Monday, October 7, 2013


10:29 I have just been watching an old television tape of a show about California's sea otters. The narrator's voice sounds like Raymond Burr, though the narrator's name wasn't in the credits so I can't prove it. I looked him up on the net, and he did do narrator work on a number of projects. He had a wonderful speaking voice. I think it's him. I have been in love with Raymond Burr since Perry Mason was on the air. I also watched him on Ironside. According to the biography I read, he played in over 90 films before he started Perry Mason in 1957. His first film was San Quentin in 1946. His other jobs started when he was still at home with his mother, as his income was needed to support the family after his parents separated. He worked as a ranch hand, a Deputy Sheriff, a photo salesman and as a nightclub singer. In World War II he served in the navy, during which time he was shot and sent home.

He was born May 21, 1917 in New Westminster, British Columbia and died on September 12, 1993 at the age of 76. He was married in 1948, but divorced in 1952. He invented a second marriage and a child to cover up the fact that he was gay. He met his life partner Robert Benevides on the set of Perry Mason. He left his 32,000,000 estate to Benevides. Even so, he was known as being very generous, giving a great deal to charities. Benevides was a television actor and producer. Burr and Benevides partnered in Sea God Nurseries, developing over 1,500 new orchids, one of which he named the Barbara Hale. In 2008 his life was commemorated in a series of Canadian postage stamps about famous Canadians in Hollywood. He worked up to the end of his life, his last two 1993 television films being The Return Of Ironside and also in 1993 Perry Mason: The Case Of The Killer Kiss. He died of cancer after a long illness.

11:08 I'm reading now. The book is the autobiography of Sidney Poitier. It's a very charming memoir starting in his earliest memories of living in a poor family on Cat Island in the Bahamas. It was a very simple life with no electricity or running water, no school, no motorized vehicles and not even a radio. They were poor, but so were others in the village, so there was no stigma about it. There was also no racial prejudice, as most of the population on the island were black, and the few white people who were there weren't in a social stratum above them. His home life was peaceful and loving. He helped around the house as soon as he was big enough to carry a bucket of water for his mother, so he wasn't spoiled. He was trusted to wander around on the island and entertain himself without parental supervision. Sometimes he did dangerous things and got into trouble, but he said the freedom and autonomy gave him good inner judgment as to what was a good thing or bad to do. At the age of 12 his much older sister asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and having seen his very first movie, he said that he wanted to go to Hollywood and be a cowboy. He had no concept of how movies were made, so he thought there were actually cows and cowboys in Hollywood. When he was 15 his father and mother put him on a boat and sent him to Miami, FL alone to live with his older brother and make his way in life. He had only had two years of schooling, while in Nassau.

By 1950 he was in his first movie called No Way Out. His parents saw it and during the movie there was a scene in which Richard Widmark beats him up and pistol-whips him. His mother rose from her seat in the movie theater and screamed out “Hit him back, Sydney. Hit him back! You never did nothing to him!” He said his mother was usually silent, introverted by nature, but she really spoke up that time!

When he was 18 years old, having $39.00 to his name from several months of work, he got on a one-way bus to New York to escape the Jim Crow southern culture in Miami. He took menial jobs until he tried out for a play, Lysistrata. He got good reviews and in 1950 he got a role in a movie No Way Out, as a black doctor treating a white bigot. By 1958 he had his first academy award nomination for The Defiant Ones. His first Oscar was for The Lilies Of The Fields, in 1963, the first black actor to win an Oscar in the leading role. In Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and To Sir, With Love he dealt with issues of the relationships between the white and black races. He also directed and produced films in the 1970's. He has an honorary doctorate degree from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. He has had six children by two wives, currently living with Joanna Shimkus. He is a long-time friend of Harry Belafonte, whom he met in his early twenties. His biography on imdb.com is recommended reading for a short summary of his life and roles.

Poitier has introduced me to a new word, “griot.” In European Society during the dark ages when very little of civilization remained after the fall of the Roman Empire, there were “bards” who memorized poems and songs and carried news in performances before the various royal courts. They filled in the blank where we now find books and newspapers, but almost nobody at that time could read and write, even including royalty. From a Net article called Sweet Chariot: the Story of the Spirituals, I have copied the following information about griots. “When discussing the poetry created by African Americans just prior to the Civil War, another African tradition comes into play: that of the West African griot. In West African culture, both historically and today, each tribal clan has had its griot, an itinerant clan member who is combination historian-musician-storyteller: "A Griot is an oral historian and musician," explains Foday Musa Suso, one of West Africa 's most respected and well-known contemporary griots. "Griots were trusted court advisors to the kings of West Africa from the twelfth century to the twentieth. Every king wanted a Griot to recite the history of the kingdom, and to pass it down from father to son. History wasn't written down – everything was memorized and recited or sung." The griot memorized the clan's significant events such as births, deaths, marriages, hunts, and wars, ensuring the continuity of the collective heritage and culture. "If you want to buy some cloth, go to the weaver. If you want a hoe, ax or knife, then go to the blacksmith. But if you want to know the history of the people, you must go to the griots." Often accompanied by the kora (a harp-like stringed instrument), drumming and/or the handclapping of the villagers, a griot might speak for hours, even days, drawing upon a practiced and memorized history, passed from griot to griot for generations. It is said that, "when a griot dies, a library has burned to the ground."

4:54 I am still reading the biography, which is not written in a straightforward time line, so I got his biographical details from imdb.com. I'll continue tomorrow.