Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Therese of Lisieux, on Deeds and Love)

“Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.” —French Carmelite nun—and “Doctor of the Church”—St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), The Thoughts of St. Therese of the Child Jesus (1915)

This Thursday, the feast day of “The Little Flower”—a saint of unsurpassed humility and devotion to God—will be celebrated.

Quote of the Day (Robert Browning, on How ‘Truth is Within Ourselves’)

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise    
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.     
There is an inmost centre in us all,    
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,  
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,            
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.         
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh          
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,          
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,               
Than in effecting entry for a light      
Supposed to be without.”—English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889), Paracelsus (1835)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ In Which a High-Level Leaker Is Not Just Caught Out But Embarrassed)

[Sir Humphrey Appleby makes several highly indiscreet, "off-the-record" statements regarding government policy on unemployment and the media during an interview for a BBC radio documentary. implying the government lacks courage and that the true, harsh nature of unemployment policy is hidden. A tape of this outtake is sent to Humphrey, and the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, obtains it, using it to blackmail Humphrey, turning the tables on his often-manipulative Cabinet Secretary.]

James Hacker [played by Paul Eddington, back turned in picture]: “How did your broadcast go?”

Sir Humphrey Appleby [played by Nigel Hawthorne, facing in picture] [quickly]: “Oh, very well, very well.”

Hacker [smiling, waiting to pounce]: “What did you say?”

Sir Humphrey: “Oh, nothing in particular. I think I pointed out some of the difficulties in allocating responsibilities as between [waving hands quickly] politicians and civil servants.”

Hacker: “But you were discreet?”

Sir Humphrey [more nervously]: “Why do you ask?”

Hacker: “Were you or weren't you?”

Sir Humphrey: “Yes!”

Hacker: “Yes you were or yes you weren’t?”

Sir Humphrey: “Yes.”

Hacker [prodding, with a cunning smile]: “Humphrey…”

Sir Humphrey: “Oh yes. Well, didn’t you expect me to be discreet?”

Hacker: “Well, yes, of course.”

Sir Humphrey [quickly trying to conclude this]: “Well, there you are, then!”

Hacker: “Well, that's all right, isn’t it?” [Sir Humphrey relaxes and smiles, thinking he’s escaped danger.]

Sir Humphrey: “Why do you ask, Prime Minister?” [He starts to sit down at last.]

Hacker: “Well, it's just that the BBC sent me a tape…” [Sir Humphrey shoots out of his seat, alarmed.]—Yes, Prime Minister, Season 2, Episode 8, “The Tangled Web,” original air date Jan. 28, 1988, teleplay by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, directed by Sydney Lotterby

I wonder if a variation of this scene occurred recently on this side of the Atlantic Ocean? You know how the Trump Administration used a Politico story to justify denying it access to the White House grounds—all because of it having allegedly “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods”?

Well, guess who the (once anonymous) source of that story was? None other than J.D. Vance, who, according to this Daily Beast article, wanted to put a positive spin on ongoing peace negotiations with Iran.

It all goes to show that when it comes to secrets divulged, Washington leaks from the top. Vance would just be the latest member of what the late great syndicated satirist Art Buchwald, back in March 1983, referred to as “the National Council of Office Leakers,” which meets weekly “and is chaired by a very high White House source.”

Quote of the Day (Jessamyn West, on What Heals or Festers)

“A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.”— American novelist Jessamyn West (1902-1984), The Life I Really Lived (1979)

This Day in Jazz History (Birth of John Coltrane, Saxophonist Supreme)

Sept. 23, 1926— John Coltrane, a saxophonist, bandleader, and composer who, after overcoming a heroin addiction in his early 30s, achieved a spiritual awakening that fueled his subsequent jazz masterpieces, was born in Hamlet, NC.

Early on, the musical promise of this country boy was recognized by a bandleader only four months his senior: Miles Davis. But six years of dependence on heroin and alcohol turned Coltrane into an unsteady, unreliable member of the Davis quintet, leading to his abrupt ouster.

