Born On This Day- October 31st... Talented Ethel Waters

When doing research for my posts, I am always struck by the cruelty, hatefulness & challenges that were/are foisted on minority artists & performers in the past century. That their work should be adored & rewarded, but the artist would still need to enter a theatre or hotel by the back door. That these amazing performers persevered & gave us so much is a testament to the power of art.

Ethel Waters rose from stardom from a most-obscure beginning, a whore's alley in Philadelphia where she lived in poverty with her mother and grandmother. She faced unspeakable racism during her rise to fame. Ethel Waters was born on October 31, 1896, as a result of her mother's rape at age 13, Ethel Waters was raised in a violent, impoverished home. She never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. Waters: "I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family." Despite this unpromising start, Waters demonstrated early the love of language that so distinguishes her work. Waters' birth in the North and her vagabond life exposed her to many culture, & gave to her interpretation of southern blues a unique sensibility that pulled in eclectic influences from across all American music. Ethel Waters: singer, dancer, actress, & evangelist, never be confined to a single identity. As a singer, she played with styles, doing what was called- “race music” & doing white standards.

Waters married at the age of 13, but soon left her abusive husband & became a maid in a Philadelphia hotel working for less than $5 a week. On her birthday- Halloween night 1913, she attended a party in costume at a nightclub in Philadelphia. She was persuaded to sing 2 songs, & impressed the audience so much that she was offered professional work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore. She later recalled that she earned $10 a week, but her managers cheated her out of the tips her admirers threw on the stage.


She was a street kid whose highest aspiration was to be a lady's maid. Instead, she found herself in vaudeville. As an actress, in films like The Member of the Wedding, Waters gave the “mammy” roles real edge & depth. Her life was as varied as her singing. She was a Catholic who could swear like a sailor. She was a lesbian whose loud fights with her lovers made more proper lesbians like Alberta Hunter label her a disgrace to their tribe. She joined Billy Graham & toured the country. Her signature song had been Stormy Weather, but once she joined the Graham crusade, she never sang it again. Waters: “My life ain't stormy no more”, which was good for her & bad for her fans. Her best known recording was her version of the spiritual- His Eye is on the Sparrow.



In 1933, Waters made a satirical all-black film entitled Rufus Jones for President. She went on to star at the Cotton Club, where she sang Stormy Weather. Waters: “I sang it from the depths of the private hell in which I was being crushed & suffocated." She took a role in the Broadway musical revue As Thousands Cheer in 1933, where she was the first black woman to appear in an otherwise all white show. In addition to the show, she starred in a national radio program & continued to work in nightclubs. She was the highest paid performer on Broadway, but she was starting to age. MGM hired Lena Horne as the ingénue in the all-Black musical- Cabin in the Sky, & Waters reprised Petunia, her stage role. The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, was a success, but Waters was offended by the attention given to Horne, & she was feeling her age.


She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1949 for Pinky. In 1950, she won the NY Drama Critics Award for her performance opposite Julie Harris in the play- The Member of the Wedding. Waters & Harris repeated their roles in the 1952 film version. In 1950, Waters starred in the TV series- Beulah but quit after complaining that the scripts' portrayal of African-Americans was degrading.


Waters was the second African American ever nominated for an Academy Award. She was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. Waters' recording of Stormy Weather was honored by the Library of Congress. It was listed in the National Recording Registry in 2004. Waters was approved for a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. However, the actual Star has not been funded, & as of her birthday in 2010, public fundraising efforts continue.

Heath Robinson

William Heath Robinson (31 May 1872 – 13 September 1944) was an English cartoonist and illustrator, who signed himself W. Heath Robinson. He is best known for drawings of eccentric machines and "Heath Robinson" has entered the language as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption.
William Heath Robinson was born into a family of artists in Islington, London. His father and brothers Thomas Heath Robinson and Charles Robinson were all illustrators. His early career was as a book illustrator, for example in Hans Christian Andersen's Danish Fairy Tales and Legends (1897); The Arabian Nights, (1899); Tales From Shakespeare (1902), and Twelfth Night (1908), Andersen's Fairy Tales (1913), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1914), Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1915), and Walter de la Mare's Peacock Pie (1916).

