...but I like it...

 
Merle Haggard

Considering the Rolling Stones recently, and thinking about Mick Jagger, it occurred to me, as it has before, how some people in show business have names that are exactly right for their genre, and those are their actual, real names:  they aren't names that were selected, or dreamed up, to use as their stage name.  (To me, it's a marvelous coincidence.)

        Now, there isn't anything wrong with having an invented stage name - you know, I'm not criticizing that, at all.  Some of them take a stage name because it's easier to spell, pronounce, remember, than their real name.

        In earlier times - more in the 20th Century than our current Century - some actors and actresses with "ethnic"-sounding names were pressured by studios to change to a more Anglo-Saxon sounding name:  hence, Anna Maria Louisa Italiano became "Anne Bancroft."

And some of them take a different name because when they go to get their Screen Actors Guild card, to work professionally, sometimes it happens that someone already in the Guild has that name already, so the person selects a different name, or a variation, or uses a middle initial.

        For example, I read that when Julia Roberts was going to get her SAG card, her name was Julie Roberts, & there was already an actress registered with that name.  So the "Pretty Woman" changed hers from Julie to Julia.

But the ones I'm thinking of here, are people who are show-business performers and they use their real name and it's absolutely perfectly fitting for the type of entertainment they do.  I can think of three, and they're all singers:

Mick Jagger

Loretta Lynn

Merle Haggard

--------------------------- I mean, imagine - if you were born with the name Merle Haggard, you can't really become a minister, or a bond trader, or a college professor - you just have to be a country singer!  LOL - I mean, it just fits.

Loretta Lynn - great name for a country singer.  And Lynn is her real married name.  (Her family name was Webb.)  The alliteration - both the first and last name starting with the letter "L" - helps make it memorable.

        And Mick Jagger - born with that moniker, you're going to have to grow up to be a force to be reckoned with in Rock & Roll, that's it.  

        His name is Michael Philip Jagger.  Mick is a common nickname for Michael, in the UK.  (In the U.S., we use "Mike" more often....)

Mick.  Jagger.

Would it be enough for your cheatin' heart, child? - I said, 

I 

know, 

it's only rock and roll but I like it.  I know, it's only rock and roll, but I like it, like it, yes I do. 

Well I like it - I like it - I like it - I said, can't you see, this ol' boy's been a-lonely?

...

If I could sing - a love song so divine -

Would it be enough for your cheatin' heart,

If I broke down and cried?

I said, I know - it's only rock and roll - but I like it, like it.......................

-30-

whatever that was...

 

A much younger Mick Jagger, in an early-1960s Rolling Stones performance of the song "It's All Over Now" - is working out his dance style, influenced by both Tina Turner and, incidentally, James Brown.

A :38-second clip is on You Tube:

video titled -

Birth Of The Chicken Dance

uploader / channel:  Jim Cim

        when you play it and view it, you get a sense of the vibe...

My favorite Viewer Comment under the video:

"Whatever that was he owns it lol"

-30-

never stop, never stop

 

----------------------- [excerpt from I, Tina - written by Tina Turner with Kurt Loder.  Copyright 1986, Harper Collins] --------------------------

        Tina:  Mick wanted to learn the pony.  He said, "How do you guys do that?"  

So we all started dancing - and I finally saw what he had been doing onstage.  

        I said, "Look at the rhythm on this guy!  God, Mick, come on!"  

I mean, we laughed.  Because Mick was serious - he wanted to get it.  

He didn't care about us laughing at him.  

        And finally he got it, in his own kind of way.

-------------------------------------------------

That was in 1966.  

        Fifty-eight years later - there's a tape of Mick practicing in his home studio - it's on You Tube.  You type in 

Mick Jagger's Dance Moves at Age 80

It's quite the inspiration, for us all, to continue moving, as we age.

-30-

onstage; offstage

 

-------------------- [excerpt from I, Tina - written by Tina Turner and Kurt Loder, copyright 1986, Harper Collins] ----------------------

Tina:  Well, the first night of the Stones tour, at the Albert Hall, I was nervous - we'd never worked a hall that big.  But we went out and did what we did, and the people loved it.  They didn't like "Please, Please, Please" - we cut that immediately - but they accepted us.  And from there on, I became more comfortable.

