BORN ON THIS DAY: ALLAN JONES

I am not a huge opera singing fan. Sometimes I feel the singing is so shrill, but I wanted to take the time to remember a tenor that I have enjoyed through the years. Allan Jones was born on this day in 1907. He was born in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. Jones, of Welsh ancestry, appeared on Broadway a few times, including 1933's Roberta and the short-lived 1934 revival of Bitter Sweet. He starred in many film musicals during the 1930s and 1940s. The best-known of these were Show Boat (1936), and The Firefly (1937) in which he sang "Donkey Serenade." It became his signature song. He is now best remembered, however, as the romantic straight man to the Marx Brothers in their first two Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films: A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.

On the strength of his appearance in A Night at the Opera, he won the coveted role of Gaylord Ravenal in the 1936 film version of Show Boat (opposite Irene Dunne) over such screen musical favorites as Nelson Eddy and John Boles. It would be Jones's most distinguished screen role in which, under the direction of James Whale, he displayed dramatic acting ability, as well as musical talent.

He made a brief appearance in the 1936 Nelson Eddy - Jeanette MacDonald film Rose Marie, singing music from Charles Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, but according to Merchant of Dreams, Charles Higham's biography of Louis B. Mayer, Eddy, who apparently considered Jones a rival and a potential threat, asked that most of Jones's footage in Rose Marie be cut, including his rendition of the great Puccini aria E lucevan le stelle - and MGM agreed to Eddy's demand.

In 1940, he moved to Universal for two musicals, both with scores by immortal composers: The Boys from Syracuse, with the stage score (severely cut) by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and One Night in the Tropics, with an original score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields which produced no hit songs. Following those, he slipped to leads in B musicals, two at Paramount, then eight at Universal, including a re-teaming with Kitty Carlisle in Larceny with Music (1943). The same year, he briefly returned to A’s by guesting, as himself, in the Olsen and Johnson musical Crazy House, where he again performed "Donkey Serenade."

In the mid 1960s the busy Jones managed to fit a few appearances on television and in movies into his busy theater, nightclub, and recording career. In 1971, he took on the role of Don Quixote in "Man of La Mancha", a role he would perform off and on for the next eight years. He also was very successful on the lecture circuit. In 1982, the 75-year-old Jones cut yet another LP, his voice belying his age: as clear and vibrant as singers a third his age. Jones continued to work for the remainder of his life, finishing a successful tour of Australia a few weeks before his death, at 84, in 1992...

MUSICAL BREAK: HARRY JAMES - GIGI

COMING SOON: THE DANNY KAYE SHOW TO DVD

During its four year run from 1963 - 1967, the Emmy Award winning The Danny Kaye Show and its host welcomed some of the greatest performers in the entertainment industry. Danny Kaye: Legends (MVD Visual – 10/16/2105 - SRP $24.95) collects six classic and complete episodes of the show featuring guest stars Louis Armstrong, Lucille Ball, Tony Bennett, George Burns, Imogene Coca, Shirley Jones and Liberace.

To see the trailer for Danny Kaye: Legends, visit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mqs-iquAl0

The collection also features performances by the Righteous Brothers (singing their number one hit “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”) French songstress Mireille Mathieu, Vikki Carr and John Gary. Also featured are series regulars Harvey Korman (pre The Carol Burnett Show), Joyce Van Patten and orchestra leader Paul Weston.

All of Danny Kaye’s remarkable talents are on display in Danny Kaye Legends from clowning in sketches with Ball, Burns, Coca and Liberace to singing duets with Gray, Jones and Satchmo (When The Saints Go Marching In) he’s in wonderful company.

Danny Kaye: Legends is a 2 DVD disc set, approximately 300 minutes long in color and black & white. Executive Producers are Dena Kaye and Edward Weidenfeld © 2015 Dena’s Trust.

For more information, please visit Danny Kaye visit www.dannykaye.com

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE MOMENTS

It is really hard to capture 40 years of Saturday Night Live in pictures. There are some memorable skits though that when you see them you will instantly remember them. I just picked out six photos of SNL skits that were memorable to me...

CHRIS FARLEY: "Living in a van down by the river"

STEVE MARTIN and DAN AYKROYD: "Two wild and crazy guys"

GILDA RADNER & STEVE MARTIN: a simple comedic dance with no words

BILL MURRAY: "Lounge Singer"

WILL FERRELL and DARRELL HAMMOND: "Celebrity Jeopardy"

WILL FERRELL: "We need more cowbell"

THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN BELUSHI

Many Saturday Night Live alumni faced drug addiction, both during and after their time on the popular comedy series. One of the first casualties to drugs and one of the most tragic was the death of John Belushi. On March 5, 1982, after showing up at his hotel for a scheduled workout, his trainer, Bill Wallace found Belushi dead in his room, Bungalow 3 at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. He was 33 years old.

