Frank Beacham's Journal

Diner, 2020

Painting by Bob Dylan

Gordon Parks was born 110 years ago today

Photo by Frank Beacham

Gordon Parks was born 110 years ago today.

Parks was a photographer, musician, writer and film director. He is best remembered for his photographic essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film, Shaft.

Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was the son of Sarah and Jackson Parks. He was the last child born to them. His father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, collard greens and tomatoes. They also had a few ducks, chickens and hogs.

Parks attended a segregated elementary school. The town was too small to afford a separate high school that would facilitate segregation of the secondary school, but blacks were not allowed to play sports or attend school social activities. Blacks were also discouraged from developing any aspirations for higher education.

Parks related in a documentary on his life that his teacher told him that his desire to go to college would be a waste of money. When Parks was eleven years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, knowing he couldn't swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land.

His mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin, seeking not only solace, but a way to face his own fear of death. At this time, he left home, being sent to live with other relatives. That situation ended with Parks being turned out onto the street to fend for himself.

In 1929, Parks briefly worked in a gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club. There he not only observed the trappings of success, but was able to read many books from the club library. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago, where he managed to land a job in a flophouse.

At the age of twenty-five, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $12.50 at a pawnshop in Seattle, Washington.

The photography clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was owned by Frank Murphy.

Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, the elegant wife of heavyweight boxing champion, Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago in 1940, where he began a portrait business and specialized in photographs of society women.

Over the next few years, Parks moved from job to job, developing a freelance portrait and fashion photographer sideline. He began to chronicle the city's South Side black ghetto and, in 1941, an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration (FSA).

Working as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C. named after the iconic Grant Wood painting, American Gothic.

The photograph shows a black woman, Ella Watson, who worked on the cleaning crew of the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag hanging on the wall, a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks had been inspired to create the image after encountering racism repeatedly in restaurants and shops in the segregated capitol city.

A later photograph in the FSA series by Parks shows Ella Watson and her family.

Upon viewing the photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and that it could get all of his photographers fired. He urged Parks to keep working with Watson, however, which led to a series of photographs of her daily life.

Parks said later that his first image was overdone and not subtle. Other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and so has affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson. After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent with the Office of War Information. Disgusted with the prejudice he encountered, he resigned in 1944.

Moving to Harlem, Parks became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue. He later followed Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers.

The most striking work by Parks during that period included, Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Despite racist attitudes of the day, the Vogue editor, Alexander Liberman, hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns.

Parks photographed fashion for Vogue for the next few years and he developed the distinctive style of photographing his models in motion rather than poised. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with Life magazine. For twenty years, Parks produced photographs on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty and racial segregation, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali and Barbra Streisand.

He became one of the most provocative and celebrated photojournalists in the United States. In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions. He later directed a series of documentaries on black ghetto life that were commissioned by National Educational Television.

With his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree in 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director. It was filmed in his home town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Parks also wrote the screenplay and composed the musical score for the film.

Shaft, a 1971 detective film by Parks starring Richard Roundtree, became a major hit that spawned a series of films that would be labeled as, blaxploitation. Parks' feel for settings was confirmed by Shaft, with its portrayal of the super-cool leather-clad, black private detective hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem racketeer.

Parks also directed the 1972 sequel, Shaft's Big Score, in which the protagonist finds himself caught in the middle of rival gangs of racketeers. Parks's other directorial credits include The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a biopic of the blues musician, Huddie Ledbetter.

In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and a libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C. during 1989. It was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.

In 2000, as an homage, he had a cameo appearance in the Shaft sequel that starred Samuel L. Jackson in the title role as the namesake and nephew of the original John Shaft. In the cameo scene, Parks was sitting playing chess when Jackson greeted him as, "Mr. P." His first job was as a piano player in a brothel when he was a teenager. Parks also performed as a jazz pianist.

His song "No Love," composed in another brothel, was performed during a national radio broadcast by Larry Funk and his orchestra in the early 1930s. Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) at the encouragement of black American conductor, Dean Dixon, and his wife Vivian, a pianist, and with the help of the composer, Henry Brant.

He completed Tree Symphony in 1967. In 1989, he composed and choreographed Martin, a ballet dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader who had been assassinated.

Beginning in the 1960s, Parks branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree (1963). He authored several books of poetry, which he illustrated with his own photographs, and he wrote three volumes of memoirs.

