This Day in Rock Music History (Buckingham, Nicks Join Fleetwood Mac)

Dec. 31, 1974—A California folk-rock duo accepted an invitation from Mick Fleetwood to join the British band Fleetwood Mac, helping it reach its greatest success to date.

The offer came because the British rock combo had just lost Bob Welch, whose marriage was breaking down and whose alienation from his bandmates was cresting. 

After listening to an album provided by producer Keith Olsen, Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood hoped, would, as its seventh guitarist in as many years, stabilize a position that had become a revolving door. (Founding member Peter Green was among those who had moved on.)

The original invitation was extended only to Buckingham, whose guitar prowess had impressed Fleetwood. But Buckingham told the drummer that he would only accept the offer if it was a two-fer—i.e., Buckingham’s girlfriend of the time, Stevie Nicks, had to come along for the ride.

After checking with the “Mac” part of the group, bassist John McVie, Fleetwood approved the idea.

The personnel change did for Fleetwood Mac what Tom Johnston’s replacement by Michael McDonald did for the Doobie Brothers around the same time: it maintained the group’s commercial viability while taking it in a different creative direction.

With Buckingham and Nicks, Fleetwood Mac now had a couple who could share singing and songwriting responsibilities with McVie’s wife, Christine McVie (who had already, according to Buckingham’s October 2024 interview with Dan Rather on YouTube, okayed the idea of another woman in the group).

Moreover, Buckingham’s skill in the recording studio moved the group further away from its original blues orientation and further along the pop path pursued by Welch over the past few years.

As part of the process, Buckingham and Nicks brought with them three songs they had planned to use for their own album: "I'm So Afraid," “Monday Morning" and " Rhiannon." The last became one of the four singles from the eponymous album they would record in January and February 1975, along with Christine McVie’s “Over My Head,” “Say You Love Me” and “Warm Ways.”

In the studio, John McVie took exception to the influence that Buckingham was already wielding on their sound, including his constant suggestions about instruments, telling him, “The band you’re in is Fleetwood Mac. I’m the Mac. And I play the bass.”

But the change in direction was approved by Olsen, who shot back, “We’re doing pop rock now. It’s a much faster way to the bank,” according to Allison Rapp’s 2021 article for Ultimate Classic Rock.

Thirty years after the original band’s formation, upon its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, critic Jim Farber catalogued their soap-opera travails, including the “religious conversions, spells of madness, ‘incestuous’ liaisons within the band, drug freak-outs, alleged brainwashings, impersonations, everything short of murder [that] have spun Fleetwood Mac’s legacy into a story worthy of Scheherazade.” He might have added abortions, ego trips, and bankruptcy (Fleetwood’s, which I discussed in this prior post).

Ironically, though Buckingham pushed for Nicks’ inclusion in the band in the first place, she became the catalyst for his removal in 2018. Fed up with his ego and inability to control his temper, she told the other bandmates on the brink of their next tour that it was either she or he.

They chose her, sparking a retaliatory lawsuit by Buckingham that ended up settled at the end of that year.

The one certainty about Fleetwood Mac is that, if it ever tours or records again, it will be without the personnel that electrified fans, off and on, for 40 years. The 2022 death of Christine McVie at age 79 only underscored how age and physical frailty were taking a toll on its members. 

John McVie had already been ailing a few years before that, and Nicks disclosed earlier this month that she is suffering from wet age-related macular degeneration.

In any event, Nicks’ fractured professional relationship with Buckingham makes it unlikely they will ever share a stage again. Since New Year’s Eve is about the passage of time, it might be best to close out this post about the most significant chapter of their careers with Nicks’ lyrics from “Silver Springs”:

Time cast a spell on you
You won't forget me
I know I could've loved you
But you would not let me.

Song Lyric of the Day (Willie Nelson, on ‘How Time Slips Away’)

“It's been so long now
And it seems now that it was only yesterday
Gee, ain't it funny how time slips away?” —Country music singer-songwriter legend Willie Nelson, “Funny How Time Slips Away,” from his …And Then I Wrote LP (1962)
 
Goodbye to 2024, for all of us—and to young days for so many of us.
 
(The accompanying photo of Willie Nelson getting ready to perform at Farm Aid 2009 was taken by Larry Philpot.)

