Visit our concession stands
August 12, 2009
The Christian Science Monitor has a story about a phenomenon known as “guerrilla drive-in” — referring to a fad in which movie buffs or people out for a good time are setting up ad-hoc outdoor movie sites.
In one sense, the full-blown outdoor movie — the drive-in — had two practical advantages that the indoor theater couldn’t match. One was the opportunity to make out in relative privacy — or so I’m told; the other was the opportunity to take kids to a movie regardless of how they behaved.
There were some disadvantages, including poor sound systems, mosquitos, susceptibility to bad weather, and rowdy patrons. Apparently these outweighed the advantages, because the number of drive-ins in the United States has dwindled from about 5,000 in the 1950s to 383 ( including the Delsea in Vineland, here in New Jersey) according to the Monitor’s story.
My strongest memory of the experience is of taking the kids to a drive-in one steamy summer night and being stuck with the choice of being eaten by the famous Jersey Mosquitos or rolling up the windows and suffocating — unable to see the screen through the fogged-up windshield.
But I also remember going to outdoor movies in a less formal way when I was a student at Penn State. Every Friday night, a screen was erected on one of the campus lawns, and we could sit on the grass and watch several slightly dated films, plus cartoons. That was almost 40 years ago, and I can’t remember whether we paid an admission. What I do remember was that, because we were seeing them outdoors, we enjoyed the movies almost regardless of their quality. I guess it’s the same effect as eating a dirty-water hot dog on a street corner in Manhattan.
The Monitor’s story is at this link:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0810/p17s02-almo.html
You can make your own drive-in movie marquee at this link:
The lady and the dragon
August 11, 2009
KUKLA, OLLIE, and FRAN ALLISON
The stamps the Postal Service issued today under the title “Early TV Memories” omit broadcasting legend Gertrude Berg but do include the influential puppet show “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” which first appeared 60 years ago. The show adopted the medieval format of hand puppets on a miniature stage, but added on-camera human being Fran Allison to interact with the characters. The major figures were Kukla — a bald creature inexplicably dressed as a clown, and Ollie – a dragon. They were joined as the situation dictated by about a dozen others, including Beulah Witch, Madame Oglepuss, Colonel Crackie, and Fletcher Rabbit, a letter carrier who was always singing “Buffalo Gal, Won’t You Come Out Tonight?”
The show, which was live when it first appeared, was done without a script. While Fran Allison was sort of an innocent, many of the puppet characters were wise-crackers. The impromptu gags often brought on audible laughter from the crew — with whom the characters frequently exchanged remarks. There is an instance of that kind of interaction — a gag about ad agencies — in the 1951 episode at the link below. That episode also has an example of a commercial — this one for a brand of shampoo — that is worked into the story line, a common device in early televison. There is also a more conventional commercial for Tide at the end of the program. The half-hour show included only those two commercials.
KUKLA and OLLIE
“Kukla, Fran and Ollie” was the brainchild of Burr Tillstrom, who appears briefly at the end of the episode I have linked to. Tillstrom worked all the puppets and provided their voices. What is most striking about his concept in this show is that it was not played for slapstick laughs and it was not condescending to children. It was conducted on such a thoughtful level, in fact, that its audience among adults was reputed to be at least as large as its audience among children. In the episode I have linked to, the characters make several references to “Tallulah” and “Tallulah’s place in New York.” Those were references to the stage and film actress Tallulah Bankhead, who was one of many public figures who were enthusiastic followers of the show.
BEULAH WITCH
The leisurely pace of “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” was in sharp contrast to the frenetic programming that dominates television today. Tillstrom’s show relied heavily on character, and that was an important part of its attraction for adults. In this and other respects, the show foreshadowed — and, in fact, led to — the Muppets. The simple and silly figure of Oliver Dragon — who could be at turns romantic and manipulative — became as real and sympathetic to his audience as Burt and Ernie and Kermit became to theirs. Tillstrom and Allison recognized that; in fact, Ollie unblushingly discusses his charisms in the episode at this link:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?gbv=2&hl=en&q=kukla%20fran%20and%20ollie&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iv#
A Los Angeles Times story about the release of a DVD collection of later episodes of “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie” is at this link:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-kukla11-2009aug11,0,1322349.story
KUKLA, BURR TILSTROM, FRAN ALLISON, and OLLIE
… and it’s gone!
August 10, 2009
GABBY HARNETT baseball card
The Boston Globe has a touching little story about Sara Bejoian, a Watertown woman who carried on a friendly baseball rivalry with her husband, Jim, who died last year when the couple had been married just shy of 54 years. Sara was a Red Sox fan and Jim rooted for the Yankees.
