Sunday Morning, Looking Back: Huell Howser’s California is Television Gold

This first appeared on April 19, 2007

In the age of spin and sleaze — when hip hoppers go criminal to boost record sales and international hookers become cultural icons in their death – what a pleasure to watch Huell Howser’s California’s Gold — that is if you live in the golden state and hunger for a semblance of reflective sanity in the shadows of nature and history.

Howser is a big tall guy from Tennessee who gets awe-shucks excited over sunsets and old abandoned docks, over off-beat museums and restored windmills. He takes the time to savor the unrushed moment, and for this we thank the various PBS stations on which his excursions, as refreshing as a drink of pure spring water, are aired.. Howser deserves a slew of Emmys.

Here he is, talking to park guides and curators ...

... Now, the clouds are breaking a little bit, and we’re looking off at the distance at the blue sky and the reflection in the water, and it goes all the way around here. This is – boy, this really is spectacular!

... Oh, look at that fish jump. Oh, my gosh! One of the big trouts jumped right on cue for us!

... Oh, wow. She’s been sitting here since 1931. Look at this. You almost have to be here to feel what this feels like, but to actually be here this close to it, it’s kind of like giving her the respect that she’s due...

... Well, she’s not looking to good these days but atleast she’s here. That’s what’s important. We touched her, we came up close to her, and we’ve felt her good vibes, thousands of California stories connected with that old boat — people who rode on her in those train cars, being here with her has been an absolutely wonderful experience. Thank you all very much. We found her, the old Solano, a fine example, even though she’s grown up in weeds and trees, and she’s rusting away and falling down into the mud, she’s still a fine example of california’s gold.

Television has too many Jerry Springers. It has only one Huell Howser.

4.19.07

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Feld versus North Lawsuit Revives Ringling Family Wars of the ‘40s

Rechanneling the Ringlings: Part One of Two

In the beginning, the word was Ringling

And the word multiplied by five to produce the brothers from Baraboo, Wisconsin who formed an unwritten pact to start a circus. They argued loudly in private over business matters, took votes, accepted the majority will and reentered the public sphere with placid lockstep. They were the force.

Were there unspoken alliances between any of them? Al and Charles, the two most loved of the brothers, shared an affinity for opera. Intellectual Alf T. was at home with either.

That leaves us with two oddballs: Lackluster Otto, a loner who handled the finances and read books, and unlike the other four never married; and the egotistically flamboyant, deal-making John. It made perfect sense that when the brothers bought Barnum & Bailey in 1908, Al and Charlie ran the Ringling show, Otto and Alf T., Barnum & Bailey. John went ahead as general routing agent, a job in which he excelled.

John versus Charles — A Schism is Born

By the mid 1920s, only two of the founding five remained — John and Charles They shared circus power with a mutual if uneasy working respect.
Mostly, Charles spent a lot of time trying to keep up with his brother John’s epic lifestyle. After Charles died in 1926, John alone ruled the big top, and he ruled it recklessly, even though he only held roughly one-third of the stock.. Any of the other brothers alone would likely have done a better job.


John lost control of the circus in 1932. His nephew, John Ringling North, recaptured family control five years later and set out to revolutionize three-ring showmanship with unstinting talent and splendor.
Self-patterned after his worldly uncle John, North was one of a kind. His better-liked brother, Henry, filled the Charles Ringling mold. And Henry bore a son, John Ringling North II.

John North versus Robert Ringling

Enter a woman of inherited power who would cast a long shadow over the Ringling family wars — indeed, a shadow that reverberates today: Edith Ringling, wife of the late Charles. A robust school teacher by day, Edith resented John Ringling’s dominant ways when only he and Charles remained, and so she pushed her husband to assert his rightful place as a co-owner.

Into the 1940s, with her husband long-gone and her son, Robert, hitting the skids off a mediocre opera career (many of the Ringlings longed not to be circus Ringlings at all), Edith pushed Robert to make a grab for circus power and depose John Ringling North, whose high-flying showmanship did not impress the traditionalist minded Edith. So what if Charles was gone.

