from my sketchbook: oliver reed

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I do not live in the world of sobriety.
Oliver Reed had no aspirations to become an actor while serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He took work as an extra in the early 1950s in mostly comedies. The more extra work he got, the more it looked like this was the career for the young Reed. He was featured in several films from legendary Hammer Studios, including the horror classic Curse of the Werewolf  in 1961. The late 60s brought some groundbreaking achievements for Reed including 1967’s I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname, the first mainstream film to use the word “fuck” and 1969’s Women in Love, the first mainstream film to feature male full-frontal nudity, in which Reed and actor Alan Bates wrestled in the nude. Reed also had a memorable role as the villainous Bill Sikes in his uncle Carol Reed’s 1968 Best Picture Oliver!  The 1970s saw Reed take roles in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and its sequels and the film version of The Who’s rock opera Tommy.  He turned down roles in The Sting and Jaws, both of which were filled by fellow countryman Robert Shaw.

Reed was infamous for his drinking binges. Once, he met with Steve McQueen for a possible film collaboration and, after some heavy drinking, Reed threw up all over McQueen. He made talk show host David Letterman a bit uneasy after Letterman asked one too many questions about his alcohol consumption.

During a break in filming the 2000 Ridley Scott epic Gladiator, Reed was drinking with his wife in a bar in Malta. After consuming three bottles of rum and several pints of beer, the 61-year-old Reed suffered a fatal heart attack. Since not all of his scenes had been completed, director Scott used CGI and some well-placed mannequins in Reed’s place.

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IF: detective

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This week’s challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “detective”.
They beat him up until the teardrops start/But he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.
I read William Hjortsberg’s detective novel Falling Angel  in 1978. The novel began life as a piece of feature fiction in Playboy  magazine, but Hjortsberg fleshed it out into a captivating homage to the hard-boiled detective novels of the 1930s and 40s. Told in the first-person narrative, through the eyes of investigator-for-hire Harry Angel, Falling Angel  follows the search for one Johnny Favorite, a big band crooner who vanishes after World War II. Angel is hired by two attorneys, working for a mysterious Mr. Cyphre, to find Favorite. It seems just prior to his disappearance, Ol’ Johnny owed Cyphre a debt of some sort. And so begins Harry Angel’s adventure into a strange and hidden society living covertly in the bowels of Manhattan. It’s a riveting whodunit that makes a sharp left and catches the reader off-guard.

Nine years after its publication, Hjortsberg penned a screenplay of his novel. It became Angel Heart  starring a miscast Mickey Rourke, a miscast Lisa Bonet and a miscast Robert DeNiro. The awful film bears little resemblance to the clever and twisted novel.

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Monday Artday: friendship part 2

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Two hits. Me hitting you and you hitting the floor.

“When you’re a kid, you can be friends with anybody. Remember when you were a little kid what were the qualifications? If someone’s in front of my house NOW, That’s my friend, they’re my friend. That’s it. Are you a grown up.? No. Great! Come on in. Jump up and down on my bed. And if you have anything in common at all ─ You like cherry soda? I like cherry soda! We’ll be best friends!”   

─  Jerry Seinfeld

Growing up, there were a couple of kids on my block that I’d call “friend.” One, in particular, was Donnie Columns. My relationship with Donnie ran the spectrum from close buddy to mortal enemy. Donnie lived three houses away from me on Nestling Road in Northeast Philadelphia. Donnie and I grew up together ─ playing with our Matchbox cars, reading comic books, riding our bikes ─ all the things that adolescent friends did. Sometimes Donnie would steal my Matchbox cars and my comic books and take off with my bike, but I usually overlooked those things because he was my friend. Donnie once stole my entire collection of Partridge Family trading cards and I never even mentioned it to him. Friends just don’t bring stuff like that up.

