Quips and Quotations (Sex, Lies, and Videotape Edition)

My God, what’s happening to Brian [Williams] is in the Zeitgeist...He’s trumping Bruce Jenner on social media. I mean, cross-dressing Bruce Jenner killed somebody, but Brian Williams is still trending.


--Unidentified NBC News source.

Vital Viewing (Golden Age of Hollywood Multitasker Edition)

Ida Lupino was born on this day in 1918. Raised in a London acting family, she took up the profession herself and eventually landed in Hollywood. Keeping whatever British accent she may have had well-hidden in her most best-known roles, she became, in her own words, "the poor man's Bette Davis", due to the off-kilter characters she played. However, her films (a few of which were turned down by Davis) tended to be much more gritty, and she was soon a mainstay of a genre now known as film noir (French for "dark film".)

Though she first appeared on film in 1931, it wasn't until 1940's They Drive By Night that she finally became a star, thanks largely to the above nervous breakdown (which I don't believe originally was done with subtitles.)

The next year she appeared opposite another actor who took a decade to find his niche in movies, Humphrey Bogart. High Sierra was one of the earliest doomed-lovers-on-the-run films. Screenplay by John Huston.

From a story by Irwin Shaw, The Hard Way (1943) was based on the relationship between Ginger Rogers and her mother, though Lupino wasn't a mom here but Joan Leslie-as-Ginger's older sister (I imagine because the actresses were only seven years apart in age.)

In Road House (1948) Lupino got to sing the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer standard "One For My Baby (and One More for the Road)" You might recall that Bette Midler won an Emmy for singing this same song on the last regular The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I'll admit the Divine Miss M is technically a much better songstress than Lupino, but her version never led to betrayal and murder as it does in this film (though it is my understanding Carson stopped returning Ed McMahon's phone calls after a while.)

Though she more often than not played femme fatale types, Lupino got a chance to portray a more sympathetic character in On Dangerous Ground (1951). I mean, what could be more sympathetic than a blind woman? Especially when opposite another mainstay of film noir, the underrated Robert Ryan?

Ryan was not at all sympathetic in his next movie with Lupino, 1952's Beware My Lovely.

Now on to her other career. I have to jump back in time a few years.

That's an actress by the name of Sally Forrest and not a pregnant Lupino in the above ad, yet the latter was very much involved in Not Wanted (1949) behind the scenes. Not content with merely acting, Lupino also liked to write screenplays, which she then produced herself. The director, Elmer Clifton, had a mild heart attack and had to leave the picture. So Lupino stepped in and finished the job, though, out of respect for Clifton, she kept his name in the credits.

Lupino calimed she never thought about directing before, but now it was all she wanted to do.

The first few movies she directed were "women pictures", though they often had provocative and controversial themes, such as the one above about rape.

In 1953, one of the queens of film noir got a chance to direct a noir herself, the extraordinarily suspenseful The Hitch-Hiker. That's Lupino on the left in the sunglasses.

Now regarded as a noir classic, in 1998 The Hitch-Hiker was considered "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" enough to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

A montage of moments from The Hitch-Hiker, featuring Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy and William Talman. Perry Mason fans may remember Talman, here playing the title character, as assistant D.A Hamilton Burger. Playing a homicidal maniac in this film, he probably could have used Perry's help.

Lupino sometimes appeared in her own films. Here she plays one of the wives of the aforementioned Edmond O'Brien (a great character actor) in The Bigamist. 

IdaLupino still appeared in other director's pictures as well. In Women's Prison (1955) she plays a prison superintendent who herself should have been under lock and key. 

Here's Lupino in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

However, it was another episode she directed, but did not appear in, that's more memorable. Titled "The Mask" don't watch it if you're planning on going to a masquerade ball.

As she moved from movies to television, Lupino didn't just direct dramas, but also sitcoms...

...such as this episode of Gilligan's Island, featuring Tina Loise as Ginger, and guest star Hans Conried as Wrongway Feldman. Amusing enough on its own terms, I guess, but a long way from The Hitch-Hiker

Lupino continued to act, but as is often the case with female stars, the parts got smaller as she aged and her looks faded a bit.

Still, she got to meet Columbo.

All in all, a remarkable career. Ida Lupino died in 1995 at age 77.

