Day 22 of Nat'l Emergency: Seven Samurai Memories

To commemorate the 100th birthday of the late Toshiro Mifune, the lead actor in many of Japanese director Akiro Kurosawa’s films, including “Seven Samurai” and “Rashomon,” Turner Classic Movies broadcast the flicks Wednesday. I recorded them.

“The Magnificent Seven” with Yul Brynner and a host of other soon to be well-known actors including Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach and James Coburn, was adapted from “Seven Samurai.” Not that it really matters. This blog post is not really concerned with “Seven Samurai.” Rather the focus is on the person with whom I saw the film for the first time, Steve Kreinberg.

In September 1971 I attended an evening orientation program for graduate students enrolled at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University. I knew no one among the roughly 80 attendees, but by some karma found myself drawn to a straight-haired, mustachioed, willowy fellow with a slight Southern twang from growing up in Gainesville, Fla. We immediately bonded, not because we turned out to be perhaps the only Jewish students but more probably because, as we acknowledged to each other later that evening, we both reconnoitered the venue prior to the meeting time to ascertain where the bathroom was located. 

Steve was two years older than my 22 years. He was married to Nancy, a nurse, who I met when we returned to his basement apartment. I was surprised to learn Nancy was headed back to their residence in San Francisco for the duration of Steve’s stay in Syracuse. 

Steve and I became almost inseparable that year despite the fact that we shared very few classes. Evenings and weekends were our bonding times. We ate pizza at the Varsity, an off-campus hangout. We drove out to the closest Lum’s in DeWitt to savor hot dogs steamed in beer, or my preferred meal, a fried shrimp basket with fries, washed down with beer served in frosted glasses. 

We went to movies. It was with Steve (and Gilda during one of her visits) that I saw “A Clockwork Orange.” We especially enjoyed Woody Allen’s “Bananas” and “Play It Again, Sam.” Steve became such a devotee of Allen that he wangled an interview with him while serving as the movie critic of the Syracuse New Times, a two-year-old alternative newspaper. Though Allen was in the middle of editing “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask,” he agreed to meet Steve at his Manhattan studio.

After Steve returned to Syracuse he was uncharacteristically quiet. When the next edition of his paper did not run his interview I demanded an explanation. Sheepishly he admitted he lost all professional composure in the presence of Allen. He just kept gushing, “You’re Woody Allen. I love your work.” There’s only so many times he could say that before Woody determined the interview was going nowhere and he dismissed Steve.

We also bonded over our shiksa (Gentile woman) fantasy, a real life blonde in our class named Donna Doherty. We barely spoke a word to her that year but hardly a day went by that her name and image did not crop up in our conversations. (As an aside, she lived in Branford, Conn., outside New Haven. I owe my first reporting job to my fascination with her. When looking for a job in 1972 I came to a fork in the road in Ansonia. The right fork led to Bridgeport, the left to New Haven. I chose New Haven because it was closer to where she lived. I got a job at The New Haven Register. Two years later Donna joined the paper as a sports writer. She eventually became editor of Tennis magazine.)  

Back to Steve: After we earned our master’s degree in newspaper journalism in the spring of 1972 Steve went back to San Francisco despite his constant fretting that reporting jobs would be hard to land. While I started work on The Register, Steve wound up working for a public relations firm. His marriage ended. He decided to try his luck in Los Angeles. 

Steve became one of the five question writers for the old “Hollywood Squares” show (the one that featured Paul Lynde in the center square). He was expected to write 50 acceptable questions per day, and yes, celebrities were counseled before each show on topics they would be asked. After “Hollywood Squares” Steve and his writing partner Andy became staff writers for “Archie Bunker’s Place” (Carroll O’Connor’s successor show to “All in the Family”) as well as for “Herman’s Head,” “Saved by the Bell,” “Head of the Class,” “Nine to Five” and “Mork & Mindy.”

He had married Robin Baskin, like Nancy a nurse. They had a son, Oliver. As with Nancy, they divorced. Robin, Oliver and Steve moved to Asheville, NC, because, as Steve related to Gilda and me during one of our visits to his California apartment, Los Angeles was no place to raise a child and besides, he had accumulated enough money to leave the Hollywood rat race. We visited him in Asheville. He came to New York with Oliver. We took them to a New York Yankees game. But our get-togethers ended almost 30 years ago. 

