOHN HUSTON: COURAGE AND ART

* * * * *  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I must admit that JOHN HUSTON (born August 5, 1906) is not the kind of human being I admire — however, he IS the kind of film maker I admire. Yes, he made his share of clunkers, but few directors made more of my all-time favorite films than he: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, Beat The Devil — and yet, he had more than his share of things to regret, as he himself admitted (more on that shortly).

But first, here are two classic scenes from THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE:

The second scene features the great actor Walter Huston (father of John) doing his incomparable dance in the gold-flecked dirt of the Sierra Madre mountains:

Getting back to John Huston’s regrettable qualities, Jeffrey Meyers (in his excellent bio) compares Huston to Ernest Hemingway: “Hemingway had four wives, Huston had five (and all of his marriages ended badly). Each married increasingly younger women and, while married, fell in love with a series of women even younger than their wives. Huston, however, [unlike Hemingway] was unashamedly promiscuous. Both had three children and were difficult, demanding and frequently absent fathers.”

“In the last paragraph of his autobiography, Huston brooded over his guilty regrets about family, finances, alcohol, tobacco and matrimony. Huston could be noble, generous and kind, as well as selfish, callous and cruel. But he should be remembered for his intellect, his imagination and his charm.”

I, of course, cannot remember him thusly because I did not know him. But I can remember him for his films, and so I do. Who could forget the black bird….

….or The African Queen:

One of those clunkers I mentioned was THE BIBLE (1966), an ungodly bad epic which he both directed and starred in. But those can be forgiven in light of the above trinity of masterpieces. If that doesn’t Beat The Devil….

 

 

 

PIED FEIFFER

pied, adj.  of two or more colors in blotches — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Another post, another autobiography (or memoir, going by the book) to review — this one titled BACKING INTO FORWARD, by Jules Feiffer. But I am not so much going to review this 2010 book as pass along some thoughts from it, which, I think, are worth thinking about — relevant, at least in part, to current backward, black and white, regressive times.

First, a brief introduction: FEIFFER (born Jan. 26, 1929), is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer who was born and grew up ‘between a blotch (of angsts) and a hard place’ in the Bronx. Having a controlling mother, little interest in school and no athletic ability whatsoever, “Fear was the principal emotion of my childhood. I hid in my sleep. I hid in my dreams. I revealed myself only in comics, which were the embodiment of my dreams.”

In his teens, he was influenced by his older sister, whose “crowd was fast-talking, fast-quipping, mischievous, left, meaning far left in their politics, their taste in books, art, movies, and just about everything else.” Marry this influence with his passion for cartoons, and you have the seeds of the man and cartoonist he was to become (the engrossing details of which you will have to read in the book).

Now for some of those thoughts I previously mentioned and now quote:

Over the years I have been asked how I came to make certain choices. How did I know? This choice as opposed to that, this direction or that? Much of my life as a young man was spent ignoring or delaying choices. The choices I made were due to running out of time. Backed into a corner, a choice was made because I no longer had a choice not to. Having nowhere to go, I spot the one open window and jump through. Choice to me is much like Butch Cassidy and Sundance escaping a posse by jumping off a cliff. They jumped. And survived. It was the right choice. But when it’s not, you’re dead.

Up until I was drafted, I had found that I could survive under any circumstance, no matter how unnerving, degrading, humiliating, or demoralizing, if I could understand the unwritten rules, i.e., the culture that was beating up on me. Whether it was family, school, sports, work, sex, I was accustomed to getting knocked down, picking myself up, and starting all over again. But in the army I was on unknown ground. After five months something went terribly wrong. They transferred me to train me to operate and repair radios on the [Korean] front line–in other words, to be killed. Radio repair was indecipherable to me. I saw no good reason [for] this assignment. As Vice President Dick Cheney explained when asked by the press why he hadn’t fought in the Vietnam War, “I had other priorities.” Yes! Yes! Me too!

