jim henson

The songs in the links posted below are from an old 45 of quirky but charming music originally heard as part of 'The Love Song of Barney Kempinski', a one-hour teleplay that aired on September 14th, 1966 as the premiere episode of an anthology TV series, ABC Stage 67.

For his performance in the title role, actor
Alan Arkin received an Emmy award nomination. (- - And has the program been seen since??)

- From the synopsis posted at TV.Com:
"Barney Kempinski, thirtyish and contentedly
self-unemployed, leaves his Lower East Side apartment smiling and happy.
"On this fine sunny day he is to be married - -
3 o'clock at City Hall - - to his girl Francine.
"In the few remaining hours of his bachelorhood, Barney goes off to tour the city and sing his love song - - exuberant, irresponsible and frequently dangerous - - to life, love and the city of
New York."

The photo at right, ▶
taken during production for 'Barney Kempinski' comes from a profile article on Arkin,
"Actor's Jump To The Top", that appeared in the July 22nd, 1966 issue of LIFE magazine.
- Click here to read that article.

Also appearing in the cast were John Gielgud,
Alan King, Lee Grant and Arlene Golonka.

(An item of note for those of who've never had the pleasure of seeing this production is that there's no listing of anyone in the cast playing the role of Barney's fiancé, Francine. Presumably the character doesn't appear in the story - - ?)


- Listen to:
Alan Arkin - I Like You
(Columbia Records 45, 1966)
(click for audio)


- Listen to:
Alan Arkin - Barney's Love Song
(Columbia Records 45, 1966)
(click for audio)


- Anyone who recalls having seen this program or has more information to share is invited to leave a comment. Better yet, if you know where / how to view 'The Love Song of Barney Kempinski' nowadays, it'd be great to hear from you. It might be fun and worth a pilgrimage to The Paley Center for Media someday to try and track it down in their archives, but in an ideal world it shouldn't have to come to that. (Don't get me started on my rant about how the history of television shouldn't be slipping into the realm of archaeology...)

Looking over highlights of Alan Arkin's career, the chronology of 'The Love Song of Barney Kempinski' falls in between Arkin's breakout film appearance in 'The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming' which had premiered just a few months earlier, and his villainous turn the following year opposite Audrey Hepburn in the thriller, 'Wait Until Dark'.

◀ At left; from the LIFE article, Arkin on set with
'Barney Kempinski' author Murray Schisgal.

Beginning in 1964, Arkin had appeared on Broadway in the original run of Schisgal's play, 'Luv', directed by Mike Nichols.

Nichols would direct Arkin again in the 1970 film, 'Catch-22'.

Both also shared roots to improvisational cabaret theater in Chicago; Alan Arkin with The Second City, and Mike Nichols to its precursor, The Compass Players.







Arkin's musical roots go back still further; at least as far as a folk-singing record, 'Once Over Lightly', released on the Elektra label in 1955. ▶

That release would lead him to the ranks of several folk groups before joining Second City, including
The Tarriers, Jeremy's Friends, and The Babysitters.

- Many of those early folk recordings can be heard at an Alan Arkin fansite (follow link), though you may want to beware of possible sporadic 'malware' warnings popping up...

(Please Note: In preparing this post, I was initially excited to have figured out the origins for 'I Like You', a song I'd heard years ago but had never known the story behind. While gathering information, further excitement arose upon finding not only a superior recording to the one I had, but the B-side of the record as well. Credit and many thanks for that goes to (like a) Fish Out Of Water, a wonderful blog of celebrity recordings. This post expands upon that one.)

"Where the Arkin is. On Columbia Records" - - Below, ▼ a print ad promoting the 45 and the TV program appeared in the September 17th, 1966 issue of Billboard Magazine.

PLEASE NOTE: In accordance with a cease and desist message received from About Comics, current copyright holder for the images from Charles M. Schulz's 'Two-by-Fours' book, the color scans from a vintage copy of that book have been removed from this blog until further notice.

Thank you.

