A year ago today, Charlie finally came home after 137 days in intensive care. He was released from the NICU on September 11 but his shunt soon malfunctioned and he had to go right back into the hospital for his sixth surgery. Thank God everything has been great since then and we’ve had him home with us without incident (spitting three times) for a full year.
I’ve loved every single second of it. It’s been fascinating watching him grow and develop over these 12 months. How lucky am I to have two such fantastic children. Charlie and Leah have such a special relationship with each other and I look forward to seeing that continue to evolve in the years to come. Funny to think that there will come a point when their age difference won’t be much of a factor. They’ll just be two adults complaining about their crazy parents.
I will write more about Charlie’s amazing life as soon as I get a handle on some work deadlines. That is, if I haven’t melted into a pool of slime like the Wicked Witch of the West. We’ve been having such a brutal heat wave that I fear the Earth may have fallen off its axis and is hurling towards the sun. Yesterday we set an all-time record in downtown L.A. of 113 degrees, even hotter in the Valley. Today we’re supposed to enjoy much cooler temperatures—about 105.
The heat wave from hell started on Saturday, the day Leah was performing in the annual Living History Tour at the historic Rosedale Cemetery near our West Adams home. Each year they pick five or six people who are buried there and have actors portraying them at the gravesite. This year they decided to feature a group of trailblazing women that included actresses Hattie McDaniel and Anna May Wong; jazz singer Nellie Lutcher; Georgia Robinson, the first African American policewoman in Los Angeles; and several famous suffragettes. Leah played Minnie Roswell Langstadter, who was one of the youngest female journalists, having worked as a reporter for a Chicago newspaper when she was only 15 years old. She interviewed people like John D. Rockefeller and J. Pierpont Morgan, and it was Minnie who reported William Vanderbilt’s famous statement, “The public be damned!” Leah’s portrayal was wonderful, and she braved ten tours and six hours in the stifling heat wearing an authentic get-up from the 1880s! Her petticoats alone probably weighed 10 lbs!
A year ago today, the day Charlie came home, it was the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But as I said at the time, it seemed a lot more like Thanksgiving. We love you, Charlie.
One of the things I love most about Jews is their ability to fight about anything. The topic doesn’t matter—get two Jews in a room and they can argue about the proper way to make a matzoh ball with the same passion and intensity as a discussion about whether Israel should build settlements on the West Bank.
I just saw this short video (thanks, Tamar!) called “A Reuben By Any Other Name” that conveys this trait beautifully. Take a look:
Watching this made me realize that I am just as opinionated as anyone in the film. Excuse me, but the sandwich served in that L.A. deli is NOT a Reuben. A Reuben is made with corned beef, swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing. End of discussion. A corned beef sandwich with cole slaw may be delicious, but it ain’t no Reuben. My one issue with the film is the premise that any proper Jew in Los Angeles WOULD call that a Reuben. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’ve had two Reubens in the past week, including one last night at the fabulous Art’s Deli in Studio City. Art himself would cut his hand off before serving a corned beef and cole slaw sandwich and calling it a Reuben.
According to one theory, a Lithuanian-born Jewish grocer named Reuben Kulakofsky invented the sandwich in Omaha, Nebraska (take that, New Yorkers!) to serve at his weekly poker game at Omaha’s Blackstone Hotel. The hotel’s owner loved the sandwich and allegedly put it on the Blackstone’s lunch menu. The sandwich’s fame spread when an employee of the hotel won a national contest with the recipe. Hmmm.
Another theory holds that the sandwich was invented by Arnold Reuben of the old Reuben’s Delicatessen on 59th Street in New York in about 1914. When Craig Claiborne tried to get to the bottom of the mystery in 1976, he was inundated with letters, most subscribing to one of these theories. Though Claiborne printed a convincing letter from Arnold Reuben’s daughter, he seemed to favor the Reuben Kulakofsky theory and provided more details on that version of the sandwich, including instructions for how to assemble the original Reuben:
Combine drained sauerkraut with some sweet chopped onion and a little chopped parsley.
