A bon vivant from the word “go”

A bon vivant from the word “go”, Ton to, Geronimo’s kimosabi,  in  his retirement from his Lone Ranger yesterdays…star of radio, television, and the silver screen.

Wasn’t it all a stage? These Apaches finding their true selves   in the metamorphic  reality: survival of the fittest.

Geronimo in his retired incarnation, hustling blankets at theFlagstaff ,Arizona  train station. Rattling the dice, as theEasterners…Claire Trevor,(originally from Brooklyn) got off theEl Capitan from Chicago, took a spring chicken  stroll from her sleeping car to limber up her fated destiny, stretching hercoefficient of expansion for the “Petrified Forest”, Bogy and Bette Davis: a saga of a desperado taking hostages in the train station’s diner.

‘Don’t any of you think you can outwit this gun ho hood. I may not be Jesse James nor Clyde of “Bonnie and Clyde” boys and girls Any of you think you can out snitch Bogy, you got another guess coming.

“Cliché or not, when J. Edgar Hoover’s G men come a knocking, you all play dumb. If Duke  Mantee going to theflawed electric chair, we’re all going down together. Nothing like the Ukraine Kiev Crimea onslaught nor the Gaza PalestineIsrael nightmare.. Our planet has hostility wherever.

“ Youngsters with dreams, searching for a better way. Fleeingevil ,beyond the pleasure principle.  That’s  my sermon, boys and girls.

“The name of the game. My mother always told me” shed the snitchers, son”. She hated snitchers. It’s in my DNA, no matter how you read the stars in cyber space.... Remember  dead snitchers tell no tales, boys and girls.”

                                                                                    III

Meanwhile  Bensonhurst’s    Claire Trevor off her spring chicken jaunt toward Duke Mantee’s diner of an Alamo, for a cup a java, a respite of her Oscar  I.D. impersonation of a gassedup  moll, to Edward G. Robinson’s “Key Largo” in the FloridaEverglades, not that far from where Tennessee Williams was dialing up his history of clogged frontal lobes: schizophrenia  blocking growth and development, mental illness diminishinghis morphing once proud hoops and hopes.

Gulping down her coffee, served up by the Littleton, New Hampshire born Bette Davis of a waitress, Claire Trevor took a Hemingway “For whom the bells toll” grasp of the scene, feeling her thespian way into the” Petrified Forest”  diner.  

                                                                                       IV

Cybernetics not yet on the plate, Duke Wayne’s “Stagecoach” passengers , along with Porter Hall and Thomas Mitchell, JohnCarradine , Duke riding shot gun. The Brooklyn born Trevor,having  portrayed a gun moll, felt her way into the Alamo scene. Leslie Howard, Bette Davis….the poet drifter mounting the diner’s kitchen.

‘”Knowing how gifted our waitress is., may I (taking a document from his tattered jacket) may I devise my property and assets to Gabrielle, our waitress ,so she may further                                                                                             her dream and vision of becoming an artist”, unfurling a landscape of PabloPicasso surrealism, the her brush transcending still life, thestrokes beyond the one dimensional Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers of a bygone  20th Century  life.

                                                                                        V

Duke Mantee infuriated by the seedy poet’s dissertation, burstsout his Billy the Kid forty five and blasts Leslie Howard. His very mortality….dying on the diner’s floor, gives life to his last wishes, a testament to his fixation on the waitress’s  dream ofbecoming a European  artist.

The gun fire is a call for arms as the G men and Feds rush the diner, side arms blazing

The Duke going down in a blaze of glory, his body falling, next to Howard’s corpse. Clair Trevor and Bette Dais, hiding in thekitchen, playing out their catechism of “survival of the fittest”  

                                                                                         V

Claire Trevor in her abbreviated asides for Starbucks cup of coffee, boarded her El Capitan sleeper, passing Geronimo smoking his peace pipe, his blankets next to his tent.

The rest is History as the pundits say….Claire Trevor settling inNewport Beach ,California.  University of California at SantaAna, Claire Trevor School of Performing Arts… tribute for 9 decades of her  immortal soul…6o in acting roles..

July 26 ,2014, the City that Never sleeps…

Wet nurse, bartender, and good humor man

“Wet nurse, bartender, and good humor man,” says it all for the late Marlon Brando and  Robert Redford’s leading manmasculinity.

