“Dr. [Lewis] Thomas and I had our business lunch. He was erudite, charming and gracious. Not, as I recall, a great enthusiast of stuffed grape leaves or mutton kebab. The good news was that he didn't drink at lunch. If memory serves, he declined dessert (could it have been the baklava?). This much I do remember: He never wrote a single word for us, probably out of fear that his fee would be a voucher at the Balkan Armenian. Thus did I learn at an early age Business Lunch Lesson No. 1: You get what you paid for.”—Christopher Buckley, recalling the Spartan business-lunch account permitted him as a “tadpole editor” by an unnamed national magazine, in “Etiquette: What’s the Golden Rule of a Business Lunch?”, The New York Times Magazine, October 2, 2011 (Food and Drink issue)
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Quote of the Day (Christopher Buckley, on a Magazine’s Meager Expense Account for Author Lunches)
“Dr. [Lewis] Thomas and I had our business lunch. He was erudite, charming and gracious. Not, as I recall, a great enthusiast of stuffed grape leaves or mutton kebab. The good news was that he didn't drink at lunch. If memory serves, he declined dessert (could it have been the baklava?). This much I do remember: He never wrote a single word for us, probably out of fear that his fee would be a voucher at the Balkan Armenian. Thus did I learn at an early age Business Lunch Lesson No. 1: You get what you paid for.”—Christopher Buckley, recalling the Spartan business-lunch account permitted him as a “tadpole editor” by an unnamed national magazine, in “Etiquette: What’s the Golden Rule of a Business Lunch?”, The New York Times Magazine, October 2, 2011 (Food and Drink issue)
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Quote of the Day (Robert Evans, on the Playboy’s Need to Stay Mum About Money)
Charm schmarm, sez I. Evans (left, with probably the most famous of his exes, Ali McGraw) is right on only one point: After awhile, when a playboy has enough money, there’s no need to yak about it. It’s obvious he's got it, for God’s sake!
Unlike what Evans would have you believe, money doesn’t lurk in the background of charm, like some wallflower at a wild party; it bestows charm.
Case in point: celebrity financial advisor Ken Starr (no, not Bill Clinton‘s nemesis). Take a look at his picture on the upper right. A bit like a svelte Wallace Shawn, wouldn‘t you say? Not physically prepossessing. But, as a recent New York Magazine piece noted, one woman smitten with him (or, rather, with the wealth created by his famous clients) was Scores exotic dancer Diane Passage (in the picture with him), who managed to lure Starr away from his third wife.
Then came Starr’s indictment for running a Ponzi scheme, and faster than you can say “Fast-Buck Frieda,” Ms. Passage was leaving him high and dry in jail as she sought a divorce.
You might, in a way, read the article as a not-so-veiled attack on capitalism. Not only did Ms. Passage, while being wined, dined and won, see her new sugar daddy as a fellow hustler, but she sized up his entire environment in a similar light: “The majority of women on Park Avenue are probably up to worse stuff than I ever was,” she said.
Money is, for Starr and his ilk, a kind of steroid, endowing them with capabilities they wouldn’t ordinarily have. No, the real playboy--and most of us have known one or two in our lifetimes--needs no such artificial enhancements. He can do more with a gleam in the eye than a dream-obsessed money manager on a Starr-crossed Passage ever could manage by waving dollar bills in the air in front of fleetingly willing women.
Monday, October 3, 2011
This Day in Film History (“The Maltese Falcon” Debuts)
October 3, 1941—For once, Hollywood got a remake right, as John Huston, noticing the potential in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon that two prior directors missed, turned this seminal hard-boiled detective novel into cinematic gold.The film, which premiered in New York City on this date, marked the film debut of Huston, a screenwriter who, after seeing how star Paul Muni altered his script for Juarez, vowed to have more control over his work in the future.
Here’s the ironic thing, though: the property that made his career was not really his. It’s not simply that this was an adaptation of a novel by someone else, but that his script changed nary a thing in it.
