“Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.” — Austin Clarke

Posted on May 9, 2026 by sheila

“He cleared a non-Yeatsian space in which an Irish poet might build a confident poetry in English for which the term ‘Anglo-Irish’ is meaningless.” – Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets

Austin Clarke was born in Dublin on this day in 1896. He is the leading Irish poet in the generation after W.B. Yeats. John Montague called Clarke “the first completely Irish poet to write in English.” He had a similar journey to other Irishmen at that time. 1916 radicalized him (he was in college at the time), although the pump was already primed, his parents were nationalists. He went to University College, Dublin – and I think ended up teaching there. He is a very Irish poet, his topics are Irish, his language and phrasing recognizably Irish. The problem was, as it was for so many, is that he sounded nothing like Yeats, and Yeats basically defined Irish poetry. Many Irish writers have made their names in opposition to Yeats. (See: Patrick Kavanagh. See: Austin Clarke.) Yeats had to be dealt with. Yeats is a fearsome influence, to this day. Clarke imitated him a bit in the beginning (unavoidable), before setting himself free. Yeats has a mystical lyricism, which Clarke doesn’t share at all. His attitude – and language – is much more grim.

Penal Law

Burn Ovid with the rest. Lovers will find
A hedge-school for themselves and learn by heart
All that the clergy banish from the mind,
When hands are joined and head bows in the dark.

More after the jump. Clarke is difficult. But worth it! And important!

Continue reading →

Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“As long as politics is this confused and evil, turning away from it would be cowardly.” — 20th century hero Sophie Scholl

Posted on May 9, 2026 by sheila

“I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.” — Sophie Scholl

She was born on this day.

In an atmosphere of almost phantasmagorical mind control and propaganda, how does one keep one’s bearings? George Orwell’s 1984 clearly breaks down the difficulty of not just resisting, but to even have a CONCEPT of resistance, when the society around you is so totalitarian – the State is so total – that no aspect of life remains untouched. There is no way out – not just for the citizens, or the State’s victims, but there is no way out for the MIND. Totalitarian states all devote a lot of time and energy and money to imprisoning peoples’ minds.

Sophie Scholl is a reminder that it doesn’t have to be this way. Scholl, a German college student, saw what was happening in her country during the world war Hitler started, and resisted it, calling for other Germans to resist too. In 1943, for these actions, she was beheaded by the Nazis. She was just 21 years old,

“It is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the twentieth century … The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I do not know why.” — Playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag

As a member of the Weiße Rose (White Rose), a resistance group made up mostly of students at the University of Munich, Scholl devoted herself to passing out leaflets, covering walls with anti-fascist graffiti, warning other Germans about the Nazis, calling for a larger and more widespread resistance. The White Rose protested the war, and accused the Nazis of committing war crimes. They called on Germans to join their extremely small numbers.

One of the White Rose pamphlets reads:

“Our current ‘state’ is the dictatorship of evil. We know that already, I hear you object, and we don’t need you to reproach us for it yet again. But, I ask you, if you know that, then why don’t you act? Why do you tolerate these rulers gradually robbing you, in public and in private, of one right after another, until one day nothing, absolutely nothing, remains but the machinery of the state, under the command of criminals and drunkards?”

Another pamphlet reads:

“And now every convinced opponent of National Socialism must ask himself how he can fight against the present ‘state’ in the most effective way….We cannot provide each man with the blueprint for his acts, we can only suggest them in general terms, and he alone will find the way of achieving this end: Sabotage in armament plants and war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, public ceremonies, and organizations of the National Socialist Party. Obstruction of the smooth functioning of the war machine….Try to convince all your acquaintances…of the senselessness of continuing, of the hopelessness of this war; of our spiritual and economic enslavement at the hands of the National Socialists; of the destruction of all moral and religious values; and urge them to passive resistance!”

Leaflet #2 read:

Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage the fascist criminals. Each wants to be exonerated of guilt, each one continues on his way with the most placid, calm conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!

