by Peter Cates

Perry Mason continued

(see previous article: TV Show: Perry Mason)

Producer Gail Patrick Jackson saw actor William Talman (1915-1968) as the serial killer in 1953’s The Hitch Hiker, directed by Ida Lupino, and immediately knew who she wanted for the role of District Attorney Hamilton Burger on the Perry Mason TV show. Talman was also one of five escaped killers in 1955’s The Big House starring Broderick Crawford, Charles Bronson, Ralph Meeker and Lon Chaney Jr., and appeared in other similar roles during the fascinating film noir years. He was scarily convincing in the sulfuric venom he exuded in those films, particularly the deranged eyes.

In his portrayal of Burger, the courtroom encounters with defense attorney Mason frequently brought on a look of outrage at a contentious eye contact level when Mason scored points for the defendant, raised objections to Burger’s examination of witnesses on the stand or insisted that certain testimony was irrelevant and immaterial. And he gave the same tit for tat.

However, both characters, sometimes begrudgingly, respected each other, both upheld the integrity of the law and both were in pursuit of justice and the truth. Burger himself stated a few times that, when he lost a case, it was a win because an innocent person didn’t go to prison or the gas chamber.

In 1960, Talman was found smoking marijuana with a group of friends and was fired from the show for a few months, until a vociferous letter writing campaign and the high pressure lobbying of CBS by producer Jackson, Burr and other cast members got Talman reinstated .

Talman came down with lung cancer in 1968 after decades of chain smoking and filmed a public service announcement on the dangers of cigarettes not to be shown until after he died. It can be seen on YouTube.

Ray Collins (1889-1965) in his role as Lieutenant Arthur Tragg almost stole the show time and again, not only with his formidable presence as Chief of Homicide, but also with his infectious sense of humor in many scenes. At one murder scene, Tragg cuts Mason some slack with the gathered evidence but states that District Attorney Burger would have his own head if the latter ever found out. And just about every time Mason would show up even at the most out of the way locations to help his client, Tragg would appear with his usual “Good morning, Counselor,” and an arrest warrant.

Collins worked often with Orsen Welles and was in the cast of the original radio broadcast of War of the Worlds that caused a nationwide panic. He too was a chain smoker and passed away from emphysema, at the age of 74, on July 11, 1965.

The many actors and actresses who made guest appearances included some memorable ones:

Angie Dickinson (1931-) was the defendant when a man who was blackmailing her wound up dead in an episode from the 1957 first season.

Joan Camden (1929-2000) appeared twice during the 1957-58 season as two different variants of the scorned woman, the first a collaborator/girlfriend with an extortionist who winds up dead and the second as a defendant whose ex-boyfriend is found dead and her fingerprints are on the gun. She brought a spitfire bitterness that reminded me of such actresses as Joan Crawford, Katherine Hepburn, Susan Hayward and Maureen Stapleton at their best.

Douglas Kennedy (1915-1973) was a gifted character actor who also appeared twice during the first season and as the actual killer – in one as a detective who murdered another detective, tries to kill Mason in the lawyer’s office but is caught by Lt. Tragg and his men who are hiding in the next room. A later episode has him as a corrupt lawyer who helps his girlfriend in the murder of her husband. He conveyed a nasty hot-tempered edginess that compelled attention.

Henderson died in 1973 in Honolulu after he suddenly came down with cancer while filming episodes with Jack Lord in Hawaii Five O.

Judy Tyler (1932-1957) played a delightfully sultry chorus line girl in a December 1957, episode seen six months after she was killed with her husband in an automobile accident . She was most famous for a starring role with Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock.

Ben Wright (1915-1989) played a jeweler who kidnapped his business partner and assisted in the murder of a second one when an embezzlement scheme goes awry. He was most “fondly” remembered for his role as the Nazi Gestapo representative Herr Zeller in the 1965 Sound of Music and conveyed the dubious ambiguity of both roles.

by Peter Cates

Armenuhi Manoogian
(Kay Armen)

Armenian American singer Armenuhi Manoogian (1915-2011), known by her stage name as Kay Armen, achieved fame during the 1940s and ‘50s with her NBC radio show, records and appearances in films and on television. Her 1950 recording of Come On A My House appeared one year before Rosemary Clooney’s megahit.

A 1945 Decca 78, 18672, featured her renditions of the wistful Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill song All At Once and a throwaway Back Home for Keeps with Satchmo’s all-time favorite orchestra, the Royal Canadians led by Guy Lombardo (1902-1977). She sang with a keen sensitivity to the meaning of the lyrics, a wonderful low, middle and high register, and a commanding individuality of presence.

