MUSIC BREAK: TONY MARTIN - TENEMENT SYMPHONY

GUEST REVIEW: IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME

Here is the usually interesting review from guest reviewer Bruce Kogan. This time he looks at the enjoyable 1949 Judy Garland musical In The Good Old Summertime...

Given how Judy Garland scored so well in another period piece, Meet Me In St. Louis, it was a natural that she be cast in In The Good Old Summertime even if she was a replacement for June Allyson. It's called serendipity.

The film is a musical adaption of MGM's The Shop Around The Corner in which James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan played the anonymous correspondents who love what each other write, but can't stand each other in person. It doesn't help that the two of them are co-workers in a department store.

Van Johnson takes the Stewart part in In The Good Old Summertime and early 20th century Budapest is transferred to early 20th century Chicago. Johnson and Garland work in a music store with Spring Byington, Clinton Sundberg, and Buster Keaton and that's owned by S.Z. Sakall. Sakall is far more lovable as he always is than Frank Morgan in the same part in The Shop Around The Corner. A bit thick, but lovable. He does think he has talent on the violin, the same way Jack Benny did on his radio program. He plays it as well as Benny did and even playing it on a Stradivarius doesn't help.

Except for one new song, Merry Christmas, the rest of the score is interpolated period favorites like Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland, I Never Knew, I Don't Care and of course the title song. Judy is really in her element doing these numbers. In fact two of the early century's great musical performers, Blanche Ring who introduced In The Good Old Summertime, and Eva Tanguay whose specialty song was I Don't Care, were still alive to see Judy do both of their numbers for the current audience. I've often wondered what they must have thought.

Buster Keaton is strangely subdued in this film. He only gets one real comic moment doing a pratfall on a dance floor and breaking a violin in the process. I'm betting some of his material wound up on the cutting room floor.

At the very end of the film, little Liza Minnelli all of three at the time made her screen debut. If you like period pieces as I do and the music of the era as I do or if you liked The Shop Around The Corner or the most current adaption of the piece, You've Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, than you will appreciate and enjoy In The Good Old Summertime...

BRUCE'S RATING: 7 OUT OF 10

MY RATING: 8 OUT OF 10

RIP: DICKIE MOORE

Little Dickie Moore, the beloved former child star, has died. He was 89.

The husband of famed actress Jane Powell, Moore began his long career in show business when he was only 11 months old, playing John Barrymore as an infant in the 1927 silent film The Beloved Rogue. He would go on to appear in more than 100 films during the next 30 years and was later the longtime spokesman for AFTRA.

His many memorable screen performances included starring roles in Oliver Twist, Sergeant York, The Life Of Louis Pasteur and Heaven Can Wait. But he probably is best known for his appearances in the Our Gang comedies and as the boyfriend who gave Shirley Temple her first screen kiss in the 1942 film Miss Annie Rooney.

He started working regularly at age 4, appearing in as many as 12 feature films a year. Among his early credits were Cecil B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man, So Big with Barbara Stanwyck and Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich and newcomer Cary Grant. In 1932, producer Hal Roach recruited him for Our Gang, where he worked with Spanky, Stymie and the kids for a year before resuming his career in feature films, including Little Men, Man’s Castle with Spencer Tracy, Peter Ibbetson with Gary Cooper, The Life Of Emile Zola with Paul Muni and The Bride Wore Red with Joan Crawford, among others.

After serving in World War II as a correspondent for Stars And Stripes in the Pacific Theater, Moore attended college in Los Angeles, majoring in journalism. He then returned to acting as Dick Moore and appeared in Out Of The Past with Robert Mitchum and in Tuna Clipper with Roddy MacDowell. He also co-produced, co-directed and acted in a short subject film called The Boy And The Eagle that was nominated for an Academy Award in 1949. His last film was The Member Of The Wedding in 1952.

Relocating to New York, he worked in radio, television, summer stock, Broadway and Off-Broadway, both as an actor and director, before his career took a new turn. He became involved with Actors’ Equity, and served on its governing Council before becoming editor of their magazine and public relations counsel. He left Equity in 1964 to become creative director for films, meetings and shows for a leading advertising agency and then was a senior associate with a major public relations firm. He formed his own public relations firm, Dick Moore and Associates, in 1966.

