“When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.” — Dorothy Thompson

Posted on July 9, 2026 by sheila


Dorothy Thompson, 1939: testifying in Congress to repeal the Neutrality Act.

“They are holding every Jew in Germany as a hostage. Therefore, we who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow and indignation and disgust in so many voices that they will be heard.” — journalist Dorothy Thompson, radio broadcast, 1938

American journalist Dorothy Thompson, whose birthday it is today, manipulated her way into an interview with Adolf Hitler in 1931, before he became Chancellor. Thompson had been keeping a close eye on him since the “beer hall putsch” way back in 1923, which launched him into national prominence. She also posed as a Red Cross worker to infiltrate the German High Command – and it worked! She got interviews with high-ranked generals, people who were extremely suspicious of any and all press.

Thompson was one of the few American journalists – hell, European journalists, ANY journalist – who instantly recognized the threat of him, devoting her career to warning people about him in her radio broadcasts and newspaper columns

Her interview with Hitler was published in a 1932 issue of Cosmopolitan, and caused a firestorm of horror and revulsion (as well as understandable envy from other journalists). It was a major scoop. The article was eventually published in book form.

The interview is fascinating. She was not “just the facts, ma’am” … she adds her impressions and conclusions:

“[Hitler] is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man. A lock of lank hair falls over an insignificant and slightly retreating forehead. . . .The nose is large, but badly shaped and without character. His movements are awkward, almost undignified and most un-martial…The eyes alone are notable. Dark gray and hyperthyroid—-they have the peculiar shine which often distinguishes geniuses, alcoholics, and hysterics…There is something irritatingly refined about him. I bet he crooks his little finger when he drinks a cup of tea.” — Dorothy Thompson, “I Saw Hitler”, 1932

Thompson had peppered Hitler with interview requests until finally he granted her one, probably assuming he could snow her because she was a woman. He underestimated her – and Thompson’s article has been criticized for underestimating him. But she spoke the truth of her impression: he seemed like a nonentity, a Nobody. This criticism ignores Thompson’s deeper psychological insights. What she saw was a nobody, a Little Man, and not a powerful intimidating warrior at all … he seemed like a little bone-less guy with a bad haircut who put on airs.

Since the 1930s, many many scholars have examined Hitler as a Nobody, a Little Man, an uneducated and easily-swayed nonentity. An incel, really. It’s dangerous when a “Nobody” gains power. (J.P. Stern expanded on this idea in his excellent book, Hitler: The Fuhrer and the People – which I wrote about here). While he was in the trenches of World War I, Hitler had a “revelation” about Germany’s destiny (he described this in Mein Kampf so nobody can say they weren’t warned), and he set out to bring his prophetic “vision” into existence. This is a deep topic, and goes beyond the scope of this “birthday post” but what I want to point out is: Thompson didn’t say “I don’t think Hitler – this little weakling – can do much damage.” She knew he was damaging: she perceived it earlier than most journalists did (the populations Hitler targeted felt it immediately, of course). Her perception of Hitler as a man prone to “hysterics”, her perception that his “refinement” was bogus … it all adds up to a hit piece not just on his policies, but on his psychology. It’s a hit piece on him PERSONALLY. Her article says: “I see through you, you little bully.” “I Saw Hitler” was damning, too, because a woman wrote it. Nazis extolled womanhood but only of the domestic breeder variety. Men who prefer women submissive forget something very important: due to millennia of political and social/cultural oppression, women are accustomed to keeping their mouths shut and navigating AROUND men, who have been barriers to their advancement. Women are far more familiar with male psychology than men are familiar with female psychology. We have to keep a close eye on men for our survival. Because of this, women see through male bullshit in an instant. Men are more prone to buy each other’s bullshit. Thompson did not buy the bullshit, perceived the Emperor had no clothes, and she also – importantly – perceived the dangerous sway he held over Germany. She called it out.

Hitler was, of course, apoplectic when the article came out.

Thompson was bureau chief in Berlin. She was considered so dangerous she was expelled from Germany, the first foreign journalist to get that “honor.” She came back to America, continuing to sound the alarm, to urge Americans to take the threat seriously. She testified before Congress in 1939, asking them to repeal the Neutrality Act (see photo above).

Also in 1939, a terrible year, maybe the worst in the 20th century, Thompson attended the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden organized by the German American Bund Society. 20,000 people were there, arm bands ON, Sieg Heils at the ready. Terrifying. An almost forgotten moment in US history, although we’re seeing it play out again in real time.