Spread Russian dressing on two pieces of pumpernickel bread. Pile corned beef high on one piece of and cover with ample swiss cheese and the sauerkraut. Top with remaining bread.
Lightly butter both sides of the sandwich. Grill slowly until cheese melts and bread browns.
I can certainly accept rye bread on a Reuben instead of pumpernickel. I can even accept someone omitting the Russian dressing (although I don’t like it). But cole slaw instead of sauerkraut? No way.
We are all Reuben lovers in my family. Here's a photo of Charlie devouring a Reuben at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, Michigan, last month. I attempted to research Reuben Kulakofsky and I even found his World War I draft registration card, but no hard evidence to support the claim that he invented the sandwich. One fact that puts the claim into question is that it seemed like Kulakofsky was a fairly observant Jew so why on earth would he create a sandwich that mixed meat and dairy, a major no-no for religious Jews? Of course that’s one of the biggest ironies, that one of the most famous Jewish sandwiches in the world is decidedly trayf. Oy.
Now don't get me started on the alleged "Turkey Reuben."
I visited New York the summer I was 18. Being the lunatic that I was, I drained my bank account and went to eight or nine plays while I was there. Today the only ones I can date to that particular trip are three musicals: “On the Twentieth Century,” an underrated Comden and Green show that starred Madeline Kahn, John Cullum, Imogene Coca, and Kevin Kline; yet another revival of “The King and I” starring Yul Brynner (Yul was already 63, and, God love him, he would perform the role in yet another Broadway revival eight years later just before his death); and a brand new musical starring a bunch of unknown kids that was written and directed by a young woman named Elizabeth Swados. It was called “Runaways” and it...blew...me...away.
I had wandered into the Plymouth theatre that night in 1978 without any expectations of what this show was. It was raw, rough around the edges, and depressing as hell, but more exciting and vibrant than anything I’d ever seen on the stage. It’s impossible to imagine anything even remotely like “Runaways” getting funded today. For one thing, the show pulls no punches in the way it depicts the difficult lives of kids in the late 1970s. Even the happy “up” songs feature lines about abuse and other horrors. For over a year, without a script or any songs, Swados was subsidized by Public Theatre impresario Joseph Papp and his New York Shakespeare Festival to interview actual children living on the streets and slowly put together a musical theatre piece that conveyed what they were dealing with. “I wanted to make a collage about the profound effects of our deteriorating families,” Swados said. “I wanted to explore the substitutes people find to deal with the loss of family and how these substitutes are sometimes effective and sometimes self-destructive. I wanted to tap the energy of young people.”
Swados interviewed over two thousands kids in New York schools and community centers as she developed the piece, using many of their stories in the lyrics. Some of the real street kids ended up in the actual show. Others in the cast included thirteen-year-old Diane Lane playing a child prostitute, Carlo Imperato, who would later appear in the TV series “Fame,” Josie de Guzman, who would win kudos for her starring role in revivals of “Guys and Dolls” and “West Side Story,” Trini Alvarado, who starred in several movies and later would play Anne Frank in a crazy musical version of her diary that I saw Off-Broadway, and Toby Parker, Sarah Jessica’s older brother who was also in the original cast of “Rent.”
There is no real plot to “Runaways.” The show consists of songs, monologues, poems, and dances about how this group of 28 kids ended up abandoned by their families or society. Can you imagine pitching that to a Broadway producer today? Never gonna happen. Especially in a show so devoid of schmaltziness or cliché. Of course it resonated completely with young audiences at the time (including me) who, even if they weren’t living on the street, could relate to many of the issues addressed in the play. Why do we think kids can’t handle the truth in art? It’s no accident that Leah’s two favorite musicals are “Rent” and “Spring Awakening,” two shows that definitely do not shy away from difficult subjects.
