Sister Ann
[played by Gail Strickland]: “Mr. Baxter, are you asking me for a date?”
Ted Baxter
[played by Ted Knight]: “Is the Pope Catholic?”
Sister Ann:
“I hope so. I’m a nun.”
Ted: “...What a rotten day!”—
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 4, Episode 14, “Almost a Nun's Story,”
original air date Dec. 15, 1973, teleplay by Ed. Weinberger and Stan Daniels,
directed by Jay Sandrich
Jews worldwide have found meaning and consolation for centuries in the story of how Esther, an orphan in a foreign land, saved her people by telling King Ahasu-e′rus of the genocidal intent of his evil minister, Haman.
But I have
come to think that this tale can apply even more broadly—to refugees, displaced
persons, immigrants—the persecuted and unwanted around the world (including in
this country) who find themselves at the mercy of civil authorities who use
them as scapegoats to distract from their own policy failures, whipping up
dangerous resentments and injustice in the process.
One verse
resonates especially in our time: “How can I endure to see the calamity that is
coming to my people? Or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?”
The image
accompanying this post, Banquet of Queen Esther, was created in 1660 by
the Dutch painter, printmaker, and draughtsman Rembrandt (1606-1669).
(The image accompanying
this post, of Sam Lipsyte at a Philip Roth birthday reading at the Library of
Congress, was taken Mar. 19, 2014, by Slowking.)
Think I could let Opening Day go by for the Yankees without genuflecting reverently towards their past?
Well, maybe not so reverently, judging from
today’s quote. But a few choice words from Casey Stengel, over a decade
before his glory days with the Bronx Bombers, were irresistible.
You can be sure that Leo Durocher gave his side
of the story to waiting reporters, and that Stengel didn’t come off anywhere so
well as his own account suggested.
But let it also be said that the Ol’ Professor wasn’t
the first Yankee employee who took exception to the antics of “Leo the Lip”—nor
would he be the last person associated with major league baseball to regard him
balefully.
None other than Babe Ruth accused him of stealing his
watch. Durocher’s vehement denial might have to be taken with a grain of salt,
considering that the telephone-and-bell system he rigged up in Polo Ground
offices enabled his New York Giants to storm back against the Dodgers and win
the 1951 pennant.
Ultimately, Stengel had the last laugh on his hated
rival, being still alive for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The
controversial Durocher wasn’t around to enjoy his own induction in 1994.
Catcher and broadcaster Joe Garagiola wrote a book, Baseball
Is a Funny Game. In the case of Stengel and Durocher, it was also a scrappy
one.
Play ball!
Peachy
Carnehan [played
by Michael Caine]: “What about the contract?”
Danny
Dravot [played
by Sean Connery]: “The contract only lasted until such time as we
was kings, and king I've been these months past! The first king here since
Alexander, the first to wear his crown in twenty-two hundred and...”
Peachy: “Fourteen.”
Danny: “Fourteen years! Him... and now
me! They call me his son and I am... in spirit anyway. It's a hugeous
responsibility. The bridge we're building, it's only the first of many. They'll
tie the country together. A nation I shall make of it, with an anthem and a
flag. I shall treat on equal terms the viceroy and other kings and princes.
When I've accomplished what I set out to do, I'll stand one day before the
queen. Not kneel, mind you, but stand like an equal. And she'll say: ‘I'd like
you to accept the Order of the Garter as a mark of my esteem, cousin.’ She'll
pin it on me herself. It's big. I tell you, it's big!”
Peachy: “And I tell you, you need a
physic!”— The Man Who Would Be King
(1975), screenplay by John Huston and Gladys Hill, based on the short story by Rudyard
Kipling, directed by John Huston
Decades
after seeing the film for the first time, I caught up again with this great
adventure tale early last night on TCM. Once again, it did not disappoint.
The tales
and poetry of Rudyard Kipling have rightfully been criticized for their
racism, but in this story he warned of the dangers facing the greatest empire in the world in the Victorian Era: power and the loss of moral authority
over distant subjects (what political scientist Joseph Nye calls “soft power”).
I don’t
know how many Americans watching this magnificent buddy-movie adaptation by John Huston applied these themes to their own country in 1975, the year they
lost Vietnam. But Kipling’s cautionary horror story should resound even more
loudly in our contemporary moment.
If power
can intoxicate the likes of Danny Dravot—a vagabond still trying to live up to
the moral code of a soldier—think how much more it can affect the judgment of a
leader with a lifetime of defying laws and mores, but now with increasingly
fewer institutional checks on his authority and ambition to expand his
imperial reach.