One of these days I will do two things. One, I will watch “Seven Samurai.” All I remember from the first time was it was almost impossible to read the English subtitles, partly because we were watching the film on Steve’s small portable television but more importantly because the white outfits of the samurai obscured many of the words superimposed in white. 

Second, I will contact him. As I had done in the past I googled Steve, Robin and Oliver as I was writing this blog post. This time I came up with information I could use to contact him. If we are successful in reconnecting I will owe it all to time spent sheltering-in-place and TCM’s broadcast of “Seven Samurai.”

Trump & the GOP: The Political Embodiment of the Fable of The Scorpion and the Frog

As they try to come to terms with the outrageous, bigoted, xenophobic, misogynistic, unconstitutional ravings of their presumptive presidential candidate, Republican Party leaders would do well to read the children’s animal fable “The Scorpion and the Frog.” (For those not familiar with the parable, the tale goes thusly: a scorpion implores a frog to carry it across a river. At first the frog rejects the idea, fearing it would be fatally stung. After the scorpion explains it wouldn’t do such a thing as it would then drown, the frog agrees. Halfway across, the frog is indeed stung. Before it dies it asks the scorpion why would it doom both of them. Because, replies the scorpion, it is in its nature to sting, regardless of the consequences.)

Donald Trump’s strained, symbiotic relationship with his current party’s establishment—which hopes to control him—is the embodiment of the fable. Despite their often stated distaste for him, the party elite is willing to carry Trump on its back as they navigate the election waters. But, just as the scorpion stung the frog and drowned both of them because it was in its nature, there is little doubt Trump will continue to make flagrantly divisive statements that may well sink GOP efforts to appeal to a base broader than angry white men and women.

Trump has promised a major rip-roaring speech early next week to expose both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s warts. For sure the speech will be colorful and entertaining. He is, after all, a master showman. But as two of the most heavily vetted public figures of the last quarter century, the Clintons have survived years of congressional and special prosecutor scrutiny. It would indeed be news if Trump revealed any new scandals beyond the rumor and innuendo that are his stock in trade. 

On the other hand, can a man currently defending himself in court for allegedly fraudulently bilking desperate, needy consumers into paying thousands of dollars to Trump University accuse the Clintons of engaging in get rich quick schemes? Bernie Sanders, a socialist, might legitimately question Hillary’s fees for Wall Street speeches, but Trump is a capitalist. You would think he would applaud her ability to squeeze as much lucre from the fat cats.

Can a man who cheated on two wives chastise another for infidelity?  Let’s keep in mind two points: Hillary never committed adultery, and many of the holier-than-thou crowd who tried to remove Bill from office wound up admitting they strayed from their marriage vows. 

Can a man who four times had to seek bankruptcy protection for his companies be expected to lecture on business acumen and vitality? Bill, after all, wiped out the deficit he inherited from his Republican predecessors and left a surplus. The stock market enjoyed boom times during his term of office, the budget was balanced, the economy was robust.

Can a man who lauded Putin and Kim Jong-Un, who suggested nuclear proliferation is acceptable, who would undermine longstanding bi-partisan international alliances, opine on foreign affairs? Beyond what is written for him, does he know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims? Does he understand the complex world of Eastern Europe and its relationship with Russia, or the rising threat of nationalist parties throughout Europe? Does he have a plan for the Southern American hemisphere beyond building a wall? 

Can a man who makes racist statements, who claims not to know who David Duke is and who does not disavow the Ku Klux Klan, who evaluates women by their physical appearance, who makes fun of the handicapped, credibly claim to be a unifier? 

Regrettably, to the rank and file Republican voters who chose him in the primaries, Trump’s inadequate resume will make no difference. Nor will it make any difference to the Hillary haters. 

The sadness in all this is that it won’t make any difference to almost all of the leaders and elected officials of the Republican Party. Few if any will listen to South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham’s lonely voice of reason.

