Sunday, June 28, 2020

Mel Brooks Turns 94


Anyone want to guess which director has three of the top fifteen films on the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Comedies list? It's none other than Mel Brooks, performer, writer, director, and producer of some of the finest comedy to grace the American stage, big screens in theaters, and the television screens in millions of our homes.


Brooks in a still from his super hit, Blazing Saddles, in 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 Producers in 1968. The rest is history, a laugh track of films including:


Blazing Saddles (1974) "Pardon me while I whip this out."

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 (musical) 2001 "Will the dancing Hitlers please wait in the wings? We are only seeing singing Hitlers.

The Producers (film remake) 2005 "My blue blanket! Give me back my blue blanket!"

Young Frankenstein (musical) 2007 "He vas my boyfriend!"



Brooks has been entertaining us for over 65 years. He is so old that political correctness would keep several of his hits out of production today. But he has no plans to stop. What I find even more remarkable is the fact that the Mel Brooks in private is most often the same zany entertainer one finds in his films. I recall the many stories my National Park Service colleagues told of Brooks and his wife, Anne Bancroft. In the '70's and '80's they were frequent guests at Caneel Bay Resort inside Virgin Islands National Park on the island of St. John. Known for playing practical jokes on the younger park rangers and resort staff during the day, Brooks and Bancroft hosted them at after-hours gatherings where hilarity ruled. Given the public comedy we know, one can only imagine the memories to come out of the spontaneity of such evenings.

Brooks has definitely left us with many memories over many decades. Who knows what's next for a comedian who is arguably the funniest man on the planet? Whatever it is I'm sure we'll be smiling.






Note: The American Film Institute list referenced has The Producers at #11 , Blazing Saddles at #6 , and Young Frankenstein at #13.


Happy birthday, Mel! May the schwartz be with you!




Thursday, June 25, 2020

Johnny Mercer: Enduring Entertainment


Although Johnny Mercer left us 44 years ago today his legacy remains strong in the vocal music industry. Another generation of pop and jazz singers discovered his catalog in the years leading up the centenary of his birth (2009) and the interest hasn't stopped. 



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

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. During a career spanning forty years he wrote the lyrics to 1500 published songs often 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 songs nominated for Academy Awards that never made list. What a remarkable talent...and I bet you hear one of his songs today most likely performed by a contemporary artist. Instead of hearing something new, I'd like to take you back to a time when everyone knew his name and the best of the best, the "First Lady of Song",  was only too happy to add her personal magic to his words.









Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Mercer in New York, 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, 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



Monday, June 22, 2020

Summer Idyll


Today the sun may reach for its highest point in the sky in our hemisphere but it began its slow and virtually undetectable descent yesterday, Yes, the summer of 2020 is already aging. As we move into the season of growth and flower I am reminded of this quote by the English writer and poet, 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.

One expression of that complete rhythm is the full range of summer themes in the vast catalog of music we can explore.  First, here is a tone poem, A Song of Summer, composed by Frederick Delius in 1931 and transcribed and arranged by Eric Fenby:






Seven hundred years earlier this was the sound of summer in England:




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!



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."




Wherever you find yourself in the rhythm of the season, may your summer living be easy and wonder-filled.





Sunday, June 21, 2020

Father's Day 2020


Best wishes to all dads on their special day. Below 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.


Dad in fourth grade, 1917-18

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.



Graduation, Class of 1925

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.



At home in 1928



Nancy and I 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.


Costumed for community play in 1928


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 my dad, Bill, and father-in-law, Vergil, and to fathers everywhere.


Dad and Mom at her family's farm in 1938



Friday, June 19, 2020

Juneteenth: Emancipation In All The Land




If you are an American with African ancestry dating to the Civil War era you have known about Juneteenth from very early childhood; otherwise, the term may be vaguely familiar or perhaps even new. I think of Juneteenth as an ingredient in our national experience that is just now blending in the melting pot concept we learned about in elementary school. We're going to hear much more about the day as we should. In fact, there is a strong chance the day will become a federal holiday in the near future. So what is this day all about? Here is a description fro the Library of Virginia:

[Juneteenth] 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

Although not a federal holiday quite yet there will be official state celebrations of this historic event in forty-three states.  Several significant days have competed to honor the subject, 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 celebration in Texas on June 19 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  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


Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Igor Stravinsky: Diversity In Sound


Igor Stravinsky, popularly recognized as a leading founder of Modern music in the 20th century, was born in Russia on this day in 1882. He lived in Switzerland and France before immigrating to the United States after World War II. Over his lifetime he composed in a variety of styles but is best remembered for his dazzling, rhythmic music in the early years - 1910 to 1914 - of the Ballets Russes produced by Sergei Diaghilev in Paris.


