Berowne's 235

(Also for ABC Wednesday: "H" is for "Hearst")

 

I’ll begin this with an apology: Sorry, Marion!

Now, to get on with my post, if you go back to when Berowne was a little kid – and that’s going way back – there came a time when my family decided to do something adventurous.

We decided to visit Santa Monica.

There were, of course, no freeways in Southern California in those days.  Santa Monica was quite a trip from where we lived in Los Angeles, and you made it with little winding roads.  It was like driving to a different state. 

I remember my mother pointing out to me a huge residence on the beach there.  “That’s Marion Davies’ place,” she said. 

I was a more or less innocent tyke at the time; I had heard of the early film star but I was completely unaware that she was the mistress of William Randolph Hearst or that the famous newspaper magnate had built this incredible “beach cottage” for her. 

Incredible it was: a massive three-story Georgian mansion with thirty-four bedrooms and three guest houses.  In it Davies and Hearst threw some of the most elaborate social functions Hollywood had ever seen.

When Hearst had met the 19-year-old Marion Davies she was a dancer; he fell madly in love with her and he wanted to turn her into a film actress and, ultimately, make her a great star.  And he had the power to tell the studios what to do.

Movie-goers would see Marion’s pictures, but they often suspected that she was in a given film because Hearst had put her there; she didn’t get there by herself.

As I’m sure you know, the motion picture “Citizen Kane,” produced in 1941 by Orson Welles, told the story of a power-mad character named Kane who greatly resembled Hearst.

In addition, the film shows Kane meeting a performer, an attractive young girl, and how he tries to take over her career.

The girl is a mediocre singer, but Kane decides he will turn her into a star – not just a talented singer of songs but an international star of grand opera.  It’s hopeless and the girl knows it, but Kane persists.

The movie audiences usually assumed this was not just the story of Hearst but also of his petite amie, the actress of dubious talent named Marion Davies.

But over the years there has been a reevaluation, a new, closer look at the actress.  It is now clear that the fictional girl in “Citizen Kane” wasn’t like Marion at all.  Commentaters and critics have studied the body of her work and have come to the conclusion that Marion Davies was indeed a fine actress and, especially, a gifted comedienne.

Hearst wanted her to perform in filmed epics, classic costume dramas, but what she wanted, what she was good at, was romantic comedy.  His patronage turned out to do more harm than good for her career.

I have to admit I used to be one of those who felt that Marion Davies was a performer of slight talent.  But I later checked out a few of her best films and I certainly changed my mind, so I’ll take this opportunity to offer her an apology.

(A bit late, I know; she died in 1961.)    

234 Quiz Answer

In the book of Genesis, Jacob lived in the land of Canaan.  When Jacob’s son Joseph was seventeen years old, he took care of the sheep with his brothers.  Jacob loved Joseph more than he did any of his other sons, because Joseph was born after Jacob was very old. Jacob had given Joseph a fancy coat to show that he was his favorite son, and so Joseph’s brothers hated him and would not be friendly to him.
(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "G" is for "Genesis")

I wrote the following scenelet, thinking it might remind you of a well-known story from the Bible.  Which story?

“So it seems you didn’t really get along well with your family, especially not with your brothers.”

“Right; there was a lot of squabbling going on.”

“Evidently one of the reasons was, you had some new clothes - a special jacket, a very colorful coat - and the rest of the family was jealous.”

“Hey, man, I was a teenager, I had to have some special threads!  Naturally the other kids were jealous; they knew the old man liked me better than any of ‘em.”

“So somehow they managed to get you sent off to work.”

“In a way I was glad to get away from them – all the jealousy and backbiting and whatever.  I was hired by an export-import outfit.  I thought it’d be something to have a job and some money and be able to do my own things.”

“But I gather the job wasn’t all that great.”

“No, it was god-awful.  It was a kind of death, a lot of boring stuff dealing with accounting and bills of lading and ten-hour days – and the salary!  That was a shock.  It was so little it was as though they thought I was a slave.”

“What did you do – quit?”

“No, I just put the old brain to work and came up with a plan.  I would perform my job real good and the boss would soon see he had hired somebody special.  I could then move right on up in the export-import business.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Actually, great.   I moved up to head of the department and before too long I was made the boss’s right-hand man.  And I began making some real dough.”

