“You are not acting so much as being. The result is realism.” — Gary Cooper

Posted on May 7, 2026 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

Cary Grant had a funny theory about Hollywood and how stardom was being like a crowded streetcar. Peter Bogdonavich asked Cary Grant to elaborate. Grant said:

Becoming a movie star is something like getting on a streetcar. Actors and actresses are packed in like sardines.

When I arrived in Hollywood, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Warner Baxter, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, and others were crammed onto the car. A few stood, holding tightly to leather straps to avoid being pushed aside. Others were firmly seated in the center of the car. They were the big stars. At the front, new actors and actresses pushed and shoved to get aboard. Some made it and slowly moved toward the center.

When a new “star” came aboard, an old one had to be edged out the rear exit. The crowd was so big you were pushed right off. There was room for only so many and no more.

One well-known star, Adolphe Menjou, was constantly being pushed off the rear. He would pick himself up, brush himself off, and run to the front to fight his way aboard again. In a short time he was back in the center only to be pushed off once more. This went on for years. He never did get to sit down.

It took me quite a while to reach the center. When I did make it, I remained standing. I held on to that leather strap for dear life. Then Warner Baxter fell out the back, and I got to sit down.

When Gregory Peck got on, it was Ronald Colman who fell off.

The only man who refused to budge was Gary Cooper. Gary was firmly seated in the center of the car. He just leaned back, stuck those long legs of his out in the aisle, and tripped everyone who came along.

Gary Cooper “refused to budge”! He really did! He was stolid, dependable, and yet charismatic – and gorgeous – aging like the proverbial fine wine. He was like Cary Grant in that people still found him a valid leading man even when he got way too old. Not that you’re ever too old for love, that’s not what I’m saying. But “movies” were casting him as a romantic lead opposite much younger women (Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon, for example), and it made him uncomfortable. It made Cary Grant so uncomfortable (he, too, was paired opposite the much younger Audrey Hepburn in Charade) he stopped making movies. Cooper was self-conscious about how much older he looked than Hepburn – so there’s all this soft-focus stuff going on with his face, as though he’s later Joan Crawford. Cooper was not vain, but he did know what he had.

And let’s face it. There’s handsome, and then there’s Gary Cooper. It’s just different. He was so masculine, so strong, so classically taciturn – shy, almost – John Wayne was taciturn too but he wasn’t shy. Cooper could be believably flustered in love. But he could also move with purpose, never a wasted gesture. He was so COMPACT as an actor. Nothing “extra”. So controlled. He was truly made for the movies. He didn’t come out of a theatre tradition. Gary Cooper wouldn’t “register” onstage at all. He needed the movie camera to capture him, he needed that intimacy to pick up on every teeny fleeting thought, every momentary hesitation and impulse.

Frank James Cooper was born in Montana. As a child, he spent 10 years in England. Somehow, he ended up in California. Perhaps looking for work? Not clear. If he had ambitions to be a great actor, he wasn’t behaving that way. He met up with two friends strolling down the street in full Western garb. They told him you could make good money as an extra in cowboy movies. If you could ride a horse, you might make some cash. This was in the early 1920s. So Cooper got his start playing extras in cowboy movies. There was no indication he had any gift for acting, but he knew how to ride a horse. Also, I mean …. LOOK at him.

Then came a “big break” in the form of a scene in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926), starring Ronald Colman, a scene which ended up getting cut. I’m interested in this story because it is the birth of the actor. Or, if not the birth, then the “reveal”. He was an extra in Barbara Worth. I don’t think he was even credited. He was a faceless nobody. Who knows what was going on in Gary Cooper, who knows what his dreams were. He had already lived quite an interesting life by this point, and he was still a young man. He was taken under the wing of an older woman who showed him the fine life, taught him how to dress, behave, perhaps showed him some other stuff, too. (The guy was a legend in the sack. Ingrid Bergman went BANANAS for him. I mean, they all did.) If you see photos of him hanging out at his house “casually”, he always looks immaculate. Not in a dandyish way, just elegant, masculine, beautiful. He had been taught. The “gigolo” rumors wafted around him, but he sailed above it, unconcerned, dressed to the nines, casually elegant, every detail perfect (it’s a good strategy.) But what else did he want out of life? Did he dream of being a star? It’s not clear. He wandered quite a bit before landing in Hollywood.

I am telling this story from my memory of reading A. Scott Berg’s biography of Sam Goldwyn, so some of the details might be fuzzy but the central event is clear. Barbara Worth was shot on location. They were having difficulties with an actor who was to play a small but important part. I think he hadn’t shown up, and he kept getting delayed. Henry King finally decided he couldn’t wait any longer and handed the role to the totally untried Gary Cooper. All Cooper had to do was knock on the door of the cabin. The woman inside would open the door, and he would collapse from exhaustion, basically falling into the room. That was the part. That was what he had to do.

Long afterwards, when asked about Cooper, Henry King would describe the first day of shooting with this unknown kid who had never acted before. It remained vivid in his mind. By coincidence, Sam Goldwyn himself was on location that day as well (this is a key detail).

Henry King knew this young beautiful kid had never acted before so he pulled him aside to give him some tips on what was needed. He said, on repeat, “Just remember your character is tired. You have been riding for days. You are tired, tired, tired … When that door opens, I need to see a man who is licked … who can barely stand … tired, tired, tired…”

King OVER-explained it to Cooper because King didn’t think Gary Cooper was an actor. Maybe Gary Cooper didn’t yet think that Gary Cooper was an actor.

Whenever there was a 5-minute break, a 10-minute break, King came back over to Cooper’s side, whispering, “Tired, tired, tired …”

Sam Goldwyn saw all this, saw how much attention the director was giving this glorified EXTRA, and grumbled about it. “Henry, am I paying you so you can give an extra acting lessons?”

King protested, “The kid isn’t an actor … I’ve got to explain to him what he has to do …”

Finally it was time to shoot.

Action!

