Woodstock is over, the cleanup begins...
The day after Woodstock, when the cleanup began…54 years ago today
Photo by Bill Eppridge
Robert Redford is 87 years old today.
An actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival, Redford has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010, he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur.
At the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars. Redford's career — like that of almost all major stars who emerged in the 1950s — began in New York, where an actor could find work both in television and on stage.
Starting in 1959, he appeared as a guest star on numerous programs, including The Untouchables, Whispering Smith, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, Playhouse 90, Tate and The Twilight Zone. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (ABC, 1962).
One of his last television appearances was on October 7, 1963, on Breaking Point, an ABC medical drama about psychiatry.
Redford's Broadway debut was in a small role in Tall Story (1959), followed by parts in The Highest Tree (1959) and Sunday in New York (1961). His biggest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963).
While still largely an unknown, Redford made his screen debut in War Hunt (1962), co-starring with John Saxon in a film set during the last days of the Korean War. This film also marked the debuts of director Sydney Pollack, with whom Redford would later collaborate, and actor Tom Skerritt.
After his Broadway success, he was cast in larger feature roles in movies. He was cast alongside screen legend Alec Guinness in the war comedy, Situation Hopeless ... But Not Serious, in which he played a soldier who has to spend years of his life hiding behind enemy lines.
In Inside Daisy Clover (1965), which won him a Golden Globe for best new star, he played a bisexual movie star who marries starlet Natalie Wood, and rejoined her along with Charles Bronson for Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966) — again as her lover, though this time in a film which achieved even greater success.
The same year saw his first teaming with Jane Fonda, in Arthur Penn's The Chase. This film marked the only time Redford would star with Marlon Brando.
Fonda and Redford were paired again in the popular big screen version of Barefoot in the Park (1967) and were again co-stars much later in Pollack's The Electric Horseman (1979).
After this initial success, Redford became concerned about his blond male stereotype image and turned down roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. Redford found the property he was looking for in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), scripted by William Goldman, in which he was paired for the first time with Paul Newman.
The film was a huge success and made him a major bankable star, cementing his screen image as an intelligent, reliable and sometimes sardonic good guy.
His overall career flourished with the critical and box office hit Jeremiah Johnson (1972); the political satire, The Candidate (1972); the hugely popular period drama The Way We Were (1973); and the biggest hit of his career; the blockbuster crime caper, The Sting (1973), which became one of the top 20 highest grossing movies of all time when adjusted for inflation. It was also nominated for an Oscar.
Between 1974 and 1976, exhibitors voted Redford Hollywood's top box-office name. His hits included The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and Three Days of the Condor (1975). The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976), directed by Alan J. Pakula and scripted once again by Goldman, was a landmark film for Redford.
Not only was he the executive producer and co-star, but the film's serious subject matter — the Watergate scandal — and its attempt to create a realistic portrayal of journalism also reflected the actor's offscreen concerns for political causes.
He also starred in a segment of the war film, A Bridge Too Far (1977), the prison drama, Brubaker (1980), playing a prison warden attempting to reform the system, and the fantasy baseball drama, The Natural (1984).
Redford continued his involvement in mainstream Hollywood movies, though with a newfound focus on directing. The first film he directed, Ordinary People, which followed the disintegration of an upper class American family after the death of a son, was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning a number of Oscars, including the Academy Award for best director for Redford himself.
His follow-up directorial project, The Milagro Beanfield War (1987), failed to generate the same level of attention.
Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985), with Redford in the male lead role opposite Meryl Streep, became an enormous critical and box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture, proving to be Redford's biggest success of the decade and Redford and Pollack's most successful of their six movies together.
Redford continued as a major star throughout the 1990s and 2000s. With the financial proceeds of his acting success, starting with his salaries from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Downhill Racer, Redford bought an entire ski area on the east side of Mount Timpanogos northeast of Provo, Utah, called "Timp Haven,” which was renamed "Sundance.”
He founded the Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute, Sundance Cinemas, Sundance Catalog and the Sundance Channel, all in and around Park City, Utah, 30 miles north of the Sundance ski area.
The Sundance Film Festival caters to independent filmmakers in the United States and has received recognition from the industry as a place to open films.
Maxine Brown, soul and R&B singer, is 84 years old today.
Born in Kingstree, South Carolina, Brown began performing professionally in the 1960s. She began singing as a child, performing with two New York-based gospel groups called, the Angelairs, and, the Royaltones, when she was a teenager.
