Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to the soundtrack to a motion picture entitled The Lion, composed by Malcolm Arnold, originally issued on a London LP with a pretty brief run time of 23 minutes. It’s a fun score. I don’t think I’d seen the motion picture since I saw it back in 1963. As per usual, Wikipedia says it first came out in July of 1962 – well, no it didn’t, idiots at Wikiwackypedia. It was released in February of 1963, February 6 to be exact in the city of Los Angeles. It did open at Christmastime in New York in 1962, but that’s hardly July, is it? Anyway, I don’t think I’d seen it since it came out at the Village Theater in Westwood. I either saw it the week it opened or at a preview a week or two before. I checked and it seems to have never had a DVD release here in the US but did have one in England that I guess I wasn’t aware of or I would have gotten it. It’s surprising that Twilight Time didn’t do a Blu-ray, but the transfer probably wasn’t good enough for Blu-ray. I had The Lion on my mind because I’d purchased what was purportedly a first edition of it, since I like books made into movies and it was a really nice copy for less money than a lunch. It arrived and was, in fact, a Book of the Month club edition. I wrote the seller and he’ll be sending me a return label on Monday. But as I researched other copies on eBay I could see that every listed first edition, first printing were book club editions. I began to wonder if that was it, that it never had any edition other than book club. The publisher was Knopf so I found that hard to believe. So, I went to the ABE – not many copies there, but the cheapest of them had a good description and said “stated First American Edition on the copyright page, which the book club edition doesn’t have, and then it was priced at $3.75 on the jacket flap. I wish it were a better copy, so I’ll have to do without until a better one comes along. It never goes for much money, which is odd given how many movies have been made from the author’s books, the author being a Frenchman named Joseph Kessel, who wrote the novel Sirocco (a Bogart movie), Belle du Jour (a Bunuel movie), Army of Shadows (a Jean-Pierre Melville movie), and The Horsemen (a Frankenheimer movie). Three others were also turned into movies in France, but those don’t seem to have been published in the US. I have his American first editions for The Horsemen, Belle du Jour, and Sirocco. Anyway, turns out The Lion is streaming on Prime, so I watched it last night. It doesn’t have much meat to it, plot-wise, but I really enjoyed it, mostly for the cast (William Holden, Capucine, Trevor Howard, and, most importantly, Pamela Franklin in her second film). Gorgeous African location footage and fine direction by Jack Cardiff, who was one of the greatest cameramen who ever lived. Pamela Franklin was simply one of the best young actresses of those years.
Now I’m listening to a favorite album of all I’ve produced and one of the lowest sellers we ever did, and that baffles me to this day. Prime Time Musicals is the album, songs from musicals from original musicals written specifically for television. Great composers, great songs, great singers, and one of the best sounding albums of all we did. No one cared. I think it’s now something people have discovered, but they should have supported it when it came out. Who knows why these things are the way they are? Not I. It’s just a delightful album from first track to last. It’s what I call a “smiler.” It just makes you smile. Otherwise, it was another ten hours of sleep for me, although I was up for an hour at two. I’m feeling much more myself after good sleep. Once up, I answered e-mails, went to the mail place, came home and ordered food from nearby El Torito. I wish it was better, but it hit the spot – enchilada and taco, rice and beans (only ate the rice) and a little scoop of their corn cake, which is the best thing they do. That was it for food. Then I did some work on the computer, had some telephonic calls, watched The Lion and a couple of irritating YouTube videos as well as a couple of old Jack Benny shows, and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, which is basically the show order, and then a ME day. I’ll eat something amusing and then I can watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow looks like there’ll be a lunch to attend, and then this week is writing commentary, figuring out what will be a very complex rehearsal schedule for the Kritzerland show, a few meetings and meals, and doing whatever needs doing.
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 whatever needs doing, keep figuring out the show order, have a ME day, eat, 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, happy to have rediscovered Prime Time Musicals and The Lion.