Happy T-Day to all. Turkey is one of my favorite foods and I eat it often. I have no relatives this side of the Mississippi River. I don't watch sports. I gave up watching Thanksgiving Parades long ago when they stopped being parades and started being infomercials. And I'm not thinking in the least about Christmas shopping. Ergo, the only special thing about this day is that there's no mail delivery and the phone isn't ringing…much.
Oh — and there isn't much news of a political variety. That's a good thing.
I'm thankful for friends…and that most if not all of mine are wise enough not to defy common sense warnings about The Disease. I'm concerned that we won't all be rid of it until more people take it seriously.
The other day I stumbled onto an online forum of folks who were trying to top each other, bragging about how little they were worried about getting COVID-19 and/or passing it on to others. It reminded me of those Four Yorkshiremen — you know the ones — boasting about having to live in a lake or a rolled-up newspaper.
Some still thought it was a myth and that all those folks who've allegedly died or been hospitalized for it are either non-existent or people who died or were hospitalized for other causes. It was a pretty scary forum and I hurriedly clicked elsewhere.
I continue to get more and more e-mails from the Trump campaign promising that any day now, they'll be filing the most massive lawsuit ever. It will be backed by tons of undeniable evidence that Trump not only beat Biden but beat him by the largest margin in any election ever for anything. But they need at least five dollars from me to make it happen. You wonder how many who buy into all this have considered Chris Christie's statement the other day: "Trump's legal team discusses fraud outside the courtroom but when they go inside the courtroom, they don't plead fraud and they don't argue fraud."
Over on Twitter, I came across this from Glenn Kessler, who fact-checks for The Washington Post…
It's amazing how the US election infrastructure was working just fine in 2016, when Trump won the presidency, but now in 2020 it's like a "third-world country" when he lost. Who was president during that period of decline?
Answer: It was that guy who won so much, he must have, like he said, just gotten tired of winning. Happy Rest of Today, everyone!
Trump's getting confused. He pardoned a turkey for lying to the F.B.I. and announced that no one is going to eat Michael Flynn with stuffing and gravy.
Posted on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 at 12:42 PM
I featured this song a long time ago on this blog but with different video links which have since expired…
In the late seventies, there was a hit song in Israel called "Hallelujah," written by composer Kobi Oshrat. It was written for and entered into something called the Eurovision Song Contest 1978, where it was rejected by the judging committee but accepted a year later for Eurovision Song Contest 1979. There, it was performed by singer Gail Atari and a group called Milk & Honey and it won a major award. Soon, it was released as a record that sold many, many copies in many, many countries in many, many languages. Here's Ms. Atari and the group singing it in, I think, Hebrew…
And here they are singing it in English…
And it was recorded in many other languages. Here they are doing it in German…
In America, it came to the attention of the singing married couple, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. I know that for a lot of people, Steve and Eydie were too 'middle of the road" and way outta sync with the music of the sixties, seventies and beyond. They were on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson a lot, though in Johnny's later years, the network folks would complain that a lot of the musical acts being booked were "too Steve and Eydie." That meant a certain style of music, not specifically those two performers, but I liked them. I thought there was something very comforting about the way they handled a tune.
Steve and Eydie thought "Hallelujah" had a good shot at becoming a hit in this country so they recorded a single record of it under the names "Parker and Penny." Why the fake names? Well, I heard two stories, the less interesting of which is that they were under contract to one record company and wanted to do this one for another.
The more interesting reason — and it might even be true for all we know — is that they thought they might reach an audience that would automatically pass up a record by Steve and Eydie. At least, it might get played on radio stations that would pass on playing a record with their names on it.
The secret did not stay secret for long. Mr. Carson had them on a couple of times to sing it. I think they did it three times in about two months on his show. The first time, Steve came on solo, started to perform it and then Eydie popped in as surprise to join him in it. The second time, Eydie came on alone but Steve suddenly turned up in the middle of the song. The third time, they came on as a duo.
I may have the order wrong but I remember the unsurprising surprises. Each time, the number started on stage and then the two of them went out into the audience — Steve up one aisle, Eydie up the other — to sing as they shook hands with audience members. The song made it as high as #46 on the charts, probably because of The Tonight Show exposure. If you can stand it one more time, here they are performing it at a concert in France but in English. And I apologize if you're never able to get it out of your head…
I am unable to put myself in the frame-of-mind of those who are proudly hosting or attending large gatherings tomorrow. I kinda half-understand people who think COVID-19 is not as great a risk — especially to the young and healthy — as authorities say. To me though, "I'll never get COVID" or "If I get it, I'll beat it with ease" are gambles you'd be nuts to take, especially since if you lose, you could also cause a lot of pain and grief for others.
