"DEAR MR. GABLE" sang Judy Garland

I'll get back to "Best Books of Bellabell's 2008" before the Big Ball drops in Time's Square, but in the meantime, let me ask you this:

How do we feel about fan mail?

Have you ever written any? Movie buff though I was, I didn't pen any adoring letters during my childhood or adolescence. But in my mid-twenties, the recorded voice of soprano Eileen Farrell made me hyper-ventilate and even shout a bit during a particularly demanding finale. So I wrote a short, grateful letter to the glorious diva. Have no idea now what I wrote. I do know what she wrote back, however. Still have the brief, kind note, with its dark blue engraved letterhead and her written signature.

Movie historians insist that Joan Crawford answered every piece of email she received. I can believe it--don't want to, don't want even to think about why she did, but I do.

New Age composer-keyboardist Mike Rowland turns out CD's with titles like "The Fairy Ring," and "Mystic Angel." Frankly, the music is what cartoonist Gerry Trudeau once called "air pudding." You'd never mistake it for Mozart. But it gives a serene comfort I've never found in other "tinkle-bong-bong" offerings. For me, it is the perfect relaxation/meditation/go-to-sleep music. And when my sister-in-law laying dying in Arizona (too young! too young!), I kept Rowland's music playing softly in the background for several days. Everyone who passed through the room stopped,listened and commented on how soothing it was. So after wearing grooves in the CD's, I finally wrote Mike Rowland a fan letter. Because I tried too hard to make it natural and unassuming, it was awkward and a little tacky, but I felt I'd paid a small debt.

Recently I saw a fine local production of the one-man play "I Am My Own Wife," the true account of a German transvestite whose efforts to save artwork of Jewish victims during World War II were both admirable and questionable. The lone actor played a full stage of roles, some 15 or more characters, and kept the play credible and absorbing from start to finish. So I emailed him a note of congratulations. But I don't think that counts as "fan" mail, "fan" being derived from "fanatic" and I not even remembering now the young actor's name.

But I am truly a fanatic on the works of Alan Bennett; and his slim novella, The Uncommon Reader, has tickled me so much I really want to thank him. But this man collects writing awards the way some Brits used to collect wildflowers.
I'm sure fan mail is, for him, just one more thing to assign someone else to deal with, whether through his publishers or by agreement with the local Postal Service (and heavy tips on Boxing Day). Bennett has been known to suffer fools gladly--well, no, not gladly. But gently. For 15 years, a wildly eccentric old woman, a stranger to the writer, camped in Bennett's front yard in her battered yellow van. After dealing with Miss Shepherd and her demands and dementia, surely Bennett views fan mail, yea or nay, as a small nuisance.

But, do we write such letters primarily for the sake of the recipient, or for our own sake? I begin to think the latter. We write so that we may benefit from the actual expression of gratitude, which, until such expression, is only appreciation, an intellectual exercise. Whereas gratitude is an emotion, a resident of the heart, which it warms and comforts.

If you were going to write a fan letter, who would it be for?

BEST BOOKS OF BELLABELL'S YEAR

Publications ranging from the New York Times to the Plumbers' Pipeline are offering us their candidates for the best books of 2008, so I decided to ante up a list as well. I don't tag these the Best Books of
2008; merely as the best books of my 2008. No particular ranking.

Claire Tomalin's SAMUEL PEPYS: THE UNEQUALlED SELF. Now, if you've read any part of the famous Diary by this 17th century eccentric, you're probably saying, "What's left to write about?" Pepys recorded the smallest details of his life, including much more than most readers care to know about such matters as his bowels, bladder, and boudoir behavior. Why a biography by someone else? Well, for one thing, because a cool, ojective but intently interested eye can tell us so much more of the fascinating story. (We all see our own lives, as Twain said, through a glass eye darkly.) And because if you read only the Diary, you are apt to think of Pepys as nothing more than a minor clerk of old Londontown who, sexually speaking, had eyes much bigger than his. . . well, never mind that. Actually, Pepys was a rather major figure of his day, and is still studied by, of all things, Naval historians (the battleship buffs, not the belly-button brigade). In sum: a rich view of a full-throttle life through a wide-angle lens.

Claire Tomalin's JANE AUSTEN; A LIFE. Here we have just the opposite problem from the Pepys' life story: although Austen wrote reams of letters, few have survived
the burnings of dim-bulb kinfolk who kindled when they should have scrapbooked. But scholar Tomalin, with the fervor of an unmedicated obsessive-compulsive, has woven the remaining threads into a thorough and thoroughly readable tapestry. A lot of nonsense and sentimental twaddle has circulated about Jane Austen as her popularity has grown with the decades and her novels been revamped as vehicles for various actorettes of the moment. This writer sees the great novelist with a clear and unsentimental but admiring eye. Having now read three or four of Tomlinson's biographies, I can only conclude that the historian has an intellect as keen as Jane Austen's and a style worthy of her subject.

