Scary no more: here's Lucy, again

P

(From Entertainment Weekly)

Since 2009, “Scary Lucy” has terrorized the small village of Celoron, New York, with square teeth and bugged-out eyes that suggest that, were she not captured in 400 pounds of bronze, she would love to pair your brains with her bottle of intoxicating Vitameatavegamin. Now that statue — which is generously considered to be a depiction of comedy legend Lucille Ball — will be replaced with another bronze sculpture, which presumably will not cause nightmares.

EW reports that the new sculpture, by artist Carolyn Palmer, will debut in Celoron, Ball’s hometown, on August 6. Palmer spent months watching I Love Lucy and studying pictures for the bronze piece. “I not only wanted to portray the playful, animated, and spontaneous Lucy,” Palmer explained, “but also the glamorous Hollywood icon.” At that time, the town will retire the “Scary Lucy” sculpture — which its creator, David Poulin, once diplomatically referred to as “by far my most unsettling sculpture.” You can see it below, and then never un-see it.

Update, August 6: The new, six-foot-tall bronze sculpture has been unveiled — and it's the vast, vast improvement that the comedy legend deserves. Today would've been Ball's 105th birthday.

                                Photo: LDM/PR

OKAY! It's Monday morning, I have a bit of a headache (though not from what you're thinking - I never touch the stuff), and lo and behold, here's good news. They have finally replaced the horrific statue purported to be Lucille Ball which disgraced her home town for SEVEN years. One can only imagine the deep dismay of the crowd as it was unveiled - or perhaps they christened it by smashing a bottle of Vita-Meata-Vegamin over its head.

I've been sort of keeping track of this story, because it represents a certain kind of bizarre. It brings to mind another - shall we say - misportrait. A few years back, an old lady who was an amateur painter took it upon herself to "restore" a painting of Jesus called Ecce Homo in a tiny church in Spain. It was peeling badly, and at first she only dabbed paint on the robe, but then. . .

This was either genius (to some people), or disaster.

It looks about as much like Jesus as that first sculpture of Lucy. But then. . . do we really know what Jesus looked like?

Are we certain there WAS a Jesus? Having been a Christian for 15 years, then walked away in total disillusionment, I now believe he was a collection of stories half-based on truth, and the other half, hope. He was wished into being, which is maybe not such a bad thing unless you're expected to believe he literally existed.

In the United Church, they lowered the ante due to falling attendance, until the Moderator of the church admitted she didn't even believe in God, let alone Jesus. But she was still "spiritual" (though not "religious"). So baking brownies for the UCW was enough to make you a member, so long as you ponied up financially to the point of pain. If you didn't, guilt and accusations that you had no "commitment" would be laid on with a trowel.

It's enough to make you embrace the new, improved Ecce Homo. Some have called it "Icky Homo", and even worse things. For a while, it brought masses of tourists to the cathedral, a boon for the town. I think the crowds have likely fallen off by now. Fallen off the edge of the world, more like. The key chains, fridge magnets, tote bags, tshirts, water bottles and action figures are now moldering on the shelves, maybe in the bargain corner at the Vatican gift store.

Meantime, we have a new Lucy, and she is a big improvement, but I still don't think they got the face quite right. She had an unusual kind of beauty, and was one of the first glamorous women to do comedy. Phyllis Diller was more the norm. Women had to look hideous to be funny. When Ball first starred in I Love Lucy, she was 40 years old, which by the standards of the day was more like 60. Some years later, she had her first baby (Little Ricky!) - and was actually pregnant on the show. Kind of like the first reality TV.

She came back in various guises for years, not always successfully, but like the trooper she was, she kept on working 'til the end.

So the new statue: shall we call it a resurrection? Shall we melt down the bronze from Scary Lucy and make a Donald Trump, offering free rotten tomatoes to the crowd?

Just a thought.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Sound the triumpets: it's William Shatner as Alexander the Great!

