flying down to rio

Louis and Dizzy

2007-01-23T09:06:00.000-08:00

Here they perform "Umbrella Man" on the Timex All Star Show - The Golden Age of Jazz recorded January 7, 1959.

Although Gillespie had criticized Armstrong as "the plantation character that so many of us resent" in a Down Beat article published in 1949, he later lived near the Armstrongs and apparently visited them frequently at their home in Corona. In his autobiography, Gillespie wrote:

I began to recognize that that what I had considered Pops's grinning in the face of racism was his absolute refusal to let anything, even anger about racism, steal the joy from his life and erase his fantastic smile.

Gillespie was an honorary pallbearer at Armstrong's funeral.

Struttin with some Barbecue

2007-01-23T07:42:00.000-08:00

This is a piece that Armstrong wrote - perhaps together with his second wife, Lil Hardin. Here's a bit of a performance apparently from 1951. Armstrong recorded this piece forty two times!

Here's a brief clip evidently from the Murrow piece on Armstrong - Satchmo the Great. By the way, Sidney Bechet frequently performed at Le Vieux Colombier with Claude Luter:

Actually, Louis probably got his first horn from the Karnofsky family before going to the Colored Waifs Home. They were junk and coal dealers that Louis worked for as a child. According to his memoirs, Louis played a tin horn to attract customers for them and they later helped him buy his first cornet. To close, here's a performance by the Marsalis family:

The Strip

2007-01-23T05:22:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of clips from a film Armstrong made together with Mickey Rooney in 1950 - "The Strip." Rooney later described the film as "a low budget musical with a low budget story." Here's a performance of Shadrack:

"Shadrack" was first recorded by Armstrong in June 1938. The film documents one of the earliest incarnations of the All-Stars: Cozy Cole, Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden and Earl Hines. Hines first worked with Armstrong in 1926 and was included on several of the Hot Five recordings.

According to Rooney, the film cost $885,000 to make and earned back just a bit more. Here's another scene featuring Rooney on drums - who is dubbed by Cozy Cole:

Before joing the All Stars, Cole played in the late 1930s and early 40s with the Cab Calloway band.

The big hit song from the film was "Kiss to Build a Dream On" which is performed three times in the film, including once by Armstrong. The song was written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and Oscar Hammersten II for the Marx Brothers film "A Night at the Opera." It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song after its use in "The Strip." It then became a staple of Armstrong and the All Stars. Here's a clip of a performance of the song by the All Stars in 1959 in Denmark:

This line up of the All Stars includes Trummy Young on trombone, Danny Barcelona on drums and Billy Kyle on piano. Armstrong also recorded "Ain't Misbehavin'" for the film - but the performance was not included in the finished picture. This was a song that had vaulted Armstrong into popular acclaim in the late 1920s when he performed it as part of the revue "Connie's Hot Chocolates." If you want to get a sense of the genius of Armstrong as a jazz vocalist, compare Armstrong's early version of this song with Fats' own. Here's Fats performing the number in "Stormy Weather." The drummer is Zutty Singleton who played with Armstrong on Fate Marable's riverboat band and recorded with Armstrong on several of the Hot Five numbers:

Savion Glover Redux

2007-01-15T14:20:00.000-08:00

I posted about Savion's performance at Celebrate Brooklyn previously. Now I find someone recorded it!

Here's a bit of what I said in my earlier post about this performance:

Bill Robinson made a "B" movie called Harlem Is Heaven in which he does his stair dance in a nightclub. The dance sequence is available on a DVD entitled At the Jazz Band Ball. Glover's performance reminded me of this dance. Robinson performs to the tune "Swanee River." Like Glover, he does not look frequently at the audience. (There are a couple of breakaway shots of the audience in the sequence - and they seem oblivious of Robinson). Like Glover, Robinson does very little with his upper body and his movement is pretty much limited to climbing and descending the stairs. Unlike Glover, Robinson is not portrayed as a member of a musical ensemble - he is accompanied only by piano.

Here's the dance by Robinson I mentioned in my post:

What do you think? By the way, Eleanor Powell (in blackface) does an homage to Robinson's stair dance in the film Honolulu - which is occasionally shown on TCM.

PS - recently Glover has been touring in a show in which he performs to classical music. Take a look:

Paris Blues

2007-01-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a video of Louis Armstrong from the film "Paris Blues". Armstrong did this scene in the middle of his 1960 trip to Africa for the State Department. For more about the trip, check out the fascinating new book Satchmo Blows Up the World.

I love the look Armstrong gives to Sidney Poitier about 1:40 into the video. The score for the film is by Duke Ellington. Armstrong and Ellington were also paired in "Cabin in the Sky" but Armstrong's scene from that film was cut and is apparently lost. I don't know who the saxophone and trombone players are who played for Poitier and Newman. Vanity said this about the film:

The film is notable for Duke Ellington's moody, stimulating jazz score. There are scenes when the drama itself actually takes a back seat to the music, with unsatisfactory results insofar as dialog is concerned. Along the way there are several full-fledged passages of superior Ellingtonia such as 'Mood Indigo' and 'Sophisticated Lady', and Louis Armstrong is on hand for one flamboyant interlude of hot jazz.

As a bonus, here's some of Ellington from "Cabin in the Sky"

Josephine Baker

2007-01-15T11:05:00.000-08:00

The National Portrait Gallery has an exhibit regarding Baker's life which I recently visited. Baker is a fascinating figure whose career raises numerous questions about issues of race, gender and identity. But she was also, according to contemporaries, a compelling dancer who brought the dance idioms of black Broadway to Europe. She opened in the Revue Negre in Paris in 1925 as part of a company which included Sidney Bechet, Claude Hopkins and the tap dancer Louis Douglas. Baker did a Danse Sauvage which was an enormous sensation. This was emphatically not tap dance. The French apparently didn't much care for tap dancing in the mid-twenties and the producers apparently thought the show as originally conceived featured too much tap.

Instead of tap, Baker's dance drew from popular American dances of the time such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom and a step called "Through the Trenches" which, according to Baker's biographer Phyllis Rose "mimicked the way soldiers moved in a crouch to avoid sniper fire."

Baker's dance played into French stereotypes of "African" dance as openly lascivious and created an enormous sensation. Of course, rather than emanating from an African jungle, Baker's dance reflected the idiom of black Broadway - Baker had danced in Sissle and Blake's Shuffle Along - and its roots in the newly emerging music called jazz. The French critic Andre Levinson wrote of Baker's performance:

There seemed to emanate from her violently shuddering body, her bold dislocations, her springing movements, a gushing stream of rhythm. . . . It was as though the jazz, catching on the wing the vibrations of this body, was interpreting word by word its fantastic monologue.

I've posted a video of Baker dancing which I should guess dates from 1926-27. Here she's not doing a "savage" dance but a "plantation" bit which of course perpetuated another set of sterotypes about African Americans. At about 1:45 in the video you can see the Through the Trenches step.

Baker published a memoir in 1927 which deeply offended French war veterans. In the book, Baker stated:

I've heard a lot of talk about the war. What a funny story! I swear I don't understand it at all but it disgusts me. I have such a horror of men with only one arm, one leg, one eye.

Of course, in the mid twenties there were probably millions of disabled war veterans in France and their protests forced Baker to disavow these comments and she later staged a benefit for them.

But this didn't end Baker's problems. In 1928 she left Paris for a tour of central Europe. In Vienna, The New York Times reported that Baker required a police escort because of protests by students "who declared their intention of preventing colored artists from playing in Vienna." The next day, the Times reported that the Nationalist Party had petitioned Austria's chancellor to ban Baker's performance. According to the article:

the deputation [to the Chancellor] said the party is receiving thousands of letters daily protesting against "brazen-faced heathen dances and scenes" which, if permitted, are likely to provoke riots.

Baker's performances were allowed to proceed however, and the Times reported that they were opposed not only by right-wing parties but by the Catholic church which held three days of "atonement" services at a church adjoining the Johann Strauss Theater where Baker performed.

To give some idea of the performances which provoked such outrage, here's another clip of Baker performing.

