Lana Turner is a bit of an odd duck with me. Not having lived back then I don’t know what was really going on, only what I read and perceive from her work. Hollywood being of zero intelligence and no creativity, pigeonholed Lana like they did so many others (Esther Williams: She swims! Judy Garland! She has to sing! Ginger Rogers dances! Bette Davis plays crazy old bats!) Hollywood knows nothing else. That’s why there is a law in Hollywood that allows them to only make remakes. If they make something new they have to pay a fine.
Hollywood’s perception of Lana was that she could only play oversexed bimbos. When her parents moved to San Francisco her parents separated and she was placed in the foster care system. Meaning we pay adults to abuse these children in their care. Hollywood just continued the abuse. They nicknamed her “the sweater girl“. Married 8 times. Her 14 year old daughter stabs to death her mom’s abusive gangster boyfriend. She was a wild ride.
I knew nothing about all this until recently. I had a hard time remembering her name. The only reason she came on my radar at all was that I saw “The Postman Always Rings Twice” was coming on TCM and I had always wanted to see it. I had really come to appreciate John Garfield. As far as Lana Turner having sex appeal? Not for me. Nothing. She’s beautiful, but she certainly didn’t bring any heat. But that’s like a lot of what Hollywood tries to force on you; Joan Crawford, a young Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and on and on.
The other noteworthy work of hers from my perspective was Peyton Place (1957). Visually it was a stunning work. The people, the locations, the clothes. It was part of Hollywood’s period where they were a little ham-handed trying to take down mainstream American society. They wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t okay to be white. That traditional American culture was responsible for all the world’s problems. It wasn’t just me that liked that one, she received an Oscar nomination for it.
And none of this wasn’t to say old Hollywood couldn’t take a stunning photo. But that’s all they were, visual pageantry. Thus Lana was useful to them for awhile.
Gunsmoke closing credits, one of the most moving theme songs of all time
I had given up some weeks ago from trying to watch Barnaby Jones or Canon in the mornings on MeTV KCCI channel 8.2 in Des Moines. But in order to have a post on a factual basis I had to put a stopwatch to it. First I looked up how long each episode was that they put in a 1 hour time slot in the 70s. Turns out the shows were 51 minutes long back then (amazingly the Andy Griffith type half hour show in the 60s was an unbelievably 26 minutes long). So when I put a stopwatch to it I found out they had now taken 15 minutes from Barnaby Jones, 6 minutes more than as originally shown. It wouldn’t even be so bad if they kept interruptions to a quarter, half and top of the hour. 4 big breaks instead of 7 little ones. Or if they just did commercials, instead of these mind numbing station promos.
But what were those missing 6 minutes? We’ll never know. I notice on other channels they cheat by not showing the closing credits. They roll them at the bottom in real tiny print then as soon as the show is over they go to the next ones, skipping the closing theme song and the readable credits. When I saw them do that on Gunsmoke (pictured above) and the Virginian, two really good theme songs, I realized what was happening. The 45 seconds or so it took to do the credits originally, with the moving theme song, allowed you to ruminate for a minute and let you process what you had just watched. Now its just boom and gone! With no time for reflection. I do hope people wake up eventually and see what’s going on.
The TV stations by how they broadcast a show, are saying just what they think of you.
[As another example 11/15 on MeTV, they just cutout the, “Goodnight John Boy!” at the end of the Waltons! Who does that? How is a TV station that dumb? 8.2 isn’t the only time thief in the Des Moines area, 13.3 is too. Partridge Family, originally a 25 minute show, is now down to 20 minutes at the WHO-TV affiliate. 5 minutes just gone! You’d think “artists” would be pissed about being hacked and butchered. Its no different than taking a razor blade cutting off 20% of an oil painting. How would that look? Taking an arm off a statue.]
(Watching 1 primetime network show last night, Young Sheldon, has revealed how bad that market has become! These are first run shows! Up to and including the season premiere 2 weeks ago. Their commercials were: 3+6+4=13 They are almost at half commercials!13 minutes! Of a half hour show, its unbelievable. No credits, they are shrunken speed credits. There’s no where to go. What are they going to do next year? Go 15 and 15? Oh! Oh! I know! They’ll split screen it, run the show on half a screen and run commercials on the other.)
