"Picnic" review

It was sexy, sultry, hot and sticky as the cotton slipping from the cypress trees of Riverside Park as summer gave way to fall in some backwater Kansas town.

One look at the DVD box and you can see it. The muscular leading man, his shirt torn almost clean off, casting lovemaking eyes on the looker in a pink dress. Hot stuff for 1955. That's the year Picnic was released in theaters.

Picnic is a classic '50s story, a look at life 60 years ago. The protagonist is in the Brando/James Dean/Elvis mold. He's the outsider who descends on a sleepy little town and starts shaking things up.

William Holden plays the drifter, Hal Carter, who arrives in town, riding in a box car. He plans to look up an old college buddy, Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson) whose family is wealthy and owns a fleet of grain elevators. Hal harbors unrealistic expectations. Thinks he can just drop in on an old friend and get set up in an office with a secretary. Be a big man behind a big desk on a big phone, making deals on Enterprise.

He scraps some change together, doing yard work for a sweet old lady, Mrs. Potts (Verna Fenton). She's a motherly woman, feeding him breakfast and washing his dirty shirt while he works, barechested, in her back yard and catches the eyes of the women next door - one of whom, Madge Owens (Kim Novak), is Alan's girlfriend. Madge's mother, Flo (Betty Field) finds Hal dangerous and there's something to that.

When he shows up on Alan's spacious lawn, it's a happy, backslapping reunion between old college roommates and fraternity brothers. They reminisce about old times, Alan shows Hal his family's grain elevators, takes him to the local swimming pool and brings him along to the Labor Day town picnic.

That's where the friendship starts to cool. Alan grows weary of Hal's blustery big talking and suggests in front of the others picnicking that Hal can get a job in his elevators - as a grain scooper. Then there's another thing that drives the friends apart - the classic wedge driver.

She stands lean, tall and perky - her big eyes set on something other than dime stores, tea parties and Kansas grain. Madge, Alan's girl.

Her mother is pushing her toward the easy life. Get crowned Miss Neewoallah (Halloween spelled backwards), marry Alan and it's lunch at the country club and Bridge parties for the rest of her life. She'll be taken care of.

It's like she tells her daughter: "You're 19, then 20 and 21. Then you're 40 and an old maid." Picnic portrays well the dead end life that awaited women at that time in that culture. It's not a life that Madge really wants. She seems lukewarm and reticent in her relationship with Alan. Then Hal comes along and lights her fire.
Hal and Madge dance together at the picnic and it falls into the category of sexy with clothes on.

Meanwhile, Alan calls the police and reports the car he let Hal borrow is stolen. He's angry and it has nothing to do with the car. Hal has been out for hours with Madge. When he arrives back at Alan's home with the car, he gets into an unrealistic looking scuffle with the police and speeds off with the car.

After losing the cops and leaving the car behind, he looks up Madge, tells her he's hopping a freight to Tulsa in the morning and begs her to meet him there. Tells her he has a job waiting for him as a hotel belhop. These two are mad for each other. "I love you, I gotta have you," Hal tells her. The two may be lovers (we can easily surmise that they made love; Hollywood didn't show the act back then) but they're not really in love. They're in lust.

The movie ends with Madge taking a bus bound for Tulsa. It's impetuous, her going after this shiftless man whom she'd just met, a man with a rap sheet. Somehow, I don't get the feeling they're going to live happily ever after in Oklahoma.

Then again, Madge needs to get the hell away from her stultifying small town Kansas life. She needs to go out and make a life for herself. In those days before women's liberation, this man, this rebel, offers her the excuse she needs to get away.

Novak was believable as the 19-year-old small town beauty queen. As for Holden's role, I wasn't buying it. He did great with what he was given, playing the swaggering roughneck, but Holden, who was around 37 at the time, looked too old to pass for a guy a few years out of college.

Of all the actors in the film, there's no question who turned in the greatest performance. That honor would go to Rosalind Russell as Rosemary Sydney, the "old maid schoolteacher" who boards in the Owens' house. She puts on airs, talking about the men who are supposedly in love with her and how she has no time for them. Inside, she's lonely, desperate and repressed.

A fortyish woman, Rosemary wants the youth, beauty and sex appeal that Hal and Madge have. Drunk on her date, Howard's, whisky, she shamelessly throws herself at Hal. Then, realizing she's made a fool out of herself, Rosemary lashes out verbal abuse at Hal. Later, she has another meltdown when she begs Howard Bevans (Arthur O'Connell) to marry her. She's vulnerable, emotionally fragile and pathetic.

Russell refused to be nominated for an Oscar in the best supporting actress category. If not for her refusal, she may have clenched it.

Filmed in Kansas, Picnic has that middle America at American mid-century feel. I love the way the director, Joshua Logan, interspersed documentary-like footage of townsfolk at the picnic with scenes of the film's stars. It made me wonder if Logan had ever directed documentaries, but there's nothing in his biographies to suggest he did.