In both of these videos, you get the sense that Baker's facial expressions were an important part of her performance. She was particularly noted for crossing her eyes. Her biographer, Phyllis Rose, thinks this was a way of deflecting attention from her sexual attractiveness. But it's also reminiscent of the kind of "mugging" that Louis Armstrong incorporated into his act. Also, in the second video particularly, I think you can get the sense of how important Baker's rear end was to her dancing. Rose quotes one hostile French critic as saying that he "was willing to bet that she had never thought of founding a new aesthetic on the mobility of her rear end."

Been Rich All My Life

2006-07-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

This documentary opened this weekend at the Quad Cinema in New York. I saw the film last night and four of the "Silver Belles" and the film maker were available after the screening to answer questions. The "Silver Belles" are former Apollo ballroom chorus dancers who formed a troupe about ten years ago and continue to dance well into their eighth and even ninth decades. Their stories are fascinating. All started at the very bottom of the ladder and forged careers dancing and performing with some of the greatest artists of our age - e.g., Duke Ellington, Bill Robinson and Louis Armstrong.

But while I expected to be educated and entertained - and I was - I didn't expect to be as moved as I was by the poignancy of their resurrected dance careers and the strength and dignity that these women display in the film. The film was made over a two year period and two of the Belles suffered serious falls during the period of its filming. The way the group handled these events is a major part of the film's story. It's a story of perseverance and how the human spirit can transcend the frailty of our bodies and the physical decay that accompany old age. It makes you realize that there are heroes right here in our midst.

Run (or dance) - but don't walk - to see this film. It'll be one of the best you see this year.

Here are some other reviews of the film.

UPDATE: Here's the trailer for the film which is now available on DVD:

Tap Forward

2006-07-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

I had the good fortune to attend the Tap Future performance last night (7/15) - part of the Tap City Festival. All of the performances were fascinating but I'll comment on my three favorites. First, David Rider danced to Gershwin's "I Can't Be Bothered Now." Rider, who is just 20 years old, danced elegantly and featured a remarkable series of spins. According this article, Rider considered giving up dance in order to join the Legionaries of Christ - a traditionalist Catholic religious order. Perhaps he has decided to stick with dance (the program describes him as a student at Fordham). If so, I'd say he made the right choice.

Of course, Astaire - who is apparently one of Rider's dance idols(?) danced to this number in Damsel in Distress. I'd say Rider very nearly outdid the master last night!

Omar Edwards did a number titled "Mr. Nicholas" - a tribute to the Nicholas Brothers. (Fayard's widow was in the audience). Edwards - according to the program notes he's Savion Golver's cousin - did the splits which were the specialty of the Brothers. But most remarkably he danced the last part of his routine in his bare feet - including what looked to me like toe jabs. That's amazing! Edwards has great polish and wonderful stage presence - he 's a great entertainer as well as a graceful dancer.

Finally, I enjoyed the performance of Linda Sohl-Ellison and Monti Ellison in a number entitled "Espiritu." Monti performed on an instrument which I had never seen before called a berimbau. This is a Brazilian instrument of apparently African origin and it produces a sound which has a percussive or rhythmic element as the bow (or vaqueta) is attached to a rattle (or caxixi). The sound of the caxixi produced an interesting counterpoint to Sohl-Ellison's fluent taps. Sohl-Ellison apparently has made a specialty of dancing to what might be called "world music." Her performance last night was a fascinating example of the possibilities in this field.

The Nicholas Brothers and the Jacksons

2006-06-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

Here they are together:

Bill Robinson on YouTube

2006-06-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

A number of videos featuring Bill "Bojangles" Robinson have been posted on YouTube including a deleted scene (very short) from the film Cafe Metropole and footage of his funeral. They can be found here, here, here (Stormy Weather), here (more Stormy Weather), here (from Harlem Is Heaven), here (from The Little Colonel), and here (from The Littlest Rebel).

Savion Glover

2006-06-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

I went to see Savion Glover perform last night at the Prospect Park bandshell. I was going to title this post "Not Your Father's Tap Dance" - but after thinking it over, I think Glover's dance has many precedents. They may not be from my father's generation, though. More like my grandfather - and his father.

Glover really is one - clearly the leading - member of a quintet. The bassist came on and after a short while Glover appeared - to appreciative applause. He dances on a relatively small raised platform. He wears what look like boots with a relatively high heel with metal taps. He is one of two percussive performers in the quintet which includes piano, bass, drums, reeds - plus Glover. In fact, there were at times three percussion players as the bassist occasionally used his instrument like a drum.

The music reminded me of Coltrane. In fact, the program notes refer to a project with Glover entitled "IF TRANE WUZ HERE." Glover's looks at the audience. In fact, the dance is clearly about sound rather than appearance. But it is fascinating to hear. He uses a series of rolls, stomps and toe jabs to produce sound of considerable rhythmic complexity. The kind of music which his quintet performs is not "dance" music - although it did have a swinging propulsion to it. And the audience loved it! dancing is not visually interesting. He wears ordinary street clothes and rarely uses his upper body. He infrequently

Bill Robinson made a "B" movie called Harlem Is Heaven in which he does his stair dance in a nightclub. The dance sequence is available on a DVD entitled At the Jazz Band Ball and here on YouTube. Glover's performance reminded of this dance. Robinson performs to the tune "Swanee River." Like Glover, he does not look frequently at the audience. (There are a couple of breakaway shots of the audience in the sequence - and they seem oblivious of Robinson). Like Glover, Robinson does very little with his upper body and his movement is pretty much limited to climbing and descending the stairs. Unlike Glover, Robinson is not portrayed as a member of a musical ensemble - he is accompanied only by piano.

Robinson recorded his taps on several occasions. He performed "Doin' the New Lowdown" with the Don Redman band in December 1932; "Ain't Misbehavin'" with Irving Mills and His Hotsy Totsy Gang in September 1929 and "Living in a Great Big Way" with Fats Waller in 1935.

And radio performances of tap dance must have been fairly common in the 1930s. In the film Big Broadcast of 1936, Robinson is shown reclining in a barber's chair while listening to the Nicholas Brothers dance over the radio. In The Black Network, the Nicholas Brothers again perform over the radio. (This short subject is available on the DVD Hallelujah). So the percussive, aural experience of tap has always been integral to the form - although no one could ever accuse the Nicholas Brothers of being indifferent to their visual presentation.

And Glover is not the first tapper to dance with bop jazz accompaniment. In 1945, the Nicholas Brothers toured with the Dizzy Gillespie big band - which included Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro and Max Roach. The tour was called Hepstations 1945 and travelled through southern states including the Carolinas, Mississippi and Alabama. Audience reaction was unfavorable but Constance Valis Hills quotes Harold Nicholas as saying: "Down South, they wanna hear the blues, get with it. . . . But we understood it, the musicians understood it, and so we were having a ball."

In 1946, a tap dancer named Ralph Brown appeared in a TV segment entitled "Jivin' in Bebop" with Gillespie's orchestra and sextet - and danced to the Charlie Parker tune "Ornithology." Brown was a huge fan of Bill Robinson. (Although in the book Tap!, Brown calls himself an "eccentric" dancer. "I also got around and did a lot of movements, spins and stuff, all that sort of thing." In that respect, he was clearly a different type of dancer than Robinson)

So, as the Good Book says, there's nothing new under the sun - although in this case it was under the moon and around 9:30 pm, this writer - who is not a night owl - headed home. In part that was because I'd been up late earlier in the week at a couple of other JVC Jazz Festival events. Of particular note was a concert called Clarinet Marmalade. It featured a clarinetist named Evan Christopher who really blew me away. If you see this guy's CDs - buy them!!! He's fantastic.

Tap Dance History Yahoo Group

2006-06-22T03:50:00.000-07:00

I have created a Yahoo group for discussion of the history of tap dance. I'm a real novice in this area but I hope it can serve as a forum for those with more knowledge and experience (and other novices) to discuss this field. Topics might include new publications in the field, films featuring tap dance and upcoming tap events. If you are interested, please check it out here.

Happy Birthday

2006-04-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

Today, if he were still alive, John James Audubon would be 221 years old! He was born on this date in 1785 in what is now Haiti. He died in 1851 and is buried in Trinity cemetery near the Episcopal Church of the Intercession at 155th and Broadway here in New York City.

