Hymn for a Sunday morning

It's safe to say that I'm
sick of daylight saving time.
Especially as we near the Spring,
to have Darkness back to do its thing
As I trudge to work in early mourn
once again feeling so forlorn
to wend through darkness I must pass
and blow this savings time out my ass.

This morning does have a saving grace or two. It's my day off. And it's the birthday of Douglas Adams, who left us all to soon. I still rue the day I sold my hardcover first editions of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy (I had all five books) to do something so mundane as keep the electricity on and pay the rent. I first discovered the series when I was living in New York City and episode one debuted on our local public broadcasting radio station. I was heartbroken when the series ended (also far too soon), and was replaced with a "Prairie Home Companion", which is the main reason I never much cared for that program. Adams' works have a particular effect on me: they make me giggle. I become a veritable puddle of giggle. I start giggling just thinking about Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, or Zaphod Beeblebrox. It is a quote from Adams which gets me through the semiannual injection of daylight savings: "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so". 

And, it was on this day in 1927 that the Roxy Theatre opened. It wasn't just a movie theater. It was THE movie theater. It's advertising called it "The Cathedral of the Motion Picture". Depending on the source you read, it had anywhere from 5,920 to 6,200+ seats. And it regularly filled them all. That's about half the population of Brattleboro at one go. It was just up from Times Square, between 6th and 7th Avenues at 50th Street, its marquee and entrance attached to the Hotel Taft.

It was conceived by early silent movie producer Herbert Lubin. The enormous popularity of the movies had encouraged exhibitors to build lavish theatres which would be as much an attraction as the movies themselves. In New York City, that meant hiring Samuel Rothafel, who created and managed most of the great "movie palaces" in the Times Square area. Lubin hired him for a large salary, stock options, a percentage of the gross, and promised to name the theatre after him. Roxy was Rathafel's nickname.

The Roxy had an orchestra pit that seated 110 musicians and rose on hydraulic lifts to stage level. It had the largest theatre organ ever built, a Kimball  pipe organ which had three consoles (also on hydraulic lifts) which could be played simultaneously. There was a separate organ in the main lobby. There were stage shows before the movie. These included a ballet troupe, a precision dancing group of chorus girls named the Roxyettes, vaudeville and radio stars, and a male chorus, all in a program usually tied to the theme of the movie. The show changed every week when the movie changed. In order to produce it, the theater had the largest music library in the world (with three curators to run it), two stories of private dressing rooms, three stories of chorus dressing rooms,  rehearsal halls, a private screening room of 100 seats, a private infirmary with staff, a costume department,  a barber shop, hairdressers, cafeteria, a gym, showers & etc. The etcetera, by the way, included a menagerie for animal acts. 

There were uniformed ushers, trained by an ex Marine officer, so famous in their own right that they were mentioned in Cole Porter's song, "You're the Top". The ushers would show you to your seat, and hand you the weekly program. 

You entered under the huge marquee at 50th and 7th, bought your ticket at one of the booths, and made your way through the entrance foyer, then into a rotunda with the world's largest oval rug, and to the brass doors leading into the auditorium. The auditorium itself was a plush dream in red velvet and gold. The projection booth, in a move completely different from any other theater, was built into the front of the first balcony. The Roxy did not have to boast - it projected the best quality image in town. 

Oh, did I mention that there was a weekly radio program hosted by Roxy and broadcast live from the theater's own studio?

The rotunda in 1927. One of the theater's pipe organs can be seen n the balcony.

Roxy contemplates the main organ console

Pre-construction architect's rendering of the auditorium

By the time the time the theatre opened with a Gloria Swanson picture ("The Love of Sunya"), the Roxy was $2.5 million over budget, and cost over $12 million 1927 dollars, which today would be about $153 million. Lubin sold his controlling interest to movie mogul and theater owner William Fox for $5 million dollars. Plans for a circuit of Roxy theatres were scrapped; the only one built, the Roxy Midway on the Upper West Side, was sold to Warner Bros. It opened in 1929 as The Beacon. Rothaphel moved on to a new project, Radio City Music Hall. The Roxyettes went with him and were renamed the Rockettes.

