At this time of year the international weekly media usually bring out what they call a “double-issue”, which with characteristic generosity they tell us is a bonus or “bumper” issue, whatever that may mean. Nothing of course to do with the fact that their staff are all off sunning themselves on a beach somewhere or getting into or over the excesses of the Holiday Season. Such journals are padded with annual reviews of one sort or another, the best books, best films, the year in review, a humungous crossword puzzle, even a year-end quiz and so on. It all makes for pretty dull fare I reckon. But there are two hardy perennials which surface at this time of year which I rather enjoy.
I’ve Got a Little List.....
The Queen’s New Year Honours List is always fun, though why they call it the Queen’s List nowadays I don’t know. She doesn’t get much of a say in it. More a pat on the back for Tony Blair’s pals I’d say. Like most Brits, what I enjoy is the froth at the top, not all those political and civic worthies getting their just desserts (now there’s a thought.....) after a lifetime’s service to their countrymen. No, what’s fun is to see the changing mores of the nation reflected in such a list. In the old days it was heavyweight politicos, civil servants, church and military men, legal eagles and industrialists or newspaper proprietors, who had rendered signal service to the nation by making substantial donations to the party in power. Serious, and I do mean serious, actors or musicians, if they talked proper, could get knighted. Only Sir Lawrence Olivier so far has managed to break the mold and got bumped up to a Lord. The nation’s best loved comics, usually Cockneys or Northerners, would be fobbed off with an MBE. I guess back in the 60’s the Prime Minister of the day thought the Beatles were comics. No wonder our mop-topped lads sent the gongs back. Sporting icons could get knighted, even if they didn’t talk proper, but only when they were old and if they had behaved themselves. Nowadays it is all much more “laddish” and “celeb”, and everyone, wherever they’re from, drop their h’aitches and affect a glottal stop. Altogether much more fun. We have Sir Elton and Sir Mick, and I’m sure it’ll be Lord McCartney of Scouse before too long. Unfortunately I haven’t seen a newspaper with this year’s honorees so I’ve not got the foggiest who’s been touched. I do think Sir Elton would be more comfy as a Dame though.
2002, In Memoriam.....
Then there’s always a list of those who’ve passed away in the year that’s gone. I find this.... moderately compelling. I guess when the famous figures of one’s early days start kicking the bucket you start to feel a little grown-up oneself. It’s part a sort of nostalgic salute I suppose. These people were part of one’s youth. I also catch myself noting the age of most of them. Usually 80 plus, except for those taken before their time in middle age by the chronic diseases that kill us these days, or those who lived too hard, died violently or young. I guess our natural span has now been upped to a respectable four score years and a bit.
Here are some of the people I’ll miss:
Peggy Lee, 81
Born Norma Deloris Egstrom in 1920, North Dakota. One of those talented sultry-voiced white singers, who sang with the great “big bands” in the 40’s. She sang with the Benny Goodman during WW2 and afterwards, she worked with Benny Carter, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra and Mel Torme. In the mid-50’s she made it big in the pop world with hits like “Fever “. I always much preferred her work with jazz musicians than her pop stuff in the 50’s and 60’s. Like so many great singers she got over-exposed in the pop world and dropped off the radar screen with the advent of rock & roll. She came up with a marvelously wistful “Is That All There Is?” in 1970.
Richard Harris, 72
I guess we all pretty much know why he only just made the “three score year and ten” mark. Quite a respectable innings in fact, all things considered. One of my favourite photos taken a few years back showed Peter O’Toole and Harris, both elegant in pinstripes, obviously really enjoying each other’s company after a really good lunch and were into reminiscing. The affection between them as co-survivors was plain to see.
It was about the time that Michael Caine, a fine actor but really not in the same league, was foolish enough to be quoted in London’s Sunday Times deploring the tradition of hell raising and general bad behaviour of the likes of Burton, O’Toole and Harris, whom he said “were all drunks”. He went on to call himself “a British Gene Hackman, with a lot to teach the younger generation of actors.” Harris took it upon himself to respond to the newspaper in a scathing 1,200-word letter putting the aspiring Micklethwaite firmly in his place. ‘Twas sterling stuff. Caine was, he said, “an over-fat, flatulent 62-year old windbag with vast limitations. Hackman was an “intimidating and dangerous actor”. Caine is “about as dangerous as Laurel or Hardy, and as intimidating as Shirley Temple.” And, any suggestion that Caine could number himself in the select company of talented post-war British actors of the ilk of Finney, Burton, Bates and Courtenay (and by implication himself) was, he said, laughable.
I suppose what he meant was that Caine had never ‘trod the boards’ and should stick to mates like Terry Stamp, who possessed equivalent thespian gifts and not try to play with the big boys. I don’t know about dangerous but the thing about Richard Harris was, onstage or onscreen, whether or not the film or play was any good, he was always worth watching. Can’t really say that about a lot of actors, can you? Why, the man could even sing passably too.........