Every so often, Donnie would turn on me. I think he thought it was funny. We would be happily playing in his backyard or on a neighbor’s front lawn when he would suddenly unleash a spewing fountain of anti-Semitic slurs in my direction. In hindsight, I’m sure he was merely parroting what he had heard his parents say behind closed doors. After all, my family was one of a handful of Jewish families in a predominantly gentile neighborhood and only one of two on the block. Donnie’s father always reminded me of Art Carney, if Mr. Carney was a Klansman. I always got an uneasy feeling from Mr. Columns around the Christmas/Chanukah season, as though the pathetic electrified menorah in our front window posed some sort of threat to him. I’m sure neither Donnie nor I fully understood the true implications of his insults, but we understood their basic purpose. Donnie wanted to start a fight.

Infrequent as they were, my neighborhood did play host to a number of fights. I was involved in a few fights as a kid, though I can’t, for the life of me, remember what initiated them. It was a rite of passage of sorts, but not one I needed to experience on a regular basis. I know I never started a fight (except maybe with my brother, an ill-conceived endeavor as he bested me in all the important fight categories ─ bigger, older, stronger and more athletic). I did run from a few fights, avoiding my predator for as long as it took to be forgotten. I fought with Johnnie Hacker, a little anti-Semitic prick from up the street. He would taunt me from afar, yelling “Jew” and “Kike” at me from the sanctuary of his fenced-in backyard. In winter, he would fire snowballs at me as I made my way home from school. I did my best to avoid him, but one time we went at it and I never let his taunts bother me after that. I even fought with a girl on my block once.

But most of my fighting was with Donnie Columns. Donnie fucking Columns. It seemed that Donnie didn’t need a reason as specific and meaningful as my ancestors standing idly by while his savior was crucified. One time, I was in Donnie’s house and I saw a triptych photo frame displaying images of his two younger sisters dressed in tutus and frozen in ballet poses. In the center frame was a smiling Donnie in a sequined vest, posed in a similar fashion. I was staring at the photo in disbelief for too long until Donnie decided I had seen enough. He took me outside and beat the shit out of me. He was bigger than me. He was stronger than me. He was most likely beaten by his parents, so he had the fighting moves. When I fought with Donnie, he would always beat the shit out of me. One time he sneaked his brother’s off-limits BB gun out to his backyard to show me how cool he was. He squeezed shot after shot out of that gun, the BBs bouncing off tree trunks and empty tin cans that littered his yard. Bored with his static targets, he turned toward me, raised the gun at arms length and in a low voice through clenched teeth whispered, “I’ll give you three to run. Horrified, I turned and fled like a frightened rabbit ─ Donnie’s low snickers echoing behind me. He pulled the trigger attempting to fire one over my head. Instead, the errant BB ricocheted off his overhanging roof and found the dead center of the back of my head. I stumbled and fell on the grass. Afraid that he just killed me, Donnie ran over to check on my well-being. I rolled over on my back, crying from the pain. Donnie’s face revealed a look of relief ─ relief that he had not just committed murder. I managed to get to my feet and I ran home. I told my mother what had transpired and, after tending to my wound, she telephoned Donnie’s mother so no one would be left out of the fun. Donnie’s mother resembled Batman-era Julie Newmar and there was something weird and other-worldly about her. She listened to my mother’s second-hand account of the incident. I have no doubt that Donnie felt her wrath when she hung up the phone. I know this because several days later, totally unprovoked, Donnie beat the shit out of me again.

Donnie beat me up regularly from the late 1960s into the early part of the 1970s. They weren’t horrible or bloody beatings. A crowd of kids from the block, whooping and yelling, would encircle the two of us as we rolled around on the grass. A few minutes would pass and, after a series of blows to my torso, the fight would end with me crying and humiliated and Donnie triumphant. Sometimes, my mother or father would come out of the house and break it up, while Mr. Columns stood off in the distance, smoking a filter-less Camel, calling out “Ahh, they’re just kids!” and chuckling.

One day, enough was enough. I don’t remember what it was that triggered me, but Payback Day had arrived and it arrived expecting a lifetime of compounded-daily interest. I have a clear, indelible picture in my mind of that day. I knocked Donnie flat on his back. I got on top of him, my knees assuring that his arms remained immobile. With my adrenal glands pumping, my unrelenting fists unleashed the fury of countless shellackings as I walloped the motherfucking piss out of Donnie Columns. The fight ended when Donnie’s mortified father pulled me off of his son and berated my parents who were watching from our kitchen window.

