jim henson

"Life completely given over to love, bears the fragrance of Christ; it invites all of us not to be afraid." ~Pope John Paul II 

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vincent Price.  I wanted to post this hilarious video of Mr. Price on What's My Line where he is the Mystery Guest.

Not only does he sing his replies, but he sings in French!  Enjoy!

Tra-La, It's May! That Lusty Month of May!

May 1st has long signified many and diverse traditional celebrations all over the world.

The day has always put me in mind of Camelot's Julie Andrews, and in recent years Seattle's
Jason Webley - - but this year I've been pointed in the direction of Brooklyn's
Jonathan Coulton and a brilliant song from his 2003 album,
Space Monkey.

Many thanks to
my dear friend Oon
for turning me on
to "JoCo", this song, and the video below.

This song contains some strong and
charming language that may be NSFW.

Today's Music Monday features not so much a composer as a singer. Patricia Routledge is best known for her portrayal of Hyacinth Bucket, the annoying and over-controlling English woman who sings decidedly off-key.

It is a bit of a shock to hear Routledge in this album from sometime in the 1960's or 70's singing Jerry Herman's And I Was Beautiful. The lyrics are very touching and Routledge does a splendid job conveying the love that is being illustrated by this piece. Her gorgeous alto voice overcomes the saccharine strings and piano accompaniment and her annunciation is perfect, in keeping with her stated belief that the English language is a beautiful thing worth learning how to speak properly.

Enjoy this!

In case you have not seen Patricia Routledge singing in her role as Hyacinth, here is a taste of what she must do--sing off key while accompanying herself on piano. She has said this is not easy to do if you already know how to sing well.

The second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony was recently used to great effect in the movie The King's Speech. This piece is played while King George VI walks the long walk to give the speech telling his country that they are at war with Germany and continues playing in the background as he gives the speech.

The movie shows his heart wrenching struggle with a severe stammer, making it impossible for him to speak in public or use the newest technology, live radio. He is helped by an unconventional speech therapist who stands directly in front of the King as he confronts the dreaded microphone.

The piece is very ceremonial and processional, but in a mostly understated way.

It is also quite a poignant piece, and very dramatic--perfectly suitable for the climactic scene in the movie.

So, sit back and let the music take you where it will.

Edited to add:  I see there are many alternatives on YouTube of this piece in relation to the King's Speech.

Click here to listen to the real King George VI giving the actual speech, with the 7th Symphony in the background.  Chilling to think what England would be enduring very shortly after this speech was broadcast.

Here is the 7th Symphony as it is played (without Colin Firth's speech, sadly) in the original soundtrack of the movie.



Hat tip to Catholic Key.

Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.

I was blessed enough to be able to sing this song in high school and it remains one of my favorites.  The entire Ceremony of Carols, from which this is taken, is beautiful and worth listening to. 

Let us never forget what Christmas is all about.

This is part of an Orthodox theology series on YouTube.  I love this concept of the Uncreated Energies of God and sin being a misuse of our energies.  This is SO common today--it is so easy to misuse our energies today--and our energies come from God and are a part of God--*and* energy is relationship and Grace, not something nebulous that lets us do something  for ourselves.

In keeping with our bird theme this week, here is Weewoo the talking starling.  Yes, a starling.  Like the ones outside.  How cool is that?

Clara is a 94 year old great grandmother who has a cooking channel on YouTube where she shares recipes that got her family through the Great Depression.

This one is for baked apples--something both my mom and my late mother-in-law used to make.

This is a calming and meditative Litany of the Sacred Heart set to Gregorian chant. Listen and open your own heart to God.

As I write this it's after midnight in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and I'm still buzzing from the superb double-feature I caught earlier this evening in the City at the historic Castro Theatre on the second night of NOIR CITY, The 8th Annual
San Francisco Film Noir Festival.

I'm hoping to get back over once or twice this next week to catch more of the festival before it's gone for another year...

Kicking off tonight's program was the impressive short embedded below, which intercuts clips from a few dozen classic Noir films, synched perfectly with Massive Attack's 'Angel' used as background score.

It was a huge crowd-pleaser for the packed house of Film Noir fanatics at The Castro...



'The Endless Night: a Valentine to Film Noir' was assembled by Serena Bramble, a 20-year-old studying psychology at Santa Rose Junior College.

Click here to read more about Ms. Bramble, the festival and its highlights.

