A blog to showcase my opinions and thoughts. Various forms from Artist Profiles to Random Thoughts, as well as long, newspaper style opinion pieces. And everything in between.
"When I started the scene again, I looked into Jack's eyes. I locked in
and forgot about everything in the world except what we were doing at
that exact moment. Being in that moment. And anyone who's ever
had the honor of acting with Jack knows what I'm talking about. You had
no choice. He demanded that of you."
-John Stamos in his eulogy for Jack Klugman
I was on vacation sailing the rocky seas of the Gulf coast when Jack Klugman died. I didn't have the proper time to write a blog about him then, but 4 weeks later I do. Like many stars of the early days of Television, he made an impression on me. I will share a few of those memories. Much like Larry Hagman, who died last month (and I wrote a blog on), Jack Klugman was always there in some capacity for most of my
life. And just like Hagman, he was a fine stage actor then character
actor in movies and TV, and finally a lead in a tremendously successful
sitcom, The Odd Couple, followed by a unique drama called Quincy. I will
share some thoughts of my encounters with Klugman as I grew up and also add an Artist Profile separately if you wish to view that as well.
My one impression of Klugman is that he was very different than Hagman. Hagman was the good looking guy. Larger than life at times when he portrayed characters like J.R. Ewing on Dallas.
Both could be really intense in the way they played a role. But Klugman was the everyman. He would never play the role of an Astronaut or an Oil Tycoon. He played sports writers, or rogue coroners,billiard hustlers and trumpet players in dives. He really resonated with the everyman, while with Hagman he was a fascination. He showed us a world we never had access to. Klugman showed us how we look in our own world. One was a spectacle while the other was a reflection of the mirror we looked in to.
My first memory of Jack Klugman was watching The Odd Couple at my grandmothers house in the TV room, sitting on the couch with my grandmothers blind black poodle Angel. She was such a nice dog and very gentle. You could pet her all day and she just never moved but
you knew she loved it. I watched many a sitcom there, as I spent a good portion of my first 10 years in that house and on that couch.
We also watched a lot of shows like Let's Make A Deal, The Price Is Right, along with a whole whack of soap operas which I never paid attention to. Except for All My Children. That is the one that still sticks in my head. In those days, everyone from teens to great grandmas, and most in between were watching All My Children.
But this blog is about Jack Klugman. Of course, I was much too young to know anything about what he had done before The Odd Couple, although he was a seasoned veteran by then. But, I think Klugman and Randall were the perfect
comedy pairing, or at least they made it seem that way. Maybe they
weren't actually those characters, but they made it seem that way. I
love Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathau, but I never got that sense from the movie. Jack Klugman was Oscar Madison, and he made him his own.
Two single, middle aged men living together was something very foreign in those days. There was even talk the show would not air because it was perceived that it was about homosexuality. The opening they created, now famous, was formulated to stop those fears. But it made for a great situation comedy. The show was not a ratings hit, but it was very funny and classic TV. That is how I remember it, and if you watch the reruns today it still stands up. However, as all good things come to an end, so did The Odd Couple. In 1975, after 5 years it was done. But Jack Klugman would not be out of work long. He landed in another time slot, one of my other favorite memories of 1970's TV.
I used to love the Sunday night NBC Mysteries. McMillan and Wife,
Columbo, McCloud and some others, but I don't remember Quincy from
those. But that is how Quincy started. Watching them in my basementwith the lime green flat carpet completely worn from years of
rambunctious playing. It seemed that was the place I
watched them all. And I certainly watched them all. Part of the joy was
that you didn't know which one you were going to get until right up to
the time the opening ended. In those days, we didn't have a remote control
nor something at the bottom of the screen to tell us what was on. And
although there was TV Guide, and my parents and grandmother always
bought it, I never read it. So, the surprise was always
there. In later years, I actually collected all the TV Guides that my
parents and grandmother had bought. My grandmother knew that and she
saved them all for me. Whenever I went over to her house, she always gave me a shopping bag full of them.
I watched Quincy in first run and also watched the reruns everyday while in high school. I
just loved them, even though they weren't terribly creative shows.
Klugman really sold that character, as he always did. There was one common thread in both the Oscar Madison and the Quincy characters.Anger, caring and frustration. Klugman could play all those at once. It is a great talent he had. It was also something he learned and honed in the very early days of his acting and television career. "We didn't start in television. We'd been making rounds. We'd been in summer stock. We learned how to work with characters...we were stretching and we were creative. We were interested in the theater. We saw every play. I saw Streetcar From Desire 17 times....it was inspiring. I learned from it. Every penny I could get...studied, observed. And we all did. We were excited. There was no money it...We were curious. We wanted to act. And we loved it."
Jack Klugman wasn't iconic. The shows he was on were not iconic. He will never be thought of as a great actor. He was pretty good. He wont be remembered in 50 years like Brando, Deniro or Pacino. But what I can say about him is that he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. When clever sitcoms were in vogue, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Newhart Show, All In The Family, etc, he was on The Odd Couple. When iconic shows like McMillan And Wife, Columbo, McCloud were the biggest shows on TV, he was in Quincy. He always seemed to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of whatever was out there. In that way, he was just very sharp. Astute. And he started out that way. In the 1950s when Playhouse productions started to pervade the TV airwaves, he made sure to find his way on some of the best ones. He made sure to get his foot in the door. And he never seemed to take it out. He did the same with Rod Serling. He was in the production that helped launch Serling's career, The Velvet Alley, and then appeared 4 times in The Twilight Zone when that was one of the most popular shows on Television.