Dorothy Thompson was there as a journalist. Journalists are supposed to be objective, right? Put their “biases” aside, right? Well, Thompson had different ideas. She saw her job as a truth-teller and she knew the Nazis were dangerous and if the Nazis won millions would die. So she sat there in the press area, and loudly heckled the speakers. She burst out in derisive laughter at their statements. She caused a scene.


At the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden: Dorothy Thompson heckles the speakers.

The Nazis around her were so furious at how she was raining on their fascist parade, a ruckus ensued. She kept heckling. The people around her heckled her. The situation was about to spin out of control when the police intervened and escorted Thompson out of the arena. Just like she was expelled from Germany for speaking out. So think about that: in the land of the free and the brave, she was criticized for speaking the truth, too.

She wrote about the vulnerabilities in our political system and how America should not be complacent about our immunity from this mental disease:

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument – the Incorporated National Will. When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say “Heil” to him, nor will they call him “Führer” or “Duce.” But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of “O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!”

Thompson was married to Sinclair Lewis. Her work inspired him to write his spookily prophetic novel with the bitterly sarcastic title It Can’t Happen Here. Lewis speculates on the kind of man who could swerve America away from democracy, echoing his wife’s prophetic words above. Lewis, too, sensed our vulnerabilities, the cracks in our system through which tyranny could slip. They both were right on the money.

Along those lines, Thompson wrote a fascinating piece for Harper’s Bazaar called “Who Goes Nazi?“. In the article, she looks around a hypothetical dinner party filled with a diverse group of Americans, and guesses which ones will “go Nazi” and which ones would be immune. It’s really something, that piece. It checks out.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

This brave smart woman was on the right side of history. To quote contestants on reality TV shows: Thompson wasn’t “here to make friends.” But she was right about the Nazis and she knew she was right. In situations where peer pressure acts as a silencer – where consensus is stifling – think WWDTD? (What Would Dorothy Thompson Do?) Journalists especially should ask themselves that question. They should be asking it now. They are failing.

Dorothy Thompson is a role model and hero.

“A little more matriarchy is what the world needs, and I know it. Period. Paragraph.” — Dorothy Thompson

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“Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.” — Janet Malcolm

Posted on July 8, 2026 by sheila

It’s her birthday today. She died in 2021.

I started out with The Silent Woman, many years ago, her book on the challenges of writing about Sylvia Plath, particularly in lieu of the draconian Plath estate, run – Shakespearean-ly – by Ted Hughes’ sister Olwyn who always hated Sylvia. It’s a fascinating and troubling book about the issues of legacy, narrative, who gets to tell whose story, who “holds” the story, and – finally – acknowledging the upsetting fact that Sylvia Plath has been “silenced” by her own estate. (This is no longer the case, 30 years later. About time.)

Many of Malcolm’s books are about the art of writing itself. She was ambivalent on the subject. Similar to Susan Sontag’s ambivalence in re: photography, Malcolm wondered if writing – particularly non-fiction writing and reportage – served any purpose at all. Malcolm’s eye was unsparing. She interviewed people, and they crucified themselves by their own words.

All writers should read The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Malcolm’s writing was so dominating it often got her into trouble: there were numerous controversies in re: her quotations. On more than one occasion, Malcolm had to produce her original notes in order to prove such-and-such conversation took place. On more than one occasion, Malcolm could not locate said notes. Not good. She was often “in trouble” like this. So: take this for what you will. In other words: don’t take what she says as the gospel truth.

Malcolm is probably most well-known for The Journalist and the Murderer: her most brutal book. Malcolm was incensed by Joe McGinniss’ best-selling “true” crime book Fatal Vision, about convicted family annihilator Jeffrey MacDonald. What angered Malcolm was McGinniss’ trickery. The writer pretended to be MacDonald’s friend and supporter in order to gain the accused murderer’s trust, McGinniss pretended the book he was writing would be a defense of MacDonald, when in actuality it was going to be an indictment. Very unethical. Malcolm didn’t care about MacDonald’s case, but she went after Joe McGinniss hard. She was appalled, you can feel it in the prose. The book started out as an article, which caused a sensation. Her thoughts went against the almost universal accolades Fatal Vision received – and she elaborated the article into a short fiery polemic-book. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Malcolm destroyed McGinniss’ reputation. He never recovered. He’s still defending himself. To Malcolm, McGinniss was a symptom of a larger issue: Malcolm’s real interest was journalism itself, which you can also see in The Silent Woman, which is about Plath, but it’s really about the challenges of literary biography. Malcolm was not afraid to go after the entire journalistic profession:

Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

Joe McGuinness’ book was a huge hit but was also “called out” for the author’s manipulations. Was it ethical to tell a subject you wanted to write a book hoping to exonerate them, and then … do the opposite? This was Malcolm’s beef.

