As a kid growing up in Chicago, I often wrote to my favorite movie and TV stars. Surprisingly, I got a fair number of replies. But of all the letters and photos I received back then, I don’t think anything ever thrilled me more than the package I got from that feline temptress who regularly reduced Batman to a quivering pile of mush—Julie Newmar.

The year was 1971 and I was all of 11 years old. I was already familiar with Julie Newmar from her short-lived series called My Living Doll in which she played AF709, also known as Rhoda Miller, a robot who lived with an Air Force shrink played by Bob Cummings. In this Johnson-era, testosterone-laced male fantasy, Cummings was trying to transform Newmar’s sexy android into the Perfect Woman, i.e., one that would do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it! (Is it possible that the modern-day women’s movement was formed just so they could band together to protest this sitcom?) I specifically remember an episode where Cummings was teaching Julie how to get into a girdle, something her character wasn’t familiar with (and obviously didn’t need!).

Before her stint as a robot, Julie Newmar was most famous as one of MGM’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. She followed that up by being perfectly cast as Stupefyin’ Jones in the film version of L’il Abner. After the cancellation of her robot TV show after one season, she landed the role that forever made her a pop culture icon. With her skintight, form-fitting suit, she was, with apologies to Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriweather, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, and Anne Hathaway, the sexiest Catwoman ever to claw her way through Gotham City. Newmar’s chemistry with Adam West’s Batman was so intense that my pre-teen self practically needed a cigarette after every episode. I can’t remember how I got the actress’s home address in New York but I certainly remember my excitement when a large manila envelope from 19 Beekman Place arrived in the mail at my Chicago home.

Here is the letter and one of the three photos that Julie Newmar sent me. Reading her sweet words, I wonder if she had a clue that the person she was writing to was only 11 years old. I am mortified that I apparently told her about being “first in my school” and have no idea what “first” I was talking about. I love her suggestive comment that she’d like to be in more films as “one way of visiting me,” and the fact that she takes the time to explain how she prefers New York over Los Angeles.

These are the other two photos Julie sent me in that manila envelope although I can’t find my signed copies. On the photo she sent of herself in her skin-tight Catwoman garb, she wrote “To D, Love J” and drew little cat whiskers on the J!

Julie Newmar was born 93 years ago today in Los Angeles as Julia Newmeyer. I’ve run into her a bunch of times over the years in L.A. and even today she causes a sensation when she enters a restaurant or theater. You can practically hear nerves being pinched as everyone in the room cranes their neck to gaze at the impossibly statuesque woman who still looks like she could give Bruce Wayne a run for his money. I’ve often seen her around town with her only child, a son named John, who was born when Newmar was 48 years old. John has Down Syndrome and is deaf, and it’s heartwarming to see the way she cares for him when the two of them are out in public.

Did you know Julie Newmar is also an inventor who has two U.S. patents for bras and two for pantyhose? She’s also a real estate entrepreneur and an avid gardener who has successfully campaigned for a ban on leaf blowers in Los Angeles. On top of her acting and dancing skills, Newmar is a classically trained pianist. There was a fun episode of My Living Doll where Rhoda plays a complicated Chopin piece much to the shock of her “owner” Bob Cummings, and that was really Newmar playing. Take a look at this brief clip:

Newmar last reprised Catwoman in the 2017 animated feature Batman vs. Two-Face, a full half-century after her original stint in the role. Here’s wishing a happy and healthy birthday to the incomparable Julie Newmar.

I was sad to hear that the brilliant Louise Lasser died yesterday at the age of 87. I admit that my first thought when I heard this news was about the encounter I had with the actress many years ago when I fear I caused her great distress. I didn’t mean to, I swear! I’ve always been well aware that celebrities are just regular folks with the same issues and challenges as the rest of us. The last thing I’d ever want to do is to act like some kind of fawning sycophant (or worse) and make someone uncomfortable. Which is why I still cringe when I remember my bizarre experience running into Louise Lasser back in the day that I worry may have contributed to her mental breakdown.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was the surprise hit of the year. A Norman Lear parody of soap operas, this nightly foray into high camp pushed all the envelopes. The star of the show was Louise Lasser, who was mostly known back then as Woody Allen’s ex-wife and the neurotic spouse in a series of Nyquil commercials. With the sudden and enormous success of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Lasser had seemingly overnight become the darling of the avant-garde and she was often seen hanging out with the likes of Andy Warhol and Gore Vidal.

Lasser was coming to Chicago in a one-woman show that would capitalize on her new fame. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what Lasser would do during this show. Did she sing? Would she do stand-up? Maybe just talk to the crowd and answer questions? But I was thrilled at the chance to see the eccentric star so I cut my college classes the next day and headed to the Park West Theater. I waited for hours in a line snaking down Armitage Avenue in Chicago’s swanky Lincoln Park to purchase one of the sought-after tickets. Mission accomplished, I threw the ticket into my ever-present backpack. As the date of the show neared, rumors circulated that Lasser was not doing well emotionally. Some people speculated that she was crumbling under the weight of her newfound celebrity status along with the rigors of starring in five shows a week. Shortly before her Park West engagement, the show was abruptly cancelled. “Ms. Lasser is experiencing minor health problems,” the notice read. Oh well. I was disappointed, but an opportunity came up for me to visit New York the following weekend. Since my plans had changed, I decided to go.

The very night that I would have been in the Park West Theater in Chicago watching Lasser’s act, I found myself in the New Apollo Theater on 42^nd Street and Broadway. As the lights came on at intermission, I spotted a familiar shock of red hair two rows in front of me. There, paging nervously through her program, sat Louise Lasser! What?!

I followed Lasser to a small lobby by the front doors of the theater where she went to have a cigarette. She was alone and looked wide-eyed and frightened. I was so stunned at the irony of the situation that I ran up to her and shouted, “Louise Lasser! Louise Lasser! I was supposed to be watching your show tonight in Chicago!” She responded as if I had caught her red-handed. As I reached into my backpack to find the ticket to her Park West show to prove my point, she lurched backwards against the wall, as if she feared I might be pulling out a gun. The more I tried to appear nonchalant and non-threatening, the more agitated she became. Still, I was so taken with the strange coincidence of our encounter that I wanted to record it. I whipped out my camera and asked her if I could snap a quick photo. Lasser backed further into the wall, her eyes darting. “Take the picture, take the picture,” she whimpered in a staccato monotone. Looking as if she wanted to die, she wrapped her purple shawl around her red hair and stared off into the distance. I took the photo.

And here it is, almost 50 years later, her Danny Miller-induced terror recorded for posterity. Ugh, what was I thinking? Later that month, I heard that Louise Lasser had checked herself into a mental facility. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman continued for a while without her and was eventually cancelled. I’m not saying that I caused the actress’s nervous breakdown, but I was clearly responsible for her panic on that particular day. Is it any wonder why I’ve always shied away from approaching celebrities in public since then? (And I haven’t even told you about the time I followed actress Ellen Burstyn for six city blocks.)

Anne Frank was born 97 years ago today, on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany. As most people know, Anne and her family emigrated to the Netherlands in 1934 when the Nazis began making life unbearable for Germany’s Jews. Later, when the Germans occupied Holland, Anne hid with her family for over two years in the attic of a building where Mr. Frank ran his business. The family and four other Jews hiding with them almost made it to the end of the war until someone informed on them in 1944. All of them were sent to concentration camps, and only Otto Frank survived. When he returned to Amsterdam and eventually learned that his wife and daughters were dead, one of the people who had helped them in hiding turned over the diary that Anne had kept during those years that she had found on the attic floor after the family was arrested. Anne’s diary became one of the most well-known first-person accounts from this time period, and Anne Frank herself a beloved historic figure. Growing up Jewish in Chicago, the presence of Anne Frank had always loomed large.

My first experience with Anne Frank was in sixth grade library class but it’s not one I’m proud of. Twice a week, when the girls went off to gym class, the boys would meet in the school’s small, crowded library. We were supposed to do our homework, research class projects, and nurture our love of literature under the bifocaled supervision of Mrs. Leavitt, the school librarian. Segregated from the well-mannered girls, we considered the school library the ideal place to unleash our ever-increasing testosterone levels and “boys will be boys” hijinks. One of the main tools of our demented play that year, I’m sorry to say, was an audio recording of The Diary of Anne Frank, read by the actress Julie Harris.

A group of boys, led by the class bully who would later do prison time, had found a short passage on the recording where Miss Harris, as thirteen-year-old Anne, talks about getting her period for the first time. In our limited universe, this thirty-second clip provided enough titillation to cause a near riot in the library as boys fought to gain control of the scratchy LPs. Mrs. Leavitt, at first delighted that we had taken an interest in the story, eventually became suspicious of our zeal. One afternoon, she ripped the headphones off of a boy’s head ’s head just as the brief passage was being read. Horrified, the librarian unleashed a tirade of outrage and condemnation. We were sick, we were perverts, we were the final indignity suffered by the Franks, insults to the memory of six million murdered Jews. Mrs. Leavitt had lost some of her own family members in the Holocaust so her horror took on a personal tone. To make matters worse, one boy had stuck a glob of Bazooka bubble gum on the black and white photo of Anne on the album’s dust jacket. Another shameful crime, made worse by the fact that Mrs. Leavitt considered gum as nefarious a substance as heroin or cocaine. At our next library session, she brought to class a large mason jar filled to the brim with a thick, translucent liquid she said was human saliva. “This is what you’re swallowing when you chew gum all day,” she explained. I tried to imagine Mrs. Leavitt spitting into a mason jar for hours end and I thought it odd that she railed about the evils of gum-chewing with similar intensity that she had used to decry Nazi war crimes. Still, I did feel bad about using Anne Frank’s diary as a source of fun, and I vowed to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the young girl’s death.

The next year, in history class, we were shown a short French documentary by Alain Resnais about Auschwitz called Night and Fog. Without the slightest historical context, the gruesome newsreel images of the mountains of hair, eyeglasses, shoes, and gold teeth extracted from Jewish mouths numbed us into uncomfortable silence. We were horrified, but by the time we saw the corpses being bulldozed into large pits, we had been anesthetized into the same detached reaction produced by nightly color pictures of the Vietnam War on the network news. History as shock therapy did little to foster our understanding of the world around us.

By high school, I had read Anne Frank’s diary in earnest along with several of the short stories she had written in hiding. Despite our different circumstances, it was easy for me to identify with Anne Frank. She was a strong-willed child who was misunderstood by her family and she found comfort only through her writing. Anne did not fit in. She found it hard to live up to the standards set by her perfect sister, Margot, and she had a difficult time dealing with her mother’s unpredictable emotions. The miserable living situation of the Franks reminded me of the growing sense of claustrophobia in my own home. My parents’ marriage was coming to an ugly end and, like Anne, I felt I faced a very uncertain future. I almost envied the Franks’ forced confinement—they had to stay together and unite against the evils lurking outside. The Franks’ co-horts in hiding, the Van Daans, reminded me of many of my parents’ friends—loud, obnoxious Jews with lots of opinions and little tact—I could relate quite well to Anne’s intolerance of them. I remember watching the film version of the diary with Millie Perkins and thinking that if I had been Anne Frank, I would have run out into the street and turned myself in to the Gestapo rather than spend another minute listening to Shelley Winters’ abrasive nagging.

Anne Frank and my mother were born within five years of each other. I began obsessing on the parallel lives the two girls led during the war. The week that Anne was ferreted to the attic hideaway in the middle of the night, my mother moved into a luxurious five-bedroom apartment on Chicago’s lakefront. While Anne was going hungry on watery potato soup and stale bread, my mother was gorging on Frango mint sundaes at Marshall Field’s department store. Anne charted the course of the war on a little wall map of Europe and dreamed of being rescued by the Allied forces. My mother’s war-time experience consisted of going to bond drives at the Oriental Theater to see Bob Hope and Mickey Rooney. In their love of movies and movie stars, my young mother and Anne Frank had much in common. Both girls’ bedroom walls were covered with photos of Hollywood actors including Norma Shearer and Deanna Durbin. But why was it that my mother lived a life of carefree privilege while another young Jewish girl faced such a cruel and harsh reality? When Anne Frank was arrested in August 1944 and sent with her family on the very last shipment of Dutch Jews to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, my mother remained blissfully unaware that such a fate could ever befall a girl her age.

Most of the events in Anne Frank’s short life were dictated by antisemitism. Born in Germany, Anne was three years old when Hitler became Chancellor and began placing restrictions on Germany’s Jewish citizens. Otto Frank moved his family to Holland, hoping for a more peaceful existence, but the onset of World War II and the German occupation of the Netherlands put an end to such hopes. Anne began losing many of the freedoms she had taken for granted—she was no longer allowed to ride a bicycle, she couldn’t go to movies, she was thrown out of her Montessori school, and finally, the family was forced into hiding to escape deportation.

I remembered Anne’s oft-repeated line, that “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart” and I wondered if I would have had the same outlook had I experienced a fraction of the indignities she suffered. Growing up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Chicago, I had little experience with antisemitism. Once, the six-year-old son of our landlord forbade me to step on the grass in front of our apartment building because I was a “dirty Jew.” The fact that I just rolled my eyes and we continued our game of “Mission: Impossible” tells me that his remark did not make me fear for my safety.

When I reached college, my antisemitic radar was more developed. One of the professors at my university published a pamphlet claiming that six million Jews were not murdered by the Nazis, and that the diary of Anne Frank was a hoax. When I spent my Junior Year Abroad in Paris, I was horrified to see the amount of neo-Nazi propaganda and anti-Jewish graffiti. Visiting a French friend’s cousin in the Black Forest region of Germany, I asked my friend to translate the section of her cousin’s fifth-grade history text that pertained to World War II. “During the war, some Jews were sent to work camps” was the book’s summation of the Holocaust.

During that year in Europe, I made my first visit to the attic where Anne had hid with her family. Walking around the rooms that I had read about so often induced a kind of altered state. I could see Anne and Peter Van Daan looking out of the little piece of window that was their only link to the outside world. I could visualize Mrs. Frank standing over the sink peeling the rotting potatoes that the helpers below would bring them with stolen ration cards. When I spotted a small piece of the original frayed wallpaper sticking out in Peter Van Daan’s tiny bedroom, I couldn’t help myself—I ripped it off and stuck it in my pocket. My God, I later thought, if everyone did that, the whole attic would be picked clean in minutes. I kept the wallpaper fragment next to the small rock I had lifted from one of the barracks during a visit to the Dachau concentration camp.

Several years later, I was working as a writer of educational films. I heard that the Anne Frank Center in Amsterdam was developing a project for schools involving the diary. They wanted to use Anne Frank’s story to teach young children about prejudice and discrimination. My obsession paid off and I got the assignment. I was given access to never-published scrapbooks of the Frank family that had recently been discovered in Germany. I re-read every page of Anne’s original diary, the version she herself edited towards the end of the war, and the version Otto Frank edited for publication after his daughter’s death. As part of my research, I was given after-hours access to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Wandering through the darkened rooms alone, I truly felt a connection to the long-lost girl. I studied each room in detail, looking away only when I came to the now glass-covered spot in Peter Van Daan’s bedroom where some psycho vandal had torn off a small piece of wallpaper.

I have since seen many other movie, TV, and theatrical depictions of Anne’s story including Yours, Anne, a 1985 musical (you heard me!) about Anne Frank starring Trini Alvarado and a 1998 revival of the original Broadway play with Natalie Portman as Anne and the late Linda Lavin as Mrs. Van Daan. The recent Disney/Hulu series A Small Light was the latest version of the story to hit the small screen, focusing primarily on the actions of Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who helped to hide the Franks and the others. It was excellent.

Anne Frank remains one of the most recognizable symbols of World War II and the Holocaust. I often wonder what Anne would be doing today had she not died of typhus just before the Liberation. Having experienced the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, would she have still believed that people were really good at heart? I have no doubt whatsoever that she would be horrified by the actions of the current American government and how they are following Hitler’s playbook to the letter to dehumanize immigrants and refugees.

As a survivor, would Anne have published her diary after the war? Would the world have embraced her story as fully as it did coming from such an innocent source, frozen in eternal childhood? I do believe that Anne Frank would have become a remarkable person, a dynamic, complex, and gifted writer. Towards the end of her life, Anne Frank displayed a maturity that belied her young years. In her last diary entry, on August 1, 1944, three days before her arrest, she wrote:

“I’ve already told you that I have a dual personality. One half embodies my exuberant cheerfulness, making fun of everything, my high-spiritedness, and above all, the way I take everything lightly. This side is usually lying in wait and pushes away the other, the better side and that’s why most people find me so insufferable…I try terribly hard to change myself, but I’m always fighting against a more powerful enemy…finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be and what I could be if…there weren’t any other people living in the world.”

Marilyn Monroe was born 100 years ago today in Los Angeles as Norma Jeane Mortenson. I’m thrilled to see so many talks, screenings, and attention paid to the truly gifted actress who sadly died in 1962 at the age of 36. Most of the coverage I’ve seen of Marilyn’s centennial has been dignified and respectful, honoring her vaunted place as a cultural icon and acknowledging many of her great performances and the promise of films that were to come that we’ll never see including Something’s Got to Give, the film she was making with Dean Martin the year that she died that was later retooled as Move Over, Darling with Doris Day and James Garner.