This is an unsold TV pilot from 1968. Took me A LONG time to find it on a free movie site. It has elements of greatness, as well as a side of cheese from Shatner's Desilu days. (More about Desilu-related issues in the next post!). The show boasts a strangely eclectic cast, from John Cassevetes (moody dark dramas, mostly) to Joseph Cotten (good journeyman actor meant to add credibility) to none other than Batman himself, Adam West.

It's worth seeing for the horsemanship alone. Shatner did all his own riding, a fact which makes more sense in light of the fact that at age 85, he STILL does all his own riding, competing at Saddlebred competitions all over the place. He's not exactly lean any more, but he does it. He's a natural horseman, and to see him thundering along bareback (no stirrups in Al's day!) with no bounce at all, as still as a feather on the horse's back. . . it's a sight to be seen.

The rest is pretty OK, though it's definitely a product of its time. Too bad it didn't make it, as this was the era - between Star Trek and T. J. Hooker, when Shatner was once again a star - that he had to live out of the back of his truck, with only the occasional Loblaws commercial to relieve the drought. But Shatner always had the ability to keep on keeping on, to be a working actor. Nowadays he does anything he wants - including riding horses.

A sentimental favorite

Of course. . . of course!

Mister Ed

Original name: Bamboo Harvester

Birth:

1949

El Monte

Los Angeles County

California, USA

Death:

Feb. 22, 1979

Burbank

Los Angeles County

California, USA

Animal Actor. Mister Ed, a Palomino horse officially named Bamboo Harvester, was a show and parade horse who was foaled in 1949 in El Monte, California. His parents were The Harvester (Sire), a Saddlebred owned by Edna and Jim Fagan; and Zetna, (Dam) who was sired by Antez, an Arabian imported from Poland. Bamboo Harvester was trained by Lester Hilton. Lester "Les" Hilton had been apprenticed under Will Rogers, and also worked with the mules in the "Francis the Talking Mule" movies. Due to old-age ailments, Bamboo Harvester was put to sleep in 1970. The producer of the Mister Ed series never would answer the question of how the horse's lips were made to move. There have been many theories over the years, including the use of peanut butter, but none have been authenticated. (bio by: Ronald Leon)

Cause of death: Euthanized

Burial:

Snodgrass Farm

Tahlequah

Cherokee County

Oklahoma, USA

Maintained by: Find A Grave

Record added: Jan 01, 2001

Find A Grave Memorial# 1551

This is a cobbling-together of a post I spent about four hours on this morning. Trying to fix the formatting, which I do for nearly every post, it suddenly disappeared.

ALL of it. It was just a blank.

I mean, no backup. Didn't even go into a recycle bin or anything.

I feel stabbed, ripped off and as if something has been snatched away from me (like four hours that I can never get back).  I don't know, all I can do to salvage this is put up some of the photos and whatever I remember of the text, though there were also three or four videos that were VERY hard to find, not to mention a gif that I can't recover.

Jesus.

Anyway, what I was GOING to say before the finished and polished post was ripped out of my hands, was something like this: as a little girl, I adored Mr. Ed, and I can see why. He was a character actor with a sweet face, and he was also a handsome palomino, a former parade horse, his shiny coat coming across well even in grainy black-and-white.

The show we saw on TV wasn't the original. There was a failed pilot starring the same horse, but a different Wilbur. This Wilbur was a clinker, and it didn't fly. But there was something about Ed. Network execs must have decided to give him another try.

(Now that I think of it, black lines kept appearing at the sides. Did that mean something? This version is awful, but I feel I must continue, damn it.)

Oh, what else? I wrote something about My Friend Flicka, a 1950s series which is now posted in its entirety on YouTube. At one point, I would have killed to see even one episode, but now I find I can't stomach Johnny Washbrook and the way he's always crying. He's a fairly good horseman, and the horse is beautiful (of course, of course!). But it was mainly that theme song I loved as a kid. It began with a little harp-stroke which isn't in most of the YouTube vids. It's cut off, probably because most people didn't notice it. But to me, it meant magic was about to begin. This video may or may not have it, because I don't remember which one I posted originally. Took me a while to find it, too.