Edith had inherited his share of the stock, and she was not about to go gently into the night off a red-light caboose. Her blood now boiled at the sight of John North, who reminded her too much of his late uncle, John. Popcorn or soda pop anyone?

Next: How a Feld Becomes a Ringling

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Little Big Top Bits ...

All quiet down the sawdust trail? Counting em’ up — we’ve got two little bigs — Big Apple and UniverSoul and ... is Kelly-Miller a little big? ... Circus Chimera is a little big- plus ... How about Giants? Carson & Barnes, on a diet, too, leads the diminishing pack, still clinging to a trio of rings .... Please consider California, Barbara Byrd, before you too go solo.... John Pugh’s New Cole is — or was — another ringless affair, he having apparently started the trend even before Kenneth Feld gave up on the circus’s most enduring stage set ... In 2005 on the Willow Grove, PA lot, I saw Pugh’s tenter reconfigured into an amorphous oblong performance area ... Beware of rearranging the deck chairs ...

How amusingly topical, and this from Big Bertha dreamer, Craig Johnson: You might know that Randy Concello, a practicing attorney in Sarasota, is the son of the late Arthur. Wonders Craig, what if John Ringling North II hired Concello to represent him, would that be a true North-Concello return? Why not, the scene is crazy with historical reverberations. ... We might witness an eerie replay of the Ringling family wars leading up to John North’s 51% conquest in late ‘47 ... Jim Royal is awfully quiet these days .... He may be breathlessly watching it all play out precariously. Jim, welcome to the Ringling rangling ‘40s. Be prepared for the in-and-out, the on-and-the off of ever-changing big top power ... You could end up working for, who knows, Nichole Feld — or even , let's see ... Patricia Buck Ringling.

Speaking of which, yes it’s a story that just keeps on giving. — About the simmering ill-will at Feld central over North II’s daring to show his name on Kelly-Miller trucks, I chatted this out with an attorney friend. While she did not dig into the law books to render an exacting position, it was her informal (I stress informal) feeling that she would side with North. "But," I asked her, "is he not using his name to lure people into the tent?" Answered she, "Sure, but it’s like he is saying, 'John Ringling North II recommends Kelly-Miller.'" She, not a circus fan, stressed rationally, it’s not as if North is calling it the Kelly-Miller and John North circus. She did caution that the word "presents" might be tricky. ... In casual summation, attorney pro bono for Showbiz David said the point is, will the public be confused into thinking it is patronizing a Ringling Bros circus? Points on or off point to ponder, kids ...

Another great blog down memory lane: Have you seen Bill Strong's wonderful Yesterday's towns? I have a link to it on this revived midway, about which, details follow below, and please read ... Strong has thrown up some photos of Clyde Beatty Circus 1952, a show I saw and loved as a kid. Even helped set up the seats and got ducats for my own hard sit in the blues. So moved am I in recall of that magical day in Santa Rosa, It informs one of the chapters in my forthcoming, Fall of the Big Top.

About this blog, please make note that I might be moving over here soon. A number of reasons make it very appealing -- as much as I have liked the typepad people, on whose lot I currently play. One reason is that it will give more visual prominence and clarity to comments and to the names of those who post them .... I believe those who take the time to contribute deserve better attention. After all, this is a blog, and I value your input ...

And that’s a little big wrap!

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The Lookout: Dramatic New Suspense Flick is So Much More than a Bank Robbery

A young man at the wheel of an expensive auto feels the deceptive thrill of youth. He is a star hockey player, has designer looks, a winning smile and the seemingly perfect girlfriend by his side. It’’s all there —— or it was. The young man is Chris Pratt, who stupidly pushes his luck by pushing the pedal to impress, racing his car with its headlights off into a devastating collusion. Chris’’s back seat passenger friends will die, his girlfriend will survive minus one leg, and he will spend his entire life paying the price in the mental damage he now struggles valiantly to overcome. Each day, he makes notes to himself in order to function. Now and then he thinks he sees his estranged girlfriend in the distance, but is unable to reach out. At night, he does janitorial work at a bank, dreaming of becoming a teller. He shares a gloomy flat with a blind man, Lewis.

