6/29/22
Newsletter26
The Ass Crack of Dawn
At 5:22 it’s just starting to get light.
Two Hollywood agents are sitting in a hotel lobby. A beautiful woman walks past. One agent says to the other, “Man, I’d like to fuck her.” The other agent says, “Fuck her out of what?”
A priest, a minister, and a rabbi are asked: when does life begin? The priest says, “When the sperm touches the egg.” The minister says, “When the baby is born.” The rabbi says, “When the kids move out.”
The song “Hound Dog” by Leiber and Stoller was first sung by Big Mama Thornton. It was written as a woman’s song. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog/ Sniffin’ ‘round my door” which makes more sense than Elvis’ version.
The song “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was a big hit three times in one year: by Marvin Gaye, by Gladys Knight & the Pips, then by Creedance Clearwater Revival.
About 45 years ago I was driving across Texas from L.A. to Florida, thus crossing the state at its widest point of 1,000 miles across. In the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, as radio stations were coming and going, I suddenly picked up CKLW from Windsor, Ontario, right across the river from Detroit. It played for about twenty minutes, then faded off into the ether.
Casting in a movie is crucial. If you miscast you ruin the film before you’ve started. The first producer to use actual Native Americans in his westerns was Thomas Ince in 1910-1915. John Ford trained with Ince and he too only cast actual Indians. The rest of Hollywood, however, was not so thoughtful. Warner Oland, an American actor of Norwegian descent was the best Charlie Chan, and had already pulled off playing an Asian in “Shanghai Express,” which he got him the Charlie Chan gig. Regarding Native Americans, Ricardo Montalban made a good living in the 1950s playing Indians. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis (real name, Bernard Schwartz) both played Native Americans. OK, so we’ve straightened that miscasting out now. Asians play Asians, Native Americans play Indians. But in a business dominated by Jews, rarely do Jews play Jews. Jesus has never been played by a Jew. H. B. Warner in the 1927 “King of Kings,” Jeffery Hunter in the remake, Max Von Sydow in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and Willem DeFoe in Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” But it’s still the norm. Ben Kingsley in “Schindler’s List,” Robert DeNiro as Bernie Madoff in the recent, “Wizard of Lies,” and my personal favorite, Millie Perkins as Anne Frank. Oddly, though, in the first sound movie, “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, the Cantor’s son was played by an actual Jew, Al Jolson (real name, Asa Yolson).
During WWII it was illegal in America to do business with the Nazis. Most companies acquiesced. Three big companies ignored the law: Coca-Cola, IBM, and Holland-America shipping. Coca-Cola created a new brand, Fanta, and sold that in Germany throughout the war. IBM had a computer in every concentration camp, which they continued to service the entire war. Holland-America lines, owned by Herbert Walker Bush (father of George, grandfather of George W.) finally had to be stopped by legal injunction.
This joke was told to me by Larry Raimi (Sam’s dad): At the U.N. a reporter steps up to three ambassadors: one from America, one from Russia, and one from Israel, and asks, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but what do you think of the meat shortage in Rawanda?” The American says, “What’s a shortage?” The Russian says, “What’s meat?” The Israeli says, “What’s excuse me?”
The sky is blue and the day’s begun.