Jack Klugman played the everyman. But he played him as extraordinary, yet flawed and vulnerable. And he did it as well as anyone can. Much like Dustin Hoffman does today. That is why the audience always related to him and why he endured. At any age, at any stage, he was you. That is how I will remember him, and why I will always stop to watch an episode of The Odd Couple or Quincy or whatever he was in. He stood out in a world that the everyman usually didn't stand out.
As Halloween approaches, we are all going to hear a song that every one of us has had many times before. As the years have gone by, it has become synonymous with Halloween, just as Felice Navidad has with Christmas. But how many of us know the origins of how the song came to be? Today marks 50 years since it became a number one hit. So, I will give you some of the history of the song, and the man behind it, who while he did other things, will always be remembered for that one song.
(Note that most of the text below I took direct from Wikipedia, mostly verbatim and made a few small changes.)
"Monster Mash" is a 1962 novelty
song and the best-known song by Bobby "Boris" Pickett. The song was
released as a single on Gary S. Paxton's Garpax Records label in August
1962 along with a full-length LP called The Original Monster Mash, which
contained several other monster-themed tunes. The "Monster Mash" single
reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 20 of that
year. Pickett was an aspiring actor who sang with a
band called The Cordials at night while going to auditions during the
day. One night, while performing with his band, Pickett did a monologue
in imitation of horror movie actor Boris Karloff while performing The
Diamonds' "Little Darlin'". The audience loved it and fellow band member
Lenny Capizzi encouraged Pickett to do more with the Karloff imitation.
Pickett and Capizzi composed "Monster Mash" and recorded it with
Gary S. Paxton, Leon Russell, Johnny McCrae, Rickie Page, and Terry
Berg, credited as "The Crypt-Kickers". The song was
partially inspired by Paxton's earlier novelty hit "Alley Oop", as well
as by the Mashed Potato dance craze of the era. A variation on the
Mashed Potato was danced to "Monster Mash", in which the footwork was
the same but Frankenstein-style monster gestures were made with the arms
and hands.
"We very seldom had a musical accompaniment: we sang
accapella. We did mostly cover versions and one of our big numbers was
'Summertime' because Billy Capizzi had a voice like Pavarotti he could hit
three high C's. Anyway we did the tune 'Little Darlin'' that The Diamonds
had recorded. I asked Lenny if I could do a Boris Karloff impression in that
part where the bass baritone sings. The audience loved it and then Lenny
said immediately that we should do a novelty record. These things sell and
with Lenny's voice we could get Gary Paxton to produce it. Gary had previous
success with 'Alley-Oop' and was the lead singer with 'The Hollywood Argyles'
when he was 17. At this time he was one of the hottest young producers in
Hollywood. One Saturday in May 1962 we wrote the song and put
it on a Wollensak tape recorder. We took it to Gary Paxton and he said, 'I
want to produce this, it is a hit record.' That was the story, it was a fluke.
When I recorded 'Monster Mash' it was just a lark and I thought a few Boris
Karloff freaks might enjoy it. It was number one in eight weeks!"
Gary Paxton at the time had success two years earlier with
"Alley-Oop". He was the lead singer for The Hollywood Argyles when he
was 17. But now, at this moment in time, he was one of the hottest young
producers in Hollywood. So he was the only guy we knew in the music
business. One Saturday in May 1962, we wrote the song and put it on a
Wollensak tape-recorder and we took it to Gary Paxton and he said "I
want to produce this. This is a hit record", so he knew from the start.
That's the story. I'm an actor. I've done a lot of acting since then,
but it was a fluke. When I went in to record "Monster Mash" I thought it
was just a lark and a few Boris Karloff freaks will enjoy this. Gosh,
it was number one in eight weeks.
-Bobby Pickett
The song is narrated by a mad scientist whose monster, late one
evening, rises from a slab to perform a new dance. The dance becomes
"the hit of the land" when the scientist throws a party for other
monsters. The producers came up with several low-budget but effective
sound effects for the recording. For example, the sound of a coffin
opening was imitated by a rusty nail being pulled out of a board. The
sound of a cauldron bubbling was actually water being bubbled through a
straw, and the chains rattling were simply chains being dropped on a
tile floor. Pickett also impersonated horror film actor Bela Lugosi as
Dracula with the lyric "Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?"
Below is a profile of Bobby Pickett, in more detail than this song gives. It shows his early fascination with the genre that led to the song that made him famous.
Today I am starting a new feature for my blog. I wont do one a week, but I will do them periodically, possibly once a month. Instead of a pure artist profile start to finish as I am accustomed to doing, I will do a profile, but focus on someone who was thrust into the limelight and then seemed to disappear once that vehicle finished. Then, try to see how they got there and why they vanished once it concluded.
