On Memorial Day, yesterday, I watched--again--Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, from 1998.
It was--as on previous viewings--harrowing, brutal, inspiring, brilliant.
Watching the film, and (to a non-veteran) its unforgettable depictions of warfare, and soldiering, felt like a meaningful way to spend part of the holiday.
On May 19th, The New York Times published an obituary of Dolores Rosedale--whose name I was not familiar with.
The story's headline read: "Dolores Rosedale, Who Found Fame as a Game-Show Sidekick, Dies at 95." She died in Spring Park, Minnesota, not far from Minneapolis.
The story's secondary headline explained that Ms. Rosedale was the model and actress better known as Roxanne--a name I do know. She was a widely-known figure in early television.
From 1950 until 1955, she was featured (with host Bud Collyer) on the CBS game show Beat the Clock--a show, the Times obituary noted, "in which contestants raced to finish stunts against time limits."
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| Roxanne, on cover of Feb. 1951 "T-V Stars" magazine |
As Times reporter Richard Sandomir wrote: "Roxanne's role didn't require her to say much at first. She posed with the prizes and took pictures of contestants as they carried out their stunts. She later introduced the contestants."
The obituary continued:
"But her poise and glamour--and perhaps, the polka-dot ballet costume she sometimes wore--helped her break out."
She was seen on the covers of Life, Look and TV Guide magazines, among others.
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| Roxanne, 1951, inside cover of "T-V Stars" |
"She reached a pop culture pinnacle of sorts in 1952," Mr. Sandomir wrote, "with the appearance of the 18-inch Roxanne doll."
I've included two images of her, above, from the February, 1951 debut issue of a magazine I have, T-V Stars. The cover photo describes her as "T-V's Most Photogenic Figure." The photo on the inside of the cover shows her holding a camera--presumably the one she used to photograph contestants, as referred to in the Times story.
Roxanne also appeared as an actress in a handful of TV shows and movies, including the 1955 Billy Wilder film The Seven Year Itch (with Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell), and in one Broadway play, A Hatful of Rain, in 1956.
In 1953, while starring on Beat the Clock, she gave an interview to newspaper columnist Earl Wilson, during which she told Mr. Wilson an amusing story about the incomparable Ms. Monroe, concerning a time when Ms. Monroe was modeling. Mr. Sandomir, of the Times, wrote the following about the interview:
Roxanne encountered Marilyn Monroe well before appearing with her in “The Seven Year Itch.”
“It was my first week in New York,” she told Earl Wilson, the syndicated gossip columnist...I’d gone to a wholesale house to model dresses. This girl walked in and started taking off her clothes. She was wearing just a dress, stockings and garter belt, and that’s ALL! I said, ‘Oh, this girl doesn’t know what underwear is.’ ”
In March of 2018, Anderson Cooper interviewed Stephanie Clifford--better known, because of her adult film career, as Stormy Daniels--on CBS's 60 Minutes. Ms. Daniels spoke--quite convincingly--of what she alleged was a 2006 sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
She told Mr. Cooper that at one point, during the evening in question--this was prior to the sexual encounter she said took place--Mr. Trump told her: "Wow, you--you are special."
A few days before the interview with Ms. Daniels aired, Mr. Cooper also interviewed former Playboy model Karen McDougal, on CNN. She, too, spoke very convincingly of what she said was an approximately ten-month relationship with Mr. Trump in 2006 and 2007.
Ms. McDougal, during the interview, said this, about the first time she said she and Mr. Trump had sexual relations: "After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me." She told Mr. Cooper: "I looked at him and said, 'I'm not that type of girl.'"
She continued: "And he said, 'Oh," and he said, 'You're really special."
Ms. McDougal added: "It hurt me that he saw me in that light." Yet she continued to see him, she said, during the ensuing months.
On January 6, 2021, nearly three years after Mr. Cooper's interviews with Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal, rioters supporting Mr. Trump stormed the United States Capitol, as Congress was in session for the pro forma counting of the ballots of the Electoral College. Some 140 law enforcement officers were assaulted and injured that day.
Shortly before 1 p.m., on January 6th, the District of Columbia police department declared that a riot was underway on the Capitol grounds. Not long after 2 p.m., rioters broke through Capitol windows and began entering the building.
It took more than two hours, from that time, for Mr. Trump to ask the insurrectionists, via a video posted on Twitter, to leave the Capitol.
He said, in the video: "So go home. We love you. You're very special."
In the late 1970s, when I began researching and writing about early television, I asked my mother if I could take a lot of what she had stored away, from her New York television career: scripts, recordings, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, letters. She didn't mind at all.
The envelope below--one of the items I took, at the time--contains a fan letter she received in January of 1952, while she was singing on the Hit Parade television show, on NBC. The letter was from a woman in Dallas, Texas.
I have been watching you on T.V. ever since we got our set. At the time you were on Kay Kyser's program. I have watched you on every program you've been on since.
The writer told her how much she enjoyed her Hit Parade performances, and said she wished she would sing more duets with fellow Hit Parade singer Russell Arms. At the end of the letter, she asked if my mother would send her a photograph.
The letter is an enjoyable artifact from early television, yet it is the front of the envelope that I find especially interesting. It had on it my mother's name (her surname appearing to be misspelled, by the way--using only one "t"--as was the case in the salutation of the letter itself), and was sent care of "Your Hit Parade T.V." in New York. The television show's network, and its address, were not included on the envelope.
The letter, as noted, is from 1952, when television was still in its relative infancy. No doubt a great many such letters, at the time, were sent to television performers, or to network programs in general--and I am guessing that, due to the newness of the medium, it was perhaps not unusual that the addressing of the envelopes did not (as above) always contain complete information.
I wonder if, during this time, the Postal Service--particularly in New York City, where so much of early TV was based--had a system in place for sorting television-oriented mailings, to insure their proper delivery. (At this time, network radio--referred to today as Old-Time Radio--had
begun its decline as a medium; maybe Postal Service procedures had existed for years, for similar radio mailings.)
This morning, at The White House, President Biden made the following remarks (appropriate, and sound):
Before I head to North Carolina, I wanted to speak a few moments about what’s going on on our college campuses here.
We’ve all seen the images. And they put to the test two fundamental American principles.