And how
much greater will be the downfall of the current successors to Danny and Peachy,
the comrade-in-arms who realizes too late the madness of the man he had unstintingly
supported?
The
image accompanying this post shows Fredric March as Jean Valjean, sentenced to
prison for stealing bread to feed his starving children, in the 1935 film
adaptation of Hugo’s novel.
The image accompanying
this post, of Tori Amos performing in Helsinki, Finland, was taken June 9,
2015, by NeoMeesje.
I say read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic by 4/10, the
centennial of its publication. It won’t take you long, and you definitely won’t
regret it!
For a
summary of the life and importance of this figure who would be wildly out of
step with the current GOP, see my post from a dozen years ago.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
The photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress
accompanying this post, showing honoree Joni Mitchell, was taken at the Kennedy
Center Honors Medallion Ceremony at the Library of Congress, Dec. 4, 2021.
The image
accompanying this post, of Alicia Keys at the 2011 Walmart Shareholders Meeting,
was taken June 3, 2011, by Walmart Stores.
An especially appropriate quote for the Ides of March…
(The image accompanying
this post shows Louis Calhern in the title role of the 1953 film adaptation of
William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.)
Garside's Career,
like
other plays mounted at the Off-Broadway venue the Mint Theater, is a
lost and neglected play. After premiering at London’s West End in 1914, it
enjoyed a successful run on the other side of the Atlantic in Boston five years
later.
For some reason, plans to bring it immediately to
Broadway were scuttled, and it seems to have disappeared from British stages
too, even though Brighouse lived until 1958. So New York audiences are getting their
first look at a clever, century-old send-up of a different form of inflation: a
young striver’s sudden burst of ego.
If you’re an American TCM fan, you probably know just
a little of his work, through David Lean’s 1954 film adaptation of his most
successful play, Hobson’s Choice. (An interesting bit of trivia, from
the Mint’s playbill for Garside’s Career: Hobson’s Choice was
also adapted in 1966 as a Sammy Cahn-Jimmy Van Heusen Broadway musical, Walking
Happy. Maybe that one will be revived someday by Encores!? Please?)
But Brighouse wrote more than 30 plays, as well as
fiction, journalism, and memoirs. His output is well worth sampling if this
production is any indication.
His title character, “silver-tongued” Peter Garside
(played by Daniel Marconi) thinks his “genius” for oratory will take him to a
station that his newly acquired license as a skilled mechanic (or, in the
phrase of the time, “engineer”) can’t even remotely match.
But fiancée Margaret Shawcross, noticing that his gift
for public speaking is dangerously intoxicating, warns him against depending on
it.
None of this can stand in the face of the irresistible
temptation presented by Garside’s Socialist labor group: a chance at a
Parliamentary seat in a by-election. Seizing it gives him the opportunity he
craves but at the price of his engagement.
Before long, as an MP, he has a comfortable apartment
in London, with aspirations for more money, political power—and a permanent end
to living in the dingy northern England town of Midlanton. He even makes
advances on Gladys Mottram, a provincial siren as bored with her status as the
daughter of the most influential family in town as Garside is with his distinctly
lower standing.
Garside’s oratorical quelling of rioters about to
break into the Mottram home only hardens belief in his political wizardry. But
his neglect of meetings and votes that matter to constituents back home trigger
a dizzying fall from power.
American audiences of the 21st century
might not be able to identify with the class tensions of pre-WWI Britain, which
found their ultimate expression in social welfare legislation passed by the
Liberals and the eventual rise of the Labour Party.
But the underlying conflict that Brighouse depicted
retains its transatlantic relevance: At what point does the desire to better
one’s self involve forgetting your working-class roots and the people who
recognized your potential in the first place?
In the battle between capital and labor, Brighouse’s
sympathies were decidedly with the latter—a point underscored here when
Margaret refuses to back down from her Socialist activism, even when threatened
with the loss of her teaching job by the formidable Lady Mottram, wife of the mayor
of Midlanton.
Nevertheless, he dispensed with propaganda—one of the
group supporting and then bringing down Peter is archly called “Karl Marx Jones,”
and he was far more interested in the countervailing emotional and ethical instincts
of politicians than their policy considerations.
In one sense, contemporary audiences may find dated
the notion that an indiscretion will spell the end of a politician’s career.
Nowadays, he (and more often than not, it is a “he”) will try again for
public office, after a year or two biding his time—as former New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo is doing now.
But Brighouse exposed in the modern political animal a
trait that remains intact: egotism that swells with even the slightest audience
and deflates with none.
