Laurel and Hardy, the Delicious Duo

Posted on June 10, 2013 by sheila

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Excerpt from Trav S.D.’s wonderful book Chain of Fools – Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to YouTube:

As a team, Laurel and Hardy played with audience’s expectations by ritualizing them, elaborating on them, embellishing them. They seemed to savor each moment, milk it, and wring every possible gag out of every situation. This is the word I would use for the duo: delicious. Even when I am not laughing I am filled with a pleasure from my head to my toes at the absolute poetry of their interplay. But times when I am not laughing at them are rare. As I said, Hardy is my favorite comedian, and Laurel, ironically the brains of the team, can’t help but impress me as well. Several of their shorts may be deemed among the funniest movies of all time, exceeding those of Chaplin and Keaton. The fact is, I laugh longer and harder at their films than anyone else’s, and by a wide margin. Further, as with Keaton, the formal beauty of some of their moments on film often approaches dance or music, and even may be said to possess profound meaning.

I am thinking primarily of one of their most commonly used comic devices, dubbed by the duo and their support team the “Tit-for-Tat”. It’s an old English expression meaning roughly the same as “measure for measure,” “an eye for an eye,” or “giving as good as you get.” By way of illustration one must unavoidably cite what may be their funniest movie (although it would be impossible to choose). In Big Business (1929), the pair are a couple of door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen who make the mistake of annoying Jimmy Finlayson one bright, sunny Southern California day. Fin slams the door in their faces, accidentally trapping a branch in the process. They irritate him some more by ringing the doorbell so they can free the tree, and then a kind of symbolic defilement happens as Laurel and Hardy proceed to destroy Fin’s house and all its contents, while Finlayson tears apart their automobile. By the end of the movie, all is rubble.

The humorous part of such exchanges is the veneer of civilization that governs them. It is a ritual, exactly like the chivalrous codes of a duel. One person stands and politely makes himself available as a target, while the other carefully takes aim and fires (or dumps a bowl of cake batter on his head, as the case may be). Often, as it is in Big Business, it is directed against a third party. Just as often, the boys engage in an internal quarrel and do it to each other. They each have their own style. When Hardy waits to “get his” he includes us, silently imploring “Isn’t this humiliating?” When Laurel waits he just stares vacantly at the ground like a cow or a mule, almost as though he’s already forgotten a scrap were in progress. When the deed is done, he merely blinks, the epitome of blankness. It’s a beautiful thing.

Laurel and Hardy’s greatest contribution to World Peace however is what I call the epidemic Tit-for-Tat. This is a sort of comical zombie apocalypse scenario where the battle starts with a couple of characters and spreads to the general population like a virus, culminating in great, glorious set pieces of comedy, truly spectacular moments of cinema. This interesting innovation seems to have begun with Hats Off (1927) , a lost film the first act of which was later remade as The Music Box (1932), substituting a piano for the washing machine in the original. The climax of the film had Laurel and Hardy mixing their hats up (as they would often do), then drawing another passerby in, and then another, until the entire street is full of mixed, discarded hats like some bloodless battlefield.

This was followed up with The Battle of the Century, a film justly renowned for showcasing the most epic pie fight ever recorded. How good is it? Let’s just say it’s impressive enough that even I like it, and I generally scorn pie fights, mostly due to the saturation and overexposure that has happened over the last century. In my view, a pie in the face ceased to be funny before your great grandfather was born. Buster Keaton agreed. When he started his solo contract in 1920 he vowed that there would be a moratorium on thrown pies; it was already a cliche by then. But Laurel and Hardy (and I of course include their directors, gagmen, and co-stars) made ballet out of a pie fight – as they did with all physical business. In The Battle of the Century, the boys accidentally cause a pie delivery man to get one right in the puss. In retaliation, he starts to heave his wares out of his truck, which is naturally lined with an impossible number of pies. Soon, everyone on the street is drawn into the melee. The entire block resembles a Tong War, the very atmosphere criss-crossed with airborne pies. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and that includes pie fights.

I love the guy who falls in the trash can, and I love the snooty woman looking through her lorgnette at the pie fight. She brings the lorgnette down for a split second and, of course, gets a pie in her face. She doesn’t react. She seems to be stunned. Then, she puts the lorgnette up again. It’s hilarious.

Humorously and coincidentally, only days before I read this passage I had said to some friends over drinks at the Algonquin Hotel that cinema today would greatly benefit from more pie fights. I want directors to feel free to have their actors throw more pies at one another. I’m dead serious. But Trav S.D.’s point is well taken!

His book is a wonderful sweeping (and yet detailed) look at silent comedies and the comedians who helped develop the form.

Posted in Books, Movies | 8 Comments

The Books: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Dylan’, by Hendrik Hertzberg and George Trow

Posted on June 9, 2013 by sheila

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Next up on the essays shelf:

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross

The Fun of It is a collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces in The New Yorker, grouped by decade, which is a lot of fun because you can see how the “voice” of the magazine developed, and how “The Talk of the Town” has grown and changed over the years.

In January of 1974, Bob Dylan and The Band played Madison Square Garden. They were on a brief tour (two months), and it was Dylan’s first tour since 1966 which took him around the world.

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So there was a great deal of curiosity about him, and all of those mixed emotions/expectations that seemed to dog Dylan no matter what he did. People wanted him to be their poster child. People wanted him to properly represent the nostalgia that they had for him. Obviously, Dylan never played the game that way. It’s probably one of the reasons why he kept growing and changing and developing as an artist (and continues to do so). If he had listened to his critics, and kept his career on a re-tread to satisfy the unimaginative earnest folk-singer types who never wanted him to change … then Dylan would have only had one season in the sun, as opposed to decades.

Of course you have to give a shit what the audience thinks of you. But honestly, you can’t care TOO much. Because often they don’t know what’s best for them, frankly. Often they are wrong in what they want from you. The anxiety about change is rich considering that he was representative of a “movement” that was all about change. But there was that undercurrent, dwelled upon in the Martin Scorsese doc, and elsewhere, of: If HE changes, then were they wrong about him in the first place? If HE changes, then does that mean I’m growing old and don’t “get it” now? If HE changes, then I don’t know what my life is about anymore. People placed so much importance on Bob Dylan. The noise surrounding Dylan, in this regard, has always been loud. People acted like it was a personal betrayal when he famously “went electric”. Now I’m no Dylan aficionado, unlike, say, Jonah Lehrer, but those who were disappointed on a personal level by Bob Dylan doing his own thing misunderstood his message in the first place. Misunderstood what he was all about. Doing what was expected would never have been what he was about! But this is the way the story goes with giant celebrities. It has always been the case. How much will audiences “take”? Do you expect them to follow you everywhere?

The 1974 tour was lucrative, involving sell-out shows, massive crowds, and intense media scrutiny.

