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Chicago theater shows “I Married an Angel”
Sorry that we missed knowing about this until the matinee was over…but if you live in Chicago you should download the info about the Portage Theater for future Mac/Eddy films!
Retired baritone reflects…on Nelson Eddy
Bobby Brittain performed for FDR and shared stages with Lucille Ball and Ethel Barrymore.
February 29, 2008
A 12-year-old Bobby Brittain entered Tin Pan Alley in the 1930s, dressed in his knickers and naively peddling words to a song he wrote.
Brittain loved to sing. The song “March of Dimes” put him in front of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, performing at a benefit of the same name, at the Waldorf Astoria. That performance resulted in a contact from the well-known William Morris Agency in Manhattan, N.Y.
Brittain had a lot going for him — everything except for his name. The agency already had someone by that name, so Bobby Brittain had to adopt a new persona, and it was the beginning of a successful career for a man known as Tommy Dix.
Today this 84-year-old, silver-haired baritone can still croon anyone back into yesteryear. The songs still sound in his heart, and he can still remember their impact on him as a youth.
The Williamsburg resident reflected back to 1935, when his mother took him to see “Naughty Marietta,” a play with Nelson Eddy.
“I heard Nelson Eddy sing, ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,’ and I began to cry,” he said.
When his mother asked him why he was crying, he told her, “That was beautiful.”
“I knew then, that’s what I wanted to do.” After winning a four-year scholarship to Manhattan’s High School of Music & Art, he became president of the science club, where the other half of his heart lies. He claims that someone entered his name into a drawing, and he was able to attend the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University for a day, where he was privileged to hear Albert Einstein speak.
“I only understood a fraction of what he was talking about,” he says.
He was tempted toward a career in science, but singing also tugged at him and he found early success employing his voice.
“I got sidetracked,” Brittain said of his singing career. “We were poor, it was during the Depression and this was a great way to make plenty money.”
Show business gave him the chance to be the voice of Henry in the radio production of “The Aldridge Family,” among other shows. From those small beginnings, he catapulted into film; starring in “Best Foot Forward” with Lucille Ball. He lived on the West Coast for a couple of years after that, but quickly returned home. One of his songs from “Best Foot Forward” enjoyed widespread popularity, “Buckle Down Winsocki.” And, for anyone around in the 1960s, he was also the voice behind the television commercial tune “Buckle up for Safety, Buckle up.”
At the age of 15, he performed in the original stage version of “The Corn is Green,” with Ethel Barrymore.
“Don’t quote me, but I may be the only person still living from that show,” Brittain said.
As much as he enjoyed entertaining, he left the business at the age of 23.
“I didn’t like all the things that were going on, so I left,” Brittain said. “I didn’t want to be under the observation of audiences any longer. Being on tour was hard, and there was no privacy. I began to like music less, because it became a job.”
But he still loved to sing. Brittain can still sit and serenade you with his songs of long ago. He also can reminisce about his Army service during World War II, his two marriages, his son and life stories. He will reveal his love of science and the arts, and he will share tears about his beloved wife, Elizabeth, who he married in 1992 but who died two years ago.
Around his home are busts of Aristotle, Hypnos, Euripides, Beethoven and Thomas Jefferson; photos of Albert Einstein, who he holds in high esteem; and the complete collection of “Great Books of the Western World.”
“I aspire to be an appreciator of beautiful things — one should develop that sense early on. We need to stand on the shoulders of the ones that went before us. When an old man dies, a great library burns down,” he said.
He sums up his life by quoting a famous line that he lives by, from philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim – a 99-year old screenwriter tells it as Hollywood was!
Here’s another book recommendation! I read an excellent review of this book and decided to check it out, noting that she discussed Louis B. Mayer. It’s a slim volume but very insightful into the 20s and 30s. Maas discusses all aspects of her life and times, the cutthroat industry, prejudice against women, the parties that were little more than orgies. Seems like some aspects of Hollywood haven’t changed much!
From the “Publishers Weekly” review: “In 1920, she answered a New York Times classified ad from Universal Pictures, becoming, at age 23, Universal’s N.Y.C. story editor. In 1925, she arrived in Hollywood, turned down a screen test and instead scripted a Clara Bow vehicle, The Plastic Age….. Maas trashes Hollywood legends, recalling Louis B. Mayer as “a very fearful, insecure man”; Clara Bow dancing nude on a tabletop; Jeanne Eagels squatting to urinate in the midst of a film set; and Marion Davies commenting on her affair with Hearst: “I’m a slave, that’s what. A toy poodle.”