Watching this morning, there is literally nothing to watch. I finally ended up on 13.2, the constant local weather loop where they also announce birthdays. TCM is showing one of Glenn Ford’s horribly bad gritty urban youth dramas. The channels with the old fart shows I refuse to watch. The Weather Channel is doing one of their reality shows with obnoxious music. And the rest of the entire Mediacom Cable System is completely worthless.
“1-Adam 12! A 415 fight group with chains and knives!” That’s what I’m talking, one of the best shows made period. So I pulled out my Season One DVD set. The episodes are 24 1/2 minutes long. Tomorrow I’ll put a stopwatch to the hack job KCCI MeTV 8.2 does to them. After putting a stopwatch to it, my calculations is they have a total of 7 minutes of commercials and promos in the half hour show. Amazingly, that’s only a minute and a half more than as originally shown. Evidently where they do their worst, is as I originally said, in the wee hours. But once again it comes down to one basic fact. We wouldn’t have to miss 1 second of the show, if they just cut out some of the station promos.
Then on AMC they just had the ending of Vacation. The movie has that great version of Holiday Road, for the closing credits, but not on TV. Its actually a large part of the movie as it invokes wonderful nostalgia with the viewer. None of it, all gone. No credits.
I had the occasion to see Mother Teresa: In the Name of God’s Poor last night. Just in reading a review of it on IMDB made me realize the volumes I don’t know about her. Interestingly it was released the year she died 1997 (born 1910, Albania). Geraldine Chapman portrayed her in this version. 90 minutes is a little slim to cover someone who changed the world (or at least a large portion of it). Protestants always like to charge that “she didn’t get to the root causes of the poverty“. Well that’s kind of obvious isn’t it? The Indian government, Hinduism and Islam. Mystery solved! Those are the 3 ingredients of that recipe.
Sister Teresa was going along all nice and sheltered in her Order in 1946 India teaching geography in a girls school for India’s well-to-do. Riots have interrupted food deliveries and the Sister ventures outside the walls to obtain food for “200 hungry girls”. So starts a journey led by God where she sees a crying need going unaddressed. She has to fight the Archbishop, she has to fight the government, she has to get past the anger and resentment of the people themselves. But the bottom line is this 36 year old nun got something started.
She has 1 year to show what she can do. Working with no resources, she begins. And miracle of miracles she get’s it going and is allowed to start her own Order devoted to the poor. Ironically, 1947 is also the year the United Nations got going. She takes 5 loaves and 3 fishes and feeds millions. They take in billions and do nothing. See the difference? To this day its private charities working on the microloans, providing water, food, livestock to raise, clothing. And the United Nations does what?
Little by little the successes start to build, and by 1962 the world is really starting to take notice. During that time one of the most glaring examples of death by bureaucrat is when she tries to turn this vacant building into a hospital. A building literally doing nothing and they don’t want to give it to her! 30 years go by and she wins the Nobel Prize (she asks that the extravagant awards night banquet be cancelled and the money given to the poor).
The purpose of this post isn’t to be a biography on Mother Teresa. It isn’t to be a review of the movie. Its to try and get past something I don’t have a word for. I see it all the time in many areas of life. Its this “can’t do” attitude. Its this “it will never work” mindset. 1 woman did a lot to change the world. No PHD in Do-good-ery, no billion dollar budgets, just a willingness to give it a shot. The attitude of “we’ll try this, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else”. People, before something new is tried, always seem to expect exactitude. Why? Its new territory, it hasn’t been done before. Roll with it. Something is better than nothing.
That’s my point. Doing nothing will certainly fail, try something. As simple as that sounds, it is a major roadblock with people and bureaucrats everywhere. If its not done their way they take their ball and go home. They get in a snit about this or that. “You wouldn’t listen to me!” Or a myriad of other excuses not to get off your ass and do something! Being a man of action I never have understood human ‘anchors’. Those people who will fight extremely hard to do nothing. Its just a mindset I can’t understand.
