Garner and Belafone Look Back

When I noticed not long ago that James Garner was “trending” on Yahoo, I assumed he had died. After all, he’s 83 and has been inactive for the past few years, unusually so for a guy who juggled movies, TV, and commercials throughout his long career and even joined the cast of 8 Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, a sitcom, after its star, John Ritter, died suddenly in 2002. I recall reading that Garner has suffered a stroke, but that came from a fan’s post on the IMDb message boards. Garner, it turns out, was “trending” because his memoir, The Garner Files, had just been published, and as I did with Harry Belafonte’s much heftier book of remembrances, I checked it out of a public library but didn’t start on page one and read through to the conclusion. I’ve been jumping around, reading a bit here and a bit there. I’m more interested in the man’s career than his childhood, although Garner had a difficult one thanks to an abusive stepmother who made him wear a dress and tell everyone to call him “Louise.”

“I tell you, it got to me. I became introverted, and it took a long time before I came out of my shell. I hated being ridiculed and never wanted to feel that way again. I think the experience shaped my acting style: I’ve always kept my tongue in my cheek and a twinkle in my eye because I want people to laugh with me, not at me. I don’t want them to think I take this play-acting too seriously. I think it also gave me sympathy for the underdog. I can’t stand to see big people picking on little people. If a director starts abusing someone in the crew, I’ll butt in.”

Garner doesn’t dish much dirt, but he has his say on some of his co-stars.

“Someone once asked me if Steve (McQueen) was ‘trouble.’ Steve was trouble if you invited him for breakfast. He didn’t like anything. Like Brando, he could be a pain in the ass on the set. Unlike Brando, he wasn’t an actor. He was a movie star, a poser who cultivated the image of a macho man. Steve wasn’t a bad guy; I think he was just insecure.”

Then there was Charles Bronson who, like McQueen, appeared with Garner in 1963's The Great Escape. “Charlie Bronson was a pain in the ass, too. He used and abused people . . . a bitter, belligerent SOB. I don’t know why he had a chip on his shoulder. He wasn’t a barrel of laughs on the set, I can tell you.”

Garner never worked with Charlton Heston, but both participated in the March on Washington in 1963. “I was not a fan of Heston’s, either as an actor - he was stiff as a board - or as a defender of civil rights.” Garner points to Heston’s later support of the NRA as proof that he was never a liberal which Garner says he is proud to be.

In his memoir, My Song, Harry Belafonte remembers Heston being invited to the march because Martin Luther King, Jr wanted him there. Though pleased that “a lot of friends of liberal causes from the Hollywood community had agreed to participate, King asked Belafonte if he had “reached out to anyone across the divide?” Belafonte knew Heston and also knew he was a conservative, but hadn’t spoken to him about the march. “I think it would be in our interest,” King said, “to have such a presence.”

Marlon Brando groaned when Belafonte suggested that Heston co-chair the delegation with him. “Charlton Heston marching with us would be a powerful image for mainstream America,” Belafonte writes, and Heston agreed to join the march and co-chair the delegation with Brando. Belafonte believes that Heston came around because he “yearned for the approval of his peers. Co-chairing a delegation with Marlon was exactly the blessing he needed.”

Belafonte’s book (like Garner’s, it was co-written by someone who probably did the actual writing) is a hefty 469 pages compared to Garner’s 273. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, it even has “A Note on the Type” (“The text of this book was set in a typeface called Aldus, designed by the celebrated typographer Hermann Zapf in 1952-53"), a sure sign of its “literary” aspirations.

Belafonte was signed to RCA Victor in 1952. After several failed singles, his second album, Belafonte, would reach number two on the Billboard chart, and had healthy sales for months to come.

“Just as Belafonte hit record stores,” he recalls, “so did the debut album by some kid from Memphis named Elvis Presley . . . Different as our sounds were, I could see that in one way, at least, we were on parallel tracks. Elvis was interpreting one kind of black music - rhythm and blues - while I found my inspiration in black folk songs, spirituals, and calypso, and also in African music, which would one day be put under the heading of world music.”

The two label-mates had yet to meet when they were recording at the same Manhattan studios, but “we’d had a bit of a run-in” after Belafonte’s sound engineer noticed they were picking up a “leak” from an adjoining studio where Presley and his band were “playing louder than the studio designers had ever imagined anyone would play.” Belafonte complained to RCA’s CEO. “Back came the word from Presley’s famous manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker: Either I could become his new client or he would destroy me. There was also a nicely wrapped box of chocolates with a note that said ‘From your friend the Colonel.’”

