"I met a lotta hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you? You’re 20 minutes."

My favorite line in a movie we finished watching last night — "Ace in the Hole."

ADDED: I'd started watching that movie a while back and forced myself to finish it yesterday after my son John — who ranked it as the best movie of 1951 — reminded me it was about to end its run on the Criterion Channel. It's a rather strange movie about a ruthless, ambitious journalist. It's got the most absurd scene involving a fur garment. I don't want to spoil it, so that's all I'll say.

AND: There are a lot of movies about journalism — usually presenting the journalist as a hero. For example here's a ranking, with "Ace in the Hole" at #46, but if you limit that to movies where the journalist is an awful person — which I'm not equipped to do — I'm guessing it would make the top 10.

"He was born Issur Danielovitch on Dec. 9, 1916... 'the son of illiterate Russian Jewish immigrants in the WASP town of Amsterdam,' one of seven children, six of them sisters."

"By the time he began attending school, the family name had been changed to Demsky and Issur had become Isadore, promptly earning him the nickname Izzy. The town’s mills did not hire Jews, so his father, Herschel (known as Harry), became a ragman, a collector and seller of discarded goods. 'Even on Eagle Street, in the poorest section of town, where all the families were struggling, the ragman was on the lowest rung on the ladder... And I was the ragman’s son.' A powerful man who drank heavily and got into fights, the elder Demsky was often an absentee father, letting his family fend for itself. Money for food was desperately short much of the time, and young Izzy learned that survival meant hard work.... [T]he summer after he graduated from college... he decided to change his name legally to something he thought more befitting an actor than Isadore Demsky. (When he chose Douglas, he wrote, 'I didn’t realize what a Scottish name I was taking.')"

From "Kirk Douglas, a Star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Dies at 103/His rugged good looks and muscular intensity made him a commanding presence in films like 'Lust for Life,' 'Spartacus' and 'Paths of Glory'" (NYT).

"In 'Seven Days in May,' a popular novel from the early nineteen-sixties that became a movie, a cabal of military officers conspire to overthrow the President of the United States..."

"... whom they regard as unduly sympathetic to the Soviet Union. The story, along with such other Cold War fantasies as 'Fail Safe' and 'Dr. Strangelove,' belongs to a genre that shares certain assumptions and plot points. The President is a reasonable fellow, doing his best to insure the survival of the planet, and the villains are the defenders of the permanent bureaucracy, usually the military. Things don’t always end well in these sagas—to wit, the destruction of New York City, in 'Fail Safe,' and of civilization, in 'Strangelove'—but the underlying message is that the President always has the interests of the American people at heart. The genre received a nonfiction update last week, when Andrew McCabe published 'The Threat"... [about] eight days in May of 2017.... McCabe’s tale is like a photo negative of the Cold War stories. Now the contest pits a despotic and, at times, seemingly deranged President against shocked and horrified bureaucrats scrambling to safeguard the basic principles of our democracy."

Writes Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.

I don't think Toobin meant to imply that "The Threat" is a work of fiction — and a cheesy one at that — a mere "popular novel," in the genre of "Cold War fantasies."

"The Norwegian saboteurs skied across the Telemark pine forest in winter whites, phantom apparitions gliding over moonlit snow."

"They halted at a steep river gorge and gazed down at a humming hydroelectric power plant where Nazi scientists had developed a mysterious, top-secret project. Lt. Joachim Ronneberg, the 23-year-old resistance fighter in command, and his eight comrades — all carrying cyanide capsules to swallow if captured — had been told by British intelligence only that the plant was distilling something called heavy water, and that it was vital to Hitler’s war effort.Hours later, in one of the most celebrated commando raids of World War II, Lieutenant Ronneberg and his demolition team sneaked past guards and a barracks full of German troops, stole into the plant, set explosive charges and blew up Hitler’s hopes for a critical ingredient to create the first atomic bomb.... They skied by night, rested by day and reached the gorge late on the night of Feb. 27, 1943.... The power plant was perched on a ledge halfway up the far slope...."

From "Joachim Ronneberg, Leader of Raid That Thwarted a Nazi Atomic Bomb, Dies at 99" (NYT).

Is there a better story in the history of skiing?

If you're thinking, I'd like to see this in a movie, no you wouldn't. Here's how it looked in the movies...



... and I consider that a fantastic argument for why writing — like the quote in the post title — is superior to cinema. Movies do excel at confronting you with giant, beautiful faces. Mesmerizing... and ludicrous.

