REVIEW: ROCKSHOW

ROCKSHOW:  FILM SHOWS WINGS AT FULL POWER

A film featuring Paul McCartney and Wings

Review by Don L. Stradley





Paul McCartney in Rockshow

There is a moment in Rockshow, a concert film of the Wings Over The World tour of 1976, where Paul McCartney sits at a piano and tells the audience he is going to play a song that goes back a few years.

He hedges for a moment, and then, with the sneakiness of a pickpocket, begins hammering the familiar rolling cords of 'Lady Madonna,' a glorious Beatles hit from a decade earlier. The crowd knows it within two notes. Another Beatles gem follows: 'The Long and Winding Road.' Later in the show, when McCartney sits with an acoustic guitar and plays 'I've Just Seen a Face,' ' Blackbird,' and 'Yesterday,' the cameras pan over people in the audience: their eyes are misty; they are spellbound. A Beatle was actually playing some hits by The Beatles.

They may have been a '60s band, but anyone who grew up in the '70s will tell you The Beatles were still vital long after their breakup. Their music was played constantly on the radio, their movies were shown often on television, and there was enough Beatle literature in the bookstores to educate an army of junior high schoolers who weren't interested in Kiss or The Eagles. For many of us, they were still number one.

The Wings Over The World tour was a major undertaking, and a gamble, by McCartney. It was a chance to prove he was still, at 34, an important figure in the music world. His Beatle bandmates had gone into various degrees of seclusion by that year, but McCartney still craved a band situation. He'd made some strong albums with Wings, released some hit singles, and by the time of this tour, he was able to put on a two hour show that could compete with any rock act of the era.

The resulting live album, Wings Over America, was a massive three record set that was notable for its shear bulk, a surprise FM radio hit in 'Maybe I'm Amazed', and the fact that it featured a handful of Beatles tunes. The live album became a touchstone for late period Beatle fans, the ones who had missed the first round of Beatlemania. While they waited fruitlessly for a moptop reunion, they could be somewhat satisfied by McCartney singing 'Yesterday' on Wings Over America. That was something, anyway.

Of course, hardcore Beatle fans can always find something to gripe about, and McCartney was sometimes criticized for not playing enough of the old hits on this tour. He has played more Beatles tunes on his recent tours, almost at the exclusion of old Wings hits, which makes Rockshow all the more exciting; this is probably the most Wings music he ever performed live. McCartney was smart to limit the oldies in 1976. He was, after all, pushing Wings. Looking back, he was actually quite generous to include a few Beatle hits, and judging by the rapturous looks on the faces of fans as he crooned 'Yesterday', anything more might've resulted in a kind of mass meltdown.


The filmed account of the tour enjoyed a brief release in 1980 and '81, but has been painstakingly restored with a stunning new 5.1 mix courtesy of Abbey Road. McCartney allegedly was against releasing the film in years past - a shortened version had kicked around on tape during the '80s - but the new version is a treasure, documenting McCartney at the height of his powers and popularity. In a way, this tour was McCartney's equivalent of Elvis Presley's 1968 NBC comeback special. The triumph would be shortlived: in a few years McCartney would be out of favor, battling his image as the sappy Beatle. In '76, though, he competed in a turf war with Rod Stewart, Elton John, and The Stones; he whipped them all. 

Rockshow was filmed at four locations, including the cavernous Seattle Kingdome. The band, featuring a classic Wings lineup of McCartney, his wife Linda, Denny Laine, Jimmy McCulloch, and Joe English, as well as a four piece horn section, was in top fighting form. The set list is phenomenal, including: 'Venus and Mars', 'Jet', 'Let Me Roll It', 'Live and Let Die', 'Bluebird', 'Beware My Love', the aforementioned Beatles tunes, plus McCartney's hits that were brand new at the time, such as 'Let 'Em In', 'What the Man Said', and McCartney's biggest hit that year, 'Silly Love Songs,' which gets the wildest fan reaction of the night.

What comes across in the film is that Wings was a great band, and McCartney was a veritable music machine, comfortable with rock & roll, blues shuffles, jazzy sounds, crooning, soul ballads, country and folk, beer chanteys, disco jive, and even a splash of reggae. Always a melodic and adventurous bassist, McCartney's playing here is brash and sinewy, anchoring the sound with even greater depth and confidence than he had with The Beatles. His voice, too, is impeccable here, as if months on the road had been the perfect stone on which to sharpen himself.
 



