Bugsy Siegel & Lawrence Tibbett
Little Jimmy Olsen
amazement there appeared a scene which will fascinate opera lovers. Bugsy
and his crony are driving around in L.A. The crony is giving Bugsy a tour of
the homes of celebrities.
Bugsy points at a house and says, "Who lives there?"
The crony says something like, "That famous opera singer...Lawrence
Whatshisname."
Bugsy says, "Melchior?"
Crony: "Nah, the other one.....oh yeah, Tibbett. Lawrence Tibbett."
Bugsy: "Stop the car!"
(Bugsy jumps out of the car with a satchel of cash and rings Tibbett's door
bell. A hoity-toity English butler answers the bell and shows Bugsy into the
liberry where Tibbett is just hanging out, who I might add, looks nothing
whatever like the Larry Tibbett we all know and love.)
After a little small talk Bugsy asks Tibbett how much he paid for the house
which, I might add, is quite the huge luxurious mansion.
Tibbett: "Thirty thousand dollars three years ago."
Bugsy: "I'll give you $40,000 cash."
(From the satchel Bugsy pulls out enough of the long green to choke a
triceratops and lays it on the elegant Queen Anne liberry table. Larry's
eyes kind of bulge out and he chokes and sputters like a high G snuck up on
him unawares.)
When he finally reins in his vocal cords Tibbett says the house isn't for
sale and money is not the object. Well, of course we all here at RMO know
that money definitely IS the object, and so does Bugsy. He starts dragging
more and more lucre out of the satchel as if it was just useless paper (kind
of like dftritter's RMO posts, if you need an analogy to visualize the
flavor properly). He (Bugsy, not tritter), bids Larry up to a cool sixty G's
(That's thousands, not high notes) who bites, and everybody is happy, except
maybe the English butler who, for all we know, is now looking at a lengthy
stretch of unemployment. On the other hand he may be Lauritz Melchior in
disguise, in which case he can probly tap his daughter, Sonia Heinie, for a
bridge loan until he can pop over to Bayreuth and earn some quick
Deutschmarks. Neither Larry nor Laury break into song with a rousing "O
Gioia", or anything like that but we do get the distinct impression that
Larry is one happy baritone. We also get the distinct impression that Larry
knows he is dealing with a person of the criminal element persuasion.
My question: How much of this, if any, is true? And was Bugsy Siegel
actually an opera fan who, if he hadn't gotten seriously perforated in Las
Vegas, might be happily posting away with us right here at RMO?
Little Jimmy Olsen
cathy
As with most things, the truth is quite boring. When Siegel moved to
LA in 1936, he simply rented a house from Tibbett while he set about
building his own house a bit further west.
Hélène Mante
desillusion.
--
---------------------------------------------
Hélène Mante
Forum Opéra
Tel./fax. : + 32 2 241 59 88
---------------------------------------------
"Little Jimmy Olsen" <cub_re...@earthlink.net> a écrit dans le message de
news: bc4svn$p1b$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net...
Andre Storfer
AES
Terrymelin
>amazement there appeared a scene which will fascinate opera lovers. Bugsy
>and his crony are driving around in L.A. The crony is giving Bugsy a tour of
>the homes of celebrities.
>
>Bugsy points at a house and says, "Who lives there?"
>
>The crony says something like, "That famous opera singer...Lawrence
>Whatshisname."
>
>Bugsy says, "Melchior?"
>
>Crony: "Nah, the other one.....oh yeah, Tibbett. Lawrence Tibbett."
>
>Bugsy: "Stop the car!"
>
>(Bugsy jumps out of the car with a satchel of cash and rings Tibbett's door
>bell. A hoity-toity English butler answers the bell and shows Bugsy into the
>liberry where Tibbett is just hanging out, who I might add, looks nothing
>whatever like the Larry Tibbett we all know and love.)
It is a scene for which Warren Beatty should be publicly flogged because it's
point seems to be "hey, all opera singers are short and fat."
Lawrence Tibbet was neither of those things. I guess Beatty was too stupid to
do the research and get the thing right. Which would have taken him all of 5
minutes to do. Beatty is a jackass.
Terry Ellsworth
Elizabeth Hubbell
You know, in this instance, I find myself agreeing! Ordinarily, I like
to cut those who are good at their craft some slack (and, taken strictly
for his effectiveness as an actor, Beatty happens to be a perfectly
persuasive artist, IMO). But Beatty (and he's not the only one)
reflects an overwhelming sloppiness and laziness throughout Hollywood
when it comes to the (occasional) depiction of matters operatic. Heck,
Beatty may not even been at fault; it may have been someone else whose
responsibility it was to check up on such things.
The bottom line is, the most basic aspects of certain things that would
have taken one minute to fact-check get routinely ignored, sometimes in
the most elaborate and keenly worked-out films. Why? It's almost as if
they're going out of the way to wink at their audience and say "See, I
don't care about facts, I'm here to tell a story!!!!" Very
disconcerting.
There's also an advertisement on New York TV right now for the lottery
where the "Sempre libera" is being sung WITH ALFREDO ON STAGE! For
Pete's sake!