Although Donnie and I were the same age and went to the same elementary school, we never had any classes together. Donnie was always in the remedial classes because he was an idiot. When it came time for high school, I vaguely remember some hushed gossip about problems in the Columns household and Donnie either dropped out or moved away with one of his parents.

I would imagine that as life continued for Donnie, he persisted in his fighting ways and eventually met someone who wasn’t as forgiving a friend as I was.

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Monday Artday: friendship

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This week’s Monday Artday challenge word is “friendship”.

Well it can take many years to forge a friendship/It can take a lifetime to get close/But we took all the shortcuts/Used our hearts as a map/And we still got closer than most

Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole met in 1976 in a Jacksonville, Florida soup kitchen and they became instant friends and eventual lovers. Lucas, the son of an alcoholic father and an abusive prostitute mother, served prison time for armed robbery and had murdered his mother and a seventeen-year-old female acquaintance by the time he met Toole. Prior to his intimate bond with Lucas, Toole was raised by his grave-robbing, Satan-worshipping grandmother, had committed four murders and became a serial arsonist who was sexually aroused by fire. Together, Lucas and Toole were a match made in Hell.

For seven years, Lucas and Toole drifted across twenty-six states on a rampage of robbery, arson, torture, rape and murder. They were a compatible team, as Lucas was a vicious sadist and Toole was a cannibal. Their usual routine involved picking up hitchhikers, both male and female, for sex and then killing and mutilating them.  Sometimes, they would just run over hitchhikers and drive off.  Once, they drove for two days with a victim’s head in the back seat of their car. In all, they assisted each other in 108 murders, fulfilling Lucas’ penchant for necrophilia and Toole’s preference for the consumption of human flesh.

In April 1983, Toole was arrested on arson charges in Jacksonville. While in custody, he confessed to dozens of unsolved arsons and murders, including the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Adam Walsh. Toole was given two death sentences which were later changed to life sentences on appeal. He died in prison of liver failure in 1996.

Lucas was arrested on weapons charges in Texas in June 1983. Lucas confessed to over 3000 murders, recanted his confessions and later confessed again. Some of the murders to which he claimed involvement occurred when Lucas was documented to have been elsewhere. He was eventually convicted of only three murders. Texas Governor George W. Bush commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment. Lucas died of heart failure in prison in 2001.

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IF: linked

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This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “linked”.
It's Lieutenant Hurwitz
“There have been people who have tried to take advantage of me. They want to be linked to me just because I’m Ethel Merman.”
— Ethel Merman

That quote from Ethel Merman, about herself, is baffling. One would think a more charismatic celebrity with a more compelling appeal would say something like this about themselves. Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, even Madonna… but Ethel Merman?

Ethel Merman appeared in scores of musicals on Broadway and in the movies. She was renowned for her loud singing voice and her ability to belt out a tune. She popularized songs by George Gershwin and Cole Porter including “Anything Goes”, “I’ve Got Rhythm” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business”. She appeared in 1100 performances of Annie Get Your Gun  on Broadway and later 700 performances of Gypsy, where she introduced her signature song “Everything’ s Coming Up Roses”.

Ethel was a staple in films and on television in the 60s and 70s, performing on countless variety shows and guest roles on regular series. She had a non-musical role in the huge ensemble cast of the slapstick farce It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World  in 1963. She was featured in episodes of Batman,  That Girl  and The Lucy Show.  Later, Ethel was cast in the reoccurring role of Ros Smith, Gopher’s mother on The Love Boat  anthology series. Her last film role was as shell-shocked Lieutenant Hurwitz, a soldier who believed he was Ethel Merman, in 1980’s Airplane!

Ethel was married four times, including seven years to Continental Airlines chairman Robert Six (who later married actress Audrey Meadows) and thirty-two days to Ernest Borgnine. In 1983, Ethel was preparing to leave for Los Angeles to appear at the 55th Academy Awards when she collapsed in her apartment. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had surgery to have it removed. She passed away in her sleep in early 1984.