I remember walking by the river down in Des Moines last year at the end of November. I came upon the tents of 2 homeless people. Its 28 degrees and getting ready to snow. A rather desperate situation. I go to the Hy-Vee 4 blocks away and get 2 – $25 gift certificates. I walk up to the tent where some noise has come from. I say, “Hello in there!” I hear a response. I say, “I got a couple of Hy-Vee cards for you and your neighbor.” He tells me she’s gone at the moment. I say, “Well, can you be sure she gets it?” He assures me he will and a hand comes out of the tent to take the 2 cards. A hand with a nasty sore that’s been there awhile.
“He’s going to keep both cards!” He might. “He’s going to use them to buy booze!” He might. But its a shot. There’s no perfect solutions to people living down by the Des Moines River or in the slums of Calcutta. Life don’t work that way. Teach them to fish after you’ve stopped the hunger. After you’ve stopped the bleeding. Then take ’em fishing. Get ’em a pole, a tacklebox, maybe a couple of lures. Can’t fish without a pole.
[Yeah, yeah I know. There’s a few million other aspects to her, to poverty, to the human existence, to sainthood, to Catholicism, to whatever it is you want to bitch about. But have you taken a small bag of groceries to a foodbank this month? There is a program in Ames called Food at First. They provide meals to the indigent. It seems that they have lost focus. It has come to be about recycling food, and not about feeding the poor. An interesting fact I learned about India a few years ago, where malnourishment is rampant, is the incredible amount of grain they lose in warehouses because they refuse to kill rats. Even a lot of liberal sources have admitted for more than 20 years, starvation is not for lack of food. Governments use food as a weapon, a means of control.]
Americans have no idea what they’ve missed, being dependent on Hollywood for their movies as it were. Being of limited experience I hadn’t realized it myself until 8 or 9 years ago with, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Hollywood of course had to keep the Danish version out of America so they could remake their own version to scoop up all the profits. Sure they ruined the movie, but by doing so they were able to release their own clothing line! It was all about merchandising!
Shortly thereafter I discovered film festivals. Where a sixteen year old with a Sony Handycam could generally be counted on to come up with something more interesting than Hollywood and a $23 million dollar budget. I was watching a really fun little movie last Saturday morning from 1932 that I thought was original, it was a remake from 1920! That’s all the last few years have been. So this morning I happen upon Un Carnet de Bal. A French film of course where a just widowed Christine takes the death of her husband to examine her own life. No children, just a haunting dream of a ball from 20 years ago and of the men who were on the dance card of her coming out party.
Having nothing to tie her down now, she decides to travel to look up the men from that night to see what has become of them. Some have died. Some have found their dreams. Many have not. Just fascinating vignettes as we drop in to observe lives that have been in motion the entire time, we just weren’t there to see them. Each sphere orbiting its own little world. Christine drops in for a moment of time and then moves on to the next on the list of 20 men. Simple men, complex men, good-hearted men, bad men.
Immediately below Christine on the upper left of the picture was my favorite encounter, the one with Alain Regnault (portrayed by an incredible actor named Harry Baur). The scene embodies everything lacking in American film. The understated nature. The focus on human emotions and not car chases and shootouts. Alain is now a Monk who leads a boys choir for at risk youth. His one true love having spurned him decades before. Now he tries to teach these boys the morals missing from today’s childhoods. The idea that the soul of a youth was to be nurtured and strengthened. Not coddled and ignored.
This movie from 1937 was in such contrast to American movies of the time. They seemed to be all about talking fast, drinking a lot and zinging one-liners (think William Powell, Myrna Loy, Clark Gable, Rosalind Russell). European films of the time weren’t stuck in a time warp so to speak. The people talked and acted like they do today, they just happened to be in black and white. Its never been so stark a difference as in their silent films. Watch a French, German, Danish, Italian, Norwegian, Japanese or Indian silent film and compare it to an American film.
Its like 10 year old’s with bad taste made the American films. The exaggerated body motions, ridiculous facial expressions. Everything was slapstick. So much of American film then seemed to be about spectacular train wrecks, impossible car chases, and death defying physical stunts. Lacking was any subtlety or nuance, all they had was a hammer and everything else was a nail. The overall impression I have of Hollywood film through the decades was their condescension for the American audience, or their complete lack of ability.