        We were something a little different for British audiences then - four wild women up there onstage. ...

        After a while, I started noticing this face offstage when the girls and I were out there.  I said, "God, who's that boy with the big lips?"  It was unusual to see a white person that looked like that, you know?  

He would just stand behind the speakers and all you could see would be this white face and these eyes and this mouth.  

        Finally, Ike brought him into the dressing room one night - they were really fans of Ike Turner - and I said, "Ike, who's that boy standing there?"  

He said, "Oh, that's Mick."  Mick went like, "Heyyy," and I was startled by the way he spoke.  He had the English accent, of course, but you could also hear in his voice that he was really into black music and black people. ...

        After that, Mick would come into the dressing room and we would sing a lot together.  He never  knocked, so you'd always have to stay kind of dressed, because he was friendly enough with Ike that he could just walk in.  

But we'd sing and talk and laugh - everything was funny in those days, with Mick around.  He'd be telling me about Keith Richards, too...and it'd be Keith-this and Keith-that, and we'd laugh it up some more.

-30-

do I love you, my oh my

 on You Tube, video titled

Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep Mountain High (original 1966 promo, edited)

channel / uploader:  amajor2002

                -  play -

-30-

wall of sound

 

Jeff Beck

--------------------- [excerpt from I, Tina - written by Tina Turner, with Kurt Loder.  Copyright 1986, Harper Collins] -----------------

        It was an uproarious excursion.  The Rolling Stones launched their tour at the Albert Hall with tape recorders running to capture the show for a projected in-concert album, Got Live if You Want It.  

Six songs into their set, though, the house erupted into a near-riot, with fans clambering up onstage....  For chitlins-circuit veterans who thought they'd seen it all, that opening night offered the Revue members a new kind of eyeful.  And, for Ike and for Tina, an earful, too.

        Tina:  I remember I was in the dressing room and I heard somebody playing guitar - and were they ever playing it!  I followed the sound out into the hallway, and I came to this other dressing room, and there was Jeff Beck, just sitting there, playing.  He was the lead guitarist for the Yardbirds, who were also on the bill.  Jeez, you should've heard him!  I couldn't believe it.

        Ike said, "Man, these guys can play over here!"  He was really blown away. ... I think maybe Ike should've just moved to England then, because he could've really got into a rush with those guys.  But, well . . .

        Mick Jagger:  I think we worked much harder after Ike and Tina had been on, you know?  Because they would really work the audience very, very hard.  But that's the reason we had them on.  

There's no point in having some jerk band on before you - you have to have somebody that'll make you top what they do.  And Ike and Tina Turner certainly did that job admirably.  

Tina's voice was very powerful, and also very idiosyncratic - easy to pick out.  "River Deep-Mountain High" was an excellent record because she had the voice to get out in front of Phil Spector's so-called wall of sound.

-30-

available, right now

 

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

On Amazon Prime, now:

Sweet Smell of Success

and

Goodbye, Columbus

on Netlifx, now:

The Sting

enjoy

-30-

"man, I was so scared..."

 
Bill Wyman, bass player for the Rolling Stones, from 1962 to 1993

------------------- [excerpts from I, Tina - copyright 1986, Harper Collins] -----------------------------

Bill Wyman:  We realized that they were a great visual act, that that was the magic thing about them.  And that's what we used to admire in people, if they could be really good visually as well as on records - which was what we tried to do.  I mean, some people made great records, and then when you saw them, they were a load of old crap, you know?  With Ike and Tina, the visual thing was as important as anything else about them.  So we got them to come over.

__________________________

        By the time the Stones tour came up, the Revue was already on its second set of post-original Ikettes.  After Robbie, Jessie, and Venetta walked out, Ike had quickly scooped up two inexperienced L.A. girls, Maxine Smith and Pat "P.P." Arnold, and a young club singer from Palo Alto named Gloria Scott....

Maxine Smith:

We went up to their house to audition.  We just sang a little bit, and then Tina said, "Okay, let's start rehearsing."  And we rehearsed from eleven o'clock in the morning till three in the morning for three whole days.  The fourth day we were on the road, and that night we were onstage.  Man, I was so scared.  And from there we just kept on going, doing one-nighters. ...

___________________________

        And then "River Deep" became a hit in England, and suddenly Ike and Tina were off to tour with the Rolling Stones.

