jAMES JOYCE: BLOOMSDAY.

Today is Bloomsday – June 16^th. It's celebrated, as it was the day James Joyce met the woman of his life in Dublin and he wrote Ulysses and set it on that particualr day in Dublin.

I wrote this in 2010 and I will read it first and edit for the date:

It's Bloomsday today – June 16th – and on Bloomsday I think I'll put up here on the blog the 'Bloomsday' episode from my novel Alfredo Hunter; the Man With the Pen.
Of course I have changed the title of my novel from The Storyteller and on Amazon.com you can see excerpts from it under the former title. In fact on Google they have the whole novel somewhere in their library of all books ever written – or whatever it's called.
Bloomsday is taken from the novel Ulysses which takes part in the day of June 16th 1904 and the leading character therein Leopold Bloom – not Leo Bloom from The Producers by the way.

James Joyce set Ulysses on June 16th 1904 because that was the day he met the love of his life Nora Barnacle; well he did not actually meet her on that day but it was the day they first walked out; it was the day she did a small sexual favour for him which might have affected his mind; he thought if she can do that for me on the first day she would do it for anybody. It wasn't necessarily true, of course – what do I know? - but it led to bouts of jealousy and anxiety from the genius Jim which would upset Nora.
They left Dublin soon after and never returned to live there again – everything he wrote about Ireland he wrote from abroad. At one time they lived in London where they married – some time during the 1930s.
There is a lot of James Joyce in my novel; number one the leading character writes a play about him, there are various references to Ulysses and the prologue is actually a pastiche of his first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. That novel starts off with 'Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocaw coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy called baby tuckoo . . .' and my novel starts off with 'Once upon a time and a long time ago it was in the city of Dublin in the land of Ireland there was a man with a pen' – and then there are other phrases I use in the prologue; Joyce talks of the world being 'a great ball surrounded by clouds' and I use that phrase adding 'as the great man once said' and he also uses the phrase a 'greasy leather ball' which I also use to denote, as he did in the novel, the way some boys from the past were forced at school into sport and I remember at school trying to head that greasy leather ball they call a football.
But even though James Joyce is a subject of my novel I don't think I am influenced by him at all. I know every writer, especially the Irish ones, feels James Joyce looking over their shoulder as they write but I am more influenced by Charles Dickens, if anybody, or even William Shakespeare. Now that might sound as if I am comparing myself to Shakespeare and Dickens but nothing could be further from the truth.
I can't remember ever learning anything at school; I never did any work at school I didn't have to and the only subjects I liked had to have a story to it – like stories from the bible; the English Literature was non existent unless you want to count Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) being passed from pupil to pupil to read out loud in schoolboy monotones and turning into Seven Pillows of Sleep for me!
So I didn't do English Literature till years later after I'd read lots of books and even been to drama school – I was a mature student studying D.H. Lawrence (surprising what one letter makes), William Golding and First World War Poetry by a teacher who loved the subject.
At drama school I was reading and trying to perform Shakespeare when I hardly knew English!! Of course I was in a lot of trouble as I hadn't heard of any of the plays or even the characters and the only way I could even understand it was by sorting out his use of parenthesis and semi colons; without sorting those out I would have been up the creak without a paddle.
I eventually did Shakespeare professionally although not as much as I would have liked to; I earned a lot of money once doing a Shakespeare play for the BBC, even though it was a small part, and when I first came over here I 'workshopped' Richard III playing Richard which went very well – I guess some of the training must have gone in.
When I write I bear in mind Shakespeare's use of the English language – again I am not comparing myself to the greatest genius that has ever lived or the two greatest novelists in the English language, but I would recommend anybody who wants to write to follow them as opposed to Dan Brown.
So remember it is Bloomsday; there will, more than likely, be something on near you, if you look for it, and if you are in Dublin go on the walking tour if you can; go to Mulligan's Pub in Poolbeg Street and drink a pint of the best Guinness in the world and then come back and read my blog about my two leading characters celebrating Bloomsday in Los Angeles which was based on a true incident in 1995.

