GONE GIRL?

 The headline popped up the other day like a slice of pumpernickel in a toaster set to "Burn": 

What, me worry?

Gee, who could have seen this coming? Oh, I know: people with a functioning
brainstem! They had zero surprise that the ratings for Weiss' cathode-ray whipping boy 60 Minutes would drop to some of their lowest ratings points in the last quarter-century.

OK, so this man-the-lifeboats talk is strictly off-the-record speculation. The kind, however, that often comes from straight from the horse's mouth -- or, in the case of CBS owner David Ellison's case, horse's ass. 

Larry and David Ellison. Why is it that billionaires
insist on having such punchable faces?

But what isn't speculation is Ellison -- who, with dad Larry resembles father-and-son villains in the Batman franchise -- is taking no chances with his other sandbox toy, CNN, keeping its current CEO Mark Thompson in the driver's seat. You can bet your Skydance stock that the "source" who gave that info to the New York Post is on the Ellison payroll.

For a Columbia grad, it's remarkable that Bari Weiss doesn't have the sense God gave geese. I mean, she really thought that firing the talent who gave 60 Minutes its legendary cachet (and ratings) would attract new viewers rather than alienate those it already had. The viewers she was pandering to have been trained not to trust any news-related program that isn't connected to Fox.

I bet she skipped class when Marie Antoinette's
fate was discussed.

I don't know what Weiss was doing in those History classes she majored in. Two-bit bloggers like me (who, in truth, is a one-bit blogger) could see that Ellison hired her to do his bidding while making it look like she was calling the shots. 

If it worked, he would be right there taking the bows with Bari. And if it backfired, she would walk the CBS plank with a golden parachute to safely land back at The Free Press. Because no self-respecting TV network (if any still exist) would hire her afterwards. Not even Fox. No way would their now anti-Israel viewers put up with a self-described "Zionist fanatic" who was also a lesbian married to another woman. And they're both New Yorkers!

Weiss herself seems to be sensing this already. The Post reports, "A CBS insider said Weiss 'seemed subdued' and was going through the motions and 'being overly nice and encouraging' at the 9 am editorial meeting on Thursday." 

Too late with the Ms. Nice Guy act, Bari. To paraphrase a warning your college pals learned in Literature class: Never send for whom the 60 Minutes stopwatch ticks. It ticks for your time left at CBS.

BTW (as the kids text), the use of "pumpernickel" in the first paragraph was no accident. The word translates to "devil's fart."

                                                             #########

FLUNKING OUT OF INFLUENCER CLASS

 

Scotland. Just don't ask me where, it all
looks the same to me.

Last week, my wife, daughter, and I returned from a driving journey around Scotland. The country is as beautiful as the travel videos promise, even as the clouds in the Highlands tend to hide the top of whatever landscape you're looking at. (As with the US, the southern part of Scotland was warm and sunny.)

You like mountains? Hoo boy, have they got mountains! Like, the way New York has pigeon droppings. (I'm comparing the amount, by the way.) You get a kick out of sheep? There seem to be towns that have more ovis than homosapiens. And the food! Everything I'm not supposed to eat they serve in abundance. I loved it, even if my upcoming bloodwork lands me on my hematologist's "bad patient" list. 

If you're in the mood for a
Highland fling.

And yet with all things Scottish surrounding me, what did I make time for? Looking at my credit card app.  Restaurants, hotels, my Highland cow underwear briefs -- the sun never set on a day when my card wasn't paid off, clean and clear.

This isn't my usual routine. When I'm in the safe confines of home, I pay off cards only once a week. If you think even that's a bit much, I'll have you know our money manager does the same thing. 

All this influences me to do is congratulate
myself for making coffee at home.

What do he and I have in common? We're old, unlike the 24% of Gen Zers who "experience intense pressure to display material wealth on social media", according to a recent piece published on The Hill. This "material wealth" ranges from overpriced lattes with flower-shaped foam to first-class airline seats paid for over time, either with 20% APR or an interest-free, four-month installment plan. I remember reading one Gen Zer breathlessly explaining the latter as "essentially getting it for free!" Not when you get hit with a charge on the 17th of every month, it isn't.

