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edgar, I didn't realize that the Gershwin brothers did that song. Nice memories, Texas.

Nor, listeners, did I realize that Johnny did this one.

ONCE IN A WHILE


Johnny Mathis - 1988


Once in a while won't you try to give one little thought to me,
Though someone else may be nearer your heart.

Once in a while won't you dream of the moments I shared with you,
Moments before we two drifted apart.

In love's smouldering ember one spark may remain.
If love can remember that spark may burn again.

I know that I'll be contented with yesterday's memories,
Knowing you think of me once in a while.

Good afternoon WA2K.

Remembering Dorothy Parker today:

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.



and wishing Valerie Harper a Happy 67th Birthday.

John Lee Hooker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Background information

Born August 22, 1917(1917-08-22)
Origin Coahoma County
Died June 21, 2001
Genre(s) Electric blues
Delta blues
Country blues
Detroit blues
Occupation(s) singer-songwriter, guitarist
Years active 1948-2001
Label(s) Vee-Jay, Chess Records and others
Associated
acts Canned Heat
Website johnleehooker.com
Notable instrument(s)
Epiphone Sheraton
Epiphone Sheraton II

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 - June 21, 2001) was an influential American post-war blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter born in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi. From a musical family, he was a cousin of Earl Hooker. John was also influenced by his stepfather, a local blues guitarist, who learned in Shreveport, Louisiana to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time.[1] John developed a half-spoken style that was his trademark. Though, similar to the early Delta blues, his music was rhythmically free. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen" (1948) and "Boom Boom" (1962).




Biography

Early life

Hooker was born on 22 August 1917[2] in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi,[1] the youngest of the eleven children of William Hooker (1871-1923), a sharecropper and a Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (1875-?). Hooker and his siblings were home-schooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs, with his earliest musical exposure being the spirituals sung in church. In 1921, his parents separated. The next year, his mother married William Moore, a blues singer who provided John's first introduction to the guitar (and whom John would later credit for his distinctive playing style).[3] The year after that (1923), John's natural father died; and at age 15, John ran away from home, never to see his mother and step-father again.[4]

Throughout the 1930s, Hooker lived in Memphis where he worked on Beale Street and occasionally performed at house parties.[1] He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, drifting until he found himself in Detroit in 1948 working at Ford Motor Company. He felt right at home near the blues venues and saloons on Hastings Street, the heart of black entertainment on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its piano players, guitar players were scarce. Performing in Detroit clubs, his popularity grew quickly, and seeking a louder instrument than his crude acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.[5]


Career

Hooker's recording career began in 1948 when his agent placed a demo tape, made by Hooker, with the Bihari brothers, owners of the Modern Records label. The company initially released an up-tempo number, "Boogie Chillen", which became Hooker's first hit single.[1] Though they were not songwriters, the Biharis often purchased or claimed co-authorship of songs that appeared on their labels, thus securing songwriting royalties for themselves, in addition to their other streams of income .

Sometimes these songs were older tunes renamed (B.B.King's "Rock Me Baby"), anonymous jams ("B.B.'s Boogie") or songs by employees (bandleader Vince Weaver). The Biharis used a number of pseudonyms for songwriting credits: Jules was credited as Jules Taub; Joe as Joe Josea; and Sam as Sam Ling. One song by John Lee Hooker, "Down Child" is solely credited to "Taub", with Hooker receiving no credit for the song whatsoever. Another, "Turn Over a New Leaf" is credited to Hooker and "Ling".

Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting the occasionally traditional blues lyric (such as "if I was chief of police, I would run her right out of town"), he freely invented many of his songs from scratch. Recording studios in the 1950s rarely paid black musicians more than a pittance, so Hooker would spend the night wandering from studio to studio, coming up with new songs or variations on his songs for each studio. Due to his recording contract, he would record these songs under obvious pseudonyms such as "John Lee Booker", "Johnny Hooker", or "John Cooker."[6]

His early solo songs were recorded under Bernie Besman. John Lee Hooker rarely played on a standard beat, changing tempo to fit the needs of the song. This made it nearly impossible to add backing tracks. As a result, Besman would record Hooker, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden palette.[7]

He appeared and sang in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. Due to Hooker's improvisatory style, his performance was filmed and sound-recorded live at the scene at Chicago's Maxwell Street Market, in contrast to the usual "playback" technique used in most film musicals [8]. Hooker was also a direct influence in the look of John Belushi's character Jake Blues, borrowing his trademark sunglasses and soul patch.

In 1989, he joined with a number of musicians, including Keith Richard, Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt to record The Healer, for which he and Bonnie Raitt won a Grammy award. Hooker recorded several songs with Van Morrison, including "Never Get Out of These Blues Alive", "The Healing Game" and "I Cover the Waterfront". He also appeared on stage with Van Morrison several times, some of which was released on the live album A Night in San Francisco. The same year he appeared as the title character on Pete Townshend's The Iron Man: A Musical.

Hooker recorded over 100 albums. He lived the last years of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where, in 1997, he opened a nightclub called "John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room", after one of his hits.[9]

He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died soon afterwards at the age of 83. The last song Hooker recorded before his death, is "Ali D'Oro", a collaboration with the Italian soul singer Zucchero, in which Hooker sang the chorus "I lay down with an angel". He was survived by eight children, nineteen grandchildren, numerous great-grandchildren and a nephew.

Among his many awards, Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two of his songs, "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom" were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. "Boogie Chillen" was included as one of the Songs of the Century. He was also inducted in 1980 into the Blues Hall of Fame. In 2000, Hooker was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.


Music

Hooker's guitar playing is closely aligned with piano Boogie Woogie. He would play the walking bass pattern with his thumb, stopping to emphasize the end of a line with a series of trills, done by rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs. The songs that most epitomize his early sound are "Boogie Chillen", about being 17 and wanting to go out to dance at the Boogie clubs, "Baby Please Don't Go", a more typical blues song, summed up by its title, and "Tupelo", a stunningly sad song about the flooding of Tupelo, Mississippi.