“Sounds like a good situation.  But it seems something bad happened?”

“Right.  And the something bad that happened was the boss’s wife.  I realize I’m not the one who’s supposed to say it, but fact is, there was this good-looking young dude around the place and she began to get ideas.”

“Oh, that could be trouble.”

“And it was.  I wanted to have nothing to do with her; she was the boss’s wife, for God’s sake.  I didn’t want any entanglement, nothing that would get me fired.”

“So what happened?”

“She was sore because I wasn’t interested in any of her reindeer games so she set out to get me.  She was heartless, accused me of doing all kinds of stuff – none of it true – and she managed to get me tossed into the slammer.”

“Incredible.  Yet obviously you managed to get out. “

“Yeah.  I just had to put the old brain to work again.  But that’s pretty well been the story of my life, one humongous problem after another.”

(The answer will be posted Saturday.)

Berowne's 233

(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "F" is for France)

Here’s another in the series titled “Berowne’s Mediocre Adventures.”

A few decades ago I was working as a film-maker and I received a wonderful assignment: to make a brief movie on Paris.

 

One item I certainly wanted in the film was some special footage of the famous Place de la Concorde, known, surely, to every tourist.

This place is possibly the most beautiful public square in what generations have claimed is the most beautiful city in the world.

 

It wasn’t always beautiful.  A few centuries ago it was called the Place de la Revolution.  The unfortunate French king had to mount the stairs to keep his appointment with Mme la Guillotine...

And the executioner impulsively showed the result of his work to the cheering crowd.  The equally unfortunate Marie Antoinette had to make the same trip.

But “concorde” suggests reconciliation, so no one gets beheaded there these days. 

 

At one end of the famous public square was a building I found fascinating.  It was the National Assembly, home of the French Parliament, and if I could get up there on top of it I would be able to get sensational footage of the entire Place de la Concorde.

However, I was told that no commercial photographer or cameraman had ever been given that permission.  They told me in the French version of our phrase, “Fuggedaboutit.”

But I persisted.  I emphasized that I was no commercial photog or paparazzo; I was working for the French Government Tourist Office.

Ergo, or ipso facto, or whatever, I was one of them; we were all working for the same boss, the gouvernement of France.

But there seemed to be some morose person in that building who was sure, once I got up on top, I’d whip out a home-made bomb and blow the whole place to the French equivalent of smithereens.

It took quite a while, but finally the word came through that, okay, even though they didn’t think it was a great idea, they’d give me the permission.

 

They assigned me two gendarmes, a sparse quasi-military unit that was to make sure I wouldn’t pull any funny stuff. 

The two cops were prepared for this assignment as though it was a platoon of Wehrmacht troops they were supposed to watch over.  They each had a mitrailleuse – machine gun – hung from a sling over the shoulder. You have not experienced the thrill of movie-making until you try to shoot a film with two machine guns pointed at you.

Anyway, I set up my tripod and camera and went to work.  Looking through the viewfinder I saw a beautiful sunlit view of the entire Place de la Concorde.  I got medium shots, wide angles, closeups, the works.

When I notified my two chaperons I was finished, I thought they seemed a bit disappointed that I hadn’t done anything unacceptable that would have allowed them to use their popguns.

The sequence later proved an important part of the finished film, a featurette titled “One Man’s Paris.”  The movie was distributed by Universal-International and I was proud to invite the entire staff of the French Gov’t Tourist Office in New York to see it playing at the Palace Theater on Broadway. 

232 Quiz Answer

 Don't forget, before the American Revolution we Americans were British.  And that includes the British colonel mentioned in this post, whose name was (drum roll) George Washington!

(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday; "E" is for "epic")

Who was this British soldier?

Speaking of history – (which nobody was) – I’ve always been interested in the conflict known as the French and Indian War, because it seemed to me that it wasn’t covered much in school.

Way back decades before the American Revolution, a large portion of the American continent belonged to the British but a much larger portion belonged to the French.

In fact, the French possessed two to three times as much American land as the British.

So there was – what else? – a war.

The French, who had Indians on their side, built a great fort in what they regarded as the center of the American continent: Fort Duquesne.