Once RCA executives “managed to sooth all the ruffled egos” both albums were completed, and would compete with each other on the charts. “All though the last half of 1956, Elvis and I traded top places with each other on that Billboard chart,” but Belafonte notes, at the end of that year in which rock ‘n’ roll began to overwhelm the charts, “the best-selling album wasn’t Elvis Presley or Elvis. It was Calypso.”

The two singers would finally meet when Belafonte played the Riviera in Las Vegas. “One night Elvis caught the show with Ann-Margret as his date, and came backstage to say hello. Elvis couldn’t have been more decorous; he insisted on calling me ‘Mr. Belafonte.’ Maybe it was just everything I was felling at the time, or maybe our year of chasing each other on the charts had made me competitive, but his manner seemed country-boy slick, and his music seemed derivative. Only later would I learn that Elvis had hung out for years with a lot of black musicians and come by his style legitimately. But he did perform with such put-on flash that over the next years, I noticed, he inspired a whole generation of rhythm-and-blues players who thought they could put that flash on and be Elvis, too.”

Thought not a rock ‘n’ roller himself, Belafonte can claim at least a footnote in rock ‘n’ roll history. For his Midnight Special album, he had wanted Sonny Terry to play harmonica, but the “world’s greatest blues harp player” was sick in bed. Belafonte’s guitarist recommended “a skinny, scraggly-haired kid no more than twenty years old” who arrived with four or five harmonicas in a brown paper bag. After Belafonte and the band agreed to run through the album’s title song for him, Bob Dylan asked for a glass of water. He didn’t want a drink, but rather dipped a harmonica into the water, shook it off, played on the track, then “tossed the harmonica he’d just played into the trash” on his way out. Belafonte took that as a bit of an insult, and assumed Dylan didn’t like him, just as he took it for granted that Dylan’s mentor and sometime vocal partner, Joan Baez, didn’t like him since someone called him “Belaphony” in Time’s Baez cover story.

For years, Belafonte “nursed a wounded ego” over these imagined slights, but eventually realized he was wrong. Dylan threw the harmonica away because it was cheap, an advantage for achieving the crude sound he was seeking, and once it was dipped in water, it was useless. In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles, Dylan praised Belafonte to the heavens (“Everything about him was gigantic”), and recalled his Midnight Special session as “the only one memorable recording date that would stand out in my mind for years to come.”

© 2012 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Oh Wow

On his deathbed, Steve Jobs, the Apple computer czar, was surrounded by loved ones. In the eulogy published in The New York Times on October 30 that radio talker Dennis Prager quoted yesterday, Jobs’ sister, Mona Simpson, described the scene, saying her father gazed silently at her and his "life partner," apologized to the latter because they could not grow old together, then, before taking his final breath, said, "OW WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW." (The caps are hers.)

I know nothing of Jobs’ spiritual beliefs. If he had any spiritual beliefs, I would assume they had roots in New Age ideas, the likes of which Oprah Winfrey has embraced. I doubt there are many Bible believers in the hi-tech world in which Jobs made his name, but then I have a sneaking suspicion that most of what we regard as science, including computers, are "indistinguishable from magic," to quote the late Arthur C. Clarke. Magic is not of God but of the devil.

But I digress.

Prager, an observant Jew, interprets Jobs’ final words as evidence of an afterlife. I do, as well, but of what afterlife? If the Bible is true, as I believe it to be, and if I understand it as well as I like to think I do, which is clearly not as well as I’d like, there is a different afterlife for the saved than there is for the damned. If the only way to Heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ, a glimpse of whom could explain why Jobs or another dying man would say “OH WOW” in the final moment before death, then who or what did Jobs see?

Atheists would likely explain away any vision by insisting that endorphins kicked in, bringing on a euphoric feeling that Jobs probably experienced in his last seconds on earth. If Jobs’ sister is a Christian (and I have no reason to think she is), unbelievers may even accuse her of lying about her father’s last words to promulgate her own beliefs. Christopher Hitchens accused various believers of putting last words into the mouths of such notable atheists as Thomas Paine and Charles Darwin and expressed the fear that they might do the same to him. So far, there have been no reports concerning Hitchens’ last words, if he uttered any, before he passed away last month.