He maintained a solo career, popular with blues and folk music fans of the early 1960s and crossed over to white audiences, giving an early opportunity to the young Bob Dylan. As he got older, he added more and more people to his band, changing his live show from simply Hooker with his guitar to a large band, with Hooker singing.

His vocal phrasing was less closely tied to specific bars than most blues singers'. This casual, rambling style had been gradually diminishing with the onset of electric blues bands from Chicago but, even when not playing solo, Hooker retained it in his sound.

Though Hooker lived in Detroit during most of his career, he is not associated with the Chicago-style blues prevalent in large northern cities, as much as he is with the southern rural blues styles, known as delta blues, country blues, folk blues, or "front porch blues". His use of an electric guitar tied together the Delta blues with the emerging post-war electric blues.[10]

His songs have been covered by MC5, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, The Yardbirds, The Animals, R.L. Burnside, the J. Geils Band and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. One of his later songs, "Harry's Philosophy", was heavily sampled by acid jazz DJ St. Germain for use on the song "Sure Thing", off St. Germain's album Tourist.


Awards and recognition

A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991
Grammy Awards:

Best Traditional Blues Recording, 1990 for "I'm in the Mood" (with Bonnie Raitt)
Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, 1998, "Don't Look Back" (with Van Morrison)
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000
Two of his songs, "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom" were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. "Boogie Chillen" was included as one of the Songs of the Century.

Quotes

"It don't take me no three days to record no album." (during the recording of the double album Hooker 'N Heat with Canned Heat.)
"I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks." (when describing his own music in an article from The Daily News, Atlanta, Ga. 1992)

Valerie Harper
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born August 22, 1940 (1940-08-22) (age 67)
Suffern, New York, United States
[show]Awards
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Lead Actress - Comedy Series
1975 Rhoda

Outstanding Supporting Actress - Comedy Series
1973 The Mary Tyler Moore Show
1972 The Mary Tyler Moore Show
1971 The Mary Tyler Moore Show





Valerie Harper (born August 22, 1940 in Suffern, New York) is an Emmy Award-winning American actress, best known for her role as Rhoda Morgenstern-Gerard on the 1970s television show The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and its spinoff, Rhoda.




Biography

Harper was born in Suffern at Good Samaritan Hospital in Rockland County, New York, to a mixed Catholic/Lutheran family, and raised in Oregon. Because of her role on the The Mary Tyler Moore Show, however, it is often assumed she is Jewish and was raised in New York City. Conversely, her former roommate, Arlene Golonka (Mayberry R.F.D.), is presumed to be Christian, though she is Jewish.

She started out as a dancer/chorus girl on Broadway in the late 1950s and early 1960s in such shows such as Take Me Along and Subways Are For Sleeping, as well as Wildcat, in which she performed with Lucille Ball. She can been seen as an extra in rock-and roll promo films that featured such artists as "Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers". In 2001 she returned to the Broadway stage to replace Linda Lavin in The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.

She also appeared in bit parts in several films beginning with Li'l Abner (1959), when she was a teenager. During the late 1960s, however, Harper worked somewhat less, though she appeared in Carl Reiner's play Something Different in 1968. She also wrote an episode of Love, American Style with her then-husband, actor/writer, Richard Schaal, whose daughter, actress Wendy Schaal (who voices "Francine Smith" on American Dad), was her stepdaughter.

Things changed when Harper got the role of the wise-cracking yet vulnerable uber-Jewish New Yorker, Rhoda Morgenstern, on two landmark CBS TV sitcoms of the 1970s: The Mary Tyler Moore Show (regular from 1970-74) and its spin-off Rhoda (1974-78), in which she played the title role. She won four Emmy awards and a Golden Globe for her work as Rhoda Morgenstern on both series.

She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for "New Star of the Year" for her role in 1974's Freebie and The Bean.[1]

Harper was one of the first people to guest star on The Muppet Show in its first season.

She also played family matriarch Valerie Hogan on the 1986 sitcom Valerie. It was renamed Valerie's Family in 1987 after Harper abruptly left the series (following a dispute with the producers) and was replaced by Sandy Duncan, who played her sister-in-law.

Harper has worked almost exclusively in theatre and television, and has also had roles in made-for-TV-movies and guest spots on a number of series, including Sex and the City. In the 1990s, she advocated hormone replacement therapy for the Eli Lilly company.

Harper is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and ran for president in the 2001 election, losing to Melissa Gilbert. She currently serves on the national board of directors of S.A.G.[2]

A 2000 project, Mary and Rhoda, was planned as a reunion series for Harper and her friend and longtime co-star, Mary Tyler Moore, but the project instead appeared as a made-for-TV movie on the ABC network.

Cindy Williams
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Cynthia Jane Williams
Born August 22, 1947 (1947-08-22) (age 60)
Van Nuys, California, USA
Official site Official Website

Cindy Williams (born August 22, 1947) is an American actress best known for starring in the TV series Laverne & Shirley and the eponymous "Shirley".




Early life

Williams was born Cynthia Jane Williams in Van Nuys, California, to John and Lillie Williams. She has a sister Carol Ann Williams. She graduated from Birmingham High School. Among her classmates were famed financier Michael Milken and fellow actress Sally Field. Cindy also attended Los Angeles City College and went on to become a movie actress in the early 1970s. She has appeared in 19 movies, but is best known for starring in the TV series Laverne & Shirley.


Career

Williams picked up important film roles early in her career: George Cukor's Travels with My Aunt 1972; as Ron Howard's high school sweetheart in George Lucas's American Graffiti 1973; Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation 1974. However, it was television that would make her rich and famous. She was best known for her portrayal, from 1976 until 1982, of loyal and fun-loving brewery worker Shirley Feeney in the sitcom Laverne & Shirley. She left the show after she became pregnant with her first child. Later, she would star in the short-lived 1993-1994 sitcom Getting By. She also guest starred on several shows, including two episodes of the sitcom 8 Simple Rules.

Williams was executive producer on the successful Steve Martin film Father of the Bride and its sequel.

In January 2007, she appeared on the Opie and Anthony radio show in a bit called Has-Been Corner. According to the interview, she apparently was not aware of the title of the segment and was blindsided by the "has-been" reference. After several minutes, she seemed to get rather annoyed.

