I'm the guest this week on Maltin on Movies, the popular podcast chaired by the popular maven of motion pictures, Leonard Maltin. It's the two of us sitting around for an hour talking about Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy — two men we both adore. When Stan and Ollie were at their best, there was no one better. You can hear us explain why over on this page.
Thanks to a flurry of e-mails, I'm learning more about census forms from early in the previous century. The 1925 one in question was dated June 1 of that year and it asked the age of each occupant at the time of their last birthday. Rose Marie Mazzetta's (that was her birth name) was given as 1. Since she was born in August, that meant she was one year old in August of 1924, which would mean she was born in 1923 which is the date commonly given.
I am at a loss to say why she made references to being born two years earlier than that except to note, as several folks pointed out to me, that census forms and birth certificates back then were sometimes inaccurate. Indeed, my own father who seems to have been born in 1910 wasn't entirely sure he was born in 1910, He did know he'd been born in October but wasn't sure of the precise date. Make of this what you will.
Also: As I mentioned, Rose apparently made her film debut in a short musical called Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder, which debuted on June 12, 1929. Some websites (including this one at one time) and other sources have said that short preceded The Jazz Singer, the famous Al Jolson movie hailed as "the first talkie," on the night it first opened and changed the motion picture industry forever. That would be impressive but The Jazz Singer had its premiere on October 6, 1927. Rose's short was not on the bill that night and she was not in The Jazz Singer, as has sometimes been reported.
I spoke with Leonard Maltin earlier this evening and he theorized that her first short could have played somewhere on a bill with Jolson's third talkie, Say It With Songs, which opened in America on August 6, 1929. More likely, all the confusion on this flows from Rose telling stories of appearing on a stage with Jolson at least once.
Hey, here's a photo with her that I don't think I've ever run on this site. The gent at the upper left is Larry Mazzeo, who under the name Larry Matthews played Ritchie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. The lady between Larry and me is Shelly Goldstein, the fine comedy writer-performer who is the fourth runner-up for the title of Person Most Mentioned On Mark's Blog, right behind Jack Kirby, Donald Trump and Frank Ferrante. Then there's me…and you can probably recognize Rob Petrie and Sally Rogers.
I'm not sure we're ever going to get a definitive answer on this but Rose Marie's official bio says she was born on August 15, 1923. That would make her 94 years, 4 months and 13 days old today.
However, things she said caused a number of her friends — myself included — to think she might have been two years older than that. That would peg the date of her birth as 1921.
Meanwhile, I just got an e-mail from Rene Thompson, whom I know. She writes…
As a life-long genealogist, I decided to do some digging. I found Rose in the 1925 New York State census living with her mother, Stevaniah aka Stella and her maternal grandparents at 616 E. 17th St. in New York. She was listed as a year old.
So that would be 1924, which would make her 93 today. Her first movie seems to have been the short musical film, Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder, which debuted on June 12, 1929. Some of the publicity for that film said she was five and some said she was six. So I don't know what to think…
It's not a shock to hear that the great performer Rose Marie has died at the age of 94. She'd been in and out of hospitals constantly the last few years and friends kept telling me, "She may not last the week." I started writing an obit for her three or four years ago and never finished it. I'm writing this one from scratch because I decided what I wanted to say about her and it wasn't what I set out to write back then.
But before I get to it, two points…one being that I don't think she was 94. I think she was 96. A number of her friends think that, too. Rose started out as a child star — a very big, stellar child star with a singing voice that was amazing for her age. A lot of us think that age was fudged by a year or two back then to make her seem younger and therefore more remarkable. We had a little birthday dinner for her four years ago and during it, she said some things that led me to conclude she was two years older than the public record showed.
Secondly: As all the obits are saying or will say, she probably had the longest performing career in the history of show business…and you know what her last paying job was? I hired her to voice a witch on The Garfield Show in 2012.
Like a lot of you, I first became aware of Rose from her appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was great on that program…and while no one thought this way at the time, that was an important role in the history of on-screen females. She wasn't there to play somebody's wife or somebody's mother or somebody's girl friend. She was a full-fledged working woman with a career and an income and a job that was equivalent to a man's. I mean, you just know Sally Rogers got the same money as Buddy Sorrell. Name me another character on TV before her who got equal pay as a guy…or as many good lines. She scored with every one of them.