And he is about to be manipulated by some no-good low-lives from out of his past into a bank robbery. A stroke of perfect casting gave the part of Chris to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whose acting muse is obviously early Leonardo DeCaprio —— before DeCaprio settled for overscripted Hollywood popcorn like The Departed. Gordon-Levitt pulls us into his crippled though proud existence. His roommate, Lewis (played by Jeff Daniels) is at first unattractive but earns our sympathy and respect; the two dream of starting their own restaurant. In the dark shadows here, there are relief lights of rare humor.


Written and directed by Scott Frank, The Lookout is unflinching in its bare-bones narrative force, perhaps too downbeat and morose at times for its own good, commercially. Still, this movie left me with a deeper appreciation for the mentally ill and the variously handicapped souls who struggle nobly day in and day out to make the most of their lives. The lookout ends on a promising note both sad and affirmative.


Solid respect from Showbiz David.

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Sunday Morning in Tinseltown: My L.A. in 54 Hours

Into Los Angeles, the almost-on-time Amtrak bus drops me off at my cathedral-in-waiting, Union Station. The day is perfect. No city is more inviting under the sun — nor more ominous by night than Hollywood ...

I hop a Dash (little busses that feel like living rooms on wheels) to the town’s newest icon, the Disney Concert Hall. There, I land a ticket for tomorrow morning’s Philharmonic. Onto my motel at Sunset and Vermont. After many sleepovers, they are getting to like me. Surprise, they even know how to smile. "You are one of our regular guests!" A King size bed downstairs for King David, complete with my first live-in cockroach, and I mean the first at this Travellodge. With wash cloth in hand, I stomp it flat and toss the cloth with it to the floor. An hour later, comes another roach — but it is the same one! I know about roach motels. Are there roach ERs? Roach HMOs?

I hop the number 2 for North Vine, and walk south to the Linwood Dunn Theatre. Security guards stand ready to pat me down — just to attend the screening of two silent films by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! Inside, I am seated with industry pros (the room buzzes with insider talk), and I learn that this is how non-members are treated. Who said things would never be the same after 9/11?

The next morning, I foot it east down Sunset to enjoy the town’s glamorous decay. In an hour I’ll be having breakfast at Phillipes (where the Paul Eagles Luncheon club used to meet) with a copy of the L.A. Times. From there to the concert. Featured keyboard wiz Jean-Yves Thibaudets uses only his left hand to pound through Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The work was composed for a musician returning from world war I minus his right arm. Heroic Ravel.


Conductor wunderkind Essa Peka Salonen also premieres his own compelling Helix, a fast-advancing 9-minute opus full of troubling images intended to commemorate the end of WWII. It makes the morning’s major work, Prokoviev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite, seem rather old hat. Not old-hat is Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall — a surreal masterpiece that is in my exalted opinion the most stunning piece of architecture in the United States. See why tinseltown is a draw?

Onto a bus, we are now heading west on Sunset — lovely ride through Bev Hills. Still sunny and perfect with a light breeze tickling the air and caressing the palms. En route, I love glancing up winding hillside roads, wondering which one delivered William Holden in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard into the clutches of fading film heroine Norma Desmond. Holden was being chased by cops out to repossess his car — and would end up being repossessed by Norma.

Hilgard in Westwood is my stop. There I will transfer to the 261, which ten minutes later deposits me and a young Japanese couple at the Brentwood gates of the magnificent Getty museum. A tram elevates us to the exhilarating plaza on high, where you can view swanky homes in the hills and the smoggy flat lands in the dismal distance.. Sometimes just being at the Getty is the lure. A strange exhibit of Nuevo Japanese "anti art" and "non art" from the early 50s shows how the freshly liberated Japanese set out to shun the past and rush eccentrically into an unknown but free future.

