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Saturday, January 5, 2008
Just trying to fill a void here, folks - - Just trying to address an injustice.
Not too long ago I was searching around the web for anything about actor Michael J. Pollard.
A fansite, an interview, whatever.
I was shocked and saddened to see so very little out there.
How can it be?!?
Here's a small attempt to turn that around.
Mr. Pollard has been showing up in movies and on TV for almost 50 years now, and as far back as I can remember it's always been a great treat for me to see him appear on the screen.
From the quiet silliness of the late fifties, into the swinging sixties and sordid seventies, it didn't matter what the genre was or the caliber of the production, Michael J shows up and I'm happy.
That trend continued on through his oddball eighties roles and the 'Hey, I'm Still Working' nineties - - I confess I've only seen one of his flicks from this century - - there's still much to explore, Pollard-wise...
Follow links to:
- The Michael J. Pollard entry at IMDb
- His Broadway stage credits listed at IBDB
- More details on his list of credits at film reference.com
- A small bio page at allmovie, another at Yahoo! Movies,
and one at TCM.Com
(clicking on images will either ENLARGE the image, or in many cases take you to the IMDb page for that appearance.)
4/10/68 ▶
Attending the Academy Awards ceremony, with his
'Bonnie And Clyde' co-stars.
Pollard was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category, but lost to George Kennedy for his performance in
'Cool Hand Luke'.
Image above ⬆ by Peter Max, 1969.
Hey, so if you have any thoughts or anecdotes about Michael J or his movies, please feel free to add comments to this post.
Any photos or references to other Pollard info to share? Send 'em along, too.
The more the merrier.
- - And Mr. Pollard, if you're out there reading this,
** thank you **
for all your work over the many years.
It's appreciated and greatly enjoyed.
Hope to see you out there again soon!
Portrait below ⬇ by Nashville artist Mike Barnett.
Below: ⬇ 'A New Kind of Hero'
- - A mini-documentary about Pollard shot on location during production of the 1969 film 'Hannibal Brooks', in which he
co-starred with Oliver Reed.
Reed and director Michael Winner also appear in this 9-minute featurette.
ADDENDUM, 2/12/08, 4/21/08, 6/27/08: Another few MJP images found, which brings up the notion of making additions to this on-going 'bank' of Pollard-mania as things present themselves. Stay tuned.- - and if YOU have any Michael J. Pollard photos, articles, interviews, memories, etc, to share, please feel free to drop an e-mail or post a comment! Thanks.
Looks like the motorcycle shot was used for a poster in 1968. ➤
Y'know, like the ones you'd find at the mall or in that groovy head shop, and then pin up on your bedroom wall.
▼ Gene Shalit's capsule movie review appeared in the December 1st, 1970 issue of LOOK magazine. ▼
(click on image to ENLARGE)
At left, 3 images from a Pollard TV
guest-appearance on 'Honey West' in 1965.
◀ In the episode 'The Princess and The Paupers', MJP is on the right as Jingles, a member of up & coming rock band
The Paupers, in performance at a swinging nightclub on L.A.'s Sunset Strip.
(Next to Pollard is Bobby Sherman, 3 or 4 years prior to 'Here Comes The Brides' and teen heartthrob status. On the left is
Nino Candido, who eventually segued from TV acting to crew work, becoming property master on 'The A-Team', 'My Name Is Earl', and other programs.)
◀ Working on an alibi with 'Honey West' stars Anne Francis and John Ericson.
◀ Oops, Spoiler alert! The guest-star did it! Who knew?!?
With Robert Culp, ▶
from a 1966 episode of 'I Spy';
'Trial by Treehouse'.
- That episode can be viewed at Hulu.
Below; ▼ with actor Kyle Holman in 1989, while filming
'Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland'.
Read an interview with Kyle Holman about the production (and a brief Pollard memory)
at Racks and Razors.Com.
Above; ▲ in Nelson,
British Columbia, along with Daryl Hannah and
Rick Rossovich during production of 'Roxanne', 1986.
Photo by Steve Thornton.
1988:
◀ Selling shades,
and hanging with
actress Sally Kirkland. ▼
UPDATE, 10.1.08: A few more photos added, including recent shots from 6/08,
(scroll down) - - and, and, AND!! - - an astonishing audio discovery, one that I'd certainly never heard about prior to finding it recently at Probe is Turning-on the People (Session 209), via Donna Lethal at
Celluloid Slammer.
