Children at Theresienstadt. Yad Vashem Archives.
It’s been a good reading season squeezed in between semesters. The pace will slow down when classes resume next week, though I just started a fascinating book about Isaac Newton’s little-known career as the scourge of counterfeiters. Of that, more later.
I just finished “The Girls of Room 28” by Hannelore Brenner, which describes the lives of children who were incarcerated at the Jewish ghetto in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, between 1941 and 1944. An estimated 13,000 children passed through there; 25 survived. Some died of disease or other consequences of neglect. Most died in the concentration camps further east. Brenner presents first-hand accounts from some of the survivors as well as material from diaries and other such documents. She also records how the Nazis bamboozled the International Red Cross into thinking that Theresienstadt was a model community for Jews, founded on the benevolent nature of Adolf Hitler. There is a lot of information and photographs about the ghetto on the YAD VASHEM web site.
Abraham Lincoln reading to his son Tad.
I can’t read too many books about Abraham Lincoln, and I was delighted with “Lincoln, Life-Size,” a volume that includes digitized reproductions of all 114 known photographs of Lincoln, most of them portraits. The book was assembled by three descendants of Frederick Meserve, one of the best-known collectors of Lincoln images. The authors used high technology to calculate the size of Lincoln’s head. The head was cropped from each of several dozen photographs and reproduced on the facing page in life size. The result is fascinating and, at times, unsettling. The authors also accompany each photograph with texts drawn from a variety of sources, some putting the photo in context, others illuminating some aspect of Lincoln’s public or private life.
GERTRUDE EDERLE
“America’s Girl” is a biography of Gertrude Ederle, a young woman from New York City who, in 1926, not only became the first woman to swim the English Channel, but far surpassed the previous record — set, obviously, by a man. Ederle did not lead an exciting life in the long term, but in the weeks and months after her achievement, she was a celebrity of proportions that have only rarely been exceeded — even in our own age of instant notoriety. More important, really, is that her accomplishment had a significance that transcended her personal fortunes. Ederle confounded the widely accepted assumption that women were not capable of feats like the one she performed. Her crossing helped to accelerate brewing changes in how women were regarded and what they were permitted to do in a society in which only men were allowed to vote until only five years before. The book was written by Tim Dahlberg with Mary Ederle Ward – the swimmer’s niece – and Brenda Green.
Yogi Berra jumps into Don Larsen's arms after the last out of the perfect game.
“Perfect” by Lew Paper, is based on Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Paper examines the well-worn but still fascinating fact that this feat – achieved only once since the World Series was inaugurated in 1903 – was carried out by a mediocre pitcher whose name would long have been forgotten if it hadn’t been for that day. But Paper makes his book good winter reading for baseball fanatics by devoting each of his 18 chapters to one the half-innings in that game, and focusing each chapter on one of the players who participated. In one instance only, he profiles two players – Jackie Robinson and Gil McDouglald – in a single chapter. In each case, Paper recounts the personal history that brought the player – Mickey Mantle, Enos Slaughter, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese – to that historic moment in sports. Not the least of these figures is Dale Mitchell of the Dodgers who was pinch hitting for starting pitcher Sal Maglie in the top of the ninth when he took the called strike that sealed Larsen’s place in history. Mitchell, who had one of the best batting eyes of his era, thought the pitch was high. So, according to Paper, did most of the Yankees on the field. But, as one baseball wag observed, when the umpire calls strike three on you, even God can’t get you off.
Authorities estimated that a third of the population of New York City - about two million people - turned out for this ticker-tape parade for Gertrude Ederle. It remains the largest such event to honor an individual athlete. (© Underwood & Underwood/CORBIS)
“Let me tell you about Sandy Dennis: There should be one in every home.” — Walter Kerr
January 11, 2010
Sandy Dennis Foundation
Turner Classic Movies picked an off-peak hour — 6 p.m. yesterday — to show “Sweet November,” a movie we weren’t familiar with, starring Anthony Newley and the unique actress Sandra Dennis. Knowing it was a Sandra Dennis movie, we actually planned dinner so that we’d be done in time to watch — and were we ever glad we did.