Gordon Parks received more than twenty honorary doctorates in his lifetime.
He died of cancer at the age of 93 while living in Manhattan, and is buried in his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas.

He was profiled in the 1967 documentary, "Weapons of Gordon Parks." The film was made by American filmmaker, Warren Forma.

American Gothic, Washington, D.C., 1942

Photo by Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks: A Personal Remembrance

In 1983, I was one of the very few Betacam owners in the United States. Rick Smolen and David Cohen were preparing to host 50 of the world’s best photographers in Hawaii in December, 1983. They were to photograph the entire state in a single day.

In additional to publishing a book, Smolen and Cohen wanted to do a television documentary on the photo shoot. I was recommended when they called Sony to inquire about who had the new one-piece camera recorder. As a result of that call, I was hired for a dream job — one that is still hard to believe to this day.

I would not only teach some of the world’s best photographers to use the Betacam, I would shoot footage myself for the documentary. But the deal even got better. I would work with two photographic legends — Gordon Parks, who would direct, and Douglas Kirkland, who would produce the show.

Parks was already one of the world’s great photographers and filmmakers and Kirkland had been a staff photographer for both Look and Life magazines. He had become famous for his amazing 1961 photos of Marilyn Monroe.

I flew to Hawaii in late November to prepare for the big day, which would be Dec. 2, 1983. Home base was beach-front hotels in Honolulu. We began work immediately.

The easy part was teaching the photographers to use the Betacam. Most, in less than an hour, were better than the network photographers I was already working with. With this group, I learned that a great eye with one camera easily translates to another. This was world-class talent!

Gordon Parks, the legend that he was, was a real taskmaster. I did things for him I would never have done for lesser mortals. One very vivid memory was one of scariest shots of my life.

Gordon had me lay down on a runway at the Honolulu airport and shoot up as a 747 landed only a few feet above my head. It was terrifying, to say the least, but I got the shot and Gordon was pleased. That was all that mattered to me.

After that ritual, we bonded, ate together and he began telling me stories of his extraordinary life and work. This went on for an entire week. We were normally joined by Doug Kirkland, who was equally adept at storytelling. Learning from these masters was something I would never forget.

The day of the big photo shoot, I was pulled in a thousand directions. We had a fleet of 18 helicopters and my day was booked from sunrise shots early in the morning straight up until midnight. We crisscrossed Hawaii. I rolled hours of video tape on every conceivable subject.

It was exhausting, but exhilarating. On that day 64,800 still images were shot. The book had 345 of them — one including our Betacam crew.

The photo coffee table book was published as “A Day in the Life of Hawaii” and the documentary we made aired on public television for years to come.

For me, it was and remains one of the most exciting projects of my life.

Here, Gordon Parks and myself on the last day of our trip, in December, 1983

The Betacam crew, 1983

David Mamet, playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director, is 75 years old today

Photo by Frank Beacham

David Mamet, playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director, is 75 years old today.

As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he has received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).

Mamet's books include: The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism and Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business.

He also wrote The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (2011), a commentary on cultural and political issues, and Three War Stories (2013), a trio of novellas about the physical and psychological effects of war.

Mamet's feature films that he both wrote and directed include Redbelt (2008), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), House of Games (1987) (which won Best Film and Best Screenplay awards at the 1987 Venice Film Festival and "Film of the Year" for the 1989 London Critics Circle Film Awards).

He also made Spartan (2004), Heist (2001), State and Main (2000) (Winner of a Best Acting - Ensemble award from the National Board of Review), The Winslow Boy (1999), Oleanna (1994) and Homicide (1991)

Homicide was nominated for the Palme d'Or at 1991 Cannes Film Festival and won a "Screenwriter of the Year" award for Mamet from the London Critics Circle Film Awards and Best Cinematography for Roger Deakins from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.

He made Things Change (1988) (which won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at 1988 Venice Film Festival for Don Ameche and Joe Mantegna) and the 2013 HBO film, Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino as Spector with Helen Mirren and Jeffrey Tambor.

Mamet has also written the screenplays for such films as The Verdict (1982), directed by Sidney Lumet, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), directed by Bob Rafelson, The Untouchables (1987) directed by Brian De Palma, Hoffa (1992), Ronin (1998), Wag The Dog (1997), The Edge (1997) and Hannibal (2001).

Mamet's style of writing dialogue, marked by a cynical, street-smart edge, precisely crafted for effect, is so distinctive that it has come to be called Mamet speak. He often uses italics and quotation marks to highlight particular words and to draw attention to his characters' frequent manipulation and deceitful use of language.