Malcolm’s book about Plath is an investigation into Plath’s estate, showing the author’s grappling with her discoveries. She thinks out loud in her writing. Malcolm leads you through a maze of possibilities, and clarity vanishes: there are no answers in the book, no one villain.

I miss coming across her byline, in The New Yorker, or the New York Review of Books.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“I’m one of those people who thinks you can have a happy life and still be an artist.” — Shelley Duvall

Posted on July 7, 2026 by sheila

Here’s the piece I wrote when Duvall died: The “pink stuff” of Shelley Duvall.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“There’s a difference between writing about something and living through it. I did both.” — poet/novelist Margaret Walker

Posted on July 7, 2026 by sheila


Photo by Carl Van Vechten

Margaret Walker was born in 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents were interesting accomplished people, and her childhood was filled with literature and music. Her father gave her a love of heavy-hitters like Schopenhauer, classic English literature, all poetry, and her mother steeped her in music, ragtime, and read poetry outloud, from early African-American writers like Paul Dunbar (my post about him here) to Shakespeare. Walker’s great-grandmother was a slave in Georgia, and she heard stories about this from her grandmother. The diversity of all of these influences poured into Margaret Walker’s own work. She was a kid when the Harlem Renaissance started, and she read them all. She started writing poetry and submitting it for publication.

Her first collection, For My People won the Yale Younger Poets prize (she was the first Black woman to win the prize.)

The title poem is perhaps one of her most famous (it’s printed below). It’s an anthem. The collection is filled with memorable character sketches, a portrait of a whole diverse community of people. “People” has its regular meaning, and then it has its higher meaning, as an identity marker – A people, MY people. She writes about legendary African-American figures, like John Henry and Stagger Lee.

What Walker considered her life’s work, and she worked on it for thirty years, was the historical novel Jubilee, published in 1966. Jubilee was about a slave family, based on the stories her grandmother used to tell her. Walker also did extensive research into the period. The novel spans many years, from the antebellum era, through the Civil War, through the chaos of Reconstruction. I have not read Jubilee, although I remember it being on the little display on the table in the main room of the library where I worked after school in high school. It has a very memorable cover. So this is an oversight on my part. I’ve read her poetry (I have For My People), but not Jubilee. It was an important book (recently released in a 50th anniversary edition), and a commercial success, important because it was black history written by a black person, not through the eyes of a white writer. Black experience is centralized. Of course, though, when the book came out many white critics compared it to Gone With the Wind, as in “It’s the OTHER side of Gone With the Wind!” OR, even worse, criticizing her for upholding some myth of Southern antebellum life, in the same way Gone With the Wind did. The NERVE. Margaret Walker was so annoyed by this she wrote a couple of pieces combatting the comparison.

Margaret Walker was a professor of literature for almost the entirety of her life. A major figure in 20th century African-American literature.

Here are a couple of her poems. And I promise I will read Jubilee.

For My People
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
dragging along never gaining never reaping never
knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
and playhouse and concert and store and hair and
Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
people who and the places where and the days when, in
memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
were black and poor and small and different and nobody
cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
marry their playmates and bear children and then die
of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox
Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and
land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
the dark of churches and schools and clubs
and societies, associations and councils and committees and
conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
rise and take control.

“Sit-Ins”
Greensboro, North Carolina, in the Spring of 1960

You were the first brave ones to defy their dissonance of hate

With your silence

With your willingness to suffer

Without violence

Those first bright young to fling your names across pages

Of new southern history

With courage and faith, convictions, and intelligence

The first to blaze a flaming path for justice

And awaken consciences

Of these stony ones.

Come, Lord Jesus, Bold Young Galilean

Sit Beside this Counter, Lord, with Me!

