Danny Burstein: Broadway’s new Buddy gives back

November 28th, 2011

If you get the original cast CD of the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, you will hear Danny Burstein as “Buddy,” the part originated by the late song & dance man, Gene Nelson. Nelson was a handsome, graceful, athletic dancer who partnered with Doris Day several times in her early Warner Brothers musicals and played “Will” in the movie version of OKLAHOMA! If I was currently employed, I’d fly to New York in a heartbeat to see Burstein in FOLLIES. Thanks to PBS TV in New York, I did see Danny in the WNET “Live From Lincoln Center” presentation of SOUTH PACIFIC. In August 2010, there was a live telecast of that acclaimed revival. What a blessing for those of us who weren’t able to get tickets to see it. Danny Burstein’s performance as Luther Billis in SOUTH PACIFIC was an extra special blessing for me. His work made me decide not to give up, not to quit doing the kind of work I love doing. Am I a fellow Broadway actor? No. I’m a TV entertainer and host. I’m not a stage actor. I’m not a singer. I wish I could sing. And so do those who’ve heard me. Here’s how Danny Burstein made an impact on me:

Early 2010 I got laid off from a TV job. Not only that, I still did not have a broadcast agent despite being a veteran with over 15 years of national credits on my resumé. I couldn’t get work, I couldn’t get auditions for work. I was ready to chuck it all in and get a full time job in some company’s customer service department.

I’ve seen the movie SOUTH PACIFIC, starring Mitzi Gaynor as Nellie Forbush, several times. If you’re black and grew up in South Central L.A. when I did, your home had at least one soundtrack of a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical on a shelf with the Motown albums. That was a piece of business accurately reflected in the movie BOYZ N THE HOOD. We “inner city” folks got that Rodgers & Hammerstein shouted down bigotry and intolerance. In middle school, I understood what they meant with the song “Carefully Taught.” Remember the controversy some time back over whether Mark Twain’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN should be altered or censored because it contained the “N”-word? If you do, then you must also alter works by Ernest Hemingway, Harper Lee’s THE KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and James Michener’s “Our Heroine,” the short story in TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC that’s the main inspiration for the musical. Nellie is no light character. In one interior monologue, she has a machine gun, rapid fire repeat of the “N”-word that makes you gasp, especially if have that Mitzi Gaynor All-American Girl image of her in mind. Nellie is serving in World War II and she’s at war with herself. At war with the racial bigotry she was taught growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas. The story was published in 1947. Ten years later, Little Rock would make national headlines when the Supreme Court ordered a high school to be integrated. A few African-American students went to school, flanked by US Army soldiers as protection.

In the movie, Ray Walston played Luther Billis as sort of the Navy’s lovable con man, manipulating the South Pacific natives to make money. He’s the guy you love to hate. You feel that you’re a better person than Billis. You have nothing in common with him except for that fact that he’s sweet on Nellie Forbush as we see during his “There Is Nothing Like A Dame” number. Then I saw Burstein play Billis. His interpretation was a revelation. Burstein’s performance landed on my heart and mind the same way that Jane Fonda’s did in KLUTE and Dustin Hoffman’s did in MIDNIGHT COWBOY. At the opening credits, I felt I’d have nothing in common with their characters. By the end credits, my soul had been touched by them. I saw some of myself in them. They stayed with me. Ray Walston and Myron McCormick of the original Broadway cast were a bit older as Luther Billis. McCormick, later the sergeant to Andy Griffith’s private in the movie NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS was not exactly a hunk. Burstein’s Luther Billis is younger, sexy, butch, brawny. The kind o’ in-your-face guy who could knock your on her ass in a bar fight. Danny’s Billis is darker, intimidating. But, like Nellie, he’s at war with himself. When he sings “There’s Is Nothing Like A Dame,” it’s more his press release than his actual bio. It’s an image he needs you to buy. It’s another thing that Luther the Opportunist & Con Man is selling. His final scene brought tears to my eyes. I never, ever expected to shed a tear over Luther Billis. Danny’s brilliance in the role turned a light back on in my heart again. As I wrote before, I’m not a stage actor. But maybe what I can do is — in my TV work — bring more folks to the arts by presenting why work is significant and relevant. Why it needs to be seen. Why it should be used as an education if you can’t afford acting classes. The arts can entertain, educate and enlighten. In an age where too many young folks are mainly concerned with getting on a Red Carpet, they need examples of “doing the work” and why THAT should be the top goal. Not the Red Carpet. Danny is an example of “doing the work.”

He was interviewed by Terry Gross on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air.” Go to the NPR website and give it a listen. You’ll dig it. More backstory on me: Financially, this year was rougher than last year. But my faith is stronger. My first TV features to air nationally aired on PM Magazine. The syndicated show ran my interviews of Meryl Streep talking about “Sophie’s Choice,” Jessica Lange on “Tootsie” and newcomer Ben Kingsley discussing his work as “Gandhi.” That was in the early 80s, a few years before my VH1 talk show premiered. In 2000 and 2006, I had network on-air jobs as a film reviewer/entertainment reporter. Friends assumed I was making, at least, $1500 a week. I was making $500 a week. Maybe, success-wise, things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped. Yet. I never made Al Roker, Sam Champion, Rosie O’Donnell or Billy Bush money. But I still love doing TV work. It’s not that I can’t do anything else. It’s what I really love doing. And I’m good at it. Danny Burstein’s memorable, touching, original performance “gave back” to me. It inspired me to persevere and try to connect others to the arts the way I was connected to them. Does that make sense? I hope it does. Let me know. If WNET has its SOUTH PACIFIC broadcast available, I highly recommend the DVD for home and classroom viewing.