Leaflet # 4 read:

“We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”

Sophie Scholl was one of THE heroes of the 20th century. Because of Sophie Scholl, no one can comfortably say: “Well, we didn’t know what was happening …” “How could we have known what was really going on?” or: “I knew things were bad, but what could I do? There was no way to fight back.” Well, Sophie Scholl knew. Sophie Scholl fought back. Do not erase Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans Scholl, and their friends. She risked her life. She lost her life. She knew what the consequences would be for what she did. She did it anyway. And, perhaps most importantly: she herself was not at risk. She was a German citizen. She was not Jewish. She was not in any threatened minority group. She and her siblings, like every other child in Germany, had been involved in the Youth Movement, eventually known as the Hitler Youth (one of the many examples of how normal German institutions were morphed into the State propaganda, how the State tentacled itself into every aspect of German life, co-opting everything). She had enjoyed the Youth Movement activities, the camping, the hiking, the community. When she saw the light, through her activist brother, as well as her activist father (who had been imprisoned for his anti-Nazi views), she broke with the tide. Not because she herself was at risk, but because others were at risk. What the Nazis were doing to OTHERS was wrong.

It’s easy to fight for yourself. Self-preservation kicks in. Fighting for others, caring about others, recognizing that YOU may be safe but OTHERS are not and you have a RESPONSIBILITY to fight for those who are not safe, like, literally anyone who isn’t the dominant group (and even the dominant group isn’t safe). Basically: care about other people enough to take risks for them. That’s the REAL heroism.

In Cultural Amnesia, Clive James wrote of Sophie Scholl:

The world would undoubtedly be a better place if Sophie Scholl were a household name like Anne Frank, another miraculous young woman from the same period. In addition to an image of how life can be affirmed bya helpless victim, we would have an image of how life can be affirmed by someone who didn’t have to be a victim at all, but chose to be one because others were.

Sophie Scholl was born in 1921 in Forchtenberg, the fourth of what would eventually be six children. Her parents raised their children in an atmosphere of political debate, open discussion, and, most importantly, the blinding light of rational critical thinking. Mr. Scholl included the children in discussions of moral and ethical issues, debating things at the dinner table, talking about the issues that faced Germany. Her brother Hans, three years older than Sophie, had become completely disillusioned with “Hitler Youth” and, by extension, the Nazi party. He was outspoken about it and was arrested for his dissident views in 1937. Meanwhile, Sophie Scholl found school increasingly difficult because the curriculum was now totally about indoctrination into Nazi ideology. (Was she able to have this awareness because of the open environment at home? Because of her father’s views? We don’t really know, and ultimately it doesn’t really matter.)


Hans and Sophie Scholl, left, and Christoph Probst, right, in Munich in 1942

Scholl and her brother Hans both attended the University of Munich. Their circle of friends were artists, philosophers, all politically aware. They talked about the dictatorship in which they lived. They knew it WAS a dictatorship, which, again, is something many people claim they hadn’t realized at the time, swept away in the brainwashing fervor of all the propaganda. This was where their White Rose activities began. Getting paper during wartime for the leaflets was terribly difficult. So was finding a printer. Every single thing they were doing – using a printing press for their own anti-government purposes – was incredibly dangerous. They knew it. Distributing the pamphlets was treacherous for them. They knew it.

In a postscript to his 1996 article about Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Clive James writes:

Hans Scholl, the master spirit of the White Rose resistance group in Munich, had already turned against his Hitler Youth upbringing, but his trajectory towards outright subversion was accelerated after one of [Stefan] Zweig’s books was taken away from him by a Nazi official. Scholl thought that if the Nazis were against that, they were against the Germany he cared about. (Goldhagen’s failure to so much as mention the White Rose, incidentally, is the kind of omission that makes a mockery of his scientific vocabulary. In science, the fact that doesn’t fit the theory eliminates the theory, not the other way about. Hans and Sophie Scholl were gentiles born into a household formed by liberal German culture, were well aware that Jews had helped to form that culture, and were ready to die for it rather than betray it. If Goldhagen wants to go on asking why the German population did not rise up, he might consider the manner in which those two brave young people perished. The guillotine is a big price to pay for a conviction.)

There are a series of letters Sophie wrote to her long-time boyfriend Fritz Hartnagel, which gives us a window into this young woman’s life, who she was, the fullness of her, her thoughtfulness, humor, insights, her exhaustion with how “political” life was, that in Germany everything was infiltrated by politics, there was no space free of it (one of the main aims of totalitarianism).

