Hiding in Plain Sight

 

With the release of the new Superman movie, I'm seeing a fair amount of discussion online about how Superman is able to protect his secret identity with just a pair of glasses, with a widespread opinion being that it's a ridiculous trope that wouldn't work in the real world.

Obviously, actors take steps to differentiate their performances of both Superman and Clark; beyond the glasses, they make Clark slouch, speak in a slightly higher register, make him clumsy, keep him timid in dangerous situations, and more or less do whatever they can to portray them as two entirely different characters.  From what I've seen in advance footage (I've not yet seen the film itself), David Corenswet seems to do a particularly good job of making Clark as un-Superman-like as possible, including having him wear his hair differently.

If you happen to think that wouldn't be successful in our world, let me just share this...

 

 

But I've got a better theory how to make certain that no one recognizes that Clark is really Superman.  You ready for it?

Superman has never told anyone he has a secret identity.

Think about it...why in the world would Superman even hint vaguely that at least some of the time, he's someone other than Superman?  He's the most powerful person in the world by far, so it's no stretch of the imagination to suggest that everyone else would just assume he'd want to be himself 24/7, instead of cosplaying as an ordinary mortal.  You don't see him in Metropolis?  That must just mean he's dealing with something elsewhere in the world, or else relaxing at his hidden Fortress of Solitude.

That's the narrative Superman ought to be pushing.  He does that, and nobody looks twice at Clark and thinks, "Hmmm, can he be Superman in disguise?"

Of course, this can beg the question, 'Why does Clark Kent even exist?'  I have thoughts.

There's a theory that Superman is who he truly is, and that Clark Kent is merely a made-up role he plays.  Oh, in his own inner monologue he may refer to himself by his Kryptonian name of Kal-El, but honestly if you had him under oath and asked him what his real name is, he would simply say "Superman".  Clark has no existence other than as a disguise.

This was perhaps best stated in "Kill Bill, Vol. 2".  That's David Carradine's Bill speaking the lines, but doubtless it's writer/director Quentin Tarantino's own belief:

 

 

Personally, I disagree with this school of thought, and I'll tell you why.  Kal-El arrived on Earth as an infant, and was taken in by the Kents, who raised them as their son, as Clark.  He was taught their values, he lived the life of an ordinary boy and young man (albeit hiding his fantastic powers from the world at large, until he was ready to employ them for good).  He's the American Dream, the immigrant who becomes an equal in the mighty mosaic that makes up the United States, and not some demi-god who soars through the skies above us.  At least, not in his own mind.  No, in his inner thoughts, he's Clark, not Superman...even when he's wearing the cape and plugging an erupting volcano or battling an alien invasion.  And if as Clark he's kind of bumbling and meek, he also has a big heart with tremendous empathy, and an unshakable faith in truth and justice.  And it's as Clark, wearing those glasses, that he gets to shed the weight of the world from his shoulders, and just be himself...an ordinary man.

So spare me the Aryan Übermensch theories of how Superman is a god, and we're ants beneath his heel.  He's a farm kid who loves dogs and can't wait to go back home to see his parents and get a good home cooked meal.  Clark Kent is the superhero, because while Superman provides us with an ideal to emulate, it's Clark who we could be if we would be our very best selves.

(Oh, and while I'm at it, I also reject the theory currently in vogue that Batman is only Batman, and Bruce Wayne is only a mask he wears when he needs to.  I know this is wrong, because I know that it wasn't a ten year old Batman who watched his parents die in an alley, it was Bruce, who pledged his life to battling crime and spare as many other children from similar tragedies as possible.  Batman is just the role he plays to carry out his mission, and as dawn rises each morning, he hangs up the cape and cowl and lives an ordinary life as Bruce Wayne.) 

So yeah, so long as he never slips up and says something like, "Well Lois, when I was in my secret identity..." then everything is cool for Clark, and he can keep on fooling the world with a pair of glasses.