His characters frequently interrupt one another, their sentences trail off unfinished, and their dialogue overlaps. Moreover, certain expressions and figures of speech are deliberately misrepresented to show that the character is not paying close attention to every detail of his dialogue.

Mamet himself has criticized his (and other writers') tendency to write "pretty" at the expense of sound, logical plots.

When asked how he developed his style for writing dialogue, Mamet said, "In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, based solely on our ability to speak the language viciously. That's probably where my ability was honed."

Mamet has been married to actress and singer-songwriter Rebecca Pidgeon since 1991. They have two children, Clara and Noah.

Dick Clark was born 93 years ago today

Dick Clark in New York City

Photo by Frank Beacham

Dick Clark was born 93 years ago today.

Clark was a radio and television personality, as well as a cultural icon who hosted American television's longest-running variety show, American Bandstand, from 1957 to 1987. The show gave many new music artists their first exposure to national audiences, including Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads and Simon & Garfunkel.

Episodes he hosted were among the first where blacks and whites performed on the same stage and among the first where the live studio audience sat without racial segregation. Singer Paul Anka claimed that Bandstand was responsible for creating a "youth culture."

Due to his perennial youthful appearance, Clark was often referred to as "America's oldest teenager." In his capacity as a businessman, Clark served as Chief Executive Officer of Dick Clark Productions, part of which he sold off in his later years.

Clark suffered a stroke in December, 2004. With his speech ability still impaired, Clark returned to his New Year's Rockin' Eve show a year later on December 31, 2005. He appear on every New Year's Rockin' Eve show through the 2011–12 show.

Clark died on April 18, 2012 of a heart attack at age 82 following a medical procedure.

Josh White Jr. is 82 years old today

Josh White Jr. is 82 years old today.

White is a songwriter, musician, actor and artist, and one of five children of Josh White, the famed singer.

Josh White, Jr., became, a “hit” overnight at the age of four, by performing with his legendary father one night at New York's Café Society night club, America's first integrated nightclub. For the next five years, Josh, Jr. performed with his father from New York to Boston to Philadelphia.

In 1949, Josh, Jr. landed his first role on Broadway, and as Josh says, "It was type casting…” White played his father's son in How Long Til Summer? with Dorothy Gish and Don Hanmer.

While continuing a solo acting career, Josh went on to perform and record with his father for the next seventeen years on radio, television, Broadway, concert halls and nightclubs around the world.

White continues to perform today.

Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri, on this day in 1835 — 187 years ago

Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri, on this day in 1835 — 187 years ago.

Clemens was apprenticed to a printer at age 13 and later worked for his older brother, who established the Hannibal Journal.

In 1857, the Keokuk Daily Post commissioned him to write a series of comic travel letters, but after writing five he decided to become a steamboat captain instead. He signed on as a pilot's apprentice in 1857 and received his pilot's license in 1859, when he was 23. Clemens piloted boats for two years— until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic.

During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term "Mark Twain," a boatman's call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by "Mark Twain" and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years.

In 1864, he moved to San Francisco to work as a reporter. There, he wrote the story that made him famous, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. In 1866, he traveled to Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union.

Next, he traveled the world writing accounts for papers in California and New York, which he later published the popular book, The Innocents Abroad (1869). In 1870, Clemens married the daughter of a wealthy New York coal merchant and settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he continued to write travel accounts and lecture.

In 1875, his novel Tom Sawyer was published, followed by Life on the Mississippi (1883) and his masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn (1885). Bad investments left Clemens bankrupt after the publication of Huckleberry Finn, but he won back his financial standing with his next three books — Pudd'Nhead Wilson (1894), Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1895) and Following the Equator (1897).

In 1903, he and his family moved to Italy, where his wife died. Her death left him sad and bitter, and his work, while still humorous, grew distinctly darker. He died in 1910.

Terrence Malick, film director, is 79 years ago today

Terrence Malick behind the camera during the production of Days of Heaven, 1978

Terrence Malick, film director, is 79 years ago today.

In a career spanning over four decades, Malick has directed six feature films. He made his directorial debut with the drama Badlands in 1973. His second film, Days of Heaven, was released in 1978. After that, he took a long hiatus from directing films.