The cast (largely veterans of past Mint productions)
play their roles adeptly, starting with Marconi, who expertly navigates
Garside’s transition from earnest laborer to pompous MP to political has-been.
Madeline Seidman endows faithful Margaret with
appropriate steely love, able to endure in turn Peter’s growing appetite for
power, narcissism, brush with scandal, self-pity, and even a gorgon of a mother
(with Amelia White making the most of the play’s most hilarious lines). And Sara Haider and Avery Whitted offer a nice contrast as the to-the-manor-born Gladys
and her cheerfully superficial brother Freddie.
In the three decades of its existence, I have managed
to see more than a dozen productions by the Mint. It has approached each with the
kind of attention and loving care that these stepchildren of modern theater
have deserved. Harold Brighouse’s play is no different. I urge you to see it
before it closes on Theater Row on Saturday, March 15.
Directed adeptly and confidently by Matt Dickson, Garside's Career nicely
complements Hindle Wakes, another dramedy by Brighouse’s friend
and fellow Northern England playwright, Stanley Houghton. The Mint is offering on-demand
screenings of a three-camera HD recording of their 2018 production through
Sunday, March 16. Viewing is free after providing your email address and zip
code; donations are welcome.
The image
accompanying this post, of Heidi Julavits at the 2015 Texas Book Festival in
Austin, Texas, was taken Oct. 17, 2015, by Larry D. Moore.
The image
accompanying this post, of Florence Welch fronting Florence and the Machine,
was taken Apr. 18, 2009, by Juan Bendana.
This accompanying image of a Pilates training session was taken Aug. 20, 2024, by ikorpilates.
I must admit that my first thought upon seeing
this was that it was some kind of human physiology class. My second thought was
that the individual who’s the focus of attention would be me after one Pilates
maneuver too many.
Okay, let’s see if Musk allows this post on X!
(The image accompanying this post, showing Elon Musk
at the 2015 Tesla Motors Annual Meeting, was taken June 9, 2015 by Steve
Jurvetson.)
Robert [voice of
Tommy Hilfiger]: “Hi, Dr. Crane. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a little
nervous, okay? My name is Robert.”
Frasier: “And your name
is...?”
Robert: “My name is
Robert.”
Frasier: “Oh, I'm sorry.
We've already had a Robert on the show today. Goodbye!” [disconnects him]
Roz Doyle
[played by Peri Gilpin] [on the office phone]: “Tony, it's Roz.
Could you get security up here? Captain Kirk's got control of the bridge and
he's gone insane.” —Frasier, Season 1, Episode 23, “Frasier Crane's
Day Off,” original air date May 12, 1994, teleplay by Chuck Ranberg and Anne
Flett-Giordano, directed by James Burrows
The image accompanying this post, The Return of the Prodigal Son, was created by Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt (1606-1669) from 1661 to 1668. That parable is one of the greatest biblical stories of repentance, and a useful one to keep in mind in this Lenten season.
Rembrandt's painting is one of the finest of his career. Interestingly, we never see the face of the prodigal, but of the forgiving father--and, off to the side, the son who never went away and is glowering now with resentment over his parent's perceived favoritism.
The image accompanying
this post of Janet Malcolm was taken Mar. 18, 2013, at the Kelly Writers House in
the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
The image accompanying this post, of Steven Yeun speaking
on The Walking Dead, at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con International in
that city’s convention center, was taken July 10, 2015, by Gage Skidmore of
Peoria, AZ.
The climax of the Oscar-nominated movie Conclave
occurs when Sister Agnes (played by Isabella Rossellini) makes a crucial
revelation before the College of Cardinals. “Although we sisters are supposed
to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears,” she says.
The scene, like the larger movie, is a challenge to the
patriarchy that has dominated the Roman Catholic Church for centuries—and, in
its way, an echo of the above earlier pointed rebuke by Margery Kempe, who wrote (in
the third person) what is believed to be the earliest surviving autobiography
in English.
The current century has found the Church in a rolling crisis, its most tumultuous since the Reformation—its religious orders depopulating, its churches emptying, its coffers drained by clerical abuse settlements, and its counsels often unheeded.
Even aside from a failure to take women into its hierarchy, the Church is finally paying the price for the alternating carping and obliviousness that its worst male leaders have displayed toward the females in their pews, even as they covered up the worst offenses of each other.
At the next papal conclave, however soon that occurs,
the assembled cardinals will do far more than pick their next leader. They will
also choose the fundamental direction of the Church, which, for its own survival, must be a belated attempt to do
what Margery Kempe urged centuries ago: “amend while you are here.”
