The Merry Mailman

There are many people in our lives that we like to call friends. But are they really? Truth is the word friend is a somewhat an ambiguous term. We have Facebook friends for example but are they in reality? Most I would venture to say are not more than Hallmark acquaintances that we rarely or never see. This is a story about someone and I like to think of him as my friend that carries letters and is more significant to me than most of any follower on Instagram or Facebook.  Each day I ride my bike through my neighborhood and invariably if my timing is right I pass the Merry Mailman. With this man I experience someone who retains a demeanor that never wavers. He is cheerful, loquacious, funny and never in a bad mood. And what’s even more unusual he’s not my friend on the aforementioned Facebook, or a follower on Instagram and I don’t have his email. On top of that I don’t even know his name.*But this Merry Mailman typifies something more than just a someone with a sunny disposition he is professional that performs his vocation with a discernment unlike many of his counterparts not only in the postal service but in many other career callings as well. Delivering mail on foot particularly in hot humid South Florida is not exactly and excuse the pun a walk in the neighborhood. He does it with pizzazz and you don’t often see your postal carrier with gesticulating moves like this man. No disrespect but the mail carrier on my route delivers our posts in perfunctory fashion no smile no emotion no vitality and certainly no animation. Not my friend every step is bounding and his energy is reminiscent of a lithium battery. 

With this man I experience someone who retains a demeanor that never wavers. He is cheerful, loquacious, funny and never in a bad mood. And what’s even more unusual he’s not my friend on the aforementioned Facebook, or a follower on Instagram and I don’t have his email. On top of that I don’t even know his name. But this Merry Mailman typifies something more than just a someone with a sunny disposition he is professional that performs his vocation with a discernment unlike many of his counterparts not only in the postal service but in many other vocations as well. Delivering mail on foot especially in hot humid South Florida is not exactly and excuse the pun a walk in the neighborhood. 

The Merry Mailman is an exclamation point on my ride and I look for him each time I clip into my bike and we always have something to say to each other. It’s rarely a matched tete a tete in fact rarely so but it matters not but it’s an exchange that is often invigorating and always spontaneous and extemporaneous. Sometimes I hear him laugh when my words spill out and that makes me smile as words can have a lasting affect bouncing off one to the other.   However his natural charm doesn’t need any assistance and when he drops his letters in each box they have an extra postmark on them “From Your Merry Mailman”.  

*His name is Arnie

Jimmy Stewart

Robert Osborne started off his tribute to Jimmy Stewart by telling us roles he didn’t portray. He donned full makeup for the part of an Asian in The Good Earth when he was but 27 but thankfully as he points out that role went to a much shorter Keye Luke who actually was Chinese. Then there was over a 100 others including North By Northwest that actually Alfred Hitchcock had him in mind for but, as fate would have it Cary Grant landed that iconic role instead. But let’s turn to this actor’s fabled career as we leave behind movies he didn’t star in shall we?  

Alfred Hitchcock and he would team up for four films Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much (which was a remake of one of Hitch’s earlier films) Vertigo and probably his most famous of all Rear Window where he costarred with Grace Kelly before she would become Princess Grace of Monaco. The latter film remains in the top 10 films of all time no small feat in view of all the magic of CGI of late mainly because the story is singular in nature and it’s premise of Stewart being held hostage with a broken leg (they had plaster casts back then) inside his hot apartment overlooking the courtyard of his residential complex and everyone’s rear window had never been done. 

James Maitland Stewart born May 20, 1908 in Indiana, Pennsylvania to English-Scottish parents who owned a hardware store. Jim was educated at a prep school and excelled in football and track he also sang played the accordion and acted on occasion. At Princeton where he studied architecture Jim got more exposure to acting with the University Players, which took him around the country and a small stint on Broadway. Here he would meet his lifelong friend Henry Fonda. 

In 1934 his first screen appearance in a short titled Art Trouble actually starred Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame but it was his collaborations with the legendary Frank Capra in roles like You Can’t Take It With You costarring Jean Arthur in 1938, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939 and after WWII in the holiday classic It’s A Wonderful Life that launched Stewart into superstardom and his iconic “everyman” persona with that Pennsylvania “aw shucks” demeanor so many Americans loved him for.  It was George Cukor however that directed him in his only competitive Oscar win in 1940 The Philadelphia Story opposite the luminaries Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.  After that film Uncle Sam played a hand.  