It was heartbreaking to watch [Jerome] Robbins go into his HUAC dance. The acting chair of the House Un-American Activites Committee, a somber, ministerial-looking fake, asked Robbins at the start of his sworn testimony what he did for a living. Robbins stated that he was a choreographer. The chair did not understand the unfamiliar word. “A chori–chori–chori–what exactly is that, Mr. Robbins.?” Robbins explained that it was something like a dance director and named shows he had choreographed, from On The Town, his first musical, to The King And I. The members of the committee seemed delighted to have this fancy new word to play with. As each one took his turn questioning Robbins, he took a crack at pronouncing “choreographer.” The point, made to the cameras for the heartland, was that loyal American don’t need highfalutinn words. No! Loyal Americans needed but one thing, fealty to God and country. Loyal Americans wrapped themselves in the flag.

Called soft on Communism, liberals quieted down about witch hunts and loyalty oaths. Called eggheads, they dumbed themselves down. Displays of wit were repressed as too highbrow. Accused of cowardice in the Cold War, liberals began appraising countries to invade. Vietnam was a liberal war. The Republican Dwight Eisenhower refused to be sucked in. But Eisenhower was a general, a war hero, he didn’t have to prove his manhood. John F. Kennedy, although a war hero, was a liberal Democrat. He had to prove his manhood. Kennedy couldn’t afford to let the Russians think he was incompetent and inconsequential, which they might well have concluded after the Bay of Pigs. The Soviets might move on Berlin because of Kennedy’s perceived weakness. Before they could make such a move, Kennedy moved on Vietnam. As much of a disaster as the war proved itself to be, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, after him, could not get out. To cut and run was not an option for Democrats because it would make them open to attacks from Republicans.

Enough. Or was/is it? Politics being politics and the American electorate being the American electorate, we now have the grotesquely cartoonish Donald Trump….so let us close with this (for what it’s worth):

THE FIX IS OFF (for now)

Something has come up to postpone my out-of-town daughter’s Father’s Day visit until the following weekend ….so my browser problem will remain on hold, and without resolution, until the (offspring’s) fix is in. Meanwhile, back at the rant, I’ve finished reading the outspoken CARROLL O’CONNOR’s autobiography wherein he vents about many things. So, to fill in, let’s take up where my last post left off. After all, it’s All In The Family.

O’Connor had a very varied pre-Archie Bunker life. Like many in their early adult years, he couldn’t find his niche. “I could not shake off a feeling of foolishness—a man of 26 plodding through the days and months with no plan, no answer for anyone who might ask “What are you going to do with yourself?” The eventual answer, after many dead-end turns, turned out to be acting….and, finally, stardom (which came with an Archie Bunker mentality).

I — no doubt like most who read autobiographies — do so primarily to learn more about the author, his/her life and times. But I’ll also admit to the guilty pleasure of learning what the author thought of well-known contemporaries — in fact, such opinions may offer insights into other personalities and professions, which broaden (for better or worse) what I thought I knew about them. So, what were O’Connor’s impressions of….

JOHN WAYNE: “He perceived America as the preeminent hero-nation, virtually a land of heroes in which he himself felt heroic (and actually was, as I knew him) and infused that perception into all his roles as naturally as if it were one of the primary  emotions.”

JEAN STAPLETON: “Jean’s idea of Edith Bunker was not only original and perfectly suited to the American audience, but very comical and emotionally moving. If ever anything on television changed the country, not radically, not even obviously, it was the performance of Jean and the example of Edith. Did our series effectively attack bigotry and racism? We thought so at the time –”

HARRY TRUMAN: “Nobody expected Truman to take part in a Korean civil war, if one should begin. His military chiefs had no battle plan; on the contrary, they had a plan for getting out of the way — withdrawing to Japan. I thought Truman was totally wrong — his political vision faulty, his practical leadership unintelligent, his moral justification false. For me, the issue of morality in war– whether or not it is a “just war” — turns on the question of choice. When you wage war because you have no choice you are acting justly. But when you have a reasonable choice and choose to wage war, you can’t call your war just.”

MOVIE WRITERS, “though marvelously reliable in inventing space creatures — shriveled humanoids and hugely swollen insects — are unreliable in depicting intelligent life on earth.”

AGENTS “are generally shrewd, knowing, clever people; good company, good friends. They have made my career; they make all careers; they are the most important people in the business.”

