Graphic Grandeur (She Was Flagged Edition)

 

 

This Peter Steiner cartoon makes me wonder if it was the report due on Marbury vs. Madison.

Now let's hear from a different Supreme:

Vital Viewing (Weimar Republic Edition)

Actor-singer-dancer Joel Grey was born on this day in 1932. Diana Ross and James Coburn invite the Cleveland native up on stage in this clip from the 45th Academy Awards (held in 1973 for movies made in 1972):

It was an unusual Oscars presentation that year. There was Native-American activist Sacheen Littlefeather famously, or, in the subsequent onstage opinions of Raquel Welch and Clint Eastwood, infamously, turning down the Best Actor award on behalf of no-show Marlon Brando. Eastwood himself was on stage twice that night, planned and unplanned. Planned was his reading of the Best Picture nominees (The Godfather, starring Brando, won.) Unplanned, Eastwood was pressed into service earlier that night when it looked like Charlton Heston might not show up to read the voting rules because of a flat tire on his way to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (after a few Ten Commandment jokes obviously not written with Eastwood in mind, Heston showed up and took over.) Of course, neither Littlefeather or Eastwood is in the above clip. So what I find unusual is that year's Oscars set direction. I don't mean who won for Best Set Direction. I mean Diana Ross' and James Coburn's immediate surroundings. They look like they're backstage or in the wings or something, don't they? That was kind of the idea. The opening musical number had a plainly-dressed Angela Lansbury informing us, via song and dance, that moviemaking is really just another job and the stars are merely working stiffs. It's actually an entertaining little number, and I might show it here sometime, that ends with Lansbury, now all gussied up in a glamorous gown, singing "make a little magic." Except once she's finished, we're stuck with the nonmagical faux-backstage set, and have to rely on occasional shots of the star-studded audience for gussied-up glamour. Unless those stars come up on stage to accept or hand out awards. And just how glamorously gussied-up do you find Ross (who had hoped to both accept and hand out but ended up only doing the latter) in that tuxedo? I have absolutely nothing against unisex fashions but the normally super-femme Miss Ross is the last person who I would expect to see take up crossdressing. But Ross is no Marlene Dietrich. Rather than provocative, she comes across as merely a cute curiosity. Still, it's appropriate that she would be dressed such a way when presenting an Oscar to Joel Grey, who himself was both provocative and unisexual in the film that won a whole bevy of Oscars that night.

Another one of those Oscars went to Liza Minnelli (she beat out the aforementioned Ross, nominated for Lady Sings the Blues), allowing her to finally, and deservedly, emerge from the shadow of her famous mother. I'll examine her signature performance at some later date. For now the man of the hour (or for however long it takes you to peruse this post) is Grey. A mainstay of the New York stage for about 20 years at that point (despite looking like he was still in his 20s), the Cabaret win made him, for a time, a household name, though the character he played, the nameless Master of Ceremonies of a between-the-world-wars Berlin nightclub, isn't one you would have found hanging around very many American households. Watch:

 

The movie does not exploit decadence; rather, it gives it its due.

--Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Before it was a movie musical, Cabaret was a stage musical (and before that a stage play and before that a book of interrelated short stories by Christopher Isherwood.) Among its feature players was a woman who a few years earlier tried but failed to kill James Bond in From Russia with Love, a man who at the same time he was appearing in hit Broadway musicals also appeared in a series of Cracker Jack commercials on TV, a woman who spent the 1970s appearing in British-made horror films and doing guest shots on American TV crime shows like Baretta and Vega$, and a man who later hosted the game show Tattletales (I admit to being fascinated by performers career arcs.) And then there's Joel Grey, the only one to appear in both the stage and film versions. And for good reason. Though on the original Broadway poster his name appears below the actors I just mentioned, the critics of the day praised his performance, which brought audiences into the theater, and he was and is seen as the main reason the stage version became a hit in the first place.

Here's a blurry clip from the 21st Tony Awards (held in 1967 for productions that debuted in 1966.) That's Larry Hagman's mom who introduces a legendary husband-and-wife dance team (though not so legendary they didn't eventually divorce), who in turn have come up on stage the then-35-going-on-19 Grey:

Joel Grey more-or-less reprised his Master of Ceremonies role for television in 1976. The atmosphere is much less decadent, but, to paraphrase Ms. Kael, it gives whimsy its due:

 

I have a sudden craving for a Kit Kat bar.

