Jew Eat Yet?

My Blog Character

I’m jealous…of myself. No, not the Danny Miller that I’ve been living inside for the past 46 years, I’m jealous of the Danny Miller I’ve met through my blog. As I’ve watched him develop over the last 10 months, I’ve wished I could be more like him. We actually share a lot of interests. We both love old movies and old houses and TV shows from the 1970s. We’re both obsessed with Jews and Anne Frank and Henry VIII and Paris and fountain pens.

We look sort of alike but Blog Danny is slightly taller, in better shape, and has a little more hair. He would never post a photo as terrifying and hideous as the one above, but if he did, he wouldn’t be neurotic about it since he is very accepting of himself and the natural aging process. Blog Danny doesn’t have high blood pressure or high cholesterol and he already eats the kind of healthy nutritious diet that I’m trying to migrate to. Maybe I can call him for some tips. I sure admire the way he works out every day without complaint and seems to balance all the parts of his life so well.

Blog Danny is also married to a woman named Kendall (coincidence?). While they occasionally spar in very humorous, witty ways (think Nick and Nora), they never have the kind of raging, ugly fight that Kendall and I went through this week. Blog Danny never loses it the way that I do when I am gripped by fear or frustration or just decades of dysfunction that I haven’t worked through in therapy yet. Blog Danny understands that all relationships have their ups and downs and appreciates the learning that can result from occasional strife. Of course he never takes his wife for granted or allows his dark mood to sour a family dinner. Blog Danny cherishes the differences between him and his wife. He knows their different preferences and ways of looking at the world will only make their lives richer.

I wish I had as good a memory as Blog Danny. While I am fascinated by all the anecdotes he spews off about pop culture icons, I’d need a little help to remember all of those fun song lyrics or interesting facts. The letters from celebrities are the same as the ones I have (how weird!), but where does he get all those other photos? Are they part of his personal collection or is he stealing them left and right? How does this guy not get arrested?

Like me, Blog Danny enjoys his job but he never feels overwhelmed and unsure or worried about his company’s finances or his own. How come I’m able to work myself up into a debilitating frenzy about things like work or finances and Blog Danny is able to take it all in stride, understanding that the daily stresses in life only make us stronger, and that most of that stuff isn’t all that important in the larger scheme of things? Man, that guy has his priorities straight.

Blog Danny also has a loving red-haired daughter named Leah. But he never tortures her in the morning when they’re running late, convinced that one tardy too many will send her on the road to academic ruin that will lead to life in a fast food sweat shop or a tawdry burlesque house. Blog Danny never snaps at his daughter and always gives her his full, undivided attention. He allows her the freedom to make her own mistakes, knowing that this is the most loving thing to do because it is the only way she will learn to become independent. He is excited about the future and the day that his daughter will go off on her own, not sick to his stomach at the thought like I am.

Blog Danny’s family is very similar to mine, I bet they came from the same shtetl in Poland. But it seems as if his family hasn’t been shaken to the core on numerous occasions from painful, sad, or tragic episodes in the same way that mine has. People don’t get as irritated or as angry at each other in Blog Danny’s family, it seems like they are a really healthy group of people. I’d love to meet them.

Blog Danny even has a rock star brother-in-law but he would never mention him in his blog unless it was truly germane to the post. He certainly wouldn’t do it to try to curry favor with his brother-in-law’s fans, thus increasing his blog stats. Blog Danny is very philosophical about his blog. He just enjoys putting his thoughts out there from time to time (never worrying that he’s not writing enough) and then if someone chooses to read it, that’s fine. He never obsessively checks his daily hits on Stat Counter or looks himself up on Technorati to see if anyone has mentioned him or linked to his blog. He never thinks twice about the number of comments he receives on a post or seethes in jealousy at the blogs that receive dozens of comments within an hour of posting a new entry.

Blog Danny has such an easy, casual rapport with the bloggers and other commenters who visit his site that you’d never know he’s never met most of them. But if he did meet them the exchanges would be just as warm and friendly as they are online, there wouldn’t be a trace of social awkwardness. Blog Danny is never longing to feel part of a community, he always feels like an accepted member of any group with which he has contact.

Oh, if only I were as smart, friendly, funny, and emotionally stable as this guy. He may poke fun at himself from time to time, but he’s got a really healthy attitude about his faults. I’m sure he never feels the need to voice every single neurotic thought as it enters his brain, thus driving everyone around him nuts with his self-deprecating tirade.

I really want to become more like Blog Danny. Do you think he’d have lunch with me? Or would he run screaming to the door? Maybe I’ll leave a comment on his blog and try to set something up.

Off the Bus

Rosa Parks died tonight. I’m sure there will be long profiles about her in every newspaper around the world tomorrow morning and moving political cartoons showing her empty seat on that infamous bus. I went into Leah’s room a few minutes ago just as she was falling asleep and told her the news. I asked her if she knew who Rosa Parks was and I was very pleased that she was able to explain Parks’ pivotal role in the civil rights movement—how her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Alabama on December 1, 1955, led to her arrest and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted for 382 days. This, of course, resulted in the eventual demise of legal segregation in this country and brought to national prominence a young preacher by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I don’t know why Rosa Parks’ death has made me so sad tonight. She was 92 and died of natural causes. For all her ordinariness, she lived a truly extraordinary life. Talking to Leah about Rosa Parks suddenly made me think about my mom. I realized with a new clarity how much I miss her, and the gaping hole I feel at her absence in Leah’s life. I suddenly burst into tears in Leah’s room and told her how sad I am that she doesn’t know my mom (she was four when my mother died), how much Leah would love her, and what a fantastic grandmother she was. Leah comforted me and said that she does remember her. Then I came into my bedroom and cried some more. I’m still trying to figure out how to accept loss and sometimes I realize I don’t have a clue. The tears stung but felt cleansing. And for some reason the death of Rosa Parks allowed me to access grief that I usually repress or intellectualize into oblivion.

