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.
Fifty summers ago, this Roger Kastel-illustrated poster made its debut on the exteriors, and in the lobbies, of movie theatres across the nation and around the world, promising filmgoers a terrifying cinematic experience. However, movie posters often promise things that the actual movies then fail to deliver. Did Jaws live up to its poster's promise? Well, if you were a filmgoer fifty summers ago--and most people didn't bother with movies during the summer until this one completely changed the business model--you already know the answer to that question, but play along with me anyway as we watch the trailer:
Trailers also sometimes promise more than the actual movie delivers, even as it's a slicing and dicing of the actual movie. Trust me, though, Jaws delivered (with a lot of slicing and dicing of a different sort.) Personally, I've always found the film more exciting than out-and-out scary, but that's fine with me. Whatever gets the heart thumping. Based on a then-recent bestselling book by Peter Benchley (Robert's grandson) and only the second feature film by the then-still-in-his-20s Steven Spielberg, it quickly became the all-time box-office champ and remained so for the next two years until topped by another summer blockbuster Star Wars (which in turn was topped a few years later by Spielberg's E.T., theExtraterrestrial which made its debut during--you guessed it--the summer.) One thing that had no chance of topping it--at least not in the commercial sense--was some magazine parody, but that doesn't means my then-middle-school-age-self couldn't get a giggle out of this:
The above is a May 1955 press release by the Los Angeles-based anticommunist (and anti-social justice) organization Keep America Commitee, which begs the question, keep America what? Sickly? How do these supposed threats to a kept Amercian stack up 70 years later? Let's start with the middle one. I've never met a single person born after 1960--the vast majority of the 2025 United States population--who's been stricken with polio, so I'd say Jonah Salk's legacy is secure. As for Mental Hygiene being a subtle and diabolical plan to transform a free and intelligent people into a cringing horde of zombies, well, I'm afraid that one is true if the 119th Congress is any indication. I'm just wondering why it took so long.
That leaves fluoridated water, which is apparently a threat again, at least according to the current Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Secretary has instructed the Center of Disease Control to recommend that cities and counties stop adding fluoride to their water supplies. Since the CDC just lost its 20-person Division of Oral Health in a recent round of budget cuts, there's been little pushback from the agency. Plenty of dentists from outside the CDC think the de-fluoridization of water is a terrible idea, but the Secretary, who has neither a D.D.S or an M.D. after his name, has shown he cares not a whit what the medical establishment thinks, and has gone so far to threaten government scientists from publishing their findings in medical journals. So what's his beef against medicine? He thinks it's corrupt. As someone who believes that any institution or establishment that's become too powerful potentially can go corrupt, I have a certain sympathy for that point of view. However, as the Secretary works for the Executive Branch of the federal government, itself an increasingly significant source of power...
...I'd just as soon take my chances with The New England Journal of Medicine. Corrupt away!
Not to be confused with a one-time cast member on Law and Order, screenwriter and director Richard Brooks was born on this date in 1912 (he died in 1992.) Among several well-known movies that Brooks wrote and directed were Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), In Cold Blood (1967) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), all worthwhile films, but the one I want you to recommend to you today is this 1960 adaptation of a best-selling novel of the Wild (Mid)West:
Academy Award voters of the day seem to second my recommendation. But first a word from Bob:
I like Kitty's gown, but that's neither here nor there. What IS here or there is the trailer for the movie, a movie that also won Oscars for leading man Burt and the future Mrs. Partridge:
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.
The last time I posted was the day before the presidential election. Some of you may have been wondering why I haven't posted since then. I just haven't had the time. You see, I've been busy...
...sulking. Well, maybe more than sulking. OK, I don't have wings (or curves), but this is pretty much the way I've felt lately. Obviously, things didn't go the way I had hoped.
But I'm not sulking anymore! I picked myself up and brushed myself off and found a way to deal with the political calamity that has now befallen our country. Take a gander:
Um, I'm suddenly hearing murmurs of disapproval.
See? Margaret Forster (author of Georgy Girl) has my back!
Now that we've established that it's wonderful, what's the best way to escape the horrors of topicality? Well, one tried-and-true method is a...
...Hays Office-approved old Hollywood movie:
Ah, what a diversion--What's that? You don't feel like you were escaping anything? What you need is a strong dose of silliness, and you can't get much sillier than this...
