Thespian Mae Questel was born on this day in 1908 (she died in 1998.) If you don't recognize the name, you at least may recognize the iconic cartoon character to whom she lent her voice:
When Betty Boop made her animation debut in 1930, she was a dog. I don't mean that unkindly, that she was a homely human woman. No, I mean that literally. She was neither homely nor human but a member of the species Canis familiaris. Allow me to explain. At the time another anthropomorphic pooch named Bimbo was animation studio head Max Fleischer's most popular character. Fleischer came up with a story for a cartoon short that had Bimbo as a dishwasher in a nightclub in love with a sexy canine singer, and asked his leading animator Grim Natwick, to come up with a design. Natwick's Betty was similar to the later human version, except that she had droopy ears and a little black nose. The subsequent short, "Dizzy Dishes", did well, and Betty remained both a supporting player and a sexy dog (she's seen in a lacy bra in one pre-Code cartoon) for the next ten or so shorts (sources vary.) Theater operators made it clear to Fleischer that they wanted to see more Betty and less Bimbo. And that it wouldn't hurt to remove any urge towards bestiality on moviegoers' parts if they were given an actual member of the species Homosapiens to drool over. And so Betty was humanized, her droopy ears replaced by earrings, and the dark nose transformed into a pert dash. As for Bimbo, he stuck around for a while as a supporting player, remaining a canine. Needless to say, the relationship between him and Betty from that point on was strictly platonic. Around this time (sources again vary), Mae Questel took over vocal duties from Betty's original portrayer Margie Hines and enacted the squeaky-voice flapper for eight years, longer than any other actor. However, that wasn't Questel's only acting achievement, as you'll find out in this interview from the 1980s:
Still sounds like Betty, doesn't she? Probably the reason Questel was asked to do the character one more time in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?:
Recently, a musical based on Betty Boop opened and very shortly thereafter closed on Broadway. Perhaps if the show's producers had found some psychic who could have channeled Mae Questel's vocal talents, it would still be running today.
I just didn’t believe I was up there in fishnets and high heels actually doing it...It’s one of my strengths as a performer. I’ve got a kind of more developed feminine side so it was a chance to knowingly explore that.
--British actor Terence Stamp, on playing transgender woman/drag queen performer Bernadette Bassenger in the 1994 Australian comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
I mean, certain things had to remain the same. She had to remain one of the antagonists because that was the structure of the show. In the second season, we saw for the first time that she was unhappy with Frank and wanted more from her life. Then around the third or fourth year, in an episode called "The Nurses" (1976), Hot Lips gave the nurses a speech telling them how lonely she was because she was in charge and that's the way it was, so she couldn't really have any friends. Her marriage and her divorce changed her. Her affair with Hawkeye in "Comrades in Arms: Part 1" (1977) changed both characters, so that they were never really rivals again.
--Loretta Swit, Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on MASH
John Gielgud is the biggest gossip I know, and I know several. He's a fabulous talent, has a magnificent voice, and he's the first to admit he's selfish and egotistic. How refreshing!
Being successful doesn't change things. There's a painful, lonely part of acting because you're always waiting. The thing about being a performer is doing, and when you have to wait, it's the same pain as when you're starting out and have no job. You think that thing will go away, but it doesn't. It just shifts. I remember Robert Duvall saying that being a successful actor is all about finding interesting hobbies, because if you don't have the right hobby, you die. It's very hard to maintain interest. Most actors don't. They become a little clichéd. You learn how to do tricks and stuff.
--Val Kilmer
(Kilmer was in a lot of well-known movies but rather than show clips from all of them--I don't exactly have the time for all that--I'm going to show a trailer from just one, 1985's True Genius, which happens to be the movie of his I first saw. It's no great shakes as a film, except for Kilmer's own performance, which if didn't make him a star right away, set him in the right direction--Kirk)
(As you can see, the military-industrial complex was fucked up even before Pete Hegseth got his hands on it.)
Actor Leonard Nimoy was born on this day in--OOPS! I forgot something.
OK, that's better. Actor Leonard Nimoy was born on this day in 1931 (he died in 2015.) Nimoy is best known for playing the starship USS Enterprise's taciturn alien first officer Spock on the 1966-69 TV series Star Trek. In a series of posts I did nearly a decade ago, I argued that despite being regularly chastised by his fellow spacefarers as being all brains and no heart, Spock eventually became the moral center of Trek. Whether Nimoy himself saw Spock that way, I can't say. I do know the actor put a lot of thought into his character, as can be attested to by this following video from 2010. Watch:
Now listen as Nimoy continuously drops the F-bomb:
Did you hear that? The Pasadena Playhouse didn't think Gene Hackman would make it as an actor? Cancel my Rose Bowl tickets! Hackman proved himself to be one of the greatest actors of his generation, able to play heroes or villains. To demonstrate, I'm going to show you two clips. The first is of him as the heroic Popeye Doyle (for which he won an Academy Award) in 1971's The FrenchConnection. The second is him as the villainous Lex Luthor in 1977's Superman. Watch:
I don't know. Hackman seems a bit safer to be around when he's the bad guy.