CHRIS SULLIVAN. LOS ANGELES 2010.

 

High Noon at the loo.

Do you know, I often wonder who are the 346 people who read my blog today. There is no way of finding out. 

I can see where a lot of them come from and what search engines they use, but there are only so many actual posts they show. There could easily be one view on every post I ever wrote – that's not true as there are 80 hits from the first ten posts it shows,

I was looking at a movie, the other day, and realised I went to the movies in my mother's arms. I'm sure of it, if not I went as a toddler in Ireland. 

When we lived in England we would go back to Ireland for the summer, to Finglas, and on Saturday mornings we would go to the local little picture house, I don't remember if it was a put up temporary job cinema, but the film would break down constantly.

When it did, it was the best part of the morning, because the projectionist was very funny – who knows, he might have become a comedian later in his life; when the break was mended, we knew the film was about to start as the lights in the cinema went slowly out, then the screen would be lit and then . . . the film would come on. 

But the projectionist would be telling us jokes and making us laugh and then he would say 'all ready to go' or something like that.

The lights would go out, the screen would be lit and then . . . ha ha ha – it was him laughing.

Sometimes he would get us to count 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then . . . the same laugh again. I think we even sang songs. I don't know where in Finglas it was but it was there.

As a child going with my mother, I didn't know what those people on the screen were, whether they were some kind of robots, or dead people or some kind of otherland where creepy crawlies would creep about, where people could fly and die. - die for a living, that's rich.

When I was at junior school in Birmingham, I would go to my imagination and think that everyone in the class was an actor, waiting to be called for our next role, rather like some agency, now I think of it, and then I would ask to go to the loo and that was some kind of calling to go and act.

Into the playground I would go, which was a hard surface – tarmac – and at the other end of the playground were the boys' loos. 

Very slowly, and in a Gary Cooper, type of walk, I would walk to the loo bum buppa bum buppa bum buppa bum.

Such was life in my mind in those days – and I've already mentioned the Superman cloak under my bed in a previous post.

 

Red Channels

                              

I wrote this in 2010, when I was living in America, and I noticed, for some reason, it's had quite a few hits recently – in fact quite a few from other posts too in 2010.

By the way, for Liberal, read left wingers. Liberals in the UK are to the left of the Conservatives and to the right of Labour.

