The City of Brotherly Love…

The City of Brotherly Love….Andy Hardy pedaling his WesterUnion bike, breathed in deeply, a his unconscious, grasped the origins of the United States of Americ. His own perspective, limited to Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton……thru the 21st0thCentury heroes like his own immigrant  Berdechev Russia mother and Dusseldorf Germany father….(6 Mertengasse)                                                

Esther Kamisky (Danny Kaye, Mel Brooks) Adler and Curtis“the Name Detective” 

“Montana Frank”, their E.T orbit of North Hollywood,California…. neighbor and his family of six children.                                              

Wife Virginia out of White Plains, Westchester,NewYork…”Gaqrlic Bread”, Terry, Sea Bee Jim, the Christian Science twins, their oler sister….how Montana Frank, a 4 star athlete out of South Pasadena High, and a football lettermanfrom U/C Berkeley… pilot bombadier out of WW2 and a selfless hero, rescuing Esther across the street from the demoniac grip of her firstr born….the bully known as the cream cheese bandit for shoplifting a silver wringly packet of Philadelphia cream cheese from a Safeway supermarket in Los Angeles.(Pico Boulevard, a block East of South Western Avenue. 

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But the City of Brotherly Love wasn’t  the stage foir Andy Hardy delivering the Montana Frank  wire from the Pentagon. “The en d of an era” as his youngest daughter Margaret (“Garlic bread”  said in her own space in Hamilton, Montana’s  funeral home.

July 27, 2016.   “Rocky”….City of Brotherly Love…                    

From those formidable years of growing up in Brooklyn

From those formidable years of  growing up in Brooklyn, we always identified with he gound hogs and underdogs. A knothole kid, sitting in the bleachers of Ebbets Field, the basketball team at Midwood High School and the intramural Gremlins outside the schoolyard….the basement gym on Coney Island Avenue and Avenue I I basement gym.

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However at UCLA, our ”Over the Rainbow” dream converted a Plato Greek hum, our honky heroes becoming.. ProfwessorFrederic Woellner in Education. “Heave is o  the way to it”thebasketball heroics of coach Wilbur John s hiring John Wooden, an All American player to govern and lead the Bruins to the brink of immortality.…  NCA championships galore!

The initials J.W being the reverse of Wilbur Johns, who saw “God’s way”.

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Although we identified with the victims of the Holocaust, those FDR 4 terms and President Truman nuclear bombinging, WW2 to its Hiroshima ad Nakasaki finality, our identity furtive years realized in mist of heroes, we identified with our ASUCLA President, who was in his role at teaching at Berkeley. And enrolled in 

Graduate school. 

Teaching “Core” at Likndbergh Junior Highy in ong Beach…substituting in the San Fernado Valley and East Los Angeles secondary schools in the Barrio.

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Afdtertwo furtive attempts at Law Schoolk, we bumped into ouirLoyola law Professor Aarvo Van Alstyne told me’’ “Hernerrt, my old roommate at Yale. Lou .P ol;lockj. He’s the Dean of Yaole Law School.”

               At the same time, UCLA Theater Arts Professor Sam Selden of Theater Arts offered to perform  “Mozart and Mushroom ”.  Comedic one actor, published in New Haven..

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So from identifying with our m heroes, the biggest was the call to “Benjamin Franklin in Paris” where we met our wife of 30 years,nothole kid ofd Brooklyn to a mrried fixture in the Borough.…living out his Ebbets Field knothole kid dream,escribing our Marfk Twain’s  “Huckleberry Finn “ “Tale of two Cities” by Dickens.

July 24, 2016    Brooklyn, the City that never sleeps.

