Gary Tischler • November 9, 2015

From 1979 to 1993, “Knots Landing,” a hugely popular television melodrama which was itself a spinoff of the even bigger “Dallas,” occupied a major part of the life of triple-threat performer Michele Lee, who headed and starred as part of a large cast playing the part of Karen Fairgate. 

It was a momentous time of change in American life, and the show blocked out the sum and sun of Lee’s professional life, before and after, to some degree.  She appeared in all 334 episodes, the only member of the cast to do so and was considered the focus of the show.  During that time,  she won a Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Lead Actress in a Prime Time Soap Opera and was nominated for an Emmy in 1982 for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Show.  On the show, she lost a husband and in real life, her marriage ended, and she became a single mom, as she did on the show.  In the process, she became nationally and instantly famous and a kind of forever person since the depth and breath of television in modern time is a time machine, a streaming memory vault.

I must admit that— if push came to shove—I do recall the recurring phrase, “Who shot J.R.?” on “Dallas.” Nevertheless, I never quite succumbed to the charms of prime soaps, including the latest reinterpretation, “Blood & Oil,” which is a “Dallas” redux starring Don Johnson. 

Talking with Michele Lee on the telephone, it soon became apparent that soaps were not the main course on the conversation menu. Lee was instantly recognizably as a most honored and vivid member in good and better standing of the tribe of on-stage performer, those razzler-dazzler types who will do almost anything to seduce you, wow you, make you laugh, make you cry, make you want to dance and spend too much money on a Broadway show. She has all the gifts that can dominate a movie and a television series, to be sure. Those same gifts make her unforgettable on stage and — wouldn’t you know it? — over the phone.

Some of those gifts will be on display 7 p.m., Friday, Nov. 5, at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, when the two-time Tony Award and Emmy-nominated star brings her show, “Nobody Does It Like Me: The Music of Cy Coleman,” part of the Kennedy Center’s “Barbara Cook’s Spotlight” series of cabaret evenings and singers. What you get instantly is what Lee’s always been first and foremost: a Broadway star long before television made her a household name.

The stage brings out her inner entertainment soul. “I don’t really like the term cabaret,” she says. “I’m an entertainer, that’s always from when I was little that I ever wanted to be. I wanted to entertain people, make them happy, make them pay attention.” 

It’s a funny feeling talking at first in the usual way—ask a question, get an answer, the process. Soon, however, you sense that she’s that person, that performer.  I don’t mean to suggest anything false or phony, not at all. She is, by any definition, down to earth, a lady mensch, if you will. It’s more like a feeling you’re in her dressing room, or living room, or on a small stage and there’s nothing so distant as a television  or computer screen separating you. It’s not the content but the context, the experience of conversation that’s memorable.

Lee started early, gaining almost instant success on television with a role in the sitcom, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” at age 19. But her Broadway musical life truly began in the same year when she made her debut in 1961 in the role of Rosemary Pilkerton in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” a landmark musical which featured Rudy Vallee and Robert Morse. 

It was Cy Coleman’s presence and his unique gift as a composer that left a mark on her life, an influence to which she continues to pay tribute.

“He was a remarkable man,” Lee said. “Everything he did was original. He was my friend and my mentor. He made people laugh.” Lee also starred in “Seesaw,” another Coleman work on which he collaborated with Michael Bennett of “A Chorus Line” fame.”

“I love doing what I’m doing now,” she said. She’s proud of her television and movie work, including a made-for-television film on the life of the star-crossed country singer Dottie West and a much-praised film “The Comic,” directed by Carl Reiner and featuring Dick Van Dyke. She also recently took up the role of Madame Morrible in the Broadway mega-hit “Wicked.”

“What I’m doing now, that was my first love, and being able to sing Cy’s songs, that’s special,” she said. She sang lines from “Hey, Big Spender,” the big number from “Sweet Charity,” another Coleman hit.

Kaitlyn Davidson, who’s starring in the title role of the Disney musical, “Cinderella” — coming to the National Theater Nov.18 through Nov. 29 — recalled working with Lee in a production of “Mame” in Pittsburgh.  “I had a small part and she was awesome,” Davidson said. “Working with her was like having a master class in musical theater.”