The marketing of Marilyn Monroe has always been a Big Industry around the world and there were plenty of kooks who came out of the woodwork to exploit her fame. I remember the woman who got a lot of attention who claimed she was the daughter Marilyn gave birth to in 1947. Her insane story claimed that she was placed by the mafia into an Italian family in Queens but that “the pretty lady” used to visit the little girl regularly throughout the 1950s. I vividly remember when this woman was interviewed by Tom Snyder on the old NBC Tomorrow show and how shocked I was that she had climbed that high on the network food chain. At the time, she was in her 30s and she made the mistake of trying to look like Monroe which only made her look like one of the Marilyn impersonators you can find in abundance on Hollywood Boulevard. I don’t know if this woman is still around but if she were you’d think that she would have found a distant relative of Monroe’s by now and had a DNA test done.

There are still plenty of Marilyn impersonators around and some of them are quite skilled. Most wear facsimiles of the famous dress from The Seven Year Itch that blew upwards when Marilyn stood over the subway grate (a scene that so infuriated Joe DiMaggio that he stormed off the set and begged Marilyn to leave the film). I remember chatting with one of the more impressive Marilyns once in the Grauman’s Chinese Theater forecourt and complimenting her, at which point she said “Thank you ever so!” in perfect Marilyn pitch. Of course, that voice itself was something Marilyn created as part of her image, it wasn’t her real speaking voice. Several years ago, Marilyn’s actual stand-in from the 1950s used to attend screenings of Monroe’s films around town. She looked a lot like Marilyn back in the day so it was fascinating to get a glimpse of how Marilyn might have looked if she had been able to grow old.

I’m pleased that the more prurient aspects of the Marilyn Monroe Industrial Complex seem to be taking a back seat this year to true scholarship and a much more compassionate view of the late actress. So many people have been speaking for Marilyn Monroe in the 64 years since her death and long before that, what a shame that she was never able to speak for herself.

Or was she?

I remember being flabbergasted 20 years ago when a front-page article in the Los Angeles Times purported to reveal actual transcripts of interviews Marilyn did with her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, shortly before her death. The transcripts, some of them very prurient, were released by a former Los Angeles County prosecutor named John Miner who believed that Marilyn Monroe did not commit suicide but was a victim of foul play. Miner was one of the principal investigators of Monroe’s death in 1962. He interviewed Dr. Greenson, who he says played for him the stream-of-consciousness audiotapes that Marilyn had recorded as part of her therapy. According to Miner, Greenson let him hear the tapes only on the condition that he would never reveal their contents. The tapes were allegedly destroyed before Greenson’s death and no transcripts were thought to exist…until years later when Miner claimed he had gone home that day and transcribed a bunch of them from memory.

Miner had kept his promise to Dr. Greenson, but after the psychiatrist’s death, when books about Monroe tried to implicate Greenson himself in the movie star’s demise, Miner claimed that he got permission from Greenson’s widow to reveal the secret transcripts. These are the ones that appeared on the front page of the L.A. Times. On the one hand, even if they are legit, it’s an abuse of privileged information on par with the excerpts of Jackie Kennedy’s letters to her clergyman that were released after Jackie’s death. In the wake of her husband’s assassination, Jackie wrote to her priest that she was in so much pain that she contemplated ending her life. Marilyn, on the other hand, seemed anything but despondent on the transcripts of her talks with Dr. Greenson, and she was making lots of plans for her future including a commitment to study Shakespeare with Lee Strasberg.

I’ll pay him to work only with me. He said I could do Shakespeare, I’ll make him prove it…Then I’ll produce and act in the Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Film Festival which will put his major plays on film...I’ve read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines. I won’t have to worry about the scripts. I’ll have the greatest script writer who ever lived working for me and I don’t have to pay him…I’ve some wonderful ideas for Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude. I feel certain I’ll win an Oscar for one or more of my Shakespearean women.

Yes, I do feel a little weird reading Marilyn’s private comments to her shrink if they are authentic, not to mention reprinting them here. But they are mostly flattering to the film star and do a lot to broaden our idea of what made her tick. And they are already in the public record. Marilyn is obviously an intelligent, introspective person. In addition to Shakespeare, she talks about other authors she is reading including Joyce and Dolstoevsky. She is clearly someone who wants to be taken seriously despite her movie star image that she had a big hand in creating. Among her ruminations are these fond memories of Clark Gable with whom she had recently made The Misfits which turned out to be the final film for both of these cultural icons.

He was so nice to me and I didn’t deserve it. I was having problems with Arthur and being sick and I held up the shooting a lot. Clark protected me from Huston who kept giving me a bad time. In the kissing scenes, I kissed him with real affection. I didn’t want to go to bed with him, but I wanted him to know how much I liked and appreciated him. When I came back from a day off the set, he patted my ass and told me if I didn’t behave myself, he would give me a good spanking. I looked him in the eye and said, “Don’t tempt me!” He burst out laughing so hard he was tearing.

Because of his performance I’ve seen Gone With the Wind over and over again. He was perfect. It makes me so mad I could scream—those Academy fuckers didn’t award him the Oscar. He should have won hands down.

Marilyn talked about her famous husbands in the tapes and confirmed that she and Joe DiMaggio still had feelings for each other.

Joe D. loves Marilyn Monroe and always will. I love him and always will. But Joe couldn’t stay married to Marilyn Monroe, the famous movie star. Joe has an image in his stubborn Italian head of a traditional Italian wife. She would have to be faithful, do what he tells her, devote all of herself to him. Doctor, you know that’s not me.

It’s different with Arthur. Marrying him was my mistake, not his. He couldn’t give me the attention, warmth, and affection I need. It’s not in his nature. Arthur never credited me with much intelligence. He couldn’t share his intellectual life with me. As bed partners we were so-so. He was not that much interested. You know I think his little Jewish father had more genuine affection for me than Arthur did.

Is this getting too salacious? Don’t worry, I’m not going to repeat the part of the transcripts about a brief affair that Marilyn allegedly had with Joan Crawford. Oy. She also talked about her relationship with the Kennedy brothers. Remember that these tapes were allegedly made shortly after her famous “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” moment with JFK.

This man is going to change our country. No child will go hungry. No person will sleep in the street and get his meals from garbage cans. People who can’t afford it will get good medical care. Industrial products will be the best in the world. No, I’m not talking Utopia — that’s an illusion, but he will transform America today like FDR did in the 30’s…I tell you, Doctor, when he has finished his achievements he will take his place with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR as one of our greatest Presidents.

But Marilyn was confused about how to deal with her relationship with Bobby Kennedy.

I guess I don’t have the courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him it’s over. I tried to get the President to do it, but I couldn’t reach him. Now I’m glad I couldn’t. He is too important to ask…Maybe I should stop being a coward and tell him myself. But because I know how much he’ll be hurt I don’t have the strength.

This is pretty incendiary stuff if it’s true. Marilyn’s other comments about Bobby are so frank that I can’t bring myself to reprint them here. At the time that these transcripts made the front page of newspapers all over the world, John Miner was the only person alive who had heard the tapes and only he knew if these were accurate transcripts. In releasing them, Miner had been hoping to get public support for exhuming poor Marilyn’s corpse to run further tests that may prove her death was not a suicide after all. That never happened and Miner, who also investigated Robert Kennedy’s assassination and other high-profile cases including the Manson murders, died in 2010. Remember, he was not some lunatic peddling conspiracies to the National Enquirer, he was a respected prosecutor back in the day, that’s why his claims got the attention that they did.

I’ve checked over the past two decades whether Miner’s claims about the transcripts have ever been disproven. They haven’t but they haven’t been verified either. In any event, there is a growing consensus to leave the woman alone, to simply honor who she was in life and the joy she brought to so many.

Happy 100^th Birthday, Marilyn.

In Betty Garrett’s very first film, Big City, young Margaret O’Brien says to her, “When you sing, you sing all over!” Truer words were never spoken. Of all the incredible stars of the MGM stock company of the 1940s and 50s (and, as Louis B. Mayer liked to say, “MGM had more stars than there are in the heavens”), Betty Garrett was one of my all-time favorites. Apart from her ability to act, dance, and sing anyone off the screen, she exuded an intelligence, wit, and sincerity that was quite rare among the studio manipulated stars of her day. Even though she often played man-hungry dames with a slapstick sensibility, Betty Garrett always transcended her roles and made us care far more about her characters than the screenwriters had any right to expect. She was funny and brash and had perfect comic timing, but there was always a vulnerable and sweet quality that came through and lit up the screen. You either have that quality or you don’t, in my opinion, it’s not something that can be taught or written into a script. Betty Garrett had it then and she maintained it throughout her life.

Yesterday marked the 107th anniversary of Betty Garrett’s birth in St. Joseph, Missouri. I can never forget the date because my mom died on Betty Garrett’s 80th birthday. My mother was a huge fan of Garrett and my last gift to her that year was a signed copy of Betty’s memoir. She had also been swooning over Betty’s husband, Larry Parks, ever since she saw him play Al Jolson in The Jolson Story at the Roosevelt Theater in downtown Chicago when she was 14.

I first met Betty Garrett at my wife Kendall’s house in Studio City in the late 1980s. Betty and Larry were friends of the Haileys for decades ever since Betty starred in Kendall’s father, Oliver Hailey’s play, Who’s Happy Now? during the premiere season of the Mark Taper Forum. Betty was just as delightful in person as she was on screen and we used to go see her perform every year in the S.T.A.G.E. Benefit in Los Angeles, the longest-running AIDS benefit in the world. It was co-chaired by Betty and the late Naomi Caryl. So many amazing stars appeared in these benefits including our friend Carole Cook who always brought the house down, but the other highlight of the show every year was Betty’s number, whether she was rollerskating across the stage (in her 80s!), performing a sexy S&M parody, or shimmying up some set piece as if she were still a young ingenue at MGM. Sometimes she would sing one of the numbers she introduced in the movies, such as “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from the Esther Williams’ film Neptune’s Daughter. I always fantasized about singing this song (which was later treated with controversy because of the appearance of a lack of consent) with Betty:

I simply must go (But baby, it’s cold outside)
The answer is no (But baby, it’s cold outside)
This welcome has been (I’m lucky that you dropped in)
So nice and warm (Look out the window at that storm)
My sister will be suspicious (Gosh, your lips look delicious)
My brother will be there at the door (Waves upon a tropical shore)
My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious (Gosh, your lips are delicious)
Well maybe just a cigarette more (Never such a blizzard before)

I’ve got to go home (Oh, baby, you’ll freeze out there)
Say, lend me your comb (It’s up to your knees out there)
You’ve really been grand (Your eyes are like starlight now)
But don’t you see (How can you do this thing to me?)
There’s bound to be talk tomorrow (Think of my lifelong sorrow)
At least there will be plenty implied (If you caught pneumonia and died)
I really can’t stay (Get over that old out)
Ahh, but it’s cold outside!

After understudying Ethel Merman on Broadway and being part of Martha Graham’s dance company, Betty became well-known for doing comical specialty songs, starting with “South America, Take It Away” from her Broadway hit Call Me Mister which opened 80 years ago last month.

I own this self-portrait that Betty drew of herself singing this song and I cherish it. The song parodied America’s “Good Neighbor policy” and the South American dance craze that resulted.

Take back your Samba, ay!, your Rumba, ay!, your Conga, ay-yi-yi!
I can’t keep movin’, ay!, my chassis, ay!, any longer, ay-yi-yi!
Now maybe Latins, ay!, in their middles, ay!, are built stronger, ay-yi-yi!
But all this takin’ to the quakin’ and this makin’ with the shakin’ leaves me achin’, ole!

We also own these cups that Betty's mother-in-law made for Betty and Larry Parks in 1946. We never use them because we're too afraid they might break, but we love them and I think of Betty every day when I walk into our kitchen.

In that first movie she made, Big City, Betty’s character, deliciously named Shoo Shoo Grady, sang a song called “Ok’l, Baby, Dok’l.” As she said in a newspaper article at the time, “I will inflict ‘Ok’l, Baby, Dok’l’ on the public, just as I inflicted ‘South America, Take it Away’ on them—and I hope they will not hold it against me!” We didn’t.

I always thought it was shocking that Betty didn’t make more movies — she only made five musicals for MGM despite being one of their most talented stars. (She almost got the lead in Annie Get Your Gun after MGM fired Judy Garland — you can read about it all in Betty’s excellent memoir, Betty Garrett and Other Songs: A Life on Stage and Screen.) In 1951, Larry Parks was dragged down by the House Un-American Activities Committee. While he was the first movie star to actually admit that he’d been a member of the Communist Party (between 1941 and 1945), he repudiated his involvement and explained how at the time the Party was one of the only groups trying to help the downtrodden groups in this country. His admission to HUAC nearly wrecked his career in Hollywood and severely damaged Betty’s as well. With no movie roles being offered, the Parks put together a successful nightclub act and were a huge hit at the London Palladium and elsewhere.

Most people today know Betty from one of her TV series. She played Archie Bunker’s liberal counterpart Irene Lorenzo on All in the Family and, as far as I’m concerned, she was TV’s first true feminist. While Bea Arthur’s Maude also sparred with bigoted Archie Bunker before getting her own series, she was often subservient to her patriarchal husband Walter. Irene Lorenzo had a loving relationship with her husband Frank (played by Vincent Gardenia) but she was always her own woman, never sacrificing her beliefs to make peace with her man and yet still being a caring spouse and a great friend to people with different beliefs. Later Betty moved over to Laverne & Shirley as landlady Edna Babish who ended up marrying Laverne’s father. On this show Betty got a chance to showcase her physical comedy abilities.

Betty Garrett died in 2011 at the age of 91 but she will never be forgotten, especially around my house. Over 60 years ago, Betty told a New York Times reporter, “I’ve always thought my value as a performer was not having any claim to being great, just doing a little bit of everything. I’m certainly no Bernhardt, but I always manage to have a good time. I might even be ahead of her there!” Nicely stated, except I’d take Betty Garrett over Sarah Bernhardt any day.

With apologies to my wife and the rest of the female population, can we all agree that actress Cyd Charisse simply had the best legs that ever walked the earth? If you don’t believe me, just look at that amazing dance number in Singin’ in the Rain when Cyd’s legs, sheathed in green stockings, fill the entire length of the screen. Her gams were a work of art, strong, perfectly shaped and proportioned, and more than capable of performing the best dancing ever seen on a movie screen. And I mean EVER.

Cyd Charisse was one of those celebrities we’d frequently see around town. I remember seeing Cyd and her husband, singer Tony Martin, at a restaurant on La Cienega and thinking that she had the regal air of a queen, but a benevolent one who would always stop and talk to her lowly subjects. In their wonderfully odd joint memoir called The Two of Us, Cyd and Tony actually encouraged fans who see them in public to come up to the couple and say hello.

Born in Amarillo, Texas, in 1922 with the decidedly un-movie-star name of Tula Finklea, Cyd’s first love was ballet and she joined the famous Ballets Russes at the age of 13. She married her dance teacher Nico Charisse in 1939 (they divorced in 1947) which gave her a more marquee-worthy last name and took Cyd from her family nickname of Sid which came from her brother’s inability to properly say “Sis.” Charisse came to MGM in 1943 and played a few bit roles before landing the small but noticeable role of “Deborah from Rhode Island” in The Harvey Girls with Judy Garland in 1946. She was featured in other A-list musicals such as Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, and Words and Music, and she did several dramatic roles, usually playing “exotic” Latinas or Native American girls, but it was her extended cameo in Singin in the Rain in 1952 that put her over the top.

For my money, Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon is the quintessential MGM musical, even better than Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris, and Cyd was perfect for the role of ballet dancer Gabrielle Gerard who is being courted by Astaire to appear in a Broadway musical. “I can watch Astaire day and night,” Charisse said later. “I don’t think he ever made a wrong move, he was a total perfectionist. He would work on a few bars for hours until it was just the way he wanted it.” There are so many great numbers in The Band Wagon but I think my all-time favorite is the simplest one—a quiet and supposedly impromptu dance between Astaire and Charisse when they are walking in Central Park trying to let off steam from their grueling rehearsals. Behold the magnificence of “Dancing in the Dark.”

Only a handful of actresses got to star opposite both Astaire and Kelly. After Singin’ in the Rain, Cyd costarred with Gene Kelly in Brigadoon and It’s Always Fair Weather, neither among my favorites but both containing exquisite dance numbers. Despite her presence in some of the most beloved musicals ever made, Charisse couldn’t sing a note, or at least not one considered worthy enough by the MGM honchos. She was dubbed in all her films, often by Carol Richards, and I thought this fact was hidden from the public until I read her discussing it in a 1952 newspaper interview. “I’d give my right arm if I could sing,” she said. “I had a number in The Wild North but it’s not what I’d call singing...not in comparison to Tony.” Throughout her life, Charisse was always asked to compare Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly but she was reluctant to do so. “I’d say they were the two greatest dancing personalities who were ever on the screen,” was as far as she’d go. “Each has a distinctive style. Each is a joy to work with. But it’s like comparing apples and oranges. They’re both delicious.”