“This is the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy,” Graham said of Trump’s attack on Federal Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. “If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it. There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”

If Hillary had made comments as explosive as Trump’s Republicans would be falling over each other as they rushed to microphones to declare her unfit for office. But, as Thomas L. Friedman pointed out in his Wednesday New York Times column, they have abandoned any principles they might have had:

“It (the Republican Party) is just an empty shell, selling pieces of itself to the highest bidders, — policy by policy — a little to the Tea Party over here, a little to Big Oil over there, a little to the gun lobby, to antitax zealots, to climate-change deniers. And before you know it, the party stands for an incoherent mess of ideas unrelated to any theory of where the world is going or how America actually becomes great again in the 21st century.” http://nyti.ms/1XCdFx7

(There have been numerous articles imagining what the first 100 days of a Trump administration would look like. Here’s one I recommend for your reading pleasure, or rather, discomfort:

http://religionnews.com/2015/11/24/trump-registration-muslims-immigrants-refugees-first-100-days/

If you have more time, listen to Leonard Lopate of WNYC interview Philippe Sands, an international lawyer and professor of law at University College London, on the subject of genocide and crimes against humanity (http://www.wnyc.org/story/philippe-sands-east-west-street/). Among the more interesting points Sands noted was that Hitler and Hans Frank, the former’s personal lawyer from 1928 to 1932, laid the groundwork for the Third Reich by challenging the authority and objectivity of Germany’s courts and judges. Sound familiar?)

Here’s you political witticism of the day, courtesy of whowhatwhy.org:

“We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.” —Woody Allen

Holiday Notes: Shopping, Woody Allen, Huckabee

Were you one of the 247 million Americans who trudged down to the mall over the 4-day Thanksgiving holiday to celebrate our collective good fortune by spending a record $59.1 billion? I wasn’t. Not that I don’t have lots to be thankful for, but I make it a point to abstain from the in-store frenzy. I didn’t even participate in the $1.5 billion Cyber Monday buy-fest. 

Perhaps because for 32 years I had to report on this ultra-patriotic shopping activity I developed a certain disdain for Black Friday, followed by Saturday and Sunday at the shopping center. Coverage of consumers fighting over Xboxes or big screen TVs or Ugg boots was all too predictable. Also predictable was the supposition that strong Thanksgiving weekend sales presaged an overall strong holiday shopping season. Yes, that could happen. But what usually transpired was a lull in spending that picked up only in the last 10 days before Christmas. Meanwhile, newspapers and electronic media wondered who would win the game of chicken between retailers who did not want to reduce prices and hurt their profit margins and consumers who wanted to wait until extreme discounts opened up their tight hold on their wallets. I’ll be very surprised if such stories don’t start appearing in about a week.

Too Awed to Ask: I’m a little behind in my reading, so I finally looked at a NY Times conversation with Robert De Niro printed November 18 in the magazine section. Written by the film critic A.O. Scott, the article highlighted a challenge many journalists confront when interviewing a famous person. Scott wrote, “I confess, however, that it took all my professional discipline to resist squandering the time I spent with De Niro on a recent Saturday afternoon in a slack-jawed fanboy recitation of his greatest hits. Oh, my God, you’re Jake Lamotta! You’re Johnny Boy! Your Travis Bickle! I’m talking to you.”

That paragraph reminded me of my year at Syracuse University earning a master’s degree in newspaper journalism. One of my classmates and best friends, Steve Kreinberg, got a freelance gig as a movie critic on the Syracuse New Times, an alternative lifestyle newspaper launched just two years earlier in 1969 (and still around today). After we laughed our way through Woody Allen’s Bananas in a suburban Syracuse movie theater—there is nothing that makes you feel more Jewish, and alone in the world, than guffawing at Woody Allen shtick when the rest of the audience is sitting cold, stone silent—Steve announced in the parking lot that he landed an interview with Allen the following week in New York City. Though Allen was in the middle of editing Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask, he agreed to meet Steve at his studio.

He drove down to Manhattan. When Steve returned he was uncharacteristically quiet. When the next edition did not run his interview I demanded an explanation. Sheepishly he admitted he lost all professional composure in the presence of the great man. He just kept gushing, “You’re Woody Allen. I love your work.” There’s only so many times he could say that before Woody determined this interview was going nowhere. 

Steve eventually recovered his moxie and went on to become one of the five question writers for the old Hollywood Squares show (the one that featured Paul Lynde in the center square). He was expected to write 50 acceptable questions per day, and yes, celebrities were counseled before each show on topics they would be asked. After Hollywood Squares Steve and his writing partner Andy became staff writers for Archie Bunker’s Place (Carroll O’Connor’s successor show to All in the Family) as well as for Herman’s Head, Saved by the Bell, Head of the Class, Nine to Five and Mork & Mindy. 