Follow the video to its posting at YouTube, for notations listing all the films used as source material.

Another obit.

Actor Lou Jacobi has left this world, at age 95.

That's a good long run.

- Follow link to his obituary from The New York Times.

Five decades spent in showbiz.
Numerous appearances on stage, screen, TV - - and I'll wager that there is not one production among them that was not greatly improved by his presence.

Even just the sound of his distinctive voice - - I have fond memories of hearing him in the ensemble cast of some of Booker & Foster's silly comedy albums, like 'When You're In Love, The Whole World Is Jewish', or in the role of band leader Al Tijuana. ▶

- Click over to the 'Tijuana Brass Sound' box set post at WFMU's Beware of The Blog and you'll find numerous Al Tijuana cuts sprinkled throughout the available mp3s.

(At the very least, take a listen to the adaptation of
'Peter Gunn'.)

So:
A World Without Lou Jacobi In It?

Impossible to contemplate.

No thank you, I reject the notion.

His listing at IMDb tells me that it has been fifteen years since Lou Jacobi's last film credit, but I've enjoyed watching him on several occasions during that time.

I also see in that long list at IMDb that there are still many of his performances waiting for me in films I've not yet seen.

Thank you for everything Mr. Jacobi, I look forward to seeing you again soon.

- A YouTube clip embedded below: ▼

From 1971, a juicy Jacobi scene from Jules Feiffer's 'Little Murders', directed by Alan Arkin.

Jacobi plays the judge, reacting to news from engaged couple Marcia Rodd & Elliott Gould that they plan to omit God from their wedding vows...

As a young man, puppeteer
Jim Henson was bursting with creative ideas and wasted no time in making things happen.

In the mid-1950s, he was making puppets for children's television before he was out of high school.

He created his first muppet TV show, Sam and Friends, during his freshman year of college.
The five-minute program aired daily, and ran for six years.

Simultaneously, Henson's muppets were making other TV appearances on variety shows and in assorted commercials.

But it wasn't all about muppets all the time...

When Henson graduated from college in 1960, he was married, had a new-born daughter, and had been working in TV and advertising for several years. He was 23.

That same year, Jim Henson released an odd, jazzy little 45 single.
On the A-side, 'Tick-Tock Sick', he complains of being 'bugged' by the relentless ticking of the clock.

Listen to:
Jim Henson - Tick-Tock Sick
(Signature Records 45, 1960)
(click for audio)

(label image via Muppet Wiki)




On the flipside...

Listen to:
Jim Henson -
The Countryside
(Signature Records 45, 1960)
(click for audio)

Regarding this 45 and a recurring motif of 'racing time' in Henson's work, Karen Falk, historian and head archivist for The Jim Henson Company said:
"Jim Henson accomplished an amazing amount in his life, but given the large number of files on unrealized projects that are in the archives, he clearly didn't have enough time to do all that he wanted to do. And 'Tick-Tock Sick' tells us that he was already feeling the crunch just six years into his career."

As the 1960's progressed, amidst increasing exposure of The Muppets, Henson also began working with experimental film.

'Time Piece' was a short film that Henson wrote, produced, directed and starred in. He began production in 1964 and took about a year to finish, working on it in between TV projects.

It premiered at New York's Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, traveled the film festival circuit, and was nominated for a Best Live Action Short Subject Oscar in 1966.

Incorporating animation, reverse motion, rapid edits and a rhythmic, percussive soundtrack by
Don Sebesky, 'Time Piece' continues some of the theme explored by 'Tick-Tock Sick' a few years earlier.

Below, ▼ view 'Time Piece'...



- This post is a companion piece to one posted at Video Cabinet in Limbo, also regarding Jim Henson's muppetless productions.
Follow link to: Richard Schaal in Jim Henson's teleplay, 'The Cube' (1969)

See also:
Circa 1965, Henson made two Muppets, Inc. industrial promo films pitching to Wilson's Meats, an advertising account, filmed in a tongue-in-cheek, mock-documentary style.
Follow links to:
- Wilson's Meats #1
- Wilson's Meats #2

Curious and kitschy old 45's like this one are pretty much the epitome of the Thrift Store Find - - the sort of 'vanity project' record originally intended to be given as a gift or maybe a give-away 'premium'.

You might find it further down the road at a garage sale, but when it was new you probably never saw it at your local music emporium or heard it on your radio.