This jointly-written Talk of the Town piece has a really interesting structure and is a fun dialectical piece, which gets at all of the things that were swirling around Dylan/The Band at that time, the stuff I mentioned before. Hendrik Hertzberg and George Trow sit down with two friends, one blond, and one dark-haired, both of whom were at the concert at Madison Square Garden. They both are asked to give their impressions of the concert. There is some disagreement, on a pretty basic level, about Bob Dylan as an artist. The blond one has some skepticism about Dylan, but maybe more so about his typical fans. This is a pretty funny statement: “I’ll tell you some people who weren’t there [at the concert]. There were no blacks there, and no transvestites, and there were very few people in embroidered jeans. Instead, there were extraordinary numbers of people who seemed to have come directly from registration at the New School. A very earnest group.” Ouch. The point the blond friend is making has to do with what she/he sees as Dylan’s lack of a sense of humor. The blond gets that there is irony in Dylan, but the humorlessness is why a more diverse audience stays away. The dark-haired person disagrees, admitting up front that he/she comes from a “Dylan-can-do-no-wrong angle”. The dark-haired person talks about Dylan’s elusive nature, how Dylan “manages to free himself from the expectations of his audience.” The suggestion appears to be that it is not Dylan’s problem, it is the problem with audience expectations (a concept that comes up again and again with Dylan). The dark-haired person was not crazy about the first half of the concert. He/she thought all the songs were played too fast, without any interpretation (or any that could be discerned or understood). However, the dark-haired person says that in retrospect the first half may be “a necessary softening-up process for both Dylan and the audience. The room was full of complicated yearnings, after all.”

The majority of this piece is made up of long quotes from these two people, and it’s a pleasure to read. “Complicated yearnings” is a hell of a line of dialogue.

Here is an excerpt where the dark-haired person talks about what happened during the second half of the concert.

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Dylan’, by Hendrik Hertzberg and George Trow

“And the second half of the concert?” we asked.

“Ah,” our dark-haired friend went on. “Dylan came out all alone, small and brave, with just his harmonica and his acoustic guitar. I was too far away to see the details of his face, but I could see his hair, curly and mousy, and that tense, crabbed stance. He sang ‘The Times They Are A-Changin” and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ and ‘Gates of Eden’ – still too fast, still in that almost strangled high chant. Then, halfway through ‘Just Like a Woman,’ it started to get magical, and when he sang ‘It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ it all fell into place. He was still fooling with the melody, but with a purpose. I felt I was hearing that song for the first time instead of the thousandth. When he sang the line about ‘But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked,’ everyone cheered, of course, but they cheered even louder for the line ‘And it’s all right, Ma, I can make it.’ After The Band came back on again, he sang a couple of very pretty new songs, and then ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ People began streaming down the aisles, and everyone stood up – there was no particular cue; we just all stood up at once. Dylan’s accompaniment for the chorus was the whole audience – twenty thousand people singing ‘HOW DOES IT FEEL?’ at the top of their lungs. The houselights were turned on, so we could all see each other, and four huge klieg lights went on behind Dylan, making everything – Dylan, us, the music – seem half again as big. He did two encores: a reprise of ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine),’ much more melodic and accessible this time, and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ I’d never heard him sing it quite that way before. He never does anything the same way twice. His voice was clear, strong, and true. He pulled it off – he kept the myth intact.”

“Personally,” our blond friend said, “when it comes to mythic figures I prefer the ones like Elvis Presley, who stay mythic in spite of themselves. Dylan was never really a successful archetype, if you know what I mean. He was only someone who seemed to be somewhere we ought to be. That’s why people worried so much about his changes of style. People worried about where Dylan was and what he was doing because they wanted to know where they should be and what they should be doing. The style changes prophesied – falsely, perhaps, some kind of movement, and that mercurial quality of his appealed to our generation’s love of novelty. But now, you see, he has run out of ways to seem some distance ahead, and has fallen back on devices that will allow him to seem (at all but a few carefully chosen moments) some distance away. It’s a little sad to fight so hard for Mythic Distance.”

“But that’s precisely what I like about him,” said our dark-haired friend. “He lives by his wits.”

Posted in Books, Music | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

For Roger Ebert: The Kings of Summer

Posted on June 7, 2013 by sheila

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Two stars. It has some problems.

My review for Roger Ebert here.

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For Roger Ebert: The Internship

Posted on June 7, 2013 by sheila

The-Internship-2013-Movie-Poster

Loved it.

My review for Roger Ebert here.

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The Books: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Elvis! David!’, by Hendrik Hertzberg

Posted on June 7, 2013 by sheila

9780375756498_p0_v1_s260x420

Next up on the essays shelf:

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross

The Fun of It is a collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces in The New Yorker, grouped by decade, which is a lot of fun because you can see how the “voice” of the magazine developed, and how “The Talk of the Town” has grown and changed over the years.

To Elvis fans, this essay is well-known because anything ever written about Elvis is well-known.

The “David” in the title refers to David Cassidy.

So let’s break it down.

Elvis burst onto the national scene in 1956 after becoming a regional phenomenon the year before. After signing with the Colonel (it was more a handshake-”you’re-my-guy” than a signing), Elvis started making television appearances. First came a series of spots on The Dorsey Brothers: these were Elvis’ first moments before a national audience. He’s wild in those spots. Much more wild than he would be only a couple of months later when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. After The Dorsey Brothers came his infamous appearance on The Milton Berle Show which really started all of his trouble. He gyrated like a maniac at the prolonged half-time ending of “Hound Dog”, and the shit hit the fan. He was denounced from pulpits, from op-ed pages. Cops threatened to shut down his show in Florida. Riots broke out at shows. Elvis was forced to hide in the backstage restroom after a show in Florida, but the girls found him there anyway and began to tear his clothes off of him. All of this spooked Ed Sullivan. It spooked Steve Allen, too, who – notoriously, awfully – had Elvis on his show and proceeded to make a mockery of him, dressing him up in a tuxedo and forcing him to sing “Hound Dog” to an actual hound dog. Nobody knew what to do with Elvis. Well, the girls knew. They always knew.

In June of 1972, Elvis Presley returned to New York after a nearly 20-year hiatus (and he didn’t tour there originally, he appeared on TV shows there) to play Madison Square Garden. He played four sold-out shows, breaking the record at the time. After a decade of not touring in the 60s, he opened at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in 1969, which would become his home away from home until he died in 1977. People made pilgrimages to Vegas to see him whenever he played there. He always returned. Starting in the 70s, Elvis began to tour constantly. He would take a month off, and then go back on the road again. He played small towns, big ones, and re-traced his steps through the South and South-East, where he had made his initial impression on young audiences. But playing New York? That was a different thing altogether. (And we shouldn’t forget that playing Las Vegas was also daunting to Elvis. He had had a brief gig there in 1956 which did not go over well. The middle-aged high-brow audience sat back and clapped politely when Elvis was used to mayhem. He walked the streets at night in despair. He couldn’t win them over. They didn’t like him! All is lost!! Returning to Vegas in 1969 was a way to slay that dragon of memory. Elvis never forgot a slight. He had a long long memory.) And New York was the place that had welcomed him in 1956, including him on the big variety shows, but had also humiliated him (phone call for Steve Allen). He was condescended to in the press, sneered at, held in contempt. That was in 1956. And if you think that wasn’t still on Elvis’ mind in 1972 when he returned, then you don’t know your Elvis!

Interestingly enough (and Conan O’Brien and Peter Guralnick cover this in their conversation), it was only when Elvis became a national phenomenon that his problems with public-image began. All those snooty Northeast elites treating him like a hick from the cow pastures, a perfect example of the “tolerance” of liberals who don’t hesitate to sneer at those with Southern accents. Tolerance, my ass. Elvis was very aware of all of that, and over the years his accent slowly disappeared, or at least lost its chewy edge. The overriding feeling in 1956 was: “Well, of course the hicks and hillbillies love you, you’re one of them, but this is New York, son, we have higher standards up here.”

It’s all rather gross and disheartening and still goes on, to some degree. Elvis was a flashpoint for all of that regional and class prejudice (not to mention race prejudice).

In some ways, this Talk of the Town piece, from June, 1972, detailing two concerts which occurred in New York City almost back to back (Elvis at Madison Square Garden, and David Cassidy at Nassau Coliseum), is about how Girls Know a Good Thing When They See It.