In 1960, she signed with the small Nomar record label, who released the smooth soul ballad "All in My Mind," which was written by Brown. The single became a hit, climbing to #2 on the U.S. R&B charts, and it was quickly followed by "Funny,” which peaked at #3.
Brown was poised to become a star and she moved to the bigger ABC-Paramount label in 1962, but left after an unsuccessful year and recording several non-chart singles for the label. She then signed in 1963 with the New York-based uptown soul label, Wand Records, a Scepter Records subsidiary.
Brown recorded a string of sizable hits for Wand over the next three years. Among these were the Carole King/Gerry Goffin songs "Oh No Not My Baby," which reached #24 on the pop charts in 1964 and "It's Gonna Be Alright," which peaked at #26 the following year.
She also recorded duets with label-mate, Chuck Jackson, including a reworked version of an Alvin Robinson hit, "Something You Got," which climbed to #10 on the R&B chart. However, the company turned its focus to other bigger-selling acts, especially Dionne Warwick.
All backing vocals for Maxine's records were performed by Cissy Houston and the Sweet Inspirations, the same group that backed Elvis Presley, plus emerging writer-producers, Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson.
Hoping to increase the line of hits for Brown and her singing partner, Chuck Jackson, Ashford and Simpson took their song catalog to Scepter Records looking for a deal. When they were turned down, the couple approached Berry Gordy at Motown Records, who immediately hired them.
Songs that were penned for Brown and Chuck became blockbuster hits for Ray Charles, such as "Let's Go Get Stoned" (co-written by Jo Armstead), as well as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."
In 1969, Brown left Wand for Commonwealth United, where she recorded two singles, the first "We'll Cry Together" reached #10 in the Billboard R&B chart and also made the lower reaches of the Hot 100.
Brown is acknowledged as one of the finer R&B vocalists of her time, able to handle soul, jazz, and pop with equal aplomb.
Here, Brown performs “On No Not My Baby.”
Roman Polanski is 90 years old today.
A French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor, Polanski has made films in Poland, Britain, France and the United States and is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers.
Polanski's films have inspired diverse directors, including the Coen brothers, Atom Egoyan, Darren Aronofsky, Park Chan-wook, Abel Ferrara and Wes Craven.
Born in Paris to Polish parents, Polanski moved with his family back to Poland in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Holocaust and was educated in Poland and became a director of both art house and commercial films.
His first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but was beaten by Federico Fellini's 8½. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France.
In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968, he moved to the United States, and cemented his status by directing the Oscar-winning horror film, Rosemary's Baby (1968).
In 1969, Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by members of the Manson Family while staying at Polanski's Benedict Canyon home above Los Angeles. Following Tate's death, Polanski returned to Europe and spent much of his time in Paris and Gstaad, but did not direct another film until Macbeth (1971) in England.
The following year he went to Italy to make What? (1973) and subsequently spent the next five years living near Rome. However, he traveled to Hollywood to direct Chinatown in 1974.
The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and was a critical and box-office success. Polanski's next film, The Tenant (1976), was shot in France, and completed the "Apartment Trilogy,” following Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby.
In 1977, after a photo shoot in Los Angeles, Polanski was arrested for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl and pleaded guilty to the charge of unlawful sex with a minor. To avoid sentencing, Polanski fled to his home in London, eventually settling in France.
In September, 2009, he was arrested by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities, which also asked for his extradition. The Swiss rejected that request, and instead released him from custody, declaring him a "free man."
During an interview for a later film documentary, he offered his apology to the woman, and in a separate interview with Swiss TV he said that he regretted that episode.
Polanski continued to make films such as The Pianist (2002), a World War II true story drama about a Jewish-Polish musician. The film won three Academy Awards including Best Director, along with numerous international awards. He also directed other films, including Oliver Twist (2005), a story which parallels his own life as a "young boy attempting to triumph over adversity.
He made The Ghost Writer (2010), a thriller focusing on a ghostwriter working with a former British Prime Minister, and Carnage (2011), a comedy-drama starring Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet.
Polanski's French-language adaptation of the award-winning play Venus in Fur, stars his wife Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric. The film premiered in competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
Polanski's Based on a True Story, an adaptation of the French novel by bestselling author Delphine de Vignan, stars Eva Green and Emmanuelle Seigner and follows a writer (Seigner) struggling to complete a new novel, while followed by an obsessed fan (Green). It premiered in 2017.
Polanski is currently preparing to direct D, a film about the notorious Dreyfus affair in the 19th century, in which one of the few Jewish members of the French Army's general staff was wrongly convicted of passing military secrets to the German Empire and sent to Devil's Island, only to be acquitted 12 years later. The film is written by Robert Harris, who is working with Polanski for the third time.
