Popeye

"Popeye the sailor is a fictional American cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar.  The character first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929 (92 years ago)."  

At that time, Segar, thirty-four years old, was an experienced American cartoonist.  Sadly, he died of leukemia nine years later.

Growing up, I adored watching many, many, many Popeye cartoons on television.  They usually followed a similar pattern.

Popeye gets into some difficulty, usually at the hands of his nemesis, Bluto.  Eating a can of spinach restores his power and energy.  Popeye then wins the day, very often in a brutal fist fight with Bluto. 

Popeye's girlfriend, Olive Oyl, a very skinny creature, was another familiar character in Popeye cartoons.  In the dubbed Portuguese language version her name was Olivia Palito (meaning a thin stick).  

Ironically, Olivia Palito was my wife Cristina's nickname as a child (because she was skinny).  Interesting that with such a nickname she grew up to marry a man who admired Popeye.

The reason I admired Popeye was not so much his fighting skills, but his personal philosophy.  He used to say, "I am what I am and that's all what I am."  In the movie Truth, the Mary Mapes character (Cate Blanchett) quoted Popeye (on why she wanted to continue as a journalist after being fired by CBS News).    

It seems a simple statement, but I think it is very deep.  It's like when my mother quoted William Shakespeare (Hamlet): "to thine own self be true, thou canst not then be false to any man."  Popeye and Shakespeare!      

G.I. Bill

On January 10, 1944 (77 years ago), the United States Congress passed the Serviceman's Readjustment Act (know as the G.I. Bill).  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed it into law on June 22, 1944.   The term G.I. refers to "government issue" which American soldiers began to refer to themselves as.

The new law provided a wide range of benefits to military veterans returning to civilian life.  Included in such benefits were stipends covering tuition and living expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools. 

Charles Bronson (Death Wish) enlisted in the United States Army Air Force in 1943 and served as an aircraft gunner.  After the war, he used the G.I. Bill to take acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Paul Newman (The Sting) served in the United States Navy during WWII as a turret gunner.  Afterwards, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill and studied acting at Kenyon College, the Yale School of Drama and the Actors Studio.    

George C. Scott (Patton) enlisted in the United States Marines in 1945, serving in the honor guard at Arlington National Cemetery.  He studied journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia under the G.I. Bill.

Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou) enlisted in the Marine Corp. in 1942 and fought in the Pacific theater during the war.  He used the G.I. Bill to study acting at the American Theater Wing in New York City.

Ernest Borgnine (Marty) served in the US Navy during WWII patrolling the Atlantic Ocean looking for enemy submarines.  Under the G.I. Bill, he studied acting at the Randall School of Dramatic Art in Hartford, CT.

Rod Steiger (In the Heat of the Night) served with the Navy in the South Pacific during WWII.  With the G.I. Bill, he studied acting at the Civil Service Little Theater Group.

Steve McQueen (Bullitt) served in the Marines from 1947 to 1950.  After his discharge, he studied acting under the G.I. Bill at Sanford Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse. 

A good use of tax dollars!  

Chinatown

 Chinatown is a 1974 mystery film written by Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski and which starred Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston and Joe Mantell.  

Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture (won by The Godfather, Part II), Best Director (won by Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather, Part II), Best Actor (Nicholson, won by Art Carney for Harry and Tonto) and Best Actress (Dunaway, won by Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore).   Towne won the film's only Academy Award: for Best Original Screenplay.

In the film Chinatown, a woman in 1937 Los Angeles hires private investigator Jake Gittes (Nicholson) to follow her husband, the chief engineer for the local Water and Power, fearing he's having an affair.  Gittes takes photos of him with a young woman which appear in the next day's newspapers.

Turns out the woman who hired Gittes was an imposter.  The chief engineer's wife, Evelyn (Dunaway), threatens Gittes with a lawsuit.  

Gittes:  You don't have to get tough with me.

Evelyn:  I don't get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes...my lawyer does.

Later, the chief engineer dies under mysterious circumstances.  Evelyn hires Gittes to investigate what happened to her husband.  He learns that Evelyn's father (Huston), a wealthy and dangerous man, was once a business partner of her husband's.  

Gittes and Evelyn enter into a sexual relationship.  Later, he follows her to a house where he sees Evelyn with the young woman Evelyn's husband was seen with at the beginning of the film.  Gittes demands answers.  

Evelyn: She's my daughter.  

Gittes (slapping her):  I said I want the truth.  

Evelyn:  She's my sister.  She's my daughter.  She's my sister and my daughter.

The police discover the chief engineer was murdered and believe Evelyn the murderer.  Gittes knows it was not her, but her father and tries to protect her from both her father and the police.

In the end, in the Chinatown section of LA, Evelyn attempts to escape with her sister/daughter, but the police kill her.  Gittes is angered, but one of his associates (Mantell) gives the finale a classic line:

Forget it, Jake.  It's Chinatown.

Nineteen years earlier, Mantell (Ang) delivered other memorable lines with Ernest Borgnine (Marty) in the film, Marty:

Ang:  What do you feel like doin' tonight?

Marty:  I don't know, Ang, what do you feel like doin'?

      

High School, Chapter 12

 It's just after Labor Day and the first day of high school has finally arrived.

I just woke up from a deep sleep.  

Wow!  

I had the greatest dream ever.

Can it come true?

In the past year, I was intimidated by girls.

I was afraid to initiate conversation with them.  

Why?

They might laugh at me.

I'd be humiliated.

Can I overcome that fear?