Vital Viewing (Girl Group Survivor Edition)

  

1944-2021

Not counting any of several short-lived regroupings that occurred after 1980, Mary Wilson had the longest tenure of any member of the Motown vocal group The Supremes. Starting in 1958 when Wilson and three other teenage girls--Florence Ballard, Diane Ross, and Betty McGlown--living in a Detroit public housing project formed a group called The Primettes; through 1960 when McGlown left to get married and was replaced by Barbara Martin; through 1962 when Martin left to have a baby, with the group, now called The Supremes and signed to the upstart record label Motown, continuing from here on in as a trio; through late 1963 when Motown head honcho Berry Gordy named Ross official lead singer, the girls having taken turns singing lead up to that point; through 1964, '65, and '66 when Diane Ross became Diana Ross and the trio achieved a worldwide success that came close to rivalling that of The Beatles; through 1967, '68, and and '69 when a depressed Ballard turned to drink and was replaced by Cindy Birdsong and the group's named was changed to Diana Ross and The Supremes; through 1970, '71, and the first few months of '72 when Ross left to pursue a solo career and was replaced by Jean Terrell, the group's name once again just The Supremes;  through the remainder of 1972 when Birdsong left to start a family and was replaced by Lynda Laurence; through 1973, '74, and '75, when Terrell, upset that the hits had stopped coming and that Motown wasn't doing enough to support the group, left and was replaced by Scherrie Payne, and Laurence, wanting to start a family, decided to leave and was replaced by Cindy Birdsong, who as I just said had left to start family and was now returning to the fold; through 1976 when Birdsong, believing the group was being mismanaged (Wilson's husband Pedro Ferrer having taken over as manager) left a second time and was replaced by Susaye Greene; and through the first half of 1977 when the girl group finally disbanded. Mary Wilson, I repeat, was there for all of it, from beginning to end, 19 years.

Along with The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Temptations, and Bob Dylan, The Supremes' most well-known lineup--Ross, Wilson, and Ballard--were inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Accepting on behalf of the legendary girl group at that year's induction ceremony were Florence Ballard's daughter Lisa Chapman Ballard (the mother having died in 1976) and a spectacularly glam Mary Wilson. Here's Mary's acceptance speech (the "Richard" she refers to is Little Richard, who made the speech inducting the group into the Hall):

Love the interaction between the klieg lights and Mary's ruby red lipstick!

As you saw and heard, Diana Ross wasn't there that night. Wilson's explanation as to why Ross wasn't there--that she wanted to spend time with her family--should be taken with a grain of salt...

...poured into an open wound. Whose wound exactly, is hard to say.

Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, and Diana Ross. Since Wilson sang mostly backup during that era, I'm only going to give you a single song from that period, The Supremes' last big hit before Ballard left the group:

"The Happening" was originally recorded for the 1967 movie of the same name starring Anthony Quinn, Michael Parks, George Maharis, and, as it's presented in the opening credits, "introducing Faye Dunaway". A (phony and calculated) counterculture comedy about four young beach bums who, by chance more than anything else, kidnap a successful businessman (Quinn) only to find that no one's willing to pay the ransom, it came and went in theaters. I've seen this film and it's a mess. Dunaway got a much better introduction in Bonnie and Clyde, which came out later that same year. The film's lackluster showing had no effect on the single released to radio stations at the same time, which peaked at #1 here in the U.S. 

Cindy Birdsong, Jean Terrill, and Mary Wilson. Terrill was the official lead singer during this period, but she didn't dominate nearly as much as Diana Ross did. Wilson got to sing lead occasionally, as she did on this Smokey Robinson-penned hit:

Released in December 1971, it eventually peaked at #16.

Cindy Birdsong, Mary Wilson, and, um, let me double-check to make sure I got this right.....Scherrie Payne. By this time--it's 1975 now--Wilson was considered the act's main attraction, and was singing lead about half the time, including on this kinda'-but-not-really-a-hit song (I'll explain afterwards):

When it comes to disco, I feel one should distinguish what came before Saturday Night Fever from what came after Saturday Night Fever. Not because the music itself was all that different afterwards, or different at all, but because attitudes toward, and expectations of, the music had changed so much. In 1975, disco was an up-and-coming musical genre that Billboard magazine tentatively kept tabs on with a "Disco Singles" chart. The pre-Saturday Night Fever "Early Morning Love" peaked at #6 on that chart. That sounds impressive , but that success has to be somewhat qualified. The song was never released as a single in the United States. If you wanted to listen to it, you either had to buy or borrow the album The Supremes, which came out the same year, or go to an actual disco (of course, there was a third option that I just now showed you: watch Soul Train.) 

 When The Supremes finally came to an end, Mary Wilson embarked on a solo career. The couple of albums that she released had only modest sales, but her post-Supremes career was hardly a bust. As a concert performer she was a popular draw in Las Vegas and on the road. One song that became a mainstay of her act was "How Lucky Can You Get?", originally sung by Barbra Streisand in the 1975 movie Funny Lady (a sequel to Funny Girl.) I found four different videos of her singing this on YouTube, and have come to the conclusion that the song is now more associated with Wilson than it is with Streisand (in fact, I just now looked at a Babs compilation album that I have at hand, and the song's not even there.) Take a look:

Watching that, I can't help but think it was a waste of Mary Wilson's talent singing backup to Diana Ross all those years. Now, that doesn't mean I believe Wilson should have sang lead instead of Ross, whose voice, after all, gave The Supremes its charts-topping signature sound. What I think is that Wilson might have been better off as a solo act from the very beginning. But at a particular point in time, either no one saw that in her, or she didn't see it in herself. Settling for backup just may have been the quickest way of leaving the Detroit projects behind. RIP, Mary Wilson.