Happy Heavenly Birthday to Harry Belafonte (1927-2023). I’ve only mentioned this about twenty times, but when I was a kid, we listened to his Carnegie Hall concerts, double LPs, so often that you could almost see through them.
And I’ve posted Belafonte concert clips before–he is utterly charming and quite possibly the handsomest man God ever created–but these clips from Beetlejuice still make me smile. Big time.
“The Banana Boat Song,” With, among others, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt’s Creek”) and Dick Cavett.
And Ryder dances to “Shake Señora/Jump in the Line” as a bonus.
I once did a lesson where I showed my classes slides with photos of the interscholastic sports teams from when I was a student at their high school, Arroyo Grande, in the 1960s. I’d show the varsity football team, then the girls varsity soccer team. That was a blank slide. Then I’d show the boys varsity basketball team—it was a good one, coached by Mario Pecile, who became a legend—then the girls b-ball team. Blank slide.
I was making a point.
There were not girls’ interscholastic sports when I was in high school. They had Aqua Festival, which featured synchronized swimming. There were intramural sports, and one of the biggest clubs on campus was the Girls’ Athletic Association, but it if someone had asked you in 1968, “Are you going to the girls’ varsity game tonight in San Luis?” in 1968, you would have thought them insane.
That athletic desert for young women persisted until Title IX was passed in 1972, mandating that schools provide young women equal opportunity to participate in interscholastic sports.
There was no Title IX in 1910, but Arroyo Grande Union High School did have a women’s basketball team. The were 4-0–not, not a big season, and the scores indicate that the baskebtball spent a lot of time on the ground (“ground,” not “floor.” No AGUHS gym until 1937), but they had uniforms and they had a reputation and the newspapers covered their games. And we have this marvelous photo from the Bennett-Loomis Archives.
I don’t know what happened between 1910 and Title IX, but it was a tragic waste in human potential. Young women, to borrow a line from On the Waterfront, should’ve been contenders. A young woman and former student, Sarah—a fellow Basset Hound lover–put me in mind of this. She posted a picture of herself scaling a climbing gym’s wall and it looked as if she wasn’t having much trouble at all. Sarah is a terrific athlete, a gymnast, small but powerful, and flexible, too, in ways I haven’t been since I was a baby and could put my foot in my own mouth, a habit that continued, figuratively, long into adulthood.
So, thinking of Sarah and other women athletes I, of course, made a little video.
I follow Women’s NCAA basketball now and again, and so Caitlin Clark’s in here. Nelly Korda’s clubhead points directly at the target in her follow-through, and you have to be about a flexible as Baby Me to do that. Her swing is both fluid and immnesely powerful. Tia Jones—okay, I’ll admit it, she is beautiful, she reminds of FloJo, whom I adored—but I don’t see how anybody can leap hurdles, let alone the way she does in the clip.
And, of course, Simone Biles is my hero because she has both the courage of a champion and the kind of honesty that requires far more courage. She risked a storm of condemnation when she admitted her vulnerablity, her emotional exhaustion, at the last Olympics, and withdrew from some events. She’s back. The video clip of her tumbling run is from last fall.
All four have one more trait that makes them great athletes. They are a joy to watch. I’m looking forward to the Paris Olympics because of young American women.
Today is February 23. On this day in 1945, a detail from the 28th Marine Regiment was immortalized in this Joe Rosenthal photograph as, still under fire, they raised a second, larger, flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. The young Marine on the right had six days to live. He was a farmer’s son from Corbett Canyon, near Arroyo Grande. His parents were Azorean immigrants. And I knew, from the date on his tombstone, that he died on Iwo Jima.
I owe Pvt. Louis Brown so much for many reasons. In my history classes, I wanted my students to learn the basics of research, including forensic study of a battlefield (The Little Bighorn) and using deductive reasoning to analyze a murder scene (the Lizzie Borden home) so that they could begin to appreciate how historians think. So the sad business of finding this young man’s tombstone inspired a lesson plan. I walked students through the steps of researching a World War II combatant—may they might research an ancestor someday—by modeling what I’d done, in a series of PowerPoint slides:
And, yes, this would be on the test, so they had a notes handout to help them follow along:
Louis Brown had by now become important to me. I wanted other people to know him, too, hence this article in the June 2009 SLO Journal Plus.
Even that wasn’t enough, so, when I began to give talks on local World War II history, Louis Brown was part of them.