McCartney also took many opportunities to step back so others could sing. Laine is especially effective, offering soulful renditions of 'Go Now' and Paul Simon's 'Richard Cory'. Laine mugs and vamps throughout the show, a typically mad Brit rocker of the era, complete with ball-crushing tight pants and a razor blade necklace.
 

In fact, lovers of '70s kitsch will adore the look of Rockshow. There are strobe lights, smoke bombs and bubble machines, and enough shag haircuts and satin pants to make one yearn for the days of Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and Midnight Special. McCartney wears a glittery black sweater and black bell bottoms, looking a bit like Jimmy Page in The Song Remains The Same, minus the serpents. Linda, with padded shoulders and an enormous shag haircut, looks like she stepped out from the cover of a Roxy Music album.

And how nice it is to see Linda McCartney again. Here, Linda seems relaxed, glad to be part of the show. In a brief intro to the film, McCartney talks about being "slagged" for bringing his wife on stage with him, and talks with pride at how she gradually became the band's cheerleader. Watching Rockshow, one sees that Linda was a trooper, singing before thousands of people every night. The 1976 tour was a triumph for her, too.

At the end of the film, after explosive versions of 'Band on the Run', 'Hi Hi Hi', and 'Solly', McCartney flashes a two-fingered peace symbol as he leaves the stage. Linda, always tending to business, flashes the Wings hand sign - thumbs together, fingers out, like a W. She was part of the band, man. She was also reminding us that her husband's other band was history, and this was a Wings show.





REVIEW: DUELING HARLOWS: RACE TO THE SILVER SCREEN

REVIEW OF DUELING HARLOWS: RACE TO THE SILVER SCREEN
Author illuminates oddball moment in sixties cinema

Book By Tom Lisanti
Review By Don L. Stradley

 

The publicity machines nearly overheated that spring of 1965 when two films, both titled Harlow, went into production at the same time. Gossip columns literally vibrated with the war or words between producers Joseph E. Levine and Bill Sargent, each trying to sell the public on a bio pic of Hollywood legend Jean Harlow. 

 

The former helmed a big budget production from Paramount Pictures, the latter an independent quickie shot in a blistering eight days. The tale of how these films came to be, and how their respective producers nearly came to blows at the 1965 Academy Awards ceremony, is a riotous, exhausting comedy of errors, captured perfectly in Tom Lisanti's Dueling Harlows: Race to the Silver Screen.

 

 Although Mr. Lisanti gives much play to Carroll Baker and Carol Lynley, the two actresses hired to play Jean Harlow, the real stars of the book are Levine and Sargent. Levine, born in Boston and known as "The Boston Barnum," had an eye for what Mr. Lisanti calls "high gloss, cotton candy trash." He made his name by importing foreign films to America, including Godzilla, but by 1964 he was scoring with sexy potboilers such as The Carpetbaggers. Meanwhile, Sargent was a young upstart trying to foist a new method of filming ("Electronovision") onto the business. That both producers latched onto the Harlow story showed there wasn't much separating Levine and Sargent. They both sought something sexy, scandalous, and easy to sell.

 

 

 

Jean Harlow had been Hollywood's reigning blond bombshell during the 1930s. Her death at age 26 as well as a bizarre marriage to producer Paul Bern (that had ended in Bern's suicide), provided the beautiful Harlow with a dark, tragic legend. Various attempts had been made during the 1950s to give Harlow's life the big screen treatment. At one point Marylin Monroe was slated for the role in a 20th Century Fox production, but the project was quashed when her playwright hubby Arthur Miller talked her out of it. 

 

By 1964, the Harlow story was back in the news thanks to a sleazy new biography in the bookstalls, a disreputable mess written by Irving Shulman with help from Harlow's former agent, Arthur Landau. The book became a bestseller and launched a wave of Harlow mania. Along with Levine at Paramount and Sargent's indy production, Fox, MGM, and Columbia also announced plans for a Harlow film. Levine, sensing another cotton candy subject, bought the rights to the Shulman book, but distanced himself from it. The book was garbage and he knew it, but garbage had made him a rich man. Owning the book rights also established Levine as the front runner in the Harlow sweepstakes. The other studios backed down, but not Sargent.

