DRW50
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Everything posted by DRW50
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January 1953 TV Radio Mirror -
I don't believe Christie would win on a national ticket, or even get through the primary. Christie is good at ranting and raving, but he's not proven enough on far right issues. They are more likely to go with someone they can guarantee speaks the true believer language. I also don't think he would be able to win over the average voter the way he does the media (who love aggressive, unpleasant Republicans) or some in New Jersey. He is a stranger to most of the public. The first time they see him he will be in an ill-fitting suit, sweating, pointing his finger, shaming them, yelling at them. Rubio has huge baggage, and I don't believe he's all that charismatic or likeable. He is a token. I do think if Romney were more of a consistent and strong candidate, he would be more likely to win (I still think he will win, or come very close), but the problem with today's GOP primaries is that you really can't make it out into the general unless you take hard right positions on everything and yell very loudly about conspiracies and the great evils of the liberals. You go into the general election known as a hatemonger, and you have to continue to act that way just to make sure the base will still support you instead of sitting at home or going third party. I think the next GOP nominee, if Romney doesn't win, will be a governor or senator from a deep red state, someone who breathes fire. Someone like Jim DeMint, or Sam Brownback. The media will go wild, and they will have plenty of money.
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Using that logic, the Democrats would have kept Congress for much longer than 2006-2010. Christie isn't likeable. He hates everyone. That's what gets him attention. Rubio is a token who seems to be distrusted by most who control his party. It's a bizarre, elitist comment. It sounds like something Scrooge would say. Why would you go around bragging about that? If you want to fire them, then fire them, but why is this so pleasurable to you? Yet the media and the GOP spent years saying that Clinton was to blame for the bad economy of the past decade. They still say that. The only reason anyone praises him now is because another Democrat is in office. As soon as that isn't true anymore, Clinton will return to being a hate figure.
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I never knew that. Barbara was much more of the typical ingenue then, but John was probably a real ass at that time. So he went on from Barbara to Kim?
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I'm not sure if anyone who opposes Romney is saying "to hell with the unemployed" when Romney's career was based on firing people, and he has bragged about liking to fire people.
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Once I saw that Lynsey's death was all about Emmett Scanlan making stupid faces, I tuned back out. I've seen enough of poor, poor Brendan to last me a lifetime.
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I could never get past Rena Sofer's awful acting.
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More and more far right governors are kicking the poor. Never underestimate how much praise you get for letting people die, which is what this essentially does. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/which-states-will-reject-obamacares-medicaid-expansion.php?ref=fpb Meanwhile, there's a not-too-subtle media effort to tell us that John Roberts only cared about politics and switched sides for reasons that were only about image. Combined with the usual far right bleating, my guess is this is designed to shame and guilt the Court into always staying in their place from now on. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57464549/roberts-switched-views-to-uphold-health-care-law/ Nothing ever changes. The GOP becomes even more extreme and the media becomes even more docile. The only laugh in this is watching Romney desperately struggle to figure out his own position on a law that has his fingerprints all over it.
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I didn't mind the rewrite, I just thought the episodes were handled terribly, and I just hated Conor and Mary.
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What did they say about her then? All that ham is all I remember. They never had any idea what to do with Diego. Only a month or two into his tenure was when he was revealed as having the affair with Emily, and being Umberto. I can't remember if viewers already knew by then that he'd caused the plane crash. Yet they were still setting up the Lily/Diego romance. I guess Mike eventually would have saved her. I wonder if the show would have gone with Mike/Lily if Shawn Christian hadn't left. I liked that with Connor and Kirk too (although at first I thought someone was going to kill him!). Paul and Sara both just seem dull and superfluous. I never understood why Sara was supposed to be so dull. All these years later and I still don't believe John and Barbara would be attracted to each other.
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The show was turning around a little at that time, although that went to pieces by spring '97 when they fired Allyson Rice Taylor and had that bizarre James return. This episode was a little sparse but I did enjoy it. This was right after Valente had been fired so they seemed to be trying to cram in as many family references as possible - I didn't know they even mentioned BIanca by this time. I also liked the scenes with Bob and Nancy. Helen Wagner was so underrated. The Kasnoffs were just dull to me but I did like how they used Mark and Ben to show some of the everyday Christmas activities like the football game. Dolan started in December 1989.