The Roxy remained one of the premier movie theatres in the world. In the 1950's, new management reconstructed parts of the theatre for new widescreen processes. They rebuilt the stage to accommodate an ice rink for use in their stage shows. Eventually, it simply cost too much in a changing world, and the Roxy closed on March the 29th, 1960 with a Dirk Bogarde picture, "The Wind Cannot Read". The wreaking crews moved in. Where the outer lobby and entrance to the grand rotunda once stood, there is now a TGIFridays. On the site of the theatre itself, there is a nondescript office building. On October the 14th, 1960,  photographer Eliot Elisofon photographed Gloria Swanson in the rubble of what was thought to be the grand rotunda. Published in Life magazine, it inspired a musical about chorus girls reuniting in a theatre about to be town down, Follies by Stephen Sondheim. The show helped start a movement to save New York City's theaters. In 1979, the Radio City Music Hall was saved and is still in use today as a performance venue, as is The Beacon. 

The Kid Sister

Today is Marion Hutton's birthday. Most folks have probably never heard of her. For the elders among us, she probably sparks an uncertain memory. Her kid sister, Betty Hutton, became a fairly well known movie star in the mid to late 1940's and early 1950's.

When both girls were very young, their father abandoned his family for another woman, eventually ending his life a suicide. Their mother struggled to make ends meet until she found a career as a bootlegger. The sisters found work singing with the Vincent Lopez Orchestra. And then one day, Glen Miller found her and hired her as the girl singer for his band. She was 17 at the time. Miller and his wife Helen became Marion's legal guardian and foster parents.

Glenn Miller and Marion Hutton

At first, Miller wanted her to be billed as "Sissy Jones", thinking it enhanced her girl next door qualities. It lasted one night before she rebelled. The story may be apocryphal - her sister Betty was said to have appeared under the name once, too. The band called her by many names: The Kid, Kid Sister, Goldilocks, the Brat, the Whack, Tootsie-roll, the Dopey Duchess. The guys were, however, very protective of her. Even though she was so young and  the only female on the tour bus, she never had any problems with the guys. They saw to that, keeping each other in line.  I once heard that she could beat them all at shooting craps.

Here's the Miller band from one of their two movies, Orchestra Wives. Marion is the vivacious blond who can be seen singing with the Modernaires, backing Tex Beneke's vocal. Sadly, there is no footage of her singing any of her big hits with the Miller band (i.e. I Want a Hat With Cherries, The Jumpin' Jive, etc.) Although Marion is only briefly seen, one can get an idea of the sheer fun she must have projected onstage. This is the complete number - in early experimental movie stereo! (Thank You Daryl Zanuck.) Be sure to click the full screen option on the YouTube window before the Nicholas Brothers start dancing (in a sequence carefully placed so that it could be cut from use in theaters in the Southern U.S.).
   



     

Marion didn't have the best voice, but she made up for it with spunk and verve. In later years, she noted that she'd never thought of herself as a singer - she thought herself more of an entertainer. She was enormously popular with audiences (for many years, she was more popular than her sister), and stayed with the band through it's final performance in September 1942 when Miller dissolved the band to go into the army. She then went on tour with Tex and the Modernaires, landed a few small roles in movies, and after a few years faded from public view, more interested in starting a family than in having a career. In 1947, she married her third husband, Vic Schoen, a bandleader and arranger for the Andrews Sistrers, Bing Crosby, and most of the top names in the business.
   

The Modernaires surround Marion. Glenn Miller is seated going over the band's arrangements.
     

In the mid 1960's, Marion began treatment for various addictions, went to college and earned two degrees in psychology. She and Vic joined AA, and founded a drug and alcohol treatment center in the state of Washington called Residence XII. They perfomed together in numerous concerts to raise funds for the center. It was one of the first treatment programs specifically targeted to women.

Her sister Betty also suffered addiction problems, and attempted suicide after losing her voice. Betty regained control of her life through the help of a Catholic priest, and made national headlines in the 1970's when she was discovered working as a dishwasher in a rectory in Rhode Island. She followed in her older sister's footsteps and went to college, earning a master's degree in psychology.

In 1987, Marion, still married to Vic, succumbed to cancer. Residence XII still exists and still serves women with addiction problems. Their website is not linked here, as they don't even mention Marion Hutton, their founder who was once America's kid sister.

