Posts

Posted on

Sorry, Long Rumba

Well, this isn’t exactly the stuff of Hollywood melodrama; but being cut off from the web for weeks—and hairs—on end is likely to have anyone channelling the none too blithe spirit of Mrs. Elbert Stevenson, the telecommunications-challenged anti-heroine of Lucille Fletcher’s “Sorry, Wrong Number.” I realize that “Sorry, No Broadband,” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it; nor does it sound right to be giving you the whole song and dance about it all whenever I do get a chance to vent publicly (that is, while not at home).

Still, the thought of getting one’s dial-uppance after years of making out like a broadbandit is just about as comforting as having the aforementioned First Lady of Suspense shriek bloody murder in your ears. These days, to be sure, Mrs. Stevenson would meet her well-timed end trying to make herself understood at some call center in India. Otherwise, this outcry from the play seems to fit our latest phone bill:

“[. . .] it’s positively driving me crazy. I’ve never seen such inefficient, miserable service.”

Pardon me for turning broadcastellan into an agony column. You see, we were given to understand that repairs of our phone line, apparently requiring the digging up of precious tarmac, would be put on hold so as not to disrupt local traffic . . . until September. I never guessed that my wanting to stay home at the computer would be deemed bad for tourism. To our relief, the phone started ringing again a few days ago; but the world wide web was still being spun without us.

So, I did not get to tell you about the production of West Side Story now playing at the local Arts Centre; or the complaints launched anonymously by a squeamish audience member voicing concerns about a simulated rape scene; or how the scene was subsequently changed so as not to offend, let alone harm the impressionables who should never be left with the impression that any show could go on without them in mind.

Apparently, West Side Story, written by former radio dramatist Arthur Laurents, is now a musical about infantile delinquents. Ours are not Happy Days for social realism. As in the age of the great radio theatricals, censorship is often nothing more than the arrogance of the few speaking up to silence what is quietly appreciated by the many. The world, it seems, is full of meddlesome Mrs. (and Mr.) Stevensons, in the spirit of providing vicarious relief through an imaginary throttling of whom on behalf of us, their long-suffering contemporaries, the revenge fantasy of “Sorry, Wrong Number” was conceived.

Posted on

Little Town Blues; or, Melting Away

Well, “it won’t be like that in town.” That is a remark you would have heard frequently, had you been eavesdropping in on us talking about our anticipated move out of the country later this month. As it turns out, we will have to wait far longer to prove or confute our hypotheses about the differences between urban and rural dwelling. Our plans to relocate to Aberystwyth, the Welsh seaside town romanticized in the quirky murder mysteries of Malcolm Pryce, have been thwarted. The potential buyer of our present abode has nixed the deal, making it impossible for us to buy the house currently owned by the person desirous to take possession of our buyer’s home. There’s a neat little triangle gone Bermuda.

Meanwhile, our cottage is once again cut off from the world, due to an ongoing problem with the telephone lines. I am in town now to file this report, sitting, in fact, not far from the Edwardian house (pictured) we were hoping to occupy. After the welcome interlude set aside for this lament, I am once again singing the blues where no one can hear me sigh . . .

Posted on

Spider Boy; or, The Web of Influence

It sounds like the perfect Hollywood spin-off; to studio executives, at least: Spider Boy. That is the title of a novel I am currently reading. The web of intrigue it spins, though, bears little resemblance to the thrills manufactured in the House of Marvel. Published in 1928, Spider Boy is not a prequel to the box-office dominating franchise on the latest instalment of which I decided to pass. Rather, it is a pre-history of the dream factory’s golden age, which, according to my estimation, ended in the early 1960s at the latest. Long out of print, Spider Boy is one of those forgotten pieces of 20th-century pop culture I tend to dust off for belated appraisal.

Reminiscent of the comic novels of Evelyn Waugh, Spider Boy is the brainchild of Carl Van Vechten, the Iowa native whose name I heretofore associated with that of Gertrude Stein, Van Vechten being the editor of her posthumously published works.