I've seen these "influencers" around New York. They're always young women who appear to have spent an hour applying make-up before leaving the house and wearing expensive duds they put on the four-month payment plan, while taking selfies with their phones held high, often with their lips puckered like those of Daisy Duck.

My 30-year-old daughter doesn't fall into this category. A few weeks ago, she was able to move from her three-bedroom apartment she shared with two friends to an affordable Brooklyn studio apartment all by herself, while working one full-time and one part-time job, paying off her college loan, and tithing to her savings account every payday.  Ask her if she thinks dropping seven bucks every day on a latte is a wise way to live. 

You had me at "Bonjour". 

As for me, I've had a Blu-ray (pictured on the left) in my Amazon cart for a few days. The only reason I'm even considering buying it is that my wife enjoys French movies. And if I have to watch a French movie with her, it might as well be on the old side. 

But it's non-essential. It waits in my cart until the time I pull the trigger -- which might not ever happen, even though it costs less than three lattes. Ergo, I don't appear to be in the influencer class. 

Pity, then, you'll never see me modeling my Highland cow briefs. Pity my wife will.

                                                         **************

THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 74

 Anti-communism! Pro-New Deal! Capitalism! Civil Rights! The entirety of the 20th century in three movies and one TV show. 

FORGOTTEN COMMANDMENTS (1932): The amount of hypocrisy that went into the making of Forgotten Commandments is equal only to its mediocrity. The work of two directors (each probably had to poke the other to stay awake), Paramount's low-budget, anti-Commie screed is further cheapened by two reels of... well, let the opening credits explain: Glorified by Spectacular Episodes from CECIL B. DE MILLE's Epic "THE TEN COMMANDMENTS". By the way, that's the 1923 silent version. Without it, this thing would run crawl only 40 minutes.

Newlyweds Paul and Marya move to Moscow to attend med school. Being married, they're allowed less expensive lodgings: a dorm-like facility, where each side-by-side "apartment" is one room minus a ceiling. Prof. Marinoff takes a liking to Paul, as does his sweetie Anya. Not to worry -- Marinoff considers monogamy to be anti-revolutionary... until Anya seduces Paul, which drives Marya to divorce, and Marinoff himself to murder. Moral: When the boot's on the other foot, Reds turn green with jealousy. (As for DeMille's Ten Commandments footage, it brings to life the story of the Exodus told by an old Orthodox priest to a group of children, which lands him in front of a firing squad. He should have stuck with "Hansel and Gretel".)

Subtle as a Russian farm tractor, Forgotten Commandments' script ("Don't keep calling me 'darling'. It's bourgeoise!") is Reefer Madness without the reefer. It also shares the same non-qualities -- simple set-ups, the look of filmed rehearsals -- as similar quickies of the time. Nobody, other than John Carradine as a rabblerousing Marxist, puts any effort into their performance -- it's astonishing this dreck was produced by one of the major studios. But what really bugs me is that the sexual shenanigans frowned upon here were rampant in Hollywood as they are now. Worse, it would take another seven years for a major studio to make an anti-Nazi movie, having spent most of the decade running scripts past the German embassy for approval. The real forgotten commandment in 1930s Hollywood was Thou Shalt Cower Before Fascists.

BONUS POINTS: Marguerite Clark (Marya) and Irving Pichel (Marinoff) starred in Dracula's Daughter four years later. Gene Raymond (Paul) starred in the manic marionette melodrama I Am Suzanne! Edward van Sloane (as a surgeon) was Hollywood's go-to actor as medicos, while Harry Cording (as a cop) was the junkie doctor in Narcotic. That's my idea of an all-star cast. 

MOTHER'S HELPER (1933): People who think certain Hollywood folks kowtow to Donald Trump have never watched the studio-produced, pro-NRA shorts. These didn't just explain what Pres. Roosevelt was trying to accomplish, they lauded him as the second coming of Abe Lincoln while actively pushing his agenda to audiences who just wanted to escape real life for a couple of hours.