Sargent had been experimenting with 'Electronovision,' a method of shooting that recorded a production on video before being transferred to film. That the end product looked like a splotchy 1950s television program was secondary; Sargent was selling Electronovision based on its sheer speed. As if to prove Electronovision was the technique of the future, Sargent plotted to get his own biopic of Harlow into cinemas before Levine's.

It was a David and Goliath story, with newcomer Sargent going up against the giant Levine, who had already won the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Cecil B. DeMille Award. But in this case, David wanted to be Goliath, as Sargent fancied himself Levine's equal as a promoter, and probably coveted Levine's status.

Sargent, although he didn't have Levine's resources, certainly had an ego to rival Levine's; he hired a blimp to fly over the 1965 Oscar ceremony advertising his Harlow, and hired rock bands to play at his film's premiere. Sargent, alternately described by associates as a genius and a bully, wasn't deterred by Levine's greater connections.  Levine, outraged that a young nobody would try to upstage him, planned to drown Sargent with money and hype.

Dueling Harlows takes readers briskly through the casting of each film, the problems with their underwritten and inaccurate screenplays, and the stress felt by Baker and Lynley. Both actresses were subjected to nasty criticism as soon as their casting was announced, and Mr. Lisanti is sensitive to what these women went through as they tried to portray the iconic Harlow.

Gordon Douglas and Alex Segal, the directors hired by Levine and Sargent, are portrayed as weary journeymen trying to get through an unpleasant ordeal. There are amusing tidbits involving showbiz veterans Judy Garland, Red Buttons, and Ginger Rogers, and Mr. Lisanti also interviews surviving cast and crew members from both films, although there is more representation from Sargent's team. The general feeling is of a family sadly recalling an unfortunate memory, but trying to move on. Mr. Lisanti includes a tragic moment at the wrap party of Sargent's Harlow which saw two union men get into a fight that ended with one of them dead from a punch in the throat.

 

But even with the excellent details and subplots offered by Mr. Lisanti, the bellicose Levine stands out. He belonged in the era of ballyhoo and pomp, back when movie stars were big and pictures were colossal. Levine's philosophy was simple: You could convince anyone that your picture was good if you spent enough money.  Levine's Harlow flopped, but he went on to produce some of the most notable films of the era, including The Graduate and The Lion in Winter. Levine's career had as many flops as hits, though. It ended in 1981 with Tattoo, a stinker from which even the mighty Levine couldn't recover. Still, it's hard to not admire a man who gave us both Carnal Knowledge and Santa Claus Conquers The Martians.

There is something bittersweet about Dueling Harlows. By 1965, Hollywood and the rest of America was at a flashpoint. Gaudy bio pics built on lavish hype and spending were about to be derailed by the changing shift in the culture. Easy Rider and Barbarella were coming. Producers like Levine were about to be replaced by Hollywood's next generation of young mavericks. Baker and Lynley, two lovely and talented actresses, would continue to work steadily but never live up to their initial promise. Baker later admitted that her legal battles with Levine in the movie's wake left her depressed and suicidal. And Sargent, although he would produce the classic Richard Pryor in Concert (1979), found himself cut off from the movie business. His gruff nature and habit of suing people turned him into a pariah.

Still, Mr. Lisanti argues that Sargent's Harlow was superior to Levine's film. The flubbed lines and grainy black and white footage couldn't conceal the feisty little movie that Sargent had produced. In a way, I was reminded of something Manny Farber, the great film critic of The New Republic and The Nation, once said while praising a B-movie from the 1940s:

"The Bs have generally a more convincing actuality than the expensive films," Farber wrote, "probably for the fact that they have less money to spend building sets and lighting them so they shine and sparkle, and designing costumes that almost walk by themselves.With less money and time to inject spurious entertainment angles into his film, the B director is more likely to spend his time making what he has real rather than classy."

This notion fits Bill Sargent's Harlow. It adds to the bittersweet nature of Mr. Lisanti's book.

DS

 

 

 

 

REVIEW OF LOOPED: Stefanie Powers stars as iconic Bankhead

Play written by Matthew Lombardo

Review by Don L. Stradley

The national tour of Looped hit Boston this week for a six day run at the Cutler Majestic Theater. The tidy production, directed by Rob Ruggiero, is brisk and funny and does what it's supposed to do, more or less. Stefanie Powers has taken over the role of Tallulah Bankhead, a part made famous by Valerie Harper during the show’s 2010 Broadway run. Of course, some would say the role of Tallulah Bankhead was originally made famous by Tallulah Bankhead.

