BOOK REVIEW: BUNNY BERIGAN - ELUSIVE LEGEND OF SWING

Bunny Berigan was considered the best white trumpeter of swing era jazz, who died prematurely in 1942 at just 33 years-of-age. The factors leading to his demise were alcoholism and overwork (the endless grind of one-nighters), plus the added stress of a poor business sense that led to bankruptcy, as well as energy sapping extra-marital dalliances (most notoriously with singer Lee Wiley). This well-balanced, well-researched, and well-written bio covers his professional and personal lives fully, thanks to the cooperation of many of Bunny's relatives, friends, and musical colleagues. 

As a trumpeter, Berigan was a powerful technician and expressive soloist, always finishing in the top three in the polls of jazz fans during his heyday alongside Louis Armstrong and Harry James. Dupuis chronicles his rise and fall in objective detail with much care and feeling for his subject. Bunny Berigan was a tragic figure who inspires adulation among his fans decades after his death. I knew the background of Bunny Berigan's life as was familiar with his mega hit "I Can't Get Started". I knew he died tragically, but I was at best casually acquainted with Berigan's life before digging into this book. Nonetheless, I found Robert Dupuis's excellent biography a joy to read. Thoroughly researched and honest, the author manifests his love for Berigan's music without compromising his objectivity as a biographer.

When Dupuis was doing his research in the 80s, he still had access to many who knew and loved Berigan first-hand - Berigan's widow Donna, a sister-in-law, two daughters, locals who knew Berigan from his Fox Lake days, and a number of musicians who had worked with Berigan. He also drew on the extensive work of several other Berigan researchers, notably Bozy White and Tom Cullen. Dupuis presents a nuanced portrait of Berigan that praises his fabulous musicianship and bluntly describes the alcoholism that took his life, but also delves at length into his strengths and weaknesses as a family man, band-leader, and friend. In learning of Berigan's life, we also learn much about the lot of swing-era instrumentalists, their lives marked by frequent and often brutal travel, long hours on the bandstand and in the studio, and exploitative industry practices that apparently reached deep into the pockets of even a top-echelon talent like Berigan.

Bunny Berigan's life was a tragedy, but with excellent books like these, Berigan's life is retold. His music and genius will never be forgotten. I highly recommend this book...

MY RATING: 10 OUT OF 10

HEALTHWATCH UPDATE: TONY BENNETT

Tony Bennett's wife, Susan Benedetto, is opening up more about the singer's health condition.

Bennett's family first revealed that he lives with Alzheimer's disease back in February, and the 95-year-old music legend took the stage one last time in August, with back-to-back shows at New York's Radio City Music Hall alongside frequent collaborator Lady Gaga.

During Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper sat down with Bennett and Benedetto following his final stage appearance.

"He recognizes me, thank goodness, his children, you know we are blessed in a lot of ways," Benedetto told the journalist. "He's very sweet."

"He doesn't know he has it," she added, referring to his Alzheimer's.

Previously, Benedetto said that Bennett was unable to understand what the disease is.

During the 60 Minutes broadcast, Bennett performed a song with his pianist — recalling each word and note without sheet music or lyrics in front of him.

 "Well that was really one of the great honors I've ever had," Cooper, 54, said, thanking Bennett for the song.

"Tony likes to say he's in the business of making people feel good, and he still is," Benedetto commented, to which Bennett confirmed, "That's it."

Dr. Gaytari Devi, who diagnosed Bennett with the disease in 2017, said in the 60 Minutes interview that the star "knows he's Tony Bennett and he knows how to behave like Tony Bennett."

"That's an area of the brain that's just so an innately hardwired part of his brain," she told Cooper. "And it's also an area of his brain that gives them real meaning and purpose in his life, and it's imbued with emotion."

 

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MUSIC BREAK: BUDDY CLARK - SOMETHING TO REMEMBER YOU BY

Remembering Buddy Clark on the 72nd anniversary of his tragic death in a plane crash...  

THE NICHOLAS BROTHERS: THE FINAL YEARS

With the advent of television, the brothers were much in demand; they appeared on programs such as All-Star Revue in 1951, The Colgate Comedy Hour in 1952, The Hollywood Palace in 1964, and The Bell Telephone Hour in 1966. Beginning in 1965, the Nicholas Brothers worked frequently in Las Vegas, and they toured—often with Sammy Davis, Jr.—throughout the United States and Europe. Fayard appeared twice more on film, in The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970) and Night at the Golden Eagle (2002). Harold appeared in several more films, including Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Tap (1989).

