FIVE DAYS HATH NOVEMBER

“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” –Gloria Swanson (as Norma Desmond)

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How many of these former “big” names do you recognize?

TEXAS GUINAN (1933)
GEORGE M. COHAN (1942)
ART TATUM (1956)
JOHNNY HORTON (1960)
MACK SENNETT (1960)
WARD BOND (1960)
GUY LOMBARDO (1977)
FRED MacMURRAY (1991)

If you’re not into the movies and music of the past, you may remember few, if any, of the foregoing (year 0f death follows their names). Because time drives a hard bargain with fame, they’ve faded away in the rearview mirror….but on this day, we back up to see them BIG again — or as big as such look-backs provide. Why on this particular day? As it happens, the above have one thing in common: they lived but five days into the last November of their lives.

TEXAS GUINAN, born Waco, TX, 1884. Flamboyant, brassy “Queen of the Night Clubs” in NYC during the Roaring Twenties. Started in vaudeville, sang, and was in silent movies before becoming hostess of Texas Guinan Club and other NYC speakeasies during Prohibition. Famous trademark greeting to incoming customers: “Hello, suckers!” She bade them goodbye November 5, 1933.

GEORGE M. COHAN, born Providence, RI, 1878. One of the early greats of the Broadway stage as an actor, composer, lyricist, librettist, director and producer. Wrote primarily nostalgic and patriotic songs, including the WWI hit Over There. James Cagney won Academy Award for his portrayal of Cohan in the 1942 film YANKEE DOODLE DANDY:

ART TATUM, born Toledo, OH, 1910. All-time great jazz pianist, despite being blind in one eye and almost blind in the other. Described by some critics as given to over-embellishment in later career (“played too many notes”), but he wasn’t one to not change with the times (for better or worse).

JOHNNY HORTON, born Los Angeles, 1925. Popular country music and rockabilly singer known for his “saga songs” such as 1959 hit The Battle of New Orleans. Killed in crash by drunk driver Nov. 5, 1960. Here he sings the title song from my favorite John Wayne film:

MACK SENNETT, born Quebec, Canada, 1880. Pioneer in  the field of slapstick comedy, famed creator of Keystone Kops in early silent film era. Among famous actors who got their start with Sennett were Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, W. C. Fields and the aforementioned Gloria Swanson. They don’t make ’em like this anymore!

WARD BOND, born Bendelman, NE, 1903. One of Hollywood’s most iconic character actors, particularly in films directed by John Ford. Bond and John Wayne were members of the USC football team when they were picked by Ford as extras for the film Salute in 1928. The three became lifelong friends and made many pictures together, including The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache and The Quiet Man.

GUY LOMBARDO, born Ontario, Canada, 1902. Leader of the most commercially successful and long-lasting “sweet” (some might say “Mickey Mouse”) dance band of all time. Theme song Auld Lang Syne was a New Year’s Eve staple for decades. Slogan: “The Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven” (I don’t know what kind of music’s on the other side, but when it’s time to go, I may chance the long way around).

FRED MacMURRAY, born Kankakee, IL, 1908. Last but least-long deceased (Nov. 5, 1991) of those listed; many of us remember this versatile actor from his roles in such great films as Double Indemnity and The Apartment over the course of a near-50 year career….but I suspect few are aware that he started out as a saxophone player and band vocalist in the early 1930s. Here he is with the Gus Arnheim band in 1930:

That’s a wrap until November 10. Take five.

 

 

 

YOU CAN NEVER BE IRISH EEN-OUGH

If you’re lucky enough to be Irish….you’re lucky enough! —Irish proverb

On St. Patrick’s Day, every man is an Irishman — if you disagree, get out of me sight and don’t come back until tomorrow! Besides, today me mind is not on Irish men, but on Irish lasses — coleens (or colleens), a word of Gaelic origin — specifically, coleens whose first name ends in een, as does me wife’s (Maureen).

One of the most famous Maureens is Irish-born Maureen O’Hara, the lovely red-headed actress who co-starred in my favorite John Wayne movie, THE QUIET MAN. This Academy Award-winning film, directed by Irish-born John Ford, is set in the fictional Irish village of Innisfree (the ending word in my last post SANCTUARY, from Wm. Butler Yeats’ poem LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE).

To me, the most Irish-sounding girl’s first name ending in een is Pegeen, a name I first heard of in Irish playwright John Millington Synge’s great THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, a wickedly funny play (later filmed in 1962) which, at its first performance in Dublin in 1907, caused a riot. Synge’s contemporary, W.B. Yeats, later wrote of the play, “It is never played before any Irish audience for the first time without something or other being flung at the players.” Pegeen is the name of the village barmaid, the heroine with “the divil’s own temper,” who is courted — and lost — by Christy Mahon, the “Playboy of the Western World.”

Another Irish een name I am fond of is Kathleen, heard in several Irish ballads, including KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN and the beautifully poignant I’LL TAKE YOU HOME AGAIN, KATHLEEN:

Happy March seventeen!

THE PASSING GAME

How do you do?  Glad to see you. It’s game day, guys and gals, so let’s get right to it. No, this isn’t about football (whatever gave you that idea?). This is a game about how many of the following ten names ring a bell, and what do they have in common (other than the fact that none were football players)?

Victor Herbert, James P. Johnson, John Ford, Clark Gable, Langston Hughes, S. J. Perelman, Hildegard, George Pal, Muriel Spark, Boris Yeltsin.