The main character, one Ambrose Deacon, is not the kind of boy or he-man that would make it in Hollywood:

About thirty-six years old, he stood a few inches over five feet and weighed too much for his height.  His light brown hair was beginning to fall away from his temples and the back of his head.  His countenance was round, his complexion inclined to be ruddy.  His nose was insignificant, but his mouth, a deep red Cupid’s bow, was his best feature.

I was intrigued by this emphasis of Deacon’s lips as expressed by a male author. Here is what else Van Vechten had to say about the anti-hero of his story:

In the depths of his steel-grey eyes could be read the record of his shyness.  His hands were pudgy and exceedingly awkward.  He constantly dropped books and other objects that he lifted.  In the presence of strangers it was even difficult for him to retain his grasp of a fork.  Moreover, he frequently stumbled over door-steps or nicked his knees or his elbows on protruding pieces of furniture.  Many an ample doorway proved too limited to permit his facile egress.

I instantly glanced at my own legs to trace the records of assorted household accidents and misadventures in gardening, letting my ego display its bruises in a moment of empathy mingled with self-pity. It always takes me a while to read on after such self-inspections; but when I did pick up the book anew, I came across the following:

Although he was no misogynist, he had never married.  Presumably no woman had yet found him attractive enough to try to gain his attention.  As a result of this condition he was shyer with women than with men.

Now, the word that caught my eye here was “Presumably,” suggesting to me that there might well be another explanation for the bachelorhood of a hero who, by his own accounts, “was indubitably playing the part ordinarily allotted to the heroine.” It is a reading that may not have occurred to the owner of this volume, the previously mentioned Ms. Waterhouse, to whom I owe the pleasure of this chance introduction to Ambrose Deacon and his silent-screen era adventures in Hollywood, to a “western drama” that struck the man who lived it as being “all wrong”—at least, that is, “according to tradition.”

This is going rather roundabout it; but I am very much indebted to others when it comes to my exposure to culture of any brow or description. I flinch at having greatness thrust upon me; but I willingly fling myself into the web of influence in hopes of getting caught up in what is presumably outmoded and inconsequential. The readings that ensue, to be sure, are entirely my own . . .

Posted on

Not Growing Up With The Simpsons

Well, I am not one to multitask. I can only manage one thing at a time, which, if desirous to veil my ineptitude, I would turn into a virtue by declaring myself to be merely anxious to give everything my all. In fact, undivided attention is not easily achieved when keeping on track means struggling not to drown in the crosscurrents of concurrency. I find it hard to read in public places, cannot tie my laces without keeping my eyes on them, and have trouble talking on the phone while being in a state of motion. I may very well be incapable of growing what is commonly referred to as “up.” Going about life with such deliberation, it would take me too long to take all the requisite steps.

It also explains the latest gap in my online journal, as unnoticed as it or its bridging might have gone. Simply put, either I live or I write, the experience being well in advance of its expression. The past few days were spent experiencing: sipping tea (or Margaritas) with visiting novelist Lynda Waterhouse and spouse, taking Montague to the beach on an afternoon almost passing for summer, and attending the opening of Hervé and the Wolf: Saints and Their Beasts, an exciting series of new paintings by our friend Clive Hicks-Jenkins. To avoid becoming rather too refined in my tastes—cultural elitism being as outmoded as modernism, the movement that gave it birth by issuing a privately printed death warrant to the popular—I agreed to take in last weekend’s international box office chart-topper, The Simpsons Movie.

Now, I haven’t watched The Simpsons with any regularity since they got their own show after graduating from the Tracy Ullman Show back in the late 1980s, when Bart and his mischief were still the focal point of this dysfunctional family portrait. Turning the pages of old diaries and photo albums, I did not come across any reference to the show and the impression it made on me (pictured above, in still earlier days, gleefully ignorant of the cultural indoctrination then deemed suitable for children).

Revisiting Springfield after taking scarcely a peek at it in fifteen years, I had little difficulty catching up. The Simpsons do not seem to change. Theirs is a constancy impossible in non-animated TV fare (its inanimate sameness notwithstanding), but common for radio characters of the pre-TV age, whose “Perennial Adolescence” caused one contemporary listener to warn that

only a miracle can save America from debacle. Such people [as those of radio’s Aldrich Family] are unequipped to create or manage an effective nation, as unable to do that as they are to run their individual lives and face the challenges of home and neighborhood [. . .]. 

