Smile

Regular readers of this page know my fondness for The Marx Brothers and Groucho in particular. Those readers should also know of my affection (addiction? disease?) for the Boston Red Sox. At school this afternoon I had students congratulating me on the World Series victory as if I was the Red Sox bullpen. I blame my Great Aunt Amy for this Red Sox affliction, but that is another story for another time. Check out the Soxaholix link to the right to see the depths of this condition. However, as this is a blog about film I'll bring it back to Groucho.

As I kid my parents showed me classic old films. Sometimes my dad would bring home a film print of Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers and we would project it on a wall in our living room. The screenings were infrequent, but wonderful. More often we would watch on TV a Charlie Chan film or some other relic that most readers of this page will have no idea what I am referencing. (Once on TV there used to be something called The Late Show where old movies would be screened. Now there is You Tube- see below.)

To me Groucho is the best. For pure anarchy and zaniness nobody can beat him- a raised eyebrow, an eye roll and a leer can get more laughs than a thousand stand-up comedian monologues. But Groucho hard a dark side. He, like many geniuses, was depressed. He lost a fortune in the 1929 stock market crash, married badly and had more personal failures than one would wish on your worst enemy. And, unlike the rest of us, he didn't have a Groucho Marx in his life to make him laugh. If anyone needed a Groucho it was Groucho.

So for everyone who reads this page and needs to smile here is Groucho as Captain Spaulding almost 80-EIGHTY!- years ago in Animal Crackers.

Now I must be going.

PeterH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCvz8y_DUSY

Bright Lights and Baseball

Yesterday's post about finding a path into the film business has me thinking about my own path and how I owe an unexpected thanks to my great aunt Amy. Aunt Amy taught me a lot of things one of which is how to love the Boston Red Sox (and to swear at the TV, and at slow drivers an appreciation of whiskey and blueberry muffins). The summer when I was seven Aunt Amy gave my dad and me tickets to see the Red Sox play- it was my first baseball game- and on the same day she got my mom the chance to see Julia Child tape her TV show.

The game was a wild one. The Sox won in extra innings. Rico Petrocelli hit a grand slam, twice players ran into each other going after pop ups. I loved it and thought all baseball games would be like that. When the game ended my dad and I went to the WGBH studios in Cambridge to pick my mom up. The taping wasn't over- Julia kept burning her sugar and had to do take after take- but they let us in to watch.

The bright lights, so hot, and the huge prehistoric looking pedestal cameras amazed me. And the colors! We only had a black and white TV so first with all the green at Fenway Park, and then all the colors of Julia's TV kitchen; it was if I woke up in Oz. I will never forget that day, and I am sure it was one of the catalysts that lead me towards the film business.

PeterH