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Post by BPD archivist on Jan 13, 2023 3:05:34 GMT
Igor Stravinsky, US travel visa application photo, taken by the Boston Police.
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Post by Mr. Ripley on Jan 13, 2023 5:10:24 GMT
Andrés Segovia, London Palladium, 1968
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Post by Newbie on Jan 13, 2023 13:35:42 GMT
I just took some new photos today to put on my Facebook page.
Thought I'd share them here as well!
I kept thinking you remind me of someone. Maybe Rainn Wilson?
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Post by topbilled on Jan 13, 2023 14:23:58 GMT
I just took some new photos today to put on my Facebook page.
Thought I'd share them here as well!
I kept thinking you remind me of someone. Maybe Rainn Wilson? Oh that's interesting. I see that one of Rainn's middle names is Dietrich, which I am guessing is a family name. And that was my grandmother's maiden name. So probably there is a German-American resemblance you are seeing.
Years ago, back in 2003, I attended two tapings of the sitcom Frasier. The friend that I went with, she said 'you look like you could be Frasier and Niles' long-lost brother.' I did not see the resemblance, but when we were at the first taping, Kelsey Grammer kept eyeing me in the audience and I think he must've thought the same thing.
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Post by Newbie on Jan 13, 2023 15:07:59 GMT
I kept thinking you remind me of someone. Maybe Rainn Wilson? Oh that's interesting. I see that one of Rainn's middle names is Dietrich, which I am guessing is a family name. And that was my grandmother's maiden name. So probably there is a German-American resemblance you are seeing.
Years ago, back in 2003, I attended two tapings of the sitcom Frasier. The friend that I went with, she said 'you look like you could be Frasier and Niles' long-lost brother.' I did not see the resemblance, but when we were at the first taping, Kelsey Grammer kept eyeing me in the audience and I think he must've thought the same thing.Ah, yes I can see the David Hyde Pierce resemblance. Between that and the Rainn Wilson similarly perhaps you missed your calling as a sit -com star. How was the Frasier taping? Lets see, 2003 was near the end of their run. Enjoyed the show but thought it overstayed its welcome at the end. The lovely kooky Daphene, for instance, became a bit a shrew in the later years. I read that they are bringing it back. Not sure about the supporting cast. Obviously John Mahoney is gone.
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Post by topbilled on Jan 13, 2023 15:35:49 GMT
Oh that's interesting. I see that one of Rainn's middle names is Dietrich, which I am guessing is a family name. And that was my grandmother's maiden name. So probably there is a German-American resemblance you are seeing.
Years ago, back in 2003, I attended two tapings of the sitcom Frasier. The friend that I went with, she said 'you look like you could be Frasier and Niles' long-lost brother.' I did not see the resemblance, but when we were at the first taping, Kelsey Grammer kept eyeing me in the audience and I think he must've thought the same thing. Ah, yes I can see the David Hyde Pierce resemblance. Between that and the Rainn Wilson similarly perhaps you missed your calling as a sit -com star. How was the Frasier taping? Lets see, 2003 was near the end of their run. Enjoyed the show but thought it overstayed its welcome at the end. The lovely kooky Daphene, for instance, became a bit a shrew in the later years. I read that they are bringing it back. Not sure about the supporting cast. Obviously John Mahoney is gone. Yes, they are bringing it back. The episodes I saw were at the tail end. I had contacted someone at Paramount in December 2003, asking how my friend and I could attend a taping. I was told that they were on winter/holiday break and would be resuming the second week of January. So when we went to the studio in January, they were all coming back from a month off. John Mahoney's home was in Chicago, not in Los Angeles though I am sure he had an apartment or stayed with someone on the west coast when he was filming the series.
Jane Leeves (Daphne) was on a brief maternity leave. She had given birth over the holidays. Her character was written out of this episode when they resumed production in January, but she was slated to resume her role the following week. However, during this taping, she showed up unexpectedly because she wanted to appear on camera. She had been in every single episode and if she missed this one, her streak would end.
So you know how they have that little closing sequence at the end, while the credits play, sometimes there is no dialogue, it is just them doing something silly while the music plays and credits roll...the director decided to throw out what was scripted for the closing sequence, and they improvised something with her serving food to the men. So she actually doesn't have any lines, but she manages to appear at the very end of the episode serving food...which continued her streak of being in every single episode, though she was technically still on maternity leave.
This was the episode called 'Boo' where Frasier's father had a heart attack.
I should tell you that between scenes Kelsey Grammer would come down from the stage and occasionally speak to the audience. He told us that he'd just gotten a call from NBC that morning and that the network was cancelling the program. He said he expected it, but he was happy that they'd had a long run and he said he thought that they had some very solid scripts coming up...there were still six or seven more episodes to do.
Hearing this news, my friend and I decided we'd go back for one more, since it was ending. The last two episodes, which would be combined into a special one-hour finale, would be impossible to attend...since that was only going to be for family members of the cast and crew to attend. The one right before the two-part finale was a flashbacks type episode which featured mostly clips from previous seasons...we did not want to see that being filmed as it would be pretty boring. So we we went back to see another one, the episode called 'Detour' which was really the last regular episode of the series. Laura Linney was a guest star, and her character would also appear in the finale, since she was playing Frasier's new love interest.