There were others, National Velvet, Fury. . . Fury was, I have to admit, the best horse actor, and the handsomest of all. In fact, he was simply stunning. But the show involved a lot of shrill whistling and irritating yelling: "Fuuuuuuuuuu-reeeeeeeee!" . And NOWHERE in the YouTube videos does the announcer ever say, "Fury. The story of a horse. . . and the boy who loved him."It's probably something like "Play it again, Sam", a TV myth.

This is from one of those very old-format TV sites set up in about the year 2000:

But the true star of the show was Fury himself. Known as Highland Dale when he lived on a farm in Missouri, he was 18 months old when he was discovered by well-known movie horse trainer Ralph McCutcheon who first used him in “Return of Wildfire” in ‘48. Series producer Leon Fromkess hired McCutcheon to deliver a horse for the series. By this time, McCutcheon had changed the horse’s name to Beauty (often called Beaut) and had worked him in “Lone Star” (‘52), “Johnny Guitar” (‘54) and “Gypsy Colt” (‘54). He was cast as the black stallion in “Giant” (‘56); and several other shows after “Fury” ended.

Can't find where I got this info, but Highland Dale was an American Saddlebred, long and rangy compared to the rather dinky Ed. Flicka was somewhere in the middle. William Shatner breeds Saddlebreds. Lesson for the day.

Elizabeth Taylor on Highland Dale/Fury was a sight to behold. His size can be gauged by how tiny she looks on him, almost like a girl. She was a magnificent horsewoman who did not need a double, not even in National Velvet when she was 13. I've tried to make a gif of my favorite scene from Giant, very poorly cropped for some reason (to avoid a letterbox effect, no doubt).

And that's all I can salvage of this post. I'm sorry, but I'll bet I feel a whole lot worse about it than you do.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

I've been goosed: it's Kids and Company!

Incredibly, I just got this AVI file from an internet source to post on YouTube! Call me a techie genius. All right then, don't. But here it is, Kids and Company, one of the most surreal things I've ever seen on the internet.

How did this happen? I started off with one of MattTheSaiyan's old DuMont videos. I found the intro for this incredible kids' show from 1951, made three gifs of it, then wondered if I could find any more.

Kids and Company

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kids and Company
Presented by Johnny Olson
Ham Fisher
Country of origin United States
No. of episodes 39
Production
Running time 24 mins.
Release
Original network DuMont
Picture format Black-and-white
Audio format Monaural
Original release September 1, 1951 – June 1, 1952

Kids and Company is an American children's TV show that aired on the now-defunct DuMont Television Network on Saturday mornings from September 1, 1951 to June 1, 1952, and was hosted by Johnny Olson and Ham Fisher. The series was primarily sponsored by Red Goose Shoes.

This was Olson's third series for DuMont, previously hosting the talent show Doorway to Fame and daytime variety series Johnny Olson's Rumpus Room. Rumpus Room shared the schedule with Kids for the latter's entire run, and ended a month after Kids did.

The 1952 finale (stated by Olson as being the last before a ten-week hiatus; despite this, the crew appears onstage to sing "Auld Lang Syne") is held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Two or three episodes, including March 25 and the finale, are held by the Paley Center for Media. One is held by the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

This Wiki entry has more links in it than text. By today's standards, the show ended almost before it began. But back then, they actually had weekly episodes that were weekly, period! So 39 episodes wasn't bad for a nine-month run.

The show is execrable. The goose, a horrible puppet that reminds me of the deformed bird-woman at the end of Freaks, flails around in one spot. It can't walk around or even hop or move at all except to flap and bounce. Its whole purpose is to be a shill for Red Goose shoes (which is why it's called Red Goose!) This ranks as one of the worst puppets I've ever seen, though Howdy Doody is right up there. The goose has a horrible kidlike voice that sounds like it's on the wrong speed, and also makes a rasping noise something like a death-rattle.

I had a weird feeling about this show. It reminds me very strangely of an SCTV feature called Happy Hour, with Happy Marsden introducing episodes of Six Gun Justice (A Republic Serial) from a bar. He had a strange puppet with him called. . . Sammy the Goose. The goose snapped its bill together in an alarming way, but didn't talk. Only its head and neck showed.

