The Dragon's Almanac 2007 - 10 Febuary

from Justin Wintle

"There's no entombment like marriage to a malevolent man."

. . (164) Chinese

cheap_priceless_editions (at) yahoo (dot) ca

University of Michigan 'Sees' A Post on CPE -- YIPEE !

Today, proudly, Cheap Priceless Editions was given a linked mention on the University of Michigan's list of Internet sites and posts (Boxxet Links) under the category 'Education'. We made the 'Best' Box.

The university's search site of various links is updated daily and choses a different focus each day. CPE was referenced under an announcement regarding Google partnering with the University of Texas to digitize part of their library collection. A similar project, the initial one in fact, of the Google Library Project, was undertaken at the U of M in December 2004.

Blogaulaire, along with several other bloggers with far greater expertise and experience than moi, highlighted our reservations about Google having free reign in how such digitized archives are distributed outside non-profit, public foundations and universities.

The only connection Blogaulaire has with this university is that it is the one and only campus venue at which I got together with Abbie Hoffman back when we were . . .

But I digress. Maybe if the U of M knew more about that 'moment', they would not have chosen to upload a link to CPE!

I'm kidding folks. Abbie's dead and I've mellowed so much, I might as well be. :) (wry, withering smile)


See HERE !!

A Great Hollywood Writer is Dead - A long, long post to bring us trekkies up to speed . .

Subtitle =
"There were T.V. scriptwriters around before Gene Roddenberry; there were Big Studios before Paramount Pictures.")

Screen & Script T.V. Writer Died on Saturday

'"I Love Lucy' writer Bob Carroll dies"

By JOHN ROGERS
Associated Press Writer

NOTA BENE: Blogaulaire - Bob Carroll worked with some of Hollywood's greats. He was there at the beginning of television, as vaudeville morphed into the electronic media.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bob Carroll Jr., a pioneering television writer who worked on all of Lucille Ball's TV shows, including "I Love Lucy," has died. He was 87.

Carroll, who had been in failing health for the past month, died Saturday, family friend and fellow TV writer Thomas Watson told The Associated Press on Monday.

. . . This B ackground Piece provided by browsing around . . .

When the show moved to television in 1953, Ball took her writers with her, changing the name to "I Love Lucy" and adding real-life husband Desi Arnaz to the cast.

Carroll and Pugh went on to work on every episode of the long-running show, Watson said, as well as many episodes of "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour," "The Lucy Show," "Here's Lucy" and "Life With Lucy." The latter show went off the air in 1986, three years before Ball's death.

Many of the shows had essentially the same premise: Lucy gets involved in some routine function and, often through well-intentioned deviousness coupled with incredible clumsiness, manages to turn it into a pratfall-filled disaster.

Carroll and (Madelyn Pugh) Davis also collaborated on several other projects, including the 1968 film "Yours, Mine and Ours" and the Arnaz-produced sitcom "The Mothers-In-Law."

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

----------------------BELOW SEE: The Museum of Broadcast Communications

Desi Arnaz with Lucille Ball


DESI (Desiderio Alberto, III) ARNAZ. Born in Santiago, Cuba, 2 March 1917. Attended Colegio Delores, Jesuit Preparatory School, Santiago, Cuba. United States Medical Corps., 1943-45. Married (1) Lucille Ball, 30 November 1940 (divorced, 1960), children: Lucie Desiree, Desiderio Alberto, IV (Desi, Jr.). Began entertainment career as singer, with Xavier Cugat Band, 1935-36; formed own band at The Conga Club, Miami, Florida, 1938, height of the "conga craze"; Broadway musical debut, Too Many Girls, 1939; RKO film version of the musical, 1940; music director for the Bob Hope radio show, 1946-47; performed with Ball in radio show, My Favorite Husband, 1947-50; produced pilot for I Love Lucy with own funds, 1951; performed as Ricky Ricardo, I Love Lucy, 1951-57; president and co-founder, Desilu Productions, 1951-62. Recipient: Best Performance of the Month, Photoplay Magazine, 1943, for Bataan.

Died in Del Mar, California 2 December 1986.

TELEVISION

1951-57 I Love Lucy (actor, producer)
1958-60 Westinghouse Playhouse (producer)
1962-65, 67 The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (actor, producer)

FILMS

Too Many Girls (1940); Father Takes a Wife (1941); The Navy Comes Through (1942); Four Jacks and a Jill (1942); Bataan (1943); Holiday in Havana (1949); Cuban Pete (1950); The Long, Long Trailer (1954); Forever Darling (1956); The Escape Artist (1982).

PUBLICATIONS

A Book by Arnaz Desi. New York: William Morrow, 1976.

BOOKS: FURTHER READING

Anderson, Christopher. Hollywood/TV. Austin, Texas: The University of Texas Press, 1994.

Andrews, Bart. The "I Love Lucy" Book. New York: Doubleday, 1985.
(for sale on this CPE site)

Andrews, Bart, and Thomas J. Watson. Loving Lucy. New York: St. Martin's, 1980.