It’s a safe bet that you can catch her act online somewhere.  In her show, Lee often includes a song by Joni Mitchell, the mistress of cool sadness. It’s “A Case of You,” a song that’s full of rue, the kind of song that travels and changes through time and to listen to Lee grab it by the heart is to witness a transformation. She makes the song hers, and more importantly , yours, the way we live now. 

You hear and see the affinity with Coleman: one of a kind.

Gary Tischler •

Crime and policing issues wear different faces in different places in the District of Columbia, as Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier well knows.  

At an Oct. 27 Penn Quarter Neighborhood Association breakfast meeting, Lanier spoke to residents and business leaders and owners in the constantly changing Penn Quarter area, where policing, it turns out, was often not so much about violent crimes and robberies, but about noise, the homeless and a rising issue with homeless encampments, and the spread of the sale and use of synthetic drugs.

Both the rise of encampments and the spread of synthetic drug use and sales have become larger problems throughout the city as a whole. The presence of encampments—at construction sites, on door fronts of businesses and alleys—are at odds with the city government’s avowed long-term strategic plans to all but eradicate homelessness.

According to Lanier, the police now operate under an “encampment protocol,” which assesses what an encampment is, how , if and when to deal with it. Per police missives on reporting a homeless encampment, the “objective of the encampment protocol is not only to clean the site, but also to build relationships with our most vulnerable residents and ultimately bring them into housing.”

As the the protocol statement explains, “an encampment” is a set up of an abode or place of residence of one or more persons on public property or an accumulation of personal belongings that is present even when the individual may not be.”

Residents complained that  Penn Quarter also has a noise problem coming often from street musicians, gatherings of people who are shouting loudly, or gathering on the street, blocking passage.

“Some of this comprises first amendment issues,” Lanier said. “Some of these activities are not per se illegal. It’s complicated, especially in this area.”

Lanier expressed concern about the spread of synthetic drugs among the homeless.  “The trade has moved out of the stores, and now individuals are selling the drugs, one at a time,” she said. “The chemistry and chemical content of the drugs change so often, we don’t even know what’s in the drugs, or its effects. It’s one of the most dangerous drugs around now, precisely because of that.  And to make it worse, the people selling the drugs have taken to selling to the homeless one item at a time for a dollar or two dollars. That makes it more difficult to deal with homeless people who may be using the drugs.  It’s a real issue and problem.”

Gary Tischler •

Most observers agreed that Hillary Clinton, as well as the Democratic Party at large had a pretty good week in the aftermath of the Democratic candidates’ debate, which was considered largely a) a triumph for Clinton and b) a measured substantive debate with few moments of outright verbal combat, or horrors of horrors, name calling.  And Clinton topped that by emerging pretty much unscathed from a grueling 11 hours plus of testimony before a Republican controlled and loaded-for-bear House select committee on the 2012 Benghazi attack as well as her e-mail account while she was secretary of state.

It was the Republicans’ turn again this week and you could make an argument—and they did—that they had a fairly good day and night of it. 

The CNBC-hosted GOP debate in Boulder, Colorado, took place Oct. 28 against a framework of relative triumph for some Republicans and the party—the very same day representative and avowed economics whiz Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. That vote appeared for a while apparently almost against his wishes—like a prom queen who can’t stand going to parties.  The election of Ryan staved off another big budget fight, as the House passed a budget deals which more than likely staved off a government shutdown, but not another intra-party debate among Republicans.

With that disunity and gridlock averted—the Congress actually passed something—the remaining GOP candidates headed into Boulder with the media and political strategists wondering how Donald Trump, who had led the polls since whenever this year, would react being relegated to runner up, behind the quiet brain surgeon—or how the same Ben Carson might make use of his newfound front runner status.

Turned out it didn’t matter much: Trump was  muted throughout as was Carson, a not unusual state for him, who has been praised for his quiet and modest manner.  In terms of the campaign so far, the two were an unmatched set—Mr. Outspoken meets Mr. Soft-spoken.

The bigger question was who was going to break out from the pack of remaining men and one woman standing.  Perhaps to no one’s surprise, Sen. Mark Rubio of Florida looked to be the big gainer after Wednesday’s contratemps if applause meters and being able to mop the floor with Jeb Bush are any indicators.

