tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-130495342012-01-31T06:41:40.576ZKeeping up with the out-of-date . . .Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.comBlogger7361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-55072639059318622192012-01-11T21:34:00.001Z2012-01-11T21:43:34.475Z

Once a year, in the run-up to Christmas, my better half and I make the seemingly interminable journey from Wales to London for some seasonal splurging on art and theater. Now, I don’t travel all the way east to the West End to waste my time on pap like Dirty Dancing. This isn’t snobbery, mind; I simply can’t thrill to a feast of re-processed cheese and the prospect of paying for it through a

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-19706741980915664222012-01-02T22:00:00.000Z2012-01-08T18:29:07.977Z

I call them inventory days, those first few weeks of a new calendar year. It is a time when I play secretary to myself, when I organize and catalogue, shelve and throw away, when I look back at the places I’ve been to, the things I have done, the people I have met. Perhaps, I am getting it all wrong: the year is crisp—so, why am I rehashing what has been, obsessively reconstructing the past with

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-43658540997284654742011-12-22T22:00:00.000Z2012-01-11T21:52:38.542Z

"What’s your great online discovery,” an interviewer asked Marcia Warren, star of the current West End production of Ladykillers.  To this, the veteran of stage, screen and radio replied, “What does online mean?” It is just the kind of answer most of us expect—and want to hear—from someone past middle age, which makes hers such a sly response.  Warren remains in character, as Mrs. Wilberforce,

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-50413341538946626612011-11-06T21:14:00.019Z2012-01-05T00:17:47.037Z

As soon as I decided to make radio plays written in the United States in the 1930s, ‘40s and early ‘50s the subject of my doctoral study, I set out to scour New York City University libraries for scripts published during that period. My degree is in English, and I was keen not to approach broadcasting as a purely historical subject. The play texts and my readings of them were to be central to

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-64325638898509089702011-10-19T19:47:00.014+01:002012-01-05T00:18:04.179Z

Obituaries often begin like this: The world (the art world, the theater world, the world of miniature golf, or what have you) has lost one of its leading, brightest, most prominent so-and-so’s. But that won’t do. Not if the so-and-so is Norman Corwin. The formula would not be worthy of him, for one. Stylistically alone, it would be un-Corwinian; it would be Hummertsian. Nor would it fit the

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-44143904876366770542011-10-04T23:49:00.016+01:002012-01-05T00:18:21.779Z

I’ve long tried—and, you might say, failed and pretty much given up—to fill a gap in the construction of our cultural histories, most of which are entirely too preoccupied with images and their interpretation. Western culture may privilege vision over any other sense—but if you think that the past will unfold before your eyes simply by looking at graphics, photos or printed records, you’ve been

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-5555566543999065482011-08-27T22:00:00.002+01:002012-01-05T00:18:47.224Z

Eve Arden is Our Miss Brooks. Joan Collins is Alexis. Estelle Getty, Sophia. Whatever else these ladies did in their long stage, screen and television careers, they have become identified with a single, signature role they had the good fortune to create in midlife. Grabbing their second chances at a second skin, they experienced a regenerative ecdysis. The character or caricature that

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-45228558643743804742011-06-27T22:00:00.003+01:002012-01-05T00:19:23.861Z

“Take Back UR Power Now,” the letters on the marquee read. I am standing in front of the Music Box Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Whose power? I wonder. Who took it? Who lost it? And just who is telling me—or anyone else reading—to seize it? Take it from me, perhaps? Do I have it? Did I ever have it? Am I supposed to have it? If so, to do what with? Storm the box office? Take to the stage?

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-24475971615209740442011-06-25T22:00:00.005+01:002012-01-05T00:19:48.792Z

The folks who proved that they had made their mark in Hollywood by leaving it in the cement slabs in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre had one thing in common. Besides having the stature of a movie star or Tinseltown personality, I mean. They could all stand up, bend down, and exert whatever pressure is required to produce those imprints. Even Charlie McCarthy, apparently. I always thought

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-20610240657124144202010-06-28T22:00:00.007+01:002012-01-05T00:15:33.808Z

“What do you think of a husband who has given a woman eight children and lived with [her] for twenty-four years and in front of his children denies that he is married to her?” No one hearing the question—an estimated twelve million Americans—could have been particularly interested in the response. It was the story that thrilled, the common, raw and true story that was 1438C, one of three cases

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-9442051545496612832010-06-25T22:57:00.015+01:002012-01-05T00:16:30.025Z

”Whatever your own political views in the matter may be . . .” Diplomatic, cautious and propitiatory, those are hardly words you would expect to hear coming from the close-miked mouth of crooner Rudy Vallee, one of the 1930s most popular—and insipid—radio personalities. After all, Vallee was not emceeing America’s Town Meeting of the Air; his chief ambassadorial function was to promote

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-76483056074537925682010-06-22T23:44:00.039+01:002012-01-05T00:16:58.240Z

While not entirely lacking in fancy or imagination, I generally avoid speculating about roads not taken, avoid taking in prospects retrospectively by asking “What if . . . ?” What if I had never gone to America? What if I had not left again some fifteen years later? What if what I had left had not been a country whose majority had just re-elected George W. Bush? While I would not go so far or

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-601956217924773032010-06-14T23:43:00.021+01:002010-06-15T13:36:03.442+01:00

