HEALTHWATCH: CHEVY CHASE

Comedian Chevy Chase has had his share of health in recent years with a near fatal heart failure in 2021. In the below picture, it shows Chevy with his new grandchild. Unfortunately, he has a bad bruise on his eye. Sources close to Chevy say that it is from a fall in a hotel room. The Christmas vacation actor, who is 81 years old now, rarely makes movies these days and travels throughout the country doing Q&A showings and meet and greets...

STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO: VERA-ELLEN

 Here is an interesting photo. Upon looking at it, it might not mean much to many people. It's a mother and her daughter. However, that daughter would become the wonderful dancer Vera-Ellen. The White Christmas actress was a long way from Hollywood. The picture was taken in 1939, when Vera-Ellen was 18. Her mother Alma was 48...

HOLLYWOOD SCANDALS: THE DEATH OF PAUL BERN

Before she died at the very young age of 26, actress Jean Harlow had already lived quite a life of scandal and intrigue. Her first marriage, which began when she was only 16, lasted just two short years. Her second marriage to MGM producer Paul Bern also ended in tragedy. Two months after marrying Jean Harlow, on September 5, Bern was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in their home on Easton Drive in Beverly Hills, California.The coroner ruled his death a suicide.

Police discovered a note at the scene that read as follows:

"Dearest Dear,
Unfortuately  this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation, I Love you.
Paul
You understand that last night was only a comedy"

Authorities viewed this as a suicide note signed by BernTo the police, and before a grand jury, Harlow's only statement was that she "knew nothing". Harlow was made an executor of her husband's estate by the Californian judge. Harlow never publicly spoke on the matter. She died of renal failure (caused by a childhood bout of scarlet fever) in June 1937 at the age of 26.

Two thousand people attended Bern's funeral, held on September 9, 1932, at the Grace Chapel at Inglewood Park Cemetery.Conrad Nagel delivered the eulogy. Bern was cremated, and his ashes were interred in the Golden West Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery.

In 1990, film producer Samuel Marx, a friend and MGM colleague of both Bern and Irving Thalberg, published a book giving a different version of Bern's death. Marx, at the time MGM's story editor (the head of the screenwriting department), said he had gone to Bern's house in the early morning of September 5, 1932, before the police were notified of the body's discovery, and had seen Thalberg tampering with the evidence. The next day, he had been among the studio executives who were told by Louis B. Mayer that the case would have to be ruled "suicide because of impotence" in order to avoid a scandal which would have finished Harlow's film career. Marx, after reviewing the evidence, concluded that Bern was murdered by his abandoned common-law wife Dorothy Millette, who then committed suicide by drowning, jumping overboard from the Delta King on the way from San Francisco to Sacramento, California...

THE BOX OFFICE STARS: 1955

 It is hard to believe that when one talks about 1955 - it is nearly 70 years ago! It just doesn't seem right. Anyways, here are the top ten stars of 1955. What a great year for movies...

1. JAMES STEWART

2. GRACE KELLY 

3. JOHN WAYNE

4. WILLIAM HOLDEN

5. GARY COOPER
6. MARLON BRANDO
7. DEAN MARTIN/JERRY LEWIS
8. HUMPHREY BOGART
9. JUNE ALLYSON
10. CLARK GABLE

   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                                                            

HISTORY OF A SONG: I'VE GOT PLENTY TO BE THANKFUL FOR

This song is one of twelve original songs Irving Berlin wrote for the 1942 film “Holiday Inn,” which also included “White Christmas,” the best-selling single of all time. In this film, the main character Jim, played by Bing Crosby, has given up a life in show business to work on his farm. He decides to turn the farm into a country inn, open only for holidays. As he goes through his first year at the Holiday Inn, we hear songs for each season, all through the lens of Jim’s romantic and professional struggles. By Thanksgiving, he is depressed and lonely, having lost his sweetheart. He has been asked to write a song for a film about his Holiday Inn, which we hear as “I’ve Got Plenty To Be Thankful For.” This song is quite chipper compared to his mood, and as we hear the song in the movie, Jim has a negative comment to answer every positive notion in the song. Fortunately for Jim (and the viewer!), shortly after Thanksgiving, Jim makes it back to his love and we get a happy Hollywood ending.

Whether you’re in the new romance stage of life or not, I bet you can relate to this song, both at its face value and with how Jim experiences the song during the movie.On its face, this song is all about simple happiness, the small things that fill you with gratitude for life and living. These are my favorite lines:

I’ve got eyes to see with
Ears to hear with
Arms to hug with
Lips to kiss with
Someone I adore

This song even has a dose of reality for those of us who are happy even without everything, with Bing Crosby singing, “I haven’t got a great big yacht to sail from shore to shore/But I’ve got plenty to be thankful for.” The song offers a way to feel gratitude for the smallest things in life.