When I was going to school in Paris in 1978, a local movie theatre did a retrospective of all of Charisse’s films. A few days after Christmas, I was scheduled to fly from Paris to the Soviet Union for a weeklong trip with a bunch of French students. On December 27th, to get us in the mood, my friends and I went to a screening of Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings at the Paris cinema that was honoring Cyd. This film became my absolute favorite of all of Charisse’s work. Made in 1957 at the height of the Cold War, the musical remake of Ninotchka featured Charisse in the Greta Garbo role and Fred Astaire playing the Melvyn Douglas part. The anti-Soviet propaganda is utterly outrageous but the film is a joy from beginning to end. (Astaire could somehow get away with lyrics that would make other actors wince, such as when he lovingly sings to Cyd about “the urge to merge with a splurge of the spring” which her character labels as “bourgeois capitalistic propaganda.”) While Charisse’s Russian accent is ridiculous and her lines preposterous, her dancing scenes with Astaire are among the best of her career. Here’s my favorite one, especially the last 90 seconds of it. No one was Cyd’s equal. Take a look:

Unfortunately, by 1957 both the studio system and musicals in general were in their death throes, and Charisse never got a decent part in a musical again. I always felt that Charisse could have been a great dramatic actress if given the chance. Cyd is is also known for the films she didn’t appear in. She was cast opposite Kelly and Judy Garland in the classic Easter Parade but had to bow out when she got injured during rehearsals (Ann Miller took over the part), and she had to abandon the lead in An American in Paris when she got pregnant, clearing the way for Leslie Caron who catapulted to fame in the role. Charisse’s most famous movie that was never released was Something’s Got to Give, the movie Marilyn Monroe was shooting when she died in 1962. Monroe requested Cyd for the part and in the clips I’ve seen the middle-aged actress was gorgeous as all get-out and perfect in the role of the snippy Bianca who had just married Dean Martin when his presumed-dead wife (Monroe) returns to town. The unfinished film was made the following year with Doris Day taking over for Marilyn and Polly Bergen assuming Charisse’s role.

By any measure, Cyd’s 60-year-marriage to Tony Martin was a great success, especially by Hollywood standards. In a 1953 interview with the couple, conducted in the MGM commissary, an L.A. Times reporter asked Martin what attracts him to women in general, Cyd in particular. “Carriage and teeth,” Martin replied, “then it’s interest in what she has to say.” The reporter then asked the singer how he felt about a girl combining marriage and a career. “I wouldn’t recommend it for a couple of 20-year-olds, because it takes a lot of mature understanding,” Martin explained. “But I feel a man should always allow his wife to express herself in a career or in any way she wants or she will develop frustrations and not be happy.”

In June 2008, I attended Cyd Charisse’s funeral at the Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City. Cyd Charisse, America’s favorite shiksa, being buried in a Jewish cemetery? I had forgotten that Tony Martin was Jewish—born Alvin Morris to Russian Jewish immigrants. When I arrived at Hillside, I saw the graves of Jewish celebrities wherever I looked: Al Jolson, Milton Berle, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, the Three Stooges, Michael Landon, Shelley Winters. It seemed odd for Cyd Charisse jto be joining oining their ranks. It was strange to walk into the small chapel at Hillside and see Cyd’s rose-covered coffin sitting in between two Hebrew passages from the Bible carved into the walls on either side. But I guess the actress had never converted because it wasn’t a Jewish ceremony. The service was officiated by Dr. Gary Alan Dickey, Senior Pastor of the United Methodist Church in Westlake Village. It was a fairly small group, maybe 120 people. I was sitting in the back surrounded by a bunch of older men and I couldn’t help but listen to their conversation before the funeral began. Turns out this was a group of MGM dancers, probably the very ones who appeared with Cyd in her classic numbers in The Band Wagon, Singin’ in the Rain, and Silk Stockings. It was hard to equate the youthful dancers from those films with this group of men in their 70s and 80s. They all seemed to love Charisse and talked about the memories they had of her and Tony over the years.

It was a poignant, serious service. Cyd’s son from her first marriage, 66-year-old Nico Charisse wept as he said good-bye to his mom. The actress’s agent told how he used to park Charisse’s car on the MGM lot when he first arrived in town at the age of 16. He told the story of Cyd auditioning for Tommy Tune when she made her Broadway musical debut in 1992’s Grand Hotel. Tune was so impressed with her he exclaimed, “I should be auditioning for YOU!” She got the part and when they got back to her dressing room, she whispered to her agent, “Do they realize I’m 70 years old and have to get on point?” But she did do it and was great in her only Broadway appearance. A few other friends and Cyd’s assistant talked about what a classy, wonderful lady Cyd Charisse was.

It was hard not to think of all the people who would’ve spoken at her funeral if they were still alive. Certainly Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly as well as directors such as Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen, writers like Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and close personal friends such as Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. This is one of the only drawbacks of living so long—less wonderful people from your life to speak at your funeral! The surviving stars of the MGM years were on hand to pay their respects. I was especially moved when Esther Williams arrived in a wheelchair. Esther and Cyd were exactly the same age and made several films together early in Cyd’s career, most notably Fiesta and On an Island With You. In both films, Cyd had steaming hot dance numbers with Esther’s love interest Ricardo Montalban. Charisse usually played Williams’ rival, and for some reason MGM seemed determined to cast Cyd as a Latina. Take a look at this clip to see Cyd during her sexy Latina phase seducing Esther’s boyfriend. ¡Ay, carumba!

Actor George Chakiris was there, the Oscar-winning Bernardo from West Side Story who is still with us at 93. Chakiris appeared with Cyd in two of her films from the 1950s, Brigadoon and Meet Me in Las Vegas. Towards the end of the service, I was stunned when Dr. Dickey said that we would all be given the opportunity to say good-bye to Cyd one last time. They removed the dozens of roses from the top of the coffin and slowly opened the heavy lid, something I never thought I’d see in a Jewish chapel. This while one of Cyd’s friends stood up and sang an a capella version of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” They had us walk up to the coffin, row by row, to pay our last respects. I was nervous as I walked past Esther Williams and Tony Martin and approached the coffin. It was hard not to choke back tears as I stood over the deceased but still beautiful face of Cyd Charisse, knowing that we were the last people who were ever going to see it in the flesh.

Forty years ago this week I was working as a writer/producer at the Society for Visual Education (SVE) in Chicago, a publisher of educational filmstrips and videos. It’s easy for me to pinpoint the day five years earlier when I interviewed for this job because it was the day that John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan: March 29, 1981. I was 21 and had been working as a copy clerk at the Chicago Tribune. This was my first real job interview after graduating from college and I was a little nervous. I think it was the first time I had a suit on since my Bar Mitzvah and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same suit! I arrived at SVE amidst the hubbub caused by the assassination attempt. The entire editorial staff at SVE was gathered around a TV set in the office watching the coverage and I joined in the discussions about the dramatic events in Washington. We talked about how Hinckley’s obsession with actress Jodie Foster had led him to shoot the new president and we groaned when Secretary of State Alexander Hague prematurely started telling anyone who would listen that he was in charge. Despite my lack of experience in educational publishing, I got the job.

SVE was a wonderful training ground. All these years later I still talk to many of the people I worked with there. We agree that our jobs at SVE provided us with an amazing amount of creative freedom even though we were working in the soon-to-be-obsolete medium of educational filmstrips. SVE had several licensed characters that we all wrote for. The star of this group was the Lollipop Dragon, a kindly green dragon who lived in the Kingdom of Tumtum with his orange girlfriend Apple Blossom and his friends Prince Hubert and Princess Gwendolyn. I wrote many adventures for the dragon, addressing a range of curriculum areas from geography and science to math and social studies. I also wrote for Slim Goodbody, a New York actor who wore a body suit that showed all of his internal organs, What-a-Mess, a wonderfully mangy Afghan puppy character created by English author Frank Muir, and Ted E. Bear, an animated creature voiced by Tommy Smothers who was responsible for me eventually leaving SVE and moving to California to work on a TV series featuring Ted and the other residents of the town of Bearbank (the show never made it to the air).

During this time, I used to participate in focus groups with teachers in Chicago to help us plan our upcoming product lines . I had such a respect for these people, especially the social studies teachers who had the critically important task of helping their young students understand our world through the lens of past and current events. When I heard that a high school social studies teacher named Christa McAuliffe had been chosen from over 11,000 applicants to be the first civilian to go up in the next space shuttle, I followed the story every step of the way. I read everything I could find about Christa’s training, listened to every interview she gave, studied the lesson plans she would bring with her on the historic trip, and got to know her family members and her students in Concord, New Hampshire.

In January 1986, as the launch approached, I couldn’t get enough of the Challenger coverage. I was disappointed each time the cold Florida temperatures delayed the mission. On January 27, I watched McAuliffe’s husband Steven being interviewed on the Today Show, talking about how excited they all were for Christa. Their kids, nine-year-old Scott and six-year-old Caroline, seemed thrilled that their mom was making such an important trip and Scott was excited that his entire third-grade grade class had traveled to Florida to watch the launch the following morning.

On January 28th we all stood around the TV set in the SVE conference room to watch the liftoff. It was still unusually cold in Florida but we were relieved that mission control did not stop the launch. In addition to Christa McAuliffe, I was riveted by the story of Judith Resnik, the Challenger astronaut who was only the second American woman to travel in space and the first Jewish astronaut. The Challenger crew also included commander Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Gregory Jarvis. When they showed the seven astronauts about to enter the shuttle, my eyes were focused on the high school teacher from New Hampshire. She seemed so happy.

My heart was racing as the Challenger majestically rose from its perch at 9:38 am Chicago time. The cameras kept cutting away to McAuliffe’s mother and sister who were there watching the liftoff and live shots from Christa’s former classroom in Concord. It seemed like a perfect launch, the Challenger rising in a beautiful straight line at Cape Canaveral and beginning to arch over the Florida sky. At first I didn’t think anything of the strange double formations that formed around the shuttle’s trail which was being closely followed by the cameras. It took me and the millions of people watching the Challenger several minutes to realize that some kind of major catastrophe had just occurred. It never even crossed my mind that anything could happen to the crew of the Space Shuttle. Hadn’t NASA proven itself over and over again, even when potentially catastrophic situations emerged during some of its earlier missions? The only casualties of the space program to date had been the three Apollo 1 astronauts who were killed by a gruesome fast-moving fire on the launchpad way back in 1967.

When it became clear that the Challenger had exploded 73 seconds after takeoff, it took my brain a while to catch up with what my eyes were seeing and my ears were hearing. I remember some initial close-ups of the stunned and then grief-stricken faces of McAuliffe’s mother and sister watching the launch. Thank God that there was still a level of human decency among news producers at that time because when it became clear what was going on, there were no more images of the astronauts’ families or the horrified students at McAuliffe’s school. I remained frozen in place for what seemed like hours, unable to turn away from the TV coverage. I kept hoping against hope that the cabin containing the astronauts had somehow survived the explosion and that they would be found shaken but alive off the Florida coast. As it turned out, the crew cabin did survive the initial breakup of the shuttle, but the astronauts were all killed, probably in the first few seconds after the disaster which we later learned was caused by a faulty O-ring in the rocket booster that had contracted in the still frigid temperatures of that January morning.

I can’t remember a news event that affected me that viscerally before January 28, 1986. Since then, only 9/11 has come close. I couldn’t even imagine the grief that the families and friends of the astronauts experienced as they watched the live broadcast of their loved ones’ completely unexpected and violent deaths. By that point Christa McAuliffe felt like a friend, a colleague, and I still had the image of her trusting, excited husband and young children in my head.

That night, in a national address, President Ronald Reagan expertly delivered the famous words that speechwriter Peggy Noonan had borrowed from a World War II-era sonnet. Despite my frequent disgust at Reagan’s conservative policies, I believed his sincerity and emotion when he said:

“We will never forget them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

I’m ashamed to admit that when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in February 2003, killing all seven of the astronauts on board, it didn’t have anywhere near the impact on me as the Challenger disaster. I can barely remember the names of the astronauts who died, despite the fact that their deaths were obviously no less a tragedy than the loss of the Challenger crew. What had happened to me in the intervening years? Was I just world-weary and less interested in the space program? The Columbia astronauts who died on that day were commander Rick D. Husband; pilot William C. McCool; payload commander Michael P. Anderson; mission specialists David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark; and Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

I was unable to drop my cynicism of President George W. Bush as he tried to follow in Reagan’s footsteps and comfort the nation that evening. I’m sure he was saddened by the tragedy but his comments seemed hollow and he lacked the oratory skills that Ronald Reagan possessed. “These astronauts knew the dangers and they faced them willingly,” Bush said in his emotion-free speech, “knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life.” And yet Bush’s skills to comfort a nation would tower over those of the current resident of the White House who would probably focus on the voting records of the astronauts after a similar tragedy, and only mourn his diehard supporters.

In July 1969, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, I remember running out into the Chicago night to study the bright orb in the sky. Could I actually see traces of the lunar module or the astronauts’ footprints with my naked eye? It was a thrilling night and a rare moment in which the entire planet seemed united. Everyone on Earth was focused on the amazing achievement of the Apollo astronauts and praying for their safe return. If someone would have asked me back then what the space program would look like in 2026, I would have said that by now there would be regular civilian flights to the bustling colonies on the moon and possibly tourist jaunts to other planets. Space travel would be no big deal by 2026 and maybe we would be interacting with life from other solar systems from whom we could learn so much. It seemed like a future of endless possibilities.

Happy Anniversary, you crazy kids! Holy crap, has it really been 493 years since you two made it legal at Whitehall Palace? Jeez, it seems like yesterday! Your relationship started out as an adulterous affair, but you were smart, Annie, and wouldn’t put out until the big guy put you on the throne. Forgive me, Annie, I hate to be rude, but you weren’t much of a looker back then—how did you nab the most powerful hunk in the land, especially after he’d already bedded and dumped your older sis? Damn, girl, leading him on but stopping just short of the prize was genius. Where did you learn that trick, from your stint in the French court? Why buy la vache when you can get le lait for free, right Annie?

Hank, you wanted our girl here so bad you went apeshit when the stupid Pope refused to annul your 24-year marriage to that Spanish ball-and-chain and declare your daughter Mary a bastard. God, Popes can be such a pain. Yikes, that Catherine of Aragon chica was a piece of work—she wouldn’t budge. Ay, caramba, I bet she got that hot-blooded temper from her folks, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. And what a slap in the face when the loser Pope excommunicated you! But you had the last laugh, Hank, when you bounced him out on his uptight ass and proclaimed yourself the leader of the new Church of England. Awesome move, dude. And it cleared the way for a hell of a wedding. On January 25, 1533, you took our little Annie here by the hand (I never believed those rumors about that sixth finger, girl) and promised yourself to her for eternity. Or at least until she could give you a male heir, right, dog? Of course both of you knew that she already had a royal bun in the oven. Bummer that it was a girl, Annie.

Hank, isn’t it funny how the qualities that most attract us to a hot chick at the beginning can be the very same ones that make us want to behead her later on? Annie, I’m guessing you played hooky the day they taught that class on “How to be a Subservient Wife and Queen.” Not a good move to keep hocking your poor husband about religion and politics for a thousand days. And you should have let him slide with those Ladies-in-Waiting on your staff. Yo, don’t forget that you were one of Queen Catherine’s ladies when you started boffing the big guy. Besides, anyone could see that the wimpy Jane Seymour wouldn’t make it through another smallpox pandemic, why couldn’t you just wait it out? If only those boy babies you carried weren’t all born dead, you could have outlasted that homewrecking wuss. But then that Seymour biatch got knocked up and there was hope once again for a male heir. Sorry, girl, you were toast, even your own family members gave you up. Except for George, now there was one loving brother. Too loving, maybe? Hank, that was a low blow to accuse Annie of adultery with all those guys. You knew most of those dudes were gay. And then to add George to her list of lovers and accuse her of incest—ouch! I knew you were innocent, Annie, no matter what that sonofabitch Cromwell said.

Do you believe in karma, Hank? Check it out, Jane Seymour finally gave you a son but then dropped dead from puerpal fever 10 days later. I told you she was a wuss. You just lost it at that point, didn’t you, Hank? Your next wife, that Cleves fraulein, was a disaster, but it was pretty low to diss her so bad right after the wedding (“I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse”) and refuse to bed her down. At least that one had the good sense to run for the hills right after the honeymoon. And then to hook up with Annie’s little cousin, Catherine Howard—what were you thinking, dude? Forget the fact that she was young enough to be your daughter, that girl was suss! I guess the Boleyns paid you back big time with that one because Chatty Cathy started doing all the things you’d accused her cousin of. At least when you lobbed that ho’s head off, she was guilty of something. You were damn lucky to get that last Queen of yours considering how you’d let yourself go. Jesus, bro, lay off the mutton legs and roast grouse. Catherine Parr managed to outlive you, Hank, but she shouldn’t have hooked up with your ex-brother-in-law Thomas Seymour. She got pregnant for the first time and died in childbirth. Holy shit, none of your wives ever caught a break, did they?

Sorry to be such a downer on your special day, kids, let’s just remember the love. Annie, it had to feel good when your daughter—you know, the one who was declared a bastard when you were offed—outlived her two crazy siblings and became one of the most powerful monarchs ever to sit on the English throne. Dang, Elizabeth ruled for 44 years, that was even longer than your reign, Hank! I wonder why she never married. Do you think it had anything to do with her dad having her mom beheaded? Just askin’.

Hey, check it out, Annie, you’re more famous today than you ever were. You’ve had some of the hottest chicks in Hollywood playing your royal ass. Merle Oberon and Genevieve Bujold got nominated for Oscars, and Dorothy Tutin, Charlotte Rampling, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, and Natalie Portman also donned your bad-ass threads. And hold up, kids, did you catch that Showtime series, The Tudors, a while back? Holy shit, you two, no more fat dudes wheezing and hobbling on their gout-infested legs, Hank, this time you were played by the superhunky Jonathan Rhys Meyers. You remember—that dude with Angelina Jolie’s sexy lips? “Henry was a man who could do anything and fuck anyone,” series producer Ben Silverman said when the series premiered. “The fact is, his dick changed the course of history, literally.” Whoa, dude! And don’t worry, Annie, no historically fugly actresses played you, they hired smokin’ hot Natalie Dormer. I’d like to see someone call her “the Great Whore” and live to tell the tale!

