WA2K Radio is now on the air

Eddie Cantor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Eddie Cantor (January 31, 1892 - October 10, 1964) was a comedian, singer, actor, songwriter, and one of the most popular entertainers in the United States of America in the early and middle 20th century. He was known to Broadway, Radio, and early television audiences as "the Apostle of Pep", and was considered "a member of the family" because of his intimate radio shows that involved stories and antics about his wife, Ida, and his five children.


Biography

Cantor was born as Israel Iskowitz in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Meta and Mechel Iskowitz. His mother died of lung cancer two years after his birth, and he was abandonded by his father, left to be raised by his grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz. A misunderstanding when signing her grandson up for school gave him her last name instead of Iskowitz. He would adopt the first name Eddie when he met his future wife, Ida Tobias, in 1903, because she liked the idea of having a boyfriend named Eddie. The two would marry in 1913, and remain together for Eddie's entire life.

By his early teens he began winning talent contests at local theaters, and started appearing on stage. One of his earliest paying jobs was doubling as a performer and waiter at Carey Walsh's Saloon on Coney Island, where a young Jimmy Durante accompanied him on piano. In 1907, Cantor became a billed name in Vaudeville.


In 1912 he was the only performer over the age of 20 to appear in Gus Edwards "Kid Kabaret", where he created his first blackface character, "Jefferson". Critical praise from that show moved him into the graces of Broadway's top producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, and a spot in his rooftop post-show show, the Midnight Frolic in 1916. A year later, after paying his dues, he debuted in the Ziegfeld Follies, where he would appear for the next five consecutive years, which were considered the best years of the long-standing revue. For some time Cantor co-starred in an act with pioneer African-American comedian Bert Williams, both appearing in blackface; Cantor played Williams's son. Other great co-stars of Cantor during his time in the Follies included Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, and W.C. Fields.

Cantor started making phonograph records in 1917, recording both comedy songs and routines and popular songs of the day, first for Victor, then for Aeoleon-Vocalion, Pathé, and Emerson. From 1921 through 1925 he had an exclusive contract with Columbia Records, then returned to Victor for the remainder of the decade.

He moved on to stardom in book musicals, starting with Kid Boots in 1923, Whoopee! in 1928, and Banjo Eyes in 1940.

Cantor was one of the era's most successful entertainers, but the 1929 Stock market crash suddenly took him from multi-millionaire status to being broke and deeply in debt. However, Cantor's relentless attention to his own earnings in order to avoid the poverty he knew growing up caused him to search quickly for more work. Cantor soon bounced back thanks to Hollywood movies and radio. Cantor had appeared in a number of short films in the 1920s, but became a feature star in 1930 with the film version of Whoopee!. He continued making feature films through 1948, the most notable including Roman Scandals (1933), Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937), and If You Knew Susie (1948).

In the 1930s he also began hosting "The Eddie Cantor Radio Show." This hour-long Sunday evening series, sponsored by Chase and Sanborn from 1931 to 1934, established Cantor as a leading comedian and his scriptwriter, David Freedman, as "the Captain of Comedy" (see: www.DavidFreedman.info). Soon, Cantor became the world's highest paid radio star. His shows began with a crowd chanting "We want Cantor - We want Cantor", said to have originated when a vaudeville audience used that chant to chase off an opening act who was on a bill before Cantor. Cantor's theme song was the 1903 pop tune "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider", dedicated to his wife, Ida.

An idea of how influential he was can be seen by the story of when on a November night in 1934 he introduced a new song by the songwriters J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie called Santa Claus is Coming to Town, there were orders for 100,000 copies of sheet music the next day.

In addition to film and radio, Cantor recorded for Hit of the Week Records, then again for Columbia, for Banner and Decca and various small labels.

He was a founder of the March of Dimes, and did much to publicize the battle against polio. Cantor also served as first president of the Screen Actors Guild.His heavy political involvement began early in his career, including his quick rush to strike with Actors Equity in 1919, against the advisement of father figure and producer, Florenz Ziegfeld.

