XXBN gets inside the Arse Elektronika Conference, with Gracie Passette speaking live with Johannes Grenzfurthner 9/26/2008 at 9 PM Pacific/11 PM Central (9/27/2008 at 12:00 AM Eastern). This year's conference theme is Do Androids Sleep With Electric Sheep? Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction.
According to this article, Josephine Judson Carringer was musically gifted, highly intelligent, ad entered college when she was 16 yrs old. She wrote Three Little Fishes with Betty Lynn Kirk, her sorority sister at the University of Tennessee in the late 1930s. They then sold the song for $200 and Saxie Dowell adapted the lyrics and music into the piece that became a number one hit in 1939 as performed by the Kay Kyser orchestra with Ish KaBibble singing.
According to Time, June 19, 1939, "Saxie Dowell recently heard, in the South, an old nursery tune called Down in de Meddy. He thought it mighty cute." We can't blame Saxie for the giant PR machine which would deny buying music (especially for a mighty cute old nursery rhyme song), and so we can likely believe the rest:
The result was published last April by Santly-Joy-Select, Inc., which got out The Music Goes 'Round and 'Round and admits to liking "crazy things." Under its title Three Little Fishies, Saxie Dowell's song last week had set something of a current record by leading the field in sheet music sales for a month.
Three Little Fishies has verses which can be sung either in English (Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool) or in "fish talk" (Down in de meddy in a ITTY BITTY POO). The chorus can be sung only one way: Boop boop dittem dattem whattem Chu! The song, likely to cause reverse peristalsis in fastidious stomachs, is all about some "itty fitties" who "fam and dey fam" until they "taw a TARK!" (shark). Den dey fam back to deir poo. The publishers, wary of overplugging Three Little Fishies, withheld it from all but a few big orchestral names—Hal Kemp, Guy Lombardo, Kay Kyser, Paul Whiteman, each of whom recorded it. The song was plugged on the radio by Mildred Bailey, Fannie Brice, Judy Starr. Along with the itty fitties, fat Saxie Dowell fam into such fame that he is now thinking of leaving Hal Kemp and starting a band of his own.
The song is a relative childhood classic -- that is to say, if you had a corny family like mine, you heard your relatives sing it. Often. You may have even heard Madonna and Rosie O'Donell perform a cover of the tune.
Now, you might be wondering why I'd be taking so much time to discuss a cute old kids' song here at SPS. Well, the idea of Baby Snooks, the bratty character played by Fanny Brice fascinates me.
It plays well-enough on the Baby Snook radio shows but, as Brice was fond of dressing & behaving 'in character', once you can see as well as hear it takes on other elements.
Putting a grown woman in little-girl-garb may have it's humorous elements, but it also says something about power & dominance -- and you don't have to be a perv to see it. Little girls are innocence, but they are also property; they belong to daddy. Short baby-doll dresses, oh-so fashionable these days, communicate these things -- innocence and access -- which is why I don't own a single one of those monstrosities.
Having a bratty girl-child mouth-off to her master may be cute, but underneath it all lies -- as sure as those ruffled panties -- the idea that she will eventually heel and heed her master. Or, if she does not, then he is less-than-a-man and plays cuckhold to her charms. Sure, all this can only make it funnier; but did they get it?
Without Brice & Snooks, we likely wouldn't have had Lily Tomlin's Edith Ann on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In -- but there's a huge difference between the two.
Tomlin's Edith Ann appeared alone in her giant rocking chair where she told stories about her family & dog. Having her be alone could have been a choice to deal with scale; but even so, simply being alone meant Edith Ann was not (as) eroticized.
Baby Snooks, by comparison, not only acted with others but interacted physically with them, drawing in all those adult contexts. There is a large difference between discussing a punishment, a la Edith Ann, and showing a grown woman dressed as a child over the knee of her daddy figure like Baby Snooks; the image has erotically charged elements.
At the base of this humor is prettified misogyny &/or glorified cuckholding. It's all good & fine for adult role-play sex-scenarios, really; but as entertainment one really ought to be aware that's what they are enjoying.
Baby Snooks (with Hanley Stafford as "Daddy") was performed on television only once (and this was Brice's only TV appearance too), on CBS-TV's Popsicle Parade of Stars in 1950 (one year prior to Brice's death). Entertainment folks document Brice's height &/or age as the reason for its failure, and Brice herself is said to have admitted that the character of Baby Snooks just didn't work properly when seen... But come on!
This wasn't the first time Baby Snooks had appeared before people. Baby Snooks was even in Judy Garland's Everybody Sing (1938) prior to radio success.
While Brice & Garland are wonderfully funny in that scene, this was not the usual Baby Snooks routine. Baby Snooks was built on the annoying relationship with her father and, sometimes, other men. The Baby Snooks character had been preformed live on stage for years and, height of male actors aside, there clearly were other issues at work here.
Fanny, who rejoined the Follies at the Winter Garden, was still not in the best of health, and had to clear her throat in her Snooks scene Hope. "That's my cold clearing up," she ad-libbed at one point.
"I thought you were just oversexed," was Bob Hope's quick reply. The line stayed in.
Yeah. No wonder it just didn't work properly on television.
I wonder just what it is that people were thinking about Baby Snooks at the time.