        The Stones tour, twelve dates in all, was booked to run from September 23 through October 9.  In addition, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue would be playing another dozen or so dates on the side, many at the enormous Mecca clubs that then catered to British youth.

-30-

river deep, mountain high

 

------------------- [excerpt from I, Tina - 1986, HarperCollins] -----------------------

[1966]

        "River Deep-Mountain High" climbed to number eighty-eight in the pop charts in the first week of June, then tumbled back down. ...

        While the song misfired in the States, it created a sensation across the Atlantic, rocketing to number three on the British charts in mid-June and remaining in the Top 50 for thirteen weeks.  

George Harrison, guitarist with the then-regnant Beatles, was quoted as calling it "a perfect record from start to finish - you couldn't improve on it."  

America had deep-sixed the single, and here were the Brits, waxing ecstatic....

        "River Deep" 's reception in Britain...was no mystery, however.  The new breed of British rock bands that ruled the charts was fascinated by black American music.  Lacking a native equivalent of blues and R & B, the British groups and their audiences had become connoisseurs of the American scene.  

Such pop-oriented acts as the Beatles and Manfred Mann and Herman's Hermits reveled in covering black girl-group hits.  Grittier stuff became the province of the more blues-oriented Yardbirds, Animals, and, especially, the Rolling Stones....

        The Stones were already well acquainted with the work of Ike and Tina Turner by the time "River Deep" arrived.  As it happened, they were then gearing up for a fall tour of the U.K.  Why not, they decided, invite the Ike and Tina Turner Revue along?

-30-

opening acts

 

After listening to the hit song "Arizona" several times, I checked out an interview with Mark Lindsay, on You Tube - at one point he was a member of the band Paul Revere and the Raiders (pictured above).

It's a band whose name is familiar to me, but I haven't studied them, don't know much about them.  According to the online encyclopedia, they had hit songs and a lot of live-performance success in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

        I didn't think I knew any of their songs, but then I clicked on one called "Kicks" and I've certainly heard that! - I know it...

...Oh don't it seem that

Kicks just keep gettin' harder to find,

You know the kicks ain't bringin' you peace of mind

Before you find out it's too late, girl,

You better get straight....

In the Mark Lindsay interview (from the '80s or '90s, I think) he told a brief anecdote about the "Raiders" playing a TV show called "Where The Action Is", in Pittsburgh, where the - Rolling Stones - opened for them...!?!

Like - Wait.  What??!

        I googled that, apparently it's true.  The Internet explained that who the opening act was and who the main attraction was, could vary, according to what part of the country the bands were playing in, based on who had a hit song that was popular locally, at that point in time.

It made a funny story in the interview, because you just wouldn't expect the Rolling Stones to be "opening" for anybody.  They would be the main attraction.  

Mark Lindsay sort of imitated Mick Jagger's accent - "Who are these guys?!"

But it was 1965, when this occurred - the Stones' most iconic albums, Let It Bleed, Exile On Main Street, Sticky Fingers, and Beggars Banquet were all still in the future, at that time - they hadn't been written or recorded, yet.

The Rolling Stones were still on their way up.

        I got to thinking about opening acts, at concerts.  A Bob Dylan concert I attended in the early 2000s had the country band Asleep At The Wheel as the opening act.  I loved that.

        And I thought about the Ike and Tina Turner Revue opening for the Rolling Stones in England, in the late '60s.  (How incredible that must have been!)  The Ike and Tina Turner Revue - musicianship, singing, showmanship would have been on a par with the Stones - they would have been just as wild, and tight, and they would have out-danced even Mick Jagger, because that was part of their style.

I remember hearing Mick in an interview saying that when Ike and Tina opened for them, "we had to work harder" to put on a great show, so as not to be "outshone" by their opening act.

-30-

sensational melody

 

viewer comments under the

Mark Lindsay - Arizona video on You Tube:

*  I love this song - Mark Lindsay is a natural born talent with amazing lyrics and music in all the songs he has done.

*  The brass section in this song blows you away.  I remember it across the decades.

*  DAMN!!!!  We just had too much brilliant music in the late 60's and early 70's!!

*  I've never heard this before.... I just heard it on my car radio

*  The Good Vibes

*  Love the good vibes songs.

