THIS IS A TEST THAT’S A SURPRISE

I recently ran across a quote which surprised the hell out of me* — not because of what it said, but because of who said it. This made me wonder about other such quotes (serious or humorous), so I decided to do the research and see what I could find. To make it more interesting, I will post the resulting ten quotes and their quotees in separate, unmatched columns. If you can correctly identify more than 100% of who said what, I will call you the wizard of quid pro quoters — not to mention, you’re just….

1. “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.“
2. “There are many dying children out there whose last wish is to meet me.” (no, it wasn’t said by Donald Trump)
3. “You can hardly tell where the computer models finish and the real dinosaurs begin.“
4. “Politics gives guys so much power that they tend to behave badly around women. I hope i never get into that.”
5. “We’re absolutely stupid to be embarked in a business where our face is connected with our accomplishments. When you get it from morning to night, it’s no longer wonderful. No dear public ever did anything for me.“
6. “Man will not be able to fly for at least another fifty years.“
7. “Rolls-Royce announced today that it is recalling all Rolls-Royce cars made after 1966 because of faulty nuts behind the steering wheels.”
8. “I’ll never get married again.“
9. “I was the first woman to burn my bra–it took the fire department four days to put it out.”
10. *”The settlement of the North American continent is little the consequence of right in any democratic or international sense; it was the consequence of a consciousness of right rooted solely in the conviction of the superiority and therefore the right of the white race.”

a. David Hasselhoff
b. Adolf Hitler, 1932
c. John Wayne
d. The Wright Brothers, 1901
e. Laura Dern (re the film Jurassic Park)
f. Walter Cronkite
g. Elizabeth Taylor, 1982 (the year she divorced her sixth husband; and yes, she did get married again)
h. Dolly Parton
i. Bill Clinton
j. Cary Grant

Just in case you want to know how well you did, here are the answers: 1.c 2.a 3.e 4.i 5.j 6.d 7.f 8.g 9.h 10. b

What’s that you say? You got all ten (100%) right (which it’s impossible to do better than), so you want to be recognized for your outstanding achievement. OK — so you’re an outliar! Ha ha ha (sorry about that, but this is my blog, so I get the last word).

RUNNING WILD(E)

Tomorrow (October 16) being the 167th birthday of Irish wit, poet, and playwright Oscar Wilde, I’m going to run a delicti-ous corpus of Wilde’s witty and often wise (and, at times, injudicious) words by you. I would have sought some new and original quotes from Mr. Wilde for this post, but given his age and condition, it’s judicious to assume he doesn’t wish to be disturbed. Thus, I will make do with these Oscar winners of old:

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.“

“I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.“

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.“

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.“

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.“

“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young” [in memories.*] *my interpretation of the meaning of the quote, which is from Wilde’s novel and play THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

INTERMISSION: No doubt you’ve been dying to know from whence cometh the inspiration for the title of this post, so I will keep you in suspenders no longer (just kidding–I have never kept anyone in suspenders….though I have seen fit to gift an upscale belt on occasion):

The above scene is from the Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot. We now return from Wilder to Wilde:

“I can resist everything except temptation.”

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”

“There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.“

“The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.“

“Who, being loved, is poor?“

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.“

This, of course, is not a book, but a blog.

That is all.

LO, MORE MR. NICE GUY

October 5th being Do Something Nice Day, I thought I’d be nicer than nice and post something extra nice for my nice readers (which I assume includes most of you). As for the nasty nasty faction, Nicely Nicely Johnson nicely nicely asks you Guys and Dolls to SIT DOWN, YOU’RE ROCKING THE BOAT!

I suppose being a Nice Guy (or Doll) comes with the territory if you live in Nice, France; Niceville, Florida; or Nice, California. I would even go so far as to say that living thereabouts is,,,,

But even if you’re a resident of the likes of Gross, Nebraska; Monster, Holland; or Toadsuck, Arkansas, on this of all days, you can DO SOMETHING NICE — it’s not all that hard.

Have a Nice Day.

BY GEORGE (GERSHWIN)

“George and [his lyricist brother] Ira Gershwin, musical laureates of the Jazz Age, wrote at the height of Broadway’s glory years–a time when the American theater was at its most varied and abundant. During Broadway’s record-breaking Christmas week, 1927, twenty offerings premiered during a seven night period, eleven on the evening of December 26. In January 1928, the Gershwins had three shows running concurrently on the Great White Way.” –Robert Kimball, musical theater historian

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You’ll be happy to hear I’m going to be a man of few words in this post, and be even happier to hear music by George on his birthday (Sept. 26, 1898). Inasmuch as my followers are the most discriminating in all blogdom, I see no need to elaborate on the opening quote. You know what Gershwin means to American music….so let’s get right into it and celebrate with this Ella-gent swinger from one of those January 1928 shows:

Next, another of my favorite Gershwin songs from one of those shows, sung here by the wonderful Lee Wiley with Fats Waller at the piano:

We bring down the curtain with the title song from OF THEE I SING, which opened at the Music Box Theater, NYC, on Dec. 26, 1931 (and is another of my many favorite Gershwin songs):

Of thee WE sing, George Gershwin — Happy Birthday!

