Well, upon my word. There's that whale with a shark in tow. Love that song, M.D. Hmmmm. Could the first lady of song be someone named Ella?
Hey, Reyn. I'm doing all right, but I must admit......
I feel like I've been locked up tight
For a century of lonely nights
Waiting for someone to release me
You're licking your lips
And blowing kisses my way
But that don't mean I'm gonna give it away
Baby baby baby (baby, baby, baby)
BRIDGE:
Ooooh (my body is saying let's go)
Ooooh (but my heart is saying no)
CHORUS:
If you wanna be with me
Baby there's a price to pay
I'm a genie in a bottle
You gotta rub me the right way
If you wanna be with me
I can make your wish come true
You gotta make a big impression
I gotta like what you do
I'm a genie in a bottle baby
You gotta rub me the right way honey
I'm a genie in a bottle baby
Come, come, come on and let me out
The music's fading
The lights down low
Just one more dance
And then were good to go
Waiting for someone
Who needs me
Hormones racing at the speed of light
But that don't mean it's gotta be tonight
Baby, baby, baby (baby, baby, baby)
BRIDGE:
Ooooh (my body is saying let's go)
Ooooh (but my heart is saying no)
CHORUS:
If you wanna be with me
| Baby there's a price to pay
I'm a genie in a bottle (I'm a genie in a bottle)
You gotta rub me the right way
If you wanna be with me (Ooh)
I can make your wish come true (Wish come true...woah)
Just come and set me free
And I'll be with you
I'm a genie in a bottle baby
You gotta rub me the right way honey
I'm a genie in a bottle baby
Come, come, come on and let me out
I'm a genie in a bottle baby
You gotta rub me the right way honey (if you wanna be with me)
I'm a genie in a bottle baby
Come, come, come on and let me out
BRIDGE:
Ooooh (my body is saying let's go)
Ooooh (but my heart is saying no)
CHORUS:
If you wanna be with me
Baby there's a price to pay
I'm a genie in a bottle
You gotta rub me the right way
If you wanna be with me
I can make your wish come true (Ooh)
You gotta make a big impression
I gotta like what you do (Oh Yeah)
If you wanna be with me
Baby there's a price to pay
I'm a genie in a bottle
You gotta rub me the right way (you gotta rub me the right way)
If you wanna be with me
I can make your wish come true
Just come and set me free baby
And I'll be with you
I'm a genie in a bottle baby
Come, come, come, on and let me out
By someone named Christina.<smile>
L. Frank Baum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born May 15, 1856
Chittenango, New York
Died May 6, 1919
Hollywood, California
Occupation Author, Newspaper Editor, Actor, Screenwriter, Film Producer
Spouse Maud Gage
Children Frank Joslyn Baum
Robert Stanton Baum
Harry Neal Baum
Kenneth Gage Baum
Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856-May 6, 1919) was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator W. W. Denslow, of one of the most popular books ever written in American children's literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known today as simply The Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a plethora of other works, and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen.
Baum's childhood and early life
Frank was born in Chittenango, New York, into a devout Methodist family of German (father's side) and Scots-Irish (mother's side) origin, the seventh of nine children born to Cynthia Stanton and Benjamin Ward Baum, only five of whom survived into adulthood. He was named "Lyman" after his father's brother, but always disliked this name, and preferred to go by "Frank". His mother, Cynthia Stanton, was a direct descendant of Thomas Stanton, one of the four Founders of what is now Stonington, Connecticut.
Benjamin Baum was a wealthy businessman, who had made his fortune in the oil fields of Pennsylvania. Frank grew up on his parents' expansive estate, Rose Lawn, which he always remembered fondly as a sort of paradise. As a young child Frank was tutored at home with his siblings, but at the age of 12 he was sent to study at Peekskill Military Academy. Frank was a sickly child given to daydreaming, and his parents may have thought he needed toughening up. But after two utterly miserable years at the military academy, he was allowed to return home. Frank Joslyn Baum claimed that this was following an incident described as a heart attack, though there is no contemporary evidence of this.
Frank started writing at an early age, perhaps due to an early fascination with printing. His father bought him a cheap printing press, and Frank used it to produce The Rose Lawn Home Journal with the help of his younger brother, Harry Clay Baum, with whom he had always been close. The brothers published several issues of the journal and included advertisements they may have sold. By the time he was 17, Baum had established a second amateur journal, The Stamp Collector, printed an 11-page pamphlet called Baum's Complete Stamp Dealers' Directory, and started a stamp dealership with his friends.
At about the same time Frank embarked upon his lifetime infatuation with the theater, a devotion which would repeatedly lead him to failure and near-bankruptcy. His first such failure occurred when a local theatrical company duped him into replenishing their stock of costumes, with the promise of leading roles that never came his way. Disillusioned, Baum left the theatre?-temporarily?-and went to work as a clerk in his brother-in-law's dry goods company in Syracuse. At one point, he found another clerk locked in a store room dead, an apparent suicide. This incident appears to have inspired his locked room story, "The Suicide of Kiaros".
At the age of 20, Baum took on a new vocation: the breeding of fancy poultry, which was a national craze at the time. He specialized in raising a particular breed of fowl, the Hamburg chicken. In 1880 he established a monthly trade journal, The Poultry Record, and in 1886, when Baum was 30 years old, his first book was published: The Book of the Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs.
