In a shabby house on the other side of the tracks, a 66-year-old man hunches over a briefcase and mutters haltingly about his past life, as if in a latter-day confessional. He speaks in the cultured English accent of a minor public school, of the sort the BBC prized 40 years ago, but has long since been downgraded in favour of less educated regional tones. Stumbling occasionally, he corrects himself without apology or embarrassment, as if trying to fix his memories in his own mind and only incidentally for the benefit of his audience.
He has maybe 100 people silently attending his mantra, like devotees of an obscure cult which claims no religious or ethnic status. They are mainly from Los Angeles, but some are thousands of miles away, actually as well as in spirit.
For this is the bizarre world of internet radio and the speaker is Ian Whitcomb, doing his weekly show for luxuriamusic.com. This is a very different Whitcomb from the song-and-dance man who can hold a live audience in his hand at one of his gigs, singing and tapping and playing the ukulele or the accordion with only an occasional interjection of vitriolic opinion about the decline of modern mores. This is radio, a one-to-one medium, where the balance is reverse and generous slabs of reminiscence are punctuated by an eclectic selection of music from the first half of the last century.
Money is scarce for fringe radio, especially something as experimental as internet radio. So Luxuria is broadcast, if that is not too grand a term, from a house on a rundown industrial estate in the LA suburb of Silver Lake, between the 5 freeway and the Los Angeles River. Potholes and puddles mark the side street down to the unprepossessing building. Push open the unlocked door and you walk straight up a short set of steps to what must once have been a living room. A sofa reminds you of its former role, but the room is now otherwise littered with detritus: broken chairs, piles of cardbox boxes overflowing with records and books, a discarded restaurant sign. To one side is a tiny kitchen with a lavatory off to the left.
Beyond the main room is another, smaller, one - the studio. Just enough room for a console and a desk with a couple of computer screens, and a few chairs round the side. A torso displays a luxuriamusic t-shirt, standing next to a plastic blowup dog.
Chuck Kelley, who lives in the house and runs the station, operates the console for Ian, who sits behind the computer screens, almost an afterthought with a microphone hanging over him. In front of him is a collection of records, tapes, CDs, the tools of his trade. He hands them to Chuck, one or two at a time, barking track numbers to be played on each one, and they briefly work out the order of play and when Ian is to come in with a link. The links are often longer than the music, as Ian replays his life for the benefit of his tiny audience.
Many of them amuse themselves by writing into the online chat room, which sometimes discusses what is happening in the studio - particularly if Ian makes one of his gaffes - but otherwise has a life of its own, picking up themes that have nothing to do with music or radio or Ian but just take on a life of their own, like a session among a bunch of friends and acquaintances who come and go and are vaguely connected by a common interest.
It is a truly weird way to spend a couple of hours. I suspect it is very much of its time and will eventually evolve or die. But it also fulfils a basic human need, to communicate, talk, bounce ideas around, put those ideas into some sort of coherent order - much as this blog is trying to do. We need to make sense of our lives and what is going on around us, and it might as well be at luxuriamusic.com on a Wednesday night (Thursday morning in Europe) as anywhere else.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Bill Kay admires Hollywood's Egyptian theatre and Musso & Frank
It's corny, it's tatty, it's trivial, but Hollywood still exerts magic even though they don't make films there any more. Today I took a closer look at two Hollywood icons - the Egyptian Theatre and Musso & Frank - and came away marvelling at how their fascination seems as strong as ever.
The Egyptian tour is organised by the present non-profit owners, the altruistic American Cinematheque, as a once-a-month look at the history and behind the scenes. If you think the newly painted Egyptian theme has just been cooked up by a bunch of 21st century designers, think again. The wall paintings and tiles along the walls of the magnificent courtyard are all either original or repainted from the original plans. I had forgotten from my first visit, in the 80s, that they had had the box office in an isolated booth out front, and didn't realise how many restructurings it had gone through since it was opened by Sid Grauman in 1922.
But, even though I have been back to the Egyptian many times since moving to Pasadena in August 2006, I hadn't realised how cleverly the theatre had been restored.