And it didn’t end there. Did you see Wolf Hall, Annie? There you were played by a hot-as-hell pre-Crown Claire Foy. She was so feisty, I loved it! And I’m stoked because we just got tickets for Six, the Broadway musical that is coming to L.A. next month starring all of Hank’s wives as bona fide rock stars. Can’t wait to see your big number, Annie, “Don’t Lose Ur Head”! Ugh, I know, that title is a little too on the nose.

Hank, Annie—you two rock, Happy 493rd! We gotta plan something BIG for your 500th!

The wonderful Charles Nelson Reilly was born 95 years ago today in the Bronx. He was a close friend of my wife, Kendall Hailey. Even though they were separated in age by more than 35 years, Charles always jokingly called Kendall his fiancée. Charles was a joy to know, every bit as funny in real life as he was on TV sitcoms, variety shows, and his endless game show appearances. He was always such a kind, caring man, whether he was bantering with Johnny Carson or schmoozing with a nurse’s aide. It was so much fun to be around him.

My wife Kendall could almost be considered a Match Game love child. Charles’ constant sparring partner on that popular game show, Brett Somers, was Kendall’s godmother, and as far as I’m concerned, Kendall’s biggest claim to fame was when Charles and Brett both wished Kendall a happy birthday on their Match Game cards and held them up to the camera. In my opinion, some of the best comedy in television resulted from the impromptu antics of Charles and Brett on that show — they got away with an achingly funny repartee that was often so risqué it would never be allowed on network television today.

Charles was Kendall’s constant companion when she was in her 20s and there’s a great photo of the two of them dressed up as if they are going to a high school prom —Kendall in some voluminous taffeta that Charles borrowed from the costume department while he wore a bad toupee and a frilly-shirted tux. Kendall used it as her Christmas card that year, confusing her Texas grandparents who wondered why her “boyfriend” seemed so much older.

Charles Nelson Reilly was renowned as an acting teacher in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. He spent years teaching at the HB Studio, the acting school created by Herbert Berghof and his wife Uta Hagen. His students included people like Liza Minnelli, Lily Tomlin, Bette Midler, Peter Boyle, Christine Lahti, and many others who went on to have very successful careers. Kendall performed in two plays directed by Charles and loved working with him.

My first childhood memory of Charles was as the character Claymore Gregg on the TV series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (based on the 1947 film) with Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare. The show was one of my favorites. Charles had a great chemistry with Hope Lange and they remained good friends until her death in 2003.

I also remember Charles from the freaky Sid and Marty Krofft series Lidsville that ran for two years in the early 70s. This show was later accused of using frequent drug references, including in the very title, and frankly, it’s probably best viewed while stoned! Charles played a villainous magician, Horatio J. HooDoo, who tormented protagonist Mark played by Butch Patrick, the former Eddie Munster. (Don’t tell me that the person who came up with the idea of a show takes place in a land of living hats wasn’t smoking something!)

Of course Charles also guest-starred in a million other popular sitcoms in the 60s and 70s, from Car 54, Where Are You? to Here’s Lucy to The Doris Day Show, and he was always the highlight of the episode. His Match Game reign began in 1973 and continued for decades. Charles once said in an interview that “when I die, it’s going to read, ‘Game Show Fixture Passes Away.’ Nothing about the theater, or Tony Awards, or Emmys. But it doesn’t bother me.” He wasn’t wrong. Many of his obituaries in 2007 focused on the game shows but the good ones talked about the full breadth of his amazing career.

Don’t forget that Charles was in the original Broadway cast of Bye, Bye Birdie and was nominated for a Tony for creating the part of Cornelius in Hello, Dolly. He won a Tony Award for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and later became an acclaimed director, most notably when he directed his close friend Julie Harris in The Belle of Amherst and The Gin Game. I wish I had seen the 1965 musical both starred in on Broadway called Skyscraper.

I have many fun memories of Charles Nelson Reilly including watching him hold court in our backyard during our 2004 wedding reception. I remember once when my brother-in-law, Jeff Tweedy, was in town mixing Wilco’s Summerteeth album, we brought Charles to a session since Jeff was a big fan. Charles walked into the recording studio and immediately captivated everyone with his funny anecdotes. Someone had a CD called Full Nelson Reilly by a band called the Didjits and Charles signed it for Jeff, “From one rock star to another.” On another evening we organized a dinner at Orso’s and it was a Charles Nelson Reilly-Jeff Tweedy lovefest throughout. I remember that the actress Sylvia Sidney was there that night and we stopped by her table as well. She died a few weeks later.

One of Kendall’s favorite Charles stories was when he was staying at the Wyndham Hotel in New York and found himself riding in the elevator alone with Sir Laurence Olivier. He said nothing to Olivier on the way up but as the elevator door opened, Charles turned to the renowned actor and deadpanned, “If I’d known this was a theatrical establishment, I would have booked elsewhere.” Olivier let out with a big belly laugh.

Charles had a great sense of humor about all things, including himself. Has there ever been anyone more parodied than him? Remember Alec Baldwin’s impersonation on Saturday Night Live? Charles didn’t stop working until he got sick, and was known to later audiences as Jose Chung on The X Files and Millennium and as the voice of the Dirty Bubble on the animated SpongeBob SquarePants.

We loved seeing Charles perform his moving autobiographical show, Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly, which was then turned into an acclaimed documentary by Barry Poltermann that you can watch on YouTube.

When our son was born two years after Charles’ death, we named him after Charles Nelson Reilly. Let’s just say that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree!

I’ve always been fascinated by this photo of my family members celebrating New Year’s Eve 60 years ago tonight at the Covenant Club in downtown Chicago. My parents are the ones standing up, my mother with her crazy mile-high 1960s hairdo, my father already decked out in celebratory regalia, my grandparents on the left, obviously feeling no pain, and my dad’s brother and his wife on the right, my Uncle Willie and Aunt Fannie. Amazing to me how formal everything was back then. Did the men own those tuxedos? I’m guessing yes. One thing that’s surprising is that the ever-present cigarettes are not visible in the photograph. My mother, grandmother, and Aunt Fannie were heavy smokers who should have listened to their nagging husbands. All three died of smoking-related cancer, first Aunt Fannie, while still in her 40s, then my grandmother in 1990, and finally my mom in 1999 at the age of 65. Casualties of an era that clearly knew how to have fun but didn’t see some of the dangers that we’re more aware of today.

Are there any places in your past that you’d give anything to revisit just one more time? The Covenant Club is that place for me. This was a Jewish social club that was founded in 1907 for well-to-do businessmen at a time when Jews were not welcome at the mainstream clubs. It was a refuge for the men during their busy workdays. They’d have lunch at the club and enjoy a “shvitz” in the steam room where endless deals were made among the city’s Jewish elite. The wives would hit the club regularly to attend meetings for their charitable organizations and plan fundraisers and parties.

The Covenant Club, at 10 North Dearborn Street, always had a big role in my family’s life. My grandparents, Sam and Anita Karoll, were married there in 1932. During its heydey, the Covenant Club was THE place to be among local and visiting Jews and others who wanted to connect with Chicago’s Jewish community. It attracted guests ranging from Sophie Tucker and Eddie Cantor to President Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt. On the weekly Opera Nights, they would invite performers from the nearby Lyric Opera for free dinners and then cajole them into singing something. One night Maria Callas didn’t feel like singing for her supper despite entreaties from the regulars. Hadassah Briskin, the wife of the club’s president, noticed that Callas’s zipper had split. She asked for some needle and thread and proceeded to sew Callas up right there at her table. Seeing this, world-famous tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano ripped some of the buttons off his own vest and shouted, “OK, now sew me!” This loosened Callas up and she sang for the excited crowd after all.

The Covenant Club was one of two main Jewish social clubs in Chicago, the other being the swanky Standard Club, founded in 1869 by German Jews. There was a definite hierarchy among Jewish immigrants to the United States with the German Jews, who typically emigrated the earliest, at the top of the food chain, and the Eastern European Jews, like my family members from Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, at a lower rung, regardless of their success in the New World. This stratification (and outright hostility between the groups from time to time) led to the creation of the Covenant Club as an alternative to the Standard Club that wasn’t particularly interested in the more recent influx of shtetl Jews.

These places were more than just social clubs. During World War II, members of the Covenant Club raised money for an ambulance and sponsored a Red Cross unit. They frequently hosted prominent speakers who warned the American Jews about the horrible things happening to their brethren in Europe. After the war, the Covenant Club wasn’t afraid to touch controversial issues. Though many of the members tended to be politically conservative, one luncheon they had during the height of the McCarthy Era was for movie producer Herbert Biberman who had been imprisoned for six months after refusing to name names for the House Un-American Activities Committee. His wife was the free-thinking actress Gale Sondergaard (who, long before she was blacklisted, had been cast as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz but left when they decided they would go with a more traditional ugly witch rather than the sexy evil witch called for in the first version of the script). Few venues would risk allowing the outspoken Biberman and Sondergaard to speak but the Covenant Club honored them both.

I attended dozens of functions at the Covenant Club at a time when it was still a Big Deal to go downtown. We’d dress in our finest clothes and head on over for the annual Purim carnival or Hanukkah party or children’s magic show or just for dinner in the fantastic restaurant where we were waited on by the very Old School staff, many of whom had probably worked there since the club’s opening. To my young eyes, walking into the Covenant Club was like entering the Palace of Versailles. I will never forget the curved marble staircase, the luxurious furniture, or the opulent chandeliers.

I loved the food in the Covenant Club’s fancy dining room, with a special nod to their famous creamed spinach. My sister recently found a vintage menu from the Covenant Club and I admit I was shocked to see such virulently treyf items on the menu as shrimp, scallops, and crabmeat. What the hell? No ham, at least. I probably never noticed the forbidden shellfish when I was there because I never would have dared order such things in front of my grandfather. Surely they had a kosher kitchen as well for their more observant guests? I guess the M.O. in those years was assimilation up to a point while retaining your Jewish identity in other ways.

By the late 1970s, the club’s aging membership was moving to warmer climates or at least out to the far suburbs. Those that remained attended less and less social functions and the once flourishing Grand Ballroom stayed dark. The Covenant Club started losing money hand over fist and closed its beautiful doors for good in 1986. The Standard Club held on until 2020.

I’d give anything to pop in at this 1965 New Year’s Eve party and hear some snippets of conversation. My parents were consummate partygoers and dressed in their finery every New Year’s Eve for the champagne-flowing party at the Covenant Club. We’d stay home watching Dick Clark on TV and at the stroke of midnight unleash a torrent of streamers that would cover every inch of our white shag carpeting. God knows what time my parents finally got home but the following day we would examine the hats and horns and other props they brought home with them, carefully placing them in a box for our own festivities the following year.

Wishing you all a fun, safe New Year’s Eve and a fantastic new year!

Mrs. Seidman gripped my jaw with fat, stubby fingers and forced my mouth as wide as a blowfish.

“Mouths open, mouths open!” she shrieked. “Sing out, children!”

O holy night
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night
Of our dear Savior’s birth.

It was early December and our fifth-grade class was preparing for the annual parade of Christmas carols through the halls of our elementary school. Our teacher was relentless in her coaching as she drummed the sacred hymns into our heads. Mrs. Seidman sought a level of enthusiasm that bordered on religious reverie. The irony of this tiny Jewish woman force-feeding Christian songs to her mostly Jewish students seemed no less odd than our public school’s obsession with the Christmas holiday in the first place. What ever happened to separation of Church and State?

Mrs. Seidman, a practicing Jew whose husband had survived the Holocaust, was enamored with the deeply spiritual canons of the season. Her arms flailing, she conducted our rehearsals as if she were preparing a convent choir for a visit from the Pope. It wasn’t enough to sing the songs, we had to feel them with our souls. Our practice sessions turned into marathons, eclipsing all other schoolwork. Terrorized into submission, we transformed ourselves from a motley group of awkward preteens into devoted apostles, proudly asserting our Hosannas to the Lord. Sweat formed on our brows and our little chests heaved as we belted the powerful crescendo again and again.

Fall on your KNEES
O hear the angels’ voices
O night DIV-I-I-I-INE
O night when Christ was born.

We spent every school day in December genuflecting in song. I tried not to think of my Orthodox grandparents, who forbade me to even utter the words “Jesus Christ” in their home. One whiff of this ecclesiastical curricula and they would have me transferred to Arie Crown Hebrew Day School before the next chorus. But families were not invited to the yearly Christ-fest, and I was smart enough to keep my liturgical repertoire to myself.

Though Jews dominated the scene at Mary Gage Peterson Public Elementary School on the north side of Chicago, our neighborhood also boasted a large number of Swedes, fellow immigrants from a few generations back. Their families congregated around nearby North Park College and Swedish Covenant Hospital, and their white-blond, blue-eyed children got along well with the Semitic majority — for the most part. Some of the Swedish students resented the fact that the Jews at Peterson were co-opting their special day and that we were able to take off both the Jewish holidays AND their holidays.

Whenever a visitor entered our classroom, Mrs. Seidman was ready with an impromptu lesson. Dr. Stanek, our principal, would watch approvingly as our teacher explained the rigors of long division or pontificated on the Big Bang Theory. But as soon as the exit door clicked into place, Mrs. Seidman went flying back to the heavily lacquered, mahogany upright piano in the corner of the room. After she had taught us the holiest songs of worship, Mrs. Seidman switched to the secular tunes that would complete our holiday program. Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus made way for Frosty, Rudolph, and that icon himself, Mr. Claus. Instead of reaching for prayerful piety in our off-key warblings, Mrs. Seidman now tried to turn us into a band of mini-Irving Berlins. She choreographed our numbers in a hyperkinetic Busby Berkeley style, full of knee kicks, quick turns, and jaunty tips of imaginary hats. Since our performance would take place marching through the hallways of the school, we practiced gliding across our classroom as we sang. Unfortunately, the bolted-down original 1920s desks, complete with holes for inkwells, blocked our way and within the first few bars of “Let it Snow” we were all over the floor — Jews and Swedes scattered about in some weird yuletide orgy.

Though all students participated equally in Mrs. Seidman’s bacchanalia, the Swedish contingent retained an air of smugness throughout the Christmas season — they knew that they were the rightful heirs to the gala festivities, and I could see their point. For years American Jews had tried to turn the eight-day Hanukkah celebration into some kind of Jewish Christmas. They sent out cards, bought gifts, put up lights — some of my friends even decorated Chanukah bushes, an indulgence my own family would never allow. These attempts at holiday assimilation seemed forced and contrived. I failed to see any parallels between the victory over the Syrian army in 165 B.C. that Hanukkah commemorates and the story of Christ’s birth. It was simply a seasonal accident that linked the two holidays (and rumor had it that the December celebration of Christmas had more to do with pagan ritual than the actual time of year the historical Jesus was born). In the name of melting pot unity, customs were borrowed and adapted, but even in its secular excesses, Hanukkah literally paled by comparison. Everything associated with the holiday — cards, wrapping paper, decorations — was forged in drab blues and whites, as if a simple splash of color was tantamount to Jewish acceptance of Christ the Redeemer.

As Christmas approached, Mrs. Seidman gave up any pretense of normal studies. As an afterthought, she added a Hanukkah-themed song to our repertoire, albeit one devoid of spiritual or historical insight. With reluctance and not a trace of ethnic pride, we learned the words and accompanying gestures to Mrs. Seidman’s latest folly.

I had a little dreidel
I made it out of clay
And when it’s dry and ready
Oh dreidel I shall play.

Finally, the big day was upon us — the last school day before the Christmas holidays. Teachers dispatched their holiday troubadours on a staggered schedule, allowing the whole school to enjoy the varied program. The younger children wore construction-paper Santa hats and sang sweetly about sleigh bells and candy canes. The oldest students wore white robes and carried real candles as they sang complex oratorios. When it was our turn to tread the bulletin board-lined hallways, Mrs. Seidman walked us to the door and reverently pressed a sprig of plastic holly into each student’s palm. We trudged off slowly and in lock-step unison, like members of a heavenly chain gang. As we lifted our voices in song, Mrs. Seidman clasped her hands together and looked upwards in exultation.

On December five and twenty
Fum, fum, fum
In a manger lonely, manger lonely
There was born a babe, a Holy Child.

It was enough to make any Jewish mother weep with pride.

Today is the fifth day of Hanukkah. I’ve always loved this photo of my great-grandfather, Itshe Meyer Korolnek, with some boys celebrating Hanukkah in the 1950s or 60s. I’ve polled family members on the kids’ identities, we think they are probably students at Eitz Chaim in Toronto, the school my great-grandfather co-founded 110 years ago with several other immigrant Jews from Poland. With his lifelong commitment to Jewish education, my great-grandfather always felt that this was one of his greatest accomplishments. What began in 1915 as a one-room cheder for boys called the Poylishe Talmud Torah that met inside the Elm Street Shul (formerly a Baptist Church), the school grew and grew, changed its name to Talmud Torah Eitz Chaim, and still educates Jewish boys and girls in Toronto today. When I started this page, I included the tracks from a fundraising LP my great-grandfather recorded for Eitz Chaim in the 1960s. It’s always such a thrill to hear his distinctive voice that I haven’t heard in person since I was 11 years old.

