James Spada's Hollywood

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Ann Hampton Calloway Sings the Streisand Songbook!

My friend and theater-going partner Don Grigware wrote this review of Ann's show for Broadway World and his own website grigwaretalkstheatre.com :

http://losangeles.broadwayworld.com/article/BWW-Reviews-Remarkable-Singer-Ann-Hampton-Callaway-Premieres-Streisand-Songbook-on-West-Coast-20130212

What a glorious night of singing at the Disney Concert Hall on Grammy Award Sunday February 10! Singular singing sensation Ann Hampton Callaway presented the Streisand Songbook in honor of her mentor. On stage with Callaway was Alan Bergman, one half of the Alan and Marilyn Bergman composing team who have written 64 songs for Barbra over the years.
Diva Callaway never disappoints her fans and so the evening was a pretty thorough look at the early Barbra starting in 1961 when she performed at the Bonsoir in NYC all the way up to her last recording in 2011 in honor of the Bergmans. There was some delightful patter about how it only took ten years for Barbra to record Callaway's "At the Same Time" as well as the wonderful story about how Ann imagined Babs first hearing Rolf Lovland's beautiful song over a romantic dinner with James Brolin and instantaneously deciding to have it set to music for her wedding. Callaway spent sleepless days and nights - "I did what all Irish girls do, I drank!" - trying to come up with just the right lyrics for "I've Dreamed of You", which Barbra did indeed sing to Brolin during their wedding ceremony.
A wonderful segment of the evening was Alan Bergman's appearance; Callaway called him a true living legend. When she left to make a costume change, Bergman sat on a stool, read the lyrics of his "Windmills of Your Mind", music by Michel Legrand, proving that when lyrics are spoken by a vibrant creator, they're poetry, pure magic. He followed this with "Nice and Easy" which he had written in the early 60s for Frank Sinatra. When Callaway returned, they dueted with "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" She called the Bergmans the creators of an entire encyclopedia for the stages of love and life, which began with "Where Do You Start?". She then asked him how he had managed to keep a successful marriage for over 50 years. Nodding to his wife Marilyn seated a few rows back, Bergman replied, "One washes. One dries." This segment was a lovely treat.
Other highlights included from Barbra's great repertoire: from the early days, "Starting Here, Starting Now", "Cry Me a River", and the unforgettable "Down with Love"; from her mid-70s album of the same name a delectable "Lazy Afternoon", one of my all time favorites; "Evergreen", Barbra's own Oscar and Grammy winning composition from A Star Is Born; and from Funny Girl "Don't Rain On My Parade" and the classic "People" beautifully combined with Sondheim's "Being Alive" from Company. How magically Callaway made the lyrics blend as she segued from "being alive, being alive, being alive" to "with one person". There was also an electric "A Piece of Sky" from Yentl, bright wishes to her audience with "On a Clear Day" mixed with "Happy Days Are Here Again", then "Lover, Where Can You Be?" and as encore, in duet with Bergman, the colorful memories of "The Way We Were".
As is a signature part of any Callaway show, she sat at the piano and composed - with the help of the audience - a Streisandesque love song that was at once funny and terribly clever. "Wish I could include that organ!" she joked as she noted the pipe organ high above the backstage wall. Terribly humorous, down-to-earth and immensely talented is the amazing Ann Hampton Callaway! Christian Jacob was at the piano, Trey Henry on bass and MB Gordy on drums throughout the one hour and 50 minute... long, but remarkably enjoyable and upbeat evening. One comment that Callaway made about the amazing Streisand is that neither sound or style have been her greatest attributes, but that she, like Ella, another ambassador of song, could always sing a song as if "it were happening for the first time". That is unparalleled artistry. Callaway is a darn close match.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Recollections from Union College alumni about the filming there of The Way We Were

