From 2023: Here’s my favorite Hawaiian-born girl singer in her 1977 TV special being pulled from the sea by astonished islanders—mostly Filipino, look at them closely—to lead a rousing chorus, with hula gestures, in THE GREATEST SHOW TUNE ever written. You got that, my Geordie love? Or is that too “exotic”for you?
EXTRA! Courtesy of YT an entire episode of Groucho’s classic TV “game” show, You Bet Your Life from 5 December 1957, featuring American concert baritone and outspoken rock’n’roll hater, John Charles Thomas, plus the heroine of the most scandalous book in my mother’s forbidden library, The Big Love—the fetchingest teenager (15!) in Hollywood, Beverly Aadland! Just months before Errol Flynn swept her away! At 11:50 Beverly sings “All Shook Up” and Groucho dances a few steps solo, then with her, in a really sweet passage a deux.
From June 2023. Sorry for my shaky handwriting but while listening to this I had a fantasy that gave me the giggles: John being interviewed by my favorite ohne palones—prime purveyors of the gay-gypsy-theatrical patois called polari—Julian and Sandy. Played of course by the inimitable Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams on Round the Horne. (This more-than-usual musical episode of Kenneth Horne’s 1967 radio show also includes Rambling Syd Rumpo, the Fraser Hayes 4 singing off-key not on purpose, and the screamingly funny takeoff sketch, “Young Horne with a Man”.)
Now John, John / Glorious John, I know that you know, and I know that you know that I know, that my long-distance lovemaking to you is being observed by a few; not many, just a few. So this rundown is for them, love:
Here are the main points I took away from this podcast: “What I do try to do as a conductor is carry my sound around with me… It’s almost—I don’t really feel comfortable talking about because you know music is basically a doing thing and not a talking thing… My deepest musical creed is wrapped up with how an orchestra sounds…” Which pretty much confirms what I’ve suspected all this time about him.
John, fire of my loins, I respect your process.
Now, as heard on Monty Python:
Fantasia on “Greensleeves” Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer Barbirolli Conducts English String Music RCA, 1963 first issue The Sinfonia of London John Barbirolli, conductor
EXTRA! Here are 2 interviews with John from BBC 2 Radio: one (8 min long) from 24 April 2016 with Michael Ball, and one (4 min long) from 4 November 2013 with Steve Wright.
Simply note that there’s nothing subtle about Rachel’s devotion to one particular maestro of the pen. And you think I’m the only crazy one out there.
The comedy short Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury was nominated in 2011 for a Hugo Award—you know, from the prestigious World Science Fiction Society, so this isn’t just any old piece of porn. So laugh your ass off, or shut up.
What shocking secret did teenage Jane learn on her wedding day! cried out the back of the Scholastic paperback on sale at school when I was 11, which got me to pony up the ninety-five cents to buy Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and find out. What merciless revenge did Heathcliff wreak on his in-laws! got another ninety-five cents out of me to buy Emily’s Wuthering Heights when I was 15. But it wasn’t until I was 19 when a sketch on Monty Python proclaimed Arthur Huntingdon’s shameless conduct against his wife that I was stoked to read Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It was worth the wait, I was finally old enough to appreciate it. The guy was scum.
A modern construction site where various fictional characters from 19th century English literature are at work: a saucy dairymaid from Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon mixes cement; a crinolined lady from Trollope’s Barchester Towers carries a shovel; the beadle from Dickens’s Oliver Twist pushes a wheelbarrow; farmers from Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles lay bricks.
Voice Over (Michael Palin): This new housing development in Bristol is one of the most interesting in the country. It’s using a variety of new techniques: shockproof curtain walling, a central high voltage, self-generated electricity source, and extruded acrylic fiberglass fitments. It’s also the first major housing project in Britain to be built entirely by characters from 19th century English literature!
In a half-finished concrete shell, a little girl in a shabby dress is working on top of a ladder.
VO: Here, Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop fits new nylon syphons into the asbestos-lined ceilings— (shot of electrical wiring) But here’s the electrical system which has attracted the most attention! (cut to Arthur Huntingdon in blue safety helmet studying blueprint) Arthur Huntingdon, who Helen Graham married as a young girl, and whose shameless conduct eventually drove her back to her brother Lawrence in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, describes why it’s unique.
