Chicago Flashbulbs: A Quarter Century of News, Politics, Sports, and Show Business (1987-2012)

By Cory Franklin, MD

"There is always a place for well-crafted, entertaining and informative essays and Chicago Flashbulbs fills that niche. Dr. Franklin's great enthusiasm and insights make these varied pieces both entertaining and memorable. His attention to detail in observing the human condition and his wry sense of humor will draw the reader in." - Howard Nearman, MD, MBA, Cascorbi Professor/Department Chair, Case Western university "Chicago Flashbulbs is filled with characters you want to read about: from hardworking teachers to a Princess; faded Hollywood legends, inspired physicians, rock stars and sports heroes. There are gripping accounts of the tragedy of wars, disease and man-made disasters as well as essays on the absurdity and humor of everyday life. The virtuous are celebrated while the pompous are revealed, as they should be." -Cynthia Kelly Conlon, JD, PhD, Adjunct Faculty, Northwestern university, School of education and Social Policy "These essays are custom-crafted for the news and nostalgia junkie which appeared in the op-ed page of the Chicago Tribune and in other publications. They are colorfully recounted stories of the high-born, the low-born and some who wished they had never been born. Readers will find themselves drawn into the subjects' lives." - Lt. Colonel Jim Nicholson, uS Army reserve (ret.), Former investigative reporter, Philadelphia Daily News, Author of Because No One Else

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Release date: Jun 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780897337410

Book preview

Essay

Chicago Flashbulbs

A Quarter Century of News, Politics, Sports and Show Business (1987–2012)

CORY FRANKLIN, MD

Academy Chicago Publishers

Published in 2013 by

Academy Chicago Publishers

363 West Erie Street

Chicago, Illinois 60654

© 2013 by Cory Franklin

First edition.

Printed and bound in the U.S.A.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

For Suzanne, Shana, Celia, Sam, Charlotte, and Margaret

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the help, guidance, and encouragement of many people, only a few of whom I can mention here:

The assistance and friendship of my editors at the Chicago Tribune, Marcia Lythcott, John McCormick, and Bruce Dold, as well as my best friend and hand-holder, Barry Rosenbloom, and my mentor, Jim Nicholson. Colleen Lyons, who brought me together with the wonderful people at Academy Chicago Publishers. And finally, the wonderful people at Academy, founders Jordan and Anita Miller, along with the invaluable staff Rachel Brusstar, Zhanna Vaynberg, and Rachel Burman.

Thank you all and my only regret is that I can’t mention everyone else whose help was essential.

ENTERTAINMENT

Be Still, My Longing Heart

The life and times of a heartthrob

July 11, 2006

For my birthday, my teenage son and 20-something daughter took me to see the new Superman Returns movie and, sure enough, I was dutifully transported to a distant planet. Only the planet wasn’t Krypton, the city wasn’t Metropolis and there were no superheroes or arch-villains. Like the hapless astronauts in an old "Twilight Zone" episode, I was stranded in a far-off world.

But I had a companion on my journey: the actress playing Clark Kent’s mother, a frail lady who appeared to be in her eighties but whose visage suggested great beauty long ago. That old lady was Eva Marie Saint, who, once upon a time, played a gorgeous blond spy whose job was to lure an unsuspecting Cary Grant into a deadly trap in North by Northwest. Before that (more than a half century ago!), she comforted an anguished Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.

I told my son this and he noted that Superman Returns was a cinematic reunion of sorts for Saint and Brando because the movie used stock footage of Brando as Superman’s father from an earlier Superman movie. No, I corrected him, that’s a different Marlon Brando, some bloated impostor who mailed in his lines for several million dollars. The guy in "On the Waterfront" was an actor.

It was somewhat disconcerting to see Eva Marie Saint today. She was not supposed to get old. The same goes for perky Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in the 1950s on TV and had a cameo as a dying old lady in Superman Returns. But at least there’s something to be said for authenticity in the movies.

As fate would have it, "North by Northwest" was on TV the night after we saw Superman Returns. I called my kids to the television for a few minutes to watch Clark Kent’s mother, when she was about Kate Bosworth’s age, seduce Cary Grant on the 20th Century Limited, the train, I added, that once ran from New York to Chicago, famous for its speed and plush accommodations. My daughter, intrigued by Cary Grant, asked how old he was in the movie. With Cary Grant you never knew. Supposedly, a journalist once inquired about his age via telegram. I explained since telegrams cost by the word, the sender often left out unnecessary words. The journalist’s telegram read, How old Cary Grant? His reply? Old Cary Grant fine, how you?

I rattled off a partial list of his leading ladies, which included many of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars: Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly. All so beautiful, but all gone now. Eva Marie Saint, the pretty blonde seductress on the train, is the last survivor.