But I digress again.

The point is, Steve Jobs apparently saw something, and what he saw was so dazzling that the normally articulate whiz-kid was, if not entirely speechless, then at a loss for the more precise language one might expect from one so brilliant. To say “OH WOW” is almost akin to saying you don’t know what to say. But even if we knew what he saw, even if he had found the words to describe it, questions would remain. From where did the vision originate? “Well,” the atheist might say, “it was those endorphins produced by the brain to ease our physical suffering. Science can explain it just as science can explain everything, rendering foolish all religious beliefs.” This by no means settles the matter. The believer in God would ask, “Who gave us endorphins?”

Since Jobs’ sister does not report that her father expressed anything resembling fear, we can only assume the vision he saw was pleasant, positive. If he was a believer in Jesus, it would make sense that he saw his savior, perhaps with arms outstretched, welcoming him home. If he was not a believer, and still saw Jesus, or Heaven, perhaps some of the preachers are wrong in thinking that salvation is available only to those who accept Jesus, “in their heart,” as they are fond of saying, and that even the relatively decent soul who nonetheless questions Jesus’ divinity, is lost, denied entry through the pearly gates and consigned to eternal hellfire. Of course, any vision of Jesus by an unbeliever could also be a deception of Satan.

Still, preachers and the most outspoken representatives of all religions generally make salvation more complicated than Jesus ever did, perhaps to justify their position as "experts." Jesus made it as simple as can be. When the thief on the cross turned to Jesus and asked Him to "remember me when You come into Your kingdom," that brief moment of faith was sufficient for the thief’s salvation. "Today," Jesus told him, "shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Elsewhere in the Bible, we read that "whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Acts 2:21).

Turn on the TV some Sunday morning (not Saturday, the true Sabbath), and things get more complex and a lot more confusing. The average Protestant preacher with access to the airwaves is a money-grubbing charlatan who emphasizes the "works" that Jesus said are like "filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6), simply not good enough to please a Creator who demands the perfection of which fallen man is incapable. The works that the TV preacher encourages usually involve a donation to his ministry which will pay his broadcasting bills and maybe help him buy a new Cadillac.

The Catholic Church also places priority on works and goes even further than the Protestants by dividing sins into categories: mortal and venial. A mortal sin is one from which there is no salvation and presumably includes murder, but I remember that as a child I was told that failure to attend Sunday Mass also qualified as a mortal sin. The message is that though Jesus died for our sins, He did not die for all of them. Shoplifting, jaywalking, and nose picking are probably covered, but His blood could only cover so much, and it missed man’s more flamboyant offenses. If true, then Jesus was either lying or misinformed when He said, "It is finished" (John 19:30) before commending His spirit to the Father. These days, I don’t regard the Catholic Church as anything more than a tool of the devil, a source of disinformation, the most effective of which is 90 percent true. There is truth in Catholic doctrine, but it is polluted with contradictions, including the elevation of Mary, Jesus’ earthy mother, to divine status.

But I digress again.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus said. "No man cometh unto the Father but by me" (John 14:6). Anyone who reaches Heaven does so because, and only because, of what Jesus accomplished on the cross at Calvary. Furthermore, we read in John 3:16 that "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). The latter passage clearly emphasizes that belief is required. The indecisive agnostic (as opposed to the atheist) who says, "I just don’t know," is seemingly doomed. The former passage is more open to interpretation. "No man cometh unto the Father but by me" could be read to mean that Jesus could decide in favor of a non-believer if He chose to do so, perhaps letting a sincere believer from a false religion enter the kingdom of Heaven because, hey, he was sincere in his belief, and did not reject Jesus, the way many atheists do, out of a surly spirit of rebellion. In God’s view, sin is sin, and though we may regard one sin as more serious than another, God does not. Taking more sugar than you need for the small coffee you ordered at McDonald’s so you can use it for the coffee you make at home is a sin, as is taking napkins for later use as tissues. Such behavior does not alarm us as much as the guy who takes a machine gun to his fellow diners, but it still falls below God’s standards of perfection and would bar one from entering Heaven without the redemption offered by Jesus Christ.

I’m digressing again.

Steve Jobs saw something on his deathbed. What did he see?