Unlike The Road is Open Again, there's no finger-snapping song to warble in Mother's Helper. This is just a three-minute sitcom featuring a husband explaining to his wife that he's home early because his boss has signed the NRA pledge. The husband's workhours have been split with new employees in order to provide more jobs to the Depression-hit unemployed. At least that's what I think he said. When you've got Fox Film's resident Swedish dialect comedian El Brendel doing the talking, you're lucky to figure out (or care about) half of what he's saying.

Professional flibbertigibbet Zasu Pitts is the housewife who tries just as hard as us to understand what this NRA business is all about, fluttering her fingers as if shaking with the D.T.'s. Or maybe, as a hardcore anti-FDR Republican in real life, being forced to recite dialogue like "Anything the president does is OK with me" made her shake with rage. A genuinely funny appearance by starlet Esther Muir as Brendel's new part-time wife -- his own idea of NRA -- wraps things up with an unexpected laugh. An interesting example of how show business worked with the government in order to push a president's agenda, Mother's Helper offers all kinds of possibilities for a contemporary, ICE-inspired short starring Dean Cain and Roseanne Barr.

BONUS POINTS: Esther Muir would gain lasting fame as Groucho Marx's would-be paramour in A Day at the Races. 

TAKE IT FROM HERE (1954): When a movie has only one showing, it's either a real
stinkeroo, something completely oddball (like It Never Happened ) or a promotional short made for a convention. Take it From Here falls in the last two categories, but people with a less worldly view of entertainment than me would drop it in the first as well. It's lonely being open to the strange and different.

Made for the 1954 Texaco gas station owners convention -- did you know such a thing existed? -- Take it From Here is a two-reel musical advising them how to promote their businesses. Such a premise sounds pretty D-U-L-L, which is why the Texaco folks jazzed things up with over a half-dozen dames with fishnet- stockinged gams. Set in the "Texa-Courtroom", Judge Harry Von Zell provides over (make that leers over) a "trial" where the women -- each representing a different mode of advertising -- musically "testify" how they help the gas stations keep the pumps pumping. I guess that still sounds pretty dull if you're not looking at the aforementioned fishnet-stockinged gams.

This is where Jimmy Durante and Donald O'Connor come in. Clad in their finest Texaco pump jockey uniforms, the two sing and clown their way through a pep talk aimed at the "jury" (i.e. conventioneers). Their message is essentially, Texaco dropped a fortune on a national advertising blitz, now hand out Texaco hats to your customers. Unlike similar ephemeral shorts, Take it From Here is in wonderful condition, looking as good as it did the day it was run for a room of drunken conventioneers who wanted more of the girls and less of the stars. 

BONUS POINTS: The classy unnamed singer representing radio --the only woman here in a fancy dress -- is a reminder of the weekly Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcast sponsored by Texaco from 1940 to 2003. The conventioneers did not give crap one about her. 

HOLLYWOOD ROUNDTABLE (August 28, 1963): Following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
March on Washington, seven of its participants gathered in a TV studio to discuss the civil rights movement. Moderated by journalist David Schoenbrun, the roundtable consisted of Harry Belafonte, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Marlon Brando, and James Baldwin. 

That's one heck of a discussion group, and startling in so many ways -- not the least of which is Heston and Brando being on the same side of a liberal cause. Unlike similar broadcasts today where the idea is scoring points with meme-ready wisecracks, these folks are lowkey and thoughtful; Heston freely admits that his involvement in the civil rights movement was for too long merely cocktail party chatter. Such a thing would get you condemned today for being late to the game rather than being literally welcomed to the table.

The white guys have their own way of speaking. Heston tends to be brief, occasionally quoting the founding fathers. Mankiewicz is passionate, verging on angry, at how "the Negroes" have been treated. Brando is Brando, talking as if being paid by the word, wanting to be taken seriously as anything but an actor. If Schoenbrun hadn't interrupted him, Brando would have kept yakking all night.

Belafonte, Poitier, and Baldwin of course are the only ones who speak from
experience in regard to civil rights or lack thereof. They are serious; while likely appreciative of the white celebrities' support, the three appear to be thinking Why should I care what they have to say? They also make you sit up and listen; Baldwin's closing remarks would be considered shocking today. 