Quote of the Day (Noel Coward, on Why ‘Writing Is More Important Than Acting’)

"Writing is more important than acting, for one very good reason: it lasts. Stage acting only lives in people's memories as long as they live. Writing is creative; acting is interpretive.”— English playwright, fiction writer, memoirist, composer, actor and wit Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973), quoted in The Noel Coward Reader, edited by Barry Day (2010)

The 125^th birthday of Noel Coward passed almost two weeks ago, but I couldn’t allow 2024 to go by without noting the worldwide observance of the event.

The image of Coward that has come down to posterity—in dinner jacket, with slicked-back hair and cigarette in hand (kind of like what you see with this post)—obscures a polymath of ferocious energy and dedication who shames the rest of us by comparison. 

Even more than the bon vivant of legend, it is this artist who scoffed at notions about his genius but gladly accepted compliments about his professionalism, that I celebrate with this post.

One last thing, though: You’ll notice in the above quote that Coward refers not to “acting” in general but to “stage acting” in particular. The latter certainly offers the possibility of an electricity between audience and performer that is not possible on film.

But film acting, in contrast, certainly “lives in people's memories as long as they live.” Coward himself is a good example.

Modern audiences will have no idea how he appeared onstage in 1933 with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in his comedy Design for Living. But as long as a TV station or movie revival house exists, viewers can watch him 18 times on film, from his 1935 screen debut in The Scoundrel to his 1969 swan song, The Italian Job.

Those roles, as fleeting or even imperfect as they could sometimes be, show why so many people of his time—and even ours—remain “mad about the boy.”

TV Quote of the Day (‘Modern Family,’ on an Outcome of the Citizenship Process)

[The household is anticipating the citizenship process for Colombian-born Gloria.]

Jay Pritchett [played by Ed O'Neill]: “Gloria's about to take her citizenship test. This little jumping bean is about to become an American.”

Gloria Delgado-Pritchett [played by Sofía Vergara] [indignantly]: “Jumping beans are Mexican!”

Jay: “Once you're an American, you won't see the difference.”— Modern Family, Season 6, Episode 22, “Patriot Games,” original air date May 6, 2015, teleplay by Christopher Lloyd, Steven Levitan, and Vali Chandrasekaran, directed by Alisa Statman

This Day in Literary History (Christina Rossetti, Victorian Poet and Devotional Writer, Dies)

Dec. 29, 1894—Weakened by a recurrence of breast cancer on top of the ailments that plagued her for most of her life, poet and devotional writer Christina Rossetti died at age 64 in London.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I have frequently quoted from this Victorian frequently over the years—even though, unlike most other writers featured here, I discovered her on my own, well after my formal education ended.

When I did, I was astonished to discover that her Complete Poems—over 1,100, with approximately 900 published in her lifetime—ran to a hefty 1,300 pages.

As I considered her work and her life, I was struck by several similarities with Emily Dickinson. 

Even the most seemingly significant difference between the two might not be as substantial as it seems at first: Although Rossetti’s religious orientation was Anglo-Catholic while Dickinson rejected the Calvinism of her New England ancestors, both pondered in their work, for want of a better term, the ultimate—i.e., the presence (or lack of it) of God, the possibility of a hereafter.

It turns out that I am hardly the only reader who has drawn parallels between the two poets. Others have pointed out these similarities:

*Each was born in December 1830;

*Each developed a reputation as a spinster/recluse;

*Each, when meeting others, did so within their homes, usually facilitated by their charismatic older brother;

*Each devoted much of their work in their home to looking after their fathers;

*Each’s sexuality—or suppression of it—has fanned intense scholarly interest, despite the lack of much documentation to justify many conclusions;

*Each seems to have suffered from a mysterious ailment or set of them, which has also produced a small cottage industry of studies;

*Each wrote poetry in a deceptively simple style that cloaks complicated reflections on resignation, loss, and mortality.

The youngest child of Italian immigrants to Great Britain, Christina came from one of the most artistically accomplished families of her era. Her father was a poet and Dante scholar; sister Maria, books on Dante, religious instruction, and Italian grammar and translation; brother William, art and literary criticism; and brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the foremost poets and painters of his time, as a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In her youth, Christina could beat her siblings in rapidly dashing off exquisite poems, and her striking looks—particularly the pale complexion, large eyes, and long uncurled hair (as seen in the attached image, created by her brother Dante)—made her one of the initial go-to models of the Pre-Raphaelites.

But in her mid-teens, she suffered a collapse in health. Over time, as she became more intensely devotional, she spurned at least two suitors who did not meet the spiritual standard she desired for a husband.