I'll take the opportunity of his birthday to shamelessly plagiarize the following list of pleasures of birdwatching from Marie Winn's wonderful website and Chris Cooper:

1. The beauty of the birds
2. The beauty of being in a natural setting
3. The joys of hunting, without the bloodshed
4. The joy of collecting (in that the practice of keeping lists -- life lists, day lists, etc.-- appeals to the same impulse as, say, stamp collecting)
5. The joy of puzzle-solving (in making those tough identifications)
6. The pleasure of scientific discovery (new observations about behavior, etc.)and saving the best for last,
7. The Unicorn Effect--After you've been birding for even a little while, there are birds you've heard of or seen in books that capture your imagination, but you've never seen for yourself...and then one day, there it is in front of you, as if some mythical creature has stepped out of a storybook and come to life. There's no thrill quite like it.

Happy Birthday and Good Birding!

Bourbons Got the Blues

2006-04-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

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The recent Vaudeville Nation exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts displayed a program for a revue called" The Bourbons Got the Blues" in which Duke Ellington participated. This was a revue staged by the Negro Cultural Committee as a benefit for the National Negro Congress on May 8, 1938. The National Negro Congress - according to the Schomburg Center - was created in 1935:

In May 1935 a conference on the economic status of the Negro was held at Howard University in Washington, D.C., out of which emerged a major civil rights coalition that was active in the late 1930s and 1940s. The National Negro Congress—whose sponsors included Ralph J. Bunche and Alain Locke of Howard University, A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, James Ford of the Communist Party, John P. Davis of the Joint Committee on National Recovery, Lester Granger and Elmer Carter of the Urban League, and Charles Houston of the NAACP—was truly significant in two respects.

It represented one of the first sincere efforts of the 20th century to bring together under one umbrella black secular leaders, preachers, labor organizers, workers, businessmen, radicals, and professional politicians, with the assumption that the common denominator of race was enough to weld together such divergent segments of black society. It also signalled the Communist Party’s movement into the mainstream of black protest activity. In particular, the evolution of the National Negro Congress dramatized the growing convergence of outlook between Communists and activist black intellectuals that had taken shape in the protests of the early Depression years and reached full fruition during the years of the Popular Front.

According to Harvey Klehr, the goals of the Congress were "not very radical." They included support for higher wages, unemployment compensation, aid to Ethiopia and assistance to black sharecroppers. The Congress also supported anti-lynching legislation.

The performance took place at the Mecca Auditorium -now City Center. The first half of the program featured sections titled "Uncle Tom is Dead" and "From the Life of Denmark Vesey". The revue was written and staged by Carlton Moss. It also included a reading of Frederick Douglass's address of July 4, 1852. This is the address that concludes:

"What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all otherdays of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty towhich he is the constant victim. To him yourcelebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholylicense; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock."
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Ellington wrote a composition for the revue -"There'll Come a Day". It was performed by Ellington on the piano with the Juanita Hall choir. I have not been able to find any record that Ellington recorded this piece.

The second half of the revue was a ballet titled"Filibuster - a Satiric Ballet". The music was composed by Paul Denniker with choreography by Anna Sokolow. I have to confess I was unfamiliar with both these names. Sokolow was a radical choreographer who was responsible for a number of political dance pieces including Anti-War Trilogy. She also did choregraphy for the Federal Theater Project's Sing for Your Supper and Bernstein's Candide.

The ballet also featured readings of speeches by Senators Ellender and Bilbo who filibustered anti-lynching legislation in the US Senate in January 1938. Theodore Bilbo was a particularly vicious racist who served as governor and later senator from Mississippi. He introduced legislation to deport black Americans to Liberia and authored a book entitled "Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization."

Other notable black actors including Rex Ingram and Canada Lee also took part in the "Bourbons" revue. Ingram got his start in a Tarzan movie made in 1918. He later appeared in "Cabin in the Sky" both on Broadway and on film. However, his reputation was tarnished by his conviction in the late 1940s for a violation of the Mann Act.

Canada Lee was a fascinating figure who was at various times in his career a jockey, a prizefighter, an actor and a civil rights pioneer. In her biography of Lee, Mona Smith writes that "Bourbons" was the "actor's first brush with overt political activism." As Smith notes

The show's mix of monologues, music, and dance proved, according to the New Masses that "Uncle Tom is dead, that the Negro remembers his heroes, working-class heroes, that the Negro is organizing for his freedom."

I had not thought of Ellington as a particularly political person. But in his biography of Ellington, A.H. Lawrence writes that the FBI began surveillance of Ellington in 1938 and regarded him as a Communist sympathizer. I imagine Bourbons Got the Blues played a role in that. What a trip it must have been to see that revue!!

Soviet News

2006-03-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

In his excellent book, Stalin and His Hangmen, Donald Rayfield comments acerbically on the silence of the Western press and intelligentsia regarding the slaughter that accompanied the Soviet collectivization of the early 1930s.

Nazi persecution of the Jews began as Stalin completed his genocide of the Russian peasant. We are still shocked today by Europe's connivance at Nazi racism but, compared with Europe's indifference to the introduction of slave labor in Russia and to the eradication of the Russian peasant, its murmurs about Nazi atrocities seem like an outcry.

Rayfield holds journalists partly responsible for this indifference. In particular, he singles out Walter Duranty of the New York Times. Rayfield accuses Duranty of being "suborned by [Genrikh] Iagoda" - head of the Soviet secret police (OGPU).

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Douglas McCollam reaches a more measured conclusion regarding Duranty, noting the difficulties that he faced coping with Soviet censorship. Nonetheless, McCollam concludes that Duranty, in the face of accurate reporting by others, sought to downplay the extent of the famine caused by Stalin's collectivization:

Duranty did not simply write watered-down stories about the famine. Others, including later critics like William Henry Chamberlain of The Christian Science Monitor and Eugene Lyons of UP, filed similarly bland reports, correcting the record only after they were out of the country. No one, it appears, both reported the depths of the famine and managed to stay inside the Soviet Union. But Duranty did more than equivocate; he repeatedly cast doubt on whether the famine was taking place, relying on scarcely more than official Soviet press reports. In so doing he allowed himself to become a vehicle of Soviet propaganda. When he was finally allowed to tour the region in September of 1933, Duranty played up the big harvest that was by then under way, and wrote that "the populace, from the babies to the old folks, looks healthy and well nourished."

In fact, according to The Black Book of Communism, more than six million people died as a result of the famine and, as Rayfield describes in detail, the horrific brutality that accompanied the collectivization.

So what did press coverage in late 1935 disclose about life in the Soviet Union? The December 16, 1935 issue of Time featured Stakhanov on the cover. According to the accompanying story:

Last week the Soviet Union was busy winding up 1935 with Russia's most recent and most sweeping innovation since the so-called "liquidation of the kulaks" and "fulfillment of the First Five-Year Plan." The great new addition to vocabularies: Stakhanovism. To liquidate the kulaks was a bloody, brutal process in which Russia's more prosperous small farmers were shot by the thousands and deported to Siberia by the hundreds of thousands for opposing Dictator Joseph Stalin's will to force every last Russian peasant into a collective farm (TIME. Nov. 26. 1928 et seq.). Today a fresh battle has opened over Stakhanovism and thus far enraged workers have done most of the shooting.

Aleksei Stakhanov was a miner and later mine director who was reported by the Soviet regime to have mined 227 tons of coal in a single shift. Not surprisingly, his feat was used as an example for other workers and the term Stakhanovite was applied to those workers who exceeded work quotas by extraordinary amounts. According to this site:

Day by day throughout the autumn of 1935, the campaign intensified, culminating in an All-Union Conference of Stakhanovites in industry and transportation which met in the Kremlin in late November. At the conference, outstanding Stakhanovites mounted the podium to recount how, defying their quotas and often the skepticism of their workmates and bosses, they applied new techniques of production to achieve stupendous results. They called for the general adoption of these techniques via socialist competition and, to bursts of applause, thanked Comrade Stalin for, as Stakhanov put it, "the happy life of our country, the happiness and glory of our magnificent fatherland."

Not surprisingly, Stakhanovites were not always popular with their fellow workers. As Time reported:

In coal mines, factories, railways and even on the Dictator's favorite collective farms in recent weeks desperate Russian workers have slain Stakhanovites.

