Treasures Among The Ruins

I've really enjoyed reading  Marilu Henner's book "Total Memory Makeover"... I'm going to share with you some of the memories rediscovered and others that I've fine tuned from the exercises she provides... I'll start by saying... I've written something a bit longer than usual this week so pardon my indulgence... and also memories like everything else in life you have to be able to embrace the bitter and the sweet... I'll be honest with you... I've sugar coated almost everything my entire life and   in some instances it was a mistake but I've learned in my reminiscing that sometimes it's as necessary as facing the truth naked in front of a mirror with the morning sun blasting through the window... all these memories have brought back so many images of people and events and I'm no more clear about some of them than before but I've figured out quite a bit about myself and about many of the people who were or are still involved in my life and where I want to go with all of this in the future... I can't urge you enough to try this with your  bank of life memories... Because you can use your past as a blueprint for the future... there is no successful business or sports team in the world that does not keep detailed records of past victories and losses to use them as tools for future success... for me this has been a great tool to learn from some of my mistakes (and other peoples mistakes too)... but it's reawakened a voice and some forgotten dreams as  well. I'm not sharing the very personal situations and what was discovered examining those here... merely the paths I once walked and recently revisited to find some of the answers I've been looking for.

I really just started becoming a person with a voice and some ideas and ideals worth believing in during The 60's... here is a fast rundown on the events that have stayed with me...

The books I remember most vividly reading...

The Silent Spring 

The Games People Play 

Valley of the Dolls

In Cold Blood 

The Feminine Mystique 

Unsafe At Any Speed 

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test 

These are the events that sick out most in my mind for some reason...

1961 - The Peace Corps created by newly elected President Kennedy... I almost joined after college but got caught up with something else... 

1963 - Martin Luther King delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech and it was discussed in depth at school and at our dinner table the next day... 

1963 - President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas... during class and in the hallways and when we were released from school that day almost everyone I encountered was crying or had been crying... I learned an early life lesson here about how people react to a tragedies... and their stand on issues such as race and segregation.

1964 - The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show... I remember watching this like it was last night...  Around this time television in our house went from B&W to color and the shows started dealing with the issues important to the era... Marlo Thomas played the first single career woman since "Our Miss Brooks" and Diane Carroll played a single mom raising her son while Merv Griffin brought the most thought provoking people from the current political arena, athletes and the arts and entertainment industries into everyone's living room five days a week... From the late 60's and well into the seventies I watched Hawaii 5-O on Sunday night and from the second I heard the iconic theme it marked the end of the weekend and time to start thinking about a new week. There were only about four or five television stations in those days and surprisingly there seemed to be more and better programing than now...

.

The events that transpired in late 60's into the 70's the the feelings I have from them are still fresh for me from the killing of King and Kennedy and the horror of Kent State   It seemed like the whole world changed in terms or class and racial and political protests that culminated in 1969 with walking on the moon and a new generation with a voice... I remember looking up at the moon while it was being broadcast on television and feeling like I was living in a time that was part a miracle... and wondered what Neil Armstrong was thinking at that exact second.

The war in Vietnam marks most of my memory of the 60's as it was the first thing I took a stand for if you don't count a few scathing and somewhat emotional reports I wrote in school on the holocaust, the internment of Japanese-Americans  during WW2 and finally "The Lunatic Joseph  McCarthy" (that was the actual title of the paper)  ... (ironically the only spot on my record at the time was an arrest from  being part of a peaceful demonstration sit-in at the UC Berkley campus in the early 70's)

Somewhere in all of this the Hells Angels scared the crap out of most people in LA and fast food restaurants started popping up everywhere and credit cards started becoming very popular! I remember routine air raid and earth quake drills in school. Divorce rates seemed to sky rocket in the late 60's for some reason... I remember thinking at the time there were people who should never have gotten divorced and did and a few who should have and did not.