This 1968 film tells an offbeat story about a young woman, Sara Dever, who — in a disingenuous way — charms a series of men into moving in with her for a month each. Sara is, by most standards, mad, but she is also irresistible in a way that Sandra Dennis was irresistible. The men who become her temporary lovers — arriving at the stroke of midnight on the first day of the month, leaving at the stroke of midnight on the last — are chance encounters, but in each she perceives some weakness, some flaw, and she helps him overcome it in 28, 30, or 31 days.
ANTHONY NEWLEY
Sara insists on the schedule. No man is to remain even a minute more than his allotment. Some are better than others at living up to this part of the bargain. The system begins to run amok when Sara takes in Charlie Blake, a seemingly unctuous Englishman who inherited a lucrative box-manufacturing company and is trying to expand it in the United States. As Charlie’s month, November, slips away, he is less and less inclined to part company with Sara. He is also increasingly concerned that her insistence on his departure has to do with something more — something darker — than her therapeutic routine.
THEODORE BIKEL
The cast of this film includes Theodore Bikel as Alonzo, a vegan sign painter and Sara’s one true confidant.
All the performances are moving, and Sandra Dennis is as good as she ever was on film, blurring the distinction between the actress and the character through inimitable speech and mannerisms and deep emotional insights. I had the good fortune to meet this actress on two occasions, and I found her just as mesmerizing as Sara seems to be in this film — and for many of the same reasons.
“Sweet November” was remade in 2001 with Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. I haven’t seen that version, but from what I’ve read, it was a laughing stock. It might have been a bad film altogether, but even if it wasn’t, I doubt that many people who have seen Sandra Dennis play Sara Dever would want to see anyone else in the part.
Sandra Dennis and Anthony Newley in "Sweet November"
Which president was the best football player?
January 8, 2010
The relationship between baseball and presidents of the United States has been well documented; in fact, there is a room devoted to the subject at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. The earliest association seems to be with Abraham Lincoln and it is most graphically represented by this Currier & Ives political cartoon, published in 1860, after Lincoln had outlasted three opponents to win the presidency. Lincoln is saying, “Gentleman, if ever you should take a hand in another match at this game, remember that you must have a good bat to strike a fair ball and make a clean score and a home run.”
ANDREW JOHNSON
How close Lincoln was to the game seems to be a matter of debate, but it is documented that his successor, Andrew Johnson, was the first president to witness an intra-city game and the first president to invite a baseball team into the White House. Among his papers are several honorary membership cards in baseball organizations.
Another president who had a particular connection to baseball was Dwight Eisenhower, who loved the game and said more than once that he would have liked to have played professionally. There is a lingering discussion about whether he did, in fact, once play semi-pro ball under an assumed name — something that would have fouled the amateur status under which he played football at West Point. A number of prominent witnesses said that Eisenhower had admitted to this in later life, but Eisenhower never publicly owned up to it.
GERALD FORD
Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor has looked into the subject of presidents and football — specifically, which president was the best player. The candidates are Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan.
Even after one gets over the image of Nixon playing football, the answer isn’t as obvious as it may seem.
If you can’t guess, you can read about it at THIS LINK.
Netflix Update No. 26: “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
January 7, 2010
REBECCA HALL
We finally got around to watching “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” which was a very successful film for Woody Allen in 2008. Besides making a lot of money – in proportion to its budget – the film won and was nominated for a ton of awards, including a best supporting actress Oscar for Penelope Cruz.
Allen pursues his interest in neurotic people, but in an unusual environment for him — some very attractive locations in Spain. The story involves two young American women — Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) — who get a chance to spend a summer in Spain in the home of a distant relative of Vicky’s, played by Patricia Clarkson. Vicky, who is a bit prim and self-assured is engaged to marry a well-groomed go-getter. Cristina, who hasn’t been successful at relationships, tentatively plays at being a free spirit. Allen uses a narrator – Christopher Evan Welch – to describe in a documentary fashion the summer in Spain in which the lives of both women are thrown into disarray.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
The agent for the turmoil is Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem), an artist whose relationship with his wife, Maria Elena (Cruz), was disrupted when she stabbed him in a characteristic fit of rage. Though it is disrupted, the relationship is not over — certainly not in Gonzalo’s mind or loins. Despite Vicky’s protestations, Cristina becomes involved with Gonzalo — in fact, moves in with him — after he unsuccessfully invites both women to join him in a menage. Vicky disapproves and says so, but by now — thanks to Gonzalo — she’s not nearly as sure of herself.