“42 Men Killed Every Week,” the headline read. Those who had already heard as much on the radio would likely have felt the impact of this crime wave; but, unless they were pining for the likes of Rudy Vallee, they would have relished it as well. Religious leaders, child psychologists, and a few popular entertainers aside, hardly anyone would have been the least bit alarmed. After all, the

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-38736552840714004982010-06-11T20:20:00.017+01:002010-07-01T21:10:32.981+01:00

Announcer Graham McNamee called it the “most terrific broadcast [he] ever took part in.” He was referring to NBC’s on-the-spot coverage of Colonel Charles L. Lindbergh’s return from France to the United States on this day, 11 June, in 1927. It certainly was a technical achievement worthy of “this new world hero, this new ambassador of America to all other countries,” as McNamee heralded the “

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-65911402494010520402010-06-10T22:22:00.017+01:002010-06-15T21:12:07.741+01:00

“You’re sorry?” That was the rather pitiful catchphrase devised for a certain “lovable lady of stage, screen, and radio”—Miss Charlotte Greenwood, who, having done well for herself on stage and screen, added “radio” to her resume in June 1944, when the Charlotte Greenwood Program was first broadcast over NBC’s Blue network as a summer replacement for Bob Hope. Actually, Greenwood had been Mrs.

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-55393161657368459792010-06-08T22:00:00.004+01:002010-06-09T19:30:53.388+01:00

“As you know, in many countries in Europe the people are only permitted to hear what their government wishes them to hear through government controlled radio stations.” With that reason to be grateful for being an American, uttered on 8 June 1941, veteran announcer Graham McNamee introduced listeners who might have tuned in to Behind the Mike to hear the “sound effect of the week” or learn how

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-42217213041556748312010-06-07T19:32:00.026+01:002010-06-07T23:33:01.427+01:00

I am often too lost in whatever thoughts go through that absent mind of mine to take note of what goes on in the world or who among the world’s notables have departed it of late. Else I am too slow to gather those thoughts in time for anything approaching timely. Enter fellow web journalists Ivan Shreve, on whom you can depend for the latest in great names to have joined the parade of late

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-14441734472162915462010-06-01T22:00:00.006+01:002010-07-01T19:23:55.655+01:00

It wasn’t just the “usual gang of crumbs” gathering at Duffy’s Tavern that evening. Otherwise, Archie would not have replaced the “Watch Your Hats and Coats” sign with one saying “Maintain Scrutiny of Thy Chapeaux and Hats.” Nor would Mrs. Duffy, who wasn’t exactly an authority on high classical authors, have been dusting off the Dostoyevsky, which Archie struggled to classify as animal,

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-28329038186151999322010-05-31T16:48:00.009+01:002010-05-31T22:15:57.434+01:00

It’s one of those days. I am reaching into my box of memorabilia, building paper bridges between the now and then. As I turn away from this little blue box—and from the scanner that transforms a printed image into a digital one—my eye catches another image, a framed poster on the wall of my study. And, once again, I become carried away, absorbed in the thoughts these two collector’s items—one

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-65877767563532559332010-05-30T23:34:00.011+01:002010-06-15T21:07:48.505+01:00

I don’t often indulge in morning afterthoughts. I might—and frequently do—revise what I said (or, rather, how I said it); but I generally just take time, and one time only, to say my piece instead of doling it out piecemeal. Unlike the producers of much of the (un)popular culture I go on about here, I don’t make a virtue of saying “As I was saying” or make my fortune, say, by milking the cash

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-49728431563156686792010-05-29T13:19:00.005+01:002010-05-29T20:29:38.744+01:00

“What is the future of the radio business in the United States? Is it to be like the telephone, the automobile, or the phonograph business, a thing that will rise suddenly to almost universal acceptance by the public and support great manufacturing plants?” These aspects of the “Commercial Side of Radio” were mooted back in May 1922, when they were raised in the first issue of Radio Broadcast.

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-68103766138753200492010-05-28T09:39:00.007+01:002010-05-29T01:18:33.360+01:00

Both BBC Radio 4 and 7 are in the thick of a J. B. Priestley festival, a spate of programs ranging from serial dramatizations of early novels (The Good Companions and Bright Day) and adaptations of key plays (Time and the Conways and An Inspector Calls), to readings from his travelogue English Journey and a documentary about the writer’s troubled radio days. Now, I don’t know just what might be

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-6398279288274737862010-05-27T20:00:00.019+01:002010-05-28T23:29:17.804+01:00

This week marks the 70th anniversary of “Operation Dynamo,” an ad hoc rescue mission involving small civilian ships coming to the aid of French and British soldiers who had been forced into retreat at Dunkerque during the for Allied troops disastrous Battle of Dunkirk. The operation, which became known as “The Miracle of the Little Ships,” was recreated today as more than sixty British vessels,

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-65796493654677217842010-05-26T21:44:00.021+01:002010-06-15T21:07:48.507+01:00

Folks flicking through the May 25-30 issue of Radio-Movie Guide back in 1941 were told about a “New Song Sensation,” a novelty number written by Ted McMichael (of the Merry Macs), Jack Owens and Leo V. Killion. The identification of the tunesmiths aside, this was probably no news at all to America’s avid dial twisters. Published only a few weeks earlier, the “Sensation” in question had already

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-28875998140320121452010-05-10T17:10:00.019+01:002010-05-27T22:15:55.112+01:00

When I heard of the passing of Lena Horne, the words “You Were Wonderful” came immediately to mind. Expressive of enthusiasm and regret, they sound fit for a tribute. However, by placing the emphasis on the first word, we may temper our applause—or the patronising cheers of others—with a note of reproach, implying that while Horne’s performances were marvellous, indeed, the system in which she