Irving Berlin, as always, outdid himself with this beautiful song. It got forgotten in the movie Holiday Inn, but during Thanksgiving it is a great song to remember and be thankful for!

RECENTLY VIEWED: WICKED

My daughter loves the music of Wicked. Because I talked her into going to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice so to repay her I said I would go see Wicked with her. No offense but I feel that Ariana Grande is annoying and not htat great of an actress, but Wicked changed that for it! The movie was absoluting amazing and one of the best movies I have seen in years! Wicked (titled onscreen as Wicked: Part I) is a 2024 American musical fantasy film directed by Jon M. Chu, and written by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox. It is the first of a two-part film adaptation of the stage musical Wicked by Stephen Schwartz and Holzman, loosely based on the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire; which in turn is based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, its sequels, and its 1939 film adaptation. The film covers the musical's first act and stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp and Ariana Grande-Butera as Galinda Upland. Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum feature in supporting roles.

Set in the Land of Oz, largely before Dorothy Gale's arrival from Kansas, it follows the story of Elphaba beginning her path to becoming the Wicked Witch of the West, and her unlikely friendship with her classmate Galinda, who becomes Glinda the Good.

Universal Pictures and Marc Platt, who both produced the stage musical, announced the film adaptation in 2012. After a long development and multiple delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chu was hired to direct, with Erivo and Grande cast in 2021. The film was split in two to avoid cutting plot points and to expand the journeys and relationships between the characters. Principal photography on both films began in December 2022 in England, but was disrupted in July 2023 due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, and concluded in January 2024.

Wicked premiered at the State Theatre in Sydney, Australia, on November 3, 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States on November 22. It received praise for its performances (particularly for Erivo, Grande, and Bailey), direction, humor, musical sequences and faithfulness to the source material, although its runtime and cinematography were met with some criticism. It has grossed $164.2 million in its opening weekend against a $150 million budget. Wicked Part Two will be released on November 21, 2025.

The movie was just amazing. My daughter knows the whole score, but it was new to me. Ariana and Cynthia were unbelievable in their roles, and I can not say enough about the film. The run time is over 2 hours and 30 minutes, but the time flew by like it was 30 minutes. I could go on and on, but do yourself a favor and go see this movie. You will get lost in the land of Oz!

MY RATING: 10 out of 10

BORN ON THIS DAY: GERALDINE FITZGERALD

Geraldine Mary Fitzgerald, born on this day in 1913 was an accomplished Irish stage, film, and television actress. She was an Academy Award and Tony Award nominee, and an Emmy Award winner. She was a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. Fitzgerald was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, south of Dublin,

She studied painting at the Dublin School of Art. Inspired by her aunt, actress Shelah Richards, Fitzgerald began her acting career in 1932 at Dublin's Gate Theatre. After two seasons in Dublin, she moved to London, where she found success in British films including The Mill on the Floss, Turn of the Tide, and Cafe Mascot.

Fitzgerald's success led her to New York and the Broadway stage in 1938. She made her American debut opposite Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House. Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis saw her in this production and subsequently signed her to a contract with Warner Bros. She had two significant successes in 1939: a role in the Bette Davis film Dark Victory, and an Academy Award nomination for her supporting performance as Isabella Linton in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights.

She then appeared in Shining Victory (1941), The Gay Sisters (1942), and Watch on the Rhine (1943) for Warner Bros., and Wilson (1944) for 20th Century Fox, but her career was hampered by her frequent clashes with studio management. She lost the role of Brigid O'Shaughnessy, villainess in The Maltese Falcon (1941), after clashes with executive Jack L. Warner. Although she continued to work throughout the 1940s, co-starring with John Garfield in the Warner Bros. crime drama Nobody Lives Forever (1946), the quality of her roles began to diminish and her career lost momentum.

In 1946, shortly after completing work on Three Strangers, she left Hollywood to return to New York City, where she married her second husband, Stuart Scheftel, a grandson of Isidor Straus. She returned to Britain to film So Evil My Love (1948), receiving strong reviews for her performance as an alcoholic adultress, and The Late Edwina Black (1951), before returning to the United States. She became a naturalized United States citizen on April 18, 1955.

Throughout the next decades, Geradine remained a powerful force in movies, on television, and on the stage. Her son's resemblance to Orson Welles, with whom she worked and was linked romantically in the late 1930s, led to rumors that Welles was his biological father. Fitzgerald never confirmed this to her son, but in his 2011 autobiography Lindsay-Hogg wrote that this question was resolved by his mother's close friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who had written that Fitzgerald told her that Welles was his father. Geraldine Fitzgerald died at the age of 91 on July 15, 2005...