Maybe the "T.S." Stood for "Terribly Similar"...

Jesse Lee Tally, known as “Doc” Tally, played baseball for the barnstorming Israelite House of David team from 1914 to his death in 1950. The House of David was a religious commune founded in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1903 and thrived through the 1920s and 30s. Its founders—not the most visionary of religious leaders—declared sex a sin (even for procreation), in principle dooming their movement after a single generation.

The House of David became a national phenomenon during that time for fielding a long-haired, long-bearded evangelizing baseball team (actually, several teams) that crisscrossed the country playing amateur; semipro; and professional opponents, including squads from the major, minor, and Negro Leagues. Sort of the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, the House of David team grew famous for its fancy, yet very formidable, play. It even, for a time, boasted several former Major League greats, including Three Finger Brown and Grover Cleveland Alexander, as well as the legendary Negro Leaguer, Satchel Paige—all of whom were required either to grow their whiskers or don a fake beard.

The House of David even beat the Major Leagues to night baseball, playing its first game under electric light in 1930—five years before the Bigs. (Ever shrewd in enlarging opportunities to play for paying customers, the House of David brought portable lights on its buses to allow night games.)

Anyway, I find Jesse Lee Tally the spitting image of the recently deceased Robin Williams. Reputedly the House of David’s best player, Tally invented the famous pepper games with which players would wow crowds with their acrobatic and dexterous skills before, and during, contests. Tally thus seems like the same type of good-natured, entertaining ham that Robin Williams came to be. Interestingly, Williams, a Chicago native, was born little more than a year after Tally’s death and just a hundred miles from Benton Harbor.*

* Perhaps stranger still, Williams starred in the resemblant-named 2004 “dramedy,” House of D.

It’s almost as if Jesse Lee Tally’s spirit entered the newborn Robin Williams’ body in 1951—all it had to do was float to the far side of Lake Michigan, and it had more than a year to do so…

So, it is entirely possible that Robin Williams possessed great baseball potential, even if he never sensed it. However, the world is a better place for him taking the route that he did—not only because he left a legacy of laughter, but because Williams’ natural inclination to field a batted ball, then toss it in the air while declaring, “Fly, be free!” would have led to a catastrophic amount of unearned runs…      

(Image from Good Will Hunting copyright Miramax Films; image from Mork and Mindy copyright ABC.)

If Only Clubber Lang Had Taken on Pyongyang...

I’m watching a M*A*S*H episode from 1981. Thankfully, MeTV runs restored versions of M*A*S*H that include scenes, or parts of scenes, long ago hacked out by greedier broadcasters squeezing episodes for every last second of commercials. Some of these scenes likely have not been shown for decades—I certainly don’t recall a lot of them despite being a M*A*S*H aficionado since the mid-70s. 

Tonight, it was Episode 223, “Give ‘Em Hell, Hawkeye,” in which Capt. Pierce, fed up with year-long peace talks that have achieved nothing, pens a letter to President Truman, narrating it in voice-over as he writes. And as Hawkeye writes his letter, he refers to Harry—in newly restored dialogue—as “Mr. T.”

Now, the actual Mr. T, Laurence Tureaud, took that name in the late 1970s, but he was, by and large, anonymous until appearing as “Clubber Lang” in Rocky III, which debuted over Memorial Day weekend in 1982.

So, clearly, Hawkeye using the name “Mr. T” in an episode filmed nearly a year earlier is unrelated to the yet-to-be celebrity of Mr. T.*

But I can’t help wondering: if Mr. T had only become a Hollywood name a matter of months earlier, he could have actually portrayed President Truman in that M*A*S*H episode (M*A*S*H already had a long history of employing young, ascendant actors in guest roles). I see the episode as a two-parter, in which President Truman, “Mr. T,” responds to Hawkeye with a letter of his own—and, as did Hawkeye, narrating his reply in voice-over as he authors it...perhaps over a montage of his training regimen in the Oval Office, such as jumping rope, using a speed bag, or whatever else passed for hardcore cardio training in the early 1950s. 

Dear Capt. Pierce,

Thank you for your letter pleading for me to end this police action. However, you don’t seem to understand politics. One doesn’t back down from international threats to peace. South Korea was attacked. Attacked! You get it? If that little man, Kim Il-sung, don’t wanna come to the peace table, then I’ll come to him. The United States is ranked No. 1. ONE! That means we’re the best. But that bum has been taking the easy matches, sneak-attacking its peaceful neighbor. I’m telling you and everybody else at the 4077th: the United States will fight North Korea anywhere, anytime, for nothing. No, I don’t hate Kim Il-sung…but I pity the fool, and we will destroy any man who tries to take what we got.  

In closing, my prediction for the war: pain. 

Yours sincerely, 

President T

With aggressiveness that would’ve made Gen. Douglas MacArthur look like a Salvation Army bell ringer and accountability that would’ve left Harry S. Truman resembling a shriveling buck-passer, Mr. T might well have provided a ratings spike and seriocomic possibilities encouraging the stable of M*A*S*H writers to continue for several more seasons—perhaps even long enough to necessitate a romance between Hot Lips Houlihan and SSgt. Rizzo that would have perfectly encapsulated the lunacy of war...not to mention paved the way for either the best or the worst spin-off in television history.