The way back nine months later into the good graces of the bandleader he called “Teacher” was harrowing: locking himself in his mother’s room in Philadelphia and, without medication or medical assistance, quitting his chemical dependence cold turkey.

For the decade remaining before he died of liver cancer, “Trane” gave thanks to God for his liberation from drugs, and sought a purity in sound that mirrored his ecstatic spiritual vision.

Particularly in albums like the Grammy-nominated A Love Supreme (1965), listeners discerned a spiritual path of devotion and redemption, open to all. In fact, for more than half a century, the African Orthodox Church, founded by Black Episcopalians critical of what they saw as racism in the larger denomination, has even officially canonized him, naming its San Francisco house of worship in his honor.

Not everyone felt well-disposed towards the even greater religious intensity his work assumed in the last couple of years of Coltrane’s life. Critic Stanley Crouch, for instance, for all his appreciation of the musician’s early work, dismissed his late ventures as “naive submission to actual noise and incompetence.”

But few would deny that Coltrane was relentlessly dedicated to practicing his craft, as well as pursuing a musical question as unexpected as his spiritual one.

“Sheets of sound” is how Downbeat jazz critic Ira Gitler described the vertical improvisational style emanating from Coltrane’s saxophone—dense layers of scales, modes and keys over an entire progression. It proved extremely influential. 

But Coltrane was uninterested in repeating himself, and his devotees could hardly keep up with his innovations over the course of the 25 albums he released as a bandleader in his abbreviated lifespan.

Even with the Great American Songbook, the corpus of popular standards that jazz has plumbed for years, Coltrane created something unique with his 1961 interpretation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things.” He transformed that approximately three-minute chestnut from The Sound of Music into what Sam Stephenson called, in a 2014 blog post for The Paris Review, “a thirteen-minute warhorse of dominion.”

Like Davis, Coltrane was connected to the area of New Jersey where I live: Bergen County, NJ. Together they worked Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet in autumn 1956 at the Hackensack home studio of legendary jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Leading his own band, Coltrane created three albums in Van Gelder’s later Englewood Cliffs studio, including, most notably, A Love Supreme.

(For a good, concise summary of Coltrane at his zenith, I recommend Patrick Jarenwattananon’s September 2010 blog post on—what else?—“Your Blog Supreme.”)

Quote of the Day (Edna St. Vincent Millay, on How Autumn ‘Shudders’ and ‘Clambers’)

“Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root.
Far and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.
 
“Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame,
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), “Autumn Chant,” in Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems, edited by J. D. McClatchy (Library of America edition, 2003)

This Day in Television History (‘Charlie's Angels’ Soars in Debut)

Sept. 22, 1976— Charlie's Angels, the latest product from the factory of TV writer-producer Aaron Spelling, quickly took flight in the Nielsen ratings following its premiere on ABC.

The series, featuring three beautiful women working for an unseen but often heard male owner of a detective agency, only heightened the criticism that Spelling was, according to the highbrow The New Yorker, a “schlock merchant.”

Spelling he laughed all the way to the bank, as his fantasy detective drama began what turned out to be five seasons in prime time.

This current post might not be the kind of elevated fare that longtime readers of this blog might recall from earlier items concerning, for instance, the Metropolitan Opera’s 1966 debut at Lincoln Center, the NY Times Jayson Blair scandal, or the death of landscape painter Thomas Moran.

But the show, even in its earliest incarnation a half-century ago, exerts a tenacious hold, particularly on those of a certain age. Just witness the social-media hoopla surrounding “Angel” Jaclyn Smith’s just-published memoir, and her appearance with former co-star Kate Jackson on The Drew Barrymore Show. 

Beyond that, the story of the show says much about manufacturing and maintaining fame, managing star egos, and an often-unacknowledged adjunct of TV production: attorneys on speed dial to launch or defend against lawsuits resulting from success.

Though Spelling, the most prolific producer in TV history (according to the Guinness Book of World Records) cheerfully acknowledged that his shows represented “mind candy,” this series—which made stars of Smith, Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett—was more like eye candy.