© 2012 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Goodbye 2011

Turn on the TV or radio, or log onto the Internet, and you can’t avoid the numerous remembrances of 2011, including tributes to those who bid adieu to this world in the year about to end. The deaths of Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Taylor received the most attention, but I’ll miss Peter Falk the most (Hail, Columbo! And The In-Laws!). Others who passed on this year include Jerry Lieber, who with Mike Stoller wrote “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” and many other rock ‘n’ roll classics, actor Cliff Robertson, and Sidney Lumet, who directed more than his share of great movies, but who I will always remember for Network, the most prescient film of the 1970s. Christopher Hitchens discovered, as everyone does in that final moment before death, that there is a God, but the revelation came too late for him to write about. Too bad. Imagine the book that could have resulted. What title would he have given it? Maybe something on the order of Uh-Oh, God Is Great, After All or Guess Who I Met in Hell?.

Barack Obama interrupted regular programming to tell us that Osama Bin Laden, the supposed mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks (but actually the scapegoat), had been killed, but no one saw a picture of the corpse. Then there was Muammar Gaddafi, dragged through the streets of Libya and murdered by his own people, undoubtedly with an assist from the CIA which has played a role in numerous revolutions during its 64 year history, including this year's so-called Arab Spring. The CIA was the secret hand behind at least two major revolutions in Iran. In 1951, when Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, the agency, with backing from the likes of David Rockefeller, mobilized Iranians who were hostile to the ruling powers and had him overthrown. Mossadegh was replaced with Mohammed Roza Pahlavi, the Shah, who would be ousted himself in 1979. In his memoirs, the Shah expressed the belief that the CIA was involved in his overthrow, too. In his place, the Ayatollah Khomeini took charge, turning Iran into the stronghold of Islamic radicalism that it remains today. Egypt’s recent revolution brought the Muslim brotherhood to power there, and now that Quadaffi has been kicked to the curb and killed, a more extreme Muslim government will almost certainly take the reins in Libya, a guarantee that events in the Middle East will continue to make headlines in 2012 and beyond.

The year 2011 was a dismal one on all fronts with more than a few of the “birth pangs” that the Bible warns are a sign of the end-times. The events in the Middle East may have the most damaging consequences in the long run, but don’t tell that to Japan. The earthquake that rocked the country in March registered an 8.9 on the Richter scale, assuring it a place as one of the worst natural disasters in history. In Luke 21:11, Jesus warned of the last days that “There will be great earthquakes in diverse places.” Those who dismiss Bible prophecy as so much superstitious claptrap would argue that there have always been earthquakes and natural disasters, but shortly after the 8.8 earthquake in Chile on February 27, 2010, World News and Prophecy put it in frightening perspective:

“If we look at the 12 strongest earthquakes registered in the world since measurements of them began some 300 years ago, four - or a third of the list - have occurred within the last six years.”

I don’t know which of those 12 earthquakes dropped off the list following this year’s disaster, but it’s now safe to say that five of the worst earthquakes in history occurred within seven years.

What does the world have in store for 2012?

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Countdown to Christmas

Christmas is only four days away, but it doesn't seem like Christmas, and hasn't since my parents passed away more than five years ago. There's Christmas music on the radio, including that duet by Bing Crosby and David Bowie (“Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth”), but I’ve found it more of a nuisance than a pleasure. Still, I'm always amused to see the video clip of that musical odd couple standing side-by-side in front of a piano singing that medley on Crosby’s final Christmas special which aired a few months after his death. Broadcast in 1977 and titled A Merry Olde Christmas, it was the subject of much curiosity due to Bowie's appearance. Pop stars had joined Der Bingle on TV shows before, but Bowie was no ordinary hit maker. The fact that he was a bonafide rock and roll star, and, therefore, not the kind of performer then prominent on prime-time television, made his guest shot on a Crosby Christmas special unusual to begin with, but his androgynous, bi-sexual reputation made it downright bizarre.

It’s doubtful Crosby was familiar with Bowie, and the decision to recruit him for the special was made by the producers who enlisted three of the show's musical directors to write a counter melody to "The Little Drummer Boy" after Bowie made it clear he disliked the popular song. The result was "Peace on Earth," which Bowie sang while Crosby handled the more familiar "ba-bump-bump-bump-bum" of the other song.