Most of us had never heard of Daniel J. Travanti before
he rocketed to fame on Hill Street Blues. We also have not seen much of
him since. How did a relative unknown land the lead role, at age 40, on one of the most revered television shows of all time? Why did it take him so long to attain such a role? Where did he come from and whatever happened to him? And
why has he basically disappeared from the limelight after Hill Street
Blues ended?
"I was born an actor. It's just there and irresistible. It seemed absolutely correct to me. There's just no question."
Travanti, the youngest of five children, was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to Italian immigrant parents on March 7, 1940. During
his teen years, he was an athlete and good student, earning
scholarships to Harvard University, Princeton University, and Dartmouth
College, though he eventually attended the University of
Wisconsin–Madison. Known as The Kenosha Kid, he was a genuine football hero
from the heart of Wisconsin and a High School All American Honorable Mention. He completed his undergraduate work in college in only three years, which was very rare in those days. He starred
in every play at the University of Wisconsin over five semesters, also something that had never been done before
"I discovered I'm here to entertain the
folks. That's what I am, an entertainer. It's a gift, Gods gift to
me. I didn't have anything to do with it in the first place."
Despite earning full scholarships to Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth he didn't attend any of those. Because his father was so "tightfisted, convinced he'd still have to
spend a lot of money," Travanti says, "I ended up at the University of
Wisconsin in Madison," to which he earned a General Motors Scholarship. In addition to graduating in three years with several majors he also found time to
act in theatres around town, attending open auditions and repeatedly
landing the leads. Experience, not classrooms, shaped Travanti's
acting.
"I don't believe in acting or playwriting majors," he says. "I
say go to college to furnish your hungry and thirsty mind. Learn and
explore, above all. Study language, language, and language; if you're
going to be an actor, that's your tool and your toy."
From the beginning Travanti had large ambitions.
"When I was growing up, I wanted three things: to make Phi Beta Kappa,
to be an all-American athlete, and win an Academy Award. Well, I've done
two of those, but I haven't won an Academy Award. Two Emmys don't
count. I've always wanted to be a sought-after actor. I get sterling
reviews; still nothing. It's easy to implode."
Immediately after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Travanti
attended the Yale School of Drama, but dropped out after one year. "It
was moribund," he says. "Later, when Robert Brustein took over, it
changed. But when I was there, if you finished Yale School of Drama, you
were finished as an actor."
By the early '60s, Travanti had relocated to New York and was pounding the pavement looking to carve out a living and build his resume. Not satisfied with what he was finding there, in short order he relocated to Los Angeles "for personal reasons,"
he says without elaborating. "I got guest shots here and there. But I
resisted being in L.A. I resisted accepting shallow material. I always
felt I was destined for other things. I watched the actors around me.
Some resisted and left. Others became very comfortable and very sad. I
was there for 29 years."
"I didn't want to appear on tv. I was going to be a serious theater actor"
Hist first television appearance was on Route 66 in 1963. In 1965, by the time he was 25, he was co-starring with Colleen Dewhurst in a
road company version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Moving to Los
Angeles in 1966, Travanti appeared on scores of TV shows, playing
misfit high schoolers and braying bad guys (he billed himself under his
actual last name of Travanty until the early '70s).
"I was the cause of my own discomfort...often"
For many years he was a guest actor, who found small, one time roles on many of the popular dramas and sitcoms of the day. Of the many he appeared in, some of those included The Patty Duke Show,
Flipper, The Defenders, Gunsmoke, East Side West Side, Love On A
Rooftop (the above clip posted), Mission Impossible and Cannon. He has commented that he wanted a series, but he really didn't want a series.
"I was always disgruntled."
In later years, we came to know Travanti as Frank Furillo on Hill Street Blues. He played the Captain of a hectic, pressure cooker police station who could keep his cool under the pressure. The character was also a recovering alcoholic. Most do not know that Travanti was also a severe alcoholic who almost let that affliction consume him years earlier. What most also don't know is that unlike his character, Travanti could not keep it together and broke down on stage long before that.
"its easier to play someone else, I don't want to be me"
In 1973, Travanti says, "I was a chronic malcontent. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. By
every standard, I was a success, but it wasn't enough. None of my
achievements ever seemed to be enough. They didn't make me happy."
"I wanted to die. This does not happen to Travanti. He
does not fail like this. I mean, you don't go from Mr. Completely
Successful to a dishrag just like that."
Yes, you do. You do if you're Daniel J. Travanti on stage in
Indianapolis in January 1973, doing a play called Twigs with Sada Thompson, , and you are an alcoholic and it's catching
up with you. Mr. Completely Successful fell apart on stage in front of the
audience. The show had to be stopped. He didn't understand it, thought
it was a crazy fluke, thought it would never happen again. But it did
happen again the next night.
"All the years of agony, crazy
relationships, demons inside of me, terrible fears I couldn't face
and this fine mind of mine wasn't helping. I was petrified. I was hit in
an area that really terrified me. Everyone can be reached in a particular
way, and the best way to reach me was to threaten my career, my work. That
got my attention fast."
He went on to do 15 more performances before he had to stop performing that play. He had finally bottomed out and had to admit what a lot of others knew. He was an alcoholic and it was destroying him.
