On my list of books to read: novelist and short story writer Ann Beattie's new work, Onlookers.
It is described as being a book of linked short stories, which take place in Charlottesville, VA. The book, published by Scribner, was released on July 18th.
https://www.amazon.com/Onlookers-Stories-Ann-Beattie/dp/1668013657/
As I've mentioned previously, in this space, I lived in Charlottesville--a city for which I continue to feel great affection--from the spring of 1995 until the start of 2001.
The 2019 Revised Edition of my book about early television (the paperback version) is available at a discounted price at my website.
The list price of the book is $24.95. It can be purchased, at the site, for $17.95, which includes Media Mail shipping.
(Please note: shipping is to the United States only--and only to the lower forty-eight states. Please also note that there is no shipping on Saturdays.)
This is an advertisement, from an April 1951 program/playbill; the playbill was for a production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
The ad, for Lucky Strike cigarettes, featured Dorothy Collins, who was, at the time, one of the stars of the Hit Parade television show on NBC.
In the ad, Ms. Collins is seen within a bull's-eye (resembling the center of a pack of Lucky Strikes). Each week, on Your Hit Parade, she appeared, famously, in a bull's-eye--in commercials (both singing and spoken) for Lucky Strike. The commercials aired near the beginning and end of each telecast.
In addition to her role as one of the starring singers on the TV show, Ms. Collins (as noted in the ad) came to be called "the sweetheart of Lucky Strike." The appellation was coined by writer and editor Clifton Fadiman, who was the host of the early TV program This Is Show Business--on which Ms. Collins's live Lucky Strike commercials were also featured.
In the program/playbill ad, above, Ms. Collins is seen emerging, somewhat, from the bull's-eye. On television, however, she remained within the border of the bull's-eye, as seen in the image below, from a 1951 Hit Parade broadcast. The image (in which Ms. Collins is holding a carton of Lucky Strikes) is from a video copy of a kinescope.
(Image of Dorothy Collins, from Your Hit Parade telecast, © Lost Gold Entertainment, Inc.)
The following includes links to two performances of "America the Beautiful." (I have featured the same links in two previous July 4th posts, in recent years.)
