Sunday Morning in Tinseltown: My L.A. in 54 Hours

Into Los Angeles, the almost-on-time Amtrak bus drops me off at my cathedral-in-waiting, Union Station. The day is perfect. No city is more inviting under the sun — nor more ominous by night than Hollywood ...

I hop a Dash (little busses that feel like living rooms on wheels) to the town’s newest icon, the Disney Concert Hall. There, I land a ticket for tomorrow morning’s Philharmonic. Onto my motel at Sunset and Vermont. After many sleepovers, they are getting to like me. Surprise, they even know how to smile. "You are one of our regular guests!" A King size bed downstairs for King David, complete with my first live-in cockroach, and I mean the first at this Travellodge. With wash cloth in hand, I stomp it flat and toss the cloth with it to the floor. An hour later, comes another roach — but it is the same one! I know about roach motels. Are there roach ERs? Roach HMOs?

I hop the number 2 for North Vine, and walk south to the Linwood Dunn Theatre. Security guards stand ready to pat me down — just to attend the screening of two silent films by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! Inside, I am seated with industry pros (the room buzzes with insider talk), and I learn that this is how non-members are treated. Who said things would never be the same after 9/11?

The next morning, I foot it east down Sunset to enjoy the town’s glamorous decay. In an hour I’ll be having breakfast at Phillipes (where the Paul Eagles Luncheon club used to meet) with a copy of the L.A. Times. From there to the concert. Featured keyboard wiz Jean-Yves Thibaudets uses only his left hand to pound through Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The work was composed for a musician returning from world war I minus his right arm. Heroic Ravel.


Conductor wunderkind Essa Peka Salonen also premieres his own compelling Helix, a fast-advancing 9-minute opus full of troubling images intended to commemorate the end of WWII. It makes the morning’s major work, Prokoviev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite, seem rather old hat. Not old-hat is Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall — a surreal masterpiece that is in my exalted opinion the most stunning piece of architecture in the United States. See why tinseltown is a draw?

Onto a bus, we are now heading west on Sunset — lovely ride through Bev Hills. Still sunny and perfect with a light breeze tickling the air and caressing the palms. En route, I love glancing up winding hillside roads, wondering which one delivered William Holden in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard into the clutches of fading film heroine Norma Desmond. Holden was being chased by cops out to repossess his car — and would end up being repossessed by Norma.

Hilgard in Westwood is my stop. There I will transfer to the 261, which ten minutes later deposits me and a young Japanese couple at the Brentwood gates of the magnificent Getty museum. A tram elevates us to the exhilarating plaza on high, where you can view swanky homes in the hills and the smoggy flat lands in the dismal distance.. Sometimes just being at the Getty is the lure. A strange exhibit of Nuevo Japanese "anti art" and "non art" from the early 50s shows how the freshly liberated Japanese set out to shun the past and rush eccentrically into an unknown but free future.

Outside, while waiting for a 261 to reverse my journey, I fall into an easy conversation with two bright ladies in town on business. One is from Philly; the other from Montreal. How could Cirque du Soleil not enter our impromptu chat? They are certain fans of Cirque, but the Canadian (with no cuing on my part) tells me Cirque is not so good as it was in the begriming. They are "diluting the shows," she regrets. Her Philly pal adamantly agrees. Hmmm. I refrain from commenting; on-the-spot feedback like this is pure journalism. Leave it pure, David. The world speaks in L.A.

Saturday, I rail down to Oceanside along creamy blond beaches, there to visit old L.A. friends Alice and Sal, who now reside in a tony Carlsbad "manufactured." In better nights at piano bars, Sal (who by day taught L.A. students driver education) sang like my idol, Frank — I called him Salnatra. Now he barely walks. And I fear the medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex has gotten the best of Sal. A head shrink (I am leery of them all) gives Sal so many pills, Sal’s medicine cabinet has reduced his will to a whisper. I could cry. His Brit wife, Alice (who insists her real name is Judy) remains as chock full of chatter and the embracement of life as ever she was. I meet her charming sister Ruth, who insists that Alice is Alice. Ruth (who is Ruth – and a widow) is in from England and in the tempered throes of a new romance. No wonder I call Judy who is Alice or Judy ... Dame Dither.