Hollywood Roundtable, filmed by the U.S. Information Agency (oh, how times have changed!) makes one yearn for the time when news and public affairs programs were civilized and made you think. Too bad a discussion about civil rights doesn't include any women, though.

BONUS POINTS: It's weirdly nostalgic seeing people on TV enveloped in cigarette and pipe smoke. 

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THE COMEBACK JACKASSES

 From London to New York, two former office holders have seen their reputations become further tarnished due to their own behavior, having gone from dazzlingly popular to voted "Least Likely to Make a Successful Comeback." 

And they dressed so darned American!

For our British brethren, it's Harry, the man who needs no second name. After Harry backtracked on his vow never to return to the homeland and his old job, he and the little lady are said to be looking for a nine-bedroom lean-to for themselves and their two are-they-or-aren't-they royal offspring in the Cotswold's. 

And that's where they're going to be spending their "working days". Pater, a/k/a King Charles, put the word out through the royal publicist just where the couple stand:

“This position, distinct from the state and royal duties undertaken by the working royal family, and with the personal latitude it brings the couple in respect of financial independence and protection of their privacy as they would wish, will continue to be fully respected. Their styles as His and Her Royal Highness remain in abeyance and are not used. [Their charitable work] is a personal matter for them both and undertaken in their private capacity. In short, their position is akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests.”

Freunde to the end.

Their styles as His and Her Royal Highness remain in abeyance. Ooh-wee! That there statement is fancy English talk for Don't call us, we won't call you. 

It seems Harry and Meghan are the Gen X Edward and Wallis, doomed to travel the globe, without a real home or titles (make that "styles"), making the occasional TV appearance with easily impressed talk show hosts. All they have to do to complete the picture is chilling with a fascist dictator. Hey, I understand there's some action going on in Germany -- just like in Edward's day!

Rudy hurt himself bending down to give
Donald Trump a happy ending one too many times.

We New Yorkers have our own clown mucking things up. In preparation for the 25th
anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Rudy Giulani took time off his busy schedule of sweating hair dye to share his thoughts regarding Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Muslims in general:

“Having lost friends [at the World Trade Center] and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming [to the memorial service].” He added for good measure, that “[Muslims] have every desire to take us over. This is not, ‘they want to be just another religion.’ They want to dominate us. […] Mamdani is a clear — a clear — supporter of that. All of the Muslims he supports are murderers.” 

That's pretty rich, considering Giuliani's administration deliberately lied about the air quality downtown in the months after 9/11. And it took our first Muslim mayor to make the information public following a quarter century of Democrat and Republican administrations quashing it -- as you know a Mayor Cuomo would have also done.

A courtroom sketch artist
captures the inner fiend.

America's Mayor-turned-America's Dracula seems to think that his kind of talk is "tough" when in truth most New Yorkers find it as hideous as his dental implants. Not content sounding crazy, he's gone past the point of being taken seriously into something sadder: pathetic. 

Meanwhile, Harry isn't at that point -- yet. It sure doesn't help that he and Meghan claim to be "surprised" at daddy-o's frosty press release when being on the outside looking in seemed to their dream.

 All they have to do is keep their heads down, raise a few shillings for whatever charity will have them, and earn an honest living -- admittedly difficult for anyone in that family -- and many Brits might forgive them. Unless they're named William and Catherine. 

                                                       **************

REMAKE, REMODEL

 

Soon to become the Paramount Apartments?

What happens to a company town when the company leaves? Detroit provides an answer. Los Angeles could be next.

You may have heard that the Ellison family has threatened to move Paramount and Warner Bros. from Hollywood to the more welcoming corral of Austin, Texas if the merger isn't approved. 

Everybody sing: Hooray for Bayonne-wood!

It's not like the movie business hasn't been moving for years anyway. Paramount has already signed a 10-year deal to use soundstages at 1888 Studios in -- what the? -- Bayonne, New Jersey when construction is finished in 2028. Its art deco design will hark back to the movie industry's golden age -- which, if you want to get all technical, started in New Jersey.  The area on which it stands includes 22 acres of the surrounding harbor, where even more stages will be constructed on barges. Beat that, Burbank!