Years ago I wrote a piece of historical fiction about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott that ended up as the cover story in a book for children called “The Struggle for Civil Rights.” I don’t even have a copy of this book anymore but when I tried to look it up just now I was surprised to discover this online study guide about the story. I loved writing that piece and I love the genre of historical fiction. The rules were that I couldn’t put fake words into the mouths of actual historical figures or have them interact with people who weren’t real. I told the story through a fictional character named Viola Warfield who lived in the same apartment complex as Rosa Parks and her husband Raymond.

In truth, Viola Warfield was the name of the woman who worked for my grandparents for over 40 years. She was a contemporary of Rosa Parks and a hard-working woman just like her. We loved Vi so much and spent more time with her when we were young than we did with our grandparents. It was Vi who taught me how to walk, Vi who got me to finally give up my bottle. We loved her and I think she loved us but I cringe when I remember that during all those years I never once asked about the husband or family members I knew she had or her life outside of my grandparents’ Lake Shore Drive apartment. We were living the Jewish/Chicago version of apartheid. I do remember that when we went to Vi’s funeral in the late 1980s I was shocked to see all those black people in the church. Who were they, I wondered, and how come Vi had never mentioned any of them? No matter how much we loved her, the reality is that she was there to serve US and the understanding was that she would keep the rest of her life on the south side were it belonged. Why can’t I talk to Vi about this now? I want to meet her in the Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s and hear stories about her family, find out what she really thought about my family members, discuss what it was like for her to care for us during all those years and what she felt about the civil rights movement that we all lived through together.

Rosa Parks lived a life of service. How many millions of people did she inspire because of her simple act of courage? Despite the fact that her name is known all over the planet, she never used it for personal gain or to become rich. Indeed, her Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development always struggled for funds. Every year the Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, learning the history of the civil rights movement.

There is one Rosa Parks quotation that always stuck with me, and it certainly resonates today:

“I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is anything such as complete happiness. I think when you say you’re happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet.”

The Goebbels Experiment

I really shouldn’t be writing about Nazis again. First of all, the last thing I want to do is attract neo-Nazis to my site and you wouldn’t believe the creepy searches I already get because of what I wrote earlier this year about the German movie “Downfall,” a dramatic film that depicts Hitler’s final days in the bunker. Second, the minute I include any photos of Hitler or his buds, I can just hear people clicking off my site in disgust. Third, I’m writing this from my usual weekend perch on La Brea Blvd. in the heart of the most ultra-orthodox neighborhood in Los Angeles. I feel guilty enough that the religious Jews passing me on their way to synagogue are witnessing my disregard for the Sabbath, but if they or one of their many children happen to see a swastika dancing across my computer screen, they might think that I am a bona fide anti-Semite looking for trouble.

Oh well, fears of Googling neo-Nazis and judgmental Chasids aside, I feel compelled to comment on the documentary I saw the night before last called “The Goebbels Experiment.” This is an absolutely riveting and revealing portrait of a Hitler’s maniacal minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, told exclusively through the journals he kept from the mid-1920s until his murder/suicide in Hitler’s bunker in 1945. Unlike the propaganda techniques he mastered for the benefit of the Third Reich, Goebbels’ own diaries expose all his warts, his rapidly changing moods, his alternating reveries and rants about his wife Magda and his mentor Adolf Hitler, his tempestuous affair with actress Lida Baarova, and his vicious hatred of the Jews including his fervent hope that every last one of them would be exterminated. Again, there’s not a single word of narration in the film, every comment comes straight from Goebbels own twisted brain, as read (quite effectively) in English by actor Kenneth Branagh. Accompanying his ravings are rare films from the German archives of Goebbels in action and unsettling home movies of the picture-perfect Goebbels family.

The diary entries provide an amazing glimpse into what made Goebbels tick, and it isn’t pretty. To start with, he had a botched operation on his foot when he was young that left him with a permanent brace and made him the subject of frequent ridicule. It also prevented him from fighting in World War I which was a big source of shame. (How many of the world’s most evil figures were gripped by shame in their youths?) Goebbels was always trying to reinvent himself and gain credibility and in 1921 he received a PhD from the University of Heidelberg. He was a frustrated writer and managed to publish a novel called “Michael” that didn’t exactly set the German literary scene on fire. Joining the fledgling Nazi party in 1924, Goebbels took an immediate liking to Hitler and pronounced him the most brilliant man he’d ever met (it’s taking all my self-control to not focus on Harriet Miers’ recent comments about Bush—I’ve already made several comparisons between Karl Rove and Joseph Goebbels and I really have to stop).

Here’s the scary thing, and if you haven’t clicked off my site yet, you may in a second: I could relate to many of Goebbels’ pre-war ravings. Not his vile politics, of course, or his fascination for the charismatic orator from Austria. But hearing him go from A to Z in a single diary entry, full of angst and despair one minute and rabid enthusiasm about his life the next, it reminded me of some of my own mood swings and questioning. It’s a good thing I didn’t have the perversion, hatred, or ideological zeal that Goebbels had or I might have gone to the Dark Side during the difficult periods in my life.

After several bouts with severe depression and a couple of failed romances, Joseph Goebbels met divorcee Magda Quandt and married her in 1931. His best man was none other than that romatic softy Adolf Hitler who apparently made a very moving toast to the loving couple (oy). You get the feeling that Magda (who grew up with a Jewish stepfather she refused to help during the war—he died in Buchenwald) was even more of a staunch Nazi supporter than her husband and it seems like she had a real thing for Hitler.

