MY FATHER, HARPO MARX

Bill Marx, son of Harpo Marx: "By the time he settled down with my mom and started raising a family, he was in his fifties and financially secure enough not to have to work every day. And so he spent a lot of his time playing with... and getting to know... his kids. And this became his 'second childhood.'"

"My dad was the most child-like adult I've ever known. Not 'child-ish' - an unattractive quality that suggests a certain selfish insensitivity. That wasn't Dad at all. No, he took the world in the way a child does - with lots of wonder and very little judgment.... with the delight of someone for whom everything is new and delightful. The great comedy parodist of song, Allan Sherman, wrote in his autobiography, 'A Gift of Laughter,' 'Harpo Marx had the good sense to never grow up.'"

"Dad once told a friend he wanted to have as many kids as he had front windows in our house on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills... so that he could see them waiving at them when he got home from work. It's still a nice image."

"My mom remembers waking up one night to find herself alone in bed. She searched the house to find out where my dad was. She looked into my 4-year-old sister, Minnie's room and found him in there, on the floor, playing jacks with her. He had insomnia, needed some action and decided to wake her up and play with her (Despite the fact that it was 3 in the morning, she was delighted)."

"In Dad's autobiography, 'Harpo Speaks', he mentions a list of rules we Marxes lived by. It wasn't a gag - Dad really did live by those rules and expected us to do the same. It wasn't that hard - his rules were all about being true to yourself and doing what was best for yourself."

Harpo Marx Family Rules

1. Life has been created for you to enjoy, but you won't enjoy it unless you pay for it with some good, hard work. This is one price that will never be marked down.
2. You can work at whatever you want to as long as you do it as well as you can and clean up afterwards and you're at the table at mealtime and in bed at bedtime.
3. Respect what the others do. Respect Dad's harp, Mom's paints, Billy's piano, (son) Alex's set of tools, (son) Jimmy's designs, and Minnie's menagerie.
4. If anything makes you sore, come out with it. Maybe the rest of us are itching for a fight, too.
5. If anything strikes you as funny, out with that, too. Let's all the rest of us have a laugh.
6. If you have an impulse to do something that you're not sure is right, go ahead and do it. Take a chance. Chances are, if you don't you'll regret it - unless you break the rules about mealtime and bedtime, in which case you'll sure as hell regret it.
7. If it's a question of whether to do what's fun or what is supposed to be good for you, and nobody is hurt whichever you do, always do what's fun.
8. If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world's against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier to do, do it.
9. Don't worry about what other people think. The only person in the world important enough to conform to is yourself.

BING CROSBY: THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS - PART 9

RIP: DIANE KEATON

Diane Keaton, who remained one of Hollywood's quirkiest and most beloved actors decades after her Academy Award-winning performance in the movie Annie Hall, has died aged 79.

Her film producer confirmed her death to on Saturday

In one of her memoirs, Keaton wrote about aging and love in Hollywood and becoming a parent late in life. She was also upfront about some of her insecurities; she fretted about aging, her hair thinning, her eyes drooping. But Keaton told me that later in life, she had finally come to accept that all flaws are beautiful.

She was born Diane Hall in Los Angeles in 1946, the daughter of real estate broker and civil engineer Jack Hall. Her mother Dorothy was once crowned Mrs. Los Angeles.

Keaton said her mom cheered her on as she pursued her dreams of becoming a singer and performer in New York. After studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse in the 1960's, Keaton ended up an understudy in the original Broadway production of the rock musical Hair.

"It was wild. It was unexpected," she said. "But I could see that I really wasn't a hippie. I knew that I wasn't a hippie in Hair."

Keaton famously refused to go onstage nude for the final scene of Hair.

Then, along came Woody Allen, with whom she had a romantic relationship. Allen cast her in Play It Again, Sam, his play, then his movie. Also his film comedies Sleeper, Love and Death, Manhattan, and, of course, Annie Hall.

Keaton's kooky, quirky role as Annie Hall and her "lah-de-dah" charm won her a best actress Oscar in 1978. She thanked Woody Allen in her acceptance speech and later, for her entire career. She stood by him throughout the controversy over allegations that Allen once molested his daughter, which the director denies.

"That's never going to change," Keaton said of her support for Allen. "He's my very, very good friend."

In Annie Hall, Keaton showed off her comedy and singing chops. But she also had dramatic film roles, most famously in The Godfather trilogy. Her character marries into the Corleone mafia family.

Diane Keaton never married, though in films, she was one of the very few older American actresses who still got leading romantic roles. That was something actress Carol Kane, Keaton's long-term friend, raved about at the time.

"She's playing the love interest a lot," Kane said. "You know, kind of passionately kissing and swooping into the bedroom…at an age when most people just sort of say, 'OK, well, that part is over.' I mean, she just gets more and more beautiful because she's more and more herself."

