REVIEW POTPOURRI – Actress: Lee Grant

Lee Grant

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Lee Grant

On the basis of three different roles, I currently find Lee Grant, still alive and very sharp in her late 90s, my favorite character actress.

The emotional nuance, strength, vulnerability, anger, calm before the storm, joy, love, maturity, chaos, decorum-every ounce of one’s humanity – is channeled from her very inner self with phenomenal discipline and authenticity into the trio of characters mentioned below:

The 1964 Fugitive episode Taps for a Dead War presented Miss Grant as Millie Hallop, a widow who owns a diner, and lives with her teenage son and brother-in-law, the latter with serious PTSD issues of his own as a Korean War veteran who was grossly disfigured by an explosion from a hand grenade tossed at him by an enemy soldier.

Meanwhile Millie is stressed out by everything that could stress out a widow raising a son, running a diner, dealing with an emotionally fractured brother-in-law and experiencing her own issues of harrowing loneliness with minimal help from the people around her.

Lee Grant has spoken of how she would draw on her own life experiences of loneliness, anxiety and anger to pour into her character roles. This statement verifies her rightfully celebrated ability to convey being on the brink of some unpredictable explosion resulting from the loneliness, anxiety and anger. When her brother-in-law, portrayed by the also very gifted Tim O’Connor, brings home the Fugitive title character Richard Kimble, whom he recognizes as a war-time buddy, Millie very quietly tells Kimble to leave immediately and never ever show his face at the diner again. The look of sulphuric rage in her eyes was honed to a precisely outstanding degree.

The 1967 Oscar winning In the Heat of the Night featured her as a grief-stricken widow Leslie Colbert who spasmodically flings her hands in the air when she is informed by Sidney Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs of her husband’s murder. At that moment, one is not sure if Mrs. Colbert is going to slap Tibbs or sob uncontrollably.

In a 1970 Columbo episode, Ransom for a Dead Man, she portrayed a murderess Leslie Williams who shoots her husband cold-bloodedly yet elicits a bizarre sympathy as she charmingly interacts with Peter Falk’s socially inept but phenomenally shrewd detective with his “Just one more thing” and “Thank you very much!”; and guardedly with a very suspicious stepdaughter. If I didn’t know any better, I would have rooted for her to get away with the murder.

One very memorable scene is when Leslie, being a licensed pilot of small aircraft, takes Columbo for a daredevil ride in her own plane and she is beautifully dressed and wearing designer sunglasses.

Born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal, in New York City, to parents who were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia, Lee Grant caught the stage bug very early in childhood and her Wikipedia biography gives an interesting account of her career with its setbacks and successes.

She was nominated for the Oscar best supporting actress award in 1951’s Detective Story in which she played a shoplifter; was named best actress at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival; but then blacklisted as a communist from 1952 to 1964 because, even though she was never a communist herself nor was ever interested in its ideology, her first husband and scriptwriter Arnold Manoff was a communist and she wouldn’t testify against him. During the 12 years, she was ekeing out a living through a few stage and TV roles and teaching to support herself and her daughter, actress Dinah Manoff.

In her 2014 autobiography, I Said Yes to Everything, she writes :

“Dinah was my grail, my constant; nothing and no one could get between us. Dinah, and my need to support her financially, morally, viscerally, and my rage at those who had taken twelve working, acting years from my life were what motivated me.”

More about Lee Grant can also be accessed via YouTube, etc.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Gerald Ford

The 38th President Gerald Ford (1913-2006) always struck me as the most personally likable of our 46 chief executives. His geniality helped immensely in generating good will on both sides of the aisle during his 25 years in the House of Representatives before President Richard Nixon appointed him as vice president on December 8, 1973, after Spiro T. Agnew was forced to resign.

However, at the same time, when Ford became vice president, I confess to knowing very little about him, except for the name, and, despite having more interest in our nation’s leaders 50 years ago than nowadays, I had very little interest in knowing more about Ford (Congressmen L. Mendel Rivers and H. Edward Hebert interested me more.). But I do remember Ford serving on the Warren Commission investigating JFK’s assassination.

Eight months later on August 9, 1974, President Richard Milhous Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford became president and would appoint Nelson Rockefeller as vice president (it was a choice between Rockefeller and George H. W. Bush.). Ford also kept Henry Kissinger on the job as Secretary of State and William E. Simon as Treasury Secretary.