                                                 

Pedaling his Western Union bike

Pedaling his Western Union bike, Andy Hardy crosedthe the Charlie Chaplin line of pantomime, his memory ging all the way back tpo Luisr Rainer(Paul Muni, “the good Erth”), Norma Shearer, Katherine Hepburn,Joan Craword (“Mommy Dearest”), Mildred Pierce”), Greta Garbo (“I vant to be alone”), HedyLaMarr. Esther Williams, June  Allyson, Judy Garland, Cy Cerisse…………

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Louis B. Mayer of Boston, a Rabbinical ancestry, wa on an ego trip to Culver City (Hal Roach’;s “Ouir gang” comedies), when Louis B. got Nichols Schenk’s vote of confidence from the B iugApple corporate office, naming him vice president I charge of production. A title he couldn’t live without.  

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Needless to say Fay Bainter’s movie son Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) could never forget those Gold Star mothers 3000 miles back in the Big Apple. 

Hadn’t he himself come a log way,grasping ma’s inhumanity to man. That the materialism, money culture, had devoured the studio’s culture.

Wasn’t that the ratiole the studio declined his opportunity to b e a reader in their culture?      

Yet Danny Fuchs, Henry Fuchs kid brother, the Chairman of the English department at Midwood High School, where Andy Hardy hd delivered his Gold Star telegrams earlier in his own experience o the studio lot. Didn’t Danny vow the UCLA one act production “Mozart and Mushrooim Barley”, log before the Hospital for Special Sugery an d Estelle Lisnek Adler’s genius…4000 hours of volunteering at Maimonides Hospital inthe Big Apple of Brooklyn.

Out for the nonce 7/21  11:49

WHERE WERE YOU 1959?

WHERE WERE YOU 1959? The man on the moon landing anniversary!

Mickey Rooney cast as the Andy Hardy of Judge Hardy’s family. (Lewis Stone, Fay Painter) in his role as a Western Union messenger to James Craig, manager father figure, delivering Defense Department wires to Gold Star mothers during World War2.

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Hearing the Hospital for Special Surgery (WQXR) 13000 Storie’s“The World getting back in the game”, from the summer’s Central Park , Andy Hardy pedaling his two wheeler thru the meadows, toward the Brooklyn Bridge and Quentin Reynolds home in Flatbush, the columnist’s mother having a Gold Star in her window, between Glenwood Road and Avenue H’s local BMT station.

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A Presidential campaign year, Andy Hardy cared no less about the campaign, the rough and tumble of politics (Ucla’s Dr. Titus (Machiavelli) “All the Kings Men”, the Hoftra Law School offering the saliva tongue lashing debate in September.

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The Gold Star mother’s digs weren’t anything like John Williams “Srtar Wars” in North Hollywood, but Andy Hardy under the guidance of hi cell phone Western Union manager (James Craig remember) had confidence that what he was paying outdelivering…these telegrams from the War Department of WW2 fatalities to the next of kin …in no way mitigate the genius of our Generals Marshall, “Ike” Omar Bradley.

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How could Andy Hardy have known in those yesterdays growing up in those yesterdays of Flatbush…Jacdkie Robinson breaking the color line with theDodgers at Ebbets Field, that the masses some six or seven decades later, could not recognize what was playing out.

That a share cropper’s dream of a grandson oputof South Pasadena High, UCLA, WW 2, the Negro League, had a different skin pallor. The eye and hand coordination that was Branch Rickey(the Dodgers hiring exec).

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Andy Hardy, telegram in hand, rang the Gold Star mother’s doorbell.

July 20,2016   The City that never sleeps

Whoa Silver

“Whoa Silver,”murmured the Lone Ranger,partially blinded by his mask.”Kimosabi Tonto.Have we not chased our quota of prairie outlaws, in their search for top billing at the Alamo.”

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“Dallas, St.Paul, Baton Rouge The politico conventions. Philadelphia’s City of Brotherly Love…tgheir vetting process for prairie “attack dogs”.                                                 III

“What do you think kimosabi?” g for for a top billing vetting at the Alamo. gowled the Lone Ranger, 

adjusting his mask, his eyes narrowing on the prairie.

Cleveland once Hillary and her “choice “ get the Alamo’s top billing.

July 14, 2016. The City that never sleeps.