 Jimmy Stewart drafted into the Army in 1940 would begin another starring role this time for his Country. He began army life as a private but during the course of the war rose to the rank of colonel and he because he had learned to fly in 1935; he flew combat missions in Europe. Jim remained in the U.S. Air Force Reserve until 1959 where he rose to the rank of brigadier general. And as one of my favorite database notes it was after the war that his career really took off.  

The lighter fare continued in 1950 in one of his favorite roles Harvey where his companion is an imaginary rabbit that has his relatives and friends completely bollixed with except of course Jim. But Stewart wanted grittier roles and they started to follow. Winchester ’73 and Broken Arrow both in 1950 then as we alluded to earlier Alfred Hitchcock came calling with his 4 productions. Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder in 1958 also found rave reviews for Jimmy’s resume. 

Stewart in the ‘70s tried his hand at television The Jimmy Stewart Show a sitcom which had a short run a drama called Hawkins and then opposite Lauren Bacall and John Wayne The Shootist in 1976. Jimmy Stewart married to his wife Gloria since 1949 had largely disappeared from the public eye showing up for various awards and with the loss of his wife in 1994 he was deeply affected. They had twin daughters and he had become father to her two sons by her previous marriage. Jimmy Stewart left this earth at age 89 and he was as most will recall a good man.  

Humphrey Bogart

Martha Vickers in the opening scene of 1946’s The Big Sleep says to Humphrey Bogart: “You’re not very tall are you?”  He looks askance at himself and responds: “Well I try to be!” A metaphor if there ever was one for this months Golden Age Star. Entertainment Weekly has called him The Greatest Movie Star of All Time and The Greatest Screen Actor by the American Film Institute. 

As Robert Osborne noted a male movie star had to be tall dark and handsome. Leading men like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor and Cary Grant come to mind to name a few that would fit that bill easily but Humphrey Bogart? Well hardly. He had a craggy face, somewhat of a lisp, he stood but 5 foot 8 inches and when he spoke his mouth looked like a man with a twisted lip. 

Born on Christmas day in 1899 in New York.  His father a successful heart surgeon and his mother an accomplished painter and illustrator and artistic director of a woman’s fashion magazine The Delineator. Oddly enough one of his mother’s drawings of him as a baby was used in a national advertising campaign for Mellin’s baby food and Humphrey was a brief national sensation.  Never a grade A student he ended up being expelled for poor grades from and exclusive boarding school. Often derided by his name in school Humphrey was glad to get away and he enlisted in the Navy at 17 and it was rumored that in a scuffle with a prisoner and a pair of handcuffs that gave him that iconic scar above the right corner of his lip. When he came out at age 19 he became a manager with a touring company and two years later he broke in with his first   role with one line playing a Japanese waiter. He thrashed around Hollywood for 10 years before he landed his breakthrough role in 1934’s The Petrified Forest. Humphrey with his dead stare, dangling arms, and bent body shocked the screen audience and cemented his nook as the arch villain of the screen.  Roles in The Great O’Malley 1937, Dead End 1937 which featured Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, Crime School 1938, and King of the Underworld 1939 emblazoned his image across the screens of America. 

But even with this great success he felt typecast and the perfect transitional role came to him in The Maltese Falcon in 1941. Often called the first film noir masterpiece Bogart playing the detective Sam Spade a slightly less than reputable shamus gets involved with some shady characters in pursuit priceless "Falcon". In the films climax Bogart’s character turns virtuous and turns in his love interest murderer Mary Astor and departs his villainous portrayals albeit for a time  for maybe his greatest role in 1942 Casablanca.  The film winning Best Picture to this day carries memorable quotes often used in everyday speech. Ten years later in 1951’s The African Queen alongside Katherine Hepburn he would finally win his Oscar. His final films all notable The Caine Mutiny 1954, Sabrina 1954 co-starring with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden and The Harder They Fall in 1956 would round out his glorious 80 film career.   

Married four times but there was only one and that one was Lauren Bacall. When they met on the set of To Have and Have Not she was only 19 he was more than 20 years her senior but the electricity jumped off the screen and even the audiences knew that these two were headed for a love that would be heralded as one of Hollywood’s iconic ones that would rival any you could name. They had two children together.  Often in almost every film Bogart  could be seen with a cigarette dangling from his lip and even lighting one for his costar but ultimately that habit would hasten his death at 57 succumbing to esophageal cancer. He and Bacall had 10 glorious years together.  