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On TCM, Diversity and a new look at Bedford Falls

November 1st, 2011

I pitched my writer and talent services to Turner Classic Movies again. I’ve been doing so for five years now. I’m a hardcore TCM fan.

Classic films have long been a passion of mine, almost a religion, ever since I was a youngster growing up in South Central Los Angeles. I would’ve gone without supper to see Fred Astaire in Swing Time on local Channel 9/KHJ TV. My first TV appearance was on a game show in Hollywood called “The Movie Game.” I was the youngest contestant who became the show’s youngest winner. My mother was in the audience. After the taping, she kept saying “How did you know the name of Bing Crosby’s boat in High Society”? After college, my first professional job was a weekly movie critic gig for Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate. I was tapped to audition for “Sneak Previews” when Siskel & Ebert left Chicago PBS for Disney syndication. Classic films and knowledge of movies in general have been a great barometer for determining how others see minorities. What others assume black people know and don’t know about movies. What we like and don’t like. I saw The Joy Luck Club and American Beauty because so many of my black friends had seen them in previews and kept raving about them. Some Hollywood execs would assume black movie-goers would skip films like those and make a bee-line for anything featuring Tyler Perry in a dress. When I lived in New York, I went to a revival theater to see William Wyler’s The Heiress. I was too thrilled to see lots of black and Latino folks in the house. When Olivia de Havilland as Catherine says, “Bolt the door, Mariah,” we cheered like Jesus had just resurrected on Easter Sunday. But, if you watched reality shows on MTV, you’d think the only old film young black men ever watched was the ultra-violent “Scarface” starring Al Pacino. It’s not. What shoots down that stereotype? How many black film critics did you, do you see on the ABC, CBS or NBC morning shows? Count them. Joel Siegel, Gene Siskel, Gene Shalit. David Edelstein. Cody Gifford. All Caucasian. The two current hosts of PBS’ Roger Ebert Presents ‘At The Movies’ are young and so Caucasian they almost make Casper the Friendly Ghost look like a member of the NAACP. Where are black hosts of a film-related interview show like James Lipton’s “Inside The Actors Studio”? For millions of American TV viewers, the only black film critics they saw on a weekly network TV basis were the two “Men on Film” characters on the sketch comedy series, In Living Color. What does that say about TV’s projected image of black people and their film IQ? Are we part of the film as art discussion? Every year, newspaper columnists do an article on the lack of diversity on TV and in film for black actors. Even black columnists don’t notice that same lack of diversity on TV in the area of film critics and film show hosts. Trust me on this, he’s a good guy but Elvis Mitchell is not the only black person in America who reviews movies and interviews actors. He’s often the only one you’ve seen on some TV shows. A lot us are still trying to be noticed. Still trying to get agents who can help us be noticed.

Last Christmas season, the host of a popular New York City radio celebrity talk show that wrote on Facebook that he preferred Pottersville to Bedford Falls when George Bailey glimpses a possible future in It’s A Wonderful Life. Let’s think about this. I’ve long appreciated how Frank Capra embraced racial diversity in Lost Horizon and It’s A Wonderful Life. You must notice details in classic films. They’re part of the art. They are character revelations. Pottersville is lively because of bars, dance hall hostesses, strip joints and gambling parlors. In Old Hollywood production code times, that meant graft and prostitution. Also there are no black people in Pottersville. We are in Bedford Falls. A black couple dances behind George and Mary at the high school dance. When George teases sweet, flirtatious Violet by urging her to go climb Bedford Mountain with him, passersby laugh. There’s a black couple out on the town, laughing behind George. Then, there are the black neighbors in the Bailey living room for the heartwarming closing scene. There are no black people in Pottersville, the town Bedford Falls would’ve become had George never lived. So, would that radio host prefer to live in a segregated, corrupt town? Because that’s exactly what Pottersville was. He didn’t notice the details. As a black performer, I often feel like a detail, a part of the big picture, waiting to be noticed.

In my long TV career, if there was one area in which I surprisingly always crashed into a color barrier, it was in trying to be the film critic on local New York City news programs. There was always a resistance to acknowledge my skills and experience. But young Anglo guys with less experience got the film critic spot right away. One is the son of a longtime movie critic. The son reviewed a new comedy. The anchor asked him what his favorite old classic comedy is. Did he pick “Some Like It Hot” by Billy Wilder? “The Lady Eve” or “Sullivan’s Travels” by Preston Sturges? “My Man Godfrey”? “His Girl Friday”? “Tootsie”? No. He picked “Coming To America” with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. And he got the network job I wanted.

For me growing up, classic films were entertaining, enlightening, educational and they connected me to the world around me. Classic movies helped me get work and distinguish myself in a workplace. A classic movie literally saved me from a near-death experience when I was in grade school. When I looked at TV and went to the movies, I looked for reflections of myself and my community. That was important to me. That’s why I was driven to use my classic film knowledge to land TV work denied black people when I was a kid. I wanted to make a difference, to present fresh looks at old films, to help integrate the TV picture in a positive way. Turner Classic Movies continuously acknowledges the artistic contributions of African-Americans on film and behind the scenes in Hollywood. I’d love to contribute some of my talent to TCM.

