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 (Living Dolls Edition)

 Ah, yes, who doesn't love a good puppet show?

What's that you say? You'd rather watch a superhero movie? One with lots of special-effects? Now look here, you young whippersnapper, before digital animation, before stop-motion photography, puppets were special-effects, the original special-effects. And just to prove my point, I'll give you a sampling:

 We'll start with the husband-and-wife team Punch and Judy. They first got their start in the middle of the 17th century, and by 1950 were still playing to full houses--or maybe just full daycare centers. Watch:

Nothing like a little domestic violence to keep the young ones occupied.

 Next up is Bullwinkle J. Moose. But wait, isn't he a cartoon character? So he is, but early in his career he occasionally made appearances in puppet form, such as when he guest-starred on Fractured Flickers, a 1963 comedy show hosted by character actor Hans Conried (born on this day in 1917, incidentally) in which silent films from the 1920s and earlier were lip-synched  by the same actors who worked on Bullwinkle's cartoon show (as both were produced by Jay Ward):

 OH, MY GOD! Foul play! Does Rocky the Flying Squirrel have an alibi?

Next up is Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. As a kid in the late 1960s and early '70s, I watched them host the CBS Children's Film Festival that came on right after Saturday morning cartoons. You only saw the trio (and heard puppeteer Burr Tillstrom) for a little bit at the beginning and the end as most of the hour was devoted to a foreign film (no, nothing by Fellini or Ingmar Bergman--these were made for kids.) KFO's real heyday, which I unfortunately missed out on as I hear even Orson Welles was a fan, was about fifteen years earlier, in the 1950s:

In case you haven't figured it out for yourself, Kukla was supposed to be a clown, Ollie a dragon, and Fran Allison a flesh-and-blood human being. Obviously, they came from three very different walks of life. A high-concept show indeed!

Now puppets come in many forms, but the two most common seem to be hand puppet, like Kukla and Ollie, and marionettes, like that freckled-face boy on the left in the above picture. If you don't recognize him, it's Howdy Doody, who, along with his human sidekick Buffalo Bob, starred on a popular children's program in the 1950s. Again, this was before my time, but, fortunately, I was around when Howdy and Bob made an appearance on a 1970s show about the 1950s:

If you're curious as to the identity of Clarabell the Clown, well, in the above clip it was Bob Brunner, who also wrote that particular episode of Happy Days. As for who played him in the 1950s, it was several actors throughout the decade, the most well-known of whom was Bob Keeshan, who later went on to even greater success playing another children's show favorite, Captain Kangaroo. And as to whether Life magazine really would have paid a large sum of money for a picture of Clarabell without makeup, only Henry R. Luce knows for sure, and he ain't talking.

 People don't generally think of ventriloquist acts as puppet shows, but that's pretty much what they are. The only difference is that you see the puppeteer. What's the secret of a successful ventriloquist? That they can throw their voice or talk without moving their lips? Nah. Edgar Bergen was a star on radio, where those abilities hardly mattered. No, a ventriloquist can move his lips all he wants as long as can successfully deflect attention to the doll, dummy, or puppet. And to do that, one needs to make the doll, dummy, or puppet a memorable character, as Wayland Flowers did a generation or so ago when he brought unto this world Madame, a glamorous, aging nymphomaniac, basically a drag queen in the form of a puppet:

 Wayland Flowers died of an AIDS-related illness at the far too young age of 49 in 1988 (when that horrific disease was just beginning to take its toll on the arts. Some day when I'm in the mood to depress everybody, I'll list all the well-known names that were lost.) There were rumors early on that Madame was buried with Flowers, but it turns out he left her and other puppets to his manager, and from time to time Madame is allowed to perform in public with comedians who can successfully mimic her (actually Flowers') voice. My initial response to that was: accept no substitutes. But it may be just what Flowers wanted. His character has outlived him. How's that for memorable?

Finally, we come to perhaps the most successful puppeteer of all time, Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets (Marionette + puppets). There's no shortage of Muppet videos online, thanks to both the continuing popularity of Sesame Street, and fond memories of The Muppet Show, the latter group of characters (now owned by Disney) having appeared in a movie a few years ago, another TV show, and generally still considered a viable commercial property. However, the clip I want to show is from neither Sesame Street nor The Muppet Show (though the star of the clip appeared on both) but a 1971 Dick Cavett Show: 

Well, what did you expect? Cavett had a late night talk show. Of course the humor is going to be a bit more edgy than what you'd see on Sesame Street.