Much of her poetry inextricably intertwines Biblical imagery with her own spontaneous melodic voice—a style that reached a peak of sorts with the famous hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” In art as in life, she was confessional and self-abasing to a fault.

But she was valued so much by contemporaries that she was a serious contender for the post of British poet laureate after the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. (Her rapidly declining health at this point closed off any chance of achieving that distinction.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (David French, on Unity Through the Pursuit of Virtue)

“The American church is torn apart by conflict over theology. It should be united by a pursuit of virtue. The church that truly influences a nation will be one that focuses on doing good more than on being right.”—Opinion columnist David French, “Some Think What You Preach Matters More Than What You Do. It Doesn’t,” The New York Times, Aug. 4, 2024

Flashback, December 1999: ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley,’ Neo-Hitchcockian Thriller, Opens

When  the psychological thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley opened in American theaters in December 1999, it seemed, on the surface, like old-fashioned entertainment out of the Fifties, with glamorous rising stars, lush on-location filming in the Mediterranean, and suspense that didn’t veer into geysers of blood.

Old-fashioned, but only up to a point. Certain aspects of the plot and characters wouldn’t have passed muster with the censors back then. Even Alfred Hitchcock, who directed an acclaimed adaptation of a prior novel by Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train, had to bow, at least to an extent, to restrictions set by the Production Code Administration.

The “Master of Suspense,” for instance, had to employ then-current Hollywood “code”—a male character’s obsession with personal appearance and a domineering mother—to suggest that one character was gay. And he could not allow a sympathetic character to resort to blackmail. But the passage of time and changes in social mores permitted a more complicated vision.

Did screenwriter-director Anthony Minghella in Ripley display the editing wizardry and offbeat humor so characteristic of Hitchcock? No. But he had the same obsession with apparel as a signifier of character, and a similar fascination with transgressiveness—in this case, a grifter-turned-serial killer.

Minghella wasn’t the first—and turned out not to be the last—to take a crack at Ripley: Rene Clement’s 1960 French version, Purple Noon, starred Alain Delon, while Netflix mounted an eight-part, black-and-white miniseries starring Andrew Scott that streamed earlier this year on Netflix.

What accounts for this material’s enduring appeal? It touches on motifs and themes that fascinate viewers: wealth, class, obsession, slippery identities, and “doubles”—characters who share traits with each other.

Binding it all together is an amoral villain so compelling that Highsmith ended up tracking his progress in five novels produced over three decades: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water.

In interviews, Highsmith refused to endorse the idea that her grifter-turned-murderer Tom Ripley was gay or bisexual.

But Ripley’s obsessive attachment to the privileged Dickie Greenleaf and his lack of feeling for any female character lend themselves to this interpretation, so Minghella wasn’t veering too far afield by rendering Tom’s sexuality more explicit.

The screenplay is at pains to increase viewers’ sympathy for and complicity in Tom’s crimes by giving him a motive besides simple avarice. 

At the same time, in contrast to the often heartless Highsmith, Minghella heightens the plight of women by making Gwyneth Paltrow’s Marge less contemptuous of Tom and by inventing an entire new character in Cate Blanchette’s Meredith Logue.

The movie, while dispensing with the novel’s pointed allusion to Henry James’ The Ambassadors (another tale about an American dispatched by a wealthy family to bring their son home), retains the international setting and conflicts so characteristic of the expatriate writer.

This time, however, there’s a twist: the American venturing abroad, Ripley, is not an innocent, but an aesthete whose tastes are facilitated by his talents for mooching, forgery, impersonation, improvisation, and murder.

I can’t tell you all the articles I came across on the Web about Ripley’s sartorial style. It’s almost as if the public (and certainly the fashion industry) is as besotted by the la dolce vita lifestyle of Dickie Greenleaf as Tom Ripley was.

Ripley was nominated for five Oscars, including best supporting actor (Law), adapted screenplay (Minghella), art direction, costume design, and original score. But it should have received more nods, and it has aged well, with some of the best performances ever turned in by Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

In the mid-Fifties, Highsmith anticipated a tendency that became overwhelming within a few decades: the American susceptibility to grifters adept at reinventing themselves.

 More than four decades later, Minghella masterfully captured the utter emptiness of all this frenzied, and criminal, striving: a villain who confesses, to the only person who begins to sound his depths, why he feels so alone even now: “I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.”

