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June in Tampa
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June
visited Tampa in 1993, and a year later I celebrated that visit with the
creation of an Allyson roll-in for my 13-week series that summer on Tampa
public access. I later sent her a
copy of the season premier, and her response constitutes my one and only fan
letter in 15 years of access cablecasting.
I therefore cannot hesitate to share the story ... |
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My
series' first program wanted mostly to tell what the term Contra Limbo was about. Because it was a season's first I also had
to explain the roll-in, entailing the inclusion of about 15 minutes of a
message of mine from 1993. For her
fans (and probably all posterity), the most interesting and reproducible part
of the 1994 program was in fact that 1-minute roll-in, so I will start with
it - visualized as set to the scrolling tune above. Even though we will have to wait for it's formal description
farther along. |
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1994:
7:15. In
today's program we have like what we call in studio theater a warm-up
session, in order to get rid of old unfinished business, or to kind of set
you up for what's going to be happening. One of the elements of the program I
think you may want to know about is particularly the roll-in - a roll-in
with June Allyson: why or how does that particularly relate to this
series.
I mean its not what you would expect as the lead-in to set of
ass-kicking social action programs. And so since this is a first program,
and the roll-in is kind of a long story, I'd like to tell it this one time
and then never have to talk about that again. What it
really does is to pick-up some unfinished business from last year. Ella Geisman,
alias June Allyson, visited Tampa March 13th last year as part of a UCH
healthcare seminar for seniors ... (continues and includes the "Bride Goes Wild"segment
from 1993 shown below: then ...) |
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21:39 I did attend at the appointed time and
enjoyed her appearance at the hospital. Now you have to realize we are not
quite looking at the person we saw (in the Bride Goes Wild clip), but my feeling was that every bit of that
personality and that charm was still there. And actually for a person who last year
was 76 years old, I thought was looking pretty good. |
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That
was the weekend that brought the fiercest storms I've experienced in
Tampa, which had blown down all University's tents and outdoor
exhibits.
So after her speech indoors, and the celebrity question &
answer period, it was time for autographs. If you put up a close-up on this thing,
this is the one that I got. The entire line involved about a
hundred people in which, having been in the first row I was about fifth
(for autographs). Now for those of us who have not been
to live programs involving senior movie stars ... What they do
at the beginning is play tapes of the highlights of their movies to remind
or inform their old or just acquired - which means just trucked in - fans
as to what the star has done. |
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So
at the end of the (video highlights), the audio system is loaded with
movie soundtrack for playback during the autographing. I should also
mention that while Allyson was lunching privately with her (UCH) sponsors
before the program, I did try to send her a copy (of which I brought
several) of my 1993 script . so whether that was delivered or not, I
was known to the hospital staff and the Security people as having
attempted an unorthodox approach to one of their most important properties
of the day.
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I mention all of this because just as I approached
the table where she sat for autographing, the background sound system went
to a level not conducive to conversation startling, but not necessarily in my
case fatal.
So I told her, up close, that we had been looking forward to her
visit, and talking about it, and handed her another of the folded scripts
which she started to open. I asked her to read it later, since
there were lot's more people in the line, and she went on to write me this
autograph.
While she was writing, she happened to wonder out loud if the sound
that was booming out at us was from anything I particularly liked. And I said it
was OK, but for a short piece what I really enjoyed was the opening song
from Girl Crazy. |
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And
when I said that, what she did was she tilted back in the chair and shot
me for a second or two the full Allyson smiling face. Which I have
to say was like CinemaScope in my brain: I mean it was still there: she
could do it.
I'm saying here's a woman who at 76 had a face that was not (now
usually) the same face as you may remember in the movie (below), but she
was able to re-do that face at will when she smiled. |
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I
thought that was pretty good. It was like - you may recall the Bill
Bixby play several years ago called Steambath. Where the
place was in fact Limbo - well, Purgetory - it may be a little vague on
that.
And the Puerto Rican locker boy in fact was God, whose identity is
rejected by the several transient souls in current passage. So the locker
guy who resembled Cheech Marin gives us, on the spot, a full minor
Ascension.
I mean he levitates, surrounded by clouds and cherubim and flutes
and ornamental brass. It was wonderful. |
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So
what I think you may have felt, without having any reason for it of course
except that the editing was so clever you may have felt actually that opening
roll-in touched a little bit on some kind of a reality, without really
hearing this much of the story. But I have commemorated (my) Allyson
moment with that video interpretation (of it). In which she
looks back from the pinnacle of her Technicolor career in 1948 - very
realistically - at just her second movie appearance n 1942. There is a
little bit to say about that movie for people who are majoring in
movies.
you might actually want to see the whole thing. |
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Girl Crazy: Allyson's name is way down low in the
cast what you saw was her only contribution to the film. It was really
a Judy Garland - Mickey Rooney film which had a terrific Busby Berkely
Western musical finale. The number you saw at the front was
really done in two parts. Allyson did the first part, which sort
of recreated the part that she had done on Broadway. And she did
it very much in the straight stand up Betty Hutton walk up to the camera
and belt it out type of presentation. |
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Then in the film itself hers was actually followed
immediately by Mickey Rooney having a chorus of the same song. Remember
Mickey who she grabbed by the collar. Mickey was called to the stage where
there were a "hundred beautiful women" surrounding him and he had a chance
to do a (pampered) male version of the same tune. In which then
he wound up getting roughed up. But it represented a transition from
how a song might be done on Broadway, as to how the song may be done on
the West Coast.
So it's interesting actually if you like to follow the evolution of
these things, at least how the film industry understood them. ... |
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1993: 14:34: What I'd like to tell you about
today (while it's still timely) is that sometime this month (in March) we
will be visited by a fairly celebrated old-timer. I'm not going to mention
her stage name, but she was born (per Variety's Who's Who in Show
Business (rev 1989))
'Ella Geisman' on October 7th in 1917, so this year in October she will be
76 years old.
And I'm sure that here as well as in Orlando there have been many
audiences of approximately my age (or even older) that have looked forward
to seeing her.
Now, Ella actually peaked (so to speak) in the decade from 1943 to
1952.
But she peaked (in a way) with just 20 films over 10 years (or 2 a
year) that she became a national institution. I won't
mention all of her films, but in a moment I'll show a clip from one of
them. |
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(read from Current Biographies 1952p 15) "In a nationwide survey conducted by the
Motion Picture Bureau in 1946, she was chosen as the "Most Typical
American Girl," and editors of 20 college papers voted her 1947's "Most
Lovable Movie Actress." Selected as one of the five top women
stars in Photoplay's polls from 1947 through 1950, she was also named
second to Bette Davis as the most popular feminine star in Women's Home Companion's 1949 and 1950 polls. According to
Boxoffice magazine's yearend survey, she was
United State's moviegoers' favorite star in 1950." |
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16:23: I want to add to that (as part of the
clip that I'm going to show, that) currently I have been particularly an
admirer of (the program) Cheers. and as a Roman Catholic you know we are
not established as teetotalers. So the fact that a tavern might be the
place where everyone knows your name" is not at least either unnatural or
immoral to most of us. The clip we have here will indicate how
Ella played the part in a bar) seduction scene with an actor named Van
Johnson.
The movie was called The Bride Goes Wild. Now for all
the episodes of Cheers that I've seen that had to do with seduction under
the influence of alcohol, I have never seen actually one that (well, to me
at least) was this entertaining. |
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(roll clip: from Allyson
char: "Another one; why not!" to Johnson's char: "Miss Terryton, come
back: you'll fall down.") |
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