Cantor's career declined somewhat in the late 1930s due to his public denunciations of Adolf Hitler and Fascism. Wishing to distance themselves from any political controversy, many sponsors dropped Cantor's shows. However, it soon bounced back with the United States entry into World War II.

In the 1940s his NBC national radio show was Time To Smile. In the 1950s he was one of the alternating hosts of the television show The Colgate Comedy Hour. However, the show landed him in an unlikely controversy -- when a young Sammy Davis Jr. appeared as a guest performer, Cantor embraced and mopped the brow of Davis with his handkerchief after his performance. Worried sponsors led NBC to threaten cancellation of the show, though Cantor's response to the controversy was to book Davis for the rest of the season. (Other sources claims that NBC threatened to cancel the show when Davis was booked for two weeks straight.) Cantor left the show in 1954, due to failing health (he had suffered a heart attack following an appearance on the show in 1952).

Cantor wrote or co-wrote at least eight books, including Caught Short! A Saga of Wailing Wall Street (1929). This and similar booklets released by the then fledgling firm, Simon & Schuster, with Cantor's name on the cover (many ?'as told to' or written with David Freedman) sold remarkably well and are still available at bookstores around the world. Customers paid a buck and received the booklet, with a penny in its hard cover. Doubtless, an original book could now fetch a pretty penny. In its day, they were worth more than gold. H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), the prominent newspaperman, asserted that these books did more to pull America out of The Depression than all government measures combined.

Cantor's autobiographies, My Life is in Your Hands (with David Freedman) and Take My Life (with Jane Kesner Ardmore) were re-published in 2000, thanks to the dedicated efforts of Cantor's grandson, musician Brian Gari (see www.briangari.com).

On October 10, 1964 in Beverly Hills, California, Eddie Cantor suffered another heart attack and died. He is buried in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.

The same year, he was awarded an honorary Academy Award.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Canto

Tallulah Bankhead
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 - December 12, 1968) was a United States actress, talk-show host and bonne vivante, born in Huntsville, Alabama.

She was the daughter of Congressman William Brockman Bankhead, niece of Senator John H. Bankhead II, and granddaughter of Senator John H. Bankhead. Her parents sent her to various schools in an attempt to keep her out of trouble, which included a year at a Catholic convent school (although her father was a Methodist and Tallulah's mother was an Episcopalian). Apparently these attempts didn't "take". She suggested the first name her godson Brockman Seawell after her grandmother, Tallulah James Brockman, and that side of her family.

At 15, Tallulah Bankhead won a movie-magazine beauty contest and convinced her family to let her move to New York. She quickly won bit parts, first appearing in a non-speaking role in The Squab Farm.

During these early New York years, she became a peripheral member of the Algonquin Round Table and known as a hard-partying girl-about-town. She also became known for her wit, although as screenwriter Anita Loos, another minor Roundtable member said: "She was so pretty that we thought she must be stupid."

In 1923, she made her debut on the London stage, where she was to appear in over a dozen plays in the next eight years. Famous as an actress, she was famous, too, for her drinking, drug taking, and many affairs with men and women. By the end of the decade, she was one of the West End's ?- and England's ?- best-known celebrities.

She returned to US in 1931 to be Paramount Pictures' "next Marlene Dietrich", but Hollywood success eluded her in her first four films of the 30s. Critics agree that her acting was flat, that she was unable to dominate the camera, and that she was generally outclassed by Dietrich, Carole Lombard, and others.

Nevertheless, David O. Selznick called her the "first choice among established stars" to play Scarlett O'Hara, but nobody else agreed; polled, moviegoers thought otherwise.

Her screen test for Gone with the Wind put her out of the running for good. Selznick decided that she was too old (at 34) for Scarlett's antebellum scenes.

Returning to Broadway, Tallulah's career stalled in unmemorable plays until she played Regina in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939). Her portrayal won her the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Performance, but Bankhead and Hellman feuded over the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland: Bankhead (a staunch enough anti-Communist) was said to want a portion of one performance's proceeds to go to Finnish relief; Hellman (an equally staunch Stalinist) objected strenuously, and the two women didn't speak for a quarter of a century to come.

