Today is the birthday of the actor Lew Ayres.

Ayres was born in Minneapolis in 1908 and had a remarkable career in Hollywood, not necessarily for the work he did but for how he conducted himself and for the impression he left. Ayres breakthrough role was in the film “All Quiet on the Western Front”, which includes a scene where he is caught alone with an adversary he has killed. You can see it on You Tube but to get to the clip you have to watch an ad first. That’s a drag, but it’s not as painful as actual trench warfare.

By today’s standards I call it a toss-up as to which one of the two actors in the scene appears to be more wooden, but the anti-war message of the film had an effect on Ayres – so much so that when World War II came along he became America’s best-known concientious objector. He was told that refusing to take up arms would end his film career, but Ayres was adamant that he would not kill another human being.

“I thought, well, this may mean the end of a career. As far as I was concerned that was all right. I was ready. I said I don’t mind working with the army because you do have a tremdous problem with the Hitler situation. I can’t deny these things, but I said as far as I’m concerned I couldn’t kill, and I couldn’t go into the army even on your side unless I did what I considered to be constructive work.”

There was a backlash and some theaters refused to show his films, but Ayres stuck to his position and managed to get into the Medical Corps as a non-combatant. He served with distinction, patching people up in the Pacific and New Guinea and after the war ended he was able to resume his career, though his star power had dimmed. Still, Ayres must have had some personal magnetism. Jane Wyman, his co-star in the film “Johnny Belinda”, left her husband, apparently with the thought that she and Ayres could make a life together. That didn’t happen, but by that point Wyman’s marriage to Ronald Reagan was beyond repair. One wonders how she felt, years later, about taking that gamble.

Lew Ayres’ other remarkable and principled stand was to turn down a chance to star on TV in a role he had created for film – Dr. Kildare. Ayres wanted NBC to agree that there would be no cigarette advertising connected with the series. In 1961, that was incredibly foresighted call for an actor, and one that was totally impossible for the network to accept. The role went to Richard Chamberlain instead. People may have been puzzled at the time, but today we understand.

I, for one, tip my hat. Happy birthday, Mr. Ayres.

Who do you admire in the motion picture world?

What a relief to wake up and realize that it is Christmas morning and the spirits did it all in one night! We didn’t miss it! Cut to the happy ending!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWdJ1EXf5zo

Have you ever had the pleasure of delivering a good surprise?

There was a great boon delivered to the blogging world this week. We in the unpaid, time-rich, opinionator class love politics, sports, and lambasting parents for their child rearing choices. With a happy crash, all these areas of interest met in one New York Times article about sports development programs for toddlers.

Apparently pre-school is not too early to get the kiddies ready to shine on fields of glory.

Parents are supposed to want to give their children a good start towards some great future achievement. It’s the specific expectation of creating a young Einstein or second coming of Joe Montana that is so laughable. Remember “Baby Mozart”?

I admit I did brain building exercises with my young’un, although mostly that involved talking and reading to him at an early age – well before he was able to answer. Speaking into the silence was also my business at the time, so it came naturally to me. We did some toddler swimming. Had there been a brawn building program, I might have gone for that too.

I suspect a day will come when this latest kind of over-the-top attention is not a big deal – maybe after the IFL (Infant Hockey League) gets a few seasons under the strap of it’s bright blue Scooby-Doo suspenders.

Other leagues will doubtless follow, along with live game day coverage on PSSN (Pre School Sports Network) and baby baseball fantasy pools. And when they are old, today’s children will remember how the preschool sports movement was immortalized on film.

Like legendary Footsie Ball coach Hoot Rocker’s famous speech to the Nottering Dome Day Care pre-walker team at halftime of their 2011 struggle against heavily favored Happy Camper Academy. Rocker was trying to salvage some dignity after an atrocious first half performance by his squad, which took up residence on the 50 foot line and hardly moved in either direction for 30 minutes.

The scene opens inside the Nottering Dome changing and nursing care area. The players are seated on their mats, character blankets draped over their sholders, their oversized heads wobbling on pencil thin necks or resting on their well padded shoulders.

The door pushes open and Rocker is wheeled in by two underpaid attendants. He weighs 400 pounds and can’t stand upright for more than ten minutes at a time. They players look at Rocker, for they are drawn to faces. Some offer him their nook, for he looks like he needs some kind of comfort. Rocker’s dark-circled eyes range over the toddlers for a full moment of unbroken silence. Then, quietly, as if the contest didn’t matter to him, he speaks.