Letter to Fritz, February 26, 1938

Dear Fritz! I’m actually lying in bed and have just woken up from a dream. In the dream I was at a camp. In my dreams I am normally traveling. Next to the camp there was a big lake. In the evening I went to see a woman who owned a boat. We sailed out across the lake and by then it was nighttime. The sky was completely overcast and in front of a wall of clouds hung the moon, a great pale disk that illuminated the whole lake. Illuminate isn’t quite the right word. The whole lake was a sort of pale grey. That’s nothing unusual but some distance away from the moon there was a little red dot glowing behind the clouds. “That’s the sun,” the woman explained to me. “We live in the only place on earth where you can see the sun and the moon at the same time.” I don’t know what happened after that. They say that dreams come from the noises you hear when you are asleep. That could well be true. Anyway. I like dreaming. I live in a strange world in my dreams where I am never quite happy. But still. Please don’t think I’m being silly or sentimental. I’d hate that. I’m actually quite the materialist. Good night. Sophie.

Letter to Fritz, April 9, 1940

My dear Fritz. I’ve got a feeling that a letter from you will come tomorrow. I hope I’m not fooling myself. Sometimes I dread the war and I’m on the brink of losing all hope. I don’t even want to think about it but soon there won’t be anything but politics, and as long as politics is this confused and evil turning away from it would be cowardly. You’re probably smiling right now and thinking “She’s such a girl” but I think I’d be far happier if I weren’t constantly under all this pressure. I could spend time doing other things with a much clearer conscience. But everything else comes second now. It’s just that we’ve been brought up to be political. Now you’ll be laughing again. I just want to be with you and see and feel nothing but the fabric of your suit. Is this a bad letter? It’s not a breath of fresh air in your musty room. In fact, it’s probably making it even mustier. Don’t hold it against me. Sophie.

On the 18th of February, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl took stacks of what would be the final White Rose pamphlet to a building on the campus of University of Munich and scattered the pamphlets around the building’s atrium. A janitor spotted them and reported it. Hans and Sophie were arrested that day.


The arrest of siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl

The two were put on trial on February 21st. Look at that date. To call it a “trial” is to make a mockery of the word.

On the back of her indictment, Scholl wrote one word: Freiheit. (Freedom.)

In the People’s Court on February 21, before the sadistic Judge Roland Freisler, Scholl declared bravely: “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.” She also challenged the court: “You know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won’t admit it?”

21 year old girl.

The two were sentenced to death and guillotined just hours later.

Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia, wrote:

She didn’t stand a chance anyway. The mere fact that the reliably fanatical Roland Freisler had been sent to preside over the court sealed her doom. But once again in her young life she was bearing witness, and to such effect that even the clinically insane Freisler was momentarily rendered speechless. When he got his breath back, he used it to remind her of his mission, which was to render her speechless permanently. Sophie Scholl was guillotined by the Nazis at Stadelheim prison in Munich on February 22, 1943, at five o’clock in the afternoon. She was twenty-one years old. In life she had been reserved with strangers but full of fun with those she loved….She radiated a moral beauty that left even her Gestapo interrogators self-consciously shuffling their papers, for once in their benighted lives hoping that the job of killing someone might pass to someone else. If there can be any such thing as a perfect person beyond Jesus Christ and his immediate family, Sophie Scholl was it.

Hans Scholl’s last words before his execution:

Es lebe die Freiheit! (Let Freedom live!)

Sophie Scholl’s last recorded words were:

“Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go… What does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

Their White Rose friends, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, Hans Konrad Leipelt, and many others were also rounded up in the following weeks and months, and many of them were tried and executed too. It wasn’t a big group. It had no “reach.” But they were RIGHT. And their RIGHT-ness should shame anyone who declares “we had no idea what was going on and even if we had what could we have done?”

Friedrich Reck, a conservative establishment German – who had been disgusted by the Weimar Republic – I mean, the man was basically a reactionary – nevertheless was horrified by the rise of the Nazis, horrified by the brutality and cruelty and corruption, kept a secret journal between 1936 and 1944, where he howled out his RAGE at what was happening in his country. He actually knew many of the main players, so you get personal impressions of Himmler, etc. Reck considered the document so dangerous he would hide it in different places, burying it in the woods, etc. He was eventually arrested by the Nazis and sent to Dachau, where he died. Amazingly, his journal survived, and it has been published with the title Diary of a Man in Despair, and it is essential reading. In March, 1943 he writes:

At just this moment, I learn for the first time of the martyrdom of the Scholls.

I never saw these two young people. In my rural isolation, I got only bits and pieces of the whole story of what they were doing, but the significance of what I heard was such I could hardly believe it. The Scholls are the first in Germany to have had the courage to witness for the truth. The movement they left at their deaths will go on, and as is always the case with martyrdom, they have sown seeds which will raise important fruit in time to come. This young brother and sister went boldly about their work, almost as though they were defying death. Their betrayal came through a miserable university proctor, who was then so afraid of being beaten or otherwise punished, that he had to be taken into protective custody.

