Archives for 2011

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love.”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

A friend of mine recently had to write a piece called “Twenty-five Interesting Things About You” for her workplace newsletter, and asked me to look it over prior to publication. As I did so, it occurred to me that such pieces are growing increasingly difficult for the blogger-tweeters among us to write. Living in public as we do, we have far fewer secrets, even the innocuous kind. All is grist for the latest posting, and we turn our own stones.

Are there twenty-five passably interesting things about me that aren’t generally known to those who know me at all well, either in person or via the social media? Let’s see. Here goes nothing, or at least not much:

• I was twenty-one when I learned how to swim.

• I hate three foods, liver, beets, and blue cheese. I’ll only eat liver in spreadable form (in which I like it very much) and I won’t eat the others under any circumstances.

• Leonard Bernstein’s “Some Other Time” is my favorite song.

• I’m painfully shy, and have spent my whole life overcompensating for it.

• One of my best friends is a sexblogger who used to be a professional stripper.

• I talk to myself when I’m alone, most often when I’m driving a car.

• When I get sleepy while driving, I make up filthy lyrics to well-known songs and sing them as loudly as possible.

• I used to have perfect pitch, but lost it many years ago.

• I’ve always wished that I had a deeper voice.

• Most of my major dreams have either come true or appear to be in the process of doing so, but here’s an unrealized fantasy: I want to be one of the speakers in a performance of William Walton’s Façade.

• I’ve never gotten falling-down drunk. Genteel tipsiness is my limit.

• Mrs. T says I’m “old-fashioned.” She doesn’t mean it as a compliment, either.

• I always choose the typefaces in which my books are set.

• I had a mild crush on Fran Drescher early in the run of The Nanny. It lasted for about three months.

• I can’t dance. Don’t ask me.

• The last time I read any novel by Charles Dickens from cover to cover was when I was in high school.

• I wrote and published a review of a biography of a well-known writer without having read any of her books. That was more than a quarter-century ago, and I still haven’t read any of them.

• I’ve been in love (romantically, that is) seven times.

• I stole an elaborately inscribed copy of a book by a legendary classical pianist from a college library (not my alma mater). Years later, I sent it back–anonymously.

• A dog attacked me when I was a little boy. This caused me to be afraid of dogs throughout the rest of my childhood. The phobia eventually subsided, but even now I only pretend to like them when in the company of passionate dog lovers.

• Conversely–sort of–I find women with cat-like faces to be irresistible.

• Not counting fine art, the only physical object owned by a friend that I have ever actively coveted was a flawlessly preserved set of the New York edition of the works of Henry James.

• I never wanted children of my own, though I (usually) enjoy their company and seem to be reasonably good with them.

• I know who Tina Fey is, but I’ve never seen her, either on TV or at the movies.

• I wore a bright pink caftan once and was photographed in it.

Kind of wussy, huh? At least I didn’t make any of it up.

Jimmy Rushing and the Count Basie All-Stars perform “I Left My Baby” on The Sound of Jazz, originally telecast in 1957:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“Life is a game and true love is a trophy.”
Rufus Wainwright, “Poses”

Yesterday’s reminiscence of the first movie I ever saw in a theater has put me in a nostalgic mood, so with the help of Wikipedia, I’ve compiled a list of interesting things that happened in 1956, the year in which Mrs. T and I were born.

So far as I know, nothing of any particular interest took place on February 6, my birthday, but the rest of the year was reasonably eventful, especially as regards art and culture. Among other noteworthy occurrences:

• Elvis Presley made his network TV debut and released his first movie, Love Me Tender.

• My Fair Lady, Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot opened on Broadway.

• John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger opened in London.

• The Huntley-Brinkley Report, the first big-name nightly TV newscast, was launched.

• The Price Is Right made its TV debut.

• The Milton Berle Show was canceled.

• Videotape was publicly demonstrated for the first time.

• William Shawn became the editor of The New Yorker.

• Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller.

• Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier.

• Marty won the Best Picture Oscar.

• Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis dissolved their partnership.

• The Wizard of Oz was shown on TV for the first time.

• Humphrey Bogart made his last movie, The Harder They Fall.

• Books published in 1956 included James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day, Albert Camus’ The Fall, Ian Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, Billie Holiday’s Lady Sings the Blues, Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place, Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah, William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man, and Angus Wilson’s Anglo-Saxon Attitudes.

• Films released in 1956 include Around the World in 80 Days, Bigger Than Life, Giant, Lust for Life, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Searchers, and The Ten Commandments.

• Records released in 1956 include Chet Baker Sings, Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven,” Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” Ray Charles’ “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” Miles Davis’ Round About Midnight, Ellington at Newport, Ella and Louis, Peggy Lee’s Black Coffee, the Louvin Brothers’ Tragic Songs of Life, Charles Mingus’ Pithecanthropus Erectus, Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus, and Frank Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers.

• Among those who made the cover of Time: Jacques Barzun (who is 103 years old and still kicking!), Maria Callas, Duke Ellington, Sigmund Freud (painted by Ben Shahn), Rex Harrison, William Holden, Edward Hopper, Marilyn Monroe, and Eero Saarinen.