Hiding from life in the mountains
The monk thinking of a one-time love
The monk seeing if the boy who broke the lamp will come forward
The civil servant on his wedding day, marrying his maid
Gabrielle Fontan, Françoise Rosay, Marie Bell (the mother, center, unable to accept her sons death)
Troy Davis has always been a favorite of mine. 5′ 8″ of grit. Ignored in his first season by outgoing Iowa State coach Jim Walden. I always wanted to ask Walden, “What were you thinking exactly?” (answer below, good for you Walden) On the highlight reel below Troy was finally put in to return a kickoff in the final game of the season, which he ran back a hundred yards for a TD. My favorite ISU coach, Dan McCarney, saw just a little bit more in Troy. 2,000 yards – twice. Nobody does that! Because he was on a low-profile team, he missed the Heisman and many other awards.
Coming out of Miami Southridge High School where they grow football players like we grow dandelions. That competition made him one heck of a player. Came to ISU for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. One year under Walden, two under McCarney, forgo his senior season. Drafted by the Saints. Ended up with the Edmonton Eskimos. But that gives you no idea what type of player he was.
His physical toughness is beyond comprehension. He was ISU’s offense for 2 years. I remember a cold November game against Kansas State. He hits the right side of the line, a pile of players surround him, he comes out the other side and runs 48 yards for a touchdown! He was inhuman. The mental toughness. Always the underdog at 5′ 8″. The only thing bigger than his thighs was his heart!
“If we didn’t do it the way we did it he never would have survived academically at Iowa State University,” Walden said. (Thanks Mr. Walden!)
She went into modeling after failing her audition at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She was told she was “Too fat and too ugly!“
Is one of the most respected British actresses despite the fact she has had no acting training.
Cuts and dyes her own hair.
An aspiring actress, she first came to fame as a model in London’s swinging 1960s, where she was photographed by the greats, including her friend, the late Patrick Lichfield. She became one of the top ten most-booked models of the 1960s.
Lumley’s breakthrough role was as Purdey in The New Avengers (1976), a role for which over 800 girls auditioned. Purdey propelled Lumley to instant fame and created one of the “must-have” hairstyles of the 1970s — the Purdey bob. Lumley became a pin-up figure for a generation of British males who grew up watching her as the high-kicking action girl.
English actress Joanna Lumley, 16th January 1986. (Photo by Michael Ward/Getty Images)
Joanna Lumley, 24, who has been given a leading role in The Breaking of Bumbo opposite Richard Warwick.
Pa News Photo 20/7/75 Joanna Lumley at a Photocall for her New Role as Elaine Perkins, New Girl in the Life of Ken Barlow for the ITV Soap “coronation Street” in Manchester
For me, Joanna Lumley checked a lot of boxes. 6′ 1″ (okay 5′ 8″) of leggy blonde. British accent. Beautiful face. Photographed by the best. Funnier then hell. Could be a very nice person, even if a flaming liberal. Photography 50 years ago was just better. Stunning photos. My favorite episode of hers from Absolutely Fabulouswas when she overdid the self-injections of Botox and her face went numb. And I completely forgot! What brought her to mind was I was watching an old movie on TCM, ‘The Satanic Rites of Dracula‘ (1973), when they had one of their spooky satanic rite scenes. It involved this scrumptious looking blonde lying on a slab buck naked while the evil coven leaders did their spells and incantation thing. I thought, “Is that Joanna Lumley?” It was!
1973’s ‘The Exorcist’ – Linda Blair (R), Ellen Burstyn
Broadcast radio and television have 2 major flaws: most of their programming is substandard, but when they do run old shows they ruin it with excessive commercials. There is such a dearth of quality shows. So the other morning when I happen to catch The Exorcist on AMC, I watch it (who doesn’t like a good demon possession movie?). As I have taken to doing lately I check to see what the length of the movie is compared to how long of a timeslot they put it in. In this case the movie is 122 minutes long in a 165 minutes time slot. I think, okay, 2 hour movie with 45 minutes of commercials. That’s fair. Not great, but fair. But then I recently found out you can’t just go by those 2 numbers.