His agent urged him to get help.
"My agent knew I was an alcoholic
when I was 25. He knew an alcoholic, knew the behavior he just didn't
label it `alcoholism. And of course, when he told me, I thought he was
exaggerating. I kept saying to myself, I'm not that bad."
Was Travanti that bad?
"Of course I was. Every bit that bad. Why else would he say such a
thing? He had no axe to grind. He wasn't out to get me."
How bad actually was he?
Travanti drank after everyone else had gone home.
Every night he drank himself to sleep.
"It's hard for me to believe
this now, but I actually believed in my soul, every fiber of my
being that I could not live my life not drinking, and that I would
never
sleep again."
Once he went over the edge one
day in Indianapolis the process of healing began. It was a long
process, many years, with many close calls and relapses, but he has
never turned back.
He describes himself as:
"an egomaniac with an inferiority complex".
It was total alcoholic behavior, addictive behavior, something Travanti readily admits now.
"I overdid
everything. I was in four major productions at Yale which had never
been done before that time. Then I got to New York. All of a sudden the
buildings didn't care anything about an egomaniac from Kenosha,
Wisconsin, by way of Yale, and I felt I was fizzling out. And I was,
because I had pushed it so far, so fast and accomplished every young mans
dream. I had won literally every single academic honor there is to win in
higher education, including Iron Cross at Wisconsin. But nothing was
ever enough. I was never satisfied, like a demon, warring all the time."
Travanti believes his recovery began on August 14, 1973. That was the night he finally admitted to himself that he was an alcoholic and wasn't the super human he always claimed or thought he could be.
"I had been reduced. It was ego
deflation in depth, which is exactly what I needed, exactly what had to
happen to me because God was not getting my attention."
Once he had recovered, he went back to school and earned his masters degree in English literature at Loyola of Merrymount in Los
Angeles. As well, since he wasn't an in demand actor, he had to resort to appearing in commercials to earn a living, something he was loathe to do. But he did it, and he got by earning a decent living that way. He would appear in 15 commercials a year for 4 or 5 years and that allowed him to retool his career.
"I did it for survival. It seemed the correct thing to do (going back to school). It
had been in the back of my mind for a long time. And also I went back
because I now had all of this spare time. Suddenly every day was a sober
day. It was a shock. What will I do, now that I'm actually awake all
these hours I'm awake and my brains fertile and fervent? What will I
do with it? It's running wild in there and it needs to be fed something.
Listen: After I finished off all my course work, I even audited a course
in medieval lit. If you had told me a few years ago that I would be
choosing to audit a course in medieval literature, I would have said you're
out of your mind. Never happen. Never."
In addition, he started to take steady roles that he would never have accepted when he was high and mighty back in the day. One of those was a soap opera, General Hospital, in 1978. He had a six month run on that show, which was the #1 rated soap at the time.
At that point, he was very disillusioned with the industry and the types of shows they were putting out. He was almost ready to give up tv and film acting and go back strictly to the theater.
"All of those influences from my teens, 40's and 50's,
, radio, tv, theater, movies have faded considerably for me. Very
disappointing"
When he went in to read for Hill Street Blues, the secretary at the office recognized him from General Hospital, something he was not pleased or proud about. He didn't want to be known as a soap opera actor nor was he happy all those years playing the bad boy, the bad guy or the tough from the street. In fact, he was actually leary of taking any series that would typecast him, which is what actually happened anyway. He almost refused Hill Street Blues in its original form because it was a cop show.
"I'm not going to be labelled or stamped, this
nationality or that nationality. I can play anything. I can play the
king of England or a mafia boss. And I have."
Travanti was cast as Captain Frank Furillo on Hill Street Blues, a job he held down from 1981 through 1987. It is what most know him for and the work he is most proud of to this day. When Travanti read the pilot for Hill Street Blues, he turned it
down precisely because "it was brilliant and complex": He wanted it too
much. Those emotional contradictions had put him in a bind on more than
one occasion, resulting in his striding into auditions with the
attitude that "I don't have to prove anything or even get the part," he
says. "I'm there to entertain the people who are auditioning me and make
them wonder who that masked man is."
He read for Hill Street creator and producer Stephen Bochco and Bochco commented to Travanti that he was terrific.Travanti had so gotten used to being disappointed and not getting great roles that his first thought was:
"So!....why aren't you going to hire me?"
Travanti was cast on Hill Street Blues on March 7th, 1980 on his 40th birthday.
He received five Emmy
nominations for his work on the show.
He admits he's a smart aleck and difficult, maybe even self-sabotaging.
Personal actions play their role in a career and a life, he says,
though he argues that the concept of free will is overrated. "I'm a man
of strong opinions and intellect, and I scare people," he says. "And I'm
not going to pretend I want to be in a project if it doesn't showcase
my abilities." The script must also meet certain standards: "It has to
have resonance, celebrate life, and be highly entertaining."
While on Hill Street Blues, he also appeared in two television movies. One of those was Adam (1983), the story of the disappearance of Adam Walsh, the son of America's Most Wanted star John Walsh.
Travanti received an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special Emmy nomination for this role.