Oh! One last thing. Actor David Alan Grier and I once chatted briefly about a movie love scene that always reduces us to tears. Grier was one of the “Men on Film” for In Living Color. The scene we discussed: In William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, Wilma helps Homer get ready for bed. Homer, the love of her life who just returned home from serving in WWII, lost his hands in the war. See? We know classic films.

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My Life & Color TV

September 12th, 2011

One day you’ve got your own talk show on VH1. You’re on national TV interviewing Kirk Douglas, Meryl Streep, Paul McCartney, Jodie Foster and Carlos Santana. Next thing you know, you’re in a San Francisco Good Will store wondering if you can afford a pair of used shoes. My life is wacky. And I was not the only person in the Used Shoes section.

Singer Tony Bennett famously left his heart in San Francisco. I’ve left a long trail of resumés and completed job applications. I had the great opportunity to be a guest last month on KPIX TV’s “Bay Sunday.” That’s a local morning news program on the city’s CBS affiliate. I’ve pitched ideas to local TV execs. As you know, films are my passion. Especially classic films. I’ve pitched doing film segments that, besides being entertaining, could help teachers in classrooms inspire kids to read (“You saw the movie, now read the book”) and segments that could be very helpful to young wannabe directors, actors and writers. Show them how to view classic films as Master Classes in the art in filmmaking and acting. Aside from that, I also pitched something very personal: “Starting Over.” I loved New York City. But, unexpectedly, I was laid off, out of work for over a year, drained my savings because rent and other costs in the city had escalated since 9/11, and I was served with an eviction notice. So I pitched a regular segment following this former VH1 talk show & Food Network host as I try to reinvent myself and “Start Over” after having to give up my studio apartment, give away most of my longtime belongings, and live with a friend for a spell. I would find and interview other 40/50-somethings in similar situations. I’d report tips and other helpful advice for fellow BabyBoomers forced to Start Over. I think it would make a good reality segment. Or, I could do bit parts on FX’s sitcom, LOUIE. I’d love that.

AGENTS: Some have asked how come my agent doesn’t get me auditions or work? Well…I have not had a broadcast agent since the 1990s. Even when I was doing network gigs, they still turned me down for representation. VH1, Food Network, movie critic work for ABC News on Lifetime TV, movie critic work with Whoopi Goldberg on her national weekday Premiere Radio show — got those jobs on my own. Seriously. So getting auditions is tough because I don’t have the benefit of an agent who hears about them and can get me into them. Oh! Get this: I thought that situation would change in 2008. I was no longer working for Food Network but the show I’d hosted, Top 5, was airing in repeats Monday through Friday. I was on national radio in the morning on Wake Up With Whoopi, sitting right next to and working with Oscar-winning show biz icon Whoopi Goldberg. I was seen on the Food Network five times a week. In addition to that, I booked acting roles in two national commercials that aired a lot. I was a TV weatherman for T-Mobile and a perplexed boardroom executive for Southwest Airlines. One more thing — for The Onion, I was playing a recurring comedy character in a satirical news segment called “In The Know.” MSNBC aired some of those webisodes. With all that, agents in NYC still rejected me. They didn’t care if I could twirl flaming batons, sing the score to WICKED in six different languages and levitate. They just didn’t care. Someone once asked why my TV career isn’t bigger like Tom Bergeron’s or Rosie O’Donnell’s. I told her that, not only didn’t I get the same opportunities they get, I was lucky if I got the opportunity to get the same opportunities. Trust me on this. If you have a good agent, count your blessings.

LOVE: I was asked if I have dated in the six months I’ve been here in the Bay Area. What are you, nuts? I couldn’t get lucky in a San Francisco prison if I had a fistful of $50s and a carton of Camels. Stop it. No. No. They’re like the agents in New York. They’re not interested. I’ve tried. And don’t even talk to me about online dating. I tried that back in New York and it taught me one thing: Online dating for people over 40 is a level of Hell that Dante never wrote about. I kid you not. I went out with one guy. In his online photo, he looked like Robert Redford in “The Way We Were.” In person, he looked like Benjamin Franklin. I said that very thing in an audition back in Manhattan. There was an attempt to launch a live weekday cable network equivalent to “The View.” With five gay men. The casting people loved me because I was the Meredith Viera/Whoopi Goldberg equivalent. Older, I could be funny and serious, I had a sense of history and pop culture. But the executive producer didn’t think I was gay enough. I said, “Would you please, please tell that to my mother so she can die a happy Catholic woman? Please?” The casting directors dug me. But the producer wanted men who were more like Jack on “Will & Grace.” On a live show in which news stories would be discussed. Maybe the show would have to switch gears for breaking news. Can you imagine Jack, a sitcom character, dealing with something like the Columbine tragedy or the death of a former president? The pilot was done and I heard it sucked. I heard that from somebody who was in it. He said that basically they came off like five screaming queens who were flapping their hands around so much, they looked like they were auditioning to be “Children of a Lesser God.” I’m glad I didn’t book it.

