QUARANTINE BLOG # 140

August 17, 2020

On August 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton became the first sitting president to testify before the Office of Independent Counsel as the subject of a grand-jury investigation.  The testimony came after a four-year investigation into Clinton and his wife Hillary’s alleged involvement in several scandals, including accusations of sexual harassment, potentially illegal real-estate deals and suspected “cronyism” involved in the firing of White House travel-agency personnel.

👉  On August 17, 1969, the grooviest event in music history – the Woodstock Music & Art Fair – closed after three days of peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll in upstate New York.  Close to half a million people attended Woodstock, soaked by rain and wallowing in the muddy mess of a farmer’s field.

👉  We missed some great historical events that happened on August 16.  For instance:

While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory on August 16, 1896, George Carmack spotted nuggets of gold in a creek bed, discovery sparking the Klondike Gold Rush.

On August 16, 1948, baseball legend George Herman “Babe” Ruth died from cancer.  For two days following, his body lay in state at the main entrance to Yankee Stadium, and tens of thousands of people stood in line to pay their last respects.

On August 16, 1920, Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was struck in the temple by a ball pitched by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees.  He died 12 hours later, the only person in major league history to die as the result of a pitched ball.

👉  Identical twins Brittany and Briana Deane met identical twins Josh and Jeremy Salyers in 2017 at the annual Twins Days festival in Twinsburg, Ohio.  The brothers proposed to the sisters at Virginia’s Twin Lakes State Park the following February 2.  They were married by twin ministers at the same festival in 2018 with the brides wearing identical dresses and veils and brother grooms Josh and Jeremy dressed in identical tuxedos.  The couples announced last week that they are both expecting.  Since identical twins share the same DNA, the children of two pairs of identical twins are legally cousins, but genetically more similar to siblings, which will make the Salyers one big family.

👉  “My Fair Lady” is another of my all-time favorites, both as the 1964 film and the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical which was based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 stage play Pygmalion.  A poor Cockney flower-seller named Eliza Doolittle  overhears a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, as he casually wagers that he could teach her to speak “proper” English, thereby making her presentable in London’s high society.  The film stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins.  It became the second highest-grossing film of 1964 and won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

The stage version set a record for the longest run of any show on Broadway up to that time, and has been called “the perfect musical.”

Audrey Hepburn’s singing was judged inadequate, and she was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who sang all songs except “Just You Wait,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVtPg2KhYGQ where Hepburn’s voice was left undubbed during the “dream sequence” with the King.

The stanzas of “You Did It” that came after Higgins, quoting Zoltan Karpathy, says “she [Eliza] is a Princess” were originally written for the Broadway version, but Rex Harrison hated the lyrics, and refused to perform the song unless and until those lyrics were omitted, which they were in most Broadway versions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS0pNPw958M. However, director George Cukor insisted that the omitted lyrics be restored for the film version or he would not direct at all, causing Harrison to oblige.

Harrison declined to pre-record his musical numbers for the film, explaining that he had never talked his way through the songs the same way twice and thus could not convincingly lip-sync to a playback during filming.  Sound technician George Groves decided to use a wireless microphone, the first such use during filming of a motion picture.  The sound department earned an Academy Award for its efforts.

Jeremy Brett, who played the love-struck Freddy Eynsford-Hill had his song, “On the Street Where You Live,” dubbed by Bill Shirley.  Two interesting performers, Brett and Shirley.

Brett, is best known for playing Sherlock Holmes in the Granada TV series which ran from 1984 to 1994.  Brett starred in all 41 episodes.  He said, “Holmes is the hardest part I have ever played – harder than Hamlet or Macbeth.”

When the filming of “My Fair Lady” concluded, Brett was approached to replace Sean Connery as James Bond, but turned the part down, feeling that playing 007 would harm his career.  George Lazenby was subsequently cast instead and appeared in only one Bond film, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (Although Lazenby had been offered a contract for seven movies, his agent convinced him that the secret agent would be archaic in the liberated 1970s – big mistake, really big – the roll made Sean Connery’s career).  Connery came back for “Diamonds are Forever,” and Roger Moore became the next Bond with “Live and Let Die.”

Jeremy Brett talking about the restoration of the film, his singing and Audrey Hepburn’s singing dubbed, and more is worth a look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvb8Q89YgCs.

Bill Shirley was an actor and baritone singer who later became a Broadway theater producer.  His two most famous roles were for dubbing Jeremy Brett’s voice in “On the Street Where You Live,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeybnI6OJMQ and as the voice of Prince Philip in Walt Disney’s 1959 animated version of “Sleeping Beauty.”  The character was named after the Duke of Edinburgh, the most senior male figure in the British royal household, and since 1953 the husband of Queen Elizabeth (actually, they were married in 1947).

👉  Today’s closing is from Praying with Jesus, by Eugene Peterson.

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

Prayer is not a job list assigned to us by God.  Nor is it a transfer of information between earth and heaven.  God knows our condition and our needs.  Prayer, like the best conversations on earth, cultivates intimacy, nurtures obedience, and becomes a way of working with God.

Prayer: In my prayers, O God, I will not make speeches to you, but learn a relationship with you.  I want to express myself completely and listen to you devoutly.  In Jesus’ name and for his sake.  Amen.

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