*Far predating this M*A*S*H episode, a Welcome Back, Kotter spin-off called Mr. T and Tina briefly ran on ABC in 1976, but the show was so short-lived and obscure that not even its star, Pat Morita, remembered it. Perhaps if he’d come up with the “Crane” a decade earlier…

(Image from M*A*S*H copyright CBS.)

We All Lifted a Yellow Submarine...

So, I just turned on the TV and caught the last ten minutes of The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), a film I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. And in that brief span, several elements immediately jumped out as closely presaging subsequent films—to the point that I wondered more than just fancifully if this predictably insipid film filled with recycled jokes and made on the cheap for a very over-the-hill comedy troupe could actually have been the source of certain concepts used in later, higher-profile works.

Look at the propeller-powered flying submarine stolen by the Martians (above). Is this not practically a real-life, full-scale model of the Beatles’ yellow submarine depicted in the 1968 animated feature film? The Three Stooges in Orbit predated Yellow Submarine by six years—yet looking at the similarities in concept and design, it’s not hard to suppose that the director of the Beatles’ film, George Dunning, was a Three Stooges fan who caught their movie upon its theatrical release,* perhaps even screening it privately six years later for the crew of animators to give them a definitive sense of the artistic style he wanted.

* In 1962, Beatlemania hadn’t yet swept England, so Dunning, a Canadian expatriate who had yet to become associated with the Beatles, likely was walking around London with little to do and thus had plenty of free time to see the new Three Stooges film.

Moments later in the film, Professor Danforth, played by long-time quasi-Stooge, Emil Sitka, displays an animated television segment of the Stooges dancing to stock, early 60s pop music. This is perhaps even stronger proof that George Dunning and his crew lifted ideas from this Three Stooges film. As you can see, that’s impressively sophisticated animation for 1962—and it appears very much the progenitor to the dazzling animation of Yellow Submarine. Granted, the Stooges weren’t as limber as the girl dancing to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” but their particular brand of fat, elderly elegance must have made a lasting impression on Dunning.

Okay, this weakest incarnation of the Three Stooges is no “Fab Four,” but consider the cumulative work of Moe, Larry, Curly, and the criminally underrated Shemp—that’s a four as fab as John, Paul, George, and Ringo, for sure.†

† Continuing the numbers game, the Three Stooges and the Beatles each counted six participating members among their ranks: the aforementioned four in each group, plus, of course, latter-day Stooges Joe Besser and Curly Joe DeRita as well as Beatles’ castoffs Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best.

Furthermore, the Three Stooges went into widespread television syndication in 1958, introducing them to a new generation—the Beatles’ generation. With the future Beatles all in their highly impressionable teens at that time, it’s a good bet the lads watched and enjoyed the Stooges’ tomfoolery—especially the angry, young man of the fledgling group, John Lennon, who probably would have appreciated them most. I can easily see the Stooges’ violent tendencies having rubbed off on the volatile Lennon. (The Three Stooges was actually removed from syndication for a time in the 1960s when mothers complained that their children were emulating the Stooges’ dangerous antics.) Now, I’m not saying that a few episodes of Moe bullying Larry, Curly, and Shemp led to Lennon kicking original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, in the head—as has occasionally been alleged in the cause of Sutcliffe’s untimely death—but I am saying that an irate John likely was not above rapidly fluttering his hand in front of Sutcliffe’s entranced gaze, then snapping it down briskly, causing Sutcliffe’s head to do the same. Whether that facilitated Sutcliffe’s fatal cerebral hemorrhage, no one will ever know—but it sure looks like a lot of stress on the brain…

As an aside, yes, the Beatles’ animated TV series (which the Fabs had nothing to do with production-wise) debuted a month before The New Three Stooges cartoon in autumn 1965. However, the Three Stooges’ animated series included numerous live-action segments, so it’s highly probable that The New Three Stooges began development before the Beatles cartoon, although there may not have been enough time to permit cross-pollination specifically between the two shows.

Having presented all of this evidence, it cannot be overlooked that any discussion concerning the Three Stooges’ influence on the Beatles begins with the fact that Moe was wearing a Beatles’ haircut before any of the lads were born; thus, the Fab Four owe their most defining physical characteristic to Moe Howard.

But I’m not positing that The Three Stooges in Orbit was a creative well from which only the Beatles drew ideas. Far from it. Though meant to look comic, the Martians in this film actually appear disturbingly grotesque—even more so when the viewer subconsciously realizes that they strongly resemble the horrifying Grendel in the 2007 CGI version of Beowulf—or rather, that Grendel strongly resembles them. One wouldn’t think that the creators of a faithful and brutally explicit retelling of a violent Dark Age tale would look to a Three Stooges film for creative inspiration, but compare the Martians’ distended skulls, heavy eyebrow ridges, and lacertilian digits to Grendel and try to deny a connection…

Of course, Moe Howard—by several accounts, well-read in his youth and possessor of two months of high school study—may, himself, have based the Stooges’ brand of aggressive comedy on the original Beowulf…

And as game-changing as was the granddaddy of all science fiction films, Star Wars,  it’s glaringly obvious from where in his movie-going youth George Lucas later pilfered the concept of the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star...