 

 
 

An excerpt from my book, THE COLOUR OF YOUR DREAMS

Setting the stage:  Following the end of their world tour in the summer of 1966, the four Beatles for the first time took several months off and pursued different interests separate from one another (John appeared in a film, How I Won the War; George went to India to study the sitar, and so forth).  Then, since the last week in November, the Beatles reconvened and had been in the recording studio, working on their next album (which as of yet was untitled).  Despite a slower than usual start, they had by this point done extensive work on such songs as "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane", and "When I'm 64", and were on this January date going to work on a new song by John (with lyrical assistance from Paul) 

 

Everywhere people stare each and every day

 

The weekday bustle of London was muffled on the 19^th of January as a sudden winter storm arrived, blanketing the city in more than 14cm of snow, with the evening temperature plunging to -11°C.  But the activity within Abbey Road was as busy as ever.

John enjoyed reading London’s Daily Mail, although he often found himself at odds with the newspaper’s conservative editorial stance.  Like the rest of its readership, he had been following the news accounts stemming from Guinness brewing heir Tara Browne’s tragic death in an automobile accident a month before, with the Daily Mail posting accounts in the weeks since of the details of the accident, news of his memorial service in Knightsbridge, and the results of the coroner’s inquest.  Now, a new story came on January the 17^th, detailing how the High Court was awarding guardianship of Browne’s two young children to his mother, Lady Oranmore, rather than to the children’s mother, Noreen MacSherry, whom the young socialite was separated and estranged from at the time of his death.  Tara, the son of Baron Mereworth, a member of the House of Lords, was a much-liked fixture of the friendly social circle shared by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  He was particularly close to both Lennon and McCartney, and in 1966 it was in the company of Browne that Paul undertook his first use of LSD.

The article stirred up John’s lingering melancholy over Browne’s death and got him thinking about writing a song.  He was interested in trying a sort of cinéma vérité style of songwriting, more like a lyrical documentary than the standard pop tune.  He opened with the line, “I read the news today, oh boy.”

He began playing with other words, shaping a tale of a man of importance (“A lucky man who made the grade” . . . as in a peerage; “They’d seen his face before”).  The accident is referenced (“He blew his mind out in a car”), although Lennon changed the circumstances; Browne was not killed driving through a red light (“He didn’t notice that the lights had changed”), but rather he was forced to swerve when another car drifted head-on into his traffic lane, and he struck a stationary vehicle to avoid the other auto. 

Satisfied with how the lyrics were shaping up, John decided to move on to another topic, as one would when reading a newspaper.  For the next part, he drew upon his own recent filmmaking experience (“The English Army had just won the war / A crowd of people turned away / But I just had to look / Having read the book”).

John as Pvt. Gripweed in How I Won the War

 

Now came time for the bridge (which John and Paul called the “middle-eight”), but Lennon was content with letting McCartney take a crack at that later, as was their collaborative habit.

Leafing through that day’s edition of the Daily Mail, John spotted another item in the ‘Far & Near’ column, a bit of absurdity played utterly straight, as the Blackburn, Lancashire Council announced that after a thorough survey, there were some 4000 holes in the city, or one twenty-sixth of a hole per resident.  That was worth commemorating, he decided.

“They had to count them all,” he wrote, following with, “Now they know how many holes it takes to … what? … the Albert Hall”.  Nothing satisfying came to mind, so he decided to worry about it later.

            Gathered in the studio, he played what he had for the others.  He was calling it “In the Life Of…”, at least for the time being.  The response was enthusiastic, and John and Paul went to work tidying up the lyrics.  McCartney suggested a line to be sung just before the bridge, and then repeated at the end: “I’d love to turn you on.”  Years later, Paul recalled, “I remembered thinking, ‘Well, that’s about as risqué as we dare get at this point.’  Well, the BBC banned it.”

            However, John was still stuck on exactly what the holes were doing to the Albert Hall.  It was then that Terry Doran, a friend of the Beatles who was visiting them at Abbey Road, made his contribution to the culture of Western Civilization by saying, “Fill the Albert Hall, John.”

Terry Doren

 

            As for the middle-eight, instead of creating something there on the spot, Paul suggested using a song he had begun writing, but hadn’t yet gotten beyond the opening stanzas.  In the spirit of “Penny Lane”, it was a remembrance of his boyhood, of waking up in the morning and rushing to catch the bus to school and sneaking a Woodbine cigarette on the open upper deck.  John loved the fact that it not only so closely recalled his own schooldays experience, but that it was so very much unlike the rest of the song in tone, but nevertheless matched the ‘slice of life’ quality of John’s lyrics.