The Queen Mother, 101
It seemed as if she were a permanent fixture in the British landscape. Her fondness for horse racing, the odd tipple or three and various old soldiers all endeared her wonderfully to the great British public, who much preferred an Anglo-Scot aristocrat as their Queen than the usual imported German royal. Ever-popular as the Queen Mum may have been, she certainly had her steelier side. Edward VIII, her brother-in-law, was never forgiven for abdicating and putting his brother Bertie in the frame. Frail of health, it was said the rigours of kingship led him to an early death. As Duke and Duchess of Windsor the Queen Mum made sure they were unwelcome in England until the day they died. She pretty much had the measure of Princess Di too.
Spike Milligan, 83
Whose sly wit, general subversiveness and brilliant one-liners will be sorely missed. He battled manic-depression for much of his life and is most famous for being the creative force in the Goon Show with Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe. Well known to be Prince Charles’ favourite comic, Spike repaid the honour by calling the monarch-to-be on air “a groveling little bastard” while accepting the British Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement at his admirer’s hands. He later asked the Prince mock-hopefully, “I suppose a knighthood’s out of the question now, isn’t it?”
Abba Eban, 87
Urbane, eloquent, Oxford-educated Eban was the acceptable voice of Zionism. As Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations and later as Foreign Minister he was in large part responsible for swinging British and American public opinion behind Israel’s struggle to become an independent nation in 1948 and the subsequent Middle Eastern wars of 1967 and 1973, though nothing he said in 1956 at the time of Suez had any effect on the US disapproval of the Franco-British collusion with the Israelis and their joint attack on Nasser. When one looks at the hard and ruthless men now running Israel’s destiny (perhaps they always were) one can see why he never got the top job. One also has to wonder how things would have panned out, then or now, if the Arab world ever managed to produce a major politician who could articulate the Arab viewpoint to the West in an equally articulate and intellectually valid manner.
Billy Wilder, 95
Writer and director Billy Wilder was both funny and cynical. In the old “glory” days, Hollywood was a grown-up place for making juvenile movies. It still is, just more foul language, sex and violence, is all. Wilder was more grown-up than most and so managed to sneak through more than his fair share of grown-up movies. Any man who says, “Never bore people”, and “if you have something important to say, wrap it in chocolate”, obviously knew his way around town. Born Jewish in what is now Poland he had variously been a ladies’ escort or “tea dancer” and a journalist before going into movies as a writer in Berlin. When Hitler came to power in 1933 he correctly read the signs and decamped to Hollywood. As a writer he soon understood the only way of protecting your work was to direct as well. After winning Academy awards for scripts like Garbo’s “Ninotchka”, he went on to direct some of Hollywood’s greatest films; the archetypal “film noir” Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960). He was nominated for 21 Oscars and won it 6 times. Four of Wilder’s movies made it to American Film Institute’s “100 Best Movies” and Some Like It Hot was picked as the “funniest movie of all time”. Still, working with such a man can’t have been easy. William Holden, who made several films with him, said he had “a mind full of razor blades”.
Others who shall be missed are:
Thor Heyerdahl (87), Norwegian anthropologist and explorer, whose books and film of the Kon-Tiki, the epic voyage in 1947 by balsa-wood boat from the coast of Peru to Polynesia, caught the imaginations of little boys everywhere. Particularly this one growing up in austerity Britain in the 1950’s.
Lionel Hampton (94) Vibraphonist and part of the fabled Benny Goodman Quartet, whose driving sense of swing defined two decades of jazz and whose orchestra gave a start to such celebrated singers and musicians as Quincy Jones, Wes Montgomery, Clark Terry, Fats Navarro, Dinah Washington, Betty Carter and (get this!) Aretha Franklin.
Stephen Jay Gould (60), US evolutionary biologist, Darwinian and secular humanist, whose writings and controversies did so much to popularise and bring to life the fascinating world of paleo-biology. Uncompromising in his stand against creationists and fundamentalists he was on less sure ground in his attacks on E.O.Wilson and other less atheistic paleontologists of note.
Some who will not be missed:
Ne Win (91) of Burma and Jonas Savimbi (67) of Angola, both of whom it could be said, tarried too long for the good of their countrymen.
Klackety-Klak, Don’t Do That.......
Suddenly, our Magic Isle is alive to the sound of.......clacking balls, everywhere. It seems every out-of work driver and under-employed shop assistant sits by the side of the road clacking his or her balls. Is this some form of post-Kuta trauma therapy decreed by the Psychiatric Department of one of the country’s great hospitals one wonders? Or, is it a discarded sex toy donated by some Japanese giantess for which the percussive genius of the population have found a yet more imaginative use? Whatever it is, I want you to know I am just soooo grateful for this opportunity to take my meditation upon tolerance and patience to yet higher levels, deliciously and sanctimoniously secure in the knowledge that, as with all such pernicious habits, this too shall pass.......
Insert Quote :
Michael Caine was quoted saying Burton, O’Toole and Harris “were all drunks”. Harris fired back flaying Caine as “an over-fat, flatulent 62-year old windbag with vast limitations”, who should not presumeto kiss the hem of the garment of a Burton or O’Toole, drunk or sober.
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