Sing Out Louise! Smile, Baby!

Graphic from Yellowdog Granny.









I am hoping to make it down to Columbia for the Republican CNN dog-and-pony-show (debate, I mean), but so far, no vehicular luck. Still panhandling for a ride, if any of you brave souls plan to go down there tomorrow to check out the Democratic Process In Action (grunts for emphasis). The Ron Paul people are having their rally directly afterwards, and that sounds like a good place to start witnessing the Third Party Gospel. I'm on it! Well okay, I would ordinarily be on it, if I had a car that could safely sustain a hundred-mile round trip without a thorough examination, which I don't.

Yes, yes, I know, if I had been a conscientious DoBee [1] I would have gotten my oil changed and tires rotated and what-all, but as an unemployed person I have not seen THE POINT. (See, she pauses to point out, HOW UNEMPLOYMENT NEGATIVELY INFLUENCES THE ECONOMY?!?) At any rate, here I am, send notes and emails and Twitters and Facebook IMs and what-have-you, if you are going down to our illustrious state capital to protest or hang out with the Ron Paul people tomorrow.

My first radio excursion on Saturday morning went well. Gregg roused himself from his cardiologist's floor and aided me wonderfully! I was scared to death, and had the proverbial death-grip on my old wooden antique rosary from Notre Dame (Indiana, not France), which was left to me by a deceased female neighbor named Butch, so its very lucky. In addition, I inexplicably required a huge Double Mocha Frappucino to get it done, but I did it! (Next week, will probably be able to make do with a regular single Vanilla.)

PLEASE DROP IN AND LISTEN! WFISradio.com, 1600 AM or 94.9 FM on your radio dial... or online. 9:00 AM on Saturday mornings, which is an ungodly weekend hour, and I apologize for that.

~*~

Be-bopping around the internet today, whilst watching Doris Day (yall know how much I love Doris) in With Six You Get Eggroll. A bad movie that nonetheless fascinated me as a wide-eyed, gullible youngster... as Single Mom-with-kids marries Single Dad-with-kids, and they wholesomely "blend" their families. As many of you know, I desperately wanted my mother to get married and behave in this wonderfully-domestic fashion, particularly if it meant she would stop wearing the bubble hairdos, popping amphetamines, singing in the country and western bands every night, drinking and smoking like a rat-pack member, marrying people she had just met and dammit, ACT LIKE SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO. [2] Ha.

Of course, now I realize, neither did Doris. If I had only known!

Will somebody tell me: Did wholesome TV-dad Brian Keith die of AIDS or is that just a rumor? Am I mixing him up with Robert Reed, since the plot of this movie is where they obviously came up with THE BRADY BUNCH? (It seemed that after Robert Reed died, it was suddenly open season on the nice TV-dads and magically, they all became gay overnight.)

Okay, checked Wikipedia: No, not true. Suicide. I knew it was something uncommon.

A shame. I always liked him.

The sweet, precocious little child-star, Anissa Jones, whom I liked so much on Brian Keith's old show, Family Affair, was an accidental drug death at age 18. We were only 6 months apart in age. The other child on the show, Johnny Whitaker, has spoken at length about his addiction problems, also, and is now a drug counselor.

I guess these Hollywood-fantasy families really were fake, weren't they?

~*~

[1] To the non-baby boomers, this is from the children's TV show Romper Room and has no relationship to the word DOOBIE as a joint or the Doobie Brothers. There were Do Bees and Don't Bees, and of course, we all tried to be good DO BEES! (We marginally succeeded.)

[2] Mama! Get out your white dress/you've done it before/without much success (Stephen Sondheim to the rescue). When I first heard this song as a kid, at maybe 8 years old, I sobbed my little heart out. (And it's where we get today's blog post title.)

See, I thought, the stipper's children understand!

Nothing changes on New Years Day

Left: One of Busby Berkeley's famous female kaleidoscopes, in 42nd Street. (1933)



Sitting here on New Years Day, relaxing with Turner Classic Movies, watching That's Dancing (1985), which I have seen before, several times.

For those of you who believe blogging (and the attendant political blog-wars) are a waste of time, rest assured, they are not. I am seeing the movie quite differently now. I thank bloggers such as Donna Darko, Blackamazon, Bint, Sylvia, Vanessa, BFP, Donna J., The Angry Black Woman, and Kevin at Slant Truth. Watching this movie, one would think white people had invented tap dancing.

Why did I not notice this before, or if I did, explained it away?

Certainly, since this a documentary (of sorts) about the history of dance in movies, one could say they are accurate in leaving out people of color other than Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson. But of course, that isn't true either. The then-called 'race movies,' popular from 1927 - 1948, showcased plenty of African-American choreography, particularly in St Louis Blues, Juke Joint and Harlem is Heaven, all of which are resolutely ignored.

I am interested in when black dancing styles were stolen for mainstream Hollywood movies. Other than an arresting clip of a tiny, very young and adorable Sammy Davis Jr. juxtaposed with a clip of precocious mimic Shirley Temple, there is no account of this process.

Similarly, Busby Berkeley's gay-nightclub sensibility and Bob Fosse's prodigious riffing on stripper-style, is also ignored. Such explanations of their origins might prove embarrassing. Instead, they are presented as white-guy choreographers who sprang fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus, even though both men were very open and honest about their influences.

As for women of color, forget it. Not even Oscar-winner Rita Moreno gets a mention; the West Side Story segment instead chooses the Jets in the garage, doing COOL. Admittedly, I love that, but AMERICA* is also an amazing, fabulous rave-up. But that was the Sharks, wasn't it? Should I wonder why the white gang gets to be in the movie but the Puerto Rican gang doesn't?


The first women of color presented in That's Dancing are the dynamic Paula Kelly and Chita Rivera, flanking beautiful Shirley MacLaine in Fosse's Sweet Charity. They are indeed worth the wait, but hey, that movie was made in 1969, forgodsake. No women of color dancers in film until 1969??? And how many of Busby Berkeley's thousands of dancers were actually women of color? (I know little about him, except his movies and his reputation for being something of a tyrant. And by the way, yall, seeing this movie again has started me on a search for a good book about him. If you know of any, recommendations welcome!)


~*~

In addition to this being the best dance number ever committed to film (no arguing the point please, this is MY blog), the stunning leads (Rita Moreno and George Chakiris) also won Academy Awards, probably for blowing everyone away with how utterly fantastic and good-looking they are.

This amazing work of art was choreographed by (gay) Jerome Robbins (changed from Rabinowitz), subject of the fascinating and entertaining book, Dance With Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins by Greg Lawrence. Highly recommended reading for movie fangirls and boys of all ages!


*This song also contains an excellent critique of race in the USA that sounds almost contemporary... kinda scary since it was filmed back in 1961. However, you will notice the following lyrics are in the original film (see clip), but omitted (!!!) from the lyrics-link, above:


Life can be bright in America
If you can fight in America
Life is alright in America
If you're a white in America

Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim...and with lyrics like those, no wonder it was left out of That's Dancing, as well as subsequent versions of West Side Story!

Enjoy these beautiful people, and once again, have a great New Year!