Skate! Skate! Skate!

 

 

 

 

 

Some day, when I'm awfully low

"Never Gonna Dance" music by Jerome Kern and words by Dorothy Fields

Though I'm left without a penny, The wolf was discreet. He left me my feet. And so, I put them down on anything But the la belle, La perfectly swell romance. Never gonna dance. Never gonna dance. Only gonna love. Never gonna dance.   Have I a heart that acts like a heart, Or is it a crazy drum, Beating the weird tattoos Of the St. Louis Blues? Have I two eyes to see your two eyes Or see myself on my toes Dancing to radios Or Major Edward Bowes? Though I'm left without a penny, The wolf was discreet. He left me my feet. And so, I put them down on anything But the la belle, La perfectly swell romance. Never gonna dance. Never gonna dance. Only gonna love. Never gonna dance.   I'll put my shoes on beautiful trees. I'll give my rhythm back to the breeze. My dinner clothes may dine where they please, For all I really want is you.   And to Groucho Marx I give my cravat. To Harpo goes my shiny silk hat. And to heaven, I give a vow To adore you. I'm starting now To be much more positive. That....   Though I'm left without my Penny, The wolf was not smart. He left me my heart. And so, I cannot go for anything But the la belle, La perfectly swell romance. Never gonna dance. Never gonna dance. Only gonna love you. Never gonna dance. http://www.glamamor.com/2012/02/cinema-style-file-fred-astaire-and.html (Best movie photos EVER!)

What's under that skirt?

ACK!  This has to rate as the most hallucinogenic 1930s production number I've ever seen, and I don't even think it's Busby Berkeley. Berkeley had a certain shiny, tappy, violently vulgar quality, while this scene, done in one incredible shot, with its swooping, suffocating curtains, dancers in skin-tight body suits and sweetly androgynous tenor soloist, is oddly sultry, even erotic: those silken drapes are hauled up as seductively as a bosomy chorine slowly raising her hemline to reveal God-knows-what.

That massive spiral-staircase turntable, the design of which must be the product of an evil mind harnessed to an over-the-top budget, keeps revealing ever-more-incredible sights and sounds, bizarre stylized dancers that look almost mechanical, operatic excerpts quickly followed by Rhapsody in Blue, and. . . at the top of it all, a Woman, immobilized as a bride buried up to the waist in cake-frosting.

Yes, she's a human cupcake, folks, looking positively edible, and I could eat her right now.  As the silken folds of those swooshy, almost liquid drapes slowwwwwwwly descend, evoking smoky boudoirs and perfume-reeking bridal chambers, we realize we have been taken on a mind-boggling trip through an abstract-art-deco/Freudian-dream-symbol-scape, a big round succulent spiral slowly sucking us into its insatiable vortex, a. . . Yes. It's eight minutes of glorious, strangely orgasmic movie magic.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Pardon me miss, but I've never done this

(From a musical called Little Me, unknown.)

FRED

Pardon me, miss, but I've never done this

With a real live girl.

Straight off the farm with an actual arm

Full of real live girl.

Pardon me if your affectionate squeeze

Fogs up my glasses and buckles my knees,

I'm simply drowned in the sight and the sound

And the scent and the feel

Of a real live girl.

SOLDIERS

Nothing can beat getting swept off your feet

By a real live girl.

Dreams in your bunk don't compare with a hunk

Of a real live girl.

Speaking of miracles, this must be it;

Just when I started to learn how to knit.

I'm all in stitches from finding what riches

A waltz can reveal

With a real live girl.

[Whistle]

Real live girl.

[Whistle]

Real live girl.

I've seen photographs and facsimiles

That have set my head off in a whirl,

But no work of art gets you right in the heart

Like a real live girl.

Take your statues of Juno,

And the Venus de My-lo.

(Me-lo.)

When a fellow wants you-know,

(We know.)

Who wants substitutes? I'll o-

Verlook everyone in the book

For a real

Sexy Sally or Suzabel.

Take your Venetian or Roman or Grecian

Ideal,

I'll take something more "uzabel."

Girls were like fellas was once my belief;

What a reversal, and what a relief.

I'll take the flowering hat and the towering heel

And the squeal

Of a real live girl.

[Dance]

Real live girl.

[Dance]

Real live girl.

Go be a holdout for Helen of Troy,

I am a healthy American boy.