Taking our cue from Sal, we opt for a sizzling lunch at the 101 Café, a landmark grill since ‘28. Let there be sodium on this day. Maybe a burger is all Sal needs to pull out. I keep asking him when he will sing "Autumn in New York,"and he keeps putting me off. Once through Pasadena not so long ago, he rebounded from another post-operation depression and was filling the air, punk style, with a catalog of Sinatra hits. And the old Sal magically returned.

And once, only last November on a day that hit 97 degrees (there they are, at the plaza by Olvera Street the previous July) Dame Dither and "Salnatra" came to see me off for Florida on Amtrak’s The Sunset Retarded.

Back by train to L.A., back to another edgy Hollywood by dark. When I lived here during the 80s on North Orange Drive, at least I had my own apartment to which I could run and hide and feel safely tucked in while police helicopters overhead threw spotlights onto the seedy streets chasing down thugs.

The sun has fled and the gig is up. The city now looks like a cheap film noir version of itself in better days when real movie stars walked the streets and graced red carpets. Now the Boulevard seems lost and irrelevant, the tourists just another flock of gawkers passing through.

At 10:50 on a Saturday night, I board a Greyhound for my return north. Nothing noteworthy; no creeps on board, thank God. Not even the faint sound of a cellphony telling somebody the bus is late so expect another call in another five minutes. A congenial cargo of withered humanity remains atypically quiet during the tear up I5 into Oakland --- to another place not so inviting by night.

Leaving town, I marvel at the cockroach who self-revived, and I wonder if Sal can, too. Maybe he will one day dismiss Dr. H. Shrink and sing "Autmn in Carlsbad."

And that’s a Tinseltown wrap!

From April 6, 2007

Remarkable Cinema Discovery: First Asian-American Film Directed by Marion Wong, Mother of Arabella who Starred on Broadway in Rodgers and Hammerstein’

Documentary film maker Arthur Dong was invited to a house south of San Francisco. A family wondered if some old nitrate film they had might be of interest to Dong and the film community.

Dong discovered and was handed historical gold: two surviving reels of the first Asian-American silent film made in the United States: The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West (1917) Or so speculates, with impressive scholastic authority, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Last Thursday in Hollywood, the Academy screened the digitally restored movie at the Linwood Dunn Theater on North Vine Street, accompanied on the piano by Michael Mortilla. Arthur Dong provided background information on his rare find and gift to the Academy.

Curse opens in a deceptively charming manner, and here we are interpreting without the benefit of subtitles, for not a one of them survived. A young man sets out to court and wed a woman (played by Violet Wong, right) by offering a gift to her mother. He succeeds. Then charm turns ugly in dramatic turns that invite speculation. The most interesting image for me was of the new bride fingering an elaborate necklace which turns into a chain. That alone was considered "high tech" for its time when the film was shot in Oakland. Does the bride feel imprisoned to a man she does not love —— or to an institution she secretly abhors? According to one analysis, because of her deceitful nature she is kicked out of the home by her disapproving mother-in-law, and she wanders off into the mountains. Next, an infant is discovered, and again we can only ponder its relationship to the principals. The husband is moved by the sight of the newborn to search for and reclaim his wife. His wife’’s sister-in-law, who has all along evidenced signs of jealousy, commits suicide.

Four to seven reels were lost. Disintegration of nitrate across time has left most silent films buried in the dust and gone forever.


Remarkably, this engaging movie was directed by 21-year-old Marion Wong (seen here in later years), a third generation American with only a third grade formal education. She was also one of precious few female directors ever to work in American silent cinema. Oft-maligned Oakland also comes in for some credit as the birthplace of Asian American cinema.


Marion Wong was the mother of Arabella Hong-Young, who starred in Rodgers and Hammerstein’’s Flower Drum Song on Broadway. Had it not been for Marion’’s support, Arabella’’s father would have banned her from perusing a life in music and she never would have attended Julliard —— or introduced to Broadway "Love Look Away." In fact, without Arabella, Rodgers and Hammerstein might not have been inspired to write the wonderful song.

Hollywood’’s film historians and preservationists are passionate about finding whatever "lost" films are still out there that can be restored. So passionate, indeed, that at the door, unless you are a member of the Academy, you are put through security and patted down before you are allowed to buy a ticket. Now, that was a first movie-going experience for me!