Looped takes place in 1965 when Bankhead allegedly spent an afternoon in a sound studio recording, or “looping,” a botched line of dialogue from Die! Die! My Darling!, a Gothic horror that would be her last movie. A drunk and stubborn Bankhead clashes with uptight sound editor Danny Miller (Brian Hutchinson), with Bankhead turning an easy day’s work into a few hours of sheer hell, complete with secret confessions, and a bunch of other things that rarely happen in real life but have a way of taking place on stage.

One would think that writing about Tallulah Bankhead would give a writer license to kill, but playwright Matthew Lombardo takes a softer route. Looped is one of those plays where rivals learn about each other and gradually become friends. Like Zorba the Greek, wild old Tallulah teaches timid Danny to let his hair down. “Take a trip,” she says during the play’s hoary denouement. “Take a drink. Do something. Be alive.” Such a predictable sentiment is disappointing, considering the play’s first act had been good, bawdy entertainment. Then again, this is the Bankhead of Lombardo’s fantasies, a kind of “Mother Tallulah” who absolves sexually confused men of their sins and tells them to live it up.

The casting of Powers is ironic, since Powers had actually been Bankhead’s co-star in Die! Die! My Darling! nearly 50 years ago. Powers, 68, does a passable impression of Bankhead. The only problem is that Powers looks marvelously fit at a time when Bankhead is supposed to be an alcoholic drug addict who has been diagnosed with only a few months to live. Powers seems more like a middle-aged party girl then a sickly old cokehead.

Still, Powers has fun with the role, and even when Lombardo’s script forces her into some heavy-handed reveries, Powers is game.

The best scene in the play is when Bankhead reminisces about her bungled performance as Blanche Dubois in a Florida production of A Streetcar Named Desire. She angrily recalls an audience of gay men at the Coconut Grove Theater laughing at her every line. It’s a remarkable moment, with Powers hinting at the disdain Bankhead may have felt for her camp followers.

A thought provoking play could have been written about a performer at odds with her audience, but judging by the laughter at the Majestic, Lombardo gave the crowd what it wanted: a night out with a vulgar old lady.

Etcetera – A bored Irish cop was stationed outside the theater. He couldn't hide his indifference as he was being instructed to guard the back entrance so Ms. Powers could make her escape after the show.

“What’s the big deal about her?” he asked. “Does she have some kind of cult following?”

He was told that Ms. Powers had been in the hit TV series Hart to Hart.

“When was that?” he said, “Thirty friggin’ years ago?”

Sometimes it takes a Boston cop to shed a little light on show business.

Review: MARTY FELDMAN, THE BIOGRAPHY OF A COMEDY LEGEND

Feldman Biography is Best showbiz Bio of the Year by Don Stradley

If your only memory of Marty Feldman is his hilarious turn in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, his life and career are illuminated in Robert Ross' Marty Feldman, The Biography of a Comedy Legend. Ross' book, a product of painstaking research, is as good as any showbiz biography you will ever read.

Before Feldman’s bulging eyes and wild hair became part of the American consciousness, he was well-known in England as one of the top television comedy writers of the 1960s. After years of writing scripts, he was finally coaxed into performing. Although he preferred working behind the scenes, Feldman’s acting style was a revelation. By mixing the deadpan humor of Buster Keaton with a bit of “Swinging ‘60s London,”  Feldman not only connected with British TV audiences, but provided a link between post war British humor and the 1970's style of Monty Python's Flying Circus. In fact, many members of the Python crew worked with Feldman and considered him a comedy sage.

Feldman’s humor may have been developed to deal with a problematic early life. Constantly punished at school for misbehaving, he left home at 15 to pursue a career as a jazz trumpeter.   Even though he scratched out a living, Feldman was often destitute, scrambling around in the company of drug dealers, third-rate musicians, and gangsters.  He was even homeless for a time, “sleeping rough” as the British say, before he began selling jokes to music hall comedians.  