Yet Baum could never stay away from the stage long. He continued to take roles in plays, performing under the stage names of Louis F. Baum and George Brooks.
In 1880, his father built him a theatre in Richburg, New York, and Baum set about writing plays and gathering a company to act in them. The Maid of Arran, a melodrama with songs based on William Black's novel A Princess of Thule, proved a modest success. Baum not only wrote the play but composed songs for it (making it a prototypical musical, as its songs relate to the narrative), and acted in the leading role. His aunt, Katharine Gray, played his character's aunt. She was the founder of Syracuse Oratory School, and Baum advertised his services in her catalog to teach theatre, including stage business, playwriting, directing, and translating (French, German, and Italian), revision, and operettas, though he was not employed to do so. On November 9, 1882, Baum married Maud Gage, a daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a famous women's suffrage activist. While Baum was touring with The Maid of Arran, the theatre in Richburg caught fire during a production of Baum's ironically-titled parlor drama, Matches, and destroyed not only the theatre, but the only known copies of many of Baum's scripts, including Matches, as well as costumes and props.
The South Dakota years
In July 1888, Baum and his wife moved to Aberdeen, Dakota Territory, where he opened a store, "Baum's Bazaar". His habit of giving out wares on credit led to the eventual bankrupting of the store, so Baum turned to editing a local newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, where he wrote a column, "Our Landlady". Baum's description of Kansas in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is based on his experiences in drought-ridden South Dakota. During much of this time, Matilda Joslyn Gage was living in the Baum household. While he was in South Dakota Baum sang in a quartet that included a man who would become one of the first Populist (People's Party) Senators in the U.S., James Kyle.
Baum becomes an author
After Baum's newspaper failed in 1891, he, Maud and their four sons moved to Chicago, where Baum took a job reporting for the Evening Post. For several years he edited a magazine for advertising agencies focused on window displays in stores. The major department stores created elaborate Christmas time fantasies, using clockwork mechanism that made people and animals appear to move.
In 1897 he wrote and published Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of Mother Goose rhymes written as prose stories, and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Mother Goose was a moderate success, and allowed Baum to quit his door-to-door job.
In 1899 Baum partnered with illustrator W. W. Denslow, to publish Father Goose, His Book, a collection of nonsense poetry. The book was a success, becoming the best-selling children's book of the year.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
In 1900, Baum and Denslow (with whom he shared the copyright) published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to much critical and financial acclaim. The book was the best-selling children's book for two years after its initial publication. Baum went on to write thirteen other novels based on the places and people of the Land of Oz.
Two years after Wizard's publication, Baum and Denslow teamed up with composer Paul Tietjens and director Julian Mitchell to produce a musical stage version of the book under Fred R. Hamlin. This stage version, the first to use the shortened title "The Wizard of Oz", opened in Chicago in 1902, then ran on Broadway for 293 stage nights from January to October 1903. It returned to Broadway in 1904, where it played from March to May and again from November to December. It successfully toured the United States with much of the same cast, as was done in those days, until 1911, and then became available for amateur use. The stage version starred David C. Montgomery and Fred Stone as the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow respectively, which shot the pair to instant fame. The stage version differed quite a bit from the book, and was aimed primarily at adults. Toto was replaced with Imogene the Cow, and Tryxie Tryfle, a waitress and Pastoria, a streetcar operator, were added as fellow cyclone victims. The Wicked Witch of the West was eliminated entirely in the script, over which Baum had little control or influence. Jokes in the script, mostly written by Glen MacDonough, called for explicit references to President Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Mark Hanna, and oil magnate John D. Rockefeller.
Beginning with the success of the stage version, most subsequent versions of the story, including newer editions of the novel, have been titled "The Wizard of Oz", rather than using the full, original title.
Following early film treatments in 1910 and 1925, Metro Goldwyn Mayer made the story into the now classic movie The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale. A completely new Tony Award winning Broadway musical based on African-American musical styles, The Wiz was staged in 1975 with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy. It was the basis for a 1978 film by the same title starring Diana Ross as an adult Dorothy. The Wizard of Oz continues to inspire new versions such as Disney's 1985 Return to Oz, The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, and a variety of animated productions. Today's most successful Broadway show, Wicked provides a backstory to the two Oz witches used in the classic MGM film. Wicked author Gregory Maguire chose to honor L. Frank Baum by naming his main character Elphaba -- a phonetic take on Baum's initials.
Later life and work
With the success of Wizard on page and stage, Baum and Denslow hoped lightning would strike a third time and in 1901 published Dot and Tot of Merryland. The book was one of Baum's weakest, and its failure further strained his faltering relationship with Denslow. It would be their last collaboration.
Several times during the development of the Oz series, Baum declared that he had written his last Oz book and devoted himself to other works of fantasy fiction based in other magical lands, including The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and Queen Zixi of Ix. However, persuaded by popular demand, letters from children, and the failure of his new books, he returned to the series each time. All of his novels have fallen into public domain in most jurisdictions, and many are available through Project Gutenberg.
