Quips and Quotations (Zen Bastard Edition)

1932-2019

I am neither for conformity nor nonconformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect nonconformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

--Paul Krassner

The Best Years of Their Lives

 I freely admit this blog often highlights once-famous movie and TV stars who are now on the fast track to obscurity, but that's my whole point. Fame is ephemeral. The household name of today is the senile babble of tomorrow. But if one of those once-famous, now-obscure people had a certain amount of talent, as occasionally is the case, then I want to remind everybody of that before the individual is inevitably overcome by anonymity. As Mrs. Loman once said in a different context (talent itself being somewhat ephemeral), attention must be paid! What's got my attention today, however, is an instance of being on the fast track to obscurity and then jumping the rails in an unexpected way. Google Estelle Getty, who played Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls, then click on "Images", and you will get a bunch of pictures of, not surprisingly, Estelle Getty. Or maybe it is a bit of surprise. After all, she died 11 years ago, and it's been 27 years since the last original episode of The Golden Girls aired. Yet as of this writing, anonymity is still a ways away for her. Sophia lives! But it doesn't stop there. Of late, if you google Getty's name and click on "Images", you're likely to get at least one picture of the once-famous, now-obscure film actress Myrna Loy. It seems someone on the Internet, either knowingly or unknowingly, is trying to pass off a picture of Loy as being that of a young Estelle Getty. If you have any inkling at all as to what Myrna Loy once looked like--she died in 1993--see if you can find her in the above image (which I snagged from elsewhere on the Information Highway.) It will be fun. Kind of like playing Where's Waldo?  

Quips and Quotations (Poetic Edda Edition)

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Vital Viewing (Keep Up Your Premiums or Else It's All for Nought Edition)

 Actress Barbara Stanwyck was born on this day in 1907. Three years before her death in 1990, Stanwyck received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and, in the forthright manner that had become her persona, showed her appreciation:

During her acceptance speech, Stanwyck made mention of...

...filmmaker Billy Wilder, who she claimed taught her how to kill (and then threw in a "Thank God!" for good measure.) What's she talking about? Let's take a quick look at her 1944 tutorial:

 

Jumpin' Jehosephat! Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray make two very ruthless people.

Even while grocery shopping!

But don't be too alarmed. They mellow out later on. After all...

...who has time for Murder One while raising a family?

Quips and Quotations (Post Office Edition)

 I am married to a fine actor named Rip Torn....The mail carriers are used to our mail box, which reads Torn Page.


--Geraldine Page

In Memoriam: Arte Johnson 1929-2019

 

Arte Johnson's show biz career starts when, while on lunch break from some boring Manhattan office job, he happened to see a small line outside a theater: an open audition for musical. Having done a bit of acting college, Johnson decided to stand in line just to see what would happen. What happened was he got a small part in an off-Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Goodbye boring office job. In the late 1950s and early-to-mid '60s, Johnson had small parts in movies, and played many one-shot characters on various TV shows. A number of these roles were dramatic in nature, but his real forte was comedy, and in fact did stand-up between acting gigs. His most memorable role toward the end of that period may have been as a stubborn government assassin in writer-director Theodore J. Flicker's 1967 national security state satire The President's Analyst (a flop in its day but now considered a more-relevant-than-ever comedy classic.) But his big break came when he joined the inaugural cast of TV's Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, a sketch comedy show comprised almost entirely of blackout gags (short skits with a single punchline.) Johnson was easily the most versatile male actor on that show, his talent for accents rivaled only by a TV sketch comedy star from a decade earlier, Sid Caesar (which may have proved problematic for both men later on when comically exaggerated foreign accents came to be seen as politically incorrect.)  Johnson's most famous character was an anachronistic World War II-era German soldier named Wolfgang who would poke his head above some shrubbery and comment on the sketch that had just concluded: "Stupid but [here comes the catchphrase] ver-r-r-y interesting" But my personal favorite of his character was a dirty old man named Tyrone whom, for reasons know only to him, found Ruth Buzzi's homely Gladys character attractive enough to continuously make passes at her. By 21st century standards, Tyrone may have been a bit of a stalker, but he paid a mighty price for all that stalking, as the sketch usually ended with him taking a savage beating from Gladys' purse.

Johnson became a household name doing Laugh-In and probably saw it as a stepping stone to greater things, leaving after the fourth season (out of five total.) As it turned out, Laugh-In WAS the greater thing. Both Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin ended up with lengthy movie careers, so lengthy in fact that their Laugh-In beginnings now seem like a answers to Jeopardy questions. For Johnson, however, it was back to pretty much what he was doing before Laugh-In, a lot of guest-shots on TV shows and small parts in movies, though he was at least more recognizable the second time around. His most notable role may have been as the insect-ingesting Renfield in the 1979 movie, Love at First Bite, a Dracula parody. It was a hit but a hit that far better advanced the career of star George Hamilton than Johnson (even, if for my popcorn money, Johnson was the funniest thing about the movie.) Johnson's fall from show biz grace (my view--he never complained about it) had nothing to do with a contraction of talent. He was probably just as funny in 2009 as he was in 1969. But audiences, as well as producers, casting directors, and agents, had come to associate him with a certain time in television history, a time that was now long past. If you happened to have been around during that time in television history (I remember the show that made him famous well, even if I was just in elementary school and probably didn't get some of the more risque jokes), then Johnson's stint on Laugh-In should have had you laughing out loud.

Springfield Pride

I know this is a few days past the Pride Month deadline, but it can't be helped. I found out today is actress Yeardley Smith's 55th birthday, began rooting around as I usually do to see if I could make a blog post out of it, and came across this picture of her at a Human Rights Campaign gala. If you don't know what the HRC is, it's a major LGBTQ advocacy group, though Smith herself is not an L or a G or a B or a T or a Q but instead a straight ally, which is always heartening. Outside of all that, who exactly is Yeardley Smith? Is she, like, a celebrity? Well, you may not recognize her name or her face, but you should be very familiar with her if you've been watching the Fox network on Sunday nights for the last three decades, for it's Smith who brings this character to life:

She was always the smart one in that family.