Note:Gone Fishing (06/01/1939) & Baby Fish Story (04/11/1940) have quite a bit of similar content for a woman who eschewed rehearsals, saying she wanted to give performances a spontaneity and unpredictability that would be lost with an over-familiarity with the lines and other players. That could just be the writers milking their own jokes. What do you notice about the shows?
The Beloved Brat, by James Street, an article on Fannie Brice as published in Radio Guide, week ending Sept 22, 1939. (Many thanks to Pop Tart for scanning & sending!) Along with photos of Fannie as Baby Snooks, there are photos of Fannie with her children, Frances & Bill, from her marriage to Nicky Arnstein -- including one of Fannie helping Frances "don 'sock and buskin'" for Frances' debut, at the age of 17, in Ziegfeld's "Follies" in 1936.
Sadly, this is just part one of The Beloved Brat, but the article ends on a rather whimsical note (links added for reader assistance):
The character [Baby Snooks] was created eighteen years ago, quite by accident. There was a song called "Poor Pauline" going the rounds. It was a take-off on the "Perils of Pauline," the old movie thriller. Fannie was at a friend's house one night and sang the song as a child might. It clicked, and Moss Hart and Dave Freedman wrote lines for Fannie and she used "Snooks" in the Follies. Today Miss Brice is "Baby Snooks," not the wife who sang "My Man." The giddy era has passed.
At the top of the heap, she married Billy Rose, but that one didn't take. Mr. Rose and Eleanor Holm are betrothed. Miss Holm is working for Mr. Rose at the New York Fair and recently she was late for a cue. Mr. Rose asked how come, and his sweetheart told him she had been laughing so much at a radio program that she forgot the time. The program was "Baby Snooks" singing "The Little Fishes."
And so the woman who made the world cry with "My Man" now plays a brat who amuses the woman who won one of Brice's men.
A center-fold presentation of what radio and movie talent-scouts looked for... I guess a gal really had to measure-up for radio too.
(Click to read the huge scan.)
Posed by Lillian Cornell, NBC singer, who typifies those qualities sought by the alert talent-scout. Photographs by Maurice Seymour.
From Radio Guide, week ending Sept 22, 1939 -- thanks to Pop Tart (who also put up a quiz from this issue, along with answers at CQ) for sending it to me!
Unorthodox in the extreme is Bartlett's method of gathering material for his programs. Every day promptly at 2:05 he whirls into the Chicago Home Arts Guild, an institution supported by national advertisers, to lunch and show 100-odd women the sponsors' 100-odd products. Tommie shouts "Hello, girls!" at the assembled matrons. Ten minutes later, after the girls are all in spasms at Tommie, who thinks nothing of rolling on the floor to get them giggling, WBBM technicians begin to record Meet the Missus. Twittering like sparrows, yanking nervously at their girdles, some of Tommie 's girls answer questions about their clothes, husbands, honeymoons, aspirations, frustrations, children, while the rest of them hoot and howl.
Apparently, Bartlett was quite the man; earning 20 wedding proposals and the moniker "housewife’s pinup boy".
Not a bad looking man. And I can only assume that even as his hair whitened and his middle thickened, his wallet's growth from all the Wisconsin Dell's attractions only served to make him more attractive. If girls and matrons once "yanked nervously at their girdles" (and isn't that a delicious bit of vintage imagery!), I bet that once the girdle was banished, the smoothing of hair & skirts, the licking & biting of lips, and other signs of lusty interest continued.
But Bartlett never married.
This would not interest me so if there weren't such a blank in the press about the man's private life. A legendary figure in the Midwest (and beyond), you'd think his exploits would be documented. Even here on the Internet, home of all things imbecilic & impolite, there is no tribute to the man, no home for all things private (let alone pervy) regarding Tommy Bartlett.
How could such a public man lead such a private life?
If he was a playboy bachelor, where are the celeb stalkings? There's no dirt on his wild youth, no dish on his radio hey-days, no smutty speculation on his incredibly wealthy years as a kitsch mogul. Where was the scandal of his will after his death? No rug-rats crawling out of the woodwork for a piece of that pie? And there's virtually no photographic evidence of his life.
Too damn quiet, if you ask me.
So I wonder, was this man gay?
Now I know you're going to accuse me of perpetuating stereotypes. Suggesting the maker of stacked water skier spectacles is anything but hetero certainly seems "typical" of a hetero. But honestly, where's the trail of his romantic life? Only a gay man living the life of such a large local legend would keep so secretive.
If you have any knowledge, news clippings, photos, anecdotal evidence, please spill it.
* Founding the the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force, known as FACT.
* Starting the Pink Ladies Social Club, a club which supports women (performers, writers, makeup artists, directors etc.) who works in the adult industry and works to fight the stereotype of female sex workers as bimbos &/or victims coerced by men into humiliating themselves.
* Being a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, an organization that works to advance sexual freedom as a fundamental human right by protecting and advancing freedom of speech and sexual expression), but with her wisdom in faith and religion.
This week, I've been outed (with my husband yet!), forced at gunpoint to join Twitter, and been interviewed on Radio Blowfish (direct link to the specific podcast download here.
Time to stop tooting my horn & having air blown up my, er, 'skirt'.
I return now to my regularly scheduled hermit status.
Ever wonder what Gloria Brame would say? Now you can find out, live.
