George Floyd

You think about the killing of George Floyd, a year ago today--and it remains breathtaking, and heartbreaking: the tragedy and sadness of it, the terrible cruelty of it.  Mr. Floyd's killing remains (and will always remain) a deeply sickening event in America's history.

Bob Dylan...and Clydie King, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Nesmith, and José Feliciano

Today, the great Bob Dylan turned 80 years old.  He was born May 24, 1941 (a half-year before the attack on Pearl Harbor).

Here is a video of Mr. Dylan singing the 1968 song "Abraham, Martin and John," with singer Clydie King; Ms. King was perhaps best-known for her frequent work, over the years, as a back-up singer.  The video, taken during a tour Mr. Dylan made in 1980, appears to be of a rehearsal.

The vocals, and Mr. Dylan's piano playing, are, I think, quite beautiful.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7t6afl

Clydie King died in 2019, at 75.   Here is another video in which she appears, from December of 1973.  

It is from a telecast of NBC's The Midnight Special, and features Linda Ronstadt singing "You're No Good."  It is a superb performance by Ms. Ronstadt--a tremendously talented singer--and by her musical ensemble.  Clydie King sings back-up for the song, along with the singer Sherlie Matthews.  José Feliciano, host for that evening's broadcast, introduces the performance. (Five years earlier, in 1968, he had released "Light My Fire," his cover of, and extraordinary re-interpretation of, the 1967 hit by The Doors.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SOosWH6_M

Ms. Ronstadt's first hit song came in 1967, when she sang with the group The Stone Poneys.  The song was "Different Drum," which had been written in 1964 by another outstanding musician, Michael Nesmith, the year before he joined the cast of The Monkees, the television show which brought him to fame.  

It is a lovely song.  Here, in a video from 1992, is an enjoyable and charming live performance of "Different Drum," by Mr. Nesmith.  At the end of the performance, he mentions, warmly, Ms. Ronstadt.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMkiZ9tO-Zs

Lastly, here is José Feliciano's hit recording of "Light My Fire," from 1968.  I was very young at the time, twelve years old, yet I remember the sense of exhilaration one felt, hearing the song. Everyone seemed to be talking about the record--not only about Mr. Feliciano's exquisite vocal, on the recording, but about his virtuosic guitar-playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RtTWDv-yWM

Charles Grodin

Charles Grodin, who died this week, at age 86, was a wonderfully talented actor.

The following is an enjoyable and illuminating excerpt from his 1989 memoir, It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here: My Journey Through Show Business (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.).  The excerpt concerns the legendary acting teacher Uta Hagen; Mr. Grodin studied with Ms. Hagen for three years, in the 1950s.  

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

    Even thirty years later, I vividly remember the most important acting lesson I learned from Uta. It wasn't part of her regular teaching precepts ("Ask yourself, 'Who am I as a character? What do I want in the scene?' ").  I don't even remember it coming up or ever being mentioned in the couple of dozen or so books on acting I've read, but it was invaluable and Uta gave it to me.  I had played Holden Caulfield in a scene from J.D. Salinger's novel Catcher in the Rye.  It was a scene between the teacher and Holden where they're discussing a terrible essay Holden had written.  After the scene was over, Uta said to me there was one "pure acting moment in that scene. Do you know what it was?"  Well...I was excited by the compliment.  I still hadn't heard many in my young career.  But I had no idea what Uta was talking about. "Was it the moment where I slowly turned and...?"

    "No," Uta interrupted.

    "Was it when I lifted my head suddenly and...?"

    "No," Uta interrupted again.

    I was quickly out of guesses.  Evidently, a "pure acting moment" had gone right by and I'd never spotted it. Neither had the class, whom Uta had invited to join in the quiz....