A different view of Soviet reality was provided by Louis Fischer in The Nation. In an article in the issue of October 23, 1935 entitled "The Russian Giant in 1935", Fischer reported:

I have just completed another Soviet journey of 5,000 miles from Leningrad down to Armenia and back to Moscow. Everywhere there is change and progress; nowhere stagnation or retrogession.

According to Fischer, Soviet peasants were no longer tempted by the city as their village lifestyle had enormously improved since collectivization. "The peasantry is talking and thinking in Bolshevik terms." This was on account of improved education available in villages - as well as significant improvements in health care. In fact, "[t]he village cinema and even theater are becoming customary."

In fact, as Rayfield concedes:

By 1934 the main slaughter was over, and a relatively good harvest provided enough grain for the surviving peasants and the townspeople.

The irony, of course, is that Time more accurately reflected the reality of Soviet society in its reporting - although its domestic coverage often reeked of racism. The Nation frequently exposed racism and reaction in the U.S. but was willing to overlook the crimes of Soviet leaders.

George White's Scandals

2006-03-05T11:54:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the most notable new stage musical of January 1936 was Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 which we discussed below. On Christmas Day 1935, George White's Scandals of 1935 opened at the New Amsterdam theater and ran for 110 performances. A similarly named film - George White's 1935 Scandals - had been released in March 1935. It featured the first major film appearance for Eleanor Powell. The film starred Alice Faye and Lyda Roberti. (Roberti had appeared in the stage version of Roberta). Three songs written for the film - including "I Like It with Music" and "Sweet and Lowdown" were cut from the film at the insistence of censor Joseph Breen.

On Broadway, Bert Lahr appeared in the show as did a dance team known as Sam, Ted and Ray. who were praised for their "excellent tap dancing" by The Nation. They apparently performed a number called "Selassie and His Army." Time heartily approved of their act:

High point of the performance: three Negroes called Sam, Ted and Ray, two of whom wear neat Ethiopian regimentals, while the third affects the sun helmet, black cape, gold-braided tunic and umbrella of Man-of-the-Year Haile Selassie, clogging for dear life atop a small dais.

Robert Benchley in The New Yorker had a similar reaction. He noted that the show features a "remarkable team of colored dancers known as Sam, Ted, and Ray, who, representing a suspiciously nimble Haile Selassie and his army, stop the show with smiling ease."

Sam, Ted and Ray were Samuel Green, Ted Fraser and Ray Winfield. They also danced under the sobriquet "Tip, Tap and Toe" and in 1937 appeared in the film You Can't Have Everything with Don Ameche and Alice Faye. Their performance in that film is said to "anticipate" those of the Nicholas Brothers.

The songs for the show were written by Ray Henderson. Henderson had been writing for Broadway since he did the music for George White's Scandals of 1925. Henderson was born in Buffalo and attended conservatory in Chicago. According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, into which Henderson was inducted in 1970, Henderson is best known as the composer of such standards as "Life Is a Bowl of Cherries", "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "You're the Cream in My Coffee."

In the same issue in which it reviewed Scandals, Time named Haile Selassie "Man of the Year." Consistent with its overall tone of condescending racism, Time commented as follows regarding the Emperor of Ethiopia:

Above all, Haile Selassie has created a general, warm and blind sympathy for uncivilized Ethiopia throughout civilized Christendom. In the wake of the world's grandiose Depression, with millions of white men uncertain as to the benefits of civilization, 1935 produced a peculiar Spirit of the Year in which it was felt to be a crying shame that the Machine Age seemed about to intrude upon Africa's last free, unscathed and simple people. They were ipso facto Noble Savages, and the noblest Ethiopian of them all naturally emerged as Man of the Year.

In the arts and entertainment field, Time noted that "independent exhibitors" named Shirley Temple as the greatest box office draw of 1935. Clark Gable was third and Astaire and Rogers fifth on the exhibitors list. Later in January 1936, Time announced that film critics had chosen David Copperfield as the top film of 1935. Top Hat was seventh on the list followed by Broadway Melody of 1936 (which featured the Nicholas Brothers) and Roberta. Clearly, dancers and dance films enjoyed a popularity and critical acclaim in the 1930s which, sadly, has dissipated in the years since.

Benny Goodman 1936

2006-02-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

Benny Goodman and his orchestra recorded four numbers - including "Stompin' at the Savoy" in an arrangement by Edgar Sampson (who had gotten his start in the Chick Webb band and was best known for writing "Savoy" and "Don't Be That Way")- on January 24, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois. This was a breakout period for Goodman. He had arrived in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935 to perform at the Palomar Ballroom after a long and disappointing national tour. When the band ditched its "sweet" numbers to play some hot arrangements by Fletcher Henderson, the reaction was electric.

As Goodman later recalled: "that was the moment that decided things for me. After travelling three thousand miles, we finally found people who were up on what we were trying to do, prepared to take our music the way we wanted to play it."

Stompin' at the Savoy, of course, memorialized the famous Savoy ballroom where Chick Webb's band frequently performed and the lindy hop was born.

In addition to his success at the Palomar, Goodman recorded his first trio sessions in July 1935 with Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa. The numbers included "After You've Gone" and "Body and Soul".

Goodman's success brought him to the attention of Time. The magazine reported on what it characterized as a revival of jazz after its first heyday in the 1920s. This revival, Time noted, was centered on Goodman.

About two years ago, jazz suddenly became salable again in the U. S. The Jazz Revival occurred almost simultaneously with a series of Columbia records which spectacled Clarinetist Benny Goodman & band made in the winter of 1933, including such latterday masterpieces as Ain't Cha' Glad?, Riffin' the Scotch, Georgia Jubilee. While the big hotel and ballroom jobs still go to the big conventional organizations, small "hot" bands have lately been springing up in saloons all over Manhattan and Chicago.

In addition, the magazine noted that Goodman's appeal extended beyond the young lindy-hoppers who thronged the Palomar and other dance halls.

In Chicago, his home town, Benny Goodman was making a sensational stay at the Congress Hotel, was somewhat ambiguously lauded in a full-page advertisement on the back page of Variety as the possessor of an "individual hot-sweet 'swing' style, " had just played a Sunday afternoon recital to 800 Chicago jazz academicians who would no more have thought of dancing than they would of gavotting at a symphony concert. Clearly, Goodman, who played his first professional date in short pants on an excursion boat, was the Man Of The Hour to thousands of jazz fans.

Of course, as Goodman was in Chicago, New Yorkers had to look to other bands to fill their nights. In February 1936, Hal Kemp was at the Madhattan Room in the Pennsylvania hotel. His was a "sweet" band. Goodman had this to say to American Heritage magazine in later years about playing the Madhattan Room:

Playing a job at a place like the Madhattan Room of the Pennsylvania Hotel, where we were then, or most anyplace, we’d usually start kind of quietly. Play dinner music, so to speak. Warm up a little bit. It wouldn’t be until later that the band really got rocking. But in a concert you had to hit right from the top, bang! Then, too, in Carnegie Hall the acoustics are special. The Madhattan Room, for instance, was very dead. You’d just blow like hell in there all the time. Carnegie, as you know, is very live, so I insisted we go in about two or three days in advance to rehearse there, just to get used to it. By the time I gave the downbeat on “Don’t Be That Way,” we were pretty confident.

Ozzie Nelson was at the Lexington. Nelson, who went on to great TV fame in the "Ozzie and Harriet Show", had married Harriet Hilliard in October 1935. She starred later in 1936 with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet.

For those with more adventurous tastes, Connie's Inn was hosting Louis Armstrong and his band in what The New Yorker called an "elaborate black and tan show." Armstrong, of course, was one of the creators of jazz music - the genre that Time believed Goodman was reviving.

Blackbirds

2006-02-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

More on the Nicholas Brothers. The recently released DVD of Hallelujah contains the short "Pie, Pie Blackbird" featuring the Nicholas Brothers and Nina Mae McKinney. McKinney was the Halle Berry of her day. According to the linked website (which is wonderful and well worth exploring) she was known as the Black Garbo. Donald Bogle in Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams notes she was also referred to as a "dusky Clara Bow."