Robert Redford, as I remember, was very friendly and you could find him outside with the extras. The boy or male extras were mostly from Union and I remember him tossing a football around. Barbara Streisand for the most part would be in her trailer and would come out when she had to shoot. I was chosen as an extra and Sydney Pollack had everyone who wanted to be an extra meet at Memorial Chapel. He was in my opinion choosing girls or women who looked a little older and were for the most part not from Union. The boys seemed to come from Union. As he walked down the rows of Memorial Chapel, I shouted out to him, “How about a part for a Jewish kid from Brooklyn.” I knew that he was Jewish and had grown up in Brooklyn and he said to me “Go and get a costume.”
I was to be in the gym scene where a formal dance took place and fitting was for a tuxedo. I was being paid something less than $2.00 an hour. I remember waiting for a scene to be shot and we were outside and it was real hot and it took forever.
Andrew Richman ‘73
Being an overloaded engineering student, I didn’t have much time to watch the making of the movie. But I do recall going into the upper classman’s dining hall and suddenly realizing that it had been turned into Barbara Streisand’s changing area. I quickly excused myself and left.
Rick Sparber ‘73
I remember when they were filming TWWW, Robert Redford often came out of his trailer and talked and goofed around. One day, they were passing a football around and Redford went for a long pass and totally wiped me out. It was muddy out and I was covered with mud from head to foot. All I could think about was that I was “short on clothes” having not done my laundry in a while and probably short on cash for laundry…typical for a college kid. I was really ticked off and didn’t know who had done this because I had my back to the quad. I started to get up and yelled “watch where you’re going; who do you think you are?” (I didn’t swear back then.) And Redford said, “I’m Robert Redford; sorry we had to meet this way.” He helped me up and shook my hand (I was too muddy for a hug!). “Are you OK?” he said. “Just a little muddy, but I clean up pretty good!” And then he was called for filming.
Margaret Mancuso Rowe ‘73
I was in the office of Dr. Thomas Kirschner presenting my ideas for my honors thesis in economics (which fortunately was completed successfully nine months later) and was gazing out his second floor office window. To my surprise and astonishment I was gazing down on a parade of my schoolmates dressed in impressive formal wear (both men and women) from the 1940′s marching across the quad near the Nott memorial. It simply created a rather bizarre scene in my mind that I still can chuckle about to myself. In fact the classmates for that scene can be still visualized in the movie in which there is the scene of the formal dance where the stars, Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand appear. (Check it out). The school really was a Hollywood set for the three weeks they were on campus.
Alan Fischman ‘73
During the filming of the movie, I was an evening student in my last year. I took both day and evening classes, so got to see some of the daytime filming. Of the stars, Redford and Streisand, they were very private people. Neither of them interacted with any of the students or the public that gathered to watch the filming. Bradford Dillman, on the other hand, was very approachable, walking the campus and interacted with people.
It was a great time in my life as I was about to complete my BS started 8 years earlier. Life in general, marriage, military service and a move from Boston to Schenectady all contributed to add to the excitement of that time.
Attainment of my goal at Union opened new doors for me. In all, I spent 34 years working for the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, retiring in 2000. I lost my first wife, Carolyn, in ’99. It was she who helped me attain my goal. I remarried in 2002. My wife, Janet, and I are “snowbirds” living here during the summer and in FL in winter.
Union and the film “The Way We Were” both have a special place in my memory and heart.
Vernon Nordstrom ‘73
For classmates, my friends, and me the filming was a “nonissue.” I lived in what was at the time Psi Upsilon fraternity house opposite Schaffer Library. I remember looking out the window and seeing an old jalopy type car careening down the street in front of our house with Robert Redford singing and cavorting in the back seat. I also remember seeing a crowd of students outside of the Nott Memorial for the filming of a speech given by Barbara Streisand. Both of these proved to be happenstances for me. I don’t recall a big hype about the movie being filmed on campus and I think most of the student body went about the business of going to school.
Peter Kircher ‘73

Friday, February 8, 2013

BARBRA TO DIRECT AGAIN!!

