The New Year

 Good wishes for 2022...

Fictional Detection

The following is from the short story "Stan the Killer," by the writer Georges Simenon, from his collection Maigret's Pipe, published in the United States in 1977 (by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich); the stories were first published in France in the 1940s. The passage is from a conversation between Simenon's Paris-based detective/Inspector of Police Jules Maigret, and his boss:

    "Have you a plan?"

    "You know, Chief, that I gave up having ideas a long time ago.  I just go about sniffing.  Some people think I'm waiting for inspiration, but they're wrong.  What I'm waiting for is the significant fact which never fails to emerge.  The important thing is to be there when it happens and to take advantage of it."

Here, too, is a brief section from the 2020 novel/mystery Snow, by John Banville (Hanover Square Press); the novel takes place largely in County Wexford, Ireland, in 1957. Of Detective Inspector St. John Strafford, the novel's main character, Banville writes:

...His strongest drive was curiosity, the simple wish to know, to be let in on what was hidden from others. Everything to him had the aspect of a cipher.  Life was a mundane mystery, the clues to the solving of which were strewn all about, concealed or, far more fascinatingly, hidden in plain view, for all to see but for him alone to recognize.

    The dullest object could, for him, flare into sudden significance, could throb in the sudden awareness of itself. There were clues, and he was their detector.

Article from a 2002 "TV Guide"

I recently looked through a copy I have of TV Guide, from April 6, 2002.  The cover story was titled: "TV We'll Always Remember." 

(No--simply for your reference--this is not Mitchell Hadley's site, "It's About TV," where he regularly writes about--and seeks to analyze the social and historical context of--programs and articles contained within particular TV Guide issues, from the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and beyond.)

In the 2002 issue there were recollections about television--from TV stars, TV news anchors, behind-the-scenes figures (producers, directors, writers), and others.

Comments from two of television's most influential figures were included.  

One was Steven Bochco--who, as many will recall, was an executive producer, co-creator, and writer for such programs as NYPD Blue, L.A. Law, and Hill Street Blues.  

He said, in 2002:

"As a boy in the '50s, I was profoundly [affected] by shows like Studio One and Playhouse 90.   They were using some of the best writers, people like Paddy Chayefsky.  I didn't have much opportunity as a kid to go to the theater. TV was my theater--first-rate theater.  It shaped my sense of what theater was.  I didn't say, 'This is what I want to do when I grow up,' but it had to have played a role.  Then, when I was starting, the criticism you'd get on some scene you wrote for some series was, 'It's too wordy, it's just talking heads.'  But I knew from those great old shows: It's the words first."

Mr. Bochco died in 2018, at age 74.

Also featured in the article were comments from Norman Lear, who (in addition to his affiliation with many other TV programs) was the creator, co-executive producer of (and writer for) All in the Family--certainly one of television's most significant shows. Mr. Lear began his television career as a writer, in 1950; he and his then-writing partner Ed Simmons worked for such programs as Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis's Colgate Comedy Hour.

Mr. Lear said, in 2002:

"People are always talking about 'the golden age.' I think the golden age is now.  But to back that up in TV terms, there's a whale of a lot of really good television out there.  So many of the hour dramas are so worthwhile, so much of what HBO is doing.  What's missing is music and variety.  I can't tell you how much I miss music and dance--everything from Lawrence Welk to Carol Burnett to Martin and Lewis to Your Show of Shows to great variety and musical television."

At 99 years old, the legendary Mr. Lear remains active as a television producer.

Christmas

Here is Judy Garland's recording of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," from 1944.  

She introduced the song in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis.

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

Merry Christmas...

Beverly Kenney, Ellis Larkins, & Ella Fitzgerald

An automobile commercial has been airing for a while on TV (for Lincoln). It features part of a very lovely vocal rendition of the song "It's a Most Unusual Day."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVDW5KfRqFk

In listening to the commercial, the singer's voice sounded familiar to me--but I was mistaken. I learned, online, that the vocalist was Beverly Kenney.  I was not familiar with her name.

Ms. Kenney recorded "It's a Most Unusual Day" in 1957, accompanied by the much-admired pianist Ellis Larkins. The song appeared on her 1958 album, "Beverly Kenney Sings For Playboys."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK_eS0sqGw

Ms. Kenney was born in New Jersey in 1932. She recorded several albums in the mid-to-late 1950s, and received critical praise for her work. She died in New York in 1960, at age 28, by suicide.