Quote of the Day (Anand Giridharadas, on Fascism and the ‘Age of Tribalism’)

“If the definition of fascism is the use of state power to throw out election results and legitimise the use of violence in politics, there are people [championing] that now—and they are outcompeting us. This age of tribalism is not really about right or left any more, but about a pro-democracy and anti-democracy movement. The pro-democracy side has a fatalism about the impossibility of bringing people over from the other side — and that is a recipe for tyranny.”—American journalist Anand Giridharadas quoted by Gillian Tett, “Lunch With the FT: ‘The Fascists Are Better at Politics,” The Financial Times, Dec. 31, 2022-Jan. 1, 2023

The image accompanying this post, of Anand Giridharadas speaking at the Meaning Conference, was taken June 28, 2019.

Exhibit Review: Classic Film Posters, Barrymore Film Center and Museum, Fort Lee, NJ

Film fans often take for granted the unique power of a movie poster. It must intrigue and lure potential audiences without misleading them about the content being advertised. If it’s lucky, it will also be aesthetically beautiful, and freeze the image of the film for ages to come.

I thought of this while viewing “Coming Attractions: Classic Film Posters from the Konstantino Spanoudis iKON Collection,” at the Barrymore Film Center and Museum in Fort Lee, NJ, not far from where I live in Bergen County. If you have a chance, rush to see this exhibit before it closes January 5. Even better, couple your trip with a ticket for one of the classic, independent, or art house movies playing in this burgeoning mecca for cinephiles in the tristate area.

The 70 items on display range from 1910, the dawn of the silent era (which began, this nonprofit center and museum will remind you, in Fort Lee) to 1981, concentrating mostly on the U.S. but with some foreign posters for a wider context.

As you look through the materials, you might be surprised to discover that issues that preoccupy Americans now had their genesis over a century ago. Censors back then, for instance, focused first on these posters—an inexpensive alternative to newspaper advertising.

Lithographers were the original creators of movie posters, and, like the other form they created—circus posters—highlighted, and sometimes exaggerated, lurid content. Opponents’ anger, then, often concentrated on the art itself, which would likely be seen by more passersby than the movies themselves.

As late as the 1930s, American movie posters were still seen as the products of hacks who labored in an industry more respected for the money it generated than as an art. So many motion pictures were being produced then that the useful life of a poster could be only days, leading to their trashing, recycling, or return to exchange.

French, German, and Italian artists often signed their work, enjoying greater recognition than their largely anonymous American counterparts. (A conspicuous exception: Saul Bass, who transformed the movie-poster industry with his art for Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, and Alfred Hitchcock—and whose seminal work for Anatomy of a Murder is shown here.)

Konstantino Spanoudis, a Greek-born Fort Lee owner and curator of iKON Art Gallery, has amassed well over 6,000 movie posters since he began accumulating this art in the late 1980s.

What’s on display in the museum’s 1,800-sq.-ft. exhibition gallery reflects his fascination especially with classic Hollywood, B-westerns, Abbott and Costello comedies, sports, and “race films” (movies made by Black filmmakers for segregated movie houses).

Nearly 20 of the pieces relate to Bergen County, mostly Fort Lee, including for:

* Fighting Death (Solex Studio, Fort Lee, 1914)

* Silent “vamp” Theda Bara’s Carmen (made at Fort Lee’s Fox Studio, 1915); and

* The multi-part Lincoln epic, Son of Democracy (filmed in Ridgefield Park, 1917).

Among the other titles promoted by these posters:

* Sarah Bernhardt’s Queen Elizabeth (1912), one of the first silents to promote a specific film and star rather than “the movies” in general; and

* Gilda (1946, pictured), the film noir starring Rita Hayworth;

* La Dolce Vita (1960), by Federico Fellini, one of the imports that these posters advertised;

* A trio of James Bond films, from the Sixties dawn of the franchise (Dr. No, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice);

* Jaws (1975), and;

* Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

The industry has progressed from an ephemeral advertising art to one whose most prized items can garner $40,000 to $50,000. The Barrymore exhibit provides a great way to appreciate two fine arts that nobody expected much from at their beginnings: the motion picture industry itself, and the posters that promoted it to a public that eventually couldn’t get enough of it.

TV Quote of the Day (‘M*A*S*H,’ As Potter and Radar Consider Cigars)

Col. Sherman Potter [played by Harry Morgan]: “Cigar?” 

