03.28.07
About Harry Houdini
1) Harry Houdini was born Erich Weiss in Budapest, Hungry March 24, 1874. His father was a Rabbi. He had five brothers (Hardeen was also a magical performer) and a sister.
2) In 1893 he met Beatrice “Bess” Raymond. She was a 16-year-old singer and dancer. The two fell in love and were married in July, three weeks after their meeting. She joined his act working as his stage assistant throughout his performing career. They did not have any children.
3) Even though he was gaining in popularity he was not happy with his success in the United States and began a tour of the Europe and Russian Vaudeville stages during the early years of the 20th Century. After returning to the United States he increased the difficulty and originality of his stunts developing his water based escapes.
4) During his life he was a movie producer and actor, a magician and an escape artist. He was also one of the first people to pilot an airplane in Australia.
5) During the early 1920’s he spend time debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums. He was a member of a Scientific American committee, which offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. The prize was never collected mainly due to the skepticism of Houdini and his ability to recognize frauds, even those who had successfully fooled many scientists and.
6) Houdini died on October 31, 1926, Halloween in Detroit. The official cause of death was peritonitis, internal poisoning resulting from a ruptured appendix, although there has been rumors that he died by poison. For 10 years after his death, his wife Bess conducted an séance on October 31. Before his death he had told her if it was possible to send a message in a secret code that they developed.
03.24.07
The Barrymore Family
1) Georgiana Drew (July 11, 1856 – July 2, 1893). She was the daughter of actors John Drew and Louisa Lane Drew. She made her theatrical debut in 1872, in the play The Ladies’ Rattle. She acted in many Broadway’s hits, like As You Like It and Pique. In 1876 she married Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth, who was acting under the name of Maurice Barrymore. They had three children Lionel, John and Ethel Barrymore.
2) Lionel Barrymore (April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954) He was born Lionel Blythe, the eldest of the Barrymore children. Lionel was the most reluctant to accept acting as a profession. From early youth he was interested in art. He started his stage career in the early 1900s. After many years spent in Paris, in 1907 he came back to Broadway, where he established his reputation as dramatic actor. In 1924 he left Broadway for Hollywood.
3) Ethel Barrymore (August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) An Academy Award-winning American actress and a member of the famous Barrymore family. She was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew. She made her first motion picture in 1914 and in the 1940s, she moved to Hollywood, California working in motion pictures.
4) John Barrymore (February 14 or 15, 1882 – May 29, 1942) born John Sidney Blythe. actor; Third child and second son of Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew Barrymore. He appeared in over 40 plays, 60 films, and 100 radio shows during his forty-year career, was perhaps the most influential and idolized actor of his day. Barrymore was renowned for his ability to flesh out underwritten roles with his charismatic charm and commanding presence. He was a hard drinking adventurer with a jaunty personality but a troubled personal life that probably cut his life short
5) John Drew Barrymore (June 4, 1929 – November 29, 2004) Son of John Barrymore and Dolores Costello. Born John Blyth Barrymore, Jr, but in 1958 changed his name to John Drew Barrymore. In the 1960s, he was occasionally incarcerated due to drug activity, public drunkenness, and spousal abuse. Minor acting career in television in guest roles.
6) Drew Blyth Barrymore Born February 22, 1975. She is the daughter of John Drew Barrymore and Ildiko Jaid Mako. “Drew” was the maiden name of her great-grandmother, Georgiana Drew; “Blythe” was the original surname of the dynasty founded by her great-grandfather, Maurice Barrymore. Barrymore’s career began at the age of 11 months, when she appeared in a dog food commercial. She appeared in E.T. She had problems with substance abuse as a teen and into her 20’s, but have overcome the troubles and is now a leading actress and Hollywood producer.
03.22.07
About George M. Cohan
1) George Michael Cohan was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1878. He was the second child of show business parents Jerry (Jerome) and Nelly (Helen Costigan) Cohan. Even though his baptismal certificate says he was born on July 3rd, Cohan’s family always insisted he was born on the 4th of July.
2) When he was 11 he and his sister Josie joined their parents on the Vaudeville stage, often working on the prestigious but exhausting B.F. Keith circuit.
3) In the 1890’s they eventually earned nearly $1000 a week, which was a great deal of pay, becoming the most highly paid four-act in vaudeville. B.F. Keith realized that a genuinely devoted family performing together had an irresistible appeal, and he booked them at his best houses. When audiences demanded extra bows, George responded with a one-line curtain speech that became Cohan’s lifelong trademark – “Ladies and gentlemen, my mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you!”