They will help to explain why it was that, back in the middle nineteen-hundreds, the most powerful nation on earth was also the most fumbling and ineffective. They will make compassionate the understanding that Americans of our time had lived so long in adolescent terms that when they were called upon for leadership in a world of crisis which demanded mature and wise decisions, they proved incompetent to make those decisions.

The Simpsons differ from the juvenile characters of old radio comedies, which largely avoided socio-political commentary. Marge, Homer, and their perennially prepubescent offspring are outwardly ageless; yet their daily lives reflect the concerns of our times. Without losing their vigor or changing their looks, a sameness at once satisfying and comforting to us mortals, The Simpsons continue to be relevant because they exploit what is most talked of so as to remain talked about. As survival artists who escape time itself, they are permitted to get away with much, especially when it comes to expressing what we dare not face because it requires us to change.

Perhaps, this feature-length episode is rather too literally topical in that it tries hard not to get under our skin. Too careful not to offend too many too much, The Simpsons Movie takes no side in the current international debate from which it culls its material as from so many recycle bins. It sanitizes the fears about which we cannot quite come clean. The “Irritating Truth” is that we are more apt to laugh at than question ourselves, to accept our failures rather than to change our ways.

Posted on

. . . for the Memories?

Well, I am not sure which state of oblivion is more tolerable: to forget or to be forgotten. I tend to commute between the two, as most folks do. Yet I am far more troubled by the defects of my own memory than by any failure on my part to leave an indelible imprint of me on the minds of others. The latter might injure my pride from time to time; but the former damages the very core of my self as a being in space and time. Is this why I am attracted to pop-cultural ephemera, to the once famous and half forgotten, to the fading sounds of radio and the passing fame of its personalities? Am I, by trying to keep up with the out-of-date, rehearsing my own struggle of keeping anything in mind and preventing it from fading?

At present, I am catching up with the cases of Sherlock Holmes as chronicled by Doctor Watson, who, on this day, 25 July, in 1936, regaled American radio listeners with the “Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.” No recording of that particular broadcast seems to have survived; and few, if any, are alive today to remember hearing it. Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, of course, are still being discovered today by readers who, like me, come to them with moving images in mind, a mind crowded with dubious celluloid tributes that bear little resemblance to Doyle’s creations. As I recently found out, the first sound film version of A Study in Scarlet has, its title apart, nothing in common with the novel, borrowing dialogue and plot elements from The Valley of Fear instead.

Those who choose to enter Doyle’s Study are likely to be struck by what his unforgettable if frequently misremembered detective had to say about memory:

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.  A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.  Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic.  He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.  It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.  Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.  It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

I find little comfort in those words. Memory is not simply a matter of selecting what one wishes to recall or neglect; nor is forgetting, however convenient in many cases, merely a means of keeping the cabinets of our internal storage space organized or of keeping from us certain memoranda about events and personages whose presence we do not care to face.

What I fail to retrieve is often just what I need to have present. I make indices of my activities, such as the list (to the right of this) of films I have seen this year, well aware that the titles alone do little to trigger memories. My pocket diary and online calendars are filled with reminders; not of things to do, but of things done and places seen, jotted down so as to bring them back to mind: a combination of letters and numbers with which to gain access to an otherwise inaccessible past.

Resorting to the outsourcing of memory, I updated my homepage today, adding an album set aside for portraits of largely forgotten entertainers, photographs given to me by a friend whose mother wrote in for and held on to them. The above picture of Bill Johnson, for instance, that “Thanks”-giving fellow with the pipe (a prop likely to endear him to Mr. Holmes, but liable to bar him or anyone, for that matter, from being featured in a Disney family movie). I do not recall hearing of him or hearing him entertain me; but I made up my mind to remember him publicly, to become an aide to someone else’s memory, the mental faculty on which I cannot depend.