In April 2007, it was announced that Williams would reunite with her Laverne & Shirley co-star Penny Marshall for a TV Land network reality series in which the ladies would play themselves and live in Marshall's house, where the show would be filmed.


Personal life

Cindy was married to Bill Hudson of the musical trio Hudson Brothers in 1981, but it ended in divorce in 2000. Together they have two children: Emily Hudson (born in 1983) and Zachary Hudson (born in 1986). She and her family reside in Los Angeles.

Bill Hudson was previously married to Goldie Hawn and is the father of their two children, Oliver and Kate Hudson.

THINGS THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO SAY WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK:
- Indubitably;
- Innovative;
- Preliminary;
- Proliferation.


THINGS THAT ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO SAY WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK:
- Specificity;
- British Constitution;
- Passive-aggressive disorder;
- Loquacious Transubstantiate.


THINGS THAT ARE DOWNRIGHT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY
WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK:

- Thanks, but I don't want to have sex;
- Nope, no more beer for me;
- Sorry, but you're not really my type;
- Good evening officer, isn't it lovely out tonight;
- Oh, I just couldn't. No one wants to hear me sing.

Well, folks. The puppy and the hawk did a duet and a quartet today.

The pup trotted in with Dorothy and Valerie, and the hawk gave us four wonderful bio's. Thanks to "the boat of youse."

Well, Bob of Boston, now we know what we can say and what we're not likely to say when imbibing. That gave us all a smile.

Let's remember Dorothy first, then we'll hear a very brief song about Golda Mier since Valerie is doing "Golda from the Balcony".

Dorothy Parker


One Perfect Rose
A single flower he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

Golda as done by Babs

So long as still within our breasts
The jewish heart beats true,
So long as still towards the east,
To zion, looks the jew,
So long our hopes are not yet lost
Two thousand years we cherished them
To live in freedom in the land
Of zion and jerusalem.

Back later, listeners, with a song by John Lee Hooker.

Who's gonna be your man
Who's gonna be your man
Who's gonna kiss your pretty red lips
Who's gonna be your man
Who's gonna shoe your pretty little foot
Who's gonna glove your hand
Who's gonna kiss your pretty red lips
Who's gonna be your man

I look down the railroad track
Just as far as I could see
All I've seen was a little bitty hand
Kept waving after me
Who's gonna be your man
Who's gonna be your man
Who's gonna kiss your pretty red lips darling
Who's gonna be your man

I've been counting every tree
Count every railroad tie
I've been counting on you my pretty baby
To love me till I die
Cause I wants to be your man
I wants to be your man
I wants to kiss your pretty red lips baby
Won't you let me be your man
Don't you weep my own true love
Don't you weep or cry
Each click of the track tells me
I'll be back in the very near by and by
Cause I'm gonna be your man
I'm gonna be your man
I'm gonna kiss your pretty red lips darling
I'm gonna be your man.

Who's Gonna Be Your Man
Harry Belafonte

It's gonna be one of those evenings, folks.

edgar, your playing that Harry Belafone song reminded me that I was going to do one by John Lee Hooker, but inspired by Tai Chi and her old sheet music, I decided that I would go with this one. I must have been may six or seven when Mrs. Anderson gave all her sheet music to my oldest sister, and this was among them and remember her playing it. This one, however is a parody, but funny.



The sheik of araby,he wrote a note to me
He said I ought to see some femininity

Down beside the Dardanella bay
where oriental breezes play
there lives a lovely maid armenian
The swellest of the belles in all the Dardanelles

By the Dardanellas with glowin´eyes
she looks across the sea and sighs
To weave the spell that is serenian

And so I had to go to see if it was so
So we cut out for Turkeystan
We both picked up and went toward the orient
Wowee it was a scene,like man

Oh my Dardanella,I love your Harem eyes
I´m a lucky fella to capture such a prize
Ah,well I knows my love for you and he knows that I´ll be true
But tell me Dardanella,is that veil a yella
She looks so dreamy in her Maidenform bra

Oh my Dardanella all we´d like to say
we have commitments in the USA
By MCA, but as we slowly sail away
We´re singin´old lang syne
But dreamy Dardanella a star of love divine

We wrote the sheik a note
and this is what we wrote
We dug the trip the most,if you should make the coast
we´ll throw a gig for you,so bring your Harem too
and most especially,the one we wanna see
dreamy Dardanella,she´s of the Harem eyes

Well, there's our Tai Chi. Where your kinsman be? M.D. is having "..viva le company.." Great to see you laughing, gal.

Well, The Ballad of John Henry is too long to play, so let's do this short version called a sequel.

Oh, the nine pound hammer,
Is a little too heavy,

Oh, the nine pound hammer,
Is a little too heavy

Oh, the nine pound hammer
Is a little too heavy, Lord

It killed John Henry
(it killed John Henry)

But it won't kill me.

Well I'm sowing on the mountain
and I'm reaping in the valley

Well I'm sowing on the mountain
And I'm reaping in the valley
I'm sowing on the mountain,
And I'm reaping in the valley, Lord

We're gonna reap
(we're gonna reap)

Just what we sow.

Did that one from memory. (whew!)

i'll have frank sinatra sing my lullaby tonight !
from the four-cd set : THE BEST OF THE COLUMBIA YEARS 1943-1952 ,
if you can get hold of it GRAB IT ! it's just great stuff !
(this is the last song on cd 4 - recorded 9/17/1952)
hbg

Good morning, WA2K folks.

Hey, hbg. I love your goodnight song by old blue eyes, and indeed it is a good question, but often the wind brings us an answer.

