Subways Are for Sleeping / Only Johnny Knows / Colloquy 2: A Dissertation on Love
Subways Are for Sleeping is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The original Broadway production played in 1961-62.
The musical was inspired by an article about subway homelessness in the March 1956 issue of Harper's and a subsequent 1957 book based on it, both by Edmund G. Love, who slept on subway trains throughout the 1950s and encountered many unique individuals. With the profits from his book, Love then embarked on a bizarre hobby: over the course of several years, he ate dinner at every restaurant listed in the Manhattan yellow pages directory, visiting them in alphabetical order.
After two previews, the Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd, opened on December 27, 1961 at the St. James Theatre, where it ran for 205 performances. The cast included Orson Bean, Sydney Chaplin, Carol Lawrence, Gordon Connell, Grayson Hall, and Green's wife Phyllis Newman (whose costume, consisting solely of a towel, was probably Freddy Wittop's easiest design in his distinguished career), with newcomers Michael Bennett and Valerie Harper in the chorus.
Subways Are for Sleeping opened to mostly negative reviews. The show already was hampered by a lack of publicity, since the New York City Transit Authority refused to post advertisements on the city's buses and in subway trains and stations for fear they would be perceived as officially sanctioning the right of vagrants to use these facilities as overnight accommodations. Producer David Merrick and press agent Harvey Sabinson decided to invite individuals with the same names as prominent theatre critics (such as Walter Kerr, Richard Watts, Jr. and Howard Taubman) to see the show and afterwards used their favorable comments in print ads. Thanks to photographs of the seven critics accompanying their blurbs (the well-known real Richard Watts was not African American), the ad was discovered to be a deception by a copy editor. It was pulled from most newspapers, but not before running in an early edition of the New York Herald Tribune. However, the clever publicity stunt allowed the musical to continue to run and it eventually turned a small profit.
Newman won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, and nominations went to Bean for Best Featured Actor and Kidd's choreography.
Words at War: Who Dare To Live / Here Is Your War / To All Hands
USS Ancon (AGC-4) was an ocean liner acquired by the United States Navy during World War II and converted to a combined headquarters and communications command ship.
Ancon anchored off Fedhala, French Morocco on November 8 and began lowering her boats at 0533. The first troops were debarked an hour later. During the course of the assault, men on the ship witnessed the sinking of four other transports, and Ancon sent out boats to rescue their survivors. On November 12 the transport headed out and, three days later, put into Casablanca harbor. She got underway on the 15th with a convoy bound for Norfolk.
After a brief pause there, Ancon traveled to Brooklyn, New York for voyage repairs. A brief period of sea trials preceded the ship's loading cargo and troops for transportation to Algeria. She sailed on January 14, 1943 as a member of the Naval Transport Service. The ship reached Oran on the 26th and spent five days discharging her cargo before heading back toward New York City, where she arrived on February 13. On that day, the vessel was reassigned to the Atlantic Fleet Amphibious Forces. On the 16th, Ancon entered the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, to undergo conversion to a combined headquarters and communications command ship. She was redesignated AGC-4 on February 26.
Following the completion of the yard work on April 21, Ancon held trials and exercises in the Chesapeake Bay through May and into early June when she was designated the flagship of the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet Amphibious Forces. The ship got underway for Oran on June 8 with Task Force (TF) 85. The ship had been selected to participate in the invasion of Sicily, and her preparations continued after her arrival at Oran on June 22.
Carrying Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, Commander, TF 85, and Lieutenant General Omar Bradley on board, Ancon sailed on July 5 for the waters off Sicily. She reached the transport area off Scoglitti on the 10th and lowered her boats early that morning. Despite enemy fire, the ship remained off Scoglitti providing communications services through the 12th and then got underway to return to North Africa. At the end of a fortnight there, she shifted to Mostaganem, Algeria, on July 29. In mid-August, the vessel moved to Algiers. During her periods in port, she prepared for the upcoming invasion of mainland Italy for which she had been designated flagship for the Commander of the 8th Fleet Amphibious Forces in Northwest African Waters.