The main problem, as explained by our highly knowledgeable and articulate guide, Mark, was that it was built as a silent film theatre, to earthquake-resisting building standards that would be considered ridiculously inadequate today. American Cinematheque wanted the best of both worlds: a cinema that could show modern films, but in a restoration that as far as possible recaptured the original building.
The answer, in essence, has been to build two cinemas inside the main shell, with up-to-date acoustic and electronic fittings, that are all easily removable if and when another restoration is mounted. The effect must offend some purists, and it may well be rethought by future owners or guardians, but I think it works.
We can, as a group of about 15 did today, appreciate the original, right down to the dressing rooms used by artists who took part in massive and elaborate prologues before the silent films were shown. But when the lights go down, we could also enjoy a modern film shown to the highest audio and visual standards, in great comfort with uncluttered views. It's a compromise, but everything today has to earn its corn and the owners have to keep the box-office busy. A 1,700-seat theatre showing only silent films would just not work, and I believe it would represent a huge missed opportunity even if the building were bought by a philanthropic billionaire. But the debate will go on, as part of the wider argument about preserving and developing the rest of Hollywood and Los Angeles. It cannot all be preserved in aspic, like some huge museum, any more than London, Paris or New York can. Money will talk: the trick is to make sure it doesn't shout, as it nearly did when Blockbuster wanted to buy the Egyptian in the early 90s.
By the time the theatre tour and accompanying film - an entertaining history called Forever Hollywood - was over it was time for lunch. Musso & Frank beckoned.
This was much more of a tourist visit, no peeks behind the scenes. But it is slowing changing. The famously brusque waiters seemed to have faded away, and there is a long cocktail bar in one of the two rooms. But, despite a vegetable plate on the menu, the food still badly needs updating.
I ordered a salad of lettuce and tomato. And that's exactly what I got: a huge chunk of lettuce, about a quarter of a whole one, with two slices of heritage tomato and a side dish of vinaigrette. A sort of DIY approach, so I set to and it ended up OK, but I expected a little more input from the kitchen to make the salad look more appetising.
And the pasta with mushroom sauce may have been OK in the 1950s but it looked sadly outdated today. The sauce was tomatoey, sweet and almost certainly tinned. The pasta was overcooked and slimy. Next time I'll have a Caesar Salad as a main course, but I'm not sure what I'll get.
So Musso is, it seems to me, relying very much on its reputation as one of Hollywood's fixtures. All very well when it comes to preserving the wood panelling and painted frieze - but not with substandard food.
The Egyptian tour is organised by the present non-profit owners, the altruistic American Cinematheque, as a once-a-month look at the history and behind the scenes. If you think the newly painted Egyptian theme has just been cooked up by a bunch of 21st century designers, think again. The wall paintings and tiles along the walls of the magnificent courtyard are all either original or repainted from the original plans. I had forgotten from my first visit, in the 80s, that they had had the box office in an isolated booth out front, and didn't realise how many restructurings it had gone through since it was opened by Sid Grauman in 1922.
But, even though I have been back to the Egyptian many times since moving to Pasadena in August 2006, I hadn't realised how cleverly the theatre had been restored.
The main problem, as explained by our highly knowledgeable and articulate guide, Mark, was that it was built as a silent film theatre, to earthquake-resisting building standards that would be considered ridiculously inadequate today. American Cinematheque wanted the best of both worlds: a cinema that could show modern films, but in a restoration that as far as possible recaptured the original building.
The answer, in essence, has been to build two cinemas inside the main shell, with up-to-date acoustic and electronic fittings, that are all easily removable if and when another restoration is mounted. The effect must offend some purists, and it may well be rethought by future owners or guardians, but I think it works.
We can, as a group of about 15 did today, appreciate the original, right down to the dressing rooms used by artists who took part in massive and elaborate prologues before the silent films were shown. But when the lights go down, we could also enjoy a modern film shown to the highest audio and visual standards, in great comfort with uncluttered views. It's a compromise, but everything today has to earn its corn and the owners have to keep the box-office busy. A 1,700-seat theatre showing only silent films would just not work, and I believe it would represent a huge missed opportunity even if the building were bought by a philanthropic billionaire. But the debate will go on, as part of the wider argument about preserving and developing the rest of Hollywood and Los Angeles. It cannot all be preserved in aspic, like some huge museum, any more than London, Paris or New York can. Money will talk: the trick is to make sure it doesn't shout, as it nearly did when Blockbuster wanted to buy the Egyptian in the early 90s.