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-38985457131637971422010-05-03T22:44:00.032+01:002010-05-27T22:10:04.536+01:00

Today, American journalist and radio playwright Norman Corwin turns 100. Whether that makes him the oldest living writer to have had a career in radio I leave it to fact-checkers and record book keepers to determine. I do know that, seventy years ago, he was already the best. Oldest. Best. Why not dispense with superlatives? Corwin has been set apart for too long. Instead, an appreciation

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-45174782318818595942010-04-24T22:00:00.012+01:002010-05-27T22:17:53.937+01:00

I might as well come right out with it, dissentient, fractious and uncharitable as it may sound. I don’t like Alan Bennett—popular British playwright, memoirist, and frequent reciter of his own words—whose latest work for the stage, The Habit of Art, was beamed from London’s National Theatre into movie houses around the world this month. He irritates me. Why, then, did I number among the

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-77714116837767082762010-04-20T22:00:00.005+01:002010-05-27T22:17:53.940+01:00

I am taking the passing ash cloud as an occasion to dust off my collection of Cinegrams, a late-1930s to early 1940s series of British movie programs I recently set out to acquire. Immemorabilia, you might call them. Not quite first-rate souvenirs of, for the most part, less-than-classic films like The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel, or worse. These cheaply printed ephemera were

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-13602719779354858942010-03-26T13:09:00.002Z2010-05-27T22:17:53.951+01:00

"What is there to say about what one loves except: I love it, and to keep on saying it?" Roland Barthes famously remarked. Sometimes, getting to the stage of saying even that much requires quite a bit of effort; and sometimes you don’t get to say it at all. Love may be where you find it, but it may also be the very act of discovery. The objective rather than the object. The pursuit whose

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-15091597319888607352010-02-24T22:00:00.012Z2010-05-27T22:27:35.522+01:00

“Education comes more easily through the ear than through the eye,” H. V. Kaltenborn declared back in 1926. He had to believe that, or needed to convince others of it, at least. After all, the newspaper editor had embarked on a new career that was entirely dependent on the public’s ability to listen and learn when he, as early as 1921, first stepped behind a microphone to throw his disembodied

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-59442287986538854782010-01-15T22:00:00.011Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.902+01:00

It doesn’t happen often that, after watching a 21-century movie based on a 21-century novel, I walk straight into the nearest bookstore to get my hands on a shiny paperback copy of the original, the initial publication of which escaped me as a matter of course. Come to think of it, this never happened before; and that it did happen in the case of Me and Orson Welles has a lot to do with the fact

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-22715638589383402682009-12-22T21:50:00.004Z2010-05-27T22:17:53.960+01:00

“There's no family uniting instinct, anyhow; it's habit and sentiment and material convenience hold families together after adolescence. There's always friction, conflict, unwilling concessions. Always!” Growing up in a familial household whose microclimate was marked by the extremes of hot-temperedness and bone-chilling calculation, I amassed enough empirical evidence to convince me that this

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-17684718749386316542009-12-02T22:00:00.001Z2010-05-27T22:17:53.962+01:00

I am not inclined to manual labor. If I lift a finger, it is likely to come down on what isn’t grammatically up to scratch or else to add a few scrapes to my scalp as I take some rambling bull by the inkhorn. There has been a little more of that going on lately—teaching and editing—and, my furrowed pate notwithstanding, I am heartily glad of it. Yet as much as I relish being back in the game

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-79300649690477052102009-11-23T11:14:00.024Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.904+01:00

The Darwin bicentenary is drawing to a close. Throughout the year, exhibitions were staged all over Britain to commemorate the achievements of the scientist and the controversy his theories wrought; numerous plays and documentaries were presented on stage, screen and radio, including a new production of Inherit the Wind (1955), currently on at the Old Vic. I was hoping to catch up with it when

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-82672022395778512492009-11-20T16:35:00.004Z2010-05-27T22:15:55.114+01:00

What the Bwana Devil! I’ve been trying on various kinds of glasses to take in Channel 4’s 3D fest—but none transport me into the third dimension. Turns out, viewing the weeklong series of films and specials, culminating in a “3-D Magic Spectacular” and a clipfest of “The Greatest Ever 3-D Moments”—requires special goggles that can only be obtained from a certain chain of supermarkets whose reach

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-88667249278877313532009-11-15T16:46:00.004Z2010-05-27T22:18:25.493+01:00

I am hardly the go-getter type. My goals are even more modest than my needs, which is to say that a full and fulfilling present day matters more to me than any future success for the prediction and preparation of which I lack the foresight. Among my few ambitions it is to amass volumes enough to have one of the most comprehensive private libraries devoted to turning up the volume—to American

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-35423603835690963682009-11-12T23:08:00.007Z2010-05-27T22:18:25.495+01:00

At the risk of sounding like a loser at a Vegas spelling bee, I am a serious eye roller. Like a roulette wheel on an off night, each circulation marks the extent of my displeasure. The other night, I was really taking my peepers for a spin. Judging from such ocular proof, you might have thought that more than eyeballs were about to roll. Indeed, it seemed as if I were going to face the Lord

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-75644577185146525722009-11-11T23:18:00.010Z2010-05-27T22:18:25.497+01:00