Magda had a son, Harald, from her first marriage, and she began popping out Aryan youth for her new husband in rapid succession. Their six tow-headed children were named Helga, Hilde, Helmut, Hedda, Holde, and Heide. Cute, huh? Were all the “H” names in honor of the kids’ godfather Hitler? The home movies of the family reminded me of the creepy films that Joan Crawford forced her adopted children to participate in (Crawford rivaled Goebbels in her ability to employ propaganda techniques to further her own career). The Goebbels children were always dressed in ridiculous frilly costumes and they looked impossibly blond and blue-eyed as they were paraded around in front of the camera. Apparently, like their contemporaries, the von Trapps of Salzburg, the Goebbels children were known to “spontaneously” break into song (after frequent rehearsals led by Magda) at official Nazi events and parties. They were the models of everything Hitler claimed was good and pure about Aryan youth. The poor kids never stood a chance.

I had never heard of Goebbels’ intense affair with actress Lida Baarova. The clips from several of Baarova’s popular films revealed one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and an excellent actress. If only she had managed to hightail it out of Germany with Marlene Dietrich instead of falling into Goebbels’ clutches, I have no doubt that she would’ve been snapped up by MGM and we’d all know her name today. Instead, it sounds like her affair with Goebbels reached all sorts of hideous dysfunction and came to a head when the formidable Magda found out about it. Magda went straight to Big Daddy Adolf to complain about her husband’s philandering and found a very sympathetic ear. Adding to Hitler’s disgust was the fact that Baarova was Czech and thus an inferior race, not worthy of his Germanic friend. Goebbels longed to leave Magda during this time and emigrate to Japan with Lida but Hitler ordered him to end the affair at once. He was despondent at first and attempted suicide in October 1938, but he eventually did break it off. Some say to get back in Hitler’s good graces he orchestrated the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938 in which many Jews were killed and countless synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed.

Lida Baarova didn’t know it, but Magda Goebbels probably saved her life. Because of Magda’s intervention, Lida was forced to leave Germany and survived the war in Prague. Returning to Germany in 1945, Baarova was promptly arrested by the American military forces as a collaborator. She was imprisoned briefly in Munich, and then extradited back to Czechoslovakia. Unable to shake her reputation as Goebbels’ lover, she moved to Argentina where she lived in poverty. Lida attempted a movie comeback in the 1950s and moved back to Europe where she appeared in Fellini’s “I Vitelloni.” One of her last films was Fassbinder’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.” She published her autobiography in 1995 in which she wrote “There's no doubt that Goebbels was an interesting character, a charming and intelligent man and a very good storyteller.” Lida Baarova died in Austria in 2000.

The documentary also reveals Goebbels’ love-hate relationship with Leni Riefenstahl, who, with Goebbels’ support, made some of the Nazis’ most successful propaganda films including her masterpieces “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” which she shot at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. “Today I was treated to more of Riefenstahl’s lunatic histrionics,” he complains in his journal as we see him on the screen extolling her virtues at an awards ceremony. Looking at Riefenshtal in her acting days and then directing her films, I was struck also by Leni Riefenstahl’s stunning beauty. (Yikes, is this my new thing? Next I’ll be changing the name of my blog to “Hot Babes of the Third Reich.”) Even though he couldn’t bear Leni personally, Goebbels recognized that her masterful filmmaking talents would serve his propaganda needs beautifully. Riefenstahl spent the rest of her life trying to distance herself from Goebbels, Hitler, and the Nazi Party (“No anti-Semitic word has ever crossed my lips,” she claimed in later years. “I have thrown no atomic bombs. I have never betrayed anyone. What am I guilty of?”) and I used to defend her to a limited degree. But watching her in this footage as she is shooting her films and mingling with the top echelon of Nazi society, it is hard to see her as a naïve victim. At best, Riefenstahl was an immensely talented opportunist whose work helped push an entire nation into a 12-year bout of insanity. Like Baarova, it’s a shame Riefenstahl didn’t join Dietrich in exile. However, if you look at it from purely a career perspective, it’s unlikely that any of the Hollywood honchos would have ever permitted her to direct an Andy Hardy film, much less the kind of major productions she was able to make with the support of Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. When Riefenstahl visited Hollywood before the war in 1938, the Jewish studio heads (to their credit) refused to meet with her. Her only allies during that trip were Henry Ford, himself a raging anti-Semite and Nazi supporter, and Walt Disney. But whatever her politics, Riefenstahl was a genius behind a camera lens and she continued working well into her 90s. She died in September 2003 at the age of 101.

Did you know that Joseph Goebbels was actually Chancellor of Germany…for a day? Following Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945, Goebbels became the official leader of the Third Reich, per Adolf’s final wishes. On May 1, after realizing that they were not going to be rescued from the bunker by German troops, Joseph and Magda put their murder/suicide plan into action. The cheerful, singing Goebbels kids had no idea what their parents had in store for them. It would be fascinating to hear from them today, and had they lived they would now range in age from 72 to 65. But they did not survive. Knowing that Germany was about to lose the war, Magda couldn’t bear the thought of her children living in a world without National Socialism so she slowly and methodically put them to sleep with morphine and then cracked cyanide into their mouths, killing them one by one. Joseph didn’t participate in the murders, but he agreed to Magda’s plans. Oddly, this was one of the few things that all of the survivors of the bunker agreed on—during their interrogations after the war everyone who was there condemned the killing of the Goebbels children by their mother’s own hand.