View of downtown, fully furnished,
move-in-ready.

I have no dog in this fight. Yes, I have a good friend in L.A. who works in "the industry" but I believe (or hope) he's been working steadily. And it isn't like Universal, Disney, and the others will fold their gilded tents overnight and move out. Yet if you scroll through enough videos of what downtown Los Angeles looks like these days, you'd think the place was dead already.

Television production has already been sneaking out the back door. It seems like for every series filmed in L.A., there's another filming in New York, New Jersey, Canada, or, in the case of the Fox sitcom Going Dutch, Ireland. Yes, it's cheaper to film an American TV series in Ireland than keeping the all-American cast in L.A. Want to hear something screwier? The show takes place in the Netherlands. 

Ship to shore no more.

Risk-averse studios being so fond of remakes begs the question: Could Hollywood remake itself? Such a thing can be done. I know, because I come from a town that was forced to do such a thing: Newport, RI.

Rewind to 1973. Pres. Richard Nixon orders the Navy Base closed after 143 years of patriotic service. Somewhere between 14,000 to 18,000 jobs were lost, sending local unemployment up 20% and costing a billion dollars to the economy. Even the Secretary of the Navy, hauled before Congress by Sen. John Pastore, admitted it wasn't necessarily a good idea. Officially, it was a cost-cutting measure, but suspicious locals claimed Nixon was still ticked off Rhode Island voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. 

Newport as I don't want to remember it.

Newporters went into a panic. What would they do without all those swabbies throwing their money around at the bars, tattoo parlors, and hookers? (I don't know for a fact there was sex trade in Newport, but where there's a horny military man...)

As the last ship sailed, the locals took a second look and realized that in depending only the Navy Base and summer tourists, they had allowed much of the city, especially the downtown shopping district, go to seed. 

Almost makes me want to visit the old place again.
Almost.

Over the next few years, the downtown area underwent a radical transformation. Rickety storefronts were razed, replaced by shiny new businesses. A new road made transportation easier, streets were cleaned, and shoppers returned.

As tourism gradually became a year-round business, Revolutionary War-era houses were restored and repainted, to resemble their original selves. The long-gone Jazz and Folk Festivals returned, this time on sunny afternoons along the water, all ages welcome. No longer was the Newport Creamery the epitome of fine dining, not with all the classy restaurants popping up along Thames Street. Even my crumbling old high school was rebuilt. 

Ignore this, however.

Newport completely remade itself -- and it took a potential disaster like the Navy Base to

do it. 

Now I'm not comparing my hometown to L.A., even if it does have something called NewportFilm, described as "A year-round documentary film organization presenting screenings, filmmaker conversations, and educational programs." But if those provincial folks could revitalize their city, surely the cosmopolitan Angelenos are capable of something similar. A brand-spanking new Navy Base could do the trick! 

                                              **************

A GALA DAY IS TOO MUCH

What has the Met done to
deserve this?

If you're unfamiliar with the Met Gala, consider yourself lucky. Ostensibly a classy, high society fundraising event for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art's costume division, it has devolved over the years into a fashion freak show for celebrities, B-listers with big followings, and the incurable viruses known as Kardashians. 

For this, we have Anna Wintour to "thank". Wintour, whose windshield-sized sunglasses and official job title as Vogue magazine's "Global Chief Content Creator", offer a hint at how insecure the poor woman is. (Watch the documentary The September Issue to see how her medical and professorial siblings look down upon her. It almost makes one feel sorry for the fashionista.)

The Gala occurs on the first Monday of May, although next year's event has already made headlines for the wrong reasons, seeing that it was going to honor fashion designer John Galliano. I'm not sure anyone outside his industry had heard of him until 2010. That was when, within a day or two, he allegedly insulted a Jewish museum curator and an Asian man, and definitely delivered his infamous "I love Hitler" routine. Definitely, because it was caught on video. And saying it in Paris, the city of Nazi collaborators? The chef's kiss.

Forget about loving Hitler; this guy
was to be honored for his fashion
sense?