The announcement that Barbra Streisand has signed a directing deal with Los Angeles-based sales and financing outfit Aldamisa International for several (as yet undetermined) projects is great news for Streisand fans and film fans as well. Barbra has proven herself to be a gifted director. In the three films she has directed (Yentl, The Prince of Tides, and The Mirror Has Two Faces, she has shown herself to be a master of the look and the emotion of a story. Yentl lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman told me that Barbra “knew the palette she wanted” for that movie, and indeed many of the scenes could have been created by a European master.

Barbra has shown herself to be equally adept at sweeping romantic melodrama and harrowing tragedy (think of the rape scene in Tides). She was also able to balance nicely the comic and dramatic elements of The Mirror Has Two Faces.

I doubt there’s any genre Barbra couldn’t conquer if she set he mind to it, but she is unquestionably drawn to romantic stories. I hope she continues to be (despite the sometime sniping of straight male critics), because there are a lot of movies left in Barbra Streisand and a lot of romantic stories left for her to tell.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Dolce & Gabanna Streisand T-shirt

Here's the link, but it's sold out--at $192 each!

http://www.polyvore.com/dolce_gabbana_barbara_streisand_jersey/thing?id=61090257

Monday, February 4, 2013

GRACE KELLY UNDERGOES A FERTILITY TEST

Before the engagement of Grace and Rainier could be announced, there were several important hurdles that needed to be cleared. Rainier’s taking a wife was a matter of state, and as such it carried with it certain unavoidable necessities. The first of these was medical assurance that Grace Kelly was physically able to bear an heir to the Monegasque throne. “I must get married and raise a family,” Rainier had told Collier’s. “I told my people recently that I am keenly sensitive to the political implications of my bachelorhood.” Even had Rainier been more cavalier about this very singular example of noblesse oblige, his advisers could not be. The survival of Monegasque life as they knew it hung in the balance; the fertility of a future princess would have to be all but guaranteed—or Rainier would not be allowed to marry her.
     This had been made painfully apparent to Rainier in 1953. He had been in love with Gisele Pascal; she had, for several years, lived in his Beaulieu villa where he spent most of his time with her. So entrenched was she in Rainier’s life that the citizens of Monaco thought of Gisele as their “uncrowned princess.” After six years of romance, Rainier wanted to marry Gisele, and the thought of becoming the Princess of Monaco thrilled her. She refused even to discuss the romance, lest she say something wrong; “I am living in a dream and nothing must spoil it.”
     Unfortunately for Gisele, something did. When Rainier told his advisers that he planned to marry her, they reminded him that it would be necessary for her to take a fertility test. Instead, Gisele presented a letter from her Paris doctors certifying that she could conceive. This was not sufficient for the Monegasque officials, who insisted that the Prince’s own doctor perform the test. When the first test came back negative, the physician took another, then a third. All indicated that Gisele was infertile. Rainier was told that he would not be allowed to marry her.
     Although he seriously considered it, abdication for the woman he loved was not a solution for Rainier, since there was no one to assume the throne; such an action would have the same effect as a childless marriage: Monaco’s seven-century Grimaldi rule would end and the country would become a French protectorate. Bitterly Rainier broke off his relationship with Gisele. The Prince told Francis Tucker, “Father, if you ever hear that my subjects think I do not love them, tell them what I have done today.” (Gisele later married and had a child, and one can only imagine the Prince’s reaction to the news.)
     Now Rainier was faced with the same dilemma, and it was as distasteful to him as it had been several years before. He knew it must be done, and by his own doctor. (Hence Dr. Donat’s otherwise inexplicable presence in America; the first reason proffered was that the Prince had come to have a checkup at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and wanted his own doctor along; later it was said that Rainier had brought Donat here to enroll in the school. Neither explanation makes any sense; Rainier didn’t have to travel three thousand miles for a medical checkup, and neither would the Prince of Monaco’s private physician have any compelling reason to attend an American university. But it was necessary to explain Donat’s presence thus, in order to avoid speculation about the real reason. Rainier sensed, correctly, that Americans would neither understand nor sympathize with the need for a fertility test of Grace Kelly before she could marry him.)
Rainier was loath to broach the subject to Grace. “Her family is very religious, very conservative,” the Prince told one of his advisers. “I don’t dare even suggest it to her!”
     But it simply had to be done. Father Tucker, who had already spent hours questioning Grace about her religious beliefs, informed her of the need for the test. Faced with the fact that without a test there was no possibility of marriage, Grace agreed.
     The test—kept secret from Grace’s family—was performed at a private sanitarium on the outskirts of Philadelphia, because its director was a man Grace knew and trusted. She was terribly anxious about undergoing the examination—not only because so much depended on it, but because Prince Rainier was under the impression that she was a virgin.
    During this emotionally charged period, Grace fell back on her intimacy with her former lover Don Richardson, and she telephoned him every day, confiding her innermost thoughts. He vividly recalls her telling him about the fertility test. “They had her in stirrups, taking all kinds of tests to make sure that she could produce an heir for Monaco. She was frantic about the fact that the test would reveal she wasn’t a virgin, because the Prince thought she was. She told me she explained to the doctors that her hymen had been broken when she was playing hockey in high school.”
     Could Prince Rainier, a sophisticated man, have actually believed that Grace, a well-traveled movie actress of twenty-six, was a virgin? “You have to remember that this was 1955,” Richardson says, “when twenty-six-year-old virgins were a lot more common than they are today. And that was Grace’s image. People believed she was a nun. Everything about her spoke of virginity and pureness; the Prince knew she came from a ‘good Catholic family.’ When you looked into the face of Grace Kelly, you couldn’t believe she was anything but unblemished, untarnished, and virginal. It’s entirely possible that the Prince, worldly as he was, believed she was a virgin.”