Joseph and Magda then went into the courtyard where Joseph shot Magda and then himself. SS officers were instructed to burn the bodies and the film shows the charred remains of the propaganda minister. It also shows footage of the still pajama-clad Goebbels children who were found in their bunks where they died. In 1970, the remains of the Goebbels family along with Hitler and Eva Braun were reburned and scattered in the Elbe River by the Soviets.

Joseph Goebbels was nothing if not a prolific journal writer. He undoubtedly would have made an excellent blogger. But now I need to stop shielding the images in this post from the religious community that is walking by and go pick up my daughter from her rehearsal. She’s playing Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” in early December and today she is working on one of the captain’s anti-Nazi diatribes. What can I say? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? (Did you know that was originally a German expression?)

My Reality Show Is Better Than Your Reality Show

Is this what it’s coming to? This past weekend while our HGTV episode of “If Walls Could Talk” premiered, our friend Michelle’s episode of “Ballroom Bootcamp” debuted on The Learning Channel. With the range of reality shows growing faster than kudzu, is it only a matter of time before all of us are signed up to reveal aspects of our personal lives to the viewing public?

Not that our show had any of the sordid elements of most reality shows. “If Walls Could Talk” features historic homes from around the country about which there is some mystery, either in the artifacts found by the current owners or in the architecture itself. Our mystery centered around the unusual features that connect the house to the early movie industry. They showed our original light fixtures, the inlaid wood floors, and our bizarre basement that contains a built-in tapestry, an intricate tiled floor, New York subway tiles on the walls, a handpainted mural going around the circumference of the room, and movie palace-like crown moldings with gold leaf. I was happy that they talked about original owner Henry Jensen and his theatres and other projects in southern California but it was very freaky to watch ourselves on TV. Kendall and I could barely hear what we were saying since we were screaming so loud at the set. Honestly, I thought I looked like Charles Laughton’s body double from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and that I sounded like a cross between Peter Lorre and Paul Lynde. Was that really my voice?? I’ve forced myself to watch the show a few more times as a desensitizing tool, like the time in an old job when I had to write a Teacher’s Guide for a film about Caesarean sections so I watched the footage of the delivery over and over again until I didn’t feel the need to pass out or puke.

The crew for the show was very nice and it turned out the producer of the segment, Katrina Sarson, was the daughter of Christopher Sarson, the man who created the TV show “Zoom” that I was so obsessed with in the early 1970s. He was also the first executive producer of “Masterpiece Theatre,” my other obsession. How strange is that? Plus, Katrina (it must be hell having that name this year) recently got her doctorate from Harvard in cognitive development and is doing fascinating work related to technology in education. We talked about the possibility of her writing a Heinemann book.

Our friend Michelle Yahn’s show, “Ballroom Bootcamp,” was an entirely different affair. Each week the show chooses three “Average Joes or Janes” (Michelle is so NOT an Average Jane!) from all walks of life to undertake a rigorous five-week training program in a different dance style (cha-cha, tango, waltz, rhumba). The contestants, God help them, then face off in a professional ballroom dancing competition. Michelle’s dance was the tango, the most difficult of the lot, and she had a professional instructor who clearly wanted to murder her after a while because of Michelle’s inability to let anyone else lead. Michelle’s label for the episode was “Hippie Mom” but they edited her scenes in such a way that she could have been called Disgruntled Contestant. “It’s like trying to learn French in three weeks," she moaned to the camera. "It’s IMPOSSIBLE!” The contestants are seen taking additional classes to help get them in the right frame of mind. The producers wanted Michelle to take a pole-dancing class but she refused, darn it. “My children will be watching!” You'd think the people at The LEARNING Channel would know how to spell but Michelle's crew got her husband's and son's name completely wrong in the on-screen credits. Come on, folks! Michelle was terrified to watch the show (she still hasn’t seen it) but we thought she came off great even though she placed third out of three in the final tango competition (ouch!). But what a fun presence—I think she should definitely have her own show.

I never would have watched “Ballroom Bootcamp” if our friend hadn’t been on it, but of course I immediately became addicted, fascinated by the lives of total strangers. When will this trend finally end? As I’ve mentioned before, some of the new so-called reality shows make Faye Dunaway’s programming in “Network” seem tame by comparison. We don’t watch many of these horrors but I’m not exactly proud of the two that we do TiVo: “My Fair Brady,” profiling the dysfunctional relationship between Christopher Knight (who played Peter on “The Brady Bunch”) and a woman half his age who won the first “America’s Top Model” competition. They even had his Brady mom, Florence Henderson, now a licensed marriage counselor, come over in one episode to offer her advice. “She’s got to move out!” Florence proclaimed. You tell him, Mama Brady! How sweet that since Christopher’s mom died years ago he thinks of Florence Henderson as a mother figure. Can I call Olivia Walton when Kendall and I need help in our marriage?

The other show we watch is even more disturbing: “Breaking Bonaduce,” featuring Danny Bonaduce self-destructing before our eyes. The former wisecracking Danny Partridge from “The Partridge Family” always seemed like a wild character (remember when he was arrested for beating up a tranny hooker?) but in this show he is a total train wreck, as he himself states in the scary opening credits. It’s sort of unconscionable that he is the subject of such a show when he is on such a downward spiral in his life. In the current episode, he is shipped off to rehab to try to deal with his raging alcoholism, steroid abuse, and sex addiction. The show reaches a new low by filming Danny and his wife Gretchen’s therapy sessions. Heeeeeelp! No sign of TV mom Shirley Jones offering marriage advice. (And believe me, she’d be the last one to do so—I was once at a screening of “Carousel” at the Cinematheque where Shirley was doing a Q&A. She was lovely but her husband Marty Ingels started heckling her from the audience and practically had to be forcibly removed.)

