Bob Hope was the most-covered cultural celebrity death of the last couple news cycles, and with good reason: The 100-year-old comedian was, as David Zurawik wrote in the Baltimore Sun, 'the nation's entertainer laureate.' Zarewik quotes Johnny Carson lavishing yet more expansive praise: 'Bob Hope was the best loved, most admired and most successful entertainer in all of history.' An arguable point, but who's going to argue? Hope was a partner in inventing much of what we know as American comedy, from the 'opening monologue' to the buddy picture to the winning use of self-deprecation. His TV specials started with a chorus singing 'Here's the star of the show tonight, with lots of jokes and sayings bright. His nose is shaped like a periscope, and here's Bob Hope.'

Sam Phillips discovered Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and many more music legends

Hope's death certainly deserved all the coverage it got, but it should not have overshadowed another legend's recent demise. Sam Phillips, whose effect on music was very possibly equal to Hope's on comedy, passed away on July 30 at the age of 80. Phillips was the founder and proprietor of Memphis' legendary Sun Studios. As the Newhouse News Service headline had it, 'Sam Phillips Oversaw a Revolution, and Elvis Was Its King.' And the Phillips Revolution wasn't just about music, although it certainly was that; he's considered to have recorded the first real 'rock' record, 'Rocket 88' by Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner.

But 'the revolution [Phillips] oversaw, and that Elvis dominated,' wrote Delia M. Rios for Newhouse, 'transformed not only what we played on our radios, but our clothes, language, politics, race relations and even our sexuality.' Elvis' embrace of African-American musical traditions (what was then known as race music) was matched by Phillips' love of those same styles, an enthusiasm that can't be denied'even by those who focus on the cynical aspect.

In his Rolling Stone obit, Andrew Dansby writes that 'Phillips' lore has the producer telling confidantes that he was seeking a white singer with a black sound, thinking such a pairing of elements would make him a million dollars.' What it actually made him was $35,000, which Phillips plowed back into Sun Records; the label went on to produce more rock and country legends, like Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.

Phillips, Dansby notes, was one of only nine artists who've been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame. The others, for the record, are Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Bob Wills, Chet Atkins and Bill Monroe.

 

Being and Artist Not Risky Enough for You?

'Although the precise cause is unclear, a study of thousands of former students of Glasgow University found that arts and law students were most likely to die early.' That was the encouraging health news from the BBC on July 31, which further notes that 'Arts students were most likely to die from lung cancer or other forms of respiratory disease,' although students of medicine 'were more likely to die as a result of accidents, suicide and violence.'

Possible reasons for the tendency for artistic types to die earlier include, A) where art students come from ('Arts students were more likely to have experienced socioeconomic deprivation in childhood') and, B) how they end up living: foolishly. 'It could simply be the case that the 'arts' culture was more likely to result in a student who smoked.'

On a similar note, Leonard Jacobs, writing in Backstage on July 30, cleared up a little bit of confusion vis a vis New York's tough new anti-smoking law, and how it relates to the theatrical community. 'New York State's new Clean Indoor Air Act, which prohibits smoking in virtually every public workplace, will apparently also apply to smoking by actors on stage as well.'

Things aren't as a bad as they appear, though, if you do plan to put on Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. 'Contrary to press reports,' Jacobs continues, 'the anti-smoking law does not mean that actors will be forced, under the threat of a civil penalty or worse, to use herbal cigarettes in scenes in which they must smoke on stage.' Producers will still be able, as they were under the previous laws, to apply to the City for a waiver if they want their Smokey Joe's Café to remain smokey.

Jacobs then contends that the Clean Air Act, as applied in the theatre, creates the potential for a Constitutional crisis. 'If a performance artist, for example, wished to create a work in which he or she smokes a cigarette onstage, would the Clean Indoor Air Act, in effect, be violating that artist's First Amendment rights?'

As long as actors can still smoke in the alley at intermission while they bitch about the stage manager, I think the Republic will be safe.

 

As Stiffler Would Say, 'Who's your daddy?'

The cast of AmericanWedding, directed by Jesse Dylan, son of Bob

Many of the reviews of American Wedding, the third'and supposedly last'in the American Pie franchise, don't mention who the director's father is. Those who do mention it sort of offhandedly, because it's sort of hard to know what to say: At the helm of the latest silly sickout comedy is the son of the great rock-folk poet of the late 20th century.

Mick LaSalle plays it cool in the San Francisco Chronicle: 'Director Jesse Dylan (Bob's son, by the way) either allows or (unfathomably) encourages Scott to play Stifler as a veritable freak'' Ditto Michael Machosky at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. 'Often, first-time director Jesse Dylan (son of Bob Dylan) will throw in a close-up shot of the gag for good measure, just to make sure that you get what's supposed to be funny about it.' (Machosky is wrong, by the way'Jesse Dylan isn't a first time director. He debuted in 2001 with How High, starring Method Man.)

Only Mike Clark, in USA Today, reaches for a Dylan-related pun in his review of the film. 'Taking his motivational cue from director Dylan's daddy Bob, walking libido Steve lives only to 'lay lady lay.'' Get it? That character likes sex. Dylan, Senior must be so proud.