In short order, Johnny-boy -- whose own fashion style seems to be "expensive Halloween costumes" -- lost his job at Dior and was put on trial for antisemitic abuse. The usual excuses for his behavior -- "work-related stress" and "multiple addictions" -- were trotted out like a past-its-prime racehorse. To my eyes and ears, that video shows a guy with zero stress, even if it is the wine slurring.

After a two year "self-loathing" penance, Galliano got a gig at Oscar de la Renta, thanks to the intervention of -- guess who! -- Anna Wintour. In the intervening years, he returned to the good graces of the fashion world because, y'know, he draws nice clothes and dresses like a drunken pirate. 

So Wintour decided that enough time had passed to honor fashion's most outspoken asshole -- which is no mean feat -- especially since he had gotten the Anti-Defamation League's "resolve and not repeat the sin" blessing in 2013. In announcing the Gala's honor of Galliano, Wintour said: 

“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano. [...] He’s a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment—something that he will live with for the rest of his life. The exhibition won’t shy away from any of the darkness in John’s past. It’s part of what has shaped him. The show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.”

Kanye on the runway.

Saying "I love Hitler" and telling Jewish people they would have been gassed is part of what shaped him? Well goddamn, Anna, that's right up there with Kanye West's c.v.

But wait, there's more! Wintour forgot that her Galliano wingding was going to happen on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Since this is the fashion world, it's unclear whether such a gaffe is ironic or appropriate.

"Hello, Page Six? You'll never guess what
that old bat is up to now!"

By now, you're probably wondering why nobody at Wintour's office didn't mention that this event might not be a good look for her, Vogue, or the Met museum. If you've seen The Devil Wears Prada 1 or 2, you already know the answer: her underlings were too afraid. So they did the next best thing by making off-the-record-cover-their-asses phone calls to the New York Post. 

Deciding that this wasn't the kind of comeback he was hoping for, Galliano Galliano's lawyer put out a statement announcing he was bowing out so as to not "place the Met in a difficult position" -- showbiz for Don't fire me, I'll quit, it's a better look for me. 

For the love of God, somebody please throw a pie
at their faces.

And as for Anna? The woman who said no designer was no more deserving of
the honor? Her official statement on the Met's site says, "John's decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is. I believe this is the right decision, and both he and the Museum have my full support" -- showbiz for Let him take the fall for my stupid decisions, it's a better look for me. 

So who's the second-most deserving designer Wintour could honor? Hey, Kanye West's side-hustle is fashion design, maybe he's available. 

                                                        ###############

THEY SAY THE NEON LIGHTS ARE BRIGHT...

More like "oldest shows still running".

While waiting for my bulgur and millet porridge to heat, I took a break from
listening to the UK news and turned my attention stateside. Specifically, NPR's 25-minute deep dive that can be boiled down to Whatsamatter with Broadway, Anyway? The two people interviewed were a lawyer and a "Broadway sensitivity specialist". 

Well, there's your answer. Producers shell out good money on shysters and people who create fancy-sounding job titles that nobody can understand. Well, that and A-list movie stars (Denzel Washington, George Clooney) and B-list pop singers (Mel B, JoJo, and others you haven't heard of) getting paid sky-high salaries, leading to outrageous ticket prices which go sky-higher via Ticketmaster, StubHub, and other bandits.

Other problems mentioned were the plethora of revivals, the dearth of new quality plays, and stars needing to take time off due to "exhaustion" -- or what Alan King referred to as "the rich man's disease."

They didn't even have time to change out of
their pajamas.

Exhaustion -- hah! If only they went through what the Four Marx Brothers did in 1929, filming The Cocoanuts in Astoria during the day, then doing Animal Crackers onstage in the evening. And three of them had to commute from Long Island for the pleasure of driving themselves to the brink of nervous breakdown.

High salaries and yet another revival of Death of a Salesman aside, allow me to offer my own problem, at least with musicals: nobody writes great songs anymore.

It seems like a dream now, but there was a time -- early 1930s to mid-1960s -- when musicals featured songs that became hits. Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, followed by the likes of Lerner & Lowe, Rodgers & Hammerstein -- giants of the theater world whose music became part of the American landscape like Mt. Rushmore. 