Certain memories of the Ford Presidency stick out:

A photograph in Time magazine shows Ronald Reagan shaking hands with D.C. Federal Judge John J. Sirica, who became best known during the Watergate investigation for demanding that Nixon turn over the White House tapes; Ford is standing between the two men with a look of panic on his face.

First Lady Betty Ford did a cameo appearance on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

During September 1975, two assassination attempts were made on President Ford’s life 17 days apart – the first by a Charles Manson follower named Squeaky Frome and the second by Sara Jane Moore. Both women served prison terms for more than 30 years before finally being paroled.

Ford’s decision to pardon former President Nixon may have been the most controversial one of his two years in office and is still being debated by scholars.

Ford’s televised debates with Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter were marked by what struck me as lots of warmth and cordiality – the amount of time the two spent shaking hands seemed at times forever.

A few memories after Ford left office:

In the late ‘70s, Ford was a guest on the Dick Cavett Show and had the most ingratiating smiles and laughs at Cavett’s witticisms.

At the 1980 Republican Convention, it was reported that Reagan offered Ford the chance to be his running mate before selecting Bush.

During the late 1990s, a cable channel televised a program at the Ford Presidential Library in which the former president introduced historian David McCullough who gave a speech about his just published biography of Harry Truman.

On December 26, 2006, President Ford died from coronary disease at his home, in Rancho Mirage, California; he was 93.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Composer: Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Jerome Kern

Great American Songbook composer Jerome Kern (1885-1945) was so captivated by reading Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel Showboat that he immediately saw its possibilities as a musical on Broad­way. But he had never met Miss Ferber and had no idea how she’d respond.

One even­ing at a theater reception, he spotted an acquaintance, the notoriously outspoken book re­viewer/­author/theater critic/­radio personality Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943) who was chatting with a woman and who could possibly arrange an introduction, given his own connections in the publishing world; Kern approached Woollcott with his request.

Woollcott replied that Ferber was very reclusive and inapproachable and could not imagine her wanting to even discuss the matter but would see what could be done. He then turned to the woman sitting next to him and said, “Edna Ferber (1885-1968), meet Jerome Kern. ”

With lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, Kern worked very quickly and the musical premiered on Broadway in less than a year. It was a huge success, it has generated at least two films in Hollywood, numerous recordings of selections have been released – I am quite fond of a 1946 Columbia Masterworks set- but Showboat had to wait until the mid-1980s for a complete recording of its three hour plus length of music and drama.

Edna Ferber

In 1980, I attended a production of Showboat at the Houston Grand Opera starring Donald O’Connor, a quite memorable evening.

Certain songs from the musical still resound – My Man Bill, Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man, and Old Man River.

A Music Treasures of the World LP from the ‘50s contains the nicely scored Showboat Symphonic Suite conducted by William Strickland (MT-31).

I recently listened to several other records here at the house of Kern compositions:

Columbia A5081 – a December 31, 1908, 12-inch shellac featuring soprano Elise Stevenson singing a very charming song, Frieda, from the 1908 Broadway musical, the Girls of Gottenberg, which closed after less than a year.

Victor 35425 – a November 24th, 1914, shellac, also 12 inch, featuring the Victor Military Band performing a medley of tunes from the Girl from Utah, which includes the classic They Didn’t Believe Me.

Victor Red Seal – a 1938 set of six 12-inch 78s, Gems from Jerome Kern Musical Shows, presenting the Victor Light Opera Company directed by Leonard Joy.

ES 10, a 1960 LP with Ed Sullivan’s written notes on Kern’s 1933 musical Roberta and selections from it performed by the uncredited vocalists listed simply as the Ed Sullivan All Star Cast, the record having sold in supermarkets for $1.69. Selections included Yesterdays, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Lovely to Look At, and were very nicely performed.

Book of the Month Records 41 – 7511, a 1984 three LP set with booklet, Jerome Kern Master of Melody, and containing vintage recordings of his music that range from Paul Whiteman to Perry Como.

The arranger/composer Paul Weston related an anecdote about working with Kern in Hollywood. The older composer told Weston, “Whenever you get told to do something that doesn’t make any sense, you ask why and keep asking why until you get an answer that does.”

On November 11, 1945, Jerome Kern died in a New York City hospital, at the age of 60, from a cerebral hemorrhage he had suffered six days earlier; Oscar Hammerstein was keeping a vigil in the room when Kern stopped breathing.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Mad Men, The Death of Stalin

Jon Hamm

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Mad Men

The seven seasons of Mad Men, which ran on AMC from 2007 to 2015,was an interesting viewing experience throughout the last three to four months via Amazon Prime but, now that all 97 episodes have been watched, I feel tremendous relief that it’s over.