In the course of this however he also wrote and illustrated two children's books, The Adventures of Uncle Lubin (1902) and Bill the Minder (1912); these are regarded as the start of his career in the depiction of unlikely machines. During the First World War he drew large numbers of cartoons, collected as Some "Frightful" War Pictures (1915), Hunlikely! (1916), and Flypapers (1919), depicting ever-more-unlikely secret weapons being used by the combatants.

In 1903 he married Josephine Latey, the daughter of newspaper editor John Latey. Heath Robinson moved to Pinner, Middlesex, in 1908. His house in Moss Lane is commemorated by a blue plaque. A project is now (2007) in hand to restore West House, in Memorial Park, Pinner, to house a Heath Robinson Collection.

In Memory Of Ruth Gordon... From Harold & Maude

Maude, played by Gordon, is in her late 70s & befriends a wealthy, suicidal young man (They meet as onlookers at a funeral). Here they walk among flowers at a nursery:


MAUDE: They grow and bloom, and fade, and die, and some change into something else. Ah, life! I should like to change into a sunflower most of all. They are so tall and simple. And you, Harold, what flower would you like to be?


HAROLD: I don’t know. Just one of those. (He gestures toward a field of daisies)


M: Why do you say that?


H: Because they are all the same.


M: Oooh, but they are not. Look. (They bend down together.) See - some are smaller, some are fatter, some grow to the left, some to the right, some even have some petals missing - all kinds of observable differences, and we haven’t even touched the bio-chemical. You see, Harold, they’re like the Japanese. At first you think they all look alike, but after you get to know them you see there is not a repeat in the bunch. Each person is different, never existed before and never to exist again. Just like this daisy - (she picks it) - an individual.


H: Well, we may be individuals all right but- we have to grow up together.


M: Yes, that’s very true. Still I believe much of the world’s sorrow comes from people who know they are this (she holds the daisy) - yet let themselves be treated (she looks out at the field) - as that.

Born On This Day- October 30th... Post Apocalyptic Muse Ruth Gordon

She has been such a major part of my life for so long, it is hard for me to remember a time when she was not busy being my muse. A quote from Ruth Gordon- “Never Face The Facts” has been my motto for much of my life. Her point was, if she had owned up to the fact that she was 5’1’’, not really pretty & that her drama teachers said she had no talent… well, she would never have become Ruth Gordon. I treasure & have read & re-read her 3 volumes of memoirs- Myself Among Others, My Side: The Autobiography Of Ruth Gordon, & Ruth Gordon- An Open Book. I know it started for me with with Inside Daisy Clover, a film that had a very real impact on me at an early age. My adoration for her was cemented with her Oscar winning performance in Rosemary’s Baby. & then Harold & Maude became the most important movie of my youth. I had a friend who was in Harold & Maude as an actor & another friend who was the set decorator on the film. I had heard all these stories about it during the filming, but I was unprepared for how much I would fall in love with this little movie that went on to be a cult favorite.

My life motto, from Ruth Gordon, was posted on a wall of our cottage in Seattle by the husband.

The daughter of a former ship captain, Ruth Gordon knew what she wanted to do with her life after witnessing a performance by stage actress Hazel Dawn in Boston. Over the initial objections of her father, Gordon decided upon a stage career, studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her debut in Peter Pan with Maude Adams: "Ruth Gordon was ever so gay as Nibs," wrote influential critic Alexander Woollcott, who became a valued & powerful friend to Gordon, & did what he could to encourage her & promote her career. With such stage hits as Seventeen, Serena Blandish, & Ethan Frome, Gordon was one of Broadway's biggest stars of the 1920s & 30s; privately, however, her life was put into shambles by the premature death of her first husband- actor Gregory Kelly. She was the toast of the West End in London during her successful run in The Country Wife. She created the role of Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker (1956), a role written for her, & the basis of the musical- Hello, Dolly!. She remarried in 1942 to the brilliant playwright Garson Kanin, 16 years younger than her. It was a union that lasted more than 4 decades.