The interior scene began. It was interrupted by the TIREDEST most weary knock on the door the world has ever heard. King said later you could barely hear the knock. The person knocking did not have the strength to lift his hand up high enough to knock properly. He was too weak. When the door opened, there he was… King said, “He had become, in the 30 seconds hidden behind that door, a completely different man. A sad sack.” Cooper took one step forward, and collapsed onto the floor … gracefully, naturally … It looked as though his legs buckled underneath him, he could not hold himself up anymore. The camera operator realizing some DAMN FINE ACTING was going on, had the presence of mind to follow Cooper’s swoon down to the floor. And cameras were gigantic back then! King called “CUT.”

Right after King called “Cut”, Sam Goldwyn gestured him to come over. Goldwyn could be quite terrifying, especially when he was really calm. In this moment, Goldwyn was eerily calm.

Goldwyn murmured, “You say that kid’s not an actor?”

King said, “He was an extra until this morning.”

Goldwyn replied, “Henry, that kid is the greatest goddamn actor I have ever seen in my life.”

Young actors can learn a lot about acting for the camera from Gary Cooper. He did so little (seemingly). There were times when directors were like “Jesus Christ, it’s like he’s sleepwalking through this. It’s AWFUL.” And then they watched the dailies. And realized the error of their ways. Oh ye of little faith. Cooper’s performance was all there. You couldn’t feel it ‘in the room’, but the camera caught it all.

What Gary Cooper didn’t know about film acting isn’t worth knowing.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day | 14 Comments

“I started at the top and worked my way down.” — Orson Welles

Posted on May 6, 2026 by sheila

orson7

It’s his birthday today.

When Orson Welles was just a teenager, he traveled to Ireland. And although it seems improbable (perhaps not, because this is Orson Welles we’re talking about), he decided to audition for the newly-formed Gate Theatre, and was given a role in their upcoming production. He literally walked in off the street and was cast. With no professional experience. As Welles sometimes told it, he unwittingly became the Toast of Dublin. A slight exaggeration, but the reality is that he did appear in a number of plays at The Gate, enjoying a lot of success.

With all of the great stuff in the Orson Welles story, I am particularly taken by the sojourn in Ireland. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. The Gate Theatre was a new operation, formed as an alternative to the all-powerful Abbey Theatre. The Gate would do new works, experimental works. The Gate still exists. The Gate was formed by a man named Micheál MacLiammóir. (He would become a lifelong friend of Orson Welles, playing Iago in Welles’ film Othello.)

othello04
Micheál MacLiammóir, Orson Welles, “Othello”

My father knew everything about MacLiammóir and gave me a copy of an obscure short-lived literary journal from 1950 called “Envoy” which included an essay by MacLiammóir called “Celluloid and the Actor.” Yes, I typed the whole thing out. It is unavailable otherwise. If the copyright-gods want to come after me, so be it. MacLiammóir’s thoughts on the actor’s craft as it relates to the movies is invaluable so I’m happy to break the law in this instance to share it.

But some words on MacLiammóir, because it’s fascinating and perfect that he and Orson Welles, a famous fabulist and tall-tale-teller himself (God love ‘im), would become such good friends. MacLiammóir presented himself as an Irish Catholic, from a long ancestral line of Catholics in Cork. He spoke fluent Irish. He wrote three autobiographies in Irish – in Irish!! – that then had to be translated into English. He devoted himself to culture in Ireland. Like Yeats, he was a great encourager of other artists. However, this Irishman with not one but TWO accents in his Gaelic name, was actually a Protestant Englishman named Alfred Willmore. He had been a child actor, appearing onstage with that most British of humans, Noel Coward, and as a young man he fell in love with Ireland. So much so that he “disappeared” his old identity and cultural heritage and re-invented himself entirely as an Irish person.

My dad and I had many great conversations about him, and the Gate, as well as Welles’ time spent there. With MacLiammóir, as with Welles, lies and truth blended, and the fantasy was preferable to the reality (because of course it was), and so why not step entirely into the fantasy? If you balk at that, you’re probably not an artist. You think artists are realistic people? These were men who were incredibly productive with their own fantasies. It takes a great imagination, not to mention courage, to walk into an audition as an American teenager in a foreign land. You have to believe you can actually get through the door, you have to believe you have a right to be there. It takes balls, yes, but it also takes a belief in the fantasy for yourself that you hold in your own mind. (This is what separated Elvis out from the pack. It’s not that he was the most talented. It’s that his dreams were MORE real to him than the everyday world around him. This is flat-out just not the case with most normal people, who accept limits as part of reality. Dreamers do not accept limits.)

So. Orson Welles, a precocious and bold teenager, who had already had much success in his high school years (appearing on radio shows with his own adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story, basically taking over the drama club in school), strolled into the audition, unannounced, unheralded. No one who was there forgot that day.

MacLiammóir’s stories of Welles’ first audition for them are laugh-out-loud funny. MacLiammóir, in one of his autobiographies (he wrote several, as I mentioned) describes being told “There’s an American teenager in the lobby … he says he wants to audition … what should I tell him?” … This “American teenager” claimed he was a lead actor at the Guild Theatre in America (which, of course, was totally untrue). Welles was basically standing out there demanding an audition!!

MacLiammóir said sure, send the kid in, and in walked Orson Welles.

MacLiammóir describes what happened next:

‘Is this all the light you can give me?’ he said in a voice like a regretful oboe. We hadn’t given him any at all yet, so that was settled, and he began. It was an astonishing performance, wrong from beginning to end but with all the qualities of fine acting tearing their way through a chaos of inexperience. His diction was practically perfect, his personality, in spite of his fantastic circus antics, was real and varied; his sense of passion, of evil, of drunkenness, of tyranny, of a sort of demoniac authority was arresting; a preposterous energy pulsated through everything he did. One wanted to bellow with laughter, yet the laughter died on one’s lips. One wanted to say, ‘Now, now, really, you know,’ but something stopped the words from coming. And that was because he was real to himself, because it was something more to him than a show, more than the mere inflated exhibitionism one might have suspected from his previous talk, something much more.

Thrilling.