            The four Beatles then went to work on the basic track, John on piano, Paul on organ, Ringo on conga drums and George on acoustic guitar.  For the next layering track, they shifted their duties a bit; now Lennon was on acoustic guitar as McCartney took his seat at the piano, Harrison played the maracas, and Starr supplied more congas.

            For the lead-in to the middle-eight, they played a simple 24-bar piano segment, and had their personal assistant, Mal Evans, count out the bars with his voice drenched in ever-increasing amounts of reverb.  They had set an alarm clock to go off to coincide with the end of the count; quickly enough, they realized this was the perfect introduction for Paul’s segment, which opened with the words, “Woke up, fell out of bed.”

            It was nearing 3:00 in the morning as the Beatles departed from Abbey Road and stepped out into the near-silent, snow-covered city, weary but immensely satisfied at what they had accomplished on this day.

 

The Colour of Your Dreams was published by BearManor Media in 2024

 

You may order it online at either Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com

 

However, I encourage you to instead ask your local bookseller to order a copy for you.  Support local book stores!

What's in a Name?

 

There are some truly great band names in rock and roll, names that seem to perfectly fit the artists, and which are spoken of with reverence by their legions of fans.

But sometimes a name isn't always immediately obvious to the band when they first form.  Most bands, it seems, cycle through one or more names before discarding them for the appellation we now all know them as.  And given what some of those original names were, I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that there were second thoughts.

Here's a list of major bands, each of them household names, along with the names they had worked under before hitting the big time...

The Band / The Crackers

The Beach Boys / The Pendletones

The Beatles / Johnny and the Moondogs

The Bee Gees / Wee Johnny Hayes and the Blue Cats

Creedence Clearwater Revival / The Golliwogs

The Eagles / Teen King and the Emergencies

The Kinks / The Bo-Weevils

Nirvana / Ted Ed Fred

Pink Floyd / The Screaming Abdabs

R.E.M. / It Crawled From the South

Sonny & Cher / Caesar & Cleo

The Might Be Giants / El Grupo de Rock and Roll

U2 / The Hype

Van Halen / Mammoth

Can you picture yourself chanting "We love Wee Johnny Hayes and the Blue Cats!!!" at a concert?  Does SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND by Johnny and the Moondogs sound right to you?

Of course, some bands got it correct right from the start, picking their correct name early on:  Fleetwood Mac, Yes, Genesis, the Rolling Stones (well, okay, initially they called themselves the Rollin' Stones), Lothar and the Hand People....

The Rolling Stones Come to America

 An excerpt from my book

BRITISH INVASION '64

Published in 2023 by BearManor Media

It's tempting to say that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were destined to make music together.  They met as seven-year-olds in the same classroom and were close friends for the next four years until Michael (as Mick was then known) and Keith moved on to different schools, and lost contact with one another.  Seven years after that, in 1961, the two 18-year-olds found themselves waiting on the same train platform, sort of recognizing one another, but neither making the effort to reintroduce himself.  But then, Richards noticed Jagger was carrying record albums by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters and was astonished; he didn’t know anyone else who loved the Chess Chicago blues musicians the way he did.  The two young men then began talking in earnest, and each discovered that the other was no dilettante fan . . . they were both serious devotees in their love of American R&B and the blues.

Soon enough Keith (who played guitar) and Mick (who sang) began jamming with other friends, and it wasn’t long before the duo and their new roommate, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, found their way into Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, and began playing London clubs.  A few months later, Jones was looking to form his own blues group, and while Jagger and Richards weren’t initially on his list of people to join his band, they more or less fell into it soon enough.  Pressed for a name for their group, Jones glanced at the Muddy Waters record he was holding in his hands, and he saw a song title that appealed to him.  “We’re the Rollin’ Stones,” he proclaimed to the world[1].

They began woodshedding in clubs throughout England, and by early ’63 the classic line-up . . . Jagger, Richards, Jones, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts . . . had set.  A residency at London’s Crawdaddy Club generated buzz about the Stones being a powerful live act, and they soon attracted the attention of Andrew Loog Oldham.  Perhaps best described as equal parts wunderkind and hustler, Oldham was only 19 years old in 1963 (younger than any member of the Stones, in fact), but he had already established himself as a freelance rock music publicist, having worked for the Beatles, as well as handing the promotions for American folk artist Bob Dylan when he came to the UK earlier that year.  The Beatles had taken a shine to the young go-getter and encouraged him to pursue his interest in managing a band.  By many accounts, it was the Beatles themselves who suggested that Oldham go and see the Rolling Stones, whom the Fab Four had already met, and enjoyed attending their shows at the Crawdaddy.  Catching one of their performances that May, Oldham immediately saw the potential for the group to be a huge success, and he convinced them to let him be their manager.