I did wonder, just now, if Sammy the Goose was based on one of those infinitely fuzzy embryonic memories, a first-childhood-memory thing all blurred in your consciousness, but, hauntingly, still there. When the writers at SCTV came up with Happy Hour and that bloody goose puppet, was there some faint echo of something they'd seen on Dumont Network in 1951?

It's possible.

This is before my time, but the SCTV crew are a few years older than me. I don't remember Dumont at all, but how could a 2-year-old remember Dumont? I just remembered that TV scared me half to death.

This was something I felt ashamed of - I was sure I was the only one - until I began to find HUNDREDS of YouTube videos of "scary", "terrifying" TV logos, most of them very old. Some of the comments mentioned very early childhood memories, and being scared shitless of these things.

So maybe people DO remember? But not consciously. For who'd drag this creature from hell out of his or her memory bank?

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Zeroes in my brain: time rolling backwards

It might be food: from Happy Living, A Guide for Brides (1970)

I'm thinking of. . . exploitation

This is just a little parable, but it is a poisonous one. It illustrates how artists take advantage of their subjects, trying to convince people they're "helping" them with their attentions when in truth, they are sucking the lifeblood out of them.

Artists, writers, creative types are ruthless. They get the story at anyone's expense. I've seen it time and time again. If you do not have this ruthlessness, you will not become famous.

It is a kind of law.

Migrant Mother, taken by Dorothea Lange. 

The photograph that has become known as “Migrant Mother” is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From – Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).





Dorothea Lange in 1936. Source

Lange’s photo became a defining image of the Great Depression, but the migrant mother’s identity remained a mystery to the public for decades because Lange hadn’t asked her name. In the late 1970s, a reporter tracked down Owens (whose last name was then Thompson), at her Modesto, California, home.

Thompson claimed that Lange never asked her any questions and got many of the details incorrect. Troy Owens recounted:

“There’s no way we sold our tires because we didn’t have any to sell. The only ones we had were on the Hudson and we drove off in them. I don’t believe Dorothea Lange was lying, I just think she had one story mixed up with another. Or she was borrowing to fill in what she didn’t have.”

Thompson was critical of Lange, who died in 1965, stating she felt exploited by the photo and wished it hadn’t been taken and also expressing regret she hadn’t made any money from it. Thompson died at age 80 in 1983. In 1998, a print of the image, signed by Lange, sold for $244,500 at auction.

The second parable freezes me in my chair. This is a photo of what people assume are inbred Deliverance-type hillbillies from deep in the backwoods. As with Dorothea Lange, Roger Ballen photographed these twins in an impoverished rural setting - not anywhere in the United States, but in
South Africa. The photo is considered a joke on the internet, often believed to be "fake" or photoshopped. It isn't. But it is so easy to locate that I only had to google "hillbilly twins" to find it (the first picture on Google images).

But the description I found on a site about Ballen and the twins (excerpt below) made my hair stand on end. Strange-looking as they are, and no doubt mentally-challenged, these are human beings, farm labourers cared for by their mother. No doubt their status isn't up to par for some people, which makes them feel free to compare them to chimpanzees or side-show attractions.

The twins and their family became world famous, but they had no knowledge of it because Ballen never told them he was a professional photographer and intended to display their pictures. They never saw one cent of remuneration, though the brothers are still groaned over and ridiculed on the internet as monstrous products of inbreeding.

For better or worse, one image more than any other has come to define South African photographer Roger Ballen - the photograph of adult twins Dresie and Casie taken in the Western Transvaal in 1993, an image distressing and unforgettable.

The twins have misshapen faces, necks as thick as bullocks', ears that protrude like chimps', bluntly cut spiky hair and prominent lower lips. Ballen has photographed them with a long thread of drool dangling from their blubbery mouths, their shirts wet and stained with dribble.

The image provokes an uncomfortable rush of thoughts and emotions: curiosity about the twins' genetic make-up, intrigue about their story, concern that someone could so brutally point the camera and shoot - did the twins understand the ramifications of that moment?