It is only after such clean-up efforts that I allow myself to contemplate how I might be remembered should ever the winds of change or the sweeping gesture of an officious feather duster wipe away what I chose to leave behind on the web . . .

Posted on

Marion Davies Slept Here

St Donats

Well, I’ve never been to Hollywood, tempting offers involving a cat, Elizabeth Taylor’s granddaughter, and a place to stay in LA notwithstanding. You don’t need to be going way out west, though, to be in the presence of Tinseltown’s past, to sense the influence of its players and witness their follies. Now, I am not referring to the likes of Ms. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who was born here in Wales. I mean stars, not celebrities. To be sure, I am somewhat of an Occidental Tourist. Where others, traveling in the Welsh countryside, will find traces of ancient history or sights that quicken the pulse of the most seasoned horticulturalist, I see signs of old Hollywoodland. Take the castle of St. Donats, for instance.

These days, St. Donats is a sort of Hogwarts for assorted Muggles, which is to say that it is an exclusive college for international students, many of whom, if my ears did not deceive me as we walked across the campus last week, come here from the United States. The castle has a centuries-spanning past, as is customary in the case of such fortifications; but in my case, the history lesson exhausted itself in reflections about its state anno 1925, when it got into the ink and blood-stained hands of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst and the far daintier ones of his lovely companion, screen actress Marion Davies (shown in an autographed picture of unverified authenticity from my collection).

Though better known as a silent screen actress, Davies transitioned successfully to sound film and was no stranger to radio. On the air, she starred in the Lux Radio Theater productions of “The Brat” (13 July 1936) and “Peg ‘o My Heart” (29 Nov. 1937), in which she recreated of one of her sentimental talkie roles.  Despite her stardom in the 1920s and ‘30s, Davies has long suffered ridicule and neglect, an unwarranted disrepute largely owing to Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. A caricature of Hearst, it leaves audiences with the impression that Davies was the delusional mistress of an influential mogul who humored her whims by purchasing her fame and foisting her lack of talent on an unimpressed multitude. Anyone who has seen Davies in films like The Patsy or Show People knows this to be slanderous. The Brooklynite with the Welsh surname was a brilliant comedienne, far more accomplished than neo-Hollywood A-lister Kirsten Dunst, who impersonated her in the speculative yet tedious Cat’s Meow (2001).

A 1927 volume titled Alice in Movieland (previously raided for a picture of silent screen star Rod La Rocque), attests to Davies’s fondness for Britain: “Well, yes, I d-do admire the Prince of Wales,” she confessed, “and I d-did try to look like him when I played the boy in the lovely uniform in my picture Graustark.” The picture was the delightful yet rarely screened Beverly of Graustark, which, along with a dozen other Davies features, I had the good fortune of catching at New York’s Film Forum some years back. “I love to do boys parts,” Davies added; and as Beverly (listed high among the films I got around to rating on the Internet Movie Database) she is at her most charmingly androgynous.

Unlike her relationship with Hearst, the star’s Hollywood bungalow was no modern affair. It featured a “pure” Tudor door leading to a Tudor hall. “Nothing Pullman about this!” the author of Alice in Movieland marveled. Yet it wasn’t “nearly Tudor enough,” Davies told her. She was determined to move house “some day”—or have her house moved: “It’s got to be the most Tudor thing in the world. I shall have it t-taken away somewhere else, and another one, m-much more beautiful b-built in its place [. . .].”

“[S]ome day,” she knew, was not too far off. Apparently, the Xanadoozy of an imported castle that is San Simeon was not enough for Hearst; perhaps, it was rather too much, too grand and imposing, even for him. Hearst was getting on in years and wanted a quiet retreat for himself and Ms. Davies. A 14th-century castle overlooking the strait known as the Bristol Channel was his idea of quaint, I gather. According to Davies biographer Lawrence Guiles, getting it ready involved the installation of an additional forty-seven bathrooms. And I find the idea of renovating our newly purchased three-bathroom, semi-detached Edwardian house in town daunting!