WRITING: “You should write!,” I’ve been told. I was contacted by an editor with Hachette Books back in 2009. I’d read Tom Bergeron’s autobiography, I’m Hosting As Fast As I Can. He and I have worked for some of the same companies and some of the same producers and with the same Oscar winning actress — Whoopi Goldberg. I’d made this observation: “Tom and I were about same age when we first had dreams of a career in broadcasting. He was in a big nice house in New England. I was in a smaller house just four short blocks away from one of the deadly fires of the Watts Riots in South Central L.A.” The editor heard about that. She knew my TV career. Liked my sense of humor. Asked me to write and submit stories about my life and career. I wrote about 60 pages and sent them. I wrote humorous stuff and serious things — like reuniting with my father I’d not seen in 22 years, my mother getting a job offer from Lena Horne, dealing with constant racial hate mail in Milwaukee where I started my TV/Radio career, caring for my white Southern Baptist partner who was dying of AIDS while I was the “funny guy” on a live WNBC morning news program, being spat upon — not for being black but because of being Catholic, growing up in South Central L.A. in the 1960s, and how a classic film saved me from a near-death experience. I wrote candidly about all that and more. And never heard from her again after that initial phone call. Not even an email acknowledging receipt of the materials. That work took a lot out o’ me.

HEALTH & SPIRIT: I’m slimmer now than I was early this year in New York City. It’s because of the hills here in San Francisco. I’ve walked over more hills than those Von Trapp kids fleeing Nazis in “The Sound of Music.” I’ve dropped a few pounds. Even though the job search here has been frustrating, I’ve not dropped my faith. If anything, this rough time has made it stronger. There’s a reason for these tough times. The Divine Force has a better plan for us all. I’ve got to keep the faith. Wish me luck. That’s all for now. Leave comments, if you’d like. And, as usual, thanks for the pleasure of your company.

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Notes on Capra’s “Lost Horizon”

September 9th, 2011

Film director Steven Spielberg verbally spanked young new filmmakers for ignoring classic films except for a couple like CITIZEN KANE and CASABLANCA. He did this in AFI (American Film Institute) videos posted on YouTube. I’m glad he did criticize them. He’s right. Classics informed and influenced young Spielberg. Look at John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS, then go back and notice Spielberg’s blocking of scenes in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and THE COLOR PURPLE. His MINORITY REPORT visually referenced Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic, METROPOLIS. A casting director in New York City, one who also taught on-camera classes that I took, confided in me after one session that she was frustrated with young wannabe actors. To her, watching classic films was part of an actor’s homework. She said that so many of her young students had no interest in movies made before the 1980s. And that ignorance shows up in their classwork and also in auditions she’d held. If you wanted to be in Broadway musicals, like characters on GLEE, you cannot just know WICKED and AVENUE Q. You have to know OKLAHOMA!, SOUTH PACIFIC, THE KING AND I, CABARET, PURLIE, GIRL CRAZY, 42ND STREET and SHOW BOAT. Yes, even musicals that were made into or based on black and white movies.

There’s a literature of film. Frank Capra’s 1937 film, LOST HORIZON, is a rich example of that. I bet Steven Spielberg would agree. The movie is based on and fairly faithful to the novel written by James Hilton. His books RANDOM HARVEST and GOODBYE MR. CHIPS were also filmed. For Capra, Ronald Colman was perfectly cast as the distinguished but weary British adventurer and scholar named Robert Conway. He strives to leave the world a better place. The movie opens with a scene of war around him. He’s doing his best to save people. He’s also spiritually at war with himself. He and a group of other Caucasian passengers — including his brother — get on a plane out of the Asian war scene to, they believe, European safety. Instead they’ve been hijacked — hijacked to a better place deeper in Asia called Shangri-La. There, Conway meets and finds the spiritual comfort he seeks from The High Lama, a very old and revered teacher (“…and a way of life based on one simple rule: Be kind!”)

The High Lama is the spiritual heart of the film. His close-ups are gentle yet a bit mysterious. He has a secret or will reveal a secret. He’s photographed near the flame of a lit candle. A symbol of knowledge and enlightenment. We see that Robert Conway has embraced the Asian culture of Shangri-La by the way Capra frames and outfits him. We dons the native garb. His brother, who takes a harsh imperialistic tone towards the Asians, refuses. He keeps inside Anglo jacket and tie, always looking the outsider. Actor John Howard is the brash brother, George. Robert is confronted with Destiny vs Family Ties. There is a higher purpose for his life in Shangri-La. But he feels responsible for his irresponsible, somewhat bigoted brother. George demands to return to a British life of privilege with a hot babe he met in Shangri-La. Will Robert ever cut that invisible umbilical cord? In one scene, the newly-enlightened (and in love) Robert argues with his brother about leaving. Notice the framing. Colman is now seen in a frame with lit candles, as The High Lama was. Howard’s George is framed before a closed door. This is the visual literature of film that tells us something about those two men.

One element I find very interesting about LOST HORIZON, especially in this age of Culture Wars. In the book, there’s a missionary woman — a bulky dame of the Margaret Dumont-in-Marx Brothers movies build. She’s not in Capra’s adaptation. Instead we get a tough platinum-haired hooker with tuberculosis and Edward Everett Horton as a bowtie-wearing fussbudget paleontologist. In old Hollywood movies, that was the gay male character. Horton was a master at playing those types. Thomas Mitchell is the rough-and-tumble financier. These three, like Robert Conway, give themselves over to the healing qualities of Shangri-La. Qualities that spiritually and physically heal. That trio forms a kind of Chosen Family — the macho straight guy, the lovable gay man and the ex-hooker. Three amigos who live together without social judgment in a way they probably couldn’t back in New York City. Gay male characters in Hollywood films didn’t start in the 1980s. They’ve been around in films like LOST HORIZON, I’M NO ANGEL, THE MALTESE FALCON, HIS GIRL FRIDAY and THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI.

