Jean Bruns died at the age of 96. Her obit tells us she graduated high school in 1945, and worked at the school for ten years after graduation. No work listed after that, but she had two sons, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, and was laid to rest next to her husband, William Bruns, Jr. Reading between the lines it appears that Mrs. Bruns ceased working to stay at home and raise her children, which was common in those days, when gas was 29¢ a gallon. (It went up to a shocking 31¢ cents in 1960).
In 1960 a color TV cost a whopping $495, equal to about $4300 now. But you could buy on credit for $2.99 a week. We were one of the first families in our neighborhood to have one, and I remember how hard it was to get the color right. The news anchors had green or pink skin, and my dad would work the knobs, cussing, until he got the people to look like they were from Earth, not Mars or Venus.
The first time The Wizard of Oz was shown in color on TV, Danny Kaye did the intro. He had to tell everyone who had a color TV not to adjust their sets at the beginning. “There’s nothing wrong with your TV!” Because, of course, the movie starts in black and white and transitions to color when Dorothy goes over the rainbow.
Remember when Dorothy, having just landed with Toto, opens the door of her house and suddenly we’re in the Technicolor world? We can do that with CGI today, but in 1939 when this was filmed, it was a more difficult challenge. It was ingenious how they did it. The entire scene was shot in color! The interior of the house was painted in sepia tones, and “Dorothy” was really Judy Garland’s stand-in, in a sepia dress, black wig, and dark makeup on her arms. When you watch it, notice that she pulls the door open, revealing the colorful world, and backs out of the shot. That’s when Judy Garland moves into the scene, carrying a fake Toto.
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Random noun: Wings.
My first thought is chicken wings. Then wings like a dove, followed by “Like the One-Winged Dove” (Stevie Nicks), angel wings, buffalo wings, and, finally Wings, the first movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
This 1928 yarn about WWI flyers was directed by William Wellman, who had been a flyer himself during the war. The aerial sequences were breathtaking for its time, and still hold up, even though the film is silent, save for a synchronized musical score.
The film starred Charles “Buddy” Rogers as a young flyer, and Clara Bow as his love interest.
Clara Bow was known as “The It Girl,” because her onscreen persona was that of a wild, seductive woman with a spark that drew the men like flies to chocolate sauce. Thus, she had “It,” a term coined by American writer Elinor Glyn to explain why some women have magnetic power.
Clara Bow’s “It” attracted another Wings cast member, Mr. Gary Cooper, who at this stage in his career was impossibly handsome onscreen and set female hearts aflutter in his brief appearance as a doomed flyer.
Clara Bow carried her popularity into the sound era, but suffered from anxiety and turned to the bottle. She married actor Rex Ingram and retired from films to live on his ranch. Sadly, her mental health deteriorated—she was diagnosed schizophrenic—and she died at age 60.
Was Clara Bow like another wings story, Icarus, who flew too close to the sun?
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Random noun: Rosebud.
An unopened flower of a rose. This brings two thoughts to mind.
One is remembering the roses we had in our garden at home when I was growing up. Wonderful smells, these roses had. My mom loved them, probably in part because her name was Rosemary. I’ve always thought that a classic and classy name. Yes, I am biased in that regard.
But when you search for “rosebud” on the net, among the top hits is, of course, the movie Citizen Kane (1941).
You know what Rosebud means in that movie. And if you don’t, listen to me now: do not look it up. Make the next thing you do is watch Citizen Kane. I’ll wait.
This Orson Welles film is routinely listed as the greatest movie of all time. I agree. And here's why.
It was a comet shooting across the movie sky, so far ahead of its time that the studio didn’t know what to do with it.
RKO had given an incredible contract to the radio and Broadway wunderkind, Welles. He’d shot to fame (some say infamy) with his “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast of 1938, which convinced a large swath of the public that we were being invaded by hostile aliens from Mars. There was panic in the streets. Literally.
That notoriety resulted in a move by Hollywood to land this young genius, all of 23 years old. He signed an unprecedented deal that gave him virtually unlimited control over any picture he wanted to make.
Welles decided to make a movie about a newspaper magnate, loosely based on William Randolph Hearst. Welles denied this was so, but everyone knew better. Which led an outraged Hearst to do everything he could to keep people from seeing it.
Welles co-wrote the screenplay with a Hollywood vet named Herman Mankiewicz. There would later be a controversy contending that “Mank” was the real genius behind the film (the overheated film critic Pauline Kael made that case), but that is a lot of hooey. Mank helped with the words, and they were good words. But film is a visual and audio medium, and it was Welles’ imagination—the greatest of any director before or since—that brought the film to life.
It is often overlooked that Welles’ performance as the lead is also among the greatest of all time.
The film is so good that you can listen to the audio alone and be rapt. But the visuals and camera movement, and Welles’ direction of all the actors, was more dazzling than anything seen onscreen before, and perhaps since.
Quote of the Week: “My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.” — Orson Welles
A Question: In the late 1960s, the advice columnist Abigail Van Buren (“Dear Abby”) received the following letter:
Dear Abby:
A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle-aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid-twenties. These two women go everywhere together and I've never seen a man go into or leave their apartment. Do you think they could be Lebanese?
Now, don't chastise me, Jim . . . I've never seen Citizen Kane. I'd better rectify that forthwith. And Lebanese? Where do you find these? :)
Lebanese!!! Hahahaha!