    When no one could spot my seemingly invisible "pure acting moment," Uta told me it was when I went to hand my essay back to the teacher, a fine actor named Scott Edmonds.  I thought Scott was going to take it, but for a moment he didn't reach out to accept it.  Then he did.  There was a moment when I wasn't sure what was going to happen next. That was the pure acting moment:  the moment of not knowing what the next moment was (just as we don't in life). I couldn't immediately repeat it, but when Uta identified it, I understood, and in the future strove to get myself again into a state of not anticipating what was next, of not knowing. Easier said than done, but it was invaluable to have been identified and experienced that once. Thirty years later, it's still about as valuable a lesson as I ever learned about acting, and that alone was worth the three years with Uta.

Willie Mays turns 90

It was startling to read, last week, that Willie Mays has turned 90 years old.  He was born May 6, 1931.

Like so many baseball fans, I have enormous admiration for Mr. Mays, and for what he achieved during his remarkable career.

When I read about his birthday, I went to YouTube, to watch (once again) his often-celebrated catch, made during the first game of the 1954 World Series, between Mays's New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians.  The game took place at New York's Polo Grounds.

The play, in the game's eighth inning--begun with a fly ball, hit to center field by Cleveland first baseman Vic Wertz--is still riveting to see.  It's often referred to as "The Catch"--and there is, indeed, a Wikipedia page devoted to the play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catch_(baseball)

It is one of the great moments in sports: Mays--somehow--catching the fly ball, on the run, his back to home plate.  And, it is not solely the catch which was extraordinary; there was also Mays's stunning throw to second base, immediately afterwards.

Because of the play, Cleveland's Larry Doby, who had been on second base, only reached third; the score, by the end of the inning, remained tied, at 2-2. The Giants went on to win the game in the tenth inning--and won the World Series in four games.

Here is the play, from YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dK6zPbkFnE

Two photographs

Here are two pictures of my late mother (both of which have been seen before, in this space).

The first is from 1949, when she became a featured singer on bandleader Kay Kyser's new weekly television program, on NBC.  The show made its debut at the start of December of that year. 

When the photograph was taken, she was twenty-one years old.  My parents had been married a few months before, in August of 1949.

The picture was, I am fairly sure, taken at New York's International Theatre, at Columbus Circle; the Kay Kyser program was telecast each week from the theatre. 

The second picture, which she used professionally, is, I believe, from the late 1980s, or the early 1990s.

Today--I am very saddened by this fact--is the twentieth anniversary of her death.  She died on this date in 2001, at age seventy-three.

 

(Top photograph, from 1949: © NBCUniversal)

Singer Jill Corey

On April 29th, the New York Times reported that the well-known singer Jill Corey had died, on April 3rd, at a Pittsburgh hospital.  She was 85.

In 1953 and 1954, Ms. Corey was one of the stars of The Dave Garroway Show, on NBC-TV.  She was also a cast member of The Johnny Carson Show, Mr. Carson's 1955-1956 weekly prime-time comedy and variety program on CBS.  Ms. Corey appeared, over time, on a number of other television shows--which included, in 1957 and 1958, starring on the NBC-TV program Your Hit Parade.   

In early 1957, singer Gisele MacKenzie, who had starred on the Hit Parade since 1953, announced she'd be leaving the program at the end of the 1956-1957 television season, to star on her own NBC show in the fall.  Subsequently, the Hit Parade was revamped, for the the 1957-1958 season.  Longtime stars Dorothy Collins, Snooky Lanson, and Russell Arms were let go, and a new vocal cast took over; bandleader Raymond Scott was also replaced.

The program's new singing stars, beginning in the fall of 1957, were Ms. Corey, Alan Copeland, Virginia Gibson, and Tommy Leonetti. 

The new cast lasted one season.  Later, for part of the 1958-1959 season, the show moved to CBS, and starred Dorothy Collins, and singer Johnny Desmond.  The program then left television--though a new CBS version aired briefly, fifteen years later, in the summer of 1974.

Here is Ms. Corey's obituary, from the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/arts/music/jill-corey-dead.html

(Above image: preview of the new Hit Parade cast, in a 1957 issue of TV Guide; Jill Corey is seen at the top left)