Scorpions - Wind Of Change

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change

The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers
The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change

[Chorus:]
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change

Walking down the street
Distant memories
Are buried in the past forever

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change

The wind of change blows straight
Into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring
The freedom bell for peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change

Gene Kelly
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Eugene Curran Kelly
Born August 23, 1912(1912-08-23)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Died February 2, 1996 (aged 83)
Beverly Hills, California, USA
Years active 1942 - 1985
Spouse(s) Betsy Blair (1941-1957)
Jeanne Coyne (1960-1973)
Patricia Ward (1990-1996)
[show]Awards
Academy Awards
Academy Honorary Award (1952)
César Awards
Life Achievement Award (1996)
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Children's Program
1967 Jack and the Beanstalk
Golden Globe Awards
Cecil B. DeMille Award (1981)
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Life Achievement Award (1989)

Eugene Curran Kelly (August 23, 1912 - February 2, 1996), better known as Gene Kelly, was an American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer, and choreographer.

Kelly was a major exponent of 20th century filmed dance, known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen. Although he is probably best known today for his performance in Singin' in the Rain, he dominated the Hollywood musical film from the mid 1940s until its demise in the late 1950s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Kelly among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No. 15.




Early life

Gene was the third son of James Kelly, a phonograph salesman, and Harriet Curran, who were both children of Irish Roman Catholic immigrants. He was born in the Highland Park neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and, at the age of eight, was enrolled by his mother in dance classes, along with his older brother James. They both rebelled, and, according to Kelly:" We didn't like it much and were continually involved in fistfights with the neighbourhood boys who called us sissies...I didn't dance again until I was fifteen."[1] Kelly returned to dance on his own initiative and by then was an accomplished sportsman and well able to take care of himself. He graduated from Peabody High School in 1929. He enrolled in Pennsylvania State College to study journalism but the economic crash obliged him to seek employment to help with the family's finances. At this time, he worked up dance routines with his younger brother Fred in order to earn prize money in local talent contests.[1]

In 1931 Kelly enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), to study economics where he joined the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics in 1933.[2] In 1930, his family started a dance studio on Munhall Road in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 1932, it was renamed The Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance. A second location was opened in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1933. While still an undergraduate student and later as a student at Pitt's School of Law, Gene was a teacher at the dance studio. Eventually, though, he decided to pursue his career as a dance teacher and entertainer full-time and so dropped out of law school after two months. He began to focus increasingly on performing, later claiming: "With time I became disenchanted with teaching because the ratio of girls to boys was more than ten to one, and once the girls reached sixteen the dropout rate was very high."[1] In 1937, having successfully managed and developed the family's dance school business, he moved to New York City in search of work as a choreographer.[1]


Stage career

After a fruitless search, Kelly returned to Pittsburgh, to his first position as a choreographer with the Charles Gaynor musical revue Hold Your Hats at the Pittsburgh Playhouse in April, 1938. Kelly appeared in six of the sketches, one of which, "La Cumparsita", became the basis of an extended Spanish number in Anchors Aweigh eight years later.

His first Broadway assignment, in November 1938, was as a dancer in Cole Porter's Leave It to Me as the American ambassador's secretary who supports Mary Martin while she sings "My Heart Belongs to Daddy". He had been hired by Robert Alton who had staged a show at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and been impressed by Kelly's teaching skills. When Alton moved on to choreograph One for the Money he hired Kelly to act, sing and dance in a total of eight routines. His first career breakthrough was in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Time of Your Life, which opened on November 11, 1939, where for the first time on Broadway he danced to his own choreography. In the same year he received his first assignment as a Broadway choreographer, for Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe. His future wife, Betsy Blair was a member of the cast, they began dating and were married on October 16, 1941.

In 1940, he was given the leading role in Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, again choreographed by Robert Alton, and this role propelled him to stardom. During its run he told reporters: "I don't believe in conformity to any school of dancing. I create what the drama and the music demand. While I am a hundred percent for ballet technique, I use only what I can adapt to my own use. I never let technique get in the way of mood or continuity."[1] It was at this time also, that his phenomenal commitment to rehearsal and hard work was noticed by his colleagues. Van Johnson who also appeared in Pal Joey recalls: "I watched him rehearsing, and it seemed to me that there was no possible room for improvement. Yet he wasn't satisfied. It was midnight and we had been rehearsing since eight in the morning. I was making my way sleepily down the long flight of stairs when I heard staccato steps coming from the stage...I could see just a single lamp burning. Under it, a figure was dancing...Gene."[1]

Offers from Hollywood began to arrive but Kelly was in no particular hurry to quit New York. Eventually, he signed with David O. Selznick, agreeing to go to Hollywood at the end of his commitment to Pal Joey, in October 1941. Prior to leaving he also choreographed the stage production of Best Foot Forward.

Kelly did not return to stage work until his MGM contract ended in 1957, and in 1958 he directed Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical play Flower Drum Song. Early in 1960 Kelly, an ardent Francophile and fluent French speaker, was invited by A. M. Julien, the general administrator of Paris Opera to select his own material and create a modern ballet for the company, the first time an American received such an assignment. The result was Pas de Dieux, based on Greek mythology combined with the music of George Gershwin's Concerto in F. It was a major success, and led to his being honored with the Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Government.


Film career

1941-1944: Becoming established in Hollywood

Selznick sold half of Kelly's contract to MGM and loaned him out to MGM for his first motion picture: For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland. Kelly was "appalled at the sight of myself blown up twenty times. I had an awful feeling that I was a tremendous flop"[1] but the picture did well and, in the face of much internal resistance, Arthur Freed of MGM picked up the other half of Kelly's contract. After appearing in the B-movie drama Pilot no. 5 he took the male lead in Cole Porter's Du Barry Was a Lady opposite Lucille Ball. His first opportunity to dance to his own choreography came in his next picture Thousands Cheer, where he performed a mock-love dance with a mop.

He achieved his breakthrough as a dancer on film, when MGM loaned him out to Columbia to play opposite Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944), where he created a memorable routine dancing to his own reflection. In his next film Anchors Aweigh (1945), MGM virtually gave him a free hand to devise a range of dance routines, including the celebrated and much imitated [3] animated dances with Tom and Jerry, and his duets with Frank Sinatra. This role garnered him his first and only Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In Ziegfeld Follies (1946) - which was produced in 1944 but not released until 1946 - Kelly teamed up with Fred Astaire - for whom he had the greatest admiration - in the famous "The Babbitt and the Bromide" challenge dance routine before leaving the studio for wartime service. Throughout this period Kelly was obliged to appear in straight acting roles in a series of cheap B-movies, now largely forgotten.