As I’ve written, Itshe Meyer Korolnek was a formidable character, but as intimidating as he could be to adults, especially those with whom he disagreed, children loved him. People from all walks of life admired his passion for all aspects of Jewish life, his generous philanthropy to individuals and organizations, and his unfailing ethics in his business dealings. But kids, unimpressed by power, wealth, or status, are the final barometers of a person’s true worth, in my opinion. Itshe Meyer had a way of relating to kids that really cemented his status as a mensch.

Itshe Meyer emigrated from Staszów (Stashev), Poland, to Canada in May 1910. Though he was only 25, he was already the father of four. Two of his young children would sadly die of Scarlet Fever before his wife, my great-grandmother Alta Toba, was able to make the trek the following year, with my Uncle Herb and my three-year-old grandfather Sam in tow. The couple would have five more children in Toronto.

When he died in 1971 at the age of 86, tributes poured in from people all over the world. For this Hanukkah post, I’m especially interested in the people who remembered meeting Itshe Meyer when they were kids.

I’ve spoken of the famous Stashever rabbi, Judah Leib Graubart, who married Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba in Staszów in 1902. Graubart would eventually follow Itshe Meyer to Toronto and the two men were spiritual partners and lifelong friends. Today they are buried next to each other. A surprising number of Judah Leib’s descendents became rabbis, and the Graubart dynasty also includes renowned attorneys, doctors, writers, Broadway producers, and actors (including Judy Graubart of “Electric Company” fame who is married to the great actor Bob Dishy).

One of Judah Leib’s sons, Rabbi David Graubart, recalled his earliest impressions of my great-grandfather.

When I first heard the name of Itshe Meyer Korolnek, I was still a small boy in Staszów. I heard of letters which had arrived from Toronto, a city in faraway Canada, dealing with my father’s possible journey there in order to accept the rabbinic post in that community. The letterheads and stationery bore the name of that fantastic Jew, and I don’t know why, but it seemed to me that he had to be a banker; throughout the weeks and months during which the negotiations proceeded with the almost legendary Max Korolnek—this was his name in English—I kept on thinking that he was a banker. Isn’t he mailing Steamship tickets? Isn’t that the work of a banker?

In the meantime, in 1920 my father had left for London, England, where he delivered an address in Albert Hall, in which he severely criticized the Polish anti-Semitic government. As a result of the publication of his speech in the Polish Press, the mayor of Staszów, Pan Krause, warned my mother to advise my father by way of secret code not to return to Staszów but to proceed directly from London to Toronto. She immediately carried out these instructions. Mother and we, the children, left Staszów shortly thereafter.

It was Erev Yom Kippur when we detrained at Toronto’s Union Station on Front Street, where we were met by father and Reb Itshe Meyer Korolnek. The small boy looked at the long-awaited Mr. Korolnek. Somehow he did not look like the banker in his imagination! Before him stood a Hasidic Jew of the type of the Jews of Staszów.

Reb Itshe Meyer evidently read my thoughts, and with his familiar smile turned to me and my brother Philip, addressing us: “I see that you are surprised! Is this Mr. Korolnek? Yes, yes, it’s I, a heimisher Yid, an old-fashioned Jew, your Stashever landsman, and let me tell you right now that Toronto is but a collection of many Stashevs, and that one can observe Yiddishkeit here just as meticulously as in Staszow!”

Another renowned rabbi from Toronto, Rabbi Ochs, recounted his own introduction to Itshe Meyer.

I still vividly recall the occasion of my first meeting with Reb Itshe Meyer, in the late 1940s. My father had just been elected Rav of the Eitz Chaim Kehilla. As he brought the rest of the family over from England, many Baalei Batim met us at Union Station and led us to a reception in the Talmud Torah Hall. I was still a lad at the time.

The mounds of snow everywhere visible, the bearded Jews with fur hats, presented to me a picture of how I had imagined a Polish shtetl. The central figure, a dynamo of energy, with a glint in his eyes, obviously the Rosh Hakohol, was Reb Itshe Meyer Korolnek.

He personified some of the finest Jewish virtues. He was ruggedly honest in all his dealings. In fact, his decision to leave his town of Stashev was taken when he realized that he could no longer subsist there unless he cheated against the local customs regulations. Whilst others leaving for “treif America” would flee in the dark of night, he invited all friends to a farewell party, and assured them he would remain fully observant and loyal to Torah.

Even during the most difficult Depression times, he refused to accept any renumeration for his melodious, heartfelt rendition of High Holy Day Tefilos. These were his personal offerings to G-d as the emissary of his congregation.

His personal acts of kindness were legion, combining concern for his fellows’ material and spiritual needs. When an observant Jew came over from Europe, he immediately took him to his bank, personally guaranteed a loan to enable the man to purchase a horse so that he could become a peddler, his own boss, and not be constrained to desecrate the Shabbos. When a visitor or newcomer came to the synagogue, he was always the first to proffer hospitality, provide lodging, and give support.

Rabbi Samuel Cooper, civil rights leader and stalwart of the Jewish community of Charleston, West Virginia, told another story of my great-grandfather’s generosity of spirit.

On a visit to a school, he was invited to join the children at lunch. At his table, a child was refused a second slice of bread. Not one to conceal his feelings or his compassion, Itshe Meyer sought out the official in charge and protested as only he could and would, “A hingerig kind bate noch a shtikel broit in men git es nisht—a hungry child asks for another slice of bread and is refused? Men darf doch hoben dos hartz fin a gazlen—only one with the heart of a robber could be so cruel!” When the official blamed the denial to the child on the insufficiency of funds, Itshe Meyer immediately volunteered to supply the school’s annual cost of bread from then on, on condition that thenceforth, no child be refused bread. As far as I know, Itshe Meyer fulfilled this pledge.

Dr. Leon D. Stitskin, author, translator, and professor of philosophy at Yeshiva University, had a life-altering encounter with Itshe Meyer as a child:

In glaring contrast to most contemporary leaders who think of duty as an obligation to ease a troubled conscience, Itshe Meyer was that rare radiant personality to whom duty was a privilege. To help and give with one’s heart, in a spirit of utmost self-abandonment and sacrifice was the very essence of his life.

But despite the high position he held in our community, he was one of us. Even as children we always felt at home with him. My first experience with Itshe Meyer was when at the annual Talmud Torah outdoor festivities he picked me up in the Talmud Torah courtyard and placed me on a soda box taken from his yard to deliver an “address” on behalf of our school. With a voice of admonition, but a glowing countenance he told me: “Speak loudly, slowly, and fear no one.”

These words helped to set me off into the career of the rabbinate and always stood me in good stead. It is difficult to forget the special kind of grace and charm that accompanied his otherwise strong words of admonition. With his simplicity, open-heartedness, and largeness of spirit, he belonged to all of us. Yehi zichro baruch! (May his memory live forever.)

I wish my great-grandfather had placed me on a wooden crate and repeated those words since they’re great ones to hear at an impressionable age. “Speak loudly, slowly, and fear no one.” They’re good words to hear at any age!

The educator and scholar Rabbi Norman Frimer might not have continued his own education were it not for the intervention of Itshe Meyer.

High School was just behind me but the prospect of higher education seemed remote for a child of the Jewish ghetto. I continued to study Torah privately with both Rabbis Graubart and Kelman but without any expectation of continuing on at the University. Suddenly word came from distant Chicago that a scholarship had been extended to me by the Yeshiva where simultaneous with my Torah studies I would be able to get my college education. The subtle hand of Mr. Korolnek was deep in this conspiracy. Only years later was this secret disclosed. In fact he even escorted me across the border for it was my first international trip which he dovetailed with a visit to his Chicago sons. He also arranged for my first American breakfast and did not leave me until I was registered at the Yeshiva and then securely ensconced in a private room with a landsman. He never left a job undone.

Rabbi Frimer remembers Itshe Meyer’s relationship with young children.

I recall him as a strong man, strong in his gentleness and strong in his anger. In the presence of young children learning Torah, I see his weather-beaten face grow soft, a tender smile wreathing his lips, and his eyes sparkling twinklingly. But against the “enemy” however, those who dared threaten the sanctities of his espoused cause, his face grew hard, his brow beatled, his eyes burned, and the same voice which could plaintively move a prayerful congregation to petition the Heavenly Court itself, now roared out a sense of pained outrage and defiance that any man would presume to serve the impious and the unjust.

I’m grateful for the memories I have of my great-grandfather. He came from such a completely different world than me and while I’m sure we would disagree on all sorts of topics, including the more liberal branches of Judaism to which my family subscribes, I feel like he would be thrilled that his great-great-grandchild, Léah Miller, is completing their rabbinical studies next year along with their husband Rachmiel and continuing the familial focus on Jewish education, and that his great-great-grandson, Charles Miller, has taken such an interest in our family’s genealogy and can tell you endless details of every single branch of the family tree.

I know my great-grandfather used to sing “Oyfn Pripetshik” (On the Hearth), the Yiddish song that depicts a rabbi teaching the Hebrew alphabet to children in a shtetl home. The song has become a poignant symbol of the Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust and was even used in a moving montage in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. If there was ever a song to represent Itshe Meyer Korolnek’s legacy, it’s this one. Happy Hanukkah!

I grew up during a time when the women’s movement was having an impact on the roles and responsibilities of women in the home. My late mother was an excellent cook, but she was also a product of her time. She welcomed the newfangled speedy meals made with a minimum of effort that were changing women’s lives in the kitchen the same way that the new birth control pill was changing their lives in the bedroom.

I still have some of my mom’s old cookbooks: her dog-eared copy of The Joy of Cooking and her well-used pictorial cookbook from Better Homes & Gardens. But these were not her culinary bibles. She came to rely on the new state-of-the-art conveniences of the 1960s and also looked for advice from that elegant and urbane star of stage and screen, Miss Arlene Francis, whose book No Time For Cooking promised to get women in and out of the kitchen in less than 15 minutes—with no sacrifices in glamor or deliciousness!

Arlene extols the virtues of packaged foods in her book with a near-religious fervor. The new prefab goodies available during this time were designed to free American women from the drudgery of the kitchen and add quality time to family life. As consumer dependency shifted from the farmland to the factory, our foods reflected the hopeful wonder of American technology. Why spend countless hours preparing the boring meals of our grandparents’ generation when you could simply grab a box, open a can, break a plastic seal, or pull back a foil lining?

A typical day in our house began with breakfast cereals that boasted a staggering array of artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. Cocoa Puffs, Sugar Pops, Cap’n Crunch. My favorite was Trix—tiny spheres of crunchy Day-Glo sugar that sent spirals of fluorescent colors strafing across my bowl of milk. I also liked Lucky Charms which featured mini-marshmallows in leprechaun-inspired shapes. I foraged past the bland cereal bits to find the yummy hearts, moons, and clovers in a spectrum of hues that never existed in God’s rainbow.

Lunchtime foods sprang forth from a stock of canned goods that was big enough to outlast the Cold War. Our luncheon menu might include Spaghettios (“the neat new spaghetti kids can eat with a spoon!”), Chef Boy-Ar-Dee mini-raviolis, Goober’s peanut butter and jelly swirled together in the same jar, or the glorious Marshmallow Fluff, a pristine white concoction of sugar and air that was added to peanut butter to make heavenly “fluffernutter” sandwiches. When she had a little extra time, my mother prepared comforting Kraft Macaroni ‘n’ Cheese. As she mixed the powdered topping with milk, it was magically transformed into a cheesy goo guaranteed to stay in the colon until Nixon’s resignation. All of these treats were washed down with refreshing sugary beverages such as grape Kool-Aid, strawberry Fizzies, Tang, Fresca, or chocolate-flavored Yoo-Hoo.

For our nightly dinner meal, my mother demonstrated a flair for the exotic. Hawaiian meatballs made with canned pineapple in heavy syrup or maybe lemon chicken made with frozen lemonade concentrate. Sometimes she served honest-to-God fresh produce: wedges of iceberg lettuce drowning in the dazzling gelatinous red-orange of Kraft French Dressing. In an era that worshiped brand names, our dinner ingredients were offerings upon the altar: melted Velveeta, cubed Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese, crushed Kellog’s Corn Flakes, Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauce, Wish-Bone Italian Dressing, Lipton Onion Soup Mix, and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. Capitalism was alive and well in America and living in our pantry.

My mother’s desserts rivaled science fair projects. She made Dole pineapple upside-down cake, sticky Rice Krispies treats, and “mock” apple pie made of Ritz crackers instead of fruit. My favorite dessert was the short-lived Jello 1-2-3. Although prepared like regular Jello, this amazing product would separate into three distinct layers as it cooled: creamy top, fruity middle, and plain artificial black cherry bottom. Top the whole thing with non-dairy Cool Whip and you have a dessert fit for an Apollo astronaut!

But let’s return to the classier help offered by the delightful Arlene Francis. We already loved Arlene in our house. While she had appeared in films, on Broadway, and in many radio and TV shows, most Baby Boomers got to know her best during her 25-year stint on What’s My Line?, the best game show in the history of television where she’d match her wits with a panel that included Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, and host John Charles Daly, a Peabody Award-winning journalist and news commentator.

In 1961, at the height of her What’s My Line? fame, Arlene wrote this cookbook for the modern woman. The color photos alone are priceless. Arlene’s caption on the above photo says, “I like to entertain informally. The little spread you see here is set out on the coffee table in my living room. Like most working women, my schedule simply doesn’t allow for big affairs very often.” Um…this is informal? I guess in Arlene’s glamorous New York world it was, even though the silk dressing gown, canapés, and carved pineapple evoke an event at the Palace of Versailles compared to what we would call an “informal” meal at my house.

I’m sure a lot of celebrity cookbooks are ghostwritten by professional writers but this book has Arlene’s unique wit all over it, I’m positive she wrote it herself. Just take a look at her “Act 1” introduction:

Just as some people lose their attractiveness at the beach, others seem stripped of all charm at the breakfast table. They fall into two types—and I’d wish they’d fall farther. You have either those determined human-robins, who chirp brightly over their orange juice, or you are confronted with the Great Stone Face, who won’t speak!

The following panacea of breakfast suggestions are so good the human-robin shuts up to eat them, and the Stone Face speaks up in appreciation. Either way, with a Breakfast Winner, how can you lose?

While Arlene’s repartée is always sparkling, I think many of her breakfast recipes would be a challenge to my 21st century stomach. But maybe that’s just me—I’m sure you’d enjoy starting your day with Prune Delight, Fruited Pork Roll, Tongue Omelet, or Smoked Sliced Beef Pancakes.

In addition to providing hundreds of recipes, many using those innovative packaged meats and canned vegetables, Arlene was also a shill for her co-publisher, Mickleberry Food Products, a huge company in Chicago that would suffer a terrible factory fire in the late 1960s and go out of business. The photo above shows some of their prepared products. (Notice the careful placement of Arlene’s previous book That Certain Something on the table!) The caption reads, “HE might want Beef in Red Wine, SHE might prefer Lobster Newburg. These and many other truly gourmet dishes are individually packaged in Flex-Vac ‘boil-in-bag’ form and frozen.” I would never dream of questioning Arlene’s integrity, but if that Lobster Newburg came out of a frozen pouch, then my name is Bennett Cerf!

In the chapter on picnics and cookouts, Arlene offers up her Bacon Kebabs that include grilled bacon wrapped around carrots, olives, and cucumbers, all basted with garlic butter. How about cubes of canned luncheon meat interspersed with buttered bananas? Oy. Another recipe involves folded slices of pork luncheon meat and salami mixed with maraschino cherries, vacuum-packed dried apricots, and canned pineapple chunks. Do you see where my mother got her inspiration? For a special treat called Asparagus Mornay, Arlene arranges a 6-ounce package of sliced luxury loaf in a pie plate and then thaws some frozen asparagus tips in Hollandaise to sprinkle on the meat along with some cheddar cheese. Yum…but what the hell is luxury loaf?

Feel like entertaining? Arlene has all the advice you’ll need, as well as delicious recipes for Tongue Spread, Prune Rings, a melted cheese dish called White Monkey, her famous Bologna Ring Gelatin Mold, and something called Frankfurter Suey which combines hot dogs with soy sauce, brown sugar, bean sprouts, onions, and chicken bouillon cubes. Mmm-good! If anyone knows how to throw a well-heeled soirée, it’s Arlene Francis:

Parties, like plays, need plotting. You can’t just ring up the curtain and hope for the best. One plot element, as important as the menu, décor, and advance preparation, is your cast of characters. To wit, if your guests lack mutual interests, their dialogue, witty or not, will give out before dinner.

The party setting is a manner of brightening your home as a mute but warm compliment to your guests. Remember, too, in that setting you, the hostess, will be stage center. If everything’s ready in the wings, there’s no need for you to make your first entrance in a dash from a hot kitchen into the spotlight looking like a road company witch from Macbeth. If you’ve plotted well and timed things properly, you can glide onstage, glamorous as a professional model. The hostess’ temperature serves as a reverse thermometer for her guests. When she’s feverish, their spirits drop to zero; when she’s cool, their spirits soar.

I’d be willing to eat Arlene’s Bacon Kabobs or Luxury Loaf if I could just spend 20 minutes in her gracious presence. Throughout the book, Arlene talks about her teenaged son Peter who “likes to feed his friends in his own room where the record collection is handy.” She explains that Peter and his “constituents in Young America” prefer cold cuts, hot dogs, and hamburgers to anything else in or out of this world. “When teenagers have four miles of catsup in which to drown anything they’re eating, they’re in heaven. Beyond that there’s little to say except ‘Batten down the hatches, and lots of luck!’” That teenager, Peter Gabel, later became a respected writer and legal scholar, the associate editor of Tikkun magazine, and an activist working on many progressive causes. He died in 2022 at the age of 75.