I'm very excited to have Dr. Gloria Brame on Cult of Gracie Radio Wednesday, July 9th (at 9 P.M. central), on XXBN ~ and not just because she calls me "the divine Gracie Passette --sex-kitten and all around erotic goddess" either. *wink*
As you know (or ought to!), Gloria's a licensed clinical sexologist, leading international authority on BDSM and fetish sex, and a wise-cracking kinky person. What's not to love?
Discovering Pap Smears At The Laundromat, On The Next Virginia Graham Show
It's hard to imagine I was just 5 years old when my mom used to fluff & fold with her friends -- and discuss uterine cancer. Oh wait, that's not one of my memories; that was a "hip" comic put out by the American Cancer Society in 1969.
While this comic seems strange, the premise that ladies do talk about such things isn't. And though it's campy just for the tones of the time (the black lady gets to be the music judge, they call themselves "girls" rather than "ladies" or "women", etc. etc. etc.), it's the comic style which rather reduces the health propaganda to silliness. Small speaking bubbles are limiting, and the style is overly dramatic. The real problem is what 1969 woman was reading comics? Teens? Sure. But they didn't hang out at laundromats --because they didn't do their own laundry.
The celeb endoresment on the back is Virginia Graham. Graham wrote for radio soaps, eventually hosting her first radio talk show in 1951 and then succeeding Margaret Truman (in 1956) as co-host of the NBC radio show Weekday with Mike Wallace -- and then became a daytime television talk show host, including for Girl Talk (1962–1969) and the Virginia Graham Show.
Having survived her own battle with cervical cancer in the 50's, and openly spoke about it, becoming a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. (Graham also started the Cerebral Palsy Foundation along with 13 other women.) Jokes on the connection between cervical cancer and smoking aside, it is said (by the not-always-so-accurate Wiki) that while Graham was very vocal on smoking cessation, when she was asked what she would do if she knew the world would end tomorrow, she replied that she would smoke.
I wonder if this is true -- but that the politically correct world of today has to remove that bit from Graham's record. Then again, there is little on Graham. (Something for me to work on, huh.)
About Jack: From 1988 to 2000 Jack Hafferkamp published/edited Libido: The Journal of Sex and Sensibility with Marianna Beck. Since then he has operated Libido Films, which specializes in gender-equal explicit erotica. Libido films have been honored at the annual Erotic Awards in London and featured at New York's Cinekink festival. Jack holds a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality, specializing in Erotology, which is the material culture of sex.
Call in with questions & comments will be taken at 1 (646) 200-3136.
Of Happy Madmen & Radio covers a story in a 1938 issue of Radio Guide on how the "modern miracle" of radio is working wonders for "America's 400,000 mentally ill." In it we meet the delightful Mrs. Diggs:
Take a look at Mrs. Diggs. Mrs. Diggs is a Negro, a man, who considers himself the most beautiful white woman in the world. He says he has letters from President Roosevelt, Will Hayes, Lindbergh and Joe Louis telling him so. What's more, he's the mother of all the white people in the world.
"Most of the patients like Gracie Allen, all right -- but not because they feel any strange bonds of sympathy or understanding. They think she's nuts, and very, very funny."
The clinically insane of 1938 may have thought Gracie was nuts and loved her for it, but they weren't alone. George Burns felt that way himself.
Once, in the middle of the night, Gracie elbowed George and asked him to make her laugh. Half-asleep, he mumbled, "Googie, googie, googie." It became his pet name for her...
...True, their marriage did have its rough spots. One oft-repeated story has it that whenever Gracie suspected George of philandering, he would buy her an expensive gift. "I wish George would find another girlfriend," she once told a friend. "I could use a silver-fox jacket."
However they managed -- and they did manage for 38 showbiz years -- Googie and Natty did so with humor and love. Right up until the end:
Burns never made a secret of the tough time he had dealing with his loss. "When I miss her a great deal, I crawl in on her side of the bed, in the middle of the day even," he told Carol Channing. "I stay there until I feel warm and good, and then I go on about my business." He also became somewhat of a fixture at Hollywood's Forest Lawn Cemetery, where every month he would go to the mausoleum to talk to Gracie. "I don't know if she hears me," he said. "But after speaking to her, I feel better."
That their chats should continue beyond the grave didn't really seem so odd. Throughout his life, whenever people asked Burns how to make a marriage work, he had a standard response: "I tell them the answer's easy--marry Gracie." Taking his own advice, he never married again.
Tonight on Cult of Gracie Radio, the guest is Randall Radic, also known as 'Father Felony' or 'Daddy Radic,' is the Ripon, CA pastor who pleaded guilty to embezzlement after he sold the First Congregational Church without the knowledge of his congregation.
As the ad on the sidebar says, Grumpy Old Bookman wrote, "if you want to read a (fairly truthful) book by a priest who is a convicted felon and has had eight fiancees & two wives, & a very complicated set of relationships... then this is for you."
It promises to be a very interesting show.
About Randall: His recently released memoir, The Sound Of Meat (published by Ephemera Bound) covers his earlier life as a professional swim coach and priest, including his eight fiancees & two wives. "I used to try and save souls without ever examining my own," says Radic. Now, with this memoir, he puts pen to his mission, voice to his sin, sadism to his redemption.
Just go here at 9 p.m. (central) tonight, and press the orange button to listen live! Call in at (347) 838-8467
Can't be there live? Watch the Cult of Gracie blog for post-show info and downloads!