Combining stage work with appearances in such films as Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) , Gordon began to collaborate with Kanin on writing projects, with such delightful results as the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn comedies Adam's Rib (1949) & Pat and Mike (1952), as well as the Judy Holliday vehicle- The Marrying Kind (1952). Gordon returned to the cameras for Inside Daisy Clover in 1966, before taking on role of an elderly neighbor in Rosemary's Baby (1968). When receiving an Oscar for her performance, the 72 year old Gordon brought down the house by saying, "You have no idea how encouraging a thing like this can be." Gordon was unforgettable in 2 films from my high school years: Where's Poppa? (1970), in which she played the obscenely senile mother of George Segal, & of course, Harold & Maude (1972), as the freewheeling soul mate of a death obsessed teen, played Bud Cort, who remained her lifelong friend in real life. The story of her early life was made into a film- The Actress, directed by George Cukor, with a screenplay by Ruth Gordon. She was portrayed by Jean Simmons & Spencer Tracy played her father. She was born 115 years ago today.

Reflections On Dominick Dunne On His Birthday

I posted about him on the day of his death in the summer of 2009. It was ironic that he died on the very day as his enemy- Edward Kennedy. I was such a big fan of his column in Vanity Fair. I would just eat it up each month.


 As I am thinking about Dominick Dunne on the day of his birth, I am reflecting on the similarities between Dominick Dunne & Truman Capote, one of my life long favorite writers. Both wrote about low acts in high society & they both craved celebrity. Capote labeled his later work- the Nonfiction Novel, & Dunne just called his books novels. Capote spent his last years doing very little writing, addicted to drugs & alcohol, appearing incoherent in public & on talk shows. Dunne was on the same track, but later in life he was sober, clear, & productive, but he was in the closet. Dunne probably wanted the literary attention that Capote received in his career, yet he outsold his writer family: brother John Gregory Dunne & sister-in-law Joan Didion. He must have been disappointed that he never entered the pantheon of literature. At the same time, he didn’t seem bitter. He was inside the fish bowl & yet always remained an outsider.


Capote’s society women rejected him after he published the roman e clef- Answered Prayers. Dunne continued to move in the world he wrote about despite an occasional snub. He did have enemies: the Kennedys, the Safras, & most famously- Congressman Condit. Dunne could get careless with facts, as Capote did, but most readers knew he was telling a larger truth; When you get to the top of society, there isn’t all that much there. This is the deeper secret Capote didn’t see.


I recently watched- After the Party in the Sundance Channel, which chronicles Dunne’s life. Listening to him talk, he seemed obviously gay. Earlier in his career, he was a television & film producer, & was the executive producer of the film version of Boys in the Band. Maybe those bitter queens spoke a truth to him that also drove him deeper into the closet. The documentary & his nonfiction writings make it clear that he cared deeply about his children & his former wife. It seems easy to dismiss a man torn like that, it seemed to be the way most people in Hollywood in the 1950s & 1960s handled such matters- “Oh, he just got married to cover up”, But, in a clever move, Dunne used his last novel to come out when his main character/alter ego reveals that he is gay.


His readers can only know a little bit about Dunne & his sexuality. In his interview with George Stephanopolous, Dominick’s son- Griffin Dunne, uses the terms gay & bisexual to describe his father. A few months before his death, Dominick told the London Times: “I am a celibate closeted bisexual.” It seems tragic when somebody has to deceive & experience shame for most of their life. To live in constant deception & shame distorts your life. Yet Capote, who was out of the closet most of his life, was full of self-loathing & in his last years, he led a miserable existence. Dunne, who speaks about his father mistreating him as a child for being a sissy, stayed in the closet his entire adult life. After success in Hollywood, he also became addicted to drugs & alcohol, but then found sobriety in rural Oregon of all places. He lived a life that he was drawn to & repelled by. For both authors, the shame of sexuality, open or not, propelled the men into a furious chase for recognition, celebrity & acceptance.


If society had been accepting of homosexuality, would both writers have never become successful writers? Was being an outsider what that made them?


It is a fitting irony for Dunne, since so much of his literary career was a reflection of a response to, the life of Truman Capote. The similarities are striking: Dunne's most famous novel The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was based on the notorious Woodward murder scandal that Capote had referred to in his novel Answered Prayers. It was the gossip & innuendo in an excerpt from it in Esquire- La Cote Basque, that got Capote shunned by his celibrity friends & started his decline.