Mental Hygiene

The Shorpy site has found another winner. I gather that most of their work is done by a guy named Dave, who searches out old photos from the Library of Congress and other sources. It's the kind of site that is very easy to get lost in - at least for me. There is usually an option to click on to get a hi-res pic which can offer sometimes stunning details. The pic that caught my attention on this morning's internet perambulation:

Washington, D.C., 1924. "Exhibit on Mental Hygiene." As we wash our hands, so must we wash our brains. Much poignantly straightforward signage. National Photo Company Collection glass negative.

I've tried something different with this pic - instead of loading the hi-res version so that you and I can click on it (or right click on it to open it in its own window) I've tried linking it to the hi-res version at the Shorpy site. That way, you get to scroll around and have a bit of fun clicking on this and that. I do hope you'll try it, it took me a little while to work this out (Blogger moves the link to the caption unless you add the caption later.)

I clipped one of the posters on the wall; and well, this explains everything! I was a walking danger signal.

In case you're wondering how the site got such a name: it was the nickname of a real boy. He is the subject of the first photograph posted by the site, one of a series taken by Lewis Hine, whose pictures helped change child labor laws in the US.

December 1910. "Shorpy Higginbotham, a 'greaser' on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. in Alabama. Said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. Carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

As the site became established, members of Shorpy's family added comments. (Shorpy shows up in four different photos.) One site visitor used the internet to see what he could find and talked to a couple of Shorpy's relatives, who were unaware of the Hine photos. He found that Shorpy died at the age of 32 in a mining accident. (If you're interested, his discoveries are posted on the Mornings on Maple Street blog.)

Some days, I really love the internet.

See It Now - March 9th, 1954

On March the 9th, 1954 (my God, 58 years ago!), I was 3 and a half years old. I certainly can't tell you what day of the week it was. But something happened that day that brought change to the United States and affected the world.

While there are memories I have from that age, I can't say that I remember that day's broadcast of a CBS News journalism program called "See It Now". I do remember the show's host, Edward R. Murrow. I liked him, and often watched his programs when I was a little older. "See It Now" was a sort of investigative news report with commentary. Today it would be called a News Magazine.  My memories of the show itself are very vague. I do remember specific Murrow programs, like "Harvest of Shame", a documentary on the lives of migrant workers in the US. I grew up in a farm area that depended on migrant workers. When a program is that immediate, you tend to remember it.

In 1953, Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, reported on the case of an American soldier by the name of Milo Radulovich. Radulovich was an Air Force lieutenant who was stripped of his rank and discharged for his continued association with suspected Communist sympathizers - his father and sister. His father had subscribed to several Serbian newspapers to keep track of events in his native Yugoslavia. One of the papers was "associated" with a Communist organization. His sister was known to have "liberal" tendencies.  As a result of the program, Radulovich was reinstated. The episode aroused the ire of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who began to focus on Murrow.

Murrow and Friendly responded by putting together a "See It Now" broadcast that was comprised of clips of McCarthy in action, accusing and interrogating Senate witnesses and making speeches. Today is the anniversary of that program's broadcast. It gave voice to the doubts of millions of Americans, and started the downfall of McCarthyism. In 2005, the story of that broadcast was told in the motion picture "Good Night, and Good Luck". I've long been familiar with the final comments made that night by Murrow. All these years later, here in our modern world, his words still have resonance.

Iconography

It's time again for a birthday mention of someone who provided my humble self with a good deal of pleasure. It's a little late in the day, I know, but I just got around to looking at the Almanac.

Today is Cyd Charisse's birthday.

She's not someone whose name comes immediately to mind when you think of "movie stars". And she's not quite the first name you'd think of when someone mentions "musical comedy dancer". And yet, two of her film performances created images which are close to the top of the Hollywood American Dream factory.

She was born Tula Ellice Finklea, the poor thing. She started dancing lessons at the age of six to help rebuild her strength after a bout with polio. By the age of 14 she auditioned for (and and danced with) the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. While on a European tour, she married dancer Nico Charisse. After the outbreak of WWII, they returned to Los Angeles, where they had studied. She was hired by MGM, and was quickly brought into the Freed unit, famous for producing musicals.