Guralnick and O’Brien did not touch upon my theory that much of the dismissiveness and condescension that Elvis still receives critically is due to the fact that his core audience was screaming women. Women just don’t seem as “serious” as men, it’s all rather silly, what women do when they go crazy for a star, isn’t it, tut-tut … if only men were also fans, then he could be seen as serious. (Of course Elvis had male fans, he always had, but the girls made more noise.) Now, granted, some men have a blindspot about such issues. The male experience is seen as The Default in our culture. It just is. But when women decide to love someone? They can move mountains. They can make people stars. Get out of the damn way.

Obviously, David Cassidy’s solo star did not shine as brightly as Elvis Presley’s. There are many many many stars who blaze across the covers of Tiger Beat for a season only to disappear when their fan base graduates to 9th grade. He was one of those. Although he did come back to Broadway to star in Blood Brothers, with his brother Shaun Cassidy and Petula Clark – and my aunt Regina was in that show! I met the Cassidy brothers! And Petula Clark. So he’s still out there. Nostalgia will carry him a long way. Interestingly enough, I Googled to check out any reviews of that Cassidy concert at Nassau Coliseum and the first thing that came up was an essay by my old blog-buddy Michele Catalano (she who organized the Sacks for Sandy wrapping party I attended). Michele Catalano was remembering her first concert, which was, unbelievably, that David Cassidy concert. I love her memory of it, how she tried to remain distant and “cool”, only to find herself screaming like a banshee.

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Elvis’ return to New York was a major media event. Of course there were no personal interviews with The King (there never were), but he did hold a press conference which has to be seen to be believed. WORK that crowd, country boy. He looks amazing, he’s funny, he’s intelligent, and in a couple of more awkward moments (when reporters ask him about the Vietnam War or his opinion on the women’s movement) he gently steers them off that course: “I’m an entertainer, honey,” he says to one woman. Brilliant.

You’d never know that that man at that press conference was terrified, terrified of being rejected and sneered at. Well, we all know what happened. He was a triumph. Not just with fans but with the press, many of whom were getting their first look at him live, ever.

Recently, a box set called Prince From Another Planet was released, with re-mastered great-sounding recordings of all four shows Elvis did at Madison Square Garden. Of course, tracks had been released before, but the sound here is now pristine. You feel like you are at the concert. Elvis sounds incredible.

And he looked amazing too.

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The “Talk of the Town” report on these two concerts – one from a guy almost 20 years into his stardom, and one from a guy just hitting it big – is very interesting. During the David Cassidy section, the author says that Cassidy doesn’t seem to take it all too seriously, and neither do the girls in the audience. That’s what these serious worry-warts don’t understand. Stop condescending to girls about what they choose to love, and how they choose to express their passion. Stop worrying about what it all means. These figures are fantasy-figures to girls, and girls love to let those fantasies out, love to scream and go mad. People still worry about the downfall of society when girls, en masse, decide to love something.

At the start, you can see some of that New York attitude in evidence (although the comedian who opened for Elvis did bomb, that’s a fact). There is some confusion about Elvis’ gigantic operation, the orchestra, the chorus, all that. This was common for many of the members of the press, who had memories of Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show with two or three guys behind him, and that was it. Who was this new Superman-figure, with a cape, and glitter, and a horn section?

What I love about this excerpt, though, is the comments included by the author’s “companion”. And there are some very interesting observations here about Elvis’ conscious manipulation of his own persona, his awareness of what was expected of him, and his sense of humor in offering it up (or not offering it up). Elvis knew what he was doing. I sense a tone of surprise in this line: “it became impossible to avoid the conclusion that he is a consummate professional”. Again, that has to be taken in context. Of course Elvis was a professional, Jeez, right? But if you think of 1972, if you think of the fact that Elvis was relatively new to the concert-touring circuit, if the majority of regular people out there knew him from his movies and the soundtracks … then yes, a feeling of surprise of how in CHARGE he was makes a lot of sense. Remember, the Beatles were out there in the world, the Rolling Stones were out there in the world. Elvis had been confined to the drive-in movie screens for almost 10 years. And unless you made the trek to Vegas, how would you ever see the guy? This is pre-Youtube-clips. In 1972, Elvis’ status was unquestionable, but seeing him live had to be absolutely overwhelming.

Here’s an excerpt.

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Elvis! David!’, by Hendrik Hertzberg

A lot was wrong with Elvis Presley’s first-ever New York appearance, at Madison Square Garden last weekend. Somebody in the Presley organization misjudged the desires of the crowd, and as a result Elvis was preceded by a standup comedian called Jackie Kahane. No doubt Mr. Kahane’s patter knocks ‘em dead inVegas, but New York is not Vegas and the Garden is not a night club. “Kids today …” said Mr. Kahane gamely, and lamely, as the audience clapped in unison. “I have a kid. Everything this kid eats turns to hair.” He was finally booed off the stage. There was fault to find with Elvis’s own performance as well. Instead of a rhythm section to back him up, he had a twenty-three-piece orchestra, a six-man rock band, and an eight-member chorus – a bit too much insurance, even for the Garden. The program was rigidly arranged and planned, allowing for little in the way of spontaneity, and it consisted largely of romantic ballads and sugary, easy-listening songs. The classics that most of the audience had come to hear – “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog” – occupied only fifteen minutes of a fifty-minute program. The blandness was conceptual as well as musical, as when Elvis sang a non-controversial medley of “Dixie,” “All My Trials”, and “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. The gyrations that made the man famous were seldom in evidence. Instead, he offered a repertoire of stereotyped actions and heroic poses.

Oddly, none of this made any difference. The audience was ecstatic throughout. (It would have been ecstatic even if Elvis had sung nothing but Gregorian chants.) During the intermission before Elvis’s appearance, our companion, a young woman who still has her Elvis scrapbook packed away in a trunk somewhere, told us a story that made it all quite comprehensible. “When I was twelve years old,” she said, “I was riding in the car with my mother and brother, and a song called ‘I Want, I Need You, I Love You’ came on the radio. I immediately felt a certain twinge. My mother said, ‘This is that Elvis Presley they’re all talking about. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.’ My brother said the same thing. I just sat on the back seat and didn’t say anything. You see, I did know what all the fuss was about.”

The lights went down, the orchestra struck up what used to be called “Thus Spake Zarathustra” and is now called “The Theme from ’2001,’” the audience began a full-throated scream, and Elvis appeared. He looked magnificent. His coal-black hair was fuller and drier than in days of old, and he wore a fantastical white costume studded with silver. He strolled back and forth on the stage, accepting the plaudits of the crowd like a Roman emperor. He looked like an apparition, and this was appropriate, because he has been a figure of fantasy for seventeen years. As the performance went on, it became impossible to avoid the conclusion that he is a consummate professional. He never cut loose, but he did not have to. The slightest gesture of his hand, the smallest inclination of his head set off waves of screams from the favored direction. The greatest ovation, except for the one that attended his initial appearance, came when he went into the first of his old songs, “Love Me.” “Treat me like a fool,” he sang. “Treat me mean an’ crool, but love me.”

Throughout, Elvis maintained a certain ironic distance from it all, sometimes engaging in a bit of self-parody. At the beginning of “Hound Dog,” for example, he posed dramatically on one knee, said, “Oh, excuse me,” and switched to the other knee. But he manifestly enjoyed the audience’s enjoyment, even as he indicated with a smile here and a gesture there that it all had less to do with him than with their idea of him. On our way out, we asked our companion if she had liked the show. “It was bliss,” she said. “I haven’t felt so intensely thirteen since – well, since I was thirteen.”

