Robert B. Sherman, brother of Richard M. Sherman, passed away today and the impact is that of losing a Gershwin. There really aren't words to do justice to what he has given the world -- to quote another great songwriting team, "All the rest is talk."
"OH, YES IT'S TRUE. IT'S TERRIBLY TRUE. ENGLAND DOES SWING LIKE A PENDULUM DO."
Blog, TV, Records
Posted on Feb 29 2012 by Greg
That's one of the strange but funny lines spoken by
Davy Jones on the iconic '60s series
The Monkees, a show which completely fabricated a pop band for TV yet ironically, in catching the lightning in a bottle, launched a real, albeit dysfunctional, pop legend.
One fourth of that lightning, perhaps the most assured and polished one -- aka the "cute one" -- was Davy, the Manchester-born song-and-dance man who, according to several accounts, would "do forty-five minutes if the refrigerator light went on."
Already a contract actor/singer with Columbia Pictures (he released his own album on the Colpix label before
The Monkees), Davy was the first signed for the series. Another experienced young actor (and emerging singer),
Micky Dolenz, was combined with musician/composers
Mike Nesmith and
Peter Tork. With some improv training and backed by
Don Kirshner's dream-team of music writers and producers (including
Neil Diamond, Carole King,
Harry Nilsson and other icons), The Monkees burned up the music charts and the TV ratings right out of the gate.
In about a year, the eager young performers rebelled against Kirshner, asserted themselves as a genuine group and became one -- almost following a
Beatles-like rise and fallout about half the time. Their albums went from hook-driven solid gold to eclectic, experimental head-scratching curios, but always fascinating and beguiling. Their sole movie, the free-form
Head (co-written by
Jack Nicholson), literally featured the "pre-fab four" leaping off a bridge to a suicidal end, symbolically drawing a curtain over the original group as it was first concocted.
But Davy Jones remained the most accessible in the ensuing years, from appearances on
The Brady Bunch to in-jokes on
Spongebob Squarepants. He'd always be one of whatever three or sometimes four Monkees who reunited. He wrote his biography and kept recording albums for his own label, many of which are found on
his website.
I was privileged to interview Davy for various Disney Parks articles, as he was an annual fixture performer at the Flower Power Concert Series at
Epcot (he was scheduled to appear this May). He was a wonderful talker, his mind moving so rapidly that his thoughts would overlap. The
Epcot audience adored him and the feeling was mutual, not only during performances, but for autograph sessions at
The American Adventure. Much what he told me wasn't just about himself and performing, but about his wife and his daughters.
T
he Monkees TV show, like the original TV
Batman, still holds up astonishingly well, for sheer, fearless, brash lunacy. Even though The Monkees' show owed much to
Richard Lester's Beatle films, watching a show every week, or every day in syndication, is different than watching movies, especially when you also have records to listen to between broadcasts. That was life as a kid in the mid-sixties. My friends and I sat around and listened to Monkee records, watched the show, collected Monkee bubble gum cards and so on.
Seeing them in concert for the first time in 1986 was like seeing the cast of
Bewitched or
I Dream of Jeannie live on stage. And the songs held up a hundred times better than the show.
Davy soloed on several of the biggest hits, particularly
Valleri and
Daydream Believer. These and other Monkee songs have been remade by other performers, and likely will last so long that few will even realize there was a "pre-fab four" that struggled for an artistic level and peer respect that always seemed a little out of their reach. But that didn't matter to the public, who love them and always well.
Davy's career, of course, encompassed more than The Monkees (his TV appearance as Broadway's Artful Dodger in
Oliver! on
The Ed Sullivan Show occurred, surprisingly, on the same night that The Beatles performed). But to most of us, he'll be the one who, when asked to stand up, would say "I am standing up" as a running Monkees gag. He never seemed to mind poking fun at himself or looking silly, as long as he was entertaining.
Somewhere up above, a refrigerator light has just lit up.
HOLLYWOOD'S TOP ROMANTIC COMEDY
Blog, Movies
Posted on Feb 16 2012 by Greg
If it weren't an animated feature, and was a contemporary live action romantic comedy/drama,
Lady and the Tramp could very well star, for instance,
Jake Gyllenhaal or
Ryan Reynolds with
Reese Witherspoon or
Jennifer Aniston.