The cause of death was an overdose of cocaine and heroin, a drug combination also known as a speedball. In the early morning hours on the day of his death, he was visited separately by friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, each of whom left the premises, leaving Belushi in the company of assorted others, including Catherine Evelyn Smith. His death was investigated by forensic pathologist Dr. Ryan Norris, among others, and, while the findings were disputed, it was officially ruled a drug-related accident.

Two months later, Smith admitted in an interview with the National Enquirer that she had been with Belushi the night of his death and had given him the fatal speedball shot. After the appearance of the article "I Killed Belushi" in the Enquirer edition of June 29, 1982, the case was reopened. Smith was extradited from Toronto, Ontario, arrested and charged with first-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter, and she served fifteen months in prison.

Belushi's wife arranged for a traditional Orthodox Christian funeral which was conducted by an Albanian Orthodox priest. She also recruited the couple's good friend, James Taylor, who postponed the European leg of his current tour to come and sing his haunting ballad, 'That Lonesome Road', at the morning grave site service. He has been interred twice at Abel's Hill Cemetery in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. A tombstone marking the original burial location has a New England classic slate design, complete with skull and crossbones, that reads, "I may be gone but Rock and Roll lives on." An unmarked tombstone in an undisclosed location marks the final burial location. He is also remembered on the Belushi family stone marking his mother's grave at Elmwood Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois. This stone reads, "He gave us laughter".

At the time of his death, Belushi was pursuing several movie projects, including Moons Over Miami with Louis Malle, National Lampoon's The Joy of Sex and Noble Rot, a script that had been adapted and rewritten by himself and former Saturday Night Live writer, Don Novello in the weeks leading up to his death. He was also scheduled to work with Aykroyd on Ghostbusters and Spies Like Us.

Belushi also made a "Guest Star Appearance" on an episode of the television series Police Squad! (1982) which showed him underwater wearing cement shoes. He died shortly before the episode aired, so the scene was cut and replaced by a segment with William Conrad.

Again, John Belushi died too young and too tragically...

BILL MURRAY: THE LAST NIGHT I SAW GILDA RADNER

Funny girl Gilda Radner died way too young of cancer in 1989 at the age of 42. She seemed to touch every life she came in contact with including fellow comedian Bill Murray. Here is Bill's story about the last night he saw Gilda Radner...

Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.

So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know.

And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.

It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her...

SOURCE

MY FIVE FAVORITE SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE STARS

As we celebrate a week of Saturday Night live stories, I wanted to start out with a list of my five favorite alumni from the show. That show, which has been on for 40 years has been the showcase from some of the greatest comedians our present entertainment industry has ever known. Here are my five favorites...

5. TINA FEY (2000-2006)

Tina Fey breathed new life into Weekend Update, bringing sharp, literate political satire to what had been a regularly scheduled dead spot for years. It says a lot that the show's best political joke since her departure has been the Sarah Palin impression she started doing as a special guest.

4. WILL FERRELL (1995-2002)

Long before Old School, Ferrell looked like the friendly, super-straight guy at the fraternity beer bash who'd been putting off graduation for too long because he wasn't looking forward to managing his dad's construction firm. Watching strange demons take over that normal-looking countenance was a joke that seldom got tired. His surrealist sensibilities carried the show for years. 

3. JOHN BELUSHI (1975-1979)

John Belushi brought the pleasures of brash slapstick to a show that otherwise tended towards hip and cerebral. He made it look easy to dominate the stage and make audiences laugh by brute force. But if you look at the performers influenced, including Chris Farley and his own brother Jim, you can see that it isn't that easy after all.

2. GILDA RADNER (1975-1979)
Gilda Radner won an Emmy for her performance on SNL in 1978 and carried many a sketch amongst the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players." Her Barbara Walters and Roseanne Roseannadanna characters remain legendary.

1. BILL MURRAY (1977-1980)

Bill Murray's stature as the most beloved of all the SNL alumni was hard-won. He basically made it onto the show over Lorne Michaels' dead body, and he had a rough couple of weeks trying to win over an audience that was hell-bent on hating him because he'd replaced the show's first breakout star, Chevy Chase. But by the time Chase returned to guest host, it was Murray's show he came back to. Murray really proved his mettle when he himself hosted the only exciting episode of the notorious 1980-81 season. It looked then and still looks today as if Golden Age SNL is something Bill Murray carries around in his back pocket in case of emergency. ..