“Writers should not write exclusively for black or white audiences, but most inclusively. After all, it is the business of all writers to write about the human condition, and all humanity must be involved in both the writing and in the reading.” — Margaret Walker

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“I believe what Camus says. When the curtain rings down, your job is done.” — Warren Oates

Posted on July 5, 2026 by sheila

“My reason for being an actor, like most any other actor, is to really nail something important down, to really find something to say in my work. And I tell myself that if I am sincere about my work, I should understand the time I live in.” — Warren Oates

It’s his birthday today.

When Warren Oates smiled, sadness and grief billowed off of him almost visibly. The smile came either out of his pain – whatever that pain was – or was a defense against the pain. Either way, the pain was always there. Either way, I am hard pressed to think of an actor who makes me want to cry when he smiles.

Who replaced him? Who could play those roles now? It’s a moot question because Warren-Oates-roles aren’t written anymore. We have lost a lot in our understanding of human nature with the vanishing of Warren Oates from the screen, because he revealed things about humanity – about men, in particular – that The Powers That Be have a vested interest in suppressing. I don’t mean to sound paranoid. But seriously: perhaps only in the 70s was the burden of masculinity – the burdens of manhood – the LONELINESS of manhood – seriously and deeply explored. This was Warren Oates territory.

That smile. That smile trying to seem jolly and jocular and confident but … you could feel the anguish wafting out of him, beyond his control.

Kim Morgan is the Poet Laureate of Warren Oates. Her essay on Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is essential reading: there’s been a lot of ink spilled on that film, but Kim’s is the one to read. She wrote and narrated a video-essay on Oates for Criterion’s release of The Shooting/Ride in the Whirlwind. Oates was Monte Hellman’s muse.

Along those lines, I touched on Oates a little bit in my tribute for Monte Hellman in Film Comment.

“I’m not angry because I’m not the leading man. Whatever they give me to do, I do. I don’t want to be typed but I have learned a lesson in patience and resignation. If it’s an anti-hero they want, I’m more than happy to oblige.” — Warren Oates

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Physical Media Booklet Essay podcast interview

Posted on July 3, 2026 by sheila

The Physical Media Booklet Essay zine, brainchild of Sean Abley, now has an accompanying podcast, where Sean interviews each of the writers about their “booklet essay” (about a film that only exists within another film; in other words, a film that does not exist). I wrote about Living in Oblivion – the film seen being shot in the film also called Living in Oblivion.

These episodes are so fascinating! We each took a different approach. I love this! There will be nine episodes of the podcast, where Sean interviews us. Episodes drop weekly. There are two out so far.

My episode is now up for free on Sean’s patron: Gay of the Dead podcast interview.

You can purchase the zine on Sean’s store. You can also buy it on Amazon.

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“My voice isn’t an instrument I can just hang up on a hook.” — Audra McDonald

Posted on July 3, 2026 by sheila

For Audra McDonald’s birthday

My good friend Ted and I were once talking about Audra McDonald and her performance of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in the live televised version of The Sound of Music, and what a powerhouse it was. You can see Carrie Underwood, receiving the power of McDonald at close range, and you can see Underwood almost shattered by what was going on, what was coming at her. It’s hard to look at anyone other than Audra, but I was deeply touched by Underwood. She is barely holding on. Even with McDonald’s performance, it is Underwood’s reaction – as a fellow performer – which is the true tribute. Unfortunately, I can’t find the live version on Youtube, so McDonald performing it at the Kennedy Center will have to do. I honestly thought I never needed to hear that song ever again. Or, hell, even once. I’m not a fan. But McDonald revitalizes it singlehandedly.

Audra McDonald’s voice is one of the great instruments of our time.

But we must not forget her acting and how her acting elevates her voice into a truly transcendent space, similar to what Judy Garland could do, what all the great singers can do. In that regard: I want to talk about McDonald’s live performance of “Maybe This Time.” I consider it to be a high watermark of live performance.

Sometimes it’s helpful to compare/contrast, although some seem to dislike it, assuming you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Believe me. I am not. Kristen Chenoweth has a phenomenal instrument, and she also can act. However: when Chenoweth sang “Maybe This Time” on Glee, she – in my opinion – dodged the entire point of the song. It’s a deep song: you MUST deal with the lyrics, you must FEEL those lyrics, otherwise … who cares.