... BNL (before Norman Lear)-era situation comedy:
After watching that, you very well can't say your current affairs anxieties haven't all been swept away.
Huh? THEY HAVEN'T? Obviously, a stronger broom is needed. So instead of silliness, I'll provide you with some downright mindless...
...slapstick:
HAHAHAHAHAHA! I'm lost in laughter, without a world-historical care in the world, and I'm sure you are too.
What do you mean your world-historical cares have increased? Boy, what a tough crowd.
All right, as one last resort, I want you all to escape into the innocence of childhood. Specifically, those nights when your mother or father would read you a...
...bedtime story:
There! I knew that would do it. Now you can puff up the pillow, pull up the blanket, and dream of a world devoid of any kind of news other than box scores and celebrity gossip. Isn't escapism wonderful?
Oh, there's still one naysayer out there, telling me I'm being irresponsible, that I should confront reality, not run away from it.
Look, naysayer, I never said I was planning to escape forever, just temporarily. And as far as confronting reality goes, I'll have you know that in order to have a better understanding of the election results, I've been reading this book:
So far nothing about fellating a microphone, but maybe that's in a later edition.
The monsters weren't intended to be gay, except possibly when director James Whale was behind the lens, but they read as gay to me. For me and my fellow queer youth growing up in the gay-intolerant era of the mid-twentieth century, these monsters spoke to our lives. That they flourished in marvelous gothic fantasy films, some brillant, most ridiculous, all imagination-stirring, only made them more special.
Hollywood's message may have seemed clear: You're gay; you're a monster. The villagers must huntyoudown and destroy you. However, there was a more subversive underside to them. Almost without exception the monsters are presented sympathetically: Frankenstein's Monster was a lonely innocent, persecuted for existing, and good with children (some of the time). And there was his enormousschvancestucker. The Wolfman was a heroic fellow who acquired a cursed life when he came to the aid of a damsel in distress. Even soulless Dracula is often presented as a lonely, isolated figure seeking love, burdened by a curse acquired in defense of his country. The villagers are usually frightened, ignorant yahoos, with a hair-trigger lynch-mob response to almost any stimulus.
These movies said to me, It is intolerant society that is wrong. Hang in there. Fight the good fight. If you get enough sequels, eventually everyone will love you. Once Abbott and Costello show up, you're home free.
There is hope.
--Douglas McEwan, The Q Guide to Classic Monster Movies
The "enourmous schvancestucker," that Mr. McEwan refers to is not a direct or even an indirect quote from any classic monster movie made in the 1930s or '40s, but rather uttered by the winsome young woman pictured above in a classic monster comedy from the 1970s. Her name is Teri Garr, and as a trick instead of a treat I'll leave it up to you to come up with the name of that movie.
Halloween is not too far off, and what better symbol of the holiday than a witch? Here's one of cinema's scariest. If fact, she just might be the gold (or mold) standard for cinematic scary witches:
Did you notice how the Tin Man put out the fire with his oil can hat? That's because a fire needs oxygen or else it's likely to die out. Nice to know that even in a land of witches and talking scarecrows, the basic laws of science still apply.
By the time she died at age 82 in 1985, Cleveland native Margaret Hamilton had lived through decades of TV showings of 1939's The Wizard of Oz, and was well-aware that her Wicked Witch of the West character had become a cultural icon. It didn't seem to bother her any. Also, cultural icons often attract the attention of other cultural icons, which seems to be the case in this clip that pairs Hamilton with a man who was considered anything but wicked:
Mister Rogers seems positively gleeful at the prospect of this sweet old lady transforming herself into a wicked witch. Walk on the wild side, Fred!
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood wasn't the only 1970s TV instance of Margaret Hamilton donning the pointy black hat and the rest of the black ensemble. Here she is alongside a man with a wit so wicked it could have turned Dorothy's face as red as her ruby slippers:
Nice place for the clip to end, huh? I take what YouTube gives me, folks. I did see this special when I was in high school, but I've long since forgotten what kind of truck driver Paul Lynde turned into. Since I don't want you to feel deprived, let's just say this came next:
Now, let's look at a different witch. Well, I thought she was a witch at first because there's a black cat, and the lady herself is dressed in black, but that's where the similarity ends:
And I don't care if she's a witch or not. She's still magical.