If you’ve seen this Capra classic, you’ll have a greater appreciation for 2003′s THE COOLER. It inverts Capra’s tale. William H. Macy is the counterpart to Ronald Colman in LOST HORIZON. He’s not the adventurer kissed by good luck. Everything he touches turns to shit in a casino called Shangri-La. A clue to this inversion is given in a scene with Paul Sorvino as the low version of The High Lama. What’s playing on his television? Capra’s LOST HORIZON.

Behind the scenes: John Howard of Capra’s film was not selfish like George Conway. Never a major movie star, he became a decorated U.S. Navy war hero in WWII. He acted opposite Katharine Hepburn as the opportunist that Tracy Lord almost weds in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. The beautiful choral singing that you hear in Shangri-La is performed by the all-Black Hall Johnson Choir. This celebrated choir was seen in Vincente Minnelli’s first film, CABIN IN THE SKY. That’s another Broadway musical turned into a black and white film.

Like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, this is a Capra film that wasn’t fully appreciated in its initial release. In my view, LOST HORIZON now stands as one of Frank Capra’s best works. Rent it. See how he embraces racial and cultural diversity in his plea for harmony. There was a 1973 musical remake. It went over like boiled cabbage at a kid’s birthday party. The best thing about that dud is the greatly under-appreciated original score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Read the book, see the Capra movie, see other Capra movies. I agree with Steven Spielberg. Today’s young directing and acting hopefuls should be studying classic films.

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Katie Couric and “The Help”

September 7th, 2011

I experienced The Help. I write “experienced” because, although I felt the screenplay was a Disney-fied look at racism, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer really took me somewhere with their performances. People might picket the Academy if Viola Davis does not get a Best Actress Oscar nomination. THE HELP is a Disney release. There’s only so far Disney goes in realistic depictions. You never see the true viciousness of racism in the 1960s, a mean decade that fueled the Civil Rights Movement. In the movie, the time span includes the June 1963 killing of civil rights activist Medger Evers and the November 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, a tragedy that paralyzed America with shock and grief similar to effects of Sept 11th. In September 1963 there was another American tragedy that became the international headline of the week. Four Black girls were killed when a racist bombed a church in Alabama. The Spike Lee documentary, 4 LITTLE GIRLS, focuses on that crime. It’s one of Lee’s best works. I interviewed Lee about it. I talked to the father of one of the girls killed. If you go to YouTube, search Spike Lee and Bobby Rivers, you’ll find that feature I did for “Good Day New York” on WNYW TV. My feature, with clips from Lee’s feature, has grittier footage than you’ll see in THE HELP. But the movie belongs to its women — of all colors. Those actresses delivered. Davis is compelling in the physical carriage and internal life she gives to her character. When she’s at work, serving a room full of white women knowing that there are racist attitudes behind the daintiness and giggles of a bridge party, her eyes are dead. Her inner rage contained. When she’s out of their view and with her best friend, played by Octavia Spencer, light returns to her eyes. For young acting students, it’s a Must-See performance. Look at Viola Davis as the mother of the Catholic schoolboy opposite Meryl Streep in DOUBT, then see her upscale sophisticated characters in either STATE OF PLAY with Russell Crowe or EAT PRAY LOVE with Julia Roberts and you’ll appreciate her emotional, physical transformation in playing Aibileen. She lifts that role of the maid to another level. A very high one that did brought tears to my eyes. Davis has played a maid before. A maid up north in what would consider itself “liberal” territory. That maid, too, was pretty much invisible to her employers. The movie, FAR FROM HEAVEN. Davis’ work had me thinking of racial hate mail I got during my first broadcast jobs in Milwaukee back in the ’70s & ’80s and my push to break through certain TV color barriers when I got to New York. My on camera performance and personality may have been entertaining but getting the work, trying to get equal opportunities, was so very very hard. No one ever asked me how it felt.

Before I saw the movie, I stopped in a bookstore and read some of the new Katie Couric book, The Best Advice I Ever Got. I jotted this down from page 100:

“I recently saw a revival of one of my favorite musicals, South Pacific, at Lincoln Center. I was struck by the prescient lyrics sung by Lieutenant Cable:
“You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
Of people whose skin is a different shade,
You’ve got to be Carefully Taught..

Scroll down and read one of the closing paragraphs of my previous blog — “Notes on THE HELP.” Specifically, the paragraph that mentions “Carefully Taught.” What a coincidence. I first realized the wisdom of those Rodgers & Hammerstein lyrics when I attended a high school in Watts just a few years after the Watts Riots of the 1960s. Not being snarky about or criticizing Katie, just noting the time difference when two TV performers now in their 50s were struck by the great social message of that song. Also, I’m pretty sure she wrote that she watched the character Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” every Friday night. Friday? Wasn’t that part of the CBS Saturday Night power line-up that ended with “The Carol Burnett Show?” Check the top of page 130 in her book and see for yourself.