I faced some major  turning points in my life that summer but in August 1969 --- Los Angeles went into shock with  with the brutal murders of Sharon Tate and four others ... I did not hear about the murders  until I got to Honolulu the next day... but I remember thinking that all this happened in the city I was sleeping in that night before ... (I had just seen her a week or two before buying baby clothes in Beverly Hills) I remember feeling sick when the details were subsequently reported on the news... and then with the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca reported everyone in LA was on edge and for months no one talked about anything else speculating about The Hells Angles or drug dealers or black militants... until Manson's arrest...  then suddenly no one felt safe anymore; paranoia and fear were incorporated into the lives and attitudes of almost everyone in the area  who most had previously been living fairly easy and relatively carefree lives... It was the first time we took care to lock our doors at night... soon we had a gate, then a guard dog and then an alarm... were we safe yet?... many thought so until the Hillside Strangler slithered into the area a little later in the 70's

The Movies that really stick out to me are ...

A Man And A Woman... as I mentioned Click On... Behind The Scenes

The Birds

Gypsy

Charade

Caprice

The Glass Bottom Boat

Inside Daisy Clover 

Valley Of The Dolls

Barefoot In The Park

Bonny And Clyde

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

The Group

The April Fools

Midnight Cowboy

Funny Girl

Hello Dolly

The Graduate

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
Easy Rider (the ending still haunts me)

The music seemed to go from wholesomeness of the 50's to a more raw and thought provoking genre and a newer cooler vibe (or so we thought)... I still love listening to The Beach Boys!

As far as fashion goes it became un-boring. There were bright colors and bold patterns. And heaven forbid the polyester pant suit and the Nehru jacket.

My personal favorite fashion memory was my black turtleneck sweater... It was very avant-garde and raised more than a few eyebrows; black was not chic then. but rather racy and bohemian...

This was the period I started really becoming interested in the theatre and the arts... the decade started with  Toys In The Attic and A Raisin In The Sun and Gypsy with Ethel Merman and The Sound Of Music and Once Upon A Mattress (I saw it with Carol Burnett and Tina Louise) and later Brenda Vaccaro in Cactus Flower and Jerry Orbach in Promises, Promises... and there was a new day dawning on "The Great White Way" in 1969... I shall never forget seeing Hair.

My brother and I were in Italy briefly during the riots, fighting and bombings in 1969 and I remember us watching from the hotel window with the naive idealism thinking this was isolated and hoping against hope something like this would never happen again... but in the morning learning of all the injured and dead we knew it was probably just the beginning... I was in Italy several times in the coming years during some of the many general strikes but most were harmless and it became just one of the many subtle nuances and charms of visiting Italy during that era... but I started being more mindful and got into the habit of registering with the Embassy offices when I was traveling (I still do) ... I got invited to a few swell parties from doing so... I suspect protocol has changed because I have not been invited  to an Embassy shin-dig since the 80's.

The 70's were just swell for me ... I was going to college and then I stated working... and evolving...

The thing that I remember vividly is having a lot of sex and getting high and there seemed to be no harsh consequences in fast living... No one had even heard of AIDS yet...

So in no particular order...

Entertainment...  

I spent quite a bit of time at Elstree Studios near London up until about 1976 so those memories might deserve an entire segment of their own but the most notable memories for me are the filming of The Boy Friend, Julia, Valentio, Superman... Murder on The Orient Express and The Greek Tycoon...

Some of the other entertaining features of the decade that stick out in my mind are...

Mia Farrow being on the first cover of People Magazine promoting The Great Gatsby... OK  I have to confess I don't always love the critically acclaimed and award winning movies the best... some of them include... The Summer Of 42, Love Story. The Way We Were,  11 Harrowhouse, Shampoo, The Godfather, What's Up Doc?,  The That's Entertainment movies, Lady Sings The Blues, The Turning Point and I became a big fan of Francois Truffaut during the 70's and liked Small Change and Day For Night best.

I have a lot of memories tied up with the filming and post production relating to the movies Grease... Jaws...  and a couple of the Airport sequel movies.

(I did a number of small and bit parts in film and television in the 70's) too much to list here but I remember telling someone once on the set of a really... really  bad Irwin Allen disaster movie (worse than Lipstick with Margaux Hemingway...  I'm not kidding)..."I'm not turning down Shakespeare In The Park to do schlock... I'm taking the best things being offered!"... I could write a book about the parts I auditioned for and did not get... but I ended up working quite a bit and meeting some really fun and interesting people... But then much like now I made most of my living doing back up vocals for established artists and singing snappy  jingles on television commercials.