Elizabeth Swados herself recognized that the success of “Runaways” was a total fluke. “It was the right place, the right time,” she said. “It was never meant to go to Broadway. It was meant to be a sort of community service piece where we took it around and we put it up for a few weeks. Instead, Swados ended up getting nominated for five Tony Awards for “Runaways” and spent years living down this early success. “Now its not so bad,” Swados said recently, “but it took, I think, 15 years for people to get off my back. Everything was implied, from the fact that I was not talented and I was lucky to I was sleeping with Joe Papp.”
Just to give you a feel for how outside the current mainstream this musical was, here's a bit of a monologue performed by a 13-year-old boy during the first half of the play when asked to give a report on current events:
At eight fifty-five Monday evening my father hit my mother across her mouth. They're kidnapping people all over the world. Patty Hearst went crazy and got free. In Detroit there's a crazy guy who's shooting kids in the face. Oh mom, don't let that happen to me. In Bronx State Hospital a junkie killed his shrink. There are no more air raid drills 'cause it won't matter. And all these books are coming out and saying That the C.I.A. killed Kennedy, The F.B.I. killed Martin Luther King. Kennedy tried to kill Castro. I usually don't think about these things. I play baseball or make models in my room, But it's current events and you're asking me. And my parents are becoming a statistic: a divorce. And I am becoming a statistic: a fucked up kid. And a pretty brunette is sending love letters to the Son of Sam. And though I'm not political I hear the Shah of Iran cuts off people's hands. And when I play guitar Sometimes my fingers turn numb and I get this pain in my gut. And I ask myself, "What am I working so hard for?" Just to be a statistic? I'm scared and that's current events. Helter Skelter's a best seller, Snipers are everywhere on the roofs. And I read yesterday that prostitution has become prosperous around Disneyland. And a crazy guy in Detroit is shooting kids in the face, And more family murders have taken place in the last year Than in all of Northern Ireland, And I don't want my family to die. And that's today's especially discouraging summary of facts. And I feel like crying, But please don't flunk me. Please don't flunk me.
I wish this play had been recorded on film because it’s definitely of its time and will probably never receive a major staging again. For years I longed to hear the haunting soundtrack again and then finally, a few years ago, it was released on CD. This is the only video clip I've ever seen of the original show. It's a medley from the 1978 Tony Awards and is a bit hackneyed (notice the not-very-good skateboarder aimlessly moving across the stage) but it gives a flavor of the startling, dynamic production:
I’ve been thinking of “Runaways” this week following my viewing of “The Race to Nowhere,” the documentary I wrote about in my previous post. I received a thoughtful comment from the college-age daughter of some friends of mine. Sarah took issue with the more dramatic concerns expressed in the film and she ended her comment with the following story:
When my mother saw the movie “Thirteen,” I was about fourteen or fifteen years old. I think she's only just recently stopped being afraid that I’ll stop going to class and start popping pills and having random sex. We need to stop making dramatic movies that instill even more anxiety into parents than they already experience. Because you know what? We're okay, and we're going to be okay.
I laughed at this last comment because I was also terrified by that film. When Leah turned 13 worried for a long time that she would suddenly start dating bikers and doing drugs just like Evan Rachel Wood did in the film.
I think Sarah is right in that most of the kids we worry about are okay and are going to be okay. But I also think that kids today do face many very intense pressures and challenges, some very similar to the ones we faced and some that are wildly different. Yes, many of us parents are prone to anxiety, but if anything, I think that as the years pass we are more likely to dismiss the difficult parts of adolescence because we just don’t want to think about it. We know life will go on for most of these kids who are sad or depressed or scared so we dismiss how truly painful it can be to be a kid. And some kids, sadly, will not emerge unscathed from these years.
I’m not saying that there’s very much we could do about it if we were privy to our children’s full range of emotions instead of just the reserved palette they choose to show us. God know I always told my parents I was “fine” no matter how I was feeling because the last thing I wanted was their misguided if well-meaning intervention. Sure, there are times when we can provide a supportive ear or strategy but I think the hardest part of being a parent is learning to LET your children experience pain without always trying to fix it.
