Monday, January 16, 2006

Shelley Stories

The other day, I posted an anecdote about Shelley Winters going in to see a youthful casting director, being asked what she'd done and hauling out her two Oscars in response. I warned that it might not be true and we still don't know if it is or it isn't. We'll never know...but I did receive a couple of interesting messages about it. This first one is from Tom Collins...

Regarding your story about Shelley Winters and the casting director, I recall hearing a slightly different version of the story (maybe you have, too). Same basic set-up as the version you printed. Winters is called in to a casting director's office to audition, which she felt was beneath her. So she comes in, sits down, but doesn't say a word. She reaches into her handbag, pulls out an Oscar, thunks it down on his desk — still wordlessly. She waits a beat, then reaches back into her bag, pulls out the second Oscar, plunks it down on his desk. She lets it sink in for a moment. Finally, she says, "Some people think I can act."

What a bold, brassy broad in the best sense. Aren't many like her left in Hollywood, more's the pity. I'm just amazed one of those Oscars wasn't for Night of the Hunter.

She didn't even get nominated for Night of the Hunter, which probably amazes everyone who's seen it. But you know what's wrong with this story? It may well have happened that way but what's wrong with it is that most auditions are not about whether someone can act. They're about whether the person is right for a particular part, and you could be the best actor in the world and still be wrong for a given role. Leaving aside all question of whether it actually occurred, the version I told is just a better story. A casting director who calls in Shelley Winters and is so ignorant of film history that he has to ask her what she's done deserves to have those Oscars rubbed in his face. That's also the case with this version of the tale sent to me by Jack Lechner...

It's possible that something like this happened with two different people — or that it never happened in either case — but I heard a version of this story about Fred Zinnemann. As in the Winters story, 70-ish Zinnemann sits down with a young executive. The exec says to Zinnemann, "So tell me about yourself." Zinnemann responds, "You first."

And I heard of that exchange, only it wasn't Fred Zinneman. It was Billy Wilder. Meanwhile, here's a note from George Haberberger...

Regarding your story about Shelley Winters pulling out her Academy Awards during auditions: I read in an obit this weekend that she donated the one she got for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank Museum. Maybe your story happened before she donated it but that's what I read.

According to this page at the site of the Anne Frank Museum, Winters did indeed donate that Oscar to their exhibit in 1975. I get the sense that the anecdote in question, if it happened, happened later than that. Shelley was still getting starring roles in notable movies in '75. One possible explanation is that I believe the Academy has occasionally allowed people who've lost their Oscars to purchase replacements and perhaps someone bent the rules to allow Shelley Winters to have her Oscar and give it too. Anyway, here's a message from Neil Polowin...

Not sure whether you've seen it, but the Shelley Winters story about her pulling her two Oscars out of her bag has been immortalized in film, in the opening scene of 1994's Swimming With Sharks. Frank Whaley's character (assistant to studio exec Buddy Ackerman, played by Kevin Spacey) tells the story to a few other junior executive wanna-bes.

I never saw Swimming With Sharks but that's interesting to know. The great thing about most show biz stories, of course, is that it almost doesn't matter if they're true if they're useful. A number of times, I've asked people who were involved in famous anecdotes to tell me what really happened and the response is, "Wish I knew...I've heard and told so many different versions, I've lost track." Or they've told tales I was present to witness and told versions that did not match what I saw at the time. Stories get fabricated or exaggerated because they're more useful in that form. If the tale of Shelley and the Casting Director helped make a good scene in that movie, that doesn't make it true...but it makes it true enough for show business.

• Posted at 8:39 PM · LINK

Today...

Today might be a good day to watch a little of the famous "I have a dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. Here's a link to an online excerpt.

• Posted at 6:06 PM · LINK

Faces/Voices

Here's a webpage with photos of some of the top cartoon actors. In real life, some of them aren't quite this skinny. (Thanks to Jeff Stone for the head's up.)