There had never been anything like A Chorus Line on Broadway and starting in 1975... it became the hottest ticket in town for a long, long time! I wrote more about it (here) Theoni Aldridge who did the costumes and who also won an academy award for her costuming in The Great Gatsby understood probably better than anyone before or since what costuming a show was about... (I had one of the mens finale costumes on once... but that's another story for another time)...

But the decade started with Blythe Danner  winning best supporting actress for drama in Butterflies Are Free, and Lauren Bacall winning best actress in a musical for Applause. During the 70's I loved Company, Grease and Follies, The Prisoner Of Second Avenue, A Little Night Music, Pippin, Chapter Two and developed a deep admiration and respect for Colleen Dewhurst in A Moon For The Misbegotten and Madeline Kahn in Boom Boom Room and later Bernadette Peters in Mack And Mable finally the decade went out with such shows as Sweeney Todd, They're Playing Our Song, On Golden Pond and The Elephant Man... ((sigh) I wish there were as many wonderful choices and talented people working in theatre today... I saw something recently that American Psycho is coming to Broadway... (speechless))

In television

Saturday Night Live debuts... it became cool to stay home on Saturday night and get high and order Dominos pizza... eventually in the 80's I learned to make a better pizza.

The MTM enterprises were formed including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Phyllis, The Bob Newhart show and probably my favorite show of all time Hill Street Blues... (I rode with the Hill Street cast in one of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades... we had a blast and I was told by people watching at home it showed... wish I had it on tape)

ABC Monday Night Football and ABC Wide World Of Sports...

ABC Movie Of The Week... made for television movies (that were really good) The four that really stand out for me are The Affair with Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner and Brief Encounter with Sophia Loren and Richard Burton and The Sex Symbol with Connie Stevens and Shelly Winters and Say Goodbye Maggie Cole with Susan Hayward, Michael Constantine and me.

And can't forget the ABC after school specials... I remember Go Ask Alice best... (Don't ask why)

Charlie's Angles--- and Farrah Fawcett became a cultural icon of the decade for many "The Swimsuit Poster" hit the market and sealed here face and nipples in history and in the minds of many adolescent boys forever.

M*A*S*H... the movie appealed to me more but I have subsequently seen all the sitcom episodes on television reruns.

Masterpiece Theatre on PBS... most memorable to me was "Upstairs Downstairs" series on Sunday night... if you missed it (I rarely did)... they did a rerun on Tuesday night)

Cable TV is introduced and HBO shows movies and programing without commercials (gratuitous nudity and  fairly graphic sex and violence hit home television for the first time)

Fashion

I wore a lot of Adidas short shorts and tennis shoes during the 70's.... Ray-Ban mirrored aviator sunglasses and a baseball cap (still work that look) I remember having really big hair especially in high humidity. I also owned bell bottom jeans and clogs and Famolare wave shoes and had Nik Nik shirts that I discussed (Here). I wore a POW/MIA bracelet even after the war ended  (eventually I mailed it to the family when it became clear he was not coming home from Vietnam many years later) 

I think my brother was the first person alive to own a pair of Birkenstock's (and I'm pretty sure he bought them at a health food store)

And then came Calvin Klein jeans...(who knew jeans could cost so much? All the cool kids I knew removed the Calvin Klein label after a few washes so only the dark patch where the label used to be was visible)... I've never been a label queen.

Books

I was in grad school and extremely busy either studying or working in the 70's so I did not read much unless it had to do with my thesis or was a script or sheet music... The only two things that spring to mind are The Other Side Of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon (it was unputdownable I read it cover to cover on a flight from NY to LA and LA to Honolulu)...

...and the Joy Of Sex... I remember in my mind thinking the drawings of the people all looked like Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromme having sex at every possible angle... my eyes are still burned with those images... 

As the foundations for gender equality were being built... I think perhaps the debut of Ms. magazine in December of 1971 gave many woman a voice they had never had in the media before and it helped shaped the focus and strength of the woman's rights movement ... and for others Playgirl magazine hit the news stand in January of 1973. 

The Events I remember best are

I attended  the winter Olympic games in Japan

The Kent State shootings

Watergate

The end of the Vietnam War

Cigarette Ads were banned from television (Veronica Hamill was in the last one for Virginia Slims  during the Johnny Carson Show just before midnight on 1 January 1971 ...)

