WA2K Radio is now on the air

As a kid, in 1952 and 53, I listened to the radio, along with my Mom. She kept it on KRDU, in Dinuba, CA. That was when I learned to appreciate Hank. Just as with Buddy Holly, Elvis, and other entertainment figures, I recall the day of his death with absolute clarity. The news stories mentioned that he was drunk at the time, but it was only after a number of years I heard mention of his drug problem. In those times, I guess they sanitized the news for us.

Well, edgar, no one sanitizes it now. I think all this tripe about celebs has made radio audiences jaded.

Sang this on TV to promote charity, etc, with the dj who was big on blue grass and country. Not bad.

Hey, hey, good lookin',
Whatcha got cookin'?
How's about cookin' somethin' up with me?
Hey, sweet baby,
Don't you think maybe
We could find us a brand new recipe?
I got a hot-rod Ford and a two-dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill.
There's soda pop and the dancin's free,
So if you wanna have fun come along with me.
Hey, good lookin',
Whatcha got cookin'?
How's about cookin' somethin' up with me?


I'm free and ready,
So we can go steady.
How's about savin' all your time for me?
No more lookin',
I know I've been tooken [sic].
How's about keepin' steady company?

I'm gonna throw my date-book over the fence
And find me one for five or ten cents.
I'll keep it 'til it's covered with age
'Cause I'm writin' your name down on every page.
Hey, good lookin',
Whatcha got cookin'?
How's about cookin' somethin' up with me?


A lot of folks did that one.

letty :
i'm glad you found your "franz" (schubert) !
if he'd be alive today , i'd say his hairstyle would be considered as being "really with it" .



since we are talking about "down under" and "kiwis' (we eat them every day :wink: ) on another thread , here is a great song about "down under" .
hope you'll like it !

Indeed, hbg. Franz would have fit right in with his lovely and sometimes loney classical creations.

What a great tribute to the "down under" folks. Thanks, buddy.

Speaking of work, I like this song.

Oscar brown jr, nat adderley

Breaking rocks out here on the chain gang
Breaking rocks and serving my time
Breaking rocks out here on the chain gang
Because they done convicted me of crime
Hold it steady right there while I hit it
Well reckon that ought to get it
Been
Working and working
But I still got so terribly far to go

I commited crime lord I needed
Crime of being hungry and poor
I left the grocery store man bleeding (breathing? )
When they caught me robbing his store
Hold it steady right there while I hit it
Well reckon that ought to get it
Been
Working and working
But I still got so terribly far to go

I heard the judge say five years
On chain-gang you gonna go
I heard the judge say five years labor
I heard my old man scream lordy, no!
Hold it right there while I hit it
Well reckon that ought to get it
Been
Working and working
But I still got so terribly far to go

Gonna see my sweet honey bee
Gonna break this chain off to run
Gonna lay down somewhere shady
Lord I sure am hot in the sun
Hold it right there while I hit it
Well reckon that ought to get it
Been
Workin and workin
Been
Workin and slavin
An
Workin and workin
But I still got so terribly far to go

here is another song that must be from "down under" .



glad we don't have to watch out for them on our roads !

I loved it and your point of view.

Love it, hbg, and to show a polar view, how about today's celeb and a song from her about Johnny. First a brief bio, then her melody.



Birth name Michele Ann Marie Fabares
Born January 19, 1944 (1944-01-19) (age 63)
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Years active 1957-present
Shelley Fabares (born January 19, 1944) is an American actress and singer, primarily for her roles on movies, soap operas and television.
The naturally blonde-headed Fabares is best known for her roles as Donna Reed's daughter and oldest child, Mary Stone, on the long-running The Donna Reed Show (a role she played from 1958 to 1963), and as Craig T. Nelson's love interest and wife, Christine Armstrong Fox, on the long-running 1990s sitcom Coach.

Words and Music by Hal David
and Sherman Edwards
Johnny, I said we were through
Just to see what you would do
You stood there and hung your head
Made me wish that I were dead
CHORUS
Oh, Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad
Give me the biggest lecture I ever had
I want a brave man, I want a cave man
Johnny, show me that you
care, really care for me
Every time you danced with me
You let Freddy cut in constantly
When he'd ask, you'd never speak
[ Lyrics provided by www.mp3lyrics.org ]
Must you always be so meek?
CHORUS

Every girl wants someone who
She can always look up to
You know I love you, of course
Let me know that you're the boss
CHORUS
Johnny, get angry, Johnny
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny
FADE

Hey, teenyboone. Thanks so much for your comment. It always makes us feel "supported".

Oops, folks. While Bob is away, Letty will play.

Joke of the day and sent to me by my Irish friend.


A guy stuck his head into a barber shop and asked, "How long before I
can get a haircut?" The barber looked around the shop full of customers and said, "About 2 hours." The guy left.