They were sentenced to death by a second example of the Rossdorfer-type. They died in all the radiance of their courage and readiness for sacrifice, and thereby attained the pinnacle in lives well lived.

He then goes on to describe their background, which he learned from some of the people who knew the Scholls. Clearly he was making his own inquiry into this astonishing act of resistance. He continues:

Their bearing before the tribunal — that of the girl, especially — was inspiring. They flung their contempt of the court, the Party, and the insane, would-be great man, Hitler, into the faces of their judges, and at the end, did something which carries the icy breath of the Eternal about it for us who survive. For, with their last words, they repeated the warning once given by the condemned Knights of the Temple to their judges, that those who were persecuting them and those who stood behind them would ‘within a year be called to judgement before the throne of God.’ The curse pronounced by the Templars were realised to the extent that before a year was past both Pope Clemens V and King Philip IV of France were dead. It remains to be seen what will happen here in the course of the next year …

But the Scholls departed from this life quietly, and gravely and with wonderful dignity gave their young blood. On their gravestones let these words be carved, and let this entire people, which has lived in deepest degradation these last ten years, blush when it reads them: ‘Cogi non potest quisquis mori scit‘ — He who knows how to die can never be enslaved.

We will all of us, someday, have to make a pilgrimage to their graves, and stand before them, ashamed.

This is the story of these two children of our race: the latest, and God willing, the first Germans of a great rebirth of the spirit.

In one of her last letters to Fritz, dated November 7, 1942, Scholl wrote:

When will the time finally come when we won’t have to focus all our strength and all our attention on things that aren’t worth lifting a finger for? Every word is scrutinized before it’s even spoken in case there’s even a hint of ambiguity about it. Our trust in other people has to give way to mistrust and caution. Oh, how tiring and sometimes disheartening it is. But no. I won’t let anything take away my courage. These trivial things will not get the better of me when I know there are other joys that surpass them. When I think of this, my strength returns and I want to cry out a word of encouragement to everyone else who is oppressed.

Clive James wrote:

You would have thought to be as good as Hans Scholl was as good as you could get. He did what he did through no compulsion except an inner imperative, in the full knowledge that he would perish horribly if he were caught. Yet if moral integrity can be conceived of as a competition, Sophie left even Hans behind. Hans tried to keep her ignorant of what he was up to but when she found out she insisted on joining in. Throughout her interrogation, the Gestapo offered her a chance that they did not extend to her brother. They told her that if she recanted she would be allowed to live. She turned them down, and walked without a tremor to the blade. The chief executioner later testified that he had never seen anyone die so bravely as Sophie Scholl. Not a whimper of fear, not a sigh of regret for the beautiful life she might have had. She just glanced up at the steel, put her head down, and she was gone. Is that you? No, and it isn’t me either.

No. But we can learn – we MUST learn – from her example.

Freiheit!

“We will all of us, someday, have to make a pilgrimage to their graves, and stand before them, ashamed.” — Friedrich Reck

 
 
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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“He sold his soul to the devil to get to play like that.” – Mississippi bluesman Son House on Robert Johnson

Posted on May 8, 2026 by sheila

It’s Robert Johnson’s birthday.

cuar02_johnson0811

“[Robert] Johnson has created a mood so delicate and bleak one feels he cannot possible get out of his song alive.” – Greil Marcus

Recently, I was walking through Times Square and suddenly Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound” came on the iPod shuffle and … the music as a soundtrack changed the scene in front of me so much it was downright eerie. The song changed my perception of reality. The song made Times Square seem as doomed as Atlantis. Robert Johnson is impossible to listen to casually.

Back in 1986 Ralph Macchio appeared in a movie called Crossroads, inspired by the Robert Johnson legend, directed by the great Walter Hill (hey, I wrote about Walter Hill’s use of costumes in his films, including Crossroads!) This movie was probably my unofficial introduction to Robert Johnson. Listen, it doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you get there.

The original story about Robert Johnson goes: he was hanging around blues clubs, young and eager and ambitious, but he couldn’t really play the guitar. Then, practically overnight, he became a genius. Son House, another Mississippi bluesman who knew Robert Johnson and had a huge influence on Johnson’s playing, was the one who theorized (probably as a joke) that Robert Johnson had met up with the devil at a crossroads one night and sold his soul. It was the only plausible explanation.