One nickname, more scornful, quickly caught on: “Jiggle TV,” for scenes focusing on its stars’ physical assets. The opening credits, with Smith in a bikini, would hardly be the last time that the show was associated with swimsuits.

In a fortuitous bit of marketing synergy, a poster featuring Fawcett in a red swimsuit went on sale right around the time the show premiered. By March 1977, five million copies were decorating bedrooms and dorms all across the country, making it, according to this 2020 Biography article, the bestselling poster of all time.

A year later, at the height of Farrahmania, an incorrect rumor circulated where I lived in Bergen County, NJ, that the former Texas model with the tousled blond hair was planning to live on the same street as Yankee catcher Thurman Munson in Norwood. The news was enough to lead one teenage guy I knew to vow to camp out overnight to catch sight of her!

Fawcett was careful to appear in a one-piece swimsuit to conceal a childhood scar on her stomach. No such problem existed for later Angel Cheryl Ladd, who, tired of being asked incessantly to wear a bikini on the show, finally came to the set one day with one that left very, very little to the imagination. 

In a 2016 oral history of Spelling in The Hollywood Reporter, the actress recalled, “I got a note from Aaron that said, ‘OK, little rebel, I got the point. And this will never happen again.’ But he didn’t mean I’d never be in a bikini again. It was more like, don’t try that again.”

Externals like clothes and hair absorbed much of Spelling’s attention, as they would for his later nighttime soap operas like Dynasty, Beverly Hills 90210, and Melrose Place. But the success of Charlie’s Angels meant that he would be ensnared, not always successfully, in keeping his stars satisfied. 

After one season, Fawcett quit to pursue other opportunities. Spelling and partner Leonard Goldberg filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit. (The case was settled out of court, with the actress agreeing on six guest appearances before bowing out.)

For her increasing annoyance with the show’s declining script quality, lack of compensation for suggesting the series’ name in the first place, and Spelling’s refusal to adjust her shooting schedule to allow for outside work like the Oscar-winning Kramer vs. Kramer, Jackson went from being nicknamed “The Smart One” among the angelic trio to being tagged “The Difficult One.” To her vast relief, she was gone after Season 3.

Smith would be the only one of the original trio to last all five seasons and 115 episodes of the show. Unlike, say, M*A*S*H or Cheers, where cast changes revitalized the series for the long haul, lineup alterations did not have a similar effect for Charlie’s Angels. Ratings were drooping when everyone decided to call it a day after the fifth season.

Spelling, Goldberg, and ABC executives may have felt particular relief in moving on. In 1979, husband and wife actors Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, silent investors in the show but not listed as producers, sued Spelling for misappropriation of funds, claiming that he had channeled their money towards another crime show, Starsky and Hutch.

The investigation dragged on for a year, until the L.A. District Attorney’s office announced that there were “insufficient grounds to institute criminal charges.” With that, “Angelgate” was consigned to history, though it involved enduring questions about proving that head-scratching Hollywood bookkeeping represented fraud rather than sloppiness.

(More than two decades later, Wagner was back in court over the angels, this time hoping for a share of the profits from the two Charlie’s Angels feature films. He gained no satisfaction or money from that lawsuit, either.)

Astonishingly, nearly decades after the show went off the air, it was revived as a multi-media franchise, on film (Charlie's Angels, 2000; Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, 2003, and a 2019 reboot), TV again (a short-lived 2011 series and an animated web series), and even a video game.

That subsequent history underscored how much the series confounded its critics.  Its appeal to male viewers was, well, obvious. (Hint: it had nothing to do with plots!) But I was surprised to discover that even among females, the show had its defenders.

In my high school yearbook, for instance, several female classmates listed among their memories “C’s A’s.” It took me a while to surmise that this referred to their time together watching Charlie’s Angels in its original Wednesday night slots.