A few days later the same guy stuck his head in the door and asked,
"How long before I can get a haircut?" The barber looked around at the shop and said, "About 3 hours." The guy left.

A week later the same guy stuck his head in the shop and asked,
"How long before I can get a haircut?" The barber looked around the shop and said, "About an hour and a half." The guy left.

The barber turned to a friend and said, "Hey, Bill, do me a favor. Follow that guy and see where he goes. He keeps asking how long he has to wait for a haircut, but then he doesn't ever come back.

A little while later, Bill returned to the shop, laughing hysterically.
The barber asked, "So where does that guy go when he leaves?"
Bill looked up, tears in his eyes and said, "Your house."

here's my joke for the day :

fellow takes his workboots to the italian cobbler for re-soling .
"ready in two weeks " , the cobbler says .
fellow checks in two weeks , same answer : "ready in two weeks " .
fellow is called up and serves in the army for two years , comes back and asks the cobbler for his boots again .
cobbler : "ready in two weeks - for sure !" .

Hey, hbg. Ah, don't we all play the waiting game? Loved your story about the cobbler and your wicked traditional song in a story. It's that time of year, ya know.

I love this song, and that Canuck reminded me of it, so I think I shall say goodnight and hope that Bob and Raggedy will accompany the "hunter of the East tomorrow and catch that sultan's turret in a noose of light."

If it takes forever I will wait for you
For a thousand summers I will wait for you
Till you're back beside me, till I'm holding you
Till I hear you sigh here in my arms

Anywhere you wander, anywhere you go
Every day remember how I love you so
In your heart believe what in my heart I know
That forevermore I'll wait for you

The clock will tick away the hours one by one
Then the time will come when all the waiting's done
The time when you return and find me here and run
Straight to my waiting arms

If it takes forever I will wait for you
For a thousand summers I will wait for you
Till you're here beside me, till I'm touching you
And forevermore sharing your love.

Goodnight, my friends.

From Letty with love

Seems so long ago, Nancy

It seems so long ago,
Nancy was alone,
looking at the Late Late show
through a semi-precious stone.
In the House of Honesty
her father was on trial,
in the House of Mystery
there was no one at all,
there was no one at all.

It seems so long ago,
none of us were strong;
Nancy wore green stockings
and she slept with everyone.
She never said she'd wait for us
although she was alone,
I think she fell in love for us
in nineteen sixty one,
in nineteen sixty one.

It seems so long ago,
Nancy was alone,
a forty five beside her head,
an open telephone.
We told her she was beautiful,
we told her she was free
but none of us would meet her in
the House of Mystery,
the House of Mystery.

And now you look around you,
see her everywhere,
many use her body,
many comb her hair.
In the hollow of the night
when you are cold and numb
you hear her talking freely then,
she's happy that you've come,
she's happy that you've come.

Leonard Cohen

Friends in Low Places
Garth Brooks

Blame it all on my roots, I showed up in boots
And ruined your black tie affair
The last one to know, the last one to show
I was the last one you thought you'd see there
And I saw the surprise and the fear in his eyes
When I took his glass of champagne
And I toasted you, said, honey, we may be through
But you'll never hear me complain

'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I'll be okay
Now, I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the Oasis
So I've got friends in low places

Well, I guess I was wrong
I just don't belong
But then, I've been there before
Everything's all right
I'll just say goodnight
And I'll show myself to the door
Hey, I didn't mean to cause a big scene
Just give me an hour and then
Well, I'll be as high as that ivory tower
That you're livin' in

'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I'll be okay
Now, I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the Oasis
So I've got friends in low places

I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I'll be okay
I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the Oasis
So I've got friends in low places...

Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors.

edgar, you always fascinate us with your choice of music. First, there's the arcane Leonard who not only makes us think, he challenges us to discover his allusions to the central theme of his lyrics. I do wonder if "Nancy" is representative of many women.

Then, folks, there is Garth who makes it quite plain what is being said in his music. Both are great songs.

Today is Richard Carpenter's birthday, and I think most of us are acquainted with him and Karen, right?



Perfect song for Monday, y'all.

Carpenters - Rainy Days And Mondays Lyrics

Talkin' to myself and feelin' old
Sometimes I'd like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hangin' around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.

What I've got they used to call the blues
Nothin' is really wrong
Feelin' like I don't belong
Walkin' around
Some kind of lonely clown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.

Funny but it seems I always wind up here
with you
Nice to know somebody loves me

Funny but it seems that it's the only thing to do
Run and find the one who loves me.

What I feel has come and gone before
No need to talk it out
We know what it's all about
Hangin' around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.

P. G. Wodehouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born: October 15, 1881(1881-10-15)
Guildford, Surrey, UK
Died: February 14 1975 (aged 93)
Southampton, NY, U.S.
Occupation: novelist, playwright, lyricist
Nationality: British (English)
U.S. (1955, aged 74)
Writing period: 1902-1975
Genres: comedy, romantic comedy
Debut works: The Pothunters (1902)

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (15 October 1881 - 14 February 1975) (IPA: [wʊd.haʊs]) was a comic writer who has enjoyed enormous popular success for more than seventy years. Despite all the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse was admired both by contemporaries like Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling as well as by modern writers like Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse said he believed was "meant to be complimentary", and which he used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Show Boat and collaborated with Rudolph Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers.