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s the Nicholas Brothers traveled the world to receive awards and honours; among these were the Kennedy Center Honors (1991) for lifetime achievement. Together or individually, they appeared in a string of stage shows up until 1993. Together with Cholly Atkins, Henry LeTang, and Frankie Manning, Fayard won a Tony Award in 1989 for his choreography in the musical Black and Blue (performed 1989–91). In 1994 both brothers were honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Harold Nicholas,79, the younger of the Nicholas Brothers, a highflying tap-dancing duo who vaulted and dived together in some of the most spectacular routines captured on film, died July 3, 2000 at the New York Hospital in Manhattan after heart and leg surgery. Fayard Nicholas, the elder and more talkative of the astounding Nicholas Brothers tap duo, whom Mikhail Baryshnikov ranked among America's best dancers, died at the age of 91 in 2006.. Their 60-year career was marked by a devoted concern for each other, despite radically different temperaments.

The Nicholas Brothers had begun their careers at a time when opportunities were few and stereotyped roles the norm for black actors and entertainers. To their credit, however, the Nicholas Brothers rose above this marginalization and, with a sense of dignity and a style all their own, earned the respect of generations of tap dancers and audiences the world over.The Nicholas Brothers credited the vaudevillian acts they watched growing up while on tour with their musician parents for inspiring them to dance. As the story goes, Fayard taught himself to dance after observing the various acts on the road, then taught his little brother. Their choreographic brilliance and synchronicity has inspired generations of dancers, ranging from Fred Astaire to Gregory Hines to Savion Glover.

THE END

THE NICHOLAS BROTHERS: THE POPULAR YEARS

From 1930 to 1932 the Nicholas Brothers played in and around Philadelphia with great success. Their first big break came in 1932, when they were hired to play at Harlem’s famous Cotton Club alongside black show business legends such as the jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer Duke Ellington, the singer Ethel Waters, the bandleader and singer Cab Calloway, and the tap dancer Bill Robinson. The youngsters were an instant sensation. Impeccably attired, Harold and Fayard, now 11 and 18 years old (though billed as much younger), dazzled every audience that walked through the doors of the notorious gangster-run nightclub. They performed intermittently at the Cotton Club, in both its uptown and downtown locations, from 1932 until it closed in 1939.

The Nicholas Brothers were part of a small cadre of black dancers who appeared frequently in Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s. Their appearance in the short film Pie, Pie Blackbird (1932) led to a string of features in Hollywood motion pictures, including Kid Millions (1934), An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935), and The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935). Fayard and Harold spent their careers shifting between engagements in vaudeville, movies, nightclubs, concerts, Broadway, records, radio, television, and extensive worldwide tours. Because of their versatility—they could sing, act, and dance and thus were considered a “triple treat”—they headlined all over the world. Fayard Nicholas later said, “We did everything in show business except opera.” They made their Broadway debut in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 alongside stars such as the singer Fanny Brice, the comedian Bob Hope, the actress Eve Arden, and the dancer Josephine Baker. In 1937 the brothers so impressed the choreographer George Balanchine with their dancing that they were cast in his production of Rodgers and Hart’s musical Babes in Arms.

During the 1940s the Nicholas Brothers continued to appear in films, including Down Argentine Way (1940), Tin Pan Alley (1940), and Sun Valley Serenade (1941). Because of the racial prejudice characteristic of the era, black performers never held major roles in mainstream feature films, and—unlike such tap dancers as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly—the Nicholas Brothers did not have the opportunity to try out their acting skills. Instead of leading men, they were presented as a specialty act. Unlike other black performers, however, they rarely donned service uniforms; they usually appeared in formal tie and tails or well-cut suits. Despite these racial restrictions, the brothers’ brief but noteworthy film appearances brought them worldwide celebrity and gave them star billing wherever they traveled. In only one film—The Pirate (1948), starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland—did they have roles apart from dancing.

The crowning achievement of their work was preserved in the film Stormy Weather (1943), which had an all-black cast. In it the brothers, suited magnificently in white tie and tails, dance on, over, and around the Cab Calloway Orchestra bandstands, dance side-by-side up a flight of stairs, leap onto a piano where they trade syncopated notes with the pianist, jump out onto the floor in full splits, dance up a divided stairway built of gigantic white stairs, meet at the top to exchange a few thrilling moves, and then leap into splits and slide down separate ramps, meeting once again on the dance floor to finish this dazzling routine with a crisp bow.

In the early 1940s they performed with Cab Calloway in the musical variety show The Cotton Club Revue. They had starring roles on Broadway in the musical St. Louis Woman (1946), with music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and book by Arna Bontemps and Countee Cullen; also featured were Pearl Bailey, Rex Ingram, and Ruby Hill. In 1948 they headlined the indoor circus extravaganza Cirque Medrano in Paris. The following year they appeared in a Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium for the king and queen of England...