The reality craze has got to stop. Bring back the actors please! But before such shows go away, I want everyone I know to be on one. I’m thinking of pitching a reality show called “So You Wanna Be a Jew” that features WASPs competing in segments on the proper use of “Oy” and commiting loshon hora on their fellow contestants in the in the Kvetching Korner™.

What reality show would you like to be on?

Living in the Past

Sometimes I worry that my love of history is a sign of dysfunction, of wanting to live in the past to avoid the here and now. I’m sure there’s some truth to that. I’d much rather read a book about Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels than an article about Bush’s propagandameister Karl Rove. I am far more interested in Dust Bowl politics and the New Deal than I am in the Dot Com Bust or the latest warnings from Alan Greenspan. And I’d sure as hell rather watch a movie starring Jennifer Jones than one with Jennifer Lopez.

When I travel around this city my eyes tend to gravitate towards the historical artifacts that managed to survive decades of neglect and wanton demolition. It was only in the 1990s that a strong preservation ethos began to re-emerge in Los Angeles. The one-of-a-kind buildings that somehow escaped the wrecking ball were suddenly being appreciated again and conservancy groups sprang up all over town. Last week Kendall and I went on a tour of some of the more glamorous remnants of Wilshire Boulevard aka the Miracle Mile. I finally got to wander through the art deco palace that was once Bullock’s Wilshire. We toured the beautifully restored rooms where Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, and Katharine Hepburn regularly shopped. The department store was shut down by the dreaded Macy’s corporation years ago and faced demolition until the Southwestern Law School bought the building and turned it into their Law Library. (For the first time in my life, I considered fulfilling my father’s dream and going to law school just so I could study in the former lingerie section and have lunch in the old Bullock’s Tea Room.)

Another place I’ve always wanted to visit was the Wilshire Boulevard Temple and it surpassed my expectations. I felt like I was like stepping back into 1930, it hasn’t changed a BIT since MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg married Queen of the Lot Norma Shearer there. All of the major studio heads belonged to this synagogue and their names are everywhere: Louis B. Mayer, Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn, Carl Laemmle, Sid Graumann. The Warner Brothers commissioned the fabulous Warner Murals painted by studio artist Hugo Ballin and depicting 3,000 years of Jewish history in such glory and splendor you might suspect the models were directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The spiritual leader of the synagogue was Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin (grandson of department store owner I. Magnin) who led the temple from its opening in 1929 until his death in 1984. It was Magnin who married Thalberg and Shearer and, a few years later when Thalberg dropped dead at the age of 37, officiated at his funeral in the temple. As I sat in the front row last week I felt like I could feel the spirit of Norma Shearer in her widow’s weeds, no doubt created for her by MGM designer Adrian, sitting in that very chair and pitching a hysterical fit. (Did convert Norma ever step foot in a temple after her husband’s death?) I’ve read a lot about Rabbi Magnin’s daughter Mae Brussell, who in the 1960s became one of the leading proponents of conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s assassination. Brussell eventually hosted her own radio show, “Dialogue: Conspiracy,” and received a handful of death threats including some by the Manson family. I can only imagine what her father, the Rabbi to the Stars, thought of his daughter’s left-wing politics.

Living in our 1909 home has transformed my love of L.A. history into a daily obsession. My dossier on Henry C. Jensen, the man who built our house and lived there with his family until his death in 1944, is growing by the minute. Tomorrow night HGTV will air our episode of the show “If Walls Could Talk” in which Kendall and I walk through our house talking about its history. We haven’t seen the final cut of this segment yet and we’re terrified about how we’re going to come across. We obeyed the producers’ every request, including walking down our street hand-in-hand for the “lifestyle segment.” Yeah, like that’s something we do nightly. Apparently we make good subjects for reality TV since they called us a few weeks ago and told us how easy it was to edit our part of the show. “You two talk in sound bites!” they exclaimed. Um, is that a compliment? I will have to watch with the sound off since I’m sure hearing my voice will make me take a vow of silence and I can only imagine what I’ll look like next to the male model host. Doesn’t the TV camera automatically add about 40 lbs.? Yeah, that’s it. And it also makes you look much balder than you really are. Oy, why didn’t I get Dweezil Zappa to play me as I had originally planned?

I feel lucky that my job as social studies editor at Heinemann allows me to seek out new ways to get students to appreciate history as much as I do. I wish I could say my love of history was influenced by the exciting curriculum at the Chicago public schools but that was not the case. In truth, it came largely from my addiction to TV shows like “Masterpiece Theatre.” Those PBS dramas sent me racing to the library to read up on the different time periods they portrayed. Because the series were mostly produced in Britain, my earliest obsessions were decidedly Anglo-based. I became fascinated by the familial wranglings of Ancient Rome (“I, Claudius”), the accomplishments and violence of Tudor England (“The Six Wives of Henry VIII” and “Elizabeth R”), the ups and downs of the Victorian period (“The Forsyte Saga” and “The Pallisers”), Edwardian England and the class system (“Upstairs Downstairs” and “The Duchess of Duke Street”), the horrors of World War I (“Testament of Youth” and “The Unknown Soldier”), the early suffragettes (“Shoulder to Shoulder”), and the end of the British Empire (“The Jewel in the Crown”).

Not that my overall TV tastes were so high-brow, as anyone who has read my blog knows. For every episode of “Upstairs Downstairs” I watched, I warped my brain with an equal number of visits to “The Brady Bunch” or “The Partridge Family.” Occasionally American television provided some learning opportunities. Norman Lear’s roster of hits delved into topical issues that, like the “Masterpiece Theatre” productions, educated without numbing the brain. I don’t usually let my ten-year-old daughter read my blog (although I should give her a complete print-out to save time in her future therapy sessions) but occasionally she’ll glance at the photos or text in a post I am writing. She read the lyrics to the theme song of “Maude” from my last post and even though she never saw a single episode of the series, is now singing the song at full gusto about 50 times a day. The words of this particular song sparked lots of historical discussion and Internet research.

Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didn’t care if the whole world looked.

Try explaining that one to a ten-year-old. While it turns out that Lady Godiva was a real person, an 11th century patron of the arts, her nude ride through the streets to protest taxes is almost surely a myth. It didn’t start appearing until about a hundred years after her death. This is also the myth that gave us the concept of the Peeping Tom, a boy named Tom who couldn’t stop gazing at the beautiful lady on her horse. This anecdote was added to the story in the 17th century as a bit of Puritan propaganda.

Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked.

While Hollywood has glamorized the true story of the young French visionary (with Ingrid Bergman, Jean Seberg, Milla Jovovich, and Leelee Sobieski in the title role), Leah was horrified to learn that the second glib line refers to an actual 19-year-old girl being burned at the stake. "That's not funny," she pronounced solemnly. And she's right. Would we make light of Helen Keller or Mother Teresa in a TV sitcom theme? Well, maybe.

Isadora was the first bra burner,
Ain’t you glad she showed up.

Vanessa Redgrave was superb in the 1968 Karel Reisz film about Isadora Duncan. She didn’t burn any bras but the actress did duplicate a real-life incident from Duncan’s life by ripping off the top of her dress during a big production number and dancing bare-breasted. The extras were not told that she would do this, thus providing the desired audience-aghast reaction shots that the director wanted.

But Leah wanted to know more about this bra-burning business. I tried to explain that as the women’s movement was taking off (again) in the 1960s certain feminists came to see their brassieres as a sign of male oppression. I told her that at some demonstrations women ripped off their bras and burned them in a bonfire. Leah simply could not understand the connection between going braless and women’s equality so we looked it up to get more background. I was shocked to discover that according to historians the bra-burning escapades of the 1960s and 70s is pure urban myth. Who knew? While some women in the late 60s and 70s did, indeed, stop wearing bras and other accoutrements of the beauty regime they found oppressive, there were no mass burnings of undergarments. Historians believe that the notion took root at the protests outside of the 1968 Miss American pageant when a group of women symbolically tossed a bunch of bras in a garbage can. The press jumped on this image and combined it with the draft card-burning that was rampant at the time to create their own entertaining version of radical feminism. I’m embarrassed that I never thought to question this story.  So many myths became part of the American consciousness during this time such as the libelous fantasy of anti-war protestors spitting on returning soldiers from Vietnam. I’ve read study after study that gives strong evidence that this never happened. Okay, I’m not saying that it’s impossible that some lunatic spit on a serviceman at an airport at some point in time, but I believe that the spread of this story was a very deliberate propaganda device designed to discredit the left. The precursors to Karl Rove’s hideous bag of tricks.

And when the country was falling apart
Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.

Sorry. Myth. Sure, Betsy Ross was widowed by the Revolutionary War and did start an upholstery and flag-making business to support her young son. But she had nothing to do with the first flag. The story was told for the first time by her grandson long after her death but even he would have been surprised to see the legend included in history textbooks as fact starting in the 1880s.

Hey, I see a new Heinemann book coming: history through the lyrics of TV theme songs. Which ones would you use?

As an addendum to this post which I wrote earlier today, Kendall, Leah, and I just got back from "A Night at the Orpheum" which was a complete 1920s style vaudeville show and screening of Harold Lloyd's 1925 classic "The Freshman" (introduced by his granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd) with live organ accompaniment. It took place at the magnificent and beautifully restored Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. If only the 11 other movie palaces that still stand on L.A.'s Broadway were in such great shape. And if only the misguided Pasadena City Council would stop the illegal demolition that has been taking place this month of the equally majestic Raymond Theatre which was built by our own Henry Jensen in 1921.

The vaudeville show was fantastic—I say bring it back! And watching Leah laugh hysterically at the antics of Harold Lloyd in this 80-year-old silent film was one of the highlights of my year.

Isadora Was the First Bra Burner

Sometimes I feel like writing about something very topical. Last weekend’s devastating earthquake in south Asia that killed over 30,000 people? No, can’t deal with that right now. The continuing chaos in Iraq? Nah. The after-effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? How about Bush’s unorthodox choices for the Supreme Court? Oy, leave me alone. There’s only one subject on my mind tonight that is of critical importance to Americans everywhere:

Bea Arthur.

More specifically, Bea Arthur in the groundbreaking 1970s sitcom “Maude.” I’ve been thinking of “Maude” this week because we saw our friend Marcia Rodd at Kendall’s mom’s house the other day. Marcia played Bea Arthur’s daughter on the pilot for “Maude” which was the 1972 season finale of “All in the Family.” I was only 12 years old but I can practically remember every line of dialogue from “All in the Family’s” first season. It’s hard to imagine the extent to which that show changed the face of television. Even a simple thing like the sound of a toilet flushing created such a sensation that they had to trim the audience's reaction in the editing room because it was one of the longest laughs in television history. (Before Archie, Edith, Mike, and Gloria, no one on TV ever had to go to the bathroom.) My parents had divorced just before “All in the Family” premiered so the show’s shocking realism punctuated the shocking realism in my own home. Bea Arthur had already appeared in an earlier episode of “All in the Family” as Edith Bunker’s ultra-liberal cousin Maude. Following Edith’s subservience to her husband and Mike Stivic’s hysteria over Archie’s every move, it was a relief to finally see someone who could stare Archie down and give him hell. The twist was that Maude, the polar opposite of Archie Bunker, was just as trapped by her extreme attitudes as Archie was.