Both McKinney and Eubie Blake, whose band appears in the short, have "Blackbird" antecedents. Blake, together with Noble Sissle, created the show "Shuffle Along" which opened on Broadway in 1921. This was a pioneering all-black Broadway show. According to the linked website:

Shuffle Along was so original and successful that it inspired the creation of countless other African-American musicals to showcase African-American dancing. In 1923, Miller and Lyle starred in Runnin' Wild, which introduced the Charleston to the stage and turned it into a national and international fad. In Sissle and Blake's 1924 production of The Chocolate Dandies, which made a star of Josephine Baker, the chorus line performed tap and danced closely together with a swinging rhythm.

Gerald Bordman praises Blake's "foot-stomping score" and says the show's "rhythms provoked an orgy of giddy dancing that had audiences shouting for more tap routines, soft shoes, buck and wing, and precision numbers."

The score included such hits as "I'm Just Wild About Harry", "Love Will Find a Way" and "Bandana Days". It also launched several great black performers on their stage careers - including Josephine Baker and Florence Mills. Nonetheless as this site notes, the show had its limitations:

Judged by contemporary standards, much of Shuffle Along would seem offensive. The African American actors darkened their skin with blackface make-up, and most of the comedy relied on old minstrel show stereotypes. Each of the leading male characters was out to swindle the other, and the show closed with one character explaining that the lighter the skin, the more desirable a Negro woman was.

The show also inspired the promoter Lew Leslie to launch a series of revues at the Plantation Club which featured performers including Mills, Baker and Paul Robeson. Eventually Leslie launched a series of "Blackbird" revues on Broadway which reached their pinnacle in "Blackbirds of 1928" which opened on May 9, 1928.

"Blackbirds" followed another black show onto the 1928 Broadway stage - "Keep Shufflin'". Time's review of Keep Shufflin is redolent of the pervasive racism of the age:

Keep Shufflin' is for those who like capering, singing, cuckoo coons.

There are also more strenuous Bedlamites from Harlem who break into loud melodious ululations; there is a skilful and frantically energetic black and blues orchestra and marty lively tappers and prancers of whom one, name unspecified, brandishes her mahogany limbs with incredibly vicious abandon.

By the way, Eubie Blake was no longer with the franchise. He had been replaced by Fats Waller. I'll just note that Blake and Waller are now lionized as among our greatest composers and musicians. The guy who wrote that Time review has been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Blackbirds was, unlike "Keep Shufflin'", an "all-white creation for an all-black cast" as Gerald Bordman put it. The music and lyrics were by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields (who did the lyrics for several numbers in Roberta and other Astaire films). The show's numbers included "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "Diga, Diga Do" and the crowd favorite - "Doin' the New Low Down". This last was performed by Bill Robinson in his Broadway debut.

According to Jim Haskins in his book Mr. Bojangles

the first-act finale [of Blackbirds], a tribute to the DuBose Heyward novel Porgy, featured a huge black screen on which were reflected the magnified shadows of the performers. The first production of the George Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess several years later featured a similar stage effect, though it is not known whether director Rouben Mamoulian consciously copied the Blackbirds segment.

But the best was yet to come, as the second act featured Bill Robinson who, according to Haskins, "from the moment he came on the stage seemed to electrify it." That was certainly the view of Time which rhapsodized:

the finest tap dancer in the world is Bill Robinson, long a spot of interest on Keith's tours. His feet are as quick as a snare drummer's hands; in Blackbirds he has a double flight of five stairs which, when he trots up and down it, produces a rapid tuneless and delicious music. Bill Robinson makes the show; if he were on the stage more of the time he would make the show a lot better.

Keith, by the way, was a vaudeville touring circuit founded by Benjamin Franklin Keith. It later became the "K" in RKO.

The New Yorker appeared to agree with Time that Robinson's dancing was the best thing in the show - albeit in a less enthusiastic way. Of "Blackbirds", they said: "Darky revue. For tap-dancing fans only."

Well, in fairness, Blackbirds did have solid competition in the 1928 theater season. Also showing was "Funny Face" with Fred and Adele Astaire, "Showboat" with Paul Robeson and others, "A Connecticut Yankee" with words and music by Rodgers and Hart, "Rosalie" - a Ziegfeld production - and the aforementioned "Keep Shufflin'".

Apparently King Vidor attended "Blackbirds" and spotted Nina Mae McKinney in the chorus line. That led to her casting in Hallelujah. And eight years after "Blackbirds of 1928", the Nicholas Brothers would star with Bill Robinson in "Big Broadcast of 1936" and then travel to London to star in a Lew Leslie production entitled "Blackbirds of 1936." And so, we're back to "Pie, Pie Blackbird".

Down Argentine Way

2006-02-12T02:16:00.000-08:00

This film features the Nicholas brothers so I watched it again recently. It has an interesting history. Originally titled The South American Way, it was among the first leading roles for Betty Grable. Grable had appeared in two Astaire/Rogers films - The Gay Divorcee (at the age of 18) and Follow the Fleet. Grable had starred in The Day the Bookies Wept in 1939. She was the female lead to Joe Penner in this picture. According to IMDB

Joe Penner was an extremely untalented and physically unappetising man who starred in a few low-budget comedies. Basically, Joe Penner was Lou Costello without the sex appeal.

The Hungarian-born Penner started out in American burlesque as a baggy-pants stooge, but he failed to get any laughs. He developed the gimmick of walking out on stage carrying a random prop, and interrupting the straight man to ask him: 'Wanna buy a (whatever object Penner was carrying)?' Time after time, this business got no laughs. Eventually, Penner came out onstage clutching a wooden hunting decoy, and he asked the straight man: 'Wanna buy a duck?' This got a huge laugh, and a star was born ... very briefly. Penner parlayed one gag question into a brief career as a radio and film comedian. On the radio, Penner developed one other catchphrase that was briefly popular: 'You nassssssty man!' Penner merits a footnote in animation history, as his vocal schtick was the inspiration for Warner Brothers' early cartoon character Egghead, who eventually evolved into Elmer Fudd.

So playing opposite the Nicholas Brothers and Don Ameche must have been a big step up for Grable. In fact, Grable was not originally slated for the role. She replaced an ailing Alice Faye. Faye had starred opposite Don Ameche in Hollywood Cavalcade in 1939 and had a series of starring roles to her credit opposite such stars as Tyrone Power in the late 1930s. But Faye had won renown chiefly as a singing actress - which may explain why Grable's dancing in Down Argentine Way was so limited.

The film was set in Argentina for commercial reasons. The fall of France in June 1940 (Down Argentine Way was released in October 1940) had severely limited the European market for Hollywood films. In addition, the rumba was the latest dance craze sweeping the country in 1940. And, of course, the other actress whose Hollywood film career was propelled by Down Argentine Way was Carmen Miranda. The film was her first Hollywood role. By 1945, Miranda was the highest paid woman (apparently in any profession) in the United States. But of course, as this source notes, there was a price to be paid.

A key part of her legend was fixed during her first success here in headlines reading, "Carmen Miranda Conquers America." But, as so often happens with the absorption of the "exotic" — i.e., ethnic — by American culture, it was the other way around. Carmen's luminous, upbeat personality was smashed under the mask. Hollywood twisted her unique personal style, her sense of humor, and her dazzling use of black styles into grim, gaudy excess and then discarded her. The "Brazilian Bombshell" collapsed onstage during a live Jimmy Durante show and died of a heart attack that night at age 46.

In 1941, Miranda went on to star, with Don Ameche and an apparently recovered Alice Faye in That Night in Rio. That film featured the songs "Chica Chica Boom Chic" and "Mama Yo Quiero".

According to IMDB:

John Hay Whitney, head of the motion picture section of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs [and a pioneer in the development of Technicolor], convinced 20th Century Fox to spend $40,000 for re-shooting scenes [in Down Argentine Way]that described native customs in an slightly unfavourable light.