I'd rather gape at the dear little shape

Of the stern and the keel

Of a full-time vocational,

Full-operational

Girl.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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I Remember

There's a story behind this song. I posted the lyrics yesterday because I think they're stunning: Stephen Sondheim mixes cliches with simple yet startlingly original images ("and ice like vinyl on the streets, cold as silver, white as sheets/Rain like strings, and changing things/Like leaves.")

This wasn't written for one of his legendary musicals, but for a quirky little TV special from the mid-'60s called Evening Primrose. A disillusioned poet (played by that disillusioned poet of Hollywood, Anthony Perkins) breaks into a department store at night, hoping to find shelter from a cruel and uncaring world, and encounters a whole subculture living there (kind of a prequel to that cheesy '80s fantasy/drama Beauty and the Beast, which I used to slavishly watch every Friday night while putting away copious quantities of fizzy peach cider).

Anyway, since no one taped things in those days (it was deemed too expensive, which is why the networks erased most of Ernie Kovacs' programs and taped quiz shows over them), this 50-minute musical was long lost except to memory. But sometimes a kinescope (a crude sort of tape taken from the TV monitor) remained, and not long ago someone unearthed a "pristine" copy from a vault somewhere and reissued it on DVD. It's on its way to me from Amazon, and I'll be reviewing it in agonizing detail when it comes.

The reason I'll bother is that the song I Remember, now a classic, was written for this show. Unfortunately, Charmion Carr, fresh from her triumph as the eldest Von Trapp daughter in The Sound of Music, played the inevitable romantic interest, just so Tony Perkins could have his usual awkward, ambivalent love scenes with her.

Unfortunately, and in spite of TSOM, Carr couldn't sing. So she basically massacred this lovely, haunting song, this song which makes me cry every time even though I always swear I won't. When I hear it, it makes me wish Anthony Perkins had sung it: with his sweet lyric tenor and great care with lyrics, he would have given it its due. (And I think he knew what it was all about.)

Since recording artist were quick to issue covers for this gem (kind of like that hymn to dysfunctional relationships, Send in the Clowns), I encountered a few different versions on YouTube, but I remembered one from a CD called Cleo Sings Sondheim that never failed to stir me.

This video has its limitations. Every Cleo Laine video I've seen has silly special effects, and this one is no exception. Losing my Mind has the following choreography:

"The sun comes up, I think about you." (Cue the sun streaming in the window.)
"The coffee cup, I think about you." (Cleo sips from a Starbuck's cup.)
And so on, and so on (giving little "gee, what shall I do" headshakes that almost destroy the song's indescribable yearning). All that's missing is the Swiffer duster to illustrate "all afternoon, doing every little chore".

I Remember is almost as inane. When the lyrics mention snow, little bits of styrofoam begin to sift down on her. When it's "leaves", pieces of paper blow into a doorway. It's just too sad.

But the performance: no one else captures the delicacy and pathos of this song, especially those last lines, "I remember days, or at least I try. But as years go by, they're a sort of haze/And the bluest ink isn't really sky. And at times I think/I would gladly die/for a day of sky."

Close your eyes, and sink into it.

Gush-a-thon

Hey, y'all. I don't know quite whas'sup with Oprah these days, but it seems her "farewell season" has to trumpet "a Very Special Oprah" every damn day now.

Having survived the Kitty Kelley debacle (the most unflattering star bio I have ever read), she's all geared up to put on Memorable Shows about Memorable

Things.

No issues, however. Not even Favorite Things, that gluttinous orgy of empty materialism. Most of them have to do with movie reunions. Oprah is big on reunions, not having been to her high school one (can you imagine the mob scene? The devastation to the buffet table?).

I recently sat through a Sound of Music reunion with the entire cast (actually it was nine people, and I really think the credits rolled for longer than that). An aged but wicked Christopher Plummer talked about his drinking binges during the shoot, and revealed that his nickname for the saccharine picture was "The Sound of

Mucus".

Oprah asked the eldest von Trapp daughter (I think it was the one who dated the Nazi: can't resist a man in a uniform!) what she had learned on the shoot. "Chris taught me a lot," she said sweetly. "What did he teach you?" (A life lesson that changed the course of her existence?)

"He taught me how to drink."