That photo, and others he took in the poor white rural areas of South Africa caused great controversy and resulted in Ballen being shunned by the South African arts community and death threats being made against him. His unsentimental and grim depictions of weird-looking people living in squalor and chaos, immortalised in the 1994 book Platteland: images of rural South Africa, were seen as cruel, denigrating and exploitative.

Hey! Listen! I beg to differ. I think this person's ATTITUDE is grotesque, particularly the assumption that anyone who is physically "different" is shameful, embarrassing, and meant to be hidden away.

I grew up with this sort of attitude. Anyone with mental illness was inherently shameful and usually "put away". Children with Down syndrome were called "mongoloid", and parents were routinely told it was the kindest thing for everyone if they institutionalized the child, forgot they ever had it and just had another baby.

Taking and even exhibiting photos of people who are outside the societal norm doesn't bother me, so long as it's done with full permission, full disclosure and a healthy degree of respect. More than anything else, the subject has to be aware that this is a professional photographer who is going to be doing all sorts of strange things with the photos, including becoming famous with them.

Publishing these photos doesn't automatically mean denigration or ridicule. Hiding people away or treating them as if they are inherently hideous and frightening isn't respectful. Is it completely taboo to show the world that some human beings look and even act radically different from the supposed norm? TLC wouldn't exist without breaking this taboo daily, but they do it in such a disgusting manner that I can't approve of it.

But I definitely disapprove of the viewpoint that says, for God's sake, don't take a picture of people with "misshapen faces, necks as thick as bullocks', ears that protrude like chimps', bluntly cut spiky hair and prominent lower lips". And if you MUST take pictures of such apelike, subhuman creatures, for God's sake, don't let anyone see them!

Is there a responsible, ethical way to do this? What about respectfully asking the subject, or in this case the twins' mother, if it would be all right to display these photos as part of an art exhibit? And what about admitting that the photos he exhibits tend to be dark, sensationalistic, even creepy, and that he has made a name for himself from them? But then, surely, she would protest and say no.

Though I am sure he would go ahead and do it anyway.

Dorothea Lange became enormously and permanently famous, famous for the ages, for her Migrant Mother pictures - but she did not even know the woman's name! She didn't know her name because she never asked, and didn't ask because she wasn't interested. Surely this subject matter was more powerful (and better for Lange's career) if she was a sort of generic Mother Courage figure. A name would just take away from all that, wouldn't it? The photographer knew a good thing when she saw it, maybe a great thing, and greatness is usually achieved by stepping over (or stepping on) someone else whose status is lower.

But the most screamingly awful part of all this is Lange's assertion that they had somehow done each other a favour:

There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. 

There IS something that might have helped this woman out. Ms. Lange should have opened her wallet then and there, given her the contents, gotten her address and made a promise to send her a cheque at regular intervals. Even a very modest amount would have made a huge difference. A portion of the proceeds of her exhibition would then go directly to this woman and her family. Thus she wouldn't be starving to death for someone else's entertainment, making the photographer into a celebrity at her expense.

People are strange when you're a stranger 

Faces look ugly when you're alone 

Women seem wicked when you're unwanted 

Streets are uneven when you're down 

When you're strange 

Faces come out of the rain 

When you're strange 

No one remembers your name 

When you're strange 

When you're strange 

When you're strange 

People are strange when you're a stranger 

Faces look ugly when you're alone 

Women seem wicked when you're unwanted 

Streets are uneven when you're down 

When you're strange 

Faces come out of the rain 

When you're strange 

No one remembers your name 

When you're strange 

When you're strange 

When you're strange 

When you're strange 

Faces come out of the rain 

When you're strange 

No one remembers your name 

When you're strange 

When you're strange
When you're strange

POST-SCRIPT. This post threatens to go on and on. But I did want to share something I found: Dresie and Casie, the much-ridiculed "hillbilly twins", now live comfortably in a nursing home in South Africa. As you can see, they're people, they laugh a lot and aren't scary. They live simply and have serious mental disabilities, but appear to enjoy life and are well cared-for.

For their sakes, I am glad that particular story ended happily.

Artwork by Krysantemum

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!