During the taping of 'Detour,' we met Celia Weston who had a guest role. Also one thing I remember about the filming of that episode is there's a scene where Frasier is driving in a car, and that had all been filmed in an actual car somewhere else, either on the backlot at Paramount, or on an actual street. So when it came time for that scene, the stage went dark and the monitors up above played the footage of the scene with Frasier in the car, and our laughs/reactions were still recorded for the audio, because obviously when Kelsey shot that footage earlier, there was no audience around to laugh at the jokes in that scene.
After the car scene finished, the lights came back on and they went about filming the rest of the scenes on the stage.
Near the end of the taping of 'Detour,' we were told that Kelsey had tied James Arness as playing the same continuously appearing character on primetime television for 20 seasons. Arness played Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for 20 seasons. And Kelsey played Frasier Crane on Cheers for 9 seasons plus 11 more seasons on Frasier. Now if they are bringing Frasier back for a reboot/continuation series, he will have done at least 21 seasons as Frasier. But he and Arness have been eclipsed by Mariska Hargitay who at this point has played her role on Law & Order: SVU for 24 seasons.
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Post by Newbie on Jan 13, 2023 16:44:27 GMT
Interesting story. Thanks for posting, TopBilled. I did not realize that Frasier had been canceled. I assumed they went out on their own choice. We'll see how Frasier fares in 2023. Will he be updated or have more updated characters to take him down a peg or two? I always liked Lilith. Maybe she'll make a cameo with a now grown Frederick.
Sounds like you went to many live tapings of different memorable shows. Do they even have a live audience other than game shows or talk shows?
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Post by topbilled on Jan 13, 2023 17:00:33 GMT
Interesting story. Thanks for posting, TopBilled. I did not realize that Frasier had been canceled. I assumed they went out on their own choice. We'll see how Frasier fares in 2023. Will he be updated or have more updated characters to take him down a peg or two? I always liked Lilith. Maybe she'll make a cameo with a now grown Frederick. Sounds like you went to many live tapings of different memorable shows. Do they even have a live audience other than game shows or talk shows? Kelsey told us (the audience) that he had hoped for a 12th season, because he enjoyed playing the character. Later, when the finale aired, he complained in the press that NBC was too busy hyping the finale of Friends which ended the same time, and that Frasier was given a much more quiet send-off.
Another thing I just remembered is that when he told us they would be going off the air, he very candidly said he did not enjoy the 10th season. That surprised me a bit, because usually a star won't diss aspects of their hit show, at least not so openly with the public. But when he said they'd had a good run and there were some very good episodes coming up at the end, he also said that he felt the 11th season was one of the strongest and a vast improvement over season 10, which he felt was problematic. I do agree that there are several weak episodes in the tenth season, and that the eleventh season is superior.
I should also mention that he was a Juilliard trained actor, and he appreciated stage-trained actors. So whenever he could get someone like Laura Linney or Celia Weston to appear, he seemed happy because those people had strong backgrounds in the theater. In one of the episodes we saw being filmed, there is a subplot where a sexy woman is hidden inside the closet of Frasier's apartment. And after the scene was filmed, Kelsey made a big point of bringing that particular actress downstage to thank her in front of everyone.
It was revealed that the original actress cast in that role had been fired after rehearsals because Kelsey felt she wasn't a good fit. So he called someone he knew at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago for a recommendation, and this actress who ended up doing the role of the woman locked in the closet was flown to L.A. overnight and played the role without any real rehearsal. He was grateful that she was such a professional and could take over at short notice. He trusted people with extensive theater backgrounds to do these special roles. And I think that's one of the reason there is so much quality acting on screen, these were very skilled people that were brought in to play the recurring and guest characters.
***
As for the reboot/continuation, since John Mahoney is gone, my guess is that it will focus on the relationship between Frasier and his grown son Fredrick. If so, if Fredrick is a regular character, then I'd expect Lilith to turn up in guest spots.
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Post by topbilled on Jan 13, 2023 17:14:49 GMT
The tapings I attended mostly had live audiences...
In addition to the two episodes of Frasier which were filmed at Paramount, I saw one episode of The Golden Girls at an old RKO soundstage on Sunset & Gower; one episode of Reba filmed at 20th Century Fox in Century City next to where episodes of The Simpsons were recorded; two episodes of Evening Shade which were filmed at Warner Brothers in Burbank; quite a few episodes of Designing Women (almost all of season 6 with Julia Duffy) which were also filmed at WB in Burbank; two episodes of The Drew Carey Show which were filmed at the old Republic studios in Studio City; two episodes of Will & Grace which were also at the old Republic lot in Studio City; over 100 episodes of the cable talk show Soap Talk which were filmed at ABC-TV studios on Prospect-- a friend of mine was a producer there and I had a standing invitation to get in whenever I wanted to watch them film. I had also worked at ABC on Prospect eight years earlier as a production assistant on General Hospital which was housed in the next building...but of course GH is not filmed before a live audience.