Marcia Rodd (who was also in an earlier “All in the Family” that season but as a different character) played Carol, Maude’s daughter, who is about to be married but breaks up with her Jewish fiancé in the episode (thanks to Archie Bunker’s interference). Marcia turned down the role of Carol when the pilot was picked up and became a regular series that fall. I think she didn’t want to leave New York, the theatre, and her current boyfriend. Oy, Marcia,  just don’t think about those residual checks you could’ve had! Marcia was, and is, a brilliant actress and is now doing a lot of directing as well. Her world premiere production of Aram Saroyan's "At the Beach House" opens next Friday at the Lost Studio in Los Angeles. If you haven't seen Marcia Rodd’s amazing performance as Patsy Newquist in Jules Feiffer’s 1971 “Little Murders,” get thee to your Netflix queue immediately! I can’t believe she didn’t get an Oscar nomination for that role, which was the most astute look at the darker side of the counter-culture ever put on film. And what a cast. Marcia’s parents in “Little Murders” were played by Vincent Gardenia (later Frank Lorenzo on “All in the Family”) and Elizabeth Wilson (Benjamin Braddock’s mother in “The Graduate”) and her co-stars were Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland, and Alan Arkin. The film was clearly ahead of its time in 1971, and possibly hit too close to home with the random shootings and that were going on at the time of the film’s release. I can still hear Marcia telling her boyfriend Elliot Gould, “I'm not saying that I'm any better or stronger than you are. It's just that you and I have different temperaments. And my temperament is better and stronger than yours!”

But back to “Maude.” Can you think of a single actress who had better timing than Bea Arthur? She could take a so-so line and make it as memorable as Lucy’s “Vitameatavegamin” routine. I attended a taping of “The Golden Girls” when I first moved out here and in one scene Estelle Getty kept messing up a line so they had to do it over and over again. Every time Bea Arthur repeated her line I burst into laughter as if I was hearing it for the first time. Who needed laugh tracks with that dame?

It was back in “Maude” days when I used to write to my favorite stars and I received a nice letter back from Beatrice Arthur. It was standard fare as those kinds of letters go, nothing very personal, but today I still marvel that any of those people wrote back at all. Do any stars today answer their own fan mail? Maude Findlay was ostensibly one of TV’s first feminists but you had to wonder. In retrospect it seems to me that her husband Walter (played by Bill Macy) was a patriarchal slavemaster of the worst kind. His constant condescension of Maude, her daughter, and her grandson would be hard to stomach today. Maude often told Walter to go to hell (“God will get you for that, Walter!”) but when she was getting a little too uppity Walter’s trademark bark of “Maude! SIT!” would do the trick every time. Oy. Still, the show broke even more taboos than “All in the Family” and was taken off the air by more stations in protest. It was only a few months after Roe v. Wade when Maude suddenly found out she was pregnant on the show (gulp! Bea Arthur was 49 at the time…) and became the first (and last?) TV sitcom character to have an abortion. Think of how daring that was back then. Can you imagine Laurie Partridge, Billie Joe Bradley, or Mary Richards even saying the word abortion? The show also dealt with racism, therapy, menopause, alcoholism, homosexuality, plastic surgery, swinging, the legalization of marijuana,  and other topics that would have sent poor Jim and Margaret Anderson of “Father Knows Best” straight to Marcus Welby, M.D. for some emergency care. (On the other hand, I still maintain that Jim and Margaret’s 1954 relationship was more equitable than the supposedly enlightened Maude and Walter’s.)

I also wrote to Maude’s replacement daughter Adrienne Barbeau (forgive me, Marcia!) and got this postcard reply: “Dear Danny. Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry I’m so late in answering. I hope you are continuing to enjoy the show—I’ll bet you liked the one where the girl came to visit us from the ghetto. Another case of reverse prejudice from Maude! My best, Adrienne Barbeau.” I remember receiving that postcard and being touched by the “came to visit US,” as if she really were Maude’s daughter and were telling a friend another anecdote about her crazy mom. That episode stands out, especially the scene where Maude was trying to convince the ghetto girl Francie that she had black friends there in the suburbs of upstate New York. She tries to pawn off her housekeeper Florida Evans (played by the great Esther Rolle ) as her pal:

Maude Findlay: Francie, this is Florida. My dear, dear friend, probably the best friend I have in the whole world.
Florida Evans: I'm the maid.

And then later when they’re about to sit down for dinner:

Maude Findlay: Francie, I hope you're hungry. We're having fried chicken for dinner.
Francie Potter: Good, I win a buck.
Maude Findlay: You win a buck?
Francie Potter: I bet that dumb brother of mine that you'd have fried chicken for me the first thing off.
Maude Findlay: Ha ha ha. I love a person with a sense of humor. Excuse me. (Maude turns around and whispers to her daughter) Carol, for Heaven's sake, go into the kitchen and throw out the grits.

Esther Rolle’s character would later spin off from “Maude” and get her own series, “Good Times,” set in the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects of Chicago, only to quit a few seasons later when the show was taken over by the embarrassing antics of her TV son’s character who made Stepin Fetchit look like James Earl Jones. Did you know that at one time both Jay Leno and David Letterman were staff writers on “Good Times?” It’s obvious both had their fingers on the pulse of the 1970s African-American experience.

Kendall and I saw Bea Arthur’s one-woman show a couple of years ago and she still has it. She’s 82 today if you can believe it. Two of Maude Findlay’s all-time idols were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Archie Bunker used to drive Maude nuts when he trashed the Roosevelts and tried to convince an enraged Maude that Richard Nixon was a better President. Whatever part of TV heaven Maude Findlay inhabits, I know she’s celebrating because today is Eleanor Roosevelt’s 121st birthday. And I have no doubt that Maude would agree that the words to her own theme song would fit Eleanor perfectly:

Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didn't care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked.