Once he’d found success in England, Feldman craved recognition in America.  A syndicated British series called The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine began appearing on American networks, which lead to Feldman performing on such U.S. staples as The Tonight Show, and Hollywood Squares. At age 40 he struck gold as Igor in Young Frankenstein.  But soon after Feldman's world conquering year of 1974, his fortunes changed.  A chain smoker and drug user, Feldman worked himself to a nub until a lonely death in a hotel room in 1982. Ross’ description of the dying Feldman trying to reach his beloved wife on the phone for a last goodbye is heartbreaking.

As Ross tells it, two things prevented Feldman from capitalizing on his Young Frankenstein success. One was America's tendency to marginalize British actors; the other was Feldman's own disenchantment with fame.  At the time of his death he was planning a return to England, where he hoped to get back on British TV.

The book also explores Feldman's Jewish upbringing. Growing up in London’s East End as the son of Russian Jews, Feldman described himself as an outcast, although he said in a 1980 interview that he admired all things Hasidic, and had been quite devout as a young boy.  He also believed his love of the performing arts was probably linked to his respect for Jewish storytellers.

Ross presents Feldman as a brilliant but unhappy fellow.   It was as if the trauma of sleeping under bridges and being penniless haunted him, even as he walked where very few British comedians had ever walked before.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS * * *

Starting with the opening pastiche of Parisian sights (obviously recalling the opening of Manhattan), it’s as if Woody Allen has finally delivered a Woody Allen movie. Gil Pender (Luke Wilson) is a frumpy modern Hollywood screenwriter stuck in Paris with his wife and in-laws. Just when it seems he can take no more of the pompous crowd, he finds himself in a Twilight Zone world where such Jazz Age icons as Zelda Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are still dancing the night away. When Pender begins flirting with Pablo Picasso’s young mistress, well, you can probably guess where Allen goes with the material.

Lacking Allen’s acid tongue and paranoia, Wilson gives Pender a kind of cottony-soft humanity. He's smart to avoid doing an Allen impression, as many others have done in Allen movies. The result is that Wilson becomes one of the most likeable characters in the Woody Allen canon, a baggy everyman trying to stay afloat in a world of very big ideas. You root for him as he mingles with his heroes, and you believe him when he says something is missing in contemporary life. Add some Cole Porter songs, and Midnight in Paris feels as if we, too, are visiting the past. I don’t mean the 1920s, but the 1980s, when Allen might have released this as a follow-up to such warm, smart comedies as Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cairo.

STRAW DOGS *

Sam Peckinpah’s violent 1971 study of pacifists finding their survival instinct is given a teeth whitening treatment in this remake by writer/director Rod Lurie. The action has been moved from England to Louisiana, the couple under siege is recast as a vapid Hollywood pair, and the bad guys are now belly-scratching hicks. James Marsden, in the role once played by Dustin Hoffman, is too self-assured to earn our sympathy. Hoffman was better, scampering like a cockroach to protect his home from invaders. The original also benefited from social tensions created by the Viet Nam war, when academics were standing up to war mongers. Lurie’s early scenes of lonely swampland, and James Woods’ stirring performance as the town drunk, suggest a film that could’ve been made about the way isolation breeds ignorance. Unfortunately, Lurie resorts to clichés about Hollywood versus the Deep South. He tries, but he can’t get this potboiler to boil.

Bernstein show - Ordinary Book, Extraordinary Music

Cambridge MA: Samuel J. Bernstein is a gentlemanly 73-year-old professor of English at Northeastern University, but lurking inside him is a feisty soul that likes to knock theatrical tradition on the head.

“That’s a fair thing to say,” Bernstein said after a workshop performance of his latest show, The Untitled Musical Revue: A Strangely Structured Musical Revue. The piece concerned four actors in a nameless revue who sing their way through various romantic troubles. It wasn't as bold as some of his other efforts, such as the play he co-authored that featured an African-American actress as Adolph Hitler, or Bernstein's musical version of The Hairy Ape, but it was offbeat enough to confirm Bernstein’s reputation as a non-traditionalist. "In the arts," said Bernstein, "there is always room for experimentation."

Nonetheless, as the characters in “Untitled” offered bromides about the mystery of love, it was the music that stood out above the Pirandello plot. Thanks particularly to the neat piano work of musical director Stephanie Tham, the jazzy flourishes made one think Bernstein is, at heart, a misplaced Tin Pan Alley figure. One hears a bit of everything in Bernstein’s music, from torch song angst, to standard Broadway panache. Bernstein’s melodic touch may be inborn: his father was a mandolin virtuoso, his mother a pianist.