Cpl. Walter “Radar” O'Reilly [played by Gary Burghoff]: “Will it stunt my growth?”

Col. Potter [eyeing the short Radar]: “What do you got to lose?”

Radar: “Is it habit forming?”

Col. Potter: “Nah. I've been smoking five cigars a day for 45 years. Never got the habit.”— M*A*S*H, Season 6, Episode 1, “Fade Out, Fade In,” original air date Sept. 20, 1977, teleplay by James Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, directed by Hy Averback

Talking about tongues planted firmly in cheek! Just as M*A*S*H used the distant mirror of the Korean conflict to comment on the Vietnam War, its writers realized that their audience would know that, 13 years before, the Surgeon General’s report had warned that smoking causes lung cancer and probably heart disease.

Quote of the Day (Mike Kelly, on Luigi Mangione’s Alleged Weapon)

“[G]host guns represent a far different element in the overall gun debate. For starters, they have been used far too often by criminals. They are cheap and often without serial numbers and other identifying characteristics, making them almost impossible to trace. And because they were constructed primarily with plastic-like materials, they are often difficult to detect at security checkpoints in airports and at such mass public events as concerts. To put the dilemma another way: These are homemade guns. But they are hardly amateurish. They work — well.”—Columnist Mike Kelly, “Mangione Probably Used a Ghost Gun. Are We Outraged?”, The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Dec. 22, 2024

Flashback, December 1924: The Scott Fitzgerald Roman Misadventure That Inspired ‘Tender Is the Night’

Shortly before Christmas 1924, in the midst of trying to finish the crucial last edits of the novel he hoped would cement his literary reputation and lift his finances, F. Scott Fitzgerald engaged in a drunken quarrel in Rome that ended up with him being beaten by the carabinieri, or the national police force.

The American was so embarrassed that he avoided writing or talking in anything more than general terms about this incident that brought out the worst instincts of himself and the nation he was visiting. The fullest description, in fact, found its way into the book he produced, at great emotional cost, a decade later, the last novel he completed in his life: Tender is the Night.

Riotous misadventures on Long Island had already delayed progress on The Great Gatsby. He came with wife Zelda and daughter Scottie to the French Riviera in the belief that he could live more cheaply abroad than in the United States, and he wanted to concentrate on his third novel instead of being forced to churn out short fiction that merely satisfied the couple’s needs to meet their mounting expenses. 

(See my blog post from 15 years ago on his tongue-in-cheek essay from the spring of 1924, “How to Live on $36,000 a Year.”)

But living beyond their means continued to plague the couple. And this time, there was an additional complication: while Scott sat at his typewriter, providing his Scribners editor Maxwell Perkins with rewritten passages that would bring Jay Gatsby into greater focus for readers, Zelda—with no creative outlet to occupy her time—became infatuated with a French aviator, in an affair that threatened the marriage.

Partly to satisfy Zelda, who wanted to see the sights associated with the Henry James novel Roderick Hudson, the Fitzgeralds visited Rome in November. The first time they had gone there, three years before, Scott had not found the “Eternal City” at all to his liking, with their flea-infested hotel suite provoking his scorn. This time, it proved near-catastrophic.

The novelist found a city that had changed for the worse, and was spiraling downward by the day. Benito Mussolini’s insurrection in 1922 had brought him to power, and right after New Year’s Day in 1925, he delivered a speech to the Italian parliament in which he took personal responsibility for violence staged by his “blackshirts” and began dismantling the last remaining shreds of democracy in the nation.

It was not a good environment for a foreigner to be involved in an altercation.

Exactly when this incident occurred is uncertain, but it can be placed after December 20, when Fitzgerald wrote to Perkins:

“I'm a bit (not very—not dangerously) stewed tonight & I'll probably write you a long letter. We're living in a small, unfashionable but most comfortable hotel at $525.00 a month including tips, meals etc. Rome does not particularly interest me but its (sic) a big year here, and early in the spring we're going to Paris. [...] I've got a new novel to write—title and all, that'll take about a year. Meanwhile, I don't want to start it until this is out & meanwhile I'll do short stories for money.”

If you’re like me, knowing what Fitzgerald could be like, your antenna might rise when you come across that statement about being “a bit (not very—not dangerously) stewed tonight.” It didn’t take long for him to go from being buzzed to being idiotically and violently intoxicated.