Tony Garnier, P&G Bar, New York City, Sept. 16, 2009
Photo by Frank Beacham
Tony Garnier has been playing bass with Bob Dylan so long that he’s starting to learn some of the tricks of his boss. Some people will write that today is Tony’s birthday and some of his bios list today as as well. But that’s only an illusion.
Perhaps the August 18 date stuck because Bob played Happy Birthday for Tony in his second encore in Las Vegas in 2010. It was a joke (believe nothing Dylan does on stage is real).
Even Tony enjoys Dylan’s joke and has left his bio alone. However, for the record, Tony’s real birthday is May 10. And that came from the man himself.
Tony was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1956. He has played bass with Dylan since 1989 — 34 years — and is the man’s longest-running sideman. He’s also Dylan’s "musical director."
In addition to his work with Dylan, Garnier has recorded with Tom Waits, Loudon Wainwright III, Paul Simon, Marc Ribot and Eric Andersen, and was a member of Asleep at the Wheel (from 1976–78) and The Lounge Lizards.
He also played with Robert Gordon in the early 1980s. He was also a long-time sideman for David Johansen in his Buster Poindexter persona, and was also briefly a member of the Saturday Night Live house band.
His musical heritage descends from the Camelia Brass Band in New Orleans led by his grandfather, D'Jalma Garnier, (also spelled Ganier while with Camelia Brass Band), a legendary early jazz player noted on the Preservation Hall roster in the New Orleans French Quarter.
Garnier is one of numerous grandsons descended from D'Jalma Thomas Garnier, the New Orleans bandleader, trumpet player, pianist and violinist said to have taught Louis Armstrong at the New Orleans Boys Home for Colored Waifs.
Tony is the younger brother of D'alma Garnier, born in 1954. He is the fiddler, composer, guitarist and "pedestrian scholar" of Louisiana Creole fame.
The two brothers are the only descendants of Papa Garnier to become professional musicians in the legacy of this significant New Orleans musical family. Both of their parents were musicians working with non-profits in California.
Before joining Dylan's Neverending Tour Band in 1989, Tony added bass tracks to films by Jim Jarmusch. These included Down by Law, filmed in Louisiana. He appeared in Dylan's 2003 film, Masked and Anonymous.
Happy “Non-Birthday” to Tony Garnier, one of the nicest guys in the music business.
Below, Frank Beacham and Tony Garner in New York City, 2010.
Sue Lyon, 1960
Photo by Bert Stern
On this day in 1958 — 65 years ago — Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, Lolita, was published in the United States.
The novel, about a man's obsession with a 12-year-old girl, had been rejected by four publishers before G.P. Putnam's Sons accepted it. The novel became a bestseller that allowed Nabokov to retire from his career as college professor.
Born in 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia, into a wealthy and privileged family, Nabokov lived in a St. Petersburg townhouse and on a country estate. There he learned boxing, tennis and chess.
He grew up speaking both English and Russian, attended Cambridge and inherited $2 million from an uncle. However, his family lost much of their wealth when the Russian Revolution forced them to flee to Germany. Nabokov earned money by teaching boxing and tennis and creating Russian crossword puzzles.
He worked during the day and wrote at night, sometimes in the bathroom so the light wouldn't bother his family. He wrote many novels and short stories in Russian.
In 1939, the tall, athletic scholar was invited to Stanford to lecture on Slavic languages. He stayed in the U.S. for 20 years, teaching at Wellesley and Cornell, and pursuing an avid interest in butterflies. He became a research fellow at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and discovered several species and subspecies of butterflies.
He and his wife, Vera, spent summers driving around the U.S., staying in motels, and looking for butterflies. The motels, the American landscape and butterflies all figure prominently in various works.
Nabokov's first novel in English was, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. His most successful books in the U.S. were, Lolita, and Ada (1969), a family chronicle about a childhood romance between two close relations, which becomes a lifelong obsession between the characters.
Nabokov and his wife returned to Europe in 1959. He died in Switzerland in 1977.
Thanks History.com
Meeting at the Crossroads, 2006
Painted by Theo Reijnders
Front row, from left to right: Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Block, Memphis Minnie, John Lee Hooker, Rory Gallagher and Steve Ray Vaughan.
Back row, from left to right: Koko Taylor, Ida Cox, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Dixon, BB King, Billie Holiday, Howlin’ Wolf, Mahalia Jackson, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Bessie Smith, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Boy Williamson and Buddy Guy.
Summer evening, 1947
Painting by Edward Hopper