ROCKER: Well, boys and girls, I haven’t a thing to say, and I know most of you can’t talk yet, so … there’s not much point in giving you a rousing speech. We had a tough go of it out there. They came ready for playtime. You came ready for naptime … each and every one of you.

(He tries to smile.)

I guess we just can’t expect to win ‘em all.

(Rocker pauses and says this quietly).

I’m going to tell you something I’ve kept to myself for years — None of you ever knew Bobby Bink. It was long before your time. But you know what a tradition he is here at Nottering Dome Day Care. Bobby Bink could build with blocks. Oh, he built. He made a tower that was twice as tall as me, and that was back when I could stand up and he couldn’t. And it was a tower just like that … a tower where he had somehow managed to perch Mrs. Plotsky’s coffee cup on the very top block … that fell over on him one day. The cup came crashing down and left a bruise above Bobby Bink’s left eyebrow. And it was that bruise that made his mommy and daddy take him out of Nottering Dome. It broke our hearts but they took him and enrolled him at West Point, thinking it would give him a shot at being chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Bink never got that job. He eventually became a Congressman. A Congressman, boys and girls – a small cog in the big machine, doomed to beg endlessly for money and praise. That’s not the kind of leader we launch here at Nottering Dome. I still remember the day they carried him out in his backwards facing car seat. I can still see his eyes. Bink didn’t want to go, I assure you.

(There is gentle, faraway look in his eyes as he recalls the boy’s words).

And the last thing he said to me — “Rock,” he said – “sometime, when the team is up to it’s diapers in yuck and the elastic is just not holding things in – tell them something for me, will ya? Tell ‘em to go out there with all they got and win one … just one … for the Binkie.

(Knute’s eyes become misty and his voice is unsteady as he finishes).

I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock”, he said – “but I’m sure I’ll hear about it. And I’ll gum an Animal Cracker for you and the team.”

There is a hushed stillness as Rocker and the crowd of toddlers look at each other. Some of the youth chew their blankets. An eye is poked. There’s some soft crying, then a hush. In the midst of this tense silence, Rocker quietly says “Alright,” to the men beside him, and his chair is wheeled slowly out of the room.

Toddler #12: Aga toota goop? Phththththththth.

With a single yowl, the players throw off their blankets and rush, on hands and chubby knees, through the doorway, for a play date with destiny.

I hope I live long enough to see that film.

Have you ever delivered or received a pep talk?

Perhaps you caught the Zenyatta story over the weekend, but if not here’s a way to catch up quickly.

Zenyatta is a racehorse with a sparkling personality. She dances. She drinks Guinness. And she established a distinct pattern of running over the course of her 20 big races. She tends to fall behind the competition early, sometimes all the way to last place, and then finishes with a breathtaking charge through the pack to win at the last moment.

This is a sure crowd pleaser in any sport because people like drama and excitement and surprise. It doesn’t matter if the come-from-behind victor is a hapless baseball team, a Kenyan marathoner or a football squad led by a geriatric quarterback. An unexpected late rally gets the blood flowing, and its dramatic punch is actively promoted by storytellers of all kinds, including those in Hollywood and at ESPN. A video, which has been configured so it can only be viewed by following this link, was produced to promote last Saturday’s Breeder’s Cup. It essentially places the Zenyatta story alongside the great horse racing legends like Secretariat and Seabiscuit, and asserts that she will emerge from the race in her typical fashion as an undefeated, screen-ready phenomenon.
Nice story.

Here’s what actually happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SHHs8EwLFE

So Zenyatta falls by a nose to a horse named Blame. Her first loss. That good old last minute magic wasn’t enough. But don’t blame Blame. Some have said it’s the jockey’s fault, and he was reported to be quite upset at the end of the race. The Hollywood ending didn’t work. Or did it?

What is the charm of an ending that is the same every single time? Once you’ve gone through the adrenaline rush of watching this athlete pull victory from certain defeat 19 straight times, how can the exact same scenario be interesting enough for the climactic race? Hmmm. Not too compelling. Finishing second is more complex, and more human. And that’s the attraction, right? Horses R’ Us!

But how does Hollywood finish the story? Does Zenyatta sense the crushing disappointment of the jockey, the owners and ESPN? Does she spiral downward into a pit of despair, drinking deeply of her quirky sideline interests, dancing like a floozy into the wee hours at that disreputable stable that never closes? Guzzling tubs of Guinness and gassing on and on to anyone who will listen about how she was once a golden girl, a media darling, and how she threw it all way by waiting a half-second too long, and now she will never be able to put Blame behind her?