Apparently, this wasn't enough to satisfy Latin American audiences. The "official" website of Carmen Miranda indicates that the film was severely criticized in Brazil and banned in Argentina. According to Boom and Bust by Thomas Schatz:

By 1941, various Hollywood studios were designing major productions for the Latin American market - and for domestic audiences as well, in hopes of improving America's interest in its neighbors to the south. . . . But in fact, Hollywood's cultivation of the Latin American market was an economic disappointment and something of a political and cultural debacle. In May 1941, ARGENTINE NIGHTS (1940) [which features the song "Brooklynonga"], a Ritz Brothers - Andrews Sisters musical comedy from Universal, was banned in Buenos Aires after opening-night demonstrations against the picture. The chairman of the U.S. Cultural Relations Committee, Jock Whitney, blamed the problem on "anti-american and anti-free forces, " but actually such protests were not uncommon, nor were they confined to films designed specifically for the Latin American market. That same month, Mexico banned a seemingly innocuous Western, KIT CARSON (1940), for its offensive portrayal of Mexicans. [Note: The plot of Kit Carson involves the taking of California from the Mexican government by the U.S. - which may have contributed to its unpopularity in Mexico.]

Well, what about the reception of Down Argentine Way in the States? I was unable to locate a review in Time or The New Yorker for the film. In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther appears to have misjudged the likely reaction to the film in Latin America:

Offhand, we can't think of anyone more abundantly qualified to serve as a ministress plenipotentiary to the Latin American lands than Betty Grable. So it is altogether likely that Twentieth Century-Fox's "Down Argentine Way," in which Miss Grable appears and which opened yesterday at the Roxy, will excite a powerful lot of good neighborliness in the countries south of us. "Yessir, we can just imagine how the boys down in Rio and B. A. will bubble with amity when they see Miss Grable up there on the screen. But why confine it to the boys down in Rio and B. A.? There are plenty of home-town fellows who will feel very neighborily towards her, too.

And that's a very good thing—for Twentieth Century-Fox, anyhow. For, except for the beauteous Miss Grable and a couple of peppery songs from Carmen Miranda, "Down Argentine Way" hasn't much to lend it an air of distinction. Observed without either of those ladies within the camera's range, it is just a sprawling Technicolored musical picture concocted out of some flashy production numbers and a few specialty acts.

The "specialty acts",i.e., the Nicholas Brothers, received no explicit mention in Crowther's review. He did, however, opine that Carmen Miranda sang "scorchily" and that "we don't see enough of her."

In her outstanding book, Brotherhood in Rhythm, Constance Valis Hill gives a detailed and illuminating description of the Nicholas Brothers dance number in the film (but you still have to see it) and describes the audience reaction to the scene - which the director Irving Cummings wanted to cut from the film and which was just over three minutes long:

Audiences watching the scene would not stop whistling, clapping, and stomping their feet. Some even shouted up to the operator in the projection booth to stop the film, rewind it, and show the scene again. In the South, where it was the custom to censor segments of a film that contained scenes with black actors, Down Argentine Way was shown uncut, and both black and white audiences in their segregated movie houses screamed in excitement over the tap dancing of the Nicholas Brothers.

In fact, in some places, including Brooklyn, the Nicholas Brothers, who appeared in just one short scene, received top billing. As Hill relates:

Even on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, the starring names of Betty Grable and Don Ameche were dropped from the marquee of the Hollywood Theatre which instead announced "Nicholas Brothers in Down Argentine Way."

Once again, they had stolen the show.

Virginia is for Loving

2006-01-28T14:28:00.001-08:00

This article reporting that Virginia is likely to amend its Bill of Rights (originally drafted by George Mason) to include a ban on gay marriage immediately prompts the thought - what do you expect from the state (excuse me, commonwealth) that gave us massive resistance and Loving v. Virginia? It might be best to begin with a few quotes from the Washington Post article:

The state Senate all but guaranteed on Wednesday that Virginia will hold a November referendum on whether to amend its 230-year-old Bill of Rights to bar same-sex marriages.

"The family is the foundation of our society, and it's been based on a union of a man and a woman since the inception of marriage," said Del. John A. Cosgrove (R-Chesapeake). "A constitutional amendment . . . will protect that."

The Bill of Rights was written by George Mason, a founding father of Virginia and the United States. "It's essentially the same document it was in 1776 in body and spirit," said A.E. Dick Howard, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Virginia, who led a commission responsible for writing the state's current constitution.

The amendment barring same-sex marriage would be added to Section 15, which begins by saying, "That no free government, nor the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue . . . "
The Virginia Bill of Rights served as a model for other states and for the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The marriage amendment would say in part, "That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions."

According to a column published in the Post in June 2004, Virginia has already outlawed not only gay marriage but civil unions:

When gay marriage came up, Virginia was among the first states to preemptively ban it, in 1997. Moreover, Virginia is the only state to forbid even private companies, unless self-insured, from extending health insurance benefits to unmarried couples. That provision affects cohabiting straights but works a far greater hardship on gay couples, who cannot marry.

Opponents of the gay marriage ban have, of course, drawn a parallel to the commonwealth's statutes barring interracial marriage which were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia. Advocates of the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage decry the analogy. This is from a Baptist website:

The interracial marriage ban was clearly built on a history of preserving the idea of racial purity and racial superiority of one race over another,” she told BP. “The requirement that a man and a woman be the applicants for a marriage license is not built on a history that men are superior to women or that women are superior to men.”Instead, Collett said, the traditional definition of marriage is “built on the history” that when a man and a woman come together in marriage, they do something that is “unique throughout all human activities” -- creating new life.

The same website contains the following arguments against gay marriage:

Evangelicals say that homosexual relationships will never bring satisfaction because, at the core, they involve rebellion against God.

The arguments against gay marriage appear to be as follows - gay marriage violates the traditional notion of marriage and is either profoundly unnatural or violates God's commandments as they relate to sexual activity and marriage. Because the traditional limitation on marriage to heterosexual unions has been accepted without question over the generations by lawmakers and courts, only activist judges who usurp the role of the legislature can declare these limitations unconstitutional.

To what extent are these views similar to those advanced by the supporters of Virginia's ban on interracial marriage in 1967?

The trial judge in the Loving case clearly viewed interracial marriage as unnatural and contrary to God's commandments. He stated;

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

The commonwealth argued the issue in a more restrained way before the Supreme Court. It merely contended that the Virginia legislature could reasonably conclude that sound public policy supported a ban on interracial marriage. Its brief argued that the Supreme Court should not inquire into the desirability of a ban on interracial marriage but if it did so:

it would quickly find itself mired in a veritable Serbonian bog of conflicting scientific opinion upon the effects of interracial marriage, and the desirability of preventing such alliances, from the physical, biological, genetic, anthropological, cultural, psychological and sociological point of view.

The brief went on to cite "scientific" authority for the proposition that interracial "breeding" would lead to undesirable consequences and would tend to extinguish the inherent "qualities" of each race:

Prof. U. G. Weatherly writes: 'It is an unquestionable fact that the yellow, as well as the negroid peoples possess many desirable qualities in which the whites are deficient. From this it has been argued that it would be advantageous if all races were blended into a universal type embodying the excellencies of each. But scientific breeders have long ago demonstrated that the most desirable results are secured by specializing types rather than by merging them. "'The color line is evidence of an attempt, based on instinctive choice, to preserve those distinctive values which a racial group has come to regard as of the highest moment to itself.'

However, in its decision in the Naim case, decided in 1955 just twelve years before Loving, the Virginia Supreme Court had been considerably less abashed in defending the commonwealth's ban on interracial marriage:

'Marriage, while from its very nature a sacred obligation, is, nevertheless, in most civilized nations, a civil contract, and usually regulated by law. Upon it society may be said to be built, and out of its fruits spring social relations and social obligations and duties, with which government is necessarily required to deal.'

In this State marriage is treated as a civil contract, but it is more than a mere civil contract. It is a public institution established by God himself, is recognized in all Christian and civilized nations, and is essential to the peace, happiness, and well-being of society. * * * The right, in the states, to regulate and control, to guard, protect, and preserve this God-given, civilizing, and Christianizing institution is of inestimable importance, and cannot be surrendered, nor can the states suffer or permit any interference therewith. If the federal government can determine who may marry in a state, there is no limit to its power. It was said . . . that the question was one of difference between the races, not of superiority or inferiority, and that the natural law which forbids their intermarriage and the social amalgamation which leads to a corruption of races is as clearly divine as that which imparted to them different natures.