Thank you, Arlene Francis, for all the time-saving tips and the entertaining social commentary you provided that helped free my mother from bondage in the kitchen—even if it did lead to a few scary meals that probably stunted my growth!

I’ve come to believe that movies are like memories: our perception of them is not fixed but is constantly shifting depending on our experience and changing sensibilities. Being a huge classic movie fan, I’m surprised by how often I see my favorite movies in a completely different way as I get older. One movie that I thought was locked in my brain was the 1961 movie version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song, but when I watched it again this week, I felt differently.

I fully expected to greet this story of Chinese Americans in San Francisco with audible groans for its outrageous stereotypes of Asian culture. Instead, as I watched the film for the first time in many years, I had the impression that the (all white) writers and filmmakers handled the subject with more care than I remembered. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of moments in the musical that I’m sure would make modern Asian American viewers cringe, but as an overall depiction of a community at a certain point in time, it didn’t seem nearly as offensive as I used to think it was. True, as a white person watching the work of white people writing and directing a mostly Asian cast, my perspective is pretty limited, but I was still surprised by what I saw.

In my frequent derision of the musical, I’d always point to the ridiculous song “Chop Suey” as an example of all that was wrong with this story. I’d adopt my own offensive pidgin accent in protest and start warbling:

Chop suey, chop suey,
Living here is very much like chop suey!

Then I’d bemoan the fact that Oscar Hammerstein II was so oblivious to Asian American culture that he didn’t even know that chop suey wasn’t an authentic Chinese food. But when I rewatched the film, I realized that this was the whole point of the song. Before singing it, Madame Liang, who has just become an American citizen after working hard toward that goal, describes how this American-invented dish epitomizes the assimilated culture she’s now a part of: a little bit of Chinese mixed in with a little bit of American. Now I get it, and I have to admit that everything about this movie seems all the more poignant in light of the current administration’s anti-immigrant hysteria. At least Madame Liang didn’t have masked ICE agents lurking outside her citizenship classes waiting to snatch her off the street. Not that I’m saying “Chop Suey” is one of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s best songs, but it is an interesting record of a time and place:

Hula hoops and nuclear war
Doctor Salk and Zsa Zsa Gabor
Bobby Darin, Sandra Dee, and Dewey
Chop suey, chop suey!

Ballpoint pens and filter tips
Lipsticks and potato chips.
In the dampest kind of heat wave
You can give your hair a neat wave.

Chop suey, chop suey!
Good and bad, intelligent, mad, and screwy.
Violins and trumpets and drums
Take it all the way that it comes
Sad and funny, sour and honey dewy
Chop suey!

Okay, fine, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” it ain’t. But it gets its message across.

The two female leads in the film are a study in contrasts. Miyoshi Umeki’s Mei Li is an off-the-boat traditional girl from mainland China who knows nothing of the brash American lifestyle (and therefore is seen as more virtuous) while gorgeous Nancy Kwan is the fully assimilated opportunistic showgirl, Linda Low, who sings risqué numbers at Sammy Fong’s Chinatown nightclub wearing provocative Asian-inspired get-ups that might feel at home in a stripper’s closet.

The filmmakers tried to have it both ways with Linda and I suppose they succeeded. On the one hand she is money- and status-obsessed and quite cynical in her approach to men and her career, especially compared to innocent Mei Li, but on the other hand, she explains her misdeeds away with her desire to quit the glamorous life, get married, and cater to her man for the rest of her life like a good (Asian) American wife. Every bump and grind she performs is in service of landing her guy so in her own way, the film posits, she’s just as “pure” as Mei Li. Nancy Kwan, who had a big success a year earlier in The World of Suzie Wong opposite William Holden, was a knockout as Linda Low, and she sings the one number from this musical that crossed over and became a bona fide pop hit. Just don’t expect the tradwife lyrics to become a feminist anthem any time soon:

I flip when a fellow sends me flowers
I drool over dresses made of lace
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound and a half of cream upon my face!

I’m strictly a female female
And my future I hope will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy having a girl like me.

And yet I have to admit that I didn’t even find that song as offensive as I used to. I realize this may not be good news, but I hope it just means that I’m finally able to view these stories from the context and times in which they were written.

Of course, I was obviously not alone in taking issue with the treatment of Asian Americans in Flower Drum Song over the past 60 years. There was enough of an outcry about it for Broadway producers to hire Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang to rewrite the libretto of the musical for a 2002 Broadway revival. This unprecedented move was controversial and many critics attacked the new version as a sacrilege to the memory of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. I saw the revised show when it previewed in Los Angeles on its way to New York and I was the only one in my group who liked the new version which thoroughly updated the story and included political analyses of the Chinese Communist government.

Now that I’ve seen the film again, though, I’d just as soon go back to the original. If we’re going to start “fixing” Broadway musicals to better fit our modern sensibilities, we better start hacking away at every popular show from the beginning of musical theatre.

Few musicals in the Rogers & Hammerstein canon would survive this re-evaluation undisturbed, especially shows like their beautiful Carousel whose leads would never pass muster in the post #MeToo era. Billy Bigelow is nothing short of an abusive monster, and put-upon Julie Jordan accepts it all:

What’s the use of wonderin’
If he’s good or if he’s bad
Or if you like the way he wears his hat?
Oh, what’s the use of wonderin’
If he’s good or if he’s bad?
He’s your feller and you love him
That’s all there is to that.

Common sense may tell you
That the endin’ will be sad
And now’s the time to break and run away
But what’s the use of wonderin’
If the endin’ will be sad?
He’s your feller and you love him
There’s nothin’ more to say.

Run, Julie, run! And yet, I really don’t want to see anyone rewrite that musical to address our 21st-century concerns, we have to look at them as they are.

One of the most exciting things about Flower Drum Song was the huge Asian American cast, a real breakthrough for an American studio film. It’s great to see that many talented Asian American actors but this can also be considered one of the troubling aspects of the film since many of the roles of the Chinese and Chinese American characters are played by Japanese and other non-Chinese actors. Of course, most white people watching this film in 1960s likely did not care or even notice, and maybe Chinese Americans didn’t give a damn either — at least the Asian characters weren’t being played by white actors as had often been the case in Hollywood.

Who can forget German Luise Rainer’s Oscar-winning performance as Chinese peasant O-Lan in the film version of Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth (the part that Anna May Wong was born to play, wanted to play, and lobbied to play — even Pearl Buck wanted her but the studios refused and only offered Wong the part of the concubine — she told them to shove it) or Katharine Hepburn’s bizarre portrayal of Jade Tan in Buck’s Dragon Seed (she didn’t even try to shed her distinctive Bryn Mawr accent for the role)? Oh, and lest we forget Jennifer Jones’ Dr. Han Suyin in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, a movie in which Jones spends a large amount of screen time telling anyone who will listen that she is Eurasian, as if she’s trying to convince even herself of this absurd casting choice.

So better Japanese Miyoshi Umeki as Mei Li than Jean Simmons, right? I don’t mean to slight Umeki. She was a delight in the film and one of the few transfers from the original Broadway production. Umeki’s co-star as Linda Low on Broadway was Japanese American Pat Suzuki. At least Nancy Kwan was half-Chinese! The other original cast member who made it to the film was Juanita Hall, whose two biggest roles in her career were Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song and Bloody Mary in South Pacific. Two iconic Asian characters—and yet Hall was African American! Go figure.

Flower Drum Song holds a special place in my heart because it is literally the first film I ever saw on a big screen. I’ll never forget the night that my brother, sister, and I got into our pyjamas, piled into our family car with pillows and blankets, and went to see the movie at a drive-in movie theatre in Chicago. Assuming the film took a year or so to make it to the local drive-ins, I still must have been under four years old, and yet I vividly remember this night. In fact, it’s the only time I remember watching a film with all the members of my immediate family.

All week I couldn’t get Mei Li’s big song, “A Hundred Million Miracles,” out of my head. I’ve been singing it nonstop around our house in my version of Miyoshi Umeki’s accent, sounding something like “a hundid meelyown midukows.” My tortured accent upsets my family members who think I’m making fun of Chinese people. I swear I’m not, but I guess it’s wise to keep my Umeki impression to myself. Despite my feeling that these old musicals should be left alone, I’m actually encouraged by the discomfort they produce. I have every confidence that newer generations will come up with much more complex and accurate depictions of our cultural landscape in all its glory and in all its current horrors. Something tells me their lyrics will be more complex than this other favorite Flower Drum Song tune about the exotic wonders of San Francisco’s Chinatown:

You can eat, if you are in the mood,
Shark-fin soup, bean cake fish.
The girl who serves you all your food
Is another tasty dish!

You know you can’t have a new way of living
Till you’re living all the way
On Grant Avenue. Where is that?
San Francisco. That’s where’s that!
California, U.S.A.!

But despite all of its deficiencies, at least Flower Drum Song introduced me to Asian Americans, probably the least represented group in my Chicago elementary and high school populations. Sadly, despite the popularity of the stage musical, the movie version of Flower Drum Song ended up being a financial failure, rare for one of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s stage-to-movie transfers. I can just hear the studio executives in their board rooms drawing their asinine conclusions: “LOSE THE ASIANS, Americans want more white leads!” No wonder we had to wait more than 30 years for The Joy Luck Club, the next big studio film with a mostly Asian American cast.

I hope more people today can appreciate the groundbreaking Flower Drum Song for what it was. Even the Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, who worked to give the story a more modern spin and said the original was often demonized in his community, admitted that the movie had always been one of his guilty pleasures. “As a boomer Asian American, you didn’t often see people that looked like you. And the idea that the younger generation, at least, was portrayed as American [in the movie] was unusual. So growing up, the musical represented one of the few positive portrayals of people that looked like me.”

A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
Are happening every day!

The Trump administration’s never-ending war on science is going to have a horrible impact on our lives, now and in the future. They have dismantled scientific bodies, politicized and censored troves of scientific information including a complete rejection of climate change and the promotion of baseless vaccine conspiracies, they have slashed funding for many federally funded research initiatives, and they have created such a hostile environment for the scientific community that there is an ever-increasing “brain drain” of scientists leaving the United States. Who knows how long it will take to recoup the immense losses of this miserable period that is also having an impact on science education from the earliest levels.

I loved science as a kid. One of my very first science role models was Don Herbert, TV’s Mr. Wizard. While Herbert started his popular TV show long before I was born, Watch Mr. Wizard was still airing in my childhood and Herbert continued to turn kids on to the wonders of science for decades to come before his death in 2007 at the age of 89. My guess is that thousands of my fellow Baby Boomers were deeply impacted by Herbert’s passion for the mysteries of the natural world.

How I longed to be one of Mr. Wizard’s young assistants when I was a kid. I can remember the excitement I felt watching his experiments and how I couldn’t wait to try them myself in our kitchen or living room, sometimes to my mother’s horror as she watched volcanoes of baking soda and vinegar erupt on her coffee table, vacuums created in heirloom teacups, or eggs magically fitting through the thin neck of a milk bottle. The beauty of Watch Mr. Wizard was that Herbert’s impressive experiments were reproducible at home, you didn’t need any expensive equipment. Every item in the house was a potential science project, and after watching his show I busily gathered utensils, paper straws, tubes from rolls of paper towels, and coffee cans for my makeshift laboratory.

Herbert reminded me of one of his contemporaries, Julia Child, whose black-and-white series, The French Chef, I also loved. (And as Julia would tell you, cooking IS science!) Herbert and Child were perfect television personalities for the 1960s, as natural in front of a camera as they were talking to family members or close friends. Their appeal included a vulnerability that is absent from most public media personalities today — they’d make mistakes, trudge through experiments or recipes that didn’t work, and then instead of demanding a reshoot, shrug it off as part of life and move on to the next attempt.

Don Herbert and Julia Child were very serious about their work but they didn’t take themselves too seriously, they were able to laugh at themselves while imparting valuable information to their devoted viewers. I loved how Herbert never talked down to his young assistants, he treated them with great respect and answered all of their questions in language they could easily understand. Herbert used no quick edits or fancy graphics to sell his message, the show was a hit solely because Mr. Wizard was the real thing. And I treated The French Chef like I did Watch Mr. Wizard, trying my hand at many of Julia Child’s delicious recipes at a very young age. I remember making her pain de mie, boeuf bourguignon, and mousse au chocolat with the same wonder and excitement as I did any of Herbert’s science experiments.

In addition to Mr. Wizard, my passion for science was further strengthened by our regular visits to Chicago’s glorious Museum of Science & Industry. I’ve yet to find a science museum that holds a candle to this great institution. Back then, visiting the imposing Beaux Arts building in Chicago’s Hyde Park (built for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition) felt as thrilling and universe-bending as accompanying Alice through the Looking Glass.

Several of my favorite exhibits from childhood still exist, I believe, such as the replica of a Coal Mine, the German U-505 Submarine, the old-fashioned Main Street (where we’d always get our photos taken at the vintage photographer’s studio), silent movie star Colleen Moore’s miniature fairy castle, the real hatching eggs (we’d stand there for hours rooting for the weaker chicks to make it), and the giant beating heart that you could walk through. Others are long gone such as the Bell Telephone Exhibit that included a working picture phone we all thought would be standard fare by 1970. You could use the phone at the museum (with a small black-and-white video image) to talk to people at a matching exhibit in faraway Disneyland. What a miracle — a preview of our Jetsons-like life with flying cars and robots that was just around the corner!

Are the preserved fetuses at all stages of development still on display at what is now called the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry? I mercifully haven’t noticed those on my more recent visits with my own kids. I remember how the massive size of some of the rooms at the museum took my breath away. The model train set seemed to go on for miles, and I could stare at the gigantic backlit Kodachrome image all day long. Our regular visits to the museum’s gift shop always produced either the day-glo “magic crystals” which we’d grow in glass fish bowls, or the infamous sea monkeys that we’d also hatch at home that were actually some kind of ghastly brine shrimp.

My love of science took root thanks to Mr. Wizard’s cool experiments and other TV mentors, the great interactive exhibits at the Museum of Science & Industry, and my obsession with NASA and the Apollo space program. But now, with anti-science, conspiracy-addled quacks like RFK, Jr. and Dr. Oz making policy in our federal government and turning every aspect of science education into a partisan screed, I fear for our nation’s youth. We need people like Mr. Wizard more than ever. Come on, kids, you future scientists and space travelers and those of you who may one day discover the cure for cancer, AIDS, and many other illnesses, don’t be dragged down by the idiots currently gutting your science education — get out that baking soda and vinegar and have some messy science fun!

Today is the 62^nd anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I’ve always considered the horrible events of that day as my very first memory. I had just turned four and even though I remember nothing else from that time period, my parents’ strong reaction (I remember my mother sobbing that day) made me press “save” on the memory. Thanksgiving that year was six days later. John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s third birthday was only three days after JFK’s death and the now widowed First Lady, God love her, still threw him a small birthday party in the White House. Jackie and her two children left the White House for good 11 days later.

Do you know that Jacqueline Kennedy spoke publicly about the assassination only one time in her entire life? She was called to testify in front of the Warren Commission, the group appointed by President Johnson to investigate the assassination. Mrs. Kennedy did not want to testify since she was still understandably traumatized by the event, but she agreed to do it for the purpose of posterity. She was questioned on June 5, 1964 by J. Lee Rankin, general counsel for the Warren Commission. This was her brief and to-the-point testimony. It lasted 10 minutes.

The Chairman: The Commission will be in order. Mrs. Kennedy, the Commission would just like to have you say in your own words, in your own way, what happened at the time of the assassination of the President. Mr. Rankin will ask you a few questions, just from the time you left the airport until the time you started for the hospital. And we want it to be brief. We want it to be in your own words and want you to say anything that you feel is appropriate to that occasion. Would you be sworn, please, Mrs. Kennedy? Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give before the Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mrs. Kennedy: I do.

Mr. Rankin: State your name for the record.

Mrs. Kennedy: Jacqueline Kennedy.

Mr. Rankin: And you are the widow of the former President Kennedy?

Mrs. Kennedy: That is right.

Mr. Rankin: Can you go back to the time that you came to Love Field on November 22 and describe what happened there after you landed in the plane?

Mrs. Kennedy: We got off the plane. The then Vice President and Mrs. Johnson were there. They gave us flowers. And then the car was waiting, but there was a big crowd there, all yelling, with banners and everything. And we went to shake hands with them. It was a very hot day. And you went all along a long line. I tried to stay close to my husband and lots of times you get pushed away, you know, people leaning over and pulling your hand. They were very friendly. And, finally, I don’t know how we got back to the car. I think Congressman Thomas somehow was helping me. There was lots of confusion.

Mr. Rankin: Then you did get into the car. And you sat on the left side of the car, did you, and your husband on your right?

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes.

Mr. Rankin: And was Mrs. Connally—

Mrs. Kennedy: In front of me.

Mr. Rankin: And Governor Connally to your right in the jump seat?

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes.

Mr. Rankin: And then did you start off on the parade route?

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes.

Mr. Rankin: And were there many people along the route that you waved to?

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes. It was rather scattered going in. Once there was a crowd of people with a sign saying something like “President Kennedy, please get out and shake our hands, our neighbors said you wouldn’t.”

Mr. Rankin: Did you?

Mrs. Kennedy: And he stopped and got out. That was, you know, like a little suburb and there were not many crowds. But then the crowds got bigger as you went in.

Mr. Rankin: And you waved to them and proceeded down the street with the motorcade?