On September 6, Ancon got underway for Salerno. During the operation, the ship carried Lieutenant General Mark Wayne Clark who commanded the 5th Army. At 0330 on September 9, the first wave of Allied troops hit the beach. Thereafter, she remained in the transport area, undergoing nearly continuous enemy air harassment, until she moved to Palermo, Sicily, to pick up ammunition to replenish her sister ships. She returned to the area off Salerno on the 15th but, the next day, arrived back in Palermo.
After two weeks in that Sicilian port, Ancon shaped a course for Algiers. She reached that port on October 2 and spent almost six weeks undergoing repairs and replenishment. In mid-November, she set sail for the United Kingdom and, on November 25, arrived in Devonport, England, where she was designated the flagship of the 11th Amphibious Force. An extended period of repairs and preparations for the impending invasion of France kept Ancon occupied through the winter and much of the spring participating in numerous training exercises with other Allied warships. On May 25, King George VI of the United Kingdom and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery visited the ship.
The preparations culminated on June 5, when Ancon got underway for Baie de la Seine, France. She served as flagship for the assault forces that landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy. Throughout the invasion, the ship provided instructions for forces both afloat and ashore. She transferred various units of the Army command to headquarters ashore and made her small boats available to other ships to carry personnel and materials to the beachhead. On June 27, she got underway to return to England and, the next day, arrived at Portland.
Ancon remained in British waters through late September, when she sailed in a convoy bound for the East Coast of the United States. She reached Charleston, South Carolina on October 9 and was then assigned to the Amphibious Training Command. At the completion of repairs at the Charleston Navy Yard on December 21, the ship got underway for sea trials. Five days later, she shaped a course for the Pacific. On the last day of 1944, the ship transited the Panama Canal and joined the Pacific Fleet. She continued on to San Diego, California, where she arrived on January 9, 1945.
The Great Gildersleeve: Leroy's Paper Route / Marjorie's Girlfriend Visits / Hiccups
The Great Gildersleeve (1941--1957), initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. Built around Throckmorton Philharmonic Gildersleeve, a character who had been a staple on the classic radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, first introduced on Oct. 3, 1939, ep. #216. The Great Gildersleeve enjoyed its greatest success in the 1940s. Actor Harold Peary played the character during its transition from the parent show into the spin-off and later in a quartet of feature films released at the height of the show's popularity.
On Fibber McGee and Molly, Peary's Gildersleeve was a pompous windbag who became a consistent McGee nemesis. You're a haa-aa-aa-aard man, McGee! became a Gildersleeve catchphrase. The character was given several conflicting first names on Fibber McGee and Molly, and on one episode his middle name was revealed as Philharmonic. Gildy admits as much at the end of Gildersleeve's Diary on the Fibber McGee and Molly series (Oct. 22, 1940).
Premiering on August 31, 1941, The Great Gildersleeve moved the title character from the McGees' Wistful Vista to Summerfield, where Gildersleeve now oversaw his late brother-in-law's estate and took on the rearing of his orphaned niece and nephew, Marjorie (originally played by Lurene Tuttle and followed by Louise Erickson and Mary Lee Robb) and Leroy Forester (Walter Tetley). The household also included a cook named Birdie. Curiously, while Gildersleeve had occasionally spoken of his (never-present) wife in some Fibber episodes, in his own series the character was a confirmed bachelor.
In a striking forerunner to such later television hits as Bachelor Father and Family Affair, both of which are centered on well-to-do uncles taking in their deceased siblings' children, Gildersleeve was a bachelor raising two children while, at first, administering a girdle manufacturing company (If you want a better corset, of course, it's a Gildersleeve) and then for the bulk of the show's run, serving as Summerfield's water commissioner, between time with the ladies and nights with the boys. The Great Gildersleeve may have been the first broadcast show to be centered on a single parent balancing child-rearing, work, and a social life, done with taste and genuine wit, often at the expense of Gildersleeve's now slightly understated pomposity.