I also went to see a few shows that were short-lived and flopped fast with audiences. One was a sitcom called Rhythm & Blues which only lasted 13 episodes and starred Anna Maria Horsford and Ron Glass-- that was taped at 20th Century Fox in Century City. And the other short-lived series I saw being taped was something called 704 Hauser a Norman Lear production that re-used the old Bunker house set from All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place. That show starred John Amos, previously of Good Times, and it only lasted six episodes. I can't remember where it was filmed.
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Post by Newbie on Jan 13, 2023 18:47:11 GMT
Playing a character that long, Grammer must have known what worked and what didn't. It must be tough for an actor on a once good show to go out there with sub par material. Interesting story about replacing the actress. Frasier had good supporting characters and guest stars. Although I didn't care for her character, Marsha Mason came in as love interest for his dad.
Rainn Wilson said something similar, after The Office went off the air, saying that people wrote off the show after Steve Carrell left. He acknowledged that the show struggled. Wilson said that the writing in the last year was strong and they were all really proud of those last shows.
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Ward's den in color
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Post by Ward's den in color on Jan 13, 2023 20:43:14 GMT
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Post by Ava juvenalia on Jan 13, 2023 21:55:35 GMT
Ava Gardner was born on Christmas Eve 1922. She was the seventh child of Jonas and Mary Elizabeth "Mollie" Gardner. They were cotton and tobacco farmers in rural Grabtown, North Carolina, until 1925, when their barn and cotton gin were destroyed by fire.
Ava spent her early childhood in Brogden, North Carolina, where her parents found employment with a public school. Jonas worked as the caretaker for the property, and Mollie worked as manager of the nearby boarding house for the teachers.
At school, age 6
The only thing I didn't care for about school was having to force my feet into those hated, confining things called shoes. In those days, thousands of children throughout the South ran around barefoot for half a year or more. Shoes were expensive. Besides, I've always loved the feel of baked earth, green grass, soft mud, and stream water under my feet. It was a special sort of freedom, and to this day I try to recapture it every chance I get. (From My Story, 1990)
When the teacher's residence was closed in 1934 because of the Depression, the Gardners moved to Newport News, Virginia, where they operated a boarding house for shipyard workers.
1934, age 11
Ava with her mother, Mollie
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Post by Hold the Mayo on Jan 14, 2023 4:20:31 GMT
Nice color pic of Ward's den. I thought he had best book collection of all those 1950s TV fathers by far. Of course it was hard to see the spines of the books to discover what books he had. He did lend a book to the Beaver every once in a while. There was also a TV in the den, so maybe the books were just for show.
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Post by Ava in bloom on Jan 16, 2023 8:55:49 GMT
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939 by Larry Tarr
Ava and her sister Beatrice Gardner Tarr Ava's eldest sister, Beatrice (whom Ava called "Bappie") had by 1939 moved to New York City and married professional photographer Larry Tarr. Ava visited them that summer and Larry took some photographs of her, one of which (below) he placed in his studio window. A Loew's Theater errand boy called Larry's office claiming to be a well-connected MGM talent scout and asked for Ava's number. He was obviously lying, but the call gave Larry and Bappie the idea of submitting Ava's photos to MGM's New York office, which they did the next day. Soon after, Marvin Schenck's office phoned Tarr Studios to arrange a screen test.
The photo that launched her career
Don't get this mixed with the one looking over left shoulder. She had the other in the paper. At some point, possibly after Bappie's death, Ava had occasion to search through family mementos where she found the above photo, and others. She wrote this note:
Jerry, I found this picture in Bea's things. This is Mama's handwriting all around the picture (made me cry). In case you can't read it, it says: "It must have been right after she left to go to California - or just before when Bappie was still in N.Y."
1941 In August of 1941, with her sister Bappie by her side at Mama's insistence, Ava boarded a train for Hollywood. She was 18 years old.
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Post by Newbie on Jan 18, 2023 20:25:51 GMT
I love Monroe's jump pictures. Her bent knees do show her character, despite her sexy exterior, she was childlike in some ways. The photographer missed that, imposing his expectations on his subject. Great photos, though. I wouldn't second-guess Halsman. When he said character, I think he meant her public persona not her inner child. I also think he was commissioned to get some leg art from her.
Thanks for the comment though. I figured I can't be the onliest one here who likes this collection. The reissued book is available on-line. The one thing I would add to it is an index with the subjects' names and dates.Hello, LuckyDan. Just following up, I received my copy of the Jump Book yesterday. (I posted in the Books section. I couldn't find this thread until James Jazz pointed me in the right direction.) It was a lot of fun to look through. As you said, Halsman goes into great detail about his "jumpology." My favorite is Peter Ustinov jumping with a cigarette while reading a script or book. Audrey and Marilyn were adorable. I wish he had captured more people jumping like Chaplin or Keaton. Anyway, thanks for mentioning this book, LuckyDan. It was great fun.
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