by Peter Cates

One of the most gifted and, nowadays, under-appreciated actors in Hollywood for over 30 years, Robert Ryan (1909-1973) played many character roles, being his best in films as evil men who were often neurotic, driven, complex.

One great performance was in the 1962 film, Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville’s novel. The story was based on the wars for naval supremacy between the British and French navies during the Napoleonic era; Ryan played the evil Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, on a British ship who ordered the flogging of sailors under his command for the most minor infractions, including not tucking a bunk blanket correctly. The half-smiles of enjoyment in his eyes, alongside his poised dignity, during the meted-out punishments attest to Ryan’s precisely-honed talent.

Other movies in a large list were 1947’s Crossfire as an anti-Semetic World War 2 officer; 1954’s Bad Day at Black Rock, as the leader of a dangerous gang of men living in a small desert town; and the same year’s Her Twelve Men, alongside Greer Garson, as one of two nice teachers in a private boy’s school in which Ryan sings and plays the guitar.

In 1944, Robert Ryan joined the Marines and served until late 1945; a friend of my parents told me about having the actor as a drill instructor in the handling of pistols during his boot camp experiences and remembering that he was a very good teacher.

Being a chain smoker, Ryan found out that he had inoperable cancer of the lymph nodes in 1970. But he kept acting . His last film was the Eugene O’Neill play, The Iceman Cometh, with Lee Marvin in the main role as Hickey, in its four-hour movie version; its world premiere was after Ryan died on July 11, 1973, at 63. He lost his wife, Jessica, to cancer in 1972.

Just before he died, Ryan said “I’ve been lucky as hell with my career and my family!”

by Peter Cates

Robert Frost

American poet

American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) was one of the very few who could earn a living from poetry alone, not having to do other jobs . He was also the only winner of four Pulitzer prizes for poetry.

Frost’s main subject material was living in New England, mostly its trials and tribulations and a few moments of its joys. His poetic technique was the native colloquial speech of New Englanders and the poems had simplicity, infinite re-readability and deeply profound themes that resonated.

My favorites are The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (“Miles to go before I sleep”), Mending Wall (“Good neighbors make good fences”) and the very tragic Home Burial.

Robert Frost was very friendly and he could be difficult, to which many folks could reply, “So what else is new ?”

He and his wife, Elinor, had six children – four daughters and two sons. The two oldest daughters outlived their father while the two youngest died shortly after birth. The older son died at four years old of cholera; his younger one committed suicide at 38 years old. Elinor passed away in her early 60s in 1938 of a heart attack, himself during prostate surgery, at 88, in 1963.

Robert Frost had the honor of reading a poem in January, 1961, at JFK’s inauguration, and was given honorary degrees from several colleges and universities, even though he never graduated from one.

To conclude, a quote from his poem, The Road Not Taken:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood….I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.”

by Peter Cates

Peace Pilgrim became renowned during her lifetime for crossing the entire United States at least six times on behalf of peace, feeling this leading from God.

She began her 29 years of walking in 1952 with hiking the entire Appalachian Trail in one season. The trail is 2,200 miles/3,500 kilometers of length, it is the longest hikers-only trail in the world, and it extends from Katahdin, in Maine, to Springer Mountain, in Georgia. She also coined the name ‘Peace Pilgrim’ on New Year’s Day, 1953, as to why she was doing these very lengthy distances and why she discontinued her previous name of 45 years.

Mildred Lisette Norman was born on July 18, 1908, and was raised on a chicken farm in Egg Harbor, New Jersey, a community of German immigrants. Her father was a carpenter, her mother a tailor, and she had two younger siblings.

She and her then-boyfriend, Stanley Ryder, eloped in 1933, settled in Philadelphia in 1939, and divorced in 1946.

During the years of walks, Peace spoke often at universities and churches and appeared on radio and television, She led an ascetic life, wearing the clothes on her back and taking no food and shelter until offered it.

She was killed in an automobile accident on July 7, 1981, exactly 38 years ago as I write this, being driven to an Indiana speaking engagement.

Peace Pilgrim did visit once or twice in the central Maine area but my interest in her began when, less than a month ago, a cousin of mine texted me photos of her parents, a wonderful aunt and uncle , with the woman at least 50 years ago. Peace Pilgrim’s commitment to walking the longest distances over a 30-year span, to speaking to others about her concerns where the world was headed with its evil tendencies and to enduring the hardships gladly that came with her stand for peace and good will – these were what resonated with people of conscience in their hearts whatever their world views might be. They do with me.

by Peter Cates

The Man Who Came to Dinner

starring Monte Woolley, Bette Davis, Reginald Gardner, Ann Sheridan, Jimmy Durante, Mary Wickes, Richard Travers etc.; directed by William Keighley; Warner Brothers, dvd, released New Year’s Day, 1942, 112 minutes.