"Don't I have a right to express my opinion?!"

I love this line and line delivery. It's Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh in "Lust for Life." Vincent has been living with his brother Theo for 6 months and disrupting the household. Theo has just said "When people come to the house you insult them." I think if you watch this clip with someone else, the 2 of you will find many hilarious opportunities to exclaim "Don't I have a right to express my opinion?!" in the style of Kirk Douglas.

4th of July movie watched last night.

On Turner Classic Movies.



Some nice lines in there about following or not following the law, and I'd quote them here if I could copy and paste them from the text of the original play (by George Bernard Shaw), but I can't, even though — searching for "law" in text — I discovered that the play is much more about law than the movie.

Anyway, the movie unleashes 3 actors — Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Laurence Olivier — to emote against each other on the subject of revolution. And there's one woman — Janette Scott — whose task is to decide not whether to join the revolution but which hunky male she likes best. Spoiler alert: Initially her husband Burt leaves her cold and the devilish Kirk Douglas turns her on, but later when Kirk gets virtuous and Burt joins the revolution — and changes from clerical garb into a buckskin jacket — she goes running to Burt who hoists her up on his big horse.

The movie is "The Devil's Disciple," and here's the full text of the Shaw play. I'd like to see the stage play, and I think the movie could be remade. There's a lot of potential to redo the big fight scene in which the Burt Lancaster character single-handedly takes on a bunch of British officers in a room. With no weapons on him, he uses what he can, including a big flaming log he grabs out of the fireplace. How can he hold a flaming log? He swathes the metaphor in a metaphor — his black priestly coat — the one that had previously insulated him from what his smoldering wife had to give.

Ah! I see there is a version of the play with Patrick Stewart and Ian Richardson, available on Amazon Prime. That's a 1987 TV film, so... it's not likely to include a more convincing and exciting wielding of the flaming log. A quick search of the text of the play, however, makes me doubt that glaring phallic symbol was Shaw's idea.

I said I'd watch the Golden Globes (and watch it "with an open mind"), so I owe you this post.

I don't know if I'd be choosing this topic for Monday morning if I hadn't essentially promised to write it. Why didn't I write it last night? I fell asleep. I fell asleep, and then I woke up at 2 a.m. and watched the rest of it, including the appearance of Kirk Douglas, who is 101 years old. How did he stay up? Yes, it's Pacific Time, 2 hours earlier, but still... he's 101!

Anyway, quick impressions:

1. Did all the women wear black? The President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (which gives out the awards) appeared on stage in a voluminous, flaming red gown, supposedly because in "her Indian culture, it’s customary to wear a festive color during a celebration." Does that amount to a disagreement with the women in black? Were they resisting the usual festivity of the occasion? Do we see some implicit ethnic critique, that the white women of Hollywood were not sensitive to the meaning of color in other cultures? I look up the meaning of wearing black in India:

Black in India has connotations with lack of desirability, evil, negativity, and inertia. It represents anger and darkness and is associated with the absence of energy, barrenness, and death. Black is used as a representation of evil and is often used to ward off evil. 

2. What impression did it make, to see all that black? On the red carpet, the black made the crowd look much less glamorous. There was much less male/female differentiation, much less of a sense that the crowd was popping with especially beautiful people. In the long shots, it looked like a crowd at a boring cocktail party of ordinary-looking people. Harvey Weinstein wasn't there, but half the people in the crowd seemed not much better looking than him. There's a scruffiness to the men's "head styling," and with everyone dressed alike, the men seemed really nondescript. Inside the theater, in the long shots, the crowd looked more like a sea of white faces than usual. Even though great efforts were made to get close-ups of the black stars at the tables, the long view looked overwhelmingly white. Just the predictable effect of contrast. You'd think movie people would have better sensitivity to how component parts appear in long shots. This all-black design concept highlighted white people.

3. How did the men dress? Many of them wore not only black suits but black shirts and black ties. It looked sharp, albeit insectoid.

4. How did the men behave? I jumped over most of the men's speeches, but I think they were following a strategy of keeping it low key and throwing attention over to women whenever possible. I'd have to see a transcript to know if any of them did that old-fashioned thanking of his wife for putting up with him. I see in the news this morning that Ewan McGregor thanked his estranged wife: "I want to take a moment to thank Ev, who always stood beside me for 22 years and my four children, I love you." And then — because we need more love in this world — he also thanked his girlfriend.