Much of Johnson’s story is lost in the obscurity of his time, when so much went unrecorded, when birth records and death records were spotty (especially for African-Americans). Robert Johnson lived a short life, but it was peripatetic: there are those who report seeing him play in this or that far-flung town, or heard him on the radio in the Pacific Northwest – a region he supposedly never visited … many of these rumors cannot be substantiated. This is all part of his legend. Robert Johnson was everywhere and nowhere.

And then he was gone. He did not leave much recorded music behind, and had no commercial success while he was alive (and back then, the idea of “commercial success” was different than it is now). His scratchy recordings only saw the light of day for a wide audience in 1961 when they were released in a box set. We are lucky to have what we do. It is partly from the wellspring of terror and dread and sin and lust – expressed by Robert Johnson – that modern American culture was born. Music like Johnson’s poured into and influenced the conservative stylings of country music – which formalized the message (hello, Louvin Brothers) and it also poured into and influenced the wailing piety of the gospel tradition – which set the message free … You put it all together – gospel, country, and rhythm & blues – and you get rock ‘n’ roll.

Robert Johnson hailed from the rich cultural landscape of the Delta. The wellspring of so much of American culture. Maybe THE wellspring. The Delta is one big Crossroads.

Greil Marcus wrote a chapter on Robert Johnson for Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. The Mississippi Delta blues is a vast subject of interconnectedness, and the rare recordings we have from the 1920s and 1930s still show the power of the music. Marcus wrote:

[Johnson] sang about the price he had to pay for the promises he tried, and failed, to keep; I think the power of his music comes in part from Johnson’s ability to shape the loneliness and chaos of his betrayal, or ours. Listening to Johnson’s songs, one almost feels at home in that desolate America; one feels able to take some strength from it, right along with the promises we could not give up if we wanted to.

More:

Johnson’s vision was a world without salvation, redemption, or rest; it was a vision he resisted, laughed at, to which he gave himself over, but most of all it was a vision he pursued. He walked his road like a failed, orphaned Puritan, looking for women and a good night, but never convinced, whether he found such things or not, that they were really what he wanted, and so framing his tales with old echoes of sin and damnation. There were demons in his songs – blues that walked like a man, the devil, or the two in league with each other – and Johnson was often on good terms with them; his greatest fear seems to have been that his desires were so extreme that he could satisfy them only by becoming a kind of demon himself.

Listen.

Marcus observes:

When acceptance and celebration mean the same thing, or when the two words must fill the same space in the mind at once, we can begin to grasp the tension and the passion of Robert Johnson’s music – because when one accepts one’s life by celebrating it, one also asks for something more. In Johnson’s blues the singer’s acceptance is profound, because he knows, and makes us see, that his celebration is also a revolt, and that the revolt will fail, because his images cannot deny the struggles they are meant to master.

This literal and emotional brand of faith helped create the music that would change American culture (and the world) forever. The music came out of poverty, disenfranchisement, racial inequality, and so did the religion (Pentecostal, Baptist, and others). There was none of the upper-class emphasis on the importance of appearing holy, which you find in the Anglican church and others. Dirt-poor people – both black and white – had similar cultural releases in the era and this was what maverick record-producer Sam Phillips sensed, and tried to capture in his early years at Sun Records. With the advent of radio, white people heard black music all the time, and black people listened to the strictly-white Grand Ole Opry broadcast, and someone like Ray Charles fell in love with Hank Williams, and someone like Elvis fell in love with Arthur Crudup. The world may have been racially segregated by law, but the AIR, and the air WAVES, were not.

In Robert Johnson’s music, you can hear the fragile birth of the revolution that was to come.

His songs vibrate with terror. Sometimes it is the singing of the song that keeps the terror at bay; other times, the terror emerges from the dead-center, it IS the song, and there is no escaping it.

Robert Johnson died on August 16, 1938 in Greenwood, Mississippi, under still-mysterious circumstances. Maybe he was killed by a jealous husband (Johnson was a ladies’ man). But the cause of death is still unknown. It was thought he might have been poisoned. There are also rumors he died of syphilis. There were other rumors, though, darker ones, that the Devil had come to collect. (This is the rumor Supernatural ran with in its episode “Crossroad Blues.”)

Robert Johnson’s songs feed into his legend. He sings about the Devil. He sings about Hell Hounds chasing him. He sings about hanging out at the crossroads. In the song “Hellhounds on my Trail”, you get a sense of increasing panic: best be moving on now, something’s coming up behind you.