More success and the same award followed her 1942 performance in Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth", in which Bankhead played Sabina, the housekeeper and temptress, opposite Fredric March and Florence Eldridge ("Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus", and also husband and wife offstage) During the run of the play, some media accused Bankhead of a running feud with the play's director, Elia Kazan, but both denied it.

In 1944, Alfred Hitchcock cast her as journalist and cynic "Constance Porter" in Lifeboat. The performance is widely acknowledged as her best on film, and won her the New York Screen Critics Award.

After World War II, Bankhead appeared in a revival of Noel Coward's "Private Lives" taking it on tour and then to Broadway for the better part of two years. The play's run made Bankhead a fortune. From that time, Bankhead could command 10% of the gross and billed larger than any other actor in the cast, although she usually granted equal billing to Estelle Winwood, a frequent co-star, and Bankhead's "best friend" from the 1920s until Bankhead's death in 1968.

Following her father's example, Bankhead was a staunch Democrat and campaigned for Harry Truman's reelection in 1948. While viewing the Inauguration parade, she booed the South Carolina float which carried then-Governor Strom Thurmond, who had recently run against Truman on the Dixiecrat ticket, splitting the Democratic vote.

Bankhead continued to perform in the 1950s and 1960s, on Broadway, in the occasional film, as a highly-popular radio show host, and in the new medium of television. Her appearance as herself on The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Comedy Hour in 1957 as The Neighbor Next Door ?- drunk, according to Ball ?- is a cult favorite, as is her role as the Black Widow on the 1960s campy television show, Batman, which turned out to be her final screen appearance. Bankhead's radio program on NBC was "The Big Show" and was billed to stem the tide of television. The program did not keep television from flourishing but it had Meredith Willson as its musical host, and featured top stars from Broadway, films, radio, and elsewhere--including Fred Allen, George Jessel, Groucho Marx, Ethel Merman, Dame Vera Lynn and Margaret Truman.

Bankhead's career was in decline by the mid-1950s. Her outrageous behavior, fueled by a two-bottle-a-day consumption of Old Grand Dad, continued unabated. And behavior that was endearingly wicked in a flapper starlet of the Twenties was wearyingly vulgar in an aging, falling star in the Sixties. Bankhead never faded from the public eye, but was increasingly a caricature of her former self. By this time, when she appeared as Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire her adoring coterie of homosexual fans cheered and laughed at her performance, hurting its dramatic tone and preventing her from achieving the desired result of a faded Southern woman.

Although she received fairly good notices for Midgie Purvis, the eponymous character who pretended to be twenty years older in order to be grandmotherly and have access to children, the play did not sell well and it closed within the season. Bankhead's last performance, in Williams's play, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, lasted only a week.

Her shortcomings notwithstanding, Tallulah always remained a personality who got good notices in the media. According to author Brendan Gill's Tallulah, when Bankhead entered the hospital for an illness, an article was headed "Tallulah hospitalized, Hospital Tallulahized".

Dick Cavett repeated on film the story that she responded to Chico Marx's statement: "I'd really like to **** you", with, "And you shall, you dear boy, and you shall." (The line may have been a particular Bankhead trademark whenever a man to whom she was attracted propositioned her so bluntly.) She even purchased a lion cub from a circus in Reno, Nevada for $100 and named him Winston Churchill, but eventually gave him up when he got too large to handle.

Tallulah Bankhead died in New York City of double pneumonia arising from influenza, complicated further by emphysema, at the age of 66 on December 12, 1968, and is buried in Saint Paul's Churchyard, Chestertown, Maryland.

She was married to actor John Emery from 1937 until 1941, when they divorced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallulah_Bankhead

ah, Bob, Where you been Boston? Waiting to see if our hawk is finished, folks

Please read Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's personal appeal.
Carol Channing


Carol Channing (born on January 31, 1921 in Seattle, Washington) is a American actress whose career was built largely on two roles, Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello Dolly!. She is easily recognized by her distinctive voice and wide eyes.