(Images from The Three Stooges in Orbit copyright Columbia Pictures; images from Yellow Submarine copyright United Artists; image from Beowulf copyright Paramount Pictures.)

Costner’s Arms Caused Draft Day Harm

According to the Web site Box Office Mojo, as of June 18, 2014, the Kevin Costner film Draft Day grossed $29.4 million worldwide. Against a budget of $25 million, this constitutes a major disappointment for Lions Gate Entertainment.

I was not among the few who forked over money to see a film that, seemingly, only a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth football fanatic given a free bucket of Milk Duds could tolerate. However, it’s clear that, apart from the insipid drama of the behind-the-scenes string-pulling that occurs on the NFL’s most crucial day of the off-season, the prime reason why Draft Day failed at the box office is Costner’s glaringly obvious lack of range as an actor.

I mean, compare his performance in Draft Day (above) to some of his major roles over the last quarter-century. Clockwise from upper left, in Field of Dreams, JFK, Wyatt Earp, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, and A Perfect World, Costner’s standard acting technique remains unchanged. It matters not whether he’s portraying a historical figure such as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison or Old West lawman Wyatt Earp, or if Costner’s role is a completely fictional character—he has not altered that cool, calm, arms-crossed stance that so defines his image across the decades.

Sure, arm-crossing is called for in some roles—but to keep drawing from that well for one’s entire career is to sabotage that career by desensitizing the audience. “We no longer care that he’s acting casually confident—he’s done it,” filmgoers clearly said by staying away from Draft Day in droves. Do we really need more proof of the potential of arms on the screen than Molly Shannon in Episode 156 of Seinfeld, “The Summer of George”? Letting her arms “hang like salamis” as she “lurches around like a caveman” led to interoffice chaos.

And the less said how disastrous is Raquel Welch’s lack of arm movement in that episode, the better…

 

Okay, said arm-swinging led to a pair of arousing catfights involving Elaine…but who wants to see Kevin Costner in a catfight, even if it were to produce the drama Draft Day so sorely missed?

The bottom line is that arms = conflict. Can you imagine the bore-fest Raging Bull would have been had DeNiro stood scene after scene in the ring with his arms crossed? You can’t throw the title and pathetically destroy your career and reputation if you don’t first move your arms to punch and win the title...

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on Costner. He could well be an unknowing victim of Hollywood typecasting, selected for these roles solely because of his experience and proficiency in characters that cross their arms—not unlike Marlon Brando, whose outstanding ability to ooze psychotic torment by grabbing his skull landed him many a classic role.

So I suppose I’ll cut Costner some slack and give him until Draft Day II: I Can’t Believe They Green-Lighted This One Also to sort himself out…

(Image from Draft Day copyright Summit Entertainment Lions Gate; image from Field of Dreams copyright Universal Pictures; images from JFK, Wyatt Earp, and A Streetcar Named Desire copyright Warner Brothers; image from Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit copyright Paramount Pictures; image from A Perfect World copyright Malpaso Productions; image from Apocalypse Now copyright Zoetrope Studios.)

It's Not a Lie...if You Believed It in 1937

Beg, Borrow or Steal, a rather obscure comedy from 1937, aired on the Turner Classic Movies channel this afternoon. Its description in the Comcast grid:

“As a gesture, an American in Paris invites his daughter’s wedding party to his nonexistent château—and they all accept.”

This plot sounds remarkably similar to Seinfeld Episode 171, “The Wizard,” in which George Costanza is caught in a lie to his would-have-been in-laws, the Rosses, about not being able to attend a charity event on behalf of his deceased fiancé because he is closing a lease on a house in the Hamptons. When the Rosses don’t call him on his lie, an infuriated George decides it’s time to get nuts and takes it up a notch by inviting the Rosses to his new summer home. Hilarity ensues when the Rosses call his bluff, and George spends two painfully awkward hours driving them to the very end of Long Island, all the while describing in exquisite detail his nonexistent house, including two solariums and a pair of horses, Snoopy and Prickly Pete.

I didn’t get to watch the film, but reading Comcast’s description of Beg, Borrow or Steal, it’s not hard to picture American expatriate Ingraham Steward (Frank Morgan) squirming to keep his Costanza-esque lie going as the wedding guests inquire about “his” château. A lavish, pre-war, French home likely built in the 19th century most certainly had two solariums—as did George’s purported lease. And horses for sure—I’m betting Snupây and Épineux Pierre. Let’s face it: lies and deceit were all the rage throughout Europe in the 1930s...

It seems as though MGM got nuts and took it up a notch sixty years before George did...

(Beg, Borrow or Steal image copyright MGM; Seinfeld image copyright NBC.)

Carl Spackler's Lifetime of Learning to Think Like an Animal

This U.S. Department of Agriculture bulletin was published in January 1940. No wonder the United States was so unprepared for Pearl Harbor and the Second World War: While the Axis powers were running rampant across Europe, Asia, and Africa, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration worried about relatively harmless mammals that, although endangering American lawns and golf courses with their burrowing, certainly posed less threat to democracy than Hitler, Hirohito, and the other guy.