My toes are tapping already.

Somebody can correct me, but it seems like the last time a Broadway show tune
song became a massive hit you couldn't escape was "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music in 1973. Only the most rabid theater fan could name any song from Wicked, Maybe Happy Ending, The Great Gatsby, The Lost Boys, Two Strangers, and whatever else was running lately. The only shows with familiar songs are either based on movies (The Lion King) or are of the jukebox genre (Just in Time). 

Giants one roamed Times Square.

If you want a real shock, go the YouTube page of filmmaker Max Hechtman and watch his "supercuts" of the 1961 and 2021 movie versions of West Side Story's production numbers. You'll know the songs immediately and will probably recall most if not all the lyrics. Now imagine what opening night audiences at the Winter Garden felt in 1957. That's what happens when you have Stephen Sondheim writing the lyrics and Leonard Bernstein composing the music. 

Wicked can run from now until climate change burns down the Gershwin Theater. The movie version can be remade as a CGI cartoon and turned into a streaming series, and none of the songs will have the massive cultural impact as any one of West Side Story's numbers. 

Maybe next time NPR wants to figure out Broadway's problems, they can interview the ushers -- you know, the people who watch the shows night after night. They might have a better p.o.v. than the sensitivity specialists. 

Irony alert: "Send in the Clowns" is the one Sondheim number I never liked.

                                               ##############

THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 73

 As the world marches further into self-destruction, I retreat further into cinematic and televised obscurities. Do you blame me?

DER KAISER VON KALIFORNIEN (1936): One of the more bizarre moments in motion picture history, German actor/director Luis Trenker brought his cast and crew to the U.S. in order to film Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, the biopic of the German-born John A. Sutter, whose trek to California in the mid-19th century led to the eventual discovery of gold in them thar hills, and the expansion of the nation's territory.

But this being a Nazi-endorsed picture, calling it a "true story" would be a stretch, seeing that the real Sutter came to America to escape debtor's prison, and looked more like Edward Arnold (who starred in Sutter's Gold the same year) than the handsome Trenker. Nor did Sutter have two young sons who were shot down by his one-time friend. And there's no mention here of Sutter enslaving entire Indian tribes and, when that didn't work, engaging in genocide. Best not for the German movie public to be reminded what was happening at home, I guess.

The whole idea behind Der Kaiser von Kalifornien seems to be that it was a strong, noble German cowboy who turned the arid deserts of the Golden State into a lush paradise through hard work, wisdom, and paternal leadership, only to be brought down by greedy rivals. (You know they're bad because they hang out with black women.) 

Der Kaiser von Kalifornien is more of an interesting piece of cinema history rather than cinema itself, little different than your average forgotten Western from the time, other than Deutsch sprechen cowpokes. It even features the old saw of a spirit leading Sutter to America and, at the end, into the Great Beyond. A shame the spirit didn't have the foresight to tell him how that world war was going to turn out for the fatherland.

BONUS POINTS: Look carefully at one scene and you'll see an automobile speeding in the distance.

PLAYHOUSE 15 ("PARTNERS IN LAW") (1953): For those who found Playhouse 90 too long, the one-season anthology series Playhouse 15 was the answer. So much for the internet being the cause of short attention spans. 

In this episode, legal partners Phillip Manning and Arthur Saunders have survived a train accident. Phil's okay, but Arthur has amnesia. Phillip tells a former client, Dr. Yardley, to perform a fatal brain operation on Arthur -- because if he regains his memory, Arthur will tell the authorities that Phil stole money from a client and hid evidence that the doc was drunk during a previous botched surgery. That way, Arthur dies "accidentally", the doctor keeps his practice, and Phillip can run away with Arthur's wife. Phillip even suggests the doc find a fly-by-night mortuary to get rid of the body! Boy, if I'm ever in a jam, I know just who to call.

Playhouse 15's "Partners In Law" is impressive for packing in a complex story in such a short runtime, as well as the number of times Arthur rubs his head when repeating his I-can't-remember-a-thing mantra, and the ease with which Phillip tries to convince the surgeon to destroy Arthur's memory for good, The doc's response -- "You'd have to remove so much [brain] tissue that you'd reduce the individual to an imbecile!" -- made me think that just taking this show seriously would do the job.

