It was not so much a red shirt as it was a cherry red shirt that I was wearing when Barbara Walters walked in for our interview. Looking back all these years later, I cringe at the thought of that…
Blog Archives
WHAT ROSALIE LIKED, EVERYONE LIKED
When I phoned Rosalie Trombley, at the time one of the most powerful figures in the music business, I did not expect her to agree to talk to me. Writing for the Windsor Star, I had been something of a…
Tagged with: "Bennie and the Jets", "What's Going On", Anne Murray, Bill Drake, Bob Seger, CKLW radio, Detroit, Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, Marvin Gaye, Rosalie Trombley, the Big 8, The Guess Who, Weekend Magazine, Windsor
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CAN YA DIG IT: SHAFT REMEMBERED
Fifty years ago, I was driving along the John Lodge Freeway in Detroit, Issac Hayes’ theme from the movie Shaft blaring away on the radio. That theme played constantly back then, its beat perfectly synchronized to the traffic on the…
I Tripped Lauren Bacall
This is how I came to trip a Hollywood legend. First of all, let’s set the scene: It is opening night at Detroit’s grand old Fisher Theatre. A new musical based on the classic 1950 Bette Davis movie, All About…
Tagged with: Adolph Green, All About Eve, Applause, Bette Davis, Betty Comden, Broadway, Charles Strouse, Detroit, Fisher Theatre, Humphrey Bogart, Key Largo, Lauren Bacall, Lee Adams, Len Cariou, Margo Channing, Ray Bennett, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Toronto Telegram
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Misfits and Inglorious Bastards
I went back to my past a few weeks ago–and discovered they were tearing It down. The past had been safely housed for over forty years inside the old gray stone monolith that was the Windsor Star on the corner of…
Tagged with: Detroit, Ella Fitzgerald, George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Hoffa, Lauren Bacall, Neil Armstrong, Ontario, Ray Charles, Teddy Kennedy, The Front Page, Windsor, Windsor Star
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That Afternoon With Henry Fonda
In a fit of nostalgia yesterday I pulled John Ford’s 1946 western, My Darling Clementine, off my DVD shelf and watched it on our new fifty-five-inch Sony television screen. Magical: it brings old movies to life again with a sharpness and clarity that…
Tagged with: 12 Angry Men, Abraham Lincoln, Ambassador East Hotel, Chicago, Clarence Darrow, Detroit, Fisher Theatre, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, John Ford, King Vidor, Mr. Roberts, My Darling Clementine, Once Upon A Time in the West, Shirlee Fonda, The Battle of the Bulge, The Grapes of Wrath, The Trial of A. Lincoln, War and Peace, Wyatt Earp
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The Last Time I Saw Jimmy Hoffa…
The last time I saw Jimmy Hoffa he was okay. It was late in the morning, and I left him standing with William F. Buckley Jr. on the floor of a Detroit television studio. What happened after that, I can’t say. We…
Tagged with: 1972, Detroit, Firing Line, Frank Mankiewicz, George McGovern, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa, Public Television, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, unions, William F. Buckley Jr., WTVS
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The Chicago Story
I met her in Detroit a long time ago at a party for author Harold Robbins. Michelle—although she called herself Mickie then—was one of the models hired for the occasion to promote Robbins as the real life incarnation of the irresistible stud he…
Ron Base Writes 