So much for "doe, a deer, a female deer," and all that rot. (Maybe it should have been "dough"). But hark! What see-est I now-est? She's doing it again, the reunion thing, only this time with the movie she refers to wistfully as the high point of her life, The Color Purple. Even back then, in '84 I think, when she was relatively unknown and had never acted before, she somehow butted everyone else out of the

way.

So now we have a Reunion of the Entire Cast, consisting mainly of a wisecracking Whoopi Goldberg (laying to rest rumors of a monumental feud sparked by Oprah cutting Whoopi out of a prestigious Legends Weekend to honor "accomplished" African American Women. I guess multiple Oscar nominations and 25-year careers aren't enough.)

Anyway, we got to see Whoopi's deluxe toilet, which was a blast and a half. She has a nice house, huge rooms. OK. We know Oprah is big on luxe housing. Then she trotted out Danny Glover, Rae Dawn Chong (what the - ?), and a few others we forgot about, the dame who played Shug Avery and all. Stephen Spielberg sent his video greetings, and Quincy Jones, looking half-stoned and sounding like Harry Belafonte on a bad day, was wheeled out to represent Living

Legends.

So what exactly was wrong with this show, aside from the kind of terminal gushing we used to see on SCTV's Sammy Maudlin Show? Why were there only a couple of references to Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple, THE MUSICAL? I don't know much about it. No one does, because I don't think it did very well. Too grapey, or something.

But that's not what fried me.

What fried me is, this all started somewhere. The movie, I mean, and all the surrounding gush, and even the vulgar Broadway musical with Oprah's name

above the title (even though she wasn't in it anywhere).

Somebody, like, at some point, kind of, uh, er. WROTE THIS

THING.

I'll give them this: there was one, very brief mention of Alice Walker, with a shot of her that was on for maybe two seconds. Then they quickly moved on.

Let me tell you how wrong that

was.

If it weren't for Alice Walker's quirky little gem, NONE OF THESE PEOPLE WOULD BE UP THERE ON THAT STAGE.

None of these people would have had the career break of a lifetime by being cast in a Spielberg film that garnered 11 Oscar nominations (but no wins: another shutout, it seems. Oprah defends it by saying "it was ahead of its time". Does the name

Beloved mean anything to you?), had it not been for the diminutive,

brilliant woman

who penned the original novel in a sort of hypnotic trance.

I don't think Alice Walker got rich.

She went on writing, which is what real writers do, though no doubt The Color Purple is still her best-known work. Given its obscurity when the movie was made, it's doubtful she was paid a fraction of what the actors made (even the lesser-known ones).

Kitty Kelley's book talks about how Oprah quickly "dropped" Alice Walker once the movie contract had been signed. Kind of the way she "dropped" Whoopi, after Whoopi made a little joke in public about Oprah's absolute power in talk-show land.

Never mind that it was

true.

In spite of a lot of posturing, Oprah is uncomfortable with certain true things, and in spite of all her bafflegabbing, she must hate authors too. Remember poor James Frey being fried, live on the air, and wanting to commit suicide as a result? The drug memoir he wrote, A Million Little Pieces, turned out to have some fictionalized elements. Show me a memoir that

doesn't.

Oprah's naivete in this regard reveals that she isn't the sophisticated reader she pretends to be. She should have known that almost all memoirs are partly fictional. If anything, it's a sign that he actually wrote it

himself.

The next Oprah gush-a-thon will be a unique, one-of-a-kind, unforgettable Barbra Streisand show (hey, it went over well last time, and moved a lot of albums), in which Barbra floats onstage in a diaphanous floor-length Davinchsky gown and the same banged bob she wore in Funny Girl. (For some reason, really big stars get

frozen in time, especially regarding their hair.

You see it whenever they interview 95-year-old starlets from Hollywood's Golden Age, their lacquered 1940s do's sitting atop ancient faces bizarrely rearraged by primitive plastic surgery.)

Barbra still sings, but her voice is now in the lower register, and she no longer belts because she can't. Why she's doing all this after 30 years of being publicity-shy is anybody's guess. (Another album?) But soft! What comes next, I wonder?

Why. . . speaking of bad face lifts. . . it's. . . it's. . .

It's Robert Redford, in a VERY VERY Special Oprah, a reunion of the Cast of The Way We Were!!!

God, haven't some of these people died by now?