Speech is a very important aspect of being human. A whisper doesn't cut it.
--James Earl Jones
The Great White Hope(1970, based on a 1968 Broadway play, also starring Jones, for which he won a Tony--Kirk)
Claudine(1974. No great shakes as a movie, but I've always liked Jones in it--Kirk)
The Empire Strikes Back(1980. Yes, I know he voiced the same character in a movie before and a movie after, but you only get one clip out of me as I refuse to hand this blog over to the Force, no matter how tempting--Kirk)
Fences (1987 Broadway play for which Jones won his second Tony--Kirk)
CNN promo(1994. Made me want to watch the news--Kirk)
That was my one big Hollywood hit, but, in a way, it hurt my picture career. After that, I was typecast as a lion, and there just weren't many parts for lions.
Actress Jean Harlow was born on this day in 1911 (prone to bouts of influenza at a time when penicillin was not yet widely available, she died of kidney failure at age 26 in 1937.) Let's start out with a few home movies:
Watching the above you might get the impression Harlow was a silent film star. In fact, she was a major star of early talkies, as well as a major sex symbol of early talkies. In this scene from 1932's Red Dust, she tries her best to break the ice by talking up dairy products with a major male sex symbol of early (as well as later) talkies, Clark Gable (speaking of which, Gable's behavior at one point probably wouldn't pass a present-day #MeToo test, but keep in mind it's not the present day but 92 years ago):
Red Dust was a drama, though the above scene was obviously one of the film's lighter moments. Now, while I won't pretend it was the first and foremost reason she or later blond bombshells as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield were such box office draws, Jean Harlow was in fact very good at comedy. Here's a comic scene from another movie that was otherwise dramatic, 1933's Dinner at Eight. I've shown it before (in a post about Marie Dressler, who also appears) and it never fails to make me chuckle:
I'm sure all you Honeymooners fans out there recognize these three folks, even if they're attired a bit differently than usual. That's because it's just a rehearsal, and not even a dress rehearsal at that. Sitting is Art Carney, who played Ed Norton. Standing behind him is Audrey Meadows, who portrayed Alice Kramden. And as Trixie Norton we have Joyce Randolph (who died just this past Saturday at age 99-- RIP) But where's the big guy, Ralph Kramden, who Jackie Gleason so memorably brought to life? Turns out Gleason didn't like to rehearse, as he wanted his on-air performance to be spontaneous. That apparently was less of a concern to Carney, Meadows, and Randolph (whose own on-air performances were pretty good anyway) so they just rehearsed without him. I assume somebody read Gleason's lines to the other three. Maybe a producer, or a stagehand, or whoever took that picture. It all worked out in the end.
Still, a post about The Honeymooners minus Gleason just doesn't seem right! So here's what I'm going to do, folks. Through the magic of computerized special effects, I'll insert Jackie Gleason, aka, Ralph Kramden, into that long-ago rehearsal.
In classical theatre in Europe, everybody plays all kinds of parts. Juliets go on to play the Nurses; they don't want to play Juliet again. I think we've got to remember to grab onto our perks, whatever is the good thing about each age. Each stage of life should be a progression.
Creating her was actually intellectual. How do I make her likable and loveable? ...Dumb blondes are annoying. I gave her a moral code. I imagined it was the childhood I would've liked to have had.
--Suzanne Somers, on her Three's Company character Chrissy Snow.
Actor Tom Berenger was born on this day in 1949. I tend to think of him as an almost-movie star. He had--has--the talent and the looks and was in a number of hit movies in the 1980s, but never seemed to quite reach that celluloid summet. Even when he played the main character in a film, I can't remember him ever getting that screen idol-defining above-the-title billing. So it was with some surprise, of the pleasurable sort, to find out that he not only may still be considered famous, but that his fame has apparently spread to, of all places, ...
...the Middle East. About six years ago Berenger went to the Kingdom of Jordan to conduct some kind of acting workshop and while there sat down for this interview, where he proves to be every bit as amiable as he is talented, and, even as an older gent, good-looking. Watch:
Since Hollywood largely has moved away from celluloid, as mentioned in the above clip, maybe there's still time for Berenger to reach the digital summit, without that click-click-click to hold him back. Before that happens, though, I want to return briefly to an era when film was still shot on film, and for that we need to leave Southwest Asia, and go to...
...Southeast Asia.
(It was actually filmed in the Philippines, but that's still Southeast Asia.)