ACTORS: “I shall never forget my first professional play rehearsal at The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, in the spring of 1951 — the immediate cordiality of my new friends the actors: they greeted me like an intimate. Now after all these years I am still unfailingly comforted, encouraged and elated in the company of actors. There is something about the work these dear neurotics do, investigating every kind of human character, that  develops in them an extraordinary tolerance, forgiveness and good humor. I commend their company even to normal folk.”

….and I commend this book of Carroll’s to you.

IT’S ALL IN THE (HUMAN) FAMILY

Surprise, surprise. I’m back before Father’s Day — not because my browser problem has magically been resolved (or resolved itself), but because what I want to share in this post doesn’t require video clips unavailable to me until the “Father’s Day fix” previously delineated.

Those of you old enough to remember the 1970’s TV sitcom ALL IN THE FAMILY will undoubtedly recall the name Carroll O’Connor, who played the role of bigoted Archie Bunker in that top-rated series:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_O%27Connor

Ironically, as I began this post this afternoon, I didn’t realize that O’Connor died 19 years ago on June 21, which happens to be Father’s Day (the day I wrongly thought I’d resume blogging). Earlier today, again by happenstance, I’d started reading his autobiography (titled I THINK I’M OUTTA HERE, which I’ve owned for some time), and realized that this was an articulate man who had much to say and said it well. So, to make a wrong story short, some of what he had to say is what I want to share, because it’s even more relevant today :

“Ruminating in later years on how nations have come under the control of haters and fools, I began to understand that it was only the brilliant foresight of the men who made the Constitution — that insistent clutch of intellectuals, not the ordinary mob of “good” people we praise so fulsomely — [who] prevented the most evil traditions of Europe from flourishing three centuries ago on these helpless shores, already defiled by slavery. And yet even so, the ordinary good people have retained their private benighted beliefs [which] have sickened the life of the country.”

“I take women very seriously, far more seriously than most men take them, or than I take most men. If a woman disapproves of what I’m doing, I worry, regardless of whether or not her reason makes complete sense to me. Woman’s intuition may be an ancient cliché, but I believe in it, respect it, and sometimes panic in the face of it.”

“My grandfather, being rich, shared the view of the rich that if private enterprise thrives, so will its dependents, the ordinary people and the poor, except a segment of the poor known as the chronic poor. “Ah, the chronic poor!” exclaimed my father in mock lament. “The rich man looks at the chronic poor and recalls the words of the Lord that they will always be with us, which the rich man understands to mean that he needn’t worry about them.”

The above quotes come from the book’s first 33 pages, which is as far as I’ve gotten so far.  On that basis alone, I recommend I THINK I’M OUTTA HERE….which, as it happens, is what I am.

 

A SINGULAR COMPOSER, A TWO-TIMING WIFE, AND A THREE PENNY OPERA

“THE ROMANCE of Kurt Weill, the Jewish cantor’s son, and Lotte Lenya, the Viennese coachman’s daughter, changed the history of Western music. Their work on The Three Penny Opera provides a knowing insight into their relationship: Weill was the creator whose work was backstage, unseen. Lenya was the performer who put the work into view. They heard the same unique music, but he gave it form while she gave it life.”
–from the cover flap of LOVE SONG, by Ethan Mordden

• * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

If you like a bargain and biographies, I’ve just read a book I’m about to tell you about, titled LOVE SONG. The “bargain” is hinted at in the subtitle: THE LIVES OF KURT WEILL AND LOTTE LENYA — a double biography, two lives for the price of one. If you’re acquainted with the music of Kurt Weill and the mystique of Lotte Lenya, an individual biography of either would be a bargain at twice  – nay, thrice — the price.

Kurt Weill was born in Germany in March 1900. As a young man (according to Mordden), “Music was his only interest, in total immersion.” He later fled the Nazi takeover and came to New York, U.S.A., in September, 1935. That month is notable for its namesake song, which may be the most unforgettable of his many memorable compositions:

Lotte Lenya, twice-married to Weill and many times in bed with other men, was born in Vienna in 1898 and outlived her husband by 31 years. Quoting from the book, “Lenya was quick to adapt to her audience: a performer, but a warm and giving one, quickly intimate with anyone she liked….she could play everything from the merrily heartless Jenny of The Threepenny Opera to the helplessly coquettish Frau Schneider of Cabaret.” Here she sings one of my favorite Weill songs:

I wish I could give you a front row seat at the real-life opera that is the LOVE SONG of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, for it is not only a love story, but an adventure and a 20th century history ranging from early success in Weimar Germany, escape from war-torn Europe, and finding the fulfillment in America which was cut short in their native land….but I could not begin to get you as caught up in their story as this “meticulously researched and detailed” book does. If you love the music of Kurt Weill, you will love this biography.