Although Monty Woolley (1888-1963) appeared in a number of other films and plays, his most well-known role is that of the radio commentator, lecturer and boa-constructor wit, Sheridan Whiteside, known as “Sherry” to his select friends. The 1942 film came on the heels of several hundred performances on Broadway of this George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart play, during which Woolley honed his character to the most exacting level.

Whiteside was based on the legendary Algonquin Round Table wit, Alexander Woolcott (1887-1943), his own larger-than-life heft and personality worthy of another column.

The plot begins when Whiteside and his secretary of many long-suffering years, Maggie, played by Bette Davis, stop for a lecture in an Ohio city during the cold of winter and accept an invitation to a luxuriant house for dinner. He walks up the slippery front steps, falls and breaks his hip. Because he is stuck in a wheelchair for an unknown number of weeks, he seizes control of the house from its rightful owners and launches a dictatorship of everyone and everything in it.

The insults and other comments among Whiteside, Maggie and others are non-stop. Meanwhile, Maggie can hold her own with sassing him back and forth, Bette Davis delivering one very fine performance in the film.

Other cast members give performances of their lifetimes. Ann Sheridan portrays Lorraine Sheldon, a successful actress, and long-time friend of Whiteside and mutual enemy of Maggie who travels from Florida to visit Whiteside for as long as she, not Whiteside, wants. Her manipulations of everyone around her add lots of comedy to the film.

Jimmy Durante plays another friend, Banjo, and film comedian, who drops in to visit Whiteside on his way from Hollywood to Nova Scotia because he wishes to feast on salmon in eastern Canada and avoid one of his girlfriends whom he had promised to visit in New York City. Whiteside refers to Banjo as the “reform school fugitive” and invites him to stay for as long as both Whiteside and Banjo want. Banjo’s initial indecision about the amount of time to take advantage of Whiteside’s hospitality leads to Durante’s classic song-and-dance sketch, Did You Ever Have the Feeling that You Wanted to Go and the Feeling that You Wanted to Stay?

Space limits details on additional members in the cast but Reginald Gardiner, Mary Wickes and Richard Travers are worthy of very honorable mention.

Quotes from the film:

Whiteside: ‘Banjo, my lad, you’re wonderful. I may write a book about you.’
Banjo: ‘Don’t bother. I can’t read.’
Maggie: ‘Sheri, the next time you do not want to see anybody, just let me know and I’ll usher them right in.’

by Peter Cates

Grieg

Peer Gynt Suite No. 1; Symphonic Dances; Two Elegiac Melodies
Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Halle Orchestra; Mercury MG 50164, LP, recorded August 9, 1957.

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) forged a musical style that was compounded of his life experiences amidst the beauties of the Norwegian landscape; health issues and one major loss; and the tunes and folk songs he heard and made part of his very soul. The fjords, mountains, lakes, meadows were distilled in the justly famed A Minor Piano Concerto, not on this record, and the three works that are contained here.

When he was 17 years old, in 1860, he came down with both pleurisy and tuberculosis but survived them, left in frail health for the remainder of his life. He married his first cousin, Nina Hagerup (1845-1935), in 1867, and they had a baby girl in 1868, only to lose her at one year old because of meningitis.

With respect to the music of Grieg’s formative years, as with such titans as Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler, the bottom line is the quality of sheer genius they and select other composers brought to their own creations. The Peer Gynt 1st Suite has four numbers – the ever-majestic Morning, the haunting tragic Asa’s Death which is my favorite, the rhythmic mystery of Anitra’s Dance and the nasty savagery of In the Hall of the Mountain King. Its endless listenability through piles of different recordings since the early 1900s, every one at least good, has sustained a position among the 10 most well known classical standards.

His four Symphonic Dances are a vivacious series of what some have labeled “free fantasias;” the high spirits of countryside festivities – whether in Grieg’s Norway or the Bohemian world of Bedrich Smetana’s opera, The Bartered Bride, and Antonin Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. The 2nd Dance has the solo oboe, and gently caressing harp and strings in one very well-sustained moment of lyricism that is unfortunately seldom heard.

Two Elegiac Melodies, for strings only, have the titles of Heart’s Wounds and The Last Spring, conveying the sadness and loss of irretrievable memories of happiness.

Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970) lavished his complete soul on this music as he so often did with other composers. The Mercury record has the most vivid sense of immediacy to be heard on very few records from the 1950s. It too has been transferred to CD and streaming.