I’ve written longer posts for Welles in the past. I adore his singular story. But today, I thought I’d focus on that audition for MacLiammóir because so much else came from it. Not just the gigs at the Gate. But a confidence in Welles which propelled him forward – as well as what I perceive to be a re-assurance from the universe (in Welles’ mind, anyway) that his fantasies were actually valid and achievable. He “stepped into the dream”, as it were. He could already see it all in his own mind. The situation very well could have turned out differently, if it hadn’t been MacLiammóir sitting out there in the darkness watching. If it had been somebody else, Welles would never have even gotten through the door. If it had been somebody else, they may have actually said out loud, “Now, now, really, you know” – as MacLiammóir reported that he thought, but then stopped himself from saying.

That “Now, now, really, you know” is so key. It’s a key element in the Welles story. Because MacLiammóir saw the flaws in the kid’s acting, saw how green the kid was, saw the inexperience and the pomposity and all that. It must have been completely ridiculous what was going on up on that stage. But MacLiammóir saw something else as well. MacLiammóir saw that the kid before him was “real to himself,” and let me tell you: that’s not just rare in actor-land, but rare in humanity, in general. MacLiammóir saw it all.

And he was not wrong.

Happy birthday, Orson Welles!

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Eartha Kitt, Micheál MacLiammóir, Orson Welles

Posted in Actors, Directors, Movies, On This Day, Theatre | Tagged , | 18 Comments

2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: As You Like It

Posted on May 5, 2026 by sheila

My progress:
Shakespeare Reading Project
Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III
Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
Titus Andronicus
The Comedy of Errors
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Romeo & Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Richard II
King John
The Merchant of Venice
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 2
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Much Ado About Nothing
Henry V
Julius Caesar

As You Like It

Many years ago, when I was living in Philadelphia, my boyfriend and I went to go see an outdoor production of As You Like It, put on by a new theatre company. I have thought all these years that it was the Arden Theatre Company – early on in their existence (they are still going strong!), but I haven’t found any evidence of the production, and I have looked. I took no photos at the time. The memory is so vivid I can even remember blocking, who was where, the costumes. The play was put on outside in an open space near the seaport – not a green park, but a wide open walkway, a promenade, if you will. There were metal bleachers set up, like you’d find in a high school gym. Maybe they had a platform, some bushes, a curtain … but for the most part they were running around on the pavement. No “support” of elaborate production design or lighting design. They had to generate the event solely on the power of make-believe. It was a hot sticky summer night, people were out having ice cream, taking walks, sitting outside having drinks … all around us as the play was going on. The actors were not miked. They had to project like the good old days.

That production of As You Like It is one of the purest examples in my own experience of the magic and weird alchemy of theatre. Who knows why one production “hits’ and another one may be fine, but just unmemorable? I think all of the details I described – the open air, the busy promenade, everything going on AROUND the production … is why it felt like something very special was happening. Theatre not separate from the world.

In Midsummer Night’s Dream, Quince lectures the theatre troupe about how they have to figure out a way to bring “the moonlight into a chamber”, i.e. create the illusion of moonlight for the play. You could be doing the play in broad daylight and you still need to bring moonlight into the chamber. I’ve always thought “bringing moonlight into a chamber” is the perfect metaphor for creating art, particularly of the theatrical kind. (I wrote about this long long ago in my piece on Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy.)

The cast of As You Like It, putting on their play in the midst of a busy social summer night, brought moonlight into the chamber. Make-believe but also authentic.

I still remember the actress playing Celia, and I wish I knew her name so I could list it here. She wore a pink sundress, a big floppy sun hat, sunglasses, a real girl’s girl, Paris Hilton in the woods, being “icked” out by bugs and dirt and mess. I remember the way this actress staggered through the imaginary “woods”, imaginary branches hitting her in the face, her dress being caught up in imaginary branches – nothing was actually there but she made us see it – and she was whimpering and flustered, like Kate Capshaw in Temple of Doom. So funny and specific.

A long time ago, I remember an acting teacher telling us, “In the right hands, Celia is a co-lead. She’s as good a role as Rosalind.” Everyone wants to be Rosalind, but do not sleep on Celia! You can tell this when you read it, but this production really SHOWED it to me. The Celia in it was SO funny, the perfect girl-pal, straight-talking and yet ultra-femme. As Rosalind flails about in love, swooning and peppering her with questions, Celia remains calm, basically deadpanning at Rosalind- “I’m waiting for you to stop screaming so I can continue on with my story.” She says another half-sentence and Rosalind flips out again and Celia has to reprimand her again. Celia really is a co-lead.

Another thing I remember: the night was so hot, and there was some worry a storm was going to come. The sky looked very ominous. There was a low rumble of thunder in the air. In the scene where Rosalind is banished, the Duke bellows out the punishment, and right at that moment a massive whoosh of COLD wind sliced through the humidity, sending the curtains and canopy fluttering – and the wind arrived just as Rosalind fell to her knees, crying out, “Where am I supposed to go?” Everything happened at the same time, the rumble of thunder, the sudden roar of wind, and Rosalind’s banishment: Nature itself cooperated with the production, inextricably part of what was happening onstage. On cue, even! Like it was a deliberate sound/light effect! The pathetic fallacy happened naturally. The actress faced the storm. Moonlight was definitely in the chamber!

The moment will stay with me forever!

I always think of As You Like It as a “romp”, and it is – but … Joy is no laughing matter! There is no point to the play beyond its own ideas and the playful context Shakespeare set up for these ideas’ exploration. Everything in the play is a pretext for the ideas. Rosalind getting banished is handled in a cursory manner because it doesn’t matter how she gets to the forest, what matters is she gets there. Same thing with Orlando and his evil big brother Oliver – the conflict is barely explained, but it doesn’t matter because we need to get them both into the forest. And etc. Jaques is melancholy for no reason – which he admits – but he himself is a pretext for the contrast he provides. Don John was also motiveless, but he embodies the darkness infusing the screwball of Much Ado. Jaques just sits in the forest being melancholy for no reason. Same with Oliver’s meanness – so clearly established – and then eradicated in his 180-degree instantaneous transformation when he sees Celia (can’t blame him. I’m half in love with Celia myself).

The forest itself is a pretext, and it makes no literal sense: there are palm trees AND there’s winter. There are lions (a lion in winter?) We’re not in England anymore. We’re not … anywhere, really. We’re stepping onto Propsero’s magic island years before The Tempest was written!