From the Amazon.com review: ” In The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, Frederica–who met and married filmmaker Ernest Maas in 1927–shows how, despite her screenwriting abilities, her career in motion pictures was stymied by her outspoken disagreements with studio bosses, and how many of those around her gave into debauchery. (At one party, she reports, “undressed, tousled men chased naked women, shrieking with laughter. Included in this orgy was Ray Long, Mr. Hearst’s representative; Harry Rapf, my own producer; and even the immaculate Irving Thalberg–all drunk, drunk, drunk.”) Her memoir’s prose has a charming tone, perfectly matching her Jazz Age exploits, which take up the bulk of the story. She also discusses the decline of the Maas’s careers, which they finally abandoned after the Second World War, but not before writing a musical (called The Shocking Miss Pilgrim) for Betty Grable. The best passages concern Frederica’s adventures in a young industry that was still discovering itself, such as her part in the creation of a motion picture legend: newly arrived actress Lucille LeSueur came up to her one day and said, “I like the way you dress. You dress like a lady. I need that. I want to be dressed right. Smart. I figured you could help.” One shopping expedition later, and Joan Crawford was taking her first steps toward stardom. “–Ron Hogan
My only complaint was that the book wasn’t longer; still, this is an excellent eyewitness account of what it was like to be a woman in Hollywood. You can probably get the book through your local library system or order it at the link above.
Reviews still coming in for the Lubitsch/Jeanette MacDonald DVDs
…
His first sound film was The Love Parade, made in 1929, the first truly “talkie” year. His use of camera movement is only slightly constrained in this operetta starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. The following year’s Monte Carlo was another leap forward, with its famous “Beyond the Blue Horizon” number, in which train sounds set the rhythm, leading to Jeanette MacDonald’s vocal and the choral backing of farmers as the train speeds by their fields. The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) is similar in tone and subject to The Love Parade, with an even smoother execution. And One Hour with You (1932) — a remake of The Marriage Circle (1924), one of Lubitsch’s best silents — is arguably the greatest of the four.
The “argument” is largely a matter of casting. Chevalier was known as “the French Jolson,” and, like the American Jolson, his style and persona have (to be kind) dated badly.
In addition to his often impenetrable accent, Chevalier’s repertoire of rolling eyes, raised eyebrows, smug grins and jaunty chuckles make his whole act somewhere between irritating and intolerable. Monte Carlo benefits hugely by having Jack Buchanan (The Band Wagon) in what would otherwise have been “the Chevalier role.”
What shall I watch tonight? How about “Love Me Tonight”
A blog called “What Shall I Watch Tonight?”
And then there’s Love Me Tonight (1932), a pre-Code classic from Mamoulian and one of the best musicals ever. Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Charles Ruggles, even Gabby Hayes(!) when he was still just plain ol’ George. Highlights: the incredible opening scene where Paris awakens, MacDonald in a nightgown so deliciously transparent it belongs in a stag movie, and the “traveling” melodies “Isn’t It Romantic?” and “Mimi”, both courtesy of Rodgers and Hart. In time, Rodgers came to detest Hart, MacDonald came to loathe Chevalier and I wasn’t too crazy about Mamoulian after working eight months deciphering his rambling tales of Hollywood yore. But – art lives on long after old grudges die, and this film is proof of that.
Poignant news story of woman who lost her Nelson Eddy sketches!
Heartbroken is what she is.
No, that is not adequate, the way her lower lip quivers when she recounts what happened on Monday afternoon, the way she slaps her kitchen counter, looks to the ceiling and blinks back tears.
It was the first time in at least 60 years that she had taken them outside of her home.
Maybe she was just lonely that day, perhaps wanting to impress the two elderly gentlemen she’d befriended in the park.
Or, if nothing else, the reason was, simply, that artists will break even the most hardened personal rules for anyone asking to view their work.
“It was my youth!” Wenona Casedy says bitterly, over and over.
She is 86 years old.
Ah, but when she talks in her expansive way of her intricately drawn pencil sketches, it is once again late-1930s, Depression-era Denver, and she is a starry-eyed 16-year-old hunting down musicians and celebrities outside the old City Auditorium downtown.
All of her opera and popular music heroes would come to town most every year.
And she would storm the stage door, begging an agent or a manager – anyone – to please have the subject of her portrait autograph it for her.