Fitzgerald’s reference to the incident came in the new year—but he still couldn’t tell agent Harold Ober exactly what bothered him about Italy this time: "I hate Italy and the Italiens [sic], so violently that I can't bring myself to write about them for the Post."

A note that Fitzgerald wrote in 1929—spare but suggestive—implies depths of antipathy not previously expressed: “After I — after a thing that happened to me in Rome I used to imagine whole auditoriums filled with the flower of Italy, and me with a machine gun concealed on the stage. All ready. Curtain up. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.”

This incident would be just one more stop along the way of “The Drunkard’s Progress” (a 19^th-century temperance pamphlet that could have served as the story of Fitzgerald’s life), except that the novelist used it as a pivotal point in his narrative for Tender is the Night.

One major change that Fitzgerald made in transforming this imbroglio from fact to fiction was in moving the date: from the mid 1920s to closer to the Great Crash. For Dick Diver, as for America, hard times are about to arrive.

Though there are already warning signs that Dick’s drinking is affecting his psychiatric practice, the breakup of his affair with Hollywood starlet Rosemary Hoyt set off reactions that push him to fisticuffs. An evening in a cabaret is marked by the erosion of his faculties and reason: “a distinct lesion of his own vitality,” followed by Dick progressively turning “pale and somewhat noisy,” his “unwilling body” while dancing, then an argument with taxi drivers over his projective fare, slurred speech, shoves and wild swings that end with him at a police station, where his beating bears all the hallmarks of the author’s lived experience:

“[E] ven as a first pang of doubt shot through him the world reeled; he was clubbed down, and fists and boots beat on him in a savage tattoo. He felt his nose break like a shingle and his eyes jerk as if they had snapped back on a rubber band into his head. A rib splintered under a stamping heel. Momentarily he lost consciousness, regained it as he was raised to a sitting position and his wrists jerked together with handcuffs. He struggled automatically. The plainclothes lieutenant whom he had knocked down, stood dabbing his jaw with a handkerchief and looking into it for blood; he came over to Dick, poised himself, drew back his arm and smashed him to the floor.”

Dick’s request for help from “Baby” Warren, the older, disapproving older sister of his wife Nicole—the relative who holds the key to the family’s, and his, finances—becomes the hinge point of the plot: 

“It had been a hard night but she [Baby Warren] had the satisfaction of feeling that, whatever Dick's previous record was, they now possessed a moral superiority over him for as long as he proved of any use."

From here on, as the mental health of Nicole—a former patient of his whom Dick had fallen in love with before marrying—improves, Dick’s drinking worsens. So much of his energy had been devoted to watching over her that he had plunged into what Fitzgerald called, in the title of another of his stories, “emotional bankruptcy.”

As I related in this prior post, Tender is the Night brought mixed reviews and poor sales upon publication. The struggles of an affluent expatriate couple in the Roaring Twenties struck many as out of tune with what average Americans were enduring in the Great Depression, and the novel’s shifts in time and point of view demanded far more than many readers were prepared to give.

Today, we can better appreciate Tender for what it is: an unexpectedly tough-minded critique of the very rich, scenes from a marriage of a golden couple that modulate from love to dissolution, and with Fitzgerald’s creative alchemy transforming the ugly circumstances of his life into poignant and beautiful art.

Though Fitzgerald had over the years lapsed from the Catholicism of his childhood and youth, perhaps he pondered the account of the talents in Matthew 25:14–30—a parable as applicable to himself as to the once-promising psychiatrist he was bringing to life.

Quote of the Day (Thomas Hardy, on Where the Oxen Knelt at Christmas)

 

“If someone said on Christmas Eve,
‘Come; see the oxen kneel,
 
‘In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,’
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”—English poet-novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), “The Oxen,” originally published in The Times of London (Christmas Eve, 1915)

Photo of the Day: Creche, St. Cecilia Church, Englewood NJ

Late yesterday afternoon, I, like so many other parishioners, lined up in front of this creche on the altar at my longtime church, St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church in Bergen County, NJ, to take this photo.  

You will find the same image all over the world today, but those who go here feel a proprietary interest in beholding this—and those who have ever attended Mass here know exactly what I’m talking about.

Quote of the Day (Patrick Kavanagh, on an Irish Christmas Eve Long Ago)

“No snow, but in their minds
The fields and roads are white;
They may be talking of the turkey markets
Or foreign politics, but to-night
Their plain, hard country words
Are Christ’s singing birds.
 