By now, of course, I was hooked on doing research like this, so Brown inspired this 2016 book, my first.
And this is why, every few months, I make sure that he has new American and Marine Corps flags. Sometimes, as this photo shows, someone else has left him flowers. That is a great kindness: Brown is their Marine, too.
Cheers was an immensely popular NBC comedy about a retired Red Sox pitcher and bar owner. His photo, behind the bar, was actually that of San Luis Obispo’s Jim Lonborg, also a Red Sox picture. The bar owner, Sam (Danson) ardently pursued his boss, Rebecca (Alley, who won multiple Emmys), who was marvelously skilled at shutting him down.
There was only one chink in Rebecca’s formidable armor, and it was this song. Her entire skeleton turned to boiled spaghetti. She swooned. I would argue, if there’s a song and a performance that deserves swooning, it’s “Unchained Melody,” as performed by the Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield.
Let the swoonage commence!
And, of course, I am not done. Let us take a moment to appreciate Hatfield and his baritone brother, Bill Withers. Wow.
Don’t ask me how I knew this. I don’t know, either. And I am not and never have—well, until this year, with their sensational rookie quarterback, C.J. Stroud, a Californian—paid the Houston Texans much attention.
But I always had the sense that this huge, powerful man, a defensive end, loves children. Of course, he loves his own: JJ and his wife, Kealia, with their son, Koa.
I love my sons, too, who are ever-so-much bigger than I am. But Watt’s love for children has always been obvious. That’s what made me first notice him.
You have every right to be cynical. Visits to children’s hospitals soften the image of what is admittedly a brutal sport. But I am reminded of these photos, too:
You can’t fake some things, PR opportunities or not. Justin Turner was Ryan Texeira’s friend. They enjoyed being together, in the same way that Watt so transparently enjoys being with children.
Here’s the best part, for me, at least currently: I asked Elizabeth the other night if I could watch the news at the top of the hour. I could only take about thee minutes of it before I turned the channel.
But, courtesy of Tribune editor Joe Tarica, we got this image of a tweet—or whatever they call them—that Watt posted earlier this week at Louisa’s Place in San Luis Obispo. It should be noted that Elizabeth and I taught a batch o’Sweeneys, the family that owns the restaurant, and we loved them. That does not detract from the glory of this image: A Louisa’s omelet is about the size of a fleet submarine and what’s inside them (my favorite is the avocado and bacon) can lead you to Glory.
He evidently was in town for a wedding, and he wrote of how excited the bride was and how happy that made him.
Righteous brother. He makes me happy, too.
What does that mean, younger folks? This beautiful young woman is French. Watch her face as she hears a Righteous Brothers song—Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield—from about 1965.
I guess, in losing Alexei Navalny and then watching the video of his beautiful, tiny, and immensely courageous widow, Yulia, I needed a Righteous Brother to comfort me because I fear so much for her, my Righteous Sister. This song is perfect for her.
I just never expected to find my Righteous Brother at Louisa’s Place.
Today’s blog post title shows you how much I like working without a net. I will now attempt to tie all of those elements together.
Let me start with my brother Bruce. Bruce is meticulous, precise and gifted in many ways. He builds stuff. When we were kids (he’s four years older), he built a scale model of the CSS Alabama, a sloop of war that played hell with Yankee shipping, especially with whaling ships, which I mind not very much at all. Bruce’s Alabama, a Revell kit, was gorgeous down to its copper-plated hull and including its monster swivel gun, a 110-pounder mounted amidships. (The Revell kit’s gun was somewhat smaller.)
Since yesterday marked the anniversary of the Confederate submarine Hunley’s first successful mission in attacking a Union ship—it was also her last, since the sub sank with her crew—thinking about Alabama today seemed natural.
And then we come to this Edouard Manet painting, Luncheon on the Grass.
I like Manet because he threw out this style, brightened his palette, and learned from young Impressionists like Renoir and Monet. That takes courage, humility and, conversely, a good deal of self-regard.
This painting baffles me. The young men are so full of self-regard—look at that one guy staring smugly at the artist—that they have failed to notice that one of their party is, to borrow a term, buck nekkid. How could anyone be so obtuse?
And what is the other lady doing, anyway? Pulling up watercress for their sandwiches? Trying to catch polliwogs? Has she lost a contact lens? And she’s in peril of losing her clothes, too.
In a trial-and-error process, I discovered that I like the French, especially those north of Paris, from Metz to Normandy. I just don’t understand them. This painting only confirms that.