Humphrey Bogart didn’t fit your typical tall dark and handsome movie start but he certainly acted like he did

Break Time

I have taken a break from politics as it has become too virulent for me. Discourse has turned into name-calling and profanity. Its not spirited debate anymore it’s an attack on me personally which fortunately for me I don’t take personally because the attackers don’t know anything about me except their perceived notion of the politics I represent. Too bad too because I am a reasonable man and when confronted in a reasonable way with a cogent argument I will think about it and if there is merit to it either respond with my view or even change or modify my own. Isn’t that what debate is all about? No it seems my antagonists and I have to frame them with that word because they have determined in advance that they think they know who I am. It’s sad because they don’t. One thing I think I have determined though is that some of the friends that have departed my company have decided that any view that doesn’t coincide with theirs is a personal attack on them. This epiphany has made it all the more clear why some have reacted the way they have. Everyone isn’t a racist, a misogynist, a fascist, a white supremacist simply because you say so. Yes a break I need until the Country if ever let’s go of the diatribe they seem hell bent on.  I am just too old for this crap.  

Robert Osborne

I am taking a departure this month and instead of honoring a Hollywood Golden Legend I’m choosing instead to pay homage to a man that introduced so many of them for over 22 years as host of TCM or for the uninitiated Turner Classic Movies, Robert Osborne. 

Robert Osborne passed away last month on March 6th and I admit unabashedly that it was an emotional day for me. He became part of my life in such a visceral fashion because he made the movies I love so much come alive in a way not many could ever do. He did it in the vernacular no hip speak without the dreaded metaphors even his successor has deemed necessary. Robert spoke of people in loving tones without being insipid and if he didn’t have something positive to say he said nothing at all. He never engaged in gossip and when his guest hosts veered away from the topic of movies he gently steered the conversation back to the narrative of what the viewer had tuned in for in the first place the back story of how the movie was made and what made the story stand out in that particular moment in time. There was never revisionist history, as so many actors love to engage in. You know what I mean taking the mindset of today and trying to make it apart of what was. I see that often in movies today. 

For many years on Saturday night at 8 pm Robert along with a season long guest co-host featured a show called The Essentials. A Hollywood star would kibbutz with Robert before and after each movie that they both (most of the time) agreed was an “Essential” movie in Hollywood History. Alec Baldwin and Drew Barrymore grand offspring of the Barrymore legends each stayed several seasons and had particular great chemistry with Robert. Baldwin loved and respected Robert and he was more than happy to spend 3 seasons introducing with Robert these classic films often trying to keep up with Robert’s insane movie historical film knowledge. Although as I alluded Osborne was never arrogant about the depth of his screen acumen and he deeply impressed the young Drew Barrymore especially when the two would introduce films featuring her Grandfather John and Grand Uncle Lionel and Grand Aunt Ethel Barrymore. Although she knew and had seen those films her relatives have starred in she wasn’t up to speed on the history Robert brought to her in the seasons she spent with him.  

Another trait that I loved about Robert was that he never brought his personal life into his work. We never knew if he was a Conservative, Liberal, Republican or Democrat and when his co-hosts questioned him on who his favorite stars were he would let you know but it never clouded his judgment on their individual performances. He just had a gentle way about him and when Golden Age stars would talk about him they swooned but it was never syrupy sweet it was genuine love. 

Robert actually started in movies but it was another legend Lucille Ball that convinced him he should write about Hollywood instead and his book 85 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards is the exclamation point about the Annual Awards Show. His DVD featuring 30 conversations with Hollywood legends some who has already passed away is a treasure trove of information about stars and their lives.  These past luminaries are so forthcoming about their lives as Robert gets them to reveal secrets as easily as taking candy from a baby. 

Robert Osborne was one of a kind he will never be repeated and although I will continue to watch TCM it will never be the same. 

The Unlived Life

Have you ever thought what if I had never married her? I never went out with him? I never took that job or went to a different school or joined the Navy? Well I have and it’s quite a ride in the land of permutations and incantations. To start with if you’re happy right now but still have some regrets in your life I’m here to say lose them because without those “mistakes” or “errors in judgment” you might be somewhere else and not living in the house of sublime you’re in right now.  