Both her father Robert Manoogian and younger brother Robert Jr. were professional wrestlers; Dad’s stage name was Bob Monograph, Junior’s Bobby Managoff.

Most of the morning while writing this, I have been listening to the numerous YouTubes of this singer, ranging from All at Once to a medley of Sinatra hits, In the Wee Small Hours, Time After Tim, etc., which she performed at a social gathering in 2007 when she was 92, and still in good voice.

The 1961 movie Hey Let’s Twist featured her and the uncredited actor Joe Pesci in his Hollywood debut more than 20 years before he cashed in with My Cousin Vinnie and Home Alone.

Guy Lombardo and his three brothers formed their first orchestra while still in elementary school in London, Ontario, constantly practicing in the back of their father’s tailor shop. The band would sell 300 million records. Lombardo was also a champion speed boat racer.

Lyricist Ira Gershwin (1896-1983) outlived younger brother George by 46 years and would collaborate with composers Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen. He loved listening to music with the volume turned up while his wife despised it. In 1977, singer Debby Boone gave him a Sony Walkman cassette player with headphones. The next day, he instructed his broker to invest in Sony.

His very extensive collection of records, books, scores and sheet music was catalogued by singer/pianist Michael Feinstein.

Composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was part of Germany’s avant-garde musical theater scene, until 1933, and is most famous for the Three Penny Opera and its showstopper Mack the Knife, which made the Billboard Top Ten during the ‘50s via an Atco 45 by the late Bobby Darin. Weill collaborated several times with playwright Bertolt Brecht and was married to one of his best interpreters, singer Lotte Lenya (1898-1931).

 

 

by Peter Cates

Rudy Vallee

Singer Rudy Vallee (1901-1986) was one of the first matinee idol crooners, starting in the late ‘20s. Frantic mobs of teenage girls went berserk at his live appearances as they did later with Sinatra, Presley and the Beatles, although with the shortly coming emergence of Russ Colombo and Bing Crosby and their even smoother use of the microphone, Vallee’s peak years with the swooning ladies would wane within two years but he did remain an influential figure in the entertainment world.

Born in Vermont, he grew up in Westbrook, did a brief stint in the army, played trombone in a dance orchestra at London’s Savoy Hotel from 1924-25, and returned to Maine where he briefly attended the University of Maine at Orono.

With relation to Vallee’s Orono years, he worked for a dance band led by a gentleman named Ralph Wallace, who fired Vallee for constantly being late to rehearsals.

Wallace later worked as a deejay for the now-defunct WTVL, here in Waterville, having retired during the late ‘50s to my hometown of nearby East Vassalboro after a broadcasting career in Cleveland, Ohio. I got to know him, was given the opportunity to watch him spin records on four different turntables on his radio show, explored the station’s record library with utter fascination, and was given 78 record sets of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler and soprano Dorothy Kirsten from his own vast collection.

His program, Time for Wally, ran five days a week for two hours in the morning and in the afternoon; he would play records and tell a few jokes (He once commented to me that, all too often, the disc jockeys were stuck with playing the same crappy records).

Back to the Vallee/Wallace connection. An acquaintance went to a San Francisco party honoring Rudy during the 1970s and mentioned his old boss. Vallee retorted jokingly, “Ralph Wallace!!!! Is that S.O.B. still living?” But he sent best wishes back to Maine.

Vallee transferred to Yale University where he graduated with a degree in philosophy and formed his own group, the Connecticut Yankees. They scored a hit record on Victor 78s in 1929, the University of Maine Stein Song, its success a bit of a mystery because of its cloying corniness but Vallee did sing with commitment, pep and warmth.

I recently listened to two other Victor ten inch 78s of the singer. The first, Victor -22136, recorded August 15 and August 21, 1929 – contains two wistful love songs; You Want Lovin’ (But I Want Love), written by Sam Coslow (1902 – 1982) who turned out dozens of songs for Paramount Pictures, and Lonely Troubadour.

Victor 24581, recorded March 5, 1934, featured two selections, Hold My Hand, and Nasty Man, that were in the 1934 filmed music revue, George White’s Scandals. He also appeared in the film and got into a fistfight with its producer George White.

All four songs were of higher quality than the Stein Song, sung and played with charming musicality and can be heard on YouTube.

by Peter Cates

Lee Marvin

For me, Lee Marvin (1924-1987) was one of the most consistently fascinating actors to grace the movies and television. He was considered a director’s dream because he instinctively knew how to move for the camera. And his ability to convey character was formidable.

Some background on his life is in order. He and his older brother Robert were both named for the ancestral family fourth cousin, Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Another ancestor from 200 years further back than General Lee, Matthew Marvin, emigrated from England in 1635 and helped in establishing the city of Hartford, Connecticut.