At the end of 1944, Kelly enlisted in the United States Naval Air Service and was commissioned as lieutenant, junior grade. He was stationed in the Photographic Section, Washington D.C., where he was involved in writing and directing a range of documentaries, and this stimulated his interest in the production side of film-making.


1946-1952: The glory years at MGM

On his return to Hollywood in the spring of 1946, MGM had nothing lined up and used him in yet another B-movie: Living in a Big Way. The film was considered so weak that Kelly was requested to design and insert a series of dance routines, and his ability to carry off such assignments was noticed. This led to his next picture with Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, the film version of Cole Porter's The Pirate, in which Kelly plays the eponymous swashbuckler. Now regarded as a classic, the film was ahead of its time and was not well received. The Pirate is now best remembered for the teaming of Kelly with The Nicholas Brothers - the leading African-American dancers of their day - in a dance routine of astonishing virtuosity. Although MGM wanted Kelly to return to safer and more commercial vehicles, he ceaselessly fought for an opportunity to direct his own musical film. In the interim, he capitalised on his swashbuckling image as one of The Three Musketeers and appeared with Vera-Ellen in the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue ballet from Words and Music (1948). There followed Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), his second film with Sinatra, where Kelly paid tribute to his Irish heritage in The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day routine. It was this musical film which persuaded Arthur Freed to allow Kelly to make ON the Town, where he teamed for the third and final time with Frank Sinatra, creating a breakthrough in the musical film genre which has been described [1] as "the most inventive and effervescent musical thus far produced in Hollywood".

With On the Town, Stanley Donen, who Kelly had brought to Hollywood as his assistant choreographer, received co-director credit. According to Kelly: "...when you are involved in doing choreography for film you must have expert assistants. I needed one to watch my performance, and one to work with the cameraman on the timing..without such people as Stanley, Carol Haney and Jeanne Coyne I could never have done these things. When we came to do On the Town, I knew it was time for Stanley to get screen credit because we weren't boss-assistant anymore but co-creators."[1] Together, they opened up the musical form, taking the film musical out of the studio and into real locations, with Donen taking responsibility for the staging and Kelly handling the choreography. Kelly went much further than before in introducing modern ballet into his dance sequences, going so far in the "Day in New York" routine as to substitute four leading ballet specialists for Sinatra, Munshin, Garrett and Miller.[2]

It was now Kelly's turn to ask the studio for a straight acting role and he took the lead role in the early mafia melodrama: The Black Hand (1949). There followed Summer Stock (1950) - Judy Garland's last musical film for MGM - in which Kelly performed the celebrated "You, You Wonderful You" solo routine with a newspaper and a squeaky floorboard. In his book "Easy the Hard Way", Joe Pasternak singles out Kelly for his patience and willingness to spend as much time as necessary to enable the ailing Garland to complete her part.[1]


There followed in quick succession two musicals which have secured Kelly's reputation as a major force in the Americal musical film, An American in Paris (1951) and - probably the most popular and admired of all film musicals - Singin' in the Rain (1952). As co-director, lead star and choreographer, Kelly was the central driving force. Johnny Green, head of music at MGM at the time, described him as follows: "Gene is easygoing as long as you know exactly what you are doing when you're working with him. He's a hard taskmaster and he loves hard work. If you want to play on his team you'd better like hard work too. He isn't cruel but he is tough, and if Gene believed in something he didn't care who he was talking to, whether it was Louis B. Mayer or the gatekeeper. He wasn't awed by anybody and he had a good record of getting what he wanted".[1]. An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and, in the same year, Kelly was presented with an honorary Academy Award for his contribution to film musicals and the art of choreography. The film also marked the debut of Leslie Caron, who Kelly had spotted in Paris and brought to Hollywood. Its dream ballet finale, lasting an unprecedented thirteen minutes was the most expensive production number ever filmed up to that point and was described by Bosley Crowther as being "whoop de doo ... one of the finest ever put on the screen"[2]. Singin' in the Rain featured Kelly's celebrated and much imitated[4] solo dance routine to the title song, along with the famous "Moses Supposes" routine with Donald O'Connor and the "Broadway Melody" finale with Cyd Charisse, and while it did not initially generate the same enthusiasm as An American in Paris, it subsequently overtook the latter film to occupy its current pre-eminent place among critics and filmgoers alike.


1953-1957: The decline of the Hollywood musical

Kelly, at the very peak of his creative powers, now made what in retrospect is seen[2] as a serious mistake. In December of 1951 he signed a contract with MGM which sent him to Europe for nineteen months so that Kelly could use MGM funds frozen in Europe to make three pictures while personally benefiting from tax exemptions. Only one of these pictures was a musical, Invitation to the Dance, a pet project of Kelly's to bring modern ballet to mainstream film audiences which was beset with delays and technical problems and wasn't released until 1956, when it flopped. When Kelly returned to Hollywood in 1954, the film musical was already beginning to feel the pressures from television, and MGM cut the budget for his next picture Brigadoon (1954), with Cyd Charisse, forcing the film to be made on studio backlots instead of on location in Scotland. This year also saw him appear as guest star with his brother Fred in the celebrated "I Love To Go Swimmin' with Wimmen" routine in Deep in My Heart. MGM's refusal to loan him out for Guys and Dolls and Pal Joey put further strains on his relationship with the studio. He negotiated an exit to his contract which involved making three further pictures for MGM.

The first of these, It's Always Fair Weather, (1956) co-directed with Donen, was a musical satire on television and advertising, and includes his famous roller skate dance routine to "I Like Myself", and a dance trio with Michael Kidd and Dan Dailey which allowed Kelly to experiment with the widescreen possibilities of Cinemascope. A modest success, it was followed by Kelly's last musical film for MGM, Les Girls (1957), in which he partnered a trio of leading ladies, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg, fittingly ending, as he had begun, with a Cole Porter musical. The third picture he completed was a co-production between MGM and himself, the B-movie The Happy Road, set in his beloved France, his first foray in his new role as producer-director-actor.