I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving
Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail
Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail
And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail
Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail

If today was Christmas eve, if today was Christmas eve
And tomorrow was Christmas day
If today was Christmas eve and tomorrow was Christmas day
All I would need is my little sweet rider
Just to pass the time away, to pass the time away

You sprinkled hot foot powder, mmm, around my door
All around my door
You sprinkled hot foot powder, all around your daddy’s door
It keeps me with ramblin’ mind rider
Every old place I go, every old place I go

I can tell the wind is risin’, the leaves tremblin’ on the tree
Tremblin’ on the tree
I can tell the wind is risin’, leaves tremblin’ on the tree
All I need is my little sweet woman
And to keep my company, hey, hey, hey, hey, my company

“Blues falling down like hail”?? ACCURATE.

When you consider the history of dogs chasing down escaped slaves – and how frightening a country night could be in 1938 Mississippi if you were a black man … there’s real terror coursing through it. And not just terror, though. There’s a blunt practicality going on too, part of the appeal of the blues. He’s telling it like it is.

In “Crossroad Blues” there are verses about a sweet woman, and how he doesn’t have one and wishes he did … but the gist of the song is much darker:

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, “Have mercy now. Save poor Bob, if you please.”
Standin’ at the crossroad, I tried to flag a ride
I tried to flag a ride
Ain’t nobody seem to know me, babe
Everybody pass me by
I’m at the crossroads, baby, the sun goin’ down,
Standin’ at the crossroads, baby, the sun goin’ down
You can run, you can run, tell my friend-boy Willie Brown
You can run, you can run, tell my friend-boy Willie Brown
Lord I’m standin’ at the crossroad,
I’m sinkin’ down

Robert Johnson’s music can never be background music. If you played “Crossroad Blues” in an elevator, or as “muzak” in a supermarket, people would run screaming, or stand stock-still, pinned to the spot.

It is not just expression. It is confrontation.

 
 
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 | Tagged | 8 Comments

“You can’t study comedy; it’s within you. It’s a personality. My humor is an attitude.” — Don Rickles

Posted on May 8, 2026 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

When Don Rickles died, John Stamos and Bob Saget couldn’t stop talking about him. Rickles, famously cantankerous, had loved both of them like sons. The stories they told about Rickles, on the late-night talk-show circuit were hilarious, heartfelt, beautiful. Here they are on Jimmy Kimmel, who also had a close relationship with Rickles. At a certain point, you can tell the three men are barely hanging on. But they hold it together. My favorite bit is “All his passwords were Hitler.” Watch that bit of intel hit Kimmel. It hits, and then it hits deeper, and then it really LANDS.

Unfurling below, is a conversation Mitchell and I had about Don Rickles. It was part of a larger series. I would throw a name at Mitchell, ask him to describe that person in “one word” and then we would discuss. Here’s our discussion on Don Rickles. We had this conversation before Don Rickles died.

SOM: One word.

MF: Me.

To this day, he is my favorite comic. He makes me laugh out loud. He’s a babbling old fool at this point. Sometimes I think he loses focus and he gets laughs on his confusion and people think he’s making a joke and really he’s just confused. But there’s something about the tenacity of his personality … He’s this short funny-looking Jewish guy and he used that ferociousness. I am sure he was a son of a bitch. I am sure that his insult humor came out of surviving in New York as a kid, being short and Jewish, and I fucking relate to that. I grew up in an era of Prozac and Oprah so I took my anger and worked through it in therapy. I think he had the same thing and he worked through it and became a star.

MF:I just think he’s so clever and so funny and he somehow manages to be the most insulting person who has ever lived. He is the only person who could say “fag” and it wouldn’t offend me in any way shape or form, and that’s saying a lot. And I’ve never heard Don Rickles do that much homophobic stuff, although I’m sure that he did. He lived with his mother until he got married at 30 or 40 years old. Loved his mother, lived with her till he got married, and he got married late, and he stayed married to the same woman. She and Don and Bob Newhart and his wife are constant travel companions. They’re besties. I think he’s the best. There’s something about him that makes me laugh the second I see him. His stupid bald head, his barking. The funniest thing is him on Letterman, he’s just vicious. He has no boundaries.

MF:For some reason, he’s very familiar to me.

SOM: His tribute speech to Martin Scorsese at the AFI is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

MF: I have a tiny clip of him doing a roast of Barbra back in the 60s. And he was the emcee. He’s so funny. “So we’re here, is this your mother? Listen, you have a dummy for a daughter. She made it and now everyone’s schmeckling her. She’s a dummy. Basically, she’s a dummy.” It’s so funny. There are no sacred cows to him, and yet I think really that everything is a sacred cow to him, and that’s what’s funny.

