Commemorating The Legendary Lena Horne

About twenty years ago I was a member of the planning and design team for the newly established Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Alabama. Fundraising was a big part of our mission and we asked a large core group of airmen who they would like to see as a national spokesman for the effort. To a man, the response was, "Lena Horne!" who made a number of visits to their two Tuskegee airfields during World War II. They adored her. She was beautiful, had a sultry voice, the perfect figure for a World War II pinup, and a highly successful musical career on stage and screen. She was also strong-willed and, at times, defiant, both characteristics that served her well in the American civil rights movement following the war. No wonder she appealed to them.

Horne publicity photo, NBC Bell Telephone Hour, 1964

Who was this international star and favorite pinup? Lena Horne was born on this day in Brooklyn in 1917. Those familiar with the singer will always remember her remarkable talent as a legendary performer with a sparkling personality and a beautiful smile, In her almost seventy years in entertainment she worked the big band and cabaret circuits, movies, Broadway, and television. She became politically active in the fight for civil rights following World War II, a decision that placed her on the federal entertainment blacklist for over a decade. Readers can enjoy more details about Horne's life and career in a New York Times obituary published following her death in May 2010.

Horne at Tuskegee Institute banquet, Tuskegee, Alabama, during World War II 

Due to her age and disabilities, Horne was unable to take on the role the Tuskegee Airmen so enthusiastically desired but fundraising commenced in a different direction and eventually contributed to construction and interpretation at the park. Her image and the stories of her visits are embedded in the exhibits.

I remember Horne well from her frequent television performances and recording beginning in the 1950's. She's always been a personal favorite among pop and jazz singers and the stories of her association with the Tuskegee Airmen story tells me she was one very special lady.

Here she is performing her signature song, Stormy Weather, from the 1943 film of the same name.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
public domain photograph, NBC Television, Wikipedia.org
banquet photo, Noel Parrish Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington

Mel Brooks Turns 93 Today

Today we're wishing one of the funniest men on the planet a very happy birthday. That performer, writer, director, producer, songwriter, and perpetually wacko comic personality known as Mel Brooks is ninety-three years old. In his seventy year career he's brought us some of the finest comedy to grace the American stage, big screens in theaters, and the television screens in millions of our homes. And there's no end in sight either with his work in animated features, occasional television appearances, and persistent rumblings of a Spaceballs sequel.

Brooks in a still from Blazing Saddles, 1974

Brooks started in comedy in the Catskills in the late 1940's, became a television comedy writer and performer in the early 1950's, and graduated to film direction with The Producer's in 1968. The rest is history, a laugh track of films including the gems:

The Producers (1968) "Will the dancing Hitlers please wait in the wings? We are only seeing singing Hitlers."


Young Frankenstein (1974) "Abby...Normal."

Silent Movie (1976) "Non!"

High Anxiety (1977) "Those who are tardy do not get fruit cup!"

History of the World Part I (1981) "It's good to be the king."

Spaceballs (1987) "May the schwartz be with you."

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) "Actually Scarlet is my middle name. My whole name is Will Scarlet O'Hara. We're from Georgia."

Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) "I have been to many stakings - you have to know where to stand! You know, everything in life is location, location, location...."

The Producers (2005) "I'm not going into the toilet. I'm going into show business!"

Three of the films listed above, Blazing Saddles , The Producers (1968), and Young Frankenstein are ranked at #6, #11, and #13, respectively, on the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Comedies list. Quite an achievement for a sickly kid who got his start as a drummer at resorts in the Catskills.

In closing here is the unforgettable three minutes and twenty seconds from the film he calls his personal favorite, the 1968 production of The Producers:

Yes, ridicule can be a powerful antidote for hate.

George Orwell: A Voice For Our Time

For a prescient and enigmatic writer it is hard to surpass George Orwell. He published these words in his novel 1984 in 1949:

The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians.

Fifteen years following their publication, Lyndon Johnson embedded the "new aristocracy" in his Great Society program, a national government initiative designed to end in a progressive utopia for the American people. I leave an evaluation of the program's success over the last two generations to my readers. Instead I choose to focus on Orwell who as time passes seems to be more and more a visitor from the future who spoke not in terms of political parties but of the human condition, universal rights, and classical liberalism.

George Orwell - Eric Arthur Blair - was born on this day in India in 1903 and educated at Eton College and through self-study and his experiences in Asia and Europe. Wikipedia defines him aptly as "an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic socialism."

George Orwell Press Photo, 1933

Most of us know him only as the author of 1984 but there is much more to read and appreciate from this man who is consistently described as one of the most influential writers of the last century. If you only know him as a novelist, I suggest you read some of his early essays, especially Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), and Homage to Catalonia (1938). These works explore social justice themes in some of the finest, most vivid, objective, and descriptive writing to be found in modern English. For another aspect of Orwell's insight readers should explore his literary criticism, available in several compilations.