His third film, the World War II drama, The Thin Red Line, was released in 1998. Seven years later, he released his fourth film, The New World, which was followed by the critically acclaimed and 2011 Palme d'Or winner, The Tree of Life. The following year saw the release of the sixth film directed by Malick, To the Wonder.

Malick has received consistent praise for his work and has been regarded as one of the greatest living filmmakers. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life, and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Thin Red Line.

He won the Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival for The Thin Red Line, the Palme d'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival for The Tree of Life, and the SIGNIS Award at the 69th Venice International Film Festival for To the Wonder.

More than any other active filmmaker, Malick belongs in the visionary company of homegrown romantics like Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and James Agee. The definitive writings of these authors did not sit comfortably or find universal favor in their own time. They can still seem ungainly, unfinished, lacking polish and perfection.

This is precisely what makes them alive and exciting: "Moby Dick," "Leaves of Grass," "The Bridge" and "A Death in the Family" lean perpetually into the future, pushing their readers forward toward a new horizon of understanding.

While the common conception of Malick as a recluse is inaccurate, he is protective of his private life. His contracts stipulate that his likeness may not be used for promotional purposes, and he routinely declines requests for interviews.

As of 2011, Malick resided in Austin, Texas.

Brownie McGhee was born 107 years ago today

Brownie McGhee was born 107 years ago today.

McGhee was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player, Sonny Terry.

Born in Knoxville, McGhee grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. As a child he had polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother, Granville "Sticks" McGhee, was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart.

His father, George McGhee, was a factory worker known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie's uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board.

McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and teaching himself to play guitar. A March of Dimes-funded leg operation enabled McGhee to walk.

At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending, Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2."

By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary, Okeh Records, in Chicago, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 when Sonny was Blind Boy Fuller's harmonica player.

The pairing was an overnight success. As well as recording, they toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980 — spending 11 months of each year touring and recording dozens of albums.

Despite their later fame as folk artists playing for white audiences, during the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to be successful black recording performers, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano.

The pair called themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and their audience. With Sonny Terry, McGhee appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy, The Jerk.

In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart. He appeared in a 1988 episode of "Family Ties" titled, "The Blues Brother," in which he played fictional blues musician, Eddie Dupre, as well as a 1989 episode of Matlock entitled, "The Blues Singer."

Happy Traum, a former guitar student of Brownie's, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook for him. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, talk about his life and the blues.

Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in 1971. The autobiographical section features Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings and a history of the early blues period from the 1930s onward.

McGhee died from stomach cancer in February, 1996 in Oakland, California at age 80.

Here, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee perform “Born and Livin’ With the Blues”

Allan Sherman, comedy writer and television producer who became famous as a song parodist in the early 1960s, was born 98 years ago today

Allan Sherman, comedy writer and television producer who became famous as a song parodist in the early 1960s, was born 98 years ago today.

Sherman’s first album, My Son, the Folk Singer (1962), became the fastest-selling record album up to that time. His biggest hit single, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," a comic novelty in which a boy describes his summer camp experiences to the tune of Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours.

Born in Chicago to Jewish American parents — Percy Copelon and Rose Sherman — Sherman, like his father, suffered from obesity. His parents divorced during his teenage years, and Allan adopted his mother's maiden name. Due to his parents constantly moving to new residences, young Sherman attended over a dozen public schools in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

Shereman attended the University of Illinois, where he earned mostly "C" grades and contributed a humor column to The Daily Illini, the college newspaper. He never received a degree because he was expelled for breaking into a campus sorority house with his then-girlfriend.

He devised a game show he intended to call “I Know a Secret.” Mark Goodson, a television producer, used Sherman's idea and turned it into “I've Got a Secret,” which ran on CBS from 1952 to 1967. Rather than paying him for the concept, Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions made Sherman the show's producer.

Sherman was reported to be warm and kindhearted to all who worked for him. But sparks often flew between Sherman and anyone who was in a position to try to restrain his creativity. As producer of I've Got a Secret, which was broadcast live, he showed a fondness for large scale stunts that had the potential to teeter on the brink of disaster.

He once released 100 rabbits onstage as an Easter surprise for the Madison Square Boys Club, whose members were seated in the studio. The boys were invited to come up onstage to collect their prize. Although the resultant melee made a good story, it did not necessarily make for good TV.

The relationship between Mark Goodson-Bill Todman and Sherman became strained to the breaking point when he finally fought to execute an idea that was destined to fall flat. His plan was to have Tony Curtis teach the panel how to play some of the games he had played as a child growing up in New York City.