ELEPHANT APPRECIATION DAY

As you know (of course you do), Sept. 22 is Elephant Appreciation Day…..and, as elephants know (but, try as they may, can’t forget), they are the symbol of the Republican Party in these good old dis-United States of America. But have you ever wondered how this thick-skinned pachyderm came to be linked with the GOP (or the donkey with the Democrats, for that matter)? Here is the link:

Now, as much as I would like to bandy about what a Grandy Old Party the Republican Party is today, today is, after all, a day to appreciate elephants, not Republicans. So let’s get in the swing of the thing:

With Thanksgiving Day and pumpkin pie season fast approaching, who wouldn’t appreciate this elephantine service:

I’d go on, but I can’t remember what I was going to say next, so I’ll just say don’t forget to hug an elephant today, and wish you a happy Elephant Appreciation Day.

AHLERT: THERE’S FROST ON THE MOON (and raccoons in the closet)

Once upon a yesterday, there was an earthling named Fred Ahlert, who was born tomorrow (Sept. 19) in a year long gone (1892), and lived to compose a time capsule of out-of-this-world music in the 1920s-30s….including:

If you were puzzled by the assertion “don’t need my raccoon” in the lyrics of the song sung by Shaw’s vocalist*, click https://www.messynessychic.com/2014/11/26/the-1920s-college-kids-and-the-fur-pimp-coat-craze/

*Peg La Centra, one of the most underrated big band singers of the swing era

Unlike many composers of that time who wrote songs mainly for stage shows or the movies, native New Yorker Fred Ahlert wrote primarily for Tin Pan Alley. Among his most popular hits were I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter, I’ll Get By (As Long as I Have You), Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, and this yellow moonlight sonata, sung here by ol’ blue eyes:

One of the few movies for which Ahlert wrote songs was the early talkie FREE AND EASY (1930). Here is the title song from that picture, starring the great silent film comedian Buster Keaton. Who knew he could also sing and dance?

Fred Ahlert was inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 — seventeen years after his death. Who can say why the Songwriters HOF didn’t get Ahlert sooner? Such is life in the big city, wouldn’t you say?

MAURICE de PAREE: A MAN AND HIS MUSICALS

“Perhaps the greatest movie musical of all time” — that’s what film critics like Leonard Maltin called Singin’ In The Rain (1952). If you’ve seen it, you know it’s a spoof of the transition from silent to sound films in 1928-29.

“Only in 1929 did the talkies really begin to talk–and sing–to much of America. By year’s end, nearly half of the country’s twenty thousand movie houses were wired for sound. Nine out of ten Americans were going to the movies at least once a week. Paramount was the most Continental of studios and took pride in the elegance, inventiveness, and visual dazzle of its product. With the shift to talkies, it lured name stage entertainers like Maurice Chevalier, the Marx Brothers, Gertrude Lawrence, Walter Huston, and Claudette Colbert.” –Edward Baron Turk, arts critic, educator and prize-winning author on the culture of France and Hollywood film.

This post is ‘a remembrance of sings past’ for the first-named of the above entertainers, Maurice Chevalier, who was born in Paris (Sept. 12, 1888) and died in Paris ((Jan. 1, 1972). He signed with Paramount in 1928 and came to America in 1929 to star in musicals, the first of which was INNOCENTS OF PARIS….but the second was the one that won him instant international acclaim. That film, THE LOVE PARADE, was adapted from a French play (Le Prince Consort) and starred Chevalier as Count Alfred Renard, a Sylvanian military attaché in Paris who has been ordered back to Sylvania by the Queen to be reprimanded for his scandalous affairs.

Co-starring Jeanette MacDonald as Queen of Sylvania, it was the first talkie directed by the man with “the [Ernst] Lubitsch touch.” In this scene from the show, the playboy Count plays the Queen’s frustrated gigolo:

In real life, Chevalier was far from the jaunty, insouciant character he played on stage and screen. Again quoting Edward Baron Turk: “Lubitsch understood that behind the Frenchman’s bubbly image was a troubled man. From his alcoholic father, Chevalier had inherited a predisposition to panic attacks, suicidal fantasies, and [other] disorders. Above all, Chevalier suffered from a chronic sense of inferiority.” Nevertheless, after a nervous breakdown in 1923, he went on to become the ‘Toast of Paris’ in solo triumphs at such venues as the Casino de Paris and Folies Bergère, leading to his being enticed to Hollywood before the end of the decade.

Following his great success in THE LOVE PARADE, in 1930-31 he appeared in four more films, including PARAMOUNT ON PARADE, a variety revue devised to show off the studio’s large roster of stars. But it wasn’t until 1932 that Chevalier again found artistic and box office magic in what critic Leonard Maltin called (and I agree) “One of the best musicals ever made”: LOVE ME TONIGHT. Among the many things this film had going for it was the inspired directing of Rouben Mamoulian and the glorious songs of Rodgers and Hart, including “Lover,” “Isn’t It Romantic,” and this ‘signature’ Chevalier chanson:

By the mid-1930s, his popularity in the U.S. waned, and he returned to France. He came back to the U.S. in 1947, but didn’t recover his former luster until his role in GIGI (1958), for which he received an honorary Oscar. Do you remember this Lerner & Loewe song which introduced the story of Gigi? I remember it well:

What is left but to say Happy 133rd Birthday, Maurice Chevalier….and Thank heaven for Maurice de Paree, his alter ego.