Stepping away from a cast party at the Cambridge Center for the Performing Arts, Bernstein explained the music of his childhood, and how "music was part of my life, every single day." 

Bernstein’s father was a member of the Mandolin Orchestra of New York and was known for playing a variety of styles. It wasn't unusual for young Bernstein to hear his father playing classical, show tunes, or ethnic music, all in the space of an evening.

"Those notes,” Bernstein said, “made their way into my consciousness more powerfully than words.”

Singer Lisa Yves included nine songs from Bernstein’s oeuvre in a recent concert performance at The Bickford Theater in Morristown, New Jersey. Her set was called “Love & Dreams,” and also featured songs by George Gershwin and Cole Porter. The startling power of the Yves/Bernstein collaboration can be heard on a YouTube clip of Yves singing Bernstein’s “Hand in Hand.” 

“Sam's songs have a classic flavor to them,” Yves said via email, describing Bernstein’s music as “reminiscent of an earlier era.”

Although Bernstein felt a strong kinship with Yves, he admitted he was a bit anxious at having his songs interpreted along with such heavyweights as Gershwin and Porter.

“I was concerned,” he said, “ although I noticed in rehearsals she made my songs sound better than they've ever sounded. She’s good enough, in my opinion, to go into New York and become a star. Still, I was somewhat intimidated, because those are two major figures in American music. But the audience was very kind, and seemed to like what she did. It was a memorable experience for me.

“It is my profound hope that Lisa will honor me by continuing to perform my songs, because I consider us a kind of artistic team. We are meant for each other.”

Working with Yves was just one of a series of career highs Bernstein has enjoyed lately. Many of his plays are being produced or given staged readings, including one epic that producers have told him would cost around $14-million to mount in New York. He doubts the current economy could support such a production, but he remains exhilarated by all that is happening for him. He has more plays in development and is beginning his 52nd year as a teacher.

“I’m able to do all of this because of my wife. We've been married 46 years. To have someone so dedicated to my welfare, to have someone so intelligent and so perceptive as part of my life, is the key to everything I do,” Bernstein said.

When told of her husband’s tribute to her, Arlene Bernstein shrugged.

“That’s nice,” she said. “But I told him he has to stop for a while.”

Bernstein didn't hear her. He was back in the lobby serving cake to the cast.

- Don Stradley

Nazi Trial Film Finally Shown in America

 

Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, a 1948 documentary,  was once deemed by Universal Studios as “too gruesome” for the American public. Now, thanks to the director's daughter, this remarkable film is finally being shown in American theaters.

Originally commissioned by the U.S. War Department’s Civil Affairs Division, Nuremberg was directed by Stuart Schulberg, younger brother of Budd Schulberg. The brothers were part of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA. Budd, who would later author such Hollywood classics as On The Waterfront, supervised two film compilations to be used by the U.S. prosecution team. Stuart artfully weaved sections from those films into the courtroom footage, creating Nuremberg.

The film played in Germany before being shelved for various political reasons, including a fear that it might permanently ruin Germany’s image in America. A decision by the Truman administration further quashed efforts to show it in this country.

 

In 2003, Stuart Schulberg’s daughter Sandra and partner Josh Waletzky undertook a five year mission to restore the 78-minute film. With a painstakingly reconstructed soundtrack using original sound from the trial, a new recording of the original music score, and narration by Liev Schreiber (the voice of most HBO documentaries), the restored film is stunning.

Nuremberg shows how the international prosecutors built their case by using the Nazis’ own films and records. The familiar images of mass graves are even more startling here, with the victims seemingly stacked liked kindling, along with mountainous piles of shoes, gold teeth, and personal items taken from death camp victims. A shot of confiscated shaving brushes seems especially poignant, as if the Nazi’s first step in destroying a person’s humanity was to take their vanity.

As critic Roger Ebert said of Shoah, the nine-hour documentary which also has resurfaced in recent months, films like this are important in that they allow one generation to tell the next what it has learned.

Nuremberg also shows, as the defendants deny culpability, what evil looks like when it's backed into a corner.