The only thing that’s really real here is playing around with love – and not just fulfilled love, or the pursuit of love, a march to the altar, although these are all at play, but it’s more about the idea and philosophy of love. Scene after scene after scene, nobody talks about anything other than love. There are multiple pairs: Orlando and Rosalind, Silvius and Phoebe, Touchstone and Audrey, Celia and Oliver: no two loves are alike! This is a big change from the interchangeable lovers in Midsummer. In As You Like It, love is tailored to the individual. What works for Phoebe will not work for Celia, and etc. The overall hopeful message: We get to choose how we want to love, who we want to love. But we need to understand love first. Within this context, gender-bending plays a much deeper role than it does in other plays featuring women dressing up as men. Rosalind supposedly dresses up for “protection” out in the forest – where her banished father, let’s not forget, has set up his alternate court. The Forest of Arden is clearly not dangerous: Rosalind is surrounded by friends. But still … she maintains the disguise. The clothes free her playfulness, but it’s play with awareness beneath it. It’s not escapism: it’s an avenue to deeper realizations. Viola needs her camouflage. Rosalind really doesn’t. Rosalind is hesitant – until the very end! – to put on womens’ clothes, and the play – if I recall correctly – ends with her still in men’s clothes, but blissfully married.

What is prioritized in As You Like It is play, not for plays’ sake, but play with a purpose. Incidentally, this, of course, is a metaphor for theatre itself.

Im her great “Love is merely a madness” speech, Rosalind shows a vast knowledge of love which she has achieved only through observation. She’s not a seasoned woman like Beatrice. Rosalind knows how she wants to be treated, she sees around her how wives are treated as compared to sweethearts, and she wants no part of marriage’s limitations. Orlando writes terrible love poetry with total confidence. He is a wrestler with a sad family backstory. Picture Emilio Estevez’s wreslter in The Breakfast Club, or any ’80s high school movie: the jock falls in love with the A-student President of the Drama Club smart girl. Orlando has to come into his own. You hear a lot that Orlando is boring compared to Rosalind. (To be fair, everyone is boring compared to Rosalind.) But Orlando’s journey from hopeless adolescent to lover with a purpose is huge, and in the right hands it is tremendously effective. When Orlando says, “I can live no longer by thinking” … I mean …

He’s sick of games. He wants the real thing. He’s ready.

Rosalind loves him from the start but sees he needs to grow up. He needs to stop idealizing her and writing sentimental bad poems. What will happen when he is confronted with the real her? She couldn’t tolerate being treated like some precious love object. She wants to be a PAL, and so she eases him into this by playing around, by making Orlando fall in love with Ganymede, her boy-disguise. The forest of Arden makes it make sense.

You get the sense that when Rosalind and Orlando and Celia and Oliver return to court, they will not just re-join society they will transform it.

This is the hope As You Like It expresses. Bringing the Forest of Arden back with us into society is a doomed idea, perhaps, but worth fighting for.

I could go on and on, but let me just list some of my scattered observations after this latest re-reading. (I probably know this play best of all of Shakespeare’s plays.)

Christopher Marlowe:
Multiple references to Christopher Marlowe, he’s even quoted directly (the “love at first sight” line from his “Hero and Leander”). There’s also a line about a “reckoning in a small room”, which is – maybe? – a reference to the way Marlowe was killed, supposedly in a drunken fight while settling a tavern bill (a “reckoning”). The reality is more complicated – Marlowe was stabbed by Ingram Frizer, a member of Sir Francis Walsingham’s secret service – and Marlowe had worked as a secret agent.

“Sans”:
I’ve been tracking Shakespeare’s use of the word “sans” through this reading project. I think the first time it shows up in the amusing exchange between Berowne and Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost:

BEROWNE:
My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.
ROSALINE:
Sans ‘sans‘, I pray you.

There’s another use of “sans” in King John, when Faulconbridge: “Come, come, sans compliment, what news abroad?”

The context is always: “Stop being fancy. Stop embellishing. Say what you mean.” Or, more bluntly, “What, English isn’t good enough for you?”

And here comes the biggest “sans” user in the Shakespearean canon: Jaques ends his famous “all the world’s a stage” monologue with a bleak description of man at the end of his life: he is “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything ” etc. Jaques’ speech is well-known by everybody, similar to Polonius’ “To thine ownself be true” speech, both of which are often quoted out of context, as if they are meme-worthy quotes directly from Shakespeare himself, instead of being spoken by specific characters in specific contexts. With these well-known quotes, though … consider the source!! Polonius is a walking-talking word-salad maker. He speaks in cliches. “To thine own self be true” are the ramblings of a man who has never had an original thought and who loves to hear himself talk. ALSO: these words of advice to his son are lovely and helpful but let’s not forget: Laertes goes off on his journey and Polonius has so little trust his son will follow the advice, he sends spies after Laertes, to report back on whether or not Laertes is drinking, gambling, whoring around. Jaques’ context, too, is a little different than an easily quoted meme and “Sans” is the giveaway. Jaques is in love with himself and his pose. He thinks he’s better than other people, particularly the ones who prioritize joy and possibility. Of COURSE he would use the word “sans”. Also, hilariously – which I remember being capitalized on in the production I saw – literally right after Jaques proclaims old men as being “sans teeth, sans everything”, who arrives on stage but Oliver and the old man Adam, who is CLEARLY not “sans everything”. Adam is old, but he describes his phase of life as “my age is as a lusty winter”. He’s lusty! Also: his name is ADAM, for God’s sake. He’s in the forest too! You know Shakespeare undercut Jaques’ generalization about old age on purpose.

“IF”.
The word “if” so predominates in the final scene it’s almost a verbal tic. Touchstone goes off on “If” explicitly, and Rosalind uses “if” repeatedly, setting up all the different potential paths for everyone onstage. “If” is the word of creation. It’s “as if”. Stanislavsky called it the “magic if”: “What would it be like IF …” Also, if someone asks “what would it be like IF” … the answer could be “As you like it”, implying generosity and co-creation. “If” is the launch pad for all creative work, especially acting. Rosalind is many things, as one of Orland’s poems observes: she is made up of “many parts”. “Parts” also means “roles”, because she – like Hamlet – is above everything else an actor.