                                                                                 II

Brando off the hilly rolling Pico Boulevard, akin to Santa Monica City College, prior to World War 2, Brando and“Hubsy” into their pre adolescent marbles and tether ball gameson the Avenue to the Pacific Ocean, that Howard HughesDouglas Aircraft and Shirley Temple made famous.

Across the hills, into the San Fernando Valley and Van Nuys High School, stood Bob’s Big Boy on the Boulevard. Here the dream  of playing out  his gig, morphing as a Picasso on the left bank,  nurturing his  all American profile on hamburgers and thick malts, the staff catering to the drive in traffic behind Bob’s Big Boy  take out, the hot rods screeching a double  carburetorecho.

.                                                                               III

In the meantime Harry Jack Sam and Albert Warner, once of Steubenville, Ohio kosher butcher shop, exploring Mussorqsky’s  ‘Night on Bald Mountain’, by grafting from their Brooklyn Avenue M base to Luther Burb ank’s, California.…  down the Chemistry and crops, from Walt Disney’s Mickey&Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs,“Stokie’s” Fantasia..

The  hiccupping sound, the family not yet into Cyber Spacegrafting, rolled the dice. Al Jolson, a charismatic larger than life  minstrel with a soul throbbing Robert Merrill baritone., out of an Eastern Parkway religious center….. opposite 770...the City that never sleeps.  

                                                                                IV

A big time set of tonsils into the sound stage, Jolson had theChemistry “The Jazz Singer” and the Warner’s were off and running to the Market…. 

Even a penny arcade  125th Street player, becoming a songplugger @$35 a week, aka George Gershwin took notice, he into his own opera genre with “Porgy and Bess” full of compassionfor the Afro American emancipation from slavery.

Subsequently with the likes of Sophie Tucker, N.Y. Post tinsel town columnist turned producer, Sidney Skolsky, Larry Parks,his wife  Betty Garret, (Actor’s Lab) created a breakthrough of  “Mammy” “Swannee”“Sonny Boy” Jolson.  

                                                                               V

Was this an epoch breaking stereotype of  the “Great Caruso”.From  novella Roma to the lower East Side of Eldridge Essex Streets.. Here Eddie Cantor and “Jolie” stretched their “blackfaces” into Flo Zigfield’s Broadway, bewitching their  soulthrobbing melodies and patter, a vicarious triumphant joy, resounding  thru Tin Pan Alley, Paul Whiteman, Irving Berlin, Kate Smith “God bless America”.

                                                                                 VI

Who could put all this wheeling and dealing into a transcending song and dance?  The Shuberts?, Black and Erlanger? Jimmy Cagney’s Red Hook vaudeville booker? the Warner Brotherssensed the silent long lines of Steubenville natives, lining up for the silent flicks, made their migration to Brooklyn and Burbank.

“Toot  toot Tootsie good bye”  the Jazz  Singer on his knees, in black face, had arrived, on the East and West  Coasts, the immigrant  sound bite of a beat , his widow Mrs. NormanKrasna  saying “Yes!”

                                                                                 VII  

Meanwhile Geronimo in  his retirement at the Flagstaff, Arizona train station, hawking his Apache blankets, was into his “Chattanooga Choo Choo”,  awaiting the passengers from Santa Fe’s El Capitan, bound for the Terminal Annex’s City of Angels, across from Olvera’s Street marketing   of Chicano  culture. The  guitars and banjos in the background, long before the Beatlesarrived on the scene , and their Liverpool sound, off the MerseyRiver...

Geronimo smoking his peace pipe, outside his tent,contemplated  taking his blankets to Albuquerque. Not that he was greedy but changing landscapes for a  game changing gamble into New Mexico..

Then  again, he was under no stress to  place his bets, remembering  how gun shows were a formidable  bastion in New Mexico. Background checks not mandatory..

Downloading his streaming app from his smart phone, he heard a nasal sounding accent from the City that never sleeps… “Plans are being made to bring George Gershwin’s “American in Paris” to Broadway next season. The Gen Kelly adaptation, co starring  Cyd Charise ,Tony Martin’s wife.

The metamorphosis had come complete circle. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, long side into T.S. Eliot’s “Waste land”. The soft tip tap of Ruby Keeler, AJ’s first frau, swirling routine: fromcasting, Dore Schary of “Boy’s Town’s Father Flannigan”  anointed for drifts of ticket stubs, Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney into their  knitting, finding their true Pinocchio, inNebraska’s “Boys Town.”.

                                                                                      VIII

Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” staying power was heard, as Colonel Buzz Aldrin , the second man on the Moon, washarvesting the space epoch in land locked Virginia, the July 19th1969 Anniversary.