Drew Barrymore must have felt a similar affinity for the show, as she not only starred in the two film versions of the early aughts but produced them. The appeal of the show for her? Girl Power—a reminder in the new millennium that Sisterhood Is Powerful.

Quote of the Day (Lee Bollinger, on How Authoritarian Threats to Higher Education Developed)

“You would have to go back to the McCarthy period in the 1950s to see something comparable to what’s happening today. For many decades we lived free from government efforts to seize control of universities and suppress criticism and independent thought. And in this time, we forged individualistic identities. We want our students and our faculty to think of themselves as loyal to our particular institution, and at the same time, we’re competing for students and faculty against other schools. So we’ve set up a system in which institutions have individual identities and compete with one another, and this makes us more vulnerable to authoritarian efforts to undermine us.”—Former Columbia University President Lee Bollinger interviewed by Paul Hond, “Defending the Fifth Branch: A Response to Authoritarian Attacks on Universities,” Columbia Magazine, Spring/Summer 2026

With the academic year in full swing now, new threats are sure to develop against America's colleges and universities, even beyond the wide-ranging war aged by the Trump Administration outlined in Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder's US News article from earlier this month. 

In the face of all of this, Bollinger advocates “the equivalent of a NATO charter, with an Article 5 for universities in the US: If any institution among us is attacked, all of us will come to its defense.”

That may be not just the best way, but the only way to proceed now. Following President Trump’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW, the White House TV pool, which includes CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox, responded by not covering him last night. (Predictably, the President counterattacked with—what else?—“Trump TV.”)

If the pool’s strategy works, other American institutions—like higher education and prominent law firms—should follow with a similar resort to collective action.

(The image of Lee Bollinger that accompanies this post was taken on Oct. 11, 2007, by Daniella Zalcman.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Maude,’ Giving a Quick English Usage Lesson to Her Husband)

[Walter Findlay doesn’t like his wife’s new male friend.]

Walter Findlay [played by Bill Macy]: “Maude, we are not having dinner with that guy tonight! I told you, I can't stand him! Guy gets some special pleasure reminding me that I didn't graduate high school. Like last time in front of everybody, giving me that lecture on the difference between 'infer' and 'imply,' as if I didn't know.”

Maude Findlay [played by Bea Arthur]: “Come on now, Walter, he just gets impatient with ninnies who constantly misuse those words.”

Walter: “Are you inferring I'm a ninny?”

Maude: “Of course not, sweetheart. I'm implying you're a ninny; you were inferring.”—Maude, Season 3, Episode 12, “Maude's New Friend,” original air date Dec. 2, 1974, teleplay by Rod Parker and Elliot Shoenman, directed by Hal Cooper

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Fulton J. Sheen, on Christianity’s Journey From Defeat to Victory)

“Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.”— Blessed Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), Life of Christ (1958)

Technically, Archbishop Sheen will not be beatified until Thursday, Sept.24. But by the time many readers notice this post, the event will have taken place.

In any case, thousands have already taken to heart, during his lifetime or in the nearly half-century since his death, the spiritual lessons of perhaps the greatest mass communicator in the history of American Catholicism.

Quote of the Day (Leo Tolstoy, on the Right Way of Doing Good)

"It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it." ― Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Anna Karenina (1877)

Quote of the Day (Annie Dillard, on the Source of Good and Evil)

“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American essayist, novelist, and memoirist Annie Dillard (1945-2026), “Total Eclipse,” in Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Licorice Pizza,’ As a Sister Fights With a Sibling)

Alana [played by Alana Haim, pictured] [during a fight with her sister]: “Este, don't you even look at me! Don't you even look at me! You're always looking at me!”

Este [played by Este Haim]: “Oh, my...”

Alana: “What are you doing?”

Este: “I didn't even say anything!”

Alana: “What are you doing? What are you thinking, huh? ‘I'm Este. I work for mom and dad. I'm perfect! I'm a real estate agent. Alana doesn't have her life together. Alana brings home stupid boyfriends all the time.’"

Este: “I mean...”