Legally Blonde begins on Top — then Splinters off into Diversionary Amusement

Review: New Broadway-Bound Musical Opens in San Francisco

About a third or half way through Act One, the new musical Legally Blonde, now trying out at the Golden Gate Theatre, looks and sounds like a solid musical comedy hit. Based upon the novel and the movie, the show delivers three winning numbers – "What you Want," with a strong popular hook; a rousing "The Harvard Variations" and the cold-hearted lawyerly anthem, "Blood in the Water." And in sensibility and development, it resembles "How To Succeed. In Business Without Really Trying." Can it be this good a show?

Well, maybe -- with a lot more work. Blond fritters away its early promise by splintering off into extraneous subplots and character cameos that are more issue-driven (all about women empowering themselves) than dramatically relevant. Of conflict, here there is little. Ultimately, the book by Heather Hach takes a low pandering Disney road a la Aida. Plot turns that might have been major are tossed around and resolved in carton fashion Laura Bell Bundy, cast in the role of protagonist Elle Woods, pushes the silly stereotype of a shrill bubble-brain blond to a grating degree, even after she manages to get into Harvard Law School. Her sole motivation is to prove to the boyfriend who dumped her back in California because she is not "serious" enough that, indeed, she is. He is also at Harvard, now with a new girlfriend. Between him and Elle, surprisingly there is little tension.

By Act Two, Elle is now an intern at the law firm managed by her professor, Callahan, and at work on the defense for a criminal defendant. Suddenly, Elle is shown to the door when she refuses Callahan’s pass. On this callous rejection, the first act curtain might have fallen. But that honor goes to the blandly upbeat "So much better." As for the trial, a couple of courtroom scenes are so illegally farcical that, by comparison, a courtroom scene I recall from a "Golden Girls"episode looks almost Shakespearean. By then, it’s all about doing whatever it takes to keep the audience engaged and laughing.

The songs of Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin push a hard, sporadically inventive beat. A few genuine gems include "Is he Gay or European?" It’s as polished and rollicking as a showstopper by Lerner and Loewe. Particularly outstanding is Michael Rupert as Professor Callahan. Book direction by Jerry Mitchell, who also choreographs, is on the creeky side.

Nonetheless, Blonde is loaded with theatrical promise, and its central premise, however superficial, about a squeaky-clean blond girl from Malibu learning how to prove herself intellectually, is a natural lure for the multitudes of mid-teen girls who are said to line up enmasse at Broadway ticket windows.

Beyond the whopping reception accorded Blonde during curtain calls, largely by the young people who dominated the half filled theatre, this fledgling musical to an adult feels achingly underdevloped and short of the Broadway mark.

Asian American Idol, Where Are You? Pat (“I Enjoy Being A Girl”) Suzuki Would Have Blasted Simon Cowell out of His Deep Freeze.

She could belt out a song with the best of them. She had, and still has when you talk to her, sass and candor and a quirky sense of humor. Her mind is a probing force full of racing philosophical ideas. She is very real. So real, that today in Manhattan, she walks the grim streets littered with the socially lost, passing out informational leaflets directing them to self-help centers.

I know a little about the real Pat Suzuki, for I was lucky enough (long after concluding I would never be lucky enough) to land an interview with her. This happened while I was writing Flower Drum Songs: The Story of Two Musicals. During our telephone conversation, I felt as if we had been friends for years.

Suzuki helped deliver Rodgers & Hammerstein’s breeziest, most contemporary hit to Broadway, when Flower Drum Song, in which she co-stared with another Japanese song gem, Miyoshi Uemeki, opened in 1958 at the St. James Theatre.

Then, as many as five shows on he Great White Way boasted at lest partly Asian faces in the casts. Then, the Orient and its exotic looks, banners and manners seemed to be at last making a big mark on the American theatre audience in New York.

So long ago. The spell didn’t last. After Flower Drum Song, there were no other flower drum songs. A few of the original cast members (like dancer Patrick Adiarte and comedian Jack Soo) got jobs in television. None made it big beyond FDS.

Pat Suzuki languished over the years. So did Miysohi Uemeki. In one of her e-mails to me, Pat believed that Miyoshi’s retreat from the spotlights was a life-saving exit to avoid the depressing ugliness of a cruel business that could turn on you in a cold second.