Capote was dropped by his adored society women friends, having allegedly stabbed them in the back by exposing their deepest secrets. Capote career was killed. He never finished the novel. But Dominick Dunne, in a way, did. He wrote the The Two Mrs.Grenvilles novel that picked up where Capote left off. Dunne did it with panache, with a story of high society intrigue, sexual obsession, greed & murder. In The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, which was made a rather good TV movie starring Claudette Colbert & Ann Margret, Dunne paid homage to Capote by creating a narrator named Basil Plant who was more than just a little the author of In Cold Blood. Dunne was also similar to that character. He was the man on the outside looking in, absorbing, documenting, & chronicling. He was the secret sharer. The man everyone trusted.


Dunne's parallels to Capote were not just on the literary scene. Dominick Dunne craved the spotlight just as much as Capote, and surrounded himself throughout his wildly checkered life with just as many socialites & celebrities. Dunne even threw his own "Black & White Ball" in Hollywood that rivaled Capote's legendary fête at the Plaza. Dunne always claimed he had the idea first. He celebrated its memory in his coffee table book of photographs- The Way We Lived Then (Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper). That was part of Dunne's charm. He never tried to exaggerate his importance,


He did noy shy away from controversy. In the TV movie of A Season in Purgatory with Patrick Dempsey in the lead, there is a rather shocking gay sex scene between the narrator & the Dempsey character who killed the young girl at the start of the story. The book is based on the Martha Moxley case which Dunne had helped to reopen & wrote about at length in Vanity Fair.


Even at the end of his life, when the party was winding down, & Dunne knew he was deathly ill, he never lost his sense of humor or his gratitude for his good fortune. He wrote about his mortality in Vanity Fair. He wrote about the depths to which he had fallen, unlike Capote who fought similar demons but who was ultimately undone by them. Life was an endless party to both men. But Dominick Dunne never overstayed his welcome. Today, on what would have been Dunne's 84th birthday, Hollywood friends & reporter pals gathered at the Chateau Marmont to celebrate Dominick Dunne's life.

Born On This Day- October 28th... Edith Claire Posener

“Good clothes are not a matter of good luck."

EDITH HEAD believed modesty was unbecoming & that you should have anything you wanted in life, but you had to be dressed for it. Edith head knew about dressing. The legendary designer saw all the Hollywood greats stripped down to their underwear or less. As the stars gazed upon themselves in the studio wardrobe mirrors, Head was the woman standing behind them, making them look impossibly glamorous while carefully avoiding glamour herself.


Hollywood's most famous & influential costume designer, as well as its most prolific, Head had a career that lasted 6 decades. She designed clothes for 1,131 films , an average of 35 a year, she dressed virtually every star who shimmered on screen in the golden age of movie making. Head was the last costume designer to be under contract to a major studio, Paramount. She was a woman who succeeded in a world, which in her day, was dominated by men.


Head wrote a pair of books: The Dress Doctor & How to Dress for Success, & played herself, giving a fashion show commentary in the 1955 film- Lucy Gallant, starring Charlton Heston & Jane Wyman.


She could be a bit playful with the truth, taking credit for designs she had not created: Audrey Hepburn's little black dress in Sabrina & the Newman/Redford wardrobe for The Sting, for which she won an Oscar. Always discreet about the size & shape of the stars' bodies, she knew about all the skeletons in their closets, but she was never one to gossip.


Head knew about the intimate secrets of Mae West's vast bosom, Gloria Swanson's wide waist & tiny feet (size 2 1/2), & swan necked Audrey Hepburn's broad shoulders. She often boasted that she was a magician: “I accentuated the positive & camouflaged the rest".


Head would make the stars, with all their flaws, look a million dollars, & she influenced the way millions of women dressed too, as a designer for Vogue patterns at a time when home dressmaking was all the rage, although Head could not sew herself.


Her costume designs for films went global. The sarong she fashioned for Dorothy Lamour in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, Head had her stitched into it, made the actress a star & was copied by every swimwear manufacturer in the US. It is still copied today.


For Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951), Head accentuated the teenage star's bosom & tiny waist with a strapless, bouffant-skirted white ballgown, scattered with violets. It became the prom dress for American teenagers when it was copied by all the leading department stores. According to Head, Taylor had the most beautiful shoulders in Hollywood, so she created dresses for her to show them off.