Will my kids tell their grandchildren about how beautiful Kate Bosworth was when she played Lois Lane? Will their grandchildren know who Lois Lane or Kate Bosworth is? Eva Marie Saint, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Marlon Brando, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, all characters in my far off world, inhabitants of a planet my kids can never visit.

Of course, if they’re lucky, young people can see movies with these characters and become familiar with what they looked like and perhaps even become acquainted with them. But they will never really know them. Because the planet those characters live on is quite distant from Earth and is traveling, at tremendous velocity, farther away every moment. One day, like Krypton, it will explode and be no more.

Rolling Stones Dodge Taxes?

Say It Ain’t So

August 11, 2006

The Rolling Stones have announced they will begin a new tour of the United States and Canada next month. The tour is expected to be a sellout, provided they don’t sing too much new stuff (and nothing from "Their Satanic Majesties Request"). With ticket prices from $60 to $450, the Stones might walk away with more than the $162 million they made on their last tour. Who says You Can’t Always Get What You Want?

Back in the good old days of rock ‘n’ roll, it was quite fashionable to parse the lyrics of songs looking for secret messages. Kids wasted countless hours listening to the Beatles’ The White Album, wondering whether Paul McCartney was really dead. But part of the Rolling Stones’ allure was that they weren’t the type to hide messages in their lyrics. When they sang Let’s Spend the Night Together, at least everyone knew what they meant.

Now it turns out they actually were sending a hidden message in one of their songs. Finally, we know what Gimme Shelter was really about: beating the tax man. It was gimme tax shelter.

The British newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported earlier this year that through adept financial management, offshore trusts and tax shelters, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts paid only 1.6 percent tax on earnings of more than $120 million. The three belong to Rolling Stones Inc., a closely guarded corporation whose finances are run by a Netherlands financial house. As the rock ‘n’ rollers begin preparing their wills (there’s a phrase to make you cringe), their finances were made public as required by Dutch law.

Richards’ net worth is reported at nearly $345 million. Jagger’s net worth is reported at nearly $390 million. Richards recently explained some of this to an interviewer.

The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws, he said. It’s why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws: where we go, where not to put it, whether to sit on it or not.

Once, long ago, when the Rolling Stones had not yet become rock ‘n’ roll royalty, the Mamas and the Papas were one of those groups that reached the pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll only to crash and burn. Their lead singer, Mama Cass, made this trenchant observation shortly before her tragic death: Probably the biggest bring-down in my life was being in a pop group and finding out just how much it was like everything it was supposed to be against.

California Grievin’ on Such a Winter’s Day

January 24, 2007

The seductive melody opens with a 7-second guitar riff that introduces a distinctive voice singing haunting lyrics, about a man pondering whether to leave his bleak winter surroundings for the idyll of California:

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day,I’d be safe and warm, if I was in L.A.

The song was California Dreamin’ and who knows how many imagined leaving their homes for California, or whether some actually packed up and moved after hearing it. Certainly anyone who remembers 1966 knows someone who did, since it coincided with America’s mid-’60s migration to the West Coast.

That siren’s voice belonged to Denny Doherty, who died last week. His mellifluous tenor led the harmony of the Mamas and the Papas, the first rock group to incorporate the voices of men and women. Life magazine called them the most inventive pop musical group and first really new vocal sound since the Beatles. For a brief period, they were No. 1, top of the pops, and they saturated the airwaves with harmonies of their well-crafted songs.

But like California itself, the seduction of fame didn’t always live up to its billing. If any group was a testimony to the excesses of the rock lifestyle and ‘60s burnout it was the Mamas and Papas. Their talent, good looks, and hip attitude made John and Michelle Phillips, Mama Cass Elliott and Doherty the royalty of Southern California. At a time when Hollywood’s old studio system was dying and movie stars were losing their luster, the Mamas and the Papas (group name courtesy of the Hells Angels) were the first rockers to fill the void as kings and queens. They bought mansions built by the silent film stars and hosted lavish parties where everyone, including the Beatles and Rolling Stones, came to pay homage.

Between hit songs, they planned and organized the Monterey Pop Festival, the first large-scale rock festival, which forever changed rock ‘n’ roll and the culture it spawned. It was a multicultural event, performed for charity, and featured breakout performances by, among others, the Who, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding.

Unfortunately, where there is rock ‘n’ roll, there are sex and drugs, the ultimate downfall of the Mamas and the Papas. Denny had an affair with Michelle, which didn’t sit well with Mama Cass, who had an unrequited crush on him, or with Michelle’s husband, John, the leader of the group. The group broke up amid squabbles and drug use—the money spent, the mansions sold.