1958-1985: Years of perseverance

Although Kelly continued to make some film appearances, most of his efforts were now concentrated on film production and directing. He directed Jackie Gleason in Gigot in Paris, but the film was subsequently drastically re-cut by Seven Arts Productions[2] and flopped. Another French effort, Jacques Demy's homage to the MGM musical: Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) in which Kelly appeared, also performed poorly.

His first foray into television was a documentary for NBC's Omnibus, Dancing is a Man's Game (1958) where he assembled a group of America's greatest sportsmen - including Mickey Mantle, Sugar Ray Robinson and Bob Cousy - and reinterpreted their moves choreographically, as part of his lifelong quest to remove the stigma of effeminacy[2] which surrounds the art of dance, while articulating the philosophy behind his dance style. It gained an Emmy nomination for choreography and now stands as the key document explaining Kelly's approach to modern dance.

Kelly also frequently appeared on television shows during the 1960s, but his one effort at a TV series: as Father O'Malley in Going My Way (1962-1963) was dropped after one season, although it subsequently enjoyed great popularity in Catholic countries outside of the US.[2] He went on to make two major TV specials: New York, New York (1966) and produced and directed Jack and the Beanstalk (1967) which again combined cartoon animation with live dance, winning him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program.

In 1963 Kelly joined Universal Pictures for a two year stint which proved to be the most unproductive of his career to date. He joined 20th Century Fox in 1965 but had little to do - partly due to his decision to decline assignments away from Los Angeles for family reasons. His perseverance finally paid off with the major box-office hit A Guide for the Married Man (1967) where he directed Walter Matthau and a major opportunity arose when Fox - buoyed by the returns from The Sound of Music (1965) - commissioned Kelly to direct Hello, Dolly! (1969), again directing Matthau along with Barbara Streisand, but which unfortunately failed to recoup the enormous production expenses.

In 1970 he made another TV special: Gene Kelly and 50 Girls and was invited to bring the show to Las Vegas, which he duly did for an eight-week stint - on condition he be paid more than any artist had hitherto been paid there.[2] He directed veteran actors James Stewart and Henry Fonda in the comedy western The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) which performed very well at the box-office. In 1974 he appeared as a narrator in the surprise hit of the year That's Entertainment! and subsequently directed and co-starred with his friend Fred Astaire in the sequel That's Entertainment, Part II (1976). It was a measure of his powers of persuasion that he managed to coax the seventy-seven year old Astaire - who had insisted that his contract rule out any dancing, having long since retired - into performing a series of song and dance duets, evoking a powerful nostalgia for the glory days of the American musical film. He continued to make frequent TV appearances and in 1980, appeared in an acting and dancing role opposite Olivia Newton John in Xanadu (1980), a bizarre[2] and expensive flop which has since attained a cult following. In Kelly's opinion "The concept was marvellous but it just didn't come off".[1]In the same year he was invited by Francis Ford Coppola to recruit a production staff for American Zeotrope's One from the Heart (1982). Although Coppola's ambition[2] was for Kelly to establish a production unit to rival the legendary Freed Unit at MGM, the film's failure put paid to this idea. His last major film assignment was as executive producer and co-host for That's Dancing! (1985) - a celebration of the history of dance in the American musical.


Personal life

Kelly was married to Betsy Blair for 16 years (1941 - 1957) and they had one child, Kerry. She divorced Kelly in 1957. In 1960, Kelly married his choreographic assistant Jeanne Coyne who had divorced Stanley Donen in 1949 after a brief marriage. He remained married to Coyne from 1960 till her death in 1973 and they had two children Bridget and Tim. He was married to Patricia Ward from 1990 until his death in 1996.

Gene Kelly was a lifelong Democratic Party supporter with strong progressive convictions, which occasionally created difficulty for him as his heyday coincided with the McCarthy era in the US. In 1947, he was part of the Hollywood delegation which flew to Washington to protest at the first official hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His first wife, Betsy Blair, was suspected of being a Communist sympathiser and when MGM, who had offered Blair a part in Marty (1955), were considering withdrawing her under pressure from the American Legion, Kelly successfully threatened MGM with a pullout from It's Always Fair Weather unless his wife was restored to the part.[2][5] He used his position on the board of directors of The Writer's Guild of America on a number of occasions to mediate disputes between unions and the Hollywood studios, and although he was frequently accused by the Right of championing the unions, he was valued by the studios as an effective mediator.

A gregarious and highly articulate individual, he retained a lifelong passion for sports and relished competition. With his wife, he organised weekly parties at his Beverly Hills home which were renowned for an intensely competitive and physical version of charades, known as "The Game".[5]

Kelly died on February 2, 1996, in Beverly Hills, California, after suffering two strokes, at the age of 83.

Vera Miles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Vera May Ralston
Born August 23, 1929 (1929-08-23) (age 78)
Boise City, Oklahoma, USA

Vera Miles (born August 23, 1929 or 1930[1]) is an American actress.





Biography

Early life

Miles was born Vera May Ralston in Boise City, Oklahoma to Burnice (née Wyrick) and Thomas Ralston.[1][2] She grew up in Pratt and in Wichita, Kansas where, as a teenager, she worked nights as a Western Union operator-typist and graduated from Wichita North High School. She was crowned Miss Kansas in 1948.


Career: 1950-1957

Her success as a beauty queen prompted her move to Los Angeles where, in 1950, she soon began landing small roles in film and television including a minor part in as a chorus girl in Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), a musical starring Janet Leigh, with whom Miles would go on to co-star nine years later in Psycho for director Alfred Hitchcock. Attracting the attention of several producers, she was put under contract at various studios where she posed for cheesecake and publicity photographs, as was standard procedure for most up-and-coming Hollywood starlets of the era. Under contract starlet to Warner Bros., she was cast in films such as The Charge At Feather River in 3-D but lost out on doing a big 3-D hit starring Vincent Price, House of Wax, for which she was considered. She said, "I was dropped by the best studios in town." In 1954, she wed her handsome and virile leading man from Tarzan's Hidden Jungle (1955), Gordon Scott (and divorced him in 1959).