Here's a video clip from a benefit concert version of "Runaways" performed last year:
Now that the summer movie mishegoss is behind us, a lot of interesting new documentaries are getting theatrical releases. (There’s a mad push by distributors to get them in the theatres in time to qualify for the 2010 Oscar nominations.)
During the past few weeks I’ve managed to see five of these films. I can say that I recommend all of them, even though I remain skeptical about one so-called documentary. Here they are (in alphabetical order):
A Film Unfinished. This is a must-see for anyone interested in the Holocaust, Jews, or Nazi propaganda (Ding! Ding! Ding! This film had my name on it!). I’m sure many of you have seen some of the poignant film clips that were shot in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, just a few months before the ghetto was liquidated and all its inhabitants sent to the death camps. It was always known that this footage was shot by Nazi film crews for a film that was never completed. Half a century after accepting this footage as a purely factual record, a missing reel of the film was found that revealed Nazis forcing Jewish residents to do additional takes of certain scenes and other signs of coerced participation. It became clear that many of the scenes were staged by the Nazi propaganda machine in an effort to promote certain “facts” about the Jews living in the ghetto. Most of the coercion involved scenes of “happy Jews” attending concerts, dinners, and other normal events. Filmmaker Yael Hersonski weaves a fascinating film out of the original footage, the missing reel, and filmed commentary by survivors of the ghetto as they respond to the raw footage. Some of the survivors remember the Nazi film crews and recount how they were forced to participate in the folly of showing Jews living “the good life” inside the ghetto, which at its height, housed over 400,000 people in insanely cramped quarters. The goal of the Nazis was obviously to juxtapose scenes of the wealthier Jews enjoying themselves and cruelly indifferent to the plight of their brethren starving on the street. The actual footage of the suffering masses, including many agonizing scenes of children begging for food or too sick to even care anymore, was also intended to paint the ghetto inhabitants as vermin living an inhuman existence. Most of the Nazis’ footage did not need to be faked. So many people died every day of starvation and typhus that rotting corpses in the street were a common sight and the living residents had no choice but to walk past these bodies every day. One survivor viewing the footage broke down in tears even though she remembered walking by the actual corpses with little emotion. “I can cry now that I’m human again,” she explained. Gazing at the faces of the many children in the footage, I couldn't help but think of Leah and Charlie and how a slight time and geographic change would have landed all of us in this hellish existence. Today most of the focus on the Warsaw Ghetto is on the uprising by a small, brave band of armed residents who managed to miraculously stave off the Nazis for a while but were eventually captured and killed. That’s a piece of the history that should be celebrated but this film reveals a much broader reality that should not be forgotten.
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I’m Still Here. I was so curious about the “truth” behind actor Joaquin Phoenix’s bizarre behavior after he supposedly retired from acting two years ago, that I rushed to see this long-awaited documentary on its opening day. After seeing the film, I’d say the jury is still out on whether Phoenix is a total whack job who was ill-suited for the bullshit surrounding Hollywood celebrity or if he has pulled off an Andy Kaufmann-like hoax on the gullible public by creating a false persona for the purpose of this film (which was directed by his brother-in-law Casey Affleck). Maybe a little bit of both? In any event, while I was fascinated watching this very talented actor implode his career (starting with his now infamous appearance on David Letterman), I was wincingly uncomfortable during much of the film which included colorful close-ups of Phoenix vomiting, snorting cocaine, grabbing naked prostitutes, and one horrific scene in which of one of Joaquin’s assistants defecates on the actor’s face. (I defy anyone to watch this scene without turning their head away.) Some reviewers are saying that the filmmakers all but admitted that the documentary is a hoax in the closing credits since some of the roles (including the non-speaking part of Phoenix’s dad) are played by actors. My feelings is that it’s a bit more complicated than that. I just read that Phoenix is making a return appearance on Letterman’s show later this month and I hope that we see a clean-shaven and slightly more “normal” Joaquin this time around. Whether he ever admits that the film is a put-on, he definitely achieved the goal of conveying a major “fuck you!” to Hollywood, and that could be seen as a worthy goal. I also heard he’s attached to a few upcoming films so that lends credence to the hoax theory. But about his much derided hip hop career, am I in need of medication if I admit that I didn’t think some of his songs were that bad? I actually appreciated some of his lyrics even though he seemed to be in full lunatic mode during his horribly received nightclub performances. Another thing that made me believe that the film was indeed an elaborate hoax is that there’s not the slightest mention of his late brother, River Phoenix. I’m guessing that Joaquin declared River’s memory completely off-limits to these crazy shenanigans. (Update/Spoiler 9/17: Affleck finally admitted that the documentary was fake! Gotta hand it to Joaquin for his commitment to that crazy persona. I still wonder if it wasn't a little bit of the real him. Now let's see if Phoenix can resurrect his other acting career...)