Life

Wodehouse, called "Plum" by most family and friends, was born prematurely to Eleanor Wodehouse (née Deane) whilst she was visiting Guildford. His father Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845-1929) was a British judge in Hong Kong. The Wodehouse family had been settled in Norfolk for many centuries. Wodehouse's great-grandfather Reverend Philip Wodehouse was the second son of Sir Armine Wodehouse, 5th Baronet, whose eldest son John Wodehouse, 1st Baron Wodehouse, was the ancestor of the Earls of Kimberley. He attended boarding school, where he saw his parents only once every six or seven months. Wodehouse grew very close to his brother, who shared his love for art. Wodehouse filled the voids in his life by writing relentlessly. He spent quite a few of his school holidays with one aunt or another; it has been speculated that this gave him a healthy horror of the "gaggle of aunts", reflected in Bertie Wooster's formidable aunts Agatha and Dahlia, as well as Lady Constance Keeble's tyranny over her many nieces and nephews in the Blandings Castle series.

He was educated at Dulwich College, where the library is now named after him, but his anticipated progression to university was stymied by family financial problems. Subsequently he worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in London (now known as HSBC) for two years, though he was never interested in banking as a career. He wrote part-time while working in the bank, eventually proving successful enough to take up writing as a full-time profession. He was a journalist with The Globe (a defunct English newspaper) for some years before moving to New York, where he worked for a time as theatre critic of "The New Yorker", collaborated with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern on several musical comedies, and began publishing short stories and novels. In the 1930s, he had two brief stints as a screenwriter in Hollywood, where, so he claimed, he was greatly over-paid. Many of his novels were also serialised in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and The Strand, which also paid well.

He married Ethel Wayman in 1914, gaining a stepdaughter, Leonora. He had no natural children, perhaps owing to having contracted mumps as a young man.

Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he shared his time between England and the United States. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the US. He was also profoundly uninterested in politics and world affairs. When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le Touquet, France, instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognise the seriousness of the conflict. He was subsequently taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940 and interned by them for a year, first in Belgium, then at Tost (now Toszek) in Upper Silesia (now in Poland). (He is recorded as saying, "If this is Upper Silesia, one must wonder what Lower Silesia must be like...".)

While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues. After being released from internment, a few months short of his 60th birthday, he used these dialogues as a basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America (but not England) that the Germans persuaded him to make from Berlin. Wartime England was in no mood for light-hearted banter, however, and the broadcasts led to many accusations of collaboration with the Nazis and even treason. Some libraries banned his books. Foremost among his critics was A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books; Wodehouse got some revenge by creating a ridiculous character named Timothy Bobbin, who starred in parodies of some of Milne's children's poetry. Among Wodehouse's defenders were Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell (see article by Orwell[1]). An investigation by the British security service MI5 concluded that Wodehouse was naive and foolish but not a traitor.[1]

The criticism led Wodehouse and his wife to move permanently to New York. Apart from Leonora, who died during Wodehouse's internment in Germany, they had no children. He became an American citizen in 1955 and never returned to his homeland, spending the remainder of his life in Remsenburg, Long Island.

He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) shortly before his death at the age of 93. It is widely believed that the honour was not given earlier because of lingering resentment about the German broadcasts. In a BBC interview he said that he had no ambitions left now that he had been knighted and there was a waxwork of him in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.


Writing style

Wodehouse took a modest attitude to his own works. In Over Seventy (1957) he wrote:

"I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at."

In the same article, Wodehouse names some contemporary humorists whom he held in high regard. These include Frank Sullivan, A. P. Herbert, and Alex Atkinson.


Characters

Wodehouse's characters however were not always popular with the establishment, notably the foppish foolishness of Bertie Wooster. Papers released by the Public Record Office have disclosed that when P. G. Wodehouse was recommended in 1967 for a Companion of Honour, Sir Patrick Dean, the British ambassador in Washington, argued that it "would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to eradicate."

Wodehouse's characters are often eccentric, with peculiar attachments, such as to pigs (Lord Emsworth), newts (Gussie Fink-Nottle), or socks (Archibald Mulliner). His "mentally negligible" good-natured characters invariably make their lot worse by their half-witted schemes to improve a bad situation.

Wodehouse's aristocrats, however, embody many of the comic attributes that characterize buffoons. In many cases the classic eccentricities of Wodehouse's upperclass give rise to plot complications.