• Fred Allen, Max Beerbohm, Clifford Brown, Tommy Dorsey, Lyonel Feininger, Alfred Kinsey, H.L. Mencken, A.A. Milne, Jackson Pollock, and Art Tatum died.

• Geena Davis, Bo Derek, Kenny G, Carrie Fisher, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Tony Kushner, Nathan Lane, Bill Maher, Mark Morris, Johnny Rotten, David Sedaris, and Dwight Yoakam were born.

All these things happened in my lifetime, more or less, though I wasn’t paying attention yet. I didn’t become aware of the larger world around me until November 22, 1963. I vaguely recall the death of my maternal grandfather the year before, but the assassination of John Kennedy is the first public event that I can now remember with any distinctness. After that, the lights went up and the show began.

Diana Krall sings “Love Letters”:

“Accepting life whole and keeping one’s love of art from idolatry means remembering that nonliving things must be loved soberly. The living have first claim, and fellow feeling for them should stir not only at the sight of sorrow and pain, but at the call of the imagination.”
Jacques Barzun, “Towards a Fateful Serenity” (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence)

I first saw a movie in a theater in 1961. It was Dondi, a now-forgotten screen version of a now-forgotten comic strip about an adorable little war orphan who makes his circuitous way from Italy to the United States, there to have all manner of adventures and live happily ever after.

The film, which starred David Janssen, Arnold Stang, Patti Page, and Walter Winchell, appears to have sunk without trace. So did the strip, which ran from 1955 to 1986, at which time it was carried by a mere thirty-five newspapers. The only reason why I remember either one is because according to family legend, I was asked to leave the theater midway through the show. It seems that I was so excited by Dondi that I insisted on running up and down the aisle, which in 1961 was universally regarded as conduct unbecoming a filmgoer, even one who was, like me, just five years old.

Most films, however musty, surface on Turner Classic Movies sooner or later. When Dondi popped up there the other day, I made a point of recording it for future viewing, and last night I took an amused peek at my very first movie. Somewhat surprisingly, the first reel, in which poor little Dondi finds refuge from a snowstorm in a shabby-looking Army barracks, had a vaguely familiar look to me. Was it possible that the first few minutes of Dondi had impressed themselves on my memory? Surely not–and yet it’s true that I’ve retained a handful of other visual fragments of my pre-school days. Among other things, I clearly remember seeing Edward R. Murrow on Person to Person, a show that Murrow stopped hosting in 1959. If I can remember that, it’s well within the realm of possibility that I can also recall a snippet or two of Dondi, at least up to the point when Hodge Decker, the dapper manager of the Malone Theater, gave me the boot.

The Malone, the movie house in Smalltown, U.S.A., where I saw Dondi, no longer exists. It was closed and torn down in 1985, a year before the comic strip bit the dust and eleven years after I moved away from the Missouri town where I grew up. I must have attended a fair number of Saturday matinees there, but the names of the other films that I saw have all faded from my memory. Nor do I have any sexy memories to share with you, for I was a pitifully slow learner when it came to women, and I don’t think I worked up the nerve to fondle anyone at the Malone other than tentatively.

As for Dondi, it’s not the worst picture I’ve ever seen, though only sentiment can explain why I watched the whole thing last night. As longtime readers of this blog know, I am one of those blessed creatures who had a largely happy childhood and who moved away from home not out of discontent but to seek out opportunities that were unavailable in a small Midwestern town. Had I taken my father’s advice and become a lawyer, I probably would have come back to Smalltown, settled down, made something of myself, and–like little Dondi–lived happily ever after.

Or not: the small towns of America, it’s said, used to be full of unhappy misfits who frittered away their lives longing for that which they could never hope to have. This may well be true, but most everybody who lived in Smalltown when I was a boy seems to have managed to do so with a minimum of fuss, and those who couldn’t usually packed up and left. Nowadays, of course, the word “provincial” has lost most of its meaning and much of its sting, since we all live in the same electronic echo chamber. It’s as easy to watch Treme or download “Born This Way” in Smalltown as it is in Manhattan. But I can remember when it took at least a month for the movies I read about in Time to get to the Malone, and many of the ones that sounded most interesting never got there at all. Though network television had started to shrink the world in 1961, its effects were gradual and fitful. In those days placing a long-distance telephone call was still a big deal, and the only person in America who carried his own phone around with him was Dick Tracy.

Was the world of my childhood better, worse, or just different? All of the above, I should think. Sometimes I wish I still lived there, but it goes without saying that I would have had to live in a place not unlike New York in order to do the things that I’d want to be doing now. I was, however, content to live in Smalltown in 1961, and almost as content in 1971. My mother and brother still live there, and I’ve yet to hear either one of them complain about it.

All in all, I think I was lucky to live there when I did, just as I was lucky to move to New York when I did. In fact, I think I’m a pretty lucky guy all around–even if I did get thrown out of the Malone Theater fifty years ago for running up and down the aisle.