Their breakup, like that of the Beatles, meant four young people whose talents meshed perfectly together were left to go their separate ways. (Give credit to the Rolling Stones for putting egos and personal problems aside to remain together so long).

Mama Cass had aspirations to be the next Barbra Streisand and had the voice to pull it off. On her way to realizing her dream after a command performance at the London Palladium, she died alone in a hotel room, less than a decade after California Dreamin’ hit the charts.

Michelle, the only California native, wed actor Dennis Hopper in a marriage that lasted eight days. She described them as the happiest days of her life. Once hailed as one of the most beautiful women in Southern California, she has made a career playing the mother of Southern California ingenues on popular television melodramas.

John, who could have been one of the great songwriters of his generation, tried his hand unsuccessfully on Broadway after an unremarkable solo career. A drug habit led to a brief prison term and ultimately to a liver transplant. He died of medical complications, an old man before his time. Upon his death, the rock community hailed him as a creative genius, though he never quite lived up to his promise.

Now the Papas are gone.

After the breakup of the Mamas and Papas, Denny Doherty returned to his native Canada, where he’d left folk music behind. He became a minor star on children’s television but never again found the right vehicle for his beautiful tenor. As he grew older, he wistfully regretted the fact he never married Mama Cass.

His death came on a winter’s day when the sky was gray and a mid-January cold wave swept over the Ontario plains. The promise of California Dreamin’ was long ago and far away.

Who Took the Fun Out of Rock?

Remembering Ellie Greenwich and girl groups

September 06, 2009

When it started out, rock ‘n’ roll was meant to be fun. Somewhere along the line, everyone started taking it too seriously. It probably began when Bob Dylan abandoned the acoustic guitar for electric. Then the Rolling Stones started singing lyrics like I shouted out who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me. Things got worse when universities started offering credits for studying rock music and Oliver Stone made a quasi art film about Jim Morrison and The Doors. The epitome of taking it too seriously is The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

FOR THE RECORD—This story contains corrected material, published Sept. 10, 2009.

Back when rock ‘n’ roll was fun, Ellie Greenwich was one of those who made it that way. Greenwich, who died recently, wrote or co-wrote some of the rock era’s greatest hits. Her specialty was girl-group classics, including Da Doo Ron Ron by the Crystals, Chapel of Love by the Dixie Cups and I Can Hear Music by the Ronettes (remade by the Beach Boys). Think big hair and high heels.

Greenwich was also responsible for the ne plus ultra of teen tragedy songs, Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las, as well as the great holiday song, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love. Perhaps Greenwich’s most memorable work was the Ronettes’ Be My Baby, featuring rock music’s greatest drum intro. (Go ahead, find a better one.) The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson said he once had a jukebox in his house and no matter which of the 100 selections you pushed, Be My Baby was the only song that played.

Greenwich worked with her husband, Jeff Barry, in the Brill Building in Manhattan, right down the hall from Carole King where the competition to produce hits was intense but exhilarating. Greenwich succeeded. According to the Daily Telegraph, Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs of all time (another bit of rock pretension) includes six by Greenwich and Barry—more than any other non-performing songwriting team.

Besides her songwriting, she worked alongside music producer Phil Spector before he .. well, you know. She co-wrote one of rock’s underappreciated classics, River Deep, Mountain High for Ike and Tina Turner. Working with strange birds like Spector and Ike Turner may have helped take the fun out of rock for Greenwich. Also, by then, the Beatles and the British Invasion ushered in a new era of music. The public wanted to hear songs about war, peace, and drugs. Girl groups and confectionary teenage love songs were passe. Music was turning serious.

But before she was done with songwriting, Greenwich discovered a young Brooklyn songwriter who auditioned for her. She recommended the unknown for a record contract and was so convinced of his talent she produced and promoted his early recordings. That unknown, Neil Diamond, became one of the world’s most successful recording artists.

In her later years, virtually unrecognized, she told of going to a beauty parlor where the sound system played her first three hits in succession. She casually informed the hairdresser that she wrote those songs and the hairdresser thought she was from Mars, Greenwich said.

But her tunes endured. In the 1980s, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis made a shambles of the military in the movie comedy Stripes. To the consternation of their drill instructor, when they march they keep military cadence by leading their platoon in singing Doo Wah Diddy. In another scene, Ramis tries to teach English to new immigrants but gives up quickly and has them dancing to the lyrics of Da Doo Ron Ron. Both Ellie Greenwich songs. Still fun.

Rock ‘n’ roll has moved on from the days of Greenwich, branching off into dozens of genres. Purists and those of a certain age lament the passing of the sound she helped create.

