R.I.P. DEANNA DURBIN

reposted from 2006 (with slight alterations)
















About twenty years ago the L.A. Times published an amazing article about Deanna Durbin. One of their writers---could it have been Kevin Thomas?---found himself in the French Village where Durbin resides. They didn't know one another, but he decided to affect an unannounced pop-in. He rang the bell, or pulled the chain, or rapped with the knocker. . .or whatever, and a moment later the door was answered by someone immediately recogniseable. Doubtlessly Durbin! She was perfectly okay with the unannounced intrusion, and the writer spent the rest of the afternoon with her as she lived her daily life, went shopping in the market, etc. Worth checking out the article on-line or wherever.

I was at songwriter Lew Spence's 2006 birthday party here in L.A. about a half-year back---the one where Pinky Winters sang AND accompanied herself on piano---and had a delightful conversation with writer-actor-director George Furth. He told me that he happened to be pretty good friends with Durbin. There were about a half-dozen others in the conversational circle (all much younger than Furth and myself), and nary a one of them had ever heard of Durbin. Not even a single, "I think I once heard my mother. . .." Somewhat ironically, even as I write this, Durbin is a very well-known and revered artist in the former Soviet Union where pretty much, I am told by reliable persons, nearly everyone knows who she is.

For the record, my favorite Durbin movie is "Christmas Holiday," where she plays piano in a whorehouse and falls in love with Gene Kelly who turns out to be a psychopatic killer and is mowed down in a hail of gunfire, after which she goes into a church and sings Ave Maria. The End! Directed by the great Robert Siodmak, who helmed this one between making "Phantom Lady" and "Cobra Woman". . .the same year, 1944!

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY WITH DEANNA DURBIN AND GENE KELLY! Clearly wartime movie patrons thought they getting a festive holiday musical romp. Instead, can you just imagine their utter shock, dismay and even occasional vomitation as they stumbled out of theaters after viewing this deceptive film noir? The film in which Durbin intro'd Frank Loesser's "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year."

It's a safe bet that this sub rosa film noir was responsible for at least a few suicides amongst unforewarned filmgoers. ("Momma went to the Bijou and never came back.")

One of several failed attempts image reconstruction for the star. Finally, in 1949, she packed it in and moved to France, lived happpily everafterward, and was never heard from professionally again. Like Garbo, Jo Stafford and only a handful of others, she knew to quit while she was ahead (well. . .almost).

Happy Birthday, Sir Duke

     photo by Ted Williams

From my memoir, Early Plastic

"The next time I went was a Sunday morning, at the very beginning of a day's worth of Duke Ellington Apollo Theater stage shows. He didn't come on until the set was nearly over at around 12:30 pm, but at least he showed (jazz musicians are notorious for knowing the existence of only one eleven o'clock per 24 hours). I didn't have the good sense to appreciate being in the presence of legendary tappers Teddy Hale and Bill Bailey, who preceded Ellington that day and who I foolishly thought of as being something boring and passe that I had to sit through to get to the Duke. This was a common attitude of the day that, for a time, threatened to kill off this great indigenous American art form."

Can't even recall the name of the movie at the Apollo that day. Angel Baby? Probably split after the Ellington set.

Anita Gravine update

 

 

Jazz singer Anita Gravine's new web site

Department of amplification

A couple of weeks ago I wrote on this blog that the only time I had ever been fired from a job was at a recording studio in New York more than a half-century ago. Not true. I forgot. This morning I remembered another gig from which I was also bounced. It goes something like this.

A quarter-century (or so) ago, I worked for a presti-di-ji-ja---oh, hell, magician---by the name of Richard J. Potash (aka: Ricky Jay) at something called the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts in Los Angeles (a snooty way of saying "Magic Museum"). He hired me as an assistant librarian at the place solely because I happened to know who the mid-19th century professional French farteur, Le Petomane, was. No other reason. Whether I could type or spell was not even a consideration.

I could probably fill a book with (mostly) negative recollections about the year or so I was in Potash's employ. One particlar remembrance I have is of a CBS summertime (lowest viewership expected) TV not-so-special in which he, ahem, starred. His tarsome forte was doing tricks by throwing playing cards at things. The show was shot at some restored film theater in the wilds of Orange County. All I can actually recall about the affair is that the later videotaped punch-ins for botched tricks must have cost nearly as much as the actual production itself.

Basically, I was canned as the result of doing my job properly---Potash eventually won some kind of major award as the result of my actions---which pissed him off no end. The incident happened to mark one of the few times in my life when I responded with a comeback of which I still remain somewhat proud. No l'espirit de l'escalier for me. I said to him, "May you die of cancer without me." I then turned on my heels and (I can only call it) flounced out of his office. I still have no idea of from where my response cameth. Alas, if what I meant by my outburst was a curse upon the life of the near-morbidly obese Potash, it seems not to have worked. It appears that there is a new documentary about/with him of one sort or another. Twelve viewers on IMDB have, so far, awarded it a 3.3 stars rating out of a possible 10. Thus, perhaps, giving his good buddy, playwright David Mamet (The Anarchist, Phil Spector, etc), a run for Potash's money in the recent boxoffice-bombs sweepstakes.

I forget but I never forgive.