As I was saying: what is wanting here is continuity, some sort of story on the go, a sense of goings-on ongoing, of the so on and so on and so on. It would be laziest to claim, as I have done, that what prevents me from turning a seemingly random clipbook into the attraction that is the yet to come is largely owing to the kind of clippings for which this (mis)nominal journal is reserved. Instead

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-51387351591139872202009-11-10T21:08:00.010Z2010-05-27T22:18:25.501+01:00

A long time (well, okay, make that ‘about four and a half years’) ago I came to the realization that the key to keeping an online journal—and one’s fingers regularly on the keyboard in its service—is serialization: some kind of evolving plot that, like life and Stella Dallas on a diet, keeps thickening and thinning from Monday till Doomsday until the inevitable sundown that not even Guiding Light

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-18062825300044114882009-10-30T22:21:00.009Z2010-05-27T22:10:04.538+01:00

This is just the night for a return—a return to that old, beloved yet woefully neglected hobbyhorse of mine. You know, the Pegasus of hobbyhorses: the radio. After all, it is the anniversary of the Mercury Theatre’s 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast, a date that lives in infamy for giving those who say that “seeing is believing” an ear-opening poke in the eye. These days, the old Pegasus

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-16075269138310057682009-10-02T22:57:00.033+01:002010-05-27T22:18:25.503+01:00

What a tramp my mind has turned into lately. I would like to think that I still got one of my own, to have and to hold on to, for richer or poorer, and all that; but every now and again, and rather too frequently at that, the willful one takes off without the slightest concern for my state of it. It used to be that I could gather my thoughts like keepsakes to store a mind with; these days, I

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-43171956701605116522009-10-01T15:16:00.046+01:002010-05-27T22:18:25.506+01:00

Legend has it that, when asked what Cecil B. DeMille was doing for a living, his five-year-old grand-daughter replied: “He sells soap.” Back then, in 1944, the famous Hollywood director-producer was known to million of Americans as host and nominal producer of the Lux Radio Theater, from the squeaky clean boards of which venue he was heard slipping (or forcefully squeezing) many a none-too-subtle

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-60342223623013069162009-09-30T22:44:00.004+01:002010-05-27T22:18:25.508+01:00

I suppose I am back in my element (earth, mingled with dust), being that I can reminisce at last about my recent trip to New York City from the comfort of my own patch of terra firma across the pond. Okay, so I never managed to turn writing into a living; but I sure can turn life into writing—provided I can go on about past experiences once I am good and ready, once that which has been going on

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-69203849975194349852009-09-10T22:10:00.001+01:002010-05-27T22:18:25.511+01:00

Remembering Gertrude Berg, that is. Having been to Fleischmanns last year (without spotting her tombstone there), I was thrilled to be catching Aviva Kempner’s much reviewed if ultimately unsatisfying documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan last week. After all, it is not a film you are likely to see in Europe (or, for that matter, in any US multiplex); and I doubt

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-24318586630850835412009-09-09T22:57:00.000+01:002010-05-27T22:19:47.929+01:00

Okay, so I’ve been cutting a few corners during my present, month-long stay in New York City; but I wasn’t about to cut Grover’s Corners. Our Town, that is, a new production of which is playing at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village. These days, there isn’t much on Broadway to tempt me into letting go of whatever is left in my wallet. I mean, Shrek the Musical? What’s next, Pac-Man

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-48793805804599141692009-08-27T22:17:00.001+01:002009-08-28T15:34:22.528+01:00

“Salut au monde!” That is a greeting the narrator of Norman Corwin’s “New York: A Tapestry for Radio” extended to the never quite statistically average American listener—anybody tuning in to the nationally broadcast play cycle Columbia Presents Corwin back during World War II. And that is how I, returned again to my old yet ever changing neighborhood in uptown Manhattan, am reaching out to the

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-27562256231164482882009-08-17T12:28:00.009+01:002009-08-20T23:08:06.846+01:00

“Frankly, I’m a little worried,” comedian Jack Paar confided in announcer Hy Averback on this day, 17 August, in 1947. He was, after all, merely a “summer replacement,” a “fellow who broadcasts during the hot weather to give the other actors time to count the money they’ve made all winter.” For the past twelve weeks, Paar had been sitting in for his first-namesake, skinflint Jack Benny, and had

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-71777419964075693882009-08-14T19:59:00.013+01:002009-08-16T21:24:16.681+01:00

Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, and Alfred Hitchcock—those were the Hollywood directors in whose films and careers I became interested in my youth, a by now but vaguely remembered period in my life during which most movie-going adolescents associated the business of making pictures with names like Rocky Balboa, Indiana Jones, or Luke Skywalker. My folks rarely went to the cinema, least of all

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-57090171238907894972009-07-29T22:17:00.026+01:002009-09-11T06:21:58.439+01:00

Nearly two centuries ago, young Rebecca Sharp marked her entrance into the world by hurling a book out of a coach window. That book, reluctantly gifted to her by the proprietress of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, was Johnson’s dictionary, a volume for which Ms. Sharp had little use, given that she was rarely at a loss for words. By the time her story became known, in 1847, words in

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-39075034601297297562009-07-28T00:17:00.022+01:002009-07-29T13:52:46.077+01:00

". . . and visited the Sea." I have not read the poetic works of Emily Dickinson in many a post-collegiate moon; yet, as wayward as my memory may be, I never forgot those glorious opening lines. You might say that is has long been an ambition of mine to utter them, to experience for myself the magic they evoke; but, until recently, I have failed on three accounts to follow Emily in her