However, by 1967, the Commonwealth brief's chief argument before the Supreme Court was simply that the Fourteenth Amendment's legislative history clearly indicated that its drafters had no intention to strike down "anti-miscegenation" statutes:

an analysis of the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment conclusively establishes the clear understanding--both of the legislators who framed and adopted the Amendment and the legislatures which ratified it--that the Fourteenth Amendment had no application whatever to the anti-miscegenation statutes of the various States and did not interfere in any way with the power of the States to adopt such statutes. The precise question was specifically considered by the framers of the Amendment, and a clear intent to exclude such statutes from the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment was repeatedly made manifest.

Therefore, it followed inexorably that only "activist" judges could overturn the Virginia statute barring interracial marriage:

Such arguments [in favor of interracial marriage on "policy" grounds] are properly addressable to the legislature, which enacted the law in the first place, and not to this court, whose prescribed role in the separated powers of government is to adjudicate, and not to legislate.

The commonwealth may well have had the best of this argument. The Supreme Court itself acknowledged that:

As for the various statements directly concerning the Fourteenth Amendment, we have said in connection with a related problem, that although these historical sources "cast some light" they are not sufficient to resolve the problem; "[at] best, they are inconclusive.["]

In fact, the Loving case seems to me to illuminate the essential problem with an originalist view of constitutional interpretation that relies heavily on the intentions of the founders or the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment. That Amendment and the Bill of Rights articulate fundamental principles of human rights and republican government in sweeping terms but their authors clearly intended their application to be limited in ways we now find offensive and untenable. Take, for example, Virginia's own Declaration of Rights, which is widely acknowledged as the model for the Bill of Rights. Article One of the Declaration reads as follows:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety

This principle strikes us as utterly incompatible with chattel, race-based slavery. But its authors, in accord with their self-interest and racial views, did not regard it as emancipating slaves (or women). Today, many would regard these same principles as incompatible with efforts to deny gays the full scope of civil rights. The Virginia legislature apparently disagrees.

Perhaps it is best to close with an excerpt from a friend of the court brief courageously filed by the Catholic Bishop of Richmond, Virginia in the Loving case:

It should be emphasized that we are concerned here with personal liberty, personal rights. It is the individual's free exercise of religion that is safeguarded by the United States Constitution. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923), in describing the area of personal liberty protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, speaks of the "right of the individual . . . to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. . . ."

Fayard Nicholas

2006-01-26T16:11:00.000-08:00

Fayard Nicholas died on Tuesday. Seventy years ago, the Nicholas brothers were among the stars of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 which opened on January 30, 1936 at the Winter Garden theater. The show featured what can only be considered an all-star cast including Fanny Brice, Josephine Baker, Bob Hope (his Broadway debut had occurred in 1933 when he starred in Roberta), and Eve Arden.

Time gave the show a lukewarm review which failed to mention the Nicholas brothers.

None of its comedy is funny enough to make anyone wear himself out laughing. On the other hand, Vincente Minnelli's diverting surrealist decor, the arts of a half-dozen stars and the blandishments of 48 show girls are likely to keep most spectators from going to sleep.

The magazine saved its harshest comments for the performance (and character) of Josephine Baker. The criticism is typical of the casual racism which characterized Time in this period.

Josephine Baker is a St. Louis wash woman's daughter who stepped out of a Negro burlesque show into a life of adulation and luxury in Paris during the booming 1920's. In sex appeal to jaded Europeans of the jazz-loving type, a Negro wench always has a head start. The particular tawny tint of tall and stringy Josephine Baker's bare skin stirred French pulses. But to Manhattan theatre-goers last week she was just a slightly buck-toothed young Negro woman whose figure might be matched in any night club show, whose dancing & singing could be topped practically anywhere outside France.

According to Josephine Baker's "official" web site, Time's criticism was typical of the reception Baker received for her performance:

A 1936 return to the United States to star in the Ziegfield Follies proved disastrous, despite the fact that she was a major celebrity in Europe. American audiences rejected the idea of a black woman with so much sophistication and power, newspaper reviews were equally cruel (The New York Times called her a "Negro wench"), and Josephine returned to Europe heartbroken.

Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin collaborated on the songs for the show which included "I Can't Get Started" - sung by Bob Hope to Eve Arden - and "He Hasn't a Thing Except Me."

The New Yorker (Robert Benchley) was considerably kinder to Ms. Baker and the show:

There is no sense in listing the good and bad things here, although the Surrealist Ballet, arranged by [George] Balanchine and danced by Harriet Hoctor [remember her from Show Girl], is something to see twice, as is the "Maharanee" number, in which Josephine Baker is featured. There is also Gertrude Niesen's singing and the dancing of the Nicholas Brothers . . ..

According to Constance Valis Hill's Brotherhood in Rhythm, the "Maharanee" number featured the Nicholas Brothers:

Baker strutted and sang in French . . .. Then she danced a one-step tango and waltz with the Varsity Eight, an all-male chorus dressed in top hats and tails. As Baker danced, one glimpsed the small and sleek figures of Fayard and Harold Nicholas moving swiftly and smoothly around and behind her, shifting the panels of her sari.

This was followed by Harold Nicholas performing an imitation of Josephine Baker, followed by the Brothers dancing "their own tap dance specialty." Hill quotes Brooks Atkinson (writing in the New York Times) as praising the Nicholas Brothers dance virtuosity:

After her cylonic career abroad, Miss Baker has become a celebrity who offers her presence instead of her talent . . . When the two Nicholas Brothers follow her with some excellent Harlem hoofing out of the Bill [Bojangles] Robinson curriculum, they restore your faith in dusky revelry.

In short, the Nicholas Brothers stole the show.

Show Girl

2006-01-22T15:04:00.000-08:00

This show night have been fun to see. It was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, the score was by Gershwin, the Duke Ellington band played the music (it had beaten out Louis Armstrong's band for the honor) and it starred Ruby Keeler, Jimmy Durante and Harriet Hoctor. (Hoctor dances with Fred Astaire in Shall We Dance). The score featured the song "Liza" and Hoctor danced in a ballet sequence featuring music from An American in Paris which was choreographed by Albertina Rasch. Gershwin was given just two weeks to write the score so he evidently decided to recycle this piece. On several nights, Al Jolson sang "Liza" from the audience in an effort to calm down Ruby Keeler - whom he had recently married.

Nonetheless, according to Gerald Bordman , the show was "heavy and slow" and closed after 111 performances. In its review Time liked several aspects of the show. It praised Keeler and Durante:

Dixie Dugan is played by pert, agile Ruby Keeler ("Mrs. Al") Jolson, whose reedy little voice blends naturally with familiar Broadway trebles. . . .

[W]ith happy frequency there does reappear a property man, impersonated by Jimmie Durante (pronounce the final e), who is one of the funniest things that ever happened in Manhattan. Night-club experts have been Durante-conscious for many a season. He is a tousled, electric fellow whose frothing utterances combine lunacy with bad grammar. His nose ("Schnoz-zola") puts Cyrano's to shame. His history includes private entertaining in his father's barber shop and at East Side parties and weddings; public appearances in Harlem, at Coney Island, circuit vaudeville.

Among the numbers Durante performed were "Who Will Be with You When I'm Far Away (Far Out in Far Rockaway)". Time even liked (at least in part) the Hoctor ballet:

Best of the new Gershwiniana are "Liza" and "So Are You"; most ambitious is the new Gershwin ballet, "An American in Paris." [Gershwin had composed the piece in 1928 and performed it at Lewisohn stadium in the summer of 1929 with the New York Philharmonic. It was his debut as a conductor]. The latter, embellished by the grace of Danseuse Harriet Hoctor, is marred by patriotic excitement at the finish in which a picture of President Hoover is momentarily expected to appear. Chief motif of the music is the shrill bark of Paris taxicab horns.

However, Time conceded that the show "inclines at intervals to be burdensome." The New Yorker called it "an uninspired stage-Cinderella story." But the magazine conceded that audiences would probably enjoy it because of Keeler, Jolson and the "Ziegfeld trimmings."

Despite its flaws, the show well illustrates the magnitude of talent at work in New York in 1929: Gershwin, Ellington, Keeler, Durante and Rasch. Remember this was a show with so much talent at its disposal that it could afford to turn Louis Armstrong down! Who knows, though, maybe Louis would have provided the spark the show clearly needed.