Things get very complicated even before Maria Elena reappears — with a flourish — to play a wholly unexpected part or two in turning things upside down.
JAVIER BARDEM
The credibility of this story hangs heavily on Gonzalo’s charm, and Bardem has it to spare. It’s an interesting combination of raw magnetism and sexual grace that plausibly could, on the one hand, take advantage of Cristine’s confusion and, on the other hand, crumble Vicky’s moral fortifications, and — if there were a third hand — inspire Maria Elena’s capacity for both lust and murder.
As usual, when Allen is on his game, this film is well written, well directed, well cast, well photographed, and well acted.
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem in a scene from "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Harold Lloyd, one more time
January 4, 2010
HAROLD LLOYD
An obscure public-access channel on our Comcast system showed “The Sin of Mr. Diddlebock” last night — an historic film in the sense that it was Harold Lloyd’s last.
Lloyd was such a genius at film comedy that I’m not sure anyone can be said to have surpassed him. This is not a good example of his work, and yet — because it’s Harold Lloyd — it’s worth watching anyway. Lloyd was coaxed out of retirement by Preston Sturgess, who wrote and directed this movie, but the two men fought bitterly throughout the production. In fact, there are two cuts of this film — the Lloyd version and the Sturgess version, the latter titled “Mad Wednesday.”
In what is probably the only instance of its kind in film history, Sturgess opens this 1947 sound film with a scene from Lloyd’s 1925 silent feature “The Freshman” in which the water boy on a college football team gets into the game and scores the last-minute winning touchdown. Lloyd charged Sturgess $50,000 for the use of that clip.
"HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK"
“The Sin of Mr. Diddlebock” ostensibly picks up the story of the same character — though with a different name — as he takes a job “at the bottom” of an advertising agency with the promise that he will get an opportunity to move up and express his bright ideas. Twenty years later, he is at the same job in the basement bookkeeping department when his boss hands him a watch and about $2,000 in savings and shows him the door. Out on the street, Diddlebock meets a panhandler and agrees to have a drink with him — the first drink of Diddlebock’s life. This is the occasion for a hilarious scene in which the bartender played by Edgar Kennedy — a wonderful comedian — mixes an original and potent concoction to make the maiden voyage memorable. You can watch that scene at THIS LINK.
Under the influence of the drink named in his honor, Diddlebock unwittingly stumbles through a series of adventures that end with him owning a horse-drawn cab complete with driver, and a penniless circus complete with 27 hungry lions.
Harold Diddlebock and his newfound friend.
The resolution comes complete with a dose of Lloyd’s trade-mark, nail-biting high-jinx on a ledge many stories above a city street.
Besides Kennedy, the cast includes Margaret Hamilton, Franklin Pangborn, and Rudy Vallee. The film — juvenile and clumsy at times — is not in the same class of the earlier work in which Lloyd was more prolific and more financially successful than Chaplin or Keaton. But Sturgess’s dialogue shows some of the old flair and Lloyd, at 54, is still able to pull off that boyish exuberance.
JIMMY DURANTE
There is a sequence of scenes in this movie in which Lloyd and other actors work closely with a lion. Some of these scenes are quite physical, and they reminded me of a story Jimmy Durante once told on the David Susskind TV show. Durante said he did a routine with an elephant in the Broadway production of Billy Rose’s “Jumbo,” which was later a movie in which Durante also appeared. In the stage show, Durante did a stunt in which he lay down on the stage while the elephant used its foot to crush a cinder block that was next to Durante’s head. According to Durante, Frank Buck — the big-game hunter — came backstage after one performance to meet the cast. He mentioned the scene with the elephant and told Durante, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars. You can never trust an elephant.” Well, Lloyd and his colleagues trusted a lion a lot more than I would — I don’t care how well fed, sedated, trained, or elderly the animal might be.