Unlike San Simeon, which I visited on an August so foggy it suggested Autumn in Wales rather than sunny California, St. Donats is open to the public only for a few days each year, after its current residents are flown out and the school shuts down in mid-Summer. I am determined to go back for another look. To me, it’ll be like Going Hollywood.

Posted on

Wallace Beery Was Indisposed; or Stand-ins to Sit Down For

The show must go on, as they say. They, obviously, have not been on British soil this summer, most of which appears to be under water. “Fair Albion”? It’s Altantis, I tell you. While all those braving the deluge are keeping their stiff upper lips well moisturised, I am staying put and dry, steeped in theater and a flood of memories. This evening, I was being treated to radio adaptations of Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (previously discussed here) and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Never mind that such adaptations may be mean substitutes for the real thing. You’d have to be out of your mind to keep out of the theater-of-the-mind on a day like this. Besides, sometimes ersatz is all you can sit down to.

Who for instance, has ever seen or is likely to attend a production of Don Marquis’s comedy The Master of the Revels (1934), a condensed version of which was soundstaged on this day, 20 July, back in 1935 over at Al Jolson’s Shell Chateau? The star was Henry Hull, who, as the star of the sensationally long-running Tobacco Road, packed them in that summer at what is now the Eugene O’Neill Theater (where a couple of cloud-covered moons ago I had the dubious fortune of taking in this year’s Tony Awards darling Spring Awakening).

One year later to the day, Walter Huston and Claudette Colbert (pictured) stepped behind the microphone to recreate their roles in the Kenyon Nicholson’s comedy The Barker. The two Broadway-trained leads were substituting for no-shows Wallace Beery and Stuart Erwin, who were scheduled to go on that night in another play. Now, Clara Bow proved a lovely substitute for Colbert when the play was adapted for the talkies; but this is as close to Biltmore Theater anno 1927 as modern media will get you.

Also on this day, in 1942, radio played The Philadelphia Story, a star-studded event that raised the curtain on a new Government-sponsored venture, the Victory Theater. I’ve seen The Philadelphia Story some time ago at London’s Old Vic; but that show, starring Jennifer Ehle and Kevin Spacey (whom I didn’t like much tottering under A Moon for the Misbegotten, either), truly felt like a substitute for the movie version. At the Victory, at least, you get to hear the original cast of that cinema classic.

Yes, when summer pulls a Wallace Beery, you appreciate radio’s importance of being ersatz.

Posted on

The "Hat" Is Familiar

Well, I don’t drive. Sitting in the car for a few hours, as I have been on two separate trips to the south of Wales these last few days, and failing to make scintillating company for my partner at the wheel, I pass the time that always seems longer when the body is at rest while in motion by listening to comedy and quiz programs on BBC 4. Quick, witty, and thoroughly radiogenic, shows like I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and Just a Minute continue to provide the kind of smart broadcast entertainment introduced in America back in 1938, when Information, Please! premiered on the CBS radio network.

Like those present day BBC offerings, the Information, Please! program relied in part on well-known guest panelists, mainly writers and entertainers, publicly to make fools of themselves for our private amusement. Now, Information, Please! is still a darn good quiz program; but I tend to listen to it for information other than that requested by host Clifton Fadiman. The program sure tests the memory. It also attests to the transitory nature of what constitutes the memorable and the retrievable, trivia and common knowledge.

To me, the most intriguing questions of Information, Please! are raised by the very voices and names of those who answer. On this day, 18 July, in 1939, Information, Please! featured the voice of one Clarence Budington Kelland. Apparently, the speaker was deemed popular enough to become a celebrity guest guesser. Not only did he join a long list of Information Pleasers including Lilian Gish, Gracie Allen, Rex Stout, and Alfred Hitchcock, he was invited to return and second guess.

On an earlier edition of Information, Please! (the transcript of which was included in an anthology of Best Broadcasts), Kelland was introduced as an “ever popular” author “whose stories and novels have delighted millions” (23 May 1939). While it is clear that those millions did not bother to pass on their delights to future generations, it remains open to speculation just when the “ever popular” made way for “whatever,” the yawn of indifference.