Geopolitical commentary aside, I believe that very well might be little Carl Spackler learning greenskeeping tips from his father. Carl’s age is never indicated in Caddyshack, but he could well be in his mid-forties. A life of golf-course maintenance in the unforgiving sun and liberal indulgence with northern California sinsemilla cannonballed by white wine likely has weathered Carl beyond his years, so being the youngster pictured on this 1940 cover is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Sure, as assistant greenskeeper at Bushwood Country Club, Carl’s primary task is to keep the course free of the destructive gopher, but its burrowing brethren, the mole, poses just as much threat to the American way of pretending to be athletic—so don’t think for one minute that the mole isn’t also Varmint Cong, even if it doesn’t prefer dancing to folk-pop as much as its tunneling counterpart. Thus, there is no reason that an experienced groundskeeper such as the man pictured on the “Mole Control” cover—as well as his apprentice son—wouldn’t also know how to deal with the pesky gopher that decades later would plague Bushwood and its upper-crust members.

True, one would think that a greenskeeper training since the 1940s wouldn’t still be six years from the position of head greenskeeper in 1980, but who knows how long Carl spent in Tibet caddying for the Dalai Lama as well as practicing to become a Cinderella-story Masters champion, himself? And let’s not forget that Carl devoted a lot of time to broadening his education on chinch bugs, manganese, and nitrogen, not to mention inventing and registering his own kind of hybrid grass. So even though he’s got that going for him—which clearly is nice—Carl’s career development might be lagging...

Au revoir, mole...

(Image of Carl Spackler copyright Warner Brothers Pictures.)     

It's Not a Nerd, It's Too Inane...It's Soviet Superman!

Pat e-mailed the rest of the Drinkmore crew this panel today. It’s from Superman: Red Son, a three-issue comic book produced in 2003 and premised on Kal-El having landed in Ukraine rather than the United States and grown up a Soviet “citizen,” fighting a never-ending battle for Josef Stalin and the Red Army rather than Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Although I’ve never read Red Son, aside from the canon of the story, in which the Soviet Union apparently becomes the predominant superpower and the United States produces super-villains to destroy both it and Superman, it is readily evident just from this panel why the USSR ultimately failed in its goal of world domination: the Russkies were dopes.

Firstly, Soviet Russia officially adopted the metric system in 1918, almost immediately upon its inception. Now, I’m not saying that Tsar Nicholas II might have saved his and the Royal Family’s tsasses by going metric—after all, the Russian Revolution was more socio-politically than metrically motivated—but I am saying that the Tsar could have substantially improved life under his apathetic reign by standardizing the nation’s AAA maps both internally and to the rest of Europe, vastly simplifying vacation travel for serfs. Even so, why the hell was Soviet Superman calculating in “capitalist” miles instead of “communist” kilometers? Soviet Superman wouldn’t have made it past Russian elementary school—yet he’s the USSR’s ultimate weapon?   

Much more importantly than simple units of measure, look how utterly vague and scatterbrained is the hammer-and-sickle–chested Superman: In a nation that measured more than 6,000 miles east to west and nearly 3,000 miles north to south—an area of 14 million square miles—he’s “pinpointing” a destination more than 3,000 miles away from a known locale.

Three thousand miles west of Vladivostok, a coastal city in the Russian Far East, is just east of the Ural Mountains. However, the Urals stretch north-south for approximately 2,500 miles. Even considering Superman’s incredible flying speed, that’s still precious minutes wasted in a millions-of-square-miles wild-goose chase across the Soviet Union’s spine. How many people will die and homes will burn while the Man of Stoli searches for this chemical fire by needlessly zooming up and down mountainous wilderness of the Urals like Clint Eastwood looking for his refueling point in Firefox?

Considering that Stalin and Soviet Superman are surely in Moscow—4,000 miles west of Vladivostok and thus obviously much closer to the chemical fire than that cross-continental port city—citing Vladivostok as a reference point makes absolutely nyet sense. Why not use Yekaterinburg, a major city on the eastern slope of the Urals and approximately those 3,000 miles west of Vladivostok, as the reference point? It’s still almost 900 miles from Moscow, thus preserving the image of Superman heroically coming to the rescue from a great distance yet eliminating the asinine inexactitude that betrays his stupidity. After all, one does not summon emergency services by saying that an ambulance is needed fifty miles west of a town located fifty miles to the east…

That neither Comrade Kent nor Stalin—who also foolishly fails to demand a more-specific location—could not fathom such obvious logic displays the kind of flawed reasoning that led to the USSR’s demise. Would American Superman know to go specifically to San Francisco if he were needed “3,000 miles west of New York”? Of course not—but, possessing the American penchant for individual thought and the free exchange of ideas, you can bet he would look into it, he would at least ask for directions. Little wonder the USSR never landed a man on the moon, conquered capitalism, or beat the Broad Street Bullies in 1976—those Soviets were such slaves to their own narrow-minded system, their overbearing Mother Russia, that they were utterly incapable of thinking even slightly out of the Bloc.

Not that the United States owns an unblemished heritage of geniuses at the helm—the US government hydrogen-bombed its own country more than a thousand times since the end of World War II—but at least our superheroes’ kryptonite isn’t common sense, and our pizza deliverymen get their precious cargo to hungry mouths without empty-headedly basing their route on the customer’s distance from the Cumberland Gap.