In 1952, she was cast as the femme fatale in the Broadway Melody number in Singin' in the Rain. Her sultry character and dancing is a highlight of the movie. Even though I consider it sacrilegious to see just a clip from the entire number, I found the following on YouTube. (I'd cap and post the whole number, but it would run about 2 minutes longer than YouTube's allowed 10 minutes.)





The following year, she was paired with Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon. She played a ballerina. He played a washed up movie musical star who turns to Broadway for work. Yes, you can name that movie cliche at 10 paces to Baker Street. But that doesn't mean that the film isn't a distinct pleasure - it is. And one of my favorite set pieces in all of moviedom is here, the "Girl Hunt Ballet". Needless to say, she played the girl. Here's the entire sequence (which, interestingly enough runs over the 10 minute YouTube time limit):





There are many other wonderful scenes, songs, and dances she performed which deserve to be noted here, but those two are forever etched into my memory and maybe the memories of film lovers everywhere. Certainly, images from the above used to be used everywhere whenever an illustration was needed for "Hollywood Musical".  But there is also the following, also from The Bandwagon. It is a simple number, really. A ballerina and a hoofer, working in the same show, trying to come to terms with each other. We know they will fall in love. They do it while "Dancing in the Dark", with an orchestration by Conrad Salinger - one of the best ever put together at MGM. I used to imagine myself courting/dancing to this number around the reflecting pool and fountain of the Christian Science Church centre in Boston... it's that kind of a moment. Movie magic. And it is the dance I always think of when I see, hear, or read Cyd Charisse's name.

Finishing touches

In one portion of  yesterday's post (the Jean Harlow birthday nod), I wanted to include a video clip from the movie "Dinner at Eight", which would explain that part's title. The clips available on YouTube were of poor quality, and one was even in the wrong frame ratio. So, since it is now within my power (and with many Thanks to the people who helped me lug my stuff around over the years) here's a clip which shows a bit of Harlow's delivery as she sets up Marie Dressler for one of the all time great double takes; a stevil  film favorite moment:




Oh, by the way, it was on this day in 1791 that Vermont became the 14th of the United States.

And there are a couple of birthdays today of people whose efforts have provided me pleasure, and of whom I'd like to take note: that ol' red headed priest and composer Antonio Vivaldi was born today in 1678 (I used to have a thing for chamber music, especially when played on period instruments),  silent serial queen Pearl White, illustrator Milt Gross (worth a long post of his own),

Shemp Howard (there was a time when I was a bigger Curly fan, but depending on my mood I kind of preferred Shemp the last time I checked), magician-card sharpe and author John Scarne, Avery Fisher (audio engineer and benefactor who paid for the acoustic redesign of what had until then been Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center),  actor Edgar Barrier (who I so enjoy in his role as Martok in one of my all time favorite movies, "Cobra Woman"), actor John Garfield (seen below with Lana Turner),

and Ward Kimball - who deserves a multi post of his own: one of Disney's "Nine Old Men", redesigner of Mickey Mouse, designer and animator of the likes of the dwarfs in Snow White, the crows from Dumbo, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat, the mice and Lucifer the cat from Cinderella, the hunters in Peter and the Wolf, etc. A short clip (again, from my stuff and from my private files on You Tube):



Kimball was also the trombonist of the dixieland styled band the "Firehouse Five Plus Two". I've played them on my radio show. He also had this thing with steam trains and restored one that he installed on his property in Southern California. He was the first person to do something like that, and it directly inspired Walt Disney's interest.

And last for today, it's time I take note of the passing of Davy Jones. These things are starting to hit close to home now. One guy I know, a few years younger than myself, noted, "I had a crush on Davy Jones, and I'm not even gay." He was pretty damn cute, with a kind of well scrubbed potential bad boy charm.

Reading some of the reminiscences published about him, one of the things that stood out: he decided that he wanted to become a rock star when he was standing in the wings on the Ed Sullivan Show as the Beatles made their first US appearance. He was there to perform as part of the moved over from England Broadway cast of Oliver, in which he played the Artful Dodger. You know I just have to do this:



Thank You for entertaining me, Davy Jones.
Rest in Peace.
 