Alana: “I knew it! I knew that was what you were thinking. You're always thinking things, you thinker! You thinker! You think things!”— Licorice Pizza (2021), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on ‘The Most Profoundly Important Sociological Factor of Modern Times’)

“The most profoundly important sociological factor of modern times [is] the growth of technology and the technicization of every aspect of human life.” — English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959 (1977)

This Day in Opera History (The Met Meets Disaster in New Lincoln Center Home)

Sept. 16, 1966—There’s something in the story of Cleopatra that inspires wretched creative excess. Three years after a four-hour blockbuster film starring Elizabeth Taylor broke up two marriages and put Twentieth-Century Fox on the financial brink, the Metropolitan Opera made the ancient Egyptian queen the centerpiece of its inaugural production at its new home in New York’s Lincoln Center.

You’ve probably already guessed that Antony and Cleopatra (whose program appears to the left), composed by Samuel Barber and directed by Franco Zeffirelli, became a legendary fiasco. How could it go so wrong?

The Met’s longtime general manager, Rudolf Bing, had done everything he could to ensure a fail-safe production. He secured the services of Leontyne Price, already an international opera superstar; Justino Diaz, a 26-year-old bass-baritone who, three years before, had become the first Puerto Rican to win the Met’s National Council Auditions; and Thomas Schippers, a charismatic young conductor.

Box-office considerations usually governed Bing’s pronounced predilection for tried-and-true European opera imports. (In fact, in his 22 seasons at the helm of the Met, he commissioned only four new pieces composed by Americans.)

But for the company’s new home, the occasion all but begged for something that would stake out an American claim to greatness. So he turned to Barber, who had won critical acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize for his 1958 opera at the old Met, Vanessa—and whose neo-romantic scores would not shock or offend the Met’s conservative listeners.

What Barber (increasingly anxious that his operas would make listeners stop talking about his searing Adagio for Strings) had in mind for the new work was something low-key and subdued, according to Sudip Bose’s 2016 retrospective for American Scholar: “an intimate piece highlighting the conflict between politics and passion, a work that reveled, above all, in Shakespeare’s intense and febrile poetry.”

Pairing one Shakespeare admirer with another, Bing hired Zeffirelli, who had won plaudits at the Met with his 1964 production of Verdi’s Falstaff. The Italian’s film versions of The Taming of the Shrew (1967), Romeo and Juliet (1968), and Hamlet (1990) would underscore an affinity with The Bard so strong that he was nicknamed Scespirelli (“Shakespearelli”).

An accomplished director and designer, he thought he could take on the role of librettist for this show, too, weaving the Elizabeth playwright’s blank verse around Barber’s score.

With revolving stages and five underground floors, the Lincoln Center Met was a decided technical improvement over the site it had occupied since 1883 at Broadway and 39th Street—one with so little storage capacity that stagehands had to pull scenery off-stage and store it out on the street.  

Zeffirelli decided to take full advantage of the enhanced new space. As Barber later recalled, “Zeffirelli wanted horses and goats and 200 soldiers, which he got, and he wanted elephants, which fortunately he didn’t get.”

The audience filling the new theater’s 3,850 seats (making it the largest capacity opera house in the world) along with TV watchers who saw news reports and documentary footage beheld a train wreck, including:

*400 principals, choristers, dancers (choreographed by Alvin Ailey) and supernumeraries that often hindered movement onstage;

*missed lighting cues;

*a massive, Egyptian-modeled headdress that even the director admitted was meant to make Ms. Price look like “a giant praying mantis,” and widely derided as unbecoming the voluptuous diva;

*a turntable that broke down just a few days before the premiere, leading to a frantic reconception of the set; and,

*most terrifying, a massive moving pyramid that inexplicably stalled during a dress rehearsal, leaving Ms. Price locked inside—and which still couldn’t be fixed by opening night.

