July, 2006
THE HAPPIEST (AND HOTTEST) PLACE ON EARTH
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If there’s one thing smart Southern California residents know, it’s to avoid Disneyland during the summertime, if you can help it, especially on weekends. But there I was with my wife last Saturday on one of the hottest days of the year doing our best to beat the heat at the Happiest Place on Earth.
The reason was a small gathering of old friends, one of whom had just conducted a business conference in Anaheim. It was the only chance we all had to get together. And, in spite of the extreme heat, we still had a good time.
Naturally, I was curious to see the “new, improved” Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and I’d also heard that there were some tweaks made to the Haunted Mansion. I can now report that these two wonderful attractions are still as much fun as they ever were. The improvements are subtle, for the most part, and visible mostly to diehard Disneyland aficionados who have memorized every aspect of these rides.
The major addition to Pirates is the presence of Jack Sparrow—who appears several times, in an astonishing AudioAnimatronic likeness of Johnny Depp. The characters played by Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy make brief appearances as well, but it’s Depp who’s the main draw. These additions didn’t measurably alter the experience for me, but they’re certainly getting a rise out of park visitors who love the Pirates movies. Some Disneyland purists object to the changes and say the park is pandering to the public, but as they say in the Old Country, it couldn’t hurt. The changes in the Haunted Mansion are even subtler, but fun to spot. As long as I hear the voice of Paul Frees welcoming me, I’m happy.
I’m pretty old-fashioned where Disneyland is concerned. I still miss some of the vintage equipment that used to fill the Main Street penny arcade—like the automated player piano—but at least there are still a few Mutoscopes on hand featuring Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and William S. Hart. (I don’t know what to call the machine that displays a series of sequential stereoscopic cards featuring silent-film comedian Al St. John, but I can see that the photo session was copyrighted in 1928.)
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And I love little touches like Mickey-shaped beignets you can purchase at Café Orleans. (Fattening, of course, and delicious.)
On the other hand, there are some high-tech additions to Disneyland and its newer sister park that are hard to resist. Although it’s been open one full year I’d never had a chance to see Turtle Talk with Crush, which is part of an animation pavilion at Disney’s California Adventure. In this presentation, the surfer-dude sea turtle from Finding Nemo swims up to what appears to be a huge aquarium window in a darkened theater and talks to us in the audience—individually! Kids and grownups alike are amazed as Crush asks questions and elicits responses from specific people in the crowd. His lip movements and facial gestures seem to match his every utterance. Wow.
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On the way home from Disneyland we stopped at the annual Disneyana show and sale run by the National Film Fantasy Conference (www.nffc.org). Here we not only saw old friends and browsed an overwhelming dealer’s room full of Disney merchandise, but took in a mind-blowing preview of what’s coming up from DisneyShopping.com, the latest incarnation of the group formerly known as Disney Galleries. These creative folks, who now sell exclusively through the Disney online store, keep coming up with irresistible figures, toys, and artifacts to delight the diehard Disney buff, almost always based on original Disney artwork.
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Most of the goodies shown here won’t be available until later this summer or early fall, but they are designed to fill your home and empty your pocketbook. Who else would think of making a replica of the illuminated sign that sat atop Walt’s original Hyperion Avenue studio... or creating new dolls of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit? They’re about to offer two reproductions of the famous street marker from the Disney studio in Burbank—noting the intersection of Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive—one at a full seven feet, the other miniaturized to seven-inches. If you’ve ever wanted a talking umbrella like the one owned by Mary Poppins, they’ve reproduced it. Keep an eye open at www.disneyshopping.com for these great collectibles. Or, if you’re like my wife and me, you may want to sign up for Collectors Anonymous before it’s too late.
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AVAST!
My phone rang several times over the last weekend as media outlets were seeking an “expert” to provide reaction to the record-breaking box-office take for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. My impulse was to quote Abraham Lincoln about fooling all of the people some of the time.
As usual, it’s money that attracts media attention, not quality, and this only reinforces Hollywood executives’ belief that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.
I’d be much more curious to take an exit poll to see how many people who forked over anywhere from $9 to $11 a head actually enjoyed this waterlogged sequel. (And granted, some folks probably did, in spite of my own sour opinion.) But that’s an aspect of this story you probably won’t find in either the mainstream press or the trade journals.
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On a happier note, I recently participated in the 20 th annual Last Remaining Seats program staged by the Los Angeles Conservancy. This wonderful event brings thousands of Angelenos to the Broadway Theater District in downtown L.A., which used to be the main shopping and entertainment district for the city before everyone moved to the ‘burbs. The Conservancy and a hardy team of volunteers puts on a great show every year, presenting classic films on the giant screens of such houses as the Orpheum, the Palace, and my favorite, The Los Angeles, the biggest and grandest of them all. (It opened in 1931 with the premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. Albert Einstein was in attendance!) In past years the Conservancy has also screened in Sid Grauman’s Million Dollar Theater, the United Artists, and the State, along with the beautiful Wiltern Theater at the corner of Wilshire and Western, which is now a concert venue. Many showings are preceded by live stage presentations as well as shorts, cartoons and newsreels.