5. I didn't hear any Trump-bashing. Aziz Ansari said: "I genuinely didn't think I would win because all the websites said I was going to lose." And: "I'm glad we won this one because it would have really sucked to lose two of these in a row." Wasn't that a shot at Hillary?

6. Oprah won the Cecil B. DeMille Award and gave a speech that has people saying she should run for President? Don't Trump haters realize that pushing Oprah as a presidential candidate undercuts one of the main arguments about Trump — that he didn't work his way up within politics but had the arrogance to think he could jump in and start at the top? Anyway, here's the transcript of Oprah's remarks. See if you think there's anything in there that's special. She had a tough task balancing her big moment with the need to recognize other people and to make her recognition of others about women in general (rather than black women or black people). It's a pretty gauzy text, but she sold it well:

In my career, what I’ve always tried my best to do, whether on television or through film, is to say something about how men and women really behave. To say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere, and how we overcome. And I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who’ve withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all the girls watching here and now to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say “me too” again.

7. Here's the video of the Oprah speech. Notice the NBC logo — NBC, which played an ignominious role in this past year's sexual harassment journalism:



8. I got the video from the fashion writers Tom and Lorenzo, who say: "Yes, we could talk about how amazing she looks; how her gown is KILLA and the fit is insane; how her hair looks amazing and her makeup is beat to the gods. It doesn’t matter. While these two queens love a diva who turns it out, we love even more when a diva comes into her full power and uses that power to affect others. Nothing but respect for our president."

9. In the comments to this post, rehajm says:

I think she makes a big mistake about the media. They aren't entitled to their own truth. Their own truth is weasel words for lies. She sure got all those powerful women in the room riled up. I wonder if they now feel powerful enough to utilize the justice system, the one with a presumption of innocence, or if they expect to keep using the new one that's ripe for abuse.

Here's the relevant text from the transcript:

I’d like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, because we all know the press is under siege these days. But we also know that it is the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice... to tyrants and victims and secrets and lies. 

I was going to say that's a blatant display of a lack of dedication to the absolute truth — puffery and stroking. It was spoken word, so how it feels at the time is most important, but you can see in the text that she said "the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth," not "its insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth." She never credited the press with having that insatiable dedication. She only held up dedication to truth as an abstract value.

I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times, which brings me to this: What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.

This is the part that bothered rehajm. Interesting. Above, I was stressing the difference between putting "the" or "its" in front of truth, and now the issue is putting "your" in front of "truth."

How can there be "your truth" and also "absolute truth"? One way to reconcile the 2 ideas is to say that "your" refers not to the press, but to the women who tell their stories and who are, as individual human beings, entitled to their subjective point of view. The press is separate, and it must "navigate these complicated times."

The press is under siege — a land-based military metaphor — and out on the Ocean of Complication. It should be dedicated to the absolute truth, and part of the truth is the way women experience their own lives and tell their stories. You can give an absolutely true report of the story that Ms. X told, even if Ms. X is only telling her own story, and that story is not the "absolute truth," but an element of a proper news report that will also contain other elements.

The next lines in Oprah's speech suggest that my interpretation of "your truth" is pretty good:

And I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year, we became the story.

Ah! How she slipped from TRUTH!!! to stories...

10. "And here are the all-male nominees," said Natalie Portman, before reading the names of the nominees for best director. (Guillermo del Toro won for "The Shape of Water.") That line resonated when, shortly afterward, the award for Best Musical/Comedy Film went to "Lady Bird,"which was directed by a woman, Greta Gerwig.

11. Did you notice what didn't get anything? "The Post" and "Get Out."

12. That reminds me. "The Post" got nothing, which means that Meryl Streep did not win for Actress in a Drama, so who won? Frances McDormand! She wore the best dress. It was the most anti-fashion dress I've ever seen. Not just black, but high neckline, long sleeves, long full skirt, and cut way large. It was the absence of a dress, even more so than nakedness. [ADDED: Tom and Lorenzo on McDormand's dress: "We’re not going to rip apart her nun’s habit. It’s fine. It’s who she is.... Granted, we think she could’ve worn a comfy pantsuit and come off a little more chic in the process, but whatevs."]

13. And I can't believe they didn't give Best Actor in a Drama to the guy in "Get Out." Who'd they give it too? A white man, Gary Oldman, who played the white man, Winston Churchill. Oh, no. Wait. "Get Out" got classified as a comedy. The actor, Daniel Kaluuya lost to James Franco. And I see "Get Out fans 'outraged' by Golden Globes snub: 'We're in the sunken place.'" You know what that means, the "sunken place"? (SPOILER: It means your body has been taken over by a white person, and you are just going along for the ride, able to see where your body is going, but only at a distance, and unable to speak or control your own motions, which aren't really yours anymore, but that monstrous white person's.)