An African-American entertainer at the height of the civil-rights movement, Price was already acutely conscious of her heavy burden in inaugurating the Met’s new venue. “I got fed up with the attitude which I received from the former Met administration [Bing’s] that I had the plum of the century,” she told Stephen E. Rubin in a 1973 New York Times interview.  “That's not true. I had the plum of responsibility.”

It wasn’t Barber (who had given her one of her early great roles in Vanessa) whom she blamed for the chaos on and off stage, nor Schippers, who, by many accounts, kept everything from spinning completely out of control with his brisk leadership of the orchestra. When Bing offered her the lead in her next Met production, Il Trovatore, she successfully insisted that Zeffirelli be removed as designer and director.

Barber had it out with the director sooner. Antony and Cleopatra was not only removed from the Met’s repertory after only seven performances, but when the composer sought to revise the opera in 1975, he turned to his longtime companion, Gian Carlo Menotti, to rework the libretto. By this time, critics, though still not enthusiastic about the opera, showed greater appreciation for Barber’s sonorous score.

In a way, however, it was already too late for the composer. After the catastrophic dress rehearsal at the Met, he vowed to a cousin, “I’m not going to write any more music—I’m through.” It wasn’t entirely true, but his final 15 years were plagued by intensifying alcoholism, depression, and creative blocks.

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on Youth, ‘The Season of Hope’)

“[Y]outh is the season of hope... only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt... to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final,... because it is new.” — English novelist Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), Middlemarch (1871) 

Quote of the Day (Ross Macdonald, on ‘The Circuit of Guilty Time’)

“The circuit of guilty time was too much like a snake with its tail in its mouth, consuming itself. If you looked too long, there’d be nothing left of it, or you. We were all guilty. We had to learn to live with it.” ― American-Canadian crime fiction writer Ross Macdonald (1915-1983), The Doomsters (1958)

Quote of the Day (Gillian Tett, on Why Voters Should Pay Attention to the Latest Census News)

“Worrying about the state of America's statistics might not seem that urgent, given all the other explosive political rows swirling in Washington. But voters should pay attention. For at the heart of this story are three key questions: can anyone paint an accurate portrait of what America is today? If so, how should this shape voting processes? And can this data be trusted in an era of manipulation, cyber hacks and artificial intelligence?”— British columnist and editor Gillian Tett, “Who Counts?”, The Financial Times, Aug. 22-23, 2026

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Miracle of Morgan's Creek,’ As a Lawman Vents Frustration With His Teenage Daughter)

Constable Edmund Kockenlocker [played by William Demarest, center] [to his 14-year-old daughter]: “Listen, Zipper-puss! Someday they're just gonna find your hair ribbon and an axe someplace. Nothing else!”— The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943), written and directed by Preston Sturges

Song Lyric of the Day (Paul Simon, on The Lord, ‘My Engineer’)

“The Lord is my engineer
The Lord is the earth I ride on
The Lord is the face in the atmosphere
The path I slip and slide on.”—Grammy winning American singer-songwriter Paul Simon, “The Lord,” in his Seven Psalms CD (2023)

The image of Paul Simon that accompanies this post was taken of him performing live in Mainz, Germany, on July 25, 2008, by Miho.

Photo of the Day: Twilight on NYC and the Hudson River

The other night, at a restaurant near me in Bergen County, NJ, I was given the choice of eating inside or outside. Considering the view just before sunset, as seen in this photo I took then from the Hudson River Walkway in Edgewater, I don’t think my decision to sit with the skyline in view was surprising.

Quote of the Day (Robertson Davies, on the Eye and the Mind)

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”—Canadian man of letters Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Tempest-Tost (1951)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,’ on ‘A Man With Ideas’)

J. Pierpont (Ponty) Finch [played by Robert Morse, right]: “Sir, if you had a man with ideas….”

J. B. Biggley [played by Rudy Vallee, left]: “Ideas? That's what I look for. I keep hiring a lot of fellows who are supposed to have brilliant ideas, but not one of them will ever do what I tell him.” — How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), based on the novel by Shepherd Mead, adapted into a Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical with book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, movie written and directed by David Swift