By the time the theatre tour and accompanying film - an entertaining history called Forever Hollywood - was over it was time for lunch. Musso & Frank beckoned.
This was much more of a tourist visit, no peeks behind the scenes. But it is slowing changing. The famously brusque waiters seemed to have faded away, and there is a long cocktail bar in one of the two rooms. But, despite a vegetable plate on the menu, the food still badly needs updating.
I ordered a salad of lettuce and tomato. And that's exactly what I got: a huge chunk of lettuce, about a quarter of a whole one, with two slices of heritage tomato and a side dish of vinaigrette. A sort of DIY approach, so I set to and it ended up OK, but I expected a little more input from the kitchen to make the salad look more appetising.
And the pasta with mushroom sauce may have been OK in the 1950s but it looked sadly outdated today. The sauce was tomatoey, sweet and almost certainly tinned. The pasta was overcooked and slimy. Next time I'll have a Caesar Salad as a main course, but I'm not sure what I'll get.
So Musso is, it seems to me, relying very much on its reputation as one of Hollywood's fixtures. All very well when it comes to preserving the wood panelling and painted frieze - but not with substandard food.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Kennedy assassination: Bill Kay on that gun, that bullet, that Deeley Plaza
Just when I thought we'd seen the last of them, last night the US Public Broadcasting Service ran a 90-minute analysis of the Kennedy assassination. As one of their talking heads said at the start of the show, on 22 November 1963 a US president was gunned down in broad daylight and in the presence of around 500 witnesses, at least 38 of whom had still or movie cameras. Yet we still do not know for sure what happened.
The first time I saw Deeley Plaza, the crime scene, it was like walking onto a darkened stage or film set that I had been known all my adult life. The features seemed so familiar: at centre stage the green square round which the motorcade had to detour and make a left turn before heading down the street that would put Kennedy in the assassin's sights; the innocuous-looking grassy knoll, surmounted by a fence that bounded a car park; and, looming in the background, the book depository. Incredibly, all is unchanged since the day of the assassination.
It makes an irresistible and compelling tourist destination, and helpfully a very thorough museum has been set up on the floor from which Oswald fired. Many of the 2,000 books on the incident are represented, covering all shades of opinion and theory and speculation.
Yet, although it provides a comforting trip down memory lane to compile yet another TV documentary - reprising the Zapruder film, the futile rush to hospital, Oswald's capture and murder, Johson's swearing in and the Warren Commission - what more is there to say? There is no sign of anyone coming forward with new evidence, let alone a confession. If there was a conspiracy the co-conspirators are either dead or have maintained a remarkably solid silence. But then, in view of the magnitude of the crime, silence was the only escape route.
Having been for many years a believer in the Lone Gunman assessement, I am belatedly coming round to the view that there was a conspiracy. I have always had doubts about Oswald's ability to fire three astonishingly accurate shots in six seconds with the rifle he had, at a moving target more than 100 yards away. I a not convinced that Kennedy's head jerked back in some spasm rather than the impact of a head-on shot from the bridge, or from the grassy knoll 20 yards to the right of the car. And, however much of a nutter Oswald was - I am assuming that he was indeed the gunman in the book depositary - he never seemed to have sufficient motivation to organise what was little more than a prank so successful that it assumed historic proportions. He certainly doesn't act innocent in the newsreel film taken of him in the police station - and what on earth were Dallas police doing letting journalists and any other member of the public mill about within yards of Oswald, yelling questions at him and eventually killing him? All police stations have a front desk for public inquiries, but prisoners must surely be held in secure areas out of reach of the public. Unbelievable.
But whether Oswald was a knowing part of a conspiracy is much harder to judge from what we can see of him. If he was involved with others, how could they trust him to keep quiet - which of course is the reason often offered for Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubenstein) killing him. But then why didn't anyone kill Ruby? He did not die until January 1967, more than three years after he shot Oswald. Or maybe someone poisoned his prison breakfast.