In 1986, Travanti starred in the HBO broadcast biographical film Murrow, portraying Edward R. Murrow. He received a Cable Ace nomination for this role.
He considers Hill Street Blues, Adam and Murrow to be his best work. By the conclusion of Hill Street Blues in 1987 he felt he had established himself and was hoping for the better quality roles in tv, film and broadway to come his way. They never did.
"Every good project I have ever done has had the same set
of characteristics. Determined men and women, fighting against the
odds..against the current and the naysayers"
Travanti's stint on
Hill Street Blues was
clearly a career high point.
He seemed to have conquered his demons and achieved the
professional success, on his own terms, that he always wanted, and
waited 20 years for. So, what happened? Why did it all go away?
Like most actors, Daniel J. Travanti is riveting when he is acting, but boring and hard to take when he is just being himself. Once
he gave up his dependence on alcohol, and could not lean on that
anymore, when the work dried up, he became a malcontent again.
"What do i want?. simple I want to give my abilities to a cause..namely the script"
While he was on Hill Street Blues he got many offers to do other projects which he turned down.. He felt the quality was not up to his standard. Once his run ended on Hill Street, the offers stopped coming. His star was fading and his reputation for being difficult and very hard to work with followed him.
"I had clout, but that was very brief"
He was the hot actor on the great show, so he got offered a lot of great
things. Once he was off that show, he was the difficult actor who was
not hot anymore and went back to being hard to work with. He has never
recovered from that, although his talent was still there. It was always
there.
"I thought, this is what I should always be doing and then it went away"
To listen to him being interviewed, he is obviously very difficult to
deal with. That is something he admits. It is what makes him so
commanding on the screen, but what also makes it hard for him to get
work..to this day.
He doesn't like to take any direction and wishes the director would just get out of the way and let the actors act. That is not the type of attitude that inspires people to hire him.
"no more dumb bad guys, no matter how much they offer"
Like most actors, Daniel J. Travanti is riveting when he is acting, but boring and hard to take when he is just being himself.He likes acting but he hates the business of acting and that soured him then..and now.
"we are not that interesting. It is all an illusion. It's a lovely illusion. If it works"
In 1993, he starred in another series, Missing Persons, which he actually didn't enjoy and mocked as a poor quality show. He actually told all that to the producer, who tried to have him fired. After that, he never got offered anything substantial in television or film.
"You can't be going beyond the limits of your character. That's bad acting"
He mocks the poor quality of almost everything he is offered then complains that he never gets offered anything anymore.
Not that he's eager to do
another series. "It really depends," he says. "I don't need the money,
and I'm no longer willing to audition for a series." Over the years,
Travanti has become less obsessed with stardom. Acting will always be
his top priority, but he has other interests now. Today he is a
committed environmentalist and vegetarian -- "I call myself a
planetarian" -- and lives far from Hollywood in Lake
Forest, Ill., with three cats and two dogs.
The years have taken their toll. The smooth delivery and
charm that were once Daniel J. Travanti are now unease and hesitation.
The talent just wore away to the point that he is hard to watch. He can
still act, because he is a great actor, but he is hard to look at..or
watch. When that happens, an actor finds it very tough to get work,
especially when he is inherently difficult as Travanti is...self
admittedly.
On acting:
"Its tough. It is a very tough life. You only do it because you can't not do it" He used to be quick and energetic. Now he is slow and lethargic. The
bloom came off the rose long before his prime because he wasted his
best years being difficult and an alcoholic. He peaked before he was
ready to deal with it.
He is a great actor because he is troubled personally in real life.
He understands how to play real emotion because he has experienced real
emotional strife in his life. His art is his salvation.
"My regret is that I have much more to offer and that I have never lived up to my abilities"
He mostly now does local theater when he works at all. In 2010 he resurfaced on Criminal Minds in this striking role.
Ray Bradbury passed away yesterday. He lived a long and
fruitful, seemingly happy life. He spent most of his life doing what he
loved: Writing and creating. I am not much for the Rest in Peace
posts. It's not my thing. I would rather focus on what he did and some
of the advice he had for writers. So I will do that.
Bradbury suffered a stroke in 1999 that left him partially dependent on a wheelchair for mobility.Despite this Bradbury continued to write, and had even written an essay on his inspiration for writing for the New Yorker published only a week prior to his death.
"I don't think life is worth living unless you are doing something you love completely."
-Ray Bradbury
Born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, Ray Bradbury died June 5, 2012 at the age of 91. Bradbury was a reader and writer throughout his youthwho
was greatly influenced by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Bradbury was
especially impressed with Poe's ability to draw readers into his works.
In his youth, he spent much time in the Carnegie library in Waukegan, Illinois, reading such authors as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and his favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Bradbury's first love was magic. If he had not become a writer, he likely would have become a magician. He tells of an encounter with a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico, after which he was determined to become a writer for the rest of his life.
Bradbury has a dislike for college and did not attend. He described it as stifling to the creativity of a writer. He preferred libraries.
"Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges
and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t
have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the
Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to
the library three days a week for 10 years."