Because of his lifelong love of theatre, he often financed elaborate musicals, often to his financial detriment. One of Baum's worst financial endeavors was his The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908), which combined a slideshow, film, and live actors with a lecture by Baum as if he were giving a travelogue to Oz. However, Baum ran into trouble and could not pay his debts to the company who produced the films. He did not get back to a stable financial situation for several years, after he sold the royalty rights to many of his earlier works, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This resulted in the M.A. Donahue Company publishing cheap editions of his early works with advertising that purported that Baum's newer output was inferior to the less expensive books they were releasing. Baum had shrewdly transferred most of his property, except for his clothing, his library (mostly of children's books, such as the fairy tales of Andrew Lang, whose portrait he kept in his study), and his typewriter, into Maud's name, as she handled the finances, anyway, and thus lost much less than he could have.
His final Oz book, Glinda of Oz was published a year after his death in 1920 but the Oz series was continued long after his death by other authors, notably Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote an additional nineteen Oz books.
Baum made use of several pseudonyms for some of his other, non-Oz books. They include:
Edith Van Dyne (the Aunt Jane's Nieces series)
Laura Bancroft (Twinkle and Chubbins, Policeman Bluejay)
Floyd Akers (The Boy Fortune Hunters series, continuing the Sam Steele series)
Suzanne Metcalf (Annabel)
Schuyler Staunton (The Fate of a Crown, Daughters of Destiny)
John Estes Cooke (Tamawaca Folks)
Capt. Hugh Fitzgerald (the Sam Steele series)
Baum also anonymously wrote The Last Egyptian: A Romance of the Nile.
Baum continued theatrical work with Harry Marston Haldeman's men's social group, The Uplifters, for which he wrote several plays for various celebrations. He also wrote the group's parodic by-laws. The group, which also included Will Rogers, was proud to have had Baum as a member and posthumously revived many of his works despite their ephemeral intent. Prior to that, his last produced play was The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (based on Ozma of Oz and the basis for Tik-Tok of Oz), a modest success in Hollywood that producer Oliver Morosco decided did not do well enough to take to Broadway. Morosco, incidentally, quickly turned to film production, as would Baum.
In 1914, having moved to Hollywood years earlier, Baum started his own film production company, The Oz Film Manufacturing Company, which came as an outgrowth of the Uplifters. He served as its president, and principal producer and screenwriter. The rest of the board consisted of Louis F. Gottschalk, Harry Marston Haldeman, and Clarence R. Rundel. The films were directed by J. Farrell Macdonald, with casts that included Violet Macmillan, Vivian Reed, Mildred Harris, Juanita Hansen, Pierre Couderc, Mai Welles, Louise Emmons, J. Charles Haydon, and early appearances by Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach. Richard Rosson appeared in one of the films, whose younger brother Harold Rosson photographed The Wizard of Oz (1939). After little success probing the unrealized children's film market, Baum came clean about who wrote The Last Egyptian and made a film of it (portions of which are included in Decasia), but the Oz name had, for the time being, become box office poison and even a name change to Dramatic Feature Films and transfer of ownership to Frank Joslyn Baum did not help. Unlike with The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, Baum invested none of his own money in the venture, but the stress probably took its toll on its health.
Baum died on May 6, 1919, aged 62, and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California.
Baum's beliefs
Literary
Baum's avowed intentions with the Oz books, and other fairy tales, was to tell such tales as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen told, bringing them up to date by making the characters not stereotypical dwarfs or genies, and by removing both the violence and the moral the violence was to point to.[1] Although the first books contained a fair amount of violence, it decreased with the series; in The Emerald City of Oz, Ozma objected to doing violence even to the Nomes who threaten Oz with invasion.[2]
Another traditional element that Baum intentionally omitted was the emphasis on romance, as he regarded love as unsuitable for young children. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the only element of romance lay in the backstory of the Tin Woodman, which explains his condition and does not otherwise affect the tale, and that of the Golden Cap; the only other stories with such elements were The Scarecrow of Oz and Tik-Tok of Oz, which Baum regarded warily until his readers accepted them.[3]
Politics
Women's Suffrage
Sally Roesch Wagner of The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation has published a pamphlet titled The Wonderful Mother of Oz describing how Matilda's radical feminist politics were sympathetically channelled by Baum into his Oz books. Much of the politics in the Republican Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer dealt with trying to convince the populace to vote for women's suffrage. Baum was the secretary of Aberdeen's Woman's Suffrage Club. When Susan B. Anthony visited Aberdeen, she stayed with the Baums. Nancy Tystad Koupal notes an apparent loss of interest in editorializing after Aberdeen failed to pass the bill for women's enfranchisement.
Some of Baum's contacts with suffragettes of his day seem to have inspired much of his second Oz story, The Marvelous Land of Oz. In this story, General Jinjur leads the girls and women of the Emerald City in a revolt by knitting needles, take over, and make the men do the household chores. His updating of Lysistrata reflects a bemused attitude.