She remembers the day in ’38 when Nelson Eddy, the singer and movie star, came to town. As president of the Denver Nelson Eddy Fan Club, she’d tracked him to the sixth floor of the Brown Palace.
She gathered her girls and they stormed the sixth floor. His manager met them at the hotel room door. Well, they asked him, would he at least sign their autograph books?
Wenona Casedy handed him the pencil sketch of her idol – she was too poor to afford paints.
“The next thing I know, the manager walks back into the hallway as we are leaving, asking if Wenona Hampson is here,” she recalls.
“Well, Mr. Eddy wants to see you!” she is told. Had she just gone to heaven?
“Here I am, this 16-year-old girl getting to see this great big movie star!” she says, looking away in clear reverie, as if it is happening all over again.
Nelson Eddy walks from a back room as she enters the room, throws his hands up and exults that he had always wanted to meet her, the girl with the sketches.
“He actually hugged me and signed my portrait for me!”
“I liked him because he was such a great singer,” Wenona Casedy says now. “And because he was well, just so beautiful!”
In her basement today are three, professional-quality pencil sketches of Nelson Eddy from years before that time, none of them signed.
At City Auditorium, which evolved into the Denver Performing Arts Center, she became legendary. Every artist, opera star or band member demanded to see the girl with the sketches, to see if they had been included.
Soon, she was often a guest backstage. Managers often asked that she come to every performance. Artists began to feel insulted if they did not have a Wenona Hampson sketch when they arrived in town.
Jeannette MacDonald sat for her three times. She loved it, if only because Nelson Eddy was always right there.
She took a phone company job across the street from the auditorium when she turned 18, and arranged for her work hours to end at curtain time, just so she could see the curtain rise and, later, have artists sign her work.
During the war, she married. She had children. For years she never sketched. She had compiled some 40 pencil sketches of stars that ultimately were all autographed.
And then came Monday.
The two elderly gentlemen she’d befriend over the past six months – both of whom could never keep up with her on her daily walks around Harvey Park in southwest Denver – had finally asked if they could see her drawings.
Oh, she never let them out of the house, she told them.
OK, maybe this once.
They were impressed by the intricacy of the drawings, of learning who the Depression-era stars were. They’d grown up on a farm in western Kansas. They didn’t even know who Nelson Eddy was, she said.
She soon gathered her drawings, all of them in black notebooks, and bid the men adieu. When she arrived back at her West Yale Avenue condominium, she could not find them.
The best she can figure now is she drove off with the notebooks, each containing at least 10 sketches, still on the trunk of her car. She immediately drove back.
She and Tim Todd, the longtime recreation director at the park, searched for hours.
Nothing.
On Thursday, she’d drawn up and was posting $200 reward notices for the drawings around the park. Tim Todd was doing the same thing.
“I feel so bad for her,” he later said. “My mom died last September, and Wenona, she reminds me of her.”
The sketches still have not surfaced.
“No questions asked,” Wenona Casedy says of the reward.
“They were my whole youth,” she says. She paces the floor with her late, beloved husband Selman’s wedding ring swinging on a gold chain around her neck.
“They are everything to me. And I cannot tell you how sick I feel about it.”
If you’ve seen them, just drop them off with Tim Todd at Harvey Park. He will arrange the reward for you.
No questions asked.
NOTE: This story had a happy ending:
Passer-by, brother return sketches, joy to artist
SOURCE: Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News
The old woman met the younger one almost before she walked into the backyard through the sliding glass door. She threw her arms open wide, and the two embraced.
“Are you the one who found my sketches?” Wenona Casedy whispered softly, tightly clutching the young woman, who began nodding and hugging her back. “This is such a miracle,” the 86-year-old woman said, looking to the sky. “I never thought I would ever see them…”
Obit of woman who cooked a meal for Nelson Eddy!
Robbie Board: ‘A kindly, gentle spirit’
Robbie Board was a slightly built tower of strength — a woman who worked and raised three children alone after her husband died. She was passionate about justice, say those who knew her, and she always spoke her mind.
Board died June 21, 2006, at age 100. Hers is not a name heard often when people speak of the history of civil rights and desegregation in Roanoke. Yet Board, some say, was an unsung hero of that time and beyond.
“She was a great believer in equal rights for everybody,” recalled her daughter, Jeane Hale Marsh of Roanoke.
“She was a great person, and because she came this way, we’re a better family and this is a better community,” her other daughter, Jackie Bolden said.