It depicts the world of Madison Avenue advertising agencies and their executives and other employees from 1960 to ’70 and does good work in recreating lifestyles, clothing and, most importantly, attitudes against the backdrop of American history during that decade – JFK, Vietnam, rock music, social media, the rising crime in Manhattan, the quiet desperation resulting from prosperity and the good life. And every episode would end with a song appropriate to that episode.

My gripe with the series was how tiresome most of the characters eventually became; the main character Don Draper, as portrayed by Jon Hamm, is insufferable in his selfishness, disloyalty and arrogance as he becomes a golden boy for creating successful ad campaigns; I was rooting for him to fail miserably, which he does by the end of the series when he has a rude awakening permeated with insincere repentance and accountability.

Only two performances really stood out – the late Robert Morse as the founder/CEO of the agency where Draper is a partner; and the extraordinary actress Elizabeth Ann Reaser who appears in a couple of episodes in season seven as the waitress Diane.

Reaser conveyed the depths of torment in her characterization of somebody who is apparently a loose cannon but who still evokes tremendous sympathy as a human being.

The actress graduated with honors as a theater major from Juilliard and, after struggling for a few years with bit parts, landed a role on daytime TV’s The Guiding Light. She gave an interview with the following comment about her upbringing:

“My father raised me from the time I was 12 years old. And it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be strong – I wasn’t raised like that. ”

The Death of Stalin

Robert Morse

Elizabeth Ann Reaser

A 2017 film, The Death of Stalin, has three outstanding performances – Simon Russell Beale as Stalin’s KGB police chief Lavrenty Beria, Olga Kurylenko as Stalin’s favorite classical pianist Maria Yudina who sends a personal note to the Dictator telling him how much she loathes him, and Jason Isaacs as the Soviet military hero Marshal Zhukov who participates with other Central Committee members in the kidnapping and execution of Beria ten months after Stalin’s March 1953 death.

Otherwise this film, promoted as a satirical black comedy, is, as I commented to a friend, quite vile.

 

 

 

 

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REVIEW POTPOURRI: Richard Nixon

Richard M. Nixon

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Richard Nixon

The 37th President Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-1994) would often take long walks along the beach at his San Clemente vacation house on the Pacific Coast. I vividly remember seeing photos of him taken from a distance by the journalists whom he despised and whose favor he rarely, if ever, sought.

Regardless of the pressures any president of the United States experiences even in recent years, Nixon conveyed a definite aura of mien in his bearing (During the final months of his presidency when Watergate was the most frequently reported topic, Press Secretary Ron Ziegler made the mistake of speaking to the president who suddenly lashed out at Ziegler with his arms.)

Nixon doggedly fought his way up the ladder, did well in school growing up in Whittier, California, and attending Whittier College before getting a scholarship to Duke University Law School; he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and became Senator in 1950. And he wasn’t above using smear tactics in both campaigns.

In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower picked Nixon as his running mate, although reluctantly since he didn’t particularly like Nixon as a human being, because Nixon had strong appeal to the very conservative Midwest and California Republicans which Eisenhower lacked as a more moderate Eastern establishment candidate.

After eight years as Ike’s Veep, the defeat in 1960 for the White House and the unsuccessful California Governor’s race in 1962, Nixon bided his time until a chain of circumstances, some of them perhaps engineered by Nixon himself, led to his being chosen as the Republican candidate in 1968, with Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew as the running mate, in a three-way race with Hubert Humphrey and Maine’s Edmund Muskie for the Democrats and the American Independent Party’s George Wallace and Curtis Lemay. Nixon and Agnew won by a narrow margin.

Rather than getting into Nixon’s leadership legacy which is voluminously documented, I wish to share a couple of brief personal items. When Nixon attended Whittier College, he took history courses with Professor David Henley who was married to my grandmother Cates’s first cousin, and East Vassalboro native, Lila Upham.

Secondly, uncles Paul and George Cates went to a Republican rally, in Augusta, in 1964, for Congressman Clifford McIntire who ran unsuccessfully against Muskie for the Senate; Nixon came that day to drum up support .

To conclude, I found a quote from Gore Vidal in a piece he wrote about the 1968 Republican convention at Miami Beach that nominated Nixon. Vidal is describing Ronald Reagan who had thrown his own hat in the ring after being elected in 1966 as the Governor of California. Vidal is remembering Reagan at the 1964 convention in San Francisco.