Many of the original episodes were co-written by John Whedon, father of Tom Whedon (who wrote The Golden Girls), and grandfather of Deadwood scripter Zack Whedon and Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog).
The key to the show was Peary, whose booming voice and facility with moans, groans, laughs, shudders and inflection was as close to body language and facial suggestion as a voice could get. Peary was so effective, and Gildersleeve became so familiar a character, that he was referenced and satirized periodically in other comedies and in a few cartoons.
Words at War: Combined Operations / They Call It Pacific / The Last Days of Sevastopol
The Siege of Sevastopol took place on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The campaign was fought by the Axis powers of Germany, Romania and Italy against the Soviet Union for control of Sevastopol, a port in Crimea on the Black Sea. On 22 June 1941 the Axis invaded the Soviet Union under Operation Barbarossa. The Axis land forces reached Crimea in the autumn, 1941, and overran the area. The only objective not in Axis hands was Sevastopol. Several attempts were made to secure the city in October and November 1941. A major attack was planned for late November, but bad weather and heavy rains delayed the Axis attack until 17 December 1941. Under the command of Erich von Manstein, the Axis forces were unable to capture Sevastopol in the first stage of operations. The Soviets launched an amphibious landing on the Crimean peninsula at Kerch in December 1941, to relieve the siege and force the Axis to divert forces to defend their gains. The operation saved Sevastopol for the time being, but the landing was checked and repulsed in May 1942.
At Sevastopol the Axis opted to conduct a siege until the summer, 1942, at which point they attacked the encircled Soviet forces by land, sea and air. On 2 June 1942, the Axis began their operation, codenamed Störfang (Sturgeon Catch). The Soviet Red Army and Black Sea Fleet held out for weeks under intense Axis bombardment. The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) played a vital part in the siege. The Luftwaffe made up for a shortage of Axis artillery, providing highly effective aerial bombardment in support of the ground forces. Finally, on the 4 July 1942, the remaining Soviet forces surrendered and the Axis seized the port. Both sides had suffered considerable losses during the siege.
With the Soviet forces neutralised, the Axis refocused their attention on the major summer campaign of that year, Operation Blue and the advance to the Caucasus oil fields.
Words at War: Barriers Down / Camp Follower / The Guys on the Ground
Alfred Friendly (December 30, 1911 -- November 7, 1983) was an American journalist, editor and writer for the Washington Post. He began his career as a reporter with the Post in 1939 and became Managing Editor in 1955. In 1967 he covered the Mideast War for the Post in a series of articles for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1968. He is credited with bringing the Post from being a local paper to having a position of national prominence.
Friendly was born in Salt Lake City. After graduating in from Amherst College in 1933, he came to Washington, DC to look for work. A former professor who worked in the Commerce Department hired him, but his appointment to a high position at such a young age earned him criticism in the press and he resigned. For the next year he travelled the country in the middle of the Depression, eventually returning to become a reporter at the Washington Daily News, writing a column for government employees. Less than two years later he was hired to write the same kind of column for the Post, where he was soon assigned to cover war mobilization efforts and anti-war strikes.
When World War II broke out he entered the Army Air Force, rising to the rank of Major before leaving in 1945. While in the military he was involved in cryptography and intelligence operations, finally becoming the second in command at Bletchley Park, and the highest ranking American officer there. After the war he remained in Europe as press aide to W. Averell Harriman supervisor of the Marshall Plan.
A year later he returned to Washington and to the Post, where he became assistant managing editor in 1952 and managing editor in 1955. In 1966 he became an associate editor and a foreign correspondent based out of London. Hearing rumors of war in 1967 he headed to the Middle East where he was present throughout the 1967 War and wrote his series of award winning articles. He retired from the Post in 1971, though he continued writing occasional editorials and book reviews.
During his retirement he wrote several books, and after his death the Alfred Friendly Foundation was established. It administers the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships to bring foreign journalists to the United States for internships at prominent newspapers. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers.