“Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she sees, then teams with three strangers to kill again.”
                 The plot of The Wizard of Oz, as listed in the TV Times

I’m not big on Hollywood. The last movie I saw in the theater was Old Yeller. I ate Raisinets and Jujubes (when they tasted like medicine, not fruit). I’m not typically starstruck. I don’t follow movie types or actors, either literally or virtually. I only really watch sports on the TV, but like most Americans, I have 319 other cable stations, just in case.

Still, in turning pages, stars of stage and screen do surface, and I should admit, there is a degree of romance and glamour in it – in Hollywood, that is. Humphrey Bogart was born in 1899 and was 41 by the time he really made it with the film The Maltese Falcon.  Together for the first time in To Have and Have Not, Lauren Bacall was 19, Bogie 44. Bacall was hot in that epic Hollywood sort of way. Maybe society doesn’t view her as such today, but she had classic beauty.  Bacall coined the term the Rat Pack, commenting on the group after a long drunken night: “They looked like a goddamn rat pack.” In the 1970s she lived in The Dakota apartments in NYC where John and Yoko owned several floors.

The year 1939 was said to be a big deal in Hollywood. That year a guy could go to the movies and see, among other flicks: Gone With the Wind, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, Gunga Din, The Wizard of Oz and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Bob Hope hosted the Academy Awards that year. Leslie Towns Hope hosted the Oscars 19 times. At one point he was the largest private landowner in California, holding 10,000 acres. He also owned 11 percent of the Los Angeles Rams. In Hope’s day, the Hollywood Bowl was a natural amphitheater called Daisy Dell.

It’s obvious that watching TV is better than going to the movies. (Actually, for all but the urbane, sophisticated, let’s-have-lunch-at-the-Brown-Derby crowd, TV programming is also superior to anything viewed at the theater, but that’s an angry judgment for another day.) For one thing, when you watch TV in the privacy of your home you can smoke. You can also make pithy comments out loud, change the channel, listen to music rather than the TV audio and multitask in a jillion ways that can be as randy as your imagination will allow.

On a single Saturday night in 1973/1974 on CBS alone you could watch: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Newhart and The Carol Burnett Show all in one sitting. Lots of laughs there, maybe even a guffaw, all with a Swanson TV dinner perched on your TV tray. “I’m hardly innocent, I’ve been around, well, maybe not around, but I’ve been nearby,” said The Mary Tyler Moore Show character Mary Richards. Did you ever watch The Flip Wilson Show? Top-notch. Born Clerow Wilson Jr., Flip was funny as hell. Talking about a tough waterfront bar, Flip said, “They frisked everyone at the door, if you didn’t have a knife, they gave you one.” In 1972, The Flip Wilson Show garnered a forty-four TV share, a million more viewers than American Idol had in its best week. Crap, Flip had Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney on his show.  

Way back when it was great to have some programs that left a little to the imagination. The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet lasted 14 years, Father Knows Best was on for nine years and Leave It to Beaver for six. These shows were great because while the families were clearly upper middle class and the men always dressed for the office, it never looked like the dads ever went to work. I guess when you’re a nice, well-groomed, white family and your father’s name is Ward, money just turns up. If you wanted something a little more highbrow, how about the $64,000 Question? Dr. Joyce Brothers won the top prize; her topic was boxing.

Winning that kind of money can cause someone to lose perspective, but that’s Hollywood, perspective gone askew. Give my regards to Broadway and see you at the movies! … (not).