Huntingdon (Eric Idle): Because sir, it is self-generating. Because we have harnessed here in this box the very forces of life itself. The very forces that will send Helen running back to beg forgiveness!
We certainly all need some tenderness and a couple laughs right now. Below, the wonderful, luminous Molly Picon—who worked with legendary actor-producer-director-impressario-rival-to-Jacob-Adler-Stella’s-dad-model-for-Max-Bialystock-grandfather-of-Michael-Tilson-Thomas Boris Thomashevsky—sings “Oyfen Pripetchik” (MM Warshawsky 1848–1907), an enduring, evocative song from the past that everyone at a certain time, in a certain place, seems to have known the melody and all the words to. From season 2, episode 6 of the TV comedy masterpiece, Car 54, Where Are You? (Entire episode on my YT channel here. And really, dig the punch line ending.)
Below, a lovely rendition from Israeli singer Chava Alberstein.
Oyfn pripetchik brent a fayerl,
Un in shtub is heys.
Un der rebe lernt kleyne kinderlekh
Dem alef-beyz.
Zet zhe kinderlekh,
Gedenkt zhe, tayere, vos ir lernt do.
Zogt zhe nokh a mol un take nokh a mol:
"Komets-alef: o!"
Lernt kinderlekh, lernt mit freyd,
Lernt dem alef-beyz.
Gliklekh is der Yid, wos kent die toyre
Un dos alef-beyz.
Connection number one: The star of the classic TV show Frasier, Kelsey Grammer, starred in Man of La Mancha at the London Coliseum in 2019. His co-star in that show was popular British TV actor Nicholas Lyndhurst, who played his Sancho Panza and now plays his “old Oxford pal” on the new Frasier show. The Joe Darion-Dale Wasserman-Mitch Leigh stage musical was co-produced by venerable (and gorgeous then, gorgeous still and always) talent agent-turned-producer Michael Linnit, who gave me my first orgasm one July night in 1973 at the St Regis Hotel in New York City, New York.
Connection number two: Also in the cast of the Coliseum’s La Mancha was soprano Danielle de Niese. De Niese’s married to the chairman of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Just like late Met mezzo Maria Ewing who was also married to a bigwig (and not just any old bigwig but the hoity-toity SIR Peter Hall which made her a lady, Lady Hall), the ladies like John well enough. And he likes them well enough.
Oh, who am I kidding? Hold my jacket, Vinny. [more after dinner, making Romanian goulash…]
Okay, I’m back. The trick to making good Romanian goulash, by the way, is to let the carrots boil long enough to get soft as stew. Cheap paprika is fine to use but dump it in, it’s never strong enough for the recipe.
Now to fighting for the man I love. After satisfying myself thoroughly, body and soul, with that very lively fantasy (taking place—this is where it went in my head—on the Mean Streets of the Lower East Side—between Vinny the Sardine’s kid sister Teresa, a girl sporting a crucifix and a great right hook—and a bottle blonde puttana, calls herself Lolita) I need to point out John’s propensity for let’s say not being at one with his female singers.
I have here, case in point, a young one named Sierra Boggess in her rendering of that classic song of girl power we all sang while bounding youthfully down the street—from the BBC Proms, 2010: “I Have Confidence”. You stay and listen. I can’t even listen all the way to the end, John and his O just drown out pobrecita, who I have enough sympathy for already, as back in 2018 she had to play the fall guyin the BBC’s cockamamie plan to appear racially woke—while being able to stock their shows with free, unseasoned talent from the local inner city arts school (a very common tactic in the States) for that West Side Story debacle of theirs.
In fact, this subject is making me so mad I need to sweeten the moment—so I’ve decided to sic one of the girls on my darling… Which one will it be? Petula…? Dusty…? Okay, here’s a song by a particular girl singer I get a particular kick out of: side B of “To Sir, With Love”—Neil Diamond’s “The Boat That I Row” sung by Lulu! I’m singing this song dancing to your picture, mi amor.