Posted in Books, Music | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Happy Birthday, Dean Martin

Posted on June 7, 2013 by sheila

From Dino, by Nick Tosches. Getting to the heart of it all, something I tried to do here, with Elvis.

His schoolmates had never really known him. Even his loving family could not tell for sure what lay within this kid who moseyed around among them with a hat on, singing. There was a pin-tumbler sidebar lock on his guts that no one could pick. That was just the way he was, and it was just the way he always would be.

Unlettered and rough-cut, Dino possessed both wiles and wisdom beyond his years – anyone trying to fuck with his mind or his body or his soul found this out forthwith. But the wisdom served by those wiles was an annihilating wisdom. It was the wisdom of the old ways, a wisdom through which the seductions of reason and love and truth and all such frail and flimsy lepidoptera would in their seasons emerge and thrive, wither and die. The sum of Dino’s instincts had to do with the old ways, those ways that were like a wall, ways that kept the world lontano, as the mafiosi would say: distant, safely and wisely at bay. That was how he liked it: lontano, like the flickering images on the theater screen that gave him pleasure as he sat alone, apart from them and unknown to them, in the dark.

Those close to him could sense it: He was there, but he was not really there; a part of them, but apart from them as well. The glint in his eye was disarming, so captivating and so chilling at once, like lantern-light gleaming on nighttime sea: the tiny soft twinkling so gaily inviting, belying for an instant, then illuminating, a vast unseen cold blackness beneath and beyond. The secret in its depth seemed to be the most horrible secret of all: that there was no secret, no mystery other than that which resides, not as a puzzle to be solved or a revelation to be discovered, but as blank immanence, in emptiness itself.

There was a picnic in Beatty Park. Roozy had gotten hold of an eight-millimeter movie camera, and they were all going to be in pictures. No one who saw that movie ever forgot it. The camera captured the silent laughter of the Crocettis and the Barrs. It followed Dino’s friends back and forth as they ran and fumbled, threw and jumped in a makeshift football game. There was merriment everywhere, but there was no Dino. Then the camera scanned to the right, to a tree off in the distance, and there he was by himself under the tree, away from it all, caught unawares and expressionless, abstractedly toying with a twig, sort of mind-whittling it. That was Dino, all right; the Dino inside the Dino who sang and swore and loafed and laughed.

He was born alone. He would die alone. These truths, he, like every punk, took to heart. But in him they framed another truth, another solitary, stubborn stone in the eye of nothing. There was something, a knowing, in him that others did not apprehend. He was born alone, and he would die alone, yes. But in between — somehow — the world in all its glory would hunker down before him like a sweet-lipped High Street whore.

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Here’s a bit from Peter Bogdonavich’s superb essay about Dean Martin, included in his book Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors. Bogdonavich talks to Howard Hawks about directing Dean Martin in Rio Bravo, where Martin gives an excellent performance. According to Hawks, Martin was afraid he couldn’t do it, afraid it would be “too dramatic”, that he would fail.

Hawks told me how he had happened to cast Martin in what would remain the finest dramatic performance of his career. “I always liked him,” Hawks said. “I’d met him personally.” Martin’s agent had asked if Hawks would consider Dean for the role of the drunken deputy and talk with him. Hawks said, “OK, nine-thirty tomorrow morning.” When the agent said he wasn’t sure Martin could get there quite that early, Hawks just closed him off: “Look, if he wants to get here at all, have him get here at nine-thirty.” Hawks grinned, remembering that Dean had come in the next day right on time and said, “Well, I’m kind of shufflin’. I did a show till midnight over in Vegas — got up early, hired an airplane to get down here and I’ve had a lot of trouble gettin’ ‘cross town.” Hawks shook his head. “You went to all that trouble to get here at nine-thirty?” Martin answered, “Yes,” and they talked for a minutes until Hawks abruptly said, “Well, you’d better go up and get your wardrobe.” Dean looked confused. “What do you mean>” he asked, and Hawks replied, “Well, you’re going to do it – go get your wardrobe.” Howard went on to me, “And that’s what we did. I knew that if he’d do all that, he’d work hard, and I knew that if he’d work we’d have no trouble because he’s such a personality. And he did – he worked hard over that drunk.”

It shows – yet only in the best way – never labored, remarkably natural. Clearly, Martin never worked that hard over a role again, nor did he ever have as layered a part to play. Apart from a cowboy burlesque with Lewis (Pardners), Rio Bravo was also Martin’s first Western, which was by far his own favorite kind of entertainment. Especially John Wayne Westerns. In his last tragic eight years, supposedly all Dean ever did was sit in front of the TV and watch Westerns. Therefore, to co-star with John Wayne (of all cowboy stars, the most popular), and to be directed by Howard Hawks – for the director’s first Western since his triumphant debut epic with Wayne, Red River — must have been for Dean one of the crowning moments of his career. The performance he gave was a kind of committed investment proving to doubters that if he wanted to, Dean could, within his range as an actor, do just about anything.

Dean Martin was smart. He worked. He could have been ruined when he “broke up” with Jerry Lewis. The two of them were such gigantic stars together. It had helped make his name. He very easily could have sunk into obscurity. But he was bold. He was smart. He struck out on his own. He began performing solo, opening in Vegas for the first time in 1957. All of his friends came out to see him. It was better than they could have ever imagined, although it was clear the man was talented. He had risen above what could have been a huge detriment. He was so identified as the straight-man to Jerry Lewis’ mania. Many lesser performers can never survive such a loss of identity. Dean Martin not only survived, he flourished.

Observations: They walk to the left. They walk to the right. They walk forward. They are applauded for that as though it is a difficult kickline. Why? Because they are awesome. No tricks, no flash. I like to watch it just tracking Dino, then again to see what Judy’s up to, and finally once more, to only watch Frank. Watch how they compete with one another, and then silently give each other props, like, “Wow, you just sounded awesome.” The sense of feeling and friendship between the three is genuine. You don’t need to DO much. Well, except have talent and genius. But if you have that? All you need to do is link arms, walk to the left, walk to the right, and you’re home.

Exquisite.

March 6, 1957

Dean Martin opened his solo show at The Sands Hotel on March 6, 1957. Everybody was there. He had split with Jerry Lewis the year before and people had (wrongly) assumed that Martin might have a hard time going solo.

Check out the marquee. It makes me ache for a time machine. I love the “Maybe Frank … Maybe Sammy”.

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Here’s one of the stills from his performance there that night, the night that would launch a spectacularly successful solo career. I love his goofiness.

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He was a hell of an actor, too.

Please go read my friend Trav S.D.’s profile of Dino’s career and importance.

Do you know anyone who doesn’t like him? I don’t. I think of him as the embodiment of a certain kind of show biz, with so much charisma that he transcended trends and fashions, yet so low-key and subtle that it wasn’t shoved down your throat.

And finally, my brother Brendan’s comments on Dean Martin.

I remember seeing the Dean Martin roasts and being scared, like a drunk friend of a drunk uncle had showed up unannounced at a dinner party and started shoe-horning everyone into singing along to perverted folk songs. I didn’t know what he was famous for and those roasts seemed to hint that he didn’t really know why either.

Then, years later as a grownup, I heard “Ain’t That A Kick In the Head” in some movie, or in a bar. That’s really all you need to do…just listen to that song a few times in a row. It all seems like a joke. Then you start to hear how well he sings the song. Then you realize that someone could have completely fouled the song up. It isn’t a very good song, actually. Think about all the classic standards. Everybody does ‘em. But is there another famous version of that song? If there is, I haven’t heard it.