Red Channels; now what does that mean to you? It didn't mean anything to me till the other day when I heard a piece on the radio about the subject.
Red Channels started sixty years ago in the television industry; it was a booklet delivered to the desks of media executives in 1950 exposing writers, actors, journalists and directors as being soft on communism; 151 individuals in total.
The introduction to Red Channels, running just over six pages, was written by Vincent Hartnett, an employee of the Phillip H Lord agency, an independent radio-programme production house, or "packager." Hartnett later founded the anti-Communist organisation AWARE, Inc.
On the list were people like Orson Welles, Leonard Bernstein, Artie Shaw, Lena Horne, Marsha Hunt and many others.
This was separate from the House Unamerican Activities Committee and McCarthyism of the time and the executives that received the Red Channels pamphlets very rarely admitted to receiving them or even saying that such a thing as the Red Channels pamphlet even existed.
In 1950 Marsha Hunt's career was in the ascendancy with the three big television networks competing for her services but after a few months of waiting she called her agent and was told the news that she was on the Red Channels list.
Eventually she found what she was being accused of and it was because she had signed certain petitions, had said certain things, had attended certain meetings and was considered a Communist sympathiser.
On her own volition she wrote to the networks and told them that she was a 'good' American and not planning to overthrow the country but to no success.
Jean Muir was cast in a series for NBC called the Aldridge Family even though she was on the Red Channels list and even went into rehearsals and recording but so many protest letters went to the sponsors about her that, even though it was embarrassing, she was dropped before the first programme was broadcast.
The Red Channels blacklist was eventually broken by a 1962 lawsuit.
Now what does this have to do with the price of toast I hear you asking?
Since being here in America I have found only one person who agreed with the McCarthy witch hunts of the late forties early fifties; I must admit I have only known a few right wingers but fifty or sixty years later you would think there would have been more survivors of those sympathies; I have heard nobody being interviewed who sympathised with McCarthy although I'm sure that many still exist.
At the time of the McCarthy witch hunts Hollywood produced movies with titles such as I Married a Communist and I Was a Communist for the FBI, in fact between the years 1948 and 1954 more than forty anti-Communist films came out of Hollywood.
In the 1951 Mickey Spillane novel One Lonely Night the hero, Mike Hammer, says “I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it . . . They were Commies . . .red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago”
Liberals often criticised the committee, but in Congress, Liberals and Conservatives alike voted to fund it every year. By 1958, only one member of Congress (James Roosevelt) voted against giving it money.
The above information about Hollywood, Mickey Spillane and Congress, I got from Howard Zinn's powerful book A People's History of the United States.
A wonderful book and in it are also facts about the early visitors to the Americas and how Christopher Columbus and his men ill treated the Indians here and in the West Indies.
In the West Indies they encountered a friendly people and abused them; all they wanted was gold for their King; the invaders would sharpen their knives and try them out on the natives. There was one case of a couple of Columbus's men encountering a pair of twin youths with a parrot who beheaded the twins and stole their parrot.
The incidents in the book are well researched and documented and I have to ask why men would do such things. Why would the whole nation believe McCarthy when he was obviously so evil?
Why would so many people follow Adolph Hitler? An unattractive monster who told the stock market and the ruling classes what they wanted to hear.
Isn't it very easy for me to look back with 20/20 hindsight and be so cute?
The people who came with Columbus knew no better but wouldn't you think they could have a modicum of empathy, sympathy or just a slight regard for their fellow man? Maybe they didn't think they were fellow men but a decent person wouldn't even do that to an animal.
And aren't we so clever looking back at the Communist witch hunts and saying that we wouldn't have had anything to do with it.
The people of the time were brainwashed with the continuous articles about Communism – I mean even Captain America was hunting Commies.
So what are we being brainwashed with these days; we live with a cancel culture, pedantic (woke) actions which are ruining other careers

Another Actor Story

 

Here's a little story – true that it's true - but no names and no pack drill.

It might be true to say that sometimes, some years ago, I was recognised by most people in the street. I won't say which street but there we go.

This little story, takes place in a city or a town in England, where I worked some time ago. I moved there, with my family, and appeared in 13 plays at the Repertory Theatre, in which, I played mainly the leading role and a few cameos – at one time, during playing the Lion in The Wizard of Oz I was asked to do five episode in TV soap.

I had to ask the director of the theatre, if I could miss the last Saturday matinee to rehearse the TV role and, to the gratification of the under study for that role, not my under study, you understand, but the Lion, he said it was okay.

When you work as an actor in a medium sized town or city, a lot of people recognise you in the street, so this added to the street recognition experienced to my prior contract with the theatre, which had been dying away.

After the TV job, I returned to the theatre and experienced more people at the stage door and the increase sales of my photos from the theatre.

I found they were selling my photo when I was presented by the odd person with a copy for me to sign.

I stayed on in the place where the theatre was when my contract at the theatre ended.

There were other actors living in the vicinity and one owned a huge Victorian house near the town centre and would throw the odd garden party. I knew him as I had seen him on TV, and chatted to him on the train into London, a few times; he always talked about his daughter and the connection to her in a kind of paranormal activity like a sixth sense.

When I was working at the theatre, he and his wife, would host garden parties and they were always lavish, with plenty of champagne and people milling around both the garden and his beautiful house with wonderful wooden floors, French windows and pieces of garden sculpture scattered around.

How much did it cost – well, I never: cheaper than the house we had bought on the outskirts of the town – well more than outskirts about ten miles.