His 1984 book, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, is an autobiographical account of his childhood in the movie business that explores the hardships that many child actors face growing up in front of the cameras. He was also author of Opportunities In Acting Careers and co-author of a study titled “The Relationship Of Amateur To Professional In The American Theatre.”

Besides his wife, he is survived by his sister, publicist Pat Kingsley; his son, Kevin Moore; and numerous grandchildren, stepchildren and step-grandchildren...

CATE BLANCHETT AS LUCILLE BALL

Cate Blanchett is hotly tipped to win an Oscar for playing the fictional 1950s heroine of Todd Haynes’s film Carol, but her next role could be one of the real life stars of the period: Lucille Ball.

The Australian actor is set to play the American TV sweetheart in a new biopic written by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing and The Social Network, reports the Wrap.

The film will cover Ball’s 20-year marriage to Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, who also played her husband in I Love Lucy, the first show of its kind to be filmed in front of a live audience.

Ball won four Emmys as a performer and went on to become one of Hollywood’s first female TV executives when she founded the studio Desilu, which produced the original Mission: Impossible and Star Trek series.

Blanchett is no stranger to biopics, winning her first Academy award for her turn as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator.

Audiences will next see her as journalist Mary Mapes in Truth, a newsroom drama about the controversial 2004 CBS report investigating George W Bush’s military service. Blanchett also recently completed films with directors Julian Rosefeldt and Terrence Malick.

The Lucille Ball project has the blessing of Ball and Arnaz’s children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr, who will produce the project with Escape Artists, the company behind the Jake Gyllenhaal drama Southpaw and The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington.

While there was no confirmation from either Blanchett or Sorkin’s camps about the film, Blanchett’s husband, theatre director Andrew Upton, confirmed to Guardian Australia “they have been talking about it for a while”.

“It’s a project that is dear to [Cate’s] heart and a great story to tell,” he said at a theatre event in Sydney on Thursday...

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TONY BENNETT AT 89

Tony Bennett, who has rarely missed an opportunity to celebrate the Great American Songbook, will release a new album in that vein this fall. “The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern” (RPM/Columbia), due out Sept. 25, will feature Mr. Bennett in close collaboration with Bill Charlap, a jazz pianist and diligent songbook steward.

The album will include 14 of the most canonical songs by Kern, who composed hundreds for the Broadway stage. On half of the album Mr. Bennett performs with Mr. Charlap’s longtime trio. Several tracks feature a piano duo, with Mr. Charlap and Renee Rosnes (who are also husband and wife).

And on a few tracks, including “The Way You Look Tonight,” Mr. Bennett and Mr. Charlap work as a duo, consciously evoking Mr. Bennett’s collaboration with Bill Evans, which yielded a pair of highly regarded albums in the 1970s. (This spring, Fantasy released “The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings,” a 4-LP boxed set, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their first release.)

Mr. Bennett, who turned 89 this month, has devoted just a handful of his many previous albums to the work of a single composer or songwriting team. His focus in recent years has been on high-profile collaborations: last fall he had a No. 1 album in “Cheek to Cheek” (Streamline/Columbia/Interscope), sharing the honor with Lady Gaga, with whom he also just finished a major tour. He hit No. 1 in 2011 with “Duets II,” which featured Lady Gaga among a glittery array of guests, including Amy Winehouse and Aretha Franklin.

“Cheek to Cheek” included the Jerome Kern tune “I Won’t Dance,” which Lady Gaga and Mr. Bennett turned into a coy stage routine...

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HEALTHWATCH: BURT REYNOLDS

Burt Reynolds rarely appears in public these days.

But the frail 79-year-old turned up at Wizard World Comic Con in Chicago on Saturday to promote his new biography, But Enough About Me.

It comes just three months after the iconic Hollywood tough guy shocked fans with his skinny, fragile appearance at WWCC in Philadelphia on May 9 when he talked about his book, due out on November 17.

Recounting a life in film, Burt has previously mentioned that the book will talk about the people he has worked with over the years, both good and bad.

'Setting the record straight is something that I have wanted to do for a while now, and with this book I will,' he said in a statement in July when publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons announced the book.

'This will be a project that will go into many areas I have never discussed.'