The point of the story was that Sara has agreed to throw out the first ball at an old-time baseball game, as a tribute to her late husband. The account by Peter DeMarco includes this sentence: “Jim Bejoian’s passion for the sport extended to the Oldtime Baseball Game, an annual charity game held at St. Peter’s Field in Cambridge in which local amateurs dress in uniforms from bygone teams and swing wooden bats in the gloaming of a late-summer night.”
What caught my eye in that sentence was the word “gloaming,” a favorite word of mine, but a word that has been neglected to the point that it is practically extinct. “Gloaming” means “twilight” or “dusk.” To my ear, each of those terms has its own connotation, each suggests a different atmosphere in those moments after sunset. Gloaming has a kind of a brooding sound.
Baseball fans — I mean fans — know that the word “gloaming” occupies a special place in the history of the game. It is associated with a game between the Chicago Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates at Wrigley Field on Sept. 28, 1938. The Cubs were a half game behind the Pirates in the National League pennant race, and their record for September up to that point was 18 wins, 3 losses, and a tie.
GABBY HARTNETT
On Sept. 28, the teams were locked in a 5-5 tie in the bottom of the ninth inning. The sun had set, and night was coming on. There were no lights at Wrigley Field, so when Cubs playing manager Gabby Hartnett came to bat with two men out, it was clear to everyone that if he didn’t reach base, the umpires would end the game in a tie. With two strikes on him, Hartnett hit the ball into the darkness. The Cubs won and, three days later, clinched the pennant. The event has been known ever since as “the home run in the gloaming,” and what expression could capture it better?
I hope Hartnett is still an iconic figure in Chicago, where he played for 18 years. He certainly isn’t one in the everyday vernacular of baseball. He deserves better. He was one of the leading catchers of his time and an excellent hitter. He was a six-time All Star and an MVP, and he is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
In addition to his outstanding record as a hitter and fielder, Hartnett took part in two more of baseball’s legendary moments, at least one of which actually happened. He was behind the plate in the 1934 All Star Game, when Carl Hubbell struck out in succession Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin. And Hartnett was the catcher in the 1932 World Series when Babe Ruth ostensibly called his own home run to centerfield.
I think I’ll start slipping “gloaming” into the conversation and see if I can inspire others to do the same.
The Globe story is at this link:
“Newman!”
August 9, 2009
"Nevertheless!"
The Baltimore Sun this week published a story about the impact of digital media on the U.S. Postal Service and specifically on handwritten letters. The basis for the story is familiar: Handwritten letters, which were already in decline, have all but disappeared now that modern electronics provide so many other means to send messages. The Sun reporter discussed this development, and the recently-announced contraction of the postal system, with young people and with older people. The result was predictable.
I am almost 67 years old, and I can’t recall writing letters by hand. I used to write a lot of long personal letters — I recently discarded most of them — but I wrote them on a typewriter. Still, I have some nostalgia for the handwritten letter, mostly because I recall when my mother wrote letters to her out-of-state friends and relatives. Mom had won awards for her handwriting when that was still considered an important part of a person’s training, and she wrote those letters in a disciplined and attractive cursive. Correspondence in those days did not have the convenience of immediacy, and I recall the excitement when Andy, the mailman — who used to sing when he made his twice-a-day visits — brought a response from Lexington, South Carolina, or some other exotic port.
Of course, that form of correspondence is still available to anyone who wants to exercise his handwriting skills and experience the anticipation of awaiting an answer. That wouldn’t be me. Like many people in this century, I communicate with people all day long through the various means now available, and I think I get as much satisfaction out of the quick reply as Mom did out of the long-term one.
The Sun’s story and other reports on this topic include remarks from some authorities who worry that increasing reliance on e-mail, text messages, tweets, and whatever program may appear next, threatens to cause our handwriting skills to atrophy. But our kind have lost other communication skills that became obsolete, and we don’t seem to be any the worse for it. Well, we may be worse, but I doubt that our writing skills had anything to do with that.
The Sun’s story is at this link:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-md.pa.lettersaug07,0,5960461.story?page=1
I learned it in the movies
August 9, 2009
TOM HULCE
The Times of London, on its web site, presents its candidates for the ten most historically inaccurate movies. The bad news is that all but two were made before 1999, which — if one were to take this seriously — would suggest a fearsome and precipitous trend.