Relatives, especially aunts and uncles, are commonly depicted with an exaggerated power to help or impede marriage or financial prospects, or simply to make life miserable. Friends are often more a trouble than a comfort in Wodehouse stories: the main character is typically being placed in a most painful situation just to please a friend. Antagonists (particularly rivals in love) are frequently terrifying and just as often get their come-uppance in a delicious fashion.

Policemen and magistrates are typically portrayed as threatening, yet easy to fool, often through the simple expedient of giving a false name. A recurring motif is the theft of policemen's helmets.

In a manner going back to the stock characters of Roman comedy (such as Plautus), Wodehouse's servants are frequently far cleverer than their masters. This is quintessentially true with Jeeves, who always pulls Bertie Wooster out of the direst scrapes. It recurs elsewhere, such as the efficient (though despised) Baxter, secretary to the befogged Lord Emsworth.


Plots

Although his plots are on the surface formulaic, Wodehouse's genius lies in the tangled layers of comedic complications that the characters must endure to reach the invariable happy ending. Typically, a relative or friend makes some demand that forces a character into a bizarre situation that seems impossible to recover from, only to resolve itself in a clever and satisfying finale. The layers pile up thickly in the longer works, with a character getting into multiple dangerous situations by mid-story. An outstanding example of this is The Code of the Woosters where most of the chapters have an essential plot point reversed in the last sentence, catapulting the characters forward into greater diplomatic disasters.

Engagements are a common theme in Wodehouse stories. A man may be unable to become engaged to the woman he loves due to some impediment. Just as often, he becomes unwillingly, or even accidentally, engaged to a woman he does not love and needs to find some back-door way out other than breaking it off directly (which goes against a gentleman's code of honour). A case in point is Freddie in Something Fresh, where his engagement to Miss Peters apparently broke off after she eloped with George Emerson. A very sad situation of a girl choosing a spirited man instead of her dim witted fiancée was cleverly made light hearted by showing how Freddie could not care less, as he was more interested in meeting the revered writer of detective stories: Ashe Marson and so on.

Assumed identities and resulting confusion are particularly common in the Blandings books.

Gambling often plays a large role in Wodehouse plots, typically with someone manipulating the outcome of the wager.

Another subject which features strongly in Wodehouse's plots is alcohol, and many plots revolve around the tipsiness of a major character. It is clear that Wodehouse himself was fond of a tipple, and he enumerated what many people consider as the definitive list of hangovers: the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and, of course, the Gremlin Boogie. Furthermore, he makes several references to a drink the nickname of which is May Queen. It is described by Uncle Fred as follows: "Its full name is, 'Tomorrow'll be of all the year the maddest, merriest day, for I'm to be the Queen of the May, mother, the Queen of the May.' A clumsy title, generally shortened for purposes of ordinary conversation. Its foundation is any good dry champagne, to which is added liqueur brandy, armagnac, kummel, yellow chartreuse, and old stout, to taste."


Writings

Wodehouse was a prolific author, writing ninety-six books in a career spanning from 1902 to 1975. His works include novels, collections of short stories, and a musical comedy. Many characters and locations appear repeatedly throughout his short stories and novels, leading readers to classify his work by "series", being:

The Blandings Castle stories (later dubbed "the Blandings Castle Saga" by Wodehouse[2]), about the upper-class inhabitants of the fictional rural Blandings Castle. Includes the eccentric Lord Emsworth, obsessed by his prize-winning pig, the "Empress of Blandings", and at one point by his equally prize-winning pumpkin ("Blandings' Hope", but, mockingly, "Percy" to Emsworth's unappreciative second son Freddie Threepwood).
The Drones Club stories, about the mishaps of certain members of a raucous social club for London's idle rich. Born in the Jeeves stories, it became its own informal series of short stories, mostly featuring club members Freddie Widgeon or Bingo Little, plus a cast of recurrent bit players such as Club millionaire Oofy Prosser.
The Golf and Oldest Member stories. They are built around one of Wodehouse's passions, the sport of golf, which all characters involved consider the only important pursuit in life. The Oldest Member of the golf course clubhouse tells most of them.
The Jeeves and Wooster stories, narrated by the wealthy, scatterbrained Bertie Wooster. A number of stories and novels that recount the improbable and unfortunate situations in which he and his friends find themselves and the manner in which his ingenious valet Jeeves is always able to extricate them. Collectively called "the Jeeves stories", or "Jeeves and Wooster", they are Wodehouse's most famous. The Jeeves stories are a valuable compendium of pre-World War II English slang in use, perhaps most closely mirrored in American literature, although at a different social level, by the work of Damon Runyon.
The Mr Mulliner stories, about a long-winded pub raconteur who tells outrageous stories about his family, all surnamed Mulliner. His sometimes unwilling listeners are always identified solely by their drinks, e.g., a "Hot Scotch and Lemon" or a "Double Whisky and Splash".
The Psmith stories, about an ingenious jack-of-all-trades with a charming, exaggeratedly refined manner. The final Psmith story, Leave it to Psmith, overlaps the Blandings stories in that Psmith works for Lord Emsworth, lives for a time at Blandings Castle, and becomes a friend of Freddie Threepwood.
The School stories, which launched Wodehouse's career with their comparative realism. They are often located at the fictional public schools of St. Austin's or Wrykyn.
The Ukridge stories, about the charming but unprincipled Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, always looking to enlarge his income through the reluctant assistance of his friend in his schemes.
The Uncle Fred stories, about the eccentric Earl of Ickenham. Whenever he can escape his wife's chaperonage, he likes to spread what he calls "sweetness and light" and others are likely to call chaos. His escapades, always involving impersonations of some sort, are usually told from the viewpoint of his nephew and reluctant companion Reginald "Pongo" Twistleton. Several times he performs his "art" at Blandings Castle.