I would love to post clips of such Weill classics as Speak Low, This Is New, and To Love You And To Lose You, but that would perhaps be too much of a good thing….so I’ll bring down the curtain with this Bobby Darin hit from The Three Penny Opera which my fellow seniors will well remember (assuming your memory is sharp):

 

 

HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN AGE: THE “BAD” ACTORS

“The gangster film has always been one of the staples of the American cinema. Though the record shows that there were several motion pictures with a gangster theme as far back as the silent era, the genre did not really begin to flourish as a popular form until the thirties. Depression-era audiences responded strongly to all the action, violence and romance that these films contained, and were more than willing to get caught up in the colorful on-screen exploits of Edward G. Robinson,, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. In a sense, the movie gangster, with the rebellious breaking of society’s rules and regulations, and his aggressive drive to “get somewhere” regardless of consequences, became something of a hero to filmgoers of the period.”
“Robinson, Cagney and Bogart are, even today, the three actors most associated with films of this type, which isn’t surprising, since all three achieved their initial fame in a Warner Brothers [the king-of-the-hill gangster film studio] crime drama.”

–Robert Bookbinder, author of CLASSIC GANGSTER FILMS

• * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

There were a lot of “bad actors” in Hollywood in those days. Robinson, Cagney and Bogart weren’t the only famous names to have become famous names playing bad guys in 1930s gangster films, but most (e.g. Peter Lorre) remained typecast as character actors. We will take a look at the “bad character actors” in our next post; this post will look to the stars.

Quoting further from Robert Bookbinder’s excellent book CLASSIC GANGSTER FILMS, “Little Caesar [1931] was the first of the great gangster films. It made a star of Edward G. Robinson, who had been working in films since 1923, and it laid the groundwork for all the fine Warner Brothers gangster movies that followed.” Here’s a clip from the film:

How tough was Edward G. Robinson? Tough enough to get Doris Day and Jack Carson out of a pickle:

Just as Little Caesar made a star of Robinson, Warner Brothers’ second gangster film (later the same year), The Public Enemy, made a star of James Cagney. In this scene, after Cagney’s friend is shot to death by a gang, he vows revenge and arms himself with two 38s:

By 1942, Cagney had made a clean break from the “gangs” — here he is in scenes from his Oscar-winning performance as showman George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy:

As for Humphrey Bogart, he was the last of the three to attain stardom after years of supporting roles in gangster films. In The Roaring Twenties (1939), he is third-billed (Cagney stars):

All three, as we know, went on to bigger (if not badder) things in such films as Double Indemnity (Robinson), Mister Roberts (Cagney), and, of course, Casablanca (Bogart), among many other memorable performances. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

 

SHORT AND (NOT SO) SWEET

Lately I’ve been (and remain) a bit under the weather, so rather than strain my brain trying to write something original, this post will quote from three book reviews which have something pertinent to say about the likes of our favorite President, either directly or by extension (book titles in caps):

KILL IT TO SAVE IT by Corey Dolgon

“Dolgon’s astute look at the conservative turn in US politics … offers a fascinating look at the phenomenon that made Donald J. Trump the preferred choice of many voters. The long-term fallout of this turn has many of us thinking far less critically than we should be–exactly as intended–and how and why we’ve learned to tolerate the intolerable.” –Eleanor J. Bader (reviewer)

UNDER THE COVER OF CHAOS by Lawrence Grossberg

“In damning detail, Grossberg here lays bare the deep roots of Trumpism. Rather than a break from some imagined pure, nuanced conservatism, Grossberg shows Trump’s manic nonsense is actually a continuation, the result of a long struggle between the new right and the reactionary right. Everyone should read this book if they want to understand the rise of authoritarianism in the United States.” –Henry Giroux (reviewer)

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE by Milton Mayer

An account of the rise of fascism in Germany from 1933-45. As such, “A timely reminder of how otherwise unremarkable and in many ways reasonable people can be seduced by demagogues and populists.” –Richard J. Evans (reviewer)

Upon further review, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

LET US TURN BACK TO THE WRIGHT, BROTHERS AND SISTERS

PROLOGUE:
We had to go ahead and discover everything for ourselves. –Orville Wright, 1901

• * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Friends, Readers, Countrymen —

If you have spent many a sleepless night
tossing and turning ’til dawn’s early light,
wondering if I’d e’er host another post,
take such worries off thy plate — they’re toast.