They start commercials early and comeback late. They completely eliminate the credits and run station promos over the top. So to satisfy my curiosity I put a timer to it. Very interesting. It started out great, 14 minutes of movie and 5 minutes of commercials. I can live with that. Then as the movie wore on it got worse and worse. By the end they were showing 7 minutes of movie and 5 minutes of commercials! That’s bullshit. When I did the tally they had taken off 12 minutes of the movie, and had a total of 57 minutes of commercial. And of course the people who made the movie, never got their credit at the end. Its maddening!
Radio does the same thing. These 2 Bozos in the morning, ‘Redeye Radio’ run 16 minutes of show in a half hour (15+1), and 14 minutes of news and commercial. That’s basically representative of all talk radio. What this says to me is they don’t think much of their customers. Their contempt is so great I’m waiting for them to go ‘overweight’ on commercials (more commercials in an hour than show). They’re close now. Rush has done it in the last year. He’s taken to reading these ‘live’ commercials in the middle of a broadcast period. Sean Hannity may have done it too. The reason they can get away with it is there is basically no competition, they’re all bad!
Radio was destroyed some years back when indie’s were forced out and they were all swallowed up by 1 mega-corporation. The first one I knew of was Clear Channel. They were bought out by iHeart Radio. Steel sharpens steel, and when there is no competition they get fat and lazy. And that they have. The same thing can be seen in television. In the old days there was a respectable amount of local programming. A way for the local affiliate to standout, make a name for themselves. That’s all gone. Now its network or nothing. They whole country sees the same crap. Homogenization. Their own programming tells them nothing.
The explosion in ‘retro’ channels isn’t telling them anything. No one’s buying into their new crap. But they’re not listening. What I’m really waiting for is to see if the consumers ever wake up to the fact they are being spit on by the broadcasters? Primetime network television (at least the 3 majors) isn’t quite as bad as radio yet, but they’re working on it. And the “off” channels, the AMC, USA and others are already there. Its a wasteland. You just never know when people are going to wake up, or not. The sliver of good shows, whether radio or TV, cannot be more than 10% of the total, then they ruin that!
[On a side note I find it interesting how The Exorcist really grew on me in its nearly 50 year existence. I looked up and found out it was mostly filmed at Georgetown University in DC. Simply beautiful exteriors with the beautiful fall they had that year. The ominous foreboding of the score. Linda Blair. A quality performance by Ellen Burstyn and Lee J. Cobb. But the one that has really grown on me is Jason Miller’s portrayal of Father Karras. Without him I don’t think the movie becomes the classic it has. He went between writing and acting during his career and died at the way too young age of 62. IMDB cast listing is so crazy. He is listed 6th, and Linda Blair is listed 7th! It doesn’t seem to be alphabetical, it doesn’t seem to be by screen time, it doesn’t seem to be by anything!]
From Calgary, Canada comes the quintessential American artist Ryan Sardachuk. He refers to himself as ‘the world’s youngest old man’. That would be because of his penchant for 60s & 70s American muscle cars (even though he looks to be just 35 or so himself). His niche is “automotive illustrator”. Okay so this is my type of art. I self-identity as a heterosexual redneck. A lot of that queer New York stuff is okay but its really not me. What is it they call comic books? Graphic novels? That’s me.
As seen below from the years she lived, according to Art in America, she was the quintessential Victorian era snob. As the article about her said: “socially and emotionally the prim Philadelphia spinster of her generation.” Her father validated it! As could be guessed from the examples of her work below, her interests were women and children. She was friends with Degas, even if their personalities were complete opposites.
Born: Mary Stevenson Cassatt, May 22, 1844, Allegheny City, PA. Died: June 14, 1926
What an interesting time to be alive; Born: May 14, 1932, Kewanee, Illinois. Someone he is compared to, Edward Hopper, I would imagine he met. Both of them living at the time in the New York area. Even though Hopper was 50 years older, there was 15 or so years of overlap. Estes probably concentrated more on the urban street scenes. He was also considered a founder of the technique known as ‘photo realism’. And while sometimes it takes a moment to realize, his works are indeed paintings. They are not photographs. On a 10 scale as to how he fits with my tastes, I’d give him an 8.
Iowa life 