-Ray Bradbury
It was in UCLA's Powell Library, in a study room with typewriters for rent, that Bradbury wrote his classic story of a book-burning future, The Fireman, which contained about 25,000 words. It was later published at about 50,000 words under the name, Fahrenheit 451, for a total cost of $9.80, due to the library's typewriter rental fees of ten cents per half-hour.
Having been inspired by science fiction heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Bradbury began to publish science fiction stories in fanzines in 1938.
He became a full-time writer by the end of 1942. His first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival, was published in 1947. Many of the stories in that collection were featured in Ray Bradbury Theater on Television, including The Coffin episode posted above and The Crowd posted below.
A chance encounter in a Los Angeles bookstore with the British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood gave Bradbury the opportunity to put The Martian Chronicles into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed.
He is generally labeled a
science fiction writer. Bradbury resisted that categorization, however:
"First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451,
based on reality. It was named so to represent the temperature at which
paper ignites. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a
depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles
is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see?
That's the reason it's going to be around a long time — because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power."
Below I have listed some more of his more famous works.
"It Came From Outer Space"
It Came From Outer Space was a 1953 movie adapted from Bradbury's Atomic Monster.
"I Sing the Body Electric"
Bradbury's short story I Sing the Body Electric was adapted for the 100th episode of The Twilight Zone. The episode was first aired on May 18, 1962.
"Dandelion Wine"
Dandelion Wine is a 1957 novel taking place in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois — a pseudonym for Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. The novel developed from the short story "Dandelion Wine" which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine. The title refers to a wine made with dandelion petals and other ingredients, commonly citrus fruit. In the story, dandelion wine, as made by the protagonist's grandfather, serves as a metaphor for packing all of the joys of summer into a single bottle.
"The Illustrated Man"
The Illustrated Man is a 1951 book of eighteen science fiction short stories by Ray Bradbury
that explores the nature of mankind. While none of the stories has a
plot or character connection with the next, a recurring theme is the
conflict of the cold mechanics of technology and the psychology of people.
The book was made into a 1969 film starring Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom. It was adapted by Howard B. Kreitsek from the stories "The Veldt", "The Long Rain", and "The Last Night of the World", and directed by Jack Smight.
"Something Wicked This Way Comes"
The 1983 horror film Something Wicked This Way Comes, starring Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce, is based on the Bradbury novel of the same name.
In two significant interviews among the many Bradbury gave over the years, I have come up with many quotes that explain Bradbury's life and writing philosophy. They are listed below.
I've always claimed that the ability to fantasize is the ability to survive. The ability to fantasize is the ability to grow.
I've
always tended to be a visual person and myths are very visual. And I
began to draw and I felt the urge to carry on these myths. If I'm
anything at all I'm not really a science fiction writer, I'm a writer of
fairy tales and modern myths about technology and my stories are easy to
remember because I was influenced at an early age by the real tellers
of tales of all history. You start out through time, 2000 years ago, and
learn all the myths then you become a good storyteller. It's in your
blood by the time you start to write. I'm glad for that background.
I discovered early on if you wanted it you went after it and you got
it. Most don't ever go anywhere or want anything, so they never get it.
You must never think at the typewriter. You must feel.
The worst thing you do when you think is you lie. ...what you try to
do as a creative person is find out who you really are...and not to
lie. Try to tell the truth all the time.
Thinking is to be a
corrective in our lives. It is not to be the center of our lives. Living
is supposed to be the center of our lives.
I love Dylan Thomas. I don't know what the hell he is writing about half the time, but he sounds good.
If there is no feeling there cannot be great art.
A typewriter should be a Ouija board. Your hands move on it and reveal things about yourself you didn't know.
you must galvanize people so they want to be completely alive and live forever.
Absolutely
none (conflict between science and religion). The processes they are
going through are the two halves of a coin. Because everything ends in
mystery. Scientists have theories and theologians have myths. And they're
both the same thing. And they end up in ignorance.
The basic problems of science fiction are philosophical ones.
In order to be excellent first you have to be mediocre.
A writers past is the most important thing he has.
Sometimes an object, a mask, a ticket stub, anything at all helps me
remember a whole experience. And out of that may come an idea for a
story.
I don't turn my back on anything. My art has grown out of many things. The good, the bad and the indifferent.
The problem of good and evil fascinates me as a writer.
A
writer moves about, observing, seeing as much as he can, trying to
guess how man will play the game. Constantly measuring the way life is
against the way he feels it ought to be. He's a magnet passing through a
factual world taking from it what he needs.
The time we have alone. The time we have for walking for riding a bicycle is the most important time for a writer. Escaping from the typewriter is part of the creative process. You have to give the subconscious time to think.
Real thinking always occurs on the sub conscious level. I never
consciously set out to write a certain story. The idea must originate
somewhere deep within me.
A story sells itself, always, but not
when it's sitting in the files. A writer needs an agent to go out into
the marketplace and sell his wares.
Any society where natural man, a pedestrian, becomes the intruder
and un-natural man, encased in a solid steel shell becomes his
molester, is a science fiction nightmare.
A story should be like a
river..flowing and never stopping. Your readers passengers on a boat
whirling downstream to constantly refreshing and changing scenery. My
readers must become the main character.
There's no real way of thanking my own teachers except through
teaching others. We all need one person to look us in the face and say
"you can do what you want to do. I tell young writers you can never be
James Joyce, you can never be Mickey Spillane you can only be
yourself." I tell them it doesn't have to be the greatest but it does
have to be you.
After a good day of writing I feel like I have been for a long walk in another world.
I'm
a storyteller. That's all I've ever tried to be. I guess in ancient
time I would have been somewhere in the marketplace alongside the
magicians, delighting the people. I'd rather delight and entertain than
anything else.
I worry about rejection. But not too much. The real fear isn't
rejection. But that there won't be enough time in your life to write all
the stories you have in you. Every time I put a new one in the mail, I
know I have beaten death again. As of yesterday, Ray Bradbury could beat death no more. But he lived
long enough to leave a legacy that endures after he is now no longer
with us.
"I didnt make any money when we had the hits. If you break even you are lucky. .....when we went to Japan we had 28 people. It is easy to see how you can lose money."
Opening Remarks
Al Stewart writes songs. That is what he does. He did have some chart success in the late 1970's, but that was brief. At the end of the day, he is a folk singer/songwriter and always did the same thing, and still does. He gained success because he hooked up with a producer, Alan Parsons, who knew how to turn his type of music into popular hits. The concept album, something he has always done and something that meshed well when he hooked up with Alan Parsons, who was already doing a lot of that. While Al Stewart was a fine performer he really was a better writer and composer. The concept album was something that worked very well within his style of composing long songs deep in historical content. He once said I can't write a song that is 3 minutes long. It isn't me.
"They all run over six minutes. I cant write short songs."
Alastair Ian Stewart was born September 5, 1945 in Glasgow, Scotland
Though born in Glasgow he grew up in the town of Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England after moving from Scotland with his mother.
Born in Scotland, raised in Dorset and gaining fame in London, Stewart moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. He married in the mid-1990s, and he, his wife and their two daughters moved to Marin County, California.
Stewart came to stardom as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from history.
Stewart was a key figure in a fertile era in British music and he appears throughout the musical folklore of the age. He played at the first ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970, and knew Yoko Ono before she met John Lennon.
Stewart shared a London apartment with a young Paul Simon, and hosted at the legendary Les Cousins folk club in London in the 1960s
He has worked with Peter White, Alan Parsons, Jimmy Page, Richard Thompson, Rick Wakeman, Tori Amos and Tim Renwick and recently has played with Dave Nachmanoff and former Wings lead-guitarist Laurence Juber.
Having bought his first guitar from future Police guitarist Andy Summers, Stewart traded in his electric guitar for an acoustic guitar when he was offered a weekly slot at Bunjies Coffee House in London's Soho in 1965.
"When Bob Dylan came along his thing was writing lyrics. I could do that a lot easier than playing the guitar. ...After seeing Jimi Hendrix one night I actually sold my electric guitar....I really wanted to be a top 10 hit guy,..but I wasn't very good at it. When Dylan came along I said to myself. "I can do that"."
From there, he went on to compete at the Les Cousins folk club on Greek Street, where he played alongside Cat Stevens, Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, Roy Harper and Ralph McTell
It was at this time that Stewart also met Yoko Ono, who persuaded him to part with the only £100 he had in the world to put towards her film entitled No 4, a compilation of naked bottoms.
Stewart's first record was the single "The Elf" (backed with a version of the Yardbirds' "Turn into Earth"), which was released in 1966 on Decca Records, and included guitar work from Jimmy Page (later of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin), the first of many leading guitarists Stewart worked with.
Stewart then signed to Columbia Records (CBS in the UK), for whom he released six albums. Though the first four of these attracted relatively little commercial interest, Stewart's popularity and cult-following grew steadily through albums that contain some of Stewart's most incisive and introspective songwriting.
Stewart's debut album Bed-Sitter Images was released on LP in 1967
Love Chronicles (1969) was notable for the 18-minute title track, an anguished autobiographical tale of sexual encounters that was the first mainstream record release ever to include the word "fucking". It was voted "Folk Album of the Year" by the UK music magazine Melody Maker, and also features Jimmy Page and Richard Thompson on guitar.
Largely written during a deep depression, the songwriting on Love Chronicles is generally stark and features what is usually credited as the first use of the word "f***ing" in popular commercial music. At least one song, "Old Compton Street Blues", was apparently recorded with a heavy cold.
His third album, Zero She Flies followed in 1970 and included a number of shorter songs which ranged from acoustic ballads and instrumentals to songs that featured electric lead guitar.
The term "zero she flies" comes from early aviation and refers to the flight of a plane (typically a biplane) flying blind but exactly on course through darkness or dense fog.
It is notable for being the first of his albums to include a song with historical references, namely "Manuscript" which refers to the events which led to the outbreak of World War I.
In 1970, Stewart jumped into a car with fellow musician Ian Anderson and headed to the small town of Pilton, Somerset. There, at Michael Eavis's Worthy Farm, Stewart performed at the first ever Glastonbury festival to a field of 1,000 hippies.
