9/30/22
Newsletter113
The Crack of Dawn
Lionel Bart (real name, Lionel Begleiter) was a British pop songwriter, and a child of Galician Jews who had left Ukraine due to the bloody pogroms against the Jews. Lionel Bart, who could neither read nor write music, wrote a series of early rock & roll songs for Tommy Steele, the culmination of which was the 1956 British hit, Rock With the Caveman. In a feat that is really unparalleled, Bart wrote the music (which he hummed to a musician who wrote it down), lyrics, and book for the play, Oliver! in 1960. The show was a smash success. The part of Artful Dodger was played by Davy Jones who would later go on to be in the Monkees. When Oliver! opened on Broadway in 1963, Bart won the Tony Award for Best Composer and lyricist. Lionel Bart received so much money and fame from the play, Oliver!, that he went wild. Bart was at the forefront of the crazy, mod, psychedelic London scene of the 1960s, becoming a major early proponent of LSD, as well as falling into the dark hole alcoholism. He managed to spend all of his money, plus get himself deeply into debt. In the most idiotic moment of his life he sold all the rights to everything he’d ever written for 350 pounds. Soon thereafter, Oliver! (1968), was made into a motion picture that won six Oscars, including Best Picture (beating Funny Girl, The Lion in Winter, and Romeo & Juliet). Not unexpectedly, the bankrupt Lionel Bart spent the next 25 years in a drug and alcohol fueled funk. When Oliver! was revived in 1994 they kindly cut him in on the profits. Lionel Bart died five years later at the age of 68.
I attended the University of Michigan in 1976 when I was 17 years old. I found a lovely little library in Angel Hall dedicated to literary periodicals that were all arranged around a big circular table at the center of the classroom-sized room. I staked out a comfortable green leather easy chair with a standing ashtray beside it, and that’s where I spent a great deal of the winter semester: reading Pauline Kael’s wonderful, intelligent, insightful movie reviews in The New Yorker, as well as the movie reviews in every other “literary” magazine, like John Simon’s idiotic, offensive reviews in New York Magazine. One day I came into the little library and who was holding court to about 20 students but John Simon himself. The man was so full of himself, seriously believing that his opinion on movies held far more weight than those of Pauline Kael or anyone else, that it just burned my ass. This asshole published a collection of 245 movie reviews and only 15 were positive. In his recent review, Mr. Simon had just taken a big shit on Taxi Driver, one of my favorite movies, and all of his reasons for disliking it were ignorant and foolish. I really do wish that I had a recording of my tirade that day, but I really let him have it. And when I mentioned Pauline Kael’s terrific, glowing review of the film, Simon said, “She only liked it to make me mad.” Well, I went off the deep end, saying something like, “If you honestly think that Pauline Kael, America’s foremost film critic, writes anything with you in mind, you’re insane.” This was all in front of 20 stunned college students. I completely overwhelmed him, mostly because he wasn’t expecting it – it was 10:00 AM – and because I was so offended that we would bad mouth Pauline Kael. I finally turned and left in a cloud of righteous indignation.
A couple of weeks later I arrive at that same lovely little library and sitting in front of about 30 students was, I shit you not, Jorge Luis Borges. Mr. Borges was one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century, and along with the younger, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was the most famous writer in South America. In 1976 Jorge Luis Borges was blind and his eyes were completely white. He spoke English very well and he told us a few of his ironic stories like a man who told stories for a living, which he did. I was enchanted. That little library was the only thing I liked about the University of Michigan. After one semester I quit and moved to Hollywood.
And so the day begins.