Legendary motion picture director John Ford picked her to star as Jeffrey Hunter's spirited love interest in The Searchers (1956), starring John Wayne, Natalie Wood, Ward Bond and Dorothy Jordan. Widely considered one of the screen's definitive and most influential Westerns, The Searchers was recently voted by Entertainment Weekly the "greatest Western of all time" and the "13th greatest film of all time." Although Miles' other films that year include Autumn Leaves with Joan Crawford and Cliff Robertson, and 23 Paces to Baker Street with Van Johnson, it was The Searchers that accounted for a dramatic upswing in her career.

A year later, Miles began a five-year personal contract to Alfred Hitchcock and was widely publicized as the director's potential successor to the sophisticated and supremely elegant cool blonde Grace Kelly. Miles' new mentor directed her in the role of the emotionally troubled new bride of Ralph Meeker in a memorable episode of his popular television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled "Revenge." Suitably impressed, Hitchcock directed her on the big screen in another strong performance as the beleaguered wife of Henry Fonda, who played a New York musician falsely accused of a crime, in The Wrong Man (1957). New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, writing of the performances of Miles and her esteemed co-star Fonda, singled out Miles' performance for greater praise, writing that she "does convey a poignantly pitiful sense of fear of the appalling situation into which they have been cast". Hitchcock responded not only to Miles' blonde beauty and intelligent sex appeal but also to her very obvious acting talent. He undertook a reinvention of his new star through grooming and wardrobe supervised by Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head. In a 1956 feature article in Look magazine, Miles said of Hitchcock, "He has never complimented me, or even told me why he signed me." Hitchcock commented in the same article, "She's an attractive, intelligent and sexy woman. That about rolls it up." In a far more effusive mood, he told a reporter, referring to the similarities between Miles and Grace Kelly, "I feel the same way directing Vera that I did with Grace. She has a style, an intelligence, and a quality of understatement."


Career: 1958-present

Production delays and her pregnancy cost Miles the dual leading role in the project Hitchcock designed as a showcase for his new star, Vertigo (1958), a film considered by many to be one of the director's masterworks. Miles recalled that when she told Hitchcock that she could not star in his deeply personal and melancholic thriller for which costumes and makeup tests had already been completed, "He was overwhelmed." The director replaced Miles with Kim Novak, with whom he clashed. When asked years later about Miles by director François Truffaut in the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock explained their professional falling-out this way: "She became pregnant just before the part that was going to turn her into a star. After that, I lost interest. I couldn't get the rhythm going with her again." Miles reflected, "Over the span of years, he's had one type of woman in his films, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, and so on. Before that, it was Madeleine Carroll. I'm not their type and never have been. I tried to please him but I couldn't. They are all sexy women, but mine is an entirely different approach."

She co-starred with Susan Hayward and John Gavin in the glossy melodrama about adultery, Back Street, directed by David Miller and based on the much-filmed 1931 novel by Fannie Hurst. A year later, Hitchcock cast her as Janet Leigh's sister Lila Crane in Psycho (1960), in which her character discovers the shocking truth about Norman Bates and his mother. Miles, while making the thriller, called it "the weirdy of all times." Despite her role being a supportive one, Miles' tense, tightly-coiled performance made a strong and lasting impression. Following another stint in another classic John Ford film with 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, opposite no less than John Wayne and James Stewart (who compete for her attention), she won a Bronze Wrangler citation from Western Heritage Awards, which she shared with director Ford, writer James Warner Bellah and her fellow actors, including Lee Marvin and Edmond O'Brien. She would play opposite John Wayne again in Hellfighters (1968).

Miles' career took an unexpected turn when she landed her first roles at the Disney studio, in A Tiger Walks (1964), Those Calloways (1965), and Follow Me, Boys! (1966). She continued to play roles for Disney into the 1970s. She did extensive television series work for years, then in 1983 reprised her famous role in Psycho II, with her character vociferously protesting the proposed parole of Norman Bates (played, as in the original, by Anthony Perkins). In later years, she lamented that Psycho had become the film with which Hitchcock's name remained most associated in the eyes of the public, considering that he had directed so many other superior films.Throughout the 80s and 90s she did tv and film work but retired from acting in 1995 and currently resides in california.She refuses any public relations[interviews,public appearances,etc.]and has maintained low profile since her retirement.

Shelley Long
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Shelley Lee Long
Born August 23, 1949 (1949-08-23) (age 58)
Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States
Spouse(s) Bruce Tyson (1981-2004)
[show]Awards
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Lead Actress - Comedy Series
1982 Cheers
Golden Globe Awards
Best Supporting Actress - Miniseries
1983 Cheers
Best TV Actress - Comedy/Musical
1985 Cheers

Shelley Lee Long (born August 23, 1949) is a Golden Globe- and Emmy Award-winning American actress and comedienne.




Biography

Early life

Long was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana to Evandine, a school teacher, and Leland Long, who worked in the rubber industry before becoming a teacher.[1] She was active on her high school speech team, and won the National Championship in Original Oratory. She delivered a speech on the need for sex education in high school. After graduating from South Side High School in Fort Wayne, she studied drama at Northwestern University, but left before graduating to pursue a career in acting and modelling.


Career

In Chicago, she joined The Second City comedy troupe and in 1975, she began writing, producing, and co-hosting the television program Sorting It Out. The local NBC broadcast went on to win three Emmy Awards for Best Entertainment Show. Her first notable role came in 1980 with A Small Circle of Friends, opposite Brad Davis and Karen Allen. The film about social unrest at Harvard University during the 1960s was a critical success. In 1981, she played the role of Tala in the Ringo Starr film Caveman, starring opposite Dennis Quaid. She was also featured in the Henry Winkler comedy Night Shift, about life working on the night shift at a city morgue, and starred with Tom Cruise in the 1983 comedy film Losin' It.