The earlier of the two monstrosities that were made before ’99 was “Amadeus,” the 1984 hatchet job on Antonio Salieri in which Tom Hulce played Mozart. The second was “Braveheart,” which I understand is a significantly inaccurate account of the life of a 13th century Scottish hero, Sir William Wallace. I don’t know anything about Wallace, which is to the point: If I had overlooked the fact that Mel Gibson starred in this film and had gone to see it, I might have accepted the account as roughly correct.
ANNE BANCROFT
Why The Times focused its attention mostly on the past decade I am not aware; maybe it reflects the level of confidence the editors have in their audience. Of course, inaccurate historical films have a proud history that extends back to decades before “Amadeus” appeared. Virtually every film based on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, for example, tries to outdo the original writers — even one of my favorites of that genre, Franco Zefferilli’s “Jesus of Nazareth,” made for television in 1977. Zef famously took pains to place the events of the gospels in their proper historical context, but he couldn’t restrain the tinkering hand. Like all dramatists, he had to portray poor Mary Magdalene, played by Anne Bancroft, as a prostitute — indeed, show her in a scene with one of her clients — even though there is no support for that idea. In Zefferelli’s tale, Barabbas — encouraged by a well-meaning Judas Iscariot — personally invites Jesus to support an armed rebellion against the Roman occupation of Palestine.
VAN HEFLIN
And as long ago as 1942, the year I was born, Van Heflin starred in the mercifully long-forgotten “Tennessee Johnson,” which purported to be a biography of Andrew Johnson, 17th president of these United States and a particular obsession of mine. The film had a pretty good cast, including Ruth Hussey, Lionel Barrymore, and Noah Beery, but the title itself set the tone for the movie as history: Nobody ever called the man “Tennessee Johnson.” The climactic scene in which Johnson goes to the floor of the Senate to defend himself against charges of impeachment was wholly fabricated. In fact, Johnson’s counsel — recalling how he came to be impeached in the first place — would not hear of him appearing at the trial for fear of what he might say. Sort of the Joe Biden of his day, in that respect.
At any rate, decide for yourself on the The Times’ choices, available at this link:
“That’s right – you’re wrong!” — Kay Kyser
August 7, 2009
ABBOTT and COSTELLO
I just reviewed a book of photographs taken at the New Jersey Shore between the late 19th century and the 1970s. As frequently happens when I read books these days, I was annoyed to distraction by the careless errors in the text – the text, in this case, consisting of chapter introductions and photo captions.
The author of the text, a New Jersey resident vaguely identified as a history teacher, must have a loose view of what constitutes history. For example, he identified the birthplace of comedian Lou Costello as “Patterson.” He also made several references to a shore community that he called “Tom’s River.” Who “Tom” is, I am not aware.
MARGARET GORMAN
The book includes three photos of Margaret Gorman, dressed in an outlandish outfit for her “coronation” as the first Miss America at the pageant that originated and persisted for many years in Atlantic City. In one photo she is accompanied by a man dressed up as King Neptune; in another, she poses on the boardwalk with a group of young girls in dancing costumes; in the last, she is being borne along the boardwalk by in what looks like a sedan chair in the shape of a seashell. The writer explains — twice — that Gorman was installed as Miss America in 1922. It was 1921.
JOE WARDELL
In one of several stunning photos of the amusement areas in Atlantic City, a marquee announces that the live entertainment on the Steel Pier includes The Three Stooges. Taking note of that, the writer adds to the name of the act the names of the individual characters — “Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe.” The photo was taken in 1938. Curly Joe Wardell didn’t join The Three Stooges until 1958. Perhaps the history teacher was thinking of Curly Howard.
Is this sort of thing the result only of downsizing in the workshops of publishing houses, or is it symptomatic of a more general disregard for precision? There was a time when it would might have taken hours for a writer to double-check the date of the first Miss America, the spellings of well-known places in his own home state, and the chronology of the evolution of a comedy act. In the 21st century, all of that would take no more than fifteen minutes.
Sui generis
August 5, 2009
GERTRUDE BERG
A few months ago, I wrote in this journal that my wife and I had discovered and watched on line a few episodes of the television series “The Goldbergs.” Those episodes are at http://www.archives.com.
After I wrote that blog, I heard from a publicist who was handling a new documentary film about the owner, writer, and star of “The Goldbergs” — Gertrude Berg — who was one of the most remarkable women of the second half of the 20th century. As a result of that contact, I wrote the following story, part of which has appeared in the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill and has been picked up on other blogs:
When the U.S. Postal Service issues its “Early TV Memories” stamps this summer, don’t look for Gertrude Berg.
The New York City native, who 80 years ago created the domestic situation comedy, and became a media mogul, was not included with the likes of Lucille Ball and Harriet Nelson, who decades later followed her into American homes.