About Jane: After dating a fetishist, she started X-traordinary Talk as a hobby. It grew very quickly and she quit her job as a magazine editor to grow the business which is now nearly 15 years old. She earned her PhD in 2002, with a dissertation on the sexual expression of tease (as distinct from flirtation and seduction) and how tease has manifested in artwork thru the ages. All while raising two strong, feminist daughters.
A little sexy doll in a see-through babydoll nightie has her arms stretched over her head, accentuating and offering her bust -- which makes sense because her nipples are the dials. One is for tuning in stations, the other is for switching the radio on &/or off.
According to auction listings, she measures 11 1/2 inches tall, 6 inches wide.
While one is listed now, these radios are not super common. At least some of these radios were made by Windsor, but they must not have clear maker marks (or, quite unlikely, sellers neglect such details), so the best way to search for them is with nude doll radio, sexy transistor radio doll, and variations thereof (including misspellings).
The first one I'd ever seen was in rough shape and I've been watching (and saving photos) ever since.
In 6 months, I've only spotted 6 of them (and some sold over $50); so happy hunting.
UPDATE: 3/08/08
A blonde version of the doll -- and you can just make out the box, with its clear plastic window; but the seller has not identified the maker.
On December 12, 1937, Mae West appeared in two sketches on ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's radio show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, then the currently the highest-rated program of the year. She appeared as herself, promoting her Paramount Pictures film, Every Day's a Holiday. On the radio show, West, as to be expected, flirted with Charlie McCarthy, Bergen's dummy, and displayed her risqué wit & sexual euphemisms.
Mae: Ah, Mr. Bergen. He’s very sweet. In fact, he’s a right guy. Confidentially, yuh’ll have to show me a man I don’t like.
Charlie: That’s swell! Bergen’s your man. You know, he can be had.
Mae: On second thought, I’m liable to take him away from yuh.
Charlie: Well, if you take Bergen away, I’m speechless. (Laughter.)
Mae: Why don’t you come up … uh, home with me now, honey? I’ll let you play in my woodpile. (Laughter.)
Charlie: Well, I’m not feeling so well tonight. I’ve been feeling nervous lately. I think I’m gonna have a nervous breakdown. Whuup! There I go.
Mae: So, good-time Charlie’s gonna play hard to get? Well, yuh can’t kid me. You’re afraid of women. Your Casanova stuff is just a front, a false front.
Charlie: Not so loud, Mae, not so loud! All my girlfriends are listening.
Mae: Oh, yeah! You’re all wood and a yard long …
Charlie: (weakly): Yeah.
Mae: Yuh weren’t so nervous and backward when yuh came up to see me at my apartment. In fact, yuh didn’t need any encouragement to kiss me.
Charlie: Did I do that?
Mae: Why, yuh certainly did. I got marks to prove it. (Snickering from audience) An’ splinters, too. (Laughter).
If that last line sent the NBC censors and the FCC into panic, it was the earlier sketch which was the most trouble.
The earlier sketch starred West and Don Ameche as Adam and Eve in the Garden Of Eden. Here's part of it, as reported by Time on Jan. 24, 1938:
Snake: That's the forbidden tree.
Eve: Oh, don't be technical. Answer me this—my palpitatin' python—would you like to have this whole Paradise to yourself?
Snake: Certainly.
Eve: O.K., then pick me a handful of fruit— Adam and I'll eat it—and the Garden of Eden is all yours. What do ya say?
Snake: Sssounds all right . . . but it's forbidden fruit.
Eve: Listen, what are you—my friend in the grass or a snake in the grass?
Snake: But forbidden fruit.
Eve: Are you a snake or are you a mouse?
Snake: I'll—I'll do it. (hissing laugh)
Eve: Now you're talking. Here—right in between those pickets.
Snake: I'm—I'm stuck.
Eve: Oh—shake your hips. There, there now, you're through.
Snake: I shouldn't be doing this.
Eve: Yeh, but you're doing all right now. Get me a big one. ... I feel like doin' a big apple.
Snake: Here you are, Missuss Eve.
Eve: Mm—oh, I see—huh—nice goin', swivel hips.
Snake: Wait a minute. It won't work. Adam'll never eat that forbidden apple.
Eve: Oh, yes, he will—when I'm through with it.
Snake: Nonsense. He won't.
Eve: He will if I feed it to him like women are gonna feed men for the rest of time.
NBC wanted to present something special for Miss West, so the powers that be turned to one of their most promising young writers, Arch Oboler. "That script came about this way," Oboler recalled on television’s The Merv Griffin Show on August 2, 1973. "NBC called upon me one day in Westwood . . . they were in trouble on the Edgar Bergen show. I knew they always were in trouble on that show, but they were in particular because John Erskin had written a book called Adam and Eve. Miss West didn’t like it, Charlie didn’t like it, Edgar . . . didn’t matter [jokingly laughs], and Don Ameche was playing the lead. So they asked me, would I write this ten-minute sketch? Well, I wasn’t interested in writing for Miss West. Finally, they waved enough money at me, and my good resolves went down the drain, but I made one condition: I said I would write about Adam and Eve only if I could take it out of the book – which I collaborated with years before – that is the Bible [jokingly]. The show was to be rehearsed on Saturday, going on the air on Sunday. This was Thursday, so I stayed up all night with my dear wife, who I married because she knew how to take things down, and I wrote this sketch. It was taken right out of Genesis."