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The Race to Nowhere. From the ridiculous to the sublime, this important documentary by Vicki Abeles shows the intense pressures that many adolescents face today with their mountains of homework, test-centered school culture, full slate of extracurricular activities, and desperate expectations about getting into the “best” schools rather than the ones that are the best fit. Abeles started working on the documentary when her own children began to crack under the weight of the daily grind that included absolutely no time for unstructured play or the relatively carefree childhoods our generation enjoyed. A bunch of teachers, students, and others are interviewed in the film to bring home the point that something has to be done about the non-child-centered focus that is hurting so many children throughout this country. One of the saddest interviews was with a clearly devoted, passionate teacher working with low-income kids in Oakland who finally felt forced to resign from her job after getting so much pressure to stop doing all of the stuff she did that worked with the kids in favor of the soul-killing practices that were geared towards higher test scores at the cost of creating lifelong learners or effective problem solvers. Much of the work that I do is aligned with the tenets of this film so I was hardly an objective viewer but it’s impossible not to be moved by the stories of some of these kids including the lovely, talented 15-year-old girl who committed suicide over a bad math grade. This film is part of a broader movement to reject the craziness that is being mandated from above. The film's excellent website includes many resources and ideas for combating the system. One person interviewed is spearheading the “no homework” movement and makes a strong case for eliminating homework. Thank God Leah’s homework isn’t as insane as the six plus hours that many of the kids in the film have to do each night, but I’m very interested in the move to abolish homework completely. And by the way, when several AP teachers in the film cut their homework load in half, do you know what happened? Their students’ test scores went way UP. See this film…and help stop the insanity!
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Sequestro. I saw this Brazilian documentary late Saturday night just after seeing “The Race to Nowhere.” Nothing like a carefree night at the movies, huh? This film chronicles the activities of an anti-kidnapping squad in Sao Paulo, Brazil, We learn how (and why) the kidnapping rates in Brazil have skyrocketed in recent years and we travel with the courageous men and women who work with the victims’ terrified families and track down these thugs who are out for a fast buck. Filmed over a four-year period, we get to know some of these families whose loved ones have been grabbed and ferreted away and we sit in on the agonizing phone calls from the kidnappers as they make their demands and engage in psychological torture. We also hear from people who went through such kidnappings as they describe their horrific ordeals and what it was like to be reunited with their families. While we see some tragic conclusions to these family dramas, we also get to witness some heartwarming reunions that are impossible to watch without bawling along with the family members. It’s very rewarding to see some of the ruthless, cowardly kidnappers dragged off by the police. The victims whose stories we follow range from a six-year-old girl to an 82-year-old man on heart medication. I’m sure Brazil is an amazing, beautiful country but I must say that all that we hear of the rampant crime that goes on in some parts of the country makes me reluctant to ever travel there. On the other hand, many of the people profiled in this film are so genuine and warm it makes me want to pack my bags for Sao Paulo immediately. Frankly, I’m surprised that this kind of kidnapping epidemic isn’t more prevalent in this country. I hope this excellent documentary doesn’t give anyone any ideas.