“I recalled my last glimpse of him, at the Cow Palace, in San Francisco, four years ago. The Reagans were seated in a box, listening to Eisenhower. While Mrs. Reagan darted angry looks about the hall (displeased at the press?), the star of Death Valley Days was staring intently at the speaker on the platform: as the age of television progresses, the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception.”

Back during the 1960s, I really didn’t think Ronald Reagan ever had a chance of becoming president.

George McGovern

In later years, the former president did a series of interviews with Diane Sawyer and David Frost and mentioned that two of his closest friends were Ed Muskie and George McGovern, Nixon’s Democratic opponent in the 1972 race who carried only one state out of the 50.

On March 16, 1974, Nixon appeared on a Grand Ole Opry TV special in Nashville with country music legend Roy Acuff (1903-1982) who taught the president how to manipulate the yo yo and talked him into playing the piano.

Another country legend Hank Williams may have best summed up Acuff’s appeal:

“He’s the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn’t worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God.”

Two ten-inch 78s here at the house feature Acuff’s uniquely down home singing and fiddling with his long time colleagues, the Smoky Mountain Boys.

Okeh 05297 from July 5 and 6, 1939, contains two sacred music selections, Drifting Too Far from the Shore, and Eyes are Watching You; Columbia 36856, recorded August 2, 1945, has Pins and Needles, and a song composed by Acuff’s business partner Fred Rose, We Live in Two Different Worlds.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Actors: Roy Rogers and Bob Nolan

Bob Nolan

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Roy Rogers
Bob Nolan

Roy Rogers

Roy Rogers (1911-1998) and Bob Nolan (1908-1980) were the two most recognizable founding members of the Sons of the Pio­neers, a vocal group that would have immense success through radio, TV, film, records and live appearances.

They cut their first disc for the newly-formed Decca label on August 8, 1934, the very same day Bing Crosby began his own very long association with that label. In 1935, the group was signed by Columbia Pictures to appear as singing cowboys in the very successful westerns of Charles Starrett (who came to China Lake often during his childhood to visit cousins in the area).

To this day, Nolan’s Cool Water may be their most famous original hit and one they recorded for both Decca and RCA Victor, whom they signed with during World War II. A 1949 RCA ten-inch 78 (20-2076) features that and Chant of the Wanderer. Their very moving blend of voices may have been what distinguished them from so many other singing cowboy groups that inevitably sprung up like dandelions once the Sons hit paydirt.

A 1956 record, released as a ten-inch 78 and seven-inch 45 and selling for 79 cents, featured so-called “famous artists” performing three current hit songs on each side (Variety V-6022). They were Goodnight My Love, Pleasant Dreams; Since I Met You Baby; Slow Walk; I Dreamed; A Thousand Miles Away; and I Feel Good.

The singers and instrumentalists, whoever they were, delivered very nicely done covers; the ladies singing Goodnight My Love could easily have been mistaken. And the record was good value for the money, each side clocking in at five to six minutes.

Three woman vocalists each recorded a shellac 78 of some renown. Prague-born contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink recorded a one-sided acoustic of a long forgotten, very pleasant song If I Forget in 1921 (Victrola Red Seal 87337).

Dinah Shore

Dinah Shore

On October 25, 1948, Dinah Shore, accompanied by two pianists, deployed her own quite pleasant pipes on two superb Great American Songbook numbers, Far Away Places, and Say It Every Day. Unlike her 1950 Victors when she squandered her talents on a lot of Tin Pan Alley garbage, her 1940s red label Columbia 78s featured much first class material and arrangements.

Vera Lynn

Vera Lynn

A 1953 ten-inch 78 from Decca/London (1350) presented English singer Vera Lynn (1917-2020), who was also gifted with a very long life, as were fellow singers Licia Albanese, Magda Olivero and George Beverly Shea. The two selections were the Lambeth Waltz, a gung ho, bombastic pep rally number accompanied by an obnoxiously cheery sounding men’s chorus, and a trite period piece entitled Queen of Everyone’s Heart to commemorate the 1953 Coronation of King Charles the III’s very wonderful mother, Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022).

She did much concertizing during World War II to boost the morale of service men and women and her fellow citizens with such classics as The White Cliffs of Dover, and We’ll Meet Again and she did have a vibrantly expressive singing voice.