"I was reading a book the other day..."

With my attention diverted to other matters, I've not been taking note of birthdays and events as per usual. Thursday March 1st was Glenn Miller's birthday. And yesterday, March 2nd, was Kurt Weill's. And, it was the anniversary of my radio show which started back in 2000. Today is the birthday of Jean Harlow, the first movie star to grace the cover of Life magazine. She was the first "Platinum Blonde", the first "Blonde Bombshell"; the terms were coined to describe her.

Harlow was a reluctant star. At one point in her life she married a man with money; they moved to Beverly Hills. Since she had a car, she drove a friend to a casting call at Fox. You can guess the rest. Her story is quite a saga, complete with controlling mother, one husband's suicide shortly after their marriage (the rumor mill had a field day), a studio arranged marriage to cover up an adulterous affair, extreme popularity, illnesses and untimely death at the age of 26.

Publicity still from "Red Headed Woman", with author Anita Loos.

She claimed that she never dyed her hair. Once, she was to play the role of Anne Darrow, screaming heroine of RKO's King Kong. During pre-production, MGM put her under exclusive contract, and the part went to Fay Wray, who wore a blonde wig for the role. 

When I was young, glamour images of Harlow were everywhere. There were a small handful which were iconic. They seem to have disappeared over the years. There are lots of images available on the internet, but many of them don't catch the Hollywood Glamour Machine in full force. Still, I managed to find a few:

Her acting talents were minimal. In their review of her role in Howard Hughes' "Hells Angels", Variety famously remarked, "It doesn't matter what degree of talent she possesses... nobody ever starved possessing what she's got."  And she did have it. She and Clark Gable steamed up the screen in several very successful pictures.

"She didn't want to be famous. She wanted to be happy."
-- Clark Gable

Happy Birthday, Ms. Harlow.

Some days I just can't

So. It's another where did the last four hours go morning, and I keep ending up back at the same place and shaking my head. I shake my head a lot these days. Side to side, not up and down. The same old place (as opposed to the old Same place) is a news story about the soldiers in Afghanistan who innocently burned copies of the Koran. Officials have officially stated, "Mistakes were made". Now that's the kind of statement that can cause one to become unstuck in time. Suddenly it is 1986 and that actor starring as President of the Good Ol' Boy US of A offers a non-apology apology over having sold weapons of destruction to Iran (violating the don't do business with terrorists pledge) to finance right wing Contras in Nicaragua, who were our okay because they were our terrorists. (The Contras were trying to topple the Sandinista government which had overthrown very bad man dictator Somoza and instituted programs for mass literacy, gender equality, and widespread easy access to medical care. Damned Socialists!)

Okay, so mistakes were made. And the Afghans overreacted by killing USA soldiers who were there to train their government in killing. Things got so bad the very model of a modern major general apologized, the President of the USA apologized, political candidates in the USA belittled the President, oh, a whole bunch o'shit hit the media fans.

And in all this time, no one, not one single columnist, not one single blogger, not one single reporter or commentator has, to my knowledge, wondered how it is that after 10 years amonkst the infidels no one had ever told those US soldiers that burning a Koran was an affront to Muslims? Did they maybe have sudden onset wisenheimers? I meant Alzheimer's. You know, the Reagan Thatcher demented-ia thing?

This just makes me wonder what "they" are covering up this time.
Or trying to hide.
As in distract us from.

Whatever it is, it certainly isn't trying to make US forget the rise in gas and oil prices.
This time it is supposed to be because the Iranians threatened to "close" the 24.2 miles wide Straights of Hormuz (why are fundamentalists always harping on being straights?) (Okay, it's only 21 point something in nautical miles.)There has been no blockade, just the threat of one. ABC News, to their Disney owned credit, ran an expose of Wall Street Speculators who had driven the price up. No one did an expose of the big oil companies and the extra monies they are raking in to bolster their already record profits.

Wait. Record profits. In a bad economy? Surely not oil companies like ExxonMobil? In the worst not a depression since the depression? You mean like GM? Or the insurance industry? Or medical product companies? Oh, that's right - we're all suffering; cut hours, downsizing, thrown out of work (does wonders for the bottom line), losing homes, homeless.... uh, huh. Can you say "managed economy"?