Outside, while waiting for a 261 to reverse my journey, I fall into an easy conversation with two bright ladies in town on business. One is from Philly; the other from Montreal. How could Cirque du Soleil not enter our impromptu chat? They are certain fans of Cirque, but the Canadian (with no cuing on my part) tells me Cirque is not so good as it was in the begriming. They are "diluting the shows," she regrets. Her Philly pal adamantly agrees. Hmmm. I refrain from commenting; on-the-spot feedback like this is pure journalism. Leave it pure, David. The world speaks in L.A.

Saturday, I rail down to Oceanside along creamy blond beaches, there to visit old L.A. friends Alice and Sal, who now reside in a tony Carlsbad "manufactured." In better nights at piano bars, Sal (who by day taught L.A. students driver education) sang like my idol, Frank — I called him Salnatra. Now he barely walks. And I fear the medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex has gotten the best of Sal. A head shrink (I am leery of them all) gives Sal so many pills, Sal’s medicine cabinet has reduced his will to a whisper. I could cry. His Brit wife, Alice (who insists her real name is Judy) remains as chock full of chatter and the embracement of life as ever she was. I meet her charming sister Ruth, who insists that Alice is Alice. Ruth (who is Ruth – and a widow) is in from England and in the tempered throes of a new romance. No wonder I call Judy who is Alice or Judy ... Dame Dither.

Taking our cue from Sal, we opt for a sizzling lunch at the 101 Café, a landmark grill since ‘28. Let there be sodium on this day. Maybe a burger is all Sal needs to pull out. I keep asking him when he will sing "Autumn in New York,"and he keeps putting me off. Once through Pasadena not so long ago, he rebounded from another post-operation depression and was filling the air, punk style, with a catalog of Sinatra hits. And the old Sal magically returned.

And once, only last November on a day that hit 97 degrees (there they are, at the plaza by Olvera Street the previous July) Dame Dither and "Salnatra" came to see me off for Florida on Amtrak’s The Sunset Retarded.

Back by train to L.A., back to another edgy Hollywood by dark. When I lived here during the 80s on North Orange Drive, at least I had my own apartment to which I could run and hide and feel safely tucked in while police helicopters overhead threw spotlights onto the seedy streets chasing down thugs.

The sun has fled and the gig is up. The city now looks like a cheap film noir version of itself in better days when real movie stars walked the streets and graced red carpets. Now the Boulevard seems lost and irrelevant, the tourists just another flock of gawkers passing through.

At 10:50 on a Saturday night, I board a Greyhound for my return north. Nothing noteworthy; no creeps on board, thank God. Not even the faint sound of a cellphony telling somebody the bus is late so expect another call in another five minutes. A congenial cargo of withered humanity remains atypically quiet during the tear up I5 into Oakland --- to another place not so inviting by night.

Leaving town, I marvel at the cockroach who self-revived, and I wonder if Sal can, too. Maybe he will one day dismiss Dr. H. Shrink and sing "Autmn in Carlsbad."

And that’s a Tinseltown wrap!

From April 6, 2007

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Remarkable Cinema Discovery: First Asian-American Film Directed by Marion Wong, Mother of Arabella who Starred on Broadway in Rodgers and Hammerstein’

Documentary film maker Arthur Dong was invited to a house south of San Francisco. A family wondered if some old nitrate film they had might be of interest to Dong and the film community.

Dong discovered and was handed historical gold: two surviving reels of the first Asian-American silent film made in the United States: The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West (1917) Or so speculates, with impressive scholastic authority, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Last Thursday in Hollywood, the Academy screened the digitally restored movie at the Linwood Dunn Theater on North Vine Street, accompanied on the piano by Michael Mortilla. Arthur Dong provided background information on his rare find and gift to the Academy.

Curse opens in a deceptively charming manner, and here we are interpreting without the benefit of subtitles, for not a one of them survived. A young man sets out to court and wed a woman (played by Violet Wong, right) by offering a gift to her mother. He succeeds. Then charm turns ugly in dramatic turns that invite speculation. The most interesting image for me was of the new bride fingering an elaborate necklace which turns into a chain. That alone was considered "high tech" for its time when the film was shot in Oakland. Does the bride feel imprisoned to a man she does not love —— or to an institution she secretly abhors? According to one analysis, because of her deceitful nature she is kicked out of the home by her disapproving mother-in-law, and she wanders off into the mountains. Next, an infant is discovered, and again we can only ponder its relationship to the principals. The husband is moved by the sight of the newborn to search for and reclaim his wife. His wife’’s sister-in-law, who has all along evidenced signs of jealousy, commits suicide.