For years, Keaton acted in such films as Looking For Mr. Goodbar, The First Wives Club and Baby Boom. She directed the documentary Heaven in 1987. She also wrote books about her life, about architecture, photography and beauty; she collected photos of beautiful men, she renovated beautiful houses, and as a single mother, raised two beautiful children. When she turned 50, she adopted her daughter, Dexter and five years later, her son Duke.

"It's an unconventional life, it's true," she told me. "But I don't really see it that way, because I just think everybody has a pretty– is there a life that doesn't have a story that isn't pretty astonishing? I've never come across anybody who hasn't. I just worked my way into the life that I have because I had a goal and it was very simple: I wanted to be in the movies."

REIMAGINING CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD THROUGH THE LENS OF AI

In the golden age of Hollywood—roughly the 1920s through the 1960s—cinema was a spectacle of glamour, storytelling, and star power. Studios like MGM, Paramount, and Warner Bros. churned out films that defined generations, while icons such as Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, and Marilyn Monroe became immortalized on silver screens. Fast forward to today, and a new kind of star is emerging—not human, but algorithmic: artificial intelligence. 

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a tool for automation or data analysis; it’s becoming a creative partner. In the context of classic Hollywood, AI offers fascinating possibilities:

Restoration and Remastering: AI-powered tools can upscale old footage to 4K, colorize black-and-white films with stunning accuracy, and even reconstruct damaged audio. This allows new audiences to experience classics like Casablanca or Sunset Boulevard in ways never before possible.

Voice and Face Recreation: Deep learning models can now recreate the voices and likenesses of long-deceased actors. While ethically complex, this technology has been used to bring back characters in franchises like Star Wars, and could theoretically allow for new performances from classic stars.

Scriptwriting and Style Emulation: AI can analyze the narrative structures and dialogue patterns of classic films to generate new scripts in the same style. Imagine a noir thriller written in the voice of Raymond Chandler, or a screwball comedy echoing the rhythm of His Girl Friday.
Reviving the Studio System—Virtually

Classic Hollywood operated under a studio system where actors, directors, and writers were contracted to specific studios. Today, AI could simulate this model in a digital space:

Virtual Production Studios: AI can generate sets, costumes, and even entire scenes, reducing the need for physical production. This democratizes filmmaking, allowing indie creators to emulate the grandeur of old Hollywood on a budget.

Digital Casting: With AI-generated avatars and voice synthesis, filmmakers can "cast" virtual actors tailored to specific roles, potentially reviving archetypes like the suave leading man or the femme fatale.
Ethical and Artistic Questions

The fusion of AI and classic Hollywood raises important questions though like does recreating a classic actor’s performance with AI honor their legacy or dilute it? Who owns the digital likeness of a deceased star? Their estate? The studio? The public? Can an AI-generated film evoke the same emotional depth as one crafted by human hands?

These questions are not easily answered, but they’re essential as we navigate this new frontier. AI doesn’t just replicate the past—it reinterprets it. By blending the aesthetics of classic Hollywood with modern technology, we’re not just preserving history; we’re creating a new genre of cinematic nostalgia. It’s a space where Bogart might share a scene with a virtual actor, or where a 1940s-style musical could be generated entirely by code.

In the end, AI may not replace the magic of classic Hollywood, but it can certainly help us rediscover it—and perhaps even reimagine it for the future...

STAR FRIENDS: PAT BOONE AND OZZY OSBOURNE

Pat Boone, the famously clean-cut pop crooner, paid tribute to his friend and former next-door neighbour, the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne.

“I am stunned. I can’t believe that my former next-door neighbor and good friend has passed suddenly,” Boone wrote on Facebook following the news of Osbourne’s death in July at the age of 76.

Osbourne and his family spent several years living next to Boone in Beverly Hills, striking up an unlikely friendship. Later, Boone’s jazzy big band cover of the Ozzy classic “Crazy Train” served as the theme song for the hit reality series, The Osbournes. (Yes, Boone recorded a whole album of metal covers, 1997’s In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy.)

“When he and Sharon and the kids lived next-door to me for a couple of years, we weren’t rock stars comparing careers – we were just friends and neighbors getting along just fine,” Boone wrote, adding: “Others may celebrate his incredible rocking style and hard rock music — but I’ll always remember his warm friendliness as my next-door neighbor. God bless you, Ozzy.”