I really dislike her version of it because she does not want to deal with the emotions of the song. In my opinion, she can’t relate to the self-loathing (“Everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me”). Chenoweth is invested in herself as a “winner.” Which, of course, is great, good for her. But as an actor you can’t care about that if the moment calls for something else. “Maybe This Time” is brutal, and trying to weasel out of the song’s implications is a fake. “Maybe This Time” is not a song of plucky triumph, but that’s the way Chenoweth plays it, down to the last show-off note. Natasha Richardson didn’t have a phenomenal voice, but her performance of the song when I saw her on Broadway, was so painful it was a harrowing experience sitting through it. I’m not exaggerating: I could barely stand to be sitting there watching. I wrote about it here, when Richardson died. Liza Minnelli’s version was different from all of these (I go into the differences in the Natasha Richardson piece). Minnelli played as hard as she could Sally’s delusional state, her self-willed belief in her own amazing-ness, and it’s insanely disturbing and thrilling. The song can take different interpretations, but you can’t DODGE anything while singing it: you have to FACE it.

Back to McDonald: watch the clip above. She FACES it.

Watch how she lets the song build, and not just the song itself, but the song’s story, and the emotions the song unleashes. The song is working ON her. As the song climbs the scales, she is not in the driver’s seat, the song pulls her up and up and up. (And of course, it’s not that simple: she IS in the driver’s seat. This is her brilliance as an actress and a performer. She is controlled enough with her instrument that she can craft it, and she does it in a way where it doesn’t look crafted at all.) The song seems to be taking her where IT needs to go. McDonald does not compromise the voice, ever: it’s clear as a bell, every note perfectly placed, no strain, no sloppiness. She is in exquisite control of her voice. Her voice is how she gets her feelings out. So often with great instruments, the feelings and/or the sense of the lyrics ARE compromised in order to get the sound out. We see this time and time again, we see this on American Idol, where the kids somehow think that SMILING while singing “Stormy Weather” is in any way a valid choice. There is such a thing as a wrong choice. It doesn’t matter if you have amazing pipes if you don’t understand THE JOB.

McDonald’s voice is so flexible and free, with such a breath-driven mix of head voice and chest voice, it can do anything go anywhere, and in the case of “Maybe This Time” the voice is such that it can TAKE the emotions exploding out of her by the end.

But watch her face during the performance of “Maybe This Time”. Watch what’s going on with her, through the whole thing but particularly as she approaches the end end, from minute 2:47 on.

The voice is in control, the feelings are not.

At the 2025 Tony Awards, she performed “Rose’s Turn”. If you were clicked into the theatre community, you followed along with the responses, which were instantaneous. People were blown away, people were critical. People raved, people recoiled. It was one of those moments (and, to be honest, we don’t get many of them any more when so much of entertainment is designed to generate NO strong responses at all, because God forbid we risk offending someone). “Rose’s Turn” is the “To be or not to be” of American musical theatre. It is the soliloquy to end all soliloquies and it can make or break a performer. Nothing will reveal shallowness or phoniness or even trying too hard like “Rose’s Turn”. There is a standard as well: it’s so well-known there are assumptions of what it is, and how it should be done. And so any deviation, an actor who makes another type of choice, can face rejection. Audiences: “no no no I remember it was done THIS way and how dare you make another choice?”

I remember Natasha Richardson playing Sally Bowles on Broadway, a production I saw, and her “take” was so different from Liza Minnelli’s that it did take a second to adjust. To be that bold in interpretation is not for the faint-hearted. You must have the goods and you must have the philosophy behind it: you have to really know what the fuck you are doing and why, in other words. Richardson knew what she was doing. I wrote about that groundbreaking performance when she died.

What happened with that performance was almost unthinkable: I didn’t think once of Liza Minnelli. “Maybe This Time” (speaking of which) completely changed when Richardson sang it. I heard it another way.

The song is the song. The soliloquy is the soliloquy. It’s a TEXT. That’s all. Words on a page.

It takes an actor to bring it to life. And, despite definitive performances, there is no one way to do it.

Audra McDonald’s interpretation of “Rose’s Turn” was unlike any other performance of it I’ve seen and it did the unthinkable (again): it made me hear the song a new way. It almost baffled me, and I did almost reject it – not because it wasn’t good, but because I literally couldn’t TAKE IN what she was doing and where she was going emotionally. She didn’t obliterate other versions but … well, she almost did. She found new depths in the song. She came at it with a different philosophy and backstory. To the naysayers: she is allowed to do that.