I could fill this blog listing all the jobs this woman had…playing Vegas for Bugsy Siegel, playing Broadway with Phil Silvers, Hollywood Squares, The Doris Day Show and so many more. For a few decades there, if a show needed a comedienne who could hold her own on stage against a Milton Berle or Danny Thomas, she was at the top of a very short list.
The last decade or two though, she didn't work much. As she once said, "I think I outlived my career." Some of that was health-related. She'd put on weight and was confined to a wheel chair, plus there were all those hospital stays. Another person might have retired but all Rose did her whole life was work. I don't think she knew how not to work and it drove her crazy that she wasn't able to perform.
A few years ago, Rose told us (her friends) that a filmmaker named Jason Wise was making a documentary about her life. That was good news if only because of how it energized her and gave her hope that the ol' career still had some applause left in it. In the months that followed though, it started to feel like it might turn into bad news. The film seemed to be taking a long time and some of us had a very real, understandable fear that she would not live to see it completed.
Well, she did.
Last August, Amber and I went to the big premiere of it out in Santa Monica. I had two strong reactions that night. One was how good it was. All the time they spent to make it was evident on the screen with every second presented in loving precision. The other reaction was how happy Rose was. I'll bet it was one of the three best nights of her life…and how amazing to have one of those when you're her age.
Rose always had great timing and I think this proves it. The film is out now. It's called Wait For Your Laugh and I highly recommend that you seek it out and watch it. It will tell you more about this woman than I or anyone could tell you and you'll certainly understand why it was an honor to know her.
A week or so ago, the Motion Picture Academy announced which documentaries will be considered for Academy Awards for 2017. They do this each year, whittling down all the submissions to a list of fifteen finalists from which the winner will be selected. Wait For Your Laugh did not make the cut. If it had, I suspect Rose would have stuck around until the ceremony next year on March 4th and then left us. In a very long, successful life, she never missed a chance to be where she was born to be: On stage.
Here we have a magical interlude from my friend Jon Armstrong, who's one of the best in his biz. Stay with him 'til the ending because you won't see it coming…
2017 was a year of record weather-related disasters. Gee, I wonder what could be causing so many of them.
Daniel Larison on the Trump administration's belief that we can bully other nations into doing what we want. The motto seems to be something like "Diplomacy is for pussies."
Trump claims he made good on his promise to repeal Obamacare and a lot of his supporters believe he has. But as Jordan Weissmann notes, it lives on.
Conservative writer Rod Dreher is dismayed (and for some reason, surprised) that right-wing news source Brietbart thinks it's right to slant its coverage in ways that help Donald Trump.
Kevin Drum notes that some staunch Republicans are getting real uncomfy as it becomes more and more undeniable that the current modus operandi of their party involves appealing to (and exacerbating) the worst racist tendencies in their base.
Donald Trump used to criticize Barack Obama for playing too much golf. Donald Trump promised that if elected president, he would not go out and play golf a lot. Donald Trump now plays way more golf than Obama ever did…and on courses that cost taxpayers a lot more money. And as Kevin Drum also notes, Donald Trump now plays golf and tries to stop us from finding out he's playing golf. The maddening thing about all that, of course, is that his supporters see nothing wrong with any of this. Their guy can do whatever he wants.
Speaking of "fake news" as we all must do these days, it's interesting to me how fact-checking sites like Politifact are now debunking different kinds of reports. They used to just do stories where someone got a statistic wrong or took a true story and spun it to mean something else…and there are still plenty of stories like that. But there are now a lot of stories like "Sasha Obama just crashed her expensive new car into a lake" or "Roy Moore takes the military vote, pulls ahead by 5,000 votes" where someone, probably to get clicks on a website, just made up something from the whole cloth. It's becoming very profitable in today's world to knowingly lie.
Finally: As I write this, an Alabama Judge has just rejected a court filing by Alabama Judge Roy Moore to stay the certification of the election he lost. Moore's insistence on embracing every nutcase theory that he didn't really lose shows why it's a good thing he lost his Senate bid. His judicial career before that was a shameful display of "the law is whatever I want it to be" masked in claims he was doing God's work. The head of Doug Jones' campaign that beat him thinks Moore would have lost — maybe by an even wider margin — if all that stuff about him dating and molesting teenagers had not surfaced. I'd like to think that's so.