Old friends
Robbie Board lived a colorful and eventful life. As a young woman, she worked as a housekeeper at the house of a young John Payne, who would become the Roanoke Valley’s most famous movie star. (Payne was a staple in mid-century movie musicals, but is best remembered as co-star of “Miracle on 34th Street,” along with Maureen O’Hara and a very young Natalie Wood. Payne was the lawyer who defended Santa Claus.)
Board was in her 20s at the time, with three children of her own. (Her first husband, William Hale, had died very young with pneumonia, Jackie Bolden said. Robbie Board was married a second time, to Lynwood Board, when the children were already grown.) Board recalled in interviews that Payne was always clowning around in his kitchen and asking her to critique his singing. “He should have been a comedian,” Board told The Roanoke Times at age 94.
Sometimes Payne took her to the movies. “With his hat turned up, Mr. Payne was the sportiest man in town,” Board told the Roanoker magazine in 1992. Board also said she once cooked country ham and fried potatoes at the Payne house for singer Nelson Eddy.
Another great review of Jeanette’s Paramount Films…
Saucy dialogue and flimsy nighties in spades
February 22, 2008
Critic Andrew Sarris defined the “Lubitsch touch” as the “counterpoint between sadness and gaiety,” to which one might add witty dialogue alongside insinuating pantomime and a view that audiences should be treated as mature enough to get subtle jokes. Director Ernst Lubitsch arrived in Hollywood in 1922 after a successful career in Germany, and in 1929 made one of the first great sound musicals, The Love Parade, with Maurice Chevalier (a star of Parisian music halls) and Jeanette MacDonald, whose background in operettas perfectly complemented Lubitsch’s fascination with the genre.
The finest Chevalier-MacDonald comedy is Rouben Mamoulian’s 1932 romp Love Me Tonight, released on DVD by Kino in 2003, but The Love Parade and three other titles in Lubitsch Musicals (from Eclipse, a subsidiary of the Criterion label) remain a treat. They were filmed before the censors clamped down on dialogue of the sort spoken here, or flimsy nighties of the sort MacDonald wears, or plots that treat infidelity and caddishness with the European offhandedness Lubitsch favoured. The plots are set in artificial kingdoms where people break into song as easily as they speak and where servants echo their employers’ love affairs and spats. Sample lyrics from a Love Parade ditty sung by Lupino Lane (aide to the military attaché played by Chevalier) and Lillian Roth (handmaiden to MacDonald’s monarch): “Squeeze me once, squeeze me twice/ Most improper, but oh it’s nice/ Let’s be common and do it again.”
In Monte Carlo (1930), MacDonald leaves a wealthy duke at the altar and takes up with disguised count Jack Buchanan in a part Chevalier would have played if he hadn’t been otherwise occupied. One influential scene uses the sound of train wheels and whistles as the rhythm for MacDonald’s song Beyond the Blue Horizon. In The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Chevalier gravitates between free spirit Claudette Colbert and wealthy, reserved Miriam Hopkins. Both Colbert and Hopkins demanded that Lubitsch photograph only the more photogenic right side of their faces; Hopkins won. Chevalier and MacDonald reunited in One Hour With You (1932), which was to have been directed by George Cukor but was handed to Lubitsch two weeks into shooting. Cukor’s contract required him to remain on set, which he recalled in 1971 as “goddamned agony for me.”
Utica’s “Great Artists Series” Mentions Nelson Eddy
Immersed in music culture
Roland Chesley was born in Rochester, N.H., on July 24, 1881. He came to Utica in 1931, transferred here from Albany as an agent for a school book publisher, Ginn & Co. He retired from that position in 1949 after 40 years of service. But even when he was so employed, he immersed himself in the city’s classical music culture, a tenor singing occasionally in B Sharp Musical Club programs and associating himself with Gertrude Curran’s inspiration to bring the best of classical music to the city.
After he retired from Ginn & Co., he was able to devote full attention to the artists’ series and to the many organizations in which he volunteered, most notably, the Utica Boys Club.
During Chesley’s long tenure with the Great Artists Series, he brought hundreds of distinguished national and international performers to the city. These include names such as Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Sergei Rachmaninov (sometimes Racmaninoff), Lily Ponds, Isaac Stern, Nelson Eddy, Van Cliburn, Mario Lanza and countless symphony orchestras from all parts of the world.
All of them performed at Utica’s illustrious Stanley Theater, which opened in September 1928.