Adaptations

Considering the extent of his success, there have been comparatively few adaptations of Wodehouse's works, in part because he was reluctant to do so:

"One great advantage in being a historian to a man like Jeeves is that his mere personality prevents one selling one's artistic soul for gold. In recent years I have had lucrative offers for his services from theatrical managers, motion-picture magnates, the proprietors of one or two widely advertised commodities, and even the editor of the comic supplement of an American newspaper, who wanted him for a "comic strip". But, tempting though the terms were, it only needed Jeeves deprecating cough and his murmured "I would scarcely advocate it, sir," to put the jack under my better nature. Jeeves knows his place, and it is between the covers of a book." (from Wodehouse's introduction to the compilation The World of Jeeves, 1967)

A Damsel in Distress was adapted in the 1937 film starring Fred Astaire, George Burns, Gracie Allen and Joan Fontaine. A 1962 film adaptation of The Girl On The Boat starred Norman Wisdom, Millicent Martin and Richard Briers.

Both the Blandings and Jeeves stories have been adapted as BBC television series: the Jeeves series has been adapted twice, once in the 1960s (for the BBC), with the title World of Wooster, starring Ian Carmichael as Bertie Wooster, and Dennis Price as Jeeves?-and again in the 1990s (by Granada Television for ITV), with the title Jeeves and Wooster, starring Hugh Laurie as Bertie and Stephen Fry as Jeeves. David Niven and Arthur Treacher also starred as Bertie and Jeeves, respectively, in a short 1930s film that was a very loose adaptation of Thank You, Jeeves, and Treacher played Jeeves without Bertie in an original sequel, Step Lively, Jeeves.

In 1975, Andrew Lloyd Webber made a musical, originally titled Jeeves. In 1996, it was rewritten as the more successful By Jeeves made it to Broadway, and a performance recorded as a video film, also shown on TV.

A version of Heavy Weather was filmed by the BBC in 1995 starring Peter O'Toole as Lord Emsworth and Richard Briers, again, as Lord Emsworth's brother, Galahad Threepwood.

In 2004, Julian Fellowes wrote a screen adaptation of Piccadilly Jim which starred Sam Rockwell. The film was not successful.

There was also a series of BBC adaptations of various short works, mostly from the Mulliner series, under the title of Wodehouse Playhouse starring John Alderton and Pauline Collins, which aired starting in 1975. The first series was introduced by Wodehouse himself, which was extraordinary considering he was 93 at the time and died the year the TV series started.

Arthur, starring Dudley Moore and Sir John Gielgud, and its sequel Arthur II: On the Rocks, were also an adaptation of the characters of Bertie and Jeeves, although not officially acknowledged, and many of the lines and incidents from the movie, including the main plot involving an engagement, were directly influenced by Wodehouse's characters.

Wodehouse's involvement with film and television from around the world is chronicled in Brian Taves, P.G. Wodehouse and Hollywood: Screenwriting, Satires, and Adaptations (McFarland, 2006).

Trivia


Author Kyril Bonfiglioli appears to have modelled his series of crime novels on Wodehouse's style. Bonfiglioli's major characters (Mortdecai and Jock) bear a fun-house mirror relation to Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves.[3]
Hugh Laurie, the actor who portrayed Wooster in the TV series Jeeves and Wooster, has said that Wodehouse's novels saved him from depression.[4] It has been remarked that Laurie's novel The Gun Seller bears much resemblance to Jeeves and Wooster.
Author Lawrence Sanders based his character Archie McNally, the bonvivant sleuth and head of Discreet Inquiries for his patrician father's Palm Beach law firm, on an amalgam of Wodehouse's characters Jeeves and Wooster. [citation needed]
Wodehouse made use of the Paint-on-the-Shoe scene in both Mike, chapter 49 and the Blandings book Something Fresh, chapter 9. Apart from character names and a few changes to fit the different plots, the scenes are practically identical.