“Oh, to be torn ‘twixt love and duty” — Ned Washington
December 31, 2009
GARY COOPER
So anyway, I didn’t want to get up yesterday morning, and Turner Classics was playing “High Noon.” I had seen it only about three dozen times, so I decided to watch. It never gets old. Its reputation has grown with the years, and deservedly so. The idea of telling a story in real time when there is virtually no action until the last couple of minutes was a master stroke — although there seems to be some dispute over whose stroke it was.
Unlike most westerns of that period – 1952 – this film is deeply cynical. It seeks to confirm my father-in-law’s frequent pronouncement that “people are no damned good,” as an entire town folds under the threat of the returning reprobate, Frank Miller, and leaves Marshal Will Kane to face Miller and his gang alone – or so they think.
Gary Cooper played the marshal – a good choice for the cerebral lawman, although there were some doubters because Cooper was so much older than his love interest in the film, Grace Kelly.
GARY COOPER and GRACE KELLY
This film was controversial in a way that illustrates the philosophical polarization of American society at the time. Carl Foreman wrote the screenplay and was a co-producer with Stanley Kramer, but when Foreman refused to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee, Kramer basically forced him out of the project and took away his credit as a producer.
John Wayne publicly denounced this film as an allegory about those who failed to support actors and other creative artists who were being badgered by the House committee. Ostensibly, he made “Rio Bravo” as a right-wing response to “High Noon.” On the other hand, Ronald Reagan took the story at face value and said he liked the portrayal of the marshal as dedicated to law and order and more concerned about the well being of the town than about his own life. Dwight Eisenhower was a fan of “High Noon,” and Bill Clinton had it screened 17 times while he was president.
TEX RITTER
Besides the concept itself, the cinematography, and the performances by Cooper and the rest of a strong cast — including Lloyd Bridges and Thomas Mitchell — this film owes its status to the title song with words by Ned Washington and music by Dmitri Tiomkin. The song, performed by the great western singer Tex Ritter, drifts into the background again and again, adding to the tension. Frankie Laine’s recording of this song sold a million copies, and I like his performance, but listening to someone other than Ritter sing “High Noon” is like listening to someone other than Johnny Mathis sing “Misty.”
The title song won an Academy Award that year. British film writer Deborah Allison maintains that the film played a pivotal role in movie-movie history. Her interesting article as at THIS LINK.
Netflix Update No. 25: “My Louisiana Sky”
December 29, 2009
Michael Cera as Jesse Wade Thompson and Kelsey Keel as Tiger Ann Parker in "My Louisiana Sky"
We watched a 2001 children’s movie from Showtime, “My Louisiana Sky,” and we weren’t surprised afterward to learn that it had won numerous awards — including the Andrew Carnegie Award and three daytime Emmys — and had been nominated for more.
JULIETTE LEWIS
Based on a novel by Kimberly Willis Holt, the story concerns Tiger, a 12-year-old girl, who lives on a farm in Louisiana with her mentally handicapped parents — Corinna and Lonnie Parker — and her maternal grandmother, Jewel Ramsey. Corinna (Amelia Campbell) is childlike, less mature now than her own daughter, and Lonnie (Chris Owens) is barely literate but is savvy enough to not only hold down a job on a nearby farm but to win the trust and respect of the owner. Jewel (Shirley Knight) keeps the house, maintains order, and does per-diem farm work — sometimes with the help of Tiger (Kelsey Keel), to earn some cash.
AMELIA CAMPBELL
There is one prodigal family member — Jewel’s other daughter, Dorie, played by the redoubtable Juliette Lewis — who has left rural life behind for a career in Baton Rouge.