 

 

 

 

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Soprano: Lily Pons

Lily Pons

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Lily Pons

Soprano Lily Pons (1898-1976) sang at the Metropolitan Opera at least 300 times between 1931 and 1960 and had a knack for using mass media to advance her career.

My first exposure to her was via a Columbia 45 rpm extended play album that Mother played at home and which went in one ear and out the other, since my opera musical sensibilities were pretty limited during second grade (I did give every record in the house a listen, being a record-holic since the age of two, if not earlier.).

However, in seventh grade, I was developing a love for classical music and was gifted a pile of 78s by a family friend that included her Victor shellac of Caro Nome from Verdi’s Rigoletto and a Columbia Masterworks 78 set featuring 4 Arias from Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment.

I played these numerous times and find them generally unsurpassed . Lily Pons sang with exquisite delicacy, her trills and high notes were technically phenomenal and she was quite knowledgeable about the history of the operatic literature.

Evidence of this is the fascinating essay she wrote about the background of the Daughter of the Regiment, the sopranos who performed it in earlier years and its technical challenges, that was included with the 78 set on Columbia.

She recorded numerous sides for Victor Red Seal during the 1930s before signing with Columbia around the time of her marriage to conductor Andre Kostelanetz (1901-1980) in 1938. As her Columbia discs were best sellers, Victor released a set of her earlier records for them in 1943 in the certainly justifiable attempt to capitalize on her success with Columbia and one in which she would also benefit.

The set, Victor Red Seal M-702, consisted of three 12-inch 78s and a 10-inch one, and very fragile; the mix of different lengths by manufacturers even in an album with cardboard insulation around the records themselves was not particularly conducive to the prevention of breakage.

The contents were a combination of arias from operas of Mozart, Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov, Ambrose Thomas and, of course, Verdi and three semi-classical concert pieces, including a very beautiful Last Rose of Summer.

Operatic high points were an aria from Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, currently my favorite Mozart opera, and duets with baritone Giuseppe De Luca (1876-1950) in Verdi’s Rigoletto and Rossini’s Barber of Seville. The other selections failed to make an impression despite her vocal prowess, especially the Rimsky Le Coq D’Or Hymn to the Sun in which her trills and gentle dynamics failed to communicate the haunting Oriental mystery of that Russian opera aria.

Pons and Kostelanetz divorced in 1958. During the ‘50s and early ‘60s, she made guest appearances on such TV shows as the Ed Sullivan Show and What’s My Line.

Lily Pons died of pancreatic cancer in a Dallas, Texas, hospital in 1976. She was 77.

Legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker once compared the lyrical beauty of fellow musician Johnny Hodges in his own playing of the soprano sax in Duke Ellington’s band to the singing of Lily Pons.

Many of her recordings and broadcasts can be heard on YouTube.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Lyndon B. Johnson

The 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) was, for good and bad, one formidable leader during his five years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

During October/November 1960, I vividly remember the two individuals and their running mates in the battle for the White House – Repub­licans Richard Nixon (1913-1994) and Massachusetts Senator/UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (1902-1985) versus Kennedy and Johnson. Every East Vassalboro school day in Susan Brondmo’s fourth grade classroom, I was bringing clippings of political cartoons from the Waterville Morning Sentinel for the morning current news show and tell; I may have monopolized the board on the wall with my offerings.

Anyways, the Cates tribe had been Republicans for decades, so I never shirked my loyalism.

Meanwhile, Uncle Charlie Rodis, who had married into the family the previous July, grew up in a Greek-American family of Democrats, in Portland; for reasons known only to God, he had never discussed politics and encountered stone cold silence at the Thanksgiving dinner when expressing jubilation about the new president.

To my little boy’s sensibilities, Nixon, despite his uncouth five o’clock shadow, and the pleasantly smiling, consummate gentleman Lodge epitomized true honesty and integrity while seemingly forthright but not quite trustworthy, Kennedy struck me the wrong way; Johnson came off as a smiling gross pig. Thus, I concluded that adults would use common sense and vote Republican.

Nixon won by a very narrow lead, so we thought; within 24 hours, Chicago Mayor Richard Daly’s Cook County machine swung the victory to Kennedy.

On November 22, 1963, aboard Air Force One, Johnson was sworn in as president with grief-stricken widow Jackie Kennedy at his side and he exuded the finest nobility and serious demeanor in his photo. I now trusted him.

Buildings of books, magazines and other documents chronicle Johnson’s legacy. He did sincerely wage war on poverty with his Great Society and shepherded the 1965 Civil Rights Bill.