And maybe, just maybe, Audra McDonald’s stunning groundbreaking career has earned her the right for you to maybe think, just maybe, she knows best? i.e. She knows what the fuck she is doing and why. And maybe GO WITH IT as opposed to REJECT it because it is NEW. There’s a conservative strain in audiences, particularly those who know their history. This is why radically new interpretations of Shakespeare sometimes meet resistance.

Powerful waves pour through Audra McDonald. There is no sea wall to break those waves. These powerful waves would overwhelm other people, frighten them. When feelings are as huge as a 90-foot wave, many others – including actors – balk. It’s not that they WON’T “go there”, it’s that they CAN’T. This stuff is not for the weak. You must be able to FACE the wave and let it hit. What I’m seeing here with her “Rose’s Turn” is a woman being hit by a 90-foot wave, and singing THROUGH the hugeness of it, the chaos of it. She’s barely holding on. (I felt this in Natasha Richardson’s Sally Bowles too. She was barely holding on.)

Are you tough enough to face what McDonald faces here? Can you accept that maybe, just maybe, she knows what she is doing, and why? And she has courage enough to do it.

Posted in Actors, Music, On This Day, Theatre | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

“You can’t be on top all the time. It isn’t natural.” — Olivia de Havilland

Posted on July 1, 2026 by sheila

It’s her birthday today.

In The Heiress, Olivia de Havilland gave one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. Her final moment, ascending the stairs, as the grifter Montgomery Clift bangs on the door screaming her name, is one of the greatest final shots in cinema. The Heiress is that rare thing, a perfect movie. It’s really a quartet – played by de Havilland, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins and Montgomery Clift – an interwoven portrayal of a sick family system, undone by the outsider. Catherine is a victim not just of a controlling father, a manipulative fantasist aunt who encourages the delusions and ignores the threat, and the user who “courts” her and betrays her … but of her society. She is a victim of the world into which she was born. This was, of course, Henry James’ point, and Washington Square, the novel on which The Heiress is based, is slim (compared to his other works) – with every word an indictment. For me, it is a criticism of patriarchy, a word now so over-used as to become almost meaningless. Catherine lives in a world where a certain class of woman has only one option: get married. If you don’t get married, you will be at the mercy of your family, you depend on them for food/shelter. You can’t do anything else. In this world, love doesn’t come into the picture. “Class” is important here. Poor people were trapped in many ways, but they weren’t trapped by these byzantine social rules dominating private life.

So Catherine is a victim. She is a capable woman, but she has been kept in a state of suspended childhood, almost a forced naivete. She has no other option. Her naivete is not charming or adorable. It is grotesque (and infuriating: there is a social critique in James’ portrayal). Her naivete leaves her open to predation. When a predator appears, in the glamorous form of the pretty-talking fortune hunter Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), Catherine is completely unprotected. Patriarchy not only couldn’t save/protect her – as it promised to do – it offered her up into danger. Catherine is foolish in many ways, but her foolishness is imposed from the outside. The world is to blame. What other options did she have? She couldn’t get an education, beyond what was deemed appropriate for young ladies of a certain class. She couldn’t circulate on her own as a single lady, and get some experience which would have helped her clock Morris instantly as a Bad Dude Up to No Good. She couldn’t travel on her own. Or … she COULD. But she would have had to be brave enough, smart enough, resourceful enough, to reject her entire upbringing, to face scandal and shunning … and not too many people can do that. We are social animals. We need our community.

Catherine could have been a happy person in any other era. She could have gone the Now Voyager route, and find her place in a more bohemian world (the films have much in common). She could have made her own money. She could have been a librarian or a secretary or … really, anything. But in her time, in her place, she had to stay at home and play by the rules. These rules destroyed her.

The revelation of de Havilland’s performance is profound. (And don’t even get me started on Ralph Richardson. He totally understood what was being critiqued and set about – meticulously and perfectly – to embody Patriarchy with a capital P, in all its cruelty, condescension and control.) But there’s more complexity to be added. Catherine’s father is right to be concerned. He clocks Morris instantly. He knows his daughter is being used. He tries to save her. Unfortunately, and tragically, this comes out as “why would this glamorous young man be interested in YOU?”

The real revelation for Catherine is the contempt in which her father holds her. She has been living in a state of illusion. She has bought her society’s lie, about her place in it, about her value and worth. When she finally perceives how her father really sees her, nothing will ever be the same again.