(Superman: Red Son panel copyright DC Comics; map of Russia copyright npr.org.)

Abraham, Father of Nations...Abe Vigoda, Father of Patience

Abe Vigoda continues to astonish with his longevity—especially those who thought he died long ago. (The extremely veteran actor has been reported as deceased on at least three occasions over the last thirty years.) Born Abraham Vigoda in February 1921 to Russian-Jewish immigrants, he remains the highest-ranking Jew in the history of the Italian Mafia, enjoying the status of caporegime in the Corleone crime family until his forced “retirement.”

Now 93 years old—and having looked ancient for many decades; he was a mere 51 in The Godfather yet appeared easily to be in his mid-sixties—I’m wondering if Vigoda can hold on to become the oldest Abraham in history. Vigoda passed Abraham Lincoln only two months into the run of his spinoff series, Fish, in 1977, and moved into the No. 2 spot in 1986, when he eclipsed Abraham Zapruder, who had proved not up to the challenge by dying, years before, at age 65. Since then, only the biblical Abraham has stood in Vigoda’s way.*

* We can endlessly debate where Abraham Simpson belongs on this list, but the fact is that his birth year has never been revealed. And with the timeline of his life continually in flux, a determination of his true age would be specious at best. Grampa Simpson is a World War II veteran, yet he also claimed to have fought in the First World War, as well as participated in the 1936 Olympic Games. His service in World War II is undoubtedly true—at least, he was certainly old enough to have served—but given Grampa Simpson’s penchant for meandering tall tales and his suspect memory, much of his background cannot be taken as gospel, even though we know he was of an advanced age when he fathered Homer in the mid-1950s. Yes, through flashbacks and glimpses of Simpsons future, we see Grampa and other Springfield residents at different ages, but because of strictly maintained canon, they never actually age—their age at the time of the series’ “birth” is the age that they have remained throughout the canonical run of the series. Therefore, Grampa, an 80-something when The Simpsons premiered in 1989, remains an 80-something today regardless of the fact that nearly a quarter-century has elapsed. So, even though Abraham Simpson once was likely much older than Abe Vigoda, Vigoda has long since reclaimed second place.

Of course, according to Genesis, Abraham lived to the ripe, old age of 175. Now whether you take the Bible at its literal word or dismiss the ages of its many incredulously long-lived characters as gross exaggerations, 175 remains the sole “official” age of record—and a target still so far away that the nonagenarian Vigoda is little more than halfway there.

Still, I believe Abe Vigoda can do it. The key to Vigoda’s long life thus far has been his languid, almost reptilian, movement. Whether shuffling gingerly through the Corleone compound or planted in fatigued misery behind his 12th Precinct desk, Vigoda’s patient, unhurried manner emulates the slow heart rate and conserved body motion of such long-living animals as the elephant, the whale, and the tortoise. Let’s face it: Vigoda even shares the same facial expressions as a tortoise…

Certainly, none of us will be around to see it, but I wouldn’t be shocked in the least if, early in the year 2096, a shriveled-yet-still-filled-with-vim Abe Vigoda quietly becomes the longest-living Abraham in human history.

After all, a 90-something who can take this hit isn’t going any time soon…

Besides, breaking the age record is the smart move...and Tessio was always smartuh.

(Image from Barney Miller copyright ABC; image from The Godfather copyright Paramount Pictures; animated GIF of Snickers ad copyright Mars, Incorporated.)

Happy Days and The Godfather Aren't Apollonias and Oranges

Although Happy Days' original theme song was Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” the producers eventually commissioned for Season 3 a new theme—yielding the Pratt & McClain “Sunday, Monday, Happy Days” theme that we all know.

Keeping that in mind, let’s take a step back and consider for a moment that Happy Days premiered in the wake of The Godfather—and while the eagerly awaited Godfather II was being filmed.

Now, I’m not saying that Happy Days was a shameless prime-time knock-off of The Godfather, but I am saying that undeniable similarities exist between the Cunninghams and the Corleones: Howard (“Mr. C”) heads his family with the protectiveness, if not brute vigilance, of Don Vito. Marion, like Mama Corleone, is the loyal wife, mother, and cook.

And although The Fonz—lending ethnic provenance as “Arthur Fonzarelli”—Potsie, and Ralph Malph are not blood members of the Cunningham family, for all intents and purposes within the parameters of the show, they, along with Richie, serve as the four brothers. The hotheaded, impulsive, womanizing Fonzie is a dead ringer for Sonny; dim-witted Potsie aptly reflects Fredo; brainy Ralph Malph wouldn’t be far removed from Tom Hagen had the all-business consigliere possessed a sense of humor (or at least a pair of springy-eyeball glasses); and the shrewd, All-American Richie, of course, fills the role of war-hero Michael.

Joanie rounds out the family similarly to Connie Corleone, even marrying The Fonz’s cousin, Chachi—as Connie wed Carlo, who, similar to Chachi, was introduced to his future bride through Fonzie’s cinematic “progenitor,” Sonny.

Furthermore, could Arnold and Al be more brazen clones of Tessio and Clemenza? Savvy restaurateur Arnold, like Tessio, clearly is the smarter of the two, whereas Al displays Clemenza’s girth and love of food.