This 1980 single celebrates the city of
San Francisco in two similar songs that capitalized on that era's surge in the popularity of jogging, in the wake of efforts by running guru/author Jim Fixx and other fitness advocates of the time.

It sounds like it was recorded just for fun by non-professional musicians.

A bit of googling regarding the principal artists supports this theory, revealing very little to suggest that they stuck with the performing end of the music industry.

It appears that the Passantino family has a rich San Franciscan background, and that Regina's daughter Angelica has worked a bit in art history and acting in more recent years.
Since his performance on one side of this record, Konrad Dryden has distinguished himself as a classical music historian and author.













Listen to:
Konrad Dryden - San Francisco Guys & Girls
(Golden gate Records 45, 1980)
(click for audio)













Listen to:
Angelica Passantino -
Mommy, Daddy Jog With Me
(Golden gate Records 45, 1980)
(click for audio)


See also:
- Though you'll still see plenty of joggers in the vicinity of San Francisco's Marina Green, Crissy Field and its Presidio district, this record brings to mind the days when it was still a 'craze', and also the beginnings of the 'Parcourse' fitness trails, some of which appeared first in San Francisco and nearby cities.

- That 'newness' of jogging might for a few in turn conjure up a scene from Albert Brooks' cynical 1981 comedy 'Modern Romance'.
Click over to YouTube to watch the running store scene, in which Bob Einstein (a.k.a.
'Super Dave Osborne' and Brooks' real-life older brother) outfits Brooks with all the 'serious' equipment he'll need to 'start a new life'.

It's sad to have lost two charismatic fan-favorite actors this week.

It's sad and it's a shame that it's been their fate to have news of their passings lumped together more often than not, but that seems to be the way these things always go.

You can also be pretty sure that the headline in each of their obituaries will more often than not attempt to 'sum up' a long career with a catch-phrase or reference to just one of many roles they played in long and varied careers. Another shame.

The good news is that both of these actors leave behind ample evidence of a body of work that we all can enjoy for years to come. There's still much to revisit and to discover.

Thank you gentlemen, each of you, for a job well done.



















Ricardo Montalbán, 1920 - 2009.

- An obituary. (follow links)



















































- Ricardo sings!
Click over to YouTube for a 'tribute' video that includes Mr. Montalbán performing
'Chihuahua Choo Choo' as its soundtrack.

Originally the song had been featured in a 1955 stage revue, 'That's Life'.
It was written by the Oscar-winning songwriting team of composer Jay Livingston and
lyricist Ray Evans, whose credits included 'Mona Lisa', 'Buttons And Bows', 'Silver Bells', 'Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)', and others.
Ricardo's recording first appeared on a 1957 LP, 'Premiere: The Top Motion Picture Stars of Hollywood Make Their Record Debut', arranged by Bob Thompson.



















Patrick McGoohan, 1928 - 2009.

- An obituary (follow links)































- Follow link to YouTube for a film trailer to the 1962 drama 'All Night Long', an 'Othello' update featuring
Patrick McGoohan as a scheming
Jazz drummer...

Like many, it was in the 1970s that I first took notice of cartoonist Charles Rodrigues' work.

It was for his strip 'The Aesop Brothers, Siamese Twins', which ran regularly in the comics pages of National Lampoon.

That would always remain my personal association with his name and his artwork, though over the years I'd discover that it had been just one publication among several to print his cartoons on a regular basis.

Rodrigues was born on September 9th, 1926, was of Portuguese heritage, and lived most of his life in rural Massachusetts.

After his service with the Navy in WWII, he married and raised a family.

His long affiliation with the magazine Stereo Review (now called 'Sound & Vision') began with its first issue in
February of 1958 (when it was called 'Hi-Fi and Music Review', later 'HiFi Review' and then 'HiFi/Stereo Review', until 1968 when the name settled to 'Stereo Review').

His cartoons for that magazine were geared for audiophiles, and the humor would often (but not always) depend on a reader's knowledge of audio equipment.

Rodrigues remained a regular contributor there for decades, and drew similarly-themed Ham and CB Radio-centric cartoons for 'Electronics Illustrated' magazine in the '60s and '70s.

In addition to the Lampoon and occasional appearances in Playboy and magazines like Look (see below) and others, his gag cartoons also ran regularly in Cracked Magazine for many years.

He was also a syndicated newspaper cartoonist, with two long-running strips; 'Charlie' (described as being like a gloomier 'Ziggy') and 'Casey The Cop' ▼.