It's an old novelty 45, released in the election year of 1968 by singer Jim Lowe, some 12 years after his big chart hit with
'The Green Door'...
Listen to:
Jim Lowe -
Michael J. Pollard For President
(Buddah Records 45, 1968)
(click for audio)
Below, ▼ MJP on June 12th, 2008 in Los Angeles, attending the ceremony honoring Warren Beatty for his AFI Life Achievement Award.
Speaking of achievements, all these years and the man still shows serious skills when it comes to the fine art of hat-wearing...
(4.18.09)
More stuff added, including
◀ this shot from July, 2008 of MJP at a movie theater in Malibu.
(photo by WENN, more at Absolutely.Net.)
A few online video tips...
Among many other credits, Mr. Pollard holds the distinction of being the only actor to appear during the 1960s on TV episodes of both 'Star Trek' and 'Lost in Space', two of the more popular Sci-Fi shows of the decade.
- The 1966 'Lost In Space' episode 'The Magic Mirror' is available for online viewing at Hulu.
- The 1966 'Star Trek' episode 'Miri' is available for online viewing at Fancast.
In addition to the 'I Spy' episode mentioned earlier in this post, a diligent seeker of MJP TV appearances posted online might care to look around on YouTube or similar sites...
◀ Photo by Polly Cole, found at flickr.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Another jumbled collection of items and notions recently encountered...
1. Number One on the list this week is far and away my excitement and relief that the holiday season is over! Yes, sure, there are plenty of good things about them, but it's always nice to know they've gone for another year.
2. A big hello to ILTS visitors from Churchill, Manitoba!
It's in my obsessive nature to regularly track the web traffic that this blog receives.
The process gets more compelling as more folks from all around the globe click in to check it out.
One feature I've grown to enjoy especially is the 'World Map' view of recent visitors.
A map with no border lines gives me an opportunity to brush up on my geography, and it's exciting (to me, anyway) to see hits coming in from far-flung locations.
Any place that rings in my mind as 'exotic' or out-of-the-way is fun to see pop up. I had hits from Luxembourg the other day, and Cyprus a week or so ago. The North American slice of the map view above includes a hit from the tiny two-island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies, as well as one from Anchorage, Alaska.
A few weeks back I began noticing a regularly-recurring 'blip' far to the north, tucked in along the western shore of Canada's Hudson Bay.
A bit of investigation online showed me that Churchill, Manitoba, is steeped in Canadian history having to do with the fur trade and the Hudson Bay Company. With a population of just under a thousand people, it has become a spot known for Arctic research and ecotourism. In addition to being a prime locale for viewing the Aurora Borealis and Beluga whales, Churchill is also known as 'The Polar Bear Capital of the World'.
Historically, the bears have converged on the area as winter approaches, waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze so they can migrate north onto the ice to begin their hunting season.
Churchill's location places it at a junction where the boreal forests to the south meet the tundra to the north, and the influx on fresh water from nearby rivers dumping into the bay tend to mean that the big freeze begins there first.
I have to wonder how their polar bears are faring these days with the much-reported hardships related to global warming...
So: A shout-out to Churchill - - Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to drop a line and let us all know how things are going!
See also: Town of Churchill website.
3. Fans of
Harvey Kurtzman and his MAD cohorts rejoice!
It looks like some long-standing wishes may be getting answered, with a reprinting of all of the material from the 11 issues of Humbug Magazine that were published back around 1957 and '58.
Fantagraphics Books has a 2-volume slipcased affair on their schedule this year, currently scheduled for release in August.
(click on cover images to ENLARGE)
Humbug was one of the humor magazines produced by Kurtzman following his departure from MAD as it made its shift from the comic-book format to the magazine format.
It was created by a collective that also included artists
Will Elder, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth. 
There was plenty of GREAT stuff that ran in Humbug, much of which has been very difficult to find since.
I see that Amazon also has a listing for a similar project collecting Kurtzman's Trump Magazine, which had immediately preceded Humbug and was published by Hugh Hefner - - but only ran for two issues. As of this writing the Amazon listing is showing a release date of '2012', which usually means something is in the works but not ready for any official solicitation. We'll see.