Bowie was in the midst of his most musically experimental phase at the time, having recorded the cold, melancholy Low and its follow-up Heroes during this period (Bowie also performed the title track from the latter album on the Crosby hour). Bowie’s ethereal music was never more alienated or detached than it was in these striking albums. Singing with lovable old Bing would have shocked his audience at any time but never more so than in 1977 when he was creating some of his darkest music. And here he was, on a Christmas special no less, dueting with Bing Crosby on “The Little Drummer Boy.” Thin, somewhat effeminate, and more than a little other worldly in appearance, Bowie provided a stunning contrast to the rumpled crooner in a comfy sweater. Surprisingly, their joint venture was a success. Their styles did not clash, and the recording, though made strictly for the CBS-TV broadcast and not intended for release on vinyl (the introduction of the compact disc was still five years away), is a memorable one. Five years later, RCA (then Bowie's label) released it as a single. It's now a staple in the season of good cheer.

There's little cheery about “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” the traditional Christmas carol that has no competition as my favorite yuletide song. Its richly melancholic melody has made it a favorite with some jazz musicians, but you do not find it being performed by many popular recording artists. Joan Baez offered a superb rendition on an album of Christmas songs she released in the ‘60s, but other than Peter, Paul, and Mary, I can’t think of any other mainstream performers who have attempted it. It may be too solemn, even a little depressing, certainly in comparison to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer," two songs I positively loathe.

If you don't hear "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" much on the radio, it's still more frequently played than the selections from the Rotary Connection's 1968 album, Peace. Although it includes an electrified version of “Silent Night,” most of the material was original, but it remains one of the finest Christmas albums ever recorded. The songs are moody and contemplative, highlighted by two exceptional pieces: “Sidewalk Santa” and “Shopping Bay Menagerie.” Unfortunately, the album has been long out of print, and is hard to find on CD. If the Rotary Connection is known at all today, it's likely because its lineup included the late Minnie Riperton who had a huge hit with "Lovin' You" ("It's easy 'cause you're beautiful") back in 1975. Her daughter, Maya Rudolph, went on to fame herself on Saturday Night Live.

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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The Err to Gore Vidal

In the February 2010 Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens cast his critical eye on Gore Vidal, a man whose “tough-mindedness” and “subversive wit” he greatly admired. When participating in a panel discussion on the life and work of Oscar Wilde, Hitchens recalled the moderator proposing that Vidal was the Oscar Wilde of our time, “and, really, once that name had been mentioned, there didn’t seem to be any obvious rival.”

If one had been looking for Gore Vidal’s successor, Hitchens didn’t have any obvious rival either, and even now, with his voice permanently stilled, no rival seems likely to emerge. Vidal himself once championed Hitchens as his heir, but then came 9/11. The attack on New York and Washington D.C. had many ramifications, the most serious of which - the shredding of the Bill of Rights and the shedding of blood in Iraq - Vidal addressed in his controversial pamphlets, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Dreaming War. One of its more frivolous results was the end of the two writers’ mutual admiration society.

Suddenly, Hitchens regarded Vidal as a “crackpot” for proposing that the Bush administration had advance knowledge of the attacks and took merciless advantage of them to justify an invasion of Iraq and the suspension of many of our civil liberties. Hitchens wrote that “if it’s true even to any degree that we were all changed by September 11, 2001, it’s probably truer of Vidal that it made him more the way he already was. . .” As an example, Hitchens referred to Vidal’s previously stated belief that Franklin Roosevelt ignored warnings that an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, knowing that such a tragedy would rally support for America’s entry into World War II.

Prior to 9/11, Hitchens was seemingly on the political left, contributing to such progressive publications as The Nation. A closer look at some of his activities suggests that the heart of a right winger was beating in his chest years before that day in 2001. While the left marched in step, supporting Bill Clinton even as he was impeached for lying under oath in the Monica Lewinsky case, Hitchens joined the conservative choir, admirably so in my view, by condemning him, writing a book, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton.

Hitchens didn't really change after 9/11. As he said of Vidal, “it made him more the way he already was . . .” Hitchens' words, which I replaced with an ellipsis - “and accentuated a crackpot strain that gradually asserted itself as dominant” - perfectly describe Hitchens himself who told USA Today that 9/11 was “an attack on America and its ideals.” George W. Bush had said that the terrorists “hate our freedom.” Different words expressing the same ridiculous sentiment.