I do understand the eagerness some have to "normalize" their worlds but I don't think eating turkey with a big group would make my life feel very pre-pandemic. And of course, I don't understand those who think the disease was a hoax all along, particularly a hoax invented to embarrass and unseat Donald Trump. When politicians like Ted Cruz who said it was are up for re-election, I hope their opponents remind the voting public of some of the stupidest, most irresponsible statements ever made by folks holding public office.
Then again, that's right up there with "We have to go to war because Saddam definitely has those Weapons of Mass Destruction." Those claims didn't bother as many people as they should have.
Trump is about to release evidence proving the election was rigged. It'll be in a package with his tax forms, his health plan, the explanation of how Mexico will pay for the wall and all that devastating info his detectives dug up in Hawaii about Obama's birth certificate.
Tomorrow into Thursday, Turner Classic Movies is running a bunch of movies starring Sean Connery: Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Marnie, The Hill and The Man Who Would Be King. Then Thursday into Friday, they go all Hitchcock on us: Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds, Psycho, Rope, The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train, Saboteur, Torn Curtain, Marnie again, The Trouble with Harry and Shadow of a Doubt. There's gotta be something in there you want to watch.
Here's a neat question. After she read this posting, Dina Wolfe wrote to ask…
In a recent post, you listed what must have been hundreds of names of people who were stars in the forties and who performed at the Hollywood Canteen. How many of them did you ever get to meet? And did any of them ever disappoint you? And do you have any tips about approaching or talking to stars like that?
Ooh. Well, I'll go over the list and use the loosest possible definition of "meet." I didn't introduce myself or shake hands with every one of these people but I did at least exchange a few words with them…
Bud Abbott, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Mel Blanc, George Burns, Cab Calloway, Adriana Caselotti, Bette Davis, Doris Day, Yvonne De Carlo, Dale Evans, Eva Gabor, Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Pinky Lee, Harold Lloyd, June Lockhart, Fred MacMurray, Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, Roddy McDowall, Fayard Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers, Margaret O'Brien, Vincent Price, Roy Rogers, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton, Moe Howard and Larry Fine of The Three Stooges, Shelley Winters and Jane Withers.
I also met Joe Besser and Joe DeRita of the Stooges but they weren't Stooges in the forties.
But I should emphasize that some of those were real brief encounters. The one with Jack Benny (which I told here) was under thirty seconds. The one with Bud Abbott (which I told here) lasted about ninety seconds.
I was disappointed by the brevity of my encounter with Mr. Abbott. It was at the Motion Picture Country Home/Hospital, which a lot of people still refer to as "The Old Show Biz Folks' Home" and I was leaving after a long chat with Larry Fine. Back then, you could talk to Larry as long as you wanted and as long as you were willing to sit and hear the same nine anecdotes over and over and over. He had nothing else to do and he welcomed the company.
On my way out that day, a nurse mentioned to me that Bud Abbott was also there so I popped in to see him. Like Larry, he had nothing to do but I caught him in a foul mood and he did not welcome company at that moment or maybe ever. I was outta there faster than you could say "Susquehanna Hat Company."
I might have been disappointed that Mickey Rooney acted like a crazy person, ranting and yelling at one of those Hollywood Collectors Shows. But I already knew he could be like that so I was not surprised.
Everyone else on that list was at least civil and some of them — like Berle, Burns, Silvers and especially Harold Lloyd — were genuinely pleased that a kid my age knew as much about their careers as I did. Red Skelton didn't care that I wanted to talk about his films or TV shows. He just wanted an audience to listen to dirty jokes which was…well, okay, I guess.
Vincent Price was pleased that I asked him about work he'd done that was not in horror films. Gene Kelly liked that we talked about his work as a film director and not just as a dancer. You want a tip? Here's a tip…
If you ever get to meet someone you've admired who has had a long career, try to ask them about something they did that not everyone asks them about. When I was introduced to Robert Morse, he was so happy that I knew of things he'd done besides How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, including projects that were relatively recent. When I met Billy Wilder, he was pleased that I wanted to know about Ace in the Hole instead of Some Like It Hot.
I doubt one person on the above list could have told you my name a day later and at least two-thirds of them never heard it at all. The only person I can think of who performed at the Hollywood Canteen who I would call an actual friend was June Foray. She danced there on stage with other starlets who kicked up their heels for the soldiers but she wasn't on the list I posted. It was a list which, in case you couldn't guess, I cribbed off Wikipedia. I still find it a little hard to believe that anyone — let alone silly ol' me — could actually meet most of those folks.
In the stage version of the Little Shop of Horrors musical, the plant didn't have a solo. I'm going to guess that was because they didn't think it could; that the puppeteer operating that monster of a puppet wouldn't be able to keep up with the lip sync of a long number. I'm assuming — and I could certainly be wrong about this — that the makers of the show thought it would look shoddy and make the plant look like more of a puppet.