As to a 'trifecta', word on the street also reports
Denis Kitchen 'being at work' on a further collection of the complete 'Help!' magazine, another fabulous Kurtzman creation from the first half of the 1960's. Fingers crossed...
See also:
- A Kurtzman profile at Read Yourself Raw.
- A Harvey Kurtzman bio page at Been Publishing, I'm Back.
4. I've just heard about the recent documentary film,
'Never Apologize: A Personal Visit With Lindsay Anderson'.
It captures actor Malcolm McDowell in one of his one-man UK stage performances reminiscing on his working and personal relationship with the maverick British film director, and supplements it with behind-the-scenes and archival footage from some of Lindsay Anderson's classic movies.
It sounds like a treat to me, and I'm astonished to discover that not only will the film play here in town next week, but Malcolm McDowell will be on hand to present it. (In Boise? The mind boggles. Sorry Boise, maybe I've misjudged you.) I'll let you know how it goes...
5. Hey! So also in the realm of cinema, I'd have to say that 'Juno' is worth all the hype. Head to the multiplex and have a look.
Here's hoping that lead actors Ellen Page and Michael Cera don't have their careers ruined in the wake of the attention they're receiving.
6. Recently, after telling me about a TV program she'd seen on BBC America about 'realistic' life-size sex dolls, my friend Topic sent me a link to wikipedia's entry on 'The Uncanny Valley'. Fascinating stuff!
The term initially referred to a hypothesis concerning the human emotional response to robots or other 'simulated humans', but has also come to be used with regard to the types of computer animation we commonly see in video games and feature films.
Essentially, the 'valley' has to do with the level of empathy we can feel towards a 'barely human' simulacra, as opposed to the discomfort we feel when faced with one that's 'nearly human'.
In discussing it more with Topic, we talked about some TV channel surfing we'd each done around Xmas when certain stations were showing the same movies over and over again.
We'd both lingered and watched a bit of 'The Incredibles', which we'd seen before, but whizzed right past 'Polar Express' which neither of us had ever been able to stomach.
Topic mentioned how she'd found the 'realistic' look of the CG
'Polar Express' characters disturbing - - They'd reached a 'nearly human' range where the remaining non-human elements became accentuated and gave her the creeps.
I said how I was fascinated and impressed by the range of human expressions and movement captured by Pixar in 'The Incredibles' - - The 'cartoony' characters are 'barely human' to the extent that we 'bridge the valley' in connecting with their human traits and 'forgiving' their otherness.
Predictably, you can find much discussion of the phenomenon online, with many different opinions being aired.
For starters, here's an article at Damn Interesting...
...Speaking of cartoony figures imbued with the human range of emotion...
7. There's the artwork of Portland, Oregon's Graham Annable.
I stumbled onto his comics a couple of years back with the collections 'Hickee' and 'Grickle', and was very taken with how much character, humor and comic timing he can convey with a deceptively simple-looking style.
I was pleased to recently discover that he has a web presence with some examples and links to other available books and comics. Even better, I previously had no idea that there were some Annable animated shorts floating around out there, like this one below, ⬇ via YouTube, 'The Last Duet On Earth'.
Follow the link to Graham Annable's blog, Grickle things!
Thursday, January 3, 2008
There's not much information available out there about The Harvey Boys, but I like this pleasantly generic-sounding old 45.
It sounds sort of like something that Beaver Cleaver would have thrown on his portable record player while he was doing homework.
Archie Bleyer founded the Cadence record label around 1953. It began almost solely as a venue for
Julius La Rosa's music, but picked up several other popular artists within a couple of years.
Listen to:
The Harvey Boys (orch. conducted by Archie Bleyer) -
Honeystrollin'
(Cadence Records 45, 1958)
(click for audio)
This single was in pretty fine company on Cadence when it was issued in '58; It followed immediately after The Chordettes' hit 'Lollipop', and it directly preceded Link Wray's classic instrumental, 'Rumble', and the Everly Brothers #1 45 release of 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' b/w 'Claudette'.
If this Harvey Boys effort failed to chart, I'd have to guess the blow was softened by the sales of those others...
(info via a Cadence discography at Both Sides Now.)
- For a bit more background on Archie Bleyer, please click over to my previous post: Janette Davis - 'Hold The Phone'
Listen to:
The Harvey Boys (orch. conducted by Archie Bleyer) -
Tug-A-Boat
(Cadence Records 45, 1958)
(click for audio)