While we're on British soil, so to speak, one of my great favorites this year is THE UNCOMMON READER, by Alan Bennett. Bennett is England's leading contemporary writer--that's not an opinion; it's a ranking, by sales and popularity and awards and height and whatever else can be measured. He's written The History Boys (six Tony awards), The Madness of King George, Prick Up Your Ears, A Private Function, Beyond the Fringe. . . . Anyway, THE UNCOMMON READER would make the dandiest Christmas present imaginable for the truly devoted readers among your circle. It's quite short--readable in an hour--and it is fiction. And it is about Queen Elizabeth II. To tell you any more would be to ruin the fun. And it is fun--and full of insight. I hope against hope that the BBC or "Masterpiece" or whoever will make us all a wonderful plum pudding for next Christmas by filming this gem--featuring Maggie Smith, or Helen Mirren (the third time would be charming), or Bennett's longtime friend and star of many of his short plays, Patricia Routledge. (Yes, yes, Hyacinth Bucket and let's forget that.)

All right; let's leave the Brits to entertain themselves and come to a very American book: CHARLES SCHULZ AND PEANUTS, by David Michaelis. Everything about Charles Schulz seems movingly American, from his birth in Minnesota to immigrant parents, to his love of baseball, his engrained work ethic, and his huge worldwide success coupled with his lifelong sense of personal failure. Now, let me be frank here: I prefer biographies and memoirs above almost all other genres at this point in my life; but some may find that this book tells them more about Charles Schulz than they want to know; (it's almost 600 pages.) Michaelis gives us great detail about the cartoonist's early life, and puts a Freudian slant on much of his later angst, which he also paints with a full brush. Moreover, Michaelis gives us a rich selection of carefully chosen Peanuts cartoons; I was astonished at how three or four panels could illuminate a whole thread of Shultz' life. At the very end of his life, having written his own name on a piece of paper, and speaking of himself, he said, "That poor kid--he never even got a chance to kick the football. What a dirty trick. . . ."

You were a good man, Charlie Shultz, but you never got to know it.

All right; that's a start. Stay tuned--and let me know what you are reading.

AFTER THE FACT BUT STILL AMUSIN'/ ABOUT THE FOLKS THAT ARE JUST CRUISIN'

I came upon this poem just this morning. Have never read it before. Written in 1932.
I liked it enough to want to share with you gentle readers.

(On another annoying point--Nash being annoyed by the non-voters: several of you have emailed to let me know you are unable to post comments on the blogsite. I'm really sorry about that--I would love to read your responses--and I have the same problem; I sometimes am unable to post on my mentor Emily's wonderful blogsite, "Hamartia and Cheese Sandwiches." Who understands the whimseys of the goddess Cyberia?)


Election Day Is a Holiday

People on whom I do not bother to dote
Are people who do not bother to vote
Heaven forbid that they should ever be exempt
From contumely, obloquy, and various kinds of contempt.

Some of them like Toscanini and some like Rudy Vallée
But all of them take about as much interest in their right to ballot as in their right to ballet.
They haven’t voted since the heyday of Miss Russell (Lillian)
And excuse themselves by saying What’s the difference of one vote in fifty million?

They have such refined and delicate palates
That they can discover no one worthy of their ballots,
And then when someone terrible gets elected
They say There, that’s just what I expected!

And they go around for four years spouting discontented criticisms
And contented witticisms,
And then when somebody to oppose the man they oppose gets nominated
They say Oh golly, golly, he’s the kind of man I’ve always abominated,
And they have discovered that if you don’t take time out to go to the polls
You can manage very nicely to get through thirty-six holes.

Oh let us cover these clever people very conspicuously with loathing,
For they are un-citizens in citizens’ clothing.
They attempt to justify their negligence
On the ground that no candidate appeals to people of their integligence,
But I am quite sure that if Abraham Lincoln (Rep.) ran against Thomas Jefferson (Dem.),
Neither man would be appealing enough to squeeze a vote out of them.

--Ogden Nash (1932)

ONSTAGE: ONE TRICK PONY

The English playwright William Congreve taught us that,"Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast." In turn, the English music-hall singer Anna Russell taught me that silly music hath charms to loosen the uptight breast.