Working tirelessly, Oldham launched a one-man marketing campaign that elevated the reputation of the Stones in London, and quickly brought them to the attention of Decca Records[2].  Their debut single that summer, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On”, made it to a respectable #21 in the UK.

A chance meeting between Lennon, McCartney, Jagger, and Richards, as both duos passed one another on a London sidewalk, led to a suggestion by Lennon that he and his songwriting partner had a half-finished tune that he thought would sound great if done by the Stones.  Repairing to a nearby pub, John and Paul put the finishing touches on a Bo Diddly beat number called “I Wanna Be Your Man”.  The two Stones happily accepted it, rushed into the studio, and the band made it to #12 on the chart with the song.

Having observed that Lennon and McCartney must certainly be earning a fair deal of money from their songwriting, Jagger suggested that the band try working on some original material as well.  The result was an instrumental dubbed “Stoned”, which was the B-side to their second single.  Rather than list all the band members’ names as the songwriters, the tune was credited to the pseudonymous “Nanker Phelge”, a nom de plume which would be employed in the future for songs that were not written solely by Jagger and Richards.

To hype his band, Oldham promoted them as the “Anti-Beatles” (a tactic which the Beatles themselves found amusing, and which they happily encouraged.)  Noted journalist and author Tom Wolfe best described the public personas of the two bands thus: “The Beatles want to hold your hand, but the Rolling Stones want to burn down your town.”  And while Brian Jones and Keith Richards[3] could be considered heartthrobs, the band on the whole were deemed fairly unattractive by pop music standards . . . which is precisely what they wanted.  The group’s very lack of conventional good looks was a key to their image as “bad boys”.  As one female fan (speaking for many) gushed, “They’re so ugly, they’re beautiful!”

 

 

The 'anonymous advertiser' of this magazine ad was almost certainly Andrew Loog Oldham

 

Not quite ready to place a self-penned song on their next A-side yet, their cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” was their next release, and it took them into the British Top Five.  Significantly, it skirted close that spring to the American Top 40, which prompted Oldham to book a brief US tour for his band for June.

Upon their arrival in New York City, they were met by 500 screaming girls . . . a significant number of whom had allegedly been hired by Oldham to give his band a Beatles-level welcome to America[4].  Also hired was New York disc jockey Murray “the K” Kaufman, the self-declared “Fifth Beatle”, who was joined at the hip to the Stones during their stay in the city so as to show them around town, gin up press coverage, and have them guest on his radio show.  The bandmembers found Murray tackily tedious, but there was one good thing that came from their compulsory affiliation: they heard him play a new R&B song by the Valentinos (a.k.a. Bobby Womack and his brothers), “It’s All Over Now”, and the band decided to cover it for their next album.

Their tour kicked off, appropriately enough, in San Bernadino, California, which is the final stop name-checked in “Route 66”, a song which the Stones loved and covered on their first album.  This initial show set the pace for a tour often fraught with mishaps and hostility, as a young man was able to relieve a police officer of his pistol during the concert and fired it at the stage, narrowly missing Jagger before the assailant was wrestled to the ground!  Next, in San Antonio, the Stones found themselves booked for four performances at the Texas Teen Fair, alongside such acts as Country & Western star George Jones, as well as the Marquis Chimps.  Backstage, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman got into an angry confrontation with some disapproving cowboys, and afterward the two young Englishmen promptly went to a sporting goods store and purchased handguns for themselves, since local police were proving to be inept at providing them with proper protection.

Next came the undisputed highlight of the American visit, as the Stones arrived in Chicago (where, unfathomably, Oldham had not booked any concerts for them).  There, they spent a full day in the heart of Chicago blues, the Chess Records studio, where they recorded no fewer than six songs (including “It’s All Over Now”), and in between numbers they downed copious amounts of whiskey with their heroes, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry.  The latter was particularly pleased that the Rolling Stones were cutting one of his songs on this day, “Around and Around”, as he had begun receiving royalty checks for his compositions that were covered by the Beatles and other British acts and was always happy to add to the tally.