Yes, Brothers and Sisters, thy long wait is o’er.
I’m back, and who of you could ask for more
although I must confess
that most may ask for less. 😦

Never-the-less, Brothers and Sisters,
it is written in the stars that I must return to the scene of my rhymes and other crimes. It’s Kismet.

Notwithstanding the never-the-less, Brothers and Sisters, I digress.
I come here not to berhyme the Wrights, but to praise them.

Thus this follow-up to my May 17 post, THE DAY THE WRIGHTS DONE ME WRONG, because, by ancient axiom, it’s the Wright thing to do (If at first you don’t succeed, fly, fly again). And if this discourse has the unintended consequence of being the sleep-aid you need to catch up on those zzzzz, the added benefit comes at no extra charge.

But I doubt that will be the case with THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, which, it so happens, is the title of a book I just finished reading (by my favorite historian, David McCullough). It’s no less than you’d expect from a Pulitzer Prize winning author: a masterful biography which (quoting from the dust cover) “draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including personal diaries, notebooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence, to tell the human side of a profoundly American story.”

The Wrights spent years of trial and air working to construct the world’s first ‘aeroplane,’ but as reader Don Frankel noted on May 17, America paid scant attention even after their successful first flight Dec. 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (and Don wasn’t just whistling Dixie in his comment). Finally, in 1906, after numerous improvements (including a more powerful engine) and many test flights, “much of the scientific world and the press [began] to change their perspective on the brothers”, and they started to attract commercial and government–especially French, not American– interest.

To the latter point, President (and fellow Ohioan) Wm. Howard Taft spoke as follows in presenting the two brothers with Gold Medals on June 10, 1909, in Washington D.C.:

I esteem it a great honor and an opportunity to present these medals to you as an evidence of what you have done. I am so glad–perhaps at a delayed hour–to show that in America it is not true that “a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.” It is especially gratifying thus to note a great step in human discovery by paying honor to men who bear it so modestly. You made this discovery by a course that we of America like to feel is distinctly American–by keeping your noses right at the job until you had accomplished what you had determined to do.

There are many stories within the story of THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, many twists and turns and mishaps along the way. The Wrights weren’t ‘stick’ figures with no interests and little to commend beyond their mechanical genius. Wilbur, for example, wrote home from France in 1906 of long walks and “the great buildings and art treasures of Paris, revealing as he never had–or had call to–the extent of his interest in architecture and painting.”

Read this bio and you will surely be taken along for the ride, as was I, by “the human side of a profoundly American story” of two men most of us know only from dry history books.

So fasten your life jackets and come fly with me.

EPILOGUE:
We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the Earth. But we were wrong. We underestimated man’s capacity to hate and to corrupt good means for an evil end. –Orville Wright, 1943 (during WWII)

 

LIKE WISE

Noble goal like chasing rainbow — beautiful while it lasts.

If the above quote sounds familiar, you have the memory of an elephant. It — the quote, not you or the elephant — appeared in my previous post as a Charlie Chanism which I made up after a trip to the latest local library book sale where my returns are becoming re-nowned and their books are becoming re-owned….and one of my new buys was titled CHARLIE CHAN — The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, by Yunte Huang.

If you’re an old movie buff like me, you’ve probably seen a number of 1930s-40s Charlie Chan films (based on the 1920-3os novels by Earl Derr Biggers) in which Charlie chanted such gems of wisdom as these:

Hasty deduction, like ancient egg, look good from outside.
Mind, like parachute, only function when open.
Trouble, like first love, teach many lessons.
Facts like photographic film — must be exposed before developing.
Advice after mistake like medicine after funeral.