In my most recent blog, I mention the university Faculty Follies, to which students flocked to see their instructors make fools of themselves through song, dance, and general desecration of the performing arts. My first appearance in the Follies was a duet, "The Indian Love Call." But the next time I succumbed to peer pressure and prepared a little number, it was a solo; and as things turned out, that song has followed me throughout my life like a trail of toilet paper eternally glued to my shoe. For which, as it happens, I'm quite grateful.

Backstory:< Anna Russell (1911-2006)was a British-born musician with excellent training and talent but a sense of humor too large to be confined to the regular concert or operatic stage. She turned instead to composing and singing hilarious spoofs of serious music, and made a long, successful career for herself in America, Canada, England, South Africa and anywhere else her wit and play on words would be appreciated. Around 1960, she published The Anna Russell Songbook, which my pal Beverly gave me as a Christmas present.

The Songbook was sub-titled, "Music For People Who Want to Sing But Can't." The non-musical voices were neatly categorized: thin wispy voices; high, clear English bell-like voices; low monotones after the French style; the loud, cracked music-hall voice "with two or three good notes at either end of the scale, and nothing much in between." That last herd included moi.

The song Anna indicated as best (ahem)for my voice was titled "I'm Only A Faded Rose." The narrator mourns that she was once "a rosebud, so fair and pure," feted with diamonds and beautiful clothes but now been cast aside: "He plucked me and wore me, then threw me away; now I'm only a faded rose." The final word spans a full octave and, when properly screeched, produces more decibels than a Boeing 747 on take-off.

I have sung the song many times to a variety of audiences. Each time, the results have been startling. Or startled. Something like that. On one occasion, I had been asked to accept an administrative appointment at the University. The small group I was to join had scheduled a meeting in a handsome, dark-paneled conference room. In attendance were two other deans, an administrative assistant, a couple of secretarys, and an assistant vice president in charge of token appearances. The head honcho, one of the finest men who ever convened a meeting, graciously introduced me and announced that after the meeting itself, we would have refreshments and, in fact, a musical number. (The administrative assistant was a gifted singer.) He then jokingly added, "Perhaps would should require Elouise to sing as well, as a sort of initiation." Indulgent smiles all around. Ho-ho-ho.

"I'll sing for you," I said. (The best defense being a good offense, and all. My singing was undeniably an offense.)

And when the short meeting was over, I launched into "Faded Rose," a capella. Given the occasion, I may have been operating with an additional shot of adrenalin. In any case, I was loud and dramatic, as Anna Russell intended. The two other deans roared; the secretaries giggled;the veep seemed unable to summon up any response. But for me the payoff was the reaction of Paula, the adminstrative assistant, she of the gorgeous voice, a regular soloist at oratorios around the valley, and a woman of calm, self-assured dignity. She was the sort of person any executive would pray to have in the outer office; even the most persistent time-wasters could not get past her guard. By the time I finished singing, her face was deep red, her careful make-up was puddled pudding, her eyes were swollen shut, and her screams of laughter had caused her to cough so hard we had to take a recess before she could sing her own number.

I calculate that my rendition of that song had speeded up the pace of my friendship with Paula by many months.

On another occasion, I attended a week-long summer workshop for feminists in higher education. This must have been in the mid-Seventies, when academic women were getting very serious about equality in the workplace, reasserting the place of neglected women writers, insisting on proper job titles, five-year plans for one's career advancement, and much more. It was all very sober, very crucial, part of the Movement, part of History, and most of the participants were so uptight they could hardly bend at the waist. Tailored power suits and heels were the order of the day. Not one woman mentioned husband or child during the first three days of the workshop. (Liberation did not preclude being servile to one's pets, however, and photos of Fluffy, Flush, Mitzi and Muffin circulated without a blush.) Our seminars and discussions were all highly educational, rigorously researched, and so boring they brought tears to the eye. In the evenings, there was little to do except collapse in one's room or share the solace of revivifying booze in the sterile lounge. The non-drinkers thumbed listlessly through old Alison Bechdel cartoons and scratched our mosquito bites.

One evening, Ms. A asked Ms. B half-heartedly if she wanted to catch the 8 p.m. movie at the university cinema. ("Bonzo goes to College.")

"No," said Ms. B . "I want to stay here and have Elouise entertain me."

I have no idea what led Ms. B. to say such a thing. Possibly my responses in the workshop discussions had suggested I was less serious about my five-year plan than the others; perhaps I just struck her as the class smart-ass. Who knows?

But a couple of the women pushed an old piano into the lobby; someone else volunteered to accompany me; (I had brought the sheet music along to submit as evidence of the traditional role of Woman As the Subject of Abuse and Ultimate Rejection); and I sang "Faded Rose."