A Civil Tongue-Lashing

TV newsman Edwin Newman was born on this date in 1919, a year in which the average person wasn't listening to the radio, much less the boob tube. Perhaps I shouldn't call it that, at least not when the subject of this post is Newman, for the man was no boob. He was part of a breed that was somewhat common when I was growing up: the Wry Newsman.

There was David Brinkley, who deliberately paced his delivery for wry effect. When commenting about a drawing that had been produced by a computer, this back when a computer was an enigmatic, room-sized machine and not the much smaller, reassuringly cozy appliance you're likely viewing now, Brinkley refused to adopt the alarmist, apocalyptic oh-dear-man-will-be-supplanted-by-technology tone and instead, implying the robot-produced picture didn't look like much, wryly stated, "When we return...we'll look at some art...if you can call it art...and if you can't call it art...what can you call it?" There! The attempted computer coup against humanity foiled with a smirk and a few well-placed pauses.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus of Wry TV Newscasts may have been 60 Minutes in its 1970s-80s heyday. Yeah, it's still on the air, but current correspondents like Steve Croft and Leslie Stahl seem to grateful to have the gig to report on crimes and misdemeanors with anything but the sincerest consternation. Only octogenarian Morley Safer is still around to hold up the wry end, expressing perverse wonderment at the industrialist trying to tell him the fish in the river just outside his dry rot repair epoxy resin factory all committed suicide. Thirty years ago, however, Safer had such wry company as Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, and, best of all, the late, great Mike Wallace.

Here's Wallace interviewing a former Mafia hit man (wryness italicized):

WALLACE: Tell me, did you ever feel guilty about killing someone?

HIT MAN: No.

WALLACE: Can you think of any circumstances where you would have felt guilty killing someone?

HIT MAN: Well, I suppose if I had to kill an innocent person.

WALLACE: And who would you consider an innocent person?

HIT MAN: Well, you. I would consider you an innocent person.

WALLACE: Well, I would hope you would consider me an innocent person.

Ha! That Mike Wallace had one set of wry testicles on him, didn't he? I think in the same situation Steve Croft would have curled up in a ball and cried.

Now, wry shouldn't be confused with humorous. Yes, a person can have a "wry sense of humor" but the very fact that "humor" needs to be foreshadowed by "wry" proves its failure as a synonym. Or look at it this way, Moe could be funny on occasion, but I think he was able to successfully pull on Larry's hair without having to resort to wryness.

According to the dictionary, "wry" means "to pull out of its expected shape." That's the word's literal meaning as a verb. Of course, I using it as an adjective to describe a personality trait. Thus, it's further defined as "understated, sarcastic, or ironic". You can be those things without being funny. Of course, those things often are funny (italics no longer denoting wryness.) Though I can't quite pinpoint the punchline, I'm sure Brinkley decelerated discourse on the nature of art was meant to amuse, and Wallace's mock indignation that he should be considered anything other than innocent was a bit of comic relief in an otherwise tense interview (the mafia hit man actually seemed the more tenser of the two.)

The major risk involved in wry news reporting is that you can come across as unlikable. People back in that three-network era often looked to their broadcast personalities for comfort, hence the beloved Walter Cronkite. Because David Brinkley was around for so long, people did, finally, take comfort in him toward the end. He was popular at the beginning of his TV career, too, as one half of The Huntley-Brinkley Report, his acerbic wisecracks (trying to solve to controversy involving the renaming of well-known dam on the Colorado River, he suggested a former president should now call himself "Herbert Boulder") provided as color commentary to Chet Huntley's more straightforward reporting. The duo ruled the early evening news roost from the late '50s into the mid-'60s. Then CBS put Cronkite opposite them. With Vietnam heating up and all sorts of civil strife bedeviling the nation, people seem to want less comedy and more comfort, and headed toward Uncle Walter's warm embrace. Huntley soon retired, and Brinkley continued on alternately as a solo act or partnered with John Chancellor. Eventually his role was reduced to a three-minute commentary a couple times a week, his smirk hardening into a sneer as the television news parade largely passed him by. Brinkley's career was resurrected when he switched from NBC to ABC and network big shot Roone Arledge, who had earlier made an unlikely star out of Howard Cosell, gave him a Sunday morning political affairs program called This Week with David Brinkley. The show was a success, and he settled quite nicely into the role of Living TV News Legend. Brinkley still cracked the occasional joke, but he now seemed downright cuddly when contrasted to regular panelist Sam Donaldson, who was not so much wry as raw.

