Sybil Bruncheon's "Who'z Dat?"... Happy, Happy Birthday to PINOCCHIO (February 23,1940)...

On February 23rd, 1940, Walt Disney's PINOCCHIO was released to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures. It wasn't just the children who sat thunderstruck at the visuals, imagination, and deeply moving story of a little toy that wanted to "be real".... When Monstro the Whale swept onto the giant movie screens of America with surging waves and tiny seagulls skittering out of the way to emphasize the appalling scale, when the ironically named Pleasure Island towering over the boys began to whirl into a terrifying nightmare of glittering lights and donkey-ears, and when the final resolution of death and transfiguration took place with the Blue Fairy and Jiminy Cricket standing by, gasps, screams, and tears flowed freely...

Whatever Disney's personal issues and prejudices were, his ability to mobilize the great talents that made one iconic piece of art after another at his studios remains fixed. 82 years later, even the stills from this and so many of his other films are spellbinding... "Cartoon"??? "Cartoon"... The word is laughable...

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SYBIL'S CINEMA!....The "WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?" series... A CHRISTMAS CAROL...

... I've proposed some epilogues to Hollywood to be shown after the credits roll on some well-loved films. Perfect for those stories and characters you just want to go on and on and on… A CHRISTMAS CAROL (any version you like!)…

After the final credits with Ebenezer Scrooge completely reformed and won over to a life of love and generosity, he lives a long glowing life of joy, robust health, and extraordinary prosperity. Interestingly, the other characters in the story have surprisingly different adventures and journeys.

Jacob Marley, his long-dead former partner, condemned to purgatory and chained to his misdeeds, serves out a long sentence of penance and is freed to pursue a new destiny. In 1971, fully a hundred and thirty years after first scaring the wits out of Scrooge on Christmas eve, Marley applies for a job in the Haunted Mansion at the newly opened Disney World in Orlando, Florida. After only a few months of furniture dragging, bad-face making in mirrors, and coloratura-groaning and yowling, he is promoted to “head-ghost” and put in charge of cotton-candy soiling and bottom-pinching. The charming and oh-so-patient Ghost of Christmas Past joins him at the resort later but is judged as too pleasant-natured to scare guests, so she’s given a popcorn stand to service near the Dumbo the Elephant kiddie-ride.

On a completely different note, the frighteningly jolly Ghost of Christmas Present is discovered to be pushing drugs, possibly cocaine and hallucinogens at the parties he crashes. It certainly explains the delirious reactions he gets from complete strangers when he waves his so-called “magic horn” over them! Always showing off his extravagance and luxurious lifestyle, he single-handedly oversees the boom-and-bust profligacy of the Gilded Age, the Roaring 20s, various Ponzi and real estate scams, and most of the activities of Wall Street. He is especially fond of caviar, rare Napoleon brandies, hand-shake buzzers, and whoopee-cushions.

As for the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he’s mistaken for a pile of extremely dirty bed-linens from a disreputable motel and is washed in scalding water and Oxi-Clean. After an hour in the dryer, he emerges much brighter and softer but his paltry thread-count dooms him to being donated to a Housing Works in lower Manhattan.

What can we tell you of the other characters in the story? The two businessmen who asked Scrooge for donations to orphanages are later arrested for questionable child-photography. They specialized in hand-tinted daguerreotypes of young persons dressed as naked fairies in a garden… or oblong vegetables. The old crones and their impoverished thug-pals who gathered at Scrooge’s house to scavenge his draperies and valuables did indeed find a winning lottery ticket in a broken drawer of moth-eaten socks, but it had expired, and they only end up with lice. Scrooge’s nephew Fred and his young bride prosper mightily under their Uncle’s generosity, but at a Christmas banquet in 1884, someone accidentally kicks over a candelabra during a particularly raucous gavotte. Their great house burns to the ground driving poor Fred to distraction. He is never quite the same again, and is later considered a possibility for Jack the Ripper by Scotland Yard… it is never proved.

Finally, the Cratchits; Bob did indeed get his job back, is promoted slowly but surely through the years although no one knows at that time what “dyslexic” or “attention deficit disorder” mean. Bob and his wife never actually do learn the names of all those children milling about and screeching (but then neither did Dickens himself.) The youngest, Tim, eventually turns out to be perfectly healthy, but later exhibits all sorts of psychosomatic symptoms as a cry for attention in such a large and frenetic family.

However, being so sweet-natured and handsome, is it any surprise he turns out to be gay? He becomes friends with Henry Fenster, the “intelligent boy, the remarkable boy” who ran to the butcher’s shop to get the “prize turkey” for Scrooge on Christmas morning. They become more than friends later, build a home together, inheriting Scrooge’s business eventually, and turn it into a highly successful import company of Asian silks for ladies’ underwear. Cratchit & Fenster Fine Lingerie ‘n’ Dainties is still featured prominently at both Harrod’s and Bergdorf Goodman.

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A Christmas Special on PBS!!!...

...it's the famous Christmas Special, EBENEEZER & DRACULA MEET FROSTY THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN & THE HANUKKAH GHOUL (1962). A holiday screwball comedy-horror romp starring Rathbone, Price, Lorre, Karloff, and featuring Christopher Lee as Prancer, Peter Cushing as Mr. Potter, Lon Chaney, Jr. as Hermey the Misfit Elf, and Sabu as Tiny Tim.... with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Santa Claus, Yvette Mimieux as Little Dorrit, Linda Hunt as the Mistletoe Monster, and Herve Villechaize as a plum pudding...ON FIRE!!. (This program is made possible by the George and Mary Bailey Very Charitable Trust… and by contributions to your PBS station from Viewers .....Like YOU! Thank You!)

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Sybil Bruncheon's "WHO'Z DAT?"... EDNA MAY OLIVER (November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942)

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???).

Will our next guest enter and sign in please….EDNA MAY OLIVER! (November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942) With a face that no one could forget, she appeared on stage and film as one of America’s best-known character actresses, often playing tart-tongued spinsters. Born Edna May Nutter in Malden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Edna was a descendant of the sixth American president, John Quincy Adams. She quit school at age fourteen in order to pursue a career on stage and achieved her first success in 1917 on Broadway in Jerome Kern's musical comedy OH, BOY!, playing the hero's comically dour Quaker Aunt Penelope. Oliver started out in silent films in 1923 but continued her stage work making her most notable stage appearance as Parthy, wife of Cap'n Andy Hawks, in the original 1927 stage production of the musical SHOW BOAT. She repeated the role in the 1932 Broadway revival, but turned down the chance to play Parthy in the 1936 film version of the show so that she could play the Nurse in that year's film version of ROMEO AND JULIET, her only role in a Shakespeare film or play.

While most often playing featured parts in over forty films, she starred in three popular mystery-comedies as spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers. Oliver received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1939 for her appearance in DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK. Since Oliver was cast in several film versions of classic British literature, including ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1933), A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935), DAVID COPPERFIELD (1935), the 1936 film version of ROMEO AND JULIET, and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940), using a quite realistic upper-class English accent, many film-goers have incorrectly assumed that she was British.

When asked why she played predominantly comedic roles, she replied, "With a horse's face, what more can I play?" Oliver died on her 59th birthday in 1942 following a short intestinal ailment that proved terminal, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. For people who love films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Edna May Oliver remains yet another one of the Platinum performers that, once seen, can never be forgotten! She is truly a perfect example of enduring power and talent in one who was never just "another pretty face". 

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