As the above shows, while there are so many unanswered questions JFK's assassination will exert a fascination that has never applied to Bobby Kennedy's killing, although there have been attempts to link the brothers' deaths with that of Martin Luther King a few months before Bobby died. So maybe PBS was right after all to commission its documentary, and maybe we can expect the episode to be revived every few years. The 50th anniversary is just under six years away.
The first time I saw Deeley Plaza, the crime scene, it was like walking onto a darkened stage or film set that I had been known all my adult life. The features seemed so familiar: at centre stage the green square round which the motorcade had to detour and make a left turn before heading down the street that would put Kennedy in the assassin's sights; the innocuous-looking grassy knoll, surmounted by a fence that bounded a car park; and, looming in the background, the book depository. Incredibly, all is unchanged since the day of the assassination.
It makes an irresistible and compelling tourist destination, and helpfully a very thorough museum has been set up on the floor from which Oswald fired. Many of the 2,000 books on the incident are represented, covering all shades of opinion and theory and speculation.
Yet, although it provides a comforting trip down memory lane to compile yet another TV documentary - reprising the Zapruder film, the futile rush to hospital, Oswald's capture and murder, Johson's swearing in and the Warren Commission - what more is there to say? There is no sign of anyone coming forward with new evidence, let alone a confession. If there was a conspiracy the co-conspirators are either dead or have maintained a remarkably solid silence. But then, in view of the magnitude of the crime, silence was the only escape route.
Having been for many years a believer in the Lone Gunman assessement, I am belatedly coming round to the view that there was a conspiracy. I have always had doubts about Oswald's ability to fire three astonishingly accurate shots in six seconds with the rifle he had, at a moving target more than 100 yards away. I a not convinced that Kennedy's head jerked back in some spasm rather than the impact of a head-on shot from the bridge, or from the grassy knoll 20 yards to the right of the car. And, however much of a nutter Oswald was - I am assuming that he was indeed the gunman in the book depositary - he never seemed to have sufficient motivation to organise what was little more than a prank so successful that it assumed historic proportions. He certainly doesn't act innocent in the newsreel film taken of him in the police station - and what on earth were Dallas police doing letting journalists and any other member of the public mill about within yards of Oswald, yelling questions at him and eventually killing him? All police stations have a front desk for public inquiries, but prisoners must surely be held in secure areas out of reach of the public. Unbelievable.
But whether Oswald was a knowing part of a conspiracy is much harder to judge from what we can see of him. If he was involved with others, how could they trust him to keep quiet - which of course is the reason often offered for Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubenstein) killing him. But then why didn't anyone kill Ruby? He did not die until January 1967, more than three years after he shot Oswald. Or maybe someone poisoned his prison breakfast.
As the above shows, while there are so many unanswered questions JFK's assassination will exert a fascination that has never applied to Bobby Kennedy's killing, although there have been attempts to link the brothers' deaths with that of Martin Luther King a few months before Bobby died. So maybe PBS was right after all to commission its documentary, and maybe we can expect the episode to be revived every few years. The 50th anniversary is just under six years away.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Bill Kay follows Bart Simpson to Griffith Observatory
It’s the one place that every LA native is familiar with, because they’ve all been taken there, Bart Simpson-like, on a school trip, tumbling out of the yellow bus and going ‘Wow!!’ as soon as they walk through the door: Griffith Observatory.
I’ve been up there before, but never got beyond the car park because it was the wrong time, wrong day or maybe wrong year. The place was closed for a long time while they spent $93m updating and expanding it – a six-year-old nerd was the first to point out that that was exactly a dollar for every mile from earth to the moon.
But when the Center for Inquiry, based at the Steve Allen Theater at the shabby end of Hollywood Boulevard, was organizing a trip to the Observatory, I jumped at the chance. The Theater is directly down the hill from the Observatory, only a ten-minute drive away. But it was so much easier to park by the Theater and pile into a coach, tickets already bought.
The most surprising point about the Observatory is how small it was before the upgrade: a Foucault’s Pendulum in the entrance hall, either side of which are halls devoted to telescopes and the moon respectively – and at the back the planetarium housed in the dome which is the Observatory’s signature. Even with the half-hour planetarium show, you’d do it comfortably in an hour – a bit more if the camera obscura is working. It’s a very poor relation of London’s Science Museum, redeemed only by the spectacular location overlooking LA, rightly used for umpteen films: James Dean even gets a bronze bust to mark the filming there of Rebel Without A Cause.