Rock ‘n’ roll may never be as much fun as it was when Ellie Greenwich was writing about young love, hanky panky, and boyfriends dying tragically in motorcycle accidents. But it could explain why she’s not in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Probably not serious enough.

Swill or Culture? Your Choice

As holiday music standards go, it’s not exactly White Christmas or even Easter Parade.

But this Halloween weekend, you’ll be saturated with one of the great, cheesy holiday records of all-time, Monster Mash. If you are one of the few remaining Americans unfamiliar with it, Bobby Boris Pickett, the writer and performer, did a hokey Boris Karloff imitation, took some amateurish sound effects, and added bad background voices. Then Pickett combined them with a simple jingle to tell the story of a new dance craze emanating from the laboratory of a mad scientist. Just for effect, at the end of the record, Pickett threw in an equally hokey Bela Lugosi imitation of Dracula lamenting, Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist? Karloff and Lugosi have been dead for decades so, sadly, the only exposure most kids have to those two classic movie ghouls is through Monster Mash.

Monster Mash has become something of a Halloween standard, a sort of chestnuts roasting on an open fire for the trick-or-treat set. It reached No. 1 in 1962 and made the top 100 in 1970 and 1973. At oldies concerts, Pickett would perform it in full mad scientist regalia, introducing it by saying, I’d like to perform a medley of my hit.

He once observed I have been paying the rent for 36 years with that song. (Composers who make their living writing familiar songs are often less sentimental about them than the public is. Jay Livingston, one of the composers of Silver Bells referred to that holiday favorite simply as my annuity. Don McLean, when asked the meaning of his cryptic rock classic, American Pie, replied, It means I won’t have to work anymore.

Bobby Pickett died two years ago and, ironically, the same week he died, the world lost Mistlav Rostropovich, one of the 20th Century’s two great cellists (Pablo Casals was the other).

Rostropovich was a true Renaissance man, a pianist, conductor and activist who made a political statement by playing Bach’s cello suites at the fallen Berlin Wall to celebrate the reunification of Germany in 1989. When Rostropovich died, some of the West’s most prominent heads of state attended his funeral while hundreds of ordinary mourners applauded his memory and his music by shouting Bravo.

When Pickett and Rostropovich died there was a brief clash of cultures on the radio. The classical music stations played hours of Rostropovich while the oldies stations gave Monster Mash a token play. But this weekend, you’ll hear a lot more Bobby Pickett than Mistlav Rostropovich on the radio.

In the long run, which will endure—the high art of Rostropovich or the low art of Bobby Pickett? Which one will our grandchildren be listening to 50 years from now? And which will their grandchildren be listening to 50 years hence? Both? Neither?

The obvious answer is Rostropovich because his music represents high culture and high culture is meant to endure. But the popularity of Monster Mash is not to be sneered at. Low culture may not be intellectually defensible, but it can be pleasurable. Just ask all those trick-or-treaters. When they grow up, Rostropovich will have to contend with them.

Andrew McKie, the former obituary writer for London’s Daily Telegraph, remarked on the contrast between the two musicians with more than a faint whiff of British elitism, Some things are better than others, and more important than others. If you don’t prefer Rostropovich to the ‘Monster Mash,’ then I hesitate to say you’re an idiot. But I don’t hesitate very long.

Poor Andrew.

Rostropovich may indeed be superior to Monster Mash, but is that really the point? Certainly one can enjoy them both without comparing and without being an idiot.

Music, like literature or movies, doesn’t have to be artistic or important, it can be frivolous and dumb and still be enjoyable. High culture and low culture both have their virtues. And without low culture, there is no high culture.

Think about that this weekend when you hear Bobby Pickett doing his hokey imitations of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Sadness Behind the ‘Million Dollar’ Jams

February 17, 2010

One afternoon in December 1956, as 21-year-old Julie Andrews was becoming the toast of Broadway with her bravura performance in the musical My Fair Lady, four rural Southerners about her age were jamming in an impromptu session at Sun Studio in faraway Memphis, Tenn.

On March 13, the story of that Memphis jam session, Million Dollar Quartet, now running at the Apollo Theater, will open on Broadway. (And keep running in Chicago.) Improbable as it would have seemed in 1956, a musical opens with the hot lick: It’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go, cat, go. But don’t you step on my blue suede shoes. Not exactly I Could Have Danced All Night.

Million Dollar Quartet is a feel-good story—the fictional re-creation of the day Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins were rehearsing when Elvis Presley, already a star, dropped in. The studio producer quickly thought to call Johnny Cash to join them, the only time the four ever played together. The play features a superb cast, and classic songs including Great Balls of Fire, Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, I Walk the Line, and Fever.

If your only frame of reference was what you saw in