For the Republicans as a whole, it seemed a typical performance—the candidates almost uniformly took up the theme of media-bashing and getting into verbal fights, not with each other, but with the moderators.  First, Ted Cruz, defender of the base, the man who shut down the government once almost single handedly, bristled after being asked a pointed question about his voting record, pointing out many of the candidates had been asked questions that were either negative, combative or encouraged candidates to fight with each other. “This is not a cage fight,” he said. “How about talking about the substantive issues?”

But why should they? That line drew huge applause, and it didn’t take long for the others to chime in—most notably Rubio who was asked about about donors to his campaign.  “The Democrats have the ultimate super PAC,” Rubio said. “It’s called the mainstream media.” Another round of Katy Perry’s top hit.

After the debate the Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said, “CNBC should be ashamed.”

Many of the candidates claimed that the Democrats had been treated with kid gloves in their debate, which would probably be news to Anderson Cooper who tried and mostly failed to goad the Dems into mini-brawls.

Given that this was a CNBC debate—completed with some of their more excitable questioners like Jim Cramer—money and economics and taxes were on the menu.  Given that these were Republican candidates, many tax plans and budget plans and plan plans were trotted. “I have a plan” was a preface to many a statement, including Carson’s 10-percet tax plan—upped to 15 percent, based on tithing.  Most of them sounded like old, discarded Reagan plans, versions of trickle down, tax cuts mixed with spending cuts and accusations from more or less one and all that the Democrats had robbed the Social Security fund clean and used  the  money elsewhere.

It was, all in all, a strange sort of debate: the candidates praising each other as a group to be a staggeringly talented group of presidential wannabes from whom a strong candidate would emerge that was just chomping at the bit to take on Hillary Clinton, who, Rubio said, had lied to America at the hearing. 

Chris Christie was as combative as ever. He bristled when a questioner brought up the issue of fantasy football and that it should be regulated as if it were gambling.  “Are you kidding me?” Christie replied. “We have all this stuff going on, and we should have the government get involved in regulating fantasy football? The government should be involved in as little as possible.”

That, too, was a common tone: that the government, especially the one headed by Barack Obama had ruined the United States of America and that it would take a GOP president to make things right.

In addition to the live TV debate were those little teasers and streamers on the bottom crawl of the screen that included tweets from Hillary Clinton and Luke Russert as well as die-hard admirers of Ted Cruz and battling Chris Christie. The crawl ran the comment, “Maybe no one should be president. It’s only four years. We all do our thing. And then we’ll see how it goes.”

Sure sounds good to—if not me—for sure, somebody.

Gary Tischler •

It’s official. It’s really official.

The District Council of the District of Columbia officially dedicated a plaque that recognizes the famous or infamous steps at Prospect and 36th Streets NW as a significant historic location in Washington, D.C.

The fates—and Andrew Huff, the Dupont Film Festival, the D.C. Film Office and others—got together, celebrated and commemorated the occasion. On hand were William Peter Blatty, the author of “The Exorcist,” the novel on which the film is based, along with director William Friedkin and a hundred or so fans, autograph seekers and early Halloween revelers.  They gathered at the site of the stairs, along with Mayor Muriel Bowser, Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, and Georgetown University President John DeGioia.

Blatty and Friedkin spent two hours or so on Prospect Street, signing autographs, programs, books, posters and other items. Also on hand were “Exorcist” fans, who remembered the filming, read the books or gather every Halloween for screenings of  “The Exorcist.” It was a film that shook up the horror movie world—and the Georgetown landscape, while it was being filmed more than 40 years ago. 

“It was strange watching the film this time,” said Bill Dunlap, artist and a good friend of Friedkin. Dunlap, who showed up with his wife and daughter, remarked about the 1973 film, “Everyone smoking, those weird telephones and the scenes of Georgetown at that time. It was pretty haunting.

On Prospect Street, promoters dressed as nuns and priests handed out containers for holy waters to hype “Exorcist Live!”  A young girl who answered to the name of Regan, in a greenish, Linda Blair-like dress was also there. 

Friedkin said he had, in one way or another, spend half of his life on this film. “It’s great to see that there are still so many people interested in the film,” he said. “It’s really appreciated.”

Smoke and shrieking noises were in evidence at the bottom of the steps as fans waited for the arrival of of Blatty, Friedkin and the rest. “Somebody should throw a dummy or something down the stairs,” one fan said. “That would really scare the hell out of people.”