Baby penguins are cuter than you. Unless you're a baby panda…
Early this AM around 2:15, I was in my friendly neighborhood 24-hour CVS Pharmacy waiting for the pharmacist to fill a prescription that a text message had informed me was filled and ready for pick-up. I found myself sitting next to a gentleman who was waiting for a refill on a medication he seems to need desperately. Without it, he said, he has wild mood swings and rages and, as he put it, "If I don't have that, you wouldn't want to come within six blocks of me." We then had a little conversation about where each of us lives because, I said, I want to make sure we're at least seven blocks apart.
He told me he is not out of this medication. He actually has a few months' supply stashed away at home but he was eligible for another refill and he wanted to not wait until after the first of the year. He has no idea, he told me, what happens to his insurance or his deductibles after 1/1/18. "I may be fine," he said. "But it's so damn confusing, I can't be sure."
His fears are short-range and long: He doesn't understand how his current plan, which he got under Obamacare, may be changing. He also doesn't know how it may be changing in the future. The uncertainty, he said, is bad for his health. "The problem," he said, "is not what will the Republicans do or what will the Democrats do? It's that it's so f'ing partisan that all they want to do is undo what the other did. We're living in a world where every time someone wins an election by five votes, my health care changes, my taxes change, all sorts of laws change…"
I told him I didn't think it was as bad as all that and he replied, "Well, it's sure heading in that direction" and I agreed and then my prescription was ready and I got up to get it and we said a friendly good-bye and I left and that was the end of it except that I sure hope he has a supply of those pills he needs because he might live within six blocks of me.
Since then, I've been thinking about uncertainty. A week or two ago, I heard an economist guy express an interesting view on the Republican tax cut for corporations and wealthy folks. He's for it but he thinks it would have a better effect on the economy if it were much smaller. This is me trying to reconstruct what he said: "A tax cut can spur investment in new businesses and new jobs but only if it's permanent. This one is so lopsided that you just know it's going to get whittled down and rolled-back somewhat just as soon as the Democrats get back into power. Ergo, less long-term investment."
That makes a certain amount of sense to me. So does the concern my friend in the drugstore has about too much instability in his life. I'd like to see the uncertainty end but I'm uncertain as to how and when that might happen.
It's time someone did an exposé on Left-Wing Billionaire George Soros…
Note to self: If you go out for dinner on any future Christmas Day in the future, don't go late. Amber and I journeyed to one of our favorite restaurants last night for an 8:45 reservation. The gentleman who led us to our table informed us that service was running slow because "One of our chefs walked out on us" — he did not explain why — and whatever entree we ordered might take as long as an hour to get to us.
I felt sorry for our server who then had to apologize over and over for things that were not his fault…mostly the fact that they were out of so many items including bread. I have never before been in a restaurant that ran out of bread. I was on my cell phone at one point when he came by our table and I told him, "I'm having a pizza delivered." He said, "Good idea. Could you save me a slice?"
A nice part of Christmas being over is that we don't have to hear any more nonsense about a "War on Christmas," though Trump will probably be congratulating himself on winning it until half past April Fool's Day. I do understand people who are deeply religious and who think the holiday should be written out as CHRISTmas but I think they're misdirecting their ire when they bitch about salespeople saying "Happy Holidays!" They should be complaining about the outfits that employ those salespeople doing everything possible to commercialize and profit off You-Know-Who's birthday.
As you may know, I was raised in a family that was half-Jewish and half-Catholic. We celebrated Christmas, we celebrated Hanukkah in all its many spellings…and we would have celebrated Kwanzaa if it had been around back then. Any reason to exchange presents. We even exchanged presents sometimes when there was no holiday in play.
No one attached any devious meaning to "Merry Christmas" or "Seasons Greetings" or "Happy Holidays" or any phrase meant as benevolent and things worked out fine. The best way to deal with religious differences is simply to ignore them. But some people won't because there's no money to be made by doing that.
Todd VanDerWerff doesn't think the political humor on Saturday Night Live is particularly pungent. Neither do I. There's a difference between saying something of substance about a political figure and just portraying him or her as a clown. There have been exceptions but too often, all we get out of SNL is the latter. I agree that The President Show on Comedy Central does a much better job of going after D.T. than S.N.L. So does Seth Meyers…and so does Jordan Klepper's show.
As my Christmas present to myself, I'm going to skip blogging today and finish a script that's been sitting on this computer half-finished while I went to Christmas parties and discussed with people whether "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a song about date rape. Also, we talked a lot about how Donald Trump has won The War Against Christmas, proving he's the guy to lead us in all wars that exist only in the imagination. That's so comforting.