About Comics would also like you to know that their book 'Schulz's Youth' collects cartoons from both the 'Young Pillars' series and images from 'Two-by-Fours'.

*******************************************


This little book of child psychology for churchgoing folk was a collaboration between beloved cartoonist
Charles M. Schulz and writer Kenneth F. Hall.

It first appeared in the
mid-1960s, right around the same time Schulz was finishing up his run on 'Young Pillars', a comic strip with similar gently religious overtones, focused on teenagers.

Schulz' 'Peanuts' gang were certainly already hugely popular at the time, though it would still be a couple of years or so before they'd take over the planet and all its media.

If the lanky, elongated teens in 'Young Pillars' looked sort of like older versions of Charlie Brown and his friends, the 'Two-By-Fours' kids look sort of like kids who were their same age but who lived across town or went to a different school.

- A bit of text from the book's back cover ▲ and preface ▼ defining the concept...

"When a Two-by-Four is a piece of lumber, you can stack it on a neat pile or cut it to just the right length and nail it to a wall.

"But, the kind of Two-by-Four we discuss here (children living in their second, third, and fourth years) you can never quite nail down so permanently or stack up so neatly.

"In fact, these youngsters do not themselves have a clear picture of just who they are, and they do a lot of groping to try to discover the answer."



Fun to see Schulz working in a single-panel format, as opposed to his customary strip motif.

The vivid colors are reminiscent of those in his book Happiness is a Warm Puppy, and bring back memories of greeting cards and calendars of the era, or 'gift' books printed around the same time by Price/Stern/Sloan and other such publishers.

(click on any image to enlarge it in a new window)







(click on any image to enlarge it in a new window)

Our internet is a fun and fascinating tool, but its laziness can be confounding.
Pertinent background information is so often avoided, or eschewed in favor of propagating misinformation.

A small case in point: Images of the oddly hairy baby doll shown below have been circulating on the web for several years now, most often presented as a lone, wacky 'WTF' photo, and almost always with the implication that it was spotted for sale in a marketplace for cheap Asian-produced toys.






Almost never mentioned is that
'You Can Shave The Baby' was never a
consumer item, but rather an art object created in 1995 by Zbigniew Libera, consisting of a set of ten matching dolls in ten matching cardboard boxes.

As described at the Polish artist's website;
"...His works - - photographs, video films, installations, objects and drawings - - piercingly and subversively (in an intellectual way) play with the stereotypes of contemporary culture."






In this vein of presenting 'transformed toys', Libera preceded 'You Can Shave The Baby' with 'Ken's Aunt' in 1994, a similar set of heavier-set Barbie-like dolls wearing unflattering foundation undergarments - -


(click on image to enlarge)




- - he followed in 1996 with perhaps his most famous and controversial work,
'Correcting Device:
LEGO Concentration Camp'
- - Three editions of 7 different highly customized boxed
Lego System sets.










From Zbigniew Libera's Artist's Statement included in an exhibition at The Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota:

"My ability to work with objects is taken from everyday urban contemporary life. In my study of the development of correctional devices and educational toys, I see such devices reveal more about a society and its mechanisms for creating and enforcing its norms than any study of society could.

"'Lego', a construction made partially from various Lego kits, takes us into a village with a mental hospital, Stalin's prison, World War II and Bosnian concentration camps. Thus, I feel I mix historical with contemporary references to represent our world, our little inferno, as built and sanctified by norms.





"'Eroica', is a four-boxed set of toy soldier-sized women figures. They are based on classical models.

"They are a reminder that in the 1990s no toy soldier set is complete without the inclusion of women, who have become the special targets of victimization in genocidal settings such as Bosnia, where rape camps have been well documented. Such is the fashion of 'heroic' actions of armies in genocidal and even less violent encounters where women are victims.

"During an academic conference in Brussels in December, 1997, an agitated audience, who felt that the Lego Concentration Camp was a real toy which was available for sale, demanded that I comment about why I constructed it.

"My response then, as it is now, was:
'I am from Poland. I've been poisoned.'"


- More Zbigniew Libera links are at Wikipedia.