14. Didn't Gary Oldman get on some political shit list a few years ago? Oh, yes, here: "Gary Oldman can't stop apologizing for that Playboy interview he did where he kept denouncing political correctness." Those were simpler times. Oldman had said: "I just think political correctness is crap. That’s what I think about it. I think it’s like, take a fucking joke. Get over it.... We all hide and try to be so politically correct. That’s what gets me. It’s just the sheer hypocrisy of everyone, that we all stand on this thing going, 'Isn’t that shocking?'"

Kirk Douglas is still alive — and today he's 100 years old.

Happy Birthday, Kirk Douglas!

From his Wikipedia page:

Growing up, Douglas sold snacks to mill workers to earn enough to buy milk and bread to help his family. Later, he delivered newspapers and during his youth worked at more than forty different jobs before getting a job acting....

Douglas' acting talents were noticed at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, which gave him a special scholarship. One of his classmates was Betty Joan Perske (later to become better known as Lauren Bacall)... Bacall wrote that she "had a wild crush on Kirk"... During their time together, she learned that he had no money, and that he once spent the night in jail since he had no place to sleep. She once gave him her uncle's old coat to keep warm: "I thought he must be frozen in the winter... He was thrilled and grateful."...

 

What a face! What a presence! Here's a list of all his movies, many of which I have not seen. So I'll just say I loved him in "Lust for Life" and "Paths of Glory." (And though I have the DVD, I've never watched "Spartacus.") 

"Honey, I just think it speaks volumes about you, about what a real creature of the theater you are that the only time that you ever had an orgasm..."

"... was saying the words of a homosexual man. It was as far from a heterosexual orgasm as you could possibly get."

Said Alec Baldwin to Elaine Stritch after she described having "an orgasm for the first time in my life" on stage in a very emotional moment of Edward Albee's play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" ("You know, that big scene? ‘Our son,’ he yells in my face, ‘is dead.’ And I went ‘No!’ At the height of my force, I said no to him.")

That's in the transcript of the May 13, 2013 episode of Baldwin's podcast "Here's The Thing." Here's the audio, with Stritch doing a very dramatic yelling of "Nooooo!" She was 88 at the time, suffering from diabetes, and a year and a month away from her death.

Reasons not to have a dog.

He doesn't understand when you suddenly do your Kirk Douglas impersonation.

ADDED: Kirk Dogless.

AND: The impersonation was based on the "Paths of Glory" clip in the previous post.

"We do find that apologies do make apologizers feel better..."

"... but the interesting thing is that refusals to apologize also make people feel better and, in fact, in some cases it makes them feel better than an apology would have.... When you refuse to apologize, it actually makes you feel more empowered.... That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth."

When you think of not apologizing, what are your first 2 associations? Mine were:

"Van Gogh's ear was cut off by friend Gauguin with a sword."

Hot news.

Although the historians [Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans] provide no "smoking gun" to back up their claims, they argue theirs is the most logical interpretation, and explains why in his final recorded words to Gauguin, Van Gogh writes: "You are quiet, I will be, too".

They cite correspondence between Vincent and his brother, Theo, in which the painter hints at what happened without directly breaking the "pact of silence" made with his estranged friend.

He mentions Gauguin's request to recover his fencing mask and gloves from Arles, but not the épée....

He also pointed to one of Van Gogh's sketches of an ear, with the word "ictus" – the Latin term used in fencing to mean a hit. The authors believe that curious zigzags above the ear represent Gauguin's Zoro-like sword-stroke.

Yeah, well, Gauguin was such a jerk to Van Gogh. Just look:

Gender-based...

... wrinkle assessment.

AND: Make sure to click through to the story about the "fresh-faced" men. The original photos might be funnier that the caricatures at the first link. Did you know Kirk Douglas looks "years younger" than his age? His age is 90.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

You can see that last night we came up with a choice of four movies to watch and -- you should be able to tell from my set of favorite quotes -- we chose "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Is that a Christmas movie? If I had to argue it was, I'd point to the party scene. It's a Christmas party. The music playing is "Jingle Bells," and we see some Christmas decorations, including a little Santa Claus. And you could say -- cornily -- that it's a movie about the triumph of the human spirit, and you could contend that that's Christmasy. Or do you think it's a movie about the triumph of the masculine spirit over the feminine? McMurphy arrives to show all those mere shadows of men how to be men. That's what the book -- which I can't stand -- was about.