Yet everything about Playhouse 15 -- the overwrought dialogue, melodramatic acting, and especially the music -- gave me a quarter-hour of warm, comforting nostalgia of childhood afternoons in front of the TV watching old reruns while drinking Cocoa Marsh. Such moments mean more now than they did then. 

BONUS POINTS: Bart Robinson, who plays Phillip, appeared in Woody Allen's Sleeper as Dr. Orva.

ANYONE CAN WIN (8/11/1953): Don't be fooled by the hyped-up announcer's promise of Anyone Can Win being "fabulous and exciting". It's just one of a billion stupid 1950s game shows created to give celebrity panelists a paycheck, and a host to crack wise. 

The twists here are that celebrities Laraine Day, Jackie Cooper, and Wendy Barrie are joined by a mystery guest disguised as Hairless Joe, a character from the "Li'l Abner" comic strip, and that the host is "Li'l Abner" creator Al Capp. (Gee, I wonder how they convinced him to take the job.) But as with many game shows of its time, Anyone Can Win has rules ridiculously complex yet sound like they're being made up on the fly. Something about questions, answers, lights, buzzers and phoning somebody at home to see if they can identify who's behind the Hairless Joe mask. 

Anyone Can Win's frenetic atmosphere is heightened by the audience. You see, they're divided into four groups, one for each panelist. Whoever wins will allow their group to split the money earned. Talk about greed -- by the end, these folks actually scream out the answers to the players, which should be against one of the show's 75 rules. 

While Al Capp tries keeping things relatively sane, Laraine Day throws a fit when one of her answers isn't accepted by the judges. And she ain't kidding -- Day is such a big baby that they give her the win just to shut her up. Maybe they were afraid her husband, New York Giants coach Leo Durocher, would come by and beat them with a baseball bat. The way Anyone Can Win operates, it wouldn't have looked out of line.

BONUS POINTS: The commercial for Carter's Little Liver Pills, before the feds forced the company to remove "Liver" from its name. Which makes sense, since according to the spot's "doctor", the stuff was for constipation.

I'LL DO ANYTHING (UNRELEASED ORIGINAL EDIT) (1994) A rare floppo for writer/director James L. Brooks, I'll Do Anything was filmed as a musical with most of the songs composed by Prince, with Carole King and Jackson Browne chipping in one each. Following a disastrous sneak preview, Brooks cut the musical numbers, did reshoots to cover what was lost, and released it as a straight romcom, receiving reviews ranging from sympathetic to hostile.

Recently, somebody uploaded a bootlegged workprint of I'll Do Anything's musical version onto the internet. Forget about a cast made up almost entirely of non-singers (read about At Long Last Love to see how that kind of thing turns out). The problem is the story -- or, rather stories. Nick Nolte is an out of work actor in Hollywood suddenly given custody of his bratty young daughter while romancing production assistant Joley Richardson. Meanwhile, Albert Brooks is a self-centered movie producer who can't commit to Julie Kavner, the owner of a company that sets up sneak previews for studios. Memo to Hollywood: nobody cares about your problems. Nor do they find the movie business as fascinating as you do. And when in hell will you learn that LOUD, BRATTY CHILDREN ARE NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN FUNNY. 

This is why the musical version of I'll Do Anything is interesting in its daring, even as it took me five hours to slog through its 140 minutes. Not that the numbers are particularly good. It's just that, well, if there's a chance of your movie being a debacle, you might as well swing for the fences as James L. Brooks does here. 

In other words, give the lead role to an actor with the comedy chops of Richard Nixon! Hire songwriters lacking musical comedy experience to write the score! Make sure only one of your actors (Tracy Ullman) can actually sing! Have your dancers jump around instead of dance! Without these gaffes, I wouldn't have made it past the first 20 minutes. 

BONUS POINTS: I'll Do Anything would have been made for a far better, funnier romcom focusing on Albert Brooks and Julie Kavner. Maybe somebody can edit out the Nick Nolte throughline and fill out the rest with A.I. 

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