• Posted at 11:47 AM · LINK

Little Screen, Big Screen

My computer monitor, a KDS Radius I've had for three or four years, died on Friday the 13th. For about a week before, it flickered now and then and I kept checking the connection to make sure it was in tight. I finally realized the flickers were a quiet cry for help from one who'd served me well for so many hours. Then the blood drained from it and it lost all its color. Everything was black on grey. I rebooted and from that point on, every image on the screen stayed there. I clicked from my desktop through four or five websites and suddenly had all of them, superimposed one on top of another. It was very sad...like the monitor was sobbing to me, "I told you I was sick."

That was it for the KDS. Since the new monitor I ordered hasn't arrived yet, I hauled out my old, smaller, non-LCD monitor and I'm using it right now. There's some sort of "evolution of technology" that impacts your sensibilities. Not all that long ago, this device — working exactly the way it does now — was an impressive, state-of-the-art wonder. Now, it's small and clunky and I feel like I'm typing onto an Etch-a-Sketch. We get spoiled real easily. Two years ago, I had to do without a cell phone for a few days and it was like not having running water. You wonder, "How do people get along without this?" forgetting that for most of your life, you did.

In the meantime, I just received the new TV I ordered for my office. I used to have a 19" Sony placed where I could watch it while I worked. I can do that if I'm in the mood and if what I'm writing isn't attention-intensive. I can have the TV on while doing e-mail or browsing the web or sending out my daily output of 1,000,000 Spam e-mails to people asking if they want to buy cheap drugs from strangers...or even while doing this. For more serious assignments, I either have to have the TV off or use it like a night light, paying it little or no nevermind. (Jack Kirby, laboring at his drawing table, usually had a TV on but tuned to a Mexican station. He liked the music and the "company"...and since he didn't understand Spanish, he wasn't distracted by what was said.)

My Sony had been flickering for months and I finally got around to replacing it with a 32" LCD set with HD. That's a picture of the new arrival above. It's the Philips 32PF7320A/37, which is one of the few models that size with a built-in Hi Def tuner. I ordered it from Costco via this page...and get this: They say "The estimated delivery time will be approximately 7-10 business days from the time of order" but I ordered it last Monday around 3:00 in the afternoon and a nice UPS man brought it to me Wednesday just after Noon. That's all the more impressive when you realize that I didn't pay for the express delivery which promises it in 3-6 days.

So far, I'm delighted with the sound and picture. The biggest flaw I've been able to find — and this is pretty minor — is that the automatic screen format feature sometimes gets confused. It's supposed to detect a widescreen video signal on its own and adjust the margins accordingly but I sometimes have to grab up the remote and change them manually. Not a big deal. I'm hesitant to recommend the thing since I've only had it a few days but I'll let you know if it blows up or gets fuzzy or starts displaying only Geico commercials or anything.

What's frustrating is that I have an HD set but my beloved Series 2 TiVo doesn't record HD signals. I can watch local channels live in high def, pulled in right off my old roof antenna...but I can't record or pause them. Owning a TiVo has ruined live TV for me — another "evolution of technology" spoilage. The DirecTV people offer a TiVo-like video recorder that will interface with my satellite dish and handle HD but I test-drove one at a store and found it clunky and poorly designed. I've decided to await the Series 3 TiVo which will work its magic with HD and which has been announced for later this year. (Possible drawback: TiVo has not been great at having upgrades and new products out when they say they'll be out.) I really think the company folks dropped the ball by not getting a Hi Def TiVo out sooner, though I suppose they had their reasons.

There was one moment on Wednesday that seemed almost symbolic. Before I could put up my new LCD set, I had to take down the old Sony, which was a tube-type set. I lifted it off its perch atop some filing cabinets and its plastic housing splintered in my hands. Like the KDS monitor, it had served me well for thousands of hours but now its time was up and its outsides practically disintegrated. What is it with electronics equipment these days? Why can't they just stop working? Why do they have to commit suicide in front of you?

• Posted at 1:39 AM · LINK