Isadora was the first bra burner
Ain't you glad she showed up. (Oh yeah)
And when the country was falling apart
Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.

And then there's Maude. (And then there's Maude.)
And then there's Maude. (And then there's Maude.)
And then there's Maude. (And then there's Maude.)
And then there's ...

That uncompromisin', enterprisin', anything but tranquilizing,
Right on Maude.

Praying in Technicolor

I never imagined when I wrote a post called “L’Shana Tovah 2005” on my 8-day-old blog last January that so many people would be doing Google searches of those words ten months later during the real Rosh Hashanah and end up finding that entry. Shana Tova means Happy New Year, of course, and I was making a Jewish-themed joke by using that phrase on the secular New Year’s Day. In that post, written on a Saturday morning, I mentioned how I was sitting in a coffee shop on La Brea watching the Chasidic families going by on their way to Shabbat services at their orthodox synagogues. Ironically, I am now sitting at that very same table watching the same Chasidic families returning home from their synagogues after the second day of Rosh Hashanah services.

It is always a wistful feeling when I gaze at the large Jewish families in this neighborhood—a feeling that carries with it a vague sense of cellular memory as if I’m remembering my past life on the Lower East Side of New York at the turn of the century or I’m somehow coded with the memories of my great-grandparents’ lives in our family’s shtetl in Poland.

I’ve been feeling rather down this week and was so happy to attend our synagogue’s Monday night Rosh Hashanah services. It was comforting to listen to our wonderful rabbi’s sermon, to hear our cantor’s soaring voice, and to feel the embrace of a community of people poised to begin the annual reflection and renewal of the High Holy Days. Kendall and I are members of the oldest gay and lesbian synagogue in the country (one that also welcomes its straight members with open arms). I hope that my grandfather and these folks here on La Brea would be evolved enough to recognize the devout Jewishness of those services without getting thrown by the occasional men holding hands with other men as they read from their prayer books or the women wearing yarmulkes and swaying to the sacred tunes with their partners and children. I’m afraid my grandfather weighed in on his feelings towards female rabbis and cantors before he died, but maybe he would have altered his views over time, especially if he’d been able to attend one of the moving services at my shul.

Thoroughly Modern Miers

Okay, I admit it. I can’t be objective where George W. Bush is concerned. No matter what he does, I think he’s an idiot. Oh, relax, I’m not on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and at least I’m aware of my bias, that helps, doesn’t it? If Bush hadn’t chosen a woman this morning to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, I would have screamed bloody murder. I would have moaned that all his lip service to equality was total bullshit and that he clearly didn’t give a damn about women getting more opportunities in this country. Now that he has nominated Harriet Miers, I am filled with cynicism and suspicion. Who is this Bush apologist that never served a day in her life as a judge? What in God’s name makes her qualified to serve in this position other than the Oath of Loyalty she clearly took regarding her devotion to Bush (look how she’s mastered the Nancy Reaganesque adoring gaze in the above photo). I may retain my suspicions about Miers even after she is confirmed (and I’m betting she will be) but I have to acknowledge that my tolerance of Bush is so low he could have exhumed Eleanor Roosevelt from her Hyde Park crypt to place her on the Court and I still would have smelled a rat.

But my job is not to analyze important political appointments with intelligence and objectivity. No, my role is to inappropriately look at such decisions within the context of mindless pop culture. Am I the only one to hear the name Harriet Miers this morning and immediately think of the evil Mrs. Meers from the film and Broadway versions of “Thoroughly Modern Millie?”

In that story, Mrs. Meers is the owner of a 1920s Hotel for Young Women in New York, close to Chinatown. Her impressionable tenants think Mrs. Meers is a kindly mother figure of Chinese descent. They are completely unaware that she is actually a monstrous Caucasian ex-con, secretly running a white slavery racket out of the hotel. Whenver Mrs. Meers checks in a new client, she inquires about her family status. When she finds a young woman with no family or connections, her eyes light up and she squeals in her fake Chinese accent: "So sad to be all alone in the world." Soon afterwards, Mrs. Meers chloroforms the poor unattached woman and drop-ships her in a large crate to the Far East. Kendall and I saw the Tony Award-winning performance of the woman who played Mrs. Meers in the recent Broadway production. Her name? Harriet (!) Harris. Also from Texas, this Harriet’s latest role was as a regular on “Desperate Housewives.” Harriet Miers has never been a housewife, desperate or otherwise, and I’m waiting to see how long it takes for people to raise their eyebrows at her unmarried status. The only reassuring news so far is that Operation Rescue and some other right-wing groups have already come out against Miers, calling her “virulently pro-abortion.”

But before we leave the fictional Mrs. Meers, how can I not point out the uncanny resemblance between Harriet Miers and the woman who created the role of Mrs. Meers in the original 1967 film version of “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” the fantastic Beatrice Lillie? Will Miers sail through the confirmation process with the same cunning as her film counterpart, only to start her own metaphorical white slavery ring once she is on the Court?

As Mrs. Meers sings in the play:

They don't know my flair for the dramatic
Not a clue, the talent I possess
Pretty girls, but not much in the attic
Face-to-face with genius, and they never guess.

They don't know they're staring at an artist
Highly trained to take on any role
Skillful mime, and brilliant laundry cart-ist
Seeking retribution for the life they stole.

They don't know I'm hotter news than Duse
Helen Hayes and Bernhardt all in one
They're on top, and I look like the loser
Wait and see who's standing when my play is done.

Oy. So sad to be all alone in the world.