American Indian Genocide
During the events leading up to the Wounded Knee Massacre, Baum wrote an editorial for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer upon the death of Sioux Chief Sitting Bull stating:
The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.[1]
After the Massacre he wrote a second editorial repeating his earlier opinion and criticizing the government for not taking even harsher measures. This second editorial ran on January 3, 1891 and made further call for genocide as follows:
The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster. The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past. An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that 'when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre." [4]
These two short editorials continue to haunt his legacy. Matilda Joslyn Gage, a white feminist who was later adopted into the Mohawk nation, was living with Baum at the time of the Wounded Knee massacre, and none of the Baum family letters or journals of the time suggest any home strife as a result of this writing. In 2006, descendants of Baum apologized to the Sioux nation for any hurt their ancestor had caused.[5]
These editorials are the only known occasion on which Baum expressed such direct views, though less hostile remarks in some other writing used racist vocabulary or stereotyping typical of the day. His overall writing is remarkably inclusive and his characters diverse. For example, aside from vocabulary no one would use today, he did acknowledge many Americans of non-European ancestry in The Woggle Bug Book to an extent unheard of in other 1905 children's publications. The short story, "The Enchanted Buffalo", which purports to be a Native American fable, speaks respectfully of tribal peoples.
Political imagery in The Wizard of Oz
Main article: Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Although numerous political references to the "Wizard" appeared early in the 20th century, it was in a scholarly article in 1964 (Littlefield 1964) that there appeared the first full-fledged interpretation of the novel as an extended political allegory of the politics and characters of the 1890s. Special attention was paid to the Populist metaphors and debates over silver and gold.[6] As a Republican and avid supporter of Women's Suffrage, it is thought that Baum personally did not support the political ideals of either the Populist movement of 1890-92 or the Bryanite-silver crusade of 1896-1900. He published a poem[1] in support of William McKinley.
Since 1964 many scholars, economists and historians have expanded on Littlefield's interpretation, pointing to multiple similarities between the characters (especially as depicted in Denslow's illustrations) and stock figures from editorial cartoons of the period. Littlefield himself wrote the New York Times letters to the editor section spelling out that his theory had no basis in fact, but was developed simply as a tool to help bored summer school students remember their history lesson.
Baum's newspaper had addressed politics in the 1890s, and Denslow was an editorial cartoonist as well as an illustrator of children's books. A series of political references are included in the 1902 stage version, such as references by name to the President and a powerful senator, and to John D. Rockefeller for providing the oil needed by the Tin Woodman. Scholars have found few political references in Baum's Oz books after 1902.
When Baum himself was asked whether his stories had hidden meanings, he always replied that they were written to please children and generate an income for his family.
Fans of the Oz books dismiss any political interpretation, and argue that Baum and Denslow had no interest in promoting any kind of political agenda.
Religion
Originally a Methodist, Baum joined the Episcopal Church in Aberdeen in order to participate in community theatricals. Later, he and his wife, encouraged by Matilda Joslyn Gage, became theosophists, in 1897. Baum's beliefs are often reflected in his writing. The only mention of a church in his Oz books is the porcelain one which the Cowardly Lion breaks in the Dainty China Country in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Baums also sent their older sons to "Ethical Culture Sunday School" in Chicago, which taught morality but not religion.
Trivia
When Baum was writing The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, he once missed a typographical error which noted a woman's "roughish smile" instead of a "roguish smile." Legend has it, he was describing a bride at her wedding, and her husband was so irate that he challenged Baum to a gun duel. The two men were to stand back to back on one street, come around the corner, face each other, and shoot. Allegedly, Baum heard guns go off during the corner turn and started to run, and a man stopped him and said "you fool, the other guy's running!" Nancy Tystad Koupal accessed all microfilms of the Pioneer and found only one instance of "roughish smile." The woman described was, in fact, an actor in a community theatre production that Baum had inadvertently wandered in on. However, Baum adapts the legend in Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation. Louise Merrick makes that mistake of describing Molly Sizer as having a "roughish smile" in the society pages, and the Sizers, "noted as quite the most aggressive and disturbing element in the neighborhood", send eldest son Bill to challenge Arthur Weldon, Louise's husband and the highest name on the masthead (though in fact he has almost no involvement in the paper at all), to a duel, after which Arthur's experience parallels Baum's.
Baum was left handed, and gave the trait to his character, Ojo, in The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Ojo believes himself to be unlucky because of his left-handedness, but ultimately becomes known as Ojo the Lucky.
When the wardrobe department of MGM began to buy costumes for the 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz, they purchased second hand clothes from rummage sales around Hollywood. Actor Frank Morgan, who played the Wizard, was given one such second-hand overcoat to wear, and he happened to notice that the lining of the coat had a label saying, "Property of L. Frank Baum". In early publicity for the movie, MGM emphasized that this was a true story. Soon after the movie was released, the coat was taken to Baum's wife, who confirmed that it had been his (see [2]). Michael Patrick Hearn stated in his keynote address before the 2000 International Wizard of Oz Club convention that this story is believed by Baum's descendants, as well as Margaret Hamilton, to be a concoction of MGM's marketing department. The whereabouts of any such coat are unknown, and fakery would not be difficult.