Huston followed the advice of director Howard Hawks--"Film the book"--so closely that he had his secretary simply type the novel out as a screenplay before submitting it at Warner Brothers. It ended up filmed substantially in that manner. In fact, the neophyte screenwriter might have spent more time on storyboarding (two days) than he did on the script.
I haven’t seen the two prior versions of the film from 1931 and 1936. According to Roger Dooley’s encyclopedia survey of American film in the 1930s, From Scarlett to Scarface, the first was fine but the second (Satan Met a Lady) execrable--so bad that Bette Davis, one of the stars, went into one of her epic pitched battles with Warner Bros. over it.
To provide something of a good-luck charm for the remake, the director’s father, Walter Huston, transitioning from leading man to character actor, made an uncredited cameo appearance as Captain Jacoby. Seven years later, the son would return the favor to his father with a more substantial role, an aging miner in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which netted Walter a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Aside from brilliance on its own terms, the movie also began a fruitful collaboration between the director and star Humphrey Bogart. Indeed, it is crucial in the evolution of this icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
High Sierra, released earlier in the year, tweaked the gangster stereotype in which Bogie had been imprisoned, allowing audiences to see his character as human for a change. The Maltese Falcon provided the actor with a forum to show that he could play more than just gangsters. For those audiences who still had a hard time imagining Bogart on the side of the angels, though, The Maltese Falcon made his character, Sam Spade, rough-edged, cynical, and willing to lie while staying barely within the law. Without the box-office credibility that The Maltese Falcon provided, it’s difficult to imagine Bogart getting the chance to play the romantic lead in Casablanca—or, indeed, to ring the many subtle inflections in his characters that would mark his career from then on up to his untimely demise from cancer in 1957.
Huston and Bogart were kindred spirits, men who liked their whiskey and their women even as they tried to live by their own code of honesty. In all, they would make six films—not just hugely popular classics such as The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen, but one of the great offbeat films that it would take later generations to appreciate, Beat the Devil (1954).
Somehow, though, this post wouldn’t be complete without considering the film’s femme fatale, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and the actress who played her, Mary Astor.
The first thing to consider is the character’s name: About as Irish as you can get, which fascinates me because of my own family background. None of the films made from Hammett’s books really beats you over the head with an Irish character’s ethnicity. But two Irish-American women played roles in his early life and career: Josephine Dolan, a young nurse whom he married in 1921, and Peggy O’Toole, his secretary-lover later in the decade, and often rumored to have at least partly inspired the creation of Brigid O’Shaughnessy.
In the first two versions of the novel, the character’s name was changed, but Huston insisted on retaining it in his version. When it came time for casting, the part almost went to an actress with an equally Irish name, Geraldine Fitzgerald. It’s interesting to think of what stamp she might have put on the role, but she rejected it, and it then went to Astor.
Both actresses already had rather checkered lives offscreen--Fitzgerald was rumored (and we know it now it for a fact, thanks to her son’s new memoir) that she bore a child out of wedlock to Orson Welles, and Astor was the subject of a headline-making divorce case in 1936 when, it was revealed, her diary went into lavish detail about her lovers. But both actresses were highly talented, and Astor would win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year for The Great Lie.
Astor’s tremendous skill didn’t shield her from the agonies of aging in Hollywood, and by the late 1950s she had cratered into a mire of alcoholism and depression. As I learned from a fascinating post on the blog Neglected Books, a Catholic priest counseling her on her treatment suggested that she write for therapy. The result was not just one memoir, but two, along with several novels that, according to this post, deserve to be reprinted.
Aside from brilliance on its own terms, the movie also began a fruitful collaboration between the director and star Humphrey Bogart. Indeed, it is crucial in the evolution of this icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
High Sierra, released earlier in the year, tweaked the gangster stereotype in which Bogie had been imprisoned, allowing audiences to see his character as human for a change. The Maltese Falcon provided the actor with a forum to show that he could play more than just gangsters. For those audiences who still had a hard time imagining Bogart on the side of the angels, though, The Maltese Falcon made his character, Sam Spade, rough-edged, cynical, and willing to lie while staying barely within the law. Without the box-office credibility that The Maltese Falcon provided, it’s difficult to imagine Bogart getting the chance to play the romantic lead in Casablanca—or, indeed, to ring the many subtle inflections in his characters that would mark his career from then on up to his untimely demise from cancer in 1957.