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At least you didn't get somebody who was in one season, like I did. I wasn't even sure who she was. Lynne somebody. Apparently this is making major (tabloid) news - Brooks accused of being a deadbeat father. It's also on ABC (I can never get their site to work). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2166933/The-Real-Housewives-Orange-County-star-Vicki-Gunvalson-accused-dating-deadbeat-dad.html?ITO=1490
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jdlr2WnK7A&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCE7AJSohWQ&feature=relmfu
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I could write a book called 'I Lead Three Lives' - my own, my mother's and my father's." Mona laughs, and nods agreement. "Don't we all! We lead our own lives to the hilt, but each is vitally interested in what the others do." Frank Sr. picks up the conversation: "We cover one another's shows. We like to have family opinions about a performance. We enjoy doing things together - going out on our boat, playing bridge. We take many vacations together. Even when Mona and I go off alone, Frankie is apt to turn up for a weekend to take me on for a game of golf." When they're learning lines for their individual shows, only one Thomas will cue the other. The third member prefers to watch a performance "cold," to get a more objective slant on it. "As soon as we finish a show, we call home to get the reviews," Mona adds. "If neither Frank nor Frankie has covered one of my shows, because of conflicting assignments, I feel lost. They're my barometers. It's good to have honest and expert criticism from those you love." The Thomases live in the heart of New York now, in a comfortable, homey apartment furnished with things they have enjoyed through the years, plus a few new pieces which don't disturb the lived-in look. Mona is chief cook and bottle-washer. "Frank's a good 'camp cook' and can take over at home when I'm too busy," she says. "Breakfast is anybody's responsibility - mine, Dad's or Frankie's whoever is up first. Usually I'm the one, with Dad right behind me and Frankie a little on the late side." In a household where someone is constantly studying a script, or racing out to rehearsals and broadcasts, chores have a tendency to become departmentalized. Frank does the shopping, but Mona makes out the list. She writes the checks. "I deposit the money and she spends it," Frank observes. "When we were first married, even though she was very young, I thought she could learn to handle the family funds. She did it so well that I never took the job back." Frank handles business arrangements, has always been interested in real estate, and has always had good ideas about the development of property. At one time, the family owned three farms and lived on one of them in a lovely white house on a hill, in New Jersey. "We loved it," Mona sighs. "But some big laboratories were built there and our taxes went sky-high within a year, so we decided to give up the farm and now divide our time between the convenience of a New York apartment and the boat we dock in Long Island Sound." Frankie has been aboard boats since he was a baby, and is an excellent sailor. Frank is an old hand, went down to Nassau last April and sailed a schooner up to New York, is crazy about boats. Frank became an actor by accident. His grandfather was a judge, and his family lived across from St. Joseph, Missouri's Courthouse Square - on which the theater also faced. "The Square was my playground," Frank recalls. "Whenever a stock company came to town and needed children for incidental parts, we kids in the Square were handy, so they put us on. We didn't have any lines in the beginning, but we did learn our way around in the theater. After a while, a manager of a traveling company offered me a job on tour. I was seventeen and I took it. It was the best experience I could have had." Mona was born in Belleville, Illinois, became stagestruck at seven, when she was cast as the tragic little daughter in that old stock-company classic, "Ten Nights in a Bar Room." Like Frank's, her theatrical debut was accidental. "The stock-company members boarded in various homes in the community, and I made friends with several who lived next-door. They needed someone my age to play the little girl, and overnight I was an actress!" At fourteen, she made a Broadway debut in the stage spectacle, "Chin Chin." She spoke one line consisting of three words. By the time she was sixteen, she was a veteran, probably the theater's youngest leading lady, in a national touring company of "Captain Kidd, Jr." The tall, broad-shouldered Frank Thomas and petite, red-haired Mona Bruns, standing only three-quarters of an inch over five feet and weighing only a hundred pounds (she's still only 104 pounds of tireless energy), met for the first time at the Greenwich Village Theater in New York. She had already been cast as the star