The small town feel takes the movie to the heart of what playwright William Inge was going for when he wrote the original play, Picnic, which won a Pulitzer Prize for drama. (Logan directed the Broadway stage production as well as the film.)

While scandalous for its day, the film is tame by today's standards. It's not a perfect film, but it's worth taking a look at this portal into a time when men wore suits and ties and women wore gorgeous dresses to small town celebrations. Picnic is a slice of Americana pie in a park with a band shelter and pavilion.

The film is mostly forgotten today. But as long as boxcar loneliness and small town yearnings - the heat - exists, Picnic will have a home on community theater and high school stages across America.

Gateway films: Inge also wrote other plays that were made into movies, such as Come Back Little Sheba and Bus Stop, which was also directed by Logan. He also directed such films as Mister Roberts and South Pacific. All are worth a look.

Check out Rosalind Russell in the 1958 comedy, Auntie Mame.

It's too bad that Kim Novak is now only known to younger audiences as the woman with all the ridiculous plastic surgery who introduced Matthew McConaughey at this year's Academy Awards. In the '50s, she was one of the hottest things going. Check her out with Jimmy Stewart in the 1958 Alfred Hitchock directed psychological thriller, Vertigo.

And while on the subject of actresses once hot, still alive, but largely forgotten, I have to recommend the Hitchcock spy thriller, North by Northwest. The film starred Eva Marie Saint with Cary Grant and James Mason.

I first saw Picnic around 20 years ago on TCM (or was it the old American Movie Classics) when today's stars introduced their favorite old films. Brooke Shields picked Picnic. Rosanne Barr and then husband Tom Arnold picked the much classier Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford in The Way We Were. Country singer Travis Tritt showed Elvis's Jailhouse Rock and Kenny Rogers presented Oklahoma.

All, all are worth seeing.

"The Beatles" review

If you're going to load up this year, reading Beatles biographies - and 2014 would be a great year to do that - this is the book to start with. It's not the greatest written book on the fabs or the most brutally honest, but it's the progenitor of all Beatle bios to follow. - The Beatles by Hunter Davies.

Davies wrote the book around late 1967 and early '68.  John Lennon would later dismiss Davies's book as "watered down" and there is some truth to that. Still, this book, albeit an authorized biography was the first to break through the Beatle bubble and begin the unraveling of the cold, unvarnished truth. It was the first book to address their rough childhoods, the band's pill popping days, playing in the red light district of Hamburg, Germany, the controversial firing of Pete Best and how Dylan turned them on to marijuana. 

To get the Beatle experience in print form, this book is a window. Like pot was a window for Rubber Soul and acid for Revolver, this book is - well, it's not that mystical of a portal, but it is an essential entryway. But be aware.  Do not get one of the revised editions of this book. Get the original version, published in September of 1968. Check it out from your local library, interlibrary loan it if your hometown library does not have it, buy it in a used bookstore or off eBay, but if you're going to read the book, read the original copy.

The magic of this book is not the stories it tells. Revelatory for their time, those stories are common knowledge today. Davies' book stands out, not for what it reveals, but for the perspective from which it was written. It came out when the Beatles were still young, somewhat naïve and contemporary, churning out hit singles and getting played on Top 40 radio.

For all anybody knew, the Beatles would still be making music together for years. Davies described the four as "umbillically connected" and they talked as if there was no end in sight.

Furthermore, John was still married to Cynthia, George was still married to Patti, Ringo to Maureen and Paul was engaged to Jane Asher. 

Who knew that in two years, the band would be broken up? That John would leave Cynthia for Yoko and Paul would be married to Linda and have a ready-made family?

Early Beatles. Davies' biography was the first to tell of the band's wild days in Hamburg, Germany. It was the first book to talk about John's art school friend, Stu Sutcliffe, who joined the band, left them and died before they became famous. Davies interviewed Sutcliffe's lover, German artist, Astrid Kirchherr, who took this photograph.

Sometimes when reading such things as John and Cyn's exchanges, there is a tinge of sadness because we know how it will end. On the surface, they seemed to have a happy marriage. In hindsight, the book reveals signs that John's marriage was in trouble. In the shadow of her rockstar husband, Cyn felt unfulfilled. She should have been working on her art and teaching like she wanted to be doing. He should have encouraged her. She wanted to live a quieter family existence with John and Julian. He wanted - at least at that time; it would end quickly - to be constantly surrounded by "our Beatle buddies." Cyn said she did not think she and John would have stayed together if she hadn't gotten pregnant. As for the Beatles worldwide fame?

Sometimes I wish it all never happened, she said.

Of the four Beatles John resonated the most with me because he had the most contradictions. He was the most mercurial of the four and his life appeared to be the one most in limbo. Davies did not go into John's drug addiction, but reading between the lines, it's there.

The book also hints about the group's manager, Brian Epstein homosexuality, without coming out with it. He was described ambiguously as a "gay bachelor." There is a flat denial that Brian's death was suicide. Davies quotes people who maintain strongly that his death was an accidental overdose of pills, but it's hard not to be skeptical.