IMDB has a lot of interesting "trivia" -- their word -- about the movie. I knew that many of the extras were real mental patients. I didn't know Will Sampson got the role of Chief Bromden because he was the only person they could find who had the two qualities they needed (Native American and physically huge). [NOTE: He wasn't an actor.] I didn't know that Jack Nicholson and Milos Forman (the director) were at odds with each other:

...Nicholson and director Milos Forman had very different ideas about how the narrative should play out; for example, Forman thought that the ward should be in bedlam when McMurphy showed up and Nicholson posited that his character would have absolutely no effect on the mental patients if they were already riled up, which would have negated the purpose of his character and therefore much of the plot. Nicholson and Forman both refused to give an inch, both believing they were right and the other was wrong. The two months that Jack Nicholson disappeared for was more like two weeks, and he didn't disappear. In actuality, Nicholson spearheaded a coup among the other actors and refused to let Forman run rehearsals, running them himself instead.

Wow. Nicholson got it right. Other evidence of how wrong Forman could be: He wanted Burt Reynolds to play McMurphy! But he was right -- I think -- not to want the fishing scene. He thought -- I agree -- it interfered with the claustrophobic atmosphere of the rest of the film. I detested the fishing scene in the book. It's exactly where I stopped reading. I liked the movie McMurphy as an anti-authoritarian, counterculture guy. The McMurphy in the book was Mr. Masculine Energy. Let's fish, let's watch baseball, let's play basketball, let's drink, let's have sex with prostitutes... and isn't the nurse a bitch?

Other evidence of how much credit Nicholson deserves:

Most of Jack Nicholson's scene with Dean R. Brooks upon arriving at the hospital was improvised - including his slamming a stapler, asking about a fishing photo, and discussing his rape conviction; Brooks's reactions were authentic.

Brooks actually was superintendent of a mental hospital. This scene reminded us of the office interview scene in "The Shining," which Nicholson made 5 years later.

Kirk Douglas owned the rights to the book for a long time and wanted to play McMurphy. When I read the book -- which was after I saw the movie and knowing Douglas wanted the part -- I fell into picturing Kirk Douglas. He was much more the sort of person (the author) Ken Kesey had in mind. Nicholson made the movie into something that resonated in 1975. The book was published in 1963... and feels like it.

Ken Kesey was pissed:

Ken Kesey wrote a screenplay for the production, but Forman rejected it because Kesey insisted on keeping Chief Bromden's first-person narration....

[Kesey said] he would never watch the movie version and even sued the movie's producers because it wasn't shown from Chief Bromden's perspective (as the novel is)....

Author Ken Kesey was so bitter about the way the filmmakers were "butchering" his story that he vowed never to watch the completed film. Years later, he claimed to be lying in bed flipping through TV channels when he settled onto a late-night movie that looked sort of interesting, only to realize after a few minutes that it was this film. He then changed channels.

"After a few minutes"... hilarious.

Watching the movie last night, I had to stop and think who Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) was reminding me of. Something about that voice. Then I realized: Condoleezza Rice! Oh, no! So steady, so calm... so infuriating. And I like Condoleezza Rice! Louise Fletcher did a fine job with her role. Has anyone ever won an Oscar for showing so little expression? She was not -- as Nurse Ratched was in the book -- an embodiment of matriarchy and women's repression of men. She was horrible, cold, and controlling, but she also had some humanity. She was in a predicament trying to deal professionally with some very trying individuals. She made all the wrong decisions, but she was recognizably human.

The actors who played those patients did a fine job portraying seriously ill men and making them dramatically effective and immensely entertaining. We felt free to laugh at them a lot without getting the nagging guilty feeling that we weren't showing enough respect for the mentally ill. There's bonus entertainment in the fact that two of them are actors we came to love in bigger roles: Danny Devito and Christopher Lloyd.

"If they made this movie today, they'd ruin it with music," I said halfway through. There was scene after scene with no music, other than the occasional record that a character in the movie played. Jack Nitzsche got an Oscar nomination for the score, and his music is memorable and evocative, but I think it only plays over the opening credits and at the very end. There was never any of that sort of movie music that instructs us on how to think and feels our emotions before we get a chance to feel them for ourselves. When Nurse Ratched puts a syrupy, soporific version of "Charmaine" on the record player for the ritual of dispensing the psychotropic drugs, what we feel is in counterpoint to the music. (With all the special features on DVDs today, I wish there was one that let you turn off the score.)