Asked what kind of movies he might be directing today,  Friedkin, who is working in the opera world these days, replied: “Movies that are in focus . . . plus, movies that tell a good story.”

“This film is part of the history of Georgetown and Georgetown University,” DiGioia said. “It’s a part of our cultural history,” Evans added. 

The proclamation noted that “The Exorcist” was in the National Film Registry by way of the Library of Congress and that the steps, once known as the “Hitchcock steps”  had taken “their place in the annals of film and Georgetown history as a perennial destination for residents and visitors of the nation’s capital.”
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Gary Tischler • November 6, 2015

The spirit of Halloween, situated as it is in the heart of fall, has a way of lingering amid the spidery white threads on bushes, the leaves falling and falling and piling up, the nights earlier and longer, the air a little damp and the vistas full of fading beauties everywhere.

It lingers also musically with the presence and presentation of choral and chamber music composer and performer Nicholas White and the Raven Consort, performing Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and other poems as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 7, Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Georgetown.

The musical work, a chamber union of words by Poe and music by White, a noted conductor, composer, organist, pianist, is making its second appearance at the Dumbarton Concert Series being first presented in February,  2013.   White, who is a native of England,  is currently Chair of the Arts and Director of Chapel Music at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, as well as being the Music Director of the Boston Cecilia.  One Washington critic called the work “an evening of sheer heaven in an acoustically ideal performing space.”

“The atmospherics, the candlelight, the intimacy, and the spiritual feeling at Dumbarton is, I think, perfect for Poe,”  White said.  “’The Raven’” is also an ideal poem for performance as music, as choral music for voices and instruments—strings and piano.”

White is very much the modern composer, not in the sense that his work is modernist in an atonal way—listening to “The Raven” is to experience rushes of lyricism throughout.  “I think perhaps there’s too much made of what modern classical music should sound like in contemporary times,” he said.  “And in this setting, this very intimate place, what you’ve accomplishes echoers and lingers, just like the poem.”

While the concert deals with other Poe poems—“Annabel Lee” and “The Bells”—the main work is a cantata for ensemble performance, voices, string quartet and piano, likely a first for any poem by the great American poet and prince of poetic darkness, who died at age 40.

Dumbarton Concerts commissioned the work, which proved to be very popular when first performed.  “You know, I think what happens with Poe, there’s a romanticism associated with his melancholy, he was an unhappy man, haunted, and his work is haunting.  But the music doesn’t have to be as dark as Poe’s life. ‘The Raven’ is a very musical poem, it’s a man calling out his anguish, his hope and feelings, confronting an apparition.  I kind of doubt that he was as miserable as all that’s been made out.”

While White has written big works, in  the “The Raven,” he said,  “I wanted to evoke the idea of a Victorian parlor, which quite often is how most people in the 19th century received their entertainment, gatherings in homes, or in churches, by natural light, it was very social, but also very cultural.”

“I think Poe had a unique appeal. He was enigmatic, lonely, often alone. He had this dark side,  which was mystical. He was, by all accounts, self-destructive, but what he created, the poetry especially, but also his stories, they endure. They remain, in their own way, modern, and it’s material ideally suited for music.”

White is something of a prodigy in the sense that he held his first organist and choir master position at the age of 15 in England, and became Organ Scholar of Clare College in Cambridge.  After coming to the United States, he held positions in churches, colleges and schools, including Washington National Cathedral as assistant organist and choirmaster, the Cathedral Choral Society, as keyboard artist, and music  director of the Woodley Ensemble.   He is the founder of the Tiffany Consort, an acclaimed group of eight singers, whose first CD “O Magnum Mysterium” was nominated for a Grammy.

= Nicholas White and the Raven Consort, performing Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and other poems as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 7, Dumbarton United Methodist Church, 3133 Dumbarton St. NW; 202-333-7212.
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Gary Tischler • October 29, 2015

If you ever had the opportunity to sit within a couple of feet of Blaze Starr, the legendary queen of burlesque and long-time Baltimore legend, proprietor of the 2 O’Clock Club on a certain block of East Baltimore Street, you knew you were eye-to-eye with an American original.