Brady, Kathleen. Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball. New York: Hyperion, 1994.

Firmat, Gustavo Perez. Life On the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1994.

Harris, Warren G. Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Higham, Charles. Lucy: The Life of Lucille Ball. New York: St. Martin's, 1986.

Sanders, Coyne Steven, and Tom Gilbert. Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. New York: Morrow 1993.

Schatz, Thomas. "Desilu, I Love Lucy, and the Rise of Network TV." In, Thompson, Robert, and Gary Burns, editors, Making Television: Authorship and the Production Process. New York: Praeger, 1990.

Desi Arnaz

(H)e was one of Hollywood's most perceptive, and powerful, producers in television's early years. His shrewd business skills and his realization of particular combinations of the television's technological and cultural connections enabled him to develop aspects of the medium that remain central to its economic and cultural force.

(In the early 1940s) Lucy and Desi set out on a nation-wide stage tour to designed to gauge public reaction to their working together in a comedy act. CBS was im-pressed with the positive public response to the couple as well as with a sample script for a TV series developed by the writers from My Favorite Husband.

The basics were there, including Desi as Ricky Ricardo, a struggling band leader, and Lucille as Lucy, a housewife with little talent but a giant yearning to break into show business. This homey battle-of-the-sexes premise for the show convinced the network that viewers could relate, and a pilot version of the program impressed the Philip Morris Company, which agreed to sponsor thirty-nine programs for the 1951-52 season on the CBS network Monday nights at 9:00 P.M

The Desilu Empire

Desilu logo as it showed in the ending credits of Star Trek. Desilu was a production company formed in 1951 by Lucille Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz. The success of the television show "I Love Lucy" enabled Desilu to grow and expand, producing such programs as The Andy Griffith Show. (The downtown Mayberry set was sometimes later used for location shots for Star Trek.)

After the breakup of the Ball-Arnaz marriage Desilu remained successful. In 1961, Ball bought out Arnaz and became the first woman ever to run a major Hollywood studio. Desilu later brought forth shows like Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Her success continued unabatedly until 1967 when Ball sold Desilu to Gulf+Western which merged it with its other production company (the studio's next-door neighbor), Paramount.

The name "Desilu" comes from Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Desilu had a first-refusal agreement with CBS, which is why Star Trek was first pitched to that network. When CBS passed on the show, NBC was then approached.

The World's Largest Studio

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
(Redirected from Desilu Studios) via Anwers Com (A. C. ripped it from Wikipedia and gave proper credit.)

Carroll discussed the fact that he and his writing partner Pugh do not receive ANY compensation for the I Love Lucy re-runs, as would be standard for writers today. He has, however, kept his sense of humor over the situation telling a reporter: "Do you think I'd be sitting here if I'd had residuals?" Carroll asked. "I'd have flown you down to Cuba for this interview if I had."

Helen Hill Memorial Website Media Mention

Family, friends and fellow community and cinema activists have been contributing to the pages on the webpage that links to this post's title.

The number of articles, website references and bloggers who have had something to say about the murder of Hill more than 3 weeks ago in NOLA is astounding. That someone makes the effort to pull those links together is commendable. Helen herself, I'll bet, if in her lifetime all that news coverage had highlighted her volunteer work teaching and feeding and offering support to pre- and post-Katrina residents of the Delta Region and New Orleans . . well people like Helen tend to just throw that stuff away so they can get on to the next challenge.

One focus of her impact on other people doing good volunteer work was in encouraging people in Halifax to pitch in after the flooding of NOLA. And when she lived there she influenced cinematographers to find community themes for creative experimentation with documentary film. If we started with the tens of blog posts listed on the HelenHill Org 'articles' page, it would be possible to document what it takes to pull one small community together. Was it Food Not Bombs that helped mobilize Halifax volunteers? Was it the filmmakers? Was it one individual?

In any case, thanks to the people who pulled those links together. Hopefully there will be some follow-up study and help us remember the motto: 'Don't Mourn, Organize!'

More Info Plus More Comment About a Mindless Murder in New Orleans

After Helen Hill, a 36-year-old animator and filmmaker, was murdered in her New Orleans home last Thursday, it was picked up as news by the major mass media in both the US and Canada.

“I'm so aggravated and angry,” said Helen Gillet, an experimental cellist who gathered with about two dozen other friends of the couple outside their modest frame house in New Orleans's Faubourg Marigny neighbourhood late yesterday afternoon. “I'm outraged at what's going on in the community.”

