Richard Nixon's acceptance speech, 1968 Republican Convention

This four-minute montage is from the 1995 Oliver Stone film, "Nixon" , with Sir Anthony Hopkins as Richard Nixon. Stone's film takes Nixon from his middle-class youth in a hardscrabble farm town backwater of Southern California to his heights as the most powerful man in America, to his ignominious fall.

On the eve of another Republican Convention speech in Florida tonight, this clip seamlessly incorporates footage of movie sound stage, actors, real people, and actual television coverage of the August 8, 1968 convention climax.



The 1968 Presidential race had some things in common with this one 42 years later. Both were divisive campaigns, both saw a country sharply divided and both featured a backdrop of a foreign war that had spun out of control.

But there were differences. The Republican Party had a broader ideological base in 1968. Nixon, defeated for President by John Kennedy in 1960, had managed to weave himself to a renomination eight years later by outmaneuvering his opponent on the right (Ronald Reagan, the governor of California) and his opponents on his left (Nelson Rockefeller of New York State and George Romney of Michigan.)

Romney was the father of Mitt Romney in case you hadn't heard.

Ironically there was an insurgent effort at the Miami convention to put George Romney on the ticket. Nixon squelched it, preferring a little-known hard-liner, Maryland governor Spiro Agrew, for his running mate.

Nixon successfully maneuvered his way to victory in the general election garnering about 42 percent of the vote against the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey and the hard-line demagogic segregationist George Wallace. Vice-President Humphrey was hampered by his inability to put distance between himself and Lyndon Johnson war policies in Vietnam. Nixon wove a together a "law and order" campaign that promised a secret plan to end the war with a get-tough approach to young demonstrators and minority activist groups.

The actual speech by "Tricky Dick" is not as interesting as this. I mainly remember August 1968 as the first time we had a color television set in the Noakes family home. I have to say the colors on the set were more interesting than the GOP speeches, at least in my Democratic household. :-)

"Buena Vista Social Club" (1999) - "Chan Chan"

A clip from Wim Wenders' award-winning documentary about 1940-50s-era Cuban musicians reunited to great international success.

From Wikipedia: "The success of both the album and film sparked a revival of international interest in traditional Cuban music and Latin American music in general. Some of the Cuban performers later released well-received solo albums and recorded collaborations with international stars from different musical genres. The "Buena Vista Social Club" name became an umbrella term to describe these performances and releases, and has been likened to a brand label that encapsulates Cuba's "musical golden age" between the 1930s and 1950s. The new success was fleeting for the most recognizable artists in the ensemble: Compay Segundo, Rubén González, and Ibrahim Ferrer, who died at the ages of ninety-five, eighty-four, and seventy-eight respectively; Segundo and González in 2003, then Ferrer in 2005.

"Several surviving members of the Buena Vista Social Club, such as trumpeter Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal, laúd player Barbarito Torres and trombonist and conductor Jesus "Aguaje" Ramos currently tour worldwide, to popular acclaim, with new members such as the singer Carlos Calunga, virtuoso pianist Rolando Luna[1][2] and occasionally the solo singer Omara Portuondo, as part of a 13 member band called Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club."

Friday Funny, American Edition: Police Squad (In Color!) Intro and "Naked Gun 2 1/2" (1991)

After subjecting television viewers to a slew of mediocre television crime shows, spawned in the 1960s and 70's (with stoic, rigid and near-humorless law-and-order spouting walking manikin-coppers) from the likes of actor/producer Jack "Dragnet" Webb and Quinn Martin ("Streets of San Francisco", "Cannon" ,et al) producers David and Jerry Zucker finally did something about it.

After making a big pop culture success "Airplane" in 1980, they turned their attention to lampooning the old-style cop procedural with a short-lived six -episode series in 1982 called "Police Squad".

The show featured Canadian-born Leslie Nielsen, an actor previously trapped as a guest star in formal and uninspired roles as urban cops and detectives, as Frank Drevin of "Police Squad, A Special Branch of the Police Force".

The ratings were not good but the show took on a cult following in VHS releases. A big screen adaptation, "Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad" (1988) was a success. Nielsen was perfect in his comic turn on this material, and the actors and actresses around him spoofed some of the same stoic cops, femme fatales and one-dimensional big-time crime bosses they had played previously. Two more film sequels followed. Later Nielsen spent the last part of his career doing take-off films playing authority figures (vampires and U.S. Presidents) gone zany.

Friday Funny, American Edition: "Ron Burgundy - The Jim "J.C." Caviezel Interview"

The legendary Southern California anchorman interviews the star of "The Passion of the Christ"....and other stuff.

Three More Hits from The British Invasion

A lot of great  songs that came out of the 1960's 'British Invasion" were done from bands which might not be household names among baby-boomers and music fans of all ages today, but they deserve a rehearing  in my view. 

   There's no way three songs could even begin to do justice to the popular songs of that era, but here are three favorites I selected from the soundtrack of the 1998 film "Rushmore", a film that proves the "invaders" have never left us. 

 This song hit Number Seven on the US Pop Charts in the Summer of 1964, and was the biggest US hit for this pair, whose success in the States surpassed their musical clout in their home country. 