But Ethel Merman is responsible for my celebrity death obsession. When I began art school as an impetuous nineteen-year-old, my smart-ass, “nothing is sacred” attitude was in full bloom. Before classes, a morning ritual was to scan through The Philadelphia Inquirer  with some classmates. One morning in February 1984, the front page of the newspaper was splashed with the news of Ethel Merman’s passing. The article was accompanied by a familiar photo of Ms. Merman in evening wear, her mouth wide open in song and her arms expressively outstretched to her sides. My friend Jeff and I laughed about the photo and one of us (I don’t remember which) creatively cut the picture from the newspaper as shown…
Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum
…and displayed it on a student bulletin board. We added the caption “Ethel Merman died for your sins” under the photo. Our class included two female students who had come back from summer break as born-again Christians. Needless to say, they were less than amused by our attempt at humor. Our little joke stayed on exhibit for approximately fifteen seconds.

But, that was the birth of a new and long-lasting hobby. For years now, a small group of friends and I  have competed to be the first to report to the others on a celebrity death. The announcements started out as in-person conversation or phone calls. With the advancement of technology, the preferred method of alert is the instantaneous email or text message. These notifications are usually coupled with some sort of smart-aleck remark about the recently deceased. It’s all good fun and it sure beats collecting stamps. And I have also expanded on my hobby, by visiting cemeteries where celebrities are buried. Some of these visits are chronicled HERE, HERE and HERE. My wife noted that if you go to Hollywood and follow a tour map to see the houses of the stars, there’s a likely possibility that they would not be at home. If you visit celebrities at a cemetery, you know  they’re home.

So, thanks Ethel Merman. I guess when you gave that quote, you were referring to me.

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from my sketchbook: some like it hot (and some don’t)

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In 1998, The American Film Institute named Some Like It Hot  the fourteenth greatest movie of all time. Two years later, The AFI once again honored Some Like It Hot  by declaring it the number one comedy film of all time.
Nobody's perfect
The film’s screenwriter/director, the great Billy Wilder, was a Hollywood legend. Emigrating to the United States in 1933 from Nazi-controlled Poland, Wilder became a successful writer and director. He earned two Best Director Oscars in his eight nominations. He penned the screenplays to such iconic films as Double Indemnity, Stalag 17, The Lost Weekend and Sabrina.  Wilder adapted the story for Some Like It Hot  from a 1951 German film called Fanfaren der Liebe. When production began in 1958, Bob Hope and Danny Kaye were considered for the roles that eventually went to Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Wilder wanted Frank Sinatra for Lemmon’s character. Wilder also campaigned for Mitzi Gaynor for the role of “Sugar Kane Kowalczyk”. United Artists execs chose Marilyn Monroe instead. Marilyn was coming off a two-year hiatus from films and she had also suffered a miscarriage. Wilder would later wish he had pushed for Ms. Gaynor a little harder.

Working with Marilyn Monroe was a nightmare for the entire cast and crew. She exhibited bouts of tardiness, stage fright, and the inability to remember lines. Her behavior was hostile, and was marked by refusals to participate in filming and outbursts of profanity. Consistently refusing to take direction from Wilder, Marilyn required forty-seven takes to get her famous line “It’s me, Sugar” correct. She would say either “Sugar, it’s me” or “It’s Sugar, me”.  After the thirtieth take, Wilder wrote the line on a blackboard. Another scene required Marilyn to rummage through some drawers and say “Where’s the bourbon?” After 40 takes of her saying “Where’s the whiskey?”, ‘Where’s the bottle?”, or “Where’s the bonbon?”, Wilder wrote the line on a piece of paper and pasted it in one of the drawers. Marilyn became confused about which drawer contained the line, so Wilder pasted it in every drawer. Fifty-nine takes were required for this scene and when she finally does say it, she has her back to the camera. Rumor says Wilder had the line dubbed in post-production.

Director Wilder wasn’t the only one that Marilyn clashed with on the set of Some Like It Hot. Although she bonded with Jack Lemmon, Marilyn had contempt for co-star Tony Curtis after she heard him remark to a crew member that kissing her was like kissing Hitler. In the “farewell” telephone conversation between Marilyn and Curtis, her side-to-side eye movements clearly reveal that she was reading her lines directly from an off-screen blackboard. Wilder often reported that Marilyn was routinely hours late to the set, and occasionally refused to leave her dressing room.