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Notes on “The Help”

September 5th, 2011

Online, I read the words “Disney production” and the quote “Minny don’t burn chicken.” My reaction was, “Oh, Lord. Please let that be a line from a new Mickey Mouse cartoon. Oh, Lord.” Well, it’s not. It’s a line from the big box office hit that’s generating a lot of Oscar buzz, The Help. Actresses Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer have won the hopes of film critics that their names are read as Oscar nominees come January. I’ve not seen the film. I’ve not read the book. But I do flinch when African-American actresses get maid roles, then have to remind audiences that there aren’t a lot of good scripts for Black actresses and work is needed to pay the bills. So, if they can exercise acting muscles giving new dimension to a maid role and pay the rent, they take the maid role. What gets me is…I totally understand what they mean. Not that I’m an actor of Viola Davis-like skills but I know those frustrations. I’ll put it to you like this. You know me. You know my personality and career from my blogs, Facebook and Youtube postings. If an actor was needed to do 10 lines on a sitcom episode as a wise-cracking movie critic who just hammered a lead character’s Hollywood action film debut, I could play that part. But agents wouldn’t submit me for it unless the breakdown read “seeking African-American, age unimportant.” Not all, but many agents do not think outside the box with minority clients to push for them to be auditioned for work based on their skills and not just their color.

From what I gather in the TV commercials and from what friends who’ve seen THE HELP tell me is that a spunky young Anglo girl called “Skeeter” is the heroine who gets the black maids to tell their story during the deadly early days of the Civil Rights movement in the segregated Deep South. I hear it’s a heartwarming Disney film that, yet again, was #1 at the box office. Controversy aside, when’s the last time a movie with two Black actresses in the top roles has been #1 at the box office for at least three consecutive weeks? And when a movie does that well, today’s Hollywood mentality immediately thinks one word: Sequel! Will we see “The Help 2: This Time It’s Personal” or “The Help 3D: Summer Vacation” — Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen?

Maybe Disney TV could take Emma Stone’s character and combine her with Black History Month for That’s So Skeeter!. The tale of the spunky Anglo force behind our celebrated Black historical figures. Skeeter: “Hey, Dr. George Washington Carver, put down that artichoke and try this. It’s called a peanut. I bet you could come up with lots of uses for it!” or Skeeter: “Hey, Rosa Parks, instead of spending all the money on cabfare, why don’t you take the bus!” or Skeeter: “Hey, Mr. Martin Luther King Jr, I was just looking over the copy for your speech next week. Why don’t you change the word ‘headache’ to ‘dream.’ I have a ‘dream.’ Y’know. Think positive. People like that kind of attitude.” All that and more on That’s So Skeeter!

Then there’s also the real big possibility that, in a couple of years, we’ll read that Mark Shaiman (Hairspray) is writing songs for a Broadway musical version of THE HELP. Trust me on this, many financially upscale Caucasians up north don’t get racism unless it’s onstage surrounded by showtunes. You could show them Spike Lee’s powerful documentary, 4 Little Girls, you could show them Edward R. Murrow’s classic TV news special Harvest of Shame, you could make them watch extended archive news footage of Dr. King’s historic March on Washington. But they won’t really get it unless a hot-looking GI is onstage in South Pacific singing “Carefully Taught.”

I do plan on seeing THE HELP because I’m in awe of Viola Davis’ acting prowess. And I do like young actress Emma Stone. She’s got the gift. I felt that when I saw her in the comedies SUPERBAD and EASY A. When Ms. Stone was on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to promote THE HELP, she told Robin Roberts that she wasn’t even aware of America’s civil rights movement history until she started making her current hit film. That’s So Skeeter!

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Lucille Ball vs The Boss

August 5th, 2011

Can you remember what you were doing on St. Patrick’s Day in 1989? For most of us Catholics, a typical St. Patrick’s Day means checking to make sure that you’re wearing something green and — perhaps — maybe having a beer with some friends at the end of the work day. Especially if you work in New York City. On that day, I lived in New York City but work had taken me for a few days to Hollywood. One of those days was magical. On the day of The Wearing of the Green, I was my way to the big Beverly Hills home of America’s Favorite Redhead — Lucille Ball. It was a memorable evening and so was a day leading up to it.

At the time, I was a veejay and talk show host on VH1. I was in Los Angeles taping interviews for my show. A crew and I were staying at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood. That’s where we taped the interviews. Some MTV folks were also at the hotel and also taping interviews. When my direct flight from New York landed in L.A., I got to the hotel and was informed by the very friendly, embarrassed front desk that the Sunset Marquis was fully booked. My room was not available because…Bruce Springsteen was late checking out of it. Yes. The Boss was in my bed. I left my bag with the bellman and went out to grab some coffee and browse at the nearby store, Book Soup, for an hour. The manager was going to notify The Boss about the situation. One hour later, he was still in the room. Two hours later he was still in the room. Three hours later, a bigger star suite opened up and The Boss moved into it. Housekeeping proceeded to clean up the vacated smaller room for me. VH1 aired Springsteen music videos, new and old, in heavy rotation. I wrote a short, charming note telling him that I was a VH1 veejay on assignment in the hotel and added names of celebs who’d be coming by to tape interviews. I asked if he could stop by the next day for a 3-minute chat about his new album. We could air his sound bites during the veejay rotation. The hotel manager assured me that he had delivered the note personally. Springsteen, who was being called the Voice of Blue Collar America, never responded to that note while we were in the deluxe West Hollywood boutique hotel. And he never apologized for making me a man without a hotel room for three hours after a long direct early flight from the East to the West Coast.

It was St. Patrick’s Day. A Friday. A buddy of mine was also in L.A. from New York on business with an advertising client. He’d be staying with relatives and told me to call him at their house. His uncle was Gary Morton. The relatives were Gary Morton and his wife, Lucille Ball. I was nervous about calling but I promised I would. Lucy answered the phone. I truly did feel like my heart was in my throat. “Hello, this Bobby Rivers. Lee told me to call him at this number.”