Anyway, here is the original Revell model kit and a model that looks very much like the one my brother built, except I think his was under sail, not uncommon to 19th-century steamships. Again, his model was gorgeous.
Hang on. We’re almost getting to the point.
In 1864, off the coast of Cherbourg, France, citizens watched as the Union Navy finally caught up with Alabama. After a one-hour gun duel during which over 200 shots were exchanged, a hit at the commerce raider’s waterline sent Alabama to the bottom.
Edouard Manet painted the battle; below is his painting and a detail from it. A little rescue boat heads for Alabama as she begins her final plunge.
The rescue boat’s important, because Capt. Raphael Semmes, seen below next to the Big Fella during an 1863 visit to Capetown, South Africa, survived this battle. He had little Semmeses who had more of the same until…wait for it…I had the pleasure of teaching history to a direct descendant, Travis Semmes, at Mission Prep. Ta-daa!
By the way, Cherbourg has ties to San Luis Obispo County history, too. In June 1944, Jack Langston of Shandon lost his life over the city when German batteries brought down his fighter, a P-38 that would’ve looked exactly like the one in the photo. He was never found. Far below, the 79th Infantry Division was fighting street to street, a terrible thing for a foot soldier to endure. One of them, a San Luis Obispo County farmworker, Domingo Martinez, was there; the 79th secured Cherbourg but Martinez was killed in the bocage beyond the city in July. My students and I found his grave at the American Cemetery above Omaha Beach on a 2010 visit.
We wanted to thank him.
Raphael and Travis Semmes made up the first coincidence. The second has to do with the fact California mandates the teaching of state history in fourth grade. That included, in 1962 and still in 2024, the construction of a model California mission. It’s a rite of passage in California, like road rash from falling off your skateboard, Senior Class Night at Disneyland or getting lost on the 405.
Of course, this tradition of building a model of a California mission devolved into outbreaks of Helicopter Parenting, wherein in Mom and Dad “helped” their fourth-grader with their mission project, which might turn out to look liked something architect Julia Morgan had turned out in her studios.
Mine didn’t.
Mine, consisting of cut-up grocery store cardboard boxes, strips of newsprint that became gobs of papier-mache (the goo doesn’t taste all that bad, I found out), looked more or less like Richard Dreyfuss’ s mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Contrast that image with the companies who figured out how to make a buck off modern fourth-graders by selling them manufactured kits (“Insert Bell Part 36a into Belltower Part 12”). This kit depicts Mission Santa Ines, my Mom’s favorite mission and my fourth-grade project.
Mine really shouldn’t have been named for little St. Agnes, who’d already been martyred once. It instead wound up looking like Our Lady of the Mashed Potatoes.
I passed fourth grade, despite that project. The historic coincidence? Here are Mom, Roberta, Bruce and me visiting Mission Santa Ines about 1960. Twenty-six years after that photo was taken, and twenty-four after my Mission Santa Ines fourth-grade project, my wife Elizabeth and I were married there.
I knew this film was a four-star classic, but I’d never seen it, maybe because I wasn’t acquainted with all the leads, especially Robert Montgomery, whom I knew only as John Wayne’s PT Boat commander in They Were Expendable. More on Montgomery to follow; he was perfect in Mr. Jordan.
John Wayne, Donna Reed and Robert Montgomery in They Were Expendable.
Mr. Jordan, of course, belongs to my parents’ generation—at least it did, before Turner Classic Movies (thank you, TCM). But since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the remake that belongs to my generation is its own classic. Heaven Can Wait. No wonder it’s a classic, too: Elaine May wrote the screenplay, Buck Henry directed it and Warren Beatty was that film’s producer and star.
The premise for both films is that an athlete is snatched from his body just before a painful death by a well-meaning collector/angel. When he gets to St. Peter’s Gate, it’s actually an airport where a fog-enshrouded airplane awaits for another manifest of souls to board. Both the dead protagonists, Joe (Robert Montgomery) the boxer and Joe (Warren Beatty) the Rams quarterback, are not on the admittance list. It’s not there time. So both have their souls kind of transfused into not-dead-yet bodies to give them a chance to live out their lives. In both cases, the bodies belong to ruthless tycoons who have victimized countless people in their climb to the top.
Among their victims are the beautiful young women that will figure in Joe’s second chance at life.