SOM: At the end of the speech, he brings up Martin Scorsese’s mother and he lets his heart out. He’s a patriarch, in a way.

MF: It’s the same thing, with Barbra. At the end, he sort of concludes by saying, of course he’s joking, and he’s honored to be there, and to see all the amazing people there, what an honor it is for me to be here. He sort of always brings it back around. It would have been interesting if he had been given more acting roles. Obviously he didn’t have the time for it, because he had a busy career, but it would have been interesting if he had been used in different ways, in the way that Scorsese used him.

MF: I mean, he did a lot of movies but they were often forgettable. I can’t even see him without starting to laugh. Some people just have funny bones. Don Rickles has funny bones.

 
 
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.

“You throw your best punch, otherwise don’t do it.” — Don Rickles

Posted in Actors, On This Day | 7 Comments

“A lot of people try to equate me with guys like Frankie Avalon and Fabian, but in the old days I sold a lot of records over a period of time, and you can’t sustain that by being just another pretty face.” — Ricky Nelson

Posted on May 8, 2026 by sheila

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (Nelson) was a popular radio show in the 1940s, and an even more popular television show in the 1950s. It was a family affair. Their son Ricky was a beautiful child, and he grew up famous, or at the very least, well-known. He was talented and pretty. So I suppose it “made sense” he would be a teen idol, but … “teen idols” were a brand new thing when Nelson “hit”. He was the Platonic Ideal of the Teen Idol. The love for him was intense. Like, Leif Garrett intense. IYKYK. He grew up wealthy but his eventual wealth far surpassed his parents.

He was a teenager when Elvis hit, when the Sun rose from Memphis, and young Ricky was heavily influenced by all those people, especially Carl Perkins. He was musically inclined. He played multiple instruments. He thought he’d like to strike out on his own. In 1957 he did. He recorded an album. (This is the Nepo Baby part of the story. He said, “I’d love to record an album” and his dad hooked him up.) He recorded a couple of songs, including Fats Domino‘s “I’m Walkin'”. There were a couple of other songs which hit – like “Teenager Romance” but “I’m Walkin'” hit the charts first – AND he performed it on his parents’ show.

He was just so BEAUTIFUL. The built-in audience for Ozzie and Harriet expanded tenfold, with the teenagers now tuning in by the droves, flipping OUT about this boy they grew up with, who suddenly was this cool ROCK AND ROLL STAR. I’m sure all of this seemed a little bit silly to “real” music fans at the time, fans of, say, Carl Perkins or Johnny Cash. Nelson was “manufactured”, built for the teens, etc. True, sure. But, as he himself expressed in the quote making up the title of this little tribute, his VOICE wasn’t manufactured. His voice is so smooth, liquidy, beautiful to listen to. There’s no strain in his voice. It’s very pure.

Bob Dylan loves Ricky Nelson: Nelson makes a couple of appearances in Dylan’s autobiography:

“He sang his songs calm and steady, like he was in the middle of a storm, men hurling past him. His voice was sort of mysterious and made you fall into a certain mood.”
— Bob Dylan

Cosign, Bob.

The other song “A Teenager’s Romance” seemed programmed to be mainlined into actual teenagers’ veins. And it was. He ALSO performed it on his parents’ television show.

This is just speculation but I think Nelson – even with his talent and his outrageous good looks – even being famous – seemed fairly regular. A kid who went to high school. Played high school football. Had two recognizable parents. Middle-class vibe (even though they were rich). Elvis was exotic. Elvis was Southern. Elvis grew up poor. Elvis was remote, by comparison. He was from the Great Depression. Nelson was strictly post-WWII. Nelson was “one of us”, but with a California gleam. He was a peer. And the teenage girls went absolutely BANANAS.

These couple of hits did so well that Ricky the Rock Star was woven into Ozzie and Harriet, and he performed in almost every episode. He was still only 16-17 years old. A huge star. But still … kind of under his parents’ wing. An “employee” rather than an artist standing on his own two feet. So he put together his own band (cue: James Burton), where he could do more “rock” stuff, where he could hang out with peers, not grown adults looking to capitalize on him. He and James Burton were both teenagers. And hungry. Burton ended up playing with Ricky for the next decade (and played with everyone else too, including, famously, Elvis). Nelson sold more than Elvis in 1958-9. He was huge.