Huston and Bogart were kindred spirits, men who liked their whiskey and their women even as they tried to live by their own code of honesty. In all, they would make six films—not just hugely popular classics such as The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen, but one of the great offbeat films that it would take later generations to appreciate, Beat the Devil (1954).
Somehow, though, this post wouldn’t be complete without considering the film’s femme fatale, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and the actress who played her, Mary Astor.
The first thing to consider is the character’s name: About as Irish as you can get, which fascinates me because of my own family background. None of the films made from Hammett’s books really beats you over the head with an Irish character’s ethnicity. But two Irish-American women played roles in his early life and career: Josephine Dolan, a young nurse whom he married in 1921, and Peggy O’Toole, his secretary-lover later in the decade, and often rumored to have at least partly inspired the creation of Brigid O’Shaughnessy.
In the first two versions of the novel, the character’s name was changed, but Huston insisted on retaining it in his version. When it came time for casting, the part almost went to an actress with an equally Irish name, Geraldine Fitzgerald. It’s interesting to think of what stamp she might have put on the role, but she rejected it, and it then went to Astor.
Both actresses already had rather checkered lives offscreen--Fitzgerald was rumored (and we know it now it for a fact, thanks to her son’s new memoir) that she bore a child out of wedlock to Orson Welles, and Astor was the subject of a headline-making divorce case in 1936 when, it was revealed, her diary went into lavish detail about her lovers. But both actresses were highly talented, and Astor would win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year for The Great Lie.
Astor’s tremendous skill didn’t shield her from the agonies of aging in Hollywood, and by the late 1950s she had cratered into a mire of alcoholism and depression. As I learned from a fascinating post on the blog Neglected Books, a Catholic priest counseling her on her treatment suggested that she write for therapy. The result was not just one memoir, but two, along with several novels that, according to this post, deserve to be reprinted.
Movie Quote of the Day (Groucho Marx, on Misplaced Collegiate Priorities)
“And I say to you gentlemen that this college is a failure.
The trouble is we're neglecting football for education.”—Professor Quincy Adams
Wagstaff (played by Groucho Marx) to the faculty of Huxley College, in HorseFeathers (1932), written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S.J. Perelman,
Will B. Johnstone, and Arthur Skeekman
(uncredited)
Judging from TaylorBranch’s cover story in the new issue of The Atlantic, more and
more college presidents are coming to agree with Groucho’s line.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Quote of the Day (Mother Teresa, on Spreading Love)
“Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”—Mother Teresa quoted in John Templeton, Worldwide Laws of Life: 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles (1998)
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Photo of the Day: No Drag at the Box Office
I’d hate standing for a long part of the day at Duffy Square, promoting Broadway’s latest shows. You have to endure all kinds of weather (including most of the last week, when, instead of taking a decisive turn toward autumn, the New York weather remained sticky), often in uncomfortable clothing (including, in some cases, impossibly high heels), for theatergoers (especially tourists) who want to see a show, any show, and might not even have a clue about the one you’re hawking. All kind of a drag, if you ask me. Except, maybe, in the case of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the new musical that the young lady pictured here is representing. After all, the show and the 1994 film on which it’s based are all about drag—drag performers, that is.
It was probably a good idea that this woman, as well as the handful of other promoters of this show I noticed the last couple of weeks on my walk to and from work, is not one of those performers. Buyers at the TKTS booth at Duffy Square were practically jostling each other to have their pictures taken with her—sort of like the young Scarlett O’Hara barely able to keep up with her suitors in Gone With the Wind. New York is a pretty liberal place, but somehow I doubt if the same level of eagerness would have been displayed toward this woman if, like those performers in her show, she were in drag.
Quote of the Day (Charles Dickens, on Usefulness in This World)
“ ‘No one is useless in this world,’ retorted the Secretary, ‘who lightens the burden of it for another.’”—Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1865)
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