4) Because of the dictatorial style of B.F. Keith, the family decided to turn to the Broadway stage with George performing in his first musical in 1900, a year after his marriage to Ethel Levy, a talented vaudeville singer and the year that his daughter Georgette was born.
5) During the early years of the 20th Century Cohan created a number of Broadway musicals including in 1904 Little Johnny Jones, which had two of famous songs Yankee Doodle Dandy and Give My Regards to Broadway. By 1920 he was one of the best known men in America owning several Broadway theaters and had companies performing all across the country.
6) On November 5, 1942 Cohan died. He did live long enough to see the film of his life Yankee Doodle Dandy and approved of the choice of James Cagney playing him.
03.21.07
About Burlesque
1) Burlesque is a direct descendant of the Commedia dell’arte. In this form of entertainment principal characters would carry a “burle”, a stick with a padded end, with which they would slap the other players for comic effect. This also formed the origin of “slapstick” comedy.
2) Burlesque means “imitation”. Burlesque encompasses pastiche, parody, and wit. The genre encompasses a variety of acts such as dancing girls, chanson singers, comedians, mime artists, and strip tease artistes.
3) Originally Burlesque featured shows that included comic sketches that often lampooned the social norms of the upper classes. It developed alongside vaudeville and ran on competing circuits.
4) It was common for burlesque stars to move into vaudeville, however vaudevillians considered it a disgrace to appear in burlesque. They felt that only those who were “washed up” would stoop so low. However, many a vaudeville veteran hit the burlesque wheels during dry spells, appearing under an assumed name.
5) With the introduction of radio and the cinema, many of the individual owners were required to do the best they could as the Vaudeville circuit declined. The strip tease was enhanced to offer something that vaudeville, film and radio could not.
6) There was a fine a fine line between titillation and propriety that the strippers had to follow to prevent them from going to jail for corrupting public morals. Some like the famous fan dancer Sally Rand and Gypsy Rose Lee gave stripping an artistic twist and graduated to general stardom.
03.20.07
About Vaudeville
1) It was a style of entertainment popular in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Vaudeville took the form of a series of separate, unrelated acts. These acts usually were unrelated and featured a different type of performance. The performance could include all or some of the following; musicians, dancers, comedians, animal acts, magicians, impersonators, acrobats, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, or later short films.
2) Prior to 1880 Vaudeville was thought to be vulgar. Tony Pastor cleaned it of its obscenity to make it more wholesome to the general public. On October 24, 1881 he staged the self-proclaimed “clean” vaudeville in New York City. It was an effort to lure more women into the male dominated saloon and variety halls.
3) Vaudeville popularity increased when B.F. Keith built a chain of Vaudeville stages in various east coast cities. This was the beginning of the Vaudeville Circuit, a single booking system contracting acts for regional and national engagement that could grow from a few weeks to two years.
4) It was common for the performers to term a theatre by how much they were paid to perform at them. The three most common were the “small time”, the “medium time,” and the “Big Time”. When a performer reached the “Big Time” they were considered the best and most famous. The Big Time found its home in 1913 at New York City’s Palace. The Palace featured the best and brightest on its bill and many would consider playing there to be the apotheosis of their careers.
5) While Vaudeville never really died it just seemed to fade away as cinemas and radio gain popularity. In fact many of the early radio and cinemas stars, such as Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen and Abbott and Costello began on the Vaudeville circuits
6) Even though vaudeville as entertainment is dead, it lives on in popular culture and entertainment. Many of the ‘entertainment slang’ came from vaudeville, such as “a flop” (an act that does badly) and “the limelight” (from the lime-green color of phosphorus lights). It’s not unusual to see common techniques and gags of vaudeville on television and on film today.
03.18.07
About James Jones’ “From Here to Eternity”
1) The novel takes place in months prior to Japan’s bombing of Hawaii. It’s based loosely of Jones’ experiences at Schofield Barracks. It tells the story of the struggles between Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a self-described “thirty-year man”, and his superiors, First Sgt. Milt Warden and Captain Holmes.
2) The novel takes its title from a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Gentleman Rankers:”
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!