She was born an only child in Seattle, Washington. Her father was an editor and moved the family to San Francisco when she was a young child. She went to school at Aptos Junior High School, where she met an Armenian American man named Harry Kullijian with whom she fell in love. They lost touch when she went to Lowell High School in San Francisco. When she left home to attend Bennington College in Vermont, her mother informed her that her father, a journalist who she had believed was born in Rhode Island, was actually a light-skinned man of half German American and half African-American descent, born in Augusta, Georgia, who had passed for white, saying that the only reason she was telling her was so she wouldn't be surprised "if she had a black baby". She kept her heritage secret so she would not be typecast on Broadway and in Hollywood, ultimately revealing it only in her autobiography, Just Lucky I Guess, which was published in 2002, when she was more than 80 years old.

Her first Broadway play was Let's Face It, where she was an understudy for Eve Arden. She had a featured role in a review, Lend an Ear, where she was spotted by Anita Loos and cast in the role of Lorelei Lee, which was to bring her to prominence. (Her signature song from the production was "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.") Carol's persona and that of the character were strikingly alike: simultaneously smart yet scattered, naïve but worldly.

She came to national prominence as the star of Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly! She never missed a performance during her run, attributing her good health to her Christian Science faith. Her performance won her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, in a year when her chief competition was Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl. She was deeply disappointed when Streisand, who was far too young for the role, successfully campaigned to play the role of Dolly Levi in the film. (Channing was probably comforted to know that few who had seen her on stage were impressed by Streisand's bizarre interpretation of the role, an odd combination of Jewish yenta and Mae West.)

She reprised the role of Lorelei Lee in the musical Lorelei, and appeared in two New York revivals of Hello, Dolly!, in addition to touring with it extensively throughout the United States.

In 1966 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie, opposite Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. She has expressed both anger and bemusement at Barbra Streisand's being cast as Dolly Levi in the movie version of Hello Dolly, which also starred the late Walter Matthau as Horace, and a young Michael Crawford as Cornelius.

She married four times. Her first husband, Theodore Naidish, was a writer; her second, Alexander Carson, was center for the Ottawa Rough Riders Canadian football team (they had one son, Channing Lowe, who is a cartoonist and who took his step-father's surname). In 1956 she married her manager and publicist Charles Lowe. They remained married for 42 years, but she abruptly filed for divorce in 1998, alleging that she and Lowe had not had marital relations in many years and only twice in that timespan; she also alleged that Lowe was gay, a fact she evidently did not realize when they wed, but he denied her allegations. He died before the divorce was finalized.

On May 10, 2003, she married Harry Kullijian, her fourth husband and her old junior high school sweetheart, who reunited with her after she mentioned him fondly in her memoir. At Lowell High School, her old school, they renamed the school's auditorium "The Carol Channing Theatre" in honor of her. On February 25, 2002, the City of San Francisco, California proclaimed it was Carol Channing Day, possibly for her advocacy of gay rights and her appearance one year as the celebrity host of the Gay Pride Day festivities in Hollywood.

Her autobiography entitled "Just Lucky I Guess" was released on October 8, 2002. In her memoirs, Channing reveals her "long kept secret" that she has African American ancestry, through her father, George Channing, who she claims was a light-skinned African-American who kept his racial identity a secret, understandably considering the treatment of that community in those days, even in a state like Washington.

Carol Channing has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard.

Her voice and mannerisms have been parodied a number of times on the improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, especially by Ryan Stiles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing

Mario Lanza
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Mario Lanza (31 January 1921 - 7 October 1959) was an Italian-American operatic tenor and Hollywood movie star who enjoyed success in the 1950s. His voice was considered by many to rival that of Enrico Caruso, whom Lanza portrayed in the 1951 film The Great Caruso. Lanza was able to sing all types of music. While his highly emotional style was not universally praised by critics, he was immensely popular and his many recordings are still prized today.