The problems manifested themselves when it became obvious that Tony Curtis had never actually played any of the games that Sherman had brought the props for. The situation might have been salvaged had the props worked as planned, but they did not.

The handkerchief parachute failed to open and land gracefully and the spool "tank" which was propelled by rubber band moved painfully slowly. The spot, which aired June 11, 1958, was a disaster and Sherman was fired as producer.

Sherman lived in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles next door to Harpo Marx, who invited him to perform his song parodies at parties attended by Marx's show-biz friends.

After one party, George Burns phoned an executive at Warner Bros. Records and persuaded him to sign Sherman to a contract. The result was a long playing album of these parodies, My Son, the Folk Singer, which was released in 1962. It sold over a million copies.

The album was so successful that it was quickly followed by My Son, the Celebrity, which ended with "Shticks of One and Half a Dozen of the Other." In 1962, capitalizing on his success, Jubilee Records re-released Sherman's 1951 single on the album, More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends.

It was a compilation of material by various Borscht Belt comedians, such as Sylvia Froos, Fyvush Finkle and Lee Tully, along with the Sherman material. One track, a spoof of summer camp entitled "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," became a surprise novelty hit, reaching #2 on the national Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks in late summer 1963.

The lyrics were sung to the tune of one segment of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours," familiar to the public because of its use in the Walt Disney film, Fantasia. That December, Sherman's "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas" single appeared on Billboard's separate Christmas chart.

Sherman had one other Top 40 hit, a 1965 take-off on the Petula Clark hit, "Downtown," called "Crazy Downtown," which spent one week at #40.

Sherman's career success was short-lived. After peaking in 1963, his popularity declined rather quickly.

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, impersonator Vaughn Meader vowed to never again do a Kennedy impression, and perhaps because of this ominous shadow – Meader was a very popular parody impressionist of the day – and the resulting reluctance to book such acts, the public saw less of Sherman's type of comedy.

Late in his life, Sherman drank and ate heavily which resulted in a dangerous weight gain. He later developed diabetes and struggled with lung disease. In 1966, his wife, Dee, filed for divorce and received full custody of their son and daughter.

Sherman lived on unemployment benefits for a time and moved into the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital near Calabasas, California for a short time to lose weight.

He died of emphysema at home in West Hollywood in 1973 — ten days before his 49th birthday.

Here, on the Dean Martin Show in 1965, Sherman joins Martin and Vic Damone to perform “I Hate the Beatles”

Abbie Hoffman, political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies"), was born 86 years ago today

Abbie Hoffman, political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies"), was born 86 years ago today.

Hoffman was arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in protests that led to violent confrontations with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, along with Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner and Bobby Seale.

The group was known collectively as the "Chicago Eight." When Seale's prosecution was separated from the others, they became known as the “Chicago Seven.” While the defendants were initially convicted of intent to incite a riot, the verdicts were overturned on appeal.

Hoffman came to prominence in the 1960s, and continued practicing his activism in the 1970s, and has remained a symbol of the youth rebellion of the counterculture era.

Hoffman was 52 at the time of his death on April 12, 1989, which was caused by swallowing 150 phenobarbital tablets and liquor. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1980. At the time, he had recently changed treatment medications and was reportedly depressed when his 83-year-old mother was diagnosed with cancer. She died in 1996 at the age of 90.

Some close to Hoffman claimed that as a natural prankster who valued youth, he was also unhappy about reaching middle age, combined with the fact that the ideas of the 1960s had given way to a conservative backlash in the 1980s. In 1984, he had expressed dismay that the current generation of young people were not as interested in protesting and social activism as youth had been during the 1960s.

Hoffman's body was found in his apartment in a converted turkey coop on Sugan Road in Solebury Township, near New Hope, Pennsylvania. At the time of his death, he was surrounded by about 200 pages of his own handwritten notes, many about his own moods.

His death was officially ruled as suicide. As reported by the New York Times, "Among the more vocal doubters at the service today was Mr. Dellinger, who said, “I don't believe for one moment the suicide thing.”

He said he had been in fairly frequent touch with Mr. Hoffman, who had “numerous plans for the future.” Yet the same New York Times article reported that the coroner found the residue of about 150 pills and quoted the coroner in a telephone interview saying, “There is no way to take that amount of phenobarbital without intent. It was intentional and self-inflicted.”

Here, Hoffman discussed the tactics of the Yippies before the Democratic National Convention in 1968