Both of the ladies were stellar vocalists, each with a distinctive style, and each put out albums in the years immediately following their moments in the Broadway sun. On Pat’s LP, her gutsy rendition of "Lady is a Tramp" is as amusing a take of the song as I have ever heard. For her turn, Miyoshi’s song catalog is on the wistful side; she excelled with numbers like "The Man I Love."

What happened, Asia America? Here is my best and saddest guess, which I fear Asians do not like hearing. It’s all about the culture — an outwardly gentle show of self-respect and restraint that fosters dignity over exhibitionism, emotional containment over free and rampant self expression. A culture of honor and tradition that does not push itself in your face. The parents by and large do not want their young bearing either attire or desire in front of an audience. I have to think they dread the idea of a child of theirs being humiliated before a national audience on American Idol.

Away from the vulgar void that is Televison, notice the emerging number of top-flight Asian concert musicians both filling out the ranks of our leading orchestras and appearing as featured solo artists. Need I explain why?

In her day, had Pat faced Simon Cowell, she would have brought him out of his sarcastic deep freeze She was authentic. She was an original, and if some of us referred to her as the Asian Merman, it was only as a flattering point of reference. For Pat Suzuki delivered a gusty, at times free-wheeling realism to the stage in Flower Drum Song that dramatized the up and coming younger generations breaking free of the old world restraints.

They have still yet to break free. Maybe, considering the "culture" into which they would be liberating themselves, holding back is still the better choice.

The Cruel Folly of American Idol: Another human sludge pile takes it on the chin.

What to say for this shrieking sideshow? It exploits America’s obsession with the great Hollywood dream. Some skeptical impressions:

Do the producers purposely select these early-round weirdos and off-key clowns just to bait Simon Cowell?— or to prove that raw talent can be shaped into starhood only on AI?. That’s what some Seattle-based bloggers think. They claim that the eliminations (last year, I think) excluded some of the city’s top talent.

Going out of my way to watch the first round last night (in total, over the years I’ve watched a total of about two hours of Idol), I wonder if this country is so pathetically bereft of talent.
Don’t kick a loser when he’s down: Last night, Randy Jackson (wasn’t he supposed to be the really nice guy?) lashed out at a vocal coach after his audition: not only was the vocal coach a no-talent singer according to Jackson, but he was in effect committing malpractice by taking on students.

Ouch. Bad taste. Stupid and uncalled for, Randy. Don’t you know that some of the best teachers are themselves failures at what they teach? Or do you suffer from Simon envy? I felt sorry for the vocal coach, who took Jackson’s nasty tirade with class, and I remembered that some wonderful instructors I’ve had who probably did not realize their own dreams.

But in the Idol insane asylum, that would be too logical and far too polite.

Enough idolhood for the moment. Maybe at the bitter-suite end (what, in another 15 months?), I’ll devote another hour to watching the contrived spectacle reach a contrived climax.
Any Gong Show reruns schedule?

There it was tonight, in Minneapolis and starting all over. Another sludge pile of hopefuls, some of them possibly real, others maybe set up for entertainment value. I laughed at the weird ones who either had been set up or genuinely believed in themselves. I felt sorry for others, and I always, of course, waited to see what Simon would say or, how he would look in grave shock when another hack wannabe started to "sing." Hands over face. Eyes to the sky. Eyes closed.
Randy lost whatever cool he had, tearing into a vocal coach after the dude failed to impress the panel, telling the guy in effect that his students were losers to by taking lessons from him. Oh? Randy seems oblivious to one of the great and sad irones of life: Some of the best teachers are those who will never make it themselves.

How far do you go trying to be another Simon when you are not Simon?

Watching the vocal coach struggle not to lose his composure in the face of such a reckless and ignorant attack, I thought of some of the wonderful instructos I’ve had, knowing they some of them made have had ambitions like myself and yet did not realize their own dreams. Randy went beyond the pale, surprising even dissmaster Simon. Or was this, too, a setup?
But then again, isn’t that what tv is all about these days – going beyond the pale to shock and titillate and keep viewers wondering who next might be assaulted by a judge’s acerbic tongue.
That’s enough idlehood for me until maybe the final episode.

Yes, showbiz can be cruel, a fact that underpins these traumatic auditions.

Ted Sato's Beautiful Big Top

I love Ted Sato — and I never met the man or even talked to him. That's him, left, with John Ringling North II and chef Henry.