Actor John Ritter was born on this day in 1948 (and died at the all-too-young age of 54 in 2003.) He's best known for the late 1970s-early '80s sex farce sitcom Three's Company, on which he played culinary school student Jack Tripper, who shares an apartment with two attractive young women while having to pretend he's gay so the landlord won't think any hanky-panky is going on. The funny thing--literally so, as it was the primary source of the show's humor--is no hanky-panky ever did go on, though the main characters often thought otherwise. 3C may have been the sexiest network series of its time, but it was all talk, no action, much innuendo about nothing:
Real sex wouldn't have been nearly as funny (though arguably still attention-getting.)
Ritter talks about the sitcom that made him a star and other things in this 1997 interview with Conan O'Brien:
So what was that Don Ohlmeier "in-joke" all about anyway? Ohlmeier was the head of NBC Entertainment, the network O'Brien was on at the time, and the highest rated network throughout the 1990s. The lying-in-the-snow wisecrack could have been a reference to Ohlmeier's alcoholism. Perhaps not a nice thing to joke about, but Ohlmeier was arguably fair game. He had been accused of sexual harassment shortly before going into rehab, and a cynical attitude toward the man was beginning to take shape. The cynical attitude wasn't lessened any by Ohlmeier's friendship with O.J. Simpson, who had recently been found not guilty of murder, though few people outside the jury box believed he was innocent. In fact, a battle of sorts was brewing between Ohlmeier and Saturday Night Live Weekend Update anchor Norm McDonald over anti-O.J. jokes the latter was making on the air, a battle McDonald would eventually lose when he was fired from SNL--WAIT A SECOND! This post is supposed to be about John Ritter, not Don Ohlmeier.
Conan mentioned that John Ritter fell down quite a bit on Three's Company. Though I didn't want the man to hurt himself, I would say that was a good thing, as Ritter was one of the great physical comedy actors of his generation. See for yourself:
Watching Ritter comically stumble and bumble his way around Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers, you might not guess that this man was in actuallity a classically-trained actor, would you? Well, here's the proof as Ritter takes a dramatic turn opposite Billy Bob Thornton in 1997's Sling Blade:
No slapstick, though Ritter's character may have put his foot in his mouth.
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.
Though he played all sorts of characters throughout his long career, Dabney Coleman's specialty was the comic scoundrel, the man you not so much love to hate, but rather are too busy laughing at to hate. Yet the real-life Coleman comes across as anything but a scoundrel as he receives his Hollywood Walk of Fame star back in 2014:
In addition to Hollywood Chamber of Commerce President Leon Gubler, the other two men speaking were filmmaker Mark Ryder, who directed the movie version of On Golden Pond (which we'll get to in a second), and television director Dennis Klein, who helmed several episodes of Coleman's critically acclaimed but short-lived sitcom Buffalo Bill. Actress Penelope Ann Miller was also on hand. I can find no movie or TV production that Coleman and Miller appeared in together, so maybe she was just there as a friend. There are such things as friendships in Hollywood.
Though he worked steadily throughout the 1960s and into the '70s, Dabney Coleman's career didn't really take off until he joined the cast of the above prime time/late night comedy soap opera in its second season. Coleman played the somewhat devious Merle Jeeter, father of nine-year-old child evangelist Jimmy Joe Jeeter. After that story line came to its (literally) shocking conclusion, Merle ran for mayor of Fernwood, Ohio, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman's fictional setting:
Merle won, naturally. He fit right in with that fucked-up town.
Taking a break from the comic scoundrel for just a moment, 1982's On Golden Pond, based on a Broadway play of the same name, gives me a chance to show you Coleman's range as an actor, that he could do drama as well as comedy. Despite his character not deemed significant enough for his visage to appear on the above movie poster, in the following scene you'll see that Coleman more than holds his own with the great Henry Fonda (as he also does in scenes with the great Katharine Hepburn and the great Jane Fonda):
Did that old dude just say you could ask him anything you wanted to about sex?
Sorry Dr. Reuben, you've just been replaced by a Fonda.
Back to Dabney Coleman. Hank's daughter Jane must not have minded working with Coleman, because a year before On Golden Pond, they both appeared in this comedy blockbuster:
Unlike Jane, Lily, and Dolly, Coleman doesn't receive above-the-title billing, but at least he's prominently displayed on the poster, as well as the movie itself. We'll show him with each of these ladies, starting with Lily:
Now Dolly:
And finally, Jane:
Where's a golden parachute when a corporate executive needs one?
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