Bette Davis: "Edith Head’s life was all about glamour, 60 years of it, in the most glamorous place in the world- Hollywood," Head designed the brown silk, sable trimmed cocktail dress Davis wore as Margo Channing in All About Eve, warning everyone as she swept down the staircase for the big party scene to fasten their seat belts because it was going to be a bumpy night. Davis tried on the finished gown the bodice & neckline were way too big. Head was horrified, but Davis pulled it off her shoulders & shook one shoulder sexily: “Doesn't it look better like this anyway?" Head won one of her 8 Oscars for that film. Davis later bought the dress for herself, because she loved it so much. Head: "There were 8 important men in my life, & they were all named Oscar."


Head was working as a language teacher at the Hollywood School for Girls in 1932 when she bluffed her way into Paramount's wardrobe department. She already had a B.A. from Berkeley & a master's from Stanford, but then went to study art at the Otis Art Institute & the Chouinard School. She was hired by the studio as a sketch artist, although the fashion drawings.


By 1938, she was head designer, working on every prestigious production the studio made, and left only in 1967, when she joined up with Universal. Head spent the remainder of her career here, thanks to her friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, including Tippi Hendren's smart green suit made of textured tweed that would snag easily during an avian attack.


Head's career was not without controversy. After winning her Oscar for The Sting, she was sued by the illustrator who really designed Redford & Newman's clothes. the truth about her design of Audrey Hepburn's little black dress emerged only after her death, when the Paris couturier Hubert de Givenchy quietly admitted that he'd come up with the frock that was copied everywhere & worn by a generation of women; Head had designed all the other costumes in the film.


Head also adored Grace Kelly & was upset when the actress slighted her by not inviting her to design the wedding dress when she got married to Prince Rainier of Monaco. She did create Princess Grace's grey going-away suit, though.


Head: "I regret never having dressed Marilyn Monroe, never designing uniforms for the Chicago Cubs, & being alone. It is much easier being remembered than trying to remember." It was an open secret in Hollywood that Edith Head was a lesbian.


In the Pixar film- The Incredibles, the personality & mannerisms of the film's fictional superhero costume designer- Edna Mode’s sense of style, round glasses, & assertive no-nonsense character are very are a direct homage to Head's legendary accomplishments & personality.

I am so in Junior High School, & I of course think it was fun to write the word- HEAD 24 times.

USA Newspaper Election And Media

The media, especially television, have played a role in the increasing cost of campaigns because candidates spend a large amount of money on advertising. Today individual candidates spend more money on media advertising than ever before. In 1860 the Republicans spent only $100,000 on Abraham Lincoln’s presidential campaign and on those of all Republican House and Senate candidates. In 1988 Republican candidate George H. W. Bush spent $70 million, just on the presidential race. During the 1998 elections, a 60-second spot on prime-time television cost as much as $100,000 every time it ran. As a result, campaigns have become more expensive, forcing candidates to concentrate more on fund-raising and less on presenting issues to voters.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Born On This Day- October 27th... New York City Wit Fran Lebowitz

“Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass”.


I always loved & looked forward to Fran Lebowitz's pieces in Interview Magazine, hired by Andy Warhol himself. I will still re-read her books- Social Studies & Metropolitan Life. Cranky, sardonic, witty, & dry; her essays make me think & make me laugh. She was named one most stylish women in Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed List, & is known to sport tailored suits by the Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard. Lebowitz has a reoccuring role on Law & Order as a judge. She had the best Proust Questionaire, on the back page of Vanity Fair, ever. I think her quips are on a par with Dorothy Parker:



All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.

Andy Warhol made fame more famous.

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.


Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.


If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail.


If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.


In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

Polite conversation is rarely either.


Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.

The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.

Bluebell Railway

Yesterday, in glorious autumn sunshine, we visited The Bluebell Railway and experienced traveling on railways as it was many years ago (third class - we know our place).  And you know what they say – nostalgia’s not what it used to be. I’m posting a little photo-essay of the visit.

The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for nine miles along the border between East Sussex and West Sussex, England. Steam trains are operated between Sheffield Park and Kingscote, with an intermediate station at Horsted Keynes.

The railway is managed and run largely by volunteers. It has the largest collection of steam locomotives (30+) in the UK after the National Railway Museum, and a collection of almost 150 carriages and wagons (most of them from before or between the world wars), unrivalled in the south of England.