I saw him a few times, around the town, and one time, about five years after I left the theatre, he called from a very smart, black Mercedes. I went over and popped my head inside and his family were there. I think I remember his wife as she hosted the garden party at his large house, and he had a couple of daughters.

He told me he was playing John Proctor in the Arthur Miller play The Crucible at the BBC. The starring role, in fact, and no wonder he had a nice posh Mercedes.

His reputation, before this, was that they struggled financially, as most actors do, but they lived a very lavish life.

Once in a while I would bump into the local newspaper critic, who had given me rave reviews; when I did the play Night Must Fall he said I was a bulwark of dramatic strength.

One day when I was walking to the local railway station, and not feeling the bulwark of dramatic strength, I met him in the street and he said 'how's it going Chris – what are you working on now?'

'I'm just off to the BBC.' – mistake!!!!

'Oh, what's happening there?'

'Dixon of Dock Green, we hope.'

'Good luck with that.' he said as I hurried towards my train.

I actually did get the role that day.

A few days later he mentioned it in his newspaper column and a few days after that, I received a letter from my bank manager 'I see you are appearing in Dixon of Dock Green – does this mean you can pay some of your overdraft off.'

I wrote back and told him 'not to believe everything in the press.'

When I finished Dixon of Dock Green it didn't make any difference to my overdraft.

I met the actor, who drove the Mercedes, on another trip to London and again he spoke about his daughter's sixth sense saying she said a week or so before he was offered the role in The Crucible, she had dreamed he would be offered a job where he would be surrounded by witches.

Work for me, at the time, was sporadic. My wife was working as a nurse at the local hospital and the weeks turned in to months and then years with the odd job here and there – survival but few cigars.

I was on my way to the hospital, one day, and an old battered Mercedes pulled up along side and it was the actor who I had last seen on the train. He asked me where I was going and he said 'hop in!'

As I was sitting next to him, I heard his exhaust pipe rattling as we travelled along and it was obvious that his Champagne Days had been put on hold.

I was going to our car which was parked in the hospital car park; our car, which was a tiny Ford Poplar, had a five pound note stuffed into the exhaust pipe which my wife had left there.

'We shouldn't be doing this' he said ' you and me should be doing better things than fishing a five pound note from . . .' he looked at our car ' – well, it's hardly a car.'

I didn't say anything about the heap of junk his car had become.

At the time I was attending classes at a local university. I was doing an 'O' level in Sociology and an 'A' level in Film Studies. So that's where we went as I knew the canteen was cheap, had excellent coffee and we could talk

His eye lit up when he saw the young girl students and he said 'you need to watch yourself here.'

I never saw him again but one day, many years later, I read that his daughter, who was an actress, had been involved with a very famous comedian when they both worked in a panto, and they were having an affair. it was all over the press. She was seventeen and he was sixty one. He, in my opinion, was as funny as tooth ache, five foot one and a lecher.

It must have broken her parent's heart.

I did a job at Beaconsfield Film Studios, which was occupied by The National Film School. It was a famous David Hare play and the students were taking lessons from a top film director. I had to be one of the actors they could practice their directing with.

There were two different classes: one was taken up with a certain part of the play and I had a scene with a young girl in another section of the play. It didn't matter how old we were as the performance wouldn't be going anywhere, it was just practice for the paying students.

We broke for lunch and went to the local pub and as we walked up the street the girl, whom I was working with, said 'I know you.'

'Oh' I said.

'You knew my dad. You popped your face in to our car one day.'

She was the daughter of the Mercedes driving lavish living actor mentioned before. 'wow' I said.

I was a little bit embarrassed, because I knew about her, and I also knew a song the comedian had sung and which was a hit song.

Out of my embarrassment and for some stupid reason I started to sing that song . . . . I don't think she heard as I stopped, as soon as I realised.

The actor, her father, died around the age of 60 – I never saw the girl again.