Walt sent me.

It's happened again.

On Sunday, I had one of those 4 hour shifts at work, 7 to 11 am. After getting home, I started falling asleep. That seemed preferable to getting all sulky over whatever came to mind. I was feeling kinda pissy that I was probably going to miss the Academy Awards, not that that is a big loss these days, ya know?  The mystique is long gone, that era passed. But it's fun to watch and bitch, dabble in occasional ridicule, try not to fall victim to the stupefy spell, that sort of thing. I'm not invested in it anymore; these last 15 years or so I don't even go to the movies much, it's too costly.  This year, the only movie with a nomination I'd seen was the last Harry Potter.

And then something possessed me. I decided to go to a matinee. Even then it's 6 bucks. But I really wanted to see The Artist. A silent movie. In black and white. That's how my movie obsession started. A silent move. In black and white.

Every now and then, for family birthdays, vacations, Christmas, my father would get out his 8mm Bell and Howell camera and take home movies. After a minute and a half, you had to stop and go into a dark room, open the camera's side door, and turn the film over and expose the other side. You'd send it off to the lab and a few weeks later (after expectantly going to the post office every day hoping for that "you have a package" slip to be in your mailbox) you'd get back a 3 minute home movie. In color.

You'd get out the projector, pull out the screen and watch the family stare or wave at the camera. Indoor scenes were a hoot - you had to have special lights. Ah, I'll go into all that some other time. What's important is that every now and again my father would, after much imploring, get out an old silent movie he had. It was called Gymnasium Jim. It starred a comic named Billy Bevan, and the Keystone Cops were in it. And I loved it. I still have it. There is this one scene, in which Bevan, in need of a car, enters a teeny tiny shed which is attached to a lamppost. The door swings open and he drives out in this -huge- car. I always smile or laugh. It's magic. It's the movies.

My Dad also had a few 16mm silent movies, and an old 16mm silent projector. There were a couple of newsreels, and a couple of Mickey Mouse cartoons: Orphans Benefit, and Mickey's Service Station.

I was hooked. I later found out that both were sound cartoons, and abridged. But that didn't bother me (then). Heck, the first 8mm movie I can remember buying was a 3 minute Castle abridgment of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein; as a home movie it was silent. And black and white. Sometimes, the local tv channels would show a Charlie Chaplin short, or run an episode of - was it really called "Fractured Flickers"? A compendium of silent comedies, everything was cut, and the clips had a hokey narration added. I wanted more. I started collecting my own 8mm prints purchased mail order from companies with exotic names like "Blackhawk Films" of Davenport Iowa, wherever that was. I'd found them somehow, probably an ad in the back pages of an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

One day, I spent my savings on a feature film, Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. It was just about the last silent film made (it had a music soundtrack when it was released in theaters). I ordered it from a guy in Argentina who made 8mm prints of silent movies that weren't really legally available in the United States. I'd never seen it. I'd read about it in a book about silent movies written by a guy named Joe Franklin. But I took a chance. It turned out to be truly great, and one of my favorite movies of all time.

There was even a film collector's newspaper, The Big Reel. Then, a  number of 8mm movie and 16mm film collectors, concerned about the lack of film preservation, started a group called the Cinephiles. They began lobbying to save old movies and newsreels. In my memory, the National Film Institute was created as a direct result. 

As the years started adding up, I branched out into 16mm, and started on 35mm. After a decade in bookstores, I ended up working in film distribution for an insanely wonderful and often economically disastrous 20 years or so. And I've been thru Beta, VHS, Laser Disc and DVDs. I still prefer film. After the jobs in distribution faded away, I somehow ended up here, in a small town in Vermont, now working as a supermarket cashier at the age of 61, in an economy where I can't even keep my cable connected. Damned economy. Damned downsizing. Damned movies.

So, anyway, Sunday, feeling fairly burnt out on life, I went to a matinee to see what became this year's Best Movie Oscar winner:

It was silent.
And in black and white.
And, God damn it, I fell in love with the movies again.
 