Such are my scattered thoughts on Christmas morning about "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," watched on Christmas Eve.

Lust for Lunch.

We had some lunch today at Crave, which seems to be a worthy new restaurant, just off State Street on Gorham (easy to miss if you're walking up State Street, but just a few steps away):



Walking back to the Law School, I saw a man preaching from the concrete pulpit that overlooks Library Mall:



He was holding up two signs and imploring people to open their hearts to religion.



A man with a long white ponytail, sitting on a metal bench just in front of the pulpit, was trying to eat his box lunch in peace:



Suddenly, the white ponytail man starts shouting back at the preacher man: "Why don't you just shut the f*ck up? What makes you think you have anything to say to me?" The preacher yells back, getting quite passionate, saying he was trying to teach love. The white ponytail man taunts the preacher, he shakes a plastic fork at him and dares him to come down from the pulpit and confront him face to face. The preacher man gets angry and throws down his signs and turns but then stops himself. The white ponytail man gets more heated up, saying, "You are so f*cking arrogant! You have nothing to offer me!" Sounding uncannily like Kirk Douglas playing Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life, the preacher seethes, "I want to help humanity!"

So I watched the first of the Ed Sullivan Shows with the Beatles, intriguingly intact, including commercials. How strangely sedate the commercials of that time were! Each one emphasized closeups of the product with a voice earnestly, quietly making assurances about how well it would perform. A "shoe wax" would make your shoes look like they had been coated with a new layer of leather, shaving cream would stay moist for the entire duration of a shave, pancakes would rise quickly after flipping. A headache was represented by a closeup of a man's face with one white dot after another appearing on it as the voiceover intoned "pain, pain, pain." The headache remedy ad came on immediately after The Beatles had opened the show with three peppy songs, and surely gave many parents around the country the chance to make wisecracks about rock and roll causing headaches. At the end of the commercial, his headache gone, the man tightens up his tie and combs his thinning hair--as if he had never heard of The Beatles! But he was happy, in a pleasantly serene way, because he didn't have a headache, and he didn't know that he looked all outmoded after the three songs that had preceded him that night.

After the ads, Ed tells the kids in the audience to be good and pay attention to the other acts, because The Beatles would be back in the end of the show. Then out comes a comic magician in white tie who does a long card trick that depends heavily on the continued reappearance of a black card in a group of red cards. But it's black and white TV! And The Beatles were just on! Then he does a long trick involving pouring salt from a salt shaker!

The next act is the cast of Oliver! No, I'm not excited. The exclamation point is part of the title, Oliver! The first person to sing is Davy Jones, future Monkee, who played the Artful Dodger in the musical. How sweet that little Davy is the first person to sing on TV after The Beatles. He does just fine.

Next is Frank Gorshin who does about ten impressions in his few minutes, turning into one celebrity after another in a routine based on the wacky notion, what if movie stars held political office? He starts with Broderick Crawford, in an impression that I've also seen Jim Carrey do. Jim Carrey clearly copied Gorshin's Broderick Crawford, though Carrey, when I saw him do it, made it seem as though it was a special Carrey sort of madness that he would make a weird choice like Broderick Crawford to impersonate--especially interesting since Carey played a role Gorshin had made famous, The Riddler. Anyway, Gorshin was just brilliant, doing Brando, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, and more.

The true horror of the evening is Tessie O'Shea, a very large woman who belted songs and played the banjo in a way that must have made sense when people still remembered vaudeville. The strange time overlap represented by this show reaches its height as Tessie tosses her white fur boa about and sings about her "curves" while stroking her huge abdomen.

Then there's a comedy routine, a lesser Stiller & Meara called McCall & Brill, and finally The Beatles come back for two more songs, ending with "I Want to Hold Your Hand." But there's still more time on the clock, so out comes a comic acrobat, a woman encased in a costume that makes her torso appear to be a face. Somehow she's able to make the eyes look back and forth as she does a little dance and ends by taking off the costume hat, which had been covering her head. Great! Then The Four Fays come out and do comic acrobatics for a few minutes, ending with their finale: one woman lies down on a table, gripping its edges, and two other women each grab one of her feet and run around the table several times in opposite directions. The audience loves it!

That's the big show!

UPDATE: I revisit this post on the 50th anniversary of this episode of the show in 2014 and provide some links to YouTube and more.