Starr, who died Monday at her home in Wilsondale, West Virginia, was probably the last big star of what was loosely known as the world of burlesque, in which comedians told baggy-pants jokes, and young women with outsized personalities and physical attributes shed their clothes to thumping music and outrageous stage gimmicks.

Starr had the personality, and then some, and the attributes, and then some. But what she also had was a sense of humor, smarts, business acumen, a charitable streak and a propensity to get involved with major politicians, much to her own considerable pain, but also gain, in the sense of notoriety.

This from a girl who was born Fannie Belle Fleming, one of 11 children in a place that was so small that it wasn’t even a place, along Twelvepole Creek in Mingo County.

Fannie Belle ran away from home and ended up in Washington, D.C., working at the Mayflower Donut Shop. But soon enough, in spite of a lot of trepidation, she was lured into stripping for a living, and, given her genuine curvy beauty, was a major success.

Then, while working at the Sho-Bar on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, she met Louisiana Governor Earl Long, brother of former governor, then senator and assassination victim, Huey Long. Their affair, which lasted until his death in 1960, was chronicled in the 1989 Ron Shelton-directed movie “Blaze,” starring Lolita Davidovich as Starr and Paul Newman, no less, as Earl Long. The movie captured not only her dramatic life, but also American, and particularly Southern, attitudes about sex, sin, religion and, of course, politics.

Starr began stripping at the 2 O’Clock Club on Baltimore’s notorious “Block” in 1950, eventually buying the place and becoming a much-beloved citizen. The proof in the pudding is the mournful tone and praise in the Baltimore Sun obituary, in which Shelton, a former Baltimore mayor and another Baltimore iconoclast, John Waters, waxed nostalgic about Starr.

This writer, working on assignment for The Georgetowner, had occasion to interview her when she was still stripping in 1980 at the Silver Slipper in Washington, one of the last genuine burlesque houses in the city, famous as the joint where House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills met one Fanne Foxe, who worked there.

After watching Starr do her “Miss Spontaneous Combustion” act, in which a red bed exploded into smoke and fake flames while she writhed thereupon, we talked to her in her dressing room. Up close, Starr turned out to be funny, unassuming, a little flirty (like a guy running an engine to make sure it was still running properly), vivacious, smart and blunt. Her memoir, “Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry,” published in 1974, was still being peddled.

I told her about a 1950s rite of passage in small town America, in which I and some of my high school friends had gone to Cleveland to the Roxy Burlesque to see a show. We might even have seen her there. By present standards, this was tame but titillating stuff: baggy-pants comedian, popcorn and skin magazines, G-strings and pasties and a burning red spotlight.

“Aw, Honey, it’s gone you know,” she said. “The last time I was there, I walked in there and they had the big posters of me up there, bigger than life. Next day, they were gone and the wreckers came.”

She bemoaned the ongoing passing of her profession. “It’s the movies that’s doing it. If they’ve seen everything, they don’t want to see you peeling off a glove.”

One of her dates was Frank Rizzo, ex-mayor of Philadelphia. When we mentioned his name, she didn’t pull punches. “That S.O.B.,” she said then. He “had me thrown in jail, but he’d see me as long as nobody would see us. I never forget being treated like that. People told me I got a memory like an elephant.”

It was never serious stuff with her — “I couldn’t do it if it was” — it was a bit of a wink and a joke, with a lot of enthusiasm and energy.

“Up there, with the makeup and the lights and the dresses and wigs, that’s Blaze Starr. That’s an act. Inside, I know who I am. I’m Lora Fleming from Mingo County.

She was and remains a lot more than that.

And right now, somewhere, the big red light goes on and the drums are pounding and it’s: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Blaze Starr!”

Gary Tischler •

If you look up the name “Charles ‘Sancho’ Ignatius,” you can find him listed as “writer, composer,” known for his “influence over abolitionists, his published correspondence” and being, under the heading of ethnicity, a “black Briton.”

If you look up Paterson Joseph, he is listed as being born in London and being an actor from 1998 until now.

For two nights at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 23 and 24, the two men, Ignatius Sancho,  actor, essayist, writer, composer, grocer, a black Briton born as a slave, friend to David Garrick and Laurence Sterne, and the first black man ever to vote in England, and Paterson Joseph, an actor, writer, sometime cook, at home in roles created by Shakespeare as well as in the HBO Series “The Leftover,” also a self-described black Briton, converge, become one, when Joseph brings his play, “Sancho: An Act of Remembrance” to the stage, as both actor and star. And therein lies a tale.