And finally: As You Like It, as far can be determined, came right before Hamlet. Shakespeare might have been working on the two plays at the same time. The similarities are striking. Hamlet seems to take place in an almost entirely abstract space, the interior of a man’s mind. As You Like It takes place in an equally abstract place, a philosophical space dominated solely by ideas. Both plays display an almost unnerving virtuosity. We’re in totally new ground now.

Quotes on the play

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“Is there any virtue, for literature, for poetry, in the simple continuity of a tradition? I believe there is not.” — Thomas Kinsella

Posted on May 4, 2026 by sheila

The Dolmen Press, operated out of Dublin, was founded in 1951 by Liam Miller, and played a crucial part in the development of Irish poetry in the mid-20th century. It was a strictly nationalist operation; before The Dolmen Press, poets (and other writers) had looked to London, mainly, as the center of the publishing world, London was where there was hope for their work being seen.

That changed with Dolmen. Many of the great Irish poets of the mid to late 20th century were published first in Dolmen. Questions of nationalism and ancestry are, of course, potentially explosive affairs in Ireland, and having to depend on England – England! – to confer validity to their work as artists was intolerable.

Irish poet Thomas Kinsella, born on this day in 1928, who died in 2021, was a huge part of the development of the Dolmen Press, one of its main voices, and he, in many ways, set the tone.

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“I’ve always had everything I wanted, and I never wanted a great deal. ” — Aline MacMahon

Posted on May 3, 2026 by sheila

“I pass emotions through a filter not generally used by actresses. I find the ground to meet my characters and am able to move from one feel to another. It is real stuff — no tricks, simply expressed.” — Aline MacMahon

Today is the birthday of this great character actress, ubiquitous in pre-Code films – many of which are classics. She cared deeply about acting.

The quote posted at the top of this piece is instantly apparent when you encounter her work, even in supporting roles (like in Heroes for Sale). She “read” older than she actually was, she brought a sense of self-awareness and confidence to the screen. She skipped the ingenue stage. Aline MacMahon was a leading lady on the New York stage, a star in New York theatre, so when she came to Hollywood to check it out she was fully formed as a trained and serious actress. She wasn’t needy. She had talent and she knew it. She started out with a substantial part opposite Edward G. Robinson in Five Star Final. MacMahon plays his secretary, an experienced woman with a sense of humor, who is also secretly in love with him. From the moment she appears, she is instantly real, grounded, subtle and deep. She stands out. She is probably most well-known for her wisecracking role in Gold Diggers of 1933. MacMahon’s character is mischievous, doesn’t take things seriously – certainly not love – but she takes her friendships and her responsibilities seriously! When she has the monologue about how the show HAS to be a hit, she if not – remember the date in the title – most of the girls will have to resort to things she doesn’t even want to mention – i.e. prostitution. She is the older sister, protector, of the group.

She is utterly real.

I must point to White Lightning, where, for the first time, Aline MacMahon plays the lead role. It’s fantastic to see her take up the center. She does so easily, playing a self-sufficient car mechanic and garage-owner living in the middle of the desert with her wild teenage sister (Ann Dvorak). It is the typical McMahon role, seen most clearly in the brutal hard-hitting Heroes for Sale: she is hearty, strong, with a sense of humor. She’s equal to men, there’s no doubts about it, and men recognize it too. However, she’s got a softness and a pain within, something only the movie camera is allowed to see. In Heroes for Sale, she has one heartbreaking closeup, showing everything going on underneath her jokey friendly public facade. Here you can see why McMahon was a celebrated actress in New York.

She studied with the first wave of Russians who came to America, vibrating with the new ideas of theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky, and the work he’d been doing at the Moscow Art Theatre. The Russians – Richard Boleslavsky, Maria Ouspenskaya, etc. – had a massive impact on 20th century theatre production/acting styles/teaching styles – because they taught the people – like Lee Strasberg and others – who went on to teach the next generation. At first, the Russians held experimental workshops and intensives for a small group of hand-picked people, and MacMahon was one. She was fascinated by what she learned (the seeds of the American Method). She used these techniques in her work in Hollywood. It shows.

MacMahon lived a long life and worked – on stage, in film, television – almost up to the very end. She was blacklisted in the 1950s for the usual idiotic reasons. She and her husband – a successful architect – had the audacity to travel around the world. No good can come of that. MacMahon’s involvement in Actors Equity, the stage actors union, was also seen as suspect. Also suspect was her support of Democratic political candidates. And here we are again. She wasn’t called before the HUAC, and so nothing formal ever happened – but the mere suggestion of “Communism”, her name even showing up on a couple of watch-lists, was enough for Hollywood to shy away from casting her. She was a New Yorker, she kept working in theatre, her career never stopped. But still: that blacklist has so much to answer for.

Aline MacMahon was the real deal. As she said, “No tricks.”

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“I was never totally involved in movies. I was making someone else’s dream come true. Not mine.” — Mary Astor

Posted on May 3, 2026 by sheila

“The reminder that there are people who have worse troubles than you is not an effective pain-killer.” — Mary Astor

It’s her birthday today. Her memoir is great, by the way. Her story was told – by everyone else – most notoriously during one of Hollywood’s most memorable “sex scandals” – and so it’s interesting to really hear from her.

From the calculating dangerous Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon …

… to the tender warm matriarch of Meet Me in St. Louis…

… this was Mary Astor’s flexible range.

To those who “knew her when”, Astor’s transformation into playing good-hearted mother figures must have been quite an interesting sight. Mary Astor, with her Gibson-Girl profile, womanly figure, romantic features, was completely believable as treacherous, cold as ice tough hard dames. Perhaps her specific brand of beauty – idealized, a 19th-century kind of beauty – made her even more effective in these complex roles. She didn’t “look the part.”

She won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the poisonous Sandra in The Great Lie, opposite Bette Davis, who played the “good” woman, by contrast. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen The Great Lie.