Tiger experiences isolation and rejection because of the way other children regard her parents. The only child who pursues a friendship with her is Jesse Wade Thompson (Michael Cera), and Tiger has trouble accepting his exuberance. When life at home deteriorates, she considers but does not leap at the prospect offered by Dorie of a comfortable and exciting life in the city.
KELSEY KEEL
While adults may find it simplistic, the portrayal of a girl deciding where her true happiness lies can be a valuable object lesson for children.
Under the direction of Adam Arkin — whose brother Anthony is married to Amelia Campbell — every cast member delivers a strong performance. Arkin and Kelsey Keel won two of the Emmys.
My homily for Christmas 2009
December 24, 2009
"The Manger" by American photographer Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934).
The following is my homily for Masses on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 2009. The theme was prompted by Tania Mann’s article, “A Heart of Flesh,” in her on-line journal “This Very Life.”
The other night I watched an episode of the TV series “Dragnet” that was originally broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1953.
“Dragnet” was one of the first police shows on television, and it based all of its stories on cases in the files of the Los Angeles Police Department.
In this episode, two detectives investigate the disappearance of a statue of the infant Jesus from the manger scene in a church in a largely Mexican neighborhood.
The pastor of the church tells the detectives that the statue had almost no monetary value, and that he could replace it.
But it had been in the manger every Christmas for decades, and the people of this poor parish would find a new figure hard to accept.
The statue was returned in time for Christmas Day, and many Christians probably appreciate how important that was to the congregation.
Many families, like those parishioners, consider their manger scene a part of their tradition, and no matter how chipped or faded the figures may become, they are unpacked every year and put in their accustomed place.
Tradition plays a part in many Christmas observances, but this desire for continuity in the portrayal of the nativity is especially fitting.
Because the practice of erecting a manger scene as we know it, is itself 786 years old.
It was introduced by Francis of Assisi for a mass to be celebrated in Greccio, a hill town in Central Italy, at midnight on Christmas of the year 1223.
Francis used living figures, including animals, but his tableaux was the model from which the manger scenes of today have evolved.
He got permission from Pope Honorius III to create that display because he wanted to focus attention – including his own, he said – on the circumstances in which God entered the world in the form of the infant Jesus.
He wanted to be able to visualize – and help other people visualize – the humility with which God, in the person of Jesus, began the journey that would lead to the salvation of the world.
As a matter of faith, Francis and other Christians knew that God had put aside his divine nature – had covered it up, so to speak – and had taken on not only the appearance but the nature of a human being.
Francis and other Christians knew intellectually that that was an astounding act of love.
But Francis wanted to see for himself, and to show others, the full depth of that love that God had for his people – God, who did not come to save his people by overwhelming them or terrifying them, but by embracing them.
Francis wanted to experience that love – wanted others to experience that love – on more than the level of theology and philosophy.
And so he wanted to contemplate that improbable scene in which the Creator of the Universe, the source and cause of all that is, makes himself present not only in the form of a human being, but in the form of a poor, helpless infant – no wealthier, no stronger than the least of his own creatures.
That child, when he had grown to manhood, would say that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends, and Francis knew that act of love began in the manger where God first gave himself – literally – to mankind.
Pope Benedict recently blessed hundreds of images of the infant Jesus that were brought to St. Peter’s Square by families preparing for Christmas.
And as he gave the blessing, the pope recalled the inspiration of St. Francis.
“The crib is a school of life,’’ the holy father said, “where we can learn the secret of true joy. This does not consist in having so many things, but in feeling loved by the Lord, (and ourselves) becoming a gift for others ….”
It is said that a teacher never knows where his influence ends, and St Francis, more than 700 years ago, cannot have known what he started.
But he taught his lesson well. It reverberates in our own time, as it did in the words of the late Cardinal Basil Hume:
“The birth of Jesus in the stable at Bethlehem is where all my questions begin to be answered.
“If I want to look on the face of utter love – if I want to see what the lover will do for the beloved – I … look on the image of the child lying in the manger.”
Say, who is that guy, anyway?
December 23, 2009
HERB VIGRAN
When we were watching the “Dragnet” Christmas episode the other night, a familiar face appeared. It was the clerk at a fleabag hotel. And as we do every time we see him, we said, “Wow, that guy must have made a thousand movies and TV shows.”