Operatic career

Born Alfredo Arnold Cocozza in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he was exposed to opera and singing at a young age, and by the age of 16 his vocal talent became apparent. Starting out in local operatic productions in Philadelphia, he later came to the attention of conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who provided young Cocozza with a full student scholarship to the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. Koussevitzky would later tell Lanza that, "Yours is a voice such as is heard once in a hundred years."

His operatic debut, as Fenton in Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor, was at Tanglewood on August 7, 1942, after just six weeks of study with conductors Boris Goldovsky and Leonard Bernstein. It was here that Cocozza adopted his stage name, the masculine form of his mother's maiden name (Maria Lanza). His performances at Tanglewood won him critical acclaim, with Noel Straus of The New York Times hailing the 21-year-old tenor as having "few equals among tenors of the day in terms of quality, warmth, and power."

His operatic career was interrupted by World War II, when he was assigned to Special Services in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He appeared on the wartime shows On the Beam and Winged Victory while in the Air Corps.

He resumed his singing career in October 1945 on the CBS radio program Great Moments in Music, where he made six appearances singing various operatic selections. He later studied under Enrico Rosati for fifteen months, then embarked on an 86-concert tour of the United States, Canada and Mexico between July 1947 and May 1948 with George London and Frances Yeend. A concert at the Hollywood Bowl brought Lanza to the attention of MGM's Louis B. Mayer, who signed Lanza to a seven-year film contract with MGM. This would prove to be a turning point in the young singer's career.

Film career

MGM's contract with Lanza required him to commit to the studio for six months, and at first Lanza was able to combine his film career with his operatic one, singing two acclaimed performances as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly for the New Orleans Opera Association in April 1948. He also continued to perform in concert, both in solo appearances and as part of the Bel Canto Trio with George London and Frances Yeend. In May 1949, he made his first commercial recordings with RCA Victor. However, his first two films, That Midnight Kiss and The Toast of New Orleans, were very successful, as was his recording career, and Lanza's fame increased dramatically.

In 1951, Lanza portrayed Enrico Caruso in The Great Caruso, which proved to be an astonishing success. At the same time, his popularity exposed Lanza to intense criticism by music critics, including those that had praised his work years earlier.

In 1952, Lanza was dismissed by MGM after he had pre-recorded the songs for The Student Prince. The film was subsequently made with actor Edmund Purdom miming to Lanza's vocals. During this period Lanza came very close to bankruptcy as a result of poor investment decisions made by his former manager. Owing about $250,000 in back taxes to the IRS, Lanza withdrew from the public eye for a time.

He returned to an active film career in 1956 in Serenade; despite its strong musical content, it was not as successful as his previous films. Lanza then moved to Rome, Italy in May 1957, where he worked on the film Seven Hills of Rome and returned to live performing in a series of acclaimed concerts throughout Britain, Ireland and the European Continent. In early 1958, he auditioned for the management of La Scala in Milan, and was immediately offered a minimum two-year contract to sing at that theatre. The opera initially discussed was Puccini's Tosca. Later that year, Lanza also agreed to open the 1960/61 season at the Rome Opera as Canio in Pagliacci. At the same time, however, his health began to decline, with the tenor suffering from a variety of ailments, including phlebitis and acute high blood pressure. The following year, in April 1959, Lanza suffered a minor heart attack, followed by double pneumonia in August. He died in Rome in October of that year at the age of 38 from a pulmonary embolism. Soprano Maria Callas would later say of him, "My biggest regret is not to have had the opportunity to sing with the greatest tenor voice I've ever heard."

Lanza's short career covered opera, radio, concerts, recordings, and motion pictures. He was the first artist for Victor Red Seal to receive a gold disc. He was also the first artist to sell two and half million albums. A highly influential artist, Lanza has been credited with inspiring the careers of successive generations of opera singers, including Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Leo Nucci and Joseph Calleja, as well as those of singers with seemingly different backgrounds, and influences, his RCA label mate, Elvis Presley amongst them, being the most notable example. In 1994, tenor José Carreras paid tribute to Lanza in a worldwide concert tour, saying of him, "If I'm an opera singer, it's thanks to Mario Lanza."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Lanza

Norman Mailer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Norman Kingsley Mailer (born January 31, 1923) is an American writer and, along with Truman Capote, is considered an innovator of the nonfictional novel.

