Quote of the Day (Zach Snyder, on Comics, ‘Our Modern Mythology’)

“I really believe that comics are our modern mythology. We deal with a lot of our issues through these characters the way the ancients explained volcanoes or earthquakes by inventing gods. The emotional earthquakes and volcanoes of our time are inexplicable, so we use these characters to comfort ourselves. I’ve directed a few films adapted from comics and graphic novels. Secrets and secret identities play a big role. They take on this kind of metaphorical significance and speak to the larger secrets the reader is keeping. Both in real life and in comics, an individual has a picture that they want to present to the world, a picture of who they are. Most of the time that picture is not completely authentic.”—American film director Zach Snyder, “Soapbox: The Columnists: WSJ. Asks Six Luminaries to Weigh in on a Single Topic. This month: Secrets,” WSJ.com, February 2016

The image accompanying this post comes from the 2017 Zach Snyder film Justice League, based on—you guessed it—the DC Comics superhero team.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Wizard of Oz,’ In Which the Cowardly Lion Has His Mettle Tested)

[The Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man consider how to rescue Dorothy from the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West.]

The Scarecrow [played by Ray Bolger]: “I've got a plan how to get in there.”

The Cowardly Lion [played by Bert Lahr]: “Fine. He's got a plan.”

The Scarecrow: “And you're going to lead us.”

The Cowardly Lion: “Yeah.”[Suddenly stopping.] “Me?”

The Scarecrow: “Yes, you.”

The Cowardly Lion: “I... I gotta get her out of there?”

The Tin Man [played by Jack Haley]: “That's right.”

The Cowardly Lion: [determined] “All right. I'll go in there for Dorothy. Wicked Witch or no Wicked Witch, guards or no guards, I'll tear them apart. I may not come out alive, but I'm going in there. There's only one thing I want you fellas to do.”

The Scarecrow, The Tin Man: “What's that?”

The Cowardly Lion: “Talk me out of it!”—The Wizard of Oz (1939), screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, adapted from the book by L. Frank Baum, directed by Victor Fleming

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of doing something I hadn’t done in more than a half century: watch The Wizard of Oz from start to finish. Many aspects of this film made it a classic. But what struck me more than ever this time was the performance of Bert Lahr.

Among the co-stars of Judy Garland, only Lahr was given not one but two solo songs: “If I Only Had the Nerve” and “If I Were King of the Forest."

Burlesque, vaudeville and Broadway audiences already knew Lahr’s work quite well. But, as film historian Roger Dooley related in his narrative of movies of the 1930s, From Scarlett to Scarface, Lahr, after appearing in an adaptation of the biggest Broadway hit of 1930, Flying High, had a mostly forgettable Hollywood career until The Wizard of Oz brought a fresh reminder of his dazzling comic gifts, with a wild assortment of different facial expressions and hilarious ad-libs.

Lahr’s brilliance as The Cowardly Lion came under the most stressful conditions. Buddy Ebsen already had to be replaced when he developed an allergic reaction to his Tin Man costume. Lahr was lucky he did not collapse from exhaustion. 

Under 100-degree lights, he sweated so much in his 60-pound costume made of African lion pelts that it required two people on set to dry the costume out. It continued to reek even after constant washing, so eventually another Cowardly Lion costume was pressed into service. (Those two costumes sold at auction back in 2014 for $3 million and less than $1 million, respectively.)

Few other heights of creativity have been reached under such physical duress.

Tweet of the Day (Comic John Lyon, on Important Work E-Mails)

“Is there a way I can filter out all work emails except the ones telling me there are donuts or cake in the office?”—Comic John Lyon, tweet of Feb. 2, 2016

Quote of the Day (Comic Grace Helbig, on the Red Carpet)

"The red carpet is filled with photographers wondering who's worth the space on their memory cards."— Grace Helbig, Grace and Style: The Art of Pretending You Have It (2016)

Quote of the Day (Radio’s Fred Allen, on a ‘Successful Man in His Field’)

“The head of our [advertising] agency was a very successful man in his field. He would enjoy being in any field. He suffered from claustrophobia. He had to stay out of Rhode Island. He always felt that the state was closing in on him.”— Radio comedian Fred Allen (1894-1956), Treadmill to Oblivion (1954)

TV Quote of the Day (Paul Lynde, on Hell’s Angels)

Host Peter Marshall: “Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?”