A very popular myth about the origin of the name "Oz" is that it was inspired by the labels on the author's filing cabinet: A-N, O-Z. Less popular is the myth that it stood for the abbreviation for "ounce". Still another story is that Baum, as an admirer of Charles Dickens, took his nickname, "Boz" and dropped the "B" for "Baum". However, according to the ([3]) International Wizard of Oz Club, L. Frank Baum's widow, Maud, once wrote to writer Jack Snow on this subject and stated that it was just a name that Frank had created out of his own mind. Snow himself had postulated (in a posthumously published unused introduction to The Shaggy Man of Oz) that the name came from children's "ohhs" and "ahhs" when Baum told the stories aloud.
John Ritter portrayed Baum in a 1990 made for TV movie, The Dreamer of Oz: The L. Frank Baum Story. The film was largely fiction, but retain some of the basic details of Baum's life such as his the many failures of his adult life before Oz and a few of the elements that inspired the books. Interestingly, it takes the duel story and turns Baum into a hero, with only the other guy running, something that was never part of the legend.
In the Broadway show, Wicked, based on Gregory Maguire's novel, the character Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) was named after Baum. Elphaba was combined from his name, L. Frank Baum.
OZcot was the name of Baum's home in Hollywood.
Joseph Cotten
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born May 15, 1905
Petersburg, Virginia, USA
Died February 6, 1994, age 88
Westwood, California, USA
Joseph Cheshire Cotten (May 15, 1905-February 6, 1994) was an American stage and screen actor. He is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Orson Welles, which included Citizen Kane, The Third Man, and Journey Into Fear, which Cotten wrote, and for his work with Alfred Hitchcock. He received his start on Broadway, starring in the original productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair, and became a recognizable Hollywood star in his own right with films such as Shadow of a Doubt and Portrait of Jennie.
Biography and Career
Early life and career
Born in Petersburg, Virginia, Cotten worked as an advertising agent after graduating from the Washington, D.C., Hickman School, where he studied acting. His work as a theatre critic inspired him to become more involved in theatre productions, first in Virginia, and later in New York. Cotten made his Broadway debut in 1930, and soon befriended up-and-coming actor/director/producer Orson Welles. In 1937 he joined Welles' Mercury Theater Company, with which he starred in productions of Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday.
Cotten made his film debut in the Welles-directed short Too Much Johnson, a comedy based on William Gillette's 1890 play. The short was occasionally screened before or after Mercury productions, but never received an official release. Cotten returned to Broadway in 1939, starring as C.K. Dexter Haven in the original production of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story as well as the 1953 production of Sabrina Fair.
Citizen Kane
After the success of Welles' infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast, Welles got an impressive contract with RKO Pictures. The two-picture deal promised full creative control for the young director, and Welles made sure to feature his Mercury players in whatever production he chose to bring to screen. However, after a year, production hadn't yet started on any of Welles' prospective projects. It took a meeting with writer Herman J. Mankiewicz for Welles to find a story to bring to the screen.
In mid 1940 filming began on Citizen Kane, which portrayed the life of a brilliant media mogul (played by Welles) who starts out as an idealist but eventually turns into a corrupt, lonely old man. The film featured Cotten prominently in the role of Kane's best friend, a drama critic for his print empire.
When released on May 1, 1941, Citizen Kane (based in part on the life of William Randolph Hearst) found little attention at theaters; Hearst owned the majority of the country's press outlets, and so forbade advertisements for the film. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1942, but was largely ignored by the Academy, only winning for Best Screenplay, for Welles and Mankiewicz. The film helped launch the careers of many other Mercury players, such as Agnes Moorehead (who played Kane's mother), Ruth Warrick (Kane's first wife), and Ray Collins (Kane's political opponent). However, Cotten was the only one of the four to find major success in Hollywood outside of Citizen Kane.
Collaborations with Welles
Despite Welles' reputation of being difficult to get along with, he and Cotten remained good friends. Cotten starred a year later in Welles' adaptation and production of The Magnificent Ambersons, supported by Moorehead. After the commercial disappointment of Citizen Kane, RKO was apprehensive about the new film, and cut nearly an hour off the running time before releasing it. Though at points the film came off as disjointed, the film was well received by critics. Despite the critical accolades Cotten received for his performance, he was again snubbed by the Academy in favor of Moorehead (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress).
In 1943, Cotten took control of the Nazi-related thriller Journey Into Fear. He wrote the screenplay with the help of Welles (who produced the film), and starred in the film. By the time production wrapped, Welles had been dropped from RKO, and, as part of the settlement, was required to edit the film to suitable length. The film was a minor hit, but separated the friends from professional collaboration for six years.
The last collaboration between Welles and Cotten is widely considered as Cotten's best performance. In The Third Man, Cotten portrays a writer of pulp fiction who travels to post-war Vienna to meet his friend Harry Lime (Welles). When he arrives he discovers Lime has died, and is determined to prove to the police that it was murder, but uncovers an even darker secret. The film proved to be another technical achievement, but Cotten was passed over come Academy night.
The Forties and Fifties
Cotten proved himself a versatile actor in Hollywood following the success of Citizen Kane. The characters he played onscreen during this period ranged from a serial killer in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (opposite Teresa Wright) to an eager police detective in 1944's Gaslight (opposite Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and in her film debut, Angela Lansbury). Cotten starred with Jennifer Jones in four films: the wartime domestic drama Since You Went Away (1944), the romantic drama Love Letters (1945), the western Duel in the Sun (1946) and later in the critically acclaimed Portrait of Jennie (1948), in which he played a melancholy artist who becomes obsessed with a girl who may have died long ago.