How does he turn a mediocre song around? He doesn’t sound all that invested in the heartbreak aspect of it, there isn’t irony dripping all over the place. I still can’t quite place what makes the song work so well. But I’m going to try:

His presence and personality are so evident that you don’t even need the song. He has sung the song out of existence. All you want to do is hear him make a rumble in his throat and roll his eyes about how much trouble a broad can be. You also somehow realize that no broad ever caused him too much trouble. He causes them trouble. And they love it.

It is almost a taunt. What could be a stupid jokey brushoff of heartache turns into a come-on. It is a magic trick.

Another thing that strikes me about Dean Martin is that you get the sense that he would have behaved exactly the same had he been a truck driver, a grocer, a whatever. Most of the other stars of that era seem to have been transformed in some way by fame and what came along with it. This guy could have strolled around the streets of Rome with his jacket over his shoulder and 10 bucks in his pocket and it would make no difference to him.

The most underrated of all time.

Posted in Actors, Music, On This Day | Tagged | 10 Comments

Happy Birthday, Gwendolyn Brooks

Posted on June 7, 2013 by sheila

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I think I first encountered Gwendolyn Brooks’s stuff in Humanities in high school (her most famous is, perhaps, “We Real Cool”).

We Real Cool

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

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Born in 1917, she died in 2000 – so the woman saw a lot. She was the descendant of a runaway slave, and her parents instilled in her a ferocity in terms of getting an education. She started writing poetry very early on, and was publishing stuff regularly as a teenager. She clearly meant business. She had gone to both white and black high schools, giving her an entryway into the white world, which, in turn, gave her a very interesting perspective on the racial divide in Chicago. Her father encouraged her, wanting her to push on in her dream to be a writer.

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The Harlem Renaissance poets were very important to her, as well as to her parents. In the Anthology, the editors write, of Brooks’s influences:

Brooks learned the hard discipline of compression from two sources. The modernists famously demanded that superfluities be eliminated, that every word be made to count (le mot juste), and this seems to have been the guiding principle of the Chicago poetry workshop she attended in the early 1940s, in which she read T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and E.E. Cummings. Brooks also learned this lesson from the spare, hard, stripped-down idiom of the blues, which Langston Hughes urged her to study. Like the authors of the blues, she uses insistent rhymes and terse simplicity, and she can be at once understated and robust. Despite Brooks’s reputation for directness, her poetry, like the blues and other African American oral traditions, evinces a sly and ironic indirection.

Brooks often wrote in common everyday vernacular, and you can clearly hear the jazz and blues influence in her phrasing. Her family was upwardly mobile (her parents made sure of that: her father built her bookshelves and a desk early on when she was a child, a strong message: “This is where you are going to spend most of your time”), but she grew up in Chicago, with violence all around her. She wrote a devastating poem called “The Boy Died In My Alley” which shows Gwendolyn Brooks’s strength and individual voice. She observes. But not from afar. She is a neighbor.

The Boy Died In My Alley
The Boy died in my alley
without my Having Known.
Policeman said, next morning,
“Apparently died Alone.”

“You heard a shot?” Policeman said.
Shots I hear and Shots I hear.
I never see the Dead.

The Shot that killed him yes I heard
as I heard the Thousand shots before;
careening tinnily down the nights
across my years and arteries.

Policeman pounded on my door.
“Who is it?” “POLICE!” Policeman yelled.
“A Boy was dying in your alley.
A Boy is dead, and in your alley.
And have you known this Boy before?”

I have known this Boy before.
I have known this boy before, who ornaments my alley.
I never saw his face at all.
I never saw his futurefall.
But I have known this Boy.

I have always heard him deal with death.
I have always heard the shout, the volley.
I have closed my heart-ears late and early.
And I have killed him ever.

I joined the Wild and killed him
with knowledgeable unknowing.
I saw where he was going.
I saw him Crossed. And seeing,
I did not take him down.

He cried not only “Father!”
but “Mother!
Sister!
Brother.”
The cry climbed up the alley.
It went up to the wind.
It hung upon the heaven
for a long
stretch-strain of Moment.

The red floor of my alley
is a special speech to me.

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Brooks climbed to the greatest heights a poet can climb to, being appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1985 (the first black woman to be so honored), and Chicago is full of streets dedicated to her, and there’s a junior high school named after her in Harvey, Illinois.

Her work is subtle. The poems work ON you. She does not insist on your involvement. But that’s one of the reasons why I find myself so involved. She had an epiphany later in life. In the late 1960s, she went to a black writer’s conference and by this point she was in her 50s, a published poet, an established voice. But she met and talked with the younger poets coming up, many of them black nationalists, far more politicized than she was, and while she said she found it “uncomfortable”, she also felt that she “woke up”.

“Until 1967, my own blackness did not confront me with a shrill spelling of itself.”

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Brooks could not turn back. She organized a poetry workshop for young black kids, and invited the members of a neighborhood gang to join. The gang was called the Blackstone Rangers (she wrote a lengthy poem about them).

The Blackstone Rangers

I
AS SEEN BY DISCIPLINES

There they are.
Thirty at the corner.
Black, raw, ready.
Sores in the city
that do not want to heal.

II
THE LEADERS

Jeff. Gene. Geronimo. And Bop.
They cancel, cure and curry.
Hardly the dupes of the downtown thing
the cold bonbon,
the rhinestone thing. And hardly
in a hurry.
Hardly Belafonte, King,
Black Jesus, Stokely, Malcolm X or Rap.
Bungled trophies.
Their country is a Nation on no map.

Jeff, Gene, Geronimo and Bop
in the passionate noon,
in bewitching night
are the detailed men, the copious men.
They curry, cure,
they cancel, cancelled images whose Concerts
are not divine, vivacious; the different tins
are intense last entries; pagan argument;
translations of the night.

The Blackstone bitter bureaus
(bureaucracy is footloose) edit, fuse
unfashionable damnations and descent;
and exulting, monstrous hand on monstrous hand,
construct, strangely, a monstrous pearl or grace.

III
GANG GIRLS

A Rangerette

Gang Girls are sweet exotics.
Mary Ann
uses the nutrients of her orient,
but sometimes sighs for Cities of blue and jewel
beyond her Ranger rim of Cottage Grove.
(Bowery Boys, Disciples, Whip-Birds will
dissolve no margins, stop no savory sanctities.)

Mary is
a rose in a whiskey glass.

Mary’s
Februaries shudder and are gone. Aprils
fret frankly, lilac hurries on.
Summer is a hard irregular ridge.
October looks away.
And that’s the Year!
Save for her bugle-love.
Save for the bleat of not-obese devotion.
Save for Somebody Terribly Dying, under
the philanthropy of robins. Save for her Ranger
bringing
an amount of rainbow in a string-drawn bag.
“Where did you get the diamond?” Do not ask:
but swallow, straight, the spirals of his flask
and assist him at your zipper; pet his lips
and help him clutch you.

Love’s another departure.
Will there be any arrivals, confirmations?
Will there be gleaning?

Mary, the Shakedancer’s child
from the rooming-flat, pants carefully, peers at
her laboring lover ….
Mary! Mary Ann!
Settle for sandwiches! settle for stocking caps!
for sudden blood, aborted carnival,
the props and niceties of non-loneliness—
the rhymes of Leaning.

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I love her short stark poem for Emmett Till.