Happily, the upgrade has doubled the Observatory’s size, by excavating under the lawn leading to the entrance. In there is another theater, the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater (I ask you, what a name), currently showing a film on the history of the Observatory. But the big showpiece is a Big Picture of a slice of the universe, plus a close look at all the planets in our solar system. And a canteen. And a gift shop.
The new planetarium is worth the visit in itself. The seats are all recliners, much further than a flight economy seat goes back, and the latest version of the show is an excellent recounting of the history of astronomy, spoiled by a presenter who seems to think she is auditioning for the movies and has a patronizing voice that might go down well with fifth-graders (10-year-olds) but grates on adult ears – not just mine, the people in the row in front were clearly just as irritated. Every syllable is stressed and lovingly lingered over, many with a coquettish laugh to drive home whatever point she is trying to make. It’s a pity, because otherwise it’s a very well thought-out programme.
So the place is well worth a visit, but don’t block off more than half a day. Oh, and the first planetarium show of the day is only one that under-fours can attend.
I’ve been up there before, but never got beyond the car park because it was the wrong time, wrong day or maybe wrong year. The place was closed for a long time while they spent $93m updating and expanding it – a six-year-old nerd was the first to point out that that was exactly a dollar for every mile from earth to the moon.
But when the Center for Inquiry, based at the Steve Allen Theater at the shabby end of Hollywood Boulevard, was organizing a trip to the Observatory, I jumped at the chance. The Theater is directly down the hill from the Observatory, only a ten-minute drive away. But it was so much easier to park by the Theater and pile into a coach, tickets already bought.
The most surprising point about the Observatory is how small it was before the upgrade: a Foucault’s Pendulum in the entrance hall, either side of which are halls devoted to telescopes and the moon respectively – and at the back the planetarium housed in the dome which is the Observatory’s signature. Even with the half-hour planetarium show, you’d do it comfortably in an hour – a bit more if the camera obscura is working. It’s a very poor relation of London’s Science Museum, redeemed only by the spectacular location overlooking LA, rightly used for umpteen films: James Dean even gets a bronze bust to mark the filming there of Rebel Without A Cause.
Happily, the upgrade has doubled the Observatory’s size, by excavating under the lawn leading to the entrance. In there is another theater, the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater (I ask you, what a name), currently showing a film on the history of the Observatory. But the big showpiece is a Big Picture of a slice of the universe, plus a close look at all the planets in our solar system. And a canteen. And a gift shop.
The new planetarium is worth the visit in itself. The seats are all recliners, much further than a flight economy seat goes back, and the latest version of the show is an excellent recounting of the history of astronomy, spoiled by a presenter who seems to think she is auditioning for the movies and has a patronizing voice that might go down well with fifth-graders (10-year-olds) but grates on adult ears – not just mine, the people in the row in front were clearly just as irritated. Every syllable is stressed and lovingly lingered over, many with a coquettish laugh to drive home whatever point she is trying to make. It’s a pity, because otherwise it’s a very well thought-out programme.
So the place is well worth a visit, but don’t block off more than half a day. Oh, and the first planetarium show of the day is only one that under-fours can attend.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Bill Kay finds rain - in Pasadena and in Hampstead
Rain. With one exception, I’ve never seen anything like the rain that hit the Los Angeles area last night. It started slowly then came down in huge, torrential floods. I was at a meeting in – yes, it seems appropriate in a punny sort of way – Lake Avenue, north Pasadena, near enough to the mountain to be at a fairly steep incline. I drove up there OK, windscreen wipers at midspeed, hard to make out road markings but they were visible enough to get along, especially as traffic was light. Then I found a parking space on the street, pointing down the hill. So far, so good. It was then I noticed the wheels of the car in front, I could hardly see them. The torrent of water was hitting the wheels with sufficient force and volume to create a mini-tsunami, high enough to hide them.
By the time I came out to the car again, two hours later, the torrent was three or four feet wide. I had to get across to reach my car door, and I thought I might be able to jump it, failed, and my foot was soaked up to the ankle and beyond.