Cotten's career cooled in the 1950s with a string of less high-profile roles in films such as the dark Civil War epic Two Flags West, the Joan Fontaine romance September Affair, and the Marilyn Monroe vehicle, Niagara. His last theatrical releases in the '50s were mostly film-noir outings and unsuccessful character studies. In 1956, Cotten left film for several years in exchange for a string of successful television ventures, such as the series On Trial, which was later called The Joseph Cotten Show. He was also featured in the successful series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and the "General Electric Theater." He finished the decade with a cameo appearance in the Welles production Touch of Evil and the 1958 adaptation of From the Earth to the Moon.
The Sixties and Seventies
In 1960 he married British actress Patricia Medina, after his first wife, Lenore Kipp, died of leukemia earlier that year. After some time away from film, Cotten returned in 1964 in the horror classic Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, opposite fellow screen veterans Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, and Agnes Moorehead. The rest of the decade found Cotten in a number of forgettable B-movies, foreign productions, and TV movies.
In the early 1970s, Cotten followed a supporting role in Tora! Tora! Tora!, with several horror features such as The Abominable Dr. Phibes, opposite Vincent Price, and the classic Soylent Green (1973).
Later in the decade, Cotten was featured in several all-star disaster outings, including Airport '77 opposite James Stewart and again with Olivia de Havilland and the nuclear thriller Twilight's Last Gleaming. On TV, he did a guest spot opposite James Garner on the 70's TV detective drama The Rockford Files.
Last Years
One of Cotten's last films was 1980's infamous Heaven's Gate. Shortly after, the 75-year-old actor retired with his wife to their home in Westwood, California. Cotten published a popular autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere, in 1987. He died on February 6, 1994, of pneumonia, a complication of terminal (or metastasized) throat cancer at the age of 88, leaving behind his wife and stepdaughter. He was buried in Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia.
Legacy
Today, Cotten is considered one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. He was never nominated for an Academy Award, despite his immense body of work, including many films that are considered classics today. The only notable acting award Cotten received throughout his career was a Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his work in Portrait of Jennie.
Quote
" Orson Welles lists Citizen Kane as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for Shadow of a Doubt and Sir Carol Reed chose The Third Man - and I'm in all of them.
James Mason
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birth name James Neville Mason
Born May 15, 1909
Huddersfield, England, United Kingdom
Died July 27, 1984, age 75
Lausanne, Switzerland
Spouse(s) Pamela Mason (1941-1964)
Clarissa Kaye-Mason (1971-1984)
Academy Awards
Nominated: Best Actor
1954 A Star Is Born
Nominated: Best Supporting Actor
1966 Georgy Girl
1982 The Verdict
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical/Comedy
1955 A Star Is Born
James Neville Mason (May 15, 1909 - July 27, 1984) was a three-time Academy Award nominated English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films.
Early life
Mason was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England to John and Mabel Mason; his father was a wealthy merchant. Mason had no formal training as an actor and initially embarked upon it as a lark. He studied architecture at Peterhouse, Cambridge but got involved in stock theatre companies in his spare time before joining the Old Vic theatre in London under the guidance of Tyrone Guthrie and Alexander Korda who gave Mason a small film role in 1933 but fired him a few days into shooting.
Career
From 1935 to 1948 he starred in many British quota quickies. A conscientious objector during World War II (something which caused his family to break with him for many years), he became immensely popular for his brooding anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady. In 1949 he made his first Hollywood film, Caught, and then went on to star in many more feature films and early TV shows. Nominated three times for an Oscar, he never won one.
Mason's distinctive voice enabled him to play a menacing villain as greatly as his good looks assisted him as a leading man. His roles include the declining actor in the 1954 version of A Star Is Born, a mortally wounded terrorist in Odd Man Out (1946), Brutus in the 1953 film of Julius Caesar, General Erwin Rommel twice, once in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel in 1951, and in The Desert Rats (1953), Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), a suave masterspy in North by Northwest (1959), a determined explorer in Journey to the Center of the Earth (also 1959) and Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962). One of his last roles, that of a corrupt lawyer in The Verdict (1982), earned him his third and final Oscar nomination.
Mason was once in the frame to play James Bond in a 1958 TV adaptation of From Russia with Love, which was ultimately never produced. Despite being in his 50s he was still in the frame to play Bond in Dr. No before Sean Connery was cast. He was also approached to appear as Bond baddie Hugo Drax in Moonraker however he turned this down despite his renowned tendency to take any job offered him. This tendency led to certain unworthy credits on his resume, The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go, Bloodline and Hunt the Man Down being examples of this. However throughout his career he remained a powerful figure in the industry and he is now regarded as one of the finest film actors of the 20th century.
Private life
He was married twice:
Actress Pamela Kellino (1941-1965); one daughter, the late Portland Mason, and one son, Morgan. Portland Mason was named after Portland Hoffa, the wife of the American film comedian Fred Allen; the Allens and the Masons were friends.