You also haven’t lived until you’ve seen her as a butch pants-suit-wearing desert matriarch in the overheated noir Desert Fury. Desert Fury is rare, and rarely shown. Keep your eyes peeled, because it is GREAT, and she is great in it.

Plus, there’s this moment between Astor and Lizabeth Scott.

Astor’s personal life was tumultuous. Her first husband (brother to Howard Hawks) died in a plane crash. She got married again and the couple had a child. Eventually, the couple divorced, a very messy and public divorce, complete with nasty custody battle. Mary Astor’s private diary, where she wrote in explicit luxurious X-rated language about her sex affair with George Kaufman, was entered into evidence, basically to show she was an unfit mother. Having the diary entered into evidence meant it was available to the public. This was the Sex Scandal to end All Sex Scandals. The diary was quoted in mainstream newspapers, her “sin” broadcast around the world. Mary Astor was shooting Dodsworth at the time, and then showing up to court, fragile and tear-streaked, and every second of it was photographed. Tabloid field-day.

Astor was a bundle of contradictions, and when she was good, there was nobody better.

In 2017, illustrator Edward Sorel came out with a book about what was known as Mary Astor’s “purple diary” and I absolutely fell in love with it.

It’s filled with Sorel’s whimsical illustrations: he is a FAN of Mary Astor, but he had no idea about the “sex scandal of 1936” until he discovered a bunch of newspaper clippings underneath the floorboards of a new apartment. He became fascinated. Riveted. A lifelong obsessive. His book, Mary Astor’s Purple Diary, is the result of that life-long obsession. I wrote about it for Ebert.

Happy birthday, Mary Astor!

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“Fear and the absence of hatred may go well together.” — Niccolò Machiavelli

Posted on May 3, 2026 by sheila

machiavelli

Prologue, The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe, written in 1589. Machiavelli died in 1527. You can see his posthumous reputation had ballooned, just 60 years after his death.

Enter MACHIAVEL.

MACHIAVEL. Albeit the world think Machiavel is dead,
Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps;
And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France,
To view this land, and frolic with his friends.
To some perhaps my name is odious;
But such as love me, guard me from their tongues,
And let them know that I am Machiavel,
And weigh not men, and therefore not men’s words.
Admir’d I am of those that hate me most:
Though some speak openly against my books,
Yet will they read me, and thereby attain
To Peter’s chair; and, when they cast me off,
Are poison’d by my climbing followers.
I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Birds of the air will tell of murders past!
I am asham’d to hear such fooleries.
Many will talk of title to a crown:
What right had Caesar to the empery?
Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure
When, like the Draco’s, they were writ in blood.
Hence comes it that a strong-built citadel
Commands much more than letters can import:
Which maxim had 14 Phalaris observ’d,
H’ad never bellow’d, in a brazen bull,
Of great ones’ envy: o’ the poor petty wights
Let me be envied and not pitied.
But whither am I bound? I come not, I,
To read a lecture here in Britain,
But to present the tragedy of a Jew,
Who smiles to see how full his bags are cramm’d;
Which money was not got without my means.
I crave but this,—grace him as he deserves,
And let him not be entertain’d the worse
Because he favours me.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, on May 3, 1469

We first had to read The Prince in high school. It made no impression whatsoever. Now, as a politically aware and power-politics-obsessive, it’s one of my favorite re-reads in my entire library. I visit it on practically an annual basis. It became especially relevant with all of my reading about the Founding Fathers, who – of course – knew their Machiavelli inside and out. The Founders were not optimists or idealists. They knew man was infinitely corruptible and so they tried (tried) to limit the possibilities of corruption.

Man is not to be trusted with power. Ever.

But in order to get to that understanding, you have to understand power in the first place.

At Ebertfest some years ago, Chazz Palminteri’s wonderful film A Bronx Tale was screened. I had forgotten its repetitive mention of Machiavelli (especially in one key monologue from the gangster Sonny, played by Palminteri). During the audience QA afterwards, a high school teacher stood up and said, “I just want to thank you because I teach Machiavelli to 10th graders, and A Bronx Tale has always been a great ‘hook.’ All I need to do is show them that scene and they get it.” Wonderful! Mr. Palminteri talked about the gangster he knew as a kid, the one on whom Sonny was based, and he said that, yes, that guy talked about Machiavelli all the time. The gangster had read Machiavelli while “away at college” (i.e. prison), and the quote in the title of this post, as well as the excerpt below, from the sequence called “On Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better to be Loved or Feared” was one of Sonny’s “take-aways” from The Prince.

The edition that I have starts with an introduction about the history of responses to The Prince, and how “Machiavellian” became a descriptive term meaning brutal selfishness and single-mindedness. This one-to-one association occurred pretty much during his lifetime. The work is often misunderstood. (Machiavelli is similar to Orwell in that respect. Christopher Hitchens, in Why Orwell Matters, analyzes how “Orwellian” became a descriptive term, and how so often Orwell is associated with totalitarianism, as though he endorsed those views, instead of being the man who could lay them out them so accurately. An almost total mistaking of the messenger with the message. It’s an age-old problem: If you show reality so clearly, with no apology, does that mean you endorse the reality? Well, of course not, but that doesn’t stop dummy critics, then or now.) Machiavelli’s very name now means something malevolent, it is a signifier, a shorthand. Maybe the only thing people remember from The Prince is the famous “the ends justify the means”, which, taken out of context, is of course terrifying. Even in context it is terrifying. But context is important.

photos_نيكولا_ميكافيللي_-_فيلسوف_شهير_14482

Machiavelli was a political insider with a cushy government job. All of that changed when the Medicis took power. Machiavelli was imprisoned, tortured, and exiled. During his exile, he wrote The Prince, as a hopeful gesture to get in the good graces of the Medicis. A gift, a presentation: “Here is all that I know about politics. You shouldn’t exile me because I can help you. Let me be of service to you.” In that light, the book is a groveling piece of sycophancy. This is what “context” provides. It’s important to remember those fascinating levels when you read some of the more cold-hearted sections of the book.