Sunday, February 3, 2013

"Smash" and Marilyn Monroe

http://www.facebook.com/NBCSmash

When Smash, the television series about the production of a Broadway play about Marilyn Monroe, first aired last year, I watched the first two episodes and then stopped. The main reason I tuned it out was that I am highly critical of impersonations of Marilyn. Unless they are so spot-on it’s amazing, I’m left cold. It seemed to me that the two actresses vying for the part of Marilyn, Karen (Katharine McPhee) and Ivy (Megan Hilty), were playing a caricature of Marilyn instead of the real woman.

After much cajoling by my ex-husband to watch the rest of the season, I relented, and I just finished watching all 15 episodes. While I still have a problem with some of the scenes and numbers involving Marilyn, there has been a progression to a more truthful representation of her.

McPhee and Hilty are both excellent actresses and have fantastic voices, but their Marilyns are far different. Hilty looks more like the somewhat zaftig Marilyn of the late 1950s, while McPhee calls to mind the thin, elegant Marilyn of 1962. I couldn’t help thinking they should have Ivy play Marilyn in the first act, and Karen play her in the second act.

The soapy plot lines and relationships are outlandish but fun. Jack Davenport is terrific as Derek, the director who’s charming when he’s bedding every leading lady in sight and tyrannical when faced with incompetence, as he far too often is. Anjelica Houston is great as usual as the beleaguered first-time producer trying to emerge from her producer-ex-husband’s shadow.

Debra Messing shows acting range she never got to display on Will & Grace as the co-songwriter tortured by her feelings for, and former and present affair with, the actor playing Joe DiMaggio.

Sometimes the writers substitute dramatic impact for common sense. Would any director allow a musical to end with the protagonist’s quiet death? Surely someone would have noticed the problem prior to the opening in Boston. And as good as Uma Thurman was as Rebecca, the movie star they bring in to play Marilyn, she looks so unlike her in face and body that I doubt any real producer would have countenanced her hiring.