Extending beyond the family, Richie Cunningham’s history with women closely mimics that of Michael Corleone: Although a violent end is not implied, Richie’s first girlfriend, Gloria, passes quickly through his life, appearing in five early episodes before departing—somewhat akin to Michael’s brief, star-crossed marriage to Apollonia Vitelli. Later, Richie weds Lori Beth, who, in her prim-and-proper WASPiness, echoes Michael’s second wife, Kay Adams and, like Kay, knows nothing of Richie’s former life with Gloria.

And perhaps the producers threw in for good measure that—even though they’re not analogous characters—Potsie, like Johnny Fontane, made his bones with a microphone.

Finally, eldest son Chuck Cunningham isn’t exactly a replica of the traitorous Paulie Gatto, but it’s no stretch to believe that the mysteriously vanished Chuck ended up slumped over a steering wheel somewhere in the marshes of Milwaukee. (After all, orange—the color of Richie’s hair—is the Italian symbol of death, and Chuck went missing not long after being in the presence of his younger brother’s hair...)

Hell, the trisyllabic Cunningham even sounds something like an Anglicized version of Corleone…

With this less-than-coincidental—and very lucrative—family model in place, Executive Producer Garry Marshall should have further capitalized on the Godfather films’ popularity through the show’s new theme song, especially because The Godfather II was largely set, like Happy Days, in the nostalgia-filled 1950s. This could best have been accomplished by having Truett Platt or Jerry McClain—whichever is performing the lead vocal in “Happy Days”—sing the lyric as how Michael’s new Sicilian bride, Apollonia, recited the days of the week in The Godfather. Or better yet—hire Simonetta Stefanelli, herself, to sing the theme in her adorably fractured English...

Mon-day, Tues-day, Happy Days
Thurs-day, Wednes-day, Happy Days
Fri-day, Sun-day, Sa-tur-day, Happy Days
The car explodes
That’s the way it goes
Fabrizio meant it for you!

(Images of The Godfather copyright Paramount Pictures; images of Happy Days copyright ABC.)

Sailing the Specious Seas of Cheese: A Theorem Wrapped in a Riddle Inside an Enigma

I wasn’t too bad at theorems in high school geometry. (Okay, I got a C, but that was the result of being totally preoccupied with the circumference of Lisa S.’s fabulous freshman breasts.) It’s been thirty years since then, but I’m gonna take a crack at a theorem here…

Theorem. Walter Matthau (as Sen. Russell Long) in JFK: “That dog don’t hunt...”

Sound bite of “Chop Top” in Primus’s “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver”: “Dog will hunt!”

Proof. Walter Matthau was not a fan of Primus (Matthau ≠ Primus).

Q.E.D.

As additional support, I offer that, to my knowledge, after Matthau died in 2000, not a single Primus album was found among his music collection.

Interestingly, each part of this theorem was released to the public in 1991—the Primus single preceding Oliver Stone’s film by approximately seven months. Of course, principal shooting for JFK took place much earlier than the film’s release, so both Matthau and Primus were creating their moments at roughly the same time. Considering that “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” garnered a fair amount of radio play—reaching #23 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart—it’s a little surprising that Walter Matthau did not take to Primus. After all, aside from Primus’s unique brand of idiosyncratic funk-metal that surely would electrify even a 71-year-old Brooklynite such as Matthau, “Jerry”—who “wrapped himself around a telephone pole”—meets a fate very similar to Lee Bowers, the railroad worker who witnessed suspicious happenings on the Grassy Knoll and died in a single-car accident on an empty road in Midlothian, Texas. It is Bowers’ testimony during the Warren Commission proceedings (as read by Jim Garrison) that helps convince the New Orleans District Attorney of a conspiracy in President Kennedy’s assassination, and, in fact, that scene with Bowers occurs in JFK only minutes after Matthau’s brief portrayal of Sen. Long and utterance of “That dog don’t hunt…”

So even had Matthau gotten up to leave the premiere and go home after his appearance half an hour into the film—which I’m betting he did—the aged Matthau likely didn’t make it out the theater door before the aforementioned Lee Bowers segment caught his attention. Okay, it’s possible that Matthau wasn’t a regular listener of the radio stations playing Primus’s new single at that time, but according to Variety’s archives, Primus was mentioned in no fewer than nine issues of that most famous of trade papers in 1991—so Matthau surely was at least aware of the band, thus making a tenuous connection in his mind between the song and the film highly probable. It’s baffling why such a fresh and dynamic sound as Primus wasn’t Walter Matthau’s cup of tea—perhaps he was still attached to those tiresome hair bands of the late ‘80s—but why Walter Matthau didn’t enjoy Primus is irrelevant mathematically. As their aforementioned statements show, Matthau and Primus were clearly at odds philosophically, as well as regards canine behavior; thus, my theorem is airtight.

On a related note, I am currently developing a corollary concerning Jack Lemmon's attitude toward Sonic Youth.

(Images from JFK copyright Warner Bros.)