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes. And in the motorcade, you know, I usually would be waving mostly to the left side and he was waving mostly to the right, which is one reason you are not looking at each other very much. And it was terribly hot. Just blinding all of us.

Mr. Rankin: Now, do you remember as you turned off of the main street onto Houston Street?

Mrs. Kennedy: I don’t know the name of the street.

Mr. Rankin: That is that one block before you get to the Depository Building.

Mrs. Kennedy: Well, I remember whenever it was, Mrs. Connally said, “We will soon be there.” We could see a tunnel in front of us. Everything was really slow then. And I remember thinking it would be so cool under that tunnel.

Mr. Rankin: And then do you remember as you turned off of Houston onto Elm right by the Depository Building?

Mrs. Kennedy: Well, I don’t know the names of the streets, but I suppose right by the Depository is what you are talking about?

Mr. Rankin: Yes; that is the street that sort of curves as you go down under the underpass.

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes; well, that is when she said to President Kennedy, “You certainly can’t say that the people of Dallas haven’t given you a nice welcome.”

Mr. Rankin: What did he say?

Mrs. Kennedy: I think he said—I don’t know if I remember it or I have read it, “No, you certainly can’t,” or something. And you know then the car was very slow and there weren’t very many people around. And then—do you want me to tell you what happened?

Mr. Rankin: Yes; if you would, please.

Mrs. Kennedy: You know, there is always noise in a motorcade and there are always motorcycles, besides us, a lot of them backfiring. So I was looking to the left. I guess there was a noise, but it didn’t seem like any different noise really because there is so much noise, motorcycles and things. But then suddenly Governor Connally was yelling, “Oh, no, no, no.”

Mr. Rankin: Did he turn toward you?

Mrs. Kennedy: No; I was looking this way, to the left, and I heard these terrible noises. You know. And my husband never made any sound. So I turned to the right. And all I remember is seeing my husband, he had this sort of quizzical look on his face, and his hand was up, it must have been his left hand. And just as I turned and looked at him, I could see a piece of his skull and I remember it was flesh colored. I remember thinking he just looked as if he had a slight headache. And I just remember seeing that. No blood or anything. And then he sort of did this [indicating], put his hand to his forehead and fell in my lap. And then I just remember falling on him and saying, “Oh, no, no, no,” I mean, “Oh, my God, they have shot my husband.” And “I love you, Jack,” I remember I was shouting. And just being down in the car with his head in my lap. And it just seemed an eternity. You know, then, there were pictures later on of me climbing out the back. But I don’t remember that at all.

Mr. Rankin: Do you remember Mr. Hill coming to try to help on the car?

Mrs. Kennedy: I don’t remember anything. I was just down like that. And finally I remember a voice behind me, or something, and then I remember the people in the front seat, or somebody, finally knew something was wrong, and a voice yelling, which must have been Mr. Hill, “Get to the hospital,”or maybe it was Mr. Kellerman, in the front seat. But someone yelling. I was just down and holding him. [Reference to wounds deleted.]

Mr. Rankin: Do you have any recollection of whether there were one or more shots?

Mrs. Kennedy: Well, there must have been two because the one that made me turn around was Governor Connally yelling. And it used to confuse me because first I remembered there were three and I used to think my husband didn’t make any sound when he was shot. And Governor Connally screamed. And then I read the other day that it was the same shot that hit them both. But I used to think if I only had been looking to the right I would have seen the first shot hit him, then I could have pulled him down, and then the second shot would not have hit him. But I heard Governor Connally yelling and that made me turn around, and as I turned to the right my husband was doing this [indicating with hand at neck]. He was receiving a bullet. And those are the only two I remember. And I read there was a third shot. But I don’t know. Just those two.

Mr. Rankin: And then from there you proceeded as rapidly as possible to the hospital, is that right?

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes.

Mr. Rankin: Do you recall anyone saying anything else during the time of the shooting?

Mrs. Kennedy: No; there weren’t any words. There was just Governor Connally’s. And then I suppose Mrs. Connally was sort of crying and covering her husband. But I don’t remember any words.

Mr. Rankin: Can you think of anything more?

The Chairman: No; I think not. I think that is the story and that is what we came for.

Mr. Rankin: You have told us what you remember about the entire period as far as you can recall, have you?

Mrs. Kennedy: Yes.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mrs. Kennedy.

President Kennedy lived an hour and a half after being shot and died at Parkland Hospital at 1:00 pm on November 22, 1963. Texas Governor John Connally survived his serious wounds and died in 1993. His wife Nellie who was next to him in the car died in 2006. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in 1994. J. Lee Rankin died in 1996.

Wicked: For Good opens today at over 4,000 movie theaters in North America following the first film a year ago and a juggernaut of press and promotion the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. We are true Wicked fanatics in my family, I have to admit, and we’ve been waiting eagerly for this day for a year. My son Charles and I even went to a Reaction Bubble event the other day where we got to listen to snippets of the tracks from the new film before they are released. The Wicked films are, in case you don’t know, a retelling of the story of the witches of Oz: Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Glinda (the Good Witch).

The films are based on the long-running Broadway musical that first starred Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenowith with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman. The musical is based on the very dark novel by Gregory Maguire which was based on the characters created well over a hundred years ago by L. Frank Baum. The stars of the movies, Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, have knocked it out of the ballpark, giving definish thrillifying performances that have already become as legendary as the ones by Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, and all of the other actors who starred in the beloved The Wizard of Oz.

That 1939 film has always played a big role in my life, even if it did lead to some confusion. When I was very young, my grandparents were the only people we knew who had a color TV, a prerequisite for watching Dorothy’s transition from bleak Kansas to Technicolor Oz, so we’d always go to their apartment on Chicago’s lakefront to watch the movie. The annual television broadcast of the MGM film was one of the Important Events™ of my childhood.

As a rule, we headed to my orthodox grandparents’ home on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive for all Jewish rituals. We had dinner at my grandparents’ every Friday night to welcome the Sabbath, we celebrated all the Jewish holidays there from Yom Kippur to Hanukkah, and we appeared on their doorstep each year for the viewing of The Wizard of Oz. Can you see why I came to believe that Dorothy’s journey down the Yellow Brick Road was an important Jewish tale on par with Noah’s Ark or the Exodus from Egypt?

The once-a-year broadcast had all the earmarks of a Jewish celebration. The weeks before the event were filled with anticipation. What night would it fall on? What would we wear? What would we eat for dinner? My grandfather lorded over the evening as befitting the patriarchal leader of the clan. After dinner he took his position of honor in the overstuffed leather chair in the den which was lined with blond wooden bookshelves crammed with Jewish-themed texts. The family gathered around as my grandfather warmed up the huge RCA console.

Both of my grandparents provided commentary throughout the evening. Following Jewish custom, certain stories were repeated year after year. My grandmother talked about taking my five-year-old mother to the Oriental Theatre in downtown Chicago during the first few weeks of the film’s theatrical run. My grandfather then pointed out that on that very date, September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and his remaining family members in the Polish town of Staszów began their tragic descent that culminated in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. It soon became impossible for me to disassociate the opening of The Wizard of Oz with the destruction of European Jewry. The film became a cinematic metaphor for the terror inflicted upon my people.

As we waited for the movie to begin, I inched closer to the set, as excited about watching the familiar tale as I was every Passover anticipating the story of the Hebrew slaves overcoming bondage in ancient Egypt. During this pre-VCR, pre-digital media age, the airing of The Wizard of Oz was such a big deal that the evening was hosted by a celebrity who would appear before and after each commercial break to talk about the film. To me these stoic men—ranging from Richard Boone of Have Gun Will Travel to Dick Van Dyke to Danny Kaye—had a rabbinic presence. Their commentary flowed easily with my grandfather’s and evoked images of learned men discussing the weekly Torah portion in the synagogue.

As the opening credits neared, my anticipation reached a fever pitch. Lights were dimmed, dessert plates cleared, and all eyes focused on the set. From the first sight of the MGM lion I was transfixed, swept away in religious reverie. The early scenes of the film on Dorothy Gale’s Kansas shtetl are filmed in black-and-white, a bleak foreshadowing of the encroaching doom that would forever obliterate the Jewish way of life throughout Europe. The danger to the Jews first takes the form of nasty Miss Gulch, a classic anti-Semite who wants to take Dorothy’s precious dog to the authorities and “make sure he’s destroyed.”

Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, though outraged like many Jews who had to endure such indignities during the early years of Nazi influence, feel powerless to stop Miss Gulch and they hand the poor mutt over to certain death. Miraculously, the dog escapes and finds his way back to Dorothy’s loving arms. Dorothy realizes that evil still lurks around the corner and she tries to run away. By this time Miss Gulch’s rabid anti-Semitism has grown into a tornado of hate, sending Dorothy and her entire house up into the gale winds of the unknown. Her town and former life disappear as she lands in the mysterious land of Oz.

For the rest of the film, Dorothy makes her way through countless trials and tribulations on her determined quest to find her true home. During this perilous journey, the Wicked Witch of the West embodies the worst of Nazi tyranny—Hitler’s personal messenger sent to torment the innocent Jewess trapped in a strange land whose dangers she could not comprehend.

As I watched the film year after year, I analyzed the religious affiliation and moral fiber of each character. With her long brown braids and simple gingham dress, Dorothy bore a striking resemblance to old pre-war photographs of my Aunt Gittel Chana in Poland. Dorothy was obviously a Jewish character with her longing for a better world “over the rainbow,” her reverence for animals and nature, and her eagerness to expose false idols such as the Wizard himself. The rest of the characters in the story eventually found their way into my “Who’s a Jew?” encyclopedia.

Glinda the Good Witch: Not a Jew. No Jewish woman with power would ever be so soft-spoken or be caught dead in that pink cinched-waist gown. Glinda represents the kind but somewhat scatterbrained aspects of European leadership that failed to take seriously the threat of darker forces lurking ahead. “You have no power here,” she says with a laugh to the Wicked Witch. Alas, Glinda underestimates the power of a charismatic figure who has the ability to incite old hatreds into mob violence.

The Munchkins: Jews. Short, odd-looking, clannish people who live apart from the Oz mainstream. The Munchkins cling to their own ways and depend on the good will of various Gentile authority figures for their survival.

Scarecrow: Jew. A wise old soul who values education above all else and tortures himself about not being smart enough. He probably got this neurosis from his never-satisfied parents. Always able to think on his feet, he nevertheless suffers from low self-esteem. A born mediator and an honest, loyal friend.

Tin Man: Not a Jew. With his kind and loving nature, the Tin Man is one of the Righteous Gentiles who would put his life on the line to protect his Jewish friend, but his unassuming nature and vulnerabilities often leave him frozen in fear as he faces his enemies. A generous nurturer whose sensitive side belies his physical strength.

Cowardly Lion: Jew. Though full of bravado and a loud bark when backed into a corner, he is really a pussycat at heart, unable to harm a fly. A classic narcissist with unresolved sexual issues. A disappointment to his loved ones who wanted him to go into the family business but admired by his friends for his willingness to buck tradition and face his worst fears.

The Witch’s Guards: Not Jews. An elite army of evil who later claim they were “just following orders.” Gestapo henchmen who show no loyalty to their leader but switch allegiances whenever it suits their needs.

Emerald City residents: Emerald City is clearly the capital of Gentile Oz. As opposed to the strange little Munchkins or the odd-looking Scarecrow and Lion, the residents of Emerald City are perfect specimens of a Master Race. Though beautiful, graceful, and strong, they lack individuality and are easy prey to a charlatan with delusions of grandeur who hopes that no one would pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Certain scenes in The Wizard of Oz were so terrifying to me that I used to have Technicolor nightmares in which the Yellow Brick Road led straight to the gates of Auschwitz. There was one line in the movie that always troubled me. After Dorothy fails to hitch a ride back to Kansas in the Wizard’s hot-air balloon, Glinda reappears and casually announces that the girl has always had the power to return home. “But why didn’t you tell her?” demands an incredulous Scarecrow. “Because she wouldn’t have believed me,” replies the Good Witch. “She had to learn it for herself.”

As a kid, this exchange used to send me into a rage of indignation. How could Glinda in good conscience let someone she cared about risk her life over and over again if she knew the secret that would send her to safety? I now see this as the film’s most Jewish message of all. For thousands of years, Jews have struggled as a people against forces that tried to destroy them or make them assimilate into the larger culture. Instead of succumbing to the waves of persecution or taking the easy way out, the tiny Jewish population thrived against all odds. It wasn’t powerful weapons or armies that allowed Jews to survive, it was their own quiet knowledge of their worth as a people.

Before returning to Kansas, Glinda asks Dorothy to recount what she’s learned during her adventures in Oz. She recites what she’s learned with confidence and import as if she’s delivering her impassioned Bat Mitzvah speech. “I learned that if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it in the first place.”

That’s it, Dorothy. Mazel tov!

As a classic movie fanatic, I have a hard time passing by the centennials of my favorite stars without comment. Here’s to the talented Rock Hudson, born 100 years ago today as Roy Harold Scherer Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, not far from where I grew up. There are plenty of excellent books about Hudson’s life and career as well as a fascinating documentary that came out recently on HBO called Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed so I won’t go into his life or career in any detail, just a few random things that come to mind when I think of him.

The first thing that comes to mind is our wonderful friend Barbara Rush who died last year at the age of 97. Barbara starred in three films opposite Rock Hudson, all of them directed by the great Douglas Sirk — from the sublime Magnificent Obsession to the ridiculous Taza, Son of Cochise. I once asked Barbara what she thought when the two of them were insanely cast as Apache Indians:

“I thought, ‘Yay, I’m going to the desert with Rock Hudson!’ I loved my Indian costumes and we had a lot of fun on location even though it was really hot. I just loved Rock. I remember on that film he was always playing Doris Day records, he loved her even though he didn’t know her yet. I was so happy when they got to work together and, of course, she really adored him. But on Taza we’d just giggle all day long. My Indian name was Oona and he’d always call me ‘Oona, dos, tres.’ We’d just scream with laughter!”

No studio today could (or should!) get away with hiring two of the whitest actors on the planet to play Apache lovers, but it’s sure fun to watch — shot in 3D yet! Can you imagine how long it took every morning to slather these two in makeup? But Barbara had a blast and she remained friends with Rock Hudson for the rest of his life.

I do think Hudson was often underrated as an actor. My favorite performances of his are probably in George Stevens’ Giant and John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, both extraordinary films, but of course I love watching his three with Barbara and his iconic pairings with Doris Day (Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and Send Me No Flowers) among so many others. Hudson had a lot of success on TV as well. My wife Kendall got to meet Rock Hudson when she was a little girl on the set of McMillan & Wife (her dad worked on the show) where she was an extra in a Halloween episode and got to sit on his lap! She thought he was wonderful.

Of course we all know that Rock Hudson was one of the first major celebrities to die from complications of AIDS at the age of 59 in 1985. His death forced many in the mainstream media to finally acknowledge the horrible disease. It’s sad that there was no way Rock Hudson could be open about his sexuality during his long career. Barbara said that it was well known but just never discussed, no one cared. Hudson even had to make fun of gay men in some of his films which is so bizarre.

For someone who spent his entire career hiding his sexuality, I was very surprised to come across a crazy article from a 1950 movie magazine that was shot in a notorious L.A. gay hangout called the Finlandia Baths. There’s Rock Hudson relaxing in the sauna with his buddies Hugh O’Brian, Scott Brady, John Bromfield, and Tony Curtis. Just a bunch of red-blooded bros, right? As if to counter the obvious homoerotic content of the photos, the text of the article focused on the exploits of these men as the “wolves” of Hollywood.

“Is a girl safe in Hollywood, or had she better take her mother along when she dates an actor? Read this surprising report on West Coast Romeos.” The guys are presented as a bunch of dudes who love to sit around together nearly nude and compare notes. I’m not saying any of the other actors in these photos were hiding anything about their sexuality, and baths and saunas were often a hangout for the Hollywood set, I’m just surprised the studios allowed Hudson to be seen in this way including the above photo in which Rock is getting a completely nude massage while Tony Curtis and the other actors play cards. In the article, Hudson is deemed one of the very few “safe” dates because of his undying love for Vera-Ellen. Um…what?

For my last memory of Rock Hudson on his centennial, let’s take a look at this jaw-dropping musical number he performed with the wonderful Bea Arthur in a 1980 special she did for CBS (in between her Maude and Golden Girls runs). Every time I see it, I’m left with just one question: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? In the number, Bea and Rock play a couple of boozing, middle-aged suburbanites who are musing about the happy-go-lucky drug-addled kids of the day. Arthur and Hudson seem to view all forms of recreational drug use with amusement and mirth. Try getting this past the network censors today:

Rock Hudson was a wonderful actor who made a lot of great movies (and some not so great!). He sadly had to live a big part of his life in secret and left us way too soon.

When I was growing up in Chicago, I used to go on theater trips to New York with my mother during which we’d cram five or six Broadway musicals into a four-day period. Later on, I used to take the Greyhound to New York with my high school friends and see lots more fantastic plays. My children have inherited my love of theater and I also married into a theater family — both of my in-laws, Oliver Hailey and Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, had plays on Broadway although they had more luck outside of New York since the all-powerful theater critics back then tended to be biased against Los Angeles-based playwrights. But theater remains a great love for the lot of us.

That’s why I’m so saddened and disgusted by how prohibitively expensive Broadway shows have become. I know there are still creative ways to get tickets that don’t require you to sell an internal organ, but as someone who used to saunter up to the box office at the last minute and often get fantastic seats in the first few rows for less than $30 (yeah, I know, that was a LONG time ago!), I hate that the Broadway experience is becoming something that is geared toward the wealthy. I was shocked when I looked up the ticket prices the other day for the brand-new Kristin Chenowith musical, The Queen of Versailles, and saw the tickets I prefer starting at $400 a seat. Come on, that is ridiculous.