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The Tillman Story. This superb documentary will infuriate you. It’s about former NFL star Pat Tillman who gave up a multi-million dollar football contract to enlist in the elite Army Rangers and go fight in Afghanistan. When he was killed there in 2004, the army created a story about Tillman’s heroism confronting enemy soldiers in the hills of that country. His funeral was used as a patriotic propaganda event to drum up new recruits in his memory. But there was a hitch. The story of Tillman’s death was pure fiction. In reality, he was the victim of “friendly fire,” shot by his own troops in the chaos of the miserable war. The military knew the details of his death from Day 1 but decided to lie to the Tillman family to serve their own needs and to shut up the other men that were there the day that Pat was killed. When Tillman’s tireless mother worked to uncover the truth, she was continually let down by the highest echelons of the military establishment and even the U.S. Congress. Pat Tillman was turned into a God-loving saintly American hero even though he was way more complicated than that and his family wasn’t going to quietly stand by and participate in the lies. The sad irony is that from all accounts Pat Tillman WAS a truly amazing, unique, incredible guy—and far more interesting than the cardboard cut-out our military propagandists tried to turn him into. I hope everyone goes to see this film. The Tillmans finally hit a dead end in their search to find out what really happened to their son, but their refusal to sink quietly into their grief over the loss of their beloved son, brother, and husband (as the army hoped they would do) makes them a truly remarkable family.
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As you can see, I love the documentary form, even though I have no illusions that such films can ever be completely unbiased or objective. I don’t mind filmmakers messing with the form (and I’m a big fan of outright “mockumentaries” such as “Waiting for Guffman” and “This Is Spinal Tap”) but the questionable premise of Joaquin Phoenix’s “I’m Still Here” makes me very uncomfortable. Which, I'm guessing, was largely the point.
This is me on the streets of Paris a whopping 32 years ago when I was going to school there. Oh, how I loved living in Paris. This photo was taken near my apartment on rue Massenet in the cushy 16th arrondisement. I used to walk around that beautiful city every day and just feel so grateful to be there. It's been way too long since I've been in France. Kendall and I were there about seven or eight years ago and I haven't been there with Leah since her first birthday. I can't wait to go back with my family and show Charlie some of my favorite Parisian haunts.
I can't believe how fast the years have flown by. Can it be possible that today is my 51stbirthday? Whaaaaat?! But I remember when my grandparents were in their fifties! I’m continuing my ridiculous tradition of focusing my birthday post on the Oscar-winning Best Picture winner not from the year of my birth, but from the “year of my age,” in this case, 1951. (If you want to know how I fell into this odd custom—hint: it's Kendall's fault—you can check out my posts from past birthdays—46, 47, 48, 49, and 50). The 1951 winner for the Best Picture Academy Award was the MGM musical, “An American in Paris.” You’d think that with my love for Paris, MGM musicals, and Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, I’d be cheering that choice, right? Eh…not really.
To be honest, I was always puzzled by the accolades given to this film. I enjoy watching it, but it is far down on my list of favorite MGM musicals of the 1950s, way behind films such as “The Band Wagon,” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” “Silk Stockings,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” and even “Kiss Me Kate.”
1951 was an important transition year for the movies. The old studio system that had always ruled Hollywood was beginning to collapse. As proof of that, 1951 was the first year that the Academy gave the Best Picture Oscars to the producers of the film rather than to the studio itself.
These are the five films that were nominated for Best Picture that year. In addition to “An American in Paris,” the list includes two films that are among my all-time favorites: Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando in career-defining performances and George Stevens’ tortuous but brilliant “A Place in the Sun” featuring Elizabeth Taylor at the peak of her beauty. Conventional wisdom at the time said that those two A-list films split the vote and thus handed the award over to the first musical to win since “The Great Ziegfeld” in 1936. Who knows? I would have voted for “A Streetcar Named Desire,” a film that still slays me every time I see it. The other two nominated films were the questionable “Quo Vadis?” Mervyn Leroy’s scenery-chewing Roman epic starring Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, and an over-the-top Peter Ustinov as Nero, and “Decision Before Dawn,” an interesting film directed by Anatole Litvak about the Americans using German POWs to gather intelligence towards the end of World War II. This film is largely forgotten today but in 1951 it probably got the “isn’t it time we started making more probing films about World War II?” vote.
