FRIDAY BOY LEPRECHAUN

Lay Lady Lay (early take)

http://youtu.be/aTGObcjaSnQ

Yesterday's set list

On the Magic Music show, NE1fm102.5: -

There'll Never Be Anyone Else But You
Is It Only The Moonlight?
I Shall Be Released
The Needle & The Damage Done

An enjoyable 2hrs in the company of Jim Bennett on his Magic Music show. He also played one of the new Men of the Tyne songs, By The River With The Bairns.

Robert Riggs

Far Away Eyes...

The Garner Files...

Book review: 'The Garner Files'
At 83, James Garner pulls no punches in this candid account of his acting career.

November 01, 2011
By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times

Many actors have breathed life into a memorable or even iconic role but only a few are capable of reconstructing an archetype. In "Maverick" and then again "The Rockford Files," James Garner stepped into two of TV's most calcified genres — the western and the detective series — and set a new standard that others have been chasing down since. Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford were different in many ways — Maverick was a fast-talking con man in the Old West, Rockford a modern L.A. private investigator with motivation issues — but they shared an important trait: They were reluctant heroes. Each would much rather wisecrack his way out of a jam, but if you pushed him hard enough, you would invariably find yourself counting angels on the ceiling.

So it's not surprising that it's taken Garner, now 83, this long to write a memoir. But having made up his mind to write it, with the help of Jon Winokur, Garner follows his own heroic dictum: Plenty of self-deprecating, humor, a general air of live-and-let-live, but when it comes down to it, no pulled punches.

For Garner fans, "The Garner Files" is catnip; Winokur perfectly captures and sustains the actor's voice, which includes a penchant for digression, intentional understatement and occasional declarations of war (against bullies; against studio bookkeeping; against certain directors, certain actors and certain studio heads). For industry aficionados, it is a candid accounting, sometimes literally, of a process that is too often over-glamorized and under-chronicled. Two of the most fascinating chapters involve his suits against Universal over syndication of "The Rockford Files" and a description of the physical damage caused by being an action star (he eventually had to have both knees replaced).

For the rest of the world, including and especially those too young to remember even "The Rockford Files," Garner's memoir offers a rare glimpse of a certain type of man, an archetype in itself. In her introduction, Julie Andrews describes Garner as a "man's man," but that has too brutish a connotation. Garner, like his characters, is first and foremost a gentleman, the sort who lives by a personal code that preaches patience and tolerance, up to a point. "When I'm pushed, I shove," Garner writes, quoting one of his own characters, Murphy Jones of the movie "Murphy's Romance."

There are more than a few fistfights in "The Garner Files," as well as thrown furniture and golf clubs, but usually there's a reason, as when costar Tony Franciosa actually punched stuntmen during fight scenes: "… he kept doing it despite my warnings to stop … so I had to pop him one."

Garner comes by his voice and his persona naturally enough. Born James Baumgarner in Norman, Okla., he lost his mother when he was 4; he and his two brothers were split up among relatives. The Baumgarners survived the Depression better than many Oklahomans, but when James' father, Weldon, remarried and reunited the family, the result was disaster. Weldon drank and his new wife Wilma beat the children viciously. Finally, James fought back. The marriage fell apart, but Weldon left again. James was 14.

After working a series of jobs, he joined the Merchant Marine; undone by chronic seasickness, he headed to California to live with his aunt, Grace Baumgarner, and enrolled at Hollywood High, where he was recommended for a Jantzen bathing suit ad. "I wasn't interested until I heard they were paying $25 an hour. That was more than the principal made!" He was soon kicked out of high school ("There was a slight problem: I never went to classes"), drafted into the Army and headed to Korea, where he was wounded twice and developed an antiwar mentality that would later make Charlie Madison, the dog robber in "The Americanization of Emily," his favorite role.

Garner became an actor the old-fashioned way — a soda jerk he met while working at a Shell station once told him that with his good looks he could be a big star. By the time Garner returned from Korea, that soda jerk was a stage producer, who quickly gave him a non-speaking role in the stage production of "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial." There, Garner sat as part of the jury, night after night watching Henry Fonda and learning how to act.

"The Garner Files" tells the story of Garner's career with many entertaining backstage stories and Garner's opinion of his luminous costars, but the kid who survived his own childhood is always present and accounted for. After falling in love with Lois, his wife of 55 years, at first sight and marrying her almost as quickly, he accepted a contract with Warner Bros. at a less than commensurate salary because he had a family to support.