 

Barney Rosset and Grove Press

Okay. The thing of it is this: I keep saying that when I was young, the world was a very different place. A pretty easy statement, on the face of it. But the meaning of it goes much deeper. Forget that it was a world before home computers or cell phones, or for that matter wireless phones at all. A phone was a heavy Bakelite thing with a cord that emerged from a nearby wall.

When you picked it up, and sometimes tapped on the little head rest lever a couple of times, an operator (in my case located over the 5 and 10 cent store downtown) would come on and ask what you wanted. They'd tell you the time, Or if school was cancelled that day. Or connect you to someone down the street or clear across town, or out into the world beyond. I am fond of saying that I remember steam trains. I remember watching them water up from the tower at the station at the end of Allen Street where I lived.

This was before the big highway systems were built. When radio was AM. Tv had come in and we'd sit and watch programs on the 13inch tube. There was no such thing as a remote control. Oh, it was all wonderful. And no one spent time cursing, dressing scandalously, dancing provocatively (Ed Sullivan had seen to that!), or telling dirty jokes in public. It had been 20 years since Clark Gable caused a ruckus when he'd used the word "damn" at the end of Gone With the Wind and no one had dared utter it in public since. Besides, that kind of talk wasn't fit to be spoken around women. And there was no such thing as teenage pregnancy or unwed mothers. Young women who had sullied their reputations often took long visits to their Aunt Ida in the country - never-mind that we were a town of less than 2,000 people surrounded by farms and country was a short walk or drive away. No nudity. On the beaches and in detective shows in movies and on tv young attractive women were causing a stir by wearing a two piece bathing suit called a bikini. It had only been a few years since men at the beach had stopped having to wear tops. Not only was sex not discussed, it was barely admitted, and it was a word that was never spoken. I was in my mid teens before it was even considered okay to spell it out in polite society.

Things started to change. A guy named Hugh Hefner started publishing a magazine which had fiction with ideas in it and pictures of naked women, with folds of silk or flower fronds covering up unmentionables. The United States Post Office seized a shipment of a book that it deemed obscene. The author was a man named David Herbert Richards Lawrence who had died nearly 30 years before. The book was Lady Chatterly's Lover. It had won awards and critical raves when it was published in England. In 1928. The publisher who dared to print it and ship it in the United States was Grove Press. A court judge decided the book, with its "unexpurgated" passages had redeeming social value. Grove then published Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. That one went all the way to the US Supreme Court who allowed it to be published. Grove press published Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot. And then there were works by Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Paul Sartre. And in the late 1960's, William Burrough's Naked Lunch, another visitor to the Supreme Court. By the time Grove published The Story of  O., there were no more trials.

Grove Press had a magazine, a sort of sister publication, a literary magazine called The Evergreen Review. It published everybody from Jack Kerouac to Malcom X and Che Guevara. Gary Snyder, John Rechy, Alan Ginzberg, Paul Goodman, Jean Genet, and oh, so many more of the avant garde of the 50's and 60's. I still have (and treasure) a hardbound collection of works from the magazine. (Unless I sold it that time trying to keep the electricity on.)

The owner of Grove Press even took a shot at film distribution, releasing "I Am Curious (Yellow)", a film with male and female frontal nudity. I know I saw it, taking an hour long bus ride to Philadelphia to do so.

The man behind all of this, the man who changed what could be written, printed, spoken out loud, seen in public, the owner of Grove Press, a guy named Barney Rosset died yesterday at the age of 89.

He had quickly become passe in the world he did so much to create. Women's Rights groups took him to task for publishing works in which women were often subjugated and dehumanized. He fired employees who tried to unionize.  In 1985, he sold, and was fired from, Grove Press. A few years ago, he started publishing the Evergreen Review as an online magazine. The 2012 Spring issue went online the day before he died, publishing articles like this:

         

I just wanted to take a minute to remember him. Although the world may be a coarser and more vulgar place, it - and especially the United States - is more adult, more thoughtful, more intellectually based  because of him. I read a lot of Grove Press books. When I ran bookstores for a living, I sold a lot of Grove Press Books. We're the better for it.

His memoir, "The Subject is Left Handed" (a line taken from his FBI file), will be published later this year.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Rosset. Rest in Peace.