TO BE CONTINUED...

RIP: JANE POWELL

LOS ANGELES -- Jane Powell, the bright-eyed, operatic-voiced star of Hollywood's golden age musicals who sang with Howard Keel in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and danced with Fred Astaire in “Royal Wedding,” has died. She was 92.

Powell died Thursday at her Wilton, Connecticut, home, longtime friend Susan Granger said. Granger said Powell died of natural causes.

“Jane was the most wonderful friend," Granger said. ”She was candid, she was honest. You never asked Jane a question you didn’t want an absolutely honest answer to."

Granger was a youngster when she met the then-teenaged Powell, who was making her film debut in 1944's “Song of the Open Road,” directed by Granger's father, S. Sylvan Simon.

She performed virtually her whole life, starting about age 5 as a singing prodigy on radio in Portland, Oregon. On screen, she quickly graduated from teen roles to the lavish musical productions that were a 20th-century Hollywood staple.

Her 1950 casting in “Royal Wedding” came by default. June Allyson was first announced as Astaire’s co-star but withdrew when she became pregnant. Judy Garland was cast, but was withdrawn because of personal problems. Jane Powell was next in line.

“They had to give it to me,” she quipped at the time. “Everybody else is pregnant.” Also among the expectant MGM stars: Lana Turner, Esther Williams, Cyd Charisse and Jean Hagen.

Powell had just turned 21 when she got the role; Astaire was 50. She was nervous because she lacked dancing experience, but she found him “very patient and understanding. We got along fine from the start.”

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” proved to be a 1954 “sleeper” hit.

“The studio didn’t think it was going to do anything,” she recalled in 2000. “MGM thought that `Brigadoon’ was going to be the big moneymaker that year. It didn’t turn out that way. We were the ones that went to the Radio City Music Hall, which was always such a coup.”

The famed New York venue was a movie theater then.

Audiences were overwhelmed by the lusty singing of Keel and Powell and especially by the gymnastic choreography of Michael Kidd. “Seven Brides” achieved classic status and resulted in a TV series and a Broadway musical.

“Blonde and small and pretty, Jane Powell had the required amount of grit and spunk that was needed to play the woman who could tame seven backwoodsmen,” John Kobal wrote in his book “Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals.”

After 13 years at MGM, though, Powell quit the studio, reasoning that she was going to be fired “because they weren’t going to be doing musicals anymore.”

“I thought I’d have a lot of studios to go to,” she said in 2000, “but I didn’t have any, because no one wanted to make musicals. It was very difficult, and quite a shock to me. There’s nothing worse than not being wanted.”

She found one musical at RKO, “The Girl Most Likely,” a 1958 remake of “Tom, Dick and Harry.” Aside from a couple of minor films, her movie career was over.

She was born Suzanne Lorraine Burce in Portland, Oregon, in 1928. She began singing on local radio as a small child, and as she grew, her voice developed into a clear, high-pitched soprano.

When the Burce family planned a trip to Los Angeles, the radio station asked if Suzanne would appear on a network talent show there. The tiny girl with a 2½-octave voice drew thunderous applause with an aria from “Carmen” and was quickly put under contract to MGM.

Her first movie was a loanout to an independent producer for “Song of the Open Road,” a 1944 mishmash with W.C. Fields (at the end of his career) and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

The character’s name in “Song of the Open Road” was Jane Powell, and MGM decided that that would be her movie name.

She played teens in such films as “Holiday in Mexico,” “Three Daring Daughters” and “A Date With Judy.” But she pleaded with the studio bosses to be given grown-up roles and finally succeeded in “Royal Wedding.”

Frothy romances and musicals continued to dominate her career, including “Young, Rich and Pretty,” “Small Town Girl” and “Three Sailors and a Girl.”

After her movie career ended, musical theater offered plenty of work for a star of her prominence and talent. She sang in supper clubs, toured in such shows as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” and “I Do! I Do!” and replaced Debbie Reynolds in the Broadway run of “Irene.”

She frequently appeared on television, notably in the Judy Garland role in a new version of “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

As she approached her 70s, Powell abandoned her singing career. “I can’t hit the high notes, and I won’t be second-rate,” she explained in 2000. She switched to drama, appearing in New York theater in such plays as “Avow,” portraying mother of an unmarried, pregnant daughter and a son who wanted to marry his male partner.

Powell’s first four marriages ended in divorce: to Geary Steffen (son Geary, daughter Suzanne), Patrick Nerney (daughter Lindsay), James Fitzgerald and David Parlour.