Back on the road days later, the group played Excelsior, Minnesota; Omaha, Nebraska; Detroit, Michigan (where the local promoter bungled things so badly, there were less than 500 paying fans in a 14,000 seat arena); Pittsburgh and Harrisburg in Pennsylvania; and then finally back to New York City for two shows at Carnegie Hall (which, between hosting the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and the Dave Clark Five on stage in 1964, was making the venerable old venue as well known to the younger set for rock and roll as it was to elder generations for classical and jazz music).  By the end of their third week in America, the Stones were glad to be headed back home at last.  But if the touring was not always enjoyable, they did have the happy experience of recording at Chess. 

Yet there was also a bit of a controversy which flared up amid the tour.  Shortly after first arriving in California, the Stones made their US national television debut on ABC’s The Hollywood Palace.  Similar in format to The Ed Sullivan Show, the Palace featured a variety of acts each week, from dancers and comedians to circus acrobats and . . . increasingly . . . rock and roll bands.  Unlike the rival show over on CBS, this one had a different host each week.  For the episode which aired on June the 6^th, the host was singer and actor Dean Martin.  The controversy erupted over the tenor of the jokes which were written for Martin to deliver when introducing the Rolling Stones.  Although fairly innocuous (“I’ve been rolled when I was stoned myself” played into Martin’s on-stage drunkard persona; “You know all these new groups today, you’re under the impression they have long hair . . . not true at all, it’s an optical illusion.  They just have low foreheads and high eyebrows” is a joke that could have been applied to virtually any of the British bands), Martin seemed to reveal some personal condescension when, after the band’s set, the host turned to the camera and blandly said, “Aren’t they great?” and rolled his eyes upward.

As uproars go, this was a relative tempest in a teapot.  But it exposed division along generational lines, as teens saw it as a mean-spirited attack on what they cared for, and their parents tended to find it as a funny denunciation of these ridiculous longhaired so-called ‘musicians’.  The divide would only widen in the years to come.  And in the meantime, Andrew Loog Oldham could only delight in the publicity it generated.

However, there was one more positive event that took place during the band’s sojourn to America.  London Records, Decca’s American subsidiary, took it upon itself to try and bolster the chart power of the Rolling Stones in the US, so they selected a song from the group’s debut album, “Tell Me” (the very first Jagger/Richards-penned tune to be recorded), and put it out.  It instantly attracted airplay, and within a few weeks it peaked at #24, the first appearance in the American Top 40 by the Stones.

A mere two weeks after London released “Tell Me”, Decca rush-released “It’s All Over Now” from the Chess session as the group’s next worldwide single.  It was their first Number One in the UK, and a big hit in several other countries, but it only made it to #26 in America . . . perhaps because it was competing for airplay that summer with “Tell Me”.  Still, it gave the Rolling Stones two concurrent Top 30 hits in the US and set the stage for greater success to come.

Bedraggled and somewhat disillusioned with America, the Stones returned to Britain, but perhaps with the satisfaction of knowing they had left discord, bewilderment, and mania in their wake; all-in-all, the Rolling Stones’ manifesto writ large.

 

 

BRITISH INVASION '64 is available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, or may be ordered from your local bookseller from BearManorMedia.com 

 

 

---

[1] “Rollin’ Stone” was written by Waters and first recorded by him in 1950.

[2] Once again, there are compelling accounts that the patronage of the Beatles played a key role in the early development of the Rolling Stones.  As legend has it, the fact that Decca had so brusquely dismissed the Beatles when the band auditioned for the label in early 1962 (“The Beatles have no future in show business” said the rejection letter) had become common knowledge in both Liverpool and London, and as the band soared to new heights with EMI in 1963, Decca, and in particular its head Dick Rowe, became the butt of many jokes in the music industry.  George Harrison thought it unfair that Rowe was being ridiculed so relentlessly, as the Beatles on reflection agreed that their audition wasn’t very good, and they didn’t blame Decca for declining to sign them.  Wanting to do Rowe a good turn for all the grief he was enduring, Harrison reportedly took him aside when they were both appearing on a television program, and he suggested that Decca give a listen to the Rolling Stones.  Rowe did, he liked what he heard, and he signed them up.  With the tremendous success of the Stones in the years to come, Rowe’s rejection of the Beatles was soon forgotten.