FORGOTTEN ONES: ARTHUR LAKE

I almost guarantee that anyone under 50 even knows the name Blondie, let alone the actor who played Dagwood - Arthur Lakes. In the 1940s, Arthur Lakes was pretty much a household name. Arthur William (Silverlake) Lake Jr. was born on April 17, 1905, in Corbin, Kentucky, when his father Arthur Adolph Silverlake (né Timberlake; 1882–1920) and uncle Archie Glenn Silverlake (né Timberlake; 1882–1963) were touring with a circus in an aerial act known as "The Flying Silverlakes". His mother, Edith Goodwin (née Edith Blanche Fautch; 1888–1958) was an actress. His parents later appeared in vaudeville in a skit "Family Affair", traveling throughout the South and Southwest United States. Arthur first appeared on stage as a baby in Uncle Tom's Cabin; his sister Florence and he became part of the act in 1910. Their mother took the children to Hollywood to get into films, and Arthur made his screen debut in the silent Jack and the Beanstalk (1917). Florence became a successful actress achieving a degree of fame as one of the screen wives of comedian Edgar Kennedy.

Universal Pictures signed Lake to a contract where, as an adolescent, he played character parts in Westerns. At age 19 he began starring in a long series of comedy shorts for Universal, which ran through 1930. He signed with RKO Radio Pictures shortly after it formed in 1928. There he made Dance Hall (1929), and Cheer Up and Smile (1930). Moviegoers first heard Lake speak when he appeared as Harold Astor, the lead of the 1929 musical comedy On with the Show!, which is notable as the first all-talking feature film using the Vitaphone process, and as Warner Bros' first all-color film shot in two-color Technicolor. In the early sound film era, Lake typically played light romantic roles, often with a comic "Mama's Boy" tone to them, such as 1931's Indiscreet, starring Gloria Swanson. He also had a substantial part as the bellhop in the 1937 film Topper.

Arthur Lake is best known for portraying Dagwood Bumstead, the husband of the title character of the Blondie comic strip, in 28. Blondie features produced by Columbia Pictures between 1938 and 1950, co-starring Penny Singleton as Blondie and Larry Simms as Baby Dumpling (later known as Alexander). Lake also played Dagwood on the radio series, which ran concurrently with the film series from 1938 to 1950, earning Lake a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6646 Hollywood Blvd. (Many of the actors on the radio show noted Lake's commitment to the program, stating that on the day of the broadcast, Lake became Dagwood Bumstead.)

Far from feeling bitter about being typecast, Lake continued to embrace the role. He played Dagwood in a short-lived 1957 Blondie TV series, and often gave speeches to Rotary clubs and other civic organizations (eagerly posing for pictures with a Dagwood sandwich), well into the 1960s and beyond. He died in 1987.

In his book about the Black Dahlia murder case, author Donald H. Wolfe asserts that Arthur Lake was questioned by the Los Angeles Police Department as a suspect, having been acquainted with the victim through her volunteer work at the Hollywood Canteen. No charges were filed and Lake was one of many persons of interest in a case that remains unsolved.

Lake died of a heart attack in Indian Wells, California, on January 9, 1987, and is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, in the Douras family mausoleum, along with actress Marion Davies and her husband, Horace G. Brown. Lake's widow Patricia was interred there upon her death in 1993...

THE END OF HOWARD STERN

Howard Stern, once the undisputed king of shock radio, is facing a dramatic decline in relevance and listenership—a fall from grace that has stunned fans and critics alike. Once commanding an audience of over 20 million daily listeners, Stern’s current numbers reportedly hover around a mere 125,000.

Stern rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s by pushing boundaries, challenging censorship, and redefining radio entertainment. His brash humor, celebrity interviews, and raw honesty made him a cultural icon. The move to satellite radio in 2006 was hailed as revolutionary, with SiriusXM betting big on Stern with a $500 million contract.

But as the years passed, Stern’s show began to change. Longtime fans noticed a shift from edgy, unpredictable content to more polished, celebrity-friendly interviews. Former staffer Steve Grillo, who interned on the show in the '90s, lamented the loss of the “old Howard,” calling the current version “a sad, pathetic version of what happened to this man”.

Grillo and others point to key changes—like the removal of beloved comedic segments and a more sanitized format—as reasons for the mass exodus of listeners. Reddit threads echo similar sentiments, citing 2009 as a turning point when Stern stopped inviting comedians for the news segment, a fan favorite.

In September 2025, Stern teased a major announcement with cryptic social media posts—“Fired? Retiring? Canceled?”—leading to speculation about the end of his show. Insiders later revealed it was a publicity stunt, a “desperate hoax” to reignite interest. With his massive contract nearing expiration and family health concerns reportedly weighing on him, Stern’s future remains uncertain

Howard Stern’s downfall is not just about ratings—it’s a cautionary tale about the risks of abandoning the core identity that built a loyal fanbase. As media evolves and audiences seek authenticity, Stern’s struggle to stay relevant underscores the challenge of aging in the spotlight. What is sad is I used to be a huge Stern fan, but those days are over with...