Quote of the Day (Roger Rosenblatt, on How ‘Age Concentrates the Mind’)

“Age concentrates the mind. The moment you realize you will no longer do something you’ve done all your life. The moment you realize that you will now need to do something you’ve never had to do before. The moment you realize that what used to be will never be the same. Some of this could lend itself to melancholy. But there is also a bigness to such moments that allows for wonder. A sense that you can’t quite comprehend it all.”— American memoirist, essayist, and novelist Roger Rosenblatt, “The World is a Room with a Piano Waiting to be Played,” The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2026

Flashback, September 2016: Musical Throwback ‘La La Land’ Builds Premature Momentum for Oscar Season

In an effort to build industry word-of-mouth before awards season, the musical dramedy La La Land premiered to North American audiences for the first time in September 2016, at the Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals, earning such rapturous approval that it became the film to beat for Best Picture Oscar.

The film’s promoters forgot an important lesson, however: don’t peak too soon lest naysayers pick it apart and allow competitors to overtake it. So it proved in the end the following winter, when La La Land walked off with six Oscars except the one most coveted: Best Motion Picture of the Year.

All of that seemed far away when these early audiences responded positively. At Telluride, for instance, the film was greeted with two mid-movie ovations (following the freeway and Griffith Park sequences) and another 20-second one at the end.

What elicited the affection of these and later audiences? Certainly stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, displaying the same chemistry they brought to Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad, as well as a months-long pre-shooting dedication that allowed them to surmount their lack of much prior vocal and dance training.

But the film also functioned as an irresistible double love story: not just between the two attractive young people at its center, but with the city that served as the focus of their entertainment dreams.

Writer-director Damien Chazelle and cinematographers Linus Sandgren and Tom Cross might not have produced the grittiest cinematic depiction of Los Angeles, but they did produce one of the most heartbreaking: a place that forces you to choose between love and ambition. “That's L.A.,” says Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian, a jazz pianist struggling to open his own club. “They worship everything, and they value nothing."

For one reason or another, I didn’t watch La La Land when it was released. It might have stayed that way except that, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed on YouTube a clip of an upbeat early song from the film, “Someone in the Crowd,” featuring Stone’s Mia stepping out with her roommates to attend a Hollywood party where they can be seen and network. 

I was hooked, and I’m sure you would be, too, if you haven’t seen the movie already.

Neither Stone nor Gosling are professional singers or dancers, so you won’t find the pyrotechnics in a Cabaret, All That Jazz, or Chicago. But you won’t find the cynicism rampant in those Bob Fosse musicals, either. This is unapologetic, heart-on-its-sleeve romanticism, with the lovers literally soaring above ground in Griffith Observatory in the “Dancing in the Stars” scene.

Moreover, Stone and Gosling, having trained intensively for their roles (with Gosling, a neophyte on the piano, practicing for months so he could perform the jazz tunes himself with no CGI or hand double) acquit themselves marvelously. 

And Chazelle, with help from choreographer Mandy Moore, have drawn the best possible lessons from those MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, as well as the poignant French 1964 “sung-through” musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

What led Moonlight to overtake La La Land in the Best Picture contest?

All the advance word-of-mouth for the latter also provided opportunities for backlash, focusing on how the film seemed crafted to capitalize on Academy voters' penchant for rewarding movies about actors (most notoriously, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan); on how it was more a retro musical than a movie with original content; and how, in violation of jazz history, it depicted a white musician induced to compromise his pursuit of pure craft by an African-American tastemaker (John Legend, inexplicably playing guitar onscreen rather than his familiar piano).

On the other hand, Moonlight came to embody an underdog spirit—particularly following the November 2016 Presidential election, when the film’s entirely African-American cast (a first in the Academy’s nomination history) and its LGBTQ theme represented defiance of what Hollywood deemed Donald Trump’s reactionary politics.

I have not seen Moonlight so I can’t comment on its merits versus La La Land. But the atmosphere of fear now sweeping the entertainment industry constitutes a far different environment from what existed a decade ago, it’s possible that a different Oscar voting outcome might occur today.