SOMETHING TO REMEMBER HIM BY

“More than [various species] becoming extinct in our time, we in the painted jungles of the theatre are also faced with our own disappearing species: charm, [which] lately has been critically outlawed on the grounds of criminal literacy. I can only shrug sadly and chalk it up as another victim of that creeping nastiness called modern civilization.” –Alan Jay Lerner, January 1974

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The above quote is from the foreword to Dancing in the Dark / Words by Howard Dietz / An Autobiography. Dietz (one of my all-time favorite songwriters) was the decades-long lyricist and librettist of 32 Broadway musicals, whose (Sept. 8, 1896) birthday the day after tomorrow, I remember today.

I suppose that I’m just an old romantic at heart,
A lover of love songs, when such songs were an art
❤️ Such that music and lyrics with taste and charm
❤️ Went Dancing in the Dark, and left arm in arm,
Alone Together, to live out a dream til death do us part?

Here, then, are three Howard Dietz songs, starting with something from Three’s A Crowd (1930), starring Libby Holman, Clifton Webb, and Fred Allen:

In his autobiography, Dietz wrote that “Libby Holman was game for anything. She was a child prodigy and had gone to law school at the age of 16 but decided that she preferred a career on the stage. Though she had studied law, she was a frivolous personality who appeared in the nude in her dressing room, and therefore had a lot of visitors.” Well, I imagine that WAS something to remember her by.

Next, we have Dancing in the Dark from The Band Wagon (1931) starring Fred and Adele (Fred’s sister) Astaire. This clip is from the movie version (1953) starring Fred and Cyd Charisse, she of the “phenomenal legs” (so pegged by film critic Pauline Kael):

Our curtain call, Alone Together, is from the 1932 musical Flying Colors starring Clifton Webb and a cast which included Imogene Coca, who seniors may remember as Sid Caesar’s TV co-star in Your Show of Shows in the 1950s:

NOTE: Pay no attention to the “Video unavailable” below, which I tried, but was unable to delete.

CHANGE OF PACE: OLD NEW ENGLAND

I have long had an interest in American history, so when I rediscovered a book of old New England houses as I was perusing my overloaded book shelves (looking for ‘downsizing candidates’), it brought back memories of several long-ago trips to and through that venerable region….and I decided to do this post as a change of pace from my usual fare.

OPEN HOUSE IN NEW ENGLAND is, for want of a better term, a biography in words and pictures of 242 houses, taverns and other buildings which were old (built 1600s to 1840s) when the book was published in 1937 — though at least one home (Longfellow’s birthplace in Portland, demolished in 1955) has since been lost to the ravages of time/vagaries of fate and progress. There is too much to cover in one post, so I will confine the following to just one of the six New England states: Maine, home of my blogging friend and yours, Rivergirl (River’s world).

Among the 22 Maine edifices listed, there are several familiar names, such as the HARRIET BEECHER STOWE HOUSE in Brunswick, Maine, which was recently restored by nearby Bowdoin College:

Here, minus the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Birthplace, are some of the other listings (alphabetically by city/town):

AUGUSTA: THE BLAINE MANSION (built 1830s, one-time home of James G. Blaine, former Republican congressman, senator, Secretary of State, and presidential nominee in the late 1800s)

AUGUSTA: FORT WESTERN (built 1754, consists of two restored block houses and original garrison house)

FARMINGTON: NORDICA HOMESTEAD (built circa 1840, home of Lillian Nordica, opera singer, the first American woman to achieve international acclaim in her field

GORHAM: BAXTER MUSEUM (built 1797, birthplace of former Gorham mayor and home of former Maine governor

KITTERY POINT: LADY PEPPERRELL HOUSE (built 1760) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Pepperrell_House

MACHIAS: BURNHAM TAVERN (built 1770) https://www.burnhamtavern.com/

YORK: THE OLD GAOL (built 1653) https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/ME-01-031-0003

We end up appropriately AWAY DOWN EAST IN MAINE, recorded almost a century ago:

I HAVE KNOW IDEA

“It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.” –George Santayana

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People are ever (as in never) asking me where I get the ideas for my posts. The answer is, ideas just poop into my head….which may be explain why some people call them crap. But why should I care what “some people” say, when a philosopher like George Santayana thinks I have “a wonderful brain”? Now there’s an ideas man who knows what he thinks about…..whereas I’m a man who has know idea what all the stink’s about.

What about other men who get ideas, such as….

And then there’s this poor guy whose idea may have been a bit short of realistic, but he probably got his comeuppance before long:

If I were a Richman, I’d go with other Ideas (recorded in New Orleans in 1928):

And so I close, as I began, with a George Santayana quote — this one, on a questioning note:

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.“

Has there never been a man alive with any idea how to keep men from making war?