Australian actress Clarissa Kaye (1971-his death)
Trivia
Mason was a devoted lover of animals, particularly cats. He and Pamela Kellino Mason co-authored the book The Cats in Our Lives, which was published in 1949. James Mason wrote most of the book and also illustrated it. In The Cats in Our Lives, he recounted humorous and sometimes touching tales of the cats (as well as a few dogs) he had known and loved.
In the late 1970s, Mason became a mentor to up-and-coming actor Sam Neill, who went on to have a successful career of his own.
James Mason's autobiography, Before I Forget, was published in 1981.
Mason survived a major heart attack in 1959 and died as a result of another on July 27, 1984 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was cremated, and (after a delay of 16 years) his ashes were buried in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. His old friend Charlie Chaplin is in a tomb a few steps away.
His son Morgan Mason is married to Belinda Carlisle, the former lead singer of The Go-Go's.
James Mason Court, a road in the Marsh area of Huddersfield, is named after him.
At Expo 67, the 1967 world's fair held in Canada, James Mason was officially named Film Actor of the Century.[citation needed]
References in popular culture
Graham Kennedy would use an imitation of James' distinctive voice as the default voice for an educated or English person on the Australian game show Blankety Blanks.
In 1991, Kelsey Grammer spoofed Mason as Captain Nemo in a skit while hosting Saturday Night Live. During the skit Nemo had to try to explain various units of nautical measurements while fighting off a giant squid.
For his audition for Saturday Night Live in 2005, Bill Hader gave an impersonation as Mason at a donut store trying to redeem an expired coupon.
British comedian Eddie Izzard often deliberately uses a James Mason impression as his standard "voice of God" in his standup routines.
On the DVD audio comentary of British Comedy The Mighty Boosh series two episode, "The Nightmare of Milky Joe" comedians Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt perform an impression of James Mason's vioce. In early days of The Mighty Boosh, Rich Fulcher and Noel Fielding performed "duelling Masons" in the Hen and Chickens in Highbury, London.
In the Jack Mckinney Robotech novelizations, when Zentraedi commander Khyron was seen for the first time by humans, during his holding of Minmei hostage, someone noted that "he talks like that sixties actor, James Mason".
In their 60's radio show "Pop Go The Beatles", when the host was introducing the song, John Lennon suggested "Why don't you do it in your famous James Mason impersonation voice?"
HIs voice served as the inspiration for the Monkey Pick Ass joke on 93.3 WMMR Philadelphia's Preston and Steve morning show.
Eddy Arnold
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Background information
Birth name Richard Edward Arnold
Also known as Tennessee Plowboy
Born May 15, 1918 (1918-05-15) (age 88)
Origin Henderson, Tennessee, USA
Genre(s) Country Music
Pop Music
Occupation(s) Singer
Instrument(s) Guitar
Years active 1946 - Present
Label(s) RCA Records
MGM Records
Website
www.eddyarnold.com
Eddy Arnold (born May 15, 1918) is an American country music singer who is second to George Jones in the number of individual hits on the country charts but, according to a formula derived by Joel Whitburn, is the all-time leader in an overall ranking for hits and their time on the charts. From 1945 through 1983 he had 145 charted songs, including 28 number-one hits.
Early years
Born Richard Edward Arnold in Henderson, Tennessee, he made his first radio appearance in 1936. During his childhood, he lost both his father and the family farm. When he turned 18 he left home to try to make his mark in the music world.
Arnold's formative musical years included early struggles to gain recognition until he landed a job as the lead male vocalist for the Pee Wee King band. By 1943, Arnold had become a solo star on the Grand Ole Opry. He was then signed by RCA Victor. In December of 1944, he cut his first record. Although all of his early records sold well, his initial big hit did not come until 1946 with "That's How Much I Love You." In common with many other country and western singers of the time, he had a folksy nickname: "The Tennessee Plowboy."
Managed by Col. Tom Parker (who later went on to control the career of Elvis Presley), Arnold began to dominate country music. In 1947-48 he had 13 of the top 20 songs. He successfully made the transition from radio to television, appearing frequently in the new medium. In 1955, he upset many in the country music establishment by going to New York to record with the Hugo Winterhalter Orchestra. The pop-oriented arrangements of "Cattle Call" and "The Richest Man (In the World)", however, helped to expand his appeal beyond its country base.
With the advent of rock and roll, Arnold's record sales dipped in the late 1950s. Along with RCA Victor label-mate Jim Reeves, he continued to try to court a wider audience by using pop-sounding, string-laced arrangements, a style that would come to be known as the Nashville sound.
Second Career
After Jerry Purcell became his manager in 1964, Arnold embarked on a "second career" that surpassed the success of the first one. In the process, he succeeded in his ambition of carrying his music to a more diverse audience. Already recorded by several other artists, "Make The World Go Away" was just another song until recorded by Arnold. Under the direction of producer Chet Atkins, and showcased by Bill Walker's arrangement and the talents of the Anita Kerr Singers and pianist Floyd Cramer, Arnold's rendition of "Make the World Go Away" became an international hit.
Bill Walker's precise, intricate arrangements provided the lush background for 16 straight Arnold hits through the late 1960s. Arnold started performing with symphony orchestras in virtually every major city. New Yorkers jammed prestigious Carnegie Hall for two concerts. Arnold appeared before the Hollywood crowd at the Coconut Grove and had long, sold-out engagements in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe.