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-69865391268632499862009-07-27T22:42:00.022+01:002009-10-07T16:00:52.069+01:00

I rose before the sun, and ran on deck to catch an early glimpse of the strange land we were nearing; and as I peered eagerly, not through mist and haze, but straight into the clear, bright, many-tinted ether, there came the first faint, tremulous blush of dawn, behind her rosy veil [ . . .]. A vision of comfort and gladness, that tropical March morning, genial as a July dawn in my own less

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-27116386578628698732009-07-26T23:16:00.026+01:002009-07-29T14:42:50.581+01:00

This is not going to be one of those “the dog ate my homework” sort of posts, which are as much an excuse for not writing as they are a woeful excuse for writing anything at all. Besides, I could hardly blame Montague, our terrier, for keeping me from keeping my journal. Rather, it is the home work that has done the biting, gnawing and tearing at the hours I would otherwise earmark for sinking

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-73768841318656120392009-06-28T11:34:00.026+01:002010-05-27T22:28:21.423+01:00

Language is to me one of the main pulls of the no longer popular, be it American radio comedy of the 1940s or the serial novels of the Victorian era. That is to say, the absence of the kind of language we refer to as “language” whenever we caution or implore others to mind theirs. Mind you, all manner of “language” escapes me in moments of physical or mental anguish; but, once I hit the

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-27684156794801932082009-06-20T03:26:00.016+01:002009-06-22T16:22:18.916+01:00

"Oh, I have seen enough and done enough and been places enough and livened my senses enough and dulled my senses enough and probed enough and laughed enough and wept more than most people would suspect." This line, as long and plodding as a life gone wearisome, was recently uttered by screen legend Olivia de Havilland, now in her 90s. You may well think that, at her age, she had reason enough

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-1538137177544312922009-06-19T19:47:00.030+01:002009-06-20T00:05:02.936+01:00

“Yoo-hoo, is anybody?” I guess that, from time to time, many of us amateur journalists feel compelled to ask the question so catchily phrased by the matriarch of the Goldbergs. At least Molly Goldberg could hope for a response from her friend and neighbor Mrs. Bloom, to whom her shouts into the dumb waiter shaft were directed. To Mrs. Goldberg, “anybody” was a certain someone. Many who

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-37284738472543369832009-06-09T14:15:00.008+01:002009-06-10T16:35:08.013+01:00

“Ziss is mine shtory, ja? Zo, bleeze, vill you be stumm and let me finish,” Tante Ilse burst out in her inimitable take on the English language. When she got that way, she’d assault her adopted tongue like an ill-tempered schnauzer tears at a bunch of newly arrived letters. If you were quick enough, you could just gather the pieces and make out the message intended. Tante Ilse was becoming a

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-54386033183453312132009-06-06T09:47:00.015+01:002010-05-27T22:24:55.909+01:00

It was a crisp, bright afternoon in April when we visited Trebah Garden, one of the most beautiful spots in all of Cornwall. The sun had come out from behind a curtain of threatening clouds and the air was fragrant with a promissory note of summer that even the leafless, wintry trees in the distance were powerless to gainsay. As we walked down the sloping path, past the Rhododendron and

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-60097558651037615252009-06-05T23:14:00.014+01:002010-05-27T22:24:55.911+01:00

I rarely hear from my sister; sometimes, months go by without a word between us. I have not seen her in almost a decade. Like all of my relatives, my sister lives in Germany. I was born there. I am a German citizen; yet I have not been “home” for nearly twenty years. It was back in 1989, a momentous year for what I cannot bring myself to call “my country,” that I decided, without any

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-80309672322425947912009-06-01T23:57:00.019+01:002009-06-02T15:28:20.668+01:00

"Ladies and gentlemen. We have grand news for you tonight, for the Lux Radio Theater has moved to Hollywood. And here we are in a theater of our very own. The Lux Radio Theater, Hollywood Boulevard, in the motion picture capital of the world. The curtain rises.” And what a bright piece of cloth it was that was lifted on this day, 1 June, in 1936, to reveal how an established if staid venue

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-16650201986077170632009-05-31T22:03:00.005+01:002009-06-03T12:00:30.620+01:00

”What happens to these ambitious people after their first appearance? Do they go on, succeed, become famous and lead the lives they’d dreamed of living? Or, after a brief glimpse of glory, do they return, disappointed and broken, into the humdrum lives they’d led before?” Those are question many viewers feel compelled to ponder after watching common folk like Susan Boyle perform on amateur

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-52097490300643576702009-05-28T15:44:00.058+01:002010-06-13T22:53:47.656+01:00

“Name your favorite radio star of 1950!” an article in Radio Guide for the week ending 18 April 1936 appealed to its readership (reputedly some 400,000 strong). It wasn’t a challenge to the clairvoyant or a call for votes in one of the magazine’s popularity polls, as the implied answer stared you right in the face, a promise with five sets of peepers. “The chances are you won’t be far wrong if

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-12798156261582039202009-05-27T09:42:00.013+01:002009-07-28T23:22:26.725+01:00

"You can’t do without it. Supposing you wanna hear Jack Benny, see? But you can’t be at home at that hour. So you tell the maid to turn the radio on when Jack Benny comes on, and this automatically goes on with the radio. . . .” That is how big shot Howard Wagner goes on about his new wire recorder—shortly before giving his old employee the ax. The employee is Willy Loman, the scene from

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-22930200190829170772009-05-26T20:55:00.024+01:002009-05-27T11:19:48.661+01:00