Montgomery’ s boxer—is that a Bronx accent?—is a big dumb guy who really isn’t dumb at all. He’s an innocent, a man who’s driven to be a boxing champ takes great joy in playing an atrocious sax. He’s also kind, innately generous, loves kids and he falls in love. Beatty, who is masterful at playing characters who are on the verge of incoherence, due mostly to their shyness, is likewise charming. His Joe’s a good Joe, too.
And both fall in love, hit by the thunderbolt, with young women who are very much like the Joes, pure of heart. Evelyn Keyes (Betty) plays that role in Mr. Jordan. She is stunning. I got hit by the thunderbolt, too.
Montgomery and Evelyn Keyes.
Keyes was 25 when she made this film; she was 23 as Suellen O’Hara, in GWTW, where she got two minutes’ screen time as a whiny kid sister. In Mr. Jordan, she’s so pure of heart that she’d kind of shiny. Hollywood’s a fantasy factory, of course: the real-life Keyes was married five times, had an abortion just before Gone With the Wind, and took as lovers Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Anthony Quinn, Eddie Fisher (later Elizabeth Taylor’s husband), Mike Todd (ditto), David Niven, Robert Stack, Peter Lawford, directors John Huston (a husband) and Charles Vidor (another, no relation to King Vidor) and studio executives Harry Cohn and Joseph Schenck. She paid, by golly, for all those bedroom gymnastics, dying in Montecito in 2008.
She was 91.
The cast of Mr. Jordan is slightly smaller, but it includes three actors I admire. Claude Rains was a pain in the ass to work with, it’s said, as demanding as a rock band that demands iced Stolicynaya and a gallon jar of M&Ms, but no green ones, in the dressing room. His arch portrayal of Captain Renault almost steals the show in Casablanca; in this film, he is suave and unrufllable, a word I just made up. That’s a wonderful character actor in the photo below, James Gleason, as Joe’s manager, Montgomery, and Claude Rains as Mr. Jordan. In the second, on the left, is Edward Everett Horton, and endearing comedic actor who became the voice of “Fractured Fairy Tales,” in an equally endearing cartoon show, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, from my long-ago youth.
The Beatty film’s actors are just as impressive. Jack Warden is Joe’s football coach and James Mason is the perfect counterpart to Rains’s Mr. Jordan.
This film is nearly stolen by the two co-stars, Dyan Cannon and Charles Grodin, who plot to murder the Beatty character, now in a millionaire’s body, for his estate. Their ineptitude is spectacular. In the earlier film, Rita Johnson and John Emory are the would-be killers.
And the young woman who falls in love with her Joe in the later film is Julie Christie. (Montgomery’s tenor sax in 1941 has become a soprano sax in 1978.)
When we see both young women in both films the first time, we are gobsmacked. No wonder it wasn’t Joe’s time.
Robert Montgomery’s Joe discovers it’s not his time in the transport to Heaven way-station early in the 1941 film. Unfortunately, the plane chosen for the 1978 version is the ill-fated Concorde. But there’s one more little payoff: the co-pilot in 1941 is twenty-eight-year-old Lloyd Bridges, I wonder why Evelyn Keyes didn’t conquer that incredibly handsome young man.
Graduation dance, circa 1943, to celebrate graduation from Primary Flight Training, Hancock Field, Santa Maria, California. Some of these young fliers are nearing the ends of their lives.
I once met a woman who’d been a teenager when she attended a dance like this, heavily chaperoned by the USO. Her dance partner was an infantryman about to ship out overseas. They hit it off, talked most if not all of the night. The next morning—this is a true story—they went to church together. Then they had pancakes.
She never saw him again.
So, for Valentine’s day the elegant Glenn Miller standard, “Moonlight Serenade,” has to be one of the most romantic and poignant songs I can think of.
Of course, after 1944, we never saw Miller again, either.
The images in the video never fail to move me. They are all of them so young.
Sometimes I think, and for good reasons, that the Good Lord dislikes me. Then I reflect on the two Basset hounds, Wilson and Walter, who are so important to me, and I realize that I’m wrong.
Losing Wilson, a rescue from Baskersfield, wasn’t unexpected; he’d lived to great old age. But with dogs, even the expected breaks your heart.
When we found Walter, in National City, near the Mexican border, the trip down to pick him up was a long one, but it was one of the happiest days of my life.
Another blessing has been the friendship between Walter, now two going on three, and the latest addition to our family, Winston the barn kitten. So make that three blessings, after all, in three marvelous lives, all of them part of my family’s lives, too.
A Work in Progress 