Joseph—who has led an actor’s life since 1988 with much acclaim and success on the stage — including the Royal Shakespeare Company in films (“The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio) and television (in the cultish “Doctor Who” series and in “The Leftovers”) — did not discover Sancho online. He read a book, and he saw a painting.

The painting is famous, being the work of William Gainsborough, probably the greatest British painter and portraitist of the18th century.  The painting was made at a time when Sancho had already achieved some standing and some apparent means. He looks a bit questioning, but comfortable in his skin and clothes, which are those of a gentleman of the time.

But it was the  book called “Black Britain” (which included the portrait) by historian Gretchen Gerzina, which affected Joseph’s feelings and thinking dramatically when he discovered it in 2008.  “Truth be told, I hadn’t known anything about Sancho at the time,” he said during a phone interview. “I think there are a lot of people—myself included—who probably there hadn’t been a major presence of black English people until the arrival of a large group of immigrants from Jamaica. I mean we all knew about the slave trade  and the islands and all of that, but here was this full-bodied man, who had risen up from service, learned to read, raised a large family, became interested in the theater,  rose in society and became a highly vocal and literate advocate for banning the slave trade.”

“He was the first black man to cast a vote,” he added.

The voice on the phone is affable, free-wheeling, easy with humor and sports a decided English accent.  It’s a voice—an actor’s voice, you think—that is spurred by curiosity, in a general way, but also the kind that even as you hear it, you imagine him listening, gathering information.  He  relishes the discovery of Sancho, but wonders that he perhaps should have known about him.  “We actors tend to be a bit self-absorbed,” he said.

“His story—and it’s a complicated, meaningful, but also very theatrical story—resonated profoundly with me, certainly,” Joseph said. “He is a forefather for all of us, for one thing, and he had a life full of accomplishment.

“Right from the beginning, I’ve been wanting to do something with his life, to do this,” he said. “So here we are, it’s the first time for this in the United States.  I’m not given to be being a writer so much, but this project comes from me and it means an enormous amount to me. Plus, it’s history, and I do love period pieces.”

Joseph’s already led a rich acting life. “One of the things that interested me about him was that he was friends with Garrick,” he said. “Garrick was in his way a revolutionary force in English theater, and in the way Shakespeare was done. The producers and directors of that time tended to rewrite Shakespeare, they would tack on happy endings to the tragedies—imagine an upbeat Hamlet, things like that.”

“Sancho was also a writer,” he said. “He wrote to and for the newspapers on everything, but especially the abolition of slavery. He wrote letters to the English novelist Laurence Sterne (‘Tristram Shandy’) to get him to support and lend his weight for abolition, which he did.” Sancho was on the side of Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.

“I think Sancho is a thick, dramatic story,” Joseph said. “It’s different from the American black historical narratives like ‘Roots’ and ‘Twelve Years a Slave.’ It’s original and rather idiosyncratic.”

Listening  to Joseph, you get the sense that this project is a kind of legacy for himself as well as Sancho.

“Acting has been my life, and it’s been remarkably rewarding in many ways,” Joseph said. “That world, especially in the theater, is always changing for everybody in terms of audiences and in terms of roles and race.  There are always things in the theater and as an actor, that are indelible.  I had the opportunity to perform in ‘Julius Caesar’ as Brutus in South Africa.  That play, by the way, was Nelson Mandela’s favorite Shakespearean play.  And Brutus—perhaps the play should have been called ‘Brutus’—is critical to the play, but he’s complicated. He struggles with the deed and the aftermath constantly. He is not prone to act quickly, somewhat, yes, that’s right, like Hamlet.”

Charles Ignatius Sancho and Paterson Joseph­ seem made for each other.

Gary Tischler •

If you should happen to be in New York City the next two days, you might want to check out what’s happening at the United Nations. The intergovernmental organization is celebrating its 70th year in addition to United Nations Day on Oct. 24.

Tomorrow, the United Nations is celebrating UN Day with a concert performed at the iconic UN General Assembly Hall. It will be a special concert featuring the Korean Broadcasting System Traditional Orchestra and other renowned international artists.