I spoke with his wife briefly on the phone back in1991. I was seeking illustrations for my book on John Ringling North, Big Top Boss, hoping to use some of the wonderful shots that Mr. Sato took while serving as Ringling-Barnum’s official photographer during their last four seasons under-canvas (1953-1956) .

Following up on the call, I sent Mr. Sato a letter dated February 26. Six days later, he sent me a large envelope containing over two dozen black and white glossies with a short note; evidently he was a man of few words: "Hope they may be use for your book. Good luck." He didn’t ask for a penny. What a gift.

Among the treasures, there, above, is the most beautiful picture I’ve ever seen of a big top — a Sato classic — and it’s mine, if I may gloat — taken on the D.C. lot in 1954. I used it in Big Top Boss, and I’m giving it a well-deserved encore in my next book on the modern circus scene due out next year.

Tiger, tiger: On the back of this photogaph, Mr. Sato wrote, "My pride and joy." This ended up on the cover of Big Top Boss.

And here is John Ringling North in a remarkably (and atypically) relaxed pose, totally free of the aloof imagery that so defined his showmanly aura to the world. Sato found that warmpth in a number of shots he took of his boss alone or with others.

There is another original Sato photo I recently discovered at the Ringling Museum, of a young ticket seller, Bill Taggart, in the yellow ticket wagon. Beyond Taggart, you look out the window onto the midway. It will also be featured in my next book because Bill shared his first-hand recollections of the last day in Pittsburgh when the big top went down for the last time. Had Taggart not identified the photographer — the two were good friends, both stayed on Car 369, and he was overjoyed when I e-mailed him the image for verification — the world might never know who took the picture. Same, probably, for many other Sato images floating anonymously around out there.

Actually, I did meet the photographer once, although it did not dawn on me until long after our 1991 correspondence. This earlier meeting took place many years earlier when Mr. Sato gave me his autograph — he had to because he was also, in 1995, the show’s official representative on the lot, and to him I went, seeking a press pass that would allow me to roam the backyard area. Gosh, I was so young, but I guess my membership in the Circus Model Builders gave me rare cache. Here is the pass Mr. Sato wrote out for me. How privileged it made me feel! How could I have ever guessed that, thirty-six years later, I would be reaching out to the same man for use of his illustrations and that, once again, he would favor me so kindly.

Ted Sato died a number of years ago. His remarkable images of the greatest show on earth will live on forever.

[12/16/06]

Broadway Bounces Higher, Digs Deeper These Days

Exit flying chandeliers and helicopters?

Reenter old-fashioned New York talent?

I have no problem telling you what a fan I am of Phantom (saw it 5 times with different friends); of Les Mis and Miss Saigon. But its's great to see the Broadway musical stage back in the hands of a new generation of top-flight American composers and writers.

The Great White White Way nearly lost its way as the last century came to an abysmal end. Then came Mel Brooks with The Producers to prove that musical comedy can work miracles at the box office. And others followed.

Best of all, there's a new show full of laughs, melody, glamour and intrigue that I actually like more than The Producers or Hairspray: It's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The sassy jazzy songs by inventive David Yazbek (The Full Monty) are highly engaging. A taut book by Jeffrey Lane keeps on delivering yet more surprising plot twists from start to final curtain. Even the older-fashioned sets look like stage sets. How glamorous. Could low-tech be making a comeback?

On a deeper level, compser-lyricist Adam Guettel, grandson of legendary Richard Rodgers, in collaboration with librettist Craig Lucas has delivered a great musical and a great work of art: The Light in the Piazza. Interestingly, Guettel has his own voice; neither a tunesmith like his grandfather nor a follower of the more abstract school of Sondheim. He seems drawn more seriously to a quasi-operatic feel and sweep, and he tells a touching story with probing fidelity, avoiding gimmicks and show-off lyrics.

Piazza is not for everybody; my brother, who watched it on tv, was "somewhat disappointed." Go if you wish to be moved by the tale of a woman and her mentally problematic daughter traveling through Italy --- when romance unexpectedly challenges and complicates an innocent holiday.

Off-Broadway has been rocking, too. See the wickeldy satiric long-running blast, Forbidden Broadway. And don't miss Altar Boyz, a near-perfect 90-minute musical, infectiously scored in a modern pop-rock sort of style. This rousing "revival" left me singing the big city's praises: Yes, New York, this is why we come here ... Yes, at your best, nobody does it like you do!