..."Now one thing the powers-that-be forgot," recalled Oboler, "that in those days, unlike today, there were three things that an actress could not do. One was to have a child out of wedlock. Two, she could not swear, and three, she could not wear glasses. It was thought terrible for an actress to wear glasses. Well, Miss West, having all the usual good sense of all of us, didn’t wear her glasses during the rehearsals so she, being very nearsighted never saw my script. She bluffed her way through. It wasn’t until air time that she walked on stage waving these glasses, put them on . . . and for the first time saw the script. The result was disaster. What she did to ‘Adam and Eve’ the Arabs had never done so miserably."
Dorothy Lamour recounted in her 1981 autobiography, My Side of the Road, "One week our special guest was Mae West, who was to play Eve to Don Ameche’s Adam, in a takeoff on the Bible story. Church groups were outraged and the mail came pouring in. I can’t even remember what she said that was so terrible, but I’m sure it was mild by today’s standards."
What Mae West said wasn’t so bad as how she said it. Telling the serpent that "I feel like doin’ a big apple" was one comment ad-libbed, but when the serpent got stuck between the picket fences in an attempt to fetch the forbidden fruit, West exclaimed with the emotion of a woman going through an orgasm, "They’re – They’re! Now you’re through!"
Edgar Bergen was shocked. "We had to have a star each week," he recalled, "and she seemed a logical choice. She was a sex star. We were fully aware of that. ‘Adam and Eve’ as you probably know, had been performed before without any untoward incidents. Possibly our program being on Sunday and having a little fun with the Bible was dangerous. We always had two rehearsals; one on Saturday evening, after which we rewrite and tighten, and then we would do a Sunday afternoon read-through. At that read-through, Mae read her lines straight. It was obvious she knew what she was doing – how to lay out line – but she didn’t give things that Mae West twist until the broadcast. I’ve always said that we had far more permissive material on a previous show."
The conversation/performance was considered so risqué & bordering on blasphemous that not only was the FCC involved, but West was banned from being featured -- or even mentioned -- on the NBC network. She did not perform again on radio until 1949.
There was nothing offensive in the dialogue or it would never have gotten on the air in the first place. I only gave the lines my characteristic delivery. What else could I do? I wasn't Aimee Semple McPherson. Or Lincoln at Gettysburg, or John Foster Dulles, or even Eleanor Roosevelt. I was Mae West. Sunday on radio doesn't alter one's personality. The trouble wasn't caused by the portion of the program in which I traded wisecracks with the bundle of splinters called Charlie McCarthy. It was the 'Adam and Eve' sketch, with me as Eve and Don Ameche as Adam. The sketch had been approved by the radio people and their usual vice-presidents, as all material must be before it is permitted to be broadcast to an innocent America. I had scarcely had time to read over the sketch before the broadcast rehearsal.
But West's performance wasn't the only trouble with the Adam & Eve sketch.
A woman from Texas had written a story about Adam and Eve and claiming plagiarism she sued the network, NBC, and Arch Oboler. Oboler had to go to court and via that same Old-Time.com link, the writer recalls:
"His first question," continued Oboler, "was ‘Mr. Oboler, where were you on February twenty-second – blah, blah, blah.’ And as long as I live, I’ll remember my answer because I was under oath. I said, ‘In the bedroom’ because, you see, Miss West does all of her business in her bedroom. She pays her bills in her bedroom, and she rehearses in her bedroom. So the judge’s next question – he looked at me very suspiciously as if I were the Henry Kissinger of my time – and he said, "Exactly, Mr. Oboler, what were you doing – and remember you’re under oath – what were you doing with Miss West?’ And his face turned bright red and he said, ‘I withdraw the question.’ And that was the end of that."
Ha!
Few opportunities and heavy NBC censorship means there are few radio shows with Mae; you can find a few of them at Old Time Radio Show Catalog, and at eBay (including this record album).
When asked about being censored Mae West reportedly said, "I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it."
ONE man on the American stage, and one woman, are possessed--Al Jolson and Fanny Brice. Their daemons are not of the same order, but together they represent all we have of the Great God Pan, and we ought to be grateful for it. For in addition to being more or less a Christian country, America is a Protestant community and a business organization-and none of these units is peculiarly prolific in the creation of daemonic individuals. We can bring forth Roosevelts--dynamic creatures, to be sure; but the fury and the exultation of Jolson is a hundred times higher in voltage than that of Roosevelt; we can produce courageous and adventurous women who shoot lions or manage construction gangs and remain pale beside the extraordinary "cutting loose" of Fanny Brice.
To say that each of these two is possessed by a daemon is a mediaeval and perfectly sound way of expressing their intensity of action. It does not prove anything-not even that they are geniuses of a fairly high rank, which in my opinion they are. I use the word possessed because it connotes a quality lacking elsewhere on the stage, and to be found only at moments in other aspects of American life-in religious mania, in good jazz bands, in a rare outbreak of mob violence. The particular intensity I mean is exactly what you do not see at a baseball game, but may at a prize fight, nor in the productions of David Belasco, nor at a political convention; you may see it on the Stock Exchange and you can see it, canalized and disciplined, but still intense, in our skyscraper architecture. It was visible at moments in the old Russian Ballet.