You might remember how last year on 12/26/16, I described how I spent the evening before…
Last night around 7 PM, I found myself in a restaurant ordering a "to go" order to take to a sick friend. The restaurant was packed and if I'd asked for a table, I might be getting seated right about now. It was so crowded in there that when the hostess said my order would take at least 30 minutes, I told her I'd be back in twenty and was going for a walk.
This was not in the nicest part of town but I felt safe. There were people on the street who looked like they'd be a lot easier and more lucrative to mug than me. One of them approached me and asked if I could spare a buck or two for food. As I fished around in my pocket for some cash, the gentleman said "I hope next year is better," which of course everyone hopes. I said, "It can't help but be," which of course is not true but you say it anyway. I was just handing the guy a few singles when suddenly, one firework exploded in the sky.
Only one. You've all seen those big displays where they fire off dozens and dozens, one right after another, the pace quickening until at last they start overlapping. Well, from some location a mile or so away, someone set off just one of those, followed by no others.
We waited about a minute to see if more would follow and when none did, I said to him, "Guess we'll have to settle for that." He said, "Don't worry. There'll be more fireworks in 2017." I said something about how we could count on that, one way or the other and —
I was interrupted in mid-post so I never finished that story. The "sick friend," of course, was my beloved Carolyn who was in that Assisted Living facility, experiencing what I knew and she sort-of knew would be her last Christmas. They served a nice dinner spread in that place that evening but it did not correspond with what she thought she should be eating. With the aid of Yelp!, I located a Thai restaurant in a crummy part of Hollywood and went over to get her some chow.
As I wrote last year, the place was mobbed and though they told me the order would take 30 minutes to prepare, it was more like 50. As we pick up our story, I'm waiting outside, about to hand some cash to a homeless guy when we see one (and only one) big, glorious, full-color firework explosion in the sky a mile or three from us. We waited and waited for more but there was only the one.
The man and I exchanged pleasantries…and it was pleasant. He told me nothing about how he'd wound up there but he definitely seemed to need the money I was giving him and he was not of bad spirit. He didn't say this but the thought struck me that he was probably satisfied with the one burst of fireworks — maybe I should say firework (single) — because when you're that bad off, one firework is still better than none.
As I gave the fellow all the small bills I had on me, I was aware there were others around who could surely have used some dollars, especially that evening. I wondered if they would then hit me up and I'd have to tell them I was tapped-out…but no. They all seemed to respect the concept that that one of them was getting all the spare cash I could spare and that, well, maybe it would be their turn if/when someone else came by.
The guy thanked me, then went into the Thai restaurant to get something to eat. Ten minutes later, he came out with his "to go" order and I had to wait another half-hour or so for mine. That might not seem fair but I think he just got Pad Thai, whereas Carolyn wanted something more complicated. Soon, it was ready and on my way back to the Assisted Living facility with it, I drove through a Tommy's and got a burger and fries so Carolyn and I could eat together. My food allergies make Thai food way too dangerous for me.
Food service at the Assisted Living Home was over so I got Carolyn into a wheelchair and rolled her down to the little dining room there, which we had all to ourselves…at first. A few other patients soon straggled in, just to be with someone. And the someone they wanted to be with was the same someone I wanted to be with: Carolyn, who even in a place like that and with her health failing, still had most of the same sense of inner joy she'd always had.
A few months later, it would not be so warm and reassuring to be with her. It would just be sad. But that night — the evening of Christmas Day, 2016 — she still had that wonderful, wonderful smile and I miss it. It was like a single explosion of fireworks against the night sky.
Here's our favorite Christmas video on this site. I'll see you all back here tomorrow…
As Kevin Drum points out…
Under the new Republican tax law, big corporations will get a permanent tax cut of 14 percentage points. You will get a tax cut of about 1 percentage point — until it expires, that is, at which point your taxes will be higher than they are today.
Merry Christmas.
I assume you've read my Mel Tormé story. If not, go do it and then come back here. I'll wait.
Okay then. Last year around this time, I dined with a friend of mine at the Lawry's on "Restaurant Row" (i.e., La Cienega Blvd.) here in Los Angeles. Along with the usual unmatched Prime Rib, they had Christmas decorations to the max and a strolling quartet of young people in Victorian dress, wandering about and singing holiday tunes, a cappella. They went table to table taking requests.
Before we requested a carol, my dining companion requested that I tell them the Mel Tormé tale. I did and then we asked for and enjoyed their rendition of "The Christmas Song," the tune that was the focus of my oft-linked anecdote. They sang it very well, we tipped and off they went.
