Abbott & Costello

The Golden Age of Hollywood

If I was to start anywhere in my stories about the Golden Age of Hollywood I would be compelled to commence with Abbott & Costello.  In fact they were Top Ten box office 8 times during the years 1941-1951.  Their 36 films from 1940-1956 grossed 2.58 billion in adjusted domestic box office dollars. In 1942 they ranked #1 where their films grossed over 540 million!

Bud and Lou had their beginnings in Vaudeville but their big success began in a film they weren’t even the headliners.  That film was the 1940 One Night in the Tropics. The top billing went to stars Allan Jones (Father of Jack Jones the singer) and Robert Cummings. (‘Love That Bob”) In retrospect the film was forgettable except for the performances of Abbott & Costello, which helped launch them into the highly successful “Buck Privates” the following year in 1941. It featured the great Andrew Sisters and the smash “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B”. The boys after playing homage to the Army were compelled to continue in the same year with “In the Navy” and “Keep ‘em Flying”. Most of the time the supporting players were musical like the aforementioned Andrew Sisters and others like Allan Jones, Kathryn Grayson, John Carroll, Dick Powell and Ted Mack’s orchestra to name but a few. 

However the main attraction was Bud & Lou where they performed many of their famous routines like Who’s on First and Slowly I Turned. But the real magic was the chemistry between the boys. Abbott the straight man knew instinctively how to let Lou go and just as importantly when to reel him in. For his part Lou Costello was a comedic genius and had a real sense of the ad lib and was even paid one of the highest compliments by the Academy Award winning actor Charles Laughton who happily took the back seat to the team in 1952’s “Abbott & Costello Meet Captain Kidd”. Laughton was so anxious to work with the boys that even with the star of his magnitude he had no ego taking second billing. 

In all Abbott & Costello made 36 movies together ending in 1956 with “Dance With Me Henry.” Although Lou made one solo film in 1959 it lacked the punch the boys made together. 

 I could go on ad infinitum here but one of the boys’ most successful films was “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” in 1948. It was such an innovation for Universal Studios wherein they took some of the bygone monster stars like Dracula, The Wolfman and of course Frankenstein and made a comedy.  Stars like Karloff, Glenn Strange and Lon Chaney Jr. played their parts straight and A & C danced a comedic rhythm heretofore that never existed.   Interestingly the part of Frankenstein originally played by Boris Karloff in 1931 feigned interest because he thought it just wasn’t a good idea to mix monsters with the mayhem of Abbott & Costello. He couldn’t have been more wrong and when he witnessed the success A & C were having with that celluloid gem he signed on in earnest the following year with “Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff”.  

The boys for two seasons, 1952 and 1953 took the small screen when they filmed 52 episodes of The Abbott & Costello Show” in which they reprised many of their routines from their movies but without the constraints of a rigid plot. The team could ‘run wild’ and if you get a chance take a look at these shows available on You tube if you haven’t already because these early television comedies were in many cases funnier in my opinion than any of their movies on the big screen. 

Next month I’ll feature William Powell.  

Cycling & Flourishing

I might have started this piece on my warrior Lisa Pepe Fernandez by saying that she is cycling and surviving but that would be a vast understatement. I met Lisa back in 2014 when she was still in the throes of her cancer treatment but you’d never know it from the vantage point of me the passenger in her spin class. Oh yes I didn’t mention she’s a spin instructor for 24 Hour Fitness. I had met her Mom some weeks prior and as a brief aside she’s going on 77 and she’s a spin instructor also at 24 Hour but that’s another story. Actually I’ve written about her several times. But this episode is about her daughter Lisa Pepe Fernandez who is a cancer survivor from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Cancer. 

Lisa’s story is part denial, part miracle but mostly it’s about her belief system that is what’s the word? Unbreakable. Yes that’s the word is  unbreakable. It is her faith in God and relationship with  her savior Jesus Christ that she is healed and cancer free today!  

When her doctor first gave her the news back in May of 2014 she refused to believe that this lump that hopped aboard her clavicle was the big C. She said I refuse to accept that and it had to be just an infection. Well willpower alone wasn’t a match by itself as her PET scan confirmed the enlarged lymph nodes. The diagnosis was Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Stage 2. And that meant 5-6 months of chemotherapy and radiation. Along with the treatment the doctor mandated or let’s say strongly suggested Lisa have a port inserted for the chemotherapy and another blow to her vanity was that she’d probably lose all her hair. All throughout it seemed Lisa stood steadfast but losing her hair broke the veritable camel’s back and the tears started to flow in earnest. After a short time of reconciliation that her fair locks would be departing Lisa started to devise a plan. She fit her treatments into her life not her life around her treatments. 