For a man who passed away at 46, George Orwell left us an enormous and rich body of work that I am sure will influence social and political thought for a very long time.

Sources:

Photos and Illustrations:
public domain, old accreditation for National Branch of Union Journalists, www.netcharles.com

Text:
title quote, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell, 1946
subject entry, wikipedia.org

Johnny Mercer's Music: A Legacy That's Very Much Alive

June 25 is a day to remember for many Savannahians in particular and fans of the Great American Songbook in general. It marks the passing of Johnny Mercer in 1976. He was a sentimental gentleman from Georgia, a favorite son of Savannah and one of the nation's most important figures in entertainment in the last century. Mercer's impact was universal. He composed melodies, wrote lyrics, sang a wide range of songs, performed in films, kept the nation laughing with his comedy, and co-founded Capitol Records and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Johnny Mercer, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948

We have come a long way from the advent of rock and roll in the mid-1950's and its dominance in the family tree of popular music. Still, the Great American Songbook, that generation of music beginning around 1930 and continuing into the early 1960's, has found a comfortable niche among music lovers around the world. Many songs in that now-tattered "book" belong to Mercer and stand in tribute to a man described as America's folk-poet and the finest lyricist in our history.

In his career Mercer wrote the lyrics to 1500 songs, collaborating with the country's top music writers, including Harold Arlen, Bernie Hannigan, Hoagy Carmichael, Harry Warren, Gene DePaul, Henry Mancini, Jerome Kern, Rube Bloom, and Matty Malneck. He also left behind a few thousand more unpublished songs and song fragments, scores of poems and prose pieces, and an unfinished autobiography all housed in the Johnny Mercer Collection at the Georgia State University Library in Atlanta.

Mercer often talked about his "bread and butter" songs. I'd say most songwriters and performers would be pleased to have five songs in such a list. Mercer had twenty-nine. Regardless of your age and interest in popular music, you may be surprised at how many of these songs you recognize:

Lazybones (1933), music by Hoagy Carmichael;

Goody, Goody (1936), music by Marty Malneck;

Too Marvelous For Words (1937), music by Richard A. Whiting;

Jeepers Creepers (1938), music by Harry Warren;

Satin Doll (1958), written with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn;

You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby (1938), music by Harry Warren;

That Old Black Magic (1943), music by Harold Arlen;

Accentuate the Positive (1944) music by Harold Arlen;

Fools Rush In (1940), music by Rube Bloom;

I Remember You (1942), music by Victor Schertzinger;

Day In - Day Out (1939), music by Rube Bloom;

Dearly Beloved (1942), music by Jerome Kern;

Come Rain or Come Shine (1946), music by Harold Arlen;

Tangerine (1942), music by Victor Schertzinger;

Hooray For Hollywood (1938), music by Richard A. Whiting;

Laura (1945), music by David Raksin;

Dream (1944), words and music by Johnny Mercer;

On the Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe (1946, Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song), music by Harry Warren;

Something's Gotta Give (1954), words and music by Johnny Mercer;

One For My Baby (1943), music by Harold Arlen;

In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening (1951, Academy Award for Best Music, Oroginal Song), music by Hoagy Carmichael;

Skylark (1941), music by Hoagy Carmichael;

Autumn Leaves (1950), music by Joseph Kosma;

I Wanna Be Around (1962), words and music by Johnny Mercer and Sadie Vimmerstedt;

Blues in the Night (1941), music by Harold Arlen;

Charade (1963), music by Henry Mancini;

Summer Wind (1965), music by Henry Mayer;

Moon River (1961, Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song), music by Henry Mancini;

Days of Wine and Roses (1962, Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song), music by Henry Mancini;


That's plenty of "bread and butter" on one man's plate, but we need to keep in mind that he had seven more songs nominated for an Academy Award that never made this list. What a remarkable talent...and I bet you hear one of his songs today.

For more on this American folk poet visit www.johnnymercerfoundation.org.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
William P. Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress


Text:

Johnny Mercer: The Life, Times, and Song Lyrics of Our Huckleberry Friend, Bob Bach and Ginger Mercer, The American Poet and Lyricists Series, Lyle Stuart, October 1982.

Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer, Philip Furia, St. Martin's Press, December 2004.

Portrait of Johnny: The Life and Times of John Herndon Mercer, Gene Lees, Hal Leonard, February 2006.

The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer, Johnny Mercer, edited by Kimball, Day, Kreuger, and Davis; Knopf 2009

Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World, Glenn T. Eskew, University of Georgia Press, 2013

Johnny Mercer Foundation

Summertime!

The summer solstice introduces the season to the northern hemisphere shortly before noon today. The sun reaches its highest point in the sky today and it is the longest day of the year.

Summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England

The sun reaches its highest point in the sky today and it is the longest day of the year. Although the sun begins its descent tomorrow, insolation from our star will continue to raise atmospheric temperatures until late July. As this day marks the end of the season of renewal and the beginning of the season of growth and flower, I am reminded of this quote by D. H. Lawrence:

The greatest need of man is the renewal forever of the complete rhythm of life and death, the rhythm of the sun's year, the body's year

There's plenty of interesting music for the day including this 13th century English round:

Middle English

Sumer is icumen in

Lhude sing cuccu!

Groweþ sed and bloweþ med

And springþ þe wde nu,

Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteþ after lomb,

Lhouþ after calue cu.

Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,

Murie sing cuccu!

Cuccu, cuccu, wel singes þu cuccu;

Ne swik þu nauer nu.

Pes:

Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.

Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!

Modern English

Summer has arrived,

Loudly sing, Cuckoo!

The seed grows and the meadow

blooms

And the wood springs anew,

Sing, Cuckoo!

The ewe bleats after the lamb

The cow lows after the calf.

The bullock stirs, the stag farts,

Merrily sing, Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing,

cuckoo;

Don't ever you stop now,

Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.

Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!

Here is a tone poem, A Song of Summer, written some 700 years later by Frederick Delius as transcribed and arranged by Eric Fenby:

And finally, there is summer as the season of youth, the school break, the summer job, of free time and good friends, and for many what the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell called "friendship set to music."

May your summer living be easy and  wonder-filled.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
photo, nasa.gov


Text:

thoughtcatalog.com

National Martini Day!

Indeed. There really is a national day for that delicious beverage staple, the dry martini. It is a classic though, no vodka allowed. Wikipedia has an informative post about the drink, including a few recipes. The information there may be useful but there is no finer discourse on the martini than Judge Robert Bork's 1996 article in National Review. Thanks to columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez you can enjoy it here.

For me the perfect cocktail calls for some perfect jazz. Today we'll enjoy a cut from John Coltrane's album, Blue Train, released in 1957. It may be sixty years old but it still sells well and consistently ranks among the top jazz albums of all time.

When it's time for dinner and relaxing afterward I suggest the 1963 album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman - also an all-time top ranked album - in addition to another martini. This combination must only be enjoyed with the one you love. No better way to enjoy the progression of the evening and the close of National Martini Day.

Juneteenth: Celebrating Emancipation

Juneteenth is not a federal holiday but there will be official state celebrations of this historic event in forty-three states. The celebration as described by the Library of Virginia...

...has grown into a popular event across the country to commemorate emancipation from slavery and celebrate African American culture. Juneteenth refers to June 19, the date in 1865 when the Union Army arrived in Galveston and announced that the Civil War was over and that slaves were free under the Emancipation Proclamation. Although the proclamation had become official more than two years earlier on January 1, 1863, freedmen in Texas adopted June 19th, later known colloquially as Juneteenth, as the date they celebrated emancipation. Juneteenth celebrations continued into the 20th century, and survived a period of declining participation because of the Great Depression and World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s Juneteenth celebrations witnessed a revival as they became catalysts for publicizing civil rights issues of the day. In 1980 the Texas state legislature established June 19 as a state holiday.

Emancipation                                                   Thomas Nast, American, 1865

The idea that Juneteenth was the most fitting day to celebrate emancipation has faced competition from several significant days including September 22: the day Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation Order in 1862; January 1: the day it took effect in 1863; January 31: the date the 13th Amendment passed Congress in 1865, officially abolishing the institution of slavery; and December 6: the day the 13th Amendment was ratified that year. The persistence of the day's celebration in Texas embedded it in the social fiber of former slaves and their families who carried it with them in their migrations to all corners of the nation and to urban areas in particular. Growing wealth among black communities in the 20th century also enabled them to hold lengthier and more elaborate celebrations.

Despite a near-century of prejudice and racism, both de jure and de facto, Juneteenth survived across the nation. It was revitalized nationally by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4, 1968), in combination with his Poor People's March on Washington (planned for May 12 to June 24, and its early conclusion with the Solidarity March on June 19.

We extend our best wishes for a joyous day to all those celebrating Juneteenth. And it's the perfect time for all of us to "honor the countless contributions made by African Americans to our Nation and pledge to support America’s promise as the land of the free."

For more about the history of this significant day in American history visit the Juneteenth World Wide Celebration site.

Sources:

Photos and Illustrations:
Library of Congress at loc.gov

Text:
virginiamemory.com
loc.gov
wikipedia.com
pbs.org, The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
"honor the countless" quote, whitehouse.gov

Leopold Bloom's Literary Day: June 16, 1904

In the world of Western literature June 16 is far from an ordinary day. It isn't that a number of significant events occurred or that any event occurred that day. Instead, June 16 (1904) is the setting for a several hundred page descriptive stream of happenings in the life of Leopold Bloom, the protagonist in the James Joyce novel, Ulysses. The Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, said this about the book:

What is so staggering about Ulysses is the fact that behind a thousand veils nothing lies hidden; that it turns neither toward the mind nor toward the world, but, as cold as the moon looking on from cosmic space, allows the drama of growth, being, and decay to pursue its course.