of "Hobohemia," the first play by Sinclair Lewis, and the producers were searching for a man to play opposite her. "I was waiting to audition for the part after a bout with the flu," Frank says. "I had only recently been discharged from the Navy after World War I. The theater had not yet opened and I stood outside, waiting, when a car drove up and Mona stepped out. (She had seen me once in a play, and I had seen her in one play, but we hadn't met.) She looked at me and asked, 'Have you been sick? Because then you shouldn't be standing out here!' She hustled me into the theater and fussed over me, and she has been solicitous about me ever since." They were married soon afterward, and they made an effort to play the same shows and to stay together as much as possible. Already, each of them was leading two lives. They worked together in stock and in Broadway productions. During the course of the New York production of "Bluebonnet," in 1921, starring Ernest Truex and featuring Mona as an unmarried sixteen-year-old, young Mrs. Thomas found out she was going to have a baby. She worked through the fifth month, then retired until Frankie was born. "Frankie has napped on many a make-up shelf," she smiles. "He was only nine months old when Dad and I played leads in Jessie Bonstelle's stock company in Buffalo, New York. Miss Bonstelle had told us that she didn't like to take a married couple, especially with a baby. We said we would take a nurse along and keep Frankie under wraps, and no one would know about him. "We got a house away from the theater, and for a couple of weeks everything went smoothly. After one matinee, some of the girls followed us home ,waited until after we went out again, then rang the bell. The maid came to the door with the baby, and our secret was out. Everybody fell in love with Frankie, so it never made any difference after that. Wherever we went, he went." It was probably inevitable that a boy who literally was brought up in a trunk, and whose familiar playground was empty stages and echoing theater auditoriums, between shows, should early become an actor. "Our plans for Frankie included the usual ten or twelve years of grade and high school, and then college," Mona reminisces. "His father went to Butler University in Indianapolis, and he wanted Frankie to have a college education and then choose whatever profession appealed to him. But, when he was nine, the plans changed abruptly. "The Depression had hit the theater as it had hit other things. Frank and I had been in a number of flops. We had our house in New Jersey and we thought of going out there 'to just weather the hard times out,' but I was afraid we would be buried in the country away from any opportunities that might come up." At this point, they heard that a friend wanted to sublet her apartment in New York and they decided to take it. Mona used to take Frankie to nearby Central Park to play. On the way to the park one day, they met an actress friend who asked Mona if she and Frank were working. Mona had to admit they were both "at liberty." The friend suggested there might be a part for her in a new play being cast, "Carry Nation," which Blanche Yurka was to direct. (Such present-day greats as James Stewart, Mildred Natwick and Myron McCormick were in it.) "We'll go there first, and then I'll take you to the park," Mona told Frankie. When the producer saw her, he said: "Why, Mona, this part is not for you. It's for a character woman." He looked at Frankie. "But there's a part in the second act that Frankie could play." "Oh, no," Mona remonstrated. "Frankie isn't going to be an actor, at least not yet. He has a lot of schooling ahead of him." "But why not, Mother?" Frankie spoke up. In the end, although Mona was sure his father would object vigorously, Frankie won out. He had been cueing his parents in their parts ever since he was old enough to read, and there was nothing about the theater which was new or strange to him. It was his natural habitat, and play-acting was just another game. Fun. Exciting. "After that, we couldn't stop him," says Frank. "He was in the Professional Children's School in New York, which made it possible for him to go on with his school work. On the road ,he had to keep up lessons just like any schoolboy." Not once have all three Thomases worked in the same play, the same movie, the same radio or television show. Between them, Frank and Frankie have made about two hundred Hollywood movies. Frankie must have registered strongly in at least one film role: Some time afterward, when he was starring on television as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and making a personal appearance in Detroit, a boy came up to him and said, "You're a phony. You're not Tom Corbett. I know you're Tim Tyler - because I saw you in the movies!" Frank and Frankie have been in two plays together, "Remember the Day" and "Goodbye Again." Mona and Frankie were together in the Broadway hit show, "Wednesday's