George comes across as the Beatle who has "grown the most" and "needs the others the least." The most materialistic of the band mates in his youth, he put those worldly concerns to the side when he embraced Eastern religion. It's interesting that while George was uncomfortable with being a celebrity, his family enjoyed it. His parents judged beauty contests and his mother answered fan mail, as did Ringo's wife, Maureen.

That's part of the fun of this book. Not only were all four Beatles still alive, most of their parents were as well. Paul's father seems much like the old, distinguished English gentleman we perceive Paul to be now. Also, it's interesting that George's father, Harold Harrison, continued working as a bus driver even after his son became a world famous millionaire.

Davies' book was written from the perspective of the Beatles having reached a plateau. The story had a neat, tidy ending. But things were forever changing in the Beatles world (despite that line in "Across the Universe") and this book was almost out of date as soon as it came off the presses. Only three months after its publication, John and Yoko would be appearing nude on the cover of Rolling Stone.

There is a certain innocence about the book as it gives a last look at the Beatles before the changes set into motion that would split the band apart and into history.

Gateway literature

Having read Hunter Davies' biography, the next logical step is to read the biographies, Shout: The Beatles and their Generation by Phillip Norman and The Beatles: A Biography by Bob Spitz. You might as well continue the journey.

I chose this video from Lennon's solo career because you see him hanging out with Miles Davis. Only a few years earlier, John is quoted in Davies' book, saying, "We're very anti-jazz. I think it's shit music."

"Bonnie and Clyde" review

I didn't watch the A&E version of Bonnie and Clyde for the same reason I refused to watch remakes of Hairspray, The Shining and Footloose.

You can't top the original.

The big screen version of Bonnie and Clyde from 1967 was ground breaking, provocative and iconoclastic. This depiction of the infamous 1930s bank robbers struck the chord of 1960s counter culture with its themes of youthful rebellion, sexual freedom and senseless murder mirroring the casualties in Vietnam.

There was an amoral aspect to the film. Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) were bank robbers and murderers, yet we liked them and sympathized with them. The anti-hero is  all over the edgy TV fare of today, but for  1960s movie audiences, used to Hollywood's old Hays Production Code, it was heavy stuff.

But those old ways were unraveling. Bonnie and Clyde reflected that.

Bonnie and Clyde were not even portrayed as dark characters. They were kind of goofy, likable and capricious. Clyde was a bumbling bank robber. For much of the film, he was impotent, telling Bonnie, "I ain't no loverboy." Yet, there was something smooth about him. In Beatty's hands...he had style. As Bonnie, Faye Dunaway was alluring. Totally smokin' hot and a tease. When she caresses Clyde's handgun, it stands in for a phallus, one of many phallic symbols in the film.

If a celluloid version of Bonnie and Clyde were made today, there would probably be graphic sex scenes. This film didn't need that. It captured the groove of the '60s sexual revolution on suggestion, alone.

Parts of the movie were fictional. For example, Bonnie didn't meet Clyde when he was trying to steal her mother's car as depicted in the movie. But that's okay. Screenwriters David Newman and Robert Benton wanted to tell a story and create a cinematic mood.

Director Arthur Penn shot the film primarily around rural back roads and primitive towns in the Dallas, Texas area that looked like the 1930s. Some scenes were shot in actual banks that the real Bonnie and Clyde robbed. There was a Grapes of Wrath feel to the story and scenery. In one scene, Clyde Barrow talks to a farmer whose home has been foreclosed by the bank. A view of the man's wife and child inside the truck looks like a Walker Evans photograph.

The 1930s Steinbeckian quality is there, casting banks as corrupt and against the poor folk. While robbing a bank, Clyde gives a farmer back the money the man had just given him - something that really happened. In a scene where they subdue a Texas ranger, Frank Hamer, played by Denver Pyle, Clyde tells him, "You oughta be helpin' poor folks instead of chasin' after us."

While it depicted the '30s and spoke to the nation's nostalgia for the era, the theme of non-conformists striking at The Establishment resonated with '60s culture. It was a moment short-lived.

Throughout the movie, there was a sense of doom hanging over the heads of Bonnie and Clyde. When they talked about the normal life they would live when this Depression was over, about what they would do differently if they were starting over, we know - they know - their ride is almost over. Reality sets in from the first moment Clyde kills a man and becomes more vivid, the deeper his gang gets in its crime spree.

The chaos that would come to consume the troubled lives of Bonnie and Clyde in their final days mirrored the societal breakdown, the violent, grenade throwing culture of the late '60s. Clyde's brother, Buck, (Gene Hackman) gets shot in the face. We see the blood, hear him in pain, hear the cacophonous screams of his wife Blance (Estelle Parsons) and Bonnie. Their dreams were dying, just as America's dream of living up to its ideals was disintegrating into violence and mass confusion.

When the gang visits Bonnie's mother, the scenes are shot slow motion with hazy, far away tones. We sense it's one last homecoming, a sad farewell.

From a Freudian aspect, it's noteworthy that when Clyde is finally able to make love to Bonnie, it's only after she has written a poem, published in the newspapers, predicting their demise. "...but it's death for Bonnie and Clyde." It speaks to what Freud called our subconscious desire for sex and death.

