I enjoyed the New York Times obituary for Gale Storm, the actress whose career peaked in the 1950s on sitcoms “My Little Margie” and “The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna.” The title character of the latter, writes Anita Gates, “was a social director on a cruise ship who, with her beautician sidekick (ZaSu Pitts), regularly confounded the ship’s stuffy captain and, every third episode, burst into song (a condition of Ms. Storm’s contract).”
More contracts should have such a provision.
Other fun facts: Her screen name (so great, by the way) was “preordained” as part of the prize package she won in the 1939 Gateway to Hollywood talent contest. (Ultimately, I suppose, “The Josephine Cottle Show” wouldn’t have had quite the same ring to it.) Also, she did a 1979 episode of “The Love Boat,” “considered something of an ‘Oh! Susanna’ copycat.”
Words of wisdom: “I’d get tired, but I’d wake up every morning looking forward to the day’s work,” Storm once wrote, referring to the challenges of her first weekly TV series. “I think that the secret to happiness is being surrounded by people you love and having work that you look forward to doing.”
Copy editor’s nitpick: I would have chosen a different phrase than Gates did to describe Storm’s widowed mother, who “became a seamstress to make ends meet.”
So, after 18 months of getting my weight under control, there are five pounds that stand between me and a 100% normal weight for my height. I’m not terribly worried about this last stretch; after dropping 115 pounds and 12 inches from my waist, five pounds is a piece of cake. (Hmmm, wait — maybe I should rephrase that.) Here’s a new photo, for those keeping track.
In anticipation of the New York premiere of “The Blue Lagoon: A Musical,” I’ve replaced complete footage on YouTube with a three-minute compilation of highlights from the original production in Washington. Check it out, and if you’ll be in Manhattan during CringeFest, July 20-Aug. 9, I hope you’ll see the show!
I’m terribly tickled that “The Blue Lagoon: A Musical” will be produced in New York this summer as part of International CringeFest, a celebration of bad plays, musicals and films, with “bad” defined by the festival as “irreverent, politically incorrect, naughty and utterly zany.” I somehow suspected that a musical about incestuous teen lovers and their three-eyed baby — the show in which my favorite number is “(Even Though We’re Related) My Heart Palpitates When I See You” — might fit the bill.
Greetings from Chinablock. The five-story string of fireworks — that’s what’s hanging from the crane-like thing — did not go off as promised, because, well, D.C. is a very regulated place, and the firemen and policemen on hand could not, it seems, be persuaded that it was a good idea.
Television-loving child that I was in the ’70s, I still somehow managed to completely miss Mitzi Gaynor’s specials. How deprived was I? Quite, it seems, after watching a PBS pledge-drive program tonight: “Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle! The Special Years.” Wow. Good stuff.
I was saddened to read the obituary for Paul Benedict, the actor who played Mr. Bentley on “The Jeffersons.” Benedict made the strongest impression on me, though, earlier than that — as the Mad Painter on “Sesame Street.” This is my favorite sequence: the one where he uses condiments to paint the number 3 on Stockard Channing’s (who knew?) sandwich bread.
