February 14, 2021 – davidbruceblog #2

Bathrooms

• Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce and their families once ate breakfast together while traveling on a train. Mr. Rathbone excused himself from the table, picked up the morning paper, then began to leave the dining car. Ever-mischievous Mr. Bruce asked Cynthia, Mr. Rathbone’s young daughter, “Darling, where’s Daddy going?” Cynthia’s answer filled the crowded dining car: “Daddy’s going to do after-breakfast plop-plops.”

• People frequently act strangely around celebrities. Humor writer H. Allen Smith tells a story about seeing Gary Cooper walk out of a men’s room. Mr. Smith then entered the restroom, where a man standing at a urinal looked at him, grinned, and said, “Right on top of Gary Cooper’s!”

Birthdays

• Victoria Horne Oakie, the wife of comedian Jack Oakie (who played the Mussolini character in Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator), had a wonderful idea for her husband’s 70^th birthday. For the year leading up to the birthday, she contacted hundreds of people her husband had worked with during his long career and asked them to write a letter to Jack. So many letters poured in that she had to collect them in two volumes. It took Mr. Oakie two weeks to read all the letters after dinner.

• W.C. Fields used to lie about his birthday, giving several dates in various interviews. When asked why he did this, he replied that he wanted to get free drinks on those other days, too.

Books

• Children’s book author/illustrator Tomie dePaola eagerly looked forward to seeing the Walt Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when it came out in 1938, but he was surprised that the movie didn’t follow the true version — that is, the version he knew — of the fairy tale. In the movie, the Evil Queen gave Snow White the poisoned apple without first pulling Snow White’s laces so tight that she couldn’t breathe or giving her a poisoned comb — both times, the dwarfs rescued her. This was so upsetting to Tomie that he yelled at the movie screen, “Where are the laces? Where is the comb?” In addition, he was so upset at the end of the movie — it stopped before the true ending — that he yelled at the screen again, “The story’s not over yet. Where’s the wedding? Where’re the red-hot iron shoes that they put on the Evil Queen so that she dances herself to death?” His mother ran in from the lobby, where she had taken his younger brother when he became frightened during a scary scene, and dragged him out of the theater. Tomie saw the movie again with a little girl from the neighborhood, but he warned her in advance that Mr. Disney didn’t know the true story of Snow White.

• Believe it or not, producer Val Lewton’s film I Walked with a Zombie is based in part on Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel Jane Eyre — in the novel, Jane works for a man whose wife suffers from incurable insanity. Mr. Lewton’s film studio, RKO, gave him a small budget and worried that his film was too arty, relying more on atmosphere than on blood to frighten people. One of his bosses complained about I Walked with a Zombie that “sock-it-to-them was being sacrificed for ‘arty stuff.’”

Censorship

• French comedian Jacques Tati, the creative genius behind the M. Hulot films, detested censorship, especially of his own work. Mr. Tati’s film Traffic was to be shown in a movie theater at Champs-Elysées, but the management thought the film was too long, so they deleted a four-minute scene from it. However, when the film was shown, it included that scene because Mr. Tati had persuaded the projectionist to put the scene back in the film. Management again deleted the four-minute scene, but a few days later, the scene was back in the film because Mr. Tati had again persuaded the projectionist to put it back in the film.

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BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC

Music: “Problema Seu” [“Your Problem”]

Album: O FUTURO DOS AUTORAMAS [THE FUTURE OF ATORAMAS]

Artist: Autoramas

Artist Location: Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

lnfo:

“Formed in Rio de Janeiro in 1998, Autoramas mixes rock from the 60s, New Wave and Jovem Guarda. One of the most successful bands in the independent scene, it has abundant material and numerous international tours. Currently it is composed by Gabriel Thomaz, Érika Martins, Jairo Fajer and Fábio Lima.”

Gabriel Thomaz: Voz e Guitarra
Érika Martins: Voz, Guitarra, Teclados e Percussão
Melvin: Baixo e Vocal
Fred Castro: Bateria

“The Autoramas are a Brazilian surf/garage rock/garage punk/rockabilly band that started in the late 90s and continue playing to this day.” — Wikipedia