“Lee, it’s Bobby Rivers,” she said.

“Talk to him. He’s the one on VH1,” I heard Lee urge.

“Hi, Bobby. This is Lucy. What are you doing around 6. Can you came over for cocktails?”

I immediately answered, “Yes.” Honestly, I wanted to shout, “Oh, Sweet Jesus, yes I can! But first, let me just write a short note for The Concierge to deliver to Mr. Bruce ‘The Boss’ Springsteen telling him where this working class America will be! Can you dig it?”

One hour of having a couple of vodka tonics with Lucille Ball was, as you can well imagine, memorable. There she was with the applejack brandy voice and famous red hair. Warm yet I sensed that Lucille Ball was closer in temperament to the business-like Ricky Ricardo and Desi Arnaz was probably more like Lucy Ricardo. Wickedly funny when it came to dishing about an Old Hollywood blonde glamour girl. And hip. We talked about my favorite of her films. Not a comedy, but a drama called The Big Street. I said that, if I was putting that a double bill for a revival movie theater, I’d put it on the same bill with Midnight Cowboy. Lucy said, “You’re right!” and added how they both had lead characters who were disabled and wanted to get to Florida from New York City. Lee was there. Gary came in to introduce himself. As I was preparing to leave, she graciously said, “I’d ask you to stay for dinner but we’ve only got two pork chops.” She and Gary were a comfortable old married couple. Dinner was being put on the table. Nothing fancy. Just pork chops. There was her fluffy little dog. Tink, I think the name was. And they had just turned on “Wheel of Fortune.” Lucy announced that she just loved Pat Sajak. And she loved her audiences. That afternoon, she’d been answering fan mail. Still grateful to the many viewers who helped her have that big house. It was so touching and ironic to me. She was a star before Bruce Springsteen and I were born. By the time he and I hit puberty, she was a global TV icon. But she, a veteran of the Hollywood studio system and later a TV superstar, invited me to her home, made me feel welcomed and complimented me on my work. She’d seen my half-hour talk show interview of Sally Field and liked it. That was one of the best reviews I ever got in my life. It meant a lot coming from Lucille Ball, a woman who — during her famed marriage to Desi Arnaz — bucked network attitudes and helped get her now-historic show, I Love Lucy on the air the way she and he envisioned it. Behind Lucy Ricardo’s zany, madcap antics was a revolutionary product that reflected the real world that a minority kid, such as I, knew. I grew up in South Central Los Angeles. Latinos were my classmates, teachers, priests, cops, doctors and neighbors. There were interracial marriages on our cul-de-sac block. The Ricardos had an interracial marriage, a bi-lingual household, a good Latino father & husband with two older folks as neighbors and best friends. That was in the 1950s. In the 1990s, that kind of racial/age diversity was sadly, oddly minimal if at all present on network sitcoms.

I’ll never forget St. Patrick’s Day 1989. To me, Lucille Ball was just as much a voice of the working class American as rock music journalists proclaimed Bruce Springsteen to be. And, surprisingly to me, she was much more accessible.

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Oprah, I’m So Grateful

May 21st, 2011

I still feel that, at the dawn of what became a TV phenomenon, Oprah was under-estimated. Let me explain: My allegiance to Oprah started when she was host of “A.M. Chicago.” I lived on Prospect Avenue on the East Side of Milwaukee at the time. The apartment building could get the Chicago station that aired her local morning show, a show with a set that looked like its budget had been a total of $49.95. I was fascinated with Oprah’s charisma the first time I saw her. There she was with Jackie Zeman of ABC’s “General Hospital” and the author of a pasta salad cookbook. All three tossed salads on the set and chatted. Oprah’s energy and the way she got working class Chicago-area women in the studio audience to ask questions held my interest for the whole show. Here was an African-American woman who looked like she was from my community, who looked like women in my family, women who’d been my friends and teachers. At that time, remember the standard look for female TV hosts? It was the Joan Lunden “Good Morning America” look or the Mary Hart “Entertainment Tonight” style or the look of women co-hosts on “PM Magazine” all across the country in the early 1980s. Oprah stood out. Oprah was opening a new door that had been locked way too long.

One of my favorite TV executives was a deliciously creative man named Jeff Nettesheim. With novel ideas for promotion and talent placement, he jockeyed Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate from third to first place in the ratings. He was a great help to me at the ABC affiliate, WISN. Then he accepted an offer to work at a station in Baltimore where he had to promote a new talent named Oprah Winfrey. Before Oprah went national, Jeff told me that she was going to be a major American TV star. If the business was smart enough to let Oprah be Oprah. Jeff loved originality. He saw how Baltimore executives wanted to make Oprah look like a Mary Hart type, which was all wrong. He said, “They hire someone because the person is different and then they try to turn that person into exactly what they had before, which was something that didn’t work.”

In Milwaukee, I was different. I was reviewing movies on a weekly basis. That was something you didn’t see black folks doing back then. I graduated from being a contributor on Milwaukee’s edition of “PM Magazine” to co-hosting a live weekday afternoon show with a studio audience. The first executive producer (blessedly replaced) and I argued because he didn’t want to book novelists on the show. “They’re boring,” he said, always reminding me that he’d worked in L.A. on the Dinah Shore talk show. But he was now in Milwaukee. I answered, “They’re boring if the host hasn’t read the book.” The next executive producer let me book a novelist on tour promoting her newest best-seller. Susan Isaacs killed. The book was funny. She was funny. The studio audience loved her. Most of the audience members had read her first book, Compromising Positions, later turned into a comedy murder mystery film starring Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia.