The violence had something audiences hadn't seen before in movies.
It looked real. We're desensitized  to violence today and we've lost touch with reality. But in 1967, it was shocking to see someone's face bloodied and flesh torn from gunshot wounds. I would say the graphic violence was warranted. Here were the consequences revealing how far the Barrow gang had fallen.

Also, the violence and deaths were timely. People were watching dead soldiers every night on the evening news. The film was a commentary on Vietnam where young men in the bloom of life were being brutally cut down. I'm sure there were right wing reactionaries at the time, cheering on the war -"blow em' to kingdom come" - while piously decrying the "immorality and violence" in Hollywood and popular culture. The audience member turned on to reality would see the connection.

A film that captures the zeitgeist of its time deserves to be watched and studied in any era. I really can't speak for the remake because I haven't seen it and don't care to, but I doubt that film students will be discussing it 40 or 50 years from now. The 1967 version may not be the definitive history, but it is the definitive film about Bonnie and Clyde.

This classic from Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs was played at various times in Bonnie and Clyde. It was anachronistic as the story was set in 1931 and the song wasn't recorded until 1948 or '49.  Still, the old timey sound complemented the film and the action well.

Gateway movies

Bonnie and Clyde was influenced by French New Wave style of filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Check out their work in films like: Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim and Breathless.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? - I read that impotence was a common theme in films from the 1960s. Obviously, I have to see more 60s films. I do know it was a theme in this Mike Nichols directed black comedy-drama about a drunken, volatile night at the home of a professor (Richard Burton) and his wife (Elizabeth Taylor) as they entertain a younger couple, (George Segal) and (Sandy Denis). Excellent film

The French Connection - Gene Hackman won a best actor Oscar for his role as a New York City police detective. Roy Schneider played his partner. Based on a true story and a book, the two stumble on an international heroin smuggling operation and try to track down the source. The film won the best picture Oscar for 1971.

Chinatown - This 1974 film directed by Roman Polanski starred Faye Dunaway, John Huston and Jack Nicholson. A critique of greed and corruption, the story was based on California's "water wars" - disputes over water rights. The film revived the noir style of the 1940s.

Natural Born Killers - There were scenes in Bonnie and Clyde showing the pair as folk heroes, glorified in the press. It reminded me of this disturbing, controversial Oliver Stone film from 1994, starring Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis, as two young lovers who murder people and become mass media celebrities.

Gateway literature

I would be remiss not to recommend James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

"The Most Dangerous Man in America" review

I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions. . . . (From Daniel Ellsberg’s TV interview with Walter Cronkite) http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/transcript-of-cronkites-interview-of-me-just-after-the-pentagon-papers-came-outhttp://www.ellsberg.net/archive/transcript-of-cronkites-interview-of-me-just-after-the-pentagon-papers-came-out

I was in college majoring in journalism, taking a Media Law class when I learned about the Pentagon Papers case – one of the most important cases ever decided by the Supreme Court. Tricky Dick Nixon tried to suppress publication of leaked documents about the Vietnam War, but fortunately the high court ruled in favor of the Constitution.

The 40th anniversary of the case brought the Pentagon Papers in the news again. At long last, the government has declassified the entire collection – more than 7,000 documents telling the dirty truth about how four U.S. presidents helped create a war that needlessly ended 58,000 American and 2 million Vietnamese lives.

Daniel Ellsberg, a defense dept. analyst, leaked the Top Secret documents to the press. The court ruled against prior restraint, saying the government could not stop newspapers from publishing the classified papers. While I understood the impact of this decision – a triumph for First Amendment rights -- I knew next to nothing about Ellsberg. I learned that Nixon’s plumbers ransacked his psychiatrist’s office and that’s about it.

This week’s news prompted me to finally watch the 2009 documentary film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. The film, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, educated me about Ellsberg and gave me new insight into this historical drama and its relevance today. POV’s (that’s cinema speak for “Point of View”) website, http://www.pbs.org/pov/ showed the documentary online for free on Monday and Tuesday this week. If you didn’t see it, I say go to your local library and check out the DVD. http://www.pbs.org/pov/mostdangerousman/

Ellsberg was not a hippie peacenik. He was an Establishment figure. A Harvard graduate, summa cum laude, Ellsberg then attended Cambridge University on a fellowship. Between 1954 and 1957, he spent three years as a U.S. Marine Corps commander. In 1959 he joined the RAND corporation global policy think tank. During the 1960s, he was a Dept. of Defense analyst perpetuating the Cold War line until – in good conscience – he could do it no longer. http://www.ellsberg.net/

He leaked a bombshell government study to newspapers chronicling the history of our Southeast Asian police action. The report – which Ellsberg helped write -- revealed how presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson had lied to the public and dragged the United States into an unjust, unwinnable war. Nixon, happy to see his predecessors with their pants down, nevertheless realized a whistleblower could also get dirt on him. So he went after Ellsberg and tried to muzzle the press.