(from Wikipedia) The duo starred in the West End production of Pump Boys And Dinettes from 1984–1985, before returning to the US in 1986 for a nostalgia tour with other British Invasionartists. In 1987 they performed in short residencies at both Harrah's Casino in Lake Tahoe, and the Reno Hilton before again breaking up.

In 2003, PBS reunited Chad & Jeremy in the 60s Pop-Rock Reunion special, which also prompted a tour the next year. They have been touring ever since. In 2008, the group released Ark-eology, an album featuring re-recordings of their 1960s hits and selected cuts from their original albums. In September 2010, Chad & Jeremy marked 50 years of performing together with a limited-edition CD entitled Fifty Years On.

  

 

1965 brought another transAtlantic hit for a group from Hertfordshire, a song given a boost by Pirate Radio Stations off shore near Britain: 

"Concrete and Clay" was a worldwide hit, and the group suddenly found themselves on radio playlists across the globe.^[2] In America, a competing cover version by Eddie Rambeau (produced by Bob Crewe) split sales, with Rambeau reaching #35 on the Billboard charts and Unit 4 + 2 placing at #28. Cash Box charted the two versions together, and they reached a combined #12.

Decca released a hastily put together album, also entitled Concrete and Clay, to capitalise on the success, but it was not as notable in style or content as the single.^[2] Nevertheless, the next single release "You've Never Been in Love Like This Before" reached the Top 20 in the UK,^[2] and #95 on the Billboard chart in the US "Concrete and Clay" returned to the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart in 1976, courtesy of Randy Edelman's cover version.^[3] More recently, the original song appeared in the soundtrack to the film, Rushmore (1998).

  

This final entry is also on the "Rushmore" soundtrack, but was done by the composer, the great Cat Stevens.  I decided to go with a version that had a little more "beat" to it from 1967. (from Wikipedia)  On New Years Day, 1962, Decca, looking for a "Beat" group, auditioned two promising young bands: Brian Poole and the Tremeloes and a somewhat similar combo (also heavily influenced by Buddy Holly) from Liverpool called The Beatles.Decca chose the Tremeloes over The Beatles. 

The original quintet consisted of lead vocalist Brian Poole, lead guitarist Ricky West, keyboardist Alan Blakely, bassist Alan Howard and drummer Dave Munden.]When Poole and Howard left the band in 1966, Alan Blakely took over leadership of the group, and Len "Chip" Hawkes, father of 1990s hitmaker Chesney Hawkes, replaced Howard. Poole pursued a career as a solo artist.After switching from Decca to CBS Records, the Tremeloes started a successful hit run from 1967 onwards with Cat Stevens' "Here Comes My Baby.

"JFK" (1992) Opening Credits--Oliver Stone, Director/Music by John Williams

"God help this country when someone sits at this desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do"--President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."--John Kennedy



Sometimes the opening credits or first scene of a film is the best thing you're going to get for your money. Such I believe is true of this bravura opening by Oliver Stone to his Cold War/Assassination Conspiracy opus, "JFK".

This film comes to mind for me because this of news reports and commentary about two major events that happened fifty years ago this week. On was a Farewell Address from the White House on January 17, 1961 of President Dwight Eisenhower. He warned the nation about the moral and spiritual threat that came from an unchecked "Military-Industrial Complex" that was growing and growing and consuming over half of the federal tax revenues at the end of his term. Eisenhower came into office as a hawk on defense but by his Second Term he saw the dangers of a protracted conflict with the Soviet Union in an atomic age. He began to temper his rhetoric about massive defense build-ups, which were becoming self-perpetuating far above the real dangers America faced.

The Military Industrial Complex speech came very late in his Presidency. The new leader, John F. Kennedy, also came in as a hawk and continued the CIA's plans to overthrow Fidel Castro's Cuba and practice brinkmanship with Moscow. As time wore on, and the Cuban Missile Crisis made clear, something other than force and more force in reserve was needed if any world--liberal capitalist or communist--was going to survive. JFK's famous speech at American University reached out to the Soviet Leader, NIkita Khrushchev. to find common humanity and for both empires to draw down jointly from the perils of a third and final world war.

Did JFK's speech create the last straw for some leaders within the government to view him as expendable? Did the "military-industrial complex" dispose of a President the way the Praetorian Guard of the Early Roman Empire disposed of the odd emperor they ceased to support? Did the loss of JFK bring a blank check to the Pentagon to ramp up a land war in Southeast Asia that the late President had expressed reservations about?

Oliver Stone seemed to think so. Many who don't buy his theories nonetheless cannot accept the relatively benign "lone gunman" theory into what happened in Dallas in November of 1963. Suffice to say we won;t ever know the answer in a way that will satisfy the curious. But let us put politics aside and see this opening as a prologue to those events.

Both "Ike" and Kennedy's speeches are excerpted in this opening. It's a masterful montage of narration, flash images, newsreel clips and stirring but ominous music, encapsulating one of the most important times in recent history,and one that still resonates within the American psyche with dreams deferred and queries about tragic events that will never be answered.