“One small step for man.  A  giant  leap for mankind” NeilArmstrong ,stepping atop a crater,    Claude Debussy’s ( Moonlight)” Clair de Lune” playing out in the galaxy..

July 19, 2014. The City that never sleeps.

The Fountain of Youth playing out on the grass

The Fountain of Youth playing out on the grass courts of Wimbledon England, and on the Apache Indian reservation ofmiddle America. In both instances, Roger Federer and NovakDjokovic demonstrating their tensioned   agony of a five set final, while retired  Apache Chief Geronimo, reminisces outside his tent, about his role selling blankets at the Flagstaff, Arizona train station, his basal metabolism up to the task of blanketing the gringos off the Santa Fe line and Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles, in from the Windy City’s hub.. .…..

                                                                                                II

Although the Pounce Deleon  expedition by the Spanish explorer, established the first known FUNTAIN OF YOUTH on our minor planet, it wasn’t until “Born Yesterday” July 6, 2014, when Biography was made.

The Guinness book of records  rethinking their thinking…. Itwasn’t Vasco de Gama, was it? It was Ralph Deleon and his 20thcentury mom and brother, blanketing the lawn of the North Hollywood Recreation and Parks:  library, pool and tennis courts, that gave rise to a  their generational  patrimony.

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH  many ancestral tumblers ago inPounce Deleon’s Disneyland of Florida, 1493....

                                                                                                     III

Who are the Deleon(s)? To shake up the Guinness records? Rewrite the books? On line, smart phone, apps you name it, sending shock waves thru cyber space…

1492 Christopher Columbus was given the nod for his New World expedition. School kids memorizing their hero’s viajo….“In 1492 Columbus….” 

The Fountain of Youth is a different sort of discovery, isn’t it, dear reader...

“ Yes indeed, mum”. Surmounting the Inquisition  by a rising star. Born in poverty, a k a the barrio in East Los Angeles.  Freaking out the La Brea Saber Tooth Tiger licks, in the boot of the City of Angels..

The turbulence by Pounce Deleon, his ancestry 5-6 centuries later..   

                                                                                                     IV

May  all the options and possibilities beyond apps and smart phones : electronics   used for  tumbling the Fountain of Youththru the centuries.. 

Therefore hence thus the  Pounce Deleon “Born Yesterday” of the North Hollywood park reality scene is obligatory. To program tablets for  rethinking Maimonides’s flight fromCordoba to Egypt. Francisco Goya’s depiction of thoseyesterdays in the Museo  del Prado ,  Madrid.

Amelia Earhart’s golden fleece stature at the park’s  Southerncorner , the library tennis courts pool beyond her sleek flight suit.

                                                                                                       V

So in this sneak preview, the Spanish explorer Pounce Deleon was born into an immortal moment of personal  discovery.Never   knowing  what was playing out, long before Cyber Space and the  electronic circuitry, the Havana Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Juan Pounce De Leon: 1493 the second  expedition to the New  World.

Little did Ralph Deleon tell us in his role as the swimming coach at Birmingham High in Van Nuys, relate the origins of hisDeleon.

Sure you had Harry Boykoff’s   (Jefferson High School, StJohns)l son in the attendance mix.. And a future Olympian,breaking all the records, swimming for the gold….

”I could always become a dentist”.

But the FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH……... A transcendental  moment of divinity.

                                                                                          VI

Summing up these North Hollywood  and Van Nuys tangents, a  symposium at Milk and Honey’s  cafe  across the Continent.The Philadelphian amigo of** Zero Mostel ,  the New Yorksimpatico of the Deleon(s)….the storehouse of metamorphosis,fraught with calumny and insight.   “ Dorian  Gray” on themenu…….

The placards      “Feed your soul” “Find your soul mate”         

“  **“Spring time for Hitler,”** (“the Producers”)

And not to forget **“Weapons of mass destruction**”* Miami’sLe Bron James  coming home, Cleveland Cavaliers.. 4 years,  $ 22 million per.

In the meantime, Geronimo touting his blankets at the Flagstaff, Arizona train station. 

“Unbelievable, Kimosabi.”

July 11, 2014 The City that never sleeps.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition”, chain smoking lyricist Fran k Loesser,  inspired during World War 2., the “Thief of Bagdad”  blood curdling man’s inhumanity to man,(Sunni Sunni Kurdish Moslem Arab tribes) in the planet’sMiddle East..