Long's taste of fame came when she was cast as the barmaid Diane Chambers in Cheers. The show was slow to capture an audience but eventually became one of the most popular shows on television and she became a most sought after actress. In 1984, Long was nominated for a Best Leading Actress Golden Globe for her performance in Irreconcilable Differences. She then appeared in a series of comedies, such as : The Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks, 1986, Outrageous Fortune with Bette Midler and Peter Coyote, 1987 and Hello Again with Corbin Bernsen, 1987.

Amidst much controversy and in a fatal career move,she abandoned her trademark role as Diane Chambers and the Cheers series at the height of the series' popularity. Producers of the show begged her to stay and even offered her $400,000 to stay, but Long refused. Reports said that she left because did not have good relations with her costars (who allegedly found her overbearing), and that she wanted to leave television roles for a film career. In a 2003 interview on The Graham Norton Show, Long said that she left for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was her desire to spend more time with her newborn daughter. Her first post-Cheers project was Troop Beverly Hills, where she played a housewife who starts a "Wilderness Girl" troop as a distraction from her divorce proceedings.


Long's career declined throughout the 1990s, when she took several roles in films, such as, Don't Tell Her It's Me and Frozen Assets, that turned out to be commercially unsuccessful. In 1993, she returned to Cheers for its series finale and starred in the short lived sitcom Good Advice with Treat Williams and Teri Garr, but the show was cancelled after two seasons. In 1995, she re-appeared as Diane Chambers in an episode of Frasier and appeared in the campy big screen re-make of The Brady Bunch Movie, which was a surprise hit and revived her career as a comedienne. In 1996, she reprised her role as Carol Brady in A Very Brady Sequel, which had more modest success. A series of ventures followed such as the made for TV remake of Freaky Friday, and the family sitcom Kelly Kelly, which, only lasted for a few episodes on The WB Television Network.


In 2000, Long took a supporting role in the Richard Gere film, Dr. T and the Women. In 2002 she reprised her role as Carol Brady in The Brady Bunch in the White House. In 2005 she played Mitzi Robinson in indpendent film Trust Me. In the early and mid 2000s, Long guest starred on several sitcoms such as 8 Simple Rules where she played John Ratzenberger's wife, and Yes, Dear where she and Alan Thicke portrayed a snobby couple interested in buying the house next door to Greg and Kim.

She has also had guest starring roles in many Television shows. In 1997, she played the Wicked Witch of the Beanstalk in the Second Season Sabrina, the Teenage Witch episode Sabrina and the Beanstalk.


Personal life

In 1979, while pursuing her acting career, Long met securities broker Bruce Tyson, whom she married in October 1981. She gave birth to her only child, her daughter Juliana on March 27, 1985. In 2004, after 23 years of marriage, Bruce Tyson filed for divorce.On November 25, 2004, Long was admitted to hospital after allegedly attempting suicide; however, her agent said it was an 'accidental overdose.'

Leola, who lived in Tennesse, had a serious telephone problem. But
unlike most people, she did something about it. . .

The brand-new $10 million Ribrock Plaza Motel opened near her house and
had acquired almost the same telephone number as Leola's.

From the moment the motel opened, Leola was besieged by calls not for
her. Since she had the same phone number for years, she felt that she
had a case to persuade the motel management to change its number.

Naturally, the management refused claiming that it could not change its
stationery.

The phone company was not helpful, either. A number was a number, and
just because a customer was getting someone else's calls 24 hours a day
didn't make it responsible. After her pleas fell on deaf ears, Leola
decided to take matters into her own hands.

At 9 o'clock the phone rang. Someone from Memphis was calling the motel
and asked for a room for the following Tuesday. Leola said,

"No problem. How many nights?"

A few hours later Dallas checked in. A secretary wanted a suite with two
bedrooms for a week. Emboldened, Leola said the Presidential Suite on
the 10th floor was available for $600 a night. The secretary said that
she would take it and asked if the hotel wanted a deposit.

"No, that won't be necessary," Leola said. "We trust you."

The next day was a busy one for Leola. In the morning, she booked an
electric appliance manufacturers convention for Memorial Day weekend, a
college prom and a reunion of the 82nd Airborne veterans from World War
II.

She turned on her answering machine during lunchtime so that she could
watch Days Of Our Lives, but her biggest challenge came in the afternoon
when a mother called to book the ballroom for her daughter's wedding in
June.

Leola assured the woman that it would be no problem and asked if she
would be providing the flowers or did she want the hotel to take care of
it. The mother said that she would prefer the hotel to handle the floral
arrangements. Then the question of valet parking came up.

Once again Leola was helpful.

"There's no charge for valet parking, but we always recommend that the
client tips the drivers."

Within a few months, the Ribrock Plaza Motel was a disaster area. People
kept showing up for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and Sweet Sixteen parties
and were all told there were no such events.

Leola had her final revenge when she read in the local paper that the
motel might go bankrupt. Her phone rang, and an executive from Marriott
said,

"We're prepared to offer you $200,000 for your motel."

Leola replies. . . .

"We'll take it...... but only if you change your phone number."

Good morning, hawkman. Thanks once again for the delightful celeb info and especially the wonderful story from that Tennessee lady. Southern gals ain't all airheads, right.

Well, Our puppy is having work done on her canine teeth today, so incompetent Letty will be a poor substitute.

The unforgettable Gene Kelly, folks.



A timely song from Gene

good mornin'
good mornin'
We've talked the whole night through
good mornin'
good mornin' to you

good mornin'
good mornin'
It's great to stay up late
good mornin'
good mornin' to you

When the band began to play
the stars were shinin' bright.
Now the milkman's on his way,
it's too late to say goodnight.

So, good mornin', good mornin'!
Sunbeams will soon smile through,
good mornin', good mornin', to you, and you, and you, and you!

Good mornin', good mornin'!
We've gabbed the whole night through,
good mornin', good mornin' to you.

in the mornin', in the mornin'!
It's great to stay up late!
good mornin', good mornin' to you!

when we left the movie show
the future wasn't bright
but came the dawn,
the show goes on
and i don't wanna say good night!

so say good mornin'!
good mornin'!
rainbows are shinin' through
good mornin'!
bonjour!
buenos dias!
bongiorno
Guten Morgen!
good mornin' to you!