The Israeli athletes killed at the Olympics in Munich... (I left almost immediately)

The first oil crisis where you had to wait on line for gas and suddenly you could not fill your tank, get a coke and a pack of cigarettes and still get change from a ten dollar bill.

Abortion becomes legal

Mikhail Baryshnikav defects from the Soviet Union

The Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs tennis match.

Patty Hearst is kidnapped

Spider Sabich is killed by Claudine Longet

Elvis Dies (a dear family friend died the same day and I have more vivid memories of her and the events that followed... as I was not really an Elvis fan)

Jimmy Hoffa disappears

The Alaska pipeline

The Bicentennial in the US and almost in the same breath when NYC asked for a government bailout.

There is so much more to it but  people started to really care about being physically fit and healthy... at least I did and the people I knew... we all ran in the Honolulu Marathon in 1974... in addition it was around the time that I made a promise and commitment to myself to never discuss my feelings about politics or religion with business associates or colleagues... I still don't... and rarely with friends and family.

The 80's were such a mixed bag in my life and memory... and while it started with so many wonderful experiences and opportunities it subsequently became scarred with death, loss and regrets ... It seemed to me at the time the world was heading in a direction that was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate or even tread water sometimes... at least for me it was. I've talked to other people who said it was the best decade of their life...so everyones lives run at different rhythms and cycles... but I think we are still bound by certain common beliefs and individual  differences.

I was somewhat disillusioned with my various career choices, but I remember working very long hours and trying to find my way...  the news the decade for me seemed to start off with the death of Gower Champion--- I still think about him when I pass The Winter Garden Theatre.. and later  John Lennon ... the day and my memories of it still run high when I walk by Yoko Ono's memorial for him in Central Park or The Dakota not far away...

I met Bjorn Borg at Wimbeldon, he was very handsome and charming to my best friend and I... I don't think she ever got over meeting him... or eating strawberries and cream with him... The same friend and I had a blast at the Olympics in LA... a few years before I went to the Lake Placid Events with another friend and her brother... I was becoming addicted to going to the Olympic games... I was not to attend again until  the Lillehammer  games in 1994 when I went back working briefly with ABC Sports covering the events.

I was in London by coincidence during the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana... What a mob... the most vivid memory I have of that trip is  getting the worst haircut of my life at Vidal Sassoon (who ever thought that rat tail thing was OK? and dyed purple to boot... I cut it off when I finally got home that night )

Later that year Natalie Wood died and about a year later Princess Grace died.. it seemed ironic at the time  because I was standing in the exact same place when I heard the news about both of them (the elevator lobby at the I.Magnin in Beverly Hills)... A couple of serious life events in tandem forced me to take a time out for a couple of years and try to put the all the pieces of my life  back together again... but unlike Humpty Dumpty I went back to Hawaii and started to sort things out there to make a new game plan...  So... I got back in the game in 1986... I remember driving and bursting into tears when I heard on the radio that the space shuttle had exploded (As a rule I don't cry that easily)... the Chernobyl disaster seemed to parallel the tempest in the tea cup of how my life appeared  to me or at least the reflection of it in the mirror or the reruns that ran through my mind as I tried to find sleep and some form of peace and escape from demons real and imagined as I walked a tight rope over my emotions and memories from the events in my personal life over the past few years.

Somewhere around here so many of my friends started dying of Aids and I started my lifelong (hate is really too strong of a word) indifference toward Madonna... I never had the Judy gene either...(but Liza used to live in the same building as a good friend and I met and chatted with her on the elevator and in the lobby a few times... she was tres charmant)... it was around this time Jane Fonda picked up the fitness craze and everyone stated getting in shape even if it was just between doing lines of coke and shots of Stoli.

I remember that a lot of people were watching Dallas on television, (I never saw the show) I still have no idea who shot JR! I was watching another early reality show called Dynasty... I had a friend who was on the show briefly. The only thing I really watched with any sort of real regularity was Magnum P.I. and Kate And Allie, Murphy Brown and The Days And Nights Of Molly Dodd... thanks to being able to video tape your favorite programs for the first time... I was able to tune into what I or my friends were involved in... here is a fun fact you might enjoy... I was on Fame twice... but not actually as part of the cast and action... I was on the television broadcast within the scene both times (I was hoping for a third... but c'est la vie!) 