On Saturday, there will be an unveiling of a major art installation in celebration of the organization’s 70th anniversary. The work, by artist Cristobal Gabarron, is called “Enlightened Universe,” and will make its debut in Central Park. It’s an interactive sculpture formed by a sphere and surrounded by a spiral of seventy figures—one for each of the United Nations’ seventy years.

Around the world, countries are celebrating UN Day by illuminating landmarks like the Sydney Opera House, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Empire State building with blue light.

The United Nations Charter was signed on June 26, 70 years ago, launching a remarkably enduring institution. In 1945, in the aftermath of the most disastrous war ever inflicted by mankind upon itself, the nation-states of the world, some of which lay in complete ruin, resolved to make the world a better place by preventing conflict, finding relief for millions of refugees, achieving fair dealings among states, providing disaster relief, among many other things.

In the end, it resolved to be strong and steadfast in its missions. These goals, given the background of the recent world war, seemed lofty and even unrealistic. They still often do. Many of the goals were achieved successfully, but many were often challenged but never undone by the rivalries inherent among super powers and smaller states. There was a recognition throughout its history that progress in the search for fairness and equality would always be done in the shadow of almost perpetual conflict somewhere on this earth, often addressed by the peace-keeping efforts of the United Nations, but never ended.

The UN Charter began with a pre-amble which is worth remembering—“we the peoples of the United Nations are determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war..to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and the worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women of nations large and small..to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”

The world, as Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, noted, is still full of strife, and more than full of major changes. “Today,” he said recently, “our world continues to be re-shaped by globalization, urbanization, migration, demographic shifts and other seismic trends. New Threats have emerged, from climate change to cyber-crime an pandemics.”

“In many respects, the world is shifting beneath our feet,” he said.

We have all seen the changes and turmoil every day, on our computer screens, tablets and iPhones, which are themselves powerful engines of change. We see the refugees, the implosion of Syria, the demonstrations, the riots and the acts of terror daily. We see disease, climate change, natural disasters, hunger and political instability. That’s why the world needs the UN.

In times like these, we like to believe that all the people working together all over the world can hold disaster at bay, find common solutions, gather together in harmony. As a sage rock-n-roller once sang: “Imagine all the people.”

Gary Tischler •

We’re all part of one sort of community or another, and when a community suffers a loss, we share in that loss. This month, the world of entertainment and performing arts lost two members of high achievement, one who was born and Washington and, with his father, co-produced the Kennedy Center Honors since 2003 and numerous film documentaries. The other was a legendary movie star from Hollywood’s Golden Age. The world of professional sports—locally and nationally—lost one of its most respected members, too.

This month we lost Michael Stevens, part of a major film-making family which included his father, George Stevens, Jr., a Georgetown resident. We lost Maureen O’Hara, 95, a bright, shining star in Hollywood’s golden age from the 1930s, when she came to the states as a teenaged Abbey Theatre actress, onward. This past week, we lost Flip Saunders, whose loss was deeply felt here where he coached the Washington Wizards for over two years and guided its budding superstar John Wall.

MICHAEL STEVENS, 48

The life of Michael Stevens seemed to be a story of fathers and sons and fathers and sons, twice over. He seemed destined to be in the film business one way or another. His grandfather was George Stevens, one of Hollywood’s great directors, whose work began in the silent era and progressed to such hits as “Gunga Din,” in the 1940s, and in the 1950s, winning two Oscars (for “Giant” and “A Place in the Sun”) and being nominated for “Shane.”

George Stevens Jr. followed in his fathers footstep although in his own way—as a young man he worked on many of his fathers films, then founded the American Film Institute, made a documentary about his father, and directed his own films, including “The Murder of Mary Phagan.” He produced the Kennedy Center Honors since its beginning, then co-produced with his son Michael until last year, when the relationship with the Kennedy Center ended.

Michael Murrow Stevens was born in Washington, where Stevens and his wife Elizabeth had made their home in Georgetown. He attended the Landon School in Bethesda and graduated from Duke University with a degree in English literature and political science.