“Bicycles scoot by. Old women
Cling to the grass margin:
Their thoughts are earthy, but their minds move
In dreams of the Blessed Virgin,
For One in Bethlehem
Has kept their dreams safe for them.”— Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “Christmas Eve Remembered,” from Collected Poems (2004)
 
The image accompanying this post, A Frost Piece, is by Irish painter James Arthur O’Connor (1792-1841), and is in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Quote of the Day (Lillian Stone, on Family Relations at Christmastime)

“Your extended family includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. It also includes Enzo, your cousin's cousin's cousin, who owns the Italian place down the street and proudly displays a signed photo of Bernadette Peters above the cash register. Every time you walk by with your dog, he gives you a wink and screams, ‘Proud home of preferred manicotti of Bernadette Peters!’ Enzo, too, is family.”— Humor writer and journalist Lillian Stone, “Shouts and Murmurs: Obscure Familial Relations, Explained for the Holidays,” The New Yorker, Dec. 9, 2024

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Gospel According to St. Luke, on the Visitation)

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechari′ah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be[a] a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’”—Luke 1:39-45 (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)

The image accompanying this post, The Visitation, was drawn by the Italian Renaissance master Raphael (1483-1520), then completed by an assistant.

Quote of the Day (Hal Borland, on Why December ‘Is Neither Bleak Nor Colorless’)

“True, December can be raw and cold and its days sometimes are dark, but it is neither bleak nor colorless. Go outdoors soon after sun-up, which now comes late, and even on a lowering day you probably will find a frosty scene of dazzling beauty. If the day is clear it can be a world transformed by frost or snow, newly created, fragile as spun glass, ephemeral as the passing hour.”— American writer, journalist and naturalist Hal Borland (1900-1978), Twelve Moons of the Year, edited by Barbara Dodge Borland (1979)

Though the sun had not yet come up, I awoke this morning to see a thin layer of snow on the ground. Quite a contrast with last winter, when, a local weatherman said last night, snow did not arrive in New York City until February 1.

Let’s see what happens this winter. Unlike when I was a kid, I don’t look forward to snow—I have to shovel it and drive in it, rather than digging out my sled and sliding down a hill in my neighborhood. But I also know that a year with little to no snow in this part of the country is a sign of something wrong.

(I took the image accompanying this post exactly four years ago today, in Overpeck County Park, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. That December really was bleak, but for reasons unrelated to the landscape. It was, you might recall, when COVID-19 raged and fear stalked the land.)

This Day in Film History (‘Godfather Part II,’ Oscar-Winning Sequel, Opens)

Dec. 20, 1974—Two years after The Godfather broke box-office records, the sequel went into general release in the U.S., in a production that was more generously budgeted, longer, more ambitious—and with a far more tragic vision of the American Dream.

The Godfather Part II duplicated its predecessor’s success, garnering six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  Many critics regard it as even superior to the first. 

Though it mirrored the original in many respects, it departed from it in relying less on memorable killings (e.g., the toll-booth murder of Sonny) and one-liners (“leave the gun, take the cannoli”) and more on narrative structure, characterization, and symbolism.

While Francis Ford Coppola was initially reluctant to direct Part II (even suggesting Martin Scorsese for the job), he came around to the idea because of two factors.

First, he insisted on—and won—greater creative control, largely sidelining his nemesis on the first film, Paramount studio exec Robert Evans, in the process.

Second, he was so disturbed by the audience’s delight at a sneak preview for the first film—the final scene, where the door is closed on Kay Corleone as her husband Michael conducts “business” as the new don—that he wanted to leave no doubt whatsoever that a fissure had appeared in their marriage and that the crime boss had endangered his soul.

In other words, he wanted to definitively disprove critics who thought the first film had romanticized the Mafia by depicting them as devoted family men rather than as killers. By the end of Part II, Michael Corleone sits utterly alone, as his focus on “business” has left him paranoid and questioning how it could have all gone so utterly wrong.

What went wrong for the Corleones, the film suggests, is also what went wrong with the American empire.

The movie, while covering roughly the years from 1957 to 1960, actually reflects America’s dark post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mood, in which cynicism about government lies and corruption became the order of the day. 

Coppola settled on the architecture of this epic with parallel stories of two fathers of roughly the same age, Vito and Michael Corleone, tracing the rise and decline of their family—their personal one as well as the criminal one they head.