De Havilland portrays this in chilling totality: her voice, her manner, her gestures – that needlepoint moment – her very soul has been altered. The scales have been ripped from her eyes. She now sees her world for what it is. She sees the lie.

While this truth is terrible, one wouldn’t wish for Catherine to stay in the place where her illusions are intact. Those illusions are built on sand. They cannot hold. They are phony. They are designed to keep her down, to keep her pliable and passive. And so when her life is destroyed by Morris’ betrayal, and when she sees how her father looks at her, her old self dies and a new one emerges, a stronger harder person. But free.

It is a towering performance. It is an example of what great acting can convey. It is not about “self”, it is not even about giving a great acting performance. It is attached to the larger world and its fictions, the lies it tells itself: de Havilland exposes the lie. She lives the consequences of the lie dying. She walks up the stairs, ignoring her lover’s anguished cries, her heart is hardened to him, she is turned to stone. Nothing could make her turn around and go open the door. She would rather die.

Her hardness is a tragedy. What would it have been like if the world had actually protected her, had nurtured her naive openness, and allowed her to blossom on her own terms? Wouldn’t it have been nice if the patriarchy had held up its end of the bargain?

Well, sure. But it’s all a lie.

At least Catherine knows it’s a lie now. The truth has set her free. Freedom can be a terrible thing, but the alternative is worse.

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“If I don’t feel it, I can’t play it.” — James Cotton

Posted on July 1, 2026 by sheila

Blues-harmonica legend James Cotton was born on this day in 1935 on a cotton plantation. He was a working musician by the time he was 10 years old. He toured with Howlin’ Wolf. Eventually he hooked up with Muddy Waters and toured with him for years, his harmonica solos an integral part of the songs. Later on, he formed his own band, and toured as a solo act for 60-plus years. He played with everyone.

In the early 1950s, he – like so many others – gravitated to Memphis, to Sun Records specifically, the space Sam Phillips had created to record blues and gospel music. Cotton’s Sun tracks are incredible, with that unmistakeable Sun sound, a sound you would recognize in a blind sample. There’s a raw-ness to the Sun stuff, because even though you had to pay to record there, it wasn’t really a commercial enterprise. At least not at the start. (One arm of the business was the money-making arm, which paid the bills, Phillips recording weddings and stuff like that.) Phillips was on a mission. He wanted these musicians and this music to be heard.

Of all of James Cotton’s Sun stuff, I love “Cotton Crop Blues” the best, a 1954 recording at Sun Records, with a grinding slightly distorted and totally modern-sounding electric guitar solo by Pat Hare.

Here’s a live clip from a Muddy Waters show from 1966. A performance of “Got My Mojo Workin’,” James Cotton harmonica solo.

And here, James Cotton, alone, slows it all way, way, WAY down. Center stage. His harmonica was as eloquent as human speech. Maybe more eloquent. Because I’ve listened to a lot of people talk, and they never sound like THIS.

He died in 2017. Here’s a full obituary, with more information.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.” — Lena Horne

Posted on June 30, 2026 by sheila

It’s her birthday today.

Mitchell and I – in yet another of our series of conversations – discuss Lena Horne. Weirdly, we had an enormous discussion about her one night when I was staying with him in Chicago. We watched endless clips of her singing and talked about her with enthusiasm and love. We woke up to the news she had died. Mitchell looked at me and said, “We didn’t even know it, but last night we gave her a sendoff.”

Part of this “series” was me asking Mitchell to describe whoever it was in “one word” as a launching point.

On Lena Horne

SOM: One word.

MF: Angry.

SOM: Talk about that.

MF: It’s almost like she was the Mike Tyson of singers. There was always this idea that she might bite. She bit her words, and she bit her phrasing.

I read that beautiful biography about her, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. It talked a lot about how she would stand in these clubs as a black woman who was considered pretty. How generous of the white audience to consider her pretty, right? And she wouldn’t be able to go in the front door, but she’d sing for these rich white people, and her friends and family couldn’t come in, and she was so furious that it kind of created her style.

She was angry about a lot of things. She was angry about the fact that she was never really given a role at MGM. All of her roles were AS Lena Horne. Well, not all of them – there were two exceptions and they were primarily black movies. But most of her movies, she was basically Lena Horne singing a song, which they would then take out when the movie played in the South. She was the link between Ethel Waters and Hattie McDaniel and the next generation, with Diahann Carroll.