That contract took him off the big screen and into "Maverick," a move he was not thrilled with, partly because it was so ill paid. When it became a hit, he dug his heels in and after he was laid off because a writers strike shut down production on "Maverick," he dug them in further. He and his lawyer, a young man by the name of Frank Wells (who would eventually run Disney), sued Warner Bros. for breach of contract. The judge ruled in his favor and despite all the predictably dire warnings, he did work, and sue, in this town again.

Garner is a self-described curmudgeon and there are times when "The Garner Files" wobbles dangerously toward the querulous. But it never topples because he is unfailingly candid about his own desires — which are to make money and do the roles he believes he is best suited to do.

By those standards, he is a wildly successful man, and by more ephemeral ones as well. Thirty pages at the end of the book are titled "Outtakes" and filled with anecdotes, memories and testimonials from Garner's friends, family and colleagues, including Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, James Woods and David Chase (who got his start on "The Rockford Files"). Although there is an air of Tom Sawyer creeping back to hear his own funeral about this chapter, it is a fine, frank and fun collection.

More than that, it provides proof that the man the reader has just spent several hours listening to does actually exist outside his own narrative. Just in case you were wondering. Like James Garner knew you were.

The Garner Files
A Memoir
James Garner and Jon Winokur
Simon & Schuster: 282 pps., $25.99

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/01/entertainment/la-et-book-20111101/2

THE SNOW ON THE TYNE

Billie Jo Spears RIP

Age 74.

The Return of Harry Lime...

Last night's set list

At The Habit, York: -

Mellow My Mind
I Don't Want To Talk About It
Long May You Run

A busy night. Loads of players inc. 1 poet. Managed to get on before folks were reduced to 2 songs. Crackin' night all told.

For the movie obsessive in your life...

Orson Welles' 'Citizen Kane' Oscar for sale

By Alan Duke, CNN
December 12, 2011

Los Angeles (CNN) -- The Oscar given Orson Welles for "Citizen Kane" some 70 years ago goes on sale in an online auction this month, a Los Angeles auction house announced Monday.

The best screenplay award for 1941 was the only Oscar for the legendary writer, director, actor, although he was given an honorary award "for superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures" nearly 30 years later.

Welles was 25 when he wrote, directed and starred in "Citizen Kane," which the American Film Institute picked in 2007 as the top film of the previous century.

The golden statuette's controversial history includes a court fight with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which tried to stop another auction in 2003. An academy official testified then that the award's value was at least $1 million.

A judge cleared the way for auction with a ruling in 2004 that Welles never signed the academy's agreement not to sell the trophy, according to Nate D. Sanders Auctions spokesman Sam Heller.

The academy, which aggressively challenges efforts to sell Oscar trophies, was successful three years ago in stopping the sale of two Oscars awarded to silent film star Mary Pickford. A Los Angeles jury ruled the descendants of a woman who was married to Pickford's third husband could only sell the statuettes back to the academy for a price of $10.

Heller would not identify the seller, although it was known to be in the hands of Beatrice Welles, the actor's youngest daughter, after she recovered it from a planned auction in 1993. It had been "assumed to be lost" for decades but was apparently in the hands of a cinematographer who got it from Welles, Heller said.

An attempt to sell it at auction in 2007 failed to draw a buyer, Heller said. It was included in a lot of historical manuscripts, not movie memorabilia, he said.

"Citizen Kane," Welles' first feature film, was nominated for nine Oscars but won just for best screenplay, which Welles shared with co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.

Welles, who portrayed a fictional media tycoon, lost to Gary Cooper in "Sergeant York" for the best actor award. John Ford's direction of "How Green Was My Valley" beat Welles for best director.

The bidding in the online auction will end on the evening of December 20, Heller said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/12/showbiz/orson-welles-oscar/

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #135

Richard Dawkins begone!

"Everyone has to believe in something... I believe I'll have another drink"

Make 'em laugh...