"She's a well-bred, meticulous looker but a little naive and a bit of a control freak! He's a sloppy, jaunty hunk who lives on a lots of friends' couches and has trouble committing to one person! Over the course of the movie, she learns to lighten up and he learns the value of a responsible relationship! A popular song plays as they head back to the city from Central Park or hop on the cable car with the Golden Gate bridge in the distance! Or any number of variations on the same story!"Even though it was released over 50 years ago and occasionally betrays its era (the baby bottles in the window, stereotyped incidental characters that were "safer" in their day than now),
Lady and the Tramp is, in many ways, more sophisticated, witty and -- dare I say -- sexier than some of today's wafer-thin incarnations.
Come on, that spaghetti scene. It predates the eating scene in
Tom Jones by several years. Lady and Tramp awake in the morning after a night out, followed by a scene in which her neighbor dogs Jock and Trusty propose marriage to her. Sure, it's so she has a roof over her head (the annoying Aunt Sarah has put her outside) but it suggests they're trying to make her an honest woman.
I thought I was really stretching things by suggesting that last assumption, so you can imagine my surprise when several Disney artists and historians say just about the same thing on one of the bonus features! Movies were changing in 1955, and Walt might not have made
Lady and the Tramp in quite the same way had the war not prevented it from going into production a decade or so sooner.
All underlying meanings aside,
Lady and the Tramp is one of Disney's biggest consistent crowd pleasers, as is evidenced by the fact that this supposedly "old" movie is neck in neck with the latest
Twilight movie for the number one sales spot (as if this writing the Blu-ray has edged out its rival). The story is brisk, relatable (the idea of being "replaced" in someone's heart worked so well for
Toy Story, too) and it is visually stunning. Everything has a handsome sheen on it, capturing a Main Street, U.S.A. idyll that Walt was simultaneously creating for his
Disneyland Park.
On
the new diamond edition Blu-ray, this detail and color are nothing short of breathtaking -- even in seemingly simple scenes like one in which Lady walks upstairs and various carpet and wallpaper patterns go off in maddening directions, yet perfectly in perspective. It's the
Alice in Wonderland look, but sane.
Perhaps no other Disney animated film features a larger cast of iconic voice talents who had shone in radio and were moving into television, including Grammy winning comedy giant
Stan Freberg as the Beaver (Freberg shows us how he does the whistle voice in a bonus feature).
Alan Reed, soon to become immortalized as the original Fred Flintstone, is Boris the Russian wolfhound.
Verna Felton, who would grace many a Disney feature, moving effortlessly from villainy to benevolence, would soon be Fred's mother-in-law.
Dal McKennon (Gumby, The Archie Show, Epcot's American Adventure) plays several roles, one that sounds much like his Mr. Weatherbee at Riverdale High.
And doing the most voices of all, almost heard in every scene, is the underrated
Bill Thompson, whose most famous voice embodied the White Rabbit and Jock for Disney, as well as Droopy for MGM and Touché Turtle for Hanna-Barbera.
This is also the first Disney animated feature with a starring lead. Before
Billy Joel, Elton John or
Phil Collins became part of Disney projects, pop goddess
Peggy Lee was allowed to add a creative imprint unlike anything Walt had ever so graciously welcomed.
Even though
Lady and the Tramp isn't a musical in the traditional sense, Lee's presence is felt throughout, either through songs she wrote with
Sonny Burke or any of her four voices (the breakout being the torchy Peg, who's a cross between
Mae West and
Jimmy Cagney.
As per the usual custom, most of the classic DVD features from the 2006 Platinum Edition DVD have been moved to the Blu-ray. The Blu-ray now has an Audio Commentary (thank you!) and the nifty "second screen" feature that allows you to gather further behind the scenes treasures from your laptop while the disc plays on your player. There's also a deleted song that Tramp was going to sing called "Free as the Breeze."
By the way, if you're interested in such wonderful songs that were deleted from Disney classics, you'll want to check out Russell Schroeder's superb, illustrated Disney's Lost Chords,
Volume One and
Volume Two.
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