Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much relaxed fish, after not enough sleep but a pretty relaxing day of doing absolutely nothing much. I got to bed very late, woke up at ten-thirty. I could end these here notes right now, but that would be unseemly. I am currently listening to one of my all-time favorite soundtrack albums, composed by someone with only two film scores to his credit – why that is is anyone’s guess. Both of his soundtracks are great, but especially the one I’m listening to – probably one of my most played albums ever. When the movie came out, I was on tour with the Bishop’s Company doing Do You Know the Milky Way. Whilst having a few days off in Cleveland (all this is in Kritzer World) I saw a bunch of movies at big movie palaces on Euclid Avenue. One of those movies was Hotel, and I just loved every second of it – a great, old-fashioned movie peopled with excellent actors, several plotlines, and this wonderful score by someone I’d never heard of, Johnny Keating. I saw it a second time while I was there, then when I got back to LA, I saw it several more times and, of course, bought the soundtrack album on Warner Bros. records. It was one of the best-sounding albums I’d ever heard and while the CD is great, it’s not quite up to the LP sound and you know I rarely say that. It’s mostly in the ride cymbal, which sounds so amazing on the LP and not quite as crisp on the FSM CD. It’s minor and no one else would notice, but it still sounds great. I played this album over and over and over and ultimately had to buy a second copy. It was on constant repeat at any number of apartments that I resided in during the LACC years. The composer that I hadn’t heard of was Johnny Keating. His other film score is to an excellent Brit film called Robbery with Stanley Baker. Aside from Hotel’s great cast (Rod Taylor, Catherine Spaak, Merle Oberon, Michael Rennie, Melvyn Douglas, Kevin McCarthy, and hilarious turn by Karl Malden as a hotel thief, this was the film that introduced me to the amazing Carmen McRae. She plays a piano player/singer in the hotel’s bar. She sings two original songs in the film, both with music by Keating – the title theme called This Hotel and the other one called This Year. Keating does have a few other film credits but they’re for arranging and orchestrating. I honestly don’t know why he wasn’t snapped up – Hotel was a hit movie and the last good movie directed by Richard Quine – for me, his finest film. After Hotel, his declined was swift and shocking. After several flop films, he ended up in TV doing episodes of some Universal ninety-minute shows like Columbo and McCoy. His final film was the awful Peter Sellers “comedy,” The Prisoner of Zenda. He was slated to do the next Sellers comedy, The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu, but left due to creative differences. In 1989, depressed and in poor health, he shot himself. He did direct many wonderful movies – my favorites from Quine were the Judy Holliday picture Full of Life, Bell, Book and Candle (beautifully directed), Strangers When We Meet, and The World of Suzie Wong. If you’ve never seen Hotel, I’m sure it’s streaming somewhere. It finally came out on a Warners Archive DVD, but I’ve really been hoping for a Blu and Ray. Sadly, it’s not streaming anywhere. Guess I’ll try to find the DVD and give it a spin, perhaps even today.
Johnny Keating was most known for his albums, many of which appeared as Phase 4 albums on London. They’re all wonderful and lots are on the Tube of You. Prior to checking in at the Hotel soundtrack, I did watch a movie, a 1983 TV movie called Through Naked Eyes, starring David Soul and Pam Dawber, directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, and written by Jeffrey Bloom. It’s yet another riff on Rear Window and its rip-offs like Body Double and John Carpenter’s TV movie, Someone’s Watching Me. The script is horrible, David Soul Is really awful in it, Pam Dawber is very cute, William Schallert plays Soul’s estranged father, and the rest of the actors are best left unnamed. They all appear to be doing different movies and Mr. Moxey does nothing to help them. Mr. Moxey started out really well in film, with his first feature in 1960, The City of the Dead (Horror Hotel in the US) – an atmospheric and excellent film. But he went into TV and never left. He did some really good episodic television and several top-notch TV movies, including A Strange and Deadly Occurrence, starring Muse Margaret. But this thing was just inept on every level, and he exacerbated it rather than helped it.
Prior to that, I only got about four hours of sleep, as you know, because I mentioned it right at the top of the notes. I’d scheduled food to arrive at one and it did – from Kabuki – a combo think with salad, Miso soup, mixed tempura, and teriyaki chicken. MIA was the three-piece California Roll it usually contains. I ate some of the salad, none of the soup, and all of everything else – it was very good. After that, I did nothing of consequence, other than have one telephonic conversation, which was brief. The rest you know, and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do as little as possible, and I must rest my voice – allergies are doing their thing. I have food coming at one-thirty, and then I must go to the mail place to pick up one small package containing kazoos, which I need for the Kritzerland show. After that, I’ll watch, listen, and mostly relax.
Tomorrow is a Zoom thing at three, Tuesday is the first Kritzerland rehearsal, Wednesday is a short rehearsal with just two performers, Friday is our second rehearsal, Sunday is our stumble-through, and then sound check and show are on Monday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do as little as possible, rest my voice, eat, go to the mail place, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, always happy to hear the Keating sound and his score to Hotel.