While Michael ventured out on his own to work on films like “The Thin Red Line” in 1998 and two tough crime thrillers, “Bad City Blues” in 1999 and “Sin” in 2003, he worked steadily as a producer, often with his father. He shared five prime-time Emmys on the KC Honors shows aired by CBS. He also helped produce the AFI lifetime salutes to film stars over the years, and directed a number of “Christmas in Washington” variety shows.

Like his father and grandfather, he ventured into documentaries and directed, co-produced and co-wrote the celebrated 2013 documentary on the much beloved and honored Washington Post political cartoonist Herblock, called “Herblock: The Black and the White.” He also directed and co-produced the 2011 film version of his father’s play “Thurgood” on the life of Thurgood Marshall.

It seems on the bright surface of their lives that here were three men, connected by a life lived not on film, but in film, in the arts, on stages and sets, bonded by respect, talent and love, often sharing their gifts and working together in ways that few fathers and sons have the opportunity to do.

MAUREEN O’HARA, 95

They don’t make them like that anymore.

They don’t make movies like the ones Hollywood made in its own-self-acknowledged golden age and they sure as all-get-out don’t make movie stars like Maureen O’Hara, who was one of the shining lights of that era that roughly spanned the beginning of talkies in the 1930s during the Depression through the 1950s, when the major studios and their heads at last began to lose their grip on power.

For an avidly movie-hungry public trying to make it through a Depression and the tensions of a World War, the studios created clowns, comedy, spectacles, epics musicals, swashbucklers, adaptations of classics, kid movies, westerns, cops and robbers and movies dealing with serious social movies, plus a fantasy or two.

They gave them movie stars as opposed to mere celebrities, and in a densely populated firmament of stars, few female stars shined brighter than the O’Hara whose Irish-lass abundant red hair just about blotted out the sun. She was made for Technicolor, which was just beginning when O’Hara arrived from Ireland as a teenaged actress straight out of the Abbey Theatre. She proceeded to star in a black and white version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” opposite Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, hopelessly smitten with O’Hara as Esmerelda, the gypsy girl. With medieval Paris as a setting and O’Hara’s drop-dead beauty, the movie looked as if it were shot in color.

She proceeded to star in a number of grade A films, in the 1940s—“How Green Was My Valley,” set in a Welsh mining town and directed by John Ford, the anti-Nazi “This Land Is Mine,” again with Laughton and other Ford films, in which she was sometimes paired with John Wayne, the greatest man’s man star outside of Clark Gable. All the Irish got together in Ford’s irascibly Irish cliché and fantasy, “The Quiet Man,” in which O’Hara and Wayne were a battling—literally—couple—Barry Fitzgerald was a tipsy matchmaker, Victor McLaglen played O’Hara’s brother, Ward Bond played a priest, and Ireland played Ireland, only more so, with the countryside intensely green and her hair intensely red.

O’Hara also starred in numerous films in a genre of film hardly, if ever, made anymore: the swashbuckler—especially those involving pirates and musketeers, in which she resisted and dueled with swains played by Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and Cornel Wilde. The lass could handle a sword and wear a corset properly.

O’Hara hadn’t made a film in quite a while—her last was in 1991 playing John Candy’s mother and courted by Anthony Quinn.
O’Hara died on October 24, at her home in Boise, Idaho. She lives on and on, incandescent, on Turner Classic Movies.

FLIP SAUNDERS, 60

Flip Saunders, who was coach of the Washington Wizards for a short time, made it to several playoffs with other teams including the Minnesota Timberwolves.

He never won an NBA championship. All he ever won was the respect, affection, love of the players he coached, his fellow professionals in the coaching world, and the world of hoops, and his family. He won a host of friends.

Not everybody—even title winners—can say that.

The basketball world responded yesterday and today with an outpouring of tributes from players, coaches and probably basketball scribes after it was learned that Saunders had lost his fight with Hodgkins Lymphona at the age of 60. He had been coaching in a return gig with the Timberwolves, where he was director of basketball operations.

Randy Whitman, the Wizards’ current coach, said, according to reports, that Saunders should be celebrated as a great man who was able to do much for the game he loved and the people and players he worked with. Adam Silver, the NBA Commissioner, said that Saunders’ death had “left a gaping hole in the fabric of our league.” And John Wall, who was coached by Saunders when he began his career as a number one pick said that Saunders “taught me what it takes to be a good player and a better man.”