Hitchens, the self-described contrarian, became an unofficial publicist for the Bush administration and its policies. Since he wasn’t on the government’s payroll, he was free to make statements that were more inflammatory, such as his description of the enemy as “Islamofascists.” Hitchens, like most Bush cheerleaders, failed to acknowledge that U.S. involvement in regions where we have no business being involved was, as Patrick Buchanan has stated, asking for trouble.

It’s a pointless argument, however, since the facts support the claim made by Vidal and others that the Bush administration had prior knowledge of the attacks. Of course, Hitchens, like others in the mainstream media, ridiculed such beliefs as unworthy of anyone but a “crackpot.”

Hitchens appears to have been something far more dangerous than a crackpot. He was a disinformation specialist. They come in all shapes and sizes, all colors and creeds, and can be found on the left, right, and in the center of every political party. Hitchens, I stated previously, “wasn’t on the government payroll,” but many journalists are secretly employed by the CIA, and have been since the days of the company’s forerunner, the OSS. In a 1977 article in The Washington Post, Carl Bernstein reported that the CIA’s “assets” included employees of virtually every major newspaper, magazine, and TV network, all of whom could be called on to do their bidding. Whether or not Hitchens was one of them, he certainly supported their agenda, something the true contrarian, Gore Vidal, never did.

In attempting to explain why Hitchens demoted him from idol to crackpot, Vidal told an audience that “I didn’t die. I just kept going on and on and on.”

And on he goes, a man without an heir, but he never really had one in Hitchens. Sure, they were both witty and had a gift for words, but Hitchens worked hard to counter Vidal’s most important message. Perhaps when Vidal called Hitchens his heir, he forgot to use the spellcheck. He may have meant “err.”

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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The Incredible Shrinking Movie Theater

When I was a young lad, I practically lived at the movies. Correction: I lived in the movies. The real world was merely something to pass through on my way into and out of the theater. Not anymore. The movie-going experience is not what it used to be and the movies are not to blame. The culprit is the movie theater.

When I was growing up in the late Sixties, downtown Cleveland, Ohio was home to such theaters as the Hippodrome, the Allen, the Loew’s State and Ohio, and the Palace, most located in an area still known as Playhouse Square. The Palace was especially well-named because, like all of these theaters, it was fit for a king. Plush architectural wonders, they made a trip to the movies an event even when the attraction was as mediocre as Murderer’s Row, a ridiculous spy thriller starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm, a secret agent less super, and certainly less sober, than James Bond whose fantastic adventures were all the rage during that decade. Yet I clearly recall seeing this turkey during my first visit to the Hippodrome in December 1966. I recall it more vividly than many superior movies I’ve seen since precisely because of the theater in which I saw it.

The downtown movie palaces are gone forever. The State, Ohio, and Palace are still standing but not as movie houses. The Hippodrome, however, exists only in memory. After closing its doors in 1980, it became a target of the wrecking ball to make room for a parking lot. Considering the grade Z exploitation movies the Hippodrome played throughout much of the Seventies (black exploitation and kung fu flicks), its demolition was a mercy killing. The Allen, boarded up for years, reopened its doors but only for live theater, not for the beam of a 35mm projector.

That’s a shame. These were special, distinctive theaters, completely unlike the multiplexes that dominate the industry today. Seeing a movie at the Hippodrome or the State was comparable to dinner at an elegant restaurant. Today’s multiplex cinemas are closer in spirit to McDonald’s. In the past, the theater where you saw a film was almost as important as the movie itself. If you saw the James Bond thriller Thunderball at the Loew’s State, as I did in December 1965, chances are you’d remember that you saw it at the State. Today, it’s doubtful anyone can accurately say where they saw a particular movie because the theaters all look and feel the same, and the movie playing at one multiplex is usually playing at all of them.

The neighborhood theaters of the past were not as impressive as the downtown movie palaces, but they had their own individual charms. My favorite was the Garden, located at West 25th Street and Clark Avenue, since it was in its darkened auditorium that I was introduced to the glorious world of cinematic make-believe, a world in which I spent some of the happiest times of my youth.

Today’s theaters are barely worthy of the name. The old theaters that do survive have been split up into multi-screen mini theaters, while the newer models built in the past thirty years are buried inside those ghastly shopping malls that are as lacking in character as the theaters themselves. And not just one theater, but often more than a dozen under one roof, all as unimaginatively numbered as so many of the sequels that play on their screens.