When it came time to do the movie, that wasn't a problem. The plant puppet they build for the film was capable of some pretty convincing lip sync. (And by the way: A lot of folks thought it was animated or it was stop-motion or CGI or something. It wasn't. It was a full-size, real puppet operated by a large team of puppeteers. What they did though was to slow down its vocal track so the puppeteers could keep up with it and then after filming, they sped up the film to the proper speed. In scenes where the plant interacted with Rick Moranis, Mr. Moranis had to do his actions extra-slow so they'd look normal when the film was sped.)
Anyway, they also (I'm sure) wanted to add a new musical number or two to the film because when a stage musical is adapted for the movies, songs from the stage are not eligible for the Oscar for Best Song but newly-added tunes are. That's why in the film of Guys and Dolls, Adelaide sings "Pet Me Poppa" instead of "A Bushel and a Peck," and in the movie of The Music Man, Marian the Librarian sings "Being In Love" instead of "My White Knight." So the Little Shop crew added "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space" for the plant, Audrey II.
And it worked to the extent that that number did get nominated for Best Song. It was beaten out by "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun but "Mean Green Mother" did get performed on the Oscarcast, albeit with a few lyrics sanitized for our protection. Here's a nice unsanitized rendition of it performed by Cavin Cornwall, who appears on a lot on stages and who, among his many voiceover gigs, is heard all over the last few Star Wars films…
I keep getting e-mails from Rudy and the Trump organization telling me they have tons of inarguable proof of massive voter fraud. Damn clever of them to wait until they lose every legal challenge and every state certifies its vote totals before they show it to anyone.
This is a scene from the 1944 movie, Hollywood Canteen. The Canteen was a club during war where soldiers could go to eat, drink and be entertained by some pretty big movie and radio stars and they made a movie about it.
Your admission ticket to the place was your uniform and you never knew who you were going to see performing there. The list included Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Iris Adrian, Fred Allen, June Allyson, Brian Aherne, Don Ameche, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, The Andrews Sisters, Dana Andrews, Eve Arden, Louis Armstrong, Jean Arthur, Fred Astaire, Mary Astor, Roscoe Ates, Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Theda Bara, Lynn Bari, Jess Barker, Binnie Barnes, Diana Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Count Basie, Anne Baxter, Warner Baxter, Louise Beavers, Wallace Beery, William Bendix, Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Ingrid Bergman, Milton Berle, Julie Bishop, Mel Blanc, Joan Blondell, Ann Blyth, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Boland, Ray Bolger, Beulah Bondi, William Boyd, Charles Boyer, Clara Bow, Eddie Bracken, El Brendel, Walter Brennan, Fanny Brice, Joe E. Brown, Les Brown, Virginia Bruce, Billie Burke, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Spring Byington, James Cagney, Cab Calloway, Rod Cameron, Eddie Cantor, Judy Canova, Kitty Carlisle, Jack Carson, Adriana Caselotti, Charlie Chaplin, Marguerite Chapman, Cyd Charisse, Charles Coburn, Claudette Colbert, Jerry Colonna, Ronald Colman, Betty Compson, Perry Como, Chester Conklin, Gary Cooper, Joseph Cotten, Noël Coward, James Craig, Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Xavier Cugat, Cass Daley, Dorothy Dandridge, Linda Darnell, Harry Davenport, Bette Davis, Dennis Day, Doris Day, Yvonne De Carlo, Gloria DeHaven, Dolores del Río, William Demarest, Olivia de Havilland, Cecil B. DeMille, Andy Devine, Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Irene Dunne, Jimmy Durante, Deanna Durbin, Ann Dvorak, Nelson Eddy, Duke Ellington, Faye Emerson, Dale Evans, Jinx Falkenburg, Glenda Farrell, Alice Faye, Louise Fazenda, Stepin Fetchit, Gracie Fields, Barry Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Jane Frazee, Joan Fontaine, Susanna Foster, Eva Gabor, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Betty Grable, Cary Grant, Kathryn Grayson, Sydney Greenstreet, Paulette Goddard, Samuel Goldwyn, Benny Goodman, Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Phil Harris, Moss Hart, Helen Hayes, Dick Haymes, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Sonja Henie, Paul Henreid, Katharine Hepburn, Portland Hoffa, Darla Hood, Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, Lena Horne, Edward Everett Horton, Marsha