Archive for September 21st, 2020

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 175

Monday, September 21st, 2020

I have an eye doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I’m being a little lazy. However, this is something that’s been on my mind for a few days.

Today, a public service announcement. Actually, a few of them. I like having the morning airing of “Perry Mason” on ME TV on as background while I work. We’re at the point in the current run where William Talman, who played District Attorney Hamilton Burger, was fired from the series (about midway through season 3).

Sheriff’s deputies, suspicious of marijuana use, raided a party on March 13, 1960, in a private home in Beverly Hills at which Talman was a guest. The deputies reported finding Talman and seven other defendants either nude or seminude. All were arrested for possession of marijuana (the charge was later dropped) and lewd vagrancy, but municipal judge Adolph Alexander dismissed the lewd vagrancy charges against Talman and the others on June 17 for lack of proof. “I don’t approve of their conduct,” the judge ruled, “but it is not for you and me to approve but to enforce the statutes.”

In spite of the charges being dropped, Talman was fired by CBS because of the morals clause in his contract. Gail Patrick Jackson, who produced “Perry Mason” and Raymond Burr both campaigned for Talman’s reinstatement, and he was rehired in December of 1960.

(Another interesting side note, unrelated to the theme of today’s post: William Hopper, who played “Paul Drake”, Mason’s private detective, served as both a member of the OSS and as a UDT guy during the war. Yeah, the guy who played Perry Mason’s private eye was a SEAL before there were SEALs.)

Talman only lived to the age of 53. He died in 1968 of lung cancer, and was one of the first people in Hollywood to do an anti-smoking commercial.

Bonus: Ladies and gentlemen, the late Yul Brynner.

Bonus #2 and #3: The Duke.

Smoking’s bad, m’kay, kids? Don’t do it.

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Obit watch: September 21, 2020.

Monday, September 21st, 2020

There were some obits that got kind of buried in the shuffle of events over the weekend. Here’s a round-up:

Winston Groom, noted author. He is perhaps most famous for Forrest Gump, but he did a lot of other work:

“‘Forrest Gump’ is not the only reason to celebrate him as a great writer,” P.J. O’Rourke, the political satirist and journalist who knew Mr. Groom for decades, wrote in an email.
In Mr. O’Rourke’s view, Mr. Groom’s debut novel, “Better Times Than These” (1978), “was the best novel written about the Vietnam War.”
“And this is not even to mention Winston’s extraordinary historical and nonfiction works,” he added.
Those books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist (for general nonfiction), “Conversations With the Enemy” (1983), an account of a Vietnam-era prisoner of war written with Duncan Spencer; “Shrouds of Glory” (1995), about the Civil War; and “Patriotic Fire” (2006), about the Battle of New Orleans.
At his death, Mr. Groom was awaiting the publication of “The Patriots,” a combined biography of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams; it is to be published in November by National Geographic.

I have not seen, and have no interest in seeing, “Forrest Gump”. However, I recall reading some years back that the book is much more vicious and satirical than the movie, and that Mr. Groom somewhat resented how the movie watered down his work. I might have to seek out some of his non-fiction, especially if P.J. O’Rourke endorses it.

Anne Stevenson, poet. She was also famous, perhaps more so, as the author of a biography of Sylvia Plath.

Ms. Plath committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, and many of her admirers blamed her husband, Mr. Hughes, who was having an affair with a woman named Assia Wevill (who herself would commit suicide in 1969). But Ms. Stevenson’s book painted a different picture, portraying Ms. Plath as “a wall of unrelenting rage” prone to outrageous behavior, while depicting Mr. Hughes as generous and caring.
The book was written with the cooperation of Ms. Plath’s literary estate, which was controlled by Mr. Hughes and his sister, Olwyn Hughes. Ms. Stevenson wrote in the preface that she “received a great deal of help from Olwyn Hughes,” so much so that “Ms. Hughes’s contributions to the text have made it almost a work of dual authorship.”
That did not give “Bitter Fame” much credibility in some critics’ eyes. The poet Robert Pinsky, reviewing it in The New York Times, called out a bias in the presentation.
“Since Ms. Stevenson’s book is, as it had to be, largely about a marriage, the tilting of viewpoint toward one side is a difficult problem for the biographer,” he wrote. “Marriages are complex and mysterious stories, each with a minimum of two sides. Writing about a marriage demands tact, respect for the unknowable and more acknowledgment of a limited viewpoint than I think Ms. Stevenson provides.”
In the British newspaper The Independent, Ronald Hayman was even harsher, calling “Bitter Fame” a “vindictive book” that sought not only to blame Ms. Plath for the failed marriage but also “to undermine her poetic achievement by representing her verse as negative, sick, death-oriented, and comparing it unfavorably with his.”

Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Long Cat (aka Nobiko) the subject of Internet memes.

Posted in Books, Mammals, Movies, Obits | 1 Comment »

Your loser update: week 2, 2020.

Monday, September 21st, 2020

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Carolina
Atlanta
Minnesota
Detroit
Philadelphia
New York Football Giants
Cincinnati
Denver
Houston
New York Jets
Miami

(Saints and Raiders are the Monday night game. Both are 1-0 at the moment.)

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