Year: 2013

A Cladrite Holiday Tradition Continues: Year 5

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It’s that time of year again, folks.

Longtime readers will recall that the sharing of the B.C. Clark anniversary sale jingle is something of a holiday tradition here at Cladrite Radio. 2013 marks the fifth year we’ve shared it with you.

image--BC Clark logo Anyone who grew (or is currently growing) up in the Oklahoma City area knows that it’s just not the Christmas season until you’ve heard the B. C. Clark Christmas jingle on television or the radio at least once.

Below are two versions of the jingle—the original, which is admittedly of lower audio quality, and a later version—the one currently heard on radio and TV in the Oklahoma City area—which arguably sounds a bit better, but drops one line late in the song (“The Christmas wish of B. C. Clark is to keep on pleasing you…”), because 30-second commercials had became the norm on local television.

Original B. C. Clark Jingle

Revised B. C. Clark Jingle

B. C. Clark, for the non-Okies among you, is a jewelry retailer that’s been in operation in the Sooner State since 1892, and since 1956 (just one year outside Cladrite Radio’s purview, but we’re stretching a point for the holidays), they’ve been running the aforementioned jingle advertising their annual sale, which takes place not after Christmas, like most stores (or so the jingle’s lyrics insist), but just before.

So for 56 years, denizens of central Oklahoma have been humming along to this catchy ditty, and it’s now our pleasure to share this holiday highlight with folks from other parts of the country (and around the world).

Ms. Cladrite, who grew up in New Jersey, had the darned thing memorized after just three or four Christmas seasons’ exposure to this seasonal delight and can sing along whenever it’s played or performed.

It’s just that catchy a tune.

But be forewarned — listen more than two or three times, and you’ll be hooked, no matter how far away you live from the nearest B.C. Clark location. And soon, as with the millions of Okies who have come to associate this venerable jingle with the Christmas season, you’ll come to feel that it just isn’t the holidays until you’ve heard the jingle once or twice (or a dozen times).

365 Nights in Hollywood: Poetic Palingenesis

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Jimmy Starr began his career in Hollywood in the 1920s, writing the intertitles for silent shorts for producers such as Mack Sennett, the Christie Film Company, and Educational Films Corporation, among others. He also toiled as a gossip and film columnist for the Los Angeles Record in the 1920s and from 1930-1962 for the L.A. Herald-Express.
Starr was also a published author. In the 1940s, he penned a trio of mystery novels, the best known of which, The Corpse Came C.O.D., was made into a movie.
In 1926, Starr authored 365 Nights in Hollywood, a collection of short stories about Hollywood. It was published in a limited edition of 1000, each one signed and numbered by the author, by the David Graham Fischer Corporation, which seems to have been a very small (possibly even a vanity) press.
Here’s “Poetic Palingenesis” from that 1926 collection.

POETIC PALINGENESIS

 
 
The evening breeze swept over the studio, cooling the hot stages and office buildings where humans toiled during the day.
There was a full moon. The white studio gave the appearance of silver glistening against a background of clover grass and palm trees. A tall eucalyptus tree stood in relief against the sky, a beautiful silhouette.
All was quiet. Occasionally one could hear the soft, broken whistle of the night janitor. He was sweeping out the dressing rooms, which were arranged in two long tiers. The large rooms on the west end were the stars’ studio homes.
The janitor always cleaned them first, before he was tired. He liked to clean them. There were always interesting things left behind, or hurriedly tossed into a corner. He liked being a janitor and he liked picture people.
He had been nicknamed Doc—because he looked like a doctor. He wore wide-wing collars and always a soft, smiling expression. Doc was a man who could make one take bad medicine and enjoy it!
But Doc was only a janitor—and he liked it.
After he had finished cleaning the stars’ dressing rooms, then came those of the leading men and women. These were not so lavishly furnished and did not need so much attention.
On he whistled.
Doc was working on the minor part actors’ rooms now. They were very plain with only varnished woodwork and a small rug on the floor.
There was one room in which Doc loafed, or rather wasted time. He called it his poetry hall. It was that. Doc could tell you the story of how it all happened.
It was on a day when the walls of this room had been just freshly painted. Doc had gone in to clean up, and as he was dusting off the mirror he discovered a note penciled in the new paint. It read:
 
All true artists have their mark.
Mine is poetry. Here is my offering:
To laugh at Life
Brings the Grim Reaper
Close to the Jester.
—Jean.
 
Doc had been angry at first and was tempted to paint it over, but then the spirit of the thing caught him. He would wait. He knew his picture people.
His waiting was not in vain.

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Cladrite Classics: Happy Birthday, Lillian Roth!

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This post first saw the light of day on 12/13/2012:

In 1974, big news was made when prolonged legal wrangling over the rights to the Marx Brothers‘ second movie, Animal Crackers (1930), was finally resolved and the movie was released for public screenings for the first time for the first time in many years.

Imagine that: A “new” Marx Brothers movie (new in the fact that no one had been able to view it, in a theatre or on television, for so long—and of course, there were no VHS tapes yet, much less DVDs or Blu-Rays).

It was our junior year in high school, and we were working part-time evenings and weekends at the Northpark Cinema 4 in Oklahoma City. Already very devoted to all things Marx Brothers, we were thrilled when Animal Crackers was booked there. The movie settled in for an inexplicably long run (our memory might be playing tricks on us, but we recall it being there for a month or more), and we spent many an hour on those slow weekend afternoons soaking up the Marxian magic when we should have been out front taking tickets and sweeping up spilled popcorn. (To this day, we have the dialogue from that picture all but memorized.)

But it wasn’t just Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo who held our attention. The winsome Ms. Lillian Roth, who played the ingénue in Animal Crackers and whose 102nd birthday it is today, hooked us but good with her flirtatious ways and deep-dish dimples.

We’ve had a crush on her ever since, and we trust that, after watching the following clips, you will, too. Happy birthday, lovely Lillian, wherever you may be.

Happy Birthday, Una Merkel!

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In Herman Raucher‘s coming-of-age novel Summer of ’42, his protagonist (coincidentally named … Hermie) has a big crush not on Lana Turner, Betty Grable, or Rita Hayworth, but on Penny Singleton, best known for portraying Blondie, wife to Arthur Lake‘s Dagwood in a long series of comedy B-pictures.

Hermie was a little bit embarrassed by his preference in movie stars, but he figured there was not as much competition that way.

We have a similar little thing for Una Merkel, whose 110th birthday it is today. Una came to specialize in playing wise and loyal second bananas to the leading ladies in romantic comedies, but she was certainly not without her own charms, not the least of which was her Southern drawl (she was born and raised in Kentucky).

Ironically enough, it was Una who was first slated to play Blondie before the role was finally awarded to Singleton.

Una enjoyed a lengthy career that began on Broadway before she started working in pictures in the late silent era. Her final role was in 1968, opposite Bill Cosby and Robert Culp on the popular television program I Spy.

But our crush stems from her work in the 1930s, when she was the glamour girl’s best pal in movies such as Red-Headed Woman, 42nd Street, and Bombshell.

Here’s a scene from the latter picture, featuring our Una opposite Jean Harlow and Louise Beavers.