Norman Mailer was born to a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey. He was brought up in Brooklyn, New York, and began attending Harvard University in 1939, where he studied aeronautical engineering. At the university, he became interested in writing and published his first story when he was 18.

Mailer was drafted into the Army in World War II and served in the South Pacific. In 1948, just before enrolling in the Sorbonne in Paris, he wrote a book that made him world-famous: The Naked and the Dead, based on his personal experiences during World War II. It was hailed by many as one of the best American novels to come out of the war years and named one of the "100 best novels" by the Modern Library.

In the following years, Mailer worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. Much of his work was refused by many publishers. But in the mid-1950s, he became famous as an anti-establishment essayist, and he was one of the founders of The Village Voice in 1955 [1]. In pieces such as The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster (1956) and Advertisements for Myself (1959), Mailer examined violence, hysteria, crime, and confusion in American society.

Other famous works include: The Deer Park (1955), An American Dream (1965), Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), Armies of the Night (1968, awarded a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), Of a Fire on the Moon (1970), The Prisoner of Sex (1971), The Executioner's Song (1979, awarded a Pulitzer Prize), Ancient Evenings (1983), Harlot's Ghost (1991) and Oswald's Tale (1995).

A number of Mailer's works, such as Armies of the Night, are of a political nature. He established a reputation for political reportage, covering the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, and 1996. In 1967, he was arrested, briefly, for his involvement in anti-Vietnam demonstrations. Two years later, he ran unsuccessfully as an independent for Mayor of New York City, allied with columnist Jimmy Breslin (who ran for City Council President), with the agenda of New York City secession and creating a 51st state.

In 1980, Norman Mailer supported convicted killer Jack Abbott's bid for parole, which was successful. He helped Abbott publish a book titled In the Belly of the Beast, a collection of his letters to Mailer about his experiences in prison. However, Abbott committed a murder not long after his release and was returned to prison. Mailer was subjected to some criticism for his role in getting Jack Abbott released and in a 1992 interview in the Buffalo News, Mailer said that his involvement with Abbott was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in."

Mailer is also noted as a biographer. His subjects have included Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Norman Mailer has been married six times, including, since 1980 to Norris Church, and has nine children. In 1960, Mailer stabbed his second wife Adele Morales with a penknife at a party. She was not seriously injured.

Mailer appears in the documentary films When We Were Kings about "the Rumble in the Jungle" Heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, and in the documentary Hijacking Catastrophe, a film about 9/11 and the Iraq War. He is mentioned in the songs "Give Peace a Chance" by John Lennon, "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)[2]" by Simon & Garfunkel, "Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken" by Lloyd Cole, "Santa Monica" by Savage Garden, and "Get By" by Talib Kweli. The Welsh punk band The Manic Street Preachers mention him alongside Sylvia Plath, Henry Miller, and Harold Pinter in their song "Faster" from on their 1994 album The Holy Bible and the Australian art-pop band TISM mention him alongside Dylan Thomas and Jackson Pollack in their song "Genius is different". He is also mentioned in Woody Allen's satirical futuristic film Sleeper (1973) in which Allen says to a scientist, "This is a picture of Norman Mailer. He left his ego to the Harvard Medical School!"

In 2005, Mailer had a special guest star appearance, playing himself on the WB television show Gilmore Girls. The episode, titled "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant", has the author being interviewed at the Dragonfly Inn, an establishment owned by the main character, Lorelai Gilmore. Also guest starring was Mailer's son, actor Stephen Mailer, who played the interviewer.

Since May 2005, he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer

Jean Simmons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jean Merilyn Simmons (born January 31, 1929 in Crouch Hill, London, England, United Kingdom) is a British actress.

Simmons began acting while still in her teens. Her first major film was Great Expectations, in which she played the young Estella. In 1948, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Ophelia in Hamlet, opposite Laurence Olivier.