The Bluebell Railway was the first preserved standard gauge steam-operated passenger railway in the world to operate a public service, running the first train on 7 August 1960, shortly after the line from East Grinstead to Lewes had been closed by British Railways. The Bluebell Railway also preserved a number of steam locomotives even before the cessation of steam service on British mainline railways in 1968.

2007 marked the railway's 125th anniversary. 2009 marked the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society's 50th anniversary. 2010 marks the Bluebell's 50th anniversary of running services.

Born On This Day- October 25th... Post Apocalyptic Bohemian Favorite- Barbara Cook

The Husband isn’t the musical comedy aficionado that I am, but he does have a theatre background & is a gay man of good taste & a certain age. So, it wasn’t difficult to rope him into my agenda of seeing Hedwig & The Angry Inch downtown & then hightailing to the Upper Eastside to catch a late night session with one of my most favorite performers- Barbara Cook in her cabaret act at The Carlyle. It was our 24th anniversary & we had seen her at the same venue on our 20th. I was hoping for a new tradition. To see one of my idols in that tiny venue, just inches away & listen to that gorgeous, august soprano doing the best music of the past century, & sharing it all with the man that I love… does it get better than that?

To gay fans of musical theater, cabaret, & superb singing, Tony & Grammy winner Barbara Cook has given 2 lifetimes' worth of happiness. In the 1950s she originated the leading roles in the musicals Candide & The Music Man. Today, among many other achievements, she is possibly the greatest interpreter of the music of Stephen Sondheim. Last season she starred, at 82 years old, in Sondheim on Sondheim, a new Broadway musical, along side Vanessa Williams & Tom Wopat. She was nominated for a Tony for her work. What Cook's gay fans may not know is that she is also the mother of an out & proud gay son, 51 year old Los Angeles based actor/ teacher/ vocal coach- Adam LeGrant. She tells of their moving journey together with the same warm heart & openness that she brings to her music.


Cook: "When he told me he was gay, I laughed. I laughed! Because it was the farthest thing from my mind. He said, `Mom, I'm not kidding.' It was like a thunderbolt, & I was very upset. The family & the grandchildren & all that stuff bothered me. But more than that, here was this person whom I thought I knew so well, and here was this enormous part of his life that I knew nothing about. I felt as if I didn't know my own son. I was very upset, not so much at the time, because I was in shock, & I also didn't want to make Adam feel bad. Then I went into a kind of depression, & really, really cried for 5 days & mourned the son I thought I'd had. On about the 5th day of that, I said to myself, What the hell is going on?"


Cook, who has been candid in the past about her struggles with depression, weight & alcohol: "I've always felt that I was not a part of the mainstream of life. I don't know what the hell I mean by that, but it's the only way I know how to put it. When I had a son, that seemed to connect me more to the stream of life. When Adam told me that he was gay, I felt, I'm no longer a part of the mainstream. & then my next thought was, my son is not here to make me feel comfortable. He's here to be the fullest person he can be, & what I have to do is help him fulfill himself as much as I can. & when that came to me, the whole thing lifted. I love him so much. I loved him then, & I love him now. & I like him…that's the thing."


Cook has long been involved with PFLAG: “What I will never, never be able to understand is how a family or a mother or father could ever be able to turn their backs on a child because of homosexuality, & do that to themselves, much less to their children. I can't understand how anyone could come to that."


As a youngster, I was such a little musical comedy queen. I had every Original Cast album of every musical, with a specialty in the little known shows & the flops. Among the collection were shows with Barbara Cook: Flahooley, Plain & Fancy, The Music Man, Candide, Showboat, The King & I, The Gay Life, & my favorite- She Loves Me!

I was already a fan before Cook resurrected her career with a successful turn to cabaret & concerts. In the summer of 1975, her Barbara Cook At Carnegie Hall Concert album was my most played record. I could not have been more excited when I had my 1st chance to see Cook live. I sent a note backstage at the cabaret at Studio One, a gay disco in West Hollywood. My missive explained that not only was I a huge fan, & a fan of her magical musical director- Wally Harper, but that the concert album was the soundtrack to my life at the moment, & that my date for the evening was not a fan of standards or show tunes, but a rock & roller that had come to love her from my constant playing of her music. I noted that she had won over a Led Zeppelin fan with her resplendent interpretations.