                                                                                  II

Slim” Into his metamorphosis ass Howard Hughes corporation, was carried away, as in his yesterdays at Cloverdale airport, in Santa Monica,  a few blocks behind Douglas Aircraft, where the cream cheese bandit, tried to find himself on  the riveting line…Marilyn Monroe on the night shift, across the Hollywood Hils,punching her rivets at Lockheed, the instant camera man, plying his wares at the Burbank gate.

                                                                                    III

Slim practicing his take offs and landings, his Houston oil drillopener, pushed aside while he went for it, at Cloverdale. Not to be forgotten, was his purchase of RKO studio from  JFK’s father, Joseph Kennedy, the Ambassador to the USSR under FDR, JFK the scribe for “Mission to Moscow”..

Meanwhile “Slim” was  posting Dore Schary to be his alter ego at the studio, he mastering his aviation dreams, building prototype aircraft. Until one day in 1946, his fuel tank lost itslargesse, Slim trying to regain control, lost his altitude, crashing into a an M.D’s  Beverly Hills home….

                                                                                   IV

In that moment, the amateur golfer play boy and millionaire,knew God was watching over him. Saved by a former Marine, who grabbed him from the cockpit, saving his life. Slim growing a mustache over his scarred lip.  To live many more days.

Therefore hence thus, Slim arranged his playboy aviator image accordingly. Offices in Gower Gulch, his message center commandeered by his fiercely devoted dream team. His chieflieutenant  until their fallout, was a Bel Air father figure, his son in law.

But “Slim” was not to be denied. His aides shielded him,  onthose cross country trips as he testified before a Senate Committee. Buying upscale Las gambling hotels, living in a penthouse, disguising himself when he sort escape from his reclusive life style.

Slim was a long way from those earthy yesterdays at Coverdale landings and take offs , the cream cheese bandit in to his riveting role at Douglas Aircraft on Pico Boulevard, within the airport’s orbit..

                                                                                        V

Little did the cream cheese bandit know that his singular tennisstratagems, would bring him into Slim’s galaxy. In creating aoffshoot of his aviation tenacity, he created the Whittaker Corporation on Wilshire.

A balsa model of his once former head stream image. Here he placed a trusted miniscule of himself: tycoon who had his own tennis court in the Hills.

The cream cheese bandit, still steady s as on automatic, playingout his alias in  that Whittaker  Slim metamorphosis The rallies would take both men into long down the lined and cross courtdeep rallies, forehands backhands drop shots and lobs as they played out their continuums for  games, sets ,dueling above the San Fernando Valley, pllaying out the their inner needs in thoseseething rallies.

Slim aspired to be a golfer but caught up in the throes of the milieu and the constancy in imagery and the movie business, hesought to lose his self in the glitter.

Like HG Wells “The Invisible Man” Or the Charles Ives’s symphony “The unanswered question”, into musical notation,while selling insurance..

“Hell’s Angels” and “The Outlaw” brought him some notoriety,but the price he paid for starring Jean Harlow in “The Angels” brought him emotionally way out. . The caste system almost broke him but he weathered the storm and starred Jane Russellin “the Outlaw”, her sultry image as a cow girl, projectedthroughout the planet’s multiplexes, the publicist using the same tried and true  projections he employed on  Jean Harlow’s image.

                                                                                       VI

In this midst, the cream  cheese bandit continued his  own play by play, becoming a teaching pro.   Selling tennis racquets,restringing them, a role at a once bankrupt golf and tennis country club, south of Ventura , in Sherman Oaks, off  Kester ,not that far from Ventura 
Boulevard, where immortal basketball UCLAU coach John Wooden would do his brisk walking..

Here he toiled his steadiness and racquet wares, along with his wife, sharing her role as a net teaching coach and playing doubles.

In one of their fated coincidence, the cream cheese bandit, reveling in his role, big time tennis still years ahead of the  Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, Steffi Gra moment, he m et hisyearning net competitors.

“Remember me from Scarsborough?” he asked one of Slim’slieutenants.”Our colleges were rivals. We played singles against each other..

.

“No sir. We never met,” said the well groomed tennis  garbedgentleman. “Absolutely not.”

                                                                                     VIII

So the cream cheese bandit was rebuffed. He took the rejection into those bullying tactics at Booth Jr. High back in Meyer Lansky’s  prohibition Brooklyn, where  he ran  the fastest 60 yard dash and immersed himself in the role of George Washington in the  Jr. High’s senior play.

July 2, 2014 The City that never sleeps