Funny, He Doesn’t Look Jewish: I’m always amused when out of left field a famous person has it revealed that deep in their past a Jewish gene lurks. Think former secretary of state Madeleine Albright (though how an intelligent woman like she could not figure out her parents chose to flee Prague in 1938 because of their Jewish origins is beyond my ken). 

Anyway, I was reading this week’s NY Times magazine when I came across this response from Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, also-ran 2008 Republican presidential primary candidate, Southern Baptist minister and Fox News Channel talk show host. Asked how to celebrate the holidays, Huckabee said, “On Christmas Eve, we go to the service at our church, and when it’s over, we go out for Chinese food.” 

Funny, I didn’t know Huckabee was Jewish (for my non-Jewish readers, ask a Jewish friend why it's funny). 

Entertainment Edition

To celebrate our 39th anniversary, Gilda and I last night went to see Relatively Speaking, three one-act plays by Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen exploring relationships. Would we recommend it? Let’s just say it was a good thing we bought the tickets as part of Broadway’s two-for-one winter promotion.

One of the delightful aspects of the Woody Allen playlet, Honeymoon Motel, was the chance once again to see Richard Libertini perform on stage. Gilda and I first saw Libertini in Paul Sill’s Story Theater back in 1971, a series of vignettes based on fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm.

Seeing the same actor over a span of 40 years is part of the amazing arc of live theater. Libertini is easily recognized. A balding, gangly actor with a melancholy demeanor that belies his comic antics, he’s made a career of playing character parts, most notably General Garcia, the insane Latin-American dictator, in the original film of The In-Laws starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, and spiritual advisor Prahka Lasa in All of Me, with Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin.

Recognizing actors on stage or screen is easy. Identifying them in public is harder. If I say so myself, I’m good at it, at least for, shall we say, actors who are not young, pop culture phenoms. A year or so ago, as audience members milled about during intermission of a Playwrights Horizons play, I walked over to shake the hand of a slightly older gentleman not arousing interest from any other theatergoer. As Gilda and our friends Ken and Jane looked on, I told him I saw him perform more than 46 years ago as Motel the Tailor in the original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. Austin Pendleton was grateful for the recognition so many years later, both for his acting and for being recognized and remembered.


The Fourth Troubador: Dick Kniss died last week. For those not familiar with the name, he was, in the words of a NY Times obituary, the stand-up bass player who became “a veritable fourth member of the folk-singing trio” Peter, Paul and Mary.

Always standing behind and usually to stage left (the audience’s right) of the featured folksingers, Kniss enjoyed a following of his own among Peter, Paul and Mary devotees, among whom I number myself. As I wrote back in September 2009 when Mary Travers passed away, my friends and I were responsible for Kniss missing a beat during one of their concerts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

We were there on a day off from our summer-camp counselor jobs. Sitting in first row center seats, we caught Kniss’ eye and started a silent dialogue with him, distracting him enough to miss a beat in a song, the name of which escapes me.

As you can read from his obituary, it probably was one of the few times in his career Kniss made a musical mistake (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/arts/music/dick-kniss-bassist-for-peter-paul-and-mary-is-dead-at-74.html?_r=1&hpw).


Into the Woods: This summer, in Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, one of my favorite musicals will be revived. Like Paul Sill’s Story Theater, the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine creation Into the Woods is based on Grimm fairy tales. But with a twist. The second act depicts the not-so-happily-ever-after lives of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Jack of beanstalk fame and assorted prince charmings, courtiers and ordinary townsfolk, including a baker and his wife. Gilda and I saw Into the Woods shortly after it opened in 1987. When PBS broadcast a production of the play in 1991, I taped it for Ellie, who was 10 at the time.

She viewed it often. During a play date with a friend one day she asked if they could watch the tape. I set it up and went outside to do some yard work, only to be surprised when they emerged from the house about an hour later. When I asked why they weren’t still watching, Ellie said the tape was over. It dawned on me that during all her previous viewings Ellie had never realized there was a second act.

Perhaps it was wrong to disabuse her of the fantasy that all stories end sweetly. Perhaps it could have waited until she was a few years older. I reacted before fully thinking through the consequences, ushering them both back into the house to watch the dark conclusion of Into the Woods.

I can’t rightly say Ellie or her friend were traumatized by the second act. Ellie’s passion for Into the Woods continued. About five years later Ellie played the baker’s wife in a Play Group Theater production of Into the Woods. It was one of many leading lady parts that defined her teenage acting years.