Laughter started slowly but accelerated. The cork popped out of more than the Scotch bottle; ice melted from the brave faces; better singers snuggled up to the piano bench and let 'er rip. By evening's end, pictures of Tommy Junior and Simone were going the rounds. During the rest of the workshop, some of us dared to wear slacks and even jeans; our responses to questions were not from the canon but from our own experience; and regular dashes of salsa seasoned the scholarly fare.

So in this month of Thanksgiving, I drink a cider toast to the irrepressible Anna Russell (her bio is titled I'm Not Making This Up, You Know!)and say, "Many thanks! Your rose never did fade in my eyes."

ONSTAGE AND UNHEARD: In memoriam, JEM

One of my favorite "onstage" experiences is the one no one heard.

Backstory: One day, early in my teaching career, I walked down a hallway and heard the colleague in a nearby office singing, "When I'm calling you-ooo-oooooo. . . ." Known as "The Indian Love Call," this was the famous song that movie star Nelson Eddy sang to Jeannette MacDonald in "Rosemarie." In my brashness, I immediately responded by singing, "Will you answer true-ooo-ooo?" A surprised Professor M. popped his head out of the doorway and said, "Miss Bell! How bold!"

Professor M. soon became "Jack"; "How bold!" became his frequent judgment of me, and
"The Indian Love Call" our signature salutation to each other. (Colleagues giggled at the uninformed who thought the song implied a romance between us: Jack was as committed and unscathed a bachelor as ever sang a solo.)

One year, as the annual Faculty Follies loomed, someone suggested Jack and I do our love call for the students. (The Follies was an recurring debacle in which ill-advised faculty members made fools of themselves by singing, dancing, and performing
vaudevillean skits for the entertainment of students. Those were pre-photographic-cell phone days; indeed pre-video camera days, and blackmail was thus less of a temptation.)

Now, performance before an audience, however silly the material, was a different matter than yodeling ad lib down the corridors. Jack was, after all, a pretty decent musician, skillful at the piano and a regular in his metropolitan choral society. As for me, I had range, volume, and gusto. Period. Couldn't read a note of music. So for two weeks prior to the Follies, Jack and I practiced in a music classroom. Ordinarily, he was a man given to irony, sarcasm, and askance eyebrows. But during those practices he was endlessly kind and patient with me. In a couple of weeks, though I sounded more like Selma Diamond than Jeannette MacDonald, the melody was recognizable.

The performance venue was a large concert hall with seats rising from the front, so that everyone had a good view. Entrance was by two side doors at the top. The stage was not raised, but even with the floor, and served by heavy curtains. As our number began, introductory chords from an offstage piano warned the audience what was coming. At the top of the hall, one exit door opened and Jack appeared, in all the rented glory that the Salt Lake Costume Company could provide. He had calf-high black boots, flared Canadian Mountie breeches, a scarlet, much be-buttoned tunic, and the well-known Stetson Mountie hat.

As he marched down the stairs, singing with manful fervor, the students started to scream with delight.

Then the curtains parted a yard or so, and I entered. Salt Lake Costume had had nothing suitable for the Indian Maiden, so we had simply taken two large beach towels in vaguely autumnal colors, stitched them together at the shoulders and sides, and girdled them with a braided rope. My head boasted braids as well, thickly twined of yellow yarn. Of course I was barefoot.

Now the audience was really shrieking, and they never stopped. As the piano accompaniment continued, we danced through our subtle choreography--me lunging with out-stretched arms for Jack, he prancing nimbly by, evading every hopeful advance--and I sang exactly as Jack had taught me, never missing a note.

Not one of which was ever heard over the pandemonium.

TELL ME AGAIN: WHAT DOES FAMILIARITY BREED?

Professor M, a longtime colleague, had seen the movie Naughty Marietta 126 times, at last count. And this record was achieved before one could buy or rent tapes or DVD's of major movies. M's recent viewings of the Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald extravaganza had surely been on television; but for the most part, he had seen those ten dozen reprises by walking into a theater and plunking down his money, whether that ticket cost a dime or a dollar or ten. It was the passion of decades of his life.

Among my acquaintances, M holds the record for seeing a single movie the most often. But in the early Sixties in France,when I worked there, a man returned to seeWest Side Story at the (rather expensive) George V cinema 500 times. When he showed up for #500, the management gave him a large bottle of champagne and a free ticket. (Pikers, in my opinion; they could at least have arranged a dinner date with Rita Moreno!) And in Wales, a little later, Mrs. Alwyn Evans saw The Sound of Music800 times.

This way madness lies, right?