The film’s title is taken from Henry Kissinger. Imagine that, a war criminal calling someone of principle “the most dangerous man in America.” That speaks loudly about the arrogance and hypocrisy of power. Hearing White House tapes of Nixon’s voice is chilling: “You’re so goddamn conscientious about civilians and I don’t give a damn.”

Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers are relevant in 2011. The U.S. military is fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, suicides are on the rise among veterans, wikileaks has revealed things the U.S. government doesn’t want you to know and the guys who blew the whistle are in jail on questionable charges. We would be remiss not to examine history in the context of today’s world and The Most Dangerous Man in America is a great resource for doing that.

The Academy award nominated film is modest, not a hagiography, but I came away from it, seeing Ellsberg as an American hero. It’s a view he would not share. Ellsberg, now 80, feels guilty about the six years he spent in the defense dept., knowing the government was lying to the public, and doing nothing as the death toll mounted in Vietnam.

The “most shameful episode in my life,” he says in the film, was helping Defense Secretary Robert McNamara persuade Pres. Lyndon Johnson to launch the “most disproportionate bombing campaign in the history of the world” on North Vietnam.

Ellsberg’s disaffection with the war evolved gradually, but by the end of the ‘60s, he could no longer remain “a passive bureaucrat.” The most riveting moments of the film reveal Ellsberg anguishing as he confronted a moral dilemma: violate the secrecy contracts he had signed or stay silent as more lives were lost. The man was willing to go to prison for the rest of his life if it meant stopping the war. Hearing this, there was no way I could not respect the man.

Ultimately, a federal judge threw out the government’s case against Ellsberg. (The Nixon administration had compromised the integrity of its investigation with dirty tricks.) But nobody could have foreseen the outcome.

The recent de-classification of the Pentagon Papers was a quiet news item. There were no world shaking revelations. The contents of the documents were revealed by the news media years ago. Really, the public response has been too quiet. We should be asking ourselves: what parallels do we see today? (Wikileaks for one.) Is the government, acting in our name, conducting itself honorably? What are the possible ramifications of our actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya? Is there transparency in government?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/02/libya/index.html http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/16/prosecutionshttp://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/25/whistleblowers

I don’t think we’ve learned from our history. Nixonian policy has become a template for the presidency and Vietnam is our template for waging war. History has vindicated Ellsberg, but if we were today fighting a war with American casualties on a scale with Vietnam, and someone leaked documents revealing executive branch weapons of mass deception, I think he would be Typhoid Mary. Most Americans would swallow that hackneyed government stand-by about that person being a traitor, costing American lives and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The same old song and dance.

Gateway films: One Bright Shining Moment. An intriguing documentary about George McGovern’s 1972 presidential run, this film is a reminder of a good opportunity lost.

Gateway books: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg’s memoir, upon which much of the film is based.

The Arrogance of Power by Sen. J. William Fulbright. This book by the late Arkansas senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is a must-read. Fulbright was writing about U.S. mistakes related to Vietnam, but he could just as well have been writing about today. If only America had heeded his advice.

There is a clip of Fulbright in The Most Dangerous Man in America explaining on a TV news show why he voted with the rest of Congress to give LBJ a blank check to wage war in Vietnam. A formidable political mind, Fulbright wasn’t perfect.

A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It by Sen. Mike Gravel. The two-term Alaska senator is featured in The Most Dangerous Man for introducing the Pentagon Papers into the public record during a filibuster.

Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House by Egil “Bud” Krogh. The head of Nixon’s plumber’s unit, Krogh served a brief prison term, turned his life around and is the only one of the plumbers to take ownership of his actions. He is interviewed in the Ellsberg documentary.

"How the Great Religions Began" review

I like the coexist bumper stickers. I'm interested in different faiths. Hence, when I saw Joeseph Gaer's How the Great Religions Began in a thrift store, I bought it.

I was hoping the book would talk about the circumstances in parts of the world that would lead to certain religions originating in those specific regions - the land, conditions, political situations. This book wasn't that deep. However it did refer to how the caste system under Hinduism led to Buddhism and how the the oppression of Jews under the Roman Empire raised hopes for a messiah and gave birth to Christianity.

Gaer's book is basic, a little naive and innocent, respectful and for the time it was written in, quite forward. How the Great Religions Began was written in the 1920s - a time when Christianity was almost the only religion in the United States and Judaism was was a U.S. sub-culture, primarily practiced among Eastern European immigrants on the East Coast.

Religious bigotry in this country was directed at Jews and Catholics. Islam, while it may have existed here since before the Mayflower, by way of the slave trade, was still too minuscule to attract notice. Islamophobia wasn't invented yet in the United States. Of course it's here now in a big way, which makes Gaer's book - while of average scholarly significance - amazingly forward in terms of subject matter and acceptance.

In today's flat, small earth, we have the world and all its cultures accessible at our fingertips. Ninety years ago, it was rare that we would acknowledge an Eastern world existed in history, rarer still for it to be regarded with respect, equal to that of Western culture. Gaer did this, giving space and consideration to such far Eastern religions as Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shintoism.

