Happy Birthday America

AdAbraham Ortelius. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Antwerp, 1595. Shelfmark G1015 O6 1595 Cage. Folger Shakespeare Libraryd caption

The Folger Shakespeare Library has a page devoted to "Shakespeare in American Life." There are some interesting factoids there--did you know Thomas Edison almost became a Shakespearean actor?--and some general trivia connecting Shakespeare to America. (Remember, he knew about America and referenced it in The Tempest when Miranda says, "O brave new world..." Check out the site here.

Just Passing Through Shakespeare

Shakespeare, New Mexico is a ghost town. Here's more information about it.

Andy Griffith and Me...

I was once in an elevator with Andy Griffith. He smiled at me and asked which floor I needed. I told him and he pushed the button for the floor. I said thank you and he smiled again.
Andy Griffith punched my elevator button!!!
I once interviewed actor Joel Higgins, who costarred with Andy Griffith on a television show called Salvage-1. Higgins told me that of all the people he'd met in show business, Andy Griffith was the person who was most--"what you see is what you get." He admired him.
I watched The Andy Griffith Show and wanted to live in Mayberry.(Years later, while going to college in North Carolina, I used to pass by Mt. Airy, Griffith's hometown and the basis for Mayberry. It's still a small town, with a population of around 10,000 people.)
\I later learned that Andy Griffith could do a lot more than the folksy stuff he did in the Andy Griffith Show and later, in Matlock. (A big fave with my father, who was not unlike Matlock himself.)
He was terrific in a television movie called Savages, which was a riff on The Most Dangerous Game.
And he was outstanding in A Face in the Crowd.  Made in 1957, A Face in the Crowd is about a hobo who becomes an overnight media sensation and then begins to act like a monster. It's scarily relevant to today's celebrity culture. If you've never seen it, you should. It costars Patricia Neal, Lee Remick, Walter Matthau, Tony Franciosa and a slew of character actors you'd recognize.
Goodbye Andy...

There's an app for that!

Of course there's a Shakespeare app.  Designed for both the iPhone and the Ipad, Shakespeare is a free app with the complete works of Shakespeare (41 plays, 154 sonnets and 6 poems, including doubtful works) and a searchable concordance to find the exact word or phrase you’re looking for (with “relaxed” searching to find words close to your search).  Get more information and download the app here.  The app is a collaboration between Readdle and Shakespeare.comhttp://shakespeare.com/.

Hank Williams was the original redneck noir hero

I just got back from seeing The Last Ride, a story about Hank Williams' last days. The movie stars Henry Thomas as Hank Williams, and though he's a decade and a half older than Williams was when he died (29), the hard-living singer/songwriter looked even older.
I'm not a fan of what the movie calls "hillbilly music," but Hank Williams transcended categories. You know all the songs that form the soundtrack of this movie, and there were so many, many more--three of which hit the top 10 after he died.
If you took Hank Williams' life and turned it into a crime drama, you wouldn't have to change much of anything to make him a classic noir character.
His mother ran a whorehouse ("Beat that," he says to the young man driving him around, played--and played well--by newcomer Jesse James.) He was baffled and bedazzled by women and it got him into trouble. He drank and smoked and drugged. He raised hell. And he died after a bar fight. he had a double dipping of talent and he threw it away with both hands.
The movie is leisurely--at two hours, it's about 30 minutes too long--but it's worth catching, if for nothing  more than Henry Thomas' performance as Hank. You can see his charm. You can see his bitterness. You can see his world-weariness. It's a good performance in a movie that's not so good. (Although I will say this for the writers--they know their southern phrases and they're pitch perfect, which you don't often see.  When a girl named Wanda--played by Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco--tells James' character how her father died, she says "he died of the black lung." The "the" is important there--nobody from that part of the country ever just says "of black lung.")
If you're in the mood for a bio-pic with a noir-ish edge and a fair amount of heart, check out The Last Ride.

Shakespeare and the Jersey Shore

Yo Willie!
That's right, Shakespeare is not just for wordsnoots any more.  Here's Vinny Guadagnino talking about why he started acting Shakespeare.

The Return of NoHo Noir

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Esme Morales and her partner Edgar are back in this tale of zombies, skanky badge bunnies and more. Read it here.