Sybil Bruncheon's "Joan Crawford Birthday Festival!"...

"FU*K Hattie Carnegie and her advice!!! Look at me! Just look at me!!! I was laughed out of Rumplemeyer's!!! RUMPELMEYER'S, DAMMIT!!!"...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "TALES & TAILS": Filbert and the Snowstorm..

Whenever it snowed, really snowed heavily, Filbert would find himself lost in thought... he loved going for his own strolls through the back alleyways and lanes of the town, far away from the bustle and racket, especially of trucks and cars stuck in the snow and spinning their wheels... or the children, always shrieking about some sled that wasn't being shared...or a slip on the ice skates that bruised a bottom. What did they expect going out on the ice on those shiny knife-shoes?... Idiots. Like their parents.. People are stupid. ...almost as stupid as their dogs... or..well, maybe not.

Filbert would yawn, and then pounce on something imaginary in the snow drift... laughing and prancing about with a twig in his mouth as if it was a mouse..or a finger...

And then he would settle in for some kitty thoughts...  like what he liked to eat. ...what he liked to hide under the sofa... what he liked to casually brush off the counter..and pretend that someone else had done it... what he liked to leave bite marks in for people to find a month later... and shout… it always made him laugh when they would shout… especially at the dog.

And then, as the snow began to fall softly again, he thought about his kitty friends in the neighborhood... maybe they'd like to jump in the snow later on tonight... after all the Stupids had gone to bed. Yes... he'd invite Claude Viskers, Edith Scrapps, Professor Purrvis Rubbs, Cassie Hizzlephitt, Dybik Mancksy, Felinia Furson, Pawla Paddington, Nozina Pinkle, Yowlette Skulck, oh, and the two strippers, Kitty Glitter & Poosy Jadore. They were identical twins and always good for a few laughs!!… good times!… ah, good times!

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Sybil's "Stroll Down Memory Lane"... Hollywood in 1950

My dear pal, Marilyn McAfee, found this photo taken at my Westwood Village home in 1950... it shows Marilyn Monroe visiting for lunch that day. She was just beginning to get more and more notoriety in Hollywood, and her career seemed about to take off. Sadly, she felt that no one took her seriously as a legitimate actress, and so, after a few cocktails, quite early in the day (10 AM!!!), she would do things to get attention, including jumping about on the furniture and reciting various passages from Shakespeare, Shaw, and O'Neill....along with the sing-song chant of "Bouncy! Bouncy! I'm a Flouncy!".... most people didn't mind so much, but they DID mind when she did it in her panties!!....and in front of President Truman! I said to her, "Marilyn! You get right upstairs and put a skirt on! If not for my sake or Harry's, at least for MRS. TRUMAN'S!!!"...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "SHAKESPEARE IN OUR DAILY LIVES!"...

Hello, Friends, (and I use that term loosely)... how many of you have wondered why your school teachers made you study Shakespeare in your early years? Well, now Mummie will help you! Let's start with this seemingly current photo. Please study the photo carefully. Then review the following multiple choices and decide which answer is correct...(and please keep your eyes on your OWN paper):

a) The photo is of KING LEAR's two evil daughters, Regan and Goneril as they decide how best to dispose of their increasingly annoying father and their nice sister Cordelia, so that they can inherit the kingdom and divide its wealth between them.

b) The photo is of two of the three witches in the opening moments of MACBETH. They have just given him their predictions about his future, and are enjoying a smoke in a back-alley of Cawdor Castle while their third "sister" goes for a hair appointment on DuPont circle.

c) The photo is of Queen Tamora from TITUS ANDRONICUS and her lunch pal, Lady Macbeth from MACBETH discussing what to order from the menu at the Palm in Washington DC. Tamora will order the "meat pie"...and Lady Macbeth is excusing herself to the ladies' room to wash her hands for the 15th time...

d) The photo is of Iago from OTHELLO and Claudius from HAMLET doing a drag show for the young republicans club in Poka-Ma-Hola, Idaho. Iago just found a handkerchief that's been used inappropriately and has asked Claudius to smell it to see if he agrees. He does.

e) The photo is of the front and back end of RICHARD III's horse agreeing that the king should change his underpants.

f) The photo is of "two spear carriers" from JULIUS CAESAR just discovering that they had no idea it was a comedy!

g) The photo is of "two handmaidens" in CLEOPATRA saying that they had no idea the queen had put on so much "water-weight", and laughing that she gets "her ass in a basket" at the end of the play.