[3] At least in 1963.

[4] More legitimate were the several dozen teenaged girls who stormed the lobby of the Astor Hotel later that day as the Rolling Stones were checking in, forcing the band to take refuge in a linen closet while the police swept the fans out of the building.

 An excerpt from my book

CARY GRANT: TAKING THE LEAD

published in 2022 by BearManor Media.

***

("The Awful Truth" was made in 1937 for Columbia Pictures, written and directed by Leo McCarey, and starred Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, and Ralph Bellamy.)

From the outset of McCarey’s assignment to the project, chaos seemed to reign, although McCarey remained very much at the center of the vortex and was seemingly actively encouraging it as a necessary part of his creative process.

Harry Cohn expected his writers to work at the studio so that they were close at hand if he needed to see them.  But Viña Delmar refused to even step foot on the lot, so she and McCarey either wrote together at her home, or else when they desired a change of scenery, they would drive over to Columbia, park outside the gates, and write from the front seat of the car.

All the same, once filming commenced, McCarey seemed to discard a good deal of what he and Delmar had written, and instead would spend the morning scribbling new lines, often on whatever scraps of paper he could find, and then assemble the cast and crew to shoot the scene.  The actors, having only a scant amount of time to learn their new lines, were flummoxed . . . Grant in particular.

Grant’s entire filmmaking experience had been within the structure of the Hollywood studios.  That meant that the script would be ready in enough time for the actors to memorize their lines.  Once on the set, they would usually rehearse a scene several times exactly as written, and then it would be shot.  Everything was done on a strict timetable, and although films frequently did go over schedule, there was never any question that each day’s work would begin at a set time, and work would continue uninterrupted until the scheduled end of each day’s shooting.

Yet now here was McCarey, often letting his cast and crew sit idle each morning while he scribbled away at that day’s pages, laughing at what, as yet, remained his own private jokes.  Or else he would sit at the piano on the set of Lucy’s penthouse apartment, playing songs, largely to amuse himself.  Even after a few productive hours of filmmaking, he often dismissed his cast and crew for the day at 3:00, rather than the customary 6:00 PM.

Cohn had informants everywhere, and he was growing increasingly exasperated by the reports he was getting about his expensive new director’s work habits.  Finally, he stalked down to the set, where he found McCarey entertaining the visiting Harold Lloyd.  The mogul angrily barked that all visitors were to vacate the set immediately, and Lloyd departed . . . followed immediately behind by McCarey, who went home and refused to return to the lot until Cohn apologized to him, to the cast and the crew, and wrote a letter of apology to Lloyd.

To the astonishment of anyone who knew Harry Cohn, the studio head did just that, however begrudgingly.  In spite of his frustrations with McCarey, he recognized that the director was something of a genius, and geniuses were invariably difficult.  More importantly, McCarey had a track record of producing profitable films, and that was what mattered most to Cohn.  The mogul could swallow his pride . . . at least this one time . . . if it meant getting a box office hit.

By the end of the first week, Dunne had gotten over her perplexity and was taking McCarey’s eccentricities in stride, and Bellamy had concluded the director was a “comedy genius” and began thoroughly enjoying himself.  But Grant was growing increasingly panicked, so much so that he finally wrote a memo to Harry Cohn entitled “What’s Wrong with This Picture” and offered to pay Columbia $5,000 to let him out of the film.  Shown the memo by Cohn, McCarey was so offended by his lead actor going behind his back this way, that he offered to kick in another $5,000 of his own money to be rid of Grant.

Cohn refused to release Grant.  For one thing, it would have cost time . . . and in Hollywood time was money . . . to find another suitable actor.  But furthermore, the studio head had seen the first few days of footage McCarey had shot, and he liked what he saw.  Harry Cohn once famously said, “I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad.  If my fanny squirms, it’s bad.  If my fanny doesn’t squirm, it’s good.  It’s as simple as that.”  And McCarey’s film wasn’t making his fanny squirm.

Things were tense on the set between director and star when filming resumed, but eventually the relationship improved between McCarey and Grant.  In large part this was because Grant was finally grasping what his character was about, and he therefore became more comfortable in the role, and gave up the fear that he was ruining his career with this film.  He was also greatly enjoying working with Dunne and Bellamy.  Furthermore, the actor respected that McCarey encouraged him to improvise, as Norman McLeod had done on Topper, and the director was an appreciative audience for Grant’s humor, often bursting out laughing at the actor’s ad-libs.  As filming continued, more than one person on set observed that Grant’s performance as Jerry Warriner . . . charming, witty, warm, zany, somewhat devious . . . seemed to reflect more and more the personality of the film’s director.