Opportunity Knocked on a Door That Shouldn't Have Been There

Jack Torrance’s “Heeerrreee’s Johnny!” head-poke through an ax-split door in 1978's The Shining is one of the iconic images in modern cinema and certainly the most identifiable on-screen moment of Jack Nicholson’s long and lauded career. But this classic scene would have been even better had the doorway instead been covered by a multi-colored curtain just like the one that Johnny Carson pawed through every weeknight at the start of The Tonight Show.

Many homes in the 1970s featured doorways adorned with tapestry dividers or hanging beads instead of doors, and the psychotic Jack Torrance popping his head through a vertically striped curtain of orange, pink, brown, beige, gold, and two shades of blue would have truly added cinematic provenance to this frighteningly comic moment.

True, Nicholson ad-libbed this legendary line, but once such a great idea was out of the bag, there’s no reason that Stanley Kubrick—notorious in Hollywood for shooting excessive takes—couldn’t have had an intern run out to a local linen store, order a replica Tonight Show curtain, and instructed Nicholson to redo the scene with the proper prop.

Frankly, I’m more than a little surprised that Kubrick—one of the most visionary filmmakers ever to step behind a camera and a renowned obsessive for detail—overlooked this opportunity.

Then again, Kubrick did have the good sense to cast Shelley Duvall rather than Robert Duvall as Jack Torrance’s wife, Wendy...

(Image from The Shining copyright Warner Brothers; image from The Tonight Show copyright NBC.)

Not Winning the Oscar Must've Made Baldini a Grouch

It's well known that both Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro won the Academy Award for portraying Vito Corleone—the only instance of two actors winning an Oscar for the same role.

But what about Oreste Baldini, who played the nine-year-old Vito at the beginning of The Godfather II? I wonder if he’s bitter that he didn’t win an Oscar for his portrayal of Vito. Sure, Baldini was on-screen for only a few scenes...yet he showed fine range, shifting effortlessly from weak, dumb-witted native to weak, dumb-witted immigrant. And if that weren’t enough to convince Academy voters, Baldini was the only “Vito” to sing (while quarantined on Ellis Island)—something neither Brando nor De Niro dared do…or likely even possessed the acting chops to do.

My guess is that the now-51-year-old Baldini seethes in anger and jealousy every minute of his life since the evening Art Carney and De Niro walked off with the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor honors, respectively, in April 1975. And although Baldini has enjoyed a busy career dubbing Hollywood dialogue into his native tongue for Italian cinema, television, animation, and even video games, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if bilious ire occasionally flares into his on-screen translations.    

Had I been an Italian citizen taking in a film at the Nuovo Olimpia on the Via in Lucina in downtown Rome on a bygone Saturday evening, I would hardly be shocked if, right in the middle of Ed Wood, Johnny Depp ranted Art Carney può andare al diavalo, che non-talento hack!

Or even a purple-rhino'ed Edward Norton inexplicably yelling De Niro ha rubato la mia Oscar, che bastardi! Baldini ha la voce di un angelo! in the midst of singing ditties of support to methadone addicts in Death to Smoochy.

I might even have felt such sympathy for the slighted Baldini that I wouldn’t have demanded my money back from the theater manager… 

(Image from The Godfather II copyright Paramount Pictures.) 

When the Law of the Land Is the Second Amendmant

I've long heard of this film, but I never knew what it was about (I think I always mistook it for 1966's run-for-your-life nail-biter, The Naked Prey). The description of The Naked Jungle on the Comcast grid:

 

"Charlton Heston plays a plantation owner threatened by soldier ants."

 

Here's the problem with Chuck: he's so obsessed with guns that, whatever the threatening situation, he deals with it using firearms, regardless of how ill-suited they may be. I wonder how that shotgun worked out for him against thousands of marauding ants? I assume the film ends with Chuck blowing his legs off as he tries to shoot the numerous ants crawling up him...eventually lying in his own gore, angrily lamenting his foolish faith in guns between wails of insufferable agony...

 

What the hell did those NRA nuts see in this dope anyway?

 

Furthermore, The Naked Jungle was released in 1954—how did they know Heston was gonna win the Oscar for Ben-Hur five years later? Hell, how did they know Ben-Hur was even gonna be made???

 

(For more on Charlton Heston and his gun fixation, see the Mount Drinkmore post, "Heston Peace,  Charlton," of April 11, 2008, located in the archive at left, or use keywords Charlton Heston, entertainment, film, or In Memoriam.)

 

(Image of The Naked Jungle movie poster copyright Paramount Pictures.)  

Wedge Would Give This Eatery the Edge

Last night, I was treated to dinner at Butcher and Singer, the swanky Steven Starr steakhouse at 15th and Walnut. As you can see under the salad selections, this establishment offers “The Wedge”—a large slice of iceberg lettuce drenched in a bacon-and-Bleu-cheese Russian dressing.

Now, maybe my proclivity for free-associative thinking was abetted by dining in a Steven Starr restaurant, but, upon first sight of it, I immediately conjured the idea of Wedge, the Rebel Alliance pilot who flew alongside Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and played a key role in all three films of the first trilogy, emerging from the kitchen in full pilot uniform and serving me The Wedge while regaling me with priceless anecdotes from the set and personal war stories from the Star Wars universe.