MGM musicals: more stars than the heavens
Watching the best of the studio's output – Singin' in the Rain, Meet Me in St Louis – is to indulge in pure joyous artifice

Bee Wilson
guardian.co.uk
Friday 9 December 2011

Fred Astaire strolls into a toyshop with a walking stick and spats, whistling. He snatches an oversized Easter bunny from a small boy and proceeds to do a tap dance using a series of conveniently positioned props that happen to be lying around on the shop floor. "I'm plumb crazy for drums," he sings, for no obvious reason. Then he takes his bunny – without paying – and nonchalantly strolls out again.

This – a scene from Easter Parade (1948) – is the sort of thing that could only happen in the fantastical Technicolor world of the MGM musical. Such trifles as logical plot development and plausible human motivation have no place here. What matters is getting as quickly as possible to the next song and the next dance and letting the stars do their thing. In an MGM musical, every sidewalk is made for dancing and every woman has cherry-red lips and high-kicking legs. When you're in the right mood, the formula is absurdly effective. The comfort seeps in from the moment you hear that MGM lion roar. You find your mouth involuntarily turning up at the corners, your toes twitch and your heart feels as if it's being pumped full of candy floss. Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! is the title of the current BFI celebration of the genre, which offers the chance to revisit Singin' in the Rain and Meet Me in St Louis alongside lesser known gems such as The Band Wagon, worth it just for the scene in Central Park where Astaire and Cyd Charisse twirl and clinch to "Dancing in the Dark".

The genius and the oddness of the MGM musical is largely the product of the sensibilities of one man, Louis B Mayer (born Lazar Meir in Ukraine in 1884), who combined sugary sentimentality with a ruthless focus on the bottom line. The star system of the golden era was Mayer's creation. Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and Katharine Hepburn all owed their careers to him.

After MGM production chief Irving Thalberg died in 1936, Mayer was able to push MGM even more towards crowd pleasers. Which meant musicals. Much of the genre was shaped by Mayer's gut instincts. In 1939, at the preview screening of The Wizard of Oz, the director Victor Fleming got jittery and wanted to cut "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", arguing it was too long and difficult. Mayer made a snap decision to keep it. In that moment, sitting on a bale of fake Kansas hay, the 16-year-old Judy Garland stopped being a child star and became a real star, whose voice seemed to make all our troubles melt like lemondrops. "There's no place like home," said Dorothy. Oh yes, there is: there's a place even better – the homes created on the MGM backlot, peopled entirely by stars. Mayer liked to say that MGM had more stars than the heavens. At their best, the MGM musicals gave the stars a perfect hermetic space in which to perform: shimmering curtains, yellow brick roads and an aura of homeliness more potent than anywhere people might really live.

"She can't act, she can't sing and she can't dance … The triple threat," says Donald O'Connor's Cosmo of the dreadful silent film star Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) in Singin' in the Rain (1952). As with so much else in the film, it's self-referential. MGM was an efficient machine that showcased talents in a highly targeted manner, depending on how much of a "threat" the particular star might be. There are the single-threat pretty faces, the chorus girls who flash across the screen for a single lovely moment, or the barnstorming male ensemble dancers in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, whose muscular cartwheels and jumps speak louder than words.

Then there are the double threats. Ann Miller was a fantastically leggy and charismatic brunette dance prodigy with Cherokee ancestors. Her publicists claimed that she could tap her feet 500 times a minute. Miller could sing, too, but was no great actor, which made her hard to position in conventional pictures. Her career went nowhere much at RKO or Columbia Pictures before she finally found her form with an MGM contract. MGM gave Miller a way to shine that had nothing to do with characterisation and everything to do with talent. In her set-piece solo dance sequences, Miller was given three minutes of freedom in glamorous outfits to shimmy and tap to her heart's delight, with the camera trained only on her. No dancing woman, not even Rita Hayworth, has ever looked quite so sure of her own power as Miller in Easter Parade, "Shakin' the Blues Away" in yellow elbow-length gloves. Virtuoso doesn't even cover it. Miller later said she had to pour blood from her high heels after all the relentless takes. But all we see on the screen is Technicolor perfection. As someone says at the beginning of "Too Darn Hot", Miller's hottest number in Kiss Me Kate: "Go, girl, go!"