Last Tuesday evening, a different friend and I were in the same Lawry's in what I think may have been the same booth. That night, they had two teams of minstrels working the room. The one that strolled to our table consisted of two men and two women with the women each carrying a four-inch thick three-ring binder crammed full of lyric sheets. Their leader asked what we'd like to hear and I asked him, "What's the silliest song in your repertoire?"
They had a brief discussion and he told us, "There are two. One is 'Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey' and the other is 'I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.'" I chose the latter and he said, "Okay, but they ask us to sing it quickly and get it over with." The two ladies quickly thumbed to the appropriate page in their binders and then the four of them performed a brilliantly-arranged version of that tune. Absolutely wonderful.
I have been unable to find an online version of anyone singing that same arrangement but here's Gayla Peevey who was ten years old when she recorded this hit record in 1953. She lip-syncs it here for some TV show of the day and then that's followed by a video of her singing it live last year at the age of 73…
Neat, huh? Yes, but I still wish I could show you what those four singers did with it last Tuesday evening at Lawry's.
Everyone around us applauded mightily. I thanked them and tipped them and then they moved to the next table where the folks there said, "We'd like to hear that Italian Donkey song!" The quartet obligingly launched into that and it was pretty good, too. I can't link to anything like their version but here's Lou Monte, who used to record funny songs with an Italian flavor, with his semi-hit version of "Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey." Not as good as the hippo tune but still appropriate for the season. And by the way, the Prime Rib at Lawry's was great. It always is.
In October, Amber and I flew to and from New York on JetBlue and I was impressed enough to write here, "This trip was the first time I've flown on JetBlue. It is not the last time I will fly on JetBlue. I am considering never flying to any city in the future if I cannot fly there on JetBlue." Well, maybe not.
According to Tim Wu, JetBlue decided in November "…that it would follow United, Delta, and the other major carriers by cramming more seats into economy, shrinking leg room, and charging a range of new fees for things like bags and WiFi."
That's quite distressing, especially to a guy like me who's 6'3" and needs to stretch out and be able to flex the knee he had replaced a few years ago. In November, I flew to Miami where, alas, JetBlue does not venture. I flew American and had to pay $80 extra each way to get enough leg room for my leg. My publisher is reimbursing me for expenses but that won't be the case with every flight I take in the future. (And if I take Amber and we want to sit together, I'll have to pay the extra dough for her so she can sit in the same section even though she doesn't need the extra inches of leg space.)
As Mr. Wu points out, the airlines are making bazillions by charging for extra legroom, early boarding and other "extras" to make flying less of a miserable experience. Thus, they have every incentive to make flying a miserable experience. You won't pay for extras if you can be happy without them.
The day's going to come when you'll have to pay an additional fee to sit in the section where the flight attendants don't come by, slap you silly, pour the hot coffee in your lap and make snide remarks about your appearance. They may even start charging for those seat cushions which in the case of a water landing can be used as flotation devices and at some point, your ticket seller may ask you, "Now, would you like to upgrade to a plane with two wings and a trained pilot?"
UPDATE: It has since been pointed out to me that the Tim Wu article to which I linked above is from 2014…so JetBlue hasn't started doing all those bad things yet. But they might. It certainly is the way other airlines operate.
I awoke this morning with a burning need to know more about Vic Lockman so I did a little detective work and tracked down a phone number for his son, David. David was delighted to hear that I had written a blog post about his dad and is going to work with me to build a complete history of his father's career. This will include stuff I didn't know about like Vic's work with Hank Ketcham on the Dennis the Menace comic books and his work on commercial comic books. We won't be doing this right away but we will be doing it.
I'll also try to pick up info on Vic's father. David informed me that his grandfather was the great magician Earl Lockman, a contemporary and cohort of Harry Houdini. I probably should have made the connection. Look at Vic's logo above and compare it to Earl Lockman's calling card…
When I get the time (ha!) I'll hit up the library at the Magic Castle and learn what I can about Grandpa Earl but I already know he invented many tricks that others later performed. I also recall that he was a technical advisor and supplier-of-magic-props for the 1953 movie Houdini which starred Tony Curtis…and I believe he was an artist himself.
David says that orders are being filled for the Christian books on www.viclockman.com so you can order from them with confidence. And watch this space for more information on the greatest comic book writer that you probably didn't hear about until this morning, Vic Lockman. Just don't start watching immediately for it. Might be a few months before we can do the man justice.