It was only after we got home that the rain started in earnest, but by then I could watch it from the safety of French windows as it bounced off the patio floor and furniture. It has stopped now, the following morning, but more is predicted. And even then the local water wallahs still say it’s just a drop in the ocean compared with what’s needed to compensate for the recent drought years. That sounds horribly familiar to anyone who lived through similar conditions in Britain.
Talking of which, the only rain I experienced that was worse than last night’s was in north London in 1975. The International Journal of Meterology website records:
“In the early evening of 14 August 1975 for a period of 2 to 3 hours, a small area of north London was subjected to the most intense rainstorm ever known in the city. On Hampstead Heath a total of 170.8mm was recorded, most of it in two and a half hours, and within the vicinity a flood disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Cars floated along streets which resembled canals; torrents of water bore down walls, poured into basements, filled subways, burst sewers and brought the underground railway to a standstill; and so many houses were damaged and dozens of families were evacuated and had to be rehoused the next day.”
I was going to visit a friend in the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, and unusually caught a bus from Farringdon Street, near Ludgate Circus, where I was working on the Evening Standard. It started off normally, then the rain began – and got heavier. And heavier. And heavier.
By the time the bus reached Kentish Town, you couldn’t see the street: it was awash. The bus had to stop awhile, but eventually the driver carried on and I got to the hospital.
The plan was to go out for a meal – the friend, Sue Thomas, was in hospital because her baby was due, but she could still get out. That, though, had to be abandoned because of the weather and I somehow got a minicab home.
California has some way to go to match that evening.
By the time I came out to the car again, two hours later, the torrent was three or four feet wide. I had to get across to reach my car door, and I thought I might be able to jump it, failed, and my foot was soaked up to the ankle and beyond.
It was only after we got home that the rain started in earnest, but by then I could watch it from the safety of French windows as it bounced off the patio floor and furniture. It has stopped now, the following morning, but more is predicted. And even then the local water wallahs still say it’s just a drop in the ocean compared with what’s needed to compensate for the recent drought years. That sounds horribly familiar to anyone who lived through similar conditions in Britain.
Talking of which, the only rain I experienced that was worse than last night’s was in north London in 1975. The International Journal of Meterology website records:
“In the early evening of 14 August 1975 for a period of 2 to 3 hours, a small area of north London was subjected to the most intense rainstorm ever known in the city. On Hampstead Heath a total of 170.8mm was recorded, most of it in two and a half hours, and within the vicinity a flood disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Cars floated along streets which resembled canals; torrents of water bore down walls, poured into basements, filled subways, burst sewers and brought the underground railway to a standstill; and so many houses were damaged and dozens of families were evacuated and had to be rehoused the next day.”
I was going to visit a friend in the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, and unusually caught a bus from Farringdon Street, near Ludgate Circus, where I was working on the Evening Standard. It started off normally, then the rain began – and got heavier. And heavier. And heavier.
By the time the bus reached Kentish Town, you couldn’t see the street: it was awash. The bus had to stop awhile, but eventually the driver carried on and I got to the hospital.
The plan was to go out for a meal – the friend, Sue Thomas, was in hospital because her baby was due, but she could still get out. That, though, had to be abandoned because of the weather and I somehow got a minicab home.
California has some way to go to match that evening.
Small World creator Carlson dies - at last, says Bill Kay
The stupid fucking cow who invented Disney’s It’s A Small World ride is dead. Thank God for that, and good riddance. Cancer got her in the end, but a knife between the shoulder blades about, ooh, 50 years ago would have been much better.
I always imagined that IASW had been invented by some Disney ‘imagineering’ committee – ‘imagineering’, isn’t that enough on its own to make your flesh creep, as if a million slugs, cockroaches and worms were sliding all over your skin at the same time?
But, no, it wasn’t like that. Someone – it turns out to be Joyce Carlson from Santa Monica High School, came up with the idea and persuaded the organizers of the 1964 New York World’s Fair to take it, and Disney took it from there.
As the photo with her LA Times obit shows, she looks like one of her IASW dolls, which look like characterless cousins of Cabbage Patch dolls, which says a lot.