Evan Hunter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pseudonym: Ed McBain, S. A. Lombino, Hunt Collins, Curt Cannon, Richard Marsten, Ezra Hannon, John Abbott
Born: October 15, 1926
New York, New York
Died: July 6, 2005
Weston, Connecticut
Occupation: Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter
Nationality: American
Writing period:
1951 - 2005
Genres: Crime fiction, mystery fiction, science fiction
Debut works: Short story: "Welcome Martians" (as S.A. Lombino) (1951)
Novel: Find The Feathered Serpent (1952)

Evan Hunter (born Salvatore Albert Lombino on October 15, 1926 - July 6, 2005), was a prolific American author and screenwriter. Though he was a successful and well-known writer using the Evan Hunter name (a name he legally adopted in 1952), he was perhaps even better known as Ed McBain, a name he used for most of his crime fiction beginning in 1956.




Biography

Early years

Evan Hunter was born and raised as Salvatore Lombino in New York City, living in East Harlem until the age of 12, at which point his family moved to the Bronx. He attended Olinville Junior High School, then Evander Childs High School before winning an Art Students League scholarship. Later, he was admitted as an art student at Cooper Union.

Lombino served in the Navy in World War II, writing several early short stories while serving aboard a destroyer in the Pacific. However, none of these stories were published until after he had established himself as an author in the 1950s.

After the war, Lombino returned to New York and studied at Hunter College, majoring in English, with minors in dramatics and education. He published a weekly column in the Hunter College newspaper as "S.A. Lombino".

While looking to start a career as a writer, Lombino took a variety of jobs, including 17 days as a teacher at Bronx Vocational High School in September 1950. This experience would later form the basis for his 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle.

In 1951, Lombino took a job as an Executive Editor for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, P.G. Wodehouse, Lester del Rey, Poul Anderson, and Richard S. Prather, amongst others. The same year, made his first professional short-story sale, a science-fiction tale entitled "Welcome Martians", credited to S.A. Lombino.



Name change and pen names

Soon after his initial short-story sale, Lombino started selling stories under the pen names "Evan Hunter" and "Hunt Collins". The name "Evan Hunter" is generally believed to have been derived from two schools he attended, Evander Childs High School and Hunter College, although the author himself would never confirm that. (He did confirm that the name "Hunt Collins" was derived from Hunter College.)

Lombino legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in May 1952, after an editor told him that a novel he wrote would sell more copies if credited to "Evan Hunter" than it would if it were credited to "S.A. Lombino". Thereafter, he used the name Evan Hunter both personally and professionally.

As Evan Hunter, he wrote books such as The Blackboard Jungle (1954), Come Winter (1973), and Lizzie (1984). He wrote the original screenplay of the 1963 film The Birds for Alfred Hitchcock.

Hunter also wrote a great deal of crime fiction and was advised by his agents that publishing too much fiction under the Hunter by-line, or publishing any crime fiction as Evan Hunter, might weaken his literary reputation. As a consequence, during the 1950s Hunter used the pseudonyms Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, and Richard Marsten for much of his crime fiction. His most famous pseudonym, Ed McBain, debuted in 1956 with the first novel in the 87th Precinct crime series.

Hunter himself publicly revealed in 1958 that he was McBain, but he continued to use that pseudonym for several decades?-most notably for the 87th Precinct series, and for the Matthew Hope series of novels.

By about 1960, Hunter had retired the pen names of Cannon, Marsten, and Collins. From this point on, crime novels were generally attributed to McBain and other sorts of fiction to Hunter. Reprints of crime-oriented stories and novels written in the 1950s previously attributed to other psuedonyms were issued under the McBain byline. Hunter stated that the division of names allowed readers to know what to expect: McBain novels had a consistent writing style, while Hunter novels were more varied.

In 2000, a novel called Candyland appeared that was credited to both Hunter and McBain. The two-part novel opened in Hunter's psychologically-based narrative voice before switching to McBain's customary police procedural style.

Aside from McBain, Hunter used at least two other pseudonyms after 1960. The 1975 novel Doors was originally attributed to Ezra Hannon, before being reissued as a work by McBain, and the 1992 novel Scimitar was credited to John Abbott.


Death

Hunter died of cancer of the larynx in 2005 at the age of 78 in Weston, Connecticut. He had three sons, one of whom, Richard Hunter, is considered one of the world's leading harmonica virtuosos.

Jean Peters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Elizabeth Jean Peters
Born October 15, 1926
Canton, Ohio
Died October 13, 2000
Carlsbad, California
Spouse(s) Stuart W. Cramer III (m.1954)
Howard Hughes (1957-1971)
Stanley Hough (1971-1990)

Elizabeth Jean Peters (October 15, 1926 - October 13, 2000) was an American actress.

After competing in a beauty contest in 1946, the Canton, Ohio native went to Hollywood to pursue an acting career. Her first film, 1947's Captain from Castile with Tyrone Power was a hit, and Leonard Maltin writes that afterwards Peters spent the new decade playing "sexy spitfires, often in period dramas and Westerns." [1]

Director Samuel Fuller chose Peters over Marilyn Monroe for the part of Candy in 1953's Pickup on South Street. He thought Peters had the right blend of sex appeal and the tough-talking, streetwise characteristics he was seeking, and that Monroe was too innocent looking for the role. Peters and Monroe starred together in another 1953 film noir, Niagara.