For his own peace of mind, Cohn made a point of steering clear of McCarey’s set.  But as the scheduled end of the shooting arrived, the mogul’s curiosity got the better of him.  To his chagrin, as he entered the sound stage one mid-afternoon, he found the director mixing cocktails for his cast instead doing any filming.  Cohn’s temper flared, but McCarey instantly calmed him by announcing that they were toasting their completion…they had just shot the final scene.  Not only had the director brought the film in on time, but he was $200,000 under budget as well!  Cohn happily accepted a drink and toasted them all.

Only at this point was the method of Leo McCarey’s madness obvious.  His constant rewrites and the lack of a finished script was his way of keeping his actors mentally fresh and to prevent them from growing too comfortable (and bored) with the script.  By frequently placing them off-balance, he knew they would be unable to fall back on any of their casual acting tricks and give anything less than a completely sincere performance.  It also added a frantic air to the acting that bolstered the film’s comedy.

The actors were often first learning each scene on the day they shot it.  McCarey would rehearse them multiple times, but in a loose fashion, allowing Grant, Dunne and Bellamy to play around with the language and smooth it out in their own speaking styles, and of course welcoming improvisation.  By the time it came to shoot the scene, the actors had creatively invested themselves into it, and they knew the scene’s beats intimately, even if the dialogue might undergo some spur of the moment alterations.  As a result, it was rare that McCarey didn’t get what he wanted in the first take.

 

***

 Cary Grant: Taking the Lead is available in paperback, hardcover, and eBook at BearManorMedia.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Amazon.com

 

Extraordinary Courage

 December the 7th of 1941.

On that day of infamy, there were countless acts of heroism, both small and large.

Although caught utterly by surprise, the American sailors and soldiers instantly sprang into action. They managed to down 29 Japanese Zeros and sank 5 Japanese mini-subs. The ferociousness of the American defenses was one of the factors why Admiral Chuichi Nagumo opted to not launch a follow-up attack on Pearl Harbor, sparing the remaining American ships from destruction.

(Of the 67 ships in the Japanese attack armada on December 7th, the U.S. Navy would go on to sink 66 of them during the war.)

Perhaps the most famous act of heroism on that day...quite probably the greatest...came from Doris "Dorie" Miller. He was a cook and laundryman aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia (such menial tasks were among the only jobs allowed to black seamen in that segregated era of the military). When the attack began, his ship was hit by seven torpedoes, but although gravely damaged, it remained afloat.

Miller was sent to assist at an anti-aircraft gun, but when he arrived at his post he discovered that the gun had been destroyed by a torpedo blast. He then went to help carry the wounded to safety, dodging strafing bullets from the Japanese planes. After having helped move the West Virginia's mortally wounded Captain to a safe place, Dorie was then assigned to assist feeding ammunition to an anti-aircraft gun.

However, finding it unmanned, Miller took control of the gun himself, although he had no training whatsoever on the weapon. A white officer, seeing Dorie at the gun, rushed over to help him by feeding him ammo belts. In spite of bullets, explosions and flames all around him, Miller continued firing until he was all out of ammunition, and is credited with shooting down up to six Zeroes.

The West Virginia was by this point too badly damaged to remain afloat, and it slowly began to sink. Rather than escaping the ship for his safety, Dorie went to work carrying wounded sailors out of harm's way, often braving burning oil-slick waters to do so. He refused to leave until the order was finally given to abandon ship.

For his actions, Dorie became the first African American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy's highest honor. He was brought back to the United States to go on war bond tours, but eventually resumed active duty in the Pacific.

On November 24, 1943 his ship, the carrier U.S.S. Liscome Bay, was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the Battle of Makin. After Navy relief efforts picked up all of the survivors, Doris Miller was declared Missing in Action on December 7, 1943...two years to the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Later in 1944, he was officially declared Killed in Action.

 

Dorie didn't live to see his Navy desegregated, or to see men and women of his skin color elevated to the highest ranks of officers.  But his act of sheer heroism in the face of the gravest of danger...proof positive that heroes come in all colors...helped spur the drive to end "Jim Crow" in the U.S. military, and that came to pass in just a few short years after Miller's death.