 

Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today has been well received since its New York premiere in September 2009, much to the relief of Sandra Schulberg.

“I had wondered how much of this was going to be new,” Schulberg said. “Some of the images have been recycled countless times, but to my enormous surprise and relief, many of the experts who screened it were very impressed; some of the footage has never been seen before, and even the footage that is familiar has a new impact when it is viewed within the context of the trial.”

A two disc DVD edition of Nuremburg is being planned for next year, which will include the two films supervised by Budd Schulberg: The Nazi Plan, which consists of the German Reich’s own films, and Nazi Concentration Camps, which used footage shot by Allied forces. The DVD will also include interviews with Nuremberg prosecutors, Budd Schulberg, and the restoration team.

Stuart Schulberg died years ago, but Budd died in 2009. He was aware of his niece’s efforts.

“He was thrilled,” said Schulberg, acknowledging that the film’s release is bittersweet without her uncle being here to see it.

Schulberg plans to make Nuremberg available to human rights groups and secondary schools. A Spanish language version of Nuremberg had great impact recently in Guatemala, where human rights issues have surfaced since the Guatemalan Civil War. It’s a sign, perhaps, that the film's life will extend beyond its current theatrical run.

“Personally,” said Schulberg, “I hope it lasts another 60 years, to make up for the 60 years it was buried.”

- Don L. Stradley

 

Here Comes Howie! by Don Stradley

 

Fans who know Howie Mandel only from Deal or No Deal or America's Got Talent might be in for a surprise when he comes to the Lynn Auditorium on May 20.

You see, Mandel may be notoriously afraid of germs, but he doesn't mind if the jokes are a little dirty.

"There is some adult fare," Mandel has said of his act, which involves a lot of back-and-forth chatter with the audience. "I wouldn't suggest bringing the kids."

It's no surprise that Mandel's stage work is not quite family friendly. After all, his stand-up comedy career extends back to the drug-fueled  1970s, just as American comedians were taking a turn for the weird.

Perhaps inspired by the end of the Vietnam War, or fallout from the 1960s underground culture, the comedians of the late '70s were moving away from political monologues and towards silly new extremes. Gallagher was smashing watermelons with hammers; Andy Kaufman was inviting women onstage to wrestle; and Bruce Baum, a contemporary of Mandel's, appeared onstage wearing a diaper.

Mandel waded into the business like a feisty little brother determined to prove he belonged. Spastic, manic, and infantile, his favorite gag in those days was to place a latex glove over his head and inflate it with his nose. A 1979 performance at the infamous Comedy Store in Los Angeles landed Mandel his first big break, a job on the syndicated game show, Make Me Laugh.

Despite successes that include NBC's St. Elsewhere, the animated series Bobby's World, and  Deal or No Deal,  Mandel has never abandoned his stand-up roots. Along with yearly comedy tours, he's a regular attraction at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.  Don't look for the latex glove, though. Sinus problems put an end to that particular stunt.

While Mandel won't temper his act for his new audience, he appreciates the ongoing interest in him. His hot streak continues with his latest show, Mobbed, which drew 10-million viewers for its March debut and was picked up by FOX for eight additional episodes. 

Mandel, 55, told Canadian news site CANOE, "At this point in my career, specifically this time in my life, I have some perspective on what this means, and how lucky this is.”

Comedy fans in Lynn are also lucky, for Mandel is making a rare area appearance.

Just don't bring the kids.

Howie Mandel appears at the Lynn Auditorium on May 20. For ticket information call 781-598-4000.

Fun Facts About Howie Mandel….

- He was the voice of Gizmo in Gremlins and Gremlins II.

- Before he was a comedian, Mandel worked in a Toronto suburb as a carpet salesman.

- Mandel has been married since 1980 and has three children.

- In 1990 Mandel was considered to replace Howard Hesseman as the lead in ABC's Head of The Class. The role eventually went to Scottish comic Billy Connolly. (Mandel ended up on Good Grief, a FOX comedy about a wisecracking mortician. The show bombed.)

- Mandel was ranked #82 on Comedy Central's 2004 list of the 100 greatest comics of all time.

- While fellow America’s Got Talent  judge Piers Morgan tries to nap in his trailer, Mandel likes to stand outside with a bullhorn, shouting at passersby, "Quiet, please. Mr. Morgan is trying to sleep!"