Four to seven reels were lost. Disintegration of nitrate across time has left most silent films buried in the dust and gone forever.


Remarkably, this engaging movie was directed by 21-year-old Marion Wong (seen here in later years), a third generation American with only a third grade formal education. She was also one of precious few female directors ever to work in American silent cinema. Oft-maligned Oakland also comes in for some credit as the birthplace of Asian American cinema.


Marion Wong was the mother of Arabella Hong-Young, who starred in Rodgers and Hammerstein’’s Flower Drum Song on Broadway. Had it not been for Marion’’s support, Arabella’’s father would have banned her from perusing a life in music and she never would have attended Julliard —— or introduced to Broadway "Love Look Away." In fact, without Arabella, Rodgers and Hammerstein might not have been inspired to write the wonderful song.

Hollywood’’s film historians and preservationists are passionate about finding whatever "lost" films are still out there that can be restored. So passionate, indeed, that at the door, unless you are a member of the Academy, you are put through security and patted down before you are allowed to buy a ticket. Now, that was a first movie-going experience for me!

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Legally Blonde begins on Top — then Splinters off into Diversionary Amusement

Review: New Broadway-Bound Musical Opens in San Francisco

About a third or half way through Act One, the new musical Legally Blonde, now trying out at the Golden Gate Theatre, looks and sounds like a solid musical comedy hit. Based upon the novel and the movie, the show delivers three winning numbers – "What you Want," with a strong popular hook; a rousing "The Harvard Variations" and the cold-hearted lawyerly anthem, "Blood in the Water." And in sensibility and development, it resembles "How To Succeed. In Business Without Really Trying." Can it be this good a show?

Well, maybe -- with a lot more work. Blond fritters away its early promise by splintering off into extraneous subplots and character cameos that are more issue-driven (all about women empowering themselves) than dramatically relevant. Of conflict, here there is little. Ultimately, the book by Heather Hach takes a low pandering Disney road a la Aida. Plot turns that might have been major are tossed around and resolved in carton fashion Laura Bell Bundy, cast in the role of protagonist Elle Woods, pushes the silly stereotype of a shrill bubble-brain blond to a grating degree, even after she manages to get into Harvard Law School. Her sole motivation is to prove to the boyfriend who dumped her back in California because she is not "serious" enough that, indeed, she is. He is also at Harvard, now with a new girlfriend. Between him and Elle, surprisingly there is little tension.

By Act Two, Elle is now an intern at the law firm managed by her professor, Callahan, and at work on the defense for a criminal defendant. Suddenly, Elle is shown to the door when she refuses Callahan’s pass. On this callous rejection, the first act curtain might have fallen. But that honor goes to the blandly upbeat "So much better." As for the trial, a couple of courtroom scenes are so illegally farcical that, by comparison, a courtroom scene I recall from a "Golden Girls"episode looks almost Shakespearean. By then, it’s all about doing whatever it takes to keep the audience engaged and laughing.

The songs of Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin push a hard, sporadically inventive beat. A few genuine gems include "Is he Gay or European?" It’s as polished and rollicking as a showstopper by Lerner and Loewe. Particularly outstanding is Michael Rupert as Professor Callahan. Book direction by Jerry Mitchell, who also choreographs, is on the creeky side.

Nonetheless, Blonde is loaded with theatrical promise, and its central premise, however superficial, about a squeaky-clean blond girl from Malibu learning how to prove herself intellectually, is a natural lure for the multitudes of mid-teen girls who are said to line up enmasse at Broadway ticket windows.

Beyond the whopping reception accorded Blonde during curtain calls, largely by the young people who dominated the half filled theatre, this fledgling musical to an adult feels achingly underdevloped and short of the Broadway mark.

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