In a letter he wrote to a friend while he was in exile, he says:

I am living in the country since my disgrace. I get up at dawn and go to the little wood where I see what work has been done …

Then comes a long section where he discusses sitting outside on a hill, reading Dante, Petrarch, Tibullus, Ovid. Then he goes to spend the afternoon at the inn, with the miller, the butcher, a cook, some bricklayers. The letter continues.

[Spent the afternoon] with these boors playing cards or dice; we quarrel over farthings. When evening comes I return to the house and go into my study. Before I enter I take off my rough mud-stained country dress. I put on my royal and curial robes and thus fittingly attired I enter into the assembly of men of old times. Welcomed by them I feed upon that food which is my true nourishment, and which has made me what I am. I dare to talk with them, and ask them the reason for their actions. Of their kindness they answer me. I no longer fear poverty or death. From these notes I have composed a little work, The Prince.

I find all of this extraordinary. My favorite image of him is changing into his old court robes whenever he went into his study to write. The man was exiled from the court at the time, but the court robes gave him a sense of humility, awe, and respect when sitting down to contemplate Dante or Ovid. (The astronomer Tycho Brahe, apparently, used to put on his court robes every time he looked through a telescope. A sense of ceremonial OCCASION.)

The Prince didn’t win over the Medicis, and Machiavelli remained an outsider for the rest of his life. But the document stands as one of the greatest books of political philosophy ever written.

Here’s an excerpt from The Prince:

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined; for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service. And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligation, which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred; for fear and the absence of hatred may go well together, and will be always attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens and his subjects or with their women. And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, let him do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. [I guess Marx and Lenin didn’t read their Machiavelli, huh?] Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more fleeting.

But when the prince is with his army and has a large number of soldiers under his control, then it is extremely necessary that he should not mind being thought cruel; for without this reputation he could not keep his army united or disposed to any duty. Among the noteworthy actions of Hannibal is numbered this, that although he had an enormous army, composed of men of all nations and fighting in foreign countries, there never arose any dissension either among them or against the prince, either in good fortune or in bad. This could not be due to anything but his inhuman cruelty, which together with his infinite other virtues, made him always venerated and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, and without it his other virtues would not have sufficed to produce that effect. Thoughtless writers admire on the one hand his actions, and on the other blame the principal cause of them.

And that it is true that his other virtues would not have sufficed may be seen from the case of Scipio (famous not only in regard to his own times, but all times of which memory remains), whose armies rebelled against him in Spain, which arose from nothing but his excessive kindness, which allowed more licence to the soldiers than was consonant with military discipline. He was reproached with this in the senate by Fabius Maximus, who called him a corrupter of the Roman militia. Locri having been destroyed by one of Scipio’s officers was not revenged by him, nor was the insolence of that officer punished, simply by reason of his easy nature; so much so, that some one wishing to excuse him in the senate, said that there were many men who knew rather how not to err, than how to correct the errors of others. This disposition would in time have tarnished the fame and glory of Scipio had he persevered in it under the empire, but living under the rule of the senate this harmful quality was not only concealed but became a glory to him.

I conclude, therefore, with regard to being feared and loved, that men love at their own free will, but fear at the will of the prince, and that a wise prince must rely on what is in his power and not on what is in the power of others, and he must only contrive to avoid incurring hatred, as has been explained.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“I only got a seventh-grade education, but I have a doctorate in funk, and I like to put that to good use.” — James Brown

Posted on May 3, 2026 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

I did not fully understand James Brown until I saw The T.A.M.I. Show, and I heard ABOUT The T.A.M.I. Show for years before I could actually SEE it. Such was the Gen-X kid dilemma. During The T.A.M.I. Show he literally destroyed the room. Okay, figuratively, he didn’t tear down the walls, but he DESTROYED the audience. I was an ’80s child and James Brown was everywhere. He had hits. He showed up everywhere. He was ubiquitous. I was a kid so I took him for granted. I had to catch up on him later once I started asking questions about all of these elders still WITH us. (This is one of the perks of growing up when I did: all of these people – or many of them – were still around, and many – like James Brown – were still big stars).

The T.A.M.I. Show should be a whole post in and of itself, but, you know, it’s been written about ad nauseum, there’s a DVD copy, with a great commentary track – it was produced by Steve Binder, who also produced/directed Elvis’ 1968 comeback special. So Binder was a finger-on-the-pulse guy. James Brown was placed second to last on the bill, with the new British invasion band, The Rolling Stones after him. The Stones closed out the show. James Brown took this – rightly – as a huge insult. Nobody FOLLOWED James Brown. The Stones were newbies. He was the ultimate headliner. His live act disintegrated human beings into swirling molecules and he’d been doing so for years. He SLAYED at the Apollo. He was a way bigger star than the Stones. So. He went out there determined to destroy the room and leave nothing left for the Stones. Which is just what happened.

Some years ago, I went on the Film Comment podcast, an episode devoted to concert films, and each guest brought a film they’d like to discuss. I brought The TAMI Show to the table.

This may be one of the best live performances … ever?

James Brown reflected on it later: “I danced so hard that night my manager cried.”

Years later, Brown ran into Steve Binder and embraced him emotionally saying, “Thank you – thank you – for capturing my act for posterity.”

There it is. His Apollo shows were sometimes captured on audio but never video. Now we have it. Now we see why he is James Brown.

You can’t believe the performance can get any bigger, you can’t believe he can commit to it even more … you can’t believe he has more energy … you can’t believe what you are seeing. Because then he digs deep and brings out MORE. He himself looks destroyed at the end.

Keith Richards said that deciding to do The T.A.M.I. Show was the worst career decision the Stones ever made.

The ultimate compliment. Nobody follows James Brown. And if anyone does, they’ll be sorry. Forever.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“It’s the sexiest toughest chord change in all of rock ‘n roll.” – Steven Van Zandt on “Rumble.” Happy Birthday, Link Wray

Posted on May 2, 2026 by sheila

When Link Wray wails “Have you heard the news? There’s good rockin’ tonight” in his version of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” … it sounds like a threat that could topple civilization. And when he goes up the octave? Forget about it. Run for cover.