After all, the actor who portrayed Wedge, Denis Lawson, also played the ubiquitous Gordon Urquhart, the hotelier, chartered accountant, and community negotiator who also waited tables in his MacAskill Arms dining room, in one of my very favorite films, Local Hero. Expert in both roles, it would be no stretch to have the aproned innkeeper who served meals to his guests do so for me while dressed instead as the orange-jumpsuited fighter ace who helped send both Death Stars to their doom.       

And as Wedge placed The Wedge in front of me, I think it would go a little something…like this:

“Look at the size of that thing!” I marvel at the large, ludicrously priced wedge of lettuce. Appreciating my homage to his most famous line of dialogue, Wedge then pours me a 42-year-old scotch like the one Urquhart serves up in Local Hero.

“Slàinte,” he toasts me.

“Good shooting, Wedge,” I commend his expert pouring ability before taking a swig.

“I can’t stay with you,” Wedge confesses, needing to return to the kitchen.

“Get back there, Wedge. You can’t do anymore good out here,” I urge gratefully.

“Sorry,” Wedge laments in his Corellia-by-way-of-Furness accent, peeling off toward the kitchen. And as I dig into my ridiculously, just insanely overpriced chunk of iceberg lettuce with a little dressing drizzled on it, I am wholly satisfied with the wait service from the best damn pilot the Alliance ever had. 

(Image of Butcher and Singer menu copyright Steven Starr Restaurants; image from Star Wars copyright Lucasfilm; image from Local Hero copyright Warner Brothers.)

Papillon's Story Is Finally Complete and Finished

Whenever the South American nation of Guiana is mentioned, most, if not all of us, think of the Steve McQueen–Dustin Hoffman film, Papillon. After all, this classic prison tale—set in the penal colony of French Guiana and its offshore solitary-confinement counterpart, Devil’s Island—put Guiana on the populace’s proverbial map.

So it should be no surprise that when I received an e-mail today mentioning a Guyanese man in a mildly amusing anecdote, I reflexively thought of this great film. Now, the e-mail is almost certainly a fabrication—I could find no verification of it on the Internet. Still, I couldn’t help but think that this anecdote should have constituted the narration at the end of Papillon, rather than the brief explanation of the infamous French prisoner’s ultimate fate and the destiny of the penal colony.*

* Although I believe that this colorful anecdote should have been spoken—like the film’s actual postscript—rather than shown, I have included it below as text because I can't afford to pay the original narrator to call each one of you and speak it.

Frankly, I’m surprised some innocuous yarn wasn’t used as the film’s postscript, considering how ardently Hollywood demands a happy ending. After all, what could provide a happier ending than a slightly charming, somewhat-clichéd slice of life about the trials of domesticity to which many of us not incarcerated in a pestilential jungle hellhole can relate?†

† Sure, Papillon “made it to freedom,” but he made it several months after the end of World War II—too late to do his duty for France by surrendering to the Germans…certainly a sadder ending to the film than the brief, wry smile provided by this anecdote.

I fully expect the contents of this e-mail to replace the film’s original postscript when Papillon is inevitably re-released in 2023 for its golden anniversary.

(Images fromPapillon copyright Allied Artists.)

Hell in the Atlantic

Tonight, I was watching a DVD of one of my favorites: the World War II, marooned-on-an-island classic, Hell in the Pacific. More than half of the opening thirty minutes of the film focuses on Lee Marvin trying to get at Toshirō Mifune’s small supply of fresh water, either by stealing it or asking for some. Just as this angle comes to a climax—with Marvin falling from a tree while attempting to fish out some water with his canteen, crashing into Mifune, and spilling the precious basin of collected rainwater—I realize that the bottle of Poland Spring from which I am now taking the last sip is my sole remaining bottle—and thus my only remaining drinkable water!  

Sure, I could have opted for tap water, but not since having seen all sorts of things in the tap water from my college dorm in Philadelphia have I trusted water from the faucet and would have spat it out as undrinkable—as did a repulsed Marvin after dipping his face in a stagnant, salty pond before continuing his pursuit of Mifune’s fresh rainwater.

So, as with Lee Marvin and his Imperial Japanese Navy rival, my survival came down to cooperating with my Mitsubishi Eclipse to obtain fresh water—the very same Mitsubishi that produced the A6M “Zero” fighter for Mifune’s Imperial Japanese Navy!

Would my car take me where I needed to go, or would it make me its captive, as did Mifune of Marvin, before Marvin escaped and turned the tables on his opponent? Could I harness the Mitsubishi’s power and make peace with it, so that we could work in tandem for our mutual benefit and set off promptly to 7-Eleven for its rich supply of Poland Spring?

Alas, upon arrival at 7-Eleven, the Mitsubishi most likely would have abruptly exploded with no warning, destroying both of us.*

Or perhaps, in some alternate ending to my evening, my Mitsubishi would refuse to open its doors, and after yelling and honking at each other in foreign-tongued futility, we’d go our separate ways as enemies once again.

* Okay, so I should have prefaced this with a Spoiler Alert…but let’s face it: you’re never gonna get off your ass and rent this film—or come to my place and watch it with me. No, it’ll be just another Saturday night alone, marooned in my apartment, waiting for the tides to be right so I can get off this desolate rock...I mean couch. Man, I would’ve been much better off had my Mitsubishi exploded...

(Images copyright Selmur Pictures.)