Singin' in the Rain, meanwhile, is a film starring three all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting "triple threats" in the form of Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly, who also co-directed. To see the three of them, perky and bright-eyed, linking arms and singing "Good mornin', good mornin', we talked the whole night through" is to participate in a deeply wholesome version of the American dream. It's almost Nietzschean in its polished will to power. You feel: these people have fought their way to the top as performers in the most competitive society in the world. They have been dressed by the finest costumiers (Debbie Reynolds's cute neckerchief deserves its own Oscar), slathered in greasepaint by the finest make-up artists and lit and shot by the most talented technicians. And they are still smiling! If the routine were even a tiny bit less crisply rehearsed, it would seem horribly trite. But somehow the three are such pros that they take all the artifice – the gimmickry with raincoats and sofas – and make it loveable and spontaneous.

The formula wasn't always so winning. In the 50s, the studio continued to churn out expensive musicals, with all the trademark MGM polish, after public tastes had moved on. Mayer's biographer Bosley Crowther noted that his "authority as a showman relied upon insistence on qualities of sentiment and make-believe that were nothing short of 'corny' in the postwar age". Mayer himself was ousted from MGM in 1951, replaced by a supposedly grittier chief of production, a kid from RKO called Dore Schary. But still the sentiment and make-believe continued, except now they often had a desperate air of cynicism.

You may hate me for saying this, because this movie has a bewildering number of fans, but a nadir was reached with High Society (1956), a film so much smaller than the sum of its starry parts. Take Grace Kelly's beauty in a white swimming costume, Bing Crosby's crooning, Frank Sinatra's worldliness, Louis Armstrong's humour and jazz, Cole Porter's songs, and what do you have? A cold-hearted, self-regarding mess of a film. The various classy elements never really gel. High Society lacks the emotional punch of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals of the late 50s and 60s, and does not have the pure joyous artifice of 1940s MGM.

The one person who could have made it work had sadly lost her contract with MGM back in 1950, after one too many nervous collapses. The actor who found her truest form in the MGM musical was Garland, the original quadruple threat: she could dance, she could act, she could be funny; and oh, she could sing. Garland took the most preposterous lines that Irving Berlin could dream up – "I was born in Michigan / And I wish and wish again" – and imbue them with heart-stopping resonance.

It is no accident that Garland was the star of the finest MGM musical of them all, the only one so brilliant and human that it surpasses the genre, 1944's Meet Me in St Louis. It's showing from 16 to 29 December at the BFI, the perfect Christmas treat. Directed by Garland's future husband Vincente Minnelli, it tells the story of an affluent St Louis family during the four seasons of a single year, 1903, the year before the World's Fair. Garland plays Esther, the second of four sisters (there is also a brother). The family is thrown into turmoil when their father is offered a job in New York. You wouldn't think that having to leave St Louis for New York was the stuff of tragedy, but it is. The critic David Thomson calls it "the most satisfying story ever told as a musical", comparing it to a Chekhov play, though here the sisters want to stay in their home, not leave it.


For once in an MGM musical, the bits between the songs are good enough to sustain a film by themselves. Minnelli gives us a non-mawkish picture of family life at the turn of the century, when five-year-olds might stay out all day riding the milk float and grown-up daughters suffer the embarrassment of having to conduct a long-distance phone conversation with a man trying to propose in front of the entire family. The cast are all excellent, from Mary Astor as the mother to Tom Drake as the boy next door. For stretches, you almost forget it's a musical. Then Garland as Esther opens her mouth to sing and you are transported to a higher plane. "The Trolley Song" is sublime, as is "Under the Bamboo Tree", where Garland pulls off the trick of dancing with a child – her little sister Tootie – and making it look completely natural.

It all culminates in "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". This song has been ruined by a thousand smug, easy listening versions. But the original, as sung by Esther to her distraught little sister, trying to console her for the fact that they are leaving the place they love, is almost unbearably sad. Garland's lustrous voice is not saying: "Isn't it jolly? It's Christmas." She is saying: "Yes, things are miserable, but one day they might not be" – a powerful message in 1944, and still resonant now, in this recession Christmas.

"Someday soon, we all will be together / If the Fates allow / Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow." We are a long way from Fred Astaire and the Easter bunny, but also not so far. Like all the other studio's musical stars, Garland was simply parading her talent, in this case, a talent for wringing tears from a willing audience. It took all the artifice of MGM to create a moment of such purity and truth.

Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! The MGM Musicalis at the BFI Southbank until 30 December.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/dec/09/mgm-musicals-bee-wilson?INTCMP=SRCH

Saul Bass