To honor Dorie, the Navy first named a frigate, the U.S.S. Miller, after him.  Once that was finally decommissioned after long service, it was announced by the Biden Administration that the next scheduled nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, due to set sail in 2029, will be commissioned as the U.S.S. Doris Miller.

"For distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. While at the side of his Captain on the bridge, Miller, despite enemy strafing and bombing and in the face of a serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety, and later manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge."

 

 

Rolling the Dice

 

The Moulin Rouge is one of the most fascinating tales of the golden years of Vegas.

In the 1950s, black performers were more than welcome to sing and play on the stages of the various casino hotels. However, kowtowing to Southern high rollers, the casinos maintained a strict segregationist policy. Thus, 'colored' singers and musicians could not stay at the hotels, play in the casinos, eat in the restaurants, or even walk through the front door...they had to come and go through the service entrance in the back.

(When Ella Fitzgerald finally managed to secure a contract that allowed her to swim in the hotel pool, if nothing else, she had to do so alone, and when she was done, the pool was drained and refilled with new water for the white guests!)

This still being the era of 'separate but equal' (hah!), some African-American financiers decided to create a little equality for themselves, and they bankrolled the Moulin Rouge, a casino that catered specifically...but not exclusively...to black patrons.

It was an immediate success, for although this was still the era of Jim Crow, a black middle class was nevertheless emerging in America, with disposable income they were looking to dispose of, and the Moulin Rouge fit that bill perfectly.

At first the other casinos were thrilled with its success, as it took the pressure off of them from the likes of the NAACP to desegregate their own facilities. And it wasn't as if they were losing any money because of it...all of those black gamblers weren't even allowed in their own casinos.

But then their attitude changed.

One of the reasons why the hotels booked such high powered performers for their showrooms was because guests knew that after the shows, the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Louis Prima would hit the casino floors themselves and mingle to all hours of the early morning. That helped ensure the casinos kept a large crowd at the tables and slots from midnight to dawn.

But with the Moulin Rouge boasting the likes of Count Basie and Duke Ellington on their stage, Sinatra and the others would decamp from their own hotels immediately after their own performances and head over there, usually to jump on stage for impromptu jam sessions. Word quickly got out, and white gamblers flocked to the Moulin Rouge to catch the action, leaving the casinos of the other hotels quiet and, ominously, not earning money.

This was not acceptable, and it would be stopped.

The mob bosses who ran the casinos also controlled such industry franchises as food and liquor suppliers. Suddenly the Moulin Rouge found itself unable to get either. And then city inspectors began showing up and hitting them with fines for previously non-existent code violations. And no one was willing to risk the LVFD not showing up if a fire were to mysteriously break out at the casino.

Seeing the writing on the wall, the Moulin Rouge shut down just a few months after opening, and with it went Vegas's first and only attempt at a black casino.

POSTSCRIPT: Having tasted some of the Vegas high life, African-Americans weren't about to let it slip away again, and they had some powerful white allies. If they couldn't have their own pie, they'd demand a slice from the others. Sammy Davis, Jr. told the casinos that if he was good enough to sing there, then he was good enough to stay there, eat there, and gamble there, too. Sinatra insisted that from then on, he would only perform for de-segregated audiences. Tony Bennett was told by one blatantly racist hotel exec that he "hoped" Bennett wouldn't hire any black musicians when he came to perform; Bennett reacted to this by promptly hiring Count Basie and his Orchestra to back him up. "That motherf*cker doesn't want to see one black face on stage?" Bennett said. "Well, now he's going to have to look at twenty of them!"

Most of the guys running the casinos were from the East, and they personally didn't have any real problem with letting blacks stay and play, but they understood the power of appearances, so they contrived to make it look as if they had no choice but to desegregate. "It would be really helpful if you could arrange some protest marches outside of the hotels," one mobster told Sammy Davis, Jr. He did just that, and the hotels promptly 'caved in', allowing people of color to come and leave their money in the casinos just as freely as any white person could. When bigots complained, the wise guys just shrugged their shoulders and said, "Whaddya gonna do? Our hands were tied."

In a sense, the Moulin Rouge was the spark that helped light the fire. It deserves to be remembered and honored.