Occasionally, people who think of me as some sort of authority approach me with questions of a literary nature. When that happens, I suddenly remember that I am Dr. Heuser, BA, MA, PhD, something that you tend to forget when you spend most of your afternoons in the company of a small dog whose passive vocabulary is limited to words like “want,” “basket,” or—a testament to my cleaning skills and

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-78847752931769659262009-05-23T20:15:00.016+01:002009-05-24T19:32:00.832+01:00

Bury this. Apparently, it was with words not much kinder that the aspiring but already middle-aged storyteller Samuel Clemens was told what to do with “The Undertaker’s Tale.” Written in 1877, it was not published until this year, nearly a century after the author’s death. The case of the premature burial has not only been brought to light but, thanks to BBC Radio 4, the disinterred matter has

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-33176192760026259952009-05-22T21:44:00.039+01:002009-05-24T09:53:50.335+01:00

“Had Holmes never existed I could not have done more, though he may perhaps have stood a little in the way of the recognition of my more serious literary work.” That is how Arthur Conan Doyle, not long before his own death in 1930, announced to his readers that he would put an end to his most robust brainchild, the by now all but immortal Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, the figure continues to

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-83826974812250006652009-05-20T14:02:00.023+01:002009-05-22T03:09:16.309+01:00

As I add another candle to the cupcake set aside for the celebration of my fourth blogging anniversary and to be consumed in the solitude of my virtual niche, I am once again wondering whether I should not have taken a scandal sheet out of Louella Parsons’s cookbook. You know, serving it while it’s hot, with a pinch of salt on the side. Dishing it out in a bowl the size of China, a

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-59616894709010733582009-05-19T13:24:00.014+01:002010-05-27T22:28:21.425+01:00

It is almost “like a bride's outfit”; in it, there’s “something old, something new, something borrowed”—although rarely anything “blue.” That is how media critic Gilbert Seldes described the language of broadcasters, the jargon used by those behind the scenes of television, with which the American public was just getting acquainted (rather than walking down the aisle). Seldes’s remark can be

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-40635671184942814772009-05-18T14:15:00.024+01:002010-05-27T22:24:55.914+01:00

Last week, my best friend was in town for a visit. Ever since I left our native Germany some twenty years ago to live abroad (first in the US, now in the UK), our time together has been short and rare. I have learned to accept the brevity of our reunions; but treating them as special occasions has often bothered me. Not that it would be a waste of time just to flop and chat; then again, that

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-24761134244164422242009-05-17T20:02:00.018+01:002010-05-27T22:24:55.916+01:00

"I'm in love with a fairy tale / Even though it hurts." It was with these lyrics, a fiddle, and a disarming smile that Norwegian delegate Alexander Rybak came to be voted winner of the 54th Eurovision Song Contest—an annual spectacle-cum-diplomatic mission reputed to be the world’s most-watched non-sporting event on television. However intended, the lines aptly capture the attitude of many

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-15452741249656192009-05-10T20:43:00.017+01:002009-05-11T10:33:23.397+01:00

Last night, I felt like an old queen. Granted, that is not an uncommon feeling for me; but the Queen in this case was none other than Victoria, who, in the last years of her reign, enjoyed partaking of live opera without actually having to leave for the theater at which it was presented. Her royal box was a contraption called the Electrophone, a special telephone service that connected

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-53420242122318062892009-05-04T13:56:00.050+01:002009-05-05T02:42:25.689+01:00

Jumping Jehosophat! It sure feels good to rant about our elected government—some force that, at times, appears to us (or is conveniently conceived of) as an entity we don't have much to do with, after the fact or fiction of election, besides the imposition of carrying the burden of enduring it, albeit not without whingeing. Back on this day, 4 May, in 1941, the Columbia Broadcasting System

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-12849978850787038632009-05-03T11:32:00.009+01:002009-05-04T10:55:52.593+01:00

Let’s start by setting forthThat it is good to take a swig of fancy every now and then,A nip or two of wonderment,To jag the mind.It’s good to send your thoughts excursioningBeyond the paved and well-worn alleys of your lifeIf only as a form of exercise [. . .]The man who prescribed this “form of exercise” in “Seems Radio Is Here to Stay” some seventy years ago, back in April 1939, is

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-30317334889965273882009-05-02T22:42:00.022+01:002009-05-03T10:38:25.331+01:00

“Well, he won’t last long.” That is what I thought, back in April 1993, when I tuned in to witness Conan O’Brien’s debut as host of Late Night. Gawky and twitchy, the comedy writer turned performer was so ill at ease he made me jittery. It felt like watching the rehearsal for a cancellation notice, the curtain rising and falling on a production staged by Bialystock and Bloom. I might have had

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-80582179671139178822009-04-30T22:55:00.010+01:002009-10-02T22:10:58.077+01:00

“April is the cruellest month,” T. S. Eliot wrote (in his opening lines for “The Waste Land”)—“mixing / Memory and desire.” I somehow felt the cruelty of this mixture more keenly this year, being that the seasonal rebirth coincides with activities amounting to more than spring cleaning, a project that triggered memories of a less than happy home and anxieties about moving. The first month of

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-64865285757428863182009-04-29T13:16:00.006+01:002009-05-05T02:14:16.802+01:00

When not at work on our new old house—where the floorboards are up in anticipation of central heating—we are on the road and down narrow country lanes to get our calloused hands on the pieces of antique furniture that we acquired, in 21st-century style, by way of online auction. In order to create the illusion that we are getting out of the house, rather than just something into it, and to put