I will say that an accurate use of "Sempre libera" is brilliantly
exploited in The Music Teacher, where the rival tenor spikes his
competitor by taking advantage of the fact that Alfredo does have an
offstage moment during (ostensibly) the soprano's moment. But then, Van
Dam was involved in that film, so......
All right, rant over.............
Geoffrey Riggs
www.operacast.com
A Tsar Is Born
"Little Jimmy Olsen" <cub_re...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:bc4svn$p1b$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net...
> A couple nights ago I was watching the moom pitcher, "Bugsy", when to my
> amazement there appeared a scene which will fascinate opera lovers. Bugsy
> and his crony are driving around in L.A. The crony is giving Bugsy a tour
of
> the homes of celebrities.
>
> Bugsy points at a house and says, "Who lives there?"
>
> The crony says something like, "That famous opera singer...Lawrence
> Whatshisname."
Some years ago, when I was dating a cutie in Newark, his roommate, a
house-rebuilder (who was even cuter), gave us a guided tour of the town. He
pointed at one elegant home in that inelegant city and said, "Oh you'll like
this. Some famous opera singer lives there." "Who?"
He couldn't think of the name. Finally I guessed, or he came up with, "Maria
Jeritza."
I went home to ransack my closet for $30,000 in cash to offer her for it,
but in the paper the very next day was the news that she'd died the previous
evening. Which I had NOTHING to do with.
Hans Lick
Terrymelin
>to cut those who are good at their craft some slack (and, taken strictly
>for his effectiveness as an actor, Beatty happens to be a perfectly
>persuasive artist, IMO)
I think of all the major actors of the past 40 years he has the most limited
range. Redford is even better.
>But Beatty (and he's not the only one)
>reflects an overwhelming sloppiness and laziness throughout Hollywood
>when it comes to the (occasional) depiction of matters operatic.
I would broaden that to say "cultural" not operatic. Hollyweird is tone deaf
and dumb when it comes to anything cultural. Look at the screen version of
Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady" with Nicole Kidman. That screenplay is so
un-Jamesian as to make one's head spin.
But that's because Hollyweird just doesn't get it if it doesn't involved
aliens, car chases, or four letter words.
>Heck,
>Beatty may not even been at fault; it may have been someone else whose
>responsibility it was to check up on such things.
Than you don't know Warren Beatty. The man is a bigger control freak than
Barbra Streisand!
Terry Ellsworth
Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
the following letters to be typed in news:3EE61DEE...@verizon.net:
> You know, in this instance, I find myself agreeing! Ordinarily, I like
> to cut those who are good at their craft some slack (and, taken strictly
> for his effectiveness as an actor, Beatty happens to be a perfectly
> persuasive artist, IMO). But Beatty (and he's not the only one) reflects
> an overwhelming sloppiness and laziness throughout Hollywood when it
> comes to the (occasional) depiction of matters operatic. Heck, Beatty
> may not even been at fault; it may have been someone else whose
> responsibility it was to check up on such things.
>
> The bottom line is, the most basic aspects of certain things that would
> have taken one minute to fact-check get routinely ignored, sometimes in
> the most elaborate and keenly worked-out films. Why? It's almost as if
> they're going out of the way to wink at their audience and say "See, I
> don't care about facts, I'm here to tell a story!!!!" Very
> disconcerting.
>
> There's also an advertisement on New York TV right now for the lottery
> where the "Sempre libera" is being sung WITH ALFREDO ON STAGE! For
> Pete's sake!
>
> I will say that an accurate use of "Sempre libera" is brilliantly
> exploited in The Music Teacher, where the rival tenor spikes his
> competitor by taking advantage of the fact that Alfredo does have an
> offstage moment during (ostensibly) the soprano's moment. But then,
> Van Dam was involved in that film, so......
>
> All right, rant over.............
Then there was the radio commercial where the wife is trying to get her
unhappy husband to do more than merely grunt at her. At the news that she
has finally bought the sponsor's product he signs, "La donna e mobile"!
Then there are all of those spaghetti sauce commercials on TV which show
vistas of Roma, Venezia, Pisa and the like whilst Lauretta threatens to
throw herself into the Arno....
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Mark Coy tossed off eBay? http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2B734C02
RMCR's most pointless, dumb and laughable chowderhead: Mark Coy.
Dov Grant
> [from Geof. Riggs; not Eliz. H., my better half]
>
>
> where the "Sempre libera" is being sung WITH ALFREDO ON STAGE! For
> Pete's sake!
>
>
> www.operacast.com
Actually, what bothers me most about this commercial is that the
costumes and sets seem to be from Trovatore, not Traviata (and the
scene takes place outdoors). Am I wrong about this? On the other hand,
if we can have a Ring Cycle with Brunnhilde having a smoke before she
slits her wrists at the end, I guess we can do Traviata in Trovatore
sets.
Dov Grant
Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
letters to be typed in
> Actually, what bothers me most about this commercial is that the costumes
> and sets seem to be from Trovatore, not Traviata (and the scene takes
> place outdoors). Am I wrong about this? On the other hand, if we can have
> a Ring Cycle with Brunnhilde having a smoke before she slits her wrists
> at the end, I guess we can do Traviata in Trovatore sets.
At least they didn't put a battleship into _Il Trovatore_. Or a choo-choo
train into _La Boheme_. Whoops, somebody did that one already!