Carlson’s family moved from Wisconsin in 1938 and in 1944 she started off in the mail room of the Disney Burbank offices. She submitted a sample of pen-and-ink sketches, which were enough to get her a job in the ink and paint department. I dread to think what those early sketches looked like, but they must have been sugary enough for Walt Disney to see a ghastly potential.
Carlson became “lead ink artist” for Lady and the Tramp, moving to the newly created Imagineering department in 1960. Surely, couldn’t someone have stabbed her with a pen by then, or at least poisoned her coffee?
She was the first woman to work 50 years at Disney and was clearly a rare example of a female paedophile. The obit notes: “She enjoyed sneaking backstage at Walt Disney World and watching children as they road the boats through IASW. [my initials] ‘You watch them going through and they’re just all eyes’, she told the Orlando Sentinel.” Aaaah.
When Carlson retired in 2000, aged 77, she was officially designated a Disney Legend. One of the windows in the Florida theme park’s Main Street reads: “Dolls by Miss Joyce, dollmaker for the world.” A brick, anyone?
The saccharine still makes me want to puke, all of 27 years since I was first exposed to IASW. The sheer small-town folksiness of it still brings back memories of how smug and small-minded Americans can be, not only in creating this rubbish but also in appreciating it and encouraging their children to appreciate it and pass it on to their children, and so on.
Happily, she must have been hell to work for. Patrick Brennan, Disney’s director of show design, (wouldn’t you just guess they’d dream up such a pompous job title?) said: “Joyce influenced a whole group of us about the importance of detail.” So she was a control freak as well as a pervert and corrupter of young minds.
Like the Jack Nicholson character in Get Schultz, after she retired Carlson kept poking her nose in at Disney under the cover of mentoring. Sounds like an excuse to keep perving the kids at Disney World.
I always imagined that IASW had been invented by some Disney ‘imagineering’ committee – ‘imagineering’, isn’t that enough on its own to make your flesh creep, as if a million slugs, cockroaches and worms were sliding all over your skin at the same time?
But, no, it wasn’t like that. Someone – it turns out to be Joyce Carlson from Santa Monica High School, came up with the idea and persuaded the organizers of the 1964 New York World’s Fair to take it, and Disney took it from there.
As the photo with her LA Times obit shows, she looks like one of her IASW dolls, which look like characterless cousins of Cabbage Patch dolls, which says a lot.
Carlson’s family moved from Wisconsin in 1938 and in 1944 she started off in the mail room of the Disney Burbank offices. She submitted a sample of pen-and-ink sketches, which were enough to get her a job in the ink and paint department. I dread to think what those early sketches looked like, but they must have been sugary enough for Walt Disney to see a ghastly potential.
Carlson became “lead ink artist” for Lady and the Tramp, moving to the newly created Imagineering department in 1960. Surely, couldn’t someone have stabbed her with a pen by then, or at least poisoned her coffee?
She was the first woman to work 50 years at Disney and was clearly a rare example of a female paedophile. The obit notes: “She enjoyed sneaking backstage at Walt Disney World and watching children as they road the boats through IASW. [my initials] ‘You watch them going through and they’re just all eyes’, she told the Orlando Sentinel.” Aaaah.
When Carlson retired in 2000, aged 77, she was officially designated a Disney Legend. One of the windows in the Florida theme park’s Main Street reads: “Dolls by Miss Joyce, dollmaker for the world.” A brick, anyone?
The saccharine still makes me want to puke, all of 27 years since I was first exposed to IASW. The sheer small-town folksiness of it still brings back memories of how smug and small-minded Americans can be, not only in creating this rubbish but also in appreciating it and encouraging their children to appreciate it and pass it on to their children, and so on.
Happily, she must have been hell to work for. Patrick Brennan, Disney’s director of show design, (wouldn’t you just guess they’d dream up such a pompous job title?) said: “Joyce influenced a whole group of us about the importance of detail.” So she was a control freak as well as a pervert and corrupter of young minds.
Like the Jack Nicholson character in Get Schultz, after she retired Carlson kept poking her nose in at Disney under the cover of mentoring. Sounds like an excuse to keep perving the kids at Disney World.
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