Johnson also escalated and prolonged the horribly bloody Vietnam War , a conflict that still divides people very sadly (I am personally pleading the Fifth on whether it was worth it).

A very worthy reading experience is The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson by Princeton professor and historian Eric Goldman (1916-1989) who served from 1963 to 1966 as a special advisor to the president.

At first their working relationship was congenial, although Goldman was never part of the inner circle. Only later when the controversies increasingly swirling around Johnson and a lack of understanding by Goldman as to what was expected of him ended his work at the White House. The book was published in 1969.

Also worth dipping into is the multi-volume, still unfinished biography of Johnson by Robert Caro.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Musician: Carl Stevens; The Lotus Club

Carl Stevens

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Carl Stevens

Carl Stevens was the professional name of trumpeter Charles H. Sagle (1927-2015). A 1959 Mercury LP, Muted Memories, featured him with a group of four outstanding session players performing a dozen pop classics.

They include Cole Porter’s I Concent­rate on You, Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer’s Jeeper Creepers, Cy Coleman’s Witchcraft, Duke Ellington’s Satin Doll, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Younger than Springtime , etc. The accompanying musicians included Bobby Christian (1911-1991) on percussion, guitarist Frank D’Rone (1932-2013), John Frigo (1916-2007) on bass and pianist Dick Marx (1924-1997). For those who wish to explore further, each of the four have recorded albums under their own name for Mercury and other labels.

On the surface, the music here might sound like typical background music at a bar or restaurant but, if one listens closely, he/she would hear different shades of phrasing provided by an assortment of mutes and the sharing of solo spotlights among the five musicians.

My copy of the album is on Mercury’s budget priced Wing label whose various classical and pop reissues were found often in downtown Waterville’s long gone dime stores such as Center’s and McClellan’s for $1.47 when I shopped for records at the cheapest possible price. Nowadays, some of the recordings of all five musicians can be heard via YouTube, including the above album.

Lotos Club

The Lotos Club

The Lotos Club was founded in 1870 as a gentleman’s club for the promotion of literature, art, music and other cultural topics; still in operation in New York City, it would eventually honor women with membership.

A 1911 book, Speeches at the Lotos Club contains after dinner speeches from the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, composer Richard Strauss and Mark Twain, and many long forgotten luminaries.

Current members include soprano Renee Fleming, cellist Yo Yo Ma and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

In a speech given January 11, 1908, Mark Twain reminisced about his very happy recent trip to England and then stated, “that you know you can’t understand an Englishman’s joke, and the Englishman can’t understand our jokes. The cause is very simple, it is for the reason that we are not familiar with the conditions that make the point of the English joke.”

 

 

 

 

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Authur: James Thurber

James Thurber

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

James Thurber

James Thurber (1894-1961) achieved a much deserved hilarious notoriety for his writings and cartoons via the New Yorker. With respect to his cartoons, Maine’s own E.B. White, while still working at the magazine’s Manhattan office as an assistant editor, found some of Thurber’s sketches in the wastebasket and published them, later commenting that they could stand on their own as artistic expressions.

One notable book, Thurber’s Dogs, collected his writings and drawings celebrating those real and imaginary canines; a paragraph conveys the precisely honed wit and clarity that Thurber achieved so often:

“My inherent fairness and open mind led me to admit that some dogs have been known to let people down, or stand them up, or exasperate and even distress them by unpredictable behavior. I even went so far as to confess that some of my own dogs had double-crossed me for a total, as I put it then, of sixteen or eighteen times, but I quickly added that the basic fault was, in almost every instance, my own.”

Two other highly recommended books are My Life and Hard Times, recounting his childhood growing up in Columbus, Ohio; and The Years With Ross, documenting the years of working with the legendary founder and editor of the New Yorker, Harold Ross (1892-1951).

A frequently anthologized sketch from My Life is The Night the Bed Fell which can be read on Google.

In the Years With Ross, Thurber comments on the huge thick mane of hair on Ross’s head which made my woman comment that she wanted to take off her shoes and walk barefoot through it.

When Thurber was seven, he and a brother were playing William Tell. His brother’s arrow missed the apple and took out one of Thurber’s eyes. The resulting neurological damage is believed to have caused increasing blindness during Thurber’s later years.

Thurber also wrote that his mother was one of the greatest comedians he ever witnessed. She once pretended to be paralyzed at a revival service and then jumped up screaming, “I’m healed.”