3) It is the first of Jones’ WWII trilogy. Even though the names are altered they are essentially the same characters. From Here to Eternity features Warden and Prewitt, who become Welsh and Witt in The Thin Red Line and Mart Winch and Bobby Prell in Whistle. Similarly, Corporal Fife in The Thin Red Line reappears as Marion Landers in Whistle, as does the cook, Storm, who becomes Johnny “Mother” Strange.
4) The 1953 movie adaptation starring Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr. It was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning 8 including Best Picture, Frank Sinatra for Best Supporting Actor and Donna Reed for Best Supporting Actress. In 2002 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
5) In 1979 the novel was made into a 6-hour mini-series. It had William Devane as Sgt Warden, Natalie Wood as the wife of the Company commander and Steve Railsback as Prewitt.
6) The mini-series was so popular that a series was made based on the characters created by Jones as well as a new character Jefferson Davis Prewitt, the brother of Robert E. Lee Prewitt. The series lasted 13 episodes.
03.16.07
When using a cell phone while driving
1) Always dial while the car isn’t moving. Use speed dialing as much as possible.
2) Never use the phone in heavy traffic or bad weather.
3) Use a hands-free phone.
4) Never look up phone numbers while driving. Keep your eyes on the road while on the phone.
5) Never have stressful conversations while driving.
6) Do not take notes while driving.
03.15.07
Even More Good Four Letter Words
1) Boat – a small ship, generally for specialized use.
2) Kite – a light frame covered with some thin material, to be flown in the wind at the end of a long string.
3) Well – in a good or satisfactory manner.
4) Land – any part of the earth’s surface not covered by a body of water.
5) Port – a city, town, or other place where ships load or unload.
6) Moon – the earth’s natural satellite.
Definitions from dictionary.com
03.14.07
About childhood obesity
1) Obesity is a major factor in Type II Diabetes. Diabetes is a serious condition that may require injections of insulin and cause an inability of wounds to heal, cause blindness or jokes. Childhood diabetes many times is causes by obesity and the lack of exercise and poor diet.
2) Children who are overweigh many times have low self-esteem and are commonly teased or bullied by other children.
3) Because of the way they are treated by other overweight children often suffer from depression and have feelings of self-loathing. Depression can also be caused lack of exercise and inappropriate stimulation of brain chemicals that balances mood.
4) Many obese children do not get enough sleep. Lack of exercise can inhibit the production or chemicals that promote sleep. Obesity can make it difficult to breath in certain position also causing sleep disruption.
5) Skin disorders on overweigh and obese children are more possible because of skin folds on their body, legs or arms.
6) Childhood obesity is likely to become adult obesity with lifelong health and emotional problems.
03.13.07
About the Author James Jones
1) James Ramon Jones was born in Robinson, Illinois on November 6, 1921. He was the second son, his older brother was George W, of Ramon and Ada Jones. He also had a younger sister, Mary Ann.
2) On November 10, 1939, three days after his eighteenth birthday he enlisted in the United States Army. One of his first assignments was with the air corps (it became the US Air Force) and was shipped to Hickman field in Hawaii. In 1940 he transferred to 27th Infantry, which was at Schofield Barracks, also located in Hawaii. He was at Schofield when Japan attacked in December 7, 1941.
3) He left Hawaii on December 6, 1942 to be stationed on Guadalcanal. He was there during the Japanese attack and from those experiences he wrote The Thin Red Line. To many it is the best book about WWII.
4) Even before the war he had dreams of being a writer. After the war he was able to work with Maxwell Perkins, Thomas Wolfe’s editor. Jones admired the work of Wolfe. He first novel was From Here to Eternity, based on his experiences in Hawaii prior to the attack of December 7, 1941. It was published in 1951 and made into a movie in 1953. The movie won Best Picture Oscar.
5) Jones went on to complete what he called his WWII trilogy with The Thin Red Line in 1961 and Whistle in 1978. The central characters are actually the same in all three books, though their names were somewhat altered. From Here to Eternity features Warden and Prewitt, who become Welsh and Witt in The Thin Red Line and Mart Winch and Bobby Prell in Whistle. Similarly, Corporal Fife in The Thin Red Line reappears as Marion Landers in Whistle, as does the cook, Storm, who becomes Johnny “Mother” Strange.
6) While working to finish Whistle Jones died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 1977. Knowing that he had little time remaining, but wanting to finish the novel at time he worked 14 hours a day on it. When he died he had completed all but the final three chapters. Those chapters were completed by Willie Morris based on notes and taped conversation that Jones had already written.