*  I heard the song on the radio in 1971 when I was 13.  I ran right out and got the single.  What a killer freakin' song.  The lyrics, the vocals, the sound..  The whole thing.

*  ...We always sang when this came on the radio.

*  I remember this playing on the store radio when I was hired at my current job 6 years ago.

*  A great memory.

*  Damn hippies....

*  Great lyrics and melody!

*  Still slaps.

*  I've always loved this song

*  Man just really love this song.  Thnx for sharing it.

*  I was in high school and remember this and SIlverbird which got me to You Tube when I heard it while watching the Grey Man on Netflix

*  This song I truly love.

*  ...the melody is sensational.  Can't stop playing it

*  A good powerful sound.

*  Awesome horn section.

*  ...It was such a great time to grow up in.  Woodstock was the largest peaceful protest ever assembled....

*  The time will be our time

*  Those born in the 40s and 50s had an incredible Era.  They got to be part of the Counterculture and that must have been wild.

*  Energy & hope galore!

*  great video and song

*  It just doesn't get any better than this!

*  Amen!

*  Awesome

*  The visual was excellent.

*  Written by Kenny Young

*  Love the brass section in this song.  It adds so much to an already great song.

-30-

"Arizona"

 

As I was listening to news reports about the apparent kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother out of her house in Tucson, Arizona, I started thinking about Arizona.

It's a state I've never been to.

But there's a song - "Arizona."

I started thinking about that song last night, at work:  "AIR-ah-ZON-AH!!"

...the irresistible "hook" in the chorus:  "AIR - ah - ZONN - AH!"

        While working, I thought of the chorus of that song, and I thought, who sang it, and I came up with "Mark Lindsay."

I get home, Google it, and, uh, yeah - it's been 56 years, but - Yes, that's the song, and that's the guy.

I remember it from hearing it on my friend's :45, on the record player at her house:  "Ari - zona!"

It had a jubilant attitude.

I sensed, at the time, 'My life is out there, waiting for me.'  I don't believe I thought about it in those exact words, but - I remember the feeling.

on You Tube, video titled:

Mark Lindsay  Arizona

uploader / channel:  John1948NineA

        -  play and enjoy  -

-30-

cascading conjectures

 
"Detective paintings"  |  Saatchi Art

Off and on, I've been listening to reports about the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, in and around Tucson, Arizona.

        The story gets a lot of attention in the media because of the "celebrity element" - Mrs. Guthrie is the mother of Savannah Guthrie, who is a television personality.

        One commentator, a retired FBI agent, said because the search has gone on for so long (since the first of this month) conjecture runs rampant - people want to know what happened, and there haven't been answers yet, and so they come up with theories - scenarios, conjectures. ...

These ideas get typed into social media, and now it's sort of a worldwide mystery.

The FBI guy said we have "cascading conjectures."

Cascading is kind of a great word.  I like it.

        A podcast host suggested that investigators contact Walmart stores in the area and find out who purchased 

a backpack,

a burner phone,

and a ski mask.

-30-

going where the weather suits my clothes

 

--------------------- [excerpt from Chronicles, by Bob Dylan] ---------------

        ...What I did was come across the country from the Midwest in a four-door sedan, '57 Impala - straight out of Chicago clearing the hell out of there - racing all the way through the smoky towns, winding roads, green fields covered with snow onward, eastbound through the state lines, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, a twenty-four-hour ride, dozing most of the way in the backseat, making small talk.  My mind fixed on hidden interests . . . eventually riding over the George Washington Bridge.

        The big car came to a full stop on the other side and let me out.  I slammed the door shut behind me, waved good-bye, stepped out onto the hard snow.  The biting wind hit me in the face.  At last I was here, in New York City, a city like a web too intricate to understand and I wasn't going to try.

        I was there to find singers, the ones I'd heard on record - Dave Van Ronk, Peggy Seeger, Ed McCurdy, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Josh White, The New Lost City Ramblers, Reverend Gary Davis and a bunch of others - most of all to find Woody Guthrie.  New York City, the city that would come to shape my destiny....

        When I arrived it was dead-on winter.  The cold was brutal and every artery of the city was snowpacked, but I'd started out from the frostbitten North Country, a little corner of the earth where the dark frozen woods and icy roads didn't faze me.  I could transcend the limitations.  It wasn't money or love that I was looking for.  