With the above quote, The Globe & Mail (Toronto, ONT, Canada) ran the story -- about Canadian-Americans: a murdered mother and a seriously injured father and a two-year-old son, Francis, who was unhurt -- by emphasizing his and her Canada connection as well as their activist commitments toward saving the NOLA community post-Katrina:

(Both) family doctor Paul Gailiunas, who grew up in Edmonton and trained in medicine in Halifax (and) Ms. Hill — who was born in the United States but took Canadian citizenship . . . were part of the community of artists, poets and other creative types, refugees from the rest of the United States and elsewhere, who have been drawn to New Orleans because of its singular history and culture. -- emphasis added by Blogaulaire

North of the border, it seems, this sort of story generates more comment on an Internet news website than in Louisiana, where it happened. On the G & M comment thread you find this example of cross-over posting in a 'comment-on-the-news' thread:

Carly MacKay from United States writes: Some of you posters make me sick. This was an article about a horrific tragedy suffered by a Canadian family who came to New Orleans to make a difference. Yet so many turn this into an opportunity to bash every American south of the border. Here is a newsflash, Americans don't think you live in igloos, we know you have electricity, the vast majority of us see the problems we face with a bozo in the White House, 3000 soldiers dead in Iraq, huge gaps between the rich and the middle class and the poor, AND yes for what ever reason Ray Nagin was re-elected in NO. So when one American makes a statement or asks a question like 'Is there electricity in Canada?' don't jump to the conclusion that all Americans are ignorant. Sometimes the only way some people can feel good about themselves is by degrading and insulting others. I wish some of the posters on this comment board had one speck of the intelligence, compassion and understanding that this couple had. I just wish that they had not gone to New Orleans. They will be in my thoughts and prayers. God bless Canada.
Posted 06/01/07 at 10:15 AM EST

Continuing to read the story in the the major mass media coverage from the US:

The Associated Press coverage (picked up by The Times of Shreveport (Louisiana, USA) did not make the Canada connection but gives greater depth to murder victim Helen Hill's cinematographic credits and the medical practise profile of injured physician-husband-father Paul Gailiunas. The Times also added an appeal that anyone with information come forward to help find the criminals responsible:

They had moved to the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood near the French Quarter about a year after Hurricane Katrina wiped out their home in the Mid-City neighborhood.

Police said both were shot at their front door about 5:30 a.m. Thursday. No other details were available. A friend said family members from Columbia, S.C., were on their way to New Orleans on Thursday after learning of the shooting.

“They were wonderful people. Two bright spots in New Orleans. They gave us hope that people could live together. And they’d do anything for anybody,” said Sheri Branch, who was taking care of the couple’s 2-year-old son while Gailiunas was hospitalized.

Hill made short films; her experimental animation shorts had been shown at a number of festivals in the United States and Canada.

She won a $35,000 fellowship in 2004 from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Program for Media Artists for her film “The Florestine Collection.” That film was described by the program as “reflecting on handcrafted work and race in New Orleans, through the personal story of a woman who made hand-sewn dresses.” She also taught filmmaking and animation to grade school through college students, the foundation’s news release said.

A Harvard graduate, she earned her master of fine arts in experimental animation from the California Institute of the Arts in 1995.

Gailiunas, who was in stable condition Thursday, opened a clinic for poor people in the Treme neighborhood in 2004. It was flooded by Katrina a year later.

The state Board of Medical Examiners lists him as working for Excelth Inc., a community-based group providing health care to poor people.

No witnesses to any of the killings has come forward, police said Thursday, begging for help to solve the most recent homicides.

A captioned photo gives the hard news:

New Orleans police investigate a shooting Thursday. Officers arriving on the scene at 5:20 a.m. discovered a man kneeling at the front door holding a 2-year-old boy in his arms. The man had been shot in his right hand, right cheek and left forearm. The boy was not injured. A woman who died at the scene had been shot in the neck. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

Friends of Helen Hill should go to this Internet address for more information or to participate in local memorial services, which will be organised in various spots across the continent.

A PHOTO IMAGE OF THE GAILIUNAS-HILL FAMILY

Donations in memorium of Hill to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) are suggested.

Tillie Olsen, author of 'Tell Me a Riddle,' dies at age 94

AP Wire | 01/02/2007 |

"I'm trying to get used to the idea of a world without Tillie Olsen," Feminist Press publisher Florence Howe said Tuesday. "She gave me `Life in the Iron Mills' in our first year, when we thought we were going to do biographies and children's books. She changed the whole direction of our press. I had never heard of some of the books she was telling me about."



Olsen did little writing in recent years, but she remained an activist. She participated in a protest against a local retailer, demanding better wages for employees. She also joined the fight in the mid-1990s to stop the San Francisco Public Library from cutting support of books in favor of computers.

"She was remarkable, right to the end," Howe said. "In her last days in the hospital, she would walk around carrying a volume of Emily Dickinson. Tillie's memory was gone by then, but she would read the book aloud, from cover to cover, without missing a beat."

A native of Omaha, Neb., Olsen was the second of seven children of Russian Jewish immigrants. Her father, Samuel Lerner, was a farmer, factory worker and paper hanger and an official in the Nebraska socialist party. While some reference works listed Olsen's year of birth as 1913, Laurie Olsen said her mother was born a year earlier.

Educated in the "school of literature," Tillie Olsen never went to college. By age 18, she had joined the Young Communist League and by her mid-20s she had moved to San Francisco and married fellow activist Jack Olsen, who died in 1989. They had four daughters.




Thanks to j. godsey at The Bibliophile Bullpen for pointing C.P.E. to this news item.