(Follow this link for another example of the 'Casey' strip.)

Charles Rodrigues died at the age of 77 on June 14, 2004, following a brief illness.

The tone of his cartoons (if not the artistic style) was often similar in dark temperament to cartoonists like Charles Addams or Virgil Partch or his contemporary, Gahan Wilson.

Though the work of Rodrigues was seldom overtly macabre, certainly within the pages of
National Lampoon he more than adequately portrayed 'taboo' subjects with regularity, to the point that in my own case it was almost more shocking (having first associated him with NatLamp) to discover how relatively tame and genteel his cartoons could be that appeared elsewhere.

In describing Rodrigues in his book 'A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever', author Josh Karp wrote:

"Charles Rodrigues was a devout Catholic who despised humor of a blasphemous or sexual
nature yet thought nothing of submiting thick, fuzzy cartoons that made humor out of the handicapped, epileptics and dwarfs as they tried to use the toilet or perform other everyday activities."

Collected here are a few Rodrigues illustrations from an old paperback, 'Strictly Personal' - - A "hilarious" collection of (supposedly authentic) newspaper 'personals column' ads.

The book was first published in 1964, and its tendency towards the mildly risqué fit right in with many of the slightly racy humor and cartoon paperbacks printed at the time by Fawcett's Gold Medal Books.










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Below, ▼ two one-panel Rodrigues cartoons that appeared in Look Magazine in 1968.






- And one more 'Stereo Review' panel (date unknown).
◀


















ADDENDUM, 1.13.09: Check out some more Charles Rodrigues cartoons from a 1966 paperback collection, 'Spitting On The Sheriff And Other Diversions' in a follow-up post!


- - Finally, a bit of tangential info with regard to the 'Strictly Personal' book.

The 'compiler/editor' was Leo Guild, a name that may be familiar to readers of trash fiction and old
'tell-all' celebrity biographies of questionable authenticity.

Guild had been a publicist for Warner Bros. beginning in the 1940s, had a long-running column in
The Hollywood Reporter, wrote Radio and TV scripts, and was occasionally credited as a Hollywood Producer.

Some time in the late '40s he began authoring books, mostly pulp fiction, but also celebrity biographies, gambling guides, 'bachelor' joke books and others, well into the 1970s.

He received perhaps his best credits for the bio 'Zanuck: Hollywood's Last Tycoon', while his work 'The Fatty Arbuckle Case' is viewed as being largely embellished fiction.


A few other titles by Leo Guild - -

-Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman
(by Hedy Lamarr and Leo Guild)

- Hollywood Screwballs

- Confidential Sex Survey

- What Are The Odds (follow link for a review at
Your Neighborhood Librarian)

- Cons and Lovers

- Mistress of Cuba (as Rita Benuto)

- The Girl Who Loved Black: White Girls Who Love Black Pimps,
the True Story of One Who Did

- Street of Ho's

- Black Bait: the True Story of Lila, a Foxy, Fast
Race Track Swinger

- Black Streets of Oakland

- The Senator's Whore

- I Was Kidnapped by Idi Amin










Leo Guild's masterpiece (or his 'Plan 9', if you will) would appear to be his 1972 novel 'The Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman', described as "...the most craptastically awful book ever written".

A 2007 article in Seattle's The Stranger supplied an overview of Guild's career, and a description of this novel.

- Follow link to 'The Worst Pulp Novelist Ever: Remembering Leo Guild'

Author Paul Collins followed this piece with some further elaboration at his Weekend Stubble blog.
- Click over to 'King Hack'.

- As if that weren't sufficient, you can read a further review of 'The Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman' over at The Groovy Age of Horror.

Leo Guild and Charles Rodrigues' book 'Strictly Personal' was released early in 1964.
When the Fall TV season began that year, Leo Guild received writer's credit for the new CBS sitcom
'My Living Doll', though essentially all he'd provided was the idea.

The program starred Bob Cummings as a psychologist given the task of caring for Rhoda, a robot fashioned to look like a real human female, played by Julie Newmar.

The series was basically a variation on the formula CBS had used the year before with their show 'My Favorite Martian', though capable of employing saucier situations than might be attainable with Ray Walston.

- Follow link to one of several video clips available at YouTube.

'My Living Doll' lasted only one season, though it did leave us with the phrase 'Does not compute'.

The following year, NBC countered with 'I Dream of Jeannie'.