In Jolson there is always one thing you can be sure of: that whatever he does he does at the highest possible pressure. I do not mean that one gets the sense of his effort, for his work is at times the easiest seeming, the most effortless in the world. Only he never saves up-for the next scene, or the next week, or the next show. His generosity is extravagant; he flings into a comic song or three-minute impersonation so much- energy, violence, so much of the totality of one human being, that you feel it would suffice for a hundred others. In the days when the runway was planked down the centre of every good theatre in America, this galvanic little figure, leaping and shouting--yet always essentially dancing and singing--upon it was the concentration of our national health and gaiety. In Row, Row, Row he would bounce up on the runway, propel himself by imaginary oars over the heads of the audience, draw equally imaginary slivers from the seat of his trousers, and infuse into the song something wild and roaring and insanely funny. The very phonograph record of his famous Toreador song is full of vitality. Even in later days when the programme announces simply "Al Jolson" (about 10.15 P.M. in each of his reviews) he appears and sings and talks to the audience and dances off-and when he has done more than any other ten men, he returns and, blandly announcing that "You ain't heard nothing yet," proceeds to do twice as much again. He is the great master of the one-man show because he gives so much while he is on that the audience remains content while he is off-and his electrical energy almost always develops activity in those about him.
If it were necessary, a plea could be made for violence per se in the American theatre, because everything tends to prettify and restrain, and the energy of the theatre is dying out. But Jolson, who lacks discipline almost entirely, has other qualities besides violence. He has an excellent baritone voice, a good ear for dialect, a nimble presence, and a distinct sense of character. Of course it would be impossible not to recognize him the moment he appears on the stage; of course he is always Jolson-but he is also always Gus and always Inbad the Porter, and always Bombo. He has created a way of being for the characters he takes on; they live specifically in the mad world of the Jolson show; their wit and their bathos are singularly creditable characteristics of themselves-not of Jolson. You may recall a scene I think the show was called Dancing Around - in which a lady knocks at the door of a house. From within comes the voice of Jolson singing, "You made me love you, I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it"--the voice approaches, dwindles away, resumes -- it is a swift characterization of the lazy servant coming to open the door and ready to insult callers, since the master is out. Suddenly the black face leaps through the doorway and cries out, "We don' want no ice," and is gone. Or Jolson as the black slave of Columbus, reproached by his master for a long absence. His lips begin to quiver, his chin to tremble; the tears are approaching, when his human independence softly asserts itself and he wails, "We all have our moments." It is quite true, for Jolson's technique is the exploitation of these moments; he has himself said that he is the greatest master of hokum in the business, and in the theatre the art of hokum is to make each second count for itself, to save any moment from dulness by the happy intervention of a slap on the back, or by jumping out of character and back again, or any other trick. For there is no question of legitimacy here-everything is right if it makes 'em laugh.
He does more than make 'em laugh; he gives them what I am convinced is a genuine emotional effect ranging from the thrill to the shock. I remember coming home after eighteen months in Europe, during the war, and stepping from the boat to one of the first nights of Sinbad. The spectacle of Jolson's vitality had the same quality as the impression I got from the New York sky line-one had forgotten that there still existed in the world a force so boundless, an exaltation so high, and that anyone could still storm Heaven with laughter and cheers. He sang on that occasion 'N Everything and Swanee. I have suggested elsewhere that hearing him sing Swanee is what book reviewers and young girls loosely call an experience. I know what Jolson does with false sentiment; here he was dealing with something which by the grace of George Gershwin came true, and there was no necessity for putting anything over. In the absurd black-face which is so little negroid that it goes well with diversions in Yiddish accents, Jolson created image after image of longing, and his existence through the song was wholly in its rhythm.
Five years later I heard Jolson in a second-rate show, before an audience listless or hostile, sing this out dated and forgotten song, and create again, for each of us seated before him, the same image-and saw also the tremendous leap in vitality and happiness which took possession of the audience as he sang it. It was marvelous. In the first weeks of Sinbad he sang the words of 'N Everything as they are printed. Gradually (I saw the show in many phases) he interpolated, improvised, always with his absolute sense of rhythmic effect; until at the end it was a series of amorous cries and shouts of triumph to Eros. I have heard him sing also the absurd song about "It isn't raining rain, It's raining violets" and remarked him modulating that from sentimentality into a conscious bathos, with his gloved fingers flittering together and his voice rising to absurd fortissimi and the general air of kidding the piece.
He does not generally kid his Mammy songs-as why should he who sings them better than anyone else? He cannot underplay anything, he lacks restraint, and he leans on the second-rate sentiment of these songs until they are forced to render up the little that is real in them. I dislike them and dislike his doing them-as I dislike Belle Baker singing Elie, Elie! But it is quite possible that my discomfort at these exhibitions is proof of their quality. They and a few very cheap jokes and a few sly remarks about sexual perversions are Jolson's only faults. They are few. For a man who has, year after year, established an intimate relation with no less than a million people, every twelvemonth, he is singularly uncorrupted. That relation is the thing which sets him so far above all the other one-manshow stars. Eddie Cantor gives at times the effect of being as energetic; Wynn is always and Tinney sometimes funnier. But no one else, except Miss Brice, so holds an audience in the hollow of the hand. The hand is steady; the audience never moves. And on the great nights when everything is right, Jolson is driven by a power beyond himself. One sees that he knows what he is doing, but one sees that he doesn't half realize the power and intensity with which he is doing it. In those moments I cannot help thinking of him as a genius.