I was more than a little shocked when a clip board holding staff member of Studio One, asked those in line: Stephen? Stephen? Would you come with me? Ms. Cook & Mr. Harper would like to talk to you". I was shown into the tiniest dressing room, where I was treated to the thrill of a meet & greet with one the most splendiferous virtuoso performers of the popular song. She told me that she & Wally had gotten a real chuckle from my note, What could she have made of the young, gushing, saucer eyed fan with big red afro? Thank you for all moments, Barbara Cook. I am still a fan. You continue to look & sing with stunning, sublime style. Happy Birthday!





Just out this month on DRG Records- the 6 disc The Essential Barbara Cook.

My Day With Kevin Kline... A Rememberance On His Birthday

The van came to pick me up first, & I didn’t really even know that I was sharing the ride. The driver stopped in front of the hotel & in slipped a matinee idol handsome man, who turned to me, smiled, extended his hand, & said: “Hello… my name is Kevin Kline”. I retorted: “No kidding”. What is it like when you meet someone that you truly idolize? I had loved, loved, loved, loved Kevin Kline since 1977 when I saw him on Broadway in the Hal Prince Musical- On The 20th Century with John Cullum, Madeline Kahn, & Imogene Coca.

 Kline had just won an Oscar for A Fish Called Wanda & had just had a baby with wife Phoebe Cates. I congratulated him on both. He asked me about the theatre scene in Seattle & kept insisting that we had worked together before: “Shakespeare In The Park in 1978?”. “No, Kevin... I think I would have remembered that”. I kept up my part of the conversation, & while letting him know how much I admired his work, I kept a nonchalant, but engaged demeanor. Yet, my brain was racing a million miles an hour with- “Oh my God, oh my God, It's Kevin Kline. I am sitting right next to him. He has freckles. He has freckles on his arms. His arms are hairy. I think I love him. Kevin Kline! He is talking to me! He thinks he knows me. Can I sneak a peek at his crotch? Will he notice? No, don’t do it! Oh…you did it, you looked at his basket! I’d like to give him an Oscar, right now.”


I finally let him have it & out gushed about how much I loved his work & how much it meant for me to work with him & he said- "I've never felt completely satisfied with what I've done. I tend to see things too critically. I'm trying to get over that. I've got the Jewish guilt & the Irish shame & it's a hell of a job distinguishing which is which."

He was so much fun to work with. The director- Lawrence Kasdan, didn’t know we had traveled to the set together, & introduced us all over again:


Kline was almost Robin Williams-ish manic on the set, joking, playing the piano & singing. Tracey Ullman, who I worship, was shy & stayed in character, even when the cameras were not rolling, but as soon as the director said- “cut”, Kevin was back to his antics. At the end of the day, he touched my shoulder, looked me right in the eye, & said- “That was fun, we need to do it again sometime”. I smiled back & deadpanned (he thought my deadpan was funny during the shoot): “Yes indeed, Mr Kline, lets do it again, real soon.”, but my brain was going- “oh my God, oh my God, it's Kevin Kline! & he is looking at me… It’s Kevin Kline! & he his handsome! & he is talking to me!”   I beamed, but tried to act like it was no big deal: “ …Oh my God, I am doing lines with Kevin Kline. He is like the best American Actor, he is our Olivier & I am acting with him!!! I think he likes me. He keeps smiling & smiling at me. I think I love him!”.

Did I mention that I really love Kevin Kline? My favorite film roles: The Pirates of Penzance, Sophie's Choice, The Big Chill, Silverado, A Fish Called Wanda, Soapdish, Grand Canyon, The Ice Storm, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Prairie Home Companion, & As You LIke It... & In & Out is not a very good movie, but I loved watching him in the film:

Damien Hirst - Pills

In the last of my mini-series on the works of Damien Hirst I am featuring his 'pill cabinets'. Each life-sized pill was cast in bronze and hand-painted by his studio workers. The first one shown here, 'Lullaby Spring' had 6,136 pills in it and sold at auction in 2007 for £9.65 million.
That kind of rules me out from buying one but I do like them.

 

'Six Pills'

'The Void'

Hirst also produced a series of limited edition jewelery featuring pills and tablets: cufflinks, silver bracelets (£15000), gold bracelets (£2500). No, I haven't got any of these either.