This time for a change, I decided to find out who he was, and he turned out to be character actor Herb Vigran. According to the International Movie Database, he appeared in 314 TV episodes and movies between 1934 and 1987. His last film, “Amazon Women on the Moon,” was released the year after his death.
HERB VIGRAN
Vigran held a law degree, but he never practiced law because he was in love with acting. Besides all the TV and movies, he did some stage work, including the 1936 Broadway classic “Having a Wonderful Time” with John Garfield and Eve Arden. He also worked in radio and was a regular on “The Jack Benny Program” before doing three years of military service during World War II.
His hundreds of TV jobs included multiple appearances on “The Adventures of Superman,” the original “Dragnet” and the later revival, “The Jack Benny Show,” “I Love Lucy,” and “Gunsmoke.”
He was so successful as a character actor that he had one of the most familiar faces in America — he looked like your Uncle Ed — but he rarely played the same part twice and was known to most of his audience as “Wotzisname.”
Herb Vigran in an episode of "The Adventures of Superman"
Netflix Update 24: “Edge of America”
December 21, 2009
JAMES McDANIEL
We watched a 2003 Showtime movie, “Edge of America,” which concerns a black man who takes a job teaching English at a high school on an American Indian reservation. This was directed by Chris Eyre, the Cheyenne/Arapaho who was also responsible for “Smoke Signals,” and there are many similarities in mood and detail, including the wise-cracking radio personality.
Kenny Williams, McDaniels’ character, is maneuvered into taking over coaching duties for the school’s girls basketball team which, in a word, stinks. The short version is that he takes the team to the state championship finals, but not via the shortest distance. There are many obstacles, most of them born of Williams’ inability to quickly grasp the nuances of Indian culture and the realities of life for these impoverished and isolated people. He finds his way, however, with some prodding and shoving at the hands of the native people, and the movie becomes “To Sir With Love on the Rez.”
GERALDINE KEAMS
The story line and the outcome seem obvious, but there are excellent performances, including McDaniels’, which won him an Emmy. The Navajo actress Geraldine Keams is inspiring in the role of a tribal elder who is the skeptical mother of one of the team members, and Wes Studi, a Cherokee, is both credible and amusing as an auto mechanic who deftly helps the coach figure out his role in his unfamiliar surroundings. Irene Bedard, an Inuit/Metis actress, does a strong turn as a teacher who is forced to play conscience for the bungling Williams. An ensemble of young actors add a lot of guts to this film in their roles as players and students at the school.
“Edge of America” is based on the experience of Jerry Richardson, who died in an auto accident while he was head coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of Central Florida. This is how Richardson’s career was described on Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online:
Jerry Richardson, age 40, has been at UCF through four seasons and in that time has become a strong and quiet force on campus and in the community. He inherited a troubled program and last season took his team to a conference tournament championship and the NCAA tournament, a first for the UCF women’s program. Not only was he building a program, but more importantly he was having a significant impact on the lives of young women in Central Florida.
This of course is not surprising. Jerry Richardson came to UCF from the Navajo Nation Reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico, where he transformed a struggling high school women’s team into four-time State Champions. From 1982 to 1993 Jerry Richardson made the Lady Chieftans of Shiprock into a story of mythic dimensions. More importantly he changed the lives of the young women he coached. Eighty percent of them went on to college, mostly as non-athletes; this at a school with a fifty percent dropout rate in a population beset with poverty and alcoholism.
Richardson believed, and made his players believe, that there was nothing you could not do as long as you had two things: opportunity and a positive attitude. Jerry Richardson brought both to Shiprock and to UCF.
He was above all a teacher, not a coach. He understood the ephemeral character of victory on the courts, and the significance of preparing his women for life after basketball. “The trophies gather dust, the kids don’t, they keep moving,” he said. Jerry Richardson’s players moved on, well prepared for the world after basketball.
JAMES McDANIEL, WES STUDI, and IRENE BEDARD in "Edge of America"
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