Now, about the 2019 Cendrillon: At the intermission talk with Cendrillon‘s director Fiona Dunn, my beloved John Wilson, mezzo Kate Lindsey, and soprano Danielle de Niese, the topic of debate was, What should Prince Charming look like in the 21st century?
Says John to the lovelies pictured above: “I think having Prince Charming as Massenet stipulated, it fits beautifully within the whole kind of sonic picture of the whole thing. It’s not a piece that you could say fits on one musical plane, it’s got lots of colors. It’s one of the most colorful pieces he ever wrote… When I said I was doing this piece to people, they would say, Oh yeah, that’s a nice light sort of sweet little piece. It’s not a sweet little piece, it’s a big piece, there’s always another layer to get to and there’s always more detail to explore, always more depth every time. It’s not lightweight…”
EXTRA! The most John Wilsonish piece in Cendrillon.
“Marche des princesses” from Cendrillon, Act IV Jules Massenet, composer Academy of St Martin in the Fields Neville Marriner, conductor Capriccio, 1997
Of course there’s no “h” in the actual title but I’m putting it in anyway to alert singers to the long vowel because the money-grubbing whore who wrote the lyrics to this Broadway musical standard didn’t give two shits for singers.
Above: After some silliness, the boys deliver a splendid rendition of the Frederick Loewe standard, “They Call the Wind Mariah” from Paint Your Wagon (Broadway, 1951)
I, however, have a lot of affection and admiration for Berlin-born-and-trained composer Frederick Loewe, who wrote the most tuneful, singable melodies on Broadway, up there with Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern. Loewe was right not to want to have anything to do with the big-screen disaster, Paint Your Wagon, which plowed on without him (Paramount, 1969), messing up Josh Logan, Paddy Chayefsky(!), Jean Seberg, Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, et al, in its trail…
The only way to read the 1969 film (and I don’t recommend watching it for pleasure ever ever ever, not even for yummy Clint) is to look at it like a late-60s hippie festival, complete with trees, mud, and crazy sex. (You know, like Woodstock…) The absolutely unreal pluralism of the background characters—Jews, Italians, whites (but no blacks), Chinese dressed in brocade with their wives(!?) all living in this dirty mining camp (a dirty mining camp where men politely doff their hats to white women) peacefully together—is another hippie fantasy, with a dollop of Chayefsky the liberal (of Marty and Network fame) added.
The one good thing in this pile of offal is the song, “They Call the Wind Mariah”, sung incongruously by Harve Presnell; but beautifully and hauntingly here by, of all people, the Smothers Brothers, the shining jokester-balladeer heroes of my youth. (Adding to their luster: as wartime US Army brats, they spent part of their childhood in the Philippines.)
Here’s hoping you haven’t watched/heard Paint Your Wagon. If you have, and the Andre Previn interpolations made you (like me) sick*, here are two lovely selections from the pen of Frederick Loewe, rendered by my bonny John Wilson and his various orchestras:
Val: I love him anyway. I adore him! You can tell the whole world if you want to that I, Valerie Campbell Boyd, love and adore the great and beautiful and wonderful Henry Orient, world without end, amen. (to Marian Gilbert, shows album cover with Orient’s face) Isn’t he absolutely divine?
Marian: He really is cute…but I thought you said he needed practice.
Val: Oh Gilbert, have you no soul? Of course he needs practice. Especially on the scales. (moans) But this is LOVE, Gil! (sinks back on bed holding album) Oh, my dreamy dream of dreams! My beautiful, adorable, oriental Henry! How can I prove to you that I’m yours?
Novelist/screenwriter Nora Johnson had an intense teenage crush on Oscar Levant, hence the cute name for Valerie’s true love. From The World of Henry Orient (United Artists, 1964), starring Peter Sellers. The enormously inventive and amusing Elmer Bernstein score is represented here by the sweet Main Title above.
See the name up in the title of this posting, The Glasshouse? Got it right this time. The only reason I kept the out-of-date jpg up on your schedule, John, is because I love this picture of Gateshead so much and got too lazy to change to the new name. Expect that pic to crop up again in some other impersonation in the future.