Quite to that point Fanny Brice hasn't reached. She hasn't, to begin with, the physical vitality of Jolson. But she has a more delicate mind and a richer humour--qualities which generally destroy vitality altogether, and which only enrich hers. She is first a great farceur; and in her songs she is exactly in the tradition of Yvette Guilbert, without the range, so far as we know, which enabled Mme Guilbert to create the whole of mediaeval France for us in ten lines of a song. The quality, however, is the same, and Fanny's evocations are as vivid and as poignant as Yvette's-they require from us exactly the same tribute of admiration. She has grown in power since she sang and made immortal, I Should Worry. Hear her now creating the tragedy of SecondHand Rose or of the one Florodora baby who-- "five little dumbells got married for money, And I got married for love . . .." These things are done with two-thirds of Yvette Guilbert's material missing, for there are no accessories and, although the words (some of the best are by Blanche Merrill) are good, the music isn't always distinguished. And the effects are irreproachable. Give Fanny a song she can get her teeth into, Mon Homme, and the result is less certain, but not less interesting. This was one of a series of realistic songs for Mistinguett, who sang it very much as Yvonne George did when she appeared in America. Miss Brice took it lento affetuoso; since the precise character of the song had changed a bit from its rather more outspoken French original. Miss Brice suppressed Fanny altogether in this song-she was being, I fear, "a serious artist"; but she is of such an extraordinary talent that she can do even this. Yvonne . George sang it better simply because the figure she evoked as Mon Homme was exactly the fake apache about whom it was written, and not the "my feller" who lurked behind Miss Brice. It was amusing to learn that without a Yiddish accent and without those immense rushes of drollery, without the enormous gawkishness of her other impersonations, Miss Brice could put a song over. But I am for Fanny against Miss Brice and to Fanny I return.
Fanny is one of the few people who "Make fun." She creates that peculiar quality of entertainment which is wholly light-hearted and everything else is added unto her. Of this special quality nothing can be said; one either sees it or doesn't, savours it or not. Fanny arrives on the scene with an indescribable gesture--after seeing it twenty times I believe that it consists of a feminine salute, touching the forehead and then flinging out her arm to the topmost gallery. There is magic in it, establishing her character at once -the magic must reside in her incredible elbow. She hasn't so much to give as Jolson, but she gives it with the same generosity, there are no reserves, and it is all for fun. Her Yiddish Squow (how else can I spell that amazing effect?) and her Heiland Lassie are examples-there isn't an arriere-pensee in them.
"The Chiff is after me . . . he says I appil to him . . . he likes my type - - " It is the complete give away of herself and she doesn't care.
And this carelessness goes through her other exceptional qualities of caricature and satire. For the first there is the famous Vamp, in which she plays the crucial scene of all the vampire stories, preluding it with the first four lines of the poem Mr Kipling failed to throw into the wastepaper basket, and fatuously adding, "I can't get over it"--after which point everything is flung into another plane-the hollow laughter, the haughty gesture, the pretended compassion, that famous defense of the vampire which here, however, ends with the magnificent line, "I may be a bad woman, but I'm awful good company." In this brief episode she does three things at once: recites a parody, imitates the moving-picture vamp, and creates through these another, truly comic character. For satire it is Fanny's special quality that with the utmost economy of means she always creates the original in the very process of destroying it, as in two numbers which are exquisite, her present opening song in vaudeville with its reiterations of Victor Hebert's Kiss Me Again, and her Spring Dance. The first is pressed far into burlesque, but before she gets there it has fatally destroyed the whole tedious business of polite and sentimental concert-room vocalism; and the second (Fanny in ballet, with her amazingly angular parody of five-position dancing) puts an end forever to that great obsession of ours, classical interpretative dancing.
Fanny's refinement of technique is far beyond Jolson's; her effects are broad enough, but her methods are all delicate. The frenzy which takes hold of her is as real as his. With him she has the supreme pleasure of knowing that she can do no wrong-and her spirits mount and intensify with every moment on the stage. She creates rapidly and her characterizations have an exceptional roundness and fulness; when the daemon attends she is superb.
It is noteworthy that these two stars bring something to America which America lacks and lovesthey are, I suppose, two of our most popular entertainers--and that both are racially out of the dominant caste. Possibly this accounts for their fine carelessness about our superstitions of politeness and gentility. The medium in which they work requires more decency and less frankness than usually exist in our private lives; but within these bounds Jolson and Brice go farther, go with more contempt for artificial notions of propriety, than anyone else. Jolson has re-created an ancient type, the scalawag servant with his surface dulness and hidden cleverness, a creation as real as Sganarelle. And Fanny has torn through all the conventions and cried out that gaiety still exists. They are parallel lines surcharged with vital energy. I should like to see that fourth-dimensional show in which they will meet.
I mention the latter as the blurbs about that book have some of the best, clearest, most concise information on Gilbert Seldes himself.
From Publishers Weekly:
In his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes (1893-1970) made the then-controversial claim that popular entertainment and culture should be treated just as seriously, and as rigorously, as the so-called high arts. Krazy Kat and Irving Berlin were worthy of critical attention, he said; and arts criticism in America hasn't been the same since. Kammen, a historian, stresses the "hands-on" aspect of Seldes's long and versatile career. He was a historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, scriptwriter, journalism school dean, newspaper and magazine columnist and CBS's first director of television. Although at times Kammen seems curiously defensive, his balanced and insightful account of Seldes's professional life?from the early '20s at the Dial magazine (and the beginning of long-running feuds with both Hemingway and the Algonquin Round Table set) to the 1950s debates on the role of "mass culture"?is a story of a life as well as a history of pop culture on the rise. Seldes, Kammen says, thought of himself as "a highbrow populist" and was a "compulsively candid critic." Kammen weights Seldes's contributions fairly but can be equally candid.