I discussed Part II briefly 10 years ago in this post. I had seen bits and pieces over the years, both in The Godfather Saga (a chronological TV presentation beginning with nine-year-old Vito Corleone in Italy through the death of his son Michael roughly three-quarters of a century later) and on AMC (where, over the last few years, Parts I, II and III have been run as holiday mini-marathons).

But a couple of days ago, for the first time, I saw Part II as a complete entity in its own right, reel to reel. The richness I (re)discovered convinced me it was worthwhile exploring in greater depth.

Its nearly half-hour more of running time compared with Godfather I gave co-screenwriters Coppola and novelist Mario Puzo more time not only to convey atmosphere, but also to offer hints about character motivations and relationships.

This time, knowing the major plot points of the movie, small, seemingly minor moments loom larger, as with the pills that Michael takes on the way to meet partner Hyman Roth—perhaps a means of alleviating the tension and anxiety of running a far-flung criminal enterprise and of surviving an assassination in his own home.

Coppola has likened the film to a saga about a king and his three sons. The imperial theme resonates most loudly and mournfully when Corleone consiglieri Tom Hagen and “soldier” Frankie Pentangeli muse on the Roman Empire:

Hagen: “You were around the old timers who dreamed up how the Families should be organized, how they based it on the old Roman Legions, and called them 'Regimes'... with the 'Capos' and 'Soldiers,' and it worked.”

Pentangeli: “Yeah, it worked. Those were great old days. We was like the Roman Empire. The Corleone family was like the Roman Empire.”

Hagen (sadly): “Yeah, it was once.”

While thoroughly of its own time, Part II anticipated much of the disillusionment in America over the last few decades by detailing the costs of the intersection of entertainment, politics, business, and crime.

Perhaps the most vivid example is when Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista meets with United Fruit Company, United Telephone and Telegraph Company, Pan American Mining Corp., South American Sugar—and Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth.

Visually, it echoes the scene from Part I when a grief-stricken Vito Corleone calls a summit meeting of the Mafia families to call a halt to their bloody vendetta—as the inclusion of Corleone and Roth with the more conventional companies implies that little difference exists between ostensibly non-criminal and criminal enterprises.

That sense is reinforced when Batista thanks a group member for the Christmas “gift” of a solid gold telephone, and later when Roth confides to colleagues: 

“There’s no limit to where we can go from here. This kind of government knows how to help business, to encourage it…We can thank our Friends in the Cuban government, which has put up half of the cash with the Teamsters on a dollar-for-dollar basis and has relaxed restrictions on imports. What I'm saying is that we have now what we have always needed: real partnership with the government.”

Roth is voicing the code of businessmen that has prevailed so often from Adolf Hitler to the wanna-be dictators of today: the transgressions of government heads matter little so long as they can forge a “real partnership” that allows them carte blanche to operate.

It has been a devolutionary process even near the start of the movie, when nine-year-old Vito and other passengers gaze longingly at the Statue of Liberty, coming just a few scenes after we see what has happened over 50 years later: Vito’s now-grown son Michael tangling with a zenophobic U.S. senator over a bribe to secure a Las Vegas casino gambling license.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Elf,’ on Meeting a Fake Store Santa)

Buddy [played by Will Ferrell]: “You stink! You smell like beef and cheese—you don’t smell like Santa!”—Elf (2003), screenplay by David Berenbaum, directed by Jon Favreau

Quote of the Day (Monica Bellucci, on How Maria Callas ‘Created What She Wanted To Be’)

“She [opera singer Maria Callas] created what she wanted to be, like many, many, many people in the business. Marilyn Monroe wasn’t the blonde bombshell when she started. We call this ‘les femmes du spectacle.’ They know how to create illusion. An artist uses her own body as a transmitter, as a way to show themselves. The body becomes an instrument.”— Italian actress Monica Bellucci quoted by Elisabeth Vincentelli, “Reviving the Aura of a Diva,” The New York Times, Jan. 26, 2023

I had become intrigued by this quote almost two years ago, but it’s come to the forefront of my consciousness now with the release of the Angelina Jolie biopic about Callas, Maria. If anyone understands the artistic creation of illusions in the manner described by Ms. Bellucci, it would have to be Ms. Jolie, I think.

(The image accompanying this post, of Maria Callas in her home in Milan, Italy, was taken in 1957 by Federico Patellani.)