Those screens are another source of irritation. In the Fifties, when television lured Americans away from the movies by offering free entertainment in the living room, the motion picture industry fought the threat by offering what could not be found on that square box. Cinemascope, Cinerama, Vista-Vision (“Motion Picture High Fidelity”), and other innovative processes that required larger and wider screens were introduced. Now that television, as well as cable and home video, has proven victorious, theater screens are smaller than ever. It’s as though theatrical releases are little more than promotional tools to hype the disc or download scheduled for release a few months later.

Even walking through the lobby of those great old theaters was more pleasurable than being anywhere in one of the shoeboxes of today. The walls were adorned with large colorful posters of the current and coming attractions. Just as the screens started shrinking, so did those posters. They’re not as eye catching as they once were either. The poster for Thunderball featured panels of exciting artwork that conveyed the action in which star Sean Connery engaged in on screen in a way that may be more memorable than the movie itself. Posters for more recent 007 films simply feature photographs of the star posing with a gun and maybe a Bond girl or two.

Well, kids, let me sum up by saying you don’t know what you missed. I may sound like an old codger drawing unfavorable comparisons between modern reality and an idealized past, but the fact is a night at the movies isn’t what it used to be. Today, you buy your overpriced ticket, see the movie and maybe a coming attraction or two, and are then rushed off the property. Considering the quality of too many of today’s films, who needs to be rushed? Chances are you’ll be hurrying out the door with no encouragement from management for fear of being locked in overnight and subjected to another viewing of The Human Centipede by a deranged projectionist.

Murderer’s Row: now that was a good movie!

PS: On a bright note, the Capitol, a grand old neighborhood theater on the west side of Cleveland, has been restored and is a full time movie house (with digital projection rather than film, which could be the subject of another nostalgic blog entry). It's a multiplex with three screens, but the two smaller theaters are upstairs. If you see a movie in the main auditorium, it's just like old times, especially on those Sunday mornings when, for five bucks, you can see everything from Citizen Kane and North by Northwest to The Pink Panther (the original with Peter Sellers) and The Bad Seed.

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Christopher Hitchens Goes Forth to Meet His Maker

In the morning when I lift my tired body from my bed and go about the business of preparing for another day, I prefer absolute silence, but usually I turn on the radio even though I loathe the voices of those morning personalities. All I want is to return to the comfort of my bed, but these jokesters sound delighted to have braved the frigid autumn air to report to a workplace. I endure their cheerfulness because if an earth-shaking event - an earthquake, a terrorist attack - has occurred while I slept, I want to be aware of it. There wasn’t anything comparable in the news on Friday morning, but I did learn that Christopher Hitchens had died the day before at age 62, finally succumbing to the cancer with which he was diagnosed in June 2010.

Hitchens had been around a long time, writing for such “progressive” publications as The Nation, but he really seemed to capture the public’s attention in the past decade when his bass voice and elegant prose turned from concerns of the left to championing George W. Bush and his War on Terror. Suddenly, Hitchens, whom Gore Vidal once considered his heir, smeared Vidal as a crackpot for believing, as many do, that Bush and company were complicit in the attacks of 9/11 and that the War on Terror was really a war on us - the citizens of the United States. Hitchens was suddenly welcome to spout off on the radio shows of such conservative talkers as Dennis Prager and Michael Medved, even though both men are observant Jews and supporters of Christianity, while Hitchens was an outspoken atheist and critic of religion. It was in the latter guise that Hitchens was best known in the final years of his life, mainly owing to his best seller, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

I never read any of Hitchens’ denunciations of religion, but the title of his book could make one suspect that he wasn’t as much of an atheist as he claimed. If God does not exist, it’s irrelevant to speak of His greatness or lack thereof. That which does not exist is nothing. It has no character whatsoever. Furthermore, if there is no God, would anyone even consider the question of His existence? C. S. Lewis didn’t think so, and neither do I. No one would worship God or choose competing idols to fill the void that has existed since Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. There would be no icons in any field. We would feel no need to look up to anyone, even a parent.

Hitchens stepped into eternity unrepentant, supposedly touched by those who prayed on his behalf, but steadfast in his denial of God. He insisted that any reports of a deathbed conversion should be dismissed as a lie or the words of a “raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain.” He also expressed no regrets about the booze and particularly the cigarettes that may have played a part in the cancer that killed him. “Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that - or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation - is worth it to me.”

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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