I have very broad shoulders and the big shoulder pads in the clothes during the 80's made me look like a cartoon. Much like the 60's I started it with a crew cut but this time you added mousse and gel and spray so that it felt like plastic instead of human hair and I ended the decade with a shoulder length ponytail.

During the late 70's early 80's and again briefly in the late 80's I was involved in four different shows on and off b-way and one national tour so I did not get a chance to see as much theatre as I would have liked but I did manage see Chess in London and loved it. In between my own curtain calls or making rounds and auditioning  I did manage  see Song And Dance, Phantom of the Opera, m Butterfly and Les Miz... and oops almost... forgot I also saw  Extremities and Night Mother when I was cheered up enough from other issues to venture out again... 

When life started to return to some semblance of normalcy the bombing of Pan Am Flt 103 pulled the carpet out from under me again... I lost a very dear friend in the disaster.

... prior to this and almost immediately after I was a passenger involved with two other airline mishaps and the sum total of the emotional roller coaster I was riding really took it's toll on me so ... I spent the remainder of the 80's quietly in Hawaii and then  alone in New York  trying recover from grief, loss and confusion ... and once again trying to map out and execute a tentative plan for the future... I went to visit friends in The US Virgin Islands just in time to get swept up in Hurricane Hugo in September of 89 that I discussed here in (Nothing Is Lost If You Can Remember) and after I got dried off from that adventure; not quite a month later I went to San Francisco for a few days of R&R before going to work on a new project in LA only to get caught in an earthquake and stranded there for a few extra days ... when the dust started to settle from everything I felt some sense of relief that the 80's were ending and took the fall of The Berlin Wall as a positive omen for the future...

In the 90's I finally had to face the fact that I was not getting any younger and I needed to settle down and grow up.. well at least settle down a little... I decided to spread my wings again and tried  interacting with new people, places, things and career choices... I had a friend who had walked down 60 flights of stairs when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 and lost his life when the twin towers crumbled less that a decade later... I still had a strong sense of Olympic pride and went to Atlanta the next year with another friend and like before we  left almost immediately after the bombing .... at the dawn of a new century I met the love of my life and he became a symbol of hope and belonging again and we started  working to build our life on a solid foundation... for some reason around this time I lost the taste for scotch and subsequently quit smoking and with renewed vim and vigor and with the money saved we refurnished our apartment... I was in NYC the morning of 11 September 2001... and to be honest with you I don't think I have been the same since... not worse but not better... just changed... because  it seems that  from the time that passed since  I watched the riots in Italy from a hotel window... and being overcome by horror at two Olympic events and the nightmares I had following the Pan Am bombing  to watching the media images of  political and religious violence in the form of bombings, assassinations and street warfare between rival militant factions... we seem now live in a world where terrorism is part of all of our lives every day... sometimes it touches us and sometimes it is far away but our souls are still permanently stained from all of it... and despite as far as we have come with so many important issues... we still live in a world of intolerance and prejudice and division ... and I'm so sad that this is the common thread woven into the fabric of the world through all of the years that I witnessed progress, change and growth  and for some reason no one seems any closer  to figuring out a way to forge new frontiers and tear down the real walls that divide us and take the initiative to propose an idea for programs that will     build a new improved and better world without all the senseless violence we are starting to take for granted. This is not the world I envisioned I would be a part of the on the night so long ago when I looked up at the  two men on the moon. Hopefully someday soon  the clouds will part and in the dawn of a new day we can face the world we live in with hope and optimism again. Why is it so difficult to take the things that we have in common and make them work with instead of against our individual differences?

According to Don McLean the lyrics "The Day The Music Died" in his song "American Pie" were originally inspired by the death of Buddy Holly when Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash after a concert. McLean wrote the song from his memories of the event... Many have tried to argue that it meant the death of  President Kennedy and others have since attributed it to other monumental  events... but for me it will be when the world has to accept  terrorism, war, violence and death as a part of everyday life and we don't have the voice to bring the necessary actions for changes to end it. 

I said very early that I would not be discussing politics or religion... but I also said rules (especially mine were made to be broken or modified) but I promise this won't become a precedent ... I'm taking some necessary time off for good behavior and hope you will come back in two weeks when I'll be talking about scents and fragrance associated with our sensory memory and some of the things that make life just a little sweeter.