Great Horned Owl

2006-01-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

The great horned owl that's been hanging around the Ramble in Central Park may have moved away - either to the north of the park or to seek a mate. There are great pictures of the bird here, here and here.

Every winter Central Park seems to produce one or more birding specials. Last year a boreal owl showed up on the Christmas bird count - as did the great horned owl this year. That small owl was a true rarity - some of the park's long-time veteran birders had never seen one. The boreal showed up shortly after a yellow breasted chat hung around for a week or so near Strawberry Fields. (In Prospect Park, we had a ring-necked pheasant that hung around most of the winter).

The wonderful thing about this great horned owl was that instead of hiding in the top of a dense conifer where you could just about barely see it, the bird roosted right out in the open - on the bare branches of lindens, oaks and other deciduous trees. As a result, it attracted the attention of squirrels, crows (which have almost disappeared from Central Park apparently due to west nile virus) and even red tailed hawks (note the crow in the background of this photo).

When I first saw this owl, I could not believe its size. The great horned owl is 22 inches long - a red tail hawk is just 19 inches long. (The red tail has a longer wingspan - 49 inches to 44 inches - but weighs much less. A great horned owl weighs just over three pounds. A red tail weighs less than 2.5 pounds).

About two weeks ago, I went to the Ramble to see the owl "fly out" at dusk. It was an awesome experience - the first time I had ever seen a great horned owl fly. It eventually headed off for the Lake - where it's rumored to have fed on mallards. In fact, it's apparently a threat to the park's beloved red tails as well.

In any event, I have to confess that I was a little sad when I didn't see the great horned owl today in the Ramble. Later, I took a walk in Prospect Park and I did see a long eared owl there - it was high up in a pine, carefully concealed, and you could just about barely see it. As a final tribute to the great horned - here's some of Audubon's characteristically vivid account of this bird:

Early in February the Great Horned Owls are seen to pair. The curious evolutions of the male in the air, or his motions when he has alighted near his beloved, it is impossible to describe. His bowings, and the snappings of his bill, are extremely ludicrous; and no sooner is the female assured that the attentions paid her by the beau are the result of a sincere affection, than she joins in the motions of her future mate.

This species is very powerful, and equally spirited. It attacks Wild Turkeys when half grown, and often masters them. Mallards, Guinea-fowls, and common barn fowls, prove an easy prey, and on seizing them it carries them off in its talons from the farm-yards to the interior of the woods. When wounded, it exhibits a revengeful tenacity of spirit, scarcely surpassed by any of the noblest of the Eagle tribe, disdaining to scramble away like the Barred Owl but facing its enemy with undaunted courage, protruding its powerful talons, and snapping its bill, as long as he continues in its presence. On these occasions, its large goggle eyes are seen to open and close in quick succession, and the feathers of its body, being raised, swell out its apparent bulk to nearly double the natural size.

By the way, I've linked to quite a few sites about this owl. The sites created and maintained by Marie Winn and Bruce Yolton's new site are particularly wonderful.

Georgetown 87, Duke 84

2006-01-22T13:24:00.000-08:00

The yell of all the yells . . . The yell that saves the day . . . Is the Hoya, Hoya Saxa . . . Of the dear old Blue and Gray!!!!!

Muslim Christian Understanding

2006-01-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

My alma mater - Georgetown University - recently announced receipt of a large grant for its Center for Christian Muslim Understanding from a Saudi Prince named Alwaleed Bin Talal. Here's a bit of the official press release:

Georgetown University has received a $20 million dollar gift from HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, an internationally renowned businessman and global investor, to support and expand its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

The Center will be renamed The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. This endowed fund is the second largest single gift in Georgetown University history.

"I am pleased to support the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. It is vital for the monotheistic religions to reach a common ground of understanding and to gain knowledge about what unites our civilizations," said Prince Alwaleed. "We are determined to build a bridge between Islam and Christianity for tolerance that transcends cultural and geographical boundaries."

This donation has already drawn criticism from the right. Prince Alwaleed is best known for his rejected gift to New York City in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Former Mayor Giuliani sent back the Prince's check for $10 million after the Prince commented that the United States

"should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause. While the U.N. passed clear resolutions numbered 242 and 338 calling for the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip decades ago, our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek."

Georgetown describes the mission of the Prince Alwaleed Center as follows:

The Center plays a pivotal role in working to erase stereotypes and fears that lead to predictions of Islam as the next global threat or of a clash of civilizations between the Muslim world and the West.

I am not qualified to assess how competently the Center performs its task. But it does seem to me that at the center of "understanding" between Christians and Muslims is mutual respect for the right to practice one's faith. While this right is not universally honored in the United States and Europe, there is little official repression of the right of Muslims to practice their faith. For example, the U.S. government does not routinely close mosques or sanction Muslims for their religious expression.

What is the situation in the homeland of Prince Alawalad Bin Talal? According to the U.S. Department of State:

The [Saudi] Government does not provide legal protection for freedom of religion, and such protection does not exist in practice. The public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited. The Government recognizes the right of non-Muslims to worship in private; however, it does not always respect this right in practice and does not define this right in law.

The Government prohibits public non-Muslim religious activities. Non-Muslim worshippers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture for engaging in religious activity that attracts official attention. The Government continues to state publicly that its policy is to allow non-Muslim foreigners to worship privately. However, the Government does not provide explicit guidelines--such as the number of persons permitted to attend private services and acceptable locations--for determining what constitutes private worship, thereby leaving the distinction between public and private worship unclear. This lack of clarity and instances of inconsistent enforcement led many non-Muslims to worship in fear of harassment and in such a way as to avoid discovery by police or Mutawwa'in. The Government often deported those detained for visible non-Muslim worship, sometimes after lengthy periods of arrest during investigation. In some cases, those convicted were also sentenced to receive lashes prior to deportation. In contrast to previous years, there was a decrease in both long-term detentions and deportations of non-Muslims for religious reasons; however, there was a marked increase in harassment by Mutawwa'in and in overall arrests and short-term detentions of non-Muslims. Some former detainees reported occasional government harassment and surveillance following their release.

In other words, a Christian who practices her faith in Saudi Arabia risks arrest, deportation and lashing.

The policies of the Saudi government are not unique in this regard. In Iran, where Islam is the official religion, the government "restricts the freedom of religion," according to the U.S. Department of State. The State Department's Report on International Religious Freedom notes that:

The [Iranian] Government vigilantly enforces its prohibition on proselytizing activities by evangelical Christians by closing their churches and arresting Christian converts. Members of evangelical congregations have been required to carry membership cards, photocopies of which must be provided to the authorities. Worshippers are subject to identity checks by authorities posted outside congregation centers. The Government has restricted meetings for evangelical services to Sundays, and church officials have been ordered to inform the Ministry of Information and Islamic Guidance before admitting new members to their congregations.

Conversion of a Muslim to a non-Muslim religion is considered apostasy under the law and is punishable by the death penalty, although it is unclear whether this punishment has been enforced in recent years. Similarly, non-Muslims may not proselytize Muslims without putting their own lives at risk. Evangelical church leaders are subject to pressure from authorities to sign pledges that they will not evangelize Muslims or allow Muslims to attend church services.
Georgetown is a Catholic university. According to its official website:

Georgetown University began with the vision of John Carroll, an American-born, European-educated Jesuit priest who returned to the United States in 1773 with the goal of securing the future of American Catholicism through education -- in particular, through the establishment of a preeminent Catholic place of higher learning.

The vision of John Carroll continues to be realized today in a distinctive educational institution -- a national University rooted in the Catholic faith and Jesuit tradition, committed to spiritual inquiry, engaged in the public sphere, and invigorated by religious and cultural pluralism.

Georgetown University is a product of our country's long tradition of religious tolerance. American Catholics can attend Mass each Sunday without any fear of official sanction. Our co-religionists in Saudi Arabia and Iran can not do the same. So this is my point of view. The "dialogue" about Christian-Muslim understanding should begin with an unequivocal demand by American Catholics that our co-religionists - our brothers and sisters in faith - be given the same freedom to worship that we enjoy. And by the way, the same freedom of worship that Muslims enjoy in this country. Unceasing advocacy for respect of religious freedom would be the best use for Prince Alwaleed's $20 million.