Burt Reynolds shocked fans recently when the once-strapping sex symbol made a rare public appearance, looking gaunt, frail, and using a cane.

The 79-year-old Hollywood legend appears to be facing a common problem among the elderly, which is the sudden loss of muscle mass and body weight. The condition often leads to difficulty walking and performing routine tasks. 

In Reynolds’ case, his thin appearance is a striking contrast to his public persona as a macho leading man. However, a top internist tells Newsmax Health, that frailty is not an inevitable fact of aging.

“Becoming thin and losing strength does happen, but I have patients in their 80s who look younger than some I have who are in their 50s,” says Michael Zimring, M.D., an internist at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., who has not treated Reynolds. “It all depends on the way they live.”

It may seem unlikely that a man such as Reynolds – so fit in his younger years that he played fullback for the Florida State football team – would end up so frail. But a string of serious health problems may have contributed to his weight loss. 

Back in the 1980s, when filming the movie City Heat, he was struck in the face with a metal chair, which broke his jaw and left him with a painful condition called temporo-mandibular joint dysfunction, or TMJ disorder. 

Unable to eat, he lost 30 pounds from his 5-foot-11 frame. Reynolds also became addicted to painkillers, a habit that took him several years to break. 

In 2009 he underwent back surgery and in 2010 he had a quintuple heart bypass. He reportedly had trouble eating following the heart operation, and again lost a large amount of weight, sparking rumors he had AIDS. He nearly died from a bout with the flu in early 2014...
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WORLD WAR II, THE US, AND CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD

Here is a great article I discovered to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. It is much better than anything I could ever write...

World War II, the US, and Classical Hollywood
by Charles Livingston

Wartime U.S.A. 1941-1945; the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor, Uncle Sam recruits his troops, and nonetheless, Hollywood manages to sustain its dominant prowess. Certainly Hollywood experiences its much anticipated, yet seemingly nominal setbacks at the box office (following the U.S.’s involvement in WWII), but by 1943, Hollywood is undoubtedly recognized as “the worlds cinema.” This is courtesy of Humphrey Bogart,Casablanca, and most of all: The Second World War.

The catastrophic destruction of Pearl Harbor ultimately led to the United States participation in the war. Our contribution to the Worlds War effort s inevitably led to the deaths of countless valiant American men. This also meant America would become unified by way of Immense Patriotism, and no media outlet of the era triggered a more severe emotional response than the cinema. While Pearl Harbor and the War loomed over seas, an abundant of proud yet weary Americans elected to visit the movies on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Several modes/ styles of cinema may have been accessible at the time, but no variation of film remained more paramount to Hollywood cinema (Post the U.S. joining the war) than the incessant method of Realism, Classical Hollywood’s proudest accomplishment.

Some of these films consisted of Casablanca, Once upon a Honeymoon, and The Best Years of Our Lives. A.O. Scott states, alluding to Casablanca, “The basic storyline would become the staple of wartime American Cinema.” All of these films would fervently communicate to, and connect American film viewers to the war that was physically distant, yet emotionally imbedded within them.

Another way, in which Hollywood managed to maintain its corporate dominance over any other media outlet, was due to the halt in production and mass distribution of the Television. The period between 1941 and 1945 could have very well witnessed the birth of TV; a legitimate form of competition meant to combat Hollywood and the studio system. Logically, resources during wartime should focus predominately on the war effort (Man power, materials, etc.), this proved to be one of the principal reasons behind Hollywood’s continued prominence during that specific period.

1946 proved to be Hollywood’s most successful year at the box office. This was not a coincidental occurrence by any stretch of the imagination. 1946 marked the end of World War II, therefore soldiers had come home from battle, the United Stated rejoiced as they recalled their countless military exploits, and families began to emerge. This also marked the era of the baby boomer (child born after World War II’s end). Americans were visiting their local cinema 5-6 time a week, sometimes merely a day off from the movies would seem foreign to the average American man and woman during 1946.

Hollywood has thrived throughout its vast existence, but no era is more indicative of its success than within the studio era, or most of all, throughout the four years before and four years following WWII. Weather it was the propaganda film, military drama, or gangster film, Americans seemed to visit the theaters not as a means of escape, but as a way of subconsciously connecting themselves with the realities of war...

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