How did you do? You say there’s several you didn’t recognize? That will never do. There are no passes here, so before we proceed to what they have in common, here are the names again, followed by year of birth and claim to fame:

1. VICTOR HERBERT, 1859, composer (father of the operetta style Broadway musical, including Babes in Toyland, Naughty Marietta and Sweethearts)

2. JAMES P. JOHNSON, 1891, composer and jazz pianist (king of Harlem stride piano & composer of such standards as The Charleston, Old Fashioned Love and If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight)

3. JOHN FORD, 1894, movie director (famous for westerns and winner of four Academy Awards for best director: The Informer, Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man, none of which were westerns)

4. CLARK GABLE, 1901, actor (Frankly, my dear, I don’t think I need say more)

5. LANGSTON HUGHES, 1902, poet, playwright and social activist (leader of the Harlem Renaissance and pioneer of literary art form known as jazz poetry)

6. S. J. PERELMAN, 1904, humorist, screenwriter and playwright (credits include humor for the New Yorker, scripts for Marx Brothers films Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, and Academy Award for screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days)

7. HILDEGARD, 1906, American cabaret singer and most elegant, well-known female supper club entertainer of her time; #1 song Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup. Longest-lived (to age 99) of the ten.

8. GEORGE PAL, 1908, film director, producer and innovator of stop-motion animation (Puppetoons); probably the least familiar name here, thus this 1994 biographical documentary (narrated by Pal’s widow Zsoka) should be both edifying and interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlRyE4U-dDM

9. MURIEL SPARK, 1918, novelist and writer (most famous work The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)

10. BORIS YELTSIN, 1931, Russian politician. First President of Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

OK, I’ll keep you in suspense no longer. What the above have in common is their birthday: February 1.

But wait — there’s more! What do the following have in common?

Rene Descartes, philosopher; Mary Shelley, novelist; Buster Keaton, comic actor; George Abbot, director; and Gian Carlo Menotti, composer.

They all passed away on February 1.

Today, on this notable day in history, The Observation Post has them coming and going. I hope you had a ball.

Gotta run.

MISTER ROGERS TERRITORY

When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. level of both states. –Will Rogers, on Oklahoma farmers migrating to California to escape the Dustbowl during the Great Depression (a plight vividly portrayed in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel/John Ford’s 1940 film The Grapes of Wrath).

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If you’ve ever felt as if you’re a remnant (at least in spirit) of the bygone era of someone who passed away before you were born, you can imagine where I’m coming from when I write about Will Rogers, who died in a plane crash in Alaska on this August day in 1935 (a year before I was a gleam in my father’s eye).

Rogers, the Oklahoma cowboy who became America’s favorite humorist and homespun philosopher in the 1920s & 30s, was born to part-Cherokee parents in 1879 when Rutherford B. Hayes was President and Oklahoma was still Indian territory. As Will wrote in his memoirs, “My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”

In my July 29 post BEHIND THE SCENES, I wrote of several performers and directors from Hollywood’s fondly-remembered Golden Age, including John Ford and some of the great films he directed. Two of those were the above-mentioned Grapes of Wrath and Judge Priest (1934), starring Will Rogers. You may be surprised to learn, as I was, that Judge Priest — well, let Ford himself say it, as told to author Bryan B. Sterling in an interview later shared in Sterling’s 1976 book, THE WILL ROGERS SCRAPBOOK:

Sterling:  You made three motion pictures with Mr. Rogers, Dr. Bull, Judge Priest and Steamboat ‘Round the Bend. The character of Judge Priest fit right in with that [Rogers’ small town Oklahoma] background. Was that shot on location?

Ford:  No, we did it right in the studio.

Sterling:  In those days, how long would it take to make a picture?

Ford:  On the largest pictures it would take four to five weeks. And they weren’t expensive pictures at all, but they all did very well. In fact, my favorite picture of all times is Judge Priest.

I hate to end on a sour note, but I doubt if Will Rogers would go over today. His humor was on the money, but of a different time. He told it like it was, but not in the gross fashion of our time. At age 55, he died before his time, but he lived at the right time.

It was a time to which I can relate.

 

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BEHIND THE SCENES

Candice Bergen’s book, KNOCK WOOD (reviewed in my last post), was one of too many biographies/autobiographies I’ve been reading lately. I read them because I’m into trying to get a handle on the “real” human being beneath the public persona of past legendary creative/performing artists I’ve “known.”

Take JOHN FORD, director of such classic Westerns as Stagecoach, Fort Apache, My Darling Clementine, Rio Grande and The Searchers. Did I really need to find out (in a book titled COMPANY OF HEROES) that he was a real horse’s ass in the way he treated others — not just the actors and subordinates he “treated like children” and often directed like a sadistic drill sergeant, but in his personal life? Well, some might say that Hollywood filmmaking was a cutthroat industry and Westerns are violent by their very nature, so it goes with the territory.

But Ford wasn’t always thoughtless, nor did he direct only shoot ’em ups. His 50 year directorial career included such (relatively) non-violent gems as Judge Priest (Will Rogers’ finest film), The Grapes Of Wrath, Young Mr. Lincoln, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man (in which fists flew, but not bullets) and Mister Roberts. Go figure. A complex fellow, Mister Ford. 

And then there’s JOHN HUSTON, who made only a few Westerns, but, like Ford, was an egoist, womanizer and “larger-than-life” figure. In his book JOHN HUSTON: COURAGE AND ART, author Jeffrey Meyers paints a picture of a man who was an “extraordinary director, writer, actor, and bon vivant who made such iconic films as The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre [in which his father, Walter Huston, co-starred], The Asphalt Jungle and The African Queen.” He also directed Anjelica Huston, his daughter by the fourth of his five wives.

John Ford. John Huston. Orson Welles. Billy Wilder. Vincente Minnelli. Woody Allen. And more. Too many biographies/autobiographies? I plead guilty. But I can’t stop. They’re addictive.