Posted on

This [I believe] I Believe

Perhaps we are becoming rather blasé about the phenomenon of web journalism (commonly known and often derided as “blogging”). Many of us still write what we wish, refusing to succumb to the urge or promise of making monetary profits by agreeing to become the mouthpieces of commerce, thereby to surrender the opportunity of sharing something about ourselves other than our apparent greed. How much is it worth to you to write freely, to display whatever you are pleased and prepared to share, what you think, think you know or believe?

It used to be a rare chance indeed to make yourself heard in a public forum comprising of more than a room full of people. The media who can spread news or opinions beyond the small circle of our communities, they always seem to be owned or run by others, be it likeminded or otherwise. That sense of being removed or apart from the media is largely a misconception, at least in democratic societies, a misconception arising from the distrust or apathy of the individual who does not participate, let alone initiate debates. And yet, what went on the air was generally prepared for the listener-turned-consumer by those who chose to enter the radio industry, whether to teach, delight, or exploit.

How exciting it must have sounded to the radio listener of 1951 when a program called This I Believe premiered on CBS, soon to be heard by American and international audiences the world over. This week, BBC Radio 4 is offering an hourlong introduction to This I Believe, its origins, its creators (among them Edward R. Murrow, pictured above), and its participants—an eclectic group of housewives and luminaries).

So, what if you were given four and a half minutes—or no more than 600 words—publicly to express your beliefs (something thousands have done since the revival of This I Believe in 2003)? What would you say? Would you find the words—and the courage—to say it?

However easy it is to say I, I believe that it should take more than a moment’s haphazarding to examine and express one’s philosophy, provided such a philosophy, which lies beyond performance and conformity, can be formulated at all. Yes, it is far easier to say “I” than it is to add “believe” and to follow it with words that truly follow . . .

Posted on

A Ramble of Epic Proportions: Wordsworth in Wales

Well, I suppose we have all taken trips that have changed our lives. After all, why else go anywhere! If it had not been for a New York City subway ride and a brisk walk to Rockefeller Center on an afternoon in December, I would never have ended up here in Wales (a virtual tour of which is being attempted in this 1930s radio broadcast). Indeed, I would not have been able to spot Wales on a map, even though I, a student of English literature, believed myself to be familiar with one of the most famous poems to have been inspired by the Welsh countryside: Wordsworth’s “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.”

It was on this day, 13 July, back in 1798, that Wordsworth revisited the Wye valley in Monmouthshire, Wales, where Tintern Abbey stands in its Romanticism-inspiring ruins (as shown left, in a more prosaic picture from my first visit there).

Wordsworth had been at the same spot some five summers earlier, together with his sister, Dorothy. He felt himself aged and believed himself matured. It had been a memorable journey; indeed, as he remarked in his notes on the poem, no work of his was “composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember.” The memory of the trip and of his “boyish days” were very much on his mind on his return to the scene, a landscape revisited not simply per pedes, but, in a less pedestrian sense, in recollection.

“[H]ow oft,” he recalled in his famous poem, in lines that would change the course of literary history,

In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—  
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

It was a vision of a landscape that recurred to Wordsworth, “in lonely rooms” and “‘mid the din / Of towns and cities.” A “worshipper of nature,” he had little to say about the Abbey itself, a ruin that inspired many an artist, most notably Turner, Wordsworth’s contemporary. This Sunday, I am going to travel down to Monmouthshire in the knowledge that my days in the Welsh countryside are numbered.

It seems I am moving back into town this fall, after nearly three years in the Welsh countryside. A small town, mind you, but a town nonetheless. It was peaceful here, and pleasant in the sunshine. Yet there has hardly been any sunshine this summer, nor warmth; and the loneliness of our house has at times been a burden to me, and to those having to suffer my presence.

Without this intensely felt isolation I would perhaps not have commenced the broadcastellan journal. Before moving to Wales, I was not aware of how much our surroundings enter our being, of how much a landscape can inhabit or possess, rather than merely surround us. Now, would the Romantic movement have come into being had Wordsworth’s second summer in Wales been as much of a washout as the present season?