But Berg is being reintroduced to the American public in a documentary film – “Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” – written and directed by Aviva Kempner.
The title evokes the phrase associated with Berg during the radio and television runs of the show she created and controlled, most widely known as “The Goldbergs.”
The principal character, Molly Goldberg, and her neighbors in a Bronx apartment building, interacted by leaning out their windows and calling: “Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg … Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Bloom.”
From her window, Molly – portrayed by Berg – invited listeners and viewers into the Goldberg household to share the lives of her husband, Jake; their children, Sammy and Rosalie; and Molly’s brother, David Romaine.
The show ran on radio from 1929 to 1946 – five days a week for much of that time – and on television from 1949 to 1956. Berg herself wrote every script in longhand.
PHILLIP LOEB
There were also a stage play, a movie, a lucrative vaudeville tour, a comic strip, a jigsaw puzzle, a newspaper column, a line of women’s dresses, and a popular cookbook – although Berg couldn’t cook.
Berg’s rise to prominence, Kempner emphasized, occurred “at the time of the greatest domestic anti-Semitism in America, and during the rise of Adolf Hitler in Europe.’’
Berg presented the family as Jewish – adopting a mild Yiddish accent and a unique use of language that became a hallmark of the character:
As Molly shows off a hat, a neighbor asks: “With what dress are you going to wear it?’’
“With mine periwinkle,’’ Molly answers, striking a pose: “Visualize!”
And Berg didn’t shy away from difficult issues affecting Jews.
The documentary points out that in 1933, the year Hitler became dicator of Germany, she had a rabbi conduct a Seder service on the program. And after Kristallnacht in 1938, she wrote an episode in which a stone smashed an apartment window while the Goldbergs were celebrating Passover; Molly calmed the children and urged Jake to continue leading the Seder.
“And yet,’’ Kempner said, “Molly Goldberg was universal. You didn’t have to be Jewish to love her.’’
This urban mother first appeared on radio a month after the stock market crash, and the Goldbergs became so important to the national psyche during the Great Depression, as people maintaining the family circle in spite of want, that Franklin Roosevelt himself acknowledged it.
THE CAST OF "THE GOLDBERGS"
Kempner – based in Washington, D.C. – made the documentary through her Ciesla Foundation, whose goal is to “produce films about under-known Jewish heroes.” Kempner – whose work includes a 2000 film about baseball legend Hank Greenberg – said that although the Gertrude Berg film is complete, she is still raising money to pay for it.
The new film includes vintage photos and motion pictures and input from members of Berg’s family, actors, her biographer and others, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The story they tell has its dark sides.
Berg, born in 1898, did not grow up in the kind of setting she portrayed in her shows.
“She never had a nurturing mother like Molly Goldberg,’’ Kempner said. “She created what she didn’t have.’’
Berg’s own mother sunk into depression after the early death of her son and ended her life in a mental institution. Berg’s father badgered Gertrude into working at resorts he opened in the Catskills and in Florida but never supported her career as an actress and producer.
By contrast, her husband, Lewis Berg, a chemical engineer, typed many scripts from his wife’s handwritten originals.
Especially unsettling in Gertrude Berg’s life was the impact of “Red Channels,” the publication that purported to expose Communists working in radio and film.
One of those identified was Philip Loeb, an actors’ union leader, who played Jake Goldberg on the television series. Berg herself was listed as a “sympathizer.”
CBS and her sponsor pressured Gertrude Berg to fire Loeb. She refused, and her show was cancelled. NBC eventually picked up the show, but Loeb had accepted a cash settlement out of consideration for Berg and the other actors. Blacklisted from radio and film, he committed suicide in 1955.
Berg won an Emmy for her portrayal of Molly Goldberg, and a Tony for her 1959 Broadway performance in “A Majority of One,” and her autobiography was a best seller.
Still, only a small percentage of Americans today know who Gertrude Berg was, Kempner said, “and I want to restore her correct place in our cultural history.’’
The home web site for the film is at http://www.mollygoldbergfilm.org/home.php Information about theaters showing the film is available there.
The Ciesla Foundation web site is at http://www.cieslafoundation.org/
“One man is a world in miniature.” — Albert Pike
August 5, 2009
The Statue of Liberty in a needle's eye
The BBC World News broadcast this morning included a report on Willard Wigan, a British sculptor whose works are so small that they can be seen only through a microscope.
Wigan traced this vocation to the fact that he is dyslexic. When he was a child, he said, dyslexia was not well understood, and he was accordingly treated as a cipher. He retreated into a fantasy world in which he built minature houses and other articles for use by the ants he found on the grounds outside his home.