After having recorded for RCA Victor since the 1940s, Arnold left the label to record four albums for MGM Records in the 1970s, posting one hit ("If The Whole World Stopped Lovin' "). He then successfully returned to RCA Victor with both the album Eddy, and the hit single "Cowboy", which evoked stylistic memories of his classic "Cattle Call." After a few more RCA releases, he retired from active singing; however, he did release a new RCA album, After All These Years in 2005 at the age of 87.
Reasons for success
There are several reasons for Arnold's great success. From the beginning he stood out from his contemporaries in the world of country singers. He never wore gaudy, glittering outfits. He sang from his diaphragm, not through his nose. He avoided the standard honky-tonk themes, preferring instead to sing songs that explored the intricacies of love.
Arnold also benefitted from his association with excellent musicians. The distinctive steel guitar of the late Roy Wiggins highlighted early recordings. Charles Grean, once employed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, played bass and wrote early arrangements, adding violins for the first time in 1956. Chet Atkins played on many of Arnold's records, even after he started serving as producer. Bassist, Bob Moore, the most recorded musician in history, first performed on the road with Eddie Arnold on the 1954 RCA Caravan and later performed on 75% of Mr. Arnold's hit recordings. Arnold also benefited from the management of Col. Parker, who guided his first career, and Jerry Purcell, who masterminded the second.
The most important factor for his success, however, was his voice. Steve Sholes, who produced all of his early hits, called Arnold a natural singer, comparing him to the likes of Bing Crosby and Enrico Caruso. Arnold worked hard perfecting his natural ability. A review of his musical career shows his progression from fledgling singer to polished performer.
Arnold's longevity is exceptional. For more than 50 years, he has transcended changing musical tastes. His recent concerts attract three generations of fans. To some he also serves as a role model; in a field often awash with alcohol and drugs, he has remained temperate. In an era of frequent divorces, Eddy and Sally Arnold have remained together for 60 years.
Arnold has been honored with induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame (in 1966), been voted Entertainer Of The Year, and received the Pioneer Award. Over his career, Arnold has sold over 85 million records and had 147 songs on the charts, including 28 Number 1 hits on Billboard's "Country Singles" top. Among his recordings are songs for mothers and children, hymns, show tunes, and novelty numbers. Probably, however, Arnold is best known for his way with a love song.
Trini Lopez
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Trini Lopez (born Trinidad López III, 15 May 1937, Dallas, Texas) is a Mexican-American singer and guitarist.
Lopez made his name on the club circuit of the Southwestern United States before being "discovered" in 1962 by the record producer Don Costa, while playing at the PJ Club in Hollywood, California. Costa was greatly taken with Lopez's latinized versions of contemporary hits and signed him up to Frank Sinatra's record label, Reprise Records. His debut album, Trini Lopez Live at PJ's, was released in 1963. The album included Lopez's most famous song, "If I Had A Hammer", which reached number one in 25 countries and was a radio favourite for many years. He also performed his own version of the traditional Mexican song "La Bamba" on this album.
His popularity led the Gibson Guitar Corporation to ask him in 1964 to design a guitar for them. He ended up designing two: The Trini Lopez Standard, a rock and roll model based on the Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow body, and the Lopez Deluxe, a variation of a Gibson jazz guitar designed by Barney Kessel.
He later recorded covers of other popular songs of the day, including "Lemon Tree" (1965), "I'm Coming Home Cindy" (1966) and "Sally Was a Good Old Girl" (1968).
During the 1960s and 1970s Lopez moved into acting as well as recording and playing, though his film career was not as successful as his music. His first film appearance was in Marriage On The Rocks (1965) where he appeared with Sinatra and Dean Martin. He was one of The Dirty Dozen (1967) and starred in Antonio (1973). He continued his musical career with extensive tours of Europe and Latin America during this period, remaining firmly within his Latin music genre; an attempt to break out by releasing a disco album in the United Kingdom in 1978 proved an embarrassing flop.
Since then, Lopez has done charitable work and received honors such as being inducted into the 'International Latin Music Hall of Fame' in 2003. He was still recording and appearing live in the early 2000s. Recently he announced a new CD album, and took part in a benefit concert to raise money for the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors.
Gus, actually I am wearing my birthday suit. The one you see in my avatar was a gift from my kids for my birthday.
Love all the songs from our folks here. Thanks so much, everyone.
Hey, hawkman. Love your funny about the Boston girls, and thanks once again for the celeb info.
I had not realized that Eddy Arnold was still with us, so here is a song by him.
Old faithful, we rode the range together
Old faithful in every kind of weather
When your round up days are over
There'll be pastures white with clover
For you old faithful pal of mine.
Hurry up old fellow,
'Cause the moon is yellow tonight
Hurry up old fellow
'Cause the moon is mellow and bright.
There's a coyote howlin' to the moon above
So carry me back to the one I love
Hurry up old fellow
'Cause we gotta get home tonight.
Old faithful we rode the range together
Old faithful in every kind of weather
When your round up days are over
There'll be pastures white with clover
For you old faithful pal of mine.
For you old faithful pal of mine...
Will, as usual, await our puppy before commenting further.