This isn't to say the book isn't dated. Some of the language, while not disrespectful, may sound that way today. The opening of the chapter on Judaism, while making a point about the diversity within the culture, sounds laughably stereotypical and un-PC today.

There are a few Jews in Abyssinia as dark as any man in that land.
There are a few Jews in China, who like the Chinese, are yellow-skinned and their eyes are almond-shaped and slanted.
There are Jews in Italy, swarthy and black-eyed.
There are Jews in Northern Russia, Canada, Sweden and Norway with blonde hair, white skins and greenish grey eyes.
And there are Jews in Denmark, Germany and Ireland who are red-haired and blue-eyed.
There are short, dark-haired Jews in warmer climates.
There are tall, light-skinned Jews in colder countries.
There are the slender daughters of Zion in Palestine, and there are the fat Jewesses in Tunis and Morocco.

The passage is painful to  read, but while it's unpalatable to modern ears, it is a reflection of the naivete' of the times. It is unlikely that Gaer was intentionally being disrespectful to any culture, and he definitely was not expressing anti-semitism. Gaer may have been marveling at the reach of his own culture.

Originally, Joseph Fisherman, he was born Jewish in Yedinitz, Russia in 1897. A lecturer in contemporary literature at UC Berkeley, he held several positions in the federal government over the years, and in 1958, he became founder and director of the Jewish Heritage Foundation in Beverly Hills. He also wrote a book called Our Jewish Heritage.

The strength of the book is Gaer's openness to world religions at a time when the Western world was not that culturally open. He can be forgiven for language that wouldn't go down well today.

Weaknesses in the book include Gaer's writing style, which sometimes sounds condescending. Not toward different cultures, but to the reader. He writes as if he's talking to a child.

Also, the book contains no bibliography or end notes, taking away from any historical value it might otherwise have. Historically, the book is accurate, but basic and without a lot of depth. A better introduction to comparative religion would be Huston Smith's 1958 book, The Religions of Man.

When reading Gaer's book, however, one can take delight in the similarities between the diverse religions: Buddha's Sermon at Benares and Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. Buddha's Four Noble Truths, Eight-fold Path, Confucios's Five Constant Virtues and Christ's Beatitudes. It was interesting to read about how Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism.

Despite Gaer's flaws, there is something fundamentally decent in his naivete' that one finds near the end of the book. In his belief that monotheism is the apex of religious thought, he writes:

The believer in One God (or Monotheist as he is called) realizes that all of mankind must be regarded as one large family, different as may be the color of people's skins, the words of their speech, or the manner of their daily lives...
The true Monotheist realizes that whatever one race does affects all other races; whatever one nation does affects all other nations; whatever one person does affects all other people - for good or for evil.
And from this the true Monotheist is forced to conclude that only what is good for mankind at large is good for the individual. And what is bad for mankind is bad for the individual in the long run.
This is what is meant by the Brotherhood of Man that all the great religions of today preach.
And through this Brotherhood of Man can be attained not through hatred, but love; not through strife, but cooperation; not through war but peace.

Oh, if it were so.

"Great Songs of Christmas (Album Five)" review

You may have heard this yuletide oldie before in another life. Piping from a hi fi console at your grandparents' house back in the days when Christmas was Christmas. Maybe your grandpa got the album with a purchase of Good Year snow tires for his Buick.

For years, Good Year and Firestone had an annual rivalry. They both released Christmas albums during the holiday season, and each year's offering was a star-studded event. The tire companies and the record companies - Firestone (RCA), Good Year (Columbia) - brought out the big guns recorded Christmas carols - Bing Crosby, Mahalia Jackson, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Robert Goulet, Isaac Stern, Barbara Streisand...

Somewhere around the early '70s, there were no more records. No more albums at your mechanic and tire dealerships the way Starbucks carries CD's today. A more cynical age was taking shape. Christmas carols. TV variety shows full of singing, dancing and cornball humor - that was okay for Don Draper and Roger Sterling's cocktail lounge lives, but the roach smokin', rock generation was graduating from college, joining the workforce and starting families. They didn't care that Maurice Chevalier made a heartwarming comedy movie in 1932.

Perhaps Good Year's Great Songs of Christmas, that album I picked up from the bargain bin at the used record store is carrying the ghost of that man who picked it up with a lube job. Maybe he wore a fedora hat and kept his Pal Malls in a silver-plated cigarette case, who knows? What if that 33 rpm record is the portal? If within its groves, I would slip into the black hole that is the ghost of Christmas Past? .

Album Five, the words on the record sleeve say. That means it was released in 1965. The album sleeve is a Christmas red with images of cute little Christmas cookie angels. Below are pictures of the singers and musicians featured in the album.
                                                             
O' Holy Night sung by Andy Williams is easily the best recording on the album, not only because it is the greatest Christmas song ever written, but for the way its carried by Williams's velvet-like voice. His stirring vocals give this classic carol the drama and reverence it deserves. I can envision the manger, the illustrious star, grasp the holiness of the scene. Near the end of the song, Williams's voice registers to a falsetto, accentuating its holiness.