Number two. This picture. Okay, I will admit to a sudden unexpected and totally unfamiliar onrush of an irrational emotion. But if you don’t understand how you get to me there’s no hope for you or your generation.
Number three. This picture. An honest artistic statement. Yeah I stole your selfie. Come and get me, coppers.
Number four. The matter at hand. I got the strong impression last night, John, that you were still in Gateshead (you’ve probably finished your Liverpool gig by now) and needed some sort of psychic “Daphne Moon” boost from me. Glad to oblige. I’ll tell you the story, long overdue, of how my dad and mom met and got married. It has to do with two of my aunties not-really-aunties-but-older-cousins—years of letter writing—and the Jai-Alai Building in Manila…
Shoot, time passes…now I’ve got to go be with Mister Grumble for a while. Tonight we’re listening to (my baby angel’s blind, remember?) the near-beginning of The United States of Socialism by Dinesh D’Souza; the middle of The Con Man by Ed McBain (“Mendo-zaaaaaaaah!”); and the last chapter of The Simulacra by Philip K Dick. Oh! And streaming the fifth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
I’ll return on my next writing day, which fortunately is tomorrow.
Well, after that whole thing about not being able to marry the woman he wanted to because of the miscegenation laws of the state of California, my dad and his white fiancee (never found out her name but it was the late 1940s so I bet it was something pretty like Helen or Margaret) went back to her home in Missouri where, like in most of the interior states, there were no legal barriers.
[4:30pm 13 Nov 2023 Pacific Time. Have to go now, Mister Grumble’s dictating his new novel to me, his sixth…be back as soon as I can…]
Mister Grumble is calling his latest novel The Last Bohemia. It’s about our old neighborhood, New York’s East Village, during the cheap-rent artsy 1980s. I’m really looking forward to it.
Back to my dad. So John, the marriage didn’t work out, of course, name me another interracial couple who made it work in the midwest in the 1940s-50s. So when they broke up in St Louis, my dad I guess was at a crossroads. There were two things he knew how to do, box (he was a small-time prizefighter in California in the 20s, a flyweight like his hero, Filipino 1923 champion-over-Welshman-Jimmy-Wilde, Pancho Villa)—and cook.
This is where that Minneapolis railroad tycoon comes in and where the story enters Scott Fitzgerald country in more ways than one.
[2:20pm 14 Nov 2023 Pacific Time. If it doesn’t rain I promised to take Mister Grumble out for a beer, he can’t go out anymore by himself. (He has a red-tipped cane, but sighted people just don’t pay attention and the sidewalks are too littered anyway.) Still, the IPAs here are pretty good, so… ]
[WHOEVER’S READING THIS WHO ISN’T JOHN: If you’re around him during this tour and you can pass him a couple words when he won’t bite your head off, just let him know CANTARA GOT HIS DAPHNE and will try to write more soon. Right now I’ve got to talk about Kennedy]
From 2022: Hope you’re feeing better, mi vida, and that you’re up and getting ready for Sheffield. Given that my feelings for you lie somewhere between a Larry Hart lyric and an Iris Murdoch story, I want to share with you 1) one of most beautiful Rodgers+Hart songs; and 2) an early passage from my second favorite comic novelist’s 15th novel, The Black Prince* (Viking, 1973) before everybody goes to hell and—well, I won’t give it away:
…[I]t is one of the peculiarities, perhaps one of the blessings, of this planet that anyone can experience this transformation of the world. Also, anyone can be its object. … The foreverness of real love is one of the reasons why even unrequited love is a source of joy. The human soul craves for the eternal of which, apart from rare mysteries of religion, only love and art can give a glimpse. … Love brings with it also a vision of selflessness. How right Plato was to think that, embracing a lovely boy, he was on the road to the Good. I say a vision of selflessness, because our mixed nature readily degrades the purity of any aspiration. But such insight, even intermittent, even momentary, is a privilege and can be of permanent value because of the intensity with which it visits us. Ah, even once, to will another rather than oneself! Why could we not make of this revelation a lever by which to lift the world? Why cannot this release from self provide a foothold in a new place which we can then colonize and enlarge until at last we will all that is not ourselves? That was Plato’s dream. It is not impossible.