It was the late 50s. Elvis was a movie star. (We always have to state what HE was doing, since he both set the tone and departed from the group.) The Sun guys were branching out into their own thing. Buddy Holly arrived. It was a good time for young hot pop stars, inspired by rockabilly, it was still close to the source in 1957-9. Nelson had good material, too. For the time.

His fan base was super loyal and lasted until his untimely death in 1985. His daughter was on Square Pegs, and I was more aware of her than her dad, of course. I did know “Garden Party” because it was omnipresent on lite-radio. But it made no impression. I just wasn’t aware of the history, although I did somehow absorb the fact that he was famous. I remember the headlines when he died. But remained unaware of who the hell he was.

Then I watched Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks. I can’t remember when I saw it. It was on television. So I was probably in high school. The real start of my intentional movie-watching. I was already a Hawks fan. I had seen His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby, and so I watched Rio Bravo. And fell madly in love with it. And it was then I put it all together. I was like, “ohhhhh so that’s Ricky Nelson. I get it now.” He wasn’t famous because of boring “Garden Party”. He was famous because of stuff like THIS. Hawks had him sing in the film, and it’s a beautiful scene. Everything pauses so we can listen and get pleasure from his voice.

Hawks said in a 1976 interview

People said, “You’re nuts for putting Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo.” He added about two million to the gross. Over in Japan they had Ricky Nelson in the middle of the posters, great big ones, over at the side were Wayne and Dean Martin.

This is the thing with Howard Hawks. I don’t believe anyone said to him, “You’re nuts for putting the biggest Teen Idol in the Western World into your movie.” I just don’t believe it. Hawks always positioned himself as a bold loner, surrounded by naysayers whom he always proved wrong. He’s my favorite director but … Of COURSE Ricky Nelson added to the gross. Of COURSE it pulled the teenagers in. The teenagers weren’t flocking to movies starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. I think it was in one of the interviews Hawks gave to Peter Bogdanovich where he said, “I put him in the movie because I liked listening to him sing. And if you have a good singer in your movie, why wouldn’t you let him sing?” That sounds more like it, at least more believable than a chorus of “You’re nuts”! Come on, Howard.

Probably Nelson’s biggest hit was “Mary Lou”, with a great guitar lick by teenage James Burton.

This reminds me of Keith Richards’ comment:

“I didn’t buy a Ricky Nelson record. I bought a James Burton record.”

Hopeful guitarists paid very close attention to what was going on with the guitarist always hovering at Nelson’s left.

The ’60s left Ricky Nelson behind. He tried to branch out into other styles, he tried to shake off the Teen Idol thing. But in the era of auteurist singer-songwriters, or bands like The Beach Boys … Nelson just couldn’t compete. People wanted him for only one thing. His “persona” was set in stone by the time he was 17 years old. He couldn’t “grow up”. Nobody would let him. Or, at least, that’s how he perceived it.

Ricky Nelson’s heyday so far pre-dates me it feels like ancient history, or at least so far removed from my time I am on the outside looking in. It’s weird: Elvis “rose” just a couple years before Nelson hit – and I have even LESS in common with Elvis, but he doesn’t feel as far away as Nelson does. Somehow. Elvis transcended. He certainly transcended – or at least seriously undercut – the Eisenhower ’50s. And so maybe, along with other rebels like James Dean, I related to his rebellion, his “fuck THIS” about … everything. Nelson didn’t have that. He had artistic ambitions and he put together a great band – obviously – when he was still a teenager, which means he wasn’t just an obedient employee or a lucky son of a celebrity. But … it lacks the edge of danger which Elvis brought, and I was always drawn to danger. And I might not have been an Elvis fan in my teens, but I knew who he was. I didn’t know Ricky Nelson. I knew his KID. Besides, I had my own Teen Idols to track. Loving Ralph Macchio was a full-time job.

But when I hear “I Wanna Be Loved”, basically his “Fever”, I get it completely. I completely understand why his numbers rival/surpass Elvis’, I understand why – for a time – he was one of the biggest stars in the world.

“I Wanna Be Loved” needs no translating, it needs no context. It’s a great track. Spare, stripped away. James Burton doing his thing. The little echo on the track. The perfect sound of Nelson’s voice. Calm and steady, “men hurling past him”. It still puts you in “a certain mood”.

Along with his daughter Tracy, Nelson has twin sons, Gunnar and Matthew, also musicians, devoted to carrying on their dad’s legacy.

 
 
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 | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

“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.”

 
 
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