It was one thing to hear the BBC radio reporter describing Wigan’s work; it was another thing to see photos of his creations for myself. They put me to mind of what I have recently read about the sizes of some circuits now in use and the prospects for such devices to become even smaller.
What are we more fascinated with, I wonder, the very large or the very small? In nature, the answer may be the very large; the Blue Whale still leaves us breathless. But where the man-made is concerned, my money is on the very small. The debacle at Babel aside — I think we are all convinced that man can build as large as he cares to, and so we aren’t so impressed when he outdoes himself. The Sears Tower? The Empire State Building? Yeah, yeah. Where should we have lunch?
Match head and boxing match
The compelling thing about small, is that our imaginations don’t contain smallness as easily as they contain bigness. We could visualize a building tall enough to reach the moon — even if it’s a physical impossibility — but we can’t visualize things so small that we cannot see them. There is nothing in our everyday experience to give us a frame of reference — those of us who aren’t physicists or bacteriologists, that is.
At any rate, you can read all about Mr. Wigan and see more of his work at this link:
http://www.willard-wigan.com/default.aspx
Girl on an eyelash
“Down the road of life we’ll fly.” — Vincent C. Bryan
August 3, 2009
The controversy of the federal government’s “cash-for-clunkers” program dramatizes the odd position we Americans have put ourselves in as victims of our own success.
The program provides a $4,500 subsidy for a qualified buyer who wants to trade in an old inefficient vehicle for a new and “greener” one. Everybody wins in this program: the buyer can afford a new car, the auto dealer and — by extension — the manufacturer gets rid of inventory, the environment is subject to one less outrage, and the junk yard gets another heap to turn back into cash. The program is so beneficial, and consequently so popular, that it went broke in a hurry, and the question of whether to re-fund it is now being debated in Congress.
One of those opposed to more funding for this program is U.S. Sen. John McCain — Sarah Palin’s former running mate. McCain thinks this program is an unfair subsidy of the auto industry, as distinct from other classes of business that are at risk in this economic downturn. But the auto industry is getting this attention because it has become such a pervasive part of the overall economy; if it goes down, according to conventional wisdom, everything else goes with it.
At the root of this phenomenon is the American obsession with cars and with new cars in particular. This has been out of control for a long time, but we were too giddy to notice. The industry produces too many cars, and whole sectors of the economy have grown around that practice like barnacles. This has happened in a country that has failed miserably at building an efficient mass-transit system, though it talks endlessly, and without blushing, about the need to get travelers off the roads and onto trains and buses and monorails and — while we’re daydreaming — into teletransporters. I don’t know if this is what McCain means by his opposition to this latest proposal to expand the federal deficit, but despite the rhetoric about reforming the auto industry, the game plan really seems to be to help it continue overproduction. And what do we think will happen in the long run if we win at that game? I admit to a prejudice here, because I drive a car until it has well over 150,000 miles on the clock, but if we continue the same behavior and expect a different outcome, aren’t we all — by definition — crazy?
"Beam me up"
JOHN F. KENNEDY
You can’t turn your back on anybody.
Take Harvard University, for example, an institution one might think of as a temple of virtue. It turns out that Harvard has been using the trade-mark laws to get control of common expressions. The university has an pending application, for example, to register the phrase “Managing Yourself.” The rationale is that the phrase is used by the university in promotional campaigns for one of its schools, and Harvard doesn’t want someone claiming a prior right to the words. As if.
If that sounds overly cautious, consider the fact that the university has filed a trademark application for the expression “The world’s thinking” based on the idea that the school may want to use those words in the future.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
Among the items so highly treasured in Cambridge is the line “Ask what you can do,” used by the Kennedy School of Government in a variety of campaigns. Those words were, of course, a high point in the presidential inaugural address of a Harvard alum, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library is said to be raising its corporate eyebrows over alma mater’s decision to nail down the clause.
There’s no word on whether Harvard has checked with the heirs, if any, of the Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran, who wrote a remarkably similar “ask not” formula in his 1925 work entitled — cough, cough! — “New Frontier.”
Is it all very innocent? One Harvard professor, Harry Lewis, takes at least philosphical exception, expressed in the Boston Globe as follows: “Universities should not be in the business of locking words down. We’re in the business of enlightening the world. To lock down common English phrases seems to be antithetical to the spirit of what universities are supposed to be about.’’
Meanwhile, if Harvard intends to go on registering phrases for which it hasn’t yet found a use — well, Yogi, watch your back.
You can read the Globe’s account of this matter at the following link:
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