The Last Quatrain Of the Ballad of Emmett Till

Emmett’s mother is a pretty-faced thing;
the tint of pulled taffy.
She sits in a red room,
drinking black coffee.
She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.

Look at how she uses the exact right amount of words. No more, no less. Brooks rarely goes for the big gestures, the obvious sucker-punch. She dazzles, but not by being ostentatious or a show-off. The editors at the Norton Anthology compare her to Edgar Lee Masters (my excerpt of him here), and I love that. It may not be obvious on the face of it, but she wrote of one community, in all of their voices, sticking to what she knew, and her poems – like “The Bean Eaters”, my favorite one of hers – have this way of cracking open an entire life in a couple of short lines, just like Masters did in Spoon River Anthology.

The Bean Eaters

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Posted in On This Day, writers | Tagged | Leave a comment

R.I.P. Esther Williams

Posted on June 6, 2013 by sheila

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Jezebel beat me to the punch with the reference, but since it was the first thing I thought of when I heard that Esther Williams, the Hollywood Mermaid and gigantic star of the 40s and 50s, had passed away at the age of 91, I figured I would share it here.

When I was 9 or 10 years old, I read as much Judy Blume as I could get my hands on. Forever remained slightly frightening (and rightly so), although a dog-eared copy was passed around my 6th grade class, and we would have worried whispered conversations about it. Later on, when I was a teenager I would fall in love with Tiger Eyes, a beautiful book. But before then, I tore through her children’s books and young-adult books. Of course there was Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (two personal favorites). But she was prolific, and I read everything.

My favorite book of hers was called Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. It tells the story of a young Jewish girl, post-World War II, whose family moves to Miami Beach from New York City in 1947. Sally is an imaginative girl, who lives a rich world of fantasy. She has rich storylines going in her head of being a detective, or the star of some sweeping romance. And during her first months in Florida, she becomes convinced that their next-door neighbor is Hitler, in disguise. Judy Blume has said that this book was her most autobiographical, dealing with a post-WWII childhood, the lingering spectre of Nazism over American Jews, and the domination of Hollywood over the dreams of kids. It’s an escape for Sally.

Sally is obsessed with Esther Williams, who was in her heyday at that point.

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I was a kid who loved watching old movies, whenever they were shown on channel 56. That’s how I first saw James Dean, Marlon Brando, Joan Fontaine, Cary Grant, and all the rest of them. On a staticky little black and white TV on Saturday afternoons. When I first saw an Esther Williams movie, I remember feeling a thrill of how smart I was, because I already knew the name, and knew how important she was, because hadn’t Sally J. Freedman introduced me to her so well?

Thanks, Judy Blume.

I wanted to share this excerpt from Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself:

Esther Williams was her favorite movie actress. Some day she was going to swim just like her, with her hair in a coronet and a flower behind her ear. Swimming along underwater, always smiling, with beautiful straight white teeth and shiny red lipstick. Esther Williams never got water up her nose or had to spit while she swam, like Sally, who didn’t like to get her face wet in the first place. Not even when she dove off the high board. You’d never know you had to kick to stay afloat from watching Esther Williams. And when she swam in the movies there was always beautiful music in the background and handsome men standing around, waiting. It would be great fun to be Esther Williams!

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Fanny Brice, the original Funny Girl, supposedly once wisecracked, “Esther Williams? Wet, she’s a star. Dry, she ain’t.”

When Esther Williams heard that remark, she laughed. She knew her career was improbable, and she knew was very lucky. She didn’t have pretensions about who or what she was. And she was a natural onscreen, not a great actress, perhaps, but she didn’t need to be. She needed to be fresh and fun and lively, and she was (not to mention a phenomenal athlete).

There’s a great obituary in the NY Times by Aljean Harmetz.

Here’s a clip from Bathing Beauty, 1944. Have fun. Esther Williams sure is.

R.I.P. Esther Williams!

Posted in Actors, RIP | Tagged | Leave a comment

On This Day: June 6, 1944: “I Really Think I’m Too Young For This.”

Posted on June 6, 2013 by sheila

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Sgt. Lee Pozek:

“We yelled to the crew to take us in, we would rather fight than drown. As the ramp dropped we were hit by machine-gun and rifle fire. I yelled to get ready to swim and fight. We were getting direct fire right into our craft. My three squad leaders in front and others were hit. Some men climbed over the side. Two sailors got hit. I got off in water only ankle deep, tried to run but the water was suddenly up to my hips. I crawled to hide behind a steel beach obstacle. Bullets hit off it, others hit more of my men. Got up to the beach to crawl behind the shingle and a few of my men joined me. I took a head count and there was only eleven of us left, from the thirty on the craft. As the tide came in we took turns running out to the water’s edge to drag wounded men to cover. Some of the wounded were hit again while on the beach. More men crowding up and crowding up. More people being hit by shellfire. People trying to help each other. While we were huddled there, I told Jim Hickey that I would like to live to be forty years old and work forty hours a week and make a dollar an hour (when I joined up I was making thirty-seven-and-a-half cents an hour). I felt, boy, I would really have it made at $40 a week. Jim Hickey still calls me from New York on June 6 to ask, ‘Hey, Sarge are you making forty bucks per yet?’”

Pvt. Len Griffing of the 501st:

“I looked out into what looked like a solid wall of tracer bullets. I remember this as clearly as if it happened this morning. It’s engraved in the cells of my brain. I said to myself, ‘Len, you’re in as much trouble now as you’re ever going to be. If you get out of this, nobody can ever do anything do you that you ever have to worry about.’”

Journalist Holdbrook Bradley:

“The sound of battle is something I’m used to. But this [the opening bombardment on D-Day] was the loudest thing I have ever heard. There was more firepower than I’ve ever heard in my life and most of us felt that this was the moment of our life, the crux of it, the most outstanding.”

Lt. Cyrus Aydlett wrote in his diary:

“It was like the fireworks display of a thousand Fourth of Julys rolled into one. The heavens seemed to open, spilling a million stars on the coastline before us, each one spattering luminous, tentacle-like branches of flame in every direction. Never before has there been any more perfect coordination of firepower than that unloosed by our air and naval forces on this so-called impregnable coastline which ‘Herr Schickelgruber’ had so painstakingly fortified with every obstacle man is capable of conceiving. Pillows of smoke and flame shot skyward with great force – the resounding blasts even at our distance were terrifying – concussion gremlins gave involuntary, sporadic jerks on your trouser legs – the ship shrugged and quivered as if she knew what was occurring.”

Pvt. Dwayne Burns, 508th PIR:

“Here we sat, each man alone in the dark. These men around me were the best friends I will ever know. I wondered how many would die before the sun came up. ‘Lord, I pray, please let me do everything right. Don’t let me get anybody killed and don’t let me get killed either. I really think I’m too young for this.’”

Sgt. Malvin Pike, E Company:

“I jumped out into waist-deep water. We had 200 feet to go to shore and you couldn’t run, you could just kind of push forward. We finally made it to the edge of the water, then we had 200 yards of open beach to cross, through the obstacles. But fortunately most of the Germans were not able to fight, they were all shook up from the bombing and the shelling and the rockets and most of them just wanted to surrender.”

Unnamed G.I. commenting on the Higgins boats:

“That s.o.b. Higgins – he hasn’t got nothing to be proud of, inventing this boat!”