When you walk through a storm,

Hold your head up high,

And don't be afraid of the dark, 

At the end of a storm,

there's a golden sky,

and the sweet silver song of a lark,

walk on through the wind, 

walk on through the rain, 

though your dreams be tossed and blown,

walk on, walk on,

with hope in your heart and you'll...

The End.

  

Irvine Auditorium

Irvine Auditorium is located on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia at the corner of 34th and Spruce Streets.  Construction was completed in 1932.  

I was there one memorable weekend evening in November 1963 for a concert with two performers.  The first was a Black stand-up comedian, Godfrey Cambridge.  The second, a Black vocalist, Dionne Warwick.  Were the choices a little unusual since the audience, 1,260 Penn students, was almost 100% white?  It was 57 years ago, but I remember.

Godfrey Cambridge at the time was thirty years old.  Two years later, Time Magazine described him as "one of the country's foremost celebrated Negro comedians."  Godfrey was indeed funny that night.

 Godfrey was born in New York City to parents who had emigrated from what is now known as Guyana.  After graduating from high school, he attended medical school for three years before deciding to become an actor.  In 1962, Godfrey received a Tony Award nomination for his performance in the play, Purlie Victorious.

"In addition to acting, Cambridge had major success as a stand-up comedian.  By 1965, he was earning as much as $4,000 a week...in all respects a headliner, working the best places.  His routines were imbued with biting sarcasm and topical humor.  

Sadly, Godfrey died of a heart attack at age 43 while filming a TV movie in which he was portraying the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Dionne Warwick was not yet twenty-three years old that night in 1963, but seemed so mature, appearing before a large audience.  She had been discovered the previous year by the composer, Burt Bacharach, and the lyricist, Hal David.  

Dionne's first single, "Don't Make Me Over," was released in November 1962 and rose to number 21 on the Pop Chart.  I'm sure she sang it that night at Irvine Auditorium.  I've been a fan of Dionne's ever since.  

Dionne went on to become a big star.  Some of her other top songs over her long career are That's What Friends Are For, I Say a Little Prayer, Do You Know The Way To San Jose, I'll Never Love This Way Again, Walk On By, Alfie and How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye.

Dionne Warwick celebrated her eightieth birthday eight days ago on December 12th.     

      

Mary Todd

 Mary Todd was born December 13, 1818 (202 years ago today) in Lexington, Kentucky, the fourth of seven children.  Her father was a wealthy banker, who owned slaves who worked in their fourteen room house.

At school, Mary studied French, literature, dance, drama and music.  After graduating in 1839, she moved to Springfield, Illinois to live with her married sister, Elizabeth Edwards.

That same year, Mary met a tall, prominent, but poor lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.  After an on again, off again, on again relationship, they married November 4, 1842 at her sister's home.  The marriage lasted more than twenty-two years and produced four sons.  

My mother, Margaret (Karch) Lasky, also produced four sons: Joel, Paul, Ted and me.

Mary's eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, born in 1843, was a lawyer, businessman, US Secretary of War in President James Garfield's Administration and an Ambassador to the Court of St. James, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison.  He died in his sleep in 1926 just shy of his 83rd birthday.

Mary's second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, was born in 1846, but died four years later of tuberculosis.

The third was William Wallace Lincoln.  He was born in 1850 and died 1862 of typhoid fever while living at the White House while his father was president.

Mary's youngest child was Thomas (Tad) Lincoln who was born in 1853.  He died at 18 years of age from an undetermined cause.

After Mary was widowed in 1865, she returned to live with her family in Illinois.  In 1875, Robert Todd Lincoln had his mother institutionalized because of her erratic behavior.  Mary was later released into the custody of her sister.  

Mary then moved to Pau, France for four years.  Afterwards, she moved back to her sister's home in Springfield, Illinois where she died of a stroke in 1882 at the age of 63.      

Charade

The dictionary defines charade as "an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance."

There is a connection between the above definition and the 1963 romantic mystery film Charade, produced and directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and which starred Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy.  

Henry Mancini's original song (Charade) was nominated for an Academy Award  (won by James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn for Call Me Irresponsible in Papa's Delicate Condition).

What a cast!  Hepburn (Roman Holiday), Matthau (The Fortune Cookie), Coburn (Affliction) and Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke) are all Academy Award winners.  Grant (a two-time Academy Award nominee) received an honorary Academy Award "for his sheer brilliance in the acting business," according to his presenter, Frank Sinatra. 

Filmed on location in Paris, Charade tells the story of five former American soldiers who stole a quarter of a million dollars ($2,100,000 today) from the U.S. government during WWII and twenty years later try to retrieve it from a hiding place, each for themselves.  One of them, Charles, is found dead at the beginning of the film.  He had the money, but hid it from the others.  But where?  That is one of the film's mysteries.  

Three of the remaining four ex-G.I.s, Herman (Kennedy), Leopold (Ned Glass) and Tex (Coburn) are desperate to find the stolen loot, but are murdered, by whom?  A CIA administrator (Matthau) and a mystery man (Grant) are also looking for the money.  And they all believe Charles's widow (Hepburn) knows where it is, but she claims ignorance.

At the film's climax, the CIA administrator is really one of the original group of thieves (Dyle) who murdered the other four.  The mystery man is really an American government official (Brian) whose job it is to find stolen U.S. government property.  

Caught between the above two (Dyle and Brian), the widow doesn't know whom to believe.  Finally, she correctly trusts her romantic instincts to believe Brian, who saves her from the murderer (and later asks her to marry him).

And where is the money?  In plain sight.  On a plain ordinary envelope addressed by Charles to his wife are three rare postage stamps worth a quarter of a million dollars.