Portrait of Stravinsky            Robert Delaunay, 1917


His work during that brief period included The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). One could say they are all signature pieces - experimental and revolutionary - that dazzled and in some cases infuriated their audiences. Regardless, the three compositions as well as other sounds from Stravinsky's imagination had a huge impact on music and the arts. He was 27 when audiences first heard The Firebird. For a taste of that music here is the finale. While you listen, keep in mind that Henry Ford sold 10,000 cars that year, the U.S. had 1000 miles of paved road, half the American population lived on farms or towns with fewer than 2500 people, and the flying machine was a very rare and thrilling sight.






In the century since the premiere of The Firebird, its innovative sounds have been re-patterned by the likes of Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, John Williams and others including Philip Glass who has perhaps carried rhythm as art to its farthest horizon to date. In the view of Tom Service writing in The Guardian in 2011,

Stravinsky is the only common influence that composers from Steve Reich to Thomas Adès, from Judith Weir to John Adams, from Elliott Carter to Louis Andriessen, can all agree on. Without Stravinsky, there would be no minimalism, not much neo-classicism, not enough rhythmic energy, and not nearly enough compositional freedom in the 20th and 21st centuries. Four decades on, the Stravinsky that's proved most popular with audiences, orchestras and concert halls is the colouristic brilliance of the three early ballets, Firebird, Petrushka, and the Rite.

Indeed, Stravinsky broke rules. In doing so he made new music. A century later it remains as fresh as the year it was composed. And although Stravinsky left this world almost a half century ago he indeed remains as the title of Service's article describes him, "Stravinsky Our Contemporary."  Here's more proof from the opening scene of The Rite of Spring. 









Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
portrait, public domain, Robert Delaunay, New Art Gallery Walsall, West Midlands, England
Text:
Igor Stravinsky entry, wikipedia.org
quotation, Tom Service, "Stravinsky Our Contemporary", theguardian.com, April 6, 2011


Tuesday, June 16, 2020

"Hold To The Now, The Here, Through Which All Future Plunges To The Past"


June 16 is far from an ordinary day in the world of Western literature. 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.

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. 


First edition copy described as "...unread except for the racy bits."

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 - doubt it could be used today - 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 is 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

Photo and Illustrations:
theguardian.com, June 4, 2009, photo by Martin Argles
Text:
quotations, goodreads.com



Sunday, June 14, 2020

Flag Day 2020


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, Smithsonian 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


There are any number of song written about our national flag. Among the best of them is George M. Cohan's 1906 rouser, "Your A Grand Old Flag," written in 1906 for his musical, George Washington, Jr. It's performed here by the Muppets from sesame Street as the opening number of 2019'a A Capitol Fourth celebration on the Mall in Washington.









Tuesday, June 9, 2020

War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength


Here's a most interesting quote from 1984, by George Orwell:

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.

Orwell's magnificently perceptive novel was published on this day in 1949. Seventy-one years later the people of the United States find their republic faced with a host of social and political dilemmas only too present in the book. A month ago most of us likely thought a novel virus would be the worst of our problems but we were wrong. An atrocity in Minneapolis brought simmering racial injustice to a boil spilling across the nation. Students of revolution used these incidents to advance their collectivist cause, one that has been unhinged since the collapse of the Soviet Union almost thirty years ago. Under the guise of protest their destruction and anarchy could well overshadow our attempts to reach common ground and begin to heal the injustices. 

What we are witnessing in protest is a search for peace, freedom, and strength. What we are witnessing in violence is a reality of war, slavery, and ignorance. It is in fact "Orwellian."




If Orwell's book is new to you or it's been a while since you read it, I suggest you find a copy and explore the dance of good intentions and the road to Hell. I suspect you'll come away cautious and careful what you ask for. In the interim, here is a brief article from BBC to whet your appetite.





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