Marvin took violin lessons as a youngster. Also, to quote a May 1964, article in the magazine Gun World entitled Elk Hunting with Lee Marvin, he “spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bob white in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades.”

As an adolescent, Marvin attended several boarding schools in New York and Florida but was kicked out for rowdy behavior.

He joined the Marines and fought in the Battle of Saipan where most of his unit was killed, his sciatic nerve severed by machine gun fire and his foot wounded by a sniper’s bullet. He spent over a year in the hospital and was awarded the Purple Heart and five other medals for bravery, yet was busted down to private from corporal for speaking his mind too freely.

My first experience of him was as a kid when I watched his show, M Squad, in which he starred as a detective.

His portrayal of evil characters was vividly manifested in guest appearances on Wagon Train, as a sadistic wagonmaster replacement, after Ward Bond died, for two episodes and as a gunman on The Virginian. An early ‘50s TV appearance was as a serial killer on Dragnet who’s also a vegetarian.

His most famous role of venom was a majorly billed appearance in Director John Ford’s 1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in which he thrashed Jimmy Stewart with a horsewhip during a stagecoach holdup and squared off unsuccessfully with John Wayne. Just the way he menacingly walked into a saloon and sat with an attitudinal smirk conveyed his natural gifts as an actor.

In 1964, he and Clu Gulagher were two professional hitmen in The Killers, which was based very loosely on Ernest Hemingway’s story (the late former President Ronald Reagan very convincingly did his only role as a mobster in what would be his last film before his political career took off).

Other memorable roles – the movies Pete Kelly’s Blues, Bad Day at Black Rock, Cat Ballou, Point Blank, Paint Your Wagon, Prime Cut, Pocket Money, Violent Saturday, The Caine Mutiny, Emperor of the North, The Iceman Cometh, Missouri Traveller, Gorky Park, and The Dirty Dozen with a sequel.

He turned down the lead role of Jaws – “What would I tell my fishing friends who’d see me come off a hero against a dummy shark?”

Lee Marvin died of a heart attack on August 29, 1987, at the age of 63.

by Peter Cates

Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto in G Major

Back during the summer of 1965, the family had a General Electric table model radio which I listened to by the hour when it broadcast classical music from WMTW-FM then located in the old Poland Springs Hotel, at the foot of Mount Washington. Anyways, it regularly programmed stereo recordings as part of its nightly Evening Concert which ran for two hours from 9 to 11 p.m., except for Saturday nights when Ray Smith hosted his weekly show of big band jazz records.

As an obsessed record collector, I wanted to hear every disc that came my way and took note of piece and performer for consideration with my very limited purchasing power; I remember the thrill of discovery with certain works – the Brahms 3rd Symphony with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra and its life-affirming opening pages or the sweetly exquisite Faure’s Pelleas and Melisande incidental music via the Charles Munch/Philadelphia Orchestra album.

Usually the station avoided recordings from before the late ‘40’s LP years but, one evening, the announcer stated that an exception would be made with an RCA Victor release of a 1944 broadcast from the NBC Symphony led by Arturo Toscanini and pianist Rudolf Serkin of Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto in G Major because of its merit as a performance.

Like the Emperor Concerto, the 4th opens with the solo piano; unlike the Emperor with its bold assertive flourishes, its notes are of a gentler nature, and then the orchestra re-states the opening melody with very beguiling sonorites. The 2nd movement is a conversation between the meditative piano and the abrupt, at times abrasive orchestra which shortly leads, without a break, into the joyful concluding Finale with its knuckle-busting chords.

Serkin and Toscanini pulled it off with driving ferocity that some even considered too hectic, not including myself; the pianist would later record two distinguished 4ths with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and leave another fine broadcast with an Italian radio orchestra that was released during the ‘80s on LP and CD.

Other superb 4ths were left by such titans as Artur Rubinstein, Walter Gieseking, Claudio Arrau, Alfred Brendel, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Van Cliburn, Guiomar Novaes, Clara Haskil, Van Cliburn, Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer, Wilhelm Kempff, Friedrich Gulda, Artur Schnabel, Julius Katchen, Gina Bachauer, Emil Gilels, Artur Schnabel, Clifford Curzon, Glenn Gould and Leon Fleisher.

Elvis vs. Boone

In 1955, Elvis Presley was the opening act for Pat Boone in a Cleveland, Ohio, concert. In 1957, a poll was taken among teenagers as to which singer had more fans. Among boys, Boone was preferred 2 to 1 over Elvis, and 3 to 1 among girls. Both singers did have a high regard for each other and both made a number of fine records.

Winter quote from the Greek philosopher Aristotle – “To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.”