Above John’s adorable face: Jane Frohman sings the song I’d make a fool of myself singing on the streets of Southwark below his window, “With a Song in My Heart”.
Here’s Stokowski, international maestro (and, like my beloved John Wilson, a graduate of the Royal College of Music) in my second favorite Deanna Durbin movie: 100 Men and a Girl. Directed by Henry Koster. Universal, 1937. Andre Previn‘s great-uncle Charles Previn, musical director, arranger, composer and conductor at Universal, won an Oscar for his score for 100 Men and a Girl. While at Universal, Previn accumulated over 225 films to his credit, including most of Deanna Durbin’s films.
The bass-baritone in the Bugs Bunny classic “Long-Haired Hare” (Warner Bros 1949), where the title of this posting comes from, is voiced by bass-baritone SF native (and, like my son, a former pupil at Mission High School) Nicolai Shutorev.
On BBC radio 1999, so I guess that makes this show 24 years old.
Patrick: This is Irina, the performance artist from Praha. Maureen: Where? Irina: Praaa-ha. Maureen: Yes, I think we know where she comes from. Does she normally wear that? Irina: I wear very little. There is a saying in my country, “Music is like the body. The more it is exposed, the more it can arouse.” Another expression we have in Czech, “Music is like sex—if we do not have it, WE DIE!!!” Maureen: (alarmed) Sex. She said sex! Irina: My music is like my sex. It come from the dark inside of my wooomb of my sex! Yearning to receive the seed of the dark black innards of my inward being… Dark, black, and hot, they copulate in the tone of the music of the fire that meets and heats, and in the heat is born the sacred coming of the sex of my body, is sex and my body is music, on and in, and in and on, my body is the sex of my heat, and my music, my heat, my body is on… Maureen: Heat? Irina: Of course. Always. Or as we say in my country, “[something-something-sex in Czech]”… Now I tune and prepare. (plays violin, orgasming loudly to music) Maureen: Well, that was quite unusual. Irina: (panting) Thank you. Patrick: Um, did you actually achieve…? Irina: (more panting) Orgasm? Of course. Maureen: So, any other questions you’d like to ask, Patrick…? Any tips? Sorry, the producer’s flashing me. (in headset) Yup! Sorry? Yes yes, I know, well, he’s had her on, it wasn’t my idea… Patrick: I did not get her on! I was under the impression we agreed we needed an example of the solo fiddle… Maureen: Yes yes, you would like a fiddle wouldn’t you? (in headset) Yes, yes, all right. (hangs up headset) I’m afraid this is the BBC and we can’t have people having orgasms on it. Can we, Patrick? Patrick: (deflated) No, no, I’m afraid not. Maureen: (to Irina) So please leave. Now our next guest…
From 25 November, 2022: On the 59th anniversary of the funeral of our own murdered-in-broad-daylight John Fitzgerald Kennedy, nothing moves me as much as the handful of scenes (here on my YT channel) where RD’s time-traveling spaceship crew—Kryten the android, Rimmer the Hologram, Cat the evolved cat, and Dave Lister the last human in the universe—unite with a disgraced JFK to right a timeline gone wrong and restore our 35th president’s shining legacy to history. That’s American actor Michael J Shannon playing Kennedy / The Shooter on the Grassy Knoll.
EXTRA! This seems to be the best place for this Howard Goodall piece: “The Lord Is My Shepherd (Psalm 23)” aka theme for the BBC’s sweet and funny 1994 series The Vicar of Dibley. Please enjoy its delicate and reverent scrumptiousness.
EXTRA EXTRA! The long, clear, laughtrack-free jukebox version of “Tongue-Tied”! Danny John-Jules never looked more fantastic.
Could you say no to this woman?
Above John at Glyndebourne, 2019: 
Novelist/screenwriter Nora Johnson had an intense teenage crush on 
Above Robert Llewellyn, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, Craig Charles and Michael J Shannon as Kennedy / The Shooter on the Grassy Knoll: 
"I'll Be Dead Before You Break My Heart" 