Her instructor’s class was on Tuesday mornings so she decided to schedule her chemo on Wednesday’s figuring the next two days she’d be picking herself up off the canvas every two weeks.  So her class was either one day before or 6 days after her chemo. She had her plan and only a select few knew of her plight (I certainly couldn’t tell) and her determination, drive and here’s that word again; unbreakable spirit kept her on her schedule as she continued to lift weights, go to her job and volunteer at the animal rescue league. 

Oh and her nurses bless their hearts told her that she as a result of the treatments would have neuralgia experience early menopause and God knows what else. Uh yeah no here’s where Lisa’s willpower kicked in. There was none of that. Sure some flu like symptoms from the treatments and by the time radiation was queued up it was and I’m paraphrasing it was 'nothing' compared to the chemo. Long story short Lisa is cancer free and continues with her 6-month check up with her oncologist. Oh and her fair locks? They’re coming back albeit slower than she’d like but Cancer it’s in her rear view mirror now and her spin classes same as they ever were spectacular.  

P.S.

Oh and her family and husband and Mom very much part of that belief system and a faith in God.  

All I Want for Christmas Is.....

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth! I remember that song as a child growing up in Queens. I forgot who sang it. I could google it perhaps but what I really want for Christmas is unconditional faith. I figure if I have that I don’t need anything emotionally or financially because whatever comes my way with unconditional faith I can handle. And since the future is unknown I can live with that.  

Man Up

If I hear this once more in the 21st Century I will have reverse peristalsis. Cease and desist with this 20th Century phrase. Stop telling the male gender to Man Up!  Don’t you just hate it guys when 53% of the world is trying to tell the other 47% they have to grow a pair? 

If you want us to be men stop trying to pretend you have a different configuration than God conceived you with. I am sick of the male being emasculated and then being told how to be a man. God does it piss me off.  Oh and this thing about dragging your maiden name with you when you get married? It’s your fathers name remember!  

If you could scratch them you would too!  

Jenny Little

 

 

I thought I might title this entry: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman but thought better of it so as not to scare anyone away. That title was actually a sci-fi  movie of the same name dated 1958 with probably the worst special effects captured on celluloid film. The heroine grown to mythic proportions is transparent throughout because CGI hadn’t been invented just yet.

Jenny on the other hand has quite genuine “special effects” resplendent with the talent of some of the best spin instructors I’ve experienced at my former home at Equinox in New York. Ms. Little displays the science of Dana Mancini who was remarkable for making class an “inside job” and the athleticism of Rocky who took my physiology “once step beyond” what I thought I was capable of and of course the Queen of spin Kristen James whose charm and charisma sparked my “afflatus” in many of my writings here on the net.

Jenny today this Sunday reignited my blue flame which I have to say I thought had just run out of propane. Five and a half years of spinning yarns literally about spin class had me thinking that this series was just done. What else could I say? Well maybe a new chapter new geography a new face might just put a new spin on my flywheel. I could complain that the Spinner bikes at 24 Hour Fitness are a bit long in the tooth with no onboard computer or creature comforts I had grown accustomed to back in Woodbury but Jenny Little made me forget that at rides end my butt hurt like the Dickens as her repertoire was positively ingenious for its complexity but simplicity in her delivery. Tempo, a driving rhythm, short breaks and a discogrpahy that was silky. Off the bike and on the bike Jenny moves with a fluidity of a Gene Kelly and the strength of a decathalete she is.

 

I will be back Jenny and thanks for bringing me back to something I really love.

 

The Best Things In Life Are Free

How is it that surrounded  in the force fed air of the  material world do we forget that the best things in life are free. It's not in  the trappings of bulging bank accounts does happiness exist. For money can bring us the rentals of luxury but when God calls us home none of those trinkets accompany us  into the ground or into the urn from the crematorium.
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The best things in life are free. The human touch, a kiss, a held hand, a glance from a loved one and a knowing smile. These gifts we share everyday and no price tag can be pulled from them.
When we cry for help and its answered I know that the best things in life are free.

The Silver Lining

I once saw a Disney movie as a kid starring Haley Mills* called Pollyanna and I know that to go through life thinking things will all turn out right might be unrealistic to some. Bad things do happen but that doesn’t mean that we should ever try to anticipate them. Life on life’s terms will always be part of the journey. And when those things like personal tragedy, death and dissolution of relationships threaten our very happiness take solace that there is always a silver lining. 

My brother in law had lost touch with his family for over a decade and as it often happens in relationships it was over something trivial which he couldn’t even recall in the present day. Life being temporary he lost his father and through that sadness he came to be with his family once again and now they talk everyday. No matter what happens the true message emerges we just have to have faith and patience that it will show up eventually. That silver lining. 

* Hayley Mills imdb.com