h) The photo is of two stagehands having a smoke and a beer in an alleyway. They're not sure if they're working on Shakespeare or Neil Simon... whatever. But they HAVE been laughing for over an hour about CORIOLANUS....

i) none of the above

j) all of the above

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...Sybil Bruncheon's "Myths For Our Time!".... Wintertime vs. Springtime

...and so children, Winter stays with us, cold and brutal, until the great Ice-Ogre comes down from the mountains and begins to eat all the snow that covers the fields, and villages, and cities!!!...He gulps down all the ice from the rivers and lakes and the frost from the trees and gardens!... and as he opens his huge monstrous mouth and finally swallows all that the Winter has frozen, Spring begins to come out from hiding and warms us for our sunny games again! And the Ice-Ogre, all hunched over and grunting, lumbers back into his hidden cave somewhere near Passaic full and bloated to sleep until the end of Winter again next year when he lets out a terrible ROOOOOOAAAR and returns!! Now, isn't that a nice story??

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Springtime Stories From Around The World!"... Daphne Grandworth and Her Spring Fever.

Daphne Grandworth found herself at "sixes and sevens" about the Winter season dragging on into February.. and then into March... Yes, it was true, the sun was rising earlier in the morning and setting a little later in the afternoon each day. Yes, it was a little higher and brighter in the sky over her parents' luxurious townhouse on Gramercy Park from one week to the next, but Daphne had always been, well... "given to notions" as the house staff described it. And so it was decided that she should be confined for her own safety. The physicians in charge of her case felt that her natural cheerfulness should not be squelched in any way, that she should be allowed to visit with friends and well-wishers, and that she should be surrounded by reminders of Mother Nature and the upcoming Spring!... the cage, of course, also prevented her from biting the furniture, or her handlers.....or trying to peck out their eyes...

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “Aren’t People Fascinating?”…. Fiona and the French Horn.

Fiona Farlywell was a nice enough girl! Charming at parties, respectful to her elders, considerate to strangers, kind to animals and people with strange moles or twitches…. And yet the terrible secret she hid even from her parents was the gnawing angst that eats away at those of us who are deeply philosophical about life…who wonder what this is all about…. who are always told “You think TOO MUCH!”… usually by well-meaning grandparents or sweaty next door neighbors… It started when Fiona was five, at her 5th birthday party actually, when she had her first suicidal thoughts. She’d seen a movie about Nero on the local tv station’s Saturday Tea-Time Matinee, and was stunned that someone would kill themselves. It had never occurred to her. She could barely conceive at her young age of someone really dying, let alone making themselves die, so as her birthday party started that evening with her family gathering around her, she asked them what would happen if she killed herself. It was right before her mom and grandmother were going to bring the cake out from the kitchen with its pink candles twinkling cheerfully as grandpa turned off the lights in the dining room… Needless to say, her sweet little voice piping brightly such an existential question, and so bluntly, “What would happen if I killed myself?”….well, are you surprised to hear that the entire party stopped dead? Cousins, uncles, aunts, some nice people from next door, her father’s boss and his chubby wife…. Everyone! Everyone stopped dead. They were too shocked even to gasp. People, nice people in the suburbs didn’t say such things…or even think them.

       And so, that was the beginning of Fiona’s …shall we say “estrangement” from the world around her. As I told you, “Fiona Farlywell was a nice enough girl! Charming at parties, respectful to her elders, considerate to strangers, kind to animals and people with strange moles or twitches….”… but being “nice enough” was a euphemism for being …”kinda strange” as her family’s neighbors would whisper over their shopping carts at the grocery store in the cereals and jellies aisle…. “Oh look. There’s Fiona Farlywell. Pretty enough..but… well… you know.”

      It was at Fiona’s seventeenth birthday, without a party, (“Why bother?”, she told her mother when it was offered to her. Her mother got tearful and fled the kitchen) It was that night when Fiona went out for a walk in the frosty air at about two in the morning. She tiptoed down the stairs, avoiding those twelfth and thirteenth steps that creaked and the fourteenth that groaned loud enough to wake her restless dad. She bundled up in the pink and fuchsia super-thick scarf and tam that her grandmother knitted for her the year before. She wrapped herself in her super-toasty down puffer jacket in the matching pink, but cropped so that it showed off her beautiful legs and behind, not that she cared really. She never really thought in those terms, and now…well… tonight on her seventeenth birthday, she was thinking of something totally different. “Why am I bothering to dress so warmly? Why …when I’m going to….??”… but what was she going to do…or how? What was it going to be? She was strangely calm and resigned… but oddly disorganized. Even as she bundled up, and carefully tiptoed out so as not to wake up anybody. She even chuckled to herself about how considerate she was being…on the last night of her life. “Typical me!” she whispered as she eased open the front door carefully, and then silently latching it behind her. She stepped carefully out onto the icy front porch so as not to slip. The night had been sleeting, and everything; the porch, the walks, the yard, the trees and every branch were coated in glassy sparkling ice. “Yes”, she thought, “the whole world on my last night has been dipped in molten glass and is frozen perfectly. Beautiful. Brittle. Forever. That’s how I’ll be when I leave it. And how I’ll remember it…if there’s something after this…”.