Child," and Mona still says, "It was the most thrilling moment of my career, to be on Broadway with my son. And just as thrilling when we did the same roles for the movie version." Mother and son were in the very first daytime television serial, A Woman To Remember. "Now the wheel has made a full turn," Frankie says. "The story of A Woman to Remember was set in a radio studio, and I played a sound-effects man. Just recently, I played a TV cameraman in Love Of Life - the one who gave Vanessa her first lessons in studio politics." Husband and wife appeared together in one of the earliest night-time serials on television, a show called Wesley, produced by Tony Miller and directed by Franklin Schaffner. Wesley was broadcast live from a studio in the East Fifties in New York. At the same time, Mona was also playing the Senator's wife in the Judy Holliday-Paul Douglas hit play, "Born Yesterday," at a theater in the West Forties. "Every Tuesday, the day Wesley was broadcast, was a nightmare. I'd race to the studio to do Wesley, then I'd race to the theater in time to appear in 'Born Yesterday,'" Mona recalls. "I couldn't have done both shows without Frankie. He had a cab waiting at each end, and he never let even a 'big date' interfere until after he had delivered me to the theater on time." Frankie - who looks a lot like his dad and is the same height, almost six-feet - is still a bachelor. "We make him too comfortable at home," his mother says. "But, one of these days, it will happen." "It took quite a while for it to happen to me," says his father. "And it was worth waiting for." All the Thomases have had long experience in radio and television, in the big night-time dramatic shows, as well as daytime serial dramas. Frank had a long run run in Portia Faces Life on radio, followed it into television until it went off the air. He played the newspaper owner of Love Of Life until the part was written out. He was the judge in the series, The Black Robe, has appeared in The Verdict Is Yours, and a long list of others. His mother recent Broadway role was the General in "End As A Man." Mona has done Studio One, Hallmark Hall Of Fame, and many others. Frankie has been in more dramas than he can count. At one point in her menfolks' careers, when they were all working and living in California, Mona went into semi-retirement to act as Frankie's agent and to give more time to home and family life. Then, when Frankie got into World War II in 1941, they came back to New York, where for two years she took over the role of Miss Sally in "Chicken Every Sunday." This was followed by her four-year stint in "Born Yesterday." Television now plays an important part in the lives of all the Thomases, with three careers so closely involved with it. What's more, they like TV and are fans themselves. "Creating and playing Aunt Emily in The Brighter Day has given me a kind of serenity that I never had before," Mona confides. "Maybe it's because I really like her and want to be like her. Quiet and serene, but with a good sense of humor. I never have to 'reach,' the way one sometimes has to do to understand a character. I never have to analyze. There Emily is, just waiting for me to take over." "I sometimes don't know where Mona leaves off and Emily begins," Frank says. "it's a wonderfully sensitive part for Mona. We have all been so lucky in the people we work with." "Yes, I'm very lucky," Mona agreed. "There's a good feeling all the way down, from our agency supervisor, Bob Leadley, producer Terry (Therese) Lewis, director Del Hughes and writer Sam Hall, to the whole cast and crew. "Between Aunt Emily and her brother, Reverend Dennis, and the other characters, there is a quality of love and understanding that is only possible because we, who have played these parts so long, share personally in some of that feeling." It's the kind of feeling that has drawn close together the Thomas family - Frank, Frankie and Mona. Even while each has been able to maintain his own freedom as an individual, there has been a linking of careers, an understanding of one another's problems, a strong bond of interest. That's how the Thomases have continued to live at least nine good lives!
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September 1958 TV Radio Mirror
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September 1958 TV Radio Mirror
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Unless Cher is on the stage with Obama or is in Congress or a statehouse, I don't see the comparison.
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Ultimately, it's subjective, so if you already think of her as very cold in the role, you may always feel that way. Oakdalian has a lot of clips of 1992 ATWT, her last year in the role - you may want to watch some of that.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VpxZtYsBBg
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMwH3zjFRTA
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