They thought of it as the center because it was where three major rivers got together.  Fort Duquesne was built right smack on what is now, in a more mercenary age, downtown Pittsburgh.

The British fought the French and Indian War successfully.  It was a large part of the reason why the French decided to cash in their chips and check out.  They left their vast territory east of the Mississippi, and their even vaster territory west, to the British.  The French influence was pretty well eradicated in those areas.

The end result of that war was the beginning of modern America.

The French and Indian War started as a sort of local war story, but it turned into an epic; numbers of countries in Europe were involved in the squeamish fight, a massive international conflict that came to be known as the Seven Years’ War.

But to get back to our French and our Indians, here’s what always interested me about that struggle. One of the most important people involved was a young red-coated British lieutenant-colonel, who led his British red-coat troops when fighting in that war.

 

Here’s a picture of that British colonel, proudly wearing the red-coat uniform in which he had served his monarch, King George.  He certainly played an important part in the formation of modern America.

What was his name?

(The answer will be posted Friday)

 

 

Berowne's 231

Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "D" is for "deep fat fryer" :-)
This week's prompt reminds me of the past.  But then, everything reminds me of the past.  So here’s another episode in the series titled “Berowne’s Mediocre Adventures.”

Come back with me, if you will, to the early days of television.  I was making a poor but meager living as a radio announcer, but I wanted to get on this New Thing – tv – because that was where the big money was.

People were making fifty to a hundred dollars a week, or so I heard.

However, there seemed to be some sort of conspiracy – I’d have called it a vicious cabal but I wasn’t sure what that was – to keep me from the visual medium.  But the big day finally arrived.

Seems a new television station had recently opened in Philadelphia,WFIL-TV, and a sponsor sent me down there to do commercials.

The show I worked on was an example of how to produce tv programs when you don’t have money to produce tv programs.

They just invited in kids, high-school types, to come to the tv studio and dance, with an emcee playing music, while a camera panned around among the happy teeners.

The show was quite successful, at least to the standards of the day.

One day when I showed up the atmosphere at the studio was funereal; they had lost their emcee.  He had been charged with doing something emcees weren’t supposed to do so he had to be let go.  The new host was a bit strange, in my opinion, because he looked so young.  It was as though the producers has just brought up one of the kids from among the dancers and put him in charge.

But no, young as he was he had a background as a professional announcer and soon took over the show, which was named “Bandstand,” and made it his.  His name was Dick Clark, as some of you have already surmised, and Dick had been blessed with the DNA or genes or whatever it was that would permit him to look pretty much like a teenager for the rest of his life.

It was on that same station that I had my first great problem as a video announcer.  A problem indeed; I was persona au gratin, told to leave and not come back.  This came about because the station was very new; some things worked, some didn’t.

What I was guilty of was “laughing on the air.”

As an announcer you could laugh as an expression of joviality and good humor, but you couldn’t laugh at the tv station itself.  Yet, because it was so new, things happened there that were funny.

One day I was doing a commercial for a deep-fat fryer.  The device, filled with oil of some kind, rested on a table and I stood behind it extolling its virtues: “You’ll bless the day you brought it into your home and kitchen.”

I poured in a plateful of chopped-up potatoes and plugged it in.  What happened next was weird.  The sound system in the studio continued working, but the device had blown out all the lights.  We, the whole building, were in total darkness.   

The camera guy and the floor manager began to laugh.  It became too much for them; they fled the studio and started to roll around in the dark outside corridor, laughing hysterically.

I decided to try to soldier on.  I got to the bit where I was speaking about the fryer’s amazing low price and the easy-payment plan that was available, well aware of the surreal situation that the item I was so persuasively selling couldn’t be seen by anyone, not even me, so I soon couldn’t continue.  The noise from outside started me laughing too.  I went out and joined the studio staff in the corridor.

I may have been laughing on the outside but on the inside I was wondering just how this muddy situation was going to be for my future, how it would look on my resume: “Performed highly effectively as tv announcer, in one instance so effectively as to blast the whole station into total darkness.”  Who would hire such an individual?

Well, as things turned out so many people laughed on the air at that new tv station it got me off the hook.  I was liberated.  It was decided that the incident had not been my fault and I was allowed to continue working there.  I didn’t try to fry any more potatoes, however.