           And then she began her journey. Down the curving little street that she had known all her life. Where she had first learned to walk, her chubby, dimpled little hands held high and tightly in her adoring father’s as he helped her stand and toddle in her first Spring. The same sidewalk that she had learned to first ride her tricycle, her Mary-Janed feet barely reaching the pedals, but gradually grasping the concept of pedaling, and in a very short time, propelling her round and round the block to the delight of her laughing grandma and her friend, Mrs. Jollup who made the delicious chocolate chip cookies, always warm from the oven with great chunks of dark chocolate and a sprinkle of sea salt. The same sidewalk, where she rode her bicycle, bright red with the fluttering hot-pink streamers in the handles, the horn AND the bell, the reflectors AND the bike-light, and the baseball card that her neighbor, Mr. Greenleaf had placed just-so on the back wheel so that it ratcheted crisply as she rounded the corner. How funny, she thought… that day when her dad suggested that they remove the training wheels and let her try riding her bike without them. No! No, she was too scared! And then she remembered her father’s twinkling eyes, the way they crinkled so handsomely when he was laughing from his heart, and sometimes how they would sparkle, maybe with tears when he was feeling that deep joy that he would try to explain to her, especially when she delighted him…or made him proud of her. His eyes had teared up a little when he chuckled as he told her that he had secretly been raising her training wheels week after week so that she wouldn’t even notice that she had been confidently riding her two-wheeler with no effort at all… Fiona had stared in disbelief until he showed her, wobbling the brilliant red bike’s back wheel. The training wheels barely touched the sidewalk. “Of course”, she thought. “I’ve had to lean the bicycle against the garage wall every evening when I’ve come home.”… the kickstand didn’t seem to be holding it up anymore. And it was her dad’s cleverness that had done it all…as usual.

        She stepped carefully down the sidewalk of her life, her short but eventful years, her memories, bright and sunny even on this black and brittle night in the dead of Winter. She was unafraid, almost expectant…and elated. What was she walking towards? What was she going to do…and where? She finally reached the corner of her street and the avenue that led to her school to the right, and to the left to the deep woods by the river. She stopped and looked both ways, straight ahead, and then up…up to the sky that was blacker than she had ever seen it, except for the sharply studded stars that twinkled more than she ever remembered seeing them ..and in greater numbers than she had ever seen as well. Millions of them. Millions. Whiter than ever against a sky that was blacker than ever. How strange and perfect for her last night. She was deeply comforted in all that vast openness…and didn’t feel empty in all that emptiness. She reveled in how delighted she was to be that small in a universe that was so big. She felt immensely warm and cozy knowing how unimportant she was in a cosmos of such gigantic movement and meaning. “I’ll walk to the river” she decided, but paused, and then, “I’ll go look one last time at my school. One last time…just to say goodbye”…. Fiona turned to the right, inching her way on the frozen ice covering everything. Had there ever been a night this cold? The whole world seemed to be made of pure ice. Here and there as she moved down the block, block after block, she slipped a little, but she caught herself each time. How ridiculous she thought that she could slip on the ice, knock herself out on the pavement, and freeze to death during the night, to be found in the morning… inexplicably... staring up at the fading stars and the dawn beginning to turn the Eastern sky a brightening pink....

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Sybil's "Spring Forward, Fall Back"... Daylight Saving Time...

Foolish Earthlings!!!.....even now the great machinery in the Intergalactic Institute of Time is being readied to turn one full eonic hour forward! It may seem overwhelming to you with your minuscule lives hanging by a thread at any moment, and your tragically brief so-called longevities ruling your petty comings and goings and your choice-less choices, but your resistance is futile..... Surrender to the Mysteriously Inevitable Power of the Chronos..... your tiny lives are of no consequence except as they flow by the countless trillions along the Great Mother Star-River. Her plans are not for us to understand!... Stand ready to obey...and live another one of your puny, little days in Peace..... Be assured that you are in some way loved…. well… as much as you are even noticed....