When I first heard about the giddy Gallic movie-goer, and about Alwyn("I just fancy that Julie Andrews!")Evans, I certainly thought they were nutsy. But I never considered my enamored colleague, Professor M., to have more than the ordinary number of screws loose. And therein lies the core of What I Learned in the School of Life Today. It exemplifies the old gibe: "I am charmingly eccentric; you are sometimes quite strange; HE is certifiable." In other words, what's close at hand, what we are familiar with, is acceptable to an amazing degree.

Let me ask you: do you ever watch the MASH reruns? Occasionally? Fairly often? Every night of the world? (Hand raised here.) But WHY?
Is there a plot line you don't know perfectly? A corny joke you couldn't recite in your sleep? A wrinkle on Col. Potter's lovable face you can't identify from ten yards out? No, no, and no, says I.

Yet I watch MASH every night, as surely as I let the dog out or brush my teeth. Surely I have seen each episode as many times as Prof. M saw Eddy woodenly woo the marvelous "Marietta."

But again, why? Anyone?

ONSTAGE AGAIN: "The Happy Journey"

A colleague in the Drama Department was about produce Thornton Wilder's "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden," best known as simply "The Happy Journey." He asked me to play the central role, Ma Kirby. Well, as you might guess, if I caved in to a roommate's request to be in her Mask Club play (see a previous Sounding), I certainly wouldn't play hard-to-get for a faculty member with a long string of successes, his own Equity card, and influence with the university promotion committee. So what if there would be no live audience?

Charles was directing and producing a film version of Wilder's play, which would then be used in drama classes and possibly sold to public television. Or to MGM--who knew? (Well, I did, for one. But I kept a straight face.)

So in a bare film studio on campus, six of us stood around, looked at each other, looked at the four straight chairs (the "car" that would take us on the happy journey), and at least one of us wondered just how you go about spinning gold out of straw.

My character was Ma Kirby. No costume other than one of my blah dresses, plus a little cloche hat Charles had pried out of the wardrobe mistress. Pa Kirby was a pleasantly portly graduate student with a battered brown fedora. Our "children" were two skinny kids that belonged to the faculty genius. (One of their brothers would later be a College Bowl star, a sister became a widely published author, another sister joined the faculty as a medievalist.) Ma and Pa had an older daughter,
a "married daughter" and always, in the script, referred to that way. It took me a while to figure out that Wilder was stressing the respectability of the daughter. In the Twenties, an unmarried daughter who lived away from home would have had neighborly tongues wagging.

Married Daughter (Beulah) comes onstage only for the last few minutes of the play. (As it turned out, that was just as well. The co-ed playing Beulah seemed to come from a very different part of the country than the rest of the cast, if not from an unknown planet.) Essentially the happy journey takes Ma and Pa and the two kids, Arthur, 10, and Caroline, 12, on an 80-mile trip during an era when such travel by car was a big deal to most folks. Oddly enough, this trip becomes a big deal to the reader. "Oddly" because almost nothing happens. The Kirbys stop for gas, they stop to let a funeral pass by; they have a rough couple of minutes when Arthur makes what Ma considers a sassy remark; they read billboards. That's about it.

And yet--everything happens. Birth (Beulah has just had a baby) and death
(not only the central figure of the funeral they pass, but the daughter's baby, who lived only a few hours). Education ("Pa, don't go past the school! Mr. Bridenbach will see us!"), work ("Ma, can I get a paper route?"), propriety ("Put your cap on, Arthur; I don't go on no journey with no tramp!" "Take off you hat, Arthur; look at your father," as the funeral passes). The Journey includes it all: food, sleep, neighbors, friendship, patriotism, religion, animals, family, love. None of it sentimentalized, none of it written in italics or bold print, most of it in casual observations taken up and dropped the way you'd spend a few minutes looking at a stone or a shell along the Jersey shore.

One character I have left till now. Wilder uses a Stage Manager, as he does in Our Town and other plays, giving this actor a variety of small roles--next door neighbor, one of Arthur's playmates, the service attendant in the gas station, with whom Ma has an extended, homey chat that embarrasses her children. Director Charles was especially insightful in his choice of cast member here. The Stage Manager was played by Sterling VanWagenen, a slim, blond young man who wore his role lightly yet with total engagement. This fellow could act. And do a bit more, as it turned out. He later produced, among many other works, the much-honored 1985 film, A Trip to Bountiful. Geraldine Page won the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe award for that role. Van Wagenen was also a co-founder of something they named the Sundance Film Festival, currently America's largest festival honoring independent films. Later, in conjunction with another blond actor, he founded the Sundance Institute, now the major supporter of independent playwrights, screenwriters and filmmakers.

Spinning gold out of straw.