You will find these, and many more, Chanisms in Appendix I of the book. But that’s just a bonus — the real story of this book is “The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective”…. a story I can’t tell you because either I would have to kill you (leaving no clues), or it would spoil the story and leave you without a motive to buy the book. But I will tell you that the fictional Honolulu detective Charlie Chan was based on real-life Honolulu detective Chang Apana, who was a character in his own right and whose career included jobs ranging from gardener to gumshoe. So get the book, plant yourself in your favorite chair, and enjoy the read.

Speaking of flowery characters, Earl Derr Biggers was no shrinking violet. Before turning novelist, Biggers (a Harvard grad)) was an outspoken newspaper columnist and drama critic. In one of his columns, he wrote of “a citizen of Mingo, Okla., [who] whipped out his trusty six-shooter the other day and shot the mustache off another citizen. We sincerely hope that the gentleman who lost the mustache appreciated the fact that he had a mighty close shave.” Shades of such baldfaced punsters as Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde and mistermuse! (The latter includes himself in such company on the grounds that the dead can’t object.)

But enough about me. Here’s Charlie!

 

A LAUGH AND A SONG AND DANCE

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. –Sir Isaac Newton

Comedian Sid Caesar, in his autobiography, CAESAR’S HOURS, quotes the above and adds, “I too stand on the shoulders of giants. Nobody does anything alone.”

To me, to call Sid Caesar (born 9/8/22) a comedian is akin to calling Newton a physicist — accurate, yes, but hardly adequate. In a down-to-earth way, I might even say that what Newton was to gravity in the 1680s, Caesar was to levity in the 1950s. The bottom line is, I was in my teens then (the 1950s, not the 1680s), and still reasonably sentient at the time; thus I can bear witness to the comic genius that I, as a geezer, still see in Caesar.

And just who were those giants on whose shoulders Caesar stood? He tells us in his book: “I always wanted to be Charlie Chaplin. He was one of my earliest comedic heroes, along with Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and W.C. Fields. Most of their comedy came from their character. They each believed in what they did, and I believed them.”

Caesar was an up-and-coming comic performing mainly in the so-called Borscht Belt in New York’s Catskill Mountains when this opportunity arose in the infancy of network TV:

It was called YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS, and what an innovative show it was. It premiered live on 2/25/50 with writers like Mel Brooks, Max Liebman (who also produced) and (later) Woody Allen. Said Caesar: “For nine years, I presided over what was arguably the best collection of comedy writers ever assembled in the history of television, and possibly in the history of the written word — unless you think the U.S. Constitution is funny.”

Add co-stars Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris, and the show was both a commercial and artistic success from Hour One. Here, they show you why:

Again quoting Caesar: “Until that time, the only big things on television were bowling, wrestling and Charlie Chan. [Max Liebman] wasn’t interested in the American public’s lowest common denominator. He wasn’t going to dumb down. His goal was that the quality of the show would drive its popularity and ultimately elevate taste.”

As Charlie Chan might say: Noble goal like chasing rainbow — beautiful while it lasts.

• * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Originally, I came to this post with the idea of making it a birthday (9/8/1896) tribute to Howard Dietz, one of my favorite lyricists, whose autobiography (titled DANCING IN THE DARK) I also commend. Then I learned that Sept. 8 is the birthday of Sid Caesar as well as Howard Dietz, and I thought I GUESS I’LL HAVE TO CHANGE MY PLAN.

Hold on — it wouldn’t be right not to dance with the dude what brung me, so rather than ditch Dietz, I’ll sing his praises here too….starting with his first big hit (above), then an excerpt from early in the book, closing with a realization of the song which titles his story.

The following is quoted from the book’s forward by Alan Jay Lerner: As for that quality of life known as charm, I can only shrug sadly and chalk it up as another victim of that creeping nastiness called modern civilization. I think about the man whose reminiscences are contained in this book. They come to mind because of that special gift of charm that is so characteristic of his lyrics. Howard [Dietz]  is the Fred Astaire, the Chevalier, the Molnar, the Lubitsch of lyric writers.

Dancing in the dark
Till the tune ends
We’re dancing in the dark
And it soon ends
We’re waltzing in the wonder
Of why we’re here
Time hurries by we’re here
And gone