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...from Sybil Bruncheon's "EASTER EGGS-traordinaries"... Little Timmy Henkbottem…

EASTER Holiday Bulletins From Around The World!!!... it didn’t seem to bother little Timmy Henkbottem whenever he played in his back yard that large bugs or insects would suddenly jump out from under a stone or log… or would drop from the ceiling in the garage or in the attic. As a matter of fact, by the age of 5 he began to actually look for them, and would bring them into the house frightening his mother, older sisters, and nice Mrs. Keppelmann, the housekeeper. He collected bugs of all sorts and kept them in jars on the shelves of his bookcase, feeding them leaves, grass…or each other….

So when Easter came and the strange Easter bunny visited the local shopping center, Timmy didn’t seem at all disturbed to see all the many mouth-parts twitching and wiggling and the staring compound eyes on the …um..”bunny” as he sat on its lap!... it wasn’t until it grabbed Timmy tightly in its six arms and skittered off to the flying saucer that the child realized something might be wrong…. terribly, oh so terribly wrong…

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A New Sybil's "WHO'Z DAT?"... GUY KIBBEE (March 6, 1882 - May 24, 1956).

Darlings! Mummy has made a decision! After reading dozens of posts and having hundreds of conversations with well-meaning folks who just don't know about the great CHARACTER actors who gave films the depth and genius that surrounded and supported the so-called "stars", I am going to post a regular, special entry called SYBIL'S "WHO'Z DAT??"....there'll be photos and a mini-bio, and the next time you see one of those familiar, fabulous faces that you just "can't quite place".......well, maybe these posts will help. Some of these actors worked more, had longer and broader careers, and ended up happier, more loved, and even wealthier than the "stars" that the public "worships"......I think there may be a metaphor in that! What do you think??? And while you’re considering it, here is one of the very most recognizable faces and voices in all Hollywood… and a person unlike any, ANY other actor; Guy Kibbee (March 6, 1882 – May 24, 1956)

Born Guy Bridges Kibbee in El Paso, Texas, he began his entertainment career on Mississippi riverboats at the young age of 13 as a singer and comedian. His father James was a publisher of small papers such as the Concho Times and Burnet Bulletin around El Paso, Texas, and Roswell, New Mexico. A few of his sons followed him into the trade, and Guy used to help out. The experience proved valuable during the early years of his stage career. Decades of obscurity awaited Guy Kibbee, who played in stock companies from San Francisco to Portland, Denver and Salt Lake City, Lincoln, Nebraska, Shreveport, Louisiana, and Wichita, Kansas. He managed the Wichita company, and his younger brother Milton joined that troupe in February, 1917.

Guy Kibbee played everywhere, taking a break only for the four years (probably just after his first marriage) that he operated his own printer’s shop in San Francisco. “I did go to Broadway once with Hugh O’Connell,” Kibbee recalled in 1932. “All that was available was small parts. O’Connell told him to stick it out, and he’d become a big success. But Kibbee elected to return to stock where he was known and could always get work. He wouldn’t play on Broadway again until called by an “actor proof part”, that of Cass Wheeler in TORCH SONG. Playwright Kenyon Nicholson introduced Kibbee to Arthur Hopkins, who was casting the play, though Hopkins got all of the credit for the discovery: “And now Mr. Hopkins magically produces an extraordinary talent in the person of Guy Kibbee,” critic Ward Morehouse wrote. When mentioning Kibbee in his review of TORCH SONG for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, critic Arthur Pollock kept it simple: “He is delicious.” It was a performance that brought Hollywood calling and a part that Kibbee would reproduce on a smaller scale in MGM’s adaptation of Nicholson’s play, retitled LAUGHING SINNERS with Joan Crawford, Neil Hamilton, and Clark Gable among those billed over Kibbee.

In the 1930s, Kibbee moved to California and became part of the Warner Bros. stock company; contracted actors who cycled through different productions in supporting roles. Kibbee's specialty was daft and jovial characters; not particularly bright businessmen, government officials, and stuffy lawyers with a secret weakness for showgirls. In musical comedies, he is perhaps best remembered for the films 42ND STREET (1933), FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933), GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (1933), DAMES (1934), WONDER BAR (1934), BABES IN ARMS (1939) with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and several others, usually with Dick Powell, Aline MacMahon, Joan Blondell, and Jimmy Cagney. As loveable and foolish as these characters were, his range and audience appeal could also make him a strong stand-out in dramas like MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) with Jimmy Stewart, RAIN (1932) with Joan Crawford and Walter Huston, most especially as Mr. Webb, editor of the Grover's Corners, New Hampshire newspaper, and father of Emily Webb, in the film version of the classic Thornton Wilder play OUR TOWN (1940) starring a young William Holden and Martha Scott.