The most puzzling omission from this list is John Huston’s “The African Queen,” a magnificent film by anyone’s standards and the kind of film that usually gets recognized by the Academy. What gives? Was somebody mad at Huston? Not that it was completely ignored. Humphrey Bogart finally took home an Oscar (beating out Marlon Brando’s electrifying Stanley Kowalski) for his role as coarse boat captain Charlie Allnut. As an aside, I always loved this film and remember admiring Bogart’s performance so late in his career. How amazing he was able to pull it off being such a very old man. Um…can you guess how old Humphrey Bogart was when he shot this film? Yep…51! Oy.
I remember my flight to Paris in September 1978 with all the other American students that were joining me that year at the Sorbonne. I don't know if we had chartered a whole plane, but I vividly remember the film they screened on board that flight: “An American in Paris.” An appropriate choice, but even then I think I was spewing my criticisms of the film to anyone who would listen (no wonder I didn't have that many friends that year). One thing that bothered me about “An American in Paris” was the decision to shoot the entire film at the MGM lot in Culver City. Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn could shlep to Uganda and the Congo to shoot “The African Queen” (Hepburn suffered from dysentery during much of the filming and had to have a bucket on hand between scenes for her constant vomiting), but Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron couldn't endure a few weeks in Paris shooting exteriors?
Avoiding location shoots was not new for MGM but there's something about the artifice of the film that annoys me. Yes, it contains a slew of wonderful Gershwin songs and I recognize the artistry of Kelly’s 16-minute ballet that closes the film even though I don't want to watch it very often. To me most of the characters are pretty stock—the only one I come close to identifying with is Gene Kelly's neurotic pianist friend played by Oscar Levant. Sadly, I can relate far more to the characters played by Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters in “A Place in the Sun,” people who are desperate to fit in but ultimately know they just can't break free from their own internalized pain. I can also relate to Blanche Dubois' delusions, Stanley Kowalski's boorish impatience, and Stella's dysfunctional denial. Yikes, what a terrifying composite character I am creating.
On the other hand, before you call my therapist, I will say that my 51st birthday felt much more like an MGM musical than any somber black-and-white drama. I can only describe it as “s’wonderful” and “s’marvelous!” Kendall, Leah, and I had an amazing dinner at the same restaurant we went to last year on my birthday when Charlie was still in the NICU. But this time he was right there with us, charming everyone at the Beverly Wilshire with his amazing personality and new “kissy face.” True, I may be getting up there, but I could not be more grateful for my family who bring Technicolor joy into my life every single day. I am right there with Gene Kelly singing this song to my loved ones:
It’s very clear Our love is here to stay. Not for a year But ever and a day. In time the Rockies may tumble Gibralter may crumble They’re only made of clay But…our love is here to stay!
This is one of the oldest photos I have in my family archives. It’s a wonderful portrait of my Uncle Dave and my Aunts Anne and Ruth taken, I believe, some time in the late 1920s. It’s one of the few photos I’ve ever seen of my grandfather’s siblings as children. I was so sad to hear that my Aunt Anne died earlier this week in Israel where she’s lived for many years. Anne was the last surviving child of my great-grandparents, Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba Korolnek, the patriarch and matriarch of my family. I'm fascinated by this photo. My Aunt Anne always seemed a little more serious than some of her brothers and sisters but she looks almost mischievous here, the leader of the younger Korolnek pack. Even though the photo is in black and white, I can see her beautiful red hair cascading over her face. She looks a bit like my daughter Leah here and is probably about the same age.
Here’s another photo of the same trio, taken a few years later in the early 1930s. With them is my great-great-grandmother, Rivka Goldkind (Alta Toba’s mother), born in 1857. How amazing it is to see my Aunt Anne, who lived until 2010, gazing at her grandmother who would be 153 years old today.
Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba came to Canada from Staszow, Poland, in 1910. They had four children in Poland but two of them, a boy and a girl, died after Itshe Meyer had left for the New World but before he could send for Alta Toba. I remember the sad story that Alta Toba told of how to inform her husband of their children’s deaths. She often wrote letters to her husband in Toronto, and in what seems like very strange advice today, Alta Toba’s rabbi told her to simply stop mentioning the two children who had died in her letters and that Itshe Meyer would get the message. Oy. But he did, and he sat shiva in Toronto for his departed offspring.
Soon afterwards, my great-grandmother sailed for Canada with the two children who had survived, my Uncle Herb (1904-1993) and my grandfather, Sam (1907-1995). Once established in Canada, their home at 35 Baldwin Street became a hub of Jewish life in Toronto for decades. Alta Toba was blessed with four more children, my Uncle Harry (1913-2000), my Aunt Anne (1915-2010), my Uncle Max (1917-2001), my Aunt Ruth (1919-1991), and my Uncle Dave (1923-1999).
This rare document shows when 16-year-old "Annie Korolnek" crossed from Canada to Detroit where she continued on to Chicago for a six-week visit with her cousin. The last visit had occurred in August 1926 when she was 10 years old.
Here are Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba at a party for their 50th wedding anniversary with all seven of their children. When I was kid, we went to Toronto at least once a year and it seemed like there were several simchas that the family celebrated each year. The strongest images I have of my great aunts and uncles is of them smiling and dancing furiously at various weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. All seven of them had very successful long-lasting marriages—only one divorce in the lot, and that took place long before I was born. It never crossed by mind back then that this vibrant group would ever leave us. I thought they would be around forever, these red-headed laughing adults who paid such respect to their religious parents while also heading up their own large families.
Considering the pressure the Korolnek children must have been under to pick mates that met with my great-grandparents’ approval, it’s amazing that they all had true love matches. My Aunt Anne certainly did. She met handsome and debonair Jack Wolff when she was just 16 years old. They described their meeting as love at first sight. Too young to get married, they dated for four years and finally stood under the chuppah in January 1936. They had three children, Rhoda, Minda, and Howard, all of whom eventually emigrated to Israel, as did Anne and Jack in the 1970s. I remember visiting them at their home in Netanya when I was a teenager.
Anne and Jack celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary (!) in 2006 with three generations of their family present (including what seemed like hundreds of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and even one great-great-grandchild on the way). If their relationship isn’t the model for a successful, fulfilling marriage, I don’t know what is. My Uncle Jack died the following year, in 2007.
I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t seen my Aunt Anne in many years. How I wish I’d been able to go to Israel for a visit in recent times and sit down and talk with her. The last time I saw Anne was at my first wedding, in Paris, in 1993. I was very touched that Aunt Anne and Uncle Jack came all the way from Israel for the event, along with their two daughters, Rhoda and Minda, and their grandchildren, my cousins Nurit and Ephraim. It was great to have them there. My last face-to-face conversation with Aunt Anne probably occurred the day after our wedding in the kosher hotel they were staying at in Paris. Anne always seemed ageless to me. During her years in Chicago, her home was always the place where Itshe Meyer and Alta Toba would stay when they came to town and we all gathered there. Their daughter Rhoda died in the 1990s, way too young. I remember calling my mom from a pay phone at Farmers Market to tell her the news and she broke down in sobs. I can only imagine the pain Anne felt in losing her daughter. Minda was the flower girl at my parents’ wedding in 1953. I saw her and her husband on a recent visit to L.A. Nurit and Ephraim are both younger than I am yet they have seven grown children who are all amazing and four grandchildren! My Aunt Anne was a great-great-grandmother four times over—does that ever happen these days?
Happily, her large family in Israel was able to celebrate Anne’s 95th birthday earlier this year. Here she is with just some of her great- and great-great-grandchildren. It feels like the end of an era. Each time someone in my family dies, it makes me wonder more about the afterlife. A big part of me believes that one day I’ll be in a circle again dancing with my laughing red-haired aunts and uncles.
Hamakom y'nachem etchem b'toch sh'ar availai tziyon ee Yerushalayim.