In 1957, after her divorce from her first husband, Texas oilman Stuart Cramer, Peters married Howard Hughes, shortly before he faded from public view and became an eccentric recluse. She retired from acting during the marriage. In 1971, Peters and Hughes divorced. She agreed to a lifetime alimony payment of $70,000 (USD) annually, adjusted for inflation, and she waived all claims to Hughes' estate. That same year, she married Stanley Hough, an executive with Twentieth-Century Fox.

The usually-paranoid Hughes surprised his aides when he did not insist on a confidentiality agreement from Peters as a condition of divorce; aides reported Peters was one of the few people Hughes never disparaged. Peters refused to discuss her life with Hughes, and declined several lucrative offers to do so. She would state only that she had not seen Hughes for several years before their divorce. Peters returned to acting with a few roles on television.

She died of leukemia in 2000 in Carlsbad, California, two days before her 74th birthday

Penny Marshall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Carole Penny Marshall
Born October 15, 1942 (1942-10-15) (age 65)
The Bronx, New York
Spouse(s) Michael Henry (1961-1963)
Rob Reiner (1971-1981)

Penny Marshall (born October 15, 1942) is an American Golden Globe-nominated actress, producer and director. She was the first woman to direct two films that grossed over $100 million each (Big and A League of Their Own).





Biography

Early life

Marshall was born Carole Penny Marshall in The Bronx, New York City to Anthony Wallace Marshall, a director of industrial films and later a producer, and Marjorie Irene (Ward), a tap dance teacher who ran a tap dance school.[1] She is the sister of actor/director Garry Marshall and Ronny Hallin, a TV producer. Her father was of Italian descent, his family having come from Abruzzo,[2] and her mother was of English and Scottish descent;[3][4] her father changed his last name from "Marsciarelli" to "Marshall" before Penny was born.[5] She is a graduate of Walton High School in New York City and attended the University of New Mexico.


Career

Marshall first gained prominence as a television actress with a recurring guest role on The Odd Couple from 1971 - 1975. She then played the role of the wise-cracking brewery worker Laverne De Fazio in the popular TV sitcom Laverne and Shirley from 1976 - 1983. While on Laverne and Shirley, she made two guest star appearances on Mary Tyler Moore as Mary's neighbor in her new apartment building, Paula Kovacks.

She has directed several successful feature motion pictures since the mid-1980s, including Big (first film directed by a woman to gross over USD $100 million), Awakenings starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro, and A League of Their Own, which starred Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell. She has also lent her voice the evil nanny in The Simpsons, Ms. Botz, and played a cameo role as herself in HBO's hit series Entourage.

In April 2007, it was announced that Marshall would reunite with her Laverne & Shirley co-star Cindy Williams 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

Marshall was married to actor and director Rob Reiner (1971 -1981). She has one daughter from her first marriage to Michael Henry, actress Tracy Reiner, who took her stepfather's name. Marshall is an avid collector of sports memorabilia and a season ticket holder for the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers. She is also a diehard fan of the New York Yankees.

Tanya Roberts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Victoria Leigh Blum
Born October 15, 1955 (1955-10-15) (age 52)
Bronx, New York City, U.S.
Spouse(s) ? (annulled)
Barry Roberts (1974-2006)
Official site None

Tanya Roberts (born Victoria Leigh Blum on October 15, 1955) is an American actress best known for her roles in Charlie's Angels, The Beastmaster, Sheena , A View to a Kill and That '70s Show.

Reportedly 5' 8" (1.73 m) tall and with measurements of 36-21-34, Roberts was regarded as one of Hollywood's most popular sex symbols during the early 1980s.





Biography

Early life and career

Tanya Roberts grew up in the Bronx, New York City. The daughter of an Irish American pen seller and a Jewish American woman, her parents divorced before she reached high school. Her sister, actress Barbara Chase, was married to Timothy Leary from 1978 to 1992.

At age 15, she abandoned her studies to get married and lived for a while hitchhiking across the United States until her mother-in-law annulled the union. Tanya continued to live in New York City, modelling and working as a dance teacher with Arthur Murray.

After meeting psychology student Barry Roberts while waiting in line for a movie, she soon married again, having proposed to him in a subway station. While Barry started a career as a screenwriter, Tanya began to study at the Actors' Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen.

Starting out, Roberts landed several television commercials for Ultra Brite, Clairol and Cool Ray sunglasses and played serious roles in the off-Broadway productions Picnic and Antigone. She continued to support herself as an Arthur Murray dance instructor. Her film debut was the thriller Forced Entry (1975, Jim Sotos) together with Nancy Allen. This was followed by the comedy The Yum-Yum Girls (1976, Narry Rosen).