        I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot.  My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity.  I didn't know a single soul in this dark freezing metropolis but that was all about to change - and quick.

        The Cafe Wha? was a club on MacDougal Street in the heart of Greenwich Village.  The place was a subterranean cavern, liquorless, ill lit, low ceiling, like a wide dining hall with chairs and tables - opened at noon, closed at four in the morning.  Somebody had told me to go there and ask for a singer named Freddy Neil who ran the daytime show at the Wha?. ---------------------------------------------- [end / excerpt]

---------------------------------------------------------------

Fred Neil wrote the song "Everybody's Talkin'" which was recorded by Harry Nilsson, and became a hit in 1969.

I'm going where the sun keeps shinin' -

Through the pourin' rain

Goin' where the weather suits my clothes...

On You Tube, video titled:

Everybody's Talkin' (1989 Remastered)

uploader / channel:  Harry Nilsson

        -  play and enjoy  -

       

Greenwich Village in 1961

-30-

must be the company...

 

When I was seventeen, I went on a trip that was called "the U.N. Trip."  Sponsored and organized by the Methodist Church, it was so that high school students could learn about the United Nations - and other parts of history and current events, too.

        For example, on the way from the Midwest to New York City (by bus), we stopped and saw Gettysburg, and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

        The group included high school students from all over the state - a boy named Arnie, two girls in my group named Dawn, and Rhonda, and one kid from a big town near where I lived, who wanted to have a career as a minister - and many more.

        When we got to New York City, it was just fantastic.  We went a lot of places, and did a lot of things.  It was fun, and interesting, and you got really tired, because you were going, all the time.

One night, we saw a show at the very famous Radio City Music Hall.  

As we were coming out of the theater, into the lobby, I knew I was going to yawn, and put up my hand to cover my mouth, of course - but people can still see if you are yawning - and this man wearing a uniform (maybe he was an usher, or some other type of employee at the theater) just chanced to see me cover my yawn, and he said, with a sort of jaunty insouciance, "Must be the company, can't be the hour!"

He said it as if it were an old, well-known expression.

And with that Manhattan accent -

        "Must be da company, can't be dee ow-ah!"

-30-

East Coast reviewers in a "hick town"

 In yesterday's post here, I noticed the NY Times writer noted the comments of "East Coast reviewers."

LOL - what about reviews in the newspapers in Minneapolis?  Missoula?  Des Moines?  Bismarck? - - dammit, what about television show reviews in the Akron Beacon Journal??  Huh?  How about those?!

        He only cared about reviews by writers on the East Coast.

This touches on a phenomenon where some people see residents of New York City as being actually quite provincial and myopic, like only seeing things from their own narrow point of view, when we might expect them to be very open-minded, sophisticated, and liberal, because they live in a city that is vibrant and rich with cultural opportunities and experiences.

        Someone once said, "New York is the biggest hick town in America" - I googled this quotation - it comes up, but doesn't assign it to any personal source - like no one knows who said it first.

Woody Allen is one example - and this isn't a criticism, only an observation - he has said, himself, he doesn't like to "leave the city" because why would he? - it has everything you want and need.

        In the '70s when I arrived in Boston to go to college, I noticed in several students' dorm rooms there would be a poster on the wall depicting New York City as the center of America.

Googling that, I got the picture below.  Very unclear to look at, but we can get the idea. ...

-30-

second thoughts

 

        In the May 25, 1971, New York Times, George Gent wrote:

------------------------- "All in the Family," which stars Carroll O'Connor as Archie and Jean Stapleton as his long suffering wife, opened to a mixed critical reception, 

    ...with some of the East Coast reviewers dismissing the program as unfunny and as a potential contributor to the bigotry it was allegedly spoofing.  

        Many of these same critics later had second thoughts.

-30-

meet me at the cemetery, baby

 

        Listening to a video on You Tube about a charismatic preacher, where he groomed and had affairs with a number of young girls in his various congregations....

The narrative mentions that, with one of his girlfriends, he would meet her in several different locations, sometimes the local cemetery.

 

These cults.

They always end in some hang-wringing craziness.  

Do people never learn?

Well, maybe the answer is, there are always new people coming along who haven't heard about the last 75 "train-wrecks" of this type, and they want to participate in some spirituality, and they get sucked in.