With a top-rated TV variety show and hit records coming from all sides, Williams was a smart choice for this album. He may not have been as Christmasy as Perry Como, but he was huge deal in entertainment-at-large.

Williams's recording fittingly begins the album. First cut on side one. The second best track, appropriately enough, is the last one on side two - "Jingle Bells", sung by the swingest cat, Mr. Showbiz, Sammy Davis, Jr. and here, Mr. Davis shows why he is a consummate professional. He takes the most ordinary, cliched of Christmas songs and turns it into a hip, swingin' affair.

But Davis's "Jingle Bells" is only a medley. It leads into the only original composition on the album, "It's Christmas Time All Over the World," written by Hugh Martin, who also wrote such classics as "Meet Me in St. Louis" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." In Davis's hands, this new (for 1965) song takes on a Sinatra-like "Come Fly With Me" vibe. The children's chorus calls to mind Sinatra's "High Hopes," while giving a glimpse of what's to come seven years later when Davis will record that perennial childlike favorite, "The Candy Man."

Naturally, I would prefer that this whole album be in a ballad and swingin' mold, something along the lines of that tradition Michael Buble is keeping alive today. This is not that album. I have, however, come to appreciate what it is -  and this is the point at which the time portal works its educational magic. The Great Songs of Christmas (Album Five) is a product of those days when Broadway show tunes, opera and classical orchestras constituted hit album sales.

Take Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Can we ever have enough Eugene Ormandy Orchestra? Don't be so cavalier. I'd say he's worthy of respect. The man conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years and he had directed the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra for five years before that.

I particularly like the orchestra's performance of "We Three Kings of Orient Are" because it's so historical. Most of us know little about The Wise Men except that they're these figures in Nativity sets who brought the Christ child gold, frankincense and myrrh. According to the book of Matthew, the only Gospel account that mentions them, they did not meet Jesus until he was around two years old and in his home. The orient the song refers to is Persia and the wise men were mostly likely priests of the high caste of Zoroastrianism who were deep into astrology. Therefore, they followed the "star," possibly a comet. Biblical scholars have written that the wise men made the journey because they were aware of the prophecies in Daniel that foretold the birth of the messiah.

Back to Eugene Ormandy. Like Sammy Davis, Jr., he was Jewish, which is interesting since they're featured on a Christmas album. Although Ormandy was born into it and of Hungarian origin.

I recently listened to a segment on NPR, asking "What happened to classical Christmas music?" This album takes the listener back to the days when classical music was still a mainstay of the season's musical palate. Opera singers Andre Kostelanetz, Richard Tucker and Anna Mari Alberghetti are featured, performing The Great Songs of Christmas.

Anna Mari Alberghetti? you ask. She was only on "The Ed Sullivan Show" more than 50 times. A lot more times than Elvis. Her soprano voice in "Caroling, Caroling" captures the sing-along, skippity-skip lilt of the song. With her girlish voice and seasonal aura, one can envision caroling merry makers in a snow-capped gingerbread neighborhood.

Dinah Shore and Doris Day have similar voices - white, sweet and virginal. They are good voices, yet the types that today would not make it past the initial auditioning on "American Idol" or "The Voice" because they would not sound contemporary enough. All the more reason to give them a listen - and a chance. Figure out what made them such smashing stars in the '50s and '60s.

The best selection on this album by a female singer is Diahann Caroll's version of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," not only because her voice is the most original of the female voices on the album, but because the song - although it is more than 400 years old - the least known. Hence, it is the most original. The lyrics about a blooming flower are symbolic of Christ's birth.

Mrs. Webb, the music teacher at my kids's school, is good about bringing fresh  songs into the elementary school Christmas concerts she directs. The kids have sang songs about diversity and caring for the earth. Neat, original stuff. "There are about five standard Christmas songs and I didn't want to be 'that teacher,'" she told me.

                                                                     
Overall, The Great Songs of Christmas is that album. Perhaps, it's appropriate, consistent with the album's title. True, "The Little Drummer Boy" and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" aren't my favorite songs. But their inclusion on this album is a window into a time when Christmas conventions were par for the course. The Golden Age of Christmas music lasted from around 1940 to 1965. This album, this culture, which for a time was coexisting with the Beatles was on the wane. In an era when the Beatles are taking their rightful place in history's archives, it is interesting to see the world as it was before.

One of my favorite songs on the album - remember I prefer the jumping tunes - is "Sleigh Ride," sung by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. Here's one that takes me back to the grandparent's house and the hi-fi console.  From somewhere in the house, someone was jangling bells and it was proof positive to me that Santa was flying nearby on his sleigh. This yuletide classic pop song, sung by the swift, crisp as clean, swingin' voices of Steve and Eydie captures all that razmatazz.

"Giddyup, giddyup, giddyup, let's go." Steve Lawrence's voice coming in like a lashing whip. Listening, I can only think, "How cool is this guy?"