MF: And she was pissed about it. She didn’t want to be anyone’s link. She wanted to be a movie star, and she wanted to be a top-rated concert singer, and she got stuck in the middle. She was very angry politically, when she got older. Totally justified. She was labeled as a female Uncle Tom, in a way, because her career was based on a white world. Her credibility as a black woman, or a civil rights activist, was called into question and that made her mad.

MF: I think a lot of people get disappointed when they hear Lena Horne for the first time. They think she’s going to be a soul singer. And of course she had a soulful voice because she sang from the heart, but she was like Sinatra and Dean Martin and Judy Garland and Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney.

MF: Lena Horne sang standards. She sang on the jazz edge of standards, but really, she was more of a pop singer. Not a blues singer, not a soul singer, not an R&B singer. She was a black woman who sang the standards. She was famous for singing Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Harold Arlen. She was also stunningly beautiful. It was interesting because she married a white man, and then seemed to regret it. She regretted that she had done that because she felt like it took her credibility away. She seemed to die fairly bitter. If you want to get a real sense of her, watch her in Cabin in the Sky (1943).

MF: Then watch some of her TV appearances in the 60s. Watch her sing with Judy Garland on the Judy Garland Show. They do two duets. They do “Day In Day Out”, and then they sing each other’s songs, which is really brilliant.

MF: I think my favorite recording of hers, for some reason, is from her Broadway show The Lady and Her Music that she won a Tony for. She does “Surrey With the Fringe On Top”, and it’s kind of a throwaway but I think it’s genius. She starts it off by saying, “I’m gonna sing this one …….. cause I like it.” And then she sings “Surrey With the Fringe On Top”, and it’s so good and jazzy and informed and sexy. To me, that’s a real mark of her artistry, that she could take a lyric and make it very much about whatever her story is, and it didn’t have to do with the context, it had to do with whatever she was thinking about. That’s the mark of a great singer.

MF: I love Christina Aguilera, and I know it’s a different tradition of singing, but she’s so busy acting like she’s singing, which she doesn’t have to do because she is in fact singing better than 90% of the planet. But she’s always showing us that she’s singing, and it’s like “Why don’t you talk to us about the story that you’re telling, and we’ll understand that you’re singing”.

SOM: One last thing about Lena: Could you talk to me about her gestures?

MF: Her gestures really are so unique, so connected to whatever she’s going through, but also really out there. Her gestures are less striking to me, though, than her facial expressions. She would do this wide-mouth to get the sound out, and her weird vowels. Like she wouldn’t say “there”, she’d say “thay-ah”. So if you say that, you can feel your mouth open – and it’s this open-mouthed A, even though that’s not really the vowel sound of the actual word. Her gestures were a lot of clenched fists, but her face – she sort of made her eyes huge, and she would scrunch up her eyes and growl. In a weird way, she had a tightness to her gestures, whereas Judy’s gestures flowed out, or Ethel Merman‘s gestures flowed out. Lena Horne’s was more of a clenched-fist gesture. In comparison to Shirley Bassey, who has the other extreme: the weirdest gestures ever.

MF: I mean, really. And Bassey got validated for it pretty early in her career so they kept getting more outrageous. She stopped judging herself. She knew she would get great reviews if she did the wildest gestures that anyone had ever seen. I feel like Lena’s gestures were born out of anger. According to a lot of reports, Lena Horne could carry a tune but wasn’t necessarily considered a great singer at the beginning, and she developed her style while doing those club dates that she hated. A lot of her style, which became famous and sexy, was based on her fury.

The biography of her is really good, because it’s about her but it’s also about that time, and what a lot of performers of her time went through. She had a lot of support in Hollywood, except she felt very very lonely, because as much as they supported her they still didn’t have much to say to her. She wasn’t working with everybody like everybody else was. They supported her, they went to see her shows and concerts, but they weren’t on set together. That kind of camaraderie, she didn’t have it. There’s that famous black and white clip showing all the MGM stars having lunch. Watch it again and see that she’s not talking to anyone, and no one’s talking to her. She looks lonely, and beautiful, and stuck there around people she doesn’t know. That’s Lena Horne in Hollywood.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

Posted in Actors, Movies, Music, On This Day | Tagged | 6 Comments