-30-

...but not for dancing

 Rob Reiner had an interesting career in films and television - as a director, and an actor.

Usually a person in "the business" is one or the other; Rob Reiner's body of work was kind of unique, in that way.

Before he directed any movies, he played roles as an actor in several TV-series on a one-time basis, and then in the hit show All In The Family, as one of the regular characters, seen there every week.

We can experience his acting on there by watching a You Tube video titled

The Bunkers and The Swingers

uploader / channel:  All In The Family

        Rue McClanahan appears in this episode - if you have watched "The Golden Girls" (in the '80s) you will remember her as Blanche Devereaux.

        Isabel Sanford is in it, too.  She is the one who finally has to tell Edith, "Those people are here to change partners, but - not for dancing. ..."

-30-

at that moment, I knew

 

        Another of the interviews with older married couples in the Rob Reiner film, When Harry Met Sally... shows these people talking - 

wife:  Uh, he - was the head counselor at the boys' camp, and I was the head counselor at the girls' camp.  And - they had a social, one night, and he walked across the room.

        I thought he was coming to talk to my friend, Maxine.  -  'Cause people were always crossing rooms to talk to Maxine.

        But he was coming to talk to me.

        And he said --

husband:  I'm Ben Small.  Of the Coney Island Smalls.  

wife:  At that moment, I knew. 

I knew, the way you know about a good melon.

-30-

9 extra floors

 

Another older-couple interview in When Harry Met Sally... - the husband and wife in this interview, telling their story of how they met, they overlap, and talk over each other - it's so funny, and typical....

**  husband:  We were both born in the same hospital...

wife:  In 1921...

husband:  Seven days apart!

wife:  In the same hospital.

husband:  We both grew up - one block away from each other...!

wife:  We lived in tenements -

husband:  ...On the Lower East Side...

wife:  On Delancey Street.

husband:  My family moved to the Bronx

wife:  He lived on Fordham Road...

husband:  Hers moved when she was eleven.

wife:  I lived on 183rd Street.

husband:  For six years, she worked - on the fifth floor, as a nurse...

wife:  I worked for a very prominent neurologist...

husband:  ...Where I had a practice, on the fourteenth floor, the very same building...

wife:  (in a hushed tone) - "We - never - met."

husband:  ...(same hushed tone) - Never (nev-ah) met.

wife:  Can you imagine that?

husband:  You know where we met?  In an elevator...

wife:  I was visiting ...

husband:  In the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago.

wife:  He was on the third floor, I was on the twelfth.

husband:  I rode up nine extra floors, just to keep talking to her. ...(!)

wife (in a tone of dreamy wonderment) - - - "Nine extra floors."

-30-

"but I never forgot her"

 

In the movie When Harry Met Sally... there are these brief little interview scenes where an older married couple are speaking to an interviewer.  You don't see the person doing the interview, only the couple.

** wife:  We fell in love in high school.

husband:  Yeah, we were high-school sweethearts.

wife:  But then after our junior year, his parents moved away.

husband:  But I never forgot her.

wife:  He never forgot me.

husband:  Naa-ah, her face was burned on my brain. - And - it was thirty-four years later, that I was walking down Broadway, and I saw her come out of Toffenetti's.  

wife:  We both looked at each other.  And it was just as though not a single day had gone by.

husband:  She was just as beautiful as she was at sixteen.

wife:

(she puts her hand affectionately on his arm) - He was just the same.  -- He looked exactly the same!

-30-

Woody Allen influence in When Harry Met Sally...

 

When I saw When Harry Met Sally... in 1989, when it came out, I noticed a lot of Woody Allen influence in the movie.

        If you're making a movie and you're going to be influenced, and inspired, by another filmmaker, it might as well be one of the best.  

There's the scene right before the end of the movie where Harry (played by Billy Crystal) runs across the streets of New York City, to get to the woman he has realized he loves.  It's similar to a scene at the end of Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan.

        There's a scene in a book-store - Sally and Marie are browsing, and Marie notices there's a guy looking at Sally; "Someone is staring at you in 'Personal Growth'" - it's Harry.    

    

        In Annie Hall, a book-store is a backdrop for the early part of Alvy and Annie's relationship.  They're shopping.  Alvy (played by Woody Allen) says, "I'm going to buy you this book on death and dying - instead of that cat book."