I often look at some of my friends that have wildly successful marriages people like Andy and Liz Lison or a gay couple I know who’ve been together in excess of 50 years. It is a true marvel in the 21st Century when it’s so easy to say I quit this doesn’t work for me I’m out of here. Some people are born to be together they’re like ducks mated for life. Unfortunately for me I was probably never cut out for marriage but I don’t envy their success only congratulate them because they figured out how to solve the rubix cube and at age 66 there’s another factor that I’m faced with. You can’t go back. Next life I tell myself but I can do some things in the present and not fall into the trap my father did like letting his body and mind atrophy with the passing of his wife my mother back in 2000. He finally succumbed in 2014 but that’s not the point instead of stagnation which he fell into I can be part of generativity. Bring light and guidance to the next generation. And hopefully I do that each day. And when God calls me home I’ll get to look at my unlived life in that movie in a seat in Heaven alongside some of the loved ones that have preceded me. If I’ve been good enough that is. 

Paulette Goddard

Born Marion Levy in Whitestone Landing, Queens on June 3, 1910 she became a child model at the tender age of 13. Her initial claim to fame came from The Ziegfeld Follies as the girl on the crescent moon she married quite young to wealthy man Edgar James at 16 they separated after just 2 years and they divorced in 1932. It was here she changed to her stage name Paulette Goddard. Paulette would marry 4 times next to Charlie Chaplin in 1936, which may have cost her the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (more on that later) and later still to Burgess Meredith and finally to and most satisfyingly to Erich Remarque in 1958 for 12 years until his death in 1970. Paulette had no children although miscarried a child with Burgess Meredith. 

Paulette secured a small role in 1932 in an Eddie Cantor film as a blond Goldwyn girl in The Kid From Spain but Paulette and Goldwyn didn’t get along and so she drifted making a series of uncredited Hal Roach films until 1936. It was in this year she met Charlie Chaplin. They soon became an item in Tinsel Town and married in 1936 and that very same year he cast her opposite him in Modern Times a huge hit and later in The Great Dictator a controversial film parodying Adolph Hitler but her career stalled most likely because of her relationship with Chaplin as exemplified when she lost her role in Gone With the Wind as Scarlett O’Hara. The imperious producer David O.  Selznick felt there was a conflict with Chaplin’s studio and therefore declined Paulette the role.  The reasoning was never quite clear but that’s the official excuse Selznick used after he decided on Vivien Leigh. However it was her role in the distaffed mega hit The Women the following year that secured her a contract with Paramount. The movie was all about men but had none of them in a starring role but directed by one who seemed to know women  the legendary George Cukor. Later that year she twice starred with Bob Hope first in The Cat and the Canary and then one of my personal favorites that influenced some of the phantasmal movies of today The Ghost Breakers. In 1943 her proudest moment came as she was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar in So Proudly We Hail opposite Claudette Colbert and Veronica Lake and Television’s first Superman George Reeves. 

Cecille B. DeMille cast her in several blockbusters Northwest Mounted Police in 1940, Reap the Wild Wind, 1942 and The Unconquered in 1947.  Previously she headlined Kitty, 1945 probably her most successful film and then Diary of a Chambermaid in 1946 wherein she starred opposite her then 3rd husband Burgess Meredith. She and Burgess were victims of the Hollywood blacklist and once were mobbed by a crowd screaming “Communists!” on their way to a premiere.  

In 1947 she made An Ideal Husband for Alexander Korda and in 1949 formed a production company with John Steinbeck called Monterey Pictures. Her last starring roles came in A Stranger Came Home retitled in the States as The Unholy Four and The Charge of the Lancers in 1954. She did some summer stock on television and reprised The Women albeit in a different role. When she retired from acting Paulette moved to Switzerland with her 4th husband in 1964. One comeback film came in an Italian effort that year, Time of Indifference with Claudia Cardinale and finally on television in 1972 The Snoop Sisters about mystery sleuths opposite Mildred Natwick and Helen Hayes. Paulette’s education never went beyond High School but she bequeathed a sizable donation of 20 million to New York University and a freshman residence is named Goddard Hall in her honor.  Paulette went through massive treatment for breast cancer in 1975 which was seemingly successful and it wasn’t until 1990 at age 79 that she succumbed to heart failure and was buried alongside her mother and 4th husband Remarque in Ronco cemetery in Switzerland.