Hunt, Ruth Hussey, Betty Hutton, Frieda Inescort, Jose Iturbi, Harry James, Gloria Jean, Anne Jeffreys, Allen Jenkins, Van Johnson, Al Jolson, Jennifer Jones, Marcia Mae Jones, Boris Karloff, Danny Kaye, Buster Keaton, Ruby Keeler, Gene Kelly, Evelyn Keyes, Guy Kibbee, Andrea King, Gene Krupa, Kay Kyser, Alan Ladd, Bert Lahr, Elsa Lanchester, Angela Lansbury, Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, Carole Landis, Frances Langford, Charles Laughton, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Peter Lawford, Gertrude Lawrence, Peggy Lee, Pinky Lee, Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Joan Leslie, Ted Lewis, Beatrice Lillie, Mary Livingston, Harold Lloyd, June Lockhart, Anita Loos, Peter Lorre, Myrna Loy, Keye Luke, Bela Lugosi, Ida Lupino, Diana Lynn, Marie McDonald, Jeanette MacDonald, Fred MacMurray, Marjorie Main, Irene Manning, Fredric March, The Marx Brothers, Herbert Marshall, Ilona Massey, Victor Mature, Elsa Maxwell, Louis B. Mayer, Hattie McDaniel, Roddy McDowall, Frank McHugh, Victor McLaglen, Butterfly McQueen, Lauritz Melchior, Adolphe Menjou, Una Merkel, Ray Milland, Ann Miller, Glenn Miller, Carmen Miranda, Robert Mitchum, Maria Montez, George Montgomery, Grace Moore, Jackie Moran, Dennis Morgan, Patricia Morison, Paul Muni, Ken Murray, The Nicholas Brothers, Ramon Novarro, Jack Oakie, Margaret O'Brien, Pat O'Brien, Virginia O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, Maureen O'Hara, Oona O'Neill, Maureen O'Sullivan, Merle Oberon, Eugene Pallette, Eleanor Parker, Harriet Parsons, Louella Parsons, John Payne, Gregory Peck, Nat Pendleton, Mary Pickford, Walter Pidgeon, Zasu Pitts, Cole Porter, Dick Powell, Eleanor Powell, Jane Powell, William Powell, Vincent Price, Anthony Quinn, George Raft, Claude Rains, Vera Ralston, Sally Rand, Basil Rathbone, Martha Raye, Donna Reed, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, Roy Rogers, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Jane Russell, Rosalind Russell, Ann Rutherford, Peggy Ryan, S.Z. Sakall, Olga San Juan, Ann Savage, David O. Selznick, Hazel Scott, Lizabeth Scott, Randolph Scott, Toni Seven, Norma Shearer, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Sylvia Sidney, Phil Silvers, Ginny Simms, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Alexis Smith, Kate Smith, Ann Sothern, Jo Stafford, Barbara Stanwyck, Craig Stevens, Leopold Stokowski, Lewis Stone, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Danny Thomas, The Three Stooges, Gene Tierney, Lawrence Tibbett, Martha Tilton, Claire Trevor, Sophie Tucker, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lupe Vélez, Beryl Wallace, Nancy Walker, Ethel Waters, John Wayne, Clifton Webb, Virginia Weidler, Johnny Weissmuller, Orson Welles, Mae West, Bert Wheeler, Alice White, Paul Whiteman, Margaret Whiting, Cornel Wilde, Esther Williams, Warren William, Chill Wills, Marie Wilson, Shelley Winters, Jane Withers, Teresa Wright, Anna May Wong, Constance Worth, Jane Wyman, Ed Wynn, Keenan Wynn, Rudy Vallee, Lupe Vélez, Loretta Young, Robert Young, Darryl F. Zanuck and Vera Zorina. Guess which one of these brought along his horse…
I have the feeling that for the rest of our lives, we'll be running into Trump supporters who will insist that their guy obviously won the 2020 Presidential Election (and not by a narrow margin) and had it stolen from him. They will not be able to explain how Democrats — who they claim are idiots who can't accomplish anything — pulled it off, nor why the many Republican judges and other officials who had to be in on it were in on it. But they'll be sure it happened and maybe even that deep down, we know it did.
They will insist there was incontrovertible, inarguable evidence of the steal but they'll have a hard time explaining why Trump's lawyers put little or none of it before judges or even Tucker Carlson. Some of the cases — especially the big one that was just tossed outta court in Pennsylvania — were so feeble that someone will surely suggest, if they haven't already, that Trump's attorneys were paid to throw the fights.
Can't wait to see how Rudy Giuliani will respond to that. It won't be his hair dye that melts. It'll be his entire head.
The stores around are out of toilet paper. It was all bought up by people who heard that panic buying/hoarding of it was happening so they rushed to buy/hoard, thereby creating the panic they'd heard about.
When you think about it, it's the perfect commodity to be hoarded. It's pretty much a necessity and it never expires. No matter how much you buy, you'll eventually use it. The same is true of paper towels, tissues, McDonald's hamburgers and very few other things we need.