Oprah, more than any other TV host in American broadcast history, proved that authors are not boring to viewers. Oprah’s Book Club really proved that. When she graduated from “A.M. Chicago” (when Phil Donahue was the top star in daytime talk TV) to going national with “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she was able to secure the syndication rights to it. She’s now a multi-millionaire because of that. To me, the fact that she was able to secure those syndication rights hints that TV executives outside of King World didn’t take the potential power of Oprah seriously.

Also, at that time in TV, folks boxed you in, image-wise. Think back to the early episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” John Amos played Gordy, the weatherman. But, when he was new to the station, folks assumed he’d be doing sports because just about every black man on TV then (when fewer of us were being seen) was doing sports. TV didn’t have black folks hosting national talk shows and we sure didn’t have African-Americans hosting national talk shows and acting in major motion pictures. We had difficulty just getting agents to represent us so we could land auditions for that kind of work.

When Oprah was new on the national scene, I was fresh in my first New York City TV job. Oprah was scheduled to come to Manhattan. Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” was out, getting much attention and doing good box office. I was a contributor on a local public affairs show. During a staff meeting, I asked if we could get an interview with Oprah. It was like an arrow shot into my heart when our executive boss said, “To me, Oprah is a buffoon.” The ignorance of her response left us speechless. Two days later, I could feel her Arctic glare on me when I said aloud in the office, “Hey, look! The buffoon just got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.”

Yes. A lot of highly-paid TV executives under-estimated the power of the non-traditional talent known as Oprah Winfrey. One of my favorite movies is “Auntie Mame,” a 1957 classic starring Rosalind Russell. The lovable, colorful character brightly says to her little nephew, “Your Auntie Mame is going to open doors for you, Patrick. Doors you never dreamed existed. Oh, what times we’re going to have!” That’s exactly what Oprah did. She opened doors for us. And it wasn’t easy. For that, I am ever so grateful.

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Life on Pacific Coast Time

April 4th, 2011

Back in New York City, one of my friends said to me that his motto for this year would be “2010. Never again.” Yep. Last year was brutal for a lot of us working class Americans who found ourselves to be non-working class Americans.

Millions of us felt as though The Fates had hit us upside the head with a skillet like Tyler Perry’s Madea. I know I did. But a very dear, longtime friend threw me some spiritual bandages. Not being either Mayor Bloomberg, Donald Trump or Snooki, I could no longer afford a studio apartment in New York City as a member of what a friend & former co-worker called “The 405 Club.” (Those of us who got $405.00 a week on unemployment.) I left my adopted city of over two decades and have relocated to the City by the Bay that Tony Bennett sang about. I’m living with a friend now in San Francisco where I’ve already started seeking job opportunities with a rejuvenated spirit. What a change! Emotionally, spiritually and physically. New surroundings, new faces, new challenges. I’m determined to keep the faith and enjoy the journey. More later. Wish me luck. The same to you.

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Twitter & The Tucson Tragedy

January 10th, 2011

I remember exactly where I was when O. J. Simpson in a white Bronco and fleeing Los Angeles police on a freeway. I was in a Los Angeles hotel hospitality suite after having taped movie star interviews to air on “Good Day New York.” I was on a press junket and dozens of us were glued to the event on live network television. The NBA Play-Offs were underway. In a smaller box on the screen was live coverage of the now-infamous white Bronco chase. The big picture was black and white men on a basketball court. The smaller picture was a famous black athlete in a white vehicle fleeing mostly white cops.

When I got home Saturday, I read the bulletin on the Los Angeles Times website that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had been shot. I was a Child of the ’60′s, the decade when bullets felled Pres. John Kennedy, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My first thought was, “Oh, Lord. Not this again. Not again.” I turned on the TV. CBS had women’s basketball. NBC, high school football. ABC, a documentary called “Best of Greatest Sports Legends: Most Colorful Characters.” Then I went over to CNN and also logged on to Twitter.

In all the time between the National Public Radio report that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had died to the corrected news that she was in critical condition yet alive and in surgery, our three major networks — channels I grew up turning to and counting on for such grave national news — stayed with sports programming. No bulletins. I got more news on Twitter. As a viewer, I was stunned. I wasn’t the only one. Others on Twitter were too. Eventually, David Muir on ABC and Russ Mitchell on CBS did break in with news briefs on the Tucson tragedy. NBC didn’t. It went from high school football to its NFL broadcast with Bob Costas. No mention of the crime. No break to show President Obama’s short address to the nation on Congresswoman Gifford’s condition. And NBC is a network that hired two relatives of our previous president as on-air news talents — Jenna Bush and Billy Bush.

On Rollingstone.com, Matt Taibbi wrote a column entitled “The Giffords Tragedy: Is the Media Partly at Fault”? Saturday, I wanted to know if some members of the media were aware and even cared. During the week on morning news, we get seemingly endless updates on the life & woes of Lindsay Lohan and spend way too much time with whatever reality show contestant got voted off an island or didn’t get a rose from a bachelor. I know that tragedy didn’t happen on a weekday. However, the feeling that those shootings which resulted in today’s National Moment of Silence didn’t seem as important as old footage of Lee Trevino on one network really angered and disappointed me as a viewer. My prayers to all the victims and their families. My prayers also to those who risked their lives to save others that dark afternoon in Tucson.

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