First edition copy (1922) "unread except for the racy bits"

To say the least, Ulysses is an adventure. For some it may be merely pornographic or a huge word puzzle or a unique work of art in its truest form. However you chose to view the novel keep in mind that people are celebrating this work and its author across the world today on what has become known as Bloomsday. And even those who know nothing about Bloomsday, never read the book or know little about the author have likely encountered bits and pieces of Joyce's skill in school and through popular culture. Here is one of those most often quoted pieces:

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

I came to appreciate that quote so much I used it for several years in a descriptive writing course. Others could have been useful but their playfulness simply made them enjoyable:

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.

Rest assured there's more there than the racy bits.

If you want to learn more about the day, the book, and the author, visit these sites: Bloomsday, Ulysses, and James Joyce.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

the guardian.com, June 4, 2009, photo by Martin Argles
Quotation, goodreads.com

Father's Day 2019

Best wishes to all dads on their special day. On the left is a picture of my dad taken in 1917 when he was in the fourth grade. He grew up to be a lot happier than he appears here. Maybe it was the Great War or just a bad day.

His mom and dad were the son and daughter of first generation immigrants from Germany and Wales. He was afflicted with polio in his early years, but that didn't stop him. He graduated from high school in the midst of the Roaring Twenties, went to work to support his aging parents and married the love of his life in the midst of the Great Depression in 1933.

He was an entrepreneur at heart who was self-employed in the insurance and utilities industries and owned his own business by the early '50's. He left the Rust Belt in 1956 for even better careers in hospitality management, a field he loved dearly because of his commitment to quality service and customer satisfaction. He was "old school:" through and through and never met a stranger.

Nancy and I have raised three fine children to successful adulthood. Though neither of our dads was present during virtually all of our children's "shaping" we know that their values played a major role in teaching our kids to be responsible, caring, and loving individuals. Such continuity is essential if we are to have community and commonwealth in these and future times. Not a day passes without a wish to have our dads and their guidance with us once more. How fortunate we were to have such beacons in our lives. And how wonderful it would be to see the reverence and respect for fatherhood restored in our nation today.

Having expressed that wish for the future, we are left with this wish for today: Happy Father's Day and a big Thank You" to Bill and Vergil, and to fathers everywhere.

Flag Day 2019

On this day in 1777 the Second Continental Congress adopted a design for the flag of the United States. This year we celebrate the centennial of President Woodrow Wilson's proclamation officially establishing June 14 as Flag Day.

The original Star Spangled Banner, Smthsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved home and the war's desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Verse 4

The Star Spangled Banner

Francis Scott Key

It wouldn't be right to have Flag Day without music so here's a rousing tribute to Old Glory from the 1942 film, Yankee Doodle Dandy, a biopic of the American songwriter, George M. Cohan. If you don't know this film it's worth viewing as one of the most entertaining biographies out of Hollywood as well as a prime example of wartime propaganda. Morale was marginal that year on both the home front and the battlefield. Any lift in spirit would help sustain our allied fight against the evil infecting Europe and the Pacific at that time. The film certainly rallied that spirit. It was a patriotic blockbuster winning several Oscars and other awards . The clip below comes from the computer colorized version produced by Ted Turner in 1986.

Sources

Text:
Yankee Doodle Dandy entry, Wikipedia.org

D-Day At 75

Today, in Normandy, France, at the edge of Omaha Beach, 170 veterans of World War II gathered with world leaders and ordinary citizens to remember the largest amphibious invasion in world history. Among them were 60 D-Day veterans, most of them in their mid to late-90's and all of them knowing this would likely be their last major gathering to commemorate the event.

 

June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Normandy. The D-Day cost was high -more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded -- but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler.

We don't teach history much in American schools anymore. I wrote a few years ago on this blog that I'd be happy if students could be made aware of the last line of the quote above taken from the U.S. Army's D-Day webpage. In 2004, Instapundit's Scott Johnson, a powerful voice for the American experience, made a similar plea over a decade ago where he addressed our remembrance of a war quickly fading into the dusty archives of the Information Age. He's reposted a revised version this year- it's full of a number of significant links - to remind us of the meaning of the day and our responsibility to keep that meaning alive well into the future.

Into The Jaws Of Death, U.S. Troops Wading Through Water And Nazi Gunfire

Let us remember and give thanks.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

Map, Department of History, United States Military Academy
Photo, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Public Domain Photographs, 1882-1962