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-42645368325858417232009-04-19T22:22:00.011+01:002009-06-10T11:05:22.839+01:00

How insignificant, at the moment, seem the influences of the sensible things which are tossed and fall and lie about us, so, or so, in the environment of early childhood. How indelibly, as we afterwards discover, they affect us; with what capricious attractions and associations they figure themselves on the white paper, the smooth wax, of our ingenuous souls, as “with lead in the rock for ever,”

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-47540887254690192992009-04-18T21:10:00.008+01:002009-04-20T00:40:28.890+01:00

All right, so I’m sounding like an aging burlesque queen about to toss her tassels and turn in the g-string that is a turn-on no longer—but, by Gypsy, I am tired of stripping. Wallpaper, I mean. This old Mazeppa has nothing but a scraper for a gimmick, and the only hand she ever got for all her grinding is a mighty sore one. I just could not live with it, though, that dreadful pattern—having

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-18523842577647137412009-04-14T22:32:00.019+01:002009-05-08T15:21:30.707+01:00

“Look, sonny, we’re up here for work. We’ve put this attic off, and put this attic off. Now that we’re here, let’s make every minute count.” That was the voice of reason Rush Gook—and several million radio listeners besides—heard on the day (18 August 1942, to be precise) that mom Sade decided it was time to tackle that stuffy space under the roof of the “small house half-way up in the next

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-78101038614600111492009-04-13T22:54:00.030+01:002009-04-14T22:32:15.609+01:00

The presumably out-of-date with which I choose to concern myself in this journal cannot be expected to have an air of minty freshness about it; but by now broadcastellan is beginning to smell downright musty. Still, I cannot quite muster the energy to attend to the cobwebs in which this nugatory niche is shrouded. The state of neglect is owing to the dust that has enveloped my carcass of late.

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-80454605081525407002009-03-26T15:11:00.008Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.918+01:00

The currency market has been giving me a headache. The British pound is anything but sterling these days, which, along with our impending move and the renovation project it entails, is making a visit to the old neighborhood seem more like a pipe dream to me. The old neighborhood, after all, is some three thousand miles away, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; and even though I have come to

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-12244635590266230802009-03-25T21:26:00.020Z2009-04-19T22:45:23.249+01:00

"I want you to go to Milan and get him. The American radio listener deserves the very best in music. All we can lose is a few weeks of your time and the expenses of the trip. No more cables. Get on a boat." That is what, back in the fall of 1936, RCA president and NBC chairman David Sarnoff told New York Post music critic Samuel Chotzinoff, whom Sarnoff made musical director at NBC. The man

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-13004148048946654422009-03-24T14:59:00.013Z2009-03-27T10:57:34.715Z

There was a time when much of what was on the air, first on radio, then on television, was live. Whatever drama unfolded, it played out on a stage the size of a nation. Nowadays, only breaking news can arrest our promiscuous gaze—the rest will have to wait until we are ready to take it in. With all the technology at our fingertips, we are in danger of losing that sense of sharing and partaking

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-82413791412681272182009-03-23T19:47:00.022Z2010-03-23T21:30:21.430Z

“So, here he is. My father. In a churchyard in the furthest tip of Llŷn. Eighty years old. Wild hair blowing in the wind. Overcoat that could belong to a tramp. Face like something hewn out of stone, staring into the distance.” The man observing is Gwydion, the middle-aged son of R. S. Thomas (1913-2000)—“Poet. Priest. Birdwatcher. Scourge of the English. The Ogre of Wales.” With this

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-32645967191837155582009-03-22T23:13:00.011Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.920+01:00

Wherever fighting men are in action—wherever disaster shakes the earth—wherever history is in the making—there you’ll find Headline Hunter Gibbons, the machine-gun stylist of words. His record is 217 words a minute, steady flow for sustained speech. But what a price he has paid for the background that makes his record possible!—His body is crosspatched with bullet wounds and sword cuts. The

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-14952342013886701202009-03-21T12:59:00.029Z2009-03-22T16:38:05.151Z

Personally, your editors don't like Mr. Welles. He is the seven-year-old kid next door who has a vocabulary twice his size. He is the good-looking young man who walks off with your best girl. He is the braggart who says impossible things and then does them. Your editors are average people. That’s why they personally are not fond of the man who is too good and knows it and shows it! . . .

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-72837232693822553492009-03-20T22:55:00.030Z2009-05-23T02:54:52.025+01:00

For the reward of a single dollar, readers of Movie-Radio Guide used to send in “boners”—fluffed or unintentionally funny lines they had caught on the air. On 29 Feburary 1940, for instance, Olive Doeling of Petaluma, California, tuned in to station KGO and heard Benny Walker (Benny Walker?) say: "Wish you could see her, folks. She's lugging a saxophone almost as big as she is behind her.”