He appeared in swashbucklers like CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935) with Errol Flynn and Westerns like FORT APACHE (1948) with John Wayne and Henry Fonda. His natural warmth and easy-going nature made him a perfect foil for major child stars like Freddie Bartholomew in LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (1936) and Shirley Temple in CAPTAIN JANUARY (1936) where he played the title character. RKO studios loved his energy so much in BABBITT (1934) that they cast him in five installments in the Scattergood Baines comedies, a lighter-hearted take on Babbitt and less satirical.

“Guy Kibbee eggs” is the name for a breakfast dish, which consists of a hole cut out of the center of a slice of bread, and an egg cracked into it, all of which is fried in a skillet. The actor prepared this dish in the Warner Bros. film MARY JANE'S PA (1935), hence the eponym. This dish is also known by other names, such as "egg in a basket". The movies proved easy work for “quick study” Kibbee, who was happy to settle down in one place for a change. “You can learn, between traffic light changes, all you’ll have to do the next day,” he said of learning his lines. “They do one scene over and over again, so many times that about all you need to do at first is read the part through.”

Kibbee was known as a big eater and “loved cards, golf, baseball, football,” remembered a friend, the columnist Henry McLemore. “He was an amazing golfer,” McLemore added (a ten or eleven handicap), and “a tough gin rummy player.” McLemore recalled pal Kibbee as an early riser, reasoning, “There just wasn’t enough time to live, and Guy didn’t want to waste any of it.”

Kibbee also became a regular on radio late in his career appearing on the Mutual Network’s comedy “Pal Rod and Gun Club of the Air” beginning in 1950. “You’d be surprised at the sympathetic mail I get as a result of the program,” Kibbee said. An avid sportsman, on the Rod and Gun show he posed as a completely helpless fisherman and hunter and spun tall tales that were sent to the show by its listeners. “Around here I can just take it easy, do this radio show and whatever other work I want to take on,” Kibbee said. He was also appearing in nightclubs at this time, just getting up on stage and telling stories about his days starting out in the riverboat shows and in the early days of Hollywood. Kibbee claimed in interviews that, “I did a couple of plays on the stock circuit this summer, played a couple of country fairs with my monologues and generally had a good—and profitable—time.”

He did a little television after this, but that medium wasn’t Kibbee’s cup of tea: “I’m not crazy about it. Too much work has to go into preparing for just one performance. I’ll leave that for the younger people.” He much more enjoyed his return to the stage where he headlined stock companies in titles like THE OLD SOAK and ON BORROWED TIME. “It’s a grand training ground for these youngsters,” Kibbee said of summer stock in 1950. “Takes the place of the old time stock companies in schooling them in the fine points of their profession.” He continued to appear on the Gun and Rod Club as late as March 1953, but it was later that year that the papers first reported Guy Kibbee was seriously ill with what was ultimately diagnosed as Parkinson’s disease, and he finally retired.

He spent nine months at the Aurora Health Institute in Rye, New York, where Walter Winchell directed readers to send the lonely actor some letters. Guy wrote back from the Institute thanking Winchell “for the coast-to-coast hook-up.” He said he had received over 3,000 cards and letters. From Rye he was sent to the Percy Williams Retirement Home in East Islip, New York, for sick and needy actors that was supported by the Actors Fund of America. “I’ve come to the bottom of the barrel,” Kibbee told the board of directors when he entered on September 24, 1954. He was bedridden at the home for over a year. The superintendent at Percy Williams’ said they always had Kibbee in to the common room to watch any old movies he had appeared in.

Kibbee was married twice; to Helen Shay from 1918 to 1923 with whom he had four children and divorced, and Esther Reed whom he married in 1925 and had three children. He was still married to her at the time of his death in 1956. Kibbee finally died from complications arising from Parkinson's disease in East Islip, Long Island, New York, and was buried in Westchester.

Guy Kibbee was mentioned in the iconic "Hot August Night" concert/album performed by Neil Diamond in 1972 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, California. "Thank you people in the audience! Tree people out there, God bless ya, I'm singin for you too! Are you still there tree people? This is the place that God made for performers when they die, they go to a place called the Greek Theatre. And you're met there by an MC, wearing a long robe and smoking a cigar, looks like Guy Kibbee, and that's what it is. It's a performer’s paradise......"

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