As for Mike Wallace, really, how likable was he? I remember reading one press account that described him as a knight out to slay a dragon. Made you feel occasionally sorry for the dragon. Especially if the camera lingered a bit too long into the stare of the beast's frightened eyes, a standard 60 Minutes technique. It actually made the bad guy seem like the underdog at times.  There's been more than one program where, against my better judgement, I felt like saying, "There, there, corporate polluter, it's gonna be all right, the nasty reporter is going away now," or "Oh, corrupt politician, my heart goes out to you! Have a good, long cry during the commercial break." Not exactly the response that was expected of me watching 60 Minutes, a show that never actually questions or challenges the status quo itself, but merely goes after the endless stream of nogoodniks who always seem to find exciting new opportunities within it.

That leaves us with Edwin Newman, who actually was likable. Instead of Brinkley's smirk and Wallace's sarcastic gape, there was a bit of a twinkle in his eyes. He could be funny, often dropping a joke into his reporting or commentary, as long as the subject matter wasn't too serious. And he knew his grammar, putting several books--humorously written but expressing concern nonetheless--about the deterioration of the English language on the best-sellers list (God knows the problems he would have found with this post.) On top of all that, he even hosted, on Eddie Murphy's last regular show yet! That had to be some kind of honor.

Newman was such an amiable presence on the various NBC news shows in which he appeared (usually those hosted by others) that some might say wasn't wry so much as folksy, a la Charles Kuralt who did the popular "On the Road" segments on the CBS news, driving around the country to one backwoods local after another looking to interview a man who a treehouse out of old Yellow Pages or the town that threw a party to commemorate the invention of pull-open beer can tab, touting it as a real example of Americana. Newman could never have done such a program. The first time some hillbilly said the word "ain't" in his presence he would have hightailed it back to the big city to write another book.

Besides, Newman was just too irreverent to be another Kuralt. Here's his deadpan joke-filled description of the 1964 World's Fair:

"Cluster's Last Stand." As much as a stickler Newman may have been when it came to the English language, he was also a sucker for a good pun.

Here's Newman in a more serous moment, on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed:

"Our image is not good...We do not appear as an adult nation...grossly diminished people" Folksy Edwin Newman is really laying it on the line here! Of all the video commentary from the day of the assassination or shortly thereafter, this has got to be the least sentimental. David Brinkley, in his commentary, kind of ducks the issues Newman raises, even suggesting that to talk about them might be in bad taste. Other than that, Brinkley tells viewers that the events of the day are shocking, which I'm sure they already knew. Newman, meanwhile is not telling people what they already know, or what they want to hear, but what they need to hear. Something in the culture broke down, and that's where the ultimate bad taste lies. What I find amazing about Newman's commentary is how contrary it is to the way the Kennedy assassination has been handed down and explained to me, as a sudden and dramatic loss of innocence. Newman, on the day of the assassination, will have none of it. It's not innocence but childishness we have too much of it. True then, true now.

Newman's commentary is of course not meant to be funny. Should it then be considered wry? There are hints of understatement, sarcasm and irony, but I'd go for the first definition, you know, wry as a verb: to pull out of its expected shape. Newman was probably expected to do a nice little eulogy on the day's tragic events, giving lip service to our greatness as a nation and how we'll emerge from this ordeal stronger, blah, blah, blah, and instead told some harsh but very necessary truths.

All with a wry sense of drama.

Quips and Quotations (City of Lights Edition)

I want to make it clear that I don't consider comics to be a Great Art. When a reviewer wants to put down a film, they'll often say it has a "comic book plot".

--Charles M. Schulz

Humorists always sit at the children's table.

--Woody Allen

Satire is what closes on a Saturday night.

--George S. Kaufman

Schulz, Allen, and Kaufman may have been a bit too hard on themselves. It seems there are people in this world who take comics, humor, and satire...

 ...VERY seriously.

Quips and Quotations (Hamlet of the Hudson Edition)

Mario Cuomo 1932-2014

I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as a Jew, a Protestant, or non-believer, or as anything else you choose. We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us. This freedom is the fundamental strength of our unique experiment in government. In the complex interplay of forces and considerations that go into the making of our laws and policies, its preservation must be a pervasive and dominant concern.

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.



We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses.