In 1950, she married the British actor, Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in several films, successfully making the transition to Hollywood. Among her best-known leading roles are Guys and Dolls (1955), Elmer Gantry (directed by her second husband, Richard Brooks) and Spartacus, and The Happy Ending, again directed by Brooks and for which she received her second Oscar nomination.

By the 70s, her screen career had tapered off. The screen's loss was the stage and television's gain. To glowing reviews, Simmons toured the U.S. in A Little Night Music, then took the show to London. For her appearance in the mini-series, The Thorn Birds, she won an Emmy Award. In 1989, she again starred in a miniseries version of Great Expectations, where she performed the role of Miss Havisham, Estella's adopted mother, as well as in 1985 and 1986 in North & South.

She was married twice:

1. Stewart Granger (1950-1960); (one child)
2. Richard Brooks (1960-1977); (one daughter Kate Brooks)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Simmons

"Just to establish some parameters," said the professor, "Mr. Nichols,
what is the opposite of joy?"
"Sadness," said the student.
"And the opposite of depression, Ms. Biggs?"
"Elation," answered Mr. Biggs.
"And you, sir, how about the opposite of woe?"
"I believe that would be 'giddy up!'," answered the student.

Ah, Bob. Liked the "woe" play on words, Boston. I believe that Jean Simmons was in Diseree(sp) with Marlon Brando as Napoleon, right?

I am still searching for the English lyrics to Schubert's Serenade.

Can anyone complete these lyrics:

...gently pleading through the night to thee
...while all are calm and silent, dearest come to me
... softly murmur in the moonlight clear, in the moonlight clear
... may watch thee none can harm thee
wherefore dost thou fear? wherefore dost thou fear?
Come and bless me here, come and bless me here
And bless me here.

Well, folks, we all know most of Bob's bio's but just to remind us of Jean:

Good morning! Anybody want to buy an expensive broken vase?


Visitor trips over shoelace at British museum, falls, shatters Chinese vases
at 16:30 on January 30, 2006, EST.

CAMBRIDGE, England (AP) - A visitor to a British museum tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and fell into a display of centuries-old Chinese vases, shattering them into "very small pieces," officials said Monday.

The three Qing dynasty vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had been donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in the university city of Cambridge in 1948 and were among its best-known artifacts. They sat on the window sill beside the staircase for 40 years.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident, but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed," museum director Duncan Robinson said.

The museum declined to identify the man who tripped on a loose shoelace Wednesday.

Asked about the porcelain vases, Margaret Greeves, the museum's assistant director, said: "They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together."

The museum declined to say what the vases were worth.

Ah, there's our Reyn, folks. I think, B.C., that oldandknew beat you to that one, but it was worth hearing again.

Wonder what has happened to all of our European friends?

Well, Letty has a lot of questions unanswered, but that's to be expected.

Yes, so I see...... now.

Well, Reyn, honey. That's no problem.

Let's allow the bros to sing like ming, folks:

Doobie Brothers lyrics
"Doobie Brothers Divided Highway lyrics"

Simmons/peterik/fox

Two lanes - twistin' down a dusty highway
Two souls - on their way to where it leads
Tail lights - fadin' on the far horizon
But there's a detour on the road to destiny
It goes up in a blinding flash
When two reckless worlds collide
You can't avoid the crash
Sometimes in life we ride on

Divided highway - torn in two directions
Speedin' out of sight through the night
Divided highway - stranded at the crossroads
Of what's wrong and who's right

Two hearts forgettin' what they meant to each other
Too proud ever to admit the truth
Someday it'll all seem clear
When two reckless worlds collide
It's gonna turn to tears
Why must we always ride a divided highway

On the road baby no-one's safe
When two reckless worlds collide
When we defend our faith
That's when in life we ride a divided highway

Shuttin' out the other side
Divided highway clingin' to our foolish pride
Out on the road nowhere; nowhere to hide

Why must we always ride a divided highway
Torn in two directions; speedin' outa sight
Divided highway stranded at the crossroads
Of what's wrong and who's right
Divided highway cuttin' through the darkness

Searchin' for the light
Divided highway ridin' on the fine line
Between day and nite
Divided highway
search

Detour, there's a troubled road ahead,
Detour, paid no mind to what it said.