Since I’ve taken to ruminating about the 1970s in this space, I was thinking this morning about what I would list as my Top 10 Broadway Musicals from that time period (the 1970s and early 80s). Here’s the ranking I came up with off the top of my head among the shows I saw back then. I’m sure I’m forgetting some great ones.

1. A History of the American Film (with Swoosie Kurtz) (1978)

2. A Chorus Line (with the original cast during its first weeks and again with Ann Reinking as Cassie) (1975)

3. On the Twentieth Century (with Madeline Kahn, Jerry Orbach, and Kevin Kline) (1978)

4. Sweeney Todd (with Angela Lansbury) (1979)

5. Chicago (with Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera and again when Ann Reinking took over for Gwen Verdon) (1975)

6. Annie (with Andrea McArdle and Dorothy Loudon) (1977)

7. Runaways (the amazing Elizabeth Swados musical) (1978)

8. Guys and Dolls (the all-black cast including Robert Guillaume) (1976)

9. The Pirates of Penzance (with Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline) (1981)

10. Woman of the Year (twice with Lauren Bacall, once with Raquel Welch) (1981)

This made me think about my very first trip to that great city, an experience I will never forget. It was the summer of 1972 and I had just survived my Bar Mitzvah which had taken place smack dab in the middle of my parents’ ugly divorce (something I can’t seem to stop talking about on here!). As a consolation prize, my grandparents decided to take me with them to the Big Apple where my grandfather, who ran a chain of clothing stores in Chicago with his brothers called Karoll’s Red Hanger Shops, was being inducted for a one-year term as the new president of the Menswear Retailers of America. I had barely been out of Chicago at that point except for summer trips to see my relatives in Toronto so I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to see the fabulous New York skyline which was in the process of changing dramatically with the almost completed construction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.

Because of my grandfather’s new position, we were treated to a suite at the ultra-modern Americana Hotel on 7th Avenue. (The unusually shaped building is still there but I think it’s now a Sheraton.) I had my own room in the suite but what I mostly remember was my grandparents’ bed which seemed way bigger than a King and was covered with an actual mink bedspread! There was a gigantic color television console in our living room and it was exciting to eat the fancy room service (I remember almost passing out when I saw in the room service menu that a hamburger cost a whopping TEN DOLLARS) while watching Marcus Welby, MD on our big screen!

On our first night in New York, we went to meet an old friend of my grandparents who was living at the Plaza Hotel (I forget who it was, but living in that building already seemed the height of glamour). As we approached the door of the massive castle-like 1907 structure on Fifth Avenue, a huge limousine screeched to a halt a few feet from us. The doorman scurried over to open the door and out climbed none other than Liza Minnelli. Cabaret had just been released a few months earlier to international acclaim and Liza had finally achieved a level of stardom that matched or perhaps exceeded her famous parents.

Minnelli was in full Sally Bowles drag complete with long glittered eyelashes, dark red lipstick, and bright green fingernails. She was dressed from head to toe in white and looked like she could have walked straight out of Berlin’s decadent Kit Kat Klub. My grandmother spotted Minnelli making her way towards us since we were standing by the front door of the hotel.

“LEESA!! LEESA MINNOOLI!! COME OVER HERE AND MEET MY GRANDSON!”

Oy. Even at 13, I knew enough to be mortified. Liza swept toward us, looked me in the eyes, gave me a little wave and her trademark giggle, and then disappeared inside the Plaza with her entourage. Being the early 70s, she was probably on her way to Studio 54 where she’d overindulge and schmooze until dawn with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol. Oh, what a time!

Less than a month later, we all watched Minnelli’s Emmy Award-winning special Liza with a Z in which she rattled off the funny title song about how frustrating it was that no one ever seemed to get her name right.

It’s Liza with ‘Z’
Not Lisa with an ‘S’
‘Cause Lisa with an ‘S’ goes ‘sss’ not ‘zzz’
It’s ‘Z’ instead of ‘S’
‘Lie’ instead of ‘Lee’
It’s simple as can be
See, Liza!

The luncheon held in my grandfather’s honor took place at the Americana the day after our Liza encounter. Here I am standing with my grandparents in my Bar Mitzvah suit. I assume the other men in this photo were big machers in the menswear industry. I was probably the only person under 50 at this lunch and I didn’t have the foresight to appreciate the history that was in the room. The 1970s were like some kind of long transition between the Old and New Worlds. Both of my grandfather’s parents, who had grown up in a Polish shtetl and emigrated to Canada in 1910, had recently died. The men’s clothing world was still called the “shmatte business” and was largely run by Jewish immigrants who were born in Russia or Poland or had Yiddish-speaking parents who had come over just before they were born.

That night we went to the taping of a talk show Steve Allen was doing at the time. It was my first visit to a television studio and I was stoked. Although I knew most of my favorite shows were filmed in far-off California, I still hoped to run into Sonny and Cher or the Mod Squad (“one black, one white, one blond”). Steve Allen was a very talented host (he had been the original host of what was now Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show), spending a lot of time with each guest and asking funny, in-depth questions. His main guest that night was a young comedian named Woody Allen who had just released a funny new film called Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). I’m sure most of Woody’s humor during the interview was over my head but I had loved Bananas and Play it Again, Sam and was thrilled to see him in the flesh.

At one point, Woody mentioned that his ex-wife, who was also in his new film, was in the audience. Steve Allen shielded his eyes against the spotlight and looked directly at where we were sitting. I turned around and there, right behind us, standing up for a quick nervous bow, was Louise Lasser. Woody and Louise had divorced the year before and she still wasn’t that famous. She was probably best known for her popular Nyquil commercial (Man: “You’re a good wife, Mildred.” Woman: “I know.”). Lasser was several years away from her ground-breaking turn as Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (a show both of my in-laws worked on). What interested me far more than Louise Lasser was her companion that evening—Don Hollinger, aka Ted Bessell, Marlo Thomas’s boyfriend on That Girl!

But getting back to my obsession with Broadway, we only saw one show on that trip, but it was enough to whet my appetite for a lifetime love of musicals. Leaving my grandfather to his meetings, my grandmother and I snuck off to a matinee of No, No, Nanette, the old chestnut from half a century earlier. The original show premiered in 1926 and was considered the cause of the Boston Red Sox “curse.” Apparently, in his effort to finance the show, producer and former Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees!

The revival owed its success to the nostalgia craze that was sweeping the country in the early 70s. The show featured some of the biggest stars from that long-ago era. Ruby Keeler was still going strong and could deliver kicks as high as when she made 42nd Street. This entire production was supervised by Ruby’s old boss, Busby Berkeley himself, now his his late 70s. Keeler hadn’t appeared with co-star Patsy Kelly since the 1935 film Go Into Your Dance starring Keeler’s then-husband Al Jolson. Jack Gilford (the Cracker Jack guy), Helen Gallagher, and Bobby Van were also in the cast. The story was pure fluff but the old 1920s songs were great and were delivered with gusto by the seasoned professionals. My favorite number was that anthem of codependency:

I want to be happy
But I won’t be happy
Till I make you happy too.
Life’s really worth living
When you are mirth giving
Why can’t I give some to you?
When skies are gray
And you say you are blue
I’ll send the sun smiling through…

Nanette herself was played by Susan Watson (who I met later as a friend of my wife’s theater family), who was the original Kim MacAfee in the Broadway version of Bye Bye Birdie a dozen years earlier. No, No, Nanette went on to win four Tony Awards including Best Actress for Helen Gallagher who would soon appear off-Broadway in my father-in-law’s play Red Rover, Red Rover opposite the great Phyllis Newman.

Oh Broadway, Broadway, I miss you. Please don’t turn into a playground exclusively for the filthy rich!

It’s hard to believe that Disneyland, Walt Disney’s original theme park, just celebrated its 70th anniversary in Anaheim. I know it’s tempting these days to look at the Disney corporation as an Evil Empire that has tried to appease the Trump administration (see the recent Jimmy Kimmel affair, the settlement they made in the defamation case Trump brought against Disney-owned ABC News, and a noticeable scaling back of the company’s DEI efforts) and exists only to lure children into their corporate lair like crack pushers in the school playground to create new generations of mindless consumers with glazed eyes and open wallets. I have joined in anti-Disney rants from time to time, railing about over-commercialization, the crazy prices for the theme parks (to go to Disneyland these days with a family of four you may need to sell a kidney), the company’s distorted treatment of women, and even speculation that Walt Disney himself had antisemitic tendencies (Jews were the butt of many jokes in the early Disney cartoons—in one scene in the original version of “The Three Little Pigs,” the Big Bad Wolf comes to the door dressed as a stereotypical Jewish peddler—an image straight out of Der Stürmer). But in the privacy of my own memories, do you want to know what I really think about Disney’s worldwide domination?

I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it!

Oops. Being the 1960s and 70s pop culture aficionado that I am, many of my happiest childhood memories revolve around Disney’s brand. Seminal moments of personality development occurred as I was hooked up to the IV drip of the Disney machine. My supersized Disney diet included such staples as The Mickey Mouse Club (while Annette and company moved on just after my birth, endless black-and-white reruns throughout my childhood made me think those kids were still donning their mouse ears on a daily basis), Mary Poppins (I idolized Julie Andrews’ “practically perfect in every way” nanny and dreamed of being one of her young charges), and a steady stream of Disney movies during the 1960s including The Three Lives of Thomasina (the first movie I remember seeing in a theater), That Darn Cat! (what’s with all the Disney felines?), The Gnome-Mobile (like the Thomasina film, also featuring the kids who played Jane and Michael Banks in Mary Poppins), The Happiest Millionaire, The Love Bug, and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes with 17-year-old Kurt Russell. And on Sunday nights, I would never miss Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, Color, Color!

The first visit of my Chicago-based family to the so-called Happiest Place on Earth occurred during the 1969 Summer of Love. While hippies and other counterculture types were gathering in the head shops of Haight-Ashbury, I was breathing in the psychedelic fumes of Disney Spirit. My family stayed in the glorious Disneyland Hotel (back when there was only one official hotel for the park—this historic hotel was sadly bulldozed in 1999), a child’s Shangri-La complete with themed restaurants, a monorail stop that would take us right into Disneyland, and a distinct smell of oranges (did they pipe in this artificial smell in memory of the groves that once filled these 100 acres?). It’s almost embarrassing to admit how excited I was to hurl myself into the Disney dream. I created a scrapbook of the trip, stuffed with Mickey Mouse-shaped menus, Instamatic portraits of our encounters with Pinocchio, Winnie the Pooh, Goofy, and Chip n’Dale, and remnants of our Disneyland ticket books.

In those days you paid a very small admission fee to get inside the park ($2.00 for adults and 60 cents for children) and then you purchased ticket books for the different rides which were given with A through E designations. The coveted E-tickets were for the Big Experiences like the Matterhorn Bobsleds, the Submarine Voyage, and It’s a Small World, a ride that premiered a few years earlier at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York (I’ll have to write a separate post about my trauma at being left behind during my family’s fabled vacation to the World’s Fair, a topic everyone I know has been hearing about for decades and something I questioned both of my parents about on heir death beds) . While E-Tickets got you admission into the most sought-after rides, I tended to favor the more sedate C-Tickets that provided entry into escapist fare such as Peter Pan’s Flight, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and Mike Fink’s Keel Boats.

We stuffed our faces at Aunt Jemima’s Kitchen where large African American waitresses called us “honey chile” and recreated the “happy, carefree days” of life in the Old South. Oy. The NAACP must have rightfully protested this throwback because the name of the restaurant was changed to the Magnolia Tree Terrace the following year. Today it is the River Belle Terrace and still features delicacies from the American South.

We went on Monsanto’s Adventure Thru Inner Space (Disneyland pioneered the idea of amusement park rides with heavy corporate sponsorship) and I truly believed with all my heart that we were shrinking down to microscopic bits as we explored the world residing inside a snowflake. As we exited our little cars which had miraculously returned to normal size, we were shown the “modern miracles created by rearranging the molecules, not only of water, but of air, coal, petroleum, and many other raw materials. THIS IS MONSANTO!”

We marveled over Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln (which also debuted at the blasted 1964 World’s Fair) featuring the first fully functioning audio-animatronic human figure who actually stood up, spoke, and gestured to the audience. Amazing! The expanded version of this attraction at Disney World in Orlando is called the Hall of Presidents and currently features a front-and-center animatronic version of Donald Trump, God help us, that looks even more horrifying than the real thing.

The Disney “Imagineers” had also created the brand new Pirates of the Caribbean ride which featured a whopping collection of 64 fake human figures and 55 fake animals. This was one of my favorites and we waited again and again in the endless lines to join the bloodthirsty pirates on their rampage through a Caribbean outpost. What other children’s ride in the world boasted a scenario that was centered around rape and pillaging? We learned the word “wench” and laughed when the local women were caught by the lascivious pirates. “Yo-ho-ho, the pirate’s life for me!” Half a century later, the pirates are still chasing women, but as a result of a1990s change, we are now supposed to believe that they are chasing them for the trays of foods that have been awkwardly placed in their animatronic hands instead of for their bodies. Oy.

Our second trip to the Magic Kingdom occurred in 1971. My parents were in the middle of a very fractious divorce, and during the worst of it my dad got the idea to hightail us away to California for a bit of a reprieve. The Times They Were a-Changin’ at the Happiest Place on Earth. The previous summer Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies had invaded the park and forced it to close early for the first time ever. While the park had just welcomed its 100 millionth guest, the changing political climate had forced the closure of Frontierland’s Indian village (featuring REAL Indians, the signs boasted—dirt poor locals who were forced to schvitz in the sun all day long looking authentic while tourists riding by on the Disneyland Railroad snapped their photos). At this time the Indian War Canoes became the Davy Crocket Explorer canoes.

Our new favorite ride was New Orleans Square’s just-opened Haunted Mansion, another marvel from those clever Imagineers. The original plans for the ride told the story of the owner of the house, a wealthy sailor who built the mansion for his soon-to-be wife. When the wife discovered that the sailor was actually a pirate, he had no choice but to ax-murder her just before their wedding. At the last minute, Walt decided this story was a bit too frightening for the kiddies so they did away with it while keeping many of the original props including the distorted wedding march, the skeletal bride with the glowing, beating heart, and the disembodied heads that popped up in the graveyard screaming “I do!” to taunt the would-be bride.

In 1971, Tomorrowland was looking a bit tired. Following the Apollo lunar landing in 1969, Disneyland’s Voyage to the Moon was given a facelift and renamed Mission to Mars but it still looked woefully out of date compared to the real NASA footage we were able to see every night on the news. This image of the future where everything was encased in sparkling white plastic was starting to seem a little retro but it wasn’t until 1998 that Tomorrowland was re-envisioned as a place of color with hydrophonic farms and state-of-the-art computer technology. Eh, I never liked it as much as the earlier Jetsons-like vision of the future.

My next trip to Disneyland took place in 1985 when I was in Los Angeles on a business trip. I made a nostalgic pilgrimage to the theme park which looked even more faded than it had in the 70s (Tomorrowland was now truly Yesterdayland) but what I remember most about that visit was the 30th reunion of the original Mouseketeers. There, in the flesh, were those icons of my youth, now in their mid-40s and being forced to dance and sing their original Mickey Mouse Club tunes over and over again in the blazing Orange County heat. Annette, Sharon, Bobby, Darlene, Karen, Cubby, Tommy, Cheryl, Don—they were all there, God love them. Annette Funicello, by far the most famous Mouseketeer and a bona fide Disney goddess, would soon be diagnosed with debilitating MS so this was sadly one of the last times we Baby Boomers got the chance to see her play off her beach movie persona. And poor Darlene Gillespie, once my favorite Mouseketeer, would soon become embroiled in a case of securities fraud and spend a couple of years in the slammer.

M-I-C—See you real soon!
K-E-Y—Why? Because I LIKE you!
M-O-U-S-E!

When I moved to Los Angeles, one of the advantages frequently repeated to me by my Chicago family and friends was that I could go to Disneyland ANYTIME I WANTED TO! But did I want to? The bloom was off the rose, and even after having kids, I only visited the park a few times. As I mentioned, the prices had careened out of control. The individual A- through E-tickets are long gone, but it now costs about $200 for a regular entry into the park, not including parking, food, or souvenirs. Yikes.

For the past 20 years, there has been a trend to turn Disneyland’s most popular attractions into feature films. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies starring Johnny Depp were a surprise success while The Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy was a surprise flop (as was the 2023 remake). Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars received mostly negative reviews despite kudos for its visual design as did The Country Bears based on Disneyland’s animatronic Country Bear Jamboree attraction. Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, fared slightly better.

I don’t know why Disney hasn’t resorted to the most obvious choice: Where oh where is the movie version of It’s a Small World? My advice is to make it a horror film. I can never look at those dolls without thinking of the iconic Trilogy of Terror segment in which Karen Black is chased down and hacked to death by a doll that seems to come straight out of one of the dark corners of that ride. Imagine all that delicious mayhem occurring to a never-ending soundtrack of the infamous earworm:

It’s a world of laughter
A world of tears
It’s a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There’s so much that we share
That it’s time we’re aware
It’s a small world after all!

Oh, Disney, you may disappoint me at times, irritate me, enrage me, and even break my heart, but let’s face it, I can never quit you.