But Smash is a show that asks for a suspension of disbelief, and after watching season one, I’m willing to give it that. It’s too much fun not to!

Season Two of Smash begins with a two-hour premiere on Tuesday, February 5.

Friday, February 1, 2013

GRACE KELLY AND RAY MILLAND'S AFFAIR WHILE FILMING "REAR wINDOW"

Grace soon found herself enmeshed in a sexual imbroglio, but it had nothing to do with Hitchcock. Her forty-nine-year-old co-star Ray Milland was another highly attractive leading man, an Oscar winner in 1945 for The Lost Weekend, and powerful and well liked in Hollywood. The fact that he was married did little to dampen twenty-three-year-old Grace’s ardent interest.
       Milland had married the former Murial Weber in 1932, and they had a son, Daniel, born 1940, and a daughter, Victoria, adopted in 1949. Like Gary Cooper, however, Milland appreciated women other than his wife, and he often succumbed to temptation. He was particularly susceptible to Grace’s considerable charms, and he fell hard. So did Grace. “It was very serious between Ray and Grace,” [Grace's sister] Lizanne recalls. They began to see each other, making little effort to conceal their romance. “I was aware of it,” Mel Dellar says. “My wife and I saw them out having dinner a couple of times, and late in the evening, after we finished filming, they’d go to some little place and have a few drinks.”
       Milland surprised Lizanne one day by confiding the depth of his feelings for Grace to her. “I flew back from Hollywood on the same plane with him,” she recalls, “and we had a long talk. He told me he really was very much in love with her.”
her.”
       Gossip in Hollywood spreads faster than Southern California fires whipped by hot Santa Ana winds, and Milland’s wife, known to her friends as Mal, soon heard talk about her husband and this beautiful newcomer. She feared it was true, but there was no proof. Several weeks after her suspicions were first aroused, her fears were confirmed. A close friend of the Millands, who requested anonymity, recalls: “Jack—his friends call Milland ‘Jack’— was going on a trip, and he had just left the house. Mal's sister Harriet was there, and Mal poured her heart out to her about her suspicions. Harriet got in her car, followed Jack to the airport, and sure enough, there was Jack with Grace, going off on a tryst somewhere.”
       The Millands separated; Grace and Ray discussed marriage. He took an apartment in Hollywood and Grace spent a great deal of time there. Teet Carle, a publicist at Paramount at the time, says, “I don’t know if they were living together, but the story got back to me that someone from the studio went over to Ray’s apartment and Grace answered the door.”
       Grace’s indiscretion soon became common knowledge in Hollywood, and she was unprepared for the animosity directed toward her. Mai Milland was extremely well liked in this company town; she and Ray had a family, and none of their many friends wanted to see the marriage destroyed. A tearful late-night telephone call from Mrs. Milland to Louella Parsons about “this young girl who’s trying to steal my husband” did little to help Grace’s cause.
        It wasn’t the publicity, which the veteran Milland was more used to and less affected by than Grace was, but rather his realization of the impracticality of his divorcing Mal that caused Milland to reconsider. Studio publicist Andy Hervey recalls that Mrs. Milland had an ace up her sleeve: “Mal told Ray, ‘You go ahead and get a divorce and marry Grace Kelly. That’s okay with me, because all the property is in my name.’ Needless to say, it wasn’t long before the marriage plans were off.”
       The previously quoted friend of the Millands adds, “Jack finally came to his senses and realized that he had a wonderful woman in Mal—and of course, they’re still together to this day.* Mal still refers to the Grace Kelly period as ‘those agonizing days.’”
         Not only was Milland being pressured to break off the romance, so was Grace by her family.family. After the Cooper and Gable “situations,” Jack Kelly had asked publicist Scoop Conlan, a family friend, to “keep an eye on Grace,” and Conlan reported back to him about his daughter’s latest potentially embarrassing liaison. The Kellys were very displeased. “My father was concerned about Ray Milland,” Kell said later. “He didn’t like what he had heard about him.” Jack Kelly himself huffed to a reporter a short time later, “I don’t like that sort of thing much. I’d like to see Grace married. These people in Hollywood think marriage is like a game of musical chairs.”