In Japan, according to Wikipedia, she "remains a cult figure."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Kenney

As noted above, Ellis Larkins was the pianist for Ms. Kenney's "It's a Most Unusual Day"--as well as being featured on the other songs on her 1958 album (along with bassist Joe Benjamin).  Mr. Larkins is perhaps best known for his work with Ella Fitzgerald--including accompanying her on the 1950 album "Ella Sings Gershwin." The album's opening song is one of the most exquisite recordings I've ever heard (a recording I've mentioned previously in this space): it is of Ms. Fitzgerald, and Mr. Larkins, performing "Someone to Watch Over Me."  

Here is the 1950 recording of the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYEeAOTIQ2c

Here, too, is the Wikipedia page about Mr. Larkins:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Larkins

Mr. Larkins died in 2002, at age 79.  Ella Fitzgerald died in 1996, at 79.

Epigraph to "The Sentence"

In an October post, I wrote of three epigraphs I particularly like--two from novels, one from a short story collection.

Here is another, that I was recently taken by; it is from the noted novelist Louise Erdrich's absorbing work, The Sentence. The novel, published by Harper in November, takes place largely in 2019 and 2020, in Minneapolis. 

Earlier this year, Ms. Erdrich's 2020 novel, The Night Watchman, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

The epigraph to The Sentence is from poet/writer Sun Yung Shin's 2016 book, Unbearable Splendor.

Sun Yung Shin, like Louise Erdrich, lives in Minneapolis.

Brian Williams' last "11th Hour" broadcast

Brian Williams--the terrific MSNBC host--signs off, tonight, from his program The 11th Hour (11 p.m.-midnight, Eastern time).  

Mr. Williams has a splendid, astute sense of how to bring about (and--re: his regular panels of guests--orchestrate) informative and excellent conversation (one element of which--as noted in a previous post about him--is the appealing wit he routinely brings to the effort).

One hopes he will soon return via another network.

Television photograph, 1969

This is a photograph I've always liked; it is from February of 1969. I happened upon it recently (along with other photographs I had not seen in years), while going through some boxes stored in a closet of my apartment.  The picture was taken from the audience of the Merv Griffin Show, which at the time was syndicated by Westinghouse Broadcasting, also known as Group W.

I don't think I took the picture, but believe it was taken by my brother, who was fifteen.  My mother, my brother and I were in New York City for a trip (I was thirteen), and, while there, we went to see a taping of Merv Griffin's program. (I am not at all certain of this, but would not be surprised if we went to the program at my request. The program aired in Boston in the late afternoons, and was a show I enjoyed watching, during this time. It is also very possible--because of my interest in television, as a child--that I asked my brother to take the picture.)

The show was taped at The Little Theater, on West 44th Street in Manhattan.  Before it became a television facility--first used by ABC, from the latter part of the 1950s into the early 1960s, and then, in the 1960s, by Westinghouse--it had been a legitimate theatre. In the 1970s it again became a theatrical venue, and in the early 1980s was renamed The Helen Hayes Theater; it is now known, simply, as The Hayes Theater. With just under 600 seats, it is the smallest theatre on Broadway. (In 1912, when it opened, it had only 299 seats--thus, its original "Little Theater" designation.)

In the photo--which I like, in part, because of the presence, in the image, of the television camera--the comedian Pat Cooper is seated next to Merv Griffin, at Mr. Griffin's desk. To the left of Griffin is the singer Jane Morgan.  According to IMDB, the episode aired on February 28, 1969--and so we were probably at the taping a week or so prior.

One of the things that sticks out in my mind about the taping is that it included an appearance by the singer Ronnie Dyson. To the best of my memory, he sang "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," which at the time was a hit song, recorded jointly by The Supremes and The Temptations.

Mr. Dyson had become famous for appearing in the Broadway musical Hair--and for his lead vocal, in the show, of the signature song "Aquarius." The show opened on Broadway at the end of April, 1968; Dyson turned 18 in June of that year.

The recording of "Aquarius," at the link below, is from the 1968 Hair cast album. Mr. Dyson's solos, in "Aquarius," are actually not that long--much of the song also features the choral singing of the play's cast--yet his performance in the song is, I think, stunning; his singing is assured, and it has, about it, a strikingly pure quality. (Please note that the first twenty seconds or so of the song--before he begins singing--are made up of quiet, miscellaneous sounds, some discordant--including chimes, what sounds like gongs, and perhaps, as well, some electronic sounds.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V2q07GOe28

Later, in 1970, Mr. Dyson had a hit song with his recording of "(If You Let Me Make Love to You Then) Why Can't I Touch You?"

He died in 1990, in Philadelphia, at age forty. His death, IMDB notes, was due to heart failure.