And then later, when Alvy and Annie are breaking up (while noting, "we can always come back together"...), they're going through their books and Annie says, "All the books about death and dying are yours.  All the poetry books are mine."

        Alvy:  "Well - you - put your name in all my books...."

In When Harry Met Sally, there's a scene where Marie and Jess are setting up house together and Harry (still in pain from his divorce) warns them, "put your name in your books right now, before they get mixed up, and you don't know whose is whose..."

-------------------------------------------------

        Also in When Harry Met Sally they discuss and reference the 1942 American film, Casablanca.  Casablanca is a major presence in the 1972 Woody Allen movie, Play It Again, Sam.

-30-

Mr. Zero

         In When Harry Met Sally... there's a scene where Harry and Jess are at a football game.  They have this conversation while participating in "The Wave" where they stand up with their hands up in the air and then sit down again, while the people in the next section stand up and then sit down.

Jess:  When did this happen?

Harry:  Friday.  Helen comes home from work and she says, 'I don't know if I want to be married anymore.'  Like it's the institution, you know, like it's nothing personal, just something she's been thinking about in a casual way.

I'm calm.  I say, 'Why don't we take some time to think about it,' you know, 'don't rush into anything.'

Jess:  Yeah.  Right.

Harry:  Next day, she says she's thought about it, and she wants a trial separation.  She just wants to try it, she says, but we can still date. ...

        Then she tells me that somebody in her office is going to South America and she can sublet his apartment.  I can't believe this.  And the doorbell rings.  'I can sublet his apartment.'  The words are still hanging in the air, you know, like a balloon attached to her mouth...

Jess:  Like a cartoon.

Harry:  Right.  So I go to the door, and there are moving men there.  Now I start to get suspicious.  I say, 'Helen, when did you call these movers?'  And she doesn't say anything.  So I ask the movers:  'When did this woman book you for this gig?'

        And they're just standing there.  Three huge guys, one of them wearing a T-shirt that says, 'Don't fuck with Mister Zero.'  

        So I said, 'Helen.  When did you make this arrangement?'  She says, 'A week ago.'  I said, 'You've known for a week, and you didn't tell me?'

        And she says, 'I didn't want to ruin your birthday.'

Jess:  You're saying Mr. Zero knew you were getting a divorce a week before you did?

Harry:  Mr. Zero knew.

Jess:  I can't believe this.

Harry:  I haven't told you the bad part, yet.

Jess:  What could be worse than Mr. Zero knowing?

Harry:  It's all a lie.  She's in love with somebody else.  Some tax attorney.  She moved in with him.

-30-

attractive

 

        Before the restaurant scene in When Harry Met Sally... where Sally, Harry, Jess, and Marie have supper, the movie shows Marie and Sally walking together, on the way to the restaurant, talking about the upcoming date.

Sally tells Marie if she and Harry get together, then we won't "drift apart," the way people always drift apart if one of them marries someone who doesn't know their friends.

        It cuts to Harry and Jess walking together toward the meeting place, and conversing.

Jess:  I don't know about this.

Harry:  It's just a dinner.

Jess:  I've finally gotten to a place in my life, where I'm comfortable with the fact that it's just me and my work.

(pause) - If she's so great, why aren't you taking her out?

Harry:  How many times do I have to tell ya, - we're just friends.

Jess:  So you're saying, she's not that attractive.

Harry:  No, I told you, she is attractive.

Jess: But, you also said she had a good personality.

Harry:  She has a good personality.

[Jess stops walking, and puts his hands up in despair.]

Harry:  What?

Jess:  When someone's not that attractive, they're always described as having a good personality.

Harry:  Look.  If you had asked me, 'What does she look like' and I said, 'She has a good personality' - that means she's not attractive.  But just because I happen to mention that she has a good personality, she could be either.  She could be attractive with a good personality, or not attractive with a good personality.

Jess:  So which one is she?

Harry:  Attractive.

Jess: (pointing a finger, for emphasis) - "But not beautiful, right?"

LOL.  It's so funny.  Suddenly, the more they talk and the more Jess gets wound up, no one is good enough for him - (and he, himself, is ok-looking, but he's no Richard Gere. ...)

-30-