Lizanne recalls, “In our family at that point divorce was not the thing to do, and going out with a married man or a divorced man was a no-no. If Milland had been single, things might have been different.” Once again, Mrs. Kelly flew to Hollywood to make sure her daughter kept her head. Jack Kelly later said, “She and Scoop sat down and talked things over with Grace. They found her willing to listen.”
“My mother and father were very strong-willed people,” Lizanne says, and they convinced Grace that she simply had to drop Ray Milland. “Grace came to realize that Ray hadn’t quite gotten over his wife, and that it was wrong for her to be the cause of his divorce. That was the main reason Ray and Grace never pursued it.”
      The gossip in Hollywood about Grace and Milland was so fierce—and the reaction so virulent—that both Grace’s own studio and Warner Brothers feared a tidal wave of bad publicity that could harm her very promising career. Robert Slatzer recalls, “In those days the studios would routinely pay off reporters to keep unsavory things out of the newspapers. In Grace’s case, it got to be very expensive because the studios were always buying off journalists in order to keep her image pure.”
A few gossip column items did appear, but it was always possible to dismiss these as exaggerations of a few innocent dates. One publication that couldn’t be bought off, however, was Confidential, the Enquirer of its day, and before long the magazine blew the whistle on the Kelly/Milland liaison in a salacious account that caused Grace deep consternation and public humiliation. In its colorful style, the magazine detailed Ray’s infatuation with Grace and the domestic discord it caused: “After one look at Gracie he went into a tailspin that reverberated from Perino’s to Ciro’s. The whole town soon hee-hawed over the news that suave Milland, who had a wife and family at home, was ga-ga over Grace. Ray pursued her ardently and Hollywood cackled. Then mama Milland found out. She lowered the boom on Ramblin’ Ray and there followed one of the loudest, most tearful fights their Beverly Hills neighbors can remember.”
Grace was shaken. She had never experienced the glare of the spotlight in quite this way before. Perhaps Confidential could be dismissed as a rag, but disapproving tidbits soon began turning up in respectable newspapers as well. “I felt like a streetwalker,” she told an interviewer later.
A good deal of the resentment against Grace in Hollywood stemmed from what many saw as the hypocrisy of her Goody Two-shoes image in light of her healthy sexual appetite. Mrs. Henry Hathaway, the widow of Grace’s first motion picture director, feels bitter toward Grace to this day. “I have nothing good to say about Grace,” she says. “She had an affair with my best friend’s husband, Ray Milland. And all the time wearing those white gloves!” Asked whom else in Hollywood Grace may have had affairs with, Mrs. Hathaway replies, “You name it. Everybody. She wore those white gloves, but she was no saint.”
      Many in Hollywood shared Mrs. Hathaway’s feelings. They mocked Grace as “Little Miss Prim and Proper.” Columnist Kendis Rochlen cackled in the Los Angeles Mirror-News, “She’s supposed to be so terribly proper, but then look at all those whispers about her and Ray Milland.”
Hollywood’s reaction to Grace’s behavior upset her deeply. She never looked upon her frequent sexual dalliances as promiscuous—and they were not, in the true sense of the word. They were neither indiscriminate nor casual. When Grace gave herself to a man, it was, as Don Richardson has said, because of a deep-seated desire for affection and acceptance from father substitutes, much more than the physical delights of sex. And, more often than not, she felt herself truly in love before she would have sex with a man. She wanted to marry Ray Milland, and the fact that her conviction that he would leave his wife and marry her was rooted more in naivete than reality does not make it any less genuine.