The elements are in place for a very different kind of horse racing movie, all about habit, hubris and hesitation. The moral? One should not pin one’s happiness and sense of worth on the unlikely success of a last minute rush.

Are you a procrastinator?

Since this is a baboon themed blog, it is always appropriate to pass along word of a found baboon. I located this one in Minneapolis, at the X,Y and Z art gallery at 3258 Minnehaha Avenue.

I THINK it’s a baboon. Or is it a rabbit? A Raboon? A Babbit? This is from an exhibit called “When Trust Is The New Money” by an art collaborative called Broken Crow. John Grider and Mike Fitzsimmons say on their website that they are trying, through large scale stencil murals, to reintroduce wild animals into the urban habitat.

Welcome back to the city, baboons! It seems like you never left. The walls at X,Y and Z are covered with this outdoor work brought inside. It also includes, among other things, a man with a chain saw, flying saucers and a bear in a dumpster.

The gallery, by the way, serves as the entrance to the Trylon Microcinema, a 50 seat theater with real 35 millimeter projectors and genuine bouncy-backed movie theater seats, showing a wide assortment of films that are brainy, exotic, classic and just plain fun. This month they’re screening Charlie Chaplin films. This weekend’s offering includes “The Circus” from 1928, which was, you may recall, the film at whose Hollywood premiere the newsreel camera caught that time traveler talking on her cellphone!

Whew! So many connections.

Name or describe a favorite piece of outdoor public art.

Everyone is relieved that the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped by an underground cave-in have been found alive. At the same time it is frightening to think of the ordeal ahead of them. It is estimated that it may take until Christmas to drill a tunnel large enough to lift them, one at a time, out of their rock walled prison 2300 feet underground.

It is very, very difficult to imagine what this must be like, starting with the depth of the underground chamber. How far 2300 feet? It’s the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building stacked one on top of the other.

The space they occupy – how small? It’s 530 square feet, described as the size of a studio apartment. Oddly, you can buy a party tent that is roughly that size on Amazon for $530 dollars.

The notes suggest you use this canopy for a wedding reception or as a carport. There’s no mention of what it would be like as a dark, hot waiting room for 33 human beings for four months straight. I doubt that most wedding guests would stand for it, even with the mimosas and free hors d’œuvres.

God help these miners and their families. I pray they all survive and are mentally healthy when they emerge, and that their resilience is an inspiration to the world.

It would also be nice if they could receive royalties for the various ways their story will be told. People trapped underground at their jobs for 16 weeks shouldn’t have to go back to work, ever. No doubt there is already talk of a reality show to mimic this catastrophe, though I suspect even the publicity hounds who populate our network airwaves would never agree to submit to this level of extreme mental torture.

A playwright somewhere could already be at work on a first draft of the stage version, though there are clear obstacles. Most theaters can’t afford to put on a 33 character show and it would be difficult for 11 actors to do triple roles. Even if they could, blocking would be a nightmare, and how long would it take to get through the happy ending scene with each man getting hoisted, one after the other, into the fly space above the stage? And didn’t they already do that with Grizabella in Cats? The critics would yawn and call it derivative, no doubt.

A major motion picture is more likely. Surely there are 33 “A list” actors in Hollywood who would love to be drenched in fake sweat while painting a picture of emotional despair and the ultimate triumph of human will over adversity. That’s Oscar grade material. The studio executives would work their usual mischief, tweaking the story to make it palatable for a U.S. audience. For instance, it would be necessary to have some of the miners be starlets whose coveralls were shredded almost to bits by the violent air blast that washed over them after the underground rock slide. And one of these female miners might have to be pregnant. With a due date that coincides with the estimated Moment Of Rescue. But you know how that’s going to turn out. Rescuers won’t be able to lift her to the surface while she’s in labor, so the more cowardly characters (Jude Law, Tilda Swinton, William H. Macy) opt to leave her underground even though some terrible danger (floodwaters, earthquake, cave bears) approaches. The noblest miners (Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep) elect to stay behind and face the worst of it in order to stand guard over mom (Anjelina Jolie) and her baby, Pepito (a Jolie-Pitt child yet to be named).

Let’s hope for a story that’s genuinely happy enough to be mishandled this way.

Name your favorite disaster movie.