Over the past two decades I’ve introduced many shows in this series, and interviewed such guests as Mrs. Buster Keaton, before a showing of The General, and Jane Wyatt, prior to a screening of Lost Horizon, in which she costarred with Ronald Colman.
Veterans of that era are few and far between in the year 2006, but for the presentation of Rebel Without a Cause on July 5 I chatted with three members of the original teenage ensemble: Beverly Long, Faye Nuell (who served as a double for Natalie Wood in many long shots) and Frank Mazzola. I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure how much these “minor” players could tell us about the movie; I was dead wrong. They gave us all—me and a packed house of 2,200 people—a real sense of what it was like to be a young actor in the 1950s, how close-knit a group they were, and how working together as they did (with director Nicholas Ray encouraging them to hang out, so they’d seem more like people who actually did spend time together) created lifelong bonds.
A Warner-Pathe newsreel from 1955 set the tone for the evening, taking us back in time to the Eisenhower era and showing the cast of Giant at a luncheon at Warner Bros. in Burbank, about to embark on their trip to the epic film’s location in Texas.
Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of surviving movie palaces in the United States, yet most residents have never been inside one of them. That’s why the Conservancy’s annual series is so vital; I took a straw poll (by applause) and discovered that many audience members who were there for Rebel had never been to the Los Angeles Theater before. One can only hope that they left that night convinced of the relevance of showing great films on a great theater screen...and that it’s imperative to do all we can to save these unique edifices.
If you’d like to know more about the Conservancy’s work—or if you live here in L.A. and aren’t already a member—please go to www.laconservancy.org.
The popular conception of “summer reading” involves escapist fare one can take to the beach. For me, this time of year offers a chance to catch up on books I’ve been meaning to get to since New Year’s Day. I try to keep up with film books as best I can (as you can see on the Leonard’s Picks page) but to keep my mind fresh I like to read other kinds of books as well—both fiction and non-fiction. While the following recommendations may not be germane to this site, when I discover books I enjoy, I like to share them.
While discussing Robert Benchley one night my friend James Karen asked if I’d ever read a novel by his son Nathaniel called Speakeasy. His description, and his enthusiasm, inspired me to find a used copy of this out-of-print book online, which was no problem at all; in fact, it cost more to ship than to purchase! Published in 1980 just after Nathaniel’s death, Speakeasy is a roman à clef about a timid man who stumbles into a job on a New York City newspaper and how his fortunes align with a couple who open a speakeasy at the dawn of Prohibition. There are elements of Nathaniel’s father Robert, and I suspect a dollop of Charles Butterworth, in the makeup of the protagonist, whose relationship with his family grows more aloof as he discovers a new social milieu, while the saga of the actual speakeasy mirrors the creation of the fabled “21” Club. Speakeasy is a delightful read, and deserves to be better known.
While browsing in my neighborhood shop, Portrait of a Bookstore, I came upon a novel 
called Mission to America by Walter Kirn, published last year. I decided to give it a try because I so liked Thumbsucker, Mike Mills’ 2005 feature which he adapted from Kirn’s semi-autobiographical novel. My instincts didn’t fail me, as Mission to America is a sharp, funny, extremely well-written social satire about a young man from a cloistered community out West who ventures into the “real world” for the first time to spread the gospel of his humanistic sect. I liked this book so much I’m going to seek out Kirn’s other work.
Finally, I caught up with Bruce Jenkins’ loving portrait of his father, Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins, published last year by Frog Ltd. Music is a passion of mine; I love jazz, the big band era, and the mainstream pop music that grew out of that period. Goodbye brings all of that to life as Jenkins, a sports writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, traces his father’s remarkable life and career. He was picking out tunes on the piano at an early age, and in his teens began teaching himself to write band arrangements. Without any proper schooling Jenkins went on to become one of the most prominent and prolific composers, conductors and arrangers of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. He was a radio personality, a top-selling recording artist, and an influential producer who shepherded everyone from Louis Armstrong to The Weavers to the pop charts during his tenure at Decca Records.
He was also a highly emotional man, as one can hear in much of his writing, and Bruce Jenkins tries his best to understand what made his father tick. Along the way he helps us relive a glorious era in American popular music. One of the book’s highlights is a lengthy interview with Frank Sinatra, who had unbounded admiration for Gordon Jenkins and spoke of him as he did no other musical collaborator.
Jenkins even goes so far as to give a platform to New York radio personality Jonathan Schwartz, who has taken every possible opportunity to deride Gordon Jenkins’ work. (He then tears Schwartz apart, using remarks from several of the elder Jenkins’ peers.)
Goodbye is a very personal work, but the younger Jenkins’ sense of discovery is disarming, and I loved reading this book. It’s inspired me to seek out some of the Gordon Jenkins’ recordings he describes, and I can’t think of a higher compliment than that.