Powell met fifth husband Dick Moore when he interviewed her for his book about child actors. As Dickie Moore, he had been a well-known child actor in the 1930s and ’40s and gave Shirley Temple her first screen kiss in “Miss Annie Rooney” (1942). Moore, head of a New York public relations office, and Powell married in 1988. He died in 2015.

Jane Powell's survivors include her three children...

THE REBRANDING OF TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES

Turner Classic Movies is one of the only 24-hour curated film channels available today. Its celebration of movies from the past could easily make it obsolete and stagnant. However, in the past few years, the cable network and its brand have taken leaps and strides in introducing new and modern ways to view old films. The rebrand that TCM announced at the beginning of September may look purely aesthetic, but it hints at more progressive programming that will serve new viewers — and the old films — better than ever.

In 1994, TCM began broadcasting films from the Turner Entertainment vault, which includes Warner Bros., MGM, and RKO Pictures. The cable network offered commercial-free programming along with host-delivered intros, which has not changed in more than 20 years. Even when AMC (American Movie Classics) abandoned this similar model to show contemporary releases, TCM remained the one place for classic films without commercials or edits to the original films. For many, the channel has been as much of a source of education as it has been of entertainment.

However, media consumption has changed rapidly in the past 10 years. Cable television viewership among younger audiences has become a rarity thanks to streaming services that offer everything possible without much curation. TCM made an effort to respond to this need by partnering with Criterion for the beloved but short-lived streaming service Filmstruck. TCM now has a sizable and diverse catalog on HBO Max. But many of their films lack the hosted introductions that make the brand unique. Fortunately, those intros are available through TCM’s on-demand option, Watch TCM.

The new “brand refresh” follows Warner Media’s dissolution of Turner Broadcasting System, leaving the future of TCM up in the air. However, it also follows many successful efforts to modernize TCM programming in the past few years.

Balancing an interest in the past with updated perspectives is not always easy, but the channel has found a way to further incorporate contextualizing old content with incredibly knowledgeable hosts such as Jacqueline Stewart and Alicia Malone. Their programs, “Silent Sunday Nights” and “TCM Imports,” have brought in films from varying perspectives, places, and time periods, allowing a stretch beyond the typical “classic” canon.

Last year, the “Women Make Film” program was a multi-week series of documentaries and films made by women from around the world. There has been a very clear effort to include more people of color in regular programming, as well, like with Star of the Month, which is currently highlighting Paul Robeson for the first time.

This kind of evolution not only attracts younger or previously uninterested viewers, but it also challenges long-time fans as well. There can be quite a push by a large portion of TCM viewers to exclusively play the hits. While showing Singin’ in the Rain at least four times a year ensures that there are ample times for someone to experience it for the first or fiftieth time, showing “new” movies is what keeps viewers tuning in again and again.

Having the tough conversations about rampant racism in Hollywood, the queer-coded characters of early American film, and the stars whom people have forgotten about challenges the nostalgia that can keep many people away from classic movies. That nostalgia is also challenged when we connect themes and attitudes from the past to today, which can uncover systemic problems within America that many people choose to ignore or believe have faded in time. Overall, recent efforts from TCM have set out to make more well-rounded and critical audiences, which feels so rare in media today.

It would be foolish not to recognize the power of marketing and branding as a way of showing off this work to modernize the brand while continuing its original goal, showing classic films. The TCM team, along with Sibling Rivalry, came up with a sleeker and easily malleable look for the logo and graphics associated with the new and improved TCM. These aesthetics look similar to many film festival graphics, like those of the New York Film Festival and Sundance. These festivals are associated with the future of film, which the TCM rebrand seems to be going for as well.

Inspired by shades found in Technicolor films and modern color movies, the palette for the branding is bright and colorful. This is a direct antithesis to what people think of when they think of old movies. “We want classic films to live,” says Dexter Fedor, Vice-President, Brand Creative & Marketing.

With the new tagline for TCM, “Where then meets now,” this desire is clear. The imagery alone would be bland. But it becomes a pedestal that stills and clips from TCM movies can stand on and stand out. Old films are still alive in the conversations we have about them and their influence on modern movies.

The TCM logo now focuses on the “C,” which has many different forms depending on its use. The “C” now embodies the core of what TCM will continue to focus on in the future: curation, context, connection, culture, and of course, classics. These aspects have been a part of TCM all along, so what people love about the channel is not changing. There is just a larger emphasis on what will keep TCM growing and evolving with generations to come.

Branding and aesthetics feel like a secondary thought to people focused on the movies that TCM provides. But it is a sign of efforts being made to grow TCM and keep it from being a casualty of streaming services. There is so much value in recontextualizing films of the past. We can learn as much about ourselves as we can about history and art. That can only be appreciated and influential if TCM can reach a wide audience. Here’s to hoping this attractive refresh will do just that...

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