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-12790114632255611742009-03-19T16:03:00.042Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.923+01:00

Historically speaking, it is difficult for me to get the larger picture. When I express anything amounting to a weltanschauung, I go all philosophical. Perhaps, I live too much in the confines of my own peculiar everyday to engage with the political events and developments that shape my existence. Life in the United States has taught—or, at any rate, encouraged—me to live in and for the now, a

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-16157688083788244722009-03-18T20:40:00.035Z2009-03-20T12:58:52.011Z

I could not have faulted anyone for brushing me off with a terse “none of your lip,” considering that my kisser had taken on the appearance of an over-boiled frankfurter abandoned during a picnic invaded by flesh-eating ants. Luckily, sights mattered less than sounds, and the painkillers had not entirely divested me of whatever powers of articulating my ideas I yet possess. Yesterday morning,

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-26288508023306814602009-03-17T20:50:00.026Z2009-03-18T10:43:23.851Z

If I’ve been keeping my trap shut lately, it’s on account of some festering crumbs in my cake hole. Sure, I can jaw away about most anything, but I’ve got to have the mind and the mandible to do so. For days now I have been plagued by mouth ulcers that are putting a muzzle on my spirits—not the kind of oral culture I generally engage with in this journal. My gums are following economic trends,

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-7578686717227321332009-03-09T22:26:00.020Z2009-03-10T16:33:10.256Z

Unlike my imperialist, Anschluss-eager ancestors, I am not anxious for Lebensraum, the supposed deficiency thereof justified many acts of ruthless expansion. If I lack living space, I tend to shrink-fit myself back into it; instead of elbowing my way out of a tight squeeze, I grab and ditch whatever the chosen niche cannot hold. The size of a pad has always been less important to me than its

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-40173166992348274972009-02-27T22:38:00.020Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.925+01:00

In a few weeks, all going according to plan, I shall be moving west, to the Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth—a short move long in the making. Once in town and halfway settled, I shall set out to uncovering whatever pop-cultural past it has—you know, Liz Taylor slept here, Ben Gazzara filmed there; that sort of thing. When it comes to broadcasting, the prized hobbyhorse in my imaginary stables,

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-56311421112990691662009-02-25T21:47:00.011Z2009-02-26T15:09:05.494Z

Staying out of touch has never been easier. We’ve all got our personal teleporters to spirit us away from the here and now. Technology is making it possible for us to remove ourselves from our communities, to stay at home not watching the world go by. Instead, we can revel in bygone worlds. Hundreds of satellite channels are serving up seconds. Before you know it, you quite forgot what time

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-66679007582059194782009-02-24T18:59:00.054Z2009-02-25T19:36:15.570Z

This is a day for disguises, and a night of unmasking. A time to let yourself go, and a time to let go of something. A night to make an ass of yourself, and a morning to mark yourself with ash. Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fastnacht. Back where I come from—Germany’s Rhineland—carnival is a major holiday, an interlude set aside for delusions, for letting powerless misrule themselves: laborers

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-39585879780164668982009-02-18T23:04:00.015Z2009-02-19T22:39:14.077Z

So iconic is this technicolorful Latina that she might not strike you, on the face of it, as the ideal subject for a sound-only documentary; but there she is, the life of Russell Davies’s “Carmen Miranda: The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat.” Once you remove that hat, you will find much to tip yours to as you listen to Ruby Wax, assisted by biographers Helena Solberg and Martha Gil-Montero, unravel

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-33731225830528391732009-02-17T21:59:00.009Z2009-02-18T22:29:29.101Z

She wasn’t funny, and she wasn’t all that nice. That’s what those stepping behind the microphone for a new hour-long BBC radio documentary have to say about the “real” Lucille Ball, comedienne, businesswoman, and small-screen icon. Not exactly a revelation, to be sure; but you might expect less after reading the blurb on the BBC’s webpage for the program, which revises history by calling I

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-55616827862162339362009-02-16T22:42:00.015Z2009-03-10T15:55:38.631Z

Like many a woebegone youth of my generation—once known as the No Future generation—I entered the crumbling empire of Evelyn Waugh’s fictions by way of that lush, languid serial adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. It wasn’t so much what I saw as what I had missed that made me pick up the book. Owing to my mother’s loyalty to Dynasty, which aired opposite Brideshead on West German television

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-5245110151725053042009-02-12T23:15:00.055Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.927+01:00

Before settling down for a small-screening of Inherit the Wind, I twisted the dial in search of the man from whose contemporaries we inherited the debate it depicts: Charles Darwin, born, like Abraham Lincoln, on this day, 12 February 1809. Like Lincoln, Darwin was a liberator among folks who resisted free thinking, a man whose ideas not only broadened minds but roused the ire of the

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-43435083150009421922009-02-11T18:18:00.062Z2010-05-27T22:24:55.929+01:00

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, I am once again lending an ear to the Great Emancipator. Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have been America’s “radio president”; but in the theater of the mind none among the heads of the States was heard talking more often than Honest Abe. On Friday, 12 February 1937, for instance, at least six nationwide broadcasts were dedicated to

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-7753339051060643552009-02-10T12:26:00.037Z2009-02-11T03:29:40.958Z

No matter how small our voices, how slight our utterances, millions of us carry on making a record of ourselves and circulating it online. Long gone are the days in which autobiography was reserved for the supposed great and good; now, anyone can flaunt the first person singular, step into the forum and exclaim, “Here I am!” or “Hear me out.” Sure enough, here I go again. Never mind that my

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13049534.post-6190916692959171802009-01-30T20:09:00.015Z2009-02-01T10:26:09.054Z

“Today, the real humorist is fast disappearing.” The “Today” here is 30 January 1949. The voice is that of satirist Fred Allen, who made the claim when called upon to expound on “The State of American Humor” for the benefit of folks tuning in to NBC’s Living 1949. “Yessir,” Allen declared, “the average comedian is a mouth that speaks the thoughts of others’ brains. Machine age humor, like the

Harry Heuserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516327808775454066noreply@blogger.com8