I don't remember the rest of the tune.

Still cleaning the stairs ...




Everything is Broken


Broken lines, broken strings, broken threads, broken springs
Broken idols, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds
Ain't no use jivin', ain't no use jokin'
Everything is broken

Broken bottles, broken plates, broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts, streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Seems like every time you stop and turn around
Someone else has just hit the ground

Broken cutters, broken saws, broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones, broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin'
Everything is broken

Every time you leave and go off some place
Things fall to pieces in my face

Broken hands on broken plows, broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools, people bending broken rules
Hound dog howlin', bullfrog croakin'
Everything is broken

Detour, there's a muddy road ahead,
Detour, paid no mind to what it said,
Detour, all the bitter things I find,
Should have read that detour sign.

My word, dys. Where did that come from?

Walter, you are a welcome face on our radio, buddy. Love your janitor allusion.

Hmmm. So we're back to broken, are we?

Who in the world is this group, folks?

God Forbid
» Broken Promise

Arcane events bring new vision
The claws you wield are visible
Echoes of souls you have taken
Cry out; cry out in anguish

I uncloak anger... my anger I have for you
Broken promises, turned your back on me
Surrendered my own judgment for you
Fell Victim to your charm surrendered

Found in you no wrong
Would have trade life for you

Souls cry out in anguish
My skin now hardened by mistrust
Reality awaken by your; hollow touch
Permanent scar now remains

If we're playing songs on the theme of "Broken," I'd like to hear one of my favorites by Annie Lennox.


You were the sweetest thing that I ever knew
But I don't care for sugar, honey, if I can't have you
Since you've abandoned me
My whole life has crashed
Won't you pick the pieces up
'Cause it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass

Walking on, walking on broken glass
Walking on, walking on broken glass

The sun's still shining in a big blue sky
But it don't mean nothing to me
Oh let the rain come down
Let the wind blow through me
I'm living in an empty room
With all the windows smashed
And I've got so little left to lose
That it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass

Walking on, walking on broken glass
Walking on, walking on broken glass

And if you're trying to cut me down
You know that I might bleed
'Cause if you're trying to cut me down
I know that you'll succeed
And if you want to hurt me
There's nothing left to fear
'Cause if you want to hurt me
You're doing really well, my dear

Now every one of us was made to suffer
Every one of us was made to weep
But we've been hurting one another
And now the pain has cut too deep
So take me from the wreckage
Save me from the blast
Lift me up and take me back
Don't let me keep on walking
I can't keep on walking on, walking on broken glass

Walking on, walking on broken glass
Walking on, walking on broken glass...

Well, my goodness, Eva, Where you been, girl? Ah, folks, we're back to the heartbreak songs.

I liked that one by Annie, incidentally.


Artist/Band: Brown Jim Ed
Lyrics for Song: Have You Ever Been Lonely
Lyrics for Album: Other songs
Have you ever been lonely?
Have you ever been blue?
Have you ever loved someone,
Just as I love you?

Can't you see I'm sorry,
For each mistake I've made?
Can't you see I've changed, dear?
Can't you see I've paid?

Be a little forgiving.
Take me back in your heart.
How can I go on living,
Now that we're apart?

If you knew what I've been through,
You would know why I ask you:
Have you ever been lonely?
Have you ever been blue?

Have you ever been lonely?
Have you ever been blue?
Have you ever loved someone,
Just as I love you?

Can't you see I'm sorry,
For each mistake I've made?
Can't you see I've changed, dear?
Can't you see I've paid?

Be a little forgiving.
Take me back in your heart.
How can I go on living,
Now that we're apart?

If you knew what I've been through,
You'd know why I ask you:
Have you ever been lonely?
Have you ever been blue?...

Janitor, January and the two-faced god Janus.

Words and their history are most interesting.