In 1977, as her husband was securing his own screenwriting career, the couple moved to Hollywood. In 1978, Tanya filmed the drama Fingers (by James Toback) co-starring Harvey Keitel, Tisa Farrow, Jim Brown and Danny Aiello. A role in the 1979 cult-movie Tourist Trap (by David Schmoeller) with Chuck Connors followed. She also appeared in the movies Racket (1979, by David Winters) with Bjorn Borg, and California Dreaming (1979, by John Hancock).

Roberts also featured in several television pilots that were never picked up: Pleasure Cove, the comedy Zuma Beach (1978, by Lee H. Katzin, co-written by Halloween director John Carpenter) and Waikiki (1980).



The 1980s

In 1980, Roberts was chosen among other 2,000 candidates to replace Shelley Hack in Charlie's Angels in what later turned out to be the last season of the series. In the show, Roberts interpreted her character Julie Rogers as a streetwise fighter who used her fists more than her gun.

After this, her popularity exploded. She was the cover of People magazine (September 7, 1981) and was offered more ambitious projects, though it could be argued that this was due to her good looks rather than her acting talent.

In 1982, she played Kiri in the sword and sorcery movie The Beastmaster (by Don Coscarelli, creator of the Phantasm franchise) with Marc Singer. She also appeared in Playboy to help promote the movie, appearing on that issue's cover (November 1982).

In 1983, Tanya filmed the little-known adventure Paladini-storia d'armi e d'amori (Guns and Love Story) in Italy. She also played the role of "Velda," buxom secretary to private detective Mike Hammer (played by Stacy Keach) in Murder Me, Murder You. The made-for-TV movie was the first of two pilots that kicked off the syndicated television series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Roberts declined to continue the role in the Mike Hammer series - where she was replaced by Lindsay Bloom - in order to film her next project, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle (by John Guillermin). The 1984 film was based on a character adapted from a Will Eisner's comic book. Dressed in scantily clad costumes, Sheena also introduced a new blonde hairstyle that Roberts would keep for the rest of her career. The movie was a box office disaster and was mauled by the critics.

The next year she appeared as a Bond girl the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985, by John Glen) alongside Roger Moore as the superspy. Roberts played Stacey Sutton, the daughter of an oil baron, opposing the evil plans of villain Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) to destroy Silicon Valley. Although the film was Moore's last turn at playing Bond, the film was only marginally successful and is thought by fans to be one of the lesser films in the series.

After a brief break she appeared in Body Slam (1987, by Hal Needham), an action movie set in the professional wrestling world. Roberts closed out the decade with Purgatory (1989, by Ami Artzi), film about the life of imprisoned women.


The 1990s

By 1990 satisfying roles began to dry up and Roberts started to film erotic thrillers for cable television, often competing with then-current star of the genre Shannon Tweed.

In Night Eyes (1990, by Jag Mundhra) she was zealously watched over by her husband, but she ends up having an affair with the detective (Andrew Stevens) who was following her. Her 1991 film Inner Sanctum (by Fred Olen Ray) became one of the biggest hits of the genre and was successful on video rental shelves. In 1992, she played Kay Egan in Sins of Desire (by Jim Wynorsky).

Roberts also appeared on the Hot Line television series (1994) and the video game The Pandora Directive (1996).

In 1998 her career had a resurgence, and she became familiar to younger audiences, when she took on the role of Midge Pinciotti on That '70s Show until she left the series in 2001. In a recent interview on E! True Hollywood Story discussing That '70s Show, Roberts said she left the show because her husband had become ill, but gave no details of his condition. The Internet Movie Database, however, reports that Barry Roberts died on 15 June 2006, after a four year battle with encephalitis. He and Tanya had been married for 32 years.


The 2000s

After leaving That '70s Show, Roberts has been heard on radio and seen on television as the spokesperson for several Las Vegas, Nevada timeshare companies, notably Soleil and Tahiti Village. Roberts does commercials on a wide variety of radio stations and programs for Consolidated Resorts.

Who Says That Cops Don't Have A Sense Of Humor?

"Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they're new. They'll stretch
out after you wear them awhile."

"Take your hands off the car, and I'll make your birth certificate a
worthless document."

"If you run, you'll only go to jail tired."

"Can you run faster than 1,200 feet per second?" (In case you didn't
know, that is the average speed of a 9 mm bullet fired from my gun.)

"So you don't know how fast you were going. I guess that means I can
write anything I want on the ticket, huh?"

"Yes Sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don't think it
will help. Oh ... did I mention that I am the shift supervisor?"

"The answer to this last question will determine whether you are
drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"

"Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster
oven."

"In God we trust, all others we run through NCIC."

"Just how big were those two beers?"

"I'm glad to hear the Chief of Police is a good personal friend of
yours. At least you know someone who can post your bail."

Nothing says "Good morning, Monday" like cop jokes.
How's life among the raptors, Hawk?