I told them [a group assembled by onetime Chase Manhattan Bank head honcho David Rockefeller] that my grandfather had died in the Great Crash of 1929--a stockbroker jumped out of a window and crushed him and his pushcart down below.

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

Unless people like you give us a new generation, willing to take on the challenge of self-government, willing to accept its responsibilities, to reform it, to change it, to make it fairer and more responsive — unless you do, the very rich will get richer, the poor will become fired in their desperation, violence will increase and here, as in so many places around the world, the purpose of government will be reduced basically to a matter of maintaining order instead of improving conditions. 

Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right.



And, in case you're wondering about his nickname... 

I have no plans, and no plans to plan.

I said I didn’t want to run for president. I didn’t ask you to believe me

In Memoriam: Joe Cocker 1944-2014

Rock and blues singer.

"It's all a matter of hearing what I like and seeing if I can make it fit into my style."

"...my arm movements? I actually saw myself with Eric Clapton – you know you see all your old stuff on YouTube now – and I was horrified at myself, with my arms just flailing around. I guess that came with my frustration at never having played piano or guitar. If you see me nowadays I'm not quite so animated, but it's just a way of trying to get feeling out – I get excited and it all comes through my body."

The son of a civil servant, Cocker grew up in Crookes, a suburb of Sheffield, in the county of Yorkshire, in the country of England. 

In his teens, Cocker was a huge fan of Ray Charles, who played the piano, but not the guitar. Whether he was frustrated about the latter, I can't say.

Judging by this picture, I'd say Cocker at least flirted with the idea of becoming a drummer. That's him at about 16, seated in front of his first band The Cavaliers. For their first gig at a local youth club, they actually had to pay the price of admission.

The Cavaliers broke up after a year, after which an American basketball team appropriated the name (sorry, couldn't resist a Cleveland reference.) Cocker took on an alias and formed a new group, Vance Edwards and the Avengers, once appearing on the same bill with another blues-based rock 'n' roll band, the Rolling Stones. In 1964, Cocker recorded a sole single, a cover of the Beatles "I'll Cry Again".

Despite Cocker's own efforts to boost sales by buying a copy himself, the single didn't go anywhere. 

However, Cocker wasn't quite through with the Beatles yet.

After another short-lived band The Joe Cocker Blues, Cocker formed, and then re-formed The Grease Band as a backup band. Together they had the above major hit in 1968, by which time Cocker had abandoned the pompadour. 

"He [Cocker] was a lovely northern lad who I loved a lot and, like many people, I loved his singing. I was especially pleased when he decided to cover "With a Little Help From My Friends" and I remember him and (producer) Denny Cordell coming round to the studio in Savile Row and playing me what they'd recorded and it was just mind-blowing, totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was and I was forever grateful to him for doing that."

--Paul McCartney

Playing air guitar at Woodstock.

 "...like an eclipse ... it was a very special day."

I can never be sure how long these videos will stay on one of my posts since I'm at the mercy of YouTube here, but in case this one is snatched before you get a chance to see it, I can assure you Joe did NOT sing out of key.

Playwright, songwriter, actor, and all-around witty guy Noel Coward, shown here in the 1930s. Among his more amusing compositions was a little ditty called "Mad Dogs and Englishmen". Little did he know that nearly 40 years later...

...Joe Cocker would appropriate it as the name of a live album and, informally, a group of some 30 musicians, most notably Leon Russell and, as a backup singer, Rita Coolidge, that he went on tour with in 1970. Coward was still alive at the time. As far as I know he never complained (assuming he even knew about it in the first place.)

Maybe Coward saw the movie.

Among the songs on Mad Dogs and Englishmen was a cover of The Box Tops "The Letter", a Top 10 hit. 

In 1974, Cocker had this monster hit. And whoever he had in mind while singing it probably got one helluva ego boost.

Cocker and Belushi on Saturday Night Live.

Richard Gere got the girl (Debra Winger, as if you didn't know) at the end of the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman.

In his own way, Cocker got the girl, too--in this case, Jennifer Warnes. OK, this relationship was platonic, but it did yield the Number 1 hit from the soundtrack of that movie "Up Where We Belong".

If there's anything to that Heaven stuff, Joe Cocker is right now up where he belongs.

Quips and Quotations (Caucasian Film Auteur Nostalgia Edition)

I’m not against the police, I'm just afraid of them.

--Alfred Hitchcock.