Let me set up the following scene. Amiable actor Berenger, in the role of the less-than-amiable Staff Sgt. Barnes, finds that he's the target of a possible murder plot, retaliation for Barnes own murder of a fellow serviceman. Charlie Sheen portrays the main plotter. Watch:
Sometimes I feel deprived about having mostly missed out on the 1960s. But not when I watch this clip.
Stella may have told this magazine, but since I only have the cover and not the insides, I can't tell you why she posed in the nude. What I can tell you is that like fellow nude models Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, Stella Stevens possessed actual acting talent, particularly when it came to comedy acting. To prove my point, I've enlisted the aid of...
...these two guys.
First up, Jerry:
The Andy Griffith Show fans will have recognized Ernest T. Bass himself, Howard Morris, in the above clip. Note how uncharacteristically subdued Jerry seems. He may have met his match in Morris.
But back to Stella...
...this time with Dean:
A very earthy woman. Dino could have done a lot worse.
Actor Bob Denver was born on this day in 1935 (he died in 2005.) Though it's not his original claim to fame, Denver is by now best-known for the 1960s situation comedy Gilligan's Island.
If you've never seen the show--which at one time would have and may still put you in a distinct minority--it's about seven people shipwrecked on an uncharted South Pacific island, each person a "type": a sea captain, i.e., skipper, a millionaire (perhaps a billionaire in today's money), his society matron wife, a movie star, a science professor, a girl-next-door type, and a fuck-up. What I find particularly interesting is how six of these seven castaways clung to their individual stereotypes despite three years spent in an island setting that made such stereotypes increasingly irrelevant, if not completely ridiculous. The sea captain no longer has a ship but still sees himself in charge; the movie star has no red carpet to walk on but still dresses as if there's paparazzi snapping photos; the millionaire flaunts his money though there's no stores on the island and the coconuts and bananas are free for the taking; the society matron looks as though she's all set to attend some charity benefit luncheon though as a shipwreck survivor marooned on an island she could probably use some charity herself; the girl-next-door type has to share her hut with the movie star, technically making the latter a girl next door, too, thus rendering the whole concept superfluous; while the science professor, though he lacks a college campus, lecture hall, and laboratory, comes closest to equaling, at times even exceeding, his former life on the mainland as he basically runs the island behind the sea captain's back and solves all sorts of problems that crop up except for the number one problem of how to get off the island, as all his book learning turns out to be no match for...
...the fuck-up, i.e., Gilligan. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh. After all, even though he has his own distinct personality, Gilligan is the one castaway lacking in any pretense. He clings to nothing, guilelessly taking each day as it comes, with little concern that he may be deviating from some self-assigned role. He's a free spirit as well as a fuck-up. He may even be a fuck-up because he's a free spirit. Or vice-versa. Neither trait gets you all that far in civilized society so it may be the island is the best place for him. Perhaps all those "mistakes" that lay waste to the Professor's carefully laid plans and dooms the castaways to yet another half hour without phones, lights, or motor cars as if they were tropical Amish, is just some unconscious sabotage on Gilligan's part. Whether the aforementioned Denver, who so memorably brought Gilligan to slapstick life would agree with that, I don't know, but he shares some thoughts on his character and the show in general with Rosie O'Donnell in this clip from 1997:
Bob and Rosie talked about the two versions of Gilligan's opening credits. We'll show you both, first the black-and-white segregated version, in which there's no Professor and Mary-Ann, both having been relegated to the back of the bus closing credits, and the multi-hued desegregated version, in which the two have finally attained their equal rights:
I definitely prefer the second opening. It's much more egalitarian.
Oh, that island wasn't egalitarian at all!
Following in the footsteps of such classic fat guy-skinny guy duos as seen above, we now present to you the comedy team of...
...Denver and Hale!
I like the fact that someone set the above video to polka music. It makes that island seem like Cleveland.
...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”
--Jack Kerouac
Mr. Kerouac may not have had Maynard G. Krebs in mind when he wrote that sentence, but I'm sure Max Shulman, creator of the TV series (and author of the book in which it was based) The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis no doubt had Kerouac in mind when he dreamed up Krebs, television's first bohemian, and Dobie's best friend. Why they should be best friends is a bit puzzling. I remember the high school I went to as being rather clique-ridden: jocks hung around with jocks, cheerleaders hung around with cheerleaders, nerds hung around with nerds, stoners hung around with stoners, and so on. Had there been beatniks in my school--it was about fifteen years too late for any to attend--I'm sure they would have hung around other beatniks and not whatever clique Dobie belonged to (the lovestruck kids who mope around Rodan sculptures clique, maybe? Except he seemed to be the only member.) I guess there's just an unwritten law of comedy that states that laughs are best mined from two best friends with nothing in common. Dobie and Maynard merely paved the way for Oscar and Felix. Anyway, if you haven't figured it out by now, Maynard was played by Denver, shooting him to fame about five years before achieving even greater fame as Gilligan:
Somehow, the Establishment always gets the upper hand.
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