Academy Award-winning costume designer Orry-Kelly designed the clothing for Lemmon and Curtis, since most of their on-screen appearances required that they dress as women. Of course, he also maintained the wardrobe for Marilyn Monroe. During production, Orry-Kelly was measuring Marilyn for a dress and he jokingly told her “Tony Curtis has a nicer ass than you.” A furious Marilyn ripped open her blouse and announced, “Yeah, but he doesn’t have tits like these!”

During the filming of Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder was speaking of dealing with the on-set antics of Marilyn Monroe when he said: “We were in mid-flight, and there was a nut on the plane.” When production ended, Marilyn was not invited to the cast wrap party.

Personally, I never liked Some Like It Hot, despite numerous viewings. I just don’t think it’s funny. I think the “creepy-for-its-time” Sunset Boulevard  is Billy Wilder’s shining moment, although Wilder himself recognized Some Like It Hot as the most popular film with which he’d ever been associated.

Oh, and I never really got the appeal of Marilyn Monroe.

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Monday Artday: ancient civilization

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This week’s Monday Artday challenge is “ancient civilization”.
Hung On The Telly/Hung On The Telly/Hung On The Telephone . . . .
Between the Upper Palaeolithic and the Late Stone Age, a forgotten civilization existed briefly. Archaeologist would rather it remain forgotten. These ancient people were called the Ineptics and carbon dating has determined that they roamed the early Earth for approximately seven weeks. There are few things known about them, but what is known is that they were remarkable in their intelligence. Or, more precisely, their lack thereof.

Physically, the Ineptics ranged in height from three feet to five feet tall. They were relatively hairless, except for a few unsightly tufts here and there on their bodies. The males of the species had seven nipples, with one on the right breast, two on the left and four on the lower left abdomen. All seven served no function whatsoever. They had three fingers and a thumb on each hand and three thumbs on each foot. They possessed prominent lower lips, though not large enough to confine several protruding teeth. The Ineptics did have dentists among them, but dentists in their society delivered the mail.

The Ineptics were the first to develop shoes, however they wore them on their heads. They hunted for food, mostly birds. When the birds were caught, they plucked them and ate the feathers, discarding the meat. They cooked the feathers by breaking up and burning the rudimentary tools they had fashioned.

The Ineptics attempted cave paintings by dragging long leaves across cave walls. The leaves were not dipped in pigment of any kind, so they left no marks.

The males wandered around in circles, often bumping into each other. The women of the group were known to throw up their hands in disgust and leave. The entire species eventually died out when they all wandered off a cliff.

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IF: dip

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This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “dip”.
oh my god it's DIIIIIIP!
Springtime. It’s the time when the skies are clear, the air is fresh and another baseball season begins.

After a six-month rest, the Boys of Summer are back on the green fields and dirt basepaths. Dressed in their familiar hometeam colors. Shagging flies. Laying down the perfect bunt. Smacking the high cheese into frozen ropes. Turning two. Painting the corners with a nasty bender. Pinching a huge wad of long cut dip tobacco out of the tin. As that tin is jammed back into its protective pocket, that wad is wedged deep in the fold between the lower lip and gum. And then, a thickened stream of shit-brown liquid is spit down the chin and the front of the uni. Just ten more years and that cancerous lower jaw will be a thing of the past.

Ah, Spring. Play ball.

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Monday Artday: flight

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The current Monday Artday challenge word is “flight”.
Can’t keep my mind/from the circling skies/Tongue-tied and twisted/Just an earth-bound misfit/I
In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a talented Athenian craftsman. Daedalus built a labyrinth for King Minos to contain the fierce monster the Minotaur (half man-half bull), which was sent as punishment for tricking the god Poseidon. King Minos also imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the labyrinth to keep watch over the Minotaur and prevent a possible escape.

To escape their confinement, Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Icarus was overwhelmed by the jubilent feeling that flying gave him. He soared through the sky and came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. The area where he fell was named for Icarus — the Icarian Sea near Icaria.

Moral of the story: Listen to your father or your wings will melt off and you’ll drown.

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