Sgt. Cliff Sorenson:

“Aerial reconnaissance had estimated that the flooded area was maybe ankle deep, except in the irrigation ditches, which they estimated to be about eighteen inches deep. Well, they made a big mistake. That flooded area was in some places up to your waist and the irrigation ditches were over your head. Some brave souls would swim across the irrigation ditches and throw toggle ropes back and haul the rest of us across. So much for aerial reconnaissance. And we waded and waded and waded. An occasional sniper shot would be fired and didn’t hit anybody. We were mostly interested in keeping from drowning because the bottom was slick and the footing tricky. You could slip down and maybe drown with all that equipment. I was so angry. The Navy had tried to drown me at the beach, and now the Army was trying to drown me in the flooded area. I was more mad at our side than I was at the Germans, because the Germans hadn’t done anything to me yet.”

Seabee Orval Wakefield:

“By middle afternoon the beach had changed from nothing but obstacles to a small city. It was apparent that we NCD units had done our job well because as far as I could see to one side of the beach was all the way opened, there was nothing holding the landing craft back. We figured our day was well spent, even though no one knew who we were. We were being questioned. ‘Who are you guys? What do you do?’ The coxswains didn’t like us because we always had so many explosives with us. When we were inland, the Army officers wanted to know what is the Navy doing in here. [An Army medical officer] said, ‘Are you guys going to just sit here or are you going to volunteer?’ We didn’t think much about that idea, we had just come off the hot end of the demolition wire but finally we did volunteer [to carry the wounded to the evacuation ship] for him. We carried the wounded down to the shore. German shells were still coming in. It was no longer a rush of men coming ashore, it was a rush of vehicles. All of a sudden it seemed like a cloud started from the horizon over the ocean and it came toward us and by the time it got to us it extended clean back to the horizon. Gliders were coming, to be turned loose inland. [At dusk, I] had my most important thought that day. [Wading onshore that morning] I found that my legs would hardly hold me up. I thought I was a coward. [Then I realized that my explosives weighed well over 100 pounds, so I cut the bags off.] When I had thought for a moment that I wasn’t going to be able to do it, that I was a coward, and then found out that I could do it, you can’t imagine how great a feeling that was. Just finding out, yes, I could do what I had volunteered to do.”

Sgt. Carwood Lipton:

“We were so full of fire that day. I was sure I would not be killed. I felt that if a bullet was headed for me it would be deflected or I would move.”

Maj. David Thomas, regimental surgeon for the 508th PIR:

“The thing that I remember most was a soldier who had his leg blown off right by the knee and the only thing left attached was his patellar tendon. And I had him down there in this ditch and I said, ‘Son, I’m gonna have to cut the rest of your leg off and you’re back to bullet-biting time because I don’t have anything to use for an anesthetic.’ And he said, ‘Go ahead, Doc.’ I cut the patellar tendon and he didn’t even whimper.”

Capt. Roy Creek:

“The bridge was ours and we knew we could hold it. But as with all victors in war, we shared a let down feeling. We knew it was still a long way to Berlin. When would the beach forces come? They should have already done so. Maybe the whole invasion had failed. All we knew was the situation in Chef-du-Pont, and Chef-du-Pont is a very small town. At 2400 hours, our fears were dispelled. Reconnaissance elements of the 4th Infantry Division wheeled into town. They shared their rations with us. It was D-Day plus one in Normandy. As I sat pondering the day’s events, I reflected upon the details of the fighting and the bravery of every man participating in it. We had done some things badly. But overall, with a hodgepodge of troops from several units who had never trained together, didn’t even know one another, engaged in their first combat, we had done okay. We captured our bridge and we held it.”

Pvt. John Fitzgerald:

“The impact of the shells threw up mounds of dirt and mud. The ground trembled and my eardrums felt as if they would burst. Dirt was filling my shirt and was getting into my eyes and mouth. Those 88s became a legend. It was said that there were more soldiers converted to Christianity by the 88 than by Peter and Paul combined. When the firing finally stopped, it was midafternoon. We still held the town and there was talk of tanks coming up from the beaches to help us. I could not hold a razor steady enough to shave for the next few days. Up until now, I had been mentally on the defensive. My introduction to combat had been a shocker but it was beginning to wear off. I found myself pissed off at the Germans, the dirt, the noise, and the idea of being pushed back.”

German Lieutenant Frerking, looking out at the approaching boats:

“Holy smoke – here they are! But that’s not possible, that’s not possible.”

Captain Robert Walker:

“I took a look towards the shore and my heart took a dive. I couldn’t believe how peaceful, how untouched, and how tranquil the scene was. The terrain was green. All buildings and houses were intact. The church steeples were proudly and defiantly standing in place. ‘Where,’ I yelled to no one in particular, ‘is the damned Air Corps?’”

Navy beachmaster Lt. Joe Smith:

“They put their ramp down and a German machine gun or two opened up and you could see the sand kick up right in front of the boat. No one moved. The coxswain stood up and yelled and for some reason everything was quiet for an instant and you could hear him as clear as a bell, he said, ‘For Christ’s sake, fellas, get out! I’ve got to go get another load.’”

Sgt. Thomas Valance:

“As we came down the ramp, we were in water about knee-high and started to do what we were trained to do, that is, move forward and then crouch and fire. One problem was we didn’t quite know what to fire at. I saw some tracers coming from a concrete emplacement which, to me, looked mammoth. I never anticipated any gun emplacements being that big. I shot at it but there was no way I was going to knock out a German concrete emplacement with a .30-caliber rifle. I abandoned my equipment which was dragging me down into the water. It became evident rather quickly that we weren’t going to accomplish very much. I remember floundering in the water with my hand up in the air, trying to get my balance, when I was first shot through the palm of my hand, then through the knuckle. Pvt. Henry Witt was rolling over toward me. I remember him saying, ‘Sergeant, they’re leaving us here to die like rats. Just to die like rats.’ [I was shot again in the left thigh] and I staggered up against the seawall and sort of collapsed there and, as a matter of fact, spent the whole day in that same position. Essentially my part in the invasion had ended by having been wiped out as most of my company was. The bodies of my buddies were washing ashore and I was the one live body in amongst so many of my friends, all of whom were dead, in many cases very severely blown to pieces.”

Sgt. Harry Bare:

“As ranking noncom, I tried to get my men off the boat and make it somehow to get under the seawall. We waded to the sand and threw ourselves down and the men were frozen, unable to move. My radioman had his head blown off three yards from me. The beach was covered with bodies, men with no legs, no arms – God, it was awful. I tried to get the men organized. There were only six out of my boat alive. I was soaking wet, shivering, but trying like hell to keep control. I could feel the cold fingers of fear grip me.”

Pvt. John Robertson, F Company:

“Behind me, coming at me, was a Sherman tank with pontoons wrapped around it. I had two choices: get run over by the tank or run through the machine-gun fire and the shelling. How I made it, I’ll never know. But I got to the shingle and tried to survive.”

Pvt. Harry Parley, E Company, 116th:

“As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell. I shut everything out and concentrated on following the men in front of me down the ramp and into the water. I was unable to come up. I knew I was drowning and made a futile attempt to unbuckle the flamethrower harness. [A buddy pulled Parley forward to where he could stand.] Then slowly, half-drowned, coughing water, and dragging my feet, I began walking toward the chaos ahead. [The machine-gun fire] made a ‘sip sip’ sound like someone sucking on their teeth. To this day I don’t know why I didn’t dump the flamethower and run like hell for shelter. But I didn’t. Months later, trying to analyze why I was able to safely walk across the beach while others running ahead were hit, I found a simple answer. The Germans were directing their fire down onto the beach so that the line of advancing attackers would run into it and, since I was behind, I was ignored. In short, the burden on my back may well have saved my life. Men were trying to dig or scrape trenches or foxholes for protection from the mortars. Others were carrying or helping the wounded to shelter. We had to crouch or crawl on all fours when moving about. To communicate, we had to shout above the dine of the shelling from both sides as well as the explosions on the beach. Most of us were in no condition to carry on. We were just trying to stay alive. The enormity of our situation came as I realized that we had landed in the wrong sector and that many of the people around me were from other units and strangers to me. What’s more, the terrain before us was not what I had been trained to encounter. I remember removing my flamethrower and trying to dig a trench while lying on my stomach. Failing that, I searched and found a discarded BAR. But we could see nothing above us to return the fire. We were the targets. I lay there, scared, worried, and often praying. Once or twice I was able to control my fear enough to race across the sand to drag a helpless GI from drowning in the incoming tide. That was the extent of my bravery that morning.”