Link Wray’s “Rumble” was considered so dangerous at the time some radio stations refused to play it. It was banned – literally – in New York and Boston. There was fear that just HEARING the song – an instrumental, no less – would cause chaos, riots, actual “rumbles”. It’s one of the only instrumentals to ever be banned from radio play in America. And you know what? The song IS dangerous. The people who were afraid of it weren’t wrong. Those who were afraid of “Rumble” sensed correctly that the song was part of what was shattering the status quo. You listen to “Rumble” and you are altered. Nothing will ever be the same again.

“The first time I heard ‘Rumble’ … it was something that had so much profound attitude …” In the documentary It Might Get Loud, Jimmy Page listens to “Rumble, and then discusses with Jack White and Edge.

His “Fever” is pure sex.

Link Wray’s guitar-playing opened the way for others. It was that radical. Once people plugged in their guitars, following in the footsteps of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other pioneers, “power chords” were always a possibility. But Link Wray is the one who discovered it, and pushed it, creating sounds that had never been heard before. He was playing around with interference in the late 1950s, a decade before Hendrix. Link Wray pushed those chords, the vibrato, the vibrations, the distortion, the interference and resonance, to their most extreme limits. In his hands, the sound becomes almost abstract, yet it never sacrifices power. Jimi Hendrix’s famous distorted version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” wouldn’t have been possible without Link Wray. Link Wray’s playing is aggressive. You can’t putter about watering plants when you’re listening to Link Wray. He will not stand for it.

I love Kim Morgan’s story of seeing Link Wray: “The crowd consisted of die-hard Rockabillies, a smattering of older people, varied Wray fans, me and my little sister. I stood in the front, hands on stage, and watched one of rock n’ roll’s most influential guitar Gods work his power — taking all that is raucous and dark and soulful and yes, light, and hypnotizing us. There were no bad vibes in that cramped crowd of potential rowdies. Moving on stage like the half-Shawnee he was, he worked us as if performing some kind of Native American rock and roll rain dance, while still playing down and dirty — music that made us feel alive and real and raw. And then dreamy — a seedy, sexy, soulful, demonic, beatific dream.”

I’m trying to picture just turning on the TV in 1959 and hearing … this.

Link Wray tells the story of how “Rumble” was born. (Naturally, I am happy about the shirt he is wearing). The song started as improvised “filler” at a record hop … but the kids heard the threat in the sound, the power of it, the sheer aggressive drive of it – they felt it immediately. Link Wray: “Now the kids are screaming because now something is happening.”

Speaking of Elvis, here’s Link Wray grinding out “Mystery Train,” live, in 1974. Even now, when his influence has so permeated our culture, and music, you can still pick his guitar out of a lineup and say “That. That’s Link Wray.”

“It’s the sexiest toughest chord change in all of rock ‘n roll.”

If you haven’t seen the documentary, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, I highly recommend it!

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“I still get a chill when I sing, ‘You Don’t Own Me.’ I find some new feeling in it every time.” –Lesley Gore

Posted on May 2, 2026 by sheila

FILE - In this May 5, 1964, file photo, singer Lesley Gore hugs a flowered record at her 18th birthday party celebrated at the Delmonico Hotel in New York. Singer-songwriter Gore, who topped the charts in 1963 with her epic song of teenage angst, "It's My Party," and followed it up with the hits "Judy's Turn to Cry," and "You Don't Own Me," died of cancer, Monday, Feb. 16, 2015. She was 68. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File)

It’s her birthday today.

Below you will find a clip of Lesley Gore, performing “You Don’t Own Me”, on the now-mythical 1964 T.A.M.I. Show, directed by Steve Binder (who also would end up directing Elvis Presley’s phenomenal 1968 “comeback special”). There’s tons of commentary out there about what went down on the T.A.M.I. Show (and you can rent it on Netflix – worth it to see the whole thing, although many of the clips are on Youtube.) All of these bands gathered for a live audience and performed. No biggie, right? But what ended up happening was a Musical Rumble, a death-match. Each band competing with each other, white British bands competing with Black American performers, inspirations to the Brits, but … it’s all fun and games but it’s kind of not, too. The concert becomes stressful and you can SEE the stress. My pal Trav SD has a great post about Gore on that show.

For example:
James Brown was placed second to last in the lineup, and the show closed out with The Rolling Stones, who were, of course, initially inspired by people like James Brown (Mick Jagger was one of the producers of the recent Brown biopic, Get On Up.) Brown was furious that he was placed second to last (“NOBODY comes after James Brown!”). James Brown came onstage and performed so well (understatement – it is a performance For the Ages), that he brought the house down for 20 straight minutes. Brown said later, “I danced so hard that night my manager cried.” And the Stones, watching him tear it up from backstage, started feeling incredibly uneasy and anxious, watching Brown. How were they supposed to follow that? No one should have to follow that. When they finally take the stage, they actually look … anxious. Richards said later that the T.A.M.I. Show was one of the biggest mistakes of their career. They don’t flop or anything, and they are riveting in their young 1964-glitter. But … following James Brown was an impossibility. Brown makes the Stones look derivative, and they know it.

All that fascinating background aside, I love Lesley Gore (she was one of the few women in the lineup – she and The Supremes!). And it’s important to remember that of all of the Macho-Rumble guys on that stage, SHE sold more records (at the time anyway) than all of them. I mean, “It’s My Party,” you know what I’m saying? She was the #1 female recording artist of 1964. She sang 4 whole songs on The TAMI Show, evidence of her star-power, but “You Don’t Own Me” is the standout.

Do not mess with this woman.

She’s not just singing the lyrics. She MEANS it, all of it.

The song is a feminist anthem, 10 years before “women’s lib” went mainstream. The song is a declaration of independence. It is also a WARNING.

I cannot tell you how happy I was that Eminem sampled it so heavily in his untitled track off of Recovery. (In doing a little research for this post, I came across the following quote from Lesley Gore: “I’ve listened to Eminem rap. That’s not daily fare for me, but I can’t help but admire how vivid what he does is. My own taste goes a little more toward Norah Jones.”) I love that.

More Lesley Gore Clips

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

Posted in Music, On This Day | 45 Comments