Mary Carroll of Booklist:
Cornell University's Kammen is an astute student of U.S. cultural history; People of Paradox (1972), A Machine That Would Go of Itself (1986), and Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) suggest his scope. It's hardly surprising that he would find Seldes a fascinating biographical subject. Seldes was a major contributor to arts criticism and magazine journalism from the 1920s to the 1960s: edited The Dial when it published T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland; wrote a classic defense of popular art, The Seven Lively Arts (1924), hundreds of magazine articles, a successful Broadway treatment of Lysistrata, and programs for radio and TV; and was founding dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. Seldes fought with Hemingway, George Jean Nathan, and Edward R. Murrow and wrestled with issues of current relevance, including "dumbing down" vs. "leveling up" in the mass media and government's role in supporting (or restraining) artistic expression. Seldes shed light rather than heat on significant artistic issues American society has faced.
(Yeah, and I left those 50 cent price tags on 'em for the photos -- so it eats at your souls!)
The covers are nearly identical, save for the colorized photos and the song titles. The front covers read:
Nipsey Russell Presents Borderline Records
HARLEMS "Son of Fun"
The spines, however, make a bit more sense with the "Borderline Records Presents Nipsey Russell Harlem's Son of Fun". They also make it clear that I have volumes two and three -- so I'm missing number one (hint-hint y'all!)
Reading the titles doesn't do the works justice -- I know, because I read them and still wasn't prepared -- but here they are. (And hit the links to download/listen.)
Nudist Wedding Well Do Hospital Public Transportation The Singer
Vol III
Side One:
A Day At The Races Radio Roundup My Friend Luigi
Side Two:
Tall In The Saddle School Days Honeymoon Hotel
Like many folks, I knew Nipsey from game shows (my favorite, too, is Match Game). But I had no idea that 1960's Nipsey Russell was raunchier than Match Game Nipsey! Who knew that you could get away with such things in the 60's -- let alone without a warning label or whatnot.
Back cover reads:
about "NIPSEY" RUSSELL HARLEM'S 'SON OF FUN'
NIPSEY RUSSELL is, by all odds, the more perceptive, brilliant and flexible of the current crop of young comedians. His keen wit is so readily adaptable to all situations and types of "Material" that he has been able to vary his efforts to everything from: -- Injecting bright sage humor into RELIGIOUS CONCERTS to -- Touring as Comic M.C. with star-studded Jazz Variety Shows (BILLY ECKSTINE'S GREAT SHOW OF '54) to -- Guest performances on CBS-TV (the ROBERT Q. LEWIS Show) to -- Legitimate Drama (Summer Stock lead in "CABIN IN THE SKY" Seacliff Theater) to -- dispensing the accepted brand of Commercial Comedy in plush Supper Clubs (The ELEGANTE in B'klyn and the CORDILLION ROOM of the CONCORD HOTEL). He projects so easily in each medium and with such warmth and affability that he is completely captivating to most audiences.
NIPSEY was born in Atlanta, Georgia and danced professionally from the age of nine. He received his early training in showmanship and stagecraft from two entertainment "Greats", EDDY HEYWOOD Senior and ANDY FAIRCHILD. College trained in Liberal Arts and Business, Nipsey served overseas in World War II as Army Lieutenant in the Medical Administrative Corps.
NIPSEY RUSSELL wrote, directed and emceed his own Radio Variety Show (STATION WLIB-N.Y.) for more than 17 months; played a featured part in the Negro National Network's RUBY VALENTINE SHOW Starring Juanita Hall... and was top comic in the STUDIO FILM "Rhythm" SERIES. Nipsey is a great favorite at the Famous APOLLO theater and his 10 year record run at Harlem's CLUB BABY GRAND is still unsurpassed. IN THESE ALBUMS -- Nipsey demonstrates his mastery of the "Double Entendre" Quips & Quotes and his hilarious interpretations of the raucous and bawdy routines he laughingly calls --
"DIALOGUE THEY DARE YOU TO DO!"
Die-hard collectors, I found no real info on these recordings. The album cover text which says that Nipsey presents Borderline Records made me wonder if this was his own label. Even when I found a (very few) other vintage records by Borderline, also comedy recordings, I wasn't sure... Nipsey had a business degree you know.
But Barnes and Noble states, "In 1960 Russell signed to the Borderline label and released a series of comedy LPs including Confucius Told Me, Things They Never Taught at School, The Birds and the Bees and All That Jazz, and Sing Along with Nipsey Russell."
Also, most if not all of the bits recorded on these two records (and the others) were also recorded on the (much easier to find) Humorsonic label -- which I also didn't find any real info about. (I'm still not satisfied with this; so more research is required.)
Here are my 'liner notes' and additional resources:
I think this may be what is referred to as "STUDIO FILM "Rhythm" SERIES".
This was the only reference I could find to Nipsey's radio show.
From Nipsey to Rush. This is why I dig collecting.
PS When sharing the Nipsey humor tracks with your friends, please credit me, Silent Porn Star, with a link. It's polite, proper and provides incentive for me to go through the bother of making such files to share. Thank you.
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