Terror and the Symphony Ball

I'm reprinting this for my Sister who was only three at the time, and I found out yesterday she doesn't remember any of it.

When I was a kid, there was such a thing as the Jackson Carnival Ball, put on by the Jackson Junior League. It was a really big deal. Patterned after the New Orleans Mardi Gras Krewes.  They had a king with a court and pages, costumes, and dancing, and the whole thing was held in the Jackson Coliseum.

The idea was to make money for the Jackson Symphony (now the Mississippi Symphony). I don't know if it didn't actually raise any money or if it was too much trouble or what, but they haven't had a Carnival Ball that big in a long time. 

My mother wasn't the kind of person to join a volunteer organization like the Junior League without doing any actual volunteer work so one year, she ended up in charge of all the costumes for the Carnival Ball, and my brother was enlisted as a page boy. I remember racks and racks of costumes filling the living room and the dining room of our house and strangers in and out to try them on. 

That year, the King of the ball was the governor of Mississippi, John Bell Williams. Williams was a World War II hero and lost one arm in battle when his bomber crashed. Sometimes he wore a mechanical prosthetic arm that ended in two curved metal prongs. 

Williams was an old-style Democrat and previously served in Congress in Washington. He supported segregation, but, as governor, he didn't fight the court order when it came down to desegregating Mississippi public schools.

Arrangements were made for the Governor to come by our house and try on his king costume before the ball. My dad supported Williams' opponent in the governor's race, so this was a slightly delicate moment. 

 My mother pulled us kids aside to tell us that a very important man was coming to the house, and we were to be on our best behavior and be very polite and say "yes, sir" and especially not to stare because he had only one arm. 

Determined to be a good boy, I spent the next day and a half preparing myself to meet this important man with one arm. I wasn't going to stare, and I wasn't going to say anything stupid like, "Nice to meet you, we voted for William Winter." or "Hey mister, where's your arm?". 

The big day came, and a nicely dressed older man came to the door in a dark suit with a hat. I was six years old. Now, my mother was wise to warn us about meeting a man with one arm, and I was ready for that, even though I'd never met a man with one arm before. What she didn't tell us was that he had replaced that arm with what looked to me like a gleaming metal HOOK like Captain Hook from Peter Pan! Captain Hook was a bad guy, so I ran and hid, not to come out until after the Governor had left.

And that was my first awkward experience with politicians.

HBO's Julia, Episode 7 Foie Gras

I've remarked before how much I'm enjoying this program.  This week's episode is especially good.  

If you enjoyed the banter of David Hyde Pierce and Bebe Neuwirth on "Fraiser" you'll find this episode a treat.  Later in the episode, Julia encounters Betty Freidan, author of "The Feminine Mystique", a foundational book involving the burgeoning feminist movement, for a powerful tet-a-tet about Julia's program and its influence on the role of American Women.

Toward the end of the episode, Julia has a moving encounter with someone most of you will recognize.  I have no idea if it's based on a real-life encounter, but I'd like to think so.

HBO hasn't yet decided about a season two of "Julia".  Let's hope they pick it up.  

Flowers In The Ponder Heart

If you ever visited Eudora Welty's home, you'll know she loved gardening and flowers, so it's not surprising she often mentions them in her books.  

In her 1953 novella, The Ponder Heart, she mentions several varieties of flowers and plants well-known to Southern Gardners, including: 

• Railroad lilies (orange daylilies) (Hemerocallis fulva)
• Narcissus Nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus)
• Red Nasturtium (Tropaeolum minus)
• Verbina (Verbena officinalis)
• Chinaberries (Melia azedarach)
• Althea (Hibiscus syriacus)
• Salvia (Salvia officinalis)
• Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora)
• Etoile Rose (Etoile de Hollande)
• Fig Tree (Ficus carica 'Celeste')

These little touches really help create a mental image of the scenes she describes if you're from the South.  As I re-read her other works, I might make similar posts about them.  I suspect this aspect of her work has been covered many times before, but it will still be fun.   

Miss Eudora Tending Her Garden (1940s)

View Our Eudora Welty Collection

The Offer Episode One

 

I watched the first episode of "The Offer" on Paramount Plus, and here's the review I promised.

It begins in the late sixties, an exciting time in the American movie business, on the rubicon of the early seventies, one of the greatest eras for Cinema.  It's a show made by Paramount, about a Paramount picture, with many scenes in the famous Gower Street Paramount studios, telling the story of how "The Godfather" came to be.  

Many people, myself included, consider "The Godfather" one of the greatest films ever made.  With all this rich material, the show is off to a good start.  First episodes are always awkward because you have to fit in a lot of basic character introductions and exposition. 

I felt the writers were struggling to fit it all in here.  They have to introduce the producers, Albert Ruddy and Robert Evans, the writers Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and real-life gangster Joe Columbo and set up the story's basic premise.  That's a lot to accomplish in an hour.  

The cast so far is competent but not bowling me over. It's too early to tell, though.  I did find Matthew Goode, playing Robert Evans, a bit annoying, but let's see how it goes.  The sets and costumes are also competent, and the cinematography is very good.

There are dozens of easter eggs strewn throughout this episode, both to movie fans of the era and Coppola fans.  One I enjoyed was seeing Coppola handling his wind-up 16mm camera.  His "home movies" shot on set are pretty well known to Godfather fans.

So far, I'm definitely in for another episode.  The show moves along pretty quickly and does not pull punches on some of the known issues associated with "The Godfather," like how Frank Sinatra reacted to the book.

The series is ten episodes, released every Thursday night on Paramount Plus.