On the back of his growing success, Stewart released Orange in 1972. It was written after a tumultuous break-up with his girlfriend and muse, Mandi, and was very much a transitional album, combining songs in Stewart's confessional style with more intimations of the historical themes that he would increasingly adopt.
The fifth release, Past, Present and Future (1973), was Stewart's first album to receive a proper release in the United States, via Janus Records. It echoed a traditional historical storytelling style and contained the song "Nostradamus," a long (9:43) track in which Stewart tied into the re-discovery of the claimed seer's writings by referring to selected possible predictions about twentieth century people and events. While too long for mainstream radio airplay at that time, the song became a hit on many U.S. college/university radio stations, which were flexible about running times.
On the U.K. concert tour that promoted the album, Stewart is quoted as saying
"My first four albums have been, for me, an apprenticeship. The new album.....is my thesis".
Modern Times is Al Stewart's sixth studio album, released in 1975.
The blonde woman on the album cover is Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's first wife, Ginger. The Cord automobile Stewart is sitting in belonged to Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
Centered in the cover, holding a mirror reflecting a bright light toward the viewer, as on Stewart's previous album, Past, Present and Future, the U. S. version of the album features the Marvel Comics character Doctor Strange.
It was also the first album where Alan Parsons was involved, which would lead later to his greatest commercial success.
"I knew Alan. I was sitting with him in a restaurant in 1974. I said I am making a new record would you like to produce it? He said yes. That was all there was to it."
"Sirens of Titan" is based on the novel of the same name by Kurt Vonnegut.
Year of the Cat is the seventh studio album by Al Stewart, released in 1976 and engineered by Alan Parsons; it is considered his masterpiece. Its sales helped by the hit single "Year of the Cat", "one of those 'mysterious woman' songs," co-written by Peter Wood. The album reached #5 on the Billboard charts.
The title track derives from a song Stewart wrote in 1966 called "Foot of the Stage" with prescient lyrics about Tony Hancock, one of Britain's favorite comedians who tragically committed suicide two years later.When Stewart discovered that Hancock was not well-known in the United States, he went back to his original title "Year of the Cat".
Stewart had all of the music and orchestration written and completely recorded before he even had a title of any of the songs. He stated that he has done this for 6 of his albums, and he often writes four different sets of lyrics for each song.
"I don't idolize guitars. I use them to write songs. To me that is what it's all about."
The other single from the album was "On the Border".
Stewart wrote "Lord Grenville" about the Elizabethan sailor and explorer Sir Richard Grenville.
Time Passages is the eighth studio album by Stewart, released in 1978. It is the follow-up Year of the Cat. The album, like its predecessor, was produced by Alan Parsons. The album reached #10 on the Billboard charts. The title track reached #7, and "A song on the radio", another song from the album reached #29 on the charts and continues to get major airplay to this day.
The album's title track reached #7 on the Billboard charts.
and "End of the Day" were both co-written by Peter White.
"A Man For All Seasons" refers to Sir Thomas More, statesman under Henry VIII of England and a Catholic martyr.
"The Palace of Versailles" is about the residence of the French Kings and the site of the beginnings of the French Revolution.
"Life in Dark Water" - references the Marie Celeste, an American brigantine merchant ship famous for having been discovered in 1872 in the Atlantic Ocean, unmanned and apparently abandoned (one lifeboat was missing), despite the fact that the weather was fine and her crew had been experienced and able seamen.
24 Carrots is the ninth studio album by Stewart, released in 1980. The single Midnight Rocks reached the top 30 on the Billboard charts in 1980, reaching #24.
24 Carrots did not sell as well than its two immediate predecessors and Stewart was dropped by his record label Arista and his popularity declined. Despite his lower profile and waning commercial success, he continued to tour the world, record albums, and maintain a loyal fanbase. There was a four-year gap between his next two albums, the highly political Russians and Americans (1984) and the upbeat pop-oriented Last Days of the Century (1988), which appeared on smaller labels and had lower sales than his previous works.
"90 percent of my job is spent sitting either in airports or on airplanes. I, what, spend 75 minutes on stage and I usually clock up about 12 hours flying and traveling and waiting in order to get to those 75 minutes on stage. The other day it took me 19 hours to get from L.A. to Albany. Left at 7:00 in the morning and got there at 2:00 the following morning. It drives me nuts, because the gig is not what I'm paid for — what I'm paid for is pushing around baggage and sitting in airports. So I write about airplanes because that's where I spend so much of my time."
In 1995, Stewart was invited to play at the 25th anniversary Glastonbury festival, taking to the same stage he had graced in 1970 at the first ever festival. Stewart and guitarist Dave Nachmanoff released a live album, Uncorked (Live with Dave Nachmanoff) on Stewart's label, Wallaby Trails Recordings, in 2009. Stewart and Nachmanoff played the Glastonbury Festival 40th anniversary in June 2010 on the Acoustic stage.
On occasion, Stewart has set poems to music, such as "My Enemies Have Sweet Voices" (lyrics by the poet Pete Morgan) on the 1970 album Zero She Flies. During his 1999 UK tour, Stewart invited Morgan to read the lyrics as he performed this song in the Leeds City Varieties Theatre show of 7 November 1999.