I suspect that the moviegoing public would, if given a chance, vote for La La Land, in any case. Box-office grosses are never to be confused with value. 

But during their theatrical runs, La La Land grossed $504.6 million worldwide, while Moonlight pulled in a considerably more modest $65.3 million, even with the help of that Best Picture statuette from the Academy.

Quote of the Day (Cynthia Ozick, on ‘Purpose in Life’)

“To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.” — American novelist, short-story writer, and critic Cynthia Ozick, O Magazine, September 2002

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Simpsons,’ on the Ingredient Behind ‘Bart the Genius’)

[After cheating on an IQ test, Bart Simpson is assigned to a school for gifted and talented students. His father speculates on what led to this outcome and how it might be duplicated within the family.]

Homer Simpson [voice of Dan Castellaneta]: “Frosty Krusty Flakes are what got him [Bart] where he is today. It could be one of these chemicals here that makes him so smart. Lisa, maybe you should try some of these.”

Marge Simpson [voice of Julie Kavner]: “Homer!”

Homer: “I'm just saying, why not have two geniuses in the family? Sort of a spare in case Bart's brain blows up.” —The Simpsons, Season 1, Episode 2, “Bart the Genius,” original air date Jan. 14, 1990, teleplay by Jon Vitti, directed by David Silverman

Song Lyric of the Day (Dolly Parton, on the Indignity of ‘Working 9 to 5’)

“Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving.”—American Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist Dolly Parton (1946-2026), “9 to 5,” from her studio LP 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (1980)
 
Last week, almost immediately after the death of Dolly Parton, ABC ran in prime time the most successful of her few movies, 9 to 5.
 
As I mulled over the lyrics of the title tune, I thought the network could have waited another week, because this 1980 farce was more appropriate for Labor Day and the memory of the star was so vivid, even overwhelming, that people won’t forget her any time soon.
 
So I thought of reproducing a small sample of her lyrics. Which of my readers hasn’t identified, at one point or another in their careers, the sentiment in these verses?
 
(The image accompanying this post, of Dolly Parton accepting the Liseberg Applause Award 2010, was created on Nov. 16, 2010, by Curtis Hilbun.)

Quote of the Day (Sally Field, on Coming From ‘A Working-Class Show Business Family’)

“A working-class show business family is the toughest, toughest job you can imagine. There is no security. You have a job one week and none for months and months and months. It’s a very grueling, tough life. It can be discouraging and humiliating and disappointing and, beyond that, just frightening because you don’t know when you will have another job or how you will live. One day we seemed to have money, and the next day they came and got everything.”—American Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Sally Field, on growing up with a stuntman-actor (Jock Mahoney) for a stepfather and an underemployed Paramount contract actress (Margaret Field) for a mother, quoted by Ann Donahue, “Women in Hollywood Icon 2006: Sally Field,” Premiere Magazine, October 2007

There are a couple of reasons why I thought of using this quote today besides, most obviously, because of Labor Day.

After 10 years, I finally got around this past week to watch La La Land. For much of the movie, Emma Stone’s character Mia has her dreams of being an actress dashed repeatedly, in just the “discouraging and humiliating and disappointing” fashion recalled by Ms. Field. 

I also recently read a book called Hollywood Unions, edited by Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola. It covers numerous occupations, most like the blue-collar, less prestigious jobs in which Field’s parents struggled to make ends meet.

Unions represent an estimated 331,000 workers in the film and television industry, most of whom will experience economic uncertainty rather than the glamour of Oscar night. Even the most successful actors will be quick to say that they might be lucky to receive one call-back out of 100 auditions.

And most of the other professionals in the nation’s entertainment capital will be employed in just the kind of low-paying, insecure, even dangerous work that so many others across the nation must accept.

(The image of Sally Field that accompanies this post was taken during BookExpo America 2018 at the Javits Convention Center in New York City, on June 1, 2018, by Rhododendrites.)