Paul Lynde: “Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.”—Hollywood Squares

As a youngster in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I was addicted to quiz shows, including It’s Academic and the Art Fleming-hosted, Merv Griffin-created Jeopardy. 

But the quiz show with a difference—about as serious as a banana peel on the floor of a vaudeville show—was Hollywood Squares.

Moving across metaphorical tic-tac-toe boards, contestants had to decide whether or not to believe the celebrities in the boxes. More often than not, that meant listening to wisecracks by the likes of comics Rose-Marie, Marty Allen, Jan  Murray, Wally Cox, and Charley Weaver (real name: Cliff Arquette—yes, Rosanna’s granddad).

Center square came to be occupied by Paul Lynde, a stage, film and TV supporting actor who found his own measure of stardom on Hollywood Squares.

“Eccentric,” “fey,” “campy,” “flamboyant,” “bitchy”—it seemed as if, in an effort to capture his essence, critics trotted out every word but “gay,” which is what the actor—who died on this day in 1982 of a heart attack at age 55—was.

Technically, Lynde never admitted his sexual orientation. But if he never formally came out of the closet, he left less than a millimeter of doubt about it.

Theater historian Ethan Mordden, in his discussion of the golden age of Broadway drama, All That Glittered, sees the 1950 John van Druten comedy Bell, Book and Candle as full of encoded language about gays, in the guise of a lighthearted comedy about witches and warlocks. One of the latter, Nicky, is described as “impish, and somewhat impertinent.”

That could describe Lynde as well, particularly when he appeared as witch-housewife Samantha Stevens’s Uncle Arthur, “The Clown Prince of the Cosmos,” on the Sixties sitcom, Bewitched.

One of the actor’s big breaks occurred in the musical Bye Bye Birdie, when, as father Harry MacAfee, he asked grouchily, “What’s the Matter With Kids Today?” 

TV producers may have had that in mind when they finally promoted him, from supporting player to lead actor, in the short-lived, eponymous The Paul Lynde Show (1972).

Audiences never really took to the show, and critics pointed out, rightly, how much its premise—a conservative father barely tolerating his daughter and no-account, lusty son-in-law—resembled All in the Family. 

(I may be one of the few people alive who remembers this sitcom, and, for all its slavish imitation of the huge CBS hit, I doubt if Carroll O’Connor could have packed quite the same kind of inflections into his voice that Lynde’s Paul Simms did in upbraiding the friends of his daughter and son-in-law as “NUUUU-die LOOO-neys!”)

In the current TV environment, when people can say practically anything at any hour, Lynde and Hollywood Squares should be seen in the context of their time. 

Some of his responses would have been considered pretty risqué for that period. (Marshall: “Paul, can anything bring tears to a chimp's eyes?” Lynde: “Finding out that Tarzan swings both ways!”) 

Other responses would, if delivered today, be considered so politically incorrect that they would provoke boycott threats, and such vituperation as to short-circuit a career. (Marshall: “What is the official currency of Puerto Rico?” Lynde: “Food stamps.”)

Though many of the show’s viewers could have guessed that Lynde was gay, they might have had a tougher time figuring out that offscreen, he was a heavy drinker who often struggled with his weight and depression. 

How much of that was due to the particular context of his time, when his sexual orientation was a matter of shame, and how much the product of the insecurity that so often plagues figures in the entertainment industry?

Quote of the Day (Kobe Bryant Divorce Weighed by ‘Left Coast Sports Babe’)

“In Vanessa Bryant’s statement that she and Kobe are divorcing, she asks for ‘privacy during this difficult time.’ Not that I wish the woman any harm, but if she wanted privacy, she should have married someone other than Kobe Bryant.— Wonder what happened between the Bryants? Did the lockout dent Kobe’s jewelry budget?”— “Left Coast Sports Babe” comic, on NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, “Kobe Locked Out?”, December 18, 2011