The somber religious selections by Kostelanetz and Ormandy do seem pedestrian and staid, but when I focus more closely, I think about why they were included here, why this holiday is what it is. It becomes clear in my mind as I hear opera tenor Richard Tucker's version of "The Lord's Prayer." Somber. Reverential. Along with the toy soldier Christmas merriment I felt as a kid at Christmas, I also recapture another holiday feeling I absorbed then - the religiosity.

The belief.

I'm just as jaded and cynical as anyone else. More so, probably. But I'll open the door, the window to that place as art dictates. You may not like every song on this album or every musical style represented, but I say open yourself up and see if you don't find Christmas spirit, real as Doscher's candy canes.

                    Steve and Edyie Gorme' singing "Sleigh Ride."
                    Edyie died last August at age 84.
                                        Terrible loss.  

                          On the Christmas album, Richard Tucker sings,
                           "The Lord's Prayer." Here is Frank Sinatra's
                           beautiful version of the song.

How could this sweet thing ever be forgotten? Here is Anna Maria's beautiful number, "Love Makes the World Go Round" from the musical "Carnival."

I didn't care for Maurice Chevalier's singing of 

"Jolly Old St. Nicholas" and I cared even 

less for his version of "Silent Night." But, I love his song, "Mimi" 

from the 1932 movie "Love Me Tonight." You really ought to 

care about that.

"The Chaperone" review

Louise Brooks was an icon of the silent film era. But only a few years before she became a celluloid heroine, she was a 15-year-old girl from Wichita, Kan. trying to make it as a dancer in New York. A 36-year-old housewife accompanied her on this trip, acting as her chaperone.

In her novel, The Chaperone, Lori Moriarty imagines the generational tension that likely existed between the teenage Louise and her middle aged chaperone. The two women came of age in entirely different eras and saw the world differently. It is easy to speculate, as Moriarty does, that there was friction.

Cora, the chaperone, is a product of the Victorian era. She's bundled in, wearing a corset and skirts that descend to her feet. In her world, sex is never mentioned and only hinted at in hushed, vague terms if it is even referred to at all.

Louise is already wearing her hair in the straight black classic bob style she will make famous a few years later. She wears skirts raised above the knees and at times goes without a bra. She is coming to bloom in the frivolous Jazz Age with its bathtub gin and relaxed morals.

Although Louise went on to be a film star, she's a supporting character in the novel. This story belongs to Cora. As the chaperone, she tries to keep Louise within the limits of propriety. But it’s Cora who breaks with convention and gains liberated new sensibilities. Cora finds her own unique voice and works through her vulnerabilities to emerge as a strong, independent-minded woman.

Moriarty cleverly uses the corset as a symbol in Cora’s evolving character. She treats the constricting undergarment as a metaphor for the restrictions society placed on women's lives. The moment Cora frees her body from the corset's grip, she frees her mind as well.

But don't discard The Chaperone as a "chick book." I would classify it as historical fiction with an element of mystery. There is enough going on in this book to make it enjoyable to readers of either gender.

Moriarty uses characters and situations to touch on historical events: the Victorian era, Suffragettes, World War I, the Spanish Influenza, the Orphan trains, Klu Klux Klan, the Jazz Age, prohibition, Civil Rights...

She did scrupulous research, which enabled her to get her facts straight and make her story believable. The historical precision gives her writing authenticity and authority.  Moriarty’s research shows in the way she weaves in facts about Louise's personal and professional life. Her parents were neglectful. She was molested as a child in Cherryvale, Kan. She did dance with Denishawn in New York, under Ruth St. Dennis. She did have a drinking problem. She did return to Wichita for awhile after her movie career flamed out.

Moriarty is true to Louise's character, having her say and do things like the actual Louise would have done. She is depicted as selfish, self-absorbed and manipulative, just as the real Louise was. Yet it's still easy to like her. Moriarty draws on Louise's life in ways that evoke admiration, as well as sympathy. Her acerbic lines are some of the best in the book.

The relationship between Louise and Cora is the most interesting in a book that contains several interesting and unique relationships. Their dialogue is enlivened by tension and competing interests, creating the most crisp character interplay of the book. Significantly, Cora does find commonalities with Louise, and the two women do develop a cautious respect for each other.

Change is a constant of life, and the two women’s lives are altered forever during that summer when their paths intersect. Their transformations take shape at a time when the rules of society were changing and never going back. But don’t be surprised, when reading this book, if the puritanism, prejudices and “slut shaming” in its pages don’t sound strangely contemporary.

After all, we know what happens the more things change.

Gateway literature

Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which Cora is reading on the trip. Also read the German philosopher Schopenhauer, whom Louise was reading on the same trip. Moriarty did extensive research to make her book historically authentic, and anything from her bibliography would be worth reading. If I had to recommend one, though, it would be Louise Brooks: A Biography by Barry Paris. It's been called the "bible on Brooks."

Gateway films

Anything with Louise Brooks in her prime, of course, especially her greatest artistic achievements, Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. Here is a video montage of Brooks.