More widely, Kempe's rejoinder applies to the patriarchy that exists in governments around the world. Substitute "nasty woman" for "wicked woman" and the archbishop's fit of pique will sound all too familiar to citizens of the United States these last eight years.
With recent Critics Choice, Golden Globe, and Screen
Actors Guild awards, Demi Moore seems well-positioned to take home a
Best Actress statuette at tomorrow night’s Oscar ceremony. It’s a far cry from
her career from the Eighties through the early aughts, when her scant critical
acclaim was signaled by the five “Razzies” “honoring” the worst in contemporary
cinema in the prior year.
The Substance is
by no stretch of the imagination cheerful, and, after seeing the movie a few
weeks ago, I found a bit of trivia disclosed before the movie (36,000
gallons of fake blood for just one scene) a severe understatement of
its grossness and goriness.
But give Moore props for taking on such a risky
role—one that requires her, at age 62, not only to disrobe even more than she
did, onscreen and on a Vanity Fair cover, three decades ago, but also to
channel a career’s worth of frustration and rage over the male gaze.
The Substance itself
has been far better received than another dystopian horror film that it
resembles in several fascinating ways, Seconds. Moreover, the
star of that 1966 sci-fi shocker, Rock Hudson, didn’t win anything like
Ms. Moore’s plaudits. The relative reception of these two deeply downbeat
dramas says much about the changing expectations of audiences and critics.
The resemblances between the two
movies are multiple and, at times, uncanny, including:
*an aging middle-aged protagonist at a crossroads,
profoundly dissatisfied and at a dead end in life;
*a mysterious stranger who tells the protagonist about
the possibility of being a younger self;
*the stranger follows up on the stranger’s tip by
going to a secretive organization that warns that, though the rewards of the
new life are amazing, certain instructions must be followed—or else;
*the bodily transformation that follows is as bloody
and disgusting as the big screen permits;
*despite the rewards reaped from the new life, the
protagonist still feels empty inside—in fact, worse;
*the protagonist tries to end this experiment in the
fountain of youth;
*that attempt is—well, no spoilers!
The greater success enjoyed by The Substance
might have something to do with its specific application to Hollywood. Many
actresses—and, I suspect, even some male matinee idols—surely identify with
Moore’s “Elisabeth,” a former box-office star who loses her most recent gig as
a TV fitness guru because of the crime of turning 50.
Comic relief, such as it is, comes from the caricature
of the agist, sexist TV exec (played by Dennis Quaid) who fires Elisabeth and,
after a much-hyped search, hires as her replacement her second, transformed
self, “Sue” (played by Margaret Qualley).
No such opportunity for laughs exists in Seconds,
and its put-upon central character, Arthur Hamilton, a Scarsdale banking
executive who laments his lost youth and dream of an artistic life, hits
squarely at mainstream suburban life in mid-Sixties America.
Hudson, believing he could not realistically play both
Arthur and the younger self he becomes through plastic surgery, Tony Wilson,
lobbied director John Frankenheimer to split the parts among himself and an
older actor (who ended up being John Randolph).
Even so, Hudson regarded his part as complex and
challenging enough that he could pivot away from the Douglas Sirk melodramas
and Doris Day rom-coms that had boosted him to the upper echelon of Hollywood
leading men.
The role was a career changer, all right—almost a
career ender. Moviegoers stayed away from this film with such grim subject
matter. It was even greeted with hostility by European critics at the Cannes
Film Festival, who were more open to unusual subject content than their
American counterparts.
It was bad enough that Hudson fell off his box-office
perch and that he would have to resort to TV (McMillan and Wife) to
revive his career. But, unlike Ms. Moore, he was unable to distance himself
sufficiently from his character.
At one point, perhaps as a gay man, finding the role
of a character filled with buried emotions to be too close to home, he went
into an unplanned crying jag in one scene. Frankenheimer had to close the set
to allow Hudson to regain his composure.
Several decades later, Seconds would be
regarded as prophecy—a cult classic not just anticipating the counterculture
that bloomed the following year, but also the false hope of spiritual and physical
rejuvenation nourished by the baby boom generation (depicted so graphically in
an actual rhinoplasty operation that the cameraman fainted).
Frankenheimer wryly observed that his paranoid thriller was "the only movie, really, that's ever gone from failure to classic without ever having been a success." But it remains so unrelentingly bleak that many viewers (including myself) have found the going so rough that we couldn't make it all the way through.
In that sense,
if not its box-office performance and Hollywood’s possible highest honor for
Ms. Moore, The Substance shares much in common with this prior bit of disturbing cinematic fare.