Pvt. Parley, what are you talking about, “that was the extent of my bravery”???

Sgt. Benjamin McKinney, C Company:

“I was so seasick I didn’t care if a bullet hit me between the eyes and got me out of my misery.”

Capt. Robert Walker:

“Here I was on Omaha Beach. Instead of being a fierce, well-trained, fighting infantry warrior, I was an exhausted, almost helpless, unarmed survivor of a shipwreck. I saw dozens of soldiers, mostly wounded. The wounds were ghastly to see. [The scene reminded me of Tennyson's lines] in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’: ‘Cannon to right of them / Cannon to left of them / Cannon in front of them / Volley’d and thunder’s.’ Every GI knew the lines ‘Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die.’”

Sgt. John Robert Slaughter:

“I watched the movie ‘The Longest Day’ and they came charging off those boats and across the beach like banshees but that isn’t the way it happened. You came off the craft, you hit the water, and if you didn’t get down in it you were going to get shot. [The incoming fire] turned the boys into men. Some would be very brave men, others would soon be dead men, but all of those who survived would be frightened men. Some wet their britches, others cried unashamedly, and many just had to find it within themselves to get the job done. This is where the discipline and training took over. There were dead men floating in the water and there were live men acting dead, letting the tide take them in. Getting across the beach to the shingle became an obsession. I made it. The first thing I did was to take off my assault jacket and spread my raincoat so I could clean my rifle. It was then I saw bullet holes in my raincoat. I lit my first cigarette. I had to rest and compose myself because I became weak in my knees.”

Pvt. Raymond Howell, D Company:

“I took some shrapnel in my helmet and hand. That’s when I said, bullshit, if I’m going to die, to hell with it I’m not going to die here. The next bunch of guys that go ver that goddamn wall, I’m going with them. If I’m gonna be infantry, I’m gonna be infantry. So I don’t know who else, I guess all of us decided well, it is time to start.”

Pvt. Albert Mominee (who was 5’1″, and had the nickname “Little One” in his regiment):

“The craft gave a sudden lurch, as it hit an obstacle and in an instant an explosion erupted followed by a blinding flash of fire. Flames raced around and over us. The first reaction was survival; the immediate instinct was the will to live. Before I knew it I was in the water. About fifty yards from shore the water was shallow enough for me to wade. Thirty yards to go and then twenty. I was exhausted and in shock. I heard a voice shouting, ‘Come on, Little One! Come on! You can make it!’ It was Lieutenant Anderson, the exec, urging me on. It seemed like someone had awakened me from a dream. I lunged toward him and as I reached him, he grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the water, then practically dragged me to the cover of the seawall. Only six out of thirty in my craft escaped unharmed. Looking around, all I could see was a scene of havoc and destruction. Abandoned vehicles and tanks, equipment strung all over the beach, medics attending the wounded, chaplains seeking the dead. Suddenly I had a craving for a cigarette. ‘Has anybody got a smoke?’ I asked.”

Ernie Pyle, June 12, 1944 column:

Now that it is over it seems to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all … As one officer said, the only way to take a beach is to face it and keep going. It is costly at first, but it’s the only way. If the men are pinned down on the beach, dug in and out of action, they might as well not be there at all. They hold up the waves behind them, and nothing is to be gained. Our men were pinned down for a while, but finally they stood up and went through, and so we took that beach and accomplished our landing. We did it with every advantage on the enemy’s side and every disadvantage on ours. In the light of a couple of days of retrospection, we sit and talk and call it a miracle that our men ever got on at all or were able to stay on.

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All quotes taken from D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, by Stephen Ambrose

Posted in On This Day | Tagged , | 8 Comments

“From the very beginning, [Elvis] was a conscious creative artist. He knew what he wanted to achieve.” – Peter Guralnick

Posted on June 4, 2013 by sheila

Well worth the time: Conan O’Brien talks to music historian/Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick about Elvis. Of course, they both dis the movies in the 60s, and I have made myself clear numerous times about my feelings about that (here’s just one example), but that’s a typical thing, seems to be the accepted view of things. I am determined to help change that, in my own small way. But that’s a minor disappointment. This is a rich and fascinating conversation, by two men who really know their topic. And better than know it, they love it.

Listen to how people talk when they talk about Elvis. Listen to the familiarity, the affection, the sadness at what-might-have-been. It’s an extraordinary connection he had with his fans. Guralnick talks about Elvis’ earliest recordings, the very beginning, in 1953, 1954. And while Elvis may not have been able to play the guitar (he really couldn’t, not then), and while there may have been better singers (there were), what he had was the ability to communicate.

And that is something that cannot be taught. Or, perhaps it can. Harry Connick sure gave it a try in his most recent coaching gig on American Idol. Those kids may be able to hit high notes and fly up and down the scale, but they do not know what they are singing about, they don’t care either (a sin, in the Religion of Art), and have no idea that what their job is, what their job REALLY is, is to communicate. In order to do that, you need to know what you are singing, and why. It’s very simple. Sorry you missed the memo. (I think of Taylor Hicks singing “Living for the City” as though it was a party song, as though “whoo-hoo, gonna have a great time in the city tonight” was the message of the song. The song is a raging furious indictment of racism, bigotry, and oppression. Take that smile off your face, Hicks. I can’t watch that performance without getting angry.)

You think Etta James is great just because of her voice? You’re wrong. It’s because of her ability to communicate WITH her voice. Plenty of people have good voices. Dime a dozen. Listen to the great performances. Watch Judy Garland sing “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on her TV show, and watch what it means to communicate. You don’t even need to know the backstory, that JFK had just been shot, although knowing that is fascinating context. But even without that, her emotions and her need to say something are poured into her tiny quivering frame and it takes everything she’s got, every bit of her life experience, her career experience, her show-biz chops, to get it OUT of her. Without falling apart. Falling apart, though, is not her job. She would fail if she fell apart. The need to communicate something is larger than her need to have a small private experience of grief and loss. She knows that. So watch.

What she does with her voice is extraordinary, but you could turn the sound down on that performance and watch it as a silent movie and STILL get what she was trying to communicate.

I wrote a bit of a manifesto on this topic. Interestingly enough, it started with an American Idol “performance” and led to Elvis Presley.

It’s called It’s Got To Cost You Something. If you are not willing to pay the price, in gesture, commitment, openness, then you have no business asking us to take time out of our lives to watch you.

More than anything else, I would say that if you want to be a performer, then you must be willing to leave something of yourself up there on that stage. And you have to know that you won’t get it back, but also